Emancipation Proclamation
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The Emancipation Proclamation is an executive order issued by United States President Abraham Lincoln during the American Civil War under his war powers. It proclaimed the freedom of 3.1 million of the nation's 4 million slaves, and immediately freed 50,000 of them, with the rest freed as Union armies advanced.[1] On September 22, 1862, Lincoln announced that he would issue a formal emancipation of all slaves in any state of the Confederate States of America that did not return to Union control by January 1, 1863. The actual order was signed and issued January 1, 1863; it named the locations under Confederate control where it would apply. Lincoln issued the Executive Order by his authority as "Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy" under Article II, section 2 of the United States Constitution.[2]
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Coverage
The proclamation did not cover the 800,000 slaves in the slave-holding border states of Missouri, Maryland, West Virginia or Delaware, which had never declared a secession; slaves there were freed by separately state and federal actions. The state of Tennessee had already mostly returned to Union control, so it also was not named and was exempted. Virginia was named, but exemptions were specified for the 48 counties that were in the process of forming West Virginia, as well as seven other named counties and two cities. Also specifically exempted were New Orleans and thirteen named parishes of Louisiana, all of which were also already mostly under Federal control at the time of the Proclamation.The Emancipation Proclamation was ridiculed for freeing only the slaves over which the Union had no power. Over 50,000 were freed the day it went into effect[3] in parts of nine of the ten states to which it applied (Texas being the exception).[4] In every Confederate state (except Tennessee and Texas), the Proclamation went into immediate effect in Union-occupied areas and at least 20,000 slaves[3][4] were freed at once on January 1, 1863.
Additionally, the Proclamation provided the legal framework for the emancipation of nearly all four million slaves as the Union armies advanced, and committed the Union to ending slavery, which was a controversial decision even in the North. Hearing of the Proclamation, more slaves quickly escaped to Union lines as the Army units moved South. As the Union armies advanced through the Confederacy, thousands of slaves were freed each day until nearly all (approximately 4 million, according to the 1860 census)[5] were freed by July 1865.
Near the end of the war, abolitionists were concerned that while the Proclamation had freed most slaves as a war measure, it had not made slavery illegal. Several former slave states had already passed legislation prohibiting slavery; however, in a few states, slavery continued to be legal, and to exist, until December 18, 1865, when the Thirteenth Amendment was enacted.
Background
On March 13, 1862, Lincoln forbade Union Army officers from returning fugitive slaves. 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 United States territories. By this act, they opposed 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.
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. In July 1862, Congress passed and Lincoln signed the "Second Confiscation Act." It liberated slaves held by "rebels".[6] It provided:
Abolitionists had long been urging Lincoln to free all slaves. 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.[7] 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.[8]SEC. 2. And be it further enacted, That if any person shall hereafter incite, set on foot, assist, or engage in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States, or the laws thereof, or shall give aid or comfort thereto, or shall engage in, or give aid and comfort to, any such existing rebellion or insurrection, and be convicted thereof, such person shall be punished by imprisonment for a period not exceeding ten years, or by a fine not exceeding ten thousand dollars, and by the liberation of all his slaves, if any he have; or by both of said punishments, at the discretion of the court. ...
SEC. 9. And be it further enacted, That all slaves of persons who shall hereafter be engaged in rebellion against the government of the United States, or who shall in any way give aid or comfort thereto, escaping from such persons and taking refuge within the lines of the army; and all slaves captured from such persons or deserted by them and coming under the control of the government of the United States; and all slaves of such person found or being within any place occupied by rebel forces and afterwards occupied by the forces of the United States, shall be deemed captives of war, and shall be forever free of their servitude, and not again held as slaves.
Lincoln first discussed the proclamation with his cabinet in July 1862. He believed he needed a Union victory on the battlefield so his decision would appear positive and strong. The Battle of Antietam, in which Union troops turned back a Confederate invasion of Maryland, gave him the opportunity to issue a preliminary proclamation on September 22, 1862. Lincoln had first shown an early draft of the proclamation to his Vice president Hannibal Hamlin,[9] 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.
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. 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 final months before its defeat.
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.[10][11] Slaves in Kentucky and Delaware were not emancipated until the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified.
Implementation
Union-occupied areas of the Confederate states where the proclamation was put into immediate effect by local commanders included Winchester, Virginia[12], Corinth, Mississippi [13], the Sea Islands along the coasts of the Carolinas and Georgia[14], Key West, Florida [15], and Port Royal, South Carolina[16].
Immediate impact
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."[3] 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[18]. Although some counties of Union-occupied Virginia were exempted from the Proclamation, the lower Shenandoah Valley, and the area around Alexandria were covered.[3]
Booker T. Washington, as a boy of 9 in Virginia, remembered the day in early 1865:[19]
The 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".As the great day drew nearer, there was more singing in the slave quarters than usual. It was bolder, had more ring, and lasted later into the night. Most of the verses of the plantation songs had some reference to freedom.... Some man who seemed to be a stranger (a United States officer, I presume) made a little speech and then read a rather long paper—the Emancipation Proclamation, I think. After the reading we were told that we were all free, and could go when and where we pleased. My mother, who was standing by my side, leaned over and kissed her children, while tears of joy ran down her cheeks. She explained to us what it all meant, that this was the day for which she had been so long praying, but fearing that she would never live to see.
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.
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.
Political impact
Racism remained pervasive on both sides of the conflict and many in the North only supported the war as an effort to force the south back into the Union. The promises of many Republican politicans 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 Prolamation. 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 Brethren of the Southern States for the Negro. I answer No!"[22] 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."[22]
War Democrats who rejected the Copperhead position within their party, found themsleves in a quandry. While thorughout the war they had continued to espouse the racist positions of thier 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.[22]
Lincoln further alienated many in the Union two days after issuing the preliminary copy of the Emcancipation 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.[22]
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."[22]
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."[22] 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."[22]
International impact
As Lincoln had hoped, the Proclamation turned foreign popular opinion in favor of the Union by adding the ending of slavery as a goal of the war. That shift ended the Confederacy's hopes of gaining official recognition, particularly from the United Kingdom, which had abolished slavery. Prior to Lincoln's decree, Britain's actions had favored the Confederacy, especially in its provision of British-built warships such as the CSS Alabama and CSS Florida. Furthermore, the North's determination to win at all costs was creating problems diplomatically; the Trent Affair of late 1861 had caused severe tensions between the United States and Great Britain. For the Confederacy to receive official recognition by foreign powers would have been a further blow to the Union cause.With the war now cast in terms of freedom against slavery, British or French support for the Confederacy would look like support for slavery, which both of these nations had abolished. 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.[23]
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
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.[24]Postbellum
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.[5]
In the years after Lincoln's death, his action in the proclamation was lauded. The anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation was celebrated as a black holiday for more than 50 years; the holiday of Juneteenth was created in some states to honor it.[25] In 1913, the fiftieth anniversary of the Proclamation, there were particularly large celebrations.
As the years went on and American life continued to be deeply unfair towards blacks, cynicism towards Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation increased.[citation needed]Some 20th century black intellectuals, including W. E. B. Du Bois, James Baldwin and Julius Lester, described the proclamation as essentially worthless. 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"[26] 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.[27] 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.[28]
See also
- Abraham Lincoln
- Act Prohibiting the Return of Slaves – 1863 statute
- African American Women, 1960's
- American Civil War
- History of slavery in Kentucky
- History of slavery in Missouri
- Juneteenth – an African American holiday commemorating the freeing of slaves
- Slavery Abolition Act – an act passed by the British parliament abolishing slavery in British colonies with compensation to the owners
- Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
- Timeline of the African-American Civil Rights Movement
- War Governors' Conference – gave Lincoln the much needed political support to issue the Proclamation
Notes
- ^ according to Eric Foner, The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery (2010) pp 239-42
- ^ Crowther p. 651
- ^ a b c d Keith Poulter, "Slaves Immediately Freed by the Emancipation Proclamation", North & South vol. 5 no. 1 (December 2001), p. 48
- ^ 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
- ^ a b "Census, Son of the South". sonofthesouth.net. 1860. http://www.sonofthesouth.net/slavery/slave-maps/slave-census.htm.
- ^ Original Text
- ^ Guelzo, Allen C. Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, 2004, pg. 18
- ^ Peter Kolchin, American Slavery: 1619–1877, New York: Hill and Wang, 1994, p.82
- ^ Bangor In Focus: Hannibal Hamlin
- ^ Freedmen and Southern Society Project: Chronology of Emancipation
- ^ TSLA: This Honorable Body: African American Legislators in 19th Century Tennessee
- ^ Richard Duncan, Beleaguered Winchester: A Virginia Community at War (Baton Rouge, LA: LSU Press, 2007), pp. 139–40
- ^ 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
- ^ William Klingaman, Abraham Lincoln and the Road to Emancipation, 1861–1865 (NY: Viking Press, 2001), p. 234
- ^ "Important From Key West", New York Times February 4, 1863, p. 1
- ^ a b Own, Our (January 9, 1863). "Interesting from Port Royal". The New York Times. p. 2. http://www.nytimes.com/1863/01/09/news/interesting-port-royal-jubliee-among-negroes-first-president-s-emancipation.html?scp=35&sq=&st=p?pagewanted=1.
- ^ "News from South Carolina: Negro Jubilee at Hilton Head", New York Herald, January 7, 1863, p.5
- ^ Harris, "After the Emancipation Proclamation", p. 45
- ^ Up from Slavery (1901) pp 19-21
- ^ "Abe Lincoln's Last Card". http://www.arthist.umn.edu/aict/Tennielweb/punch/621018.html.
- ^ 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 9780823220625. http://books.google.com/?id=aQQXbIE--ggC&pg=PA236-IA10&lpg=PA236-IA10&dq=London+Times+freeing+the+slaves+Lincoln's+%22desperate+last-trump+card%22&q=London%20Times%20freeing%20the%20slaves%20Lincoln's%20%22desperate%20last-trump%20card%22.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i Jennifer L. Weber (2006). Copperheads: the rise and fall of Lincoln's opponents in the North. New York, New York: Oxford University Press.
- ^ Mack Smith, p. 72
- ^ Allan Nevins, Ordeal of the Union: vol 6. War Becomes Revolution, 1862–1863 (1960)
- ^ Guelzo, p. 244.
- ^ Guelzo, p. 3.
- ^ Doris Kearns Goodwin, A Team of Rivals, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005
- ^ Foner, Eric (April 9, 2000). "review of Forced into Glory: Abraham Lincoln's White Dream by Lerone Bennett, Jr.". Los Angeles Times Book Review. http://www.ericfoner.com/reviews/040900latimes.html. Retrieved Jun 30, 2008.
References
- Herman Belz, Emancipation and Equal Rights: Politics and Constitutionalism in the Civil War Era (1978)
- Crowther, Edward R. “Emancipation Proclamation”. in Encyclopedia of the American Civil War. Heidler, David S. and Heidler, Jeanne T. (2000) ISBN 0-393-04758-X
- Christopher Ewan, "The Emancipation Proclamation and British Public Opinion" The Historian, Vol. 67, 2005
- John Hope Franklin, The Emancipation Proclamation (1963)
- Foner, Eric. The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery (W.W. Norton, 2010)
- Guelzo, Allen C. Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America (2004)
- Guelzo, Allen C. "How Abe Lincoln Lost the Black Vote: Lincoln and Emancipation in the African American Mind," Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association (2004) 25#1 online edition
- Harold Holzer, Edna Greene Medford, and Frank J. Williams. The Emancipation Proclamation: Three Views (2006)
- Howard Jones, Abraham Lincoln and a New Birth of Freedom: The Union and Slavery in the Diplomacy of the Civil War (1999)
- Mitch Kachun, Festivals of Freedom: Memory and Meaning in African American Emancipation Celebrations, 1808–1915 (2003)
- Mack Smith, Denis (1969). Garibaldi (Great Lives Observed). Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall.
- McPherson, James M. Ordeal by Fire: the Civil War and Reconstruction (2001 [3rd ed.]), esp. pp. 316–321.
- Nevins, Allan. Ordeal of the Union: vol 6. War Becomes Revolution, 1862–1863 (1960)
- Roger L. Ransom and Richard Sutch: One Kind of Freedom – The Economic Consequences of Emancipation, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1977 ISBN 0-521-29203-4
- C. Peter Ripley, Roy E. Finkenbine, Michael F. Hembree, Donald Yacovone, Witness for Freedom: African American Voices on Race, Slavery, and Emancipation (1993)
- Silvana R. Siddali, From Property To Person: Slavery And The Confiscation Acts, 1861–1862 (2005)
- John Syrett. Civil War Confiscation Acts: Failing to Reconstruct the South (2005)
- Alexander Tsesis, We Shall Overcome: A History of Civil Rights and the Law (2008)
- Michael Vorenberg, Final Freedom: The Civil War, the Abolition of Slavery, and the Thirteenth Amendment (2001)
External links
| Wikisource has original text related to this article: |
 | Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Emancipation Proclamation |
- Lesson plan on Emancipation Proclamation from EDSITEment NEH
- Report of the Brown University Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice
- Teaching resources about Slavery and Abolition on blackhistory4schools.com
- Text and images of the Emancipation Proclamation from the National Archives
- Online Lincoln Coloring Book for Teachers and Students
- Emancipation Proclamation and related resources at the Library of Congress
- Scholarly article on rhetoric and the Emancipation Proclamation
- Mr. Lincoln and Freedom: Emancipation Proclamation
- First Edition Emancipation Proclamation in 1862 Harper's Weekly
- Chronology of Emancipation during the Civil War
- "Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation"
- Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation at the New York State Library – Images and transcript of Lincoln's original manuscript of the preliminary proclamation.
- 1865 NY Times article Sketch of its History by Lincoln's portrait artist
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