nist talk. Compromises were worked out by which slavery was outlawed in new territories, but it was still allowed in the Southern states where it had become an entrenched and seemingly necessary part of the economy. The events taking place in Kansas solidified the image of the Republicans as a northern party while seriously weakening the Democrats. The Democratic party itself was split into sectional halves over certain issue and actions, such as the Dred Scott decision in 1857, the constitutional crisis in Kansas in 1857, the Lincoln-Douglas debates in Illinois in 1858, John Brown's raid in Virginia in 1859, and the election of Lincoln in 1860 (Nash and Jeffrey 481).
Slavery did become a central issue with the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln would have preferred that slavery be done away with by state law, and he tried to persuade the slave states to adopt this policy. As the war progressed, he became convinced that the government should make abolition an aim of the war for military purposes and to win the support of liberal opinion in Europe. He used the victory at Antietam to make public his Emancipation Proclamation which said that all slaves in areas in rebellion against the United States would from this time on be free. The Proclamation did not apply to the border states or to those sections of the Confederacy already in Union hands, but it would mean that from that time on every Union victory would speed the destruction of slavery. The proclamation had a subtle impact on the North, but its immediate effect was to aggravate racial prejudices. This allowed the Democrats to make political capital of the issue. It would later free slaves who would then be contained, or kept in the South.
Blacks participated in the Civil war as combatants on both sides of the war. We might assume that blacks would fight on the side of the north because that was in their best interests, but some had reason to fight...