WE ONLY THINK WE KNOW

 Take what we are celebrating today:

We only think it freed all the slaves.

As Galadriel says of Sauron's gift of the Rings of Power

"But they were, all of them, deceived."

To paraphrase Fallout -- Politics, like war, never changes.

President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 did not free all enslaved people in the United States. 

The proclamation only freed slaves in states that had seceded from the Union, giving the South 100 days to end their rebellion. 

If the South complied, slavery could continue, but if they kept fighting, their slaves would be freed and could be drafted into the Union army. 

The proclamation also exempted the Border States, as well as Tennessee and areas of Louisiana and Virginia occupied by Federal troops.

Lincoln's primary motivation for the proclamation was to win the Civil War and reunite the Republic. 

He also didn't want to antagonize the slave states loyal to the Union by setting their slaves free.

What do you think? 

Hobbes is getting a headache trying to figure it out.