Question

Which describes Southerners' reaction to President Lincoln's issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation?

Answer 1

The answer is They knew that defeat in the war would mean the complete end of slavery.                 

Answer 2

Not sure but hope what I know help a little...Slavery was “an unqualified evil to the negro, the white man, and the State,” said Abraham Lincoln in the 1850s. Yet in his first inaugural address, Lincoln declared that he had “no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with slavery in the States where it exists.” He reiterated this pledge in his first message to Congress on July 4, 1861, when the Civil War was three months old.Did You Know?When it took effect in January 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation freed 3.1 million of the nation's 4 million slaves.

What explains this apparent inconsistency in Lincoln’s statements? And how did he get from his pledge not to interfere with slavery to a decision a year later to issue an emancipation proclamation? The answers lie in the Constitution and in the course of the Civil War. As an individual, Lincoln hated slavery. As a Republican, he wished to exclude it from the territories as the first step to putting the institution “in the course of ultimate extinction.”