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The Emancipation Proclamation |
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Digital History ID 3074
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In July 1862, about two months before President Lincoln issued
the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, Congress adopted a
second Confiscation Act calling for the seizure of the property
of slaveholders who were actively engaged in the rebellion. It
seems unlikely that this act would have freed any slaves, since
the federal government would have to prove that individual slaveholders
were traitors. (In fact, one of the largest slaveholders in South
Carolina was a Baltimore Unionist). Lincoln felt that Congress
lacked the legal authority to emancipate slaves; he believed that
only the President acting as commander-in-chief had the authority
to abolish slavery.
On September 22, 1862, less than a week after the Battle of
Antietam, President Lincoln met with his cabinet. As one cabinet
member, Samuel P. Chase, recorded in his diary, the President
told them that he had "thought a great deal about the relation
of this war to Slavery":
You all remember that, several weeks ago, I read to you an
Order I had prepared on this subject, which, since then, my mind
has been much occupied with this subject, and I have thought
all along that the time for acting on it might very probably
come. I think the time has come now. I wish it were a better
time. I wish that we were in a better condition. The action of
the army against the rebels has not been quite what I should
have best liked. But they have been driven out of Maryland, and
Pennsylvania is no longer in danger of invasion. When the rebel
army was at Frederick, I determined, as soon as it should be
driven out of Maryland, to issue a Proclamation of Emancipation
such as I thought most likely to be useful. I said nothing to
any one; but I made the promise to myself, and (hesitating a
little)--to my Maker. The rebel army is now driven out, and I
am going to fulfill that promise.
The preliminary Emancipation Proclamation that President Lincoln
issued on September 22 stated that all slaves in designated parts
of the South on January 1, 1863, would be freed. The President
hoped that slave emancipation would undermine the Confederacy
from within. Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles reported that
the President told him that freeing the slaves was "a military
necessity, absolutely essential to the preservation of the Union....The
slaves [are] undeniably an element of strength to those who [have]
their service, and we must decide whether that element should
be with us or against us."
Fear of foreign intervention in the war also influenced Lincoln
to consider emancipation. The Confederacy had assumed, mistakenly,
that demand for cotton from textile mills would lead Britain to
break the Union naval blockade. Nevertheless, there was a real
danger of European involvement in the war. By redefining the war
as a war against slavery, Lincoln hoped to generate support from
European liberals.
Even before Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, Postmaster
General Montgomery Blair (1813-1883), a former Democrat from Maryland,
had warned the President that this decision might stimulate antiwar
protests among northern Democrats and cost the administration
the fall 1862 elections. In fact, Peace Democrats did protest
against the proclamation and Lincoln's assumption of powers not
specifically granted by the Constitution. Among the "abuses"
they denounced were his unilateral decision to call out the militia
to suppress the "insurrection," impose a blockade of
southern ports, expand the army beyond the limits set by law,
spend federal funds without prior congressional authorization,
and suspend the writ of habeas corpus (the right of persons under
arrest to have their case heard in court). The Lincoln administration
imprisoned about 13,000 people without trial during the war, and
shut Democratic newspapers in New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago
for varying amounts of time.
The Democrats failed to gain control of the House of Representatives
in the Fall 1862 election, in part because the preliminary Emancipation
Proclamation gave a higher moral purpose to the northern cause.
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