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.
1. America began sending aid to the French fighting in Vietnam and the rest of Indochina in the late 1940s. France was fighting Communist rebels led by Ho Chi Minh. It wasn't until Ho Chi Minh defeated the French in 1954 that America became officially involved in trying to defeat the Communists in Vietnam.