EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION

President Abraham Lincoln's preliminary Emancipation Proclamation of September 22, 1862, became federal military policy on January 1, 1863, prompting Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles to describe it as "a broad step … a landmark in history" (Welles, vol. 1, p. 212). The edict transformed the Civil War into a war of African-American liberation. On New Year's Day, "all persons held as slaves within any State … then … in rebellion against the United States" became "thenceforward, and forever free" (Basler, vol. 5, p. 434). Although in 1861 Lincoln had repeatedly asserted that his responsibility as president was to suppress the South's rebellion and reunite the nation, not to free its slaves, by late 1862 the realities of war forced him to incorporate emancipation into national policy. Emancipation was both a military tactic and a humanitarian act.

At this point in the war, the armies stood locked in a stalemate and Northern morale was low. England was threatening to recognize Confederate President Jefferson Davis's new government, which could have turned the Civil War into an international conflict. Lincoln needed more men to fill depleted Union regiments, and the Confederacy's military successes depended heavily on slavery: Bondsmen and women provided the agricultural and industrial labor that equipped, fed, and supplied its armies. Slaves constructed fortifications, repaired railroads, and freed up Southern whites to serve in the army.

Union Major General George B. McClellan's tactical draw against Confederate General Robert E. Lee at the Battle of Antietam on September 17, 1862, provided the breakthrough Lincoln sought. Five days afterward, Lincoln issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. In doing so, he gave the rebellious states an ultimatum: If after January 1, 1863, they did not stop fighting and continued to resist federal forces, their slaves would be freed. When the Confederates failed to surrender upon Lincoln's deadline, the emancipation of the South's four million slaves became a Northern war aim.

Confederate President Jefferson Davis damned Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation as an effort to cause a slave uprising and race war within the Confederacy. In the North, however, abolitionists, African Americans, and others sympathetic to the slaves welcomed Lincoln's proclamation. "We are all liberated" by the Emancipation Proclamation, black abolitionist Frederick Douglass declared. "The white man is liberated, the black man is liberated, the brave men now fighting the battles of their country against rebels and traitors are now liberated, and may strike … the Rebels, at their most sensitive point" (Foner, vol. 3, p. 322).

Many Northern Republicans nonetheless expressed disappointment that the president justified his proclamation on the grounds of military necessity, not on the grounds of a commitment to racial equality. They complained that it technically freed slaves only in territory still under Confederate control. In fairness to Lincoln, however, the Emancipation Proclamation did free many slaves along the Mississippi River, in eastern North Carolina and the Sea Islands along the Atlantic coast, and in areas that fell to Union armies throughout the Confederacy.

In addition to freeing Confederate slaves, Lincoln's final Emancipation Proclamation also decreed that suitable emancipated slaves "will be received into the armed service of the United States to garrison forts, positions, stations, and other places, and to man vessels of all sorts in said service" (Basler, vol. 6, p. 30). This signaled a major reversal in policy, because since the start of the war the U.S. Army had turned away free black volunteers.

After 1863, both free African Americans and slaves rushed to join the U.S. Army. They were determined to bury slavery, defeat the Confederacy, prove their manhood, and earn full citizenship. By war's end the army had raised 178,975 African-American troops.

The wartime emancipation of Confederate slaves, coupled with the military service of the African-American troops, paved the way for the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment of the Constitution (December 1865). The Emancipation Proclamation has come to symbolize the destruction of slavery. It commenced the halting and slow, but eventually successful, integration of African Americans into every aspect of American life.

bibliography

Basler, Roy P., ed. The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln. 9 vols. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953–1955.

Foner, Philip S., ed. The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass. 5 vols. New York: International Publishers, 1952–1975.

Franklin, John Hope. The Emancipation Proclamation. Garden City, NJ: Doubleday, 1963.

U.S. War Department. The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. 128 vols. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1880–1901.

Welles, Gideon. Diary of Gideon Welles: Secretary of the Navy under Lincoln and Johnson. 3 vols. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1911.

John David Smith

See also:Constitutional Amendments and Changes; Lincoln, Abraham; Slavery.