In 1862, Lincoln adopted the radicalRepublican position that emancipation was a military necessity. Eventually Lincoln justified the war inabolitionist terms. After the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect (January 1863) the war lastedfor almost two more years and public discontent with the war increased.
Following a Japanese occupation in the 1940s, the Vietnamese fought French rule in the First Indochina War, eventually expelling the French in 1954. Thereafter, Vietnam was divided politically into two rival states, North and South Vietnam.ietnam's independence was gradually eroded by France â aided by large Catholic militias â in a series of military conquests between 1859 and 1885. In 1862, the southern third of the country became the French colony of Cochinchina.
Japan decided to take advantage of French weakness and they forced the French government to allow Japanese troops to occupy French Indo-China, although they left the French administration in place. The Vietnamese Communists or Viet Minh fought the Japanese and by 1945 they controlled parts of North Vietnam. Meanwhile in March 1945 the Japanese took control of the administration of Vietnam and when Japan surrendered on 15 August 1945 they left a power vacuum. Ho Chi Minh moved quickly to fill the vacuum.