Editing Emancipation Proclamation (section)

==Critiques==
{{further|Abraham Lincoln and slavery}}
Lincoln's proclamation has been called "one of the most radical emancipations in the history of the modern world."<ref>{{Cite magazine |last=Hahn |first=Steven |date=2011-01-13 |title=Discovering Equality |url=https://newrepublic.com/article/81377/lincoln-slavery-fiery-trial-review |magazine=The New Republic |issn=0028-6583}}</ref> Nonetheless, as over the years American society continued to be deeply unfair towards black people, cynicism towards Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation increased. One attack was [[Lerone Bennett, Jr.|Lerone Bennett's]] ''[[Forced into Glory: Abraham Lincoln's White Dream]]'' (2000), which claimed that Lincoln was a white supremacist who issued the Emancipation Proclamation in lieu of the real racial reforms for which radical abolitionists pushed. To this, one scholarly review states that "Few Civil War scholars take Bennett and [[Thomas DiLorenzo|DiLorenzo]] seriously, pointing to their narrow political agenda and faulty research."<ref>{{cite journal |url= https://muse.jhu.edu/article/315139 |last=Dirck |first=Brian |title=''Father Abraham: Lincoln's Relentless Struggle to End Slavery'', and ''Act of Justice: Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation and the Law of War'', and ''Lincoln and Freedom: Slavery, Emancipation, and the Thirteenth Amendment'' (review) |journal=Civil War History |date=September 2009 |volume=55 |issue=3 |pages= 382–385|doi=10.1353/cwh.0.0090 |s2cid=143986160 |url-access=subscription }}</ref> In his ''Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation'', [[Allen C. Guelzo]] noted professional historians' lack of substantial respect for the document, since it has been the subject of few major scholarly studies. He argued that Lincoln was the U.S.'s "last [[Age of Enlightenment|Enlightenment]] politician"<ref>{{harvnb|Guelzo|2006|p=[https://books.google.com/books?id=MOFHPTQYqzgC&pg=PA3 3]}}</ref> and as such had "allegiance to 'reason, cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason'.... But the most important among the Enlightenment's political virtues for Lincoln, and for his Proclamation, was prudence".<ref>{{harvnb|Guelzo|2006|p=[https://books.google.com/books?id=MOFHPTQYqzgC&pg=PA3 3]}}</ref>

Other historians have given more credit to Lincoln for what he accomplished toward ending slavery and for his own growth in political and moral stature.<ref>Doris Kearns Goodwin, ''Team of Rivals'', New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005</ref> More might have been accomplished if he had not been assassinated. As [[Eric Foner]] wrote:
<blockquote>Lincoln was not an abolitionist or Radical Republican, a point Bennett reiterates innumerable times. He did not favor immediate abolition before the war, and held racist views typical of his time. But he was also a man of deep convictions when it came to slavery, and during the Civil War displayed a remarkable capacity for moral and political growth.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.ericfoner.com/reviews/040900latimes.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20041027065400/http://www.ericfoner.com/reviews/040900latimes.html|archive-date=2004-10-27|url-status=live |title=''Forced into Glory: Abraham Lincoln's White Dream'' by Lerone Bennett, Jr. |first=Eric |last=Foner |publisher=Los Angeles Times Book Review |date=April 9, 2000}} (book review)</ref></blockquote>

Kal Ashraf wrote:
<blockquote>Perhaps in rejecting the critical dualism—Lincoln as individual emancipator pitted against collective self-emancipators—there is an opportunity to recognise the greater persuasiveness of the combination. In a sense, yes: a racist, flawed Lincoln did something heroic, and not in lieu of collective participation, but next to, and enabled, by it. To venerate a singular 'Great Emancipator' may be as reductive as dismissing the significance of Lincoln's ''actions''. Who he was as a man, no one of us can ever really know. So it is that the version of Lincoln we keep is also the version we make.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.baas.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/asib108-kal%20ashraf.pdf |title='Editorial', American Studies in Britain |series=(108: Spring 2013) |p=2|issn=1465-9956 |first=Kal |last=Ashraf |publisher=[[British Association for American Studies]] |date=March 2013 |access-date=2013-03-28 |archive-date=June 23, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210623212050/https://www.baas.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/asib108-kal%20ashraf.pdf |url-status=dead }}</ref></blockquote>