DK - The American Civil War

The Emancipation

Proclamation

The Emancipation Proclamation of New Year’s Day, 1863, transformed the nature of the Civil War and

the Union war effort. Until then, for the North, it had been a war to preserve the Union and to restore

the rebellious states to their prewar status. Now it had also become a war for freedom.

L

incoln’s Preliminary Emancipation

Proclamation of September 1862

offered the Confederate states a

chance to return to the Union and

retain slavery at least for the time

being. In spite of this enticement, none

of the rebellious states came back into

the Federal fold. Throughout the

unconquered South, the Preliminary

Proclamation was ignored as an empty

measure that presented no real change

in how the war would be fought.

Southerners were well aware that

slaves, through their labor on farms

and plantations and their work on

entrenchments and fortifications, were

BEFORE

In June 1862, President Lincoln completed
drafting a Preliminary Emancipation
Proclamation to free slaves in the Rebel
states. He presented it to his cabinet in July.

THE WRONG MOMENT
All members of the cabinet approved the spirit
of the document. But Secretary of State
William H. Seward claimed that issuing it now,
in the wake of General George B. McClellan’s
withdrawal from the Virginia Peninsula, would
appear as “our last shriek on the retreat.” Lincoln
decided to postpone discussion of the matter
until the North achieved a decisive victory.

PRELIMINARY PROCLAMATION
The Battle of Antietam in September 1862 offered
the “victory” Lincoln needed. Although a tactical
draw, Confederate general Robert E. Lee was forced
to abandon his offensive into Maryland and retreat
to Virginia. On September 22, Lincoln released the
Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. The
rebellious states were offered 100 days to return
to the Union and adopt some form of gradual
or immediate emancipation; otherwise, slaves in
the Confederacy would be “forever free.”

vital to the Southern cause. In November

1861, the Montgomery Advertiser had

asserted that “the institution of slavery

in the South alone enables her to place

in the field a force much larger in

proportion to her white population

than the North ... The institution is a

tower of strength to the South.”

The need to act

Lincoln knew this as well, and after the

Union’s military setbacks in the East

during the first year of the war, he was

anxious to do something that would

make significant and visible inroads

against the Confederate effort. At this

point, Northern public morale was

faltering, pressure from the powerful

abolitionist bloc in the Republican Party

First Reading, July 22, 1862

This depiction of Lincoln’s presentation of his

momentous document to his cabinet is a copy of

Francis Carpenter’s First Reading of the Emancipation

Proclamation of President Lincoln in the U.S. Capitol.

was growing, while across the Atlantic

Britain and France were showing

disturbing signs of moving toward a

quick recognition of Confederate

independence. All of these factors,

along with Lincoln’s own predisposition

ARTICLE II, SECTION 2 The clause in the

U.S. Constitution, under which Lincoln

issued the Emancipation Proclamation,

using his authority as commander-in-

chief of the U.S. Army and Navy.