On this day in 1862, President Abraham Lincoln issues a preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, which sets a date for the freedom of more than 3 million enslaved in the United States and recast the Civil War as a fight against slavery.
The proclamation was directed to all of the areas in rebellion and all segments of the executive branch (including the Army and Navy) of the United States. It proclaimed the freedom of enslaved people in the ten states in rebellion.
Around 25,000 to 75,000 were immediately emancipated in those regions of the Confederacy where the US Army was already in place. It could not be enforced in the areas still in rebellion, but, as the Union army took control of Confederate regions, the Proclamation provided the legal framework for the liberation of more than three and a half million enslaved people in those regions by the end of the war.
The Emancipation Proclamation outraged Southerners and their sympathizers, who saw it as the beginning of a race war. It energized abolitionists and undermined those Europeans who wanted to intervene to help the Confederacy.
Some Confederates welcomed the Proclamation because they believed it would strengthen pro-slavery sentiment in the Confederacy and thus lead to the greater enlistment of white men into the Confederate army. According to one Confederate cavalry sergeant from Kentucky, "The Proclamation is worth three hundred thousand soldiers to our Government at least... It shows exactly what this war was brought about for and the intention of its damnable authors."
The Proclamation lifted the spirits of African Americans both free and enslaved; it led many to escape from their masters and get to Union lines to obtain their freedom and join the Union Army.
The Emancipation Proclamation was never challenged in court. To ensure the abolition of slavery in all of the U.S., Lincoln also insisted that Reconstruction plans for Southern states require them to enact laws abolishing slavery (which occurred during the war in Tennessee, Arkansas, and Louisiana); Lincoln encouraged border states to adopt abolition (which occurred during the war in Maryland, Missouri, and West Virginia) and pushed for passage of the Thirteenth Amendment.
The Senate passed the 13th Amendment by the necessary two-thirds vote on April 8, 1864; the House of Representatives did so on January 31, 1865; and the required three-fourths of the states ratified it on December 6, 1865. The amendment made slavery and involuntary servitude unconstitutional, "except as a punishment for crime."
Lincoln's Gettysburg Address in November 1863 made indirect reference to the Proclamation and the ending of slavery as a war goal with the phrase "new birth of freedom". The Proclamation solidified Lincoln's support among the rapidly growing abolitionist element of the Republican Party and ensured that they would not block his re-nomination in 1864.
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September 22, 1862
Excellent and Thanks!