After one of the bloodiest battles in the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. The Proclamation would take effect on January 1, 1863 if the confederate states did not return to the Union. It established that all enslaved people in confederate states in rebellion against the Union “Shall be then, thenceforth and forever free”.  It is believed that Lincoln was against slavery, some would say that he hated it. In a speech he gave in Peoria, Illinois, in 1854 he said  "If the negro is a man, why then my ancient faith teaches me that 'all men are...