The Emancipation Proclamation, President Abraham Lincoln’s hallowed manifesto of liberty and freedom, is a curious anomaly. After the states of the South seceded from the United States to form the Confederate States of America, the North was faced with a vexing political question: Should the overriding goal of the Civil War be to abolish slavery, or to preserve the Union? Even many opponents of slavery in the North believed preservation was the more crucial issue, and the president had to walk a careful line between the two factions so as not to alienate either the preservationists or the abolitionists; he needed the support of both groups to preserve the Union and end slavery.
Indeed, Lincoln was adamantly opposed to slavery, but he was also a pragmatist. In his August 22, 1862, letter (Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut) to Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune, Lincoln wrote:
My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause.
Lincoln clearly understood that he had to save the Union before he could help the slaves; the preservation of the Union was his top priority.
With military and political considerations dictating caution, Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation went through various drafts, from an initial working paper in which he expressed some ideas on the subject to a Preliminary Proclamation, which essentially functioned to serve notice to the people engaged in rebellion against the United States, to a final proclamation in which, political considerations notwithstanding, he called for an end to slavery in the rebel states. Ironically, although in theory the final proclamation severed the chains of bondage that enslaved the American Negro in rebel states, in reality it did not free a single slave. Still, the Emancipation Proclamation transformed the Civil War into a battle for liberty and democracy and became an enduring symbol of freedom. It was a written affirmation of the Union’s dedication to the cause of freedom and liberty, a message to the entire world that human subjugation would not be allowed.
Slavery had been an integral part of American society since colonial times. Ships transported Negroes from Africa, captured mostly from the western section of the continent, and by the beginning of the eighteenth century, their import composed a thriving trade made up of mainly American and British concerns.
Over time those who saw slavery as immoral and wrong became more outspoken, and a movement for reform reached its peak near the mid-nineteenth century. Abolitionists in the North had been making their views known more forcefully and radically since the early 1830s, while pro-slavery factions sometimes mounted vicious attacks against their opponents. The slavery question became a thorny political issue. In 1850, Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act, which provided for owners of slaves to reclaim runaways. The election in 1860 of Abraham Lincoln enraged many people in the South, who had derided the future president as a “black Republican.” On December 20, 1860, South Carolina became the first state to secede from the Union, followed the next month by Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas, forming the Confederate States of America. Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee seceded and joined the Confederacy in the six months that followed. On April 12, 1861, Confederate soldiers attacked Fort Sumter, and the War Between the States began.
When Lincoln gave his inaugural address on March 4, 1861, the United States was a divided nation. Although slavery was a major factor in this disunion, other conditions, such as the rivalry and economic differences between the agricultural South and the industrial North, the slave states being in jeopardy of losing control of Congress because of the projected admission of free states from the western territories, and social differences in Southern and Northern societies, played contributing roles. In his inaugural speech Lincoln endeavored to quell apprehension among the Southern states regarding the security of property by making the oft quoted declaration: “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists.”
For many years Lincoln had wanted to abolish slavery in the nation’s capital, but he did not press the issue. On April 16, 1862, as he was beginning his second year as president, Lincoln signed “AN ACT For the release of certain persons held to service or labor in the District of Columbia.” An anti-slavery group had pressed for passage of this bill, which established a commission to determine the value of slaves, whose masters, if loyal to the United States, could receive a maximum of $300 per slave. The slaves in the District of Columbia were set free by the new law, while slaves in other parts of the country were not affected by it and continued eagerly to await emancipation.
Just a few months later, Lincoln would make his first formal attempt at freeing the slaves in the South. In May and June of 1862, Lincoln sketched out a decree outlawing slavery in the rebellious states, much of it written in the War Department’s telegraph office, where he spent time almost every day following the Union Army’s progress; these writings of Lincoln do not survive. Soon, however, he wrote a more formal document, the initial draft of the Emancipation Proclamation. It is not known when Lincoln wrote this initial draft, but an analysis of Lincoln’s itinerary points to July 13, 1862. The president had returned to Washington three days earlier, on July 10, from a visit to General George McClellan’s headquarters on the James River. Various matters consumed his time over the next two days, and then in a carriage ride to the funeral of Secretary of War Edwin McMasters Stanton’s infant son on July 13, Lincoln surprised Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles and Secretary of State William H. Seward with a reading of his preliminary draft.
Lincoln presented the first draft of his Emancipation Proclamation on July 22, 1862, to his cabinet, which then consisted of Secretary of State Seward, Secretary of War Stanton, Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase, Secretary of the Interior Caleb B. Smith, Postmaster General Montgomery Blair, Attorney General Edward Bates, and Secretary of the Navy Welles.
In the first paragraph of the two-paragraph document, Lincoln warned “all persons … to cease participating in, aiding, countenancing, or abetting the existing rebellion, or any rebellion against the government of the United States, and to return to their proper allegiance to the United States.” At the end of the second paragraph, the president declared: “And, as a fit and necessary military measure for effecting this object, I, as Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, do order and declare that on the first day of January in the year of our Lord one thousand, eight hundred and sixty three, all persons held as slaves within any state or states, wherein the constitutional authority of the United States shall not be practically recognized, submitted to, and maintained, shall then, thenceforward, and forever, be free.”
Welles and Chase described the reactions of the cabinet members to Lincoln’s first draft of his Preliminary Proclamation in their diaries (Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.). From them we learn that Chase and Stanton advocated the proclamation’s release; Bates offered only measured support (he opposed Negroes having equal rights with whites); and Blair thought the proclamation would cause harm in the upcoming congressional elections.
Lincoln withheld this proclamation on the counsel of his secretary of state, William H. Seward. The Union armies were dispirited, having suffered many defeats, and Seward believed that issuing a proclamation would appear to be a desperate gesture on the president’s behalf. It made more sense, Seward reasoned, for the president to publicly change his earlier position of noninterference with slavery when the war picked up for the U
nion.
Lincoln seized the opportunity to do so immediately after the Battle of Antietam in Maryland. A Confederate army under General Robert E. Lee tried to drive an assault into the North in mid-September but was repelled by a Union army under McClellan. Thousands of soldiers died on both sides, but there were far more fatalities in the Southern army. While neither side actually “won” the battle, the North had successfully held back the Southern advance, and it was enough of a victory for the president to put forward the Emancipation Proclamation from a position of strength.
This first page of the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863.
And so Lincoln presented the Preliminary Proclamation to his cabinet on September 22, 1862. (This contained substantial revisions from his initial draft; Lincoln himself wrote the Preliminary Proclamation, and Secretary of State Seward made many corrections on the manuscript.) Lincoln declared that in one hundred days, on January 1, 1863, “all persons held as slaves within any state or designated part of a state, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States shall be then, thenceforward and forever free.”
Indeed, on January 1, 1863, one hundred days after the Preliminary Proclamation, the “final” Emancipation Proclamation was issued. Lincoln signed the document in midafternoon, after hundreds of government officials and citizens who had come into the White House over the past few hours for New Year’s Day festivities had left. The document signed by Lincoln contained all the corrections he had made or requested to be made earlier in his handwritten draft, with alterations made right up through the morning of January 1.
Lincoln’s final Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863, begins with a summing up of his Preliminary Proclamation of September 22, 1862, and follows with an enumeration of the states and parts of states in rebellion against the United States. Lincoln went on to declare that by virtue of the power vested in him as commander in chief of the United States Army and Navy in time of actual armed rebellion against the authority and government of the United States, “all persons held as slaves within said designated States and parts of States, are, and henceforth shall be free; and … the Executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons.” Other statements Lincoln made include enjoining the freed slaves to abstain from violence except in self-defense, and that when allowed, the freed slaves, “labor faithfully for reasonable wages.” Finally, Lincoln asserted that freed slaves “of suitable condition, will be received into the armed services of the United States to garrison forts, stations, and other places, and to man vessels of all sorts in said service.” This invitation for slaves to serve in the armed forces was not contained in the Preliminary Proclamation.
For all its good intentions, the final Emancipation Proclamation failed to address completely the liberation of American slaves. It applied only in areas controlled by the Confederacy, over which the president had no actual control, and so it did not immediately free any slaves. It did not declare slaves in loyal states to be free, although it indirectly offered slaves their freedom if they would join the Union Army and allowed them to fight for a preserved Union in which slavery was outlawed. Four lithographic copies were made of Lincoln’s handwritten final proclamation, and this would prove fortunate, since the fate of this priceless original document was to be catastrophic.
An engrossed copy was made of Lincoln’s final Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863.* Written on two large sheets of paper folded to make eight pages, the engrossed Emancipation Proclamation was signed by President Lincoln and Secretary of State Seward.
In this 1864 lithograph a Union soldier reads the Emancipation Proclamation to slaves in hiding, possibly at an Underground Railroad location. A young woman, with two children holding on to her, kneels in prayer, while older Negroes listen hopefully in the shadows. The work was widely printed during the Civil War and many viewers tried to determine its symbolism.
In the early evening of this New Year’s Day, the Emancipation Proclamation was telegraphed around the country from the office of the War Department. News of the Emancipation Proclamation was greeted in some places with jubilance, while in some areas of the North radicals complained that Lincoln had issued it only to strengthen the military. Still, over the next several days there were joyous celebrations and ceremonies in Northern cities, many with speeches and singing.
Lincoln retained the first draft of his proclamation (it later passed to his son Robert Todd Lincoln), but due to his beneficence, the Preliminary Proclamation fell into private hands, then became the property of a state government. During the Civil War the U.S. Sanitary Commission provided care for injured Union soldiers. To help raise money for this purpose, the commission held bazaars in many states, and sometimes requested President Lincoln to donate important manuscripts so they could be auctioned, sold, or raffled off.
Lincoln realized the importance of this cause and parted with his manuscript. The original draft of Lincoln’s Preliminary Proclamation was sent to Emily W. Barnes of the Army Relief Bazaar in Albany, New York, by Assistant Secretary of State Frederick W. Seward, who in a letter dated January 4, 1864, noted that “the body of it is in his own handwriting, the pencilled additions in the hand of the Secretary of State, and the formal beginning and ending, in the hand of the Chief Clerk.” In February and March 1864, the Army Relief Bazaar was sponsored to collect money for the U.S. Sanitary Commission, and a raffle was held in which the well-known abolitionist Gerrit Smith won the document. Smith donated it to the Sanitary Commission to help it raise additional funds. On April 28, 1865, two weeks after Lincoln was assassinated, the New York State Legislature purchased it for the state library for $1,000.
While four handwritten and engrossed Emancipation Proclamations by, or contemporary to, Lincoln are known to exist, unfortunately the version that might be considered the most valuable of all these documents, the final proclamation in Lincoln’s hand, does not survive. The president sent the working copy of his final Emancipation Proclamation to the Northwestern Sanitary Fair in Chicago. This original draft was sent to the fair managers with a letter dated October 26, 1863. The document was purchased for $3,000 by Thomas Bryan, who donated it to the Soldiers’ Home in Chicago, where it was destroyed in the 1871 Great Chicago Fire.
The engrossed Emancipation Proclamation is considered the official document, but it was actually copied from other versions.
Lincoln was an ardent believer in democracy, impassioned about the founding of America on the principle “that all men are created equal.” Slavery was the antithesis of this premise, and would, he believed, only lead to a weakening of the structure of democracy. In a speech at Edwardsville, Illinois, on September 11, 1858, Lincoln made the point that if the people of a nation had the inclination and opportunity to take away the liberty of their fellow human beings, they would “become the fit subjects of the first cunning tyrant” who rose among them.
In December 1865, eight months after Lincoln was assassinated, the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified, outlawing slavery in the United States and freeing the slaves in the North who had been untouched by the Emancipation Proclamation. With this action, the degrading manacles of human bondage were finally sundered, and the passionate advocate of freedom whose proclamation led the way became immortalized as the Great Emancipator.
LOCATIONS:
First draft (July 22, 1862): Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
Preliminary Proclamation: Lincoln’s draft (September 22, 1862): The New York State Library, Cultural Education Center, Empire State Plaza, Albany, New York. Engrossed copy (September 22, 1862): National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C.
“Final” Proclamation: Engrossed copy (January 1, 1863): National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C.
Footnote
*A variety of official and unofficial copies of the Emancipation Proclamation were published, and some of these
were signed by President Lincoln as well as by members of his cabinet or staff. In 1864, about forty-eight commemorative copies of the Emancipation Proclamation were printed for the Philadelphia Sanitary Fair, one of a number of sanitary fairs, and signed by Lincoln and Seward, to be sold to help soldiers injured in the Civil War. Approximately half of these documents survive, and some have been sold over the years for relatively large sums of money.
SLICES OF TOM THUMB’S
WEDDING CAKE
DATE: 1863.
WHAT THEY ARE: Pieces of cake preserved from the wedding of the famous nineteenth-century dwarf.
WHAT THEY LOOK LIKE: Small slices were given to the guests and were typically a few inches long by a couple of inches wide and an inch or two deep.
On February 10, 1863, Charles Sherwood Stratton, better known to the world as General Tom Thumb, publicly formalized the great love of his life by marrying Mercy Lavinia Warren Bump, professionally dubbed Queen Lavinia.* The wedding was one of mid-nineteenth-century New York’s great “fairy tale celebrations,” capturing the imaginations of poor and rich folk alike. As The New York Times began its coverage of the ceremony:
Those who did and those who did not attend the wedding of Gen. Thomas Thumb and Queen Lavinia Warren composed the population of this great Metropolis yesterday, and thenceforth religious and civil parties sink into comparative insignificance before this one arbitrating query of fate—Did you or did you not see Tom Thumb married?
Helping to orchestrate the wedding of the two Lilliputians was the renowned showman and master of humbug, Phineas Taylor Barnum. Having made exorbitant amounts by exhibiting the two at the American Museum on Broadway, his Gotham gallery of sideshow attractions and curiosities, Barnum tried to induce the couple to postpone their wedding, but the two were deeply in love, and it is a testament to their commitment to each other that they forged ahead without deference to Barnum or concern over financial incentives. Accepting the inevitable, Barnum, who had a flair for the dramatic and for spectacles, saw the publicity value of the wedding and helped put on the best event he could. With Tom, twenty-five years old, always having an affinity for women and the women an affinity for him, the wedding seemed especially to intrigue the female population. According to the story filed by the Times reporter,
Jumbo's Hide, Elvis's Ride, and the Tooth of Buddha Page 23
