Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation: The Story of America Series [Ep. 30]

And we returned to our American stories. Up next, another installment, our thirtieth of our series about Us, The Story of America series with Hillsdale College Professor and author of Land of Hope, Professor Bill McLay. By eighteen sixty-two, the Civil War was in full bloody swing from Antietam to Shiloh to Fredericksburg. Lincoln had gone through general after general after general, and the situation was bleak. It was amidst all of this that Lincoln decided to take on another monumental task: emancipation. Let’s get into the story. Take it away.

Bill, Lincoln was not only a statesman, but a master politician, and he understood that it was always perilous to get too far ahead of public sentiment and opinion. Weighing all of these things, Lincoln decided in July of eighteen sixty-two that the government should adopt a strong anti-slavery position, one that could be justified on military and diplomatic ground. He knew that freed slaves could and would fight in the war on the Union side. He also knew that abolition would bring support from the foreign capitals of the world, a huge diplomatic victory for the Union. As a Constitution man, Lincoln would have vastly preferred for the Confederate States to abolish slavery on their own, but that didn’t happen, wasn’t likely to happen, and Lincoln was now prepared to use the power of his office, his power as Commander in Chief under the Constitution, explicitly by the Constitution itself, used that power to begin the process of ending slavery.

Discussions with his cabinet about such a bold move met with mixed reactions. Some feared absolute chaos in the South for an intervention, precisely what Lincoln did not want. Others, like Secretary of State William Seward, thought it was a good idea, but thought the timing was wrong. Better to wait until a big victory or two before announcing such a thing. Lincoln actually followed Seward’s advice. It was a mere five days after Antietam, on September twenty-second, eighteen sixty-two, that Lincoln made public the first part of what has come to be called the Emancipation Proclamation. Like Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, which was notoriously short, a mere two hundred and seventy-two words, Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation was a bit longer, at seven hundred and nineteen words, but they were words that changed America, changed our history, changed our way of life. They’re worth reading.

All persons held as slaves within any State or designating part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free. And the Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such person, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom. There it is. It’s a rather lawyerly state, as befits the man who proclaimed it. And yet it’s important to note here why proclamation was actually a very limited one. It didn’t free slaves everywhere in the United States, just Confederate States during the Civil War, which meant that, theoretically, Southern States had ended their involvement in the war, could keep their slaves. This is an important point because it’s how they can justify as constitutional his efforts on behalf of abolition. And let’s get back to the Proclamation. They can continue.

That the Executive will, on the first day of January, fourth said, by proclamation, designated the States and parts of States, if any, in which the people thereof, respectively, shall be in rebellion against the United States. And the fact that any State or the people thereof, shall on that day be in good faith represented in the Congress of the United States, by members chosen there too at elections wherein a majority of qualified voters of such State shall have participated, shall, in the absence of strong countervailing testimony, it be deemed conclusive evidence that such State and the people thereof are not then in rebellion against the United States. Now, Therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, by virtue of the power in me vested as Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, in time of actual armed rebellion against the authority and Government of the United States, and as a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion, on this first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and in accordance with my purpose to do so, publicly proclaimed for the full period of one hundred days from the day first above mentioned, order designated to States and parts of States, wherein the people thereof, respectively, are this day and rebellion against the United States, the following, to it: Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia, and which accepted parts are for the present left precisely as if this Proclamation were not issued, and by virtue of the power and for the purpose of force, in, I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated States and parts of States, are, and henceforward shall be free, and that the Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons. And I hereby enjoin upon the people so declared to be free, to have stained from all violence, unless in necessary self-defense. And I recommend to them that, in all cases, when allowed, they labor faithfully for reasonable way. And I further declare and make none that such persons a suitable condition will be received into the armed Force of the United States. The Garrison, forts, physicians stations at other places, and demand vessels of all sorts in said service. And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice warranted by the Constitution, upon military necessity, I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind to the gracious favor of Almighty God. A witness thereof I have hereunto set my hand and cause the seal of the United States to be affixed down in the City of Washington’s first day of January, the year of our Lord hundred and sixty-three and of the Independence of the United States of America, the eighty-seventh. By the President Abraham Lincoln. William H. Sewart, Secretary of State.

Now, there were many critics who waited for something more definitive and were complete from Lincoln on the issues of slavery, something more rousing, something more magnificent, something that rivaled some of the more beautiful and powerful language of the Declaration of Independence, something that would clearly and dramatically end the institution of slavery once and for all. But this criticism missed the point of Lincoln’s genius. Lincoln was careful, not because he was a coward, but because he wanted slavery ended in the right way, and that meant compliance with the Constitution. The words “by any means necessary” were not in Lincoln’s vocabulary. He had too much regard and respect for the founders. He knew that an amendment to the Constitution was the right way to go, the proper way to go, the fitting way to go, and the constitutional way to go. Despite his profound misgivings about the moral tragedy and moral crime of slavery, he revered the Constitution more than he hated slavery, and it might be useful to add, he revered the Constitution because he realized that without the Constitution, the Constitution were being tossed aside as so much tissue standing in the way of progress. The result might have led to a dismembered nation that was incapable of sustaining individual liberties such as they were founded in the Bill of Rights, let alone effect the difficult task of abolishing slavery. So the Emancipation Proclamation came at the right time, and it had the right moral tone that shifted the purpose of the war. It made the war about bigger things. Lincoln would make the same point much more pointedly at his Gettysburg Address in November of eighteen sixty-three. The war after the Emancipation Proclamation and then after Gettysburg was no longer just about preserving the Union. It was about something so much bigger, and a terrific job on the production and editing by our own Monty Montgomery, himself a Hillsdale College graduate and Hillsdale College Professor Bill McLay, author of Land of Hope, and the best line of all in this piece. He revered the Constitution more than he hated slavery, and the way forward was a constitutional amendment. The story of the Emancipation Proclamation. Here on our American Stories.