The Emancipation Proclamation

The Emancipation Proclamation - September 22, 1862

Lincoln has made an emancipation for all slaves taking affect on January 1, 1863. This is enough. Lincoln has gone too far. Here we are fighting a war about the very issue that he has now decided to try to take away. I believe many of us Southerners knew this would eventually end with Lincoln coming down with an iron fist and attempting to strip us of our very livelihood. How is it that we are supposed to keep our states afloat economically if we don't have slaves to pick our cotton and continue tending the fields? This is far beyond the point I think any of us expected to be in this war. This is out of hand. And who is Lincoln to think that he can rule us when we're not even under his authority anymore. We seceded for this very reason. Lincoln said he wanted simply to preserve the Union... obviously we're past that. Preservation is probably the furthest thing we're from. Perhaps northerners are joining the abolitionist movement to punish slaveholders or moral standard. But at the very least, this is destroying the country more and adding to the tension that is already built up between the north and south.

http://www.whitehousehistory.org/04/subs/04_b_1863.html
http://aotw.org/exhibit.php?exhibit_id=10