TopIC I | emancipation 283document 12.4 “President Lincoln and his Scheme
of Emancipation,” Charleston Mercury
1862For many Southerners, Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation was a cynical military ploy to
inspire rebellion among Southern slaves, as implied in this excerpt from the Charleston
Mercury from December 11, 1862.There is something in Northern Abolitionism which seems, in some way or
other, totally to deprave its votaries [followers]. We speak not of its cruel and
barbarous exemplifications in practical war, when the passions may be lashed
into fury, but of its corrupting tendency in the sober relations of government
in civil life. For instance, the Constitution of a country ought to be, in the rela-
tions of this world, as sacred as the Bible is in those of the next. Yet Abolitionism
teaches a man that there is a higher law than the Constitution of the country,
or the Bible itself. Hence, their licentious [unethical] aggressions upon the slave
institution of the South, in spite of the Constitution, and even the plain dictates
of interest itself. Hence President LINCOLN[’s] Proclamation for the abolition
of slavery in the Confederate States, without a particle of constitutional author-
ity. And, having committed this impotent and insolent blunder, he follows it up
with another still more impotent and absurd. In his late message to the Con-
gress of the United States, he gravely proposes, with a most elaborate dissertation
to support it, that all the slaves of loyal masters shall be emancipated, by a law
of Congress, in 1900—the close of the century. The slaves of loyal masters will
amount to one in twenty or one in one hundred. By his Proclamation, the nine-
teen out of twenty will be emancipated by the first of next January. Under such
circumstances, how is it possible to perpetuate slavery over the twentieth slave?
The truth is, his Proclamation is declarative for emancipation to all the slaves of
the South. That is what... [it] signifies, and that is what he means by it. Presi-
dent LINCOLN is not such a fool as not to know that the emancipation of all the
slaves in the South, belonging to the citizens of the Confederate States, is also an
emancipation of all the slaves belonging to the few traitors who affect allegiance
to the United States. Why, then, propose to Congress, to do that in 1900 which
he does next January, so far as the power of the United States can accomplish
it? The answer is very simple. The fellow is a rogue. He wishes to disguise the
scope and atrocity of his unconstitutional and fiendish policy. His calling upon
Congress to do anything in the matter is a flagrant hypocrisy. If he can deprive
white men in the United States of their liberties, whenever he pleases, why can
he not liberate black men? If his Proclamation is constitutional, what act towards
the slaves of the Confederate States can be unconstitutional? He and his bloody
associate in criminality, SEWARD, are fully of the opinion of that keen observer
of our baser nature, who remarked that “Words are the counters of wise men, but13_STA_2012_ch12_275-306.indd 283 31/03/15 4:53 PM