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The Emancipation Proclamation (Little Books of Wisdom)

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Note: Amazon has grouped together reviews of several different editions of this book; this review is for The Emancipation Proclamation (Little Books of Wisdom).

Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation is justly famed the world over, and every American or would-be American owes it to himself or herself to reread it occasionally, and this Applewood Books version is a good choice for reasons besides being sturdy, nice looking, and inexpensive.

A brief Foreward lays out the timeline of the drafting of the Emancipation Proclamation, including the well known quotation from Lincoln's reply to a Horace Greely editorial accusing him of being remiss with regard to emancipation, in which Lincoln makes clear that regardless of his personal feelings about slavery (he loathed it), his paramount object was saving the Union NOT saving or destroying slavery. What follows is the text of the three different versions of the proclamation: first draft, preliminary version, and the final, issued proclamation, along with Lincoln's introductory remarks to his cabinet regarding the second version, and last, the Thirteenth Amendment.

Note: Applewood Books has produced a nice looking inexpensive series of sturdy pocket-sized reprints of important American books, documents, speeches, pamphlets, and poems, the Little Books of Wisdom, uniform with this volume, that are ideal for gifting to doctors, lawyers, teachers, business professionals, and students of same: The Way to Wealth, George Washington's Rules of Civility & Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation, The Constitution of the United States of America, On the Art of Teaching, The Poems of Abraham Lincoln, The Strenuous Life, The Bill of Rights with Writings That Formed Its Foundation, The Path of the Law, The Constitution of the Confederate States of America, The Jefferson Bible: The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, A Message to Garcia, A Declaration of Sentiments, Robert's Rules of Order, Good Citizenship, On Being Human, A Discourse Upon the Duties of a Physician, The Declaration of Independence with Short Biographies of Its Signers, The Wants of Man, George Washington's Farewell Address, The Speech of Chief Seattle, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Common Sense, The Articles of Confederation, and The Gospel of Wealth.

Some selected volumes are also available in boxed sets: Books of American Wisdom Boxed Set, CEO's Gift Box of Wisdom, Doctor's Gift Box of Wisdom, Lawyer's Gift Box of Wisdom, New Citizen's Gift Box of Wisdom, and Teacher's Gift Box of Wisdom.

And some have been published in Spanish: Un Mensaje a Garcia and Constitucion de Los Estados Unidos.

This is just a great thing to have on your Kindle! If you know someone (especially a younger person) that has never read this great document, just hand them your Kindle. You'll be doing them a favor

It's history. What can you say? You can't review history as it happened. You can only know that it did. It's what people write and say about it than can be reviewed. Reviewing it as a speech and later published document, one has to admit he was a great speech writer in his time. He was careful about his words and since he didn't make mistakes in his writing, he had them well thought out before he set them to paper.

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The Emancipation Proclamation does not, as is usually believed, put an end to slavery in the United States. It ends slavery (technically but not really until the war ends) only in those states and portions of states which are at the time of signing (January 1 1862) in open rebellion against the United States of America. It orders military units moving into those areas to procure real freedom for those who are technically freed by the proclamation. It also orders that men who are eligible to be soldiers be accepted into the Union army. In real fact, very few white men would fight alongside black men, and "black regiments" with white officers were created as time went by. This should be read by all students of American history as an example of a document which does NOT do what most people think it does.

This should be required reading. Like it or not it is a valuable piece of our history and helped shape the great nation we are today.

With this, Abe Lincoln ended slavery in the United States. A true gem of American history worth every penny. Keep moving forward. Today, the war on terrorism...