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Emancipation Proclamation | HearLore
— Ch. 1 · Constitutional Foundations And Legal Context —
Emancipation Proclamation.
~10 min read · Ch. 1 of 7
The United States Constitution of 1787 did not use the word 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. Under the Fugitive Slave Clause in Article IV, Section 2, no person held to service or labor in one state would become legally free by escaping to another. Article I, Section 9 allowed Congress to pass legislation to outlaw the importation of persons, but not until 1808. For purposes of the 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. 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 in 1857. 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. Based on this property-rights-centered argument, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney found the Missouri Compromise unconstitutionally violated substantive due process. Slavery was also supported in law and in practice by a pervasive culture of white supremacy. 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. 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.
Drafting Process And Cabinet Deliberations
Lincoln first discussed the Proclamation with his cabinet in July 1862. He drafted his Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation and read it to Secretary of State William Seward and Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles on July 13. Seward and Welles were at first speechless, then Seward referred to possible anarchy throughout the South and resulting foreign intervention. Welles apparently said nothing. On July 22, Lincoln presented it to his entire cabinet as something he had determined to do and asked their opinion on wording. Although Secretary of War Edwin Stanton supported it, Seward advised Lincoln to issue the Proclamation after a major Union victory, or else it would appear as if the Union was giving its last shriek of retreat. 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. This marked a turning point in the Civil War. On the 22nd of September 1862, five days after Antietam, Lincoln called his cabinet into session and issued the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. According to Civil War historian James M. McPherson, Lincoln told cabinet members that he made a solemn vow before God that if General Lee was driven back from Pennsylvania, he would crown the result by the declaration of freedom to the slaves. Others present used the word resolution instead of vow to God. Gideon Welles 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. Lincoln had first shown an early draft of the proclamation to Vice President Hannibal Hamlin, an ardent abolitionist, who was more often kept in the dark on presidential decisions.
Military Implementation And Immediate Impact
On New Year's Eve in 1862, African Americans enslaved and free gathered across the United States to hold Watch Night ceremonies for Freedom's Eve, looking toward the stroke of midnight and the promised fulfillment of the Proclamation. Estimates of the number of slaves freed immediately by the Emancipation Proclamation are uncertain. One contemporary estimate put the contraband population of Union-occupied North Carolina at 10,000, and the Sea Islands of South Carolina also had a substantial population. Those 20,000 slaves were freed immediately by the Emancipation Proclamation. This Union-occupied zone where freedom began at once included parts of eastern North Carolina, the Mississippi Valley, northern Alabama, the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, a large part of Arkansas, and the Sea Islands of Georgia and South Carolina. News of the Proclamation spread rapidly by word of mouth, arousing hopes of freedom, creating general confusion, and encouraging thousands to escape to Union lines. George Washington Albright, a teenage slave in Mississippi, recalled that like many of his fellow slaves, his father escaped to join Union forces. According to Albright, plantation owners tried to keep news of the Proclamation from slaves, but they learned of it through the grapevine. The young slave became a runner for an informal group they called the 4Ls, Lincoln's Legal Loyal League, bringing news of the Proclamation to secret slave meetings at plantations throughout the region. Slaves fled their masters and were often assisted by Union soldiers. The Sea Islands off the coast of Georgia had been occupied by the Union Navy earlier in the war. The whites had fled to the mainland while the blacks stayed. An early program of Reconstruction was set up for the former slaves, including schools and training. Naval officers read the Proclamation and told them they were free.
Political Fallout And Domestic Opposition
The Proclamation was immediately denounced by Copperhead Democrats, who opposed the war and advocated restoring the union by allowing slavery. Horatio Seymour, while running for governor of New York, cast the Emancipation Proclamation as a call for slaves to commit extreme acts of violence on all white Southerners. He said it was a proposal for the butchery of women and children, for scenes of lust and rapine, and of arson and murder, which would invoke the interference of civilized Europe. The Copperheads also saw the Proclamation as an unconstitutional abuse of presidential power. In the Republican Watchman in Greenpoint, Long Island, its editor Henry A. Reeves wrote that in the name of freedom for Negroes, the proclamation imperils the liberty of white men. It overturns the Constitution and Civil Laws and sets up Military Usurpation in their stead. By contrast, in a speech delivered in February 1863 at the Cooper Union and published in the New-York Tribune, Frederick Douglass called the Proclamation the greatest event of our nation's history, if not the greatest event of the century. Lincoln further alienated many in the Union two days after issuing the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation by suspending habeas corpus. His opponents linked these two actions in their claims that he was becoming a despot. In light of this and a lack of military success for the Union armies, many War Democrat voters who had previously supported Lincoln turned against him and joined the Copperheads in the off-year elections held in October and November. In the 1862 elections, the Democrats gained 28 seats in the House as well as the governorship of New York. Lincoln's friend Orville Hickman Browning told the president that the Proclamation and the suspension of habeas corpus had been disastrous for his party by handing the Democrats so many weapons.
International Diplomacy And Foreign Policy
As Lincoln had hoped, the Proclamation turned foreign popular opinion in favor of the Union by gaining the support of anti-slavery countries and countries that had already abolished slavery. This shift ended the Confederacy's hopes of gaining official recognition. Since the Emanculation Proclamation made the eradication of slavery an explicit Union war goal, it linked support for the South to support for slavery. Public opinion in Britain would not tolerate support for slavery. As Henry Adams noted, The Emancipation Proclamation has done more for us than all our former victories and all our diplomacy. In Italy, Giuseppe Garibaldi hailed Lincoln as the heir of the aspirations of John Brown. On the 6th of August 1863, Garibaldi wrote to Lincoln: Posterity will call you the great emancipator, a more enviable title than any crown could be, and greater than any merely mundane treasure. Mayor Abel Haywood, a representative for workers from Manchester, England, wrote to Lincoln saying: We joyfully honor you for many decisive steps toward practically exemplifying your belief in the words of your great founders: All men are created free and equal. The Emancipation Proclamation served to ease tensions with Europe over the North's conduct of the war, and combined with the recent failed Southern offensive at Antietam, to remove any practical chance for the Confederacy to receive foreign military intervention in the war. However, in spite of the Emancipation Proclamation, arms sales to the Confederacy through blockade running, from British firms and dealers, continued, with knowledge of the British government. The Confederacy was able to sustain the fight for two more years largely thanks to the weapons supplied by British blockade runners. As a result, the blockade runners operating from Britain were responsible for killing 400,000 additional soldiers and civilians on both sides.
Transition To The Thirteenth Amendment
Near the end of the war, abolitionists were concerned that the Emancipation Proclamation would be construed solely as a war measure, as Lincoln intended, and would no longer apply once fighting ended. They also were increasingly anxious to secure the freedom of all slaves, not just those freed by the Emancipation Proclamation. Thus pressed, Lincoln staked a large part of his 1864 presidential campaign on a constitutional amendment to abolish slavery throughout the United States. Lincoln's campaign was bolstered by votes in both Maryland and Missouri to abolish slavery in those states. Maryland's new constitution abolishing slavery took effect on the 1st of November 1864. Slavery in Missouri ended on the 11th of January 1865, when a state convention approved an ordinance abolishing slavery by a vote of 60-4, and later the same day, Governor Thomas C. Fletcher followed up with his own Proclamation of Freedom. Winning re-election, Lincoln pressed the lame duck 38th Congress to pass the proposed amendment immediately rather than wait for the incoming 39th Congress to convene. In January 1865, Congress sent to the state legislatures for ratification what became the Thirteenth Amendment, banning slavery in all U.S. states and territories, except as punishment for a crime. The amendment was ratified by the legislatures of enough states by the 6th of December 1865, and proclaimed 12 days later. There were approximately 40,000 slaves in Kentucky and 1,000 in Delaware who were liberated then.
Civil Rights Legacy And Centennial Commemoration
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. made many references to the Emancipation Proclamation during the civil rights movement. These include an Emancipation Proclamation Centennial Address he gave in New York City on the 12th of September 1962, in which he placed the Proclamation alongside the Declaration of Independence as an imperishable contribution to civilization. He added: All tyrants, past, present and future, are powerless to bury the truths in these declarations. He lamented that despite a history where the United States proudly professed the basic principles inherent in both documents, it sadly practiced the antithesis of these principles. He concluded: There is but one way to commemorate the Emancipation Proclamation. That is to make its declarations of freedom real; to reach back to the origins of our nation when our message of equality electrified an unfree world, and reaffirm democracy by deeds as bold and daring as the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation. King's most famous invocation of the Emancipation Proclamation was in a speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial at the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. King began the speech saying: Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity. But one hundred years later, we must face the tragic fact that the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination.
When did Abraham Lincoln issue the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation?
Abraham Lincoln issued the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation on the 22nd of September 1862. This action occurred five days after the Union victory at the Battle of Antietam.
How many slaves were freed immediately by the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863?
Approximately 20,000 slaves were freed immediately by the Emancipation Proclamation. These individuals lived within Union-occupied zones including parts of eastern North Carolina, the Sea Islands of Georgia and South Carolina, and areas of the Mississippi Valley.
Why did Abraham Lincoln wait to issue the Emancipation Proclamation until September 1862?
Abraham Lincoln waited for a major Union military victory before issuing the proclamation to avoid appearing as if the Union was retreating. He received this opportunity following the Battle of Antietam which turned back a Confederate invasion of Maryland.
What foreign countries supported the United States after the Emancipation Proclamation?
The Emancipation Proclamation gained support from anti-slavery countries such as Britain and Italy. Giuseppe Garibaldi wrote to Lincoln calling him the great emancipator while workers in Manchester England honored his decisive steps toward freedom.
When was the Thirteenth Amendment ratified to abolish slavery throughout the United States?
The Thirteenth Amendment was ratified by state legislatures on the 6th of December 1865. This amendment banned slavery in all U.S. states and territories except as punishment for a crime.