Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation

By Patricia Hamarstrom Williams | December 17th, 2019 |

From Wikipedia: The Emancipation Proclamation, or Proclamation 95, was a presidential proclamation and executive order issued by United States President Abraham Lincoln effective January 1, 1863. It changed the legal status under federal law of more than 3.5 million enslaved African Americans in the Confederate states from slave to free. As soon as a slave escaped the control of the Confederate government, either by running away across Union lines or through the advance of federal troops, the slave was permanently free. Ultimately, the Union victory brought the proclamation into effect in all of the former Confederacy. The remaining slaves, those in the areas not in revolt, were freed by state action, or by the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified in December 1865.

With Congress’ approval Lincoln in 1862, with partial compensation, ended slavery in the District of Columbia; this long-standing issue was now addressable since the Senators of the states in rebellion, who had blocked such a measure so as not to set a precedent, left Congress in 1861. As for the states, Lincoln believed that he had no authority as President to end slavery, which was a state matter. However, Lincoln was not only President, he was Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces. As such, he could take military measures. His order carefully limited the Proclamation to those areas in insurrection, where civil government was not respected and his military authority, therefore, applied.^[2] As a war measure, it hurt the South economically by removing its labor force, helped the Union militarily by making Union soldiers out of freed slaves, and took an implicit statement toward black citizenship by accepting blacks as soldiers and trusting them with arms. (Up until this point, there had been no blacks in combat positions in the Army.) The Proclamation also ended any chances of the Confederate government gaining recognition from England or France, which were anti-slavery and whose support for the Union it increased. It marked a major shift in the stated goals of the war, admitting what the South had claimed all along: the Union was fighting the war to end slavery. Psychologically, it was the turning point of the war.

The proclamation was directed to all of the areas in rebellion and all segments of the executive branch (including the Army and Navy) of the United States.^[3] It proclaimed the freedom of all slaves in the ten states in rebellion.^[4] Even though it excluded areas not in rebellion, including the border slave states of Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri, it still applied to more than 3.5 million of the 4 million slaves in the country.

The Proclamation followed a series of warnings in the summer of 1862 under the Second Confiscation Act, allowing Confederate supporters 60 days to surrender, or face confiscation of land and slaves. 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 outlaw slavery, and did not grant citizenship to the ex-slaves (called freedmen). But in addition to the goal of preserving the Union, ^[5] for the first time it made the eradication of slavery an explicit war goal. The symbolic importance of the federal government outlawing slavery, even on a limited basis, was enormous. For the first time, the Union (the country) was publicly committed to ending slavery everywhere. It meant escaped slaves would no longer be returned South, that the hated Fugitive Slave Laws were dead. It also said that former slaves could fight in the military against their former owners, using weapons the Northern army would supply. This would soon supply fresh troops for the Union army, but its psychological impact was also enormous. This was the South’s nightmare: a slave revolt supported by the North.

Around 25,000 to 75,000 slaves were immediately emancipated in those regions of the Confederacy where the US Army was already in control. It could not be enforced in the areas still in rebellion, but as the Union army took control of Confederate regions, the Proclamation provided the legal framework for the liberation of more than three and a half million 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 applied only 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 (unnamed but occupied by Union troops since 1862) and lower Louisiana (also under occupation), and specifically excluded those 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 (as in West Virginia) 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.^[6]

On September 22, 1862, Lincoln issued a preliminary warning that he would order the emancipation of all slaves in any state that did not end its rebellion against the Union by January 1, 1863.^[7]^[8] None of the Confederate states did so, and Lincoln’s order was signed and took effect on January 1, 1863. The Emancipation Proclamation outraged white Southerners and their sympathizers, who saw it as the beginning of a race war, like in Haiti. It angered some Northern Democrats, energized abolitionists, and undermined those Europeans that wanted to intervene to help the Confederacy.^[9] The Proclamation lifted the spirits of African Americans both free and slave. It led many slaves to escape from their masters and get to Union lines to obtain their freedom, and to join the Union Army.

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 stated goal at the start of the war was to maintain the Union. The Proclamation made freeing the slaves an explicit goal of the Union war effort. Establishing the abolition of slavery as one of the two primary war goals served to deter intervention by Britain and France.^[10] 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, and insisted that Reconstruction plans for Southern states require abolition in new state constitutions. Congress passed the 13th Amendment by the necessary two-thirds vote on January 31, 1865, and it was ratified by the states on December 6, 1865, ending legal slavery in the United States.^[11]

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