Emancipation Proclamation

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
Henry Louis Stephens, untitled watercolor (c. 1863) of a black man reading a newspaper with headline "Presidential Proclamation/Slavery".
Abraham Lincoln, Brooklyn Museum

The Emancipation Proclamation was a presidential proclamation[1] issued by President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, as a war measure during the American Civil War, directed to all areas in rebellion and all segments of the Executive branch (including the Army and Navy) of the United States. It proclaimed the freedom of slaves in the ten states that were still in rebellion,[2] thus applying to 3.1 million of the 4 million slaves in the U.S. at the time. The Proclamation was based on the president's constitutional authority as commander in chief of the armed forces;[3] it was not a law passed by Congress. The Proclamation also ordered that suitable persons among those freed could be enrolled into the paid service of United States' forces, and ordered the Union Army (and all segments of the Executive branch) to "recognize and maintain the freedom of" the ex-slaves. The Proclamation did not compensate the owners, did not itself outlaw slavery, and did not make the ex-slaves (called freedmen) citizens. It made the eradication of slavery an explicit war goal, in addition to the goal of reuniting the Union.[4]

Around 20,000 to 50,000 slaves in regions where rebellion had already been subdued were immediately emancipated. It could not be enforced in areas still under rebellion, but as the Union army took control of Confederate regions, the Proclamation provided the legal framework for freeing more than 3 million more slaves in those regions. Prior to the Proclamation, in accordance with the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, escaped slaves were either returned to their masters or held in camps as contraband for later return. The Proclamation only applied to slaves in Confederate-held lands; it did not apply to those in the four slave states that were not in rebellion (Kentucky, Maryland, Delaware, and Missouri, which were unnamed), nor to Tennessee (also unnamed), and specifically excluded counties of Virginia soon to form the state of West Virginia. Also specifically excluded (by name) were some regions already controlled by the Union army. Emancipation in those places would come after separate state actions and/or the December 1865 ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment, which made slavery and indentured servitude, except for those duly convicted of a crime, illegal everywhere subject to United States jurisdiction.[5]

On September 22, 1862, Lincoln had issued a preliminary proclamation that he would order the emancipation of all slaves in any state (or part of a state) that did not end their rebellion against the Union by January 1, 1863. None of the Confederate states restored themselves to the Union, and Lincoln's order, signed and issued January 1, 1863, took effect. The Emancipation Proclamation outraged white Southerners who envisioned a race war, angered some Northern Democrats, energized anti-slavery forces, and undermined forces in Europe that wanted to intervene to help the Confederacy.[6] The Proclamation lifted the spirits of African Americans both free and slave. It led many slaves to escape from their masters and run behind Union lines to obtain their freedom.

The Emancipation Proclamation broadened the goals of the Civil War. While slavery had been a major issue that led to the war, Lincoln's only mission at the start of the war was to keep the Union together. The Proclamation made freeing the slaves an explicit goal of the Union war effort, and was a step towards outlawing slavery and conferring full citizenship upon ex-slaves.


The United States Constitution of 1787 did not use the word "slavery" but included several provisions about unfree persons. The Three-Fifths Compromise (in Article I, Section 2) allocated Congressional representation based "on the whole Number of free Persons" and "three fifths of all other Persons".[7] Under the Fugitive Slave Clause (Article IV, Section 2), "[n]o person held to service or labour in one state" would be freed by escaping to another. Article I, Section 9 allowed Congress to pass legislation to outlaw the "Importation of Persons", but not until 1808.[8] However, for purposes of the Fifth Amendment—which states that, "No person shall ... be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law"—slaves were understood as property.[9] Although abolitionists used the Fifth Amendment to argue against slavery, it became part of the legal basis for treating slaves as property with Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857).[10] Socially, slavery was also supported in law and in practice by a pervasive culture of white supremacy.[11] Nonetheless, between 1777 and 1804, every Northern state provided for the immediate or gradual abolition of slavery. No Southern state did so, and the slave population of the South continued to grow, peaking at almost 4 million people at the beginning of the American Civil War, in which most slave states sought to break away from the United States.[12]

Against this background, Lincoln issued the Proclamation under his authority as "Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy" under Article II, section 2 of the United States Constitution.[13] As such, he claimed to have the martial power to free persons held as slaves in those states that were in rebellion "as a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion".[14] He did not have Commander-in-Chief authority over the four slave-holding states that were not in rebellion: Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland and Delaware, and so those states were not named in the Proclamation.[16] The fifth border jurisdiction, West Virginia, where slavery remained legal but was in the process of being abolished, was, in January 1863, still part of the legally recognized "reorganized" state of Virginia, based in Alexandria, which was in the Union (as opposed to the Confederate state of Virginia, based in Richmond).

The Emancipation Proclamation was never challenged in court.

To ensure the abolition of slavery in all of the U.S., Lincoln pushed for passage of the Thirteenth Amendment. Congress passed it by the necessary two-thirds vote on January 31, 1865, and it was ratified by the states on December 6, 1865.[17]


The moment portrayed by Lee Lawrie in Lincoln, Nebraska

The Proclamation applied in the ten states that were still in rebellion in 1863, and thus did not cover the nearly 500,000 slaves in the slave-holding border states (Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland or Delaware) which were Union states — those slaves were freed by separate state and federal actions. The state of Tennessee had already mostly returned to Union control, under a recognized Union government, so it was not named and was exempted. Virginia was named, but exemptions were specified for the 48 counties then in the process of forming the new state of West Virginia, and seven additional counties and two cities in the Union-controlled Tidewater region.[18] Also specifically exempted were New Orleans and 13 named parishes of Louisiana, all of which were also already mostly under federal control at the time of the Proclamation. These exemptions left unemancipated an additional 300,000 slaves.[19]

The Emancipation Proclamation has been ridiculed, notably in an influential passage by Richard Hofstadter for "freeing" only the slaves over which the Union had no power.[20] These slaves were freed due to Lincoln's "war powers". This act cleared up the issue of contraband slaves.[21] It automatically clarified the status of over 100,000 slaves. In fact 20,000 to 50,000 were freed the day it went into effect[22] in parts of nine of the ten states to which it applied (Texas being the exception).[23] In every Confederate state (except Tennessee and Texas), the Proclamation went into immediate effect in Union-occupied areas and at least 20,000 slaves[22][23] were freed at once on January 1, 1863.


While the Proclamation had freed most slaves as a war measure, it had not made slavery illegal. Of the states that were exempted from the Proclamation, Maryland,[25] Missouri,[26] Tennessee,[27] and West Virginia[28] prohibited slavery before the war ended. In 1863, President Lincoln proposed a moderate plan for the Reconstruction of the captured Confederate State of Louisiana.[29] Only 10% of the state's electorate had to take the loyalty oath. The state was also required to abolish slavery in its new constitution. Identical Reconstruction plans would be adopted in Arkansas and Tennessee. By December 1864, the Lincoln plan abolishing slavery had been enacted in Louisiana.[30][31] However, in Delaware[32] and Kentucky,[33] slavery continued to be legal until December 18, 1865, when the Thirteenth Amendment went into effect.


Military action prior to emancipation[edit]

The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 required individuals to return runaway slaves to their owners. During the war, Union generals such as Benjamin Butler declared that slaves in occupied areas were contraband of war and accordingly refused to return them.[35] This decision was controversial because it implied recognition of the Confederacy as a separate nation under international law, a notion that Lincoln steadfastly denied. As a result, he did not promote the contraband designation. In addition, as contraband, these people were legally designated as "property" when they crossed Union lines and their ultimate status was uncertain.[36]

Governmental action towards emancipation[edit]

In December 1861, Lincoln sent his first annual message to Congress (the State of the Union Address, but then typically given in writing and not referred to as such). In it he praised the free labor system, as respecting human rights over property rights; he endorsed legislation to address the status of contraband slaves and slaves in loyal states, possibly through buying their freedom with federal taxes, and also the funding of strictly voluntary colonization efforts.[37] In January 1862, Thaddeus Stevens, the Republican leader in the House, called for total war against the rebellion to include emancipation of slaves, arguing that emancipation, by forcing the loss of enslaved labor, would ruin the rebel economy. On March 13, 1862, Congress approved a "Law Enacting an Additional Article of War", which stated that from that point onward it was forbidden for Union Army officers to return fugitive slaves to their owners.[38] On April 10, 1862, Congress declared that the federal government would compensate slave owners who freed their slaves. Slaves in the District of Columbia were freed on April 16, 1862, and their owners were compensated.

On June 19, 1862, Congress prohibited slavery in all current and future United States territories (though not in the states), and President Lincoln quickly signed the legislation. By this act, they repudiated the 1857 opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States in the Dred Scott Case that Congress was powerless to regulate slavery in U.S. territories.[39][40] This joint action by Congress and President Lincoln also rejected the notion of popular sovereignty that had been advanced by Stephen A. Douglas as a solution to the slavery controversy, while completing the effort first legislatively proposed by Thomas Jefferson in 1784 to confine slavery within the borders of existing states.[41][42]

In July 1862, Congress passed and Lincoln signed the Second Confiscation Act, containing provisions for court proceedings to liberate slaves held by convicted "rebels", or of slaves of rebels that had escaped to Union lines.[43] The Act applied in cases of criminal convictions and to those who were slaves of "disloyal" masters, however, Lincoln's position continued to be that Congress lacked power to free all slaves within the borders of rebel held states, but Lincoln as commander in chief could do so if he deemed it a proper military measure,[44] and that Lincoln had already drafted plans to do.

Public opinion of emancipation[edit]

Abolitionists had long been urging Lincoln to free all slaves. In the summer of 1862, Republican editor Horace Greeley of the highly influential New York Tribune wrote a famous editorial entitled "The Prayer of Twenty Millions" demanding a more aggressive attack on the Confederacy and faster emancipation of the slaves: "On the face of this wide earth, Mr. President, there is not one ... intelligent champion of the Union cause who does not feel ... that the rebellion, if crushed tomorrow, would be renewed if slavery were left in full vigor ... and that every hour of deference to slavery is an hour of added and deepened peril to the Union."[45] Lincoln responded in his Letter To Horace Greeley from August 22, 1862, in terms of the limits imposed by his duty as president to save the Union:


Lincoln scholar Harold Holzer wrote in this context about Lincoln's letter: "Unknown to Greeley, Lincoln composed this after he had already drafted a preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, which he had determined to issue after the next Union military victory. Therefore, this letter, was in truth, an attempt to position the impending announcement in terms of saving the Union, not freeing slaves as a humanitarian gesture. It was one of Lincoln's most skillful public relations efforts, even if it has cast longstanding doubt on his sincerity as a liberator."[47] Historian Richard Striner argues that "for years" Lincoln's letter has been misread as "Lincoln only wanted to save the Union."[48] However, within the context of Lincoln's entire career and pronouncements on slavery this interpretation is wrong, according to Striner. Rather, Lincoln was softening the strong Northern white supremacist opposition to his imminent emancipation by tying it to the cause of the Union. This opposition would fight for the Union but not to end slavery, however Lincoln gave them the means and motivation to do both, at the same time.[48] Conflicting advice, to free all slaves, or not free them at all, was presented to Lincoln in public and private. A mass rally in Chicago on September 7, 1862, demanded an immediate and universal emancipation of slaves. A delegation headed by William W. Patton met the President at the White House on September 13. Lincoln had declared in peacetime that he had no constitutional authority to free the slaves. Even used as a war power, emancipation was a risky political act. Public opinion as a whole was against it.[49] There would be strong opposition among Copperhead Democrats and an uncertain reaction from loyal border states. Delaware and Maryland already had a high percentage of free blacks: 91.2% and 49.7%, respectively, in 1860.[50]

Drafting and issuance of the proclamation[edit]


Lincoln first discussed the proclamation with his cabinet in July 1862. He drafted his "preliminary proclamation" and read it to Secretary of State William Seward, and Secretary of Navy Gideon Welles, on July 13. Seward and Welles were at first speechless, then Seward referred to possible anarchy throughout the South and resulting foreign intervention; Welles apparently said nothing. On July 22, Lincoln presented it to his entire cabinet as something he had determined to do and he asked their opinion on wording.[51] Although Secretary of War Edwin Stanton supported it, Seward advised Lincoln to issue the proclamation after a major Union victory, or else it would appear as if the Union was giving "its last shriek of retreat".[52]

In September 1862, the Battle of Antietam gave Lincoln the victory he needed to issue the Emancipation. In the battle, though General McClellan allowed the escape of Robert E. Lee's retreating troops, Union forces turned back a Confederate invasion of Maryland. On September 22, 1862, five days after Antietam occurred, Lincoln called his cabinet into session and issued the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation.[53] According to Civil War historian James M. McPherson, Lincoln told Cabinet members that he had made a covenant with God, that if the Union drove the Confederacy out of Maryland, he would issue the Emancipation Proclamation.[54][55] Lincoln had first shown an early draft of the proclamation to Vice President Hannibal Hamlin,[56] an ardent abolitionist, who was more often kept in the dark on presidential decisions. The final proclamation was issued January 1, 1863. Although implicitly granted authority by Congress, Lincoln used his powers as Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy, "as a necessary war measure" as the basis of the proclamation, rather than the equivalent of a statute enacted by Congress or a constitutional amendment. Some days after issuing the final Proclamation, Lincoln wrote to Major General John McClernand: "After the commencement of hostilities I struggled nearly a year and a half to get along without touching the "institution"; and when finally I conditionally determined to touch it, I gave a hundred days fair notice of my purpose, to all the States and people, within which time they could have turned it wholly aside, by simply again becoming good citizens of the United States. They chose to disregard it, and I made the peremptory proclamation on what appeared to me to be a military necessity. And being made, it must stand."[57]

Reproduction of the Emancipation Proclamation at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati, Ohio. (Zoom)

Initially, the Emancipation Proclamation effectively freed only a small percentage of the slaves, those who were behind Union lines in areas not exempted. Most slaves were still behind Confederate lines or in exempted Union-occupied areas. Secretary of State William H. Seward commented, "We show our sympathy with slavery by emancipating slaves where we cannot reach them and holding them in bondage where we can set them free." Had any slave state ended its secession attempt before January 1, 1863, it could have kept slavery, at least temporarily. The Proclamation only gave Lincoln the legal basis to free the slaves in the areas of the South that were still in rebellion. However, it also took effect as the Union armies advanced into the Confederacy.

The Emancipation Proclamation also allowed for the enrollment of freed slaves into the United States military. During the war nearly 200,000 blacks, most of them ex-slaves, joined the Union Army.[58] Their contributions gave the North additional manpower that was significant in winning the war. The Confederacy did not allow slaves in their army as soldiers until the last month before its defeat.[59]

Though the counties of Virginia that were soon to form West Virginia were specifically exempted from the Proclamation (Jefferson County being the only exception), a condition of the state's admittance to the Union was that its constitution provide for the gradual abolition of slavery. Slaves in the border states of Maryland and Missouri were also emancipated by separate state action before the Civil War ended. In Maryland, a new state constitution abolishing slavery in the state went into effect on November 1, 1864. In early 1865, Tennessee adopted an amendment to its constitution prohibiting slavery.[60][61] Slaves in Kentucky and Delaware were not emancipated until the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified.


Areas covered by the Emancipation Proclamation are in red. Slave holding areas not covered are in blue.

The Proclamation was issued in two parts. The first part, issued on September 22, 1862, was a preliminary announcement outlining the intent of the second part, which officially went into effect 100 days later on January 1, 1863, during the second year of the Civil War. It was Abraham Lincoln's declaration that all slaves would be permanently freed in all areas of the Confederacy that had not already returned to federal control by January 1863. The ten affected states were individually named in the second part (South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina). Not included were the Union slave states of Maryland, Delaware, Missouri and Kentucky. Also not named was the state of Tennessee, in which a Union-controlled military government had already been set up, based in the capital, Nashville. Specific exemptions were stated for areas also under Union control on January 1, 1863, namely 48 counties that would soon become West Virginia, seven other named counties of Virginia including Berkeley and Hampshire counties, which were soon added to West Virginia, New Orleans and 13 named parishes nearby.

Union-occupied areas of the Confederate states where the proclamation was put into immediate effect by local commanders included Winchester, Virginia,[62] Corinth, Mississippi,[63] the Sea Islands along the coasts of the Carolinas and Georgia,[64] Key West, Florida,[65] and Port Royal, South Carolina.[66]

Immediate impact[edit]

A circa 1870 photograph of two children who were likely recently emancipated.

It is common to encounter a claim that the Emancipation Proclamation did not immediately free a single slave; however, as a result of the Proclamation, many slaves were freed during the course of the war, beginning with the day it took effect. Eyewitness accounts at places such as Hilton Head, South Carolina,[67] and Port Royal, South Carolina,[66] record celebrations on January 1 as thousands of blacks were informed of their new legal status of freedom. Estimates of the number of slaves freed immediately by the Emancipation Proclamation are uncertain. One contemporary estimate put the 'contraband' population of Union-occupied North Carolina at 10,000, and the Sea Islands of South Carolina also had a substantial population. Those 20,000 slaves were freed immediately by the Emancipation Proclamation."[22] This Union-occupied zone where freedom began at once included parts of eastern North Carolina, the Mississippi Valley, northern Alabama, the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, a large part of Arkansas, and the Sea Islands of Georgia and South Carolina.[68] Although some counties of Union-occupied Virginia were exempted from the Proclamation, the lower Shenandoah Valley, and the area around Alexandria were covered.[22] Emancipation was immediately enforced as Union soldiers advanced into the Confederacy. Slaves fled their masters and were often assisted by Union soldiers.[69]

Booker T. Washington, as a boy of 9 in Virginia, remembered the day in early 1865:[70]


Emancipation took place without violence by masters or ex-slaves. The Proclamation represented a shift in the war objectives of the North—reuniting the nation was no longer the only goal. It represented a major step toward the ultimate abolition of slavery in the United States and a "new birth of freedom".

Runaway slaves who had escaped to Union lines had previously been held by the Union Army as "contraband of war" under the Confiscation Acts; when the proclamation took effect, they were told at midnight that they were free to leave. The Sea Islands off the coast of Georgia had been occupied by the Union Navy earlier in the war. The whites had fled to the mainland while the blacks stayed. An early program of Reconstruction was set up for the former slaves, including schools and training. Naval officers read the proclamation and told them they were free.

Winslow Homer's 1876 "A Visit from the Old Mistress" depicts a tense meeting between a group of newly freed slaves and their former slaveholder. Smithsonian Museum of American Art

In the military, reaction to the Proclamation varied widely, with some units nearly ready to mutiny in protest. Some desertions were attributed to it. Other units were inspired by the adoption of a cause that ennobled their efforts, such that at least one unit took up the motto "For Union and Liberty".

Slaves had been part of the "engine of war" for the Confederacy. They produced and prepared food; sewed uniforms; repaired railways; worked on farms and in factories, shipping yards, and mines; built fortifications; and served as hospital workers and common laborers. News of the Proclamation spread rapidly by word of mouth, arousing hopes of freedom, creating general confusion, and encouraging thousands to escape to Union lines.[71] George Washington Albright, a teenage slave in Mississippi, recalled that like many of his fellow slaves, his father escaped to join Union forces. According to Albright, plantation owners tried to keep the Proclamation from slaves but news of it came through the "grapevine". The young slave became a "runner" for an informal group they called the 4Ls ("Lincoln's Legal Loyal League") bringing news of the proclamation to secret slave meetings at plantations throughout the region.[72]

Robert E. Lee saw the Emancipation Proclamation as a way for the Union to bolster the number of soldiers it could place on the field, making it imperative for the Confederacy to increase their own numbers.

Writing on the matter after the sack of Fredericksburg, Lee wrote "In view of the vast increase of the forces of the enemy, of the savage and brutal policy he has proclaimed, which leaves us no alternative but success or degradation worse than death, if we would save the honor of our families from pollution, our social system from destruction, let every effort be made, every means be employed, to fill and maintain the ranks of our armies, until God, in his mercy, shall bless us with the establishment of our independence."[73] Lee's request for a drastic increase of troops would go unfulfilled.

Political impact[edit]

"Abe Lincoln's Last Card; Or, Rouge-et-Noir (Red and Black)"; Punch, Volume 43, October 18, 1862, p. 161.— a cartoon by the Englishman John Tenniel, after the London Times stated that Lincoln had played his "last card" in issuing the Proclamation.[74][75] Lincoln's hair is in points, suggesting horns. The cartoon was often reprinted in the Copperhead press.[76][77]

The Proclamation was immediately denounced by Copperhead Democrats who opposed the war and advocated restoring the union by allowing slavery. Horatio Seymour, while running for the governorship of New York, cast the Emancipation Proclamation as a call for slaves to commit extreme acts of violence on all white southerners, saying it was "a proposal for the butchery of women and children, for scenes of lust and rapine, and of arson and murder, which would invoke the interference of civilized Europe".[78] The Copperheads also saw the Proclamation as an unconstitutional abuse of Presidential power. Editor Henry A. Reeves wrote in Greenport's Republican Watchman that "In the name of freedom of Negroes, [the proclamation] imperils the liberty of white men; to test a utopian theory of equality of races which Nature, History and Experience alike condemn as monstrous, it overturns the Constitution and Civil Laws and sets up Military Usurpation in their Stead."[78]

Racism remained pervasive on both sides of the conflict and many in the North supported the war only as an effort to force the South to stay in the Union. The promises of many Republican politicians that the war was to restore the Union and not about black rights or ending slavery, were now declared lies by their opponents citing the Proclamation. Copperhead David Allen spoke to a rally in Columbiana, Ohio, stating "I have told you that this war is carried on for the Negro. There is the proclamation of the President of the United States. Now fellow Democrats I ask you if you are going to be forced into a war against your Brithren of the Southern States for the Negro. I answer No!"[79] The Copperheads saw the Proclamation as irrefutable proof of their position and the beginning of a political rise for their members; in Connecticut H. B. Whiting wrote that the truth was now plain even to "those stupid thick-headed persons who persisted in thinking that the President was a conservative man and that the war was for the restoration of the Union under the Constitution".[78]

War Democrats who rejected the Copperhead position within their party, found themselves in a quandary. While throughout the war they had continued to espouse the racist positions of their party and their disdain of the concerns of slaves, they did see the Proclamation as a viable military tool against the South, and worried that opposing it might demoralize troops in the Union army. The question would continue to trouble them and eventually lead to a split within their party as the war progressed.[78]

Lincoln further alienated many in the Union two days after issuing the preliminary copy of the Emancipation Proclamation by suspending habeas corpus. His opponents linked these two actions in their claims that he was becoming a despot. In light of this and a lack of military success for the Union armies, many War Democrat voters who had previously supported Lincoln turned against him and joined the Copperheads in the off-year elections held in October and November.[78]

In the 1862 elections, the Democrats gained 28 seats in the House as well as the governorship of New York. Lincoln's friend Orville Hickman Browning told the President that the Proclamation and the suspension of habeas corpus had been "disastrous" for his party by handing the Democrats so many weapons. Lincoln made no response. Copperhead William Javis of Connecticut pronounced the election the "beginning of the end of the utter downfall of Abolitionism in the United States".[78]

Historians James M. McPherson and Allan Nevins state that though the results look very troubling, they could be seen favorably by Lincoln; his opponents did well only in their historic strongholds and "at the national level their gains in the House were the smallest of any minority party's in an off-year election in nearly a generation. Michigan, California, and Iowa all went Republican.... Moreover, the Republicans picked up five seats in the Senate."[78] McPherson states "If the election was in any sense a referendum on emancipation and on Lincoln's conduct of the war, a majority of Northern voters endorsed these policies."[78]

The initial Confederate response was one of expected outrage. The Proclamation was seen as vindication for the rebellion, and proof that Lincoln would have abolished slavery even if the states had remained in the Union.[80]

International impact[edit]

As Lincoln had hoped, the Proclamation turned foreign popular opinion in favor of the Union by gaining the support of anti-slavery countries and countries that had already abolished slavery (especially the developed countries in Europe). This shift ended the Confederacy's hopes of gaining official recognition.[81]

Since the Emancipation Proclamation made the eradication of slavery an explicit Union war goal, it linked support for the South to support for slavery. Public opinion in Britain would not tolerate direct support for slavery. Britain, however, continued to build and operate blockade runners for the South. As Henry Adams noted, "The Emancipation Proclamation has done more for us than all our former victories and all our diplomacy." In Italy, Giuseppe Garibaldi hailed Lincoln as "the heir of the aspirations of John Brown". On August 6, 1863, Garibaldi wrote to Lincoln: Posterity will call you the great emancipator, a more enviable title than any crown could be, and greater than any merely mundane treasure.[82]

Alan Van Dyke, a representative for workers from Manchester, England, wrote to Lincoln saying, "We joyfully honor you for many decisive steps toward practically exemplifying your belief in the words of your great founders: 'All men are created free and equal.'" The Emancipation Proclamation served to ease tensions with Europe over the North's conduct of the war, and combined with the recent failed Southern offensive at Antietam to cut off any practical chance for the Confederacy to receive international support in the war.

Gettysburg Address[edit]

Lincoln's Gettysburg Address in November 1863 made indirect reference to the Proclamation and the ending of slavery as a war goal with the phrase "new birth of freedom". The Proclamation solidified Lincoln's support among the rapidly growing abolitionist element of the Republican Party and ensured they would not block his re-nomination in 1864.[83]


Emancipation from Freedmen's viewpoint; illustration from Harper's Weekly 1865

Near the end of the war abolitionists were concerned that the Emancipation Proclamation would be construed solely as a war measure, Lincoln's original intent, and would no longer apply once fighting ended. They were also increasingly anxious to secure the freedom of all slaves, not just those freed by the Emancipation Proclamation. Thus pressed, Lincoln staked a large part of his 1864 presidential campaign on a constitutional amendment to abolish slavery uniformly throughout the United States. Lincoln's campaign was bolstered by separate votes in both Maryland and Missouri to abolish slavery in those states. Maryland's new constitution abolishing slavery took effect in November 1864. Slavery in Missouri was ended by executive proclamation of its governor, Thomas C. Fletcher, on January 11, 1865.

Winning re-election, Lincoln pressed the lame duck 38th Congress to pass the proposed amendment immediately rather than wait for the incoming 39th Congress to convene. In January 1865, Congress sent to the state legislatures for ratification what became the Thirteenth Amendment, banning slavery in all U.S. states and territories. The amendment was ratified by the legislatures of enough states by December 6, 1865, and proclaimed 12 days later. There were about 40,000 slaves in Kentucky and 1,000 in Delaware who were liberated then.[24]


As the years went on and American life continued to be deeply unfair towards blacks, cynicism towards Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation increased. Perhaps the strongest attack was Lerone Bennett's Forced into Glory: Abraham Lincoln's White Dream (2000), which claimed that Lincoln was a white supremacist who issued the Emancipation Proclamation in lieu of the real racial reforms for which radical abolitionists pushed. In his Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, Allen C. Guelzo noted the professional historians' lack of substantial respect for the document, since it has been the subject of few major scholarly studies. He argued that Lincoln was America's "last Enlightenment politician"[84] and as such was dedicated to removing slavery strictly within the bounds of law.

Other historians have given more credit to Lincoln for what he accomplished within the tensions of his cabinet and a society at war, for his own growth in political and moral stature, and for the promise he held out to the slaves.[85] More might have been accomplished if he had not been assassinated. As Eric Foner wrote:

Lincoln was not an abolitionist or Radical Republican, a point Bennett reiterates innumerable times. He did not favor immediate abolition before the war, and held racist views typical of his time. But he was also a man of deep convictions when it came to slavery, and during the Civil War displayed a remarkable capacity for moral and political growth.[86]

Kal Ashraf wrote:

Perhaps in rejecting the critical dualism–Lincoln as individual emancipator pitted against collective self-emancipators–there is an opportunity to recognise the greater persuasiveness of the combination. In a sense, yes: a racist, flawed Lincoln did something heroic, and not in lieu of collective participation, but next to, and enabled, by it. To venerate a singular –Great Emancipator' may be as reductive as dismissing the significance of Lincoln's actions. Who he was as a man, no one of us can ever really know. So it is that the version of Lincoln we keep is also the version we make.[87]

Legacy in the Civil Rights Era[edit]

President Barack Obama views the Emancipation Proclamation in the Oval Office next to a bust of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.[edit]

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. made many references to the Emancipation Proclamation in his work for racial Civil Rights. These include a speech made at an observance of the hundredth anniversary of the issuing of the Proclamation made in New York City on September 12, 1962 where he placed it alongside the Declaration of Independence as an "imperishable" contribution to civilization, and "All tyrants, past, present and future, are powerless to bury the truths in these declarations". He lamented that despite a history where American "proudly professed the basic principles inherent in both documents" it "sadly practiced the antithesis of these principles". He concluded "There is but one way to commemorate the Emancipation Proclamation. That is to make its declarations of freedom real; to reach back to the origins of our nation when our message of equality electrified an unfree world, and reaffirm democracy by deeds as bold and daring as the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation."[88]

King's most famous invocation of the Emancipation Proclamation was in a speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial at the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom (often referred to as the "I Have a Dream" speech). King began the speech saying "Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of captivity. But one hundred years later, we must face the tragic fact that the Negro is still not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination."[89]

The "Second Emancipation Proclamation"[edit]

In the early 1960s Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his associates developed a strategy to call on President John F. Kennedy to bypass a Southern segregationist opposition in the Congress by issuing an Executive Order (which was the same kind of document as the Emancipation Proclamation) to put an end to segregation. This envisioned document was referred to as the "Second Emancipation Proclamation".

President John F. Kennedy[edit]

On June 11, 1963, President Kennedy appeared on national television to address the issue of civil rights. Kennedy, who had been routinely criticized as timid by leaders of the civil rights movement, told Americans that two black students had been peacefully enrolled in the University of Alabama with the aid the National Guard despite the opposition of Governor George Wallace.

Then Kennedy unexpectedly called for national unity on civil rights, for the first time referring to it as a "moral issue".[90] Invoking the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation he said "One hundred years of delay have passed since President Lincoln freed the slaves, yet their heirs, their grandsons, are not fully free. They are not yet freed from the bonds of injustice. They are not yet freed from social and economic oppression. And this Nation, for all its hopes and all its boasts, will not be fully free until all its citizens are free. We preach freedom around the world, and we mean it, and we cherish our freedom here at home, but are we to say to the world, and much more importantly, to each other that this is a land of the free except for the Negroes; that we have no second-class citizens except Negroes; that we have no class or cast system, no ghettoes, no master race except with respect to Negroes? Now the time has come for this Nation to fulfill its promise. The events in Birmingham and elsewhere have so increased the cries for equality that no city or State or legislative body can prudently choose to ignore them."[91]

In the same speech Kennedy announced he would introduce comprehensive civil rights legislation to the United States Congress which he did a week later (he continued to push for its passage until his assassination in November 1963). Historian Peniel E. Joseph holds Lyndon Johnson's ability to get that bill passed (on July 2, 1964) was aided by "the moral forcefulness of the June 11 speech" which turned "the narrative of civil rights from a regional issue into a national story promoting racial equality and democratic renewal".[90]

President Lyndon B. Johnson[edit]

During the American Civil Rights movement of the 1960s Lyndon B. Johnson invoked the Emancipation Proclamation holding it up as a promise yet to be fully implemented.

As Vice President while speaking from Gettysburg on May 30, 1963 (Memorial Day), at the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation, Johnson connected it directly with the ongoing Civil Rights struggles of the time saying "One hundred years ago, the slave was freed. One hundred years later, the Negro remains in bondage to the color of his skin.... In this hour, it is not our respective races which are at stake—it is our nation. Let those who care for their country come forward, North and South, white and Negro, to lead the way through this moment of challenge and decision.... Until justice is blind to color, until education is unaware of race, until opportunity is unconcerned with color of men's skins, emancipation will be a proclamation but not a fact. To the extent that the proclamation of emancipation is not fulfilled in fact, to that extent we shall have fallen short of assuring freedom to the free."[92]

As President, Johnson again invoked the proclamation in a speech presenting the Voting Rights Act at a joint session of Congress on Monday, March 15, 1965. This was one week after violence had been inflicted on peaceful civil rights marchers in Selma, Alabama. Johnson said "... it's not just Negroes, but really it's all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And we shall overcome. As a man whose roots go deeply into Southern soil, I know how agonizing racial feelings are. I know how difficult it is to reshape the attitudes and the structure of our society. But a century has passed—more than 100 years—since the Negro was freed. And he is not fully free tonight. It was more than 100 years ago that Abraham Lincoln—a great President of another party—signed the Emancipation Proclamation. But emancipation is a proclamation and not a fact. A century has passed—more than 100 years—since equality was promised, and yet the Negro is not equal. A century has passed since the day of promise, and the promise is unkept. The time of justice has now come, and I tell you that I believe sincerely that no force can hold it back. It is right in the eyes of man and God that it should come, and when it does, I think that day will brighten the lives of every American."[93]

In popular culture[edit]

In episode 86 of The Andy Griffith Show, Andy asks Barney to explain the Emancipation Proclamation to Opie who is struggling with history at school.[94] Barney brags about his history expertise, yet it is apparent he cannot answer Andy's question. He finally becomes frustrated and explains it is a proclamation for certain people who wanted emancipation.[95]

See also[edit]

Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation - printed in the September 23, 1862, National Republican, Washington D.C.


  1. ^ http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=69880#axzz1rbrCEZl5
  3. ^ "The Emancipation Proclamation: Freedom's first steps". National Endowment for the Humanities. Retrieved 2013-06-27. 
  4. ^ Eric Foner, The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery (2010) pp. 239–42
  5. ^ "Amendments to the U.S. Constitution". Retrieved 2014-01-26. 
  6. ^ Allan Nevins, Ordeal of the Union: vol 6. War Becomes Revolution, 1862–1863 (1960) pp. 231–41, 273
  8. ^ Foner, 2010, p. 16
  10. ^ Tsesis, The Thirteenth Amendment and American Freedom (2004), p. 14. "Nineteenth century apologists for the expansion of slavery developed a political philosophy that placed property at the pinnacle of personal interests and regarded its protection to be the government's chief purpose. The Fifth Amendment's Just Compensation clause provided the proslavery camp with a bastion for fortifying the peculiar institution against congressional restrictions to its spread westward. Based on this property-rights centered argument, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, in Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857), found the Missouri Compromise unconstitutionally violated due process."
  11. ^ Tsesis, The Thirteenth Amendment and American Freedom (2004), pp. 18–23. "Constitutional protections of slavery coexisted with an entire culture of oppression. The peculiar institution reached many private aspects of human life, for both whites and blacks. [...] Even free Southern blacks lived in a world so legally constricted by racial domination that it offered only a deceptive shadow of freedom."
  12. ^ Foner, 2010, pp. 14–16
  13. ^ Crowther p. 651
  14. ^ Numerous slaves were being commanded to perform tasks to support the Confederate war effort, including making weapons.
  15. ^ "The Emancipation Proclamation". Transcription. U.S. National Archives. January 1, 1863. 
  16. ^ The fourth paragraph of the proclamation explains that Lincoln issued it, "by virtue of the power in me vested as Commander-in-Chief, of the Army and Navy of the United States in time of actual armed rebellion against the authority and government of the United States, and as a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion".[15]
  17. ^ "13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution". The Library of Congress. Retrieved 2013-06-27. 
  18. ^ Freedmen and Southern Society Project (1982). Freedom: a documentary history of emancipation 1861–1867 : selected from the holdings of the National Archives of the United States. The destruction of slavery. CUP Archive. pp. 69. ISBN 978-0-521-22979-1. 
  19. ^ Foner (2010) pp. 241–242
  20. ^ Striner, Richard (2006). Father Abraham: Lincoln's Relentless Struggle to End Slavery. Oxford University Press. p. 192 (citing Hofstadter's 1948 essay, in which he relates, in part, a sardonic remark by William Seward). ISBN 978-0-19-518306-1. 
  21. ^ Heidler, David (2000). Encyclopedia of the American Civil War. ABC-CLIO. p. 652. 
  22. ^ a b c d Keith Poulter, "Slaves Immediately Freed by the Emancipation Proclamation", North & South vol. 5 no. 1 (December 2001), p. 48
  23. ^ a b William C. Harris, "After the Emancipation Proclamation: Lincoln's Role in the Ending of Slavery", North & South vol. 5 no. 1 (December 2001), map on p. 49
  24. ^ a b "Census, Son of the South". sonofthesouth.net. 1860. 
  26. ^ "Missouri abolishes slavery". January 11, 1865. 
  27. ^ "Tennessee State Convention: Slavery Declared Forever Abolished". The New York Times. January 14, 1865. 
  28. ^ "On this day: 1865-FEB-03". 
  29. ^ Stauffer (2008), Giants, p. 279
  30. ^ Peterson (1995) Lincoln in American Memory, pp. 38–41
  31. ^ McCarthy (1901), Lincoln's plan of Reconstruction, p. 76
  32. ^ "Slavery in Delaware". 
  35. ^ Adam Goodheart (April 1, 2011). "How Slavery Really Ended in America". The New York Times. Retrieved 2011-04-03. 
  36. ^ "Living Contraband - Former Slaves in the Nation's Capital During the Civil War". Civil War Defenses of Washington. National Park Service. Retrieved 2013-06-29. 
  37. ^ Striner, Richard (2006). Father Abraham: Lincoln's Relentless Struggle to End Slavery. Oxford University Press. pp. 147–148. ISBN 978-0-19-518306-1. 
  38. ^ U.S., Statutes at Large, Treaties, and Proclamations of the United States of America 12. Boston. 1863. p. 354. 
  39. ^ Guminski, Arnold. The Constitutional Rights, Privileges, and Immunities of the American People, page 241 (2009).
  40. ^ Richardson, Theresa and Johanningmeir, Erwin. Race, ethnicity, and education, page 129 (IAP 2003).
  41. ^ Montgomery, David. The student's American history, page 428 (Ginn & Co. 1897).
  42. ^ Keifer, Joseph. Slavery and Four Years of War, p. 109 (Echo Library 2009).
  43. ^ "The Second Confiscation Act, July 17, 1862". History.umd.edu. Retrieved 2011-05-29. 
  44. ^ Donald, David. Lincoln, page 365 (Simon and Schuster 1996)
  45. ^ Harold Holzer, Dear Mr. Lincoln: Letters to the President, Southern Illinois University Press, 2006, p. 160–161
  46. ^ The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln edited by Roy P. Basler, Volume V, p. 388–389
  48. ^ a b Striner, Richard (2006). Father Abraham: Lincoln's Relentless Struggle to End Slavery. Oxford University Press. p. 176. ISBN 978-0-19-518306-1. 
  49. ^ Guelzo 2006, p. 18.
  51. ^ "Emancipation Proclamation". Lincoln Papers. Library of Congress and Knox College. 2002. Retrieved 2013-06-28. 
  52. ^ Goodwin, Doris (2005). Team of Rivals. New York: Blithedale Productions. 
  53. ^ U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, 1862
  54. ^ McPherson, James M. Battle Cry of Freedom, (1988), p. 557
  55. ^ Carpenter, Frank B (1866). Six Months at the White House. p. 90. ISBN 978-1-4290-1527-1. Retrieved 2010-02-20.  as reported by Secretary of the Treasury, Salmon Portland Chase, September 22, 1862. Others present used the word resolution instead of vow to God.
    Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy Under Lincoln and Johnson (Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1911), 1:143, reported that Lincoln made a covenant with God that if God would change the tide of the war, Lincoln would change his policy toward slavery. See also Nicolas Parrillo, "Lincoln's Calvinist Transformation: Emancipation and War", Civil War History (September 1, 2000).
  56. ^ "Bangor In Focus: Hannibal Hamlin". Bangorinfo.com. Retrieved 2011-05-29. 
  57. ^ "The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln" edited by Roy P. Basler, Volume 6, p. 48–49
  58. ^ "Teaching With Documents: The Fight for Equal Rights: Black Soldiers in the Civil War". U.S. National Archives and Records Administration. 
  59. ^ "Confederate Law Authorizing the Enlistment of Black Soldiers, as Promulgated in a Military Order". CSA General Orders, No. 14. Department of History, University of Maryland. March 23, 1865. 
  60. ^ "Freedmen and Southern Society Project: Chronology of Emancipation". History.umd.edu. 2009-12-08. Retrieved 2011-05-29. 
  61. ^ "TSLA: This Honorable Body: African American Legislators in 19th Century Tennessee". State.tn.us. Retrieved 2011-05-29. 
  62. ^ Richard Duncan, Beleaguered Winchester: A Virginia Community at War (Baton Rouge, LA: LSU Press, 2007), pp. 139–40
  63. ^ Ira Berlin et al., eds, Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation 1861–1867, Vol. 1: The Destruction of Slavery (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 260
  64. ^ William Klingaman, Abraham Lincoln and the Road to Emancipation, 1861–1865 (NY: Viking Press, 2001), p. 234
  65. ^ "Important From Key West", The New York Times February 4, 1863, p. 1
  66. ^ a b Own, Our (January 9, 1863). "Interesting from Port Royal". The New York Times. p. 2. 
  67. ^ "News from South Carolina: Negro Jubilee at Hilton Head", New York Herald, January 7, 1863, p. 5
  68. ^ Harris, "After the Emancipation Proclamation", p. 45
  69. ^ Allen C. Guelzo (2006). Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America. Simon & Schuster. pp. 107–8. 
  70. ^ Booker T. Washington (1907). Up From Slavery: an autobiography. Doubleday, Page. pp. 19–21. 
  71. ^ Goodheart, Adam (2011). 1861: The Civil War Awakening. New York: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. 
  72. ^ Jenkins, Sally, and John Stauffer. The State of Jones. New York: Anchor Books edition/Random House, c. 2009 (2010). ISBN 978-0-7679-2946-2, p. 42
  73. ^ Shelby Foote (1963). The Civil War, a Narrative: Fredericksburg to Meridian. Volume 2. Random House. 
  74. ^ "London Times Editorial". Oct 6, 1862. Retrieved 2012-11-28. 
  75. ^ "International Reaction". 
  76. ^ "Abe Lincoln's Last Card". 
  77. ^ Mitgang, Herbert (2000). Abraham Lincoln, a press portrait: his life and times from the original newspaper documents of the Union, the Confederacy, and Europe. Fordham Univ Press. ISBN 978-0-8232-2062-5. 
  78. ^ a b c d e f g h Weber, Jennifer L. (2006). Copperheads: the rise and fall of Lincoln's opponents in the North. New York, New York: Oxford University Press. 
  79. ^ Weber 2006, p. 65.
  80. ^ "The Rebel Message: What Jefferson Davis Has to Say". New York Herald. America's Historical Newspapers. Retrieved 2012-01-04. 
  81. ^ Robert E. May (1995). "History and Mythology : The Crisis over British Intervention in the Civil War". The Union, the Confederacy, and the Atlantic rim. Purdue University Press. pp. 29–68. ISBN 978-1-55753-061-5. 
  82. ^ Mack Smith, p. 72
  84. ^ Guelzo 2006, p. 3.
  85. ^ Doris Kearns Goodwin, A Team of Rivals, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005
  86. ^ Foner, Eric (April 9, 2000). "review of Forced into Glory: Abraham Lincoln's White Dream by Lerone Bennett, Jr.". Los Angeles Times Book Review. Archived from the original on 2004-10-27. Retrieved 2014-02-23. 
  87. ^ Ashraf, Kal (March 2013). "Editorial in American Studies in Britain (108: Spring 2013) iSSN 1465-9956". British Association for American Studies. Retrieved 2013-03-28. 
  88. ^ Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. "Dr. Martin Luther King on the Emancipation Proclamation". National Park Service. 
  89. ^ Dr. Marin Luther King, Jr. (August 28, 1963). "I Have A Dream". The King Center. 
  90. ^ a b Peniel E. Joseph (June 10, 2013). "Kennedy's Finest Moment". The New York Times. 
  91. ^ John F. Kennedy (June 11, 1963). "237 - Radio and Television Report to the American People on Civil Rights". 
  92. ^ "Remarks of Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson". May 30, 1963. 
  93. ^ Lyndon B. Johnson (March 15, 1965). "We Shall Overcome". 
  94. ^ "Episode Guide". The Andy Griffith Show. TV Land. 
  95. ^ "Barney Fife Explains The Emancipation Proclamation". Episode clip, The Andy Griffith Show. YouTube. 


External links[edit]