Zinn’s chapter helps to describe the political nature of slavery that often gets overlooked in American history books. It talks about how violent slave rebellions with the goal of ending slavery at the forefront, like that of Nat Turner, were vehemently disapproved of by society, even though Abraham Lincoln and the rest of the Union did something very similar a few years later in the name of the Civil War. Abraham Lincoln did not have any intention of ending slavery when he was first elected, which he made clear in his inaugural address. In fact, the Civil War really was not started with the hopes of ending slavery at all, but rather to advance the northern elites interests that included, “economic expansion-free land, free labor, a free market, a high protective tariff for manufacturers, a bank of the United States” (189). The Union saw slavery as a barrier in achieving that. Zinn made it seem as though the fact that the interests of the North and the interests of the African American community at the time came together on ending slavery was just a matter of good timing, and not at all an alignment on any moral grounds.

The Civil War resulted in the Emancipation Proclamation (which only freed slaves in states of the Confederacy but technically said nothing about those behind Union lines) and the 13th amendment that outlawed slavery all together, but it came at a time when much of America still did not really feel strongly about the freedom and equality of African-Americans. This chapter gave me a new perspective on a potential reason why violence towards blacks spiked after the Civil War with the emergence of groups like the Ku Klux Klan. It seems as though America was not mentally ready to move out of the slave era, but it was achieved anyway to make way for the interests of the white elite. My question is: did Abraham Lincoln really help African Americans by issuing the Emancipation Proclamation as much as the history books make it seem, and does it even matter what his moral intentions were? Do the ends justify the means in this situation? Did he unknowingly set the African American community up for a period of systematic racial oppression and violence against them that many saw as a form of slavery in its own right?