l incoln’s s hadow 39
Union war fortunes were at low ebb, following the defeat of General
George B. McClellan on the Peninsula and General John Pope at
Second Bull Run.
Th e president wanted emancipation to appear to be a necessary war
measure, required by circumstances, not an act of desperation by a gov-
ernment that seemed on the verge of losing. Th erefore, having drafted
a preliminary emancipation proclamation, Lincoln decided to await
some kind of battlefi eld success before making it public. Antietam,
though a victory of a dubious sort (McClellan wasted a chance to infl ict
a crippling defeat on Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia), gave
Lincoln the opening he sought. Th at it was McClellan’s quasi-triumph
that provided the moment for emancipation was no small irony, because
he was deeply hostile to abolitionism and closely connected to the
Democratic opposition. On September 22, 1862, Lincoln published the
preliminary proclamation, due to go into eff ect on January 1, 1863,
which declared free all persons held in servitude in those places then in
rebellion against the United States government. In literal terms, of
course, the proclamation freed no one, for it applied only where it
could not be enforced. But as Union armies advanced across the South,
the proclamation would take eff ect.
Th e immediate repercussions of Lincoln’s announcement followed
predictable lines, but what was most important was that the northern
public did not repudiate the policy change. Several generals who
disagreed with the president, notably McClellan, were dismissed in the
weeks that followed. Northern reaction split by party—Democrats
denounced emancipation while Republicans endorsed it as an essential
measure if the war were to be fought to a successful conclusion. In the
fall 1862 congressional elections the Republicans lost seats, but the losses
were mild in comparison to typical off -year elections in the middle of
the nineteenth century. Lincoln had weighed the public mood correctly:
by not prematurely embracing emancipation, he had sustained public
support for the war through a diffi cult period when morale on the home
front sagged. It was an outstanding example of artful wartime political
direction.
But the matter does not end there. Having moved from a limited
confl ict with a narrow political goal to a “remorseless revolutionary
confl ict,” in words Lincoln used earlier to describe the kind of war he