Emancipation proclamation question?

Question

According to Wikipedia (and a documentary I just watched), the Emancipation Proclamation freed slaves that were held in seceding states. Wikipedia goes on to report, "Had any seceding state rejoined the Union before January 1, 1863, it could have kept slavery, at least temporarily."

Could somebody please explain this to me? Did the seceding states not have any legislative power over slavery? How did Lincoln set slaves free in states that weren't really under his control?

Answer 1

Oh boy! I suppose I should not be surprised by now, but most of the previous are RIDDLED with misunderstandings. Sorry for the length of the following, but I hope it will clarify this act by Lincoln, and what it really DID do.


The Emancipation Proclamation was a formal legal proclamation by which President Lincoln

a) acting as commander-in-chief, in order to better prosecute the war to restore the Union --
b) declared that ALL slaves in territories then under rebellion were "henceforth ... free"
c) directed the armed services to enforce the proclamation, including by assisting fleeing slaves
d) provided for blacks, including those freed by this act, to join the U.S. military if they so chose [some 180,000 did so by war's end, and made a vital contribution]

Before I explain the details below, note that parts (c) and (d) destroy the common claim that "no one was freed" by the Proclamation -- perhaps the most common misunderstanding you'll hear by folks thinking they are "setting the record straight" (and a favorite claim of neo-Confederates and Lincoln-haters).

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The Document(s):

There were actually TWO parts to this -- a "preliminary" proclamation, made on Sept 22, 1862, announcing his plans to act in 100 days (Jan1, 1863), and the "final" proclamation of Jan 1, 1863 which refers back to parts of the Sept 22 document and specifies the territories affected. They are actually rather brief and worth reading through to see how they worked -- so I'll provide a link for each:

http://www.nysl.nysed.gov/library/features/ep/
http://www.nps.gov/ncro/anti/emancipation.html

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Specific language:

To illustrate the points in the summary above, here are the main parts of the final Proclamation (plus one or two from the preliminary form):

a) 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. . . .

b) 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;

c) and [I order and declare] that the Executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons.

[preliminary includes: will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom.. . . And I do hereby enjoin upon and order all persons engaged in the military and naval service of the United States to observe, obey, and enforce, within their respective spheres of service, the act and sections above recited.]

d) And I further declare and make known, that such persons of suitable condition, will be received into the armed service of the United States to garrison forts, positions, stations, and other places, and to man vessels of all sorts in said service.

Conclusion: 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, and the gracious favor of Almighty God.

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Finally, some clarifications of this act, esp. of points most often misunderstood or misrepresented:

1) It dealt first with slaves who had ALREADY escaped, assuring them that they would NOT be returned... and also encouraged others to flee, with the same promise

2) Of course it could not immediately put into EFFECT the freeing of all slaves in rebel territory. (For that matter NO legal declaration can succeed all by itself) BUT as soon as the Union forces were able to take a territory slaves there WERE freed.

Thus the claims that it "freed no one" are utterly untrue. In fact, for the territories it covered it freed ALL the slaves by war's end (lastly in Texas -- on June 19, 1865, thereafter celebrated as "Juneteenth"). The 13th did not actually free these folks, but it DID act as a guarantee to KEEP them free, lest someone try to undo the Emancipation Proclamation in court after the war ended.

3) This act was a MILITARY act
a) to weaken the Confederacy by depriving it of its labor force and
b) to add MANPOWER for the North, by allowing freed blacks to join the Union army (as about 180,00 did by war's end)

Both of these, esp. (b), demonstrate that the Proclamation DID free people!

4) The Proclamation was thus NOT just a "PR" move (though he certainly did hope it would help prevent dangerous foreign recognition of the Confederacy). Do note that an act like this can have MULTIPLE purposes (or hoped for results). So showing that it had or was hoped to have one effect does NOT prove that it had no others.

5) As for why he did not declare freedom for slaves in border slaves states that had not seceded (and the final proclamation DID not do so, contrary to one answer offered) -- Lincoln did not have ANY authority under the Constitution to discard state laws in this way.

If he had attempted to free slaves in loyal states, just on his own say-so, the proclamation would surely have been struck down in federal court, esp. by the Supreme Court, which had opposed other war measures, and was still presided over by Roger Taney (author of the Dred Scott Decision). That would have doomed this or any similar effort from then on.

In addition, even if he had thought it Constitutional and dared to test its legality, the backlash would have been enormous, esp. in the slave border states, likely pushing one or more to secede and probably dooming the whole war effort.

(Even as it was, Lincoln suffered greatly at the polls for this measure in the fall of 1862. So the idea that this proclamation was merely symbolic and carried no political risks is absurd.)

6) But Lincoln did NOT ignore these "Union slaves". Indeed, for more than a year before the Proclamation he had been lobbying these states (DE, KY, MD, MO) to emancipate their slaves themselves... though they refused.

Then, following the Proclamation, he began to lobby hard for Congressional action to FULLY end slavery (and overcome any possible LEGAL challenges to the Proclamation) -- through what became the 13th amendment. To do so he did a lot of logrolling and even expedited the statehood process for Nevada, calculating that their vote would be needed for ratification. (That amendment, incidentally, did effectively free only a handful of slaves in Northern border states.)

In other words, the larger claim that he did nothing about slaves in the Union states is absolutely false. (For the claim that he "didn't even care" there is even more evidence in his actions and in his speeches from the Lincoln-Douglas debates onward.)

Note that this also helps to answer your question about what would have happened had any territories returned before January 1, 1863. Of course, if they were NOT in rebellion he would have NO AUTHORITY under the Constitution to free their slaves any more than he could have freed slaves in the loyal states. By saying so explicitly, he protected the Proclamation from certain legal challenges. And had any 'accepted the offer', he would have proceeded as he had ALREADY been doing to bring Union slavery to a Constitutional END.

7) This was a LEGAL document, not an "inspirational speech". This explains why it does not have the high rhetoric of his speeches. The need here was NOT to "inspire" or motivate. It needed to be able to withstand the likely court challenges. The legal arguments had to be as strong as he could make them.


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If you want some more info, check the following sources:

http://www.mrlincolnandfreedom.org/inside.asp?ID=3&subjectID=1
and related pages in sidebar links

Allen Guelzo, *Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery*
introduced at: http://www.abrahamlincolnsclassroom.org/Library/newsletter.asp?ID=1&CRLI=64

Answer 2

This Site Might Help You.

RE:
Emancipation proclamation question?
According to Wikipedia (and a documentary I just watched), the Emancipation Proclamation freed slaves that were held in seceding states. Wikipedia goes on to report, "Had any seceding state rejoined the Union before January 1, 1863, it could have kept slavery, at least...

Answer 3

The Emancipation Proclamation proclaimed by Abraham Lincoln had no legal clout whatsoever, it merely was a proclamation, just as it states, not a law or amendment...it was a ploy by the president to give the war some direction, some moral compass...Congress at the time was very close to petitioning the south for peace, so many in the House and Senate were fed up with the war, the losses, the amount of money being spent...Lincoln felt if he could justify the war as a crusade against the abomination of slavery that the Congress would back down and the "doves" would lessen their rhetoric...by freeing the slaves in the states under rebellion Lincoln established a popular base there and the beginning of an underground movement against the south amongst the southern slaves, freed blacks, and liberals of the day...sound eerily familiar to current events?!!!

Answer 4

Yes, it is very interesting that The Emancipation Proclamation actual didn't free a single slave (although it did make their freedom inevitable in the case of a Union victory).

Since the only slaves "freed" by the EP were those in states now in secession, and the states in secession were under Confederate control, it affected no one - at that moment. As someone else said it was symbolic --- but it was also a promise and a statement that when those states come back, they will come back without slavery. Prior to that there was nothing to indicate that states couldn't return to the Union exactly as they left, with slavery intact. The EP changed that.

It was, because of the way it made the statement, yet did nothing to offend the border states which still had slavery but remain loyal, and the way it fostered foreign support as well as local support, a genius of wartime maneuvering. For all his weaknesses as a leader, Lincoln was a genius in many ways.

Answer 5

The Emancipation Proclamation was limited in many ways. It applied only to states that had seceded from the Union, leaving slavery untouched in the loyal border states. It also expressly exempted parts of the Confederacy that had already come under Northern control. Most important, the freedom it promised depended upon Union military victory.
Contrary to popular opinion, the war wasn't fought over slavery....that was one of the issues, yes....but the war was begun to stop the southern states from seceding form the Union. The issue of slavery became a rallying cry....the intent, at first, was to declare all NEW territories as "free", the new territories being missouri, texas, etc......in other words, no slaves. The South, already overwhelmed by the industrial North, was against that notion. Additionally, there was a lot of concern over where the federal government and the state government began and ended. The southern states wanted, and in fact needed, less federal control over their territory.
The original, first draft, of the proclamation did not end slavery....it ended ONLY in the states that seceded. The second, the one we learn about, was the one that declared freedom for all slaves, no matter where...loyalist or secessionist territories. The proclamation was more of a militray maneuver....it allowed slaves the power to revolt and join the armed forces to fight in the Union cause, a powerful piece of insight. The federal government never recognized the right of the Confederacy to have seceeded from the Union, and the proclamation was just another way to voice that.
There are many layers to the document...many intents and motives....

Answer 6

The seceding states had all of the power, so they pulled out of the Union, because they did not want to be told what to do by someone who was not affected.
Lincoln had no want to free the slaves, he was forced into it by a compromise and had to issue a proclamation. It was invalid as far as the Confederacy felt. Sort of like us, today, telling Toronto what they could and could not do.
Since it was meant only for those fallen away states, if they were back in the union, it would not affect them.
Don't let anyone fool you. There were many slaves in the North. Especially on the docks and Mills.
You final question is answered like this: Lincoln did not free any slaves anywhere, he simply stated that the Union considered them freed. They indeed were not under his control.
Lincoln was not the sharp cookie that we used to draw in grade school. He was easily led and influenced. But by issuing the proclamation he quieted a great many critics and money people, in the North. Money talks, even back then.

Answer 7

The Civil War was the climax of a long conflict between slave states and free states, a conflict that started long before Southern states seceded from the Union to form the Confederate States of America.

At the Constitutional Convention in 1787, delegates from slave states fought hard to make sure that the new Constitution protected the rights of slave owners. As Northern states abolished slavery during the late 1700s and early 1800s, the conflict between free states and slave states shaped up as a regional conflict between North and South. As the nation expanded westward, Southerners wanted new states to join the Union as slave states so that they would send pro-slavery members to Congress. Northerners wanted new free states that would elect anti-slavery Senators and Representatives. Fear of an increasing number of free states and a consequent anti-slavery majority in Congress was a strong motivating factor behind the Southern decision to secede after Abraham Lincoln's victory in the presidential election of 1860. (Secession began while Lincoln was still President-elect, before he was sworn in.)

Some slave states did not secede from the Union, but every state that did secede was a slave state. Leaders of the Confederacy declared that their new nation was founded on the principle that all men were not created equal, that blacks were inferior and ought to be held in bondage. So the South was definitely fighting for slavery. The North, however, was not fighting against slavery, at least not at the start of the war. The North was fighting to keep the Union together, to enforce the principle that no state had the power to secede. Lincoln said that he would free all the slaves, or none of them, or some of them, depending on which course of action would help to preserve the Union.

As you've noted, the Emancipation Proclamation applied only in areas where the Union had no power to enforce it, so the Proclamation did not actually free a single slave at the time. Slaves in the Confederate states did not gain their freedom until after the South had lost the war and the Union government was able to exercise authority in that section of the country. And slavery was not finally abolished throughout the United States until the 13th Amendment was added to the Constitution.

Answer 8

It was only a symbolic gesture. He was hoping to give the anti slavery north a cause to rally around. He also was hoping that when news of the emancipation filtered through the southern states, slaves might rise up against the rebels. Of course, slaves in the slave states that stayed with the US were not included in the emancipation, because Lincoln feared that would drive those states to also leave the union.

Answer 9

The seceding states where those that were not joined under th union. they were still part of USA, they just had different rules that the Northern states, but when the president, the leader of the union AND the confederacy made the proclamation, they had to listen him. the only reason abe freed the slaves in the confederacy was so that the slaves could come to the north and fight to abolish slavery forever.