The Emancipation Proclamation, issued on January 1, 1863, by President Abraham Lincoln, has proven to be one of the landmark documents of American history. In it, Lincoln freed all of the slaves residing in Confederate territory not under Union army occupation. The Emancipation Proclamation changed the tenor of the Civil War by linking the Union cause with the liberation of the slaves.
The idea for an Emancipation Proclamation originated in the actions of slaves during the war. From the beginning of armed conflict, slaves near the battle lines crossed over to the Union army camps. Unwilling to return the slaves because the Coneederate army was using them to build forts and other armaments, Union army officials did not know at first what to do with fugitive slaves. Congress stepped in and passed the first Confiscation Act in August 1861. It declared that slave owners forfeited their rights to slaves if their slaves were used in military service. Nearly a year later, Congress passed a second Confiscation Act. This one was more emphatic, claiming that slaves of any person actively supporting rebellion would be “forever free of their servitude.” Congress also issued a Militia Act, which stated that any slave who gave service to the military would be free, as would his family. Still, by the summer of 1862, there was no official emancipation, or freeing of slaves. The war was still for “union.”
Lincoln detested slavery, but early in the conflict, he feared that emancipation would provoke the border states into joining the Confederacy. He also had doubts about the legality of an emancipation act from Congress and hoped to provide monetary compensation to slave owners as a compromise measure. In the period between the two Coneiscation Acts, abolitionists, Republican politicians, newspaper editors, and various citizen groups pressured
Congress, and especially President Lincoln, to emancipate the slaves.
During the spring and summer of 1862, Frederick Douglass, the most influential African American at the time, and Charles Sumner, the abolitionist senator from Massachusetts, met with Lincoln, hoping to push him toward immediate and unconditional emancipation, but Lincoln remained steadfast. In a famous reply to newspaper editor Horace Greeley, Lincoln wrote, “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 save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.” But even as he reaffirmed his primary public commitment to preserving the Union, privately Lincoln was beginning to fashion an emancipation order. He read an early draft to his cabinet in July 1862. Most cabinet members favored emancipation, but a few questioned the timing of the order. There was pressure for immediate emancipation to forestall foreign (especially British) aid and recognition of the Confederacy, but with the poor showing of the Union army in the field, the cabinet did not want emancipation to be seen as an act of desperation. Lincoln decided to wait for a military victory.
Lincoln got his victory at the Battle of Antietam, and issued a preliminary proclamation of emancipation five days later on September 22, 1862. Under his authority as commander in chief, Lincoln declared that as of January 1, 1863, slaves in those states still in rebellion would be freed. As a compromise measure, the preliminary proclamation included a compensation provision for loyal slave owners and suggested colonizing ex-slaves in another part of the country or overseas. Nonetheless, the impact of the proclamation was polarizing. Slaves in the border states, though unaffected by the terms of the order, began to act like freedmen, refusing to do work and demanding respect from white people. Abolitionists praised Lincoln’s decision, but many more in the North were critical, contributing to Republican defeats in the fall elections.
On New Year’s Day 1863, Lincoln issued the official Emancipation Proclamation. “I do order,” it stated, “and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated States and parts of States are and henceforward shall be free.” Unlike the preliminary proclamation, this one specified which areas were included by the order. All of Arkansas, Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina fell under the authority of the Emancipation Proclamation, but Lincoln excluded 12 parishes in Louisiana, 53 counties in Virginia, all of Union-occupied Tennessee, and the border states of Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri.
Hundreds of thousands of African Americans remained in bondage, but the legalities of the Emancipation Proclamation made little difference to slaves across the country. The document actually freed very few slaves, since most areas under Union occupation were exempt and those under Confederate control were out of reach. However, the proclamation encouraged slaves to assert their freedom everywhere. Wherever the Union army moved, slavery effectively ended.
Besides the geographic boundaries, there were two other significant changes in the final Emancipation Proclamation. First, Lincoln left out any mention of compensation and colonization. Second and more important, the Emancipation Proclamation called for the enlistment of African-American soldiers: “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 to man vessels of all sorts in said service.” Recruiters spread across the country, and by the war’s end 180,000 African Americans had served in the Union armed forces. Lincoln had turned Confederate slave labor into Union fighting power.
The Emancipation Proclamation also represented a shift in focus for the war effort. By the time it was issued, Lincoln believed that the Civil War could not be won without emancipating the slaves. By arming former slaves, Lincoln gave them an opportunity to fight for their own freedom and, in so doing, to fight for their country. More than just adding muscle to the armed services, enrolling black soldiers implied that, at war’s end, they would receive full citizenship rights by virtue of their service.
Celebrations erupted across the North to praise the Emancipation Proclamation. Few stopped to consider that only a tiny number of slaves were officially freed, since the Confederate government controlled most of the areas detailed in the document. Instead, the celebrants, mostly African Americans and abolitionists, insisted that the Emancipation Proclamation had injected a moral element into the war, giving it a new cause. Lincoln noted the morality of his decision, writing that he believed emancipation to be “an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution, upon military necessity.” The document had immediate practical benefits as well, as the British government backed away from recognizing the Confederacy soon after Lincoln issued the Proclamation.
The Thirteenth Amendment officially ended slavery in the United States in December 1865, but the Emancipation Proclamation was the crippling blow to the slave system in the United States.
See also abolition.
Further reading: John Hope Franklin, The E-mancipation Proclamation (Wheeling, Ill.: Harlan Davidson, 1995); Michael Vorenberg, Final Freedom: The Civil War, the
Abolition of Slavery and the Thirteenth Amendment (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
—Justin J. Behrend
World History
