Nearly 20 percent of Trump’s supporters disapprove of Lincoln freeing the slaves

[skepticscott]

41. You're not telling me anything I don't know

But the fact remains that, when it was issued, the Emancipation Proclamation had no legal force anywhere where it would have mattered. Only when military control was taken, when and where it was, did it have any force at all. And suppose things had gone badly for the United States militarily in the latter part of 1864, Lincoln had not won re-election, and the United States had negotiated a peace. Would those slaves have been "freed", because of the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation? Of course not.

And however you argue those issues, even more relevant to the issue at hand is the question of how many of the people polled could be expected to know enough history to parse all this out? Damn few. So yes, I stand by my labeling of this as a dumb ass question.