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.
However the French army soon arrived in the south to take control from the British. In the north Chinese troops moved in. However Ho Chi Minh soon decided that the French were the lesser of two evils and he signed a treaty, which said that French troops should replace Chinese troops in North Vietnam for 5 years.