The Emancipation Proclamation
- In This Quick Guide:
- The Prayer of Twenty Million
- Preliminary Proclamation
- The Final Proclamation
- Congress Acts
On January 1, 1863, Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, arguably the most important document of Lincoln’s presidency and to the Civil War. In this guide we’ll look at Lincoln’s delicate position on slavery and how the Civil War finally did become a fight to make men free.
The Prayer of Twenty Million
Abraham Lincoln was anything but a lover of slavery. However, in 1862, he understood that most men were not fighting the war in order to end slavery, and he feared that defining emancipation (the freeing of slaves) as the purpose of the war would alienate the soldiers and turn volunteers away. He feared, too, that the border states—which permitted slavery but remained loyal to the Union—would fly to the cause of the South if he suddenly acknowledged that the war was to end slavery and thus deprive citizens of their human property.
Yet, in the North, especially in New England, the voices calling for emancipation grew louder, more numerous, and more strident. On August 19, 1862, Horace Greeley, the eloquent and influential editor of the New York Tribune, published in his paper an open letter to Abraham Lincoln on behalf (he said) of the 20 million citizens of the loyal states. He took the president to task for annulling his generals’ orders of emancipation, for failing vigorously to enforce the Confiscation Acts, and, in short, for not recognizing that “no loyal person [could be] rightfully held in Slavery by a traitor.” Greeley called for immediate emancipation.
The president replied, by letter, just three days later:
“… My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or destroy Slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could do it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. What I do about Slavery and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save this Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union ….”
Yet quietly, Lincoln continued to hone and polish a draft of an emancipation proclamation, waiting for the right time to make it public.
Preliminary Proclamation
Lincoln issued a preliminary Emancipation Proclamation on September 23, 1862. In hindsight, this seems a timid document, its rhetoric more legalistic than inspiring. It did not free a single slave, but, rather, gave a warning to slave owners living in rebellious states.
The Final Proclamation
Only after the January 1 deadline had come and gone did President Lincoln issue the “final” Emancipation Proclamation. It read:
“Whereas, on the twenty-second day of September, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-two, a proclamation issued by the President of the United States containing among other things the following to wit:
‘That on the first day of January in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State, or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforth and forever free, and the Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom ….’
“Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States … do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within the said designated States and parts of States are, and henceforward shall be free; and that the Executive Government of the United States, including the Military and Naval authorities, thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons.
“And I hereby enjoin upon the people so declared to be free, to abstain from all violence, unless in necessary self-defense, and I recommend to them, that in all cases, when allowed, they labor faithfully for reasonable wages.
“And I further declare and make known that such persons of suitable condition will be received into the armed service of the United States to garrison forts, positions, stations, and other places, and man vessels of all sorts in said service.
“And upon this, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution, upon military necessity, I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind and the gracious favor of Almighty God ….”
But even that document liberated only those slaves in areas still “in rebellion,” that is, in parts of the Confederacy that were not under the control of the Union army. It was reasoned that areas now under Union control were no longer, strictly speaking, in rebellion. Lincoln also still couldn’t afford to drive the border states into the Confederacy by freeing their slaves. With bitter irony, then, this meant that …
- Slavery was alive and well where the Union army had been victorious.
- No slave was set free in the border states—Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri. (West Virginia, already broken away from Virginia, was not admitted to the Union until June 20, 1863, and then on the condition that its slaves would be gradually emancipated.)
- In the states where the slaves were declared free, the law could not, of course, be enforced until the war was won.
Congress Acts
Before the war ended, Congress would take action beyond the proclamation. The 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was passed by the Senate on April 8, 1864, and by the House (after a fight) on January 31, 1865. By December 18, 1865, the measure was ratified by the states. The amendment is brief: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”
As tentative as the Emancipation Proclamation might seem from our perspective, it was a momentous document and probably just right for its time and circumstances. Although the Proclamation was sufficiently cautious to avoid inflaming the occupied South and the border states, it gave the war new moral force and, for those who believed the war was to make men free, it officially made it such a struggle. More than that, it changed the course of the United States forever.
From The Complete Idiot’s Guide to the Civil War, Second Edition, by Alan Axelrod, Ph.D.
