Emancipation Proclamation

Emancipation Proclamation (1863).Issued by President Abraham Lincoln on 1 January 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation declared that all slaves, in states or portions of states in rebellion against the United States, “are and henceforward shall be free.” The president thus freed slaves in Arkansas, Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and parts of Virginia and Louisiana. Lincoln exempted those states remaining loyal to the Union, such as Maryland, and portions of Confederate states occupied by U.S. troops. Lincoln justified the proclamation by citing military necessity.

The proclamation was the culmination of a gradual process. Although Lincoln had initially declared the preservation of the Union, and not the abolition of slavery, as his principal purpose in fighting the Civil War, the two goals had become intertwined as the conflict progressed. Northerners were divided over the issue of slavery, and many were hostile to fighting a war on behalf of slaves. Lincoln also knew that any hope of compromise with the Confederacy ruled out the abolition of slavery as a war aim. He also feared that slave‐holding states still loyal to the Union would secede if slavery were threatened. But the course of war determined Lincoln's actions and ensured that the abolition of slavery would become a central focus of the conflict.

Slaves, free blacks, and white abolitionists had, of course, immediately recognized the war's potential to end slavery. As the Union army and navy moved into portions of the South, such as the Sea Islands of South Carolina, slaves sought freedom behind Union lines. In May 1861, General Benjamin F. Butler declared slaves who fled to the Union army headquartered at Fortress Monroe, Virginia, to be contraband of war—that is, enemy property open to confiscation by Union troops. Lincoln signed this policy into law as the First Confiscation Act on 6 August 1861. Other moves toward ending slavery followed. In April 1862, Republicans in Congress abolished slavery in the District of Columbia and in the territories. The Second Confiscation Act, passed 17 July 1862, freed all rebel‐owned slaves who came behind Union lines, while the Militia Act of the same date freed slaves employed by the military. Lincoln and his military commanders recognized that undermining slavery would ultimately weaken the Confederacy and strengthen the Union. Military losses and the knowledge that reconciliation was unlikely also encouraged Lincoln to move toward emancipation. But his advisers encouraged him to refrain from issuing any proclamation until after a Union victory. On 22 September 1862, five days after Robert E. Lee's army withdrew following the Battle of Antietam, Lincoln released a preliminary proclamation announcing his intentions to free slaves in rebellious states on 1 January.

A crucial difference between the preliminary and the final proclamation was the latter's silence on the question of colonization—the repatriation of freed slaves to Africa. In the preliminary proclamation, Lincoln asserted his commitment to colonization, a measure that would appease loyal Southerners and Northerners who feared competition from free black labor. Lincoln's decision not to include a plan of colonization in the final proclamation bolstered its radical potential. In addition to freeing slaves in rebel states and recommending that able‐bodied freedmen be “received into the armed service,” Lincoln advised former slaves to immediately become free laborers, by working “faithfully for reasonable wages.”

The Emancipation Proclamation had several important consequences. While freeing only slaves in areas outside the control of the federal government, it tied the abolition of slavery to the defeat of the Confederacy and ensured that northern victory would mean a reconstruction of southern society and economy. Before the Emancipation Proclamation, African American men and women had been employed by the Union army as servants, teamsters, laborers, scouts, cooks, and laundry workers. Although the Proclamations did not directly state that African American soldiers would serve in combat, former slaves and their allies quickly interpreted it this way. Approximately 190,000 black men would serve in the army and navy during the Civil War. The enlistment of African Americans facilitated the abolition of slavery in border states and throughout the South. As black soldiers demonstrated their courage at Port Hudson, Louisiana; Milliken's Bend, Louisiana; and Fort Wagner, South Carolina, they gained northern respect and support for emancipation increased. In joining the Union army or seeking its protection, former slaves denied the Confederacy their labor, thereby hastening the destruction of slavery.

Providing a precedent for the Reconstruction Era amendments to the Constitution, especially the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery, the Emancipation Proclamation revealed what slaves had known from the beginning: Slavery was the central issue of the Civil War.
See also Antislavery; Colonization Movement, African; Confederate States of America.

Bibliography

Leon F. Litwack , Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery, 1980.
Eric Foner , Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877, 1988.
James M. McPherson , Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era, 1988.
Benjamin Quarles , Lincoln and the Negro, 1991.
Ira Berlin,, Barbara J. Fields,, Steven F. Miller,, Joseph P. Reidy,, and and Leslie Rowland , Slaves No More: Three Essays on Emancipation and the Civil War, 1992.
John Hope Franklin , The Emancipation Proclamation, 1995.

Carol Faulkner