  On August 22, 1862, just one month before Abraham Lincoln issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, he wrote a letter to Horace Greeley, abolitionist editor of the New York Tribune. The letter read in part:
For some months before the Battle of Antietam, as his letter to Greeley indicates, Lincoln had been wrestling with the problem of slavery and its connection with the war. He became convinced that a new spiritual and moral force—emancipation of the slaves—must be injected into the Union cause, else the travail of war might dampen the fighting spirit of the North. If this loss of vitality should come to pass, the paramount political objective of restoring the Union might never be attained. Another compelling factor in Lincoln’s thinking was the need to veer European opinion away from its sympathy for the South. A war to free the slaves would enlist the support of Europe in a way that a war for purely political objectives could not. Thus, slowly and with much soul searching, Lincoln’s official view of his duty came to correspond with his personal wish for human freedom. The outcome of these deliberations was the Emancipation Proclamation. The Federal victory at Antietam gave Lincoln the opportunity to issue the proclamation—a dramatic step toward eliminating slavery in the United States. By this act, Lincoln stretched the Constitution to the limit of its meaning. His interpretation of presidential war powers was revolutionary. It would become a precedent for other Presidents who would similarly find constitutional authority for emergency action in time of war. First page of Lincoln’s handwritten draft of the formal Emancipation Proclamation. Courtesy, Library of Congress. More important, the proclamation was to inaugurate a revolution in human relationships. Although Congress had previously enacted laws concerning the slaves that went substantially as far as the Emancipation Proclamation, the laws had lacked the dramatic and symbolic import of Lincoln’s words. Dating from the proclamation, the war became a crusade and the vital force of abolition sentiment was captured for the Union cause, both at home and abroad—especially in England. The immediate practical effects of the Emancipation Proclamation were negligible, applying as it did only to those areas “in rebellion” where it could not be enforced. But its message became a symbol and a goal which opened the way for universal emancipation in the future. Thus the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution are direct progeny of Lincoln’s proclamation. Any document with the long-term importance of the Emancipation Proclamation deserves to be read by those who experience its effects. Following is the text of the formal Emancipation Proclamation, issued on January 1, 1863:
U. S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE: 1986 0 - 157-109: QL 3 |
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