Emancipation Proclamation: Difference between revisions

==Authority==

{{Further|Slave states and free states}}

 

The [[Slavery and the United States Constitution|United States Constitution]] of 1787 did not use the word [[Slavery and the United States Constitution|"slavery"]] but included several provisions about unfree persons. The [[Three-Fifths Compromise]] (in Article I, Section 2) allocated congressional representation based "on the whole Number of free Persons" and "three-fifths of all other Persons".<ref>{{cite book|author=Jean Allain|title=The Legal Understanding of Slavery: From the Historical to the Contemporary|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=n_KAvAjkEbsC&pg=PA117|year=2012|publisher=Oxford University Press|page=117|isbn=9780199660469}}</ref> Under the [[Fugitive Slave Clause]] (Article IV, Section 2), "No person held to Service or Labour in one State" would become legally free by escaping to another. [[Port Preference Clause|Article I, Section 9]] allowed Congress to pass legislation to outlaw the "Importation of Persons", but not until 1808.<ref name="Foner—2010——16">{{harvnb|Foner|2010|p=16}}</ref> However, for purposes of the [[Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution|Fifth Amendment]]—which states that, "No person shall ... be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law"—slaves were understood to be property.<ref>{{cite book|author=Jean Allain|title=The Legal Understanding of Slavery: From the Historical to the Contemporary|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=n_KAvAjkEbsC&pg=PA119|year=2012|publisher=Oxford University Press|pages=119–120|isbn=9780199660469}}</ref> Although abolitionists used the Fifth Amendment to argue against slavery, it was made part of the legal basis for treating slaves as property by ''[[Dred Scott v. Sandford]]'' (1857).<ref>Tsesis, ''The Thirteenth Amendment and American Freedom: A Legal History'' (2004), p. 14. "Nineteenth century apologists for the expansion of slavery developed a political philosophy that placed property at the pinnacle of personal interests and regarded its protection to be the government's chief purpose. The Fifth Amendment's Just Compensation Clause provided the proslavery camp with a bastion for fortifying the peculiar institution against congressional restrictions to its spread westward. Based on this property-rights-centered argument, Chief Justice [[Roger B. Taney]], in his infamous ''[[Dred Scott v. Sandford]]'' (1857) decision, found the Missouri Compromise unconstitutionally violated substantive due process".</ref> Slavery was also supported in law and in practice by a pervasive culture of [[white supremacy]].<ref>Tsesis, ''The Thirteenth Amendment and American Freedom'' (2004), pp. 18–23. "Constitutional protections of slavery coexisted with an entire culture of oppression. The peculiar institution reached many private aspects of human life, for both whites and blacks.... Even free Southern blacks lived in a world so legally constricted by racial domination that it offered only a deceptive shadow of freedom."</ref> Nonetheless, between 1777 and 1804, every Northern state provided for the immediate or gradual abolition of slavery. No Southern state did so, and the slave population of the South continued to grow, peaking at almost four million people at the beginning of the Civil War, when most slave states sought to break away from the United States.<ref name="Foner—2010-14-16">{{harvnb|Foner|2010|pp=14–16}}</ref>

In September 1862, the [[Battle of Antietam]] gave Lincoln the victory he needed to issue the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. In the battle, though the Union suffered heavier losses than the Confederates and [[General McClellan]] allowed the escape of [[Robert E. Lee]]'s retreating troops, Union forces turned back a Confederate invasion of Maryland, eliminating more than a quarter of Lee's army in the process. This marked a turning point in the Civil War.

 

 

On September 22, 1862, five days after Antietam, and while residing at the [[President Lincoln's Cottage|Soldier's Home]], Lincoln called his cabinet into session and issued the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/american_originals_iv/sections/preliminary_emancipation_proclamation.html#|title=Preliminary Emacipation Proclamation, 1862|website=www.archives.gov}}</ref> According to Civil War historian [[James M. McPherson]], Lincoln told cabinet members, "I made a solemn vow before God, that if General Lee was driven back from Pennsylvania, I would crown the result by the declaration of freedom to the slaves."<ref>McPherson, James M. ''Battle Cry of Freedom'', (1988), p. 557.</ref><ref>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FTsl3N7hDpAC&q=six+months+at+the+white+house+carpenter |first=Frank B. |last=Carpenter |author-link=Francis Bicknell Carpenter |title=Six Months at the White House |year=1866 |page=90 |publisher=Applewood Books |access-date=February 20, 2010 |isbn=978-1-4290-1527-1}} as reported by Secretary of the Treasury, Salmon Portland Chase, September 22, 1862. Others present used the word ''resolution'' instead of ''vow to God''.<br />

[[Gideon Welles]], ''Diary of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy Under Lincoln and Johnson'' (Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1911), 1:143, reported that Lincoln made a covenant with God that if God would change the tide of the war, Lincoln would change his policy toward slavery. See also Nicolas Parrillo, "Lincoln's Calvinist Transformation: Emancipation and War", ''Civil War History'' (September 1, 2000).</ref> Lincoln had first shown an early draft of the proclamation to Vice President [[Hannibal Hamlin]],<ref>{{cite web|url=http://bangorinfo.com/Focus/focus_hannibal_hamlin.html |title=Bangor in Focus: Hannibal Hamlin |publisher=Bangorinfo.com |date= n.d.|access-date=May 29, 2011}}</ref> an ardent abolitionist, who was more often kept in the dark on presidential decisions. The final proclamation was issued on January 1, 1863. Although implicitly granted authority by Congress, Lincoln used his powers as Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy to issue the proclamation "as a necessary war measure." Therefore, it was not the equivalent of a statute enacted by Congress or a constitutional amendment, because Lincoln or a subsequent president could revoke it. One week after issuing the final Proclamation, Lincoln wrote to Major General [[John McClernand]]: "After the commencement of hostilities I struggled nearly a year and a half to get along without touching the 'institution'; and when finally I conditionally determined to touch it, I gave a hundred days fair notice of my purpose, to all the States and people, within which time they could have turned it wholly aside, by simply again becoming good citizens of the United States. They chose to disregard it, and I made the peremptory proclamation on what appeared to me to be a military necessity. And being made, it must stand". Lincoln continued, however, that the states included in the proclamation could "adopt systems of apprenticeship for the colored people, conforming substantially to the most approved plans of gradual emancipation; and ... they may be nearly as well off, in this respect, as if the present trouble had not occurred". He concluded by asking McClernand not to "make this letter public".<ref> [http://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/lincoln6/1:84.1?rgn=div2;view=fulltext;q1=broken+eggs "The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln]" edited by Roy P. Basler, Volume 6, pp. 48–49.</ref>

Initially, the Emancipation Proclamation effectively freed only a small percentage of the slaves, namely those who were behind Union lines in areas not exempted. Most slaves were still behind Confederate lines or in exempted Union-occupied areas. Secretary of State [[William H. Seward]] commented, "We show our sympathy with slavery by emancipating slaves where we cannot reach them and holding them in bondage where we can set them free." Had any slave state ended its secession attempt before January 1, 1863, it could have kept slavery, at least temporarily. The Proclamation freed the slaves only in areas of the South that were still in rebellion on January 1, 1863. But as the Union army advanced into the South, slaves fled to behind its lines, and "[s]hortly after issuing the Emancipation Proclamation, the Lincoln administration lifted the ban on enticing slaves into Union lines."<ref>[[James Oakes (historian)|Oakes, James]], ''Freedom National'', p. 367.</ref> These events contributed to the destruction of slavery.

 

====Confederate response====

[[File:Negroes Leaving Home - April 9 1864 issue Harper's Weekly - uncropped, Internet Archive copy.jpg|thumb|"NEGROES LEAVING THEIR HOME: The view on page 237 illustrates a phase of the war which the rebels have found it difficult to contemplate with any complacency. The exodus of the slaves from the bondage which has so long oppressed them has been steady and continuous from the moment the first blow was struck against the national honor, and it still goes on, hundreds and thousands of the poor, outraged creatures cowing weekly into tho Union lines at all points in the field. Our sketch gives an admirable view of the desolation which surrounds the homes of the negroes, and the heartiness and energy with which they make their way to freedom upon the slightest opportunity. The Federal gun-boat, it will be seen, lies far out at sea, but the sharp eyes of the waiting, watching bondmen have caught sight of the flag she carries; they know there is shelter under it for them, and launching their little boat, they carefully put the aged and infirm, with their few more valuable effects, aboard, and, with a pang, it may be, at leaving their rude home, but with hope and joy in their hearts at the prospect of deliverance, pull away from the shore, which henceforth is to be to them only a dark dreary line marking a yet darker past. There is pathos as well as history in the picture." (''Harper's Weekly'', April 9, 1864)]]

 

Confederate President [[Jefferson Davis]] reacted to the Emancipation Proclamation with outrage and in an address to the Confederate Congress on January 12 threatened to send any U.S. military officer captured in Confederate territory covered by the proclamation to state authorities to be charged with "exciting servile insurrection", which was a capital offense.<ref>{{cite web | url=http://www.awb.com/dailydose/?p=822 | title=January 12, 1863: Jefferson Davis responds to the Emancipation Proclamation &#124; the Daily Dose | access-date=January 13, 2023 | archive-date=January 13, 2023 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230113000330/http://www.awb.com/dailydose/?p=822 | url-status=dead }}</ref>

* [[Slavery Abolition Act 1833]] – an act passed by the British parliament abolishing slavery in British colonies with compensation to the owners

* [[Slave Trade Act]]s

* [[Timeline of the civil rights movement]]

* [[War Governors' Conference]] – gave Lincoln the much needed political support to issue the Proclamation