Emancipation Proclamation Date-

On Jan. 1, 1863, the formal and definite Emancipation Proclamation was issued. The President, by virtue of his powers as commander in chief, declared free all those slaves residing in territory in rebellion against the federal government “as a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion.”


Slavery to the Blacks-

Slavery was "an unqualified evil to the Negro, the white man, and the State," said Abraham Lincoln in the 1850's. Yet in his first inaugural address, Lincoln declared that he had "no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with slavery in the States where it exists." He reiterated this pledge in his first message to Congress on July 4, 1861, when the Civil War was three months old.

Slavery to Lincoln-

As an individual, Lincoln hated slavery. As a Republican, he wished to exclude it from the territories as the first step to putting the institution "in the course of ultimate extinction." But as president of the United States,

Lincoln was bound by a Constitution that protected slavery in any state where citizens wanted it. As commander in chief of the armed forces in the Civil War, Lincoln also worried about the support of the four border slave states and the Northern Democrats. These groups probably would have turned against the war for the Union if the Republicans had made a move against slavery in 1861.

But the president's role as commander in chief cut two ways. If it restrained him from alienating proslavery Unionists, it also empowered him to seize enemy property used to wage war against the United States. Slaves were the most conspicuous and valuable such property.

Blacks’ in the Civil War-

The Emancipation Proclamation did more than lift the war to the level of a crusade for human freedom. It brought some substantial practical results, because it allowed the Union to recruit black soldiers. To this invitation to join the army the blacks responded in considerable numbers, nearly 180,000 of them enlisting during the remainder of the war. By Aug. 26, 1863, Lincoln could report, in a letter to James C. Conkling, that “the emancipation policy, and the use of colored troops, constitute the heaviest blow yet dealt to the rebellion.”

Most Republicans had become convinced by 1862 that the war against a slave holders' rebellion must become a war against slavery itself, and they put increasing pressure on Lincoln to proclaim an emancipation policy. This would have comported with Lincoln's personal convictions, but as president he felt compelled to balance these convictions against the danger of alienating half of the Union constituency. By the summer of 1862, however, it was clear that he risked alienating the Republican half of his constituency if he did not act against slavery.

Proclamation Delayed-

William H. Seward persuaded Lincoln to withhold the proclamation until a major Union military victory could give it added force. Lincoln used the delay to help prepare conservative opinion for what was coming. In a letter to journalist Horace Greeley, published in the New York Tribune on August 22, 1862, the president reiterated that his "paramount object in the struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or destroy slavery." If he could accomplish this objective by freeing all, some, or none of the slaves, that was what he would do. Lincoln had already decided to free some and was in effect forewarning potential opponents of the Confederacy.

Lincoln issued Warning-

after the qualified Union victory in the Battle of Antietam, Lincoln issued a preliminary proclamation warning that in all states still in rebellion on January 1, 1863, he would declare their slaves "then, thence forward, and forever free."
January 1 came, and with it the final proclamation, which committed the government and armed forces of the United States to liberate the slaves in rebel states "as an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution, upon military necessity." The proclamation exempted the border slave states and all or parts of three Confederate states controlled by the Union army on the grounds that these areas were not in rebellion against the United States.

Northern Persuasion-

The Emancipation Proclamation also hurt the South by discouraging Britain and France from entering the war. Both of those nations depended on the South to supply them with cotton, and the Confederacy hoped that they would fight on its
side. But the proclamation made the war a fight against slavery. Most British and French citizens opposed slavery, and so they gave their support to the Union.