It never fails to surprise me how supposedly educated people, with a purported knowledge in history and law, get the Emancipation Proclamation wrong.
For example, this week on the Clay Travis and Buck Sexton show, Clay Travis credited Abraham Lincoln for freeing slaves in the Civil War in 1863. Though he didn’t reference the Emancipation Proclamation issued by Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, that presumably was what he was referencing.
Clay Travis not only earned bachelor’s degree from Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, but also a law degree, has been a practicing attorney, hosts a major radio talk show and has written several books. Not a slouch.
And he isn’t Confederaphobic. He actually objected to Vanderbilt’s efforts to rename Confederate Memorial hall… and was punished for it. He owns a coffee company honoring Davy Crockett, a defender of the Alamo and a Tennessean who owned slaves. So, he obviously isn’t shy of true history.
One doesn’t have to do more than read the Emancipation Proclamation once, word for word, to see that it is the biggest legal loophole of the 19th century–not one single slave was freed in any State in “rebellion”, meaning every Confederate State.
Simply and plainly, once you get past all the formalities, the President of the United States had no power to free enslaved people in an independent nation state. And, where he, arguably, might have had the power to do so, he feed none.
So, the beat goes on…people think they know things when they really don’t know, but have no problem espousing their opinion, anyway.
Some readers’ parents may have admonished them, as did mine: “It’s better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt”. Free speech grants the right to be wrong, but it is our responsibility not to take everything we hear or read as “the Gospel.” Just because you read it or hear it, doesn’t mean it is true.
And it isn’t a bias to northern Republicans, unless it came from teachers along the way, who he trusted. So as we begin 2025, it is time to redouble efforts to fact check educational materials of your children and grandchildren’s schools to make sure THEY learn the TRUTH.
Americans, even some Southerners, know so much that isn’t so about Lincoln, the war, secession, slavery, Jim Crow, segregation and more. We have the Yankees to ‘thank’ for that.