Analysis: The Emancipation Proclamation

Date: January 1, 1863

Author: Lincoln, Abraham

Genre: legal document

Summary Overview

The Emancipation Proclamation has been a much-debated and much-misunderstood document. Many people believe it freed all the slaves, but it freed only those who lived in areas that were still in rebellion against the federal government as of the date of the proclamation, January 1, 1863. Although Abraham Lincoln had strong personal feelings against slavery, he initially had no plans to abolish it. But by the summer of 1862, he determined to free the slaves in the Rebel states because this would make it harder for the Confederacy to continue the war. He believed that his authority as commander-in-chief of the armed forces gave him the ability to do this; however, this military authority could not be applied to the slave states that had remained loyal to the Union. Therefore, the proclamation applied only to the states that were in rebellion against the federal government as of January 1, 1863.

Document Analysis

On September 22, 1862, shortly after the Battle of Antietam, President Abraham Lincoln issued what has become known as the “preliminary emancipation proclamation.” This document was basically a warning to the Confederate states that if they did not end their war against the federal government by January 1, 1863, then on that date the slaves held in those rebellious areas would be set free. Lincoln had decided on this course of action by the midsummer of 1862, but members of his cabinet persuaded him to wait until a significant Union victory had been achieved before announcing the policy. Lincoln considered Major General George McClellan’s victory over the Confederate forces at Antietam Creek, near Sharpsburg, Maryland, on September 17 to be that victory. Five days later he issued the preliminary statement. This document laid out what would happen if armed resistance to federal authority did not end by the close of the current year. The first two full paragraphs of the final proclamation that was issued on January 1, 1863, consist of quotations from the preliminary document of September 22, 1862. By giving the Confederate states nearly three months of warning, Lincoln hoped that some states might be induced to end their rebellion so that they might continue to be allowed to have slavery.

Provisions

Because Lincoln saw the Emancipation Proclamation as a war measure, aimed at limiting the power of the Confederacy to carry on the war, it would only take effect in areas that were in rebellion against the Union. Thus, the preliminary proclamation specifies how this status would be determined. If, by January 1, 1863, states had ended their rebellion and elected representatives to Congress, who had been chosen in elections in which the majority of eligible voters had taken part (thus indicating broad public support for any profession of loyalty by the state), then that state would no longer be considered to be in rebellion to the federal government. No Confederate state took any action to end their rebellion, so in the final form of the proclamation, Lincoln specified the states that were still in rebellion, excepting certain areas in Virginia and Louisiana that were already back under federal control.

Lincoln considered what he was doing in the Emancipation Proclamation to be primarily a war measure, and so he invoked “the power in me vested as Commander in Chief” of the military forces of the United States. Article 2, section 2 of the US Constitution provides that “the President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States.” Lincoln states that he is taking this action at a “time of actual armed rebellion” against the government, and he believes it to be “a fit and necessary war measure.” This concept of a “war measure” is crucial to an understanding of the Emancipation Proclamation and why it applied only where it did; it is also related to understanding why Lincoln did not take action to free the slaves earlier, or in some other fashion. Despite Lincoln’s personal opposition to slavery, he believed that, constitutionally, he had no power to simply declare all slaves to be free. But the concept of “war powers” had evolved as an unwritten but generally accepted principle that in times of war a president might have extraordinary powers to take actions that would facilitate the prosecution of the war, or to hinder the ability of an enemy to carry on the war. Confiscation of the property of an enemy that was being used to support the war effort was considered a legitimate power of war, and some slaves had already been freed under the terms of the First Confiscation Act (August 1861) and the Second Confiscation Act (July 1862). Thus Lincoln believed that, as a war measure, he could order the freeing of the slaves in areas that were in rebellion against the legitimately established government. Slaves were often used to directly aid the Confederate forces, such as in building trenches and fortifications, or in other kinds of labor in and around military camps. Indirectly, slave labor kept much of the economy of the Confederacy running, and the presence of large numbers of slaves meant that a greater proportion of the white male population of the South was available for military service. For these reasons, Lincoln believed he could take action against slavery in the areas that were in rebellion. These arguments would not apply, however, to areas that had not rebelled—such as the border states, where slavery was legal, but which had nevertheless remained in the Union; these included Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri. Nor would it apply to areas where federal authorities had already retaken control—most prominently, the state of Tennessee.

Lincoln notes that this proclamation of January 1, 1863, is simply carrying out what he had warned the Confederate states that he would do when he issued the preliminary proclamation—all of this, he says, is “in accordance with my purpose to do so publicly proclaimed for the full period of one hundred days.” Francis Bicknell Carpenter was an artist commissioned to paint a picture memorializing the Emancipation Proclamation, and spent nearly six months at the White House in the spring and summer of 1864 working on this portrait. During this time Carpenter had many conversations with Lincoln, and Lincoln told him that when he issued the preliminary proclamation, he did not realize that it was precisely one hundred days from September 22, 1862, to January 1, 1863. Carpenter’s painting, First Reading of the Emancipation Proclamation of President Lincoln, was unveiled to the cabinet on July 22, 1864—two years to the day from the occasion depicted in the picture.

The states identified in the proclamation as being in rebellion include all of the eleven states that had seceded and formed the Confederate States of America. Forty-eight western counties of Virginia had broken away from that state and in June 1863 were admitted to the Union as the new state of West Virginia. The proclamation would therefore not apply in western Virginia. Also, some counties along the Atlantic coast of Virginia had already been reoccupied by federal forces, and these specific counties are also listed as “excepted parts” where the proclamation would not apply. Likewise, in southern Louisiana, Union naval power had allowed federal forces to take control of a large region, and so specific parishes (counties) in Louisiana are also listed as excepted. In these excepted parts of Virginia and Louisiana, the situation was “left precisely as if this proclamation were not issued,” meaning that the slaves in those regions were not set free. Contemporary accounts of the time when the final proclamation was issued tell of slaves reading the document or listening intently as it was read, to find out whether they were from areas that were considered in rebellion, and thus were freed by the document.

While slaves in loyal states or federally controlled portions of Rebel states were not affected by the proclamation, slaves in those areas that were declared to still be in a state of rebellion against the federal authority “are, and henceforward shall be free.” Under the previous Confiscation Acts passed by Congress, there was the potential of court cases being filed later to determine whether the slaves freed under those laws had actually belonged to people supporting the Confederate war effort, or if those specific slaves had been used in ways that aided the war. But under the Emancipation Proclamation, no such claims by slave owners would be possible. If the state or part of a state in which they lived was in rebellion against the government when the proclamation took effect, then the slaves in that area were freed—irrespective of the slave owners’ loyalty or professed loyalty to the Union. Lincoln also pledged that the powers of the executive branch of the government, including the armed forces, would be used to see that the freedom of these former slaves is “recognized and maintained.”

One of the issues that had been debated in connection with any potential policy that might free the slaves during the war was the possibility that the freed people might rise up in revenge against their former masters. Lincoln encouraged the freed slaves to refrain from any violence, unless it was necessary in legitimate cases of self-defense. Also, wherever they might have the opportunity to do so, they should “labor faithfully for reasonable wages.” As it happened, there were very few incidents of violence by freed slaves. Their usual response to being set free was simply to leave the lands of their former masters; or, more precisely, the slaves freed themselves by leaving the farms and plantations where they had been enslaved and making their way to the lines of the Union Army. In 1865, Congress created the Freedman’s Bureau, which was to try to help the freed slaves to make the transition to living as free people. The Freedman’s Bureau—which was technically called the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands—sought to provide schools for the freed slaves, and to negotiate contracts to see that the workers were paid reasonable wages for their labor.

Related Issues

The preliminary document that Lincoln issued in September 1862 was not only a warning of what would happen if the rebellion did not end by January 1, 1863. There were also suggestions of other potential actions that never materialized. Lincoln proposed suggesting to Congress laws that would give financial aid to any state that would undertake freeing their slaves on the state level. By this means, masters might be financially compensated for freeing their slaves. In the months leading up to the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln had met several times with representatives of the loyal border states where slavery was legal. He urged them to consider voluntary emancipation, whether immediate or gradual, and suggested that federal money might be made available to aid them if they would do this. In May 1862, he warned the border state representatives he met with, “You cannot be blind to the signs of the times.” None of the border states took this action before the Emancipation Proclamation was issued. Although the proclamation did not free the slaves in these loyal border states, some of these states—including Maryland, Missouri, and West Virginia—did adopt emancipation before the Thirteenth Amendment, which finally ended slavery everywhere in the United States, was ratified in December 1865.

Another issue that was proposed in the preliminary proclamation was aid for the colonization of freed African Americans outside of the United States. Like many antislavery advocates, Lincoln had initially supported colonization, but eventually meetings with representatives of free blacks in the North convinced him that the African American people were not, for the most part, interested in leaving the United States. In the final form of the Emancipation Proclamation, neither aid for states voluntarily freeing their slaves, nor any encouragement of colonization is mentioned. The time for such half-measures, Lincoln believed, had passed.

Another issue that was not mentioned in the preliminary document was the use of African American troops in the Union war effort. But in the final document, Lincoln declares that “such persons of suitable condition” (referring to the freed slaves mentioned in the previous paragraph), will be received into the US military “to garrison forts, positions, stations, and other places, and to man vessels of all sorts in said service.” The question of using black troops, whether free men from the North or emancipated slaves, was controversial but had been discussed from the early days of the war. Freeing the slaves would take the laborers from the South that produced the agricultural products and other commodities essential to the Confederate economy. But beyond removing this source of support for the Confederacy, arming African Americans could add thousands of troops to the Union war effort.

Initially, Lincoln feared that freeing the slaves would alienate the border states and also some Northern voters. He also feared that using black troops would also upset some in the North. But by the end of 1862, Lincoln sensed that public opinion in the Northern states was changing on these issues. Freed slaves, who had escaped to Union lines or who had been confiscated as contraband of war, had already been aiding the Union war effort for some time. They were used as laborers in military camps, and as cooks, medical aides, and in other noncombatant positions. Some people in the North believed that the Confederacy might be on the verge of arming the slaves to fight, promising them freedom if they served the Rebel military effort. (The Confederacy would embrace this idea toward the very end of the war, but the conflict ended before any black Confederate troops could be utilized to any significant extent).

Actually, blacks were serving in the US Navy even before the Emancipation Proclamation, as they had (in small numbers) ever since the American Revolution. During the Civil War, about eighteen thousand African Americans served in the US Navy, and by the end of the war, more than 180,000 served in the Union Army. Thousands of Northern blacks who had been free before the war served, but over half of all the black troops were freed slaves—so the Emancipation Proclamation had served to take people whose labor represented a valuable contribution to the Confederacy’s rebellion and to turn them into soldiers fighting against the rebellion. Not all Northerners welcomed the use of black troops, and in some cases commanders were reluctant to have them doing anything other than occupation duty or manual labor in military camps. But when black troops fought, they performed admirably, and this lessened the prejudice against their use in combat. There was also initially some discrimination in pay and other issues, but eventually black troops were paid the same as any other Union soldiers.

Lincoln concluded the Emancipation Proclamation with a statement that he believed it to be “an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution, upon military necessity.” Many abolitionists had argued from the very beginning of the war that the Confederacy, by taking up arms against the government, had forfeited any right to claim constitutional protections for slavery. They could not rebel against a constitutionally ordained government and at the same time invoke the protection of slavery under the Constitution. By the summer of 1862, Lincoln had come to see that if emancipation were undertaken as a war measure, “upon military necessity,” then he could take action to free the slaves in the Rebel states. The phrase in which Lincoln invokes “the considerate judgment of mankind, and the gracious favor of almighty God” was suggested by Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase, but Lincoln no doubt heartily agreed with the sentiment expressed. Lincoln’s personal religious beliefs are a complex issue; it might be said (perhaps too simply) that he had deist beliefs similar to many of the Founding Fathers. While he expressed belief in no particular religious group, he did believe in a Creator who exercised providence over the affairs of nations. While he was struggling with the question of what to do about freeing the slaves, Lincoln often spoke to others about feeling he was an instrument in the hands of this providential power, and he spoke of seeking to understand what the will of God might be for him in this matter.

Bibliography

Franklin, John Hope. The Emancipation Proclamation. New York: Doubleday, 1963. Print.

Guelzo, Allen C. Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America. New York: Simon, 2004. Print.

Holder, Harold, Edna Greene Medford, and Frank J. Williams. The Emancipation Proclamation: Three Views. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 2006. Print.

Masur, Louis P. Lincoln’s Hundred Days: The Emancipation Proclamation and the War for the Union. Cambridge: Belknap P of Harvard UP, 2012. Print.

McPherson, James M., and James K. Hogue. Ordeal by Fire: The Civil War and Reconstruction. 4th ed. Boston: McGraw, 2010. Print.

Paludin, Phillip Shaw. The Presidency of Abraham Lincoln. Amer. Presidency Series. Lawrence: UP of Kansas, 1994. Print.