Prayers, Glittering Parties, and the Sudden Taste of Freedom Getty Images The Emancipation Proclamation inspired New Year’s celebrations that endure to this day For young Ed McCree, enslaved on a thousand-acre Georgia cotton plantation, Christmas and New Year’s Day 150 years ago were like no other he had ever known. This child and the other men and women in bondage had always cherished Christmas. There was a week off from the unrelenting and ruthless work in the fields and barnyards; young pigs and cattle were slaughtered; and peaches and melons, still sweet from the summer, were pulled from the wheat straw and cottonseed that kept them fresh. New Year’s Day typically brought back the drudgery of daily life on a large plantation and Ed McCree, a child around 10, would be again forced to carry buckets of water to the men and women working in the fields. The difference that December 1864? William Tecumseh Sherman’s Union Army had just marched across Georgia through the rice plantations of the low-country and reached the seaport of Savannah, offering it to President Abraham Lincoln as a Christmas present.

New Year’s Day 1865—and those in the two years previous—were among the most poignant and pregnant with new beginnings in American history. Ever since Lincoln had signaled his intent in September 1862 to declare slaves in rebel states emancipated as of New Year’s 1863, the possibility of freedom for African-Americans in the South had been hanging in the air, depending on the war’s progression. I’ve long been fascinated by this transitory period of anticipation, in part because some of my ancestors were living under slavery and grappled with what it meant to be emancipated either by their own actions, or by decree. It’s also always struck me as tone deaf to argue that the Emancipation Proclamation or the Army’s earlier “contraband” policy that freed the slaves it came into contact with were merely symbolic or cynical acts.

(Lincoln didn’t seek to free slaves in border states that stayed in the Union, critics are quick to point out.) As Frederick Douglass and other abolitionists contended in a rebuttal to those who posited the perfect as the enemy of the good (and a rebuttal worth repeating in the context of gradual progress on a host of landmark issues ranging from segregated schools to wartime human rights abuses): It matters where the nation officially comes down on moral issues, even if it is not ready or able to completely live up to its professed ideals. African-American communities already held traditional church services on New Year’s Eves, but they took on a special meaning as the country welcomed in the watershed year of 1863, becoming the predecessors of today’s Watch Night services. In Baltimore, Washington, D.C., and the many free black communities in other cities and towns, African-Americans gathered to anticipate the moment the United States finally would declare itself at war with slavery and not simply disunion. Overton Bernard, a white, pro-slavery minister, described with dismay the Watch Night he witnessed in Union-held Portsmouth, Virginia, in response to what he described as Lincoln’s “unwise and unconstitutional” proclamation: Black families packed the A.M.E.

church until well past midnight to pray, to sing, and to hope. In his diary, Bernard hoped that somehow emancipation would be averted as even the promise of freedom had caused the town’s blacks to become “idle and impudent” and ready to challenge their place in society. The next day some 5,000 men, women, and children marched and rode horses, hoisting banners and flags in celebration of freedom. They celebrated despite the fact that troops from New York jeered them and disrupted their march at rifle and bayonet point and also despite the fact that Portsmouth was not covered by the proclamation, given that it was under Union control before Lincoln made his announcement. The condition of the enslaved in Union-held areas would be “left precisely as if this proclamation were not issued” because Lincoln wanted to make it clear that his emancipation order was meant to injure secessionists more than the institution of slavery. But the significance of this decidedly imperfect decree was still electric.

It is often said that the Emancipation Proclamation only freed slaves where the Union lacked authority to do so (and where the commander-in-chief could get away with it on his own as a wartime exigency), but to blacks in Portsmouth, the mere promise of freedom was so tantalizing that it was cause for celebration. At the same time, abolitionists in the North were also throwing parties laden with expectation. In Medford, Massachusetts, businessman and activist George Stearns opened his vast estate for an affair he called “the John Brown party.” Unveiling a marble bust of the radical antislavery revolutionary whom he had helped to fund and arm, Stearns played host to a storied assortment of public intellectuals, including trailblazing abolitionists William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips; Julia Ward Howe, whose “Battle Hymn of the Republic” had inspired northern soldier and civilian alike; and the transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson and his friend Amos Alcott, who brought his daughter Louisa May (later known as the author of Little Women).

Like the free blacks at their Watch Nights, the partygoers spent New Year’s Day waiting for word that Lincoln had actually signed the document and had begun, in their minds, to redeem himself for his previous inaction and timidity on the central moral issue of the day. But back in Georgia, on the plantation in Oconee County that held Ed McCree and his family captive, the Emancipation Proclamation was still nothing more than a theoretical abstraction that New Year’s Day of 1863. While it effectively meant the United States government no longer considered Ed the property of his owner John McCree, the proclamation was not known to any slave on the plantation. As 1863 dawned, the Union Army was too far away—two years away, to be precise—to be in a position to deliver on the proclamation’s promise to Ed, and it is one of the horrific cruelties of history to think of all the hardship slaves still endured while awaiting their promised deliverance. When it did come, the deliverance from slavery would be experienced by most African-Americans in the South very suddenly. Sometimes men and women forced the issue by escaping slavery whenever federal armies got close enough to afford them the opportunity.

Other times it came with a group of soldiers showing up at the plantation out of the blue and passing out hams and shoulders from the smokehouse as they took some for themselves. Sherman’s March to the Sea from Atlanta in late 1864 took the Federals right through the McCree plantation before Christmas. After the troops had passed, Ed remembered his owner gathering his former property before him and beginning to state what they had longed to hear their whole lives: that they were free. The young boy didn’t actually hear what was said as he remembered bolting at the first words and running “around that place, a-shouting at the top of my voice.” Something draws me to that moment of emancipation Ed McCree experienced 150 years ago, two years after it was initially proclaimed. Emancipation was the beginning of a host of decisions and challenges for Ed and his family. The entire world the former slaves knew and had learned to survive, especially Georgia and South Carolina’s “Kingdom of Rice,” was gone. Should the family stay where they were and try to make a new life there, or should they follow Sherman’s Army and see where it led?

Even if they were slaves no more, the Emancipation Proclamation did not make African-Americans citizens, or endow them with many of the core rights enjoyed by other Americans. Even many who’d hoped for slavery’s abolition also hoped people like Ed would, once free, leave the country in which they were born, and which their sweat had helped build and make wealthy, in order to “go back to Africa.” For some members of my extended family back then, uncertainty about their situation and what their future in the United States might hold was enough for them to go to Canada. Still, in honor of all the folks for whom emancipation suddenly marched their way as 1864 came to an end, we are putting a decidedly Savannah flavor into the traditional dish of cowpeas and rice in our household’s New Year’s celebration this year. Rather than black-eyed peas, my New Year’s hoppin’ John will go by its Gullah name, “reezy peezy,” and will feature Carolina Gold Rice and low-country red peas, a staple for slaves in the region. We will enjoy the dish as a tribute to the resilient spirit of the thousands who found themselves traveling a new road to find their way in a new, unknown America.

Christopher Wilson is director of the program in African-American history and culture at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. He also is director of experience and program design and founded the museum’s award-winning educational theater program. He wrote this for What It Means to Be American , a partnership of the Smithsonian and Zocalo Public Square . Zocalo Public Square is a not-for-profit Ideas Exchange that blends live events and humanities journalism. Lincoln signs Emancipation Proclamation - Jan 01, 1863 - HISTORY.com Lincoln signs Emancipation Proclamation Publisher A+E Networks On this day in 1863, Abraham Lincoln signs the Emancipation Proclamation. Attempting to stitch together a nation mired in a bloody civil war, Abraham Lincoln made a last-ditch, but carefully calculated, decision regarding the institution of slavery in America. By the end of 1862, things were not looking good for the Union. The Confederate Army had overcome Union troops in significant battles and Britain and France were set to officially recognize the Confederacy as a separate nation.

In an August 1862 letter to New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley, Lincoln confessed “my paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and it is not either to save or to destroy slavery.” Lincoln hoped that declaring a national policy of emancipation would stimulate a rush of the South’s slaves into the ranks of the Union army, thus depleting the Confederacy’s labor force, on which the southern states depended to wage war against the North. Lincoln waited to unveil the proclamation until he could do so on the heels of a Union military success. On September 22, 1862, after the battle at Antietam, he issued a preliminary Emancipation Proclamation declaring all slaves free in the rebellious states as of January 1, 1863. Lincoln and his advisors limited the proclamation’s language to slavery in states outside of federal control as of 1862, failing to address the contentious issue of slavery within the nation’s border states. In his attempt to appease all parties, Lincoln left many loopholes open that civil rights advocates would be forced to tackle in the future.

Republican abolitionists in the North rejoiced that Lincoln had finally thrown his full weight behind the cause for which they had elected him. Though slaves in the south failed to rebel en masse with the signing of the proclamation, they slowly began to liberate themselves as Union armies marched into Confederate territory. Toward the end of the war, slaves left their former masters in droves. They fought and grew crops for the Union Army, performed other military jobs and worked in the North’s mills. Though the proclamation was not greeted with joy by all northerners, particularly northern white workers and troops fearful of job competition from an influx of freed slaves, it had the distinct benefit of convincing Britain and France to steer clear of official diplomatic relations with the Confederacy. Though the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation signified Lincoln’s growing resolve to preserve the Union at all costs, he still rejoiced in the ethical correctness of his decision.

Lincoln admitted on that New Year’s Day in 1863 that he never “felt more certain that I was doing right, than I do in signing this paper.” Although he waffled on the subject of slavery in the early years of his presidency, he would thereafter be remembered as “The Great Emancipator.” To Confederate sympathizers, however, Lincoln’s signing of the Emancipation Proclamation reinforced their image of him as a hated despot and ultimately inspired his assassination by John Wilkes Booth on April 14, 1865. Related Videos A Mighty Act: The 150th Anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation - The Daily Beast Emancipation A Mighty Act: The 150th Anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation On Jan. 1, 1863, President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation freeing an estimated 500,000 slaves, changing the course of the Civil War, and revolutionizing America. Historian Harold Holzer on what happened on that fateful day—and the still raging debate over its achievements.

Harold Holzer 01.01.13 9:45 AM ET Like most Americans then and now, Abraham Lincoln began his New Year’s day 150 years ago by attending a party, in this case his own. AP Illustration of President Abraham Lincoln signs the Emancipation Proclamation on Jan. 1, 1863 in Washington. But it was no ordinary party, and certainly no ordinary New Year’s. While four million African-American slaves and thousands of white abolitionists waited anxiously for word that he had signed the Emancipation Proclamation on this, its promised due date, Lincoln first hosted the annual reception for the diplomatic corps, military elite, and members of Congress. And when it was over, guards threw open the doors of the White House and admitted thousands more revelers—members of the general public eager to clutch the president’s hand and wish him a happy 1863 as well. The delay—if it was not more than that—understandably alarmed tense freedom advocates gathered in churches across the North, many engaged in ardent prayer since midnight.

It caused many pessimists to wonder whether Lincoln would in fact renege on the promise he had made when he issued his preliminary emancipation on Sept. 22: that if Confederate states did not return to the Union by Jan. 1, he would declare their slaves “then, thenceforward, and forever free.” In the hundred days since, anti-administration newspapers here and abroad had condemned Lincoln for fomenting “servile insurrection,” abandoning his “constitutional moorings,” and threatening the American social order. Disappointed, the president himself had acknowledged that his announcement had sent the stock market spiraling into decline, sped desertion from the armed forces and inhibited enlistment. “This, looked soberly in the face,” Lincoln understated at the time, “is not very satisfactory.” In the midst of such widespread rebuke, New York lawyer and diarist George Templeton Strong spoke for many when he wondered whether “Lincoln’s backbone” would “carry him through the work” he was “pledged … to do” on Jan.

1, ominously warning: “If he postpone or dilute his action, his name will be a byword and a hissing till the annals of the nineteenth century are forgotten.” But the concern proved premature. As Lincoln had recently assured a delegation of Union men from his native Kentucky, “he would rather die than take back a word of the Proclamation of Freedom.” By Christmas, abolitionist Senator Charles Sumner was convinced that the president “would not stop the Proclamation if he could, and could not if he would.” Besides, Lincoln had not intended to make America’s freedom community wait those tense extra hours while he attended his annual holiday reception. A typographical error made him do it. Earlier that day, the president had unrolled and meticulously proofread the official copy of the final proclamation, as painstakingly “engrossed” on a vellum scroll by a professional scribe.

Unfortunately, a dismayed Lincoln spotted a tiny error within the boilerplate language at the bottom of this initial copy—the “hereunto set his hand” phrase had been mistakenly transcribed as “set his name.” Insisting that the document must be absolutely perfect because it would be so closely scrutinized, he ordered that the scribe create a new version—holiday notwithstanding. Not until mid-afternoon was the revised scroll finally ready. As soon as the annual reception ended, Lincoln quickly headed from the East Room upstairs to his private office, where he commenced patiently inspecting it. This time, he found no mistakes at all. But another delay—albeit a brief one—would now follow. ‘Lincoln: How Abraham Lincoln Ended Slavery in America’ by Harold Holzer. 240 pp. Newmarket for It Books. $16.99. As the three witnesses in the room watched in almost breathless silence—Secretary of State William H. Seward, his son and private secretary Frederick, and Lincoln’s own secretary John G. Nicolay—the president picked up his pen, dipped it in an inkwell, but then unexpectedly put the pen down, offering nothing by way of explanation.

Then he picked up the pen again, held it over the document as before, but once more set it back on the table without comment. What did it mean? Could he in fact be uncertain after all? Was he prepared to blink? Breaking the quiet, Lincoln finally looked up and explained: “I have been shaking hands since nine o’clock this morning, and my right arm is almost paralyzed. If my name ever goes into history it will be for this act, and my whole soul is in it. If my hand trembles when I sign the Proclamation, all who examine the document hereafter will say, ‘He hesitated.’” Rather than risk creating a “tremulous” signature, Lincoln instead commenced massaging his giant hands together. Only when he felt the sensation in them return did he take up his pen one more time, and “slowly, firmly, write “that ‘Abraham Lincoln’ with which the whole world is now familiar,” as a contemporary testified. “Then he looked up, smiled, and proudly declared: “That will do.” What the proclamation did—and did not do—has been a matter of debate ever since.

Many still stubbornly insist that the Emancipation Proclamation freed no one—that it proved utterly and cynically toothless, applying only to a region in which Lincoln had no authority to proclaim anything. It was meant only to keep England from recognizing the Confederacy, go these arguments. Lincoln had no real compassion for slaves; only for restoration of the Union. The truth is, some 50,000 enslaved people in Confederate territory immediately gained their freedom on Jan. 1, most along the coast of the Carolinas. In the years that followed, moreover, Union troops, armed with miniature copies of the proclamation printed for distribution to dubious Southern slave owners, liberated tens of thousands more wherever they marched. And emboldened by word of the official imprimatur, yet tens of thousands of additional slaves bravely abandoned their bondage on their own, offering their services to the Union when they reached federal lines. Was it effective? Even the slaves Confederate president Jefferson Davis had left behind at his Mississippi plantation used it as a means of escape—soon after Ulysses S. Grant’s forces began their siege of nearby Vicksburg.

What better proof of the proclamation’s impact could there be than its ability to deprive its author’s counterpart of his own enslaved property? Most important of all, beginning on that unforgettable New Year’s Day, the proclamation forever transformed the Civil War from a struggle merely to restore the Union as it was, to a titanic battle to create a new Union altogether—in which all men, everywhere, would ultimately be free. If the proclamation did not with one stroke of the pen bring about the end of slavery, it did herald and hasten the beginning of the end of slavery. The Declaration of Independence, to which it was immediately compared, did not alone create a free United States in 1776; it required validation and enforcement on the battlefield before its promise could be kept—just as did the “second declaration of independence” four score and seven years later. Certainly the Proclamation was variously appreciated and feared in its own day, by friends and foes alike. Southerners (and many Northerners) howled in protest at its announcement, particularly over its call for African-American enlistment in the Union armed forces.

And many disappointed liberals bemoaned the document’s numbingly legalistic language, which its supremely gifted author had in fact carefully employed to ensure that no judicial body (particularly the hostile Supreme Court) could find grounds to overturn it. Lincoln determined that it was more important for his proclamation to be legally fireproof than emotionally stirring, and he paid a price among those who hoped for a more stirring declaration. While acknowledging emancipation day as “an epoch in our national history,” for example, Frederick Douglass, who had long advocated such a presidential order, could not help observing: “It was not a proclamation of ‘liberty throughout the land, unto all the inhabitants thereof’ such as we had hoped it would be, but was one marked by discriminations and reservations.” Get The Beast In Your Inbox! Daily DigestStart and finish your day with the top stories from The Daily Beast. Cheat SheetA speedy, smart summary of all the news you need to know (and nothing you don't). President Lincoln Signs the Emancipation Proclamation, 1863 Printer Friendly Version >>> "If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong." This is what Abraham Lincoln stated in a letter to a constituent in 1864.

He had always been against slavery but believed that his presidential powers as defined by the Constitution did not give him the authority to abolish it. In early 1862, Lincoln tried and failed to develop an alternative approach: an effort to free the salves of the Border States by buying out their masters. The "Emancipation Oak"in was first read to slaves here. The spot became hallowed ground. Stymied, Lincoln came up with a unique solution; if he could not eliminate slavery in the Union, he would do it in the Confederacy. He would abolish slavery in the Southern States based on his military powers as commander-in-chief of the Union's war effort. His decision was prompted by the realization that slave labor provided the foundation of the South's ability to wage war. On the battle front, slaves dug the trenches, built the battlements, cooked the meals and drove the wagons. On the home front, they tilled the fields, ginned the cotton, and performed many other duties that underpinned the South's economy. Slave labor freed the Confederate soldiers for combat. Without their slaves, the South's military power would be seriously diminished.

Thus, his proclamation to end slavery in the South would be a military action intended to further the Union's war effort for, as Lincoln declared: "civilized belligerents do all in their power to help themselves or hurt the enemy." He revealed his plan and a first draft of the proclamation to his Cabinet on July 22, 1862. He made it clear that he was not seeking their approval, as he had made up his mind to issue the proclamation. He did, however, ask for their comments. Secretary of State Seward questioned the timing of the announcement. The war was not going well for the North. A year earlier it had been soundly defeated at the First Battle of Bull Run and subsequent attempts to attack the South had sputtered. Seward felt that announcing the proclamation at this time would appear to be a desperate attempt of a broken government to rally opinion at home and abroad to its cause. Better to wait for a victory on the battlefield. Lincoln agreed. The Union's victory came in September when it repulsed Lee's invasion of the North at the Battle of Antietam ( see Carnage at Antietam, 1862 ).

Lincoln issued a preliminary draft of the proclamation on September 22 that warned the Confederate States that if they did not return to the Union by January 1, 1863, he would issue a second proclamation declaring the slaves of those states "forever free". His warning was ignored. The general reaction in the North was supportive, but many had doubts as to whether Lincoln would actually follow through with his plan. "...the act itself was only the simplest and briefest formality." John Nicolay and John Hay were Lincoln's private secretaries and were there on that New Years' Day when he signed the Emancipation Proclamation: ADVERTISMENT "Mr. Lincoln took the various manuscript notes and memoranda which his Cabinet advisers brought him on the 31st of December and during that afternoon and the following morning with his own hand carefully rewrote the entire body of the draft of the proclamation... It is a custom in the Executive Mansion to hold on New Year's Day an official and public reception, beginning at eleven o'clock in the morning, which keeps the President at his post in the Blue Room until two in the afternoon. The hour for this reception came before Mr.

Lincoln had entirely finished revising the engrossed copy of the proclamation, and he was compelled to hurry away from his office to friendly handshaking and festal greeting with the rapidly arriving official and diplomatic guests. The rigid laws of etiquette held him to this duty for the space of three hours. Had actual necessity required it, he could of course have left such mere social occupation at any moment; but the President saw no occasion for precipitancy. On the other hand, he probably deemed it wise that the completion of this momentous executive act should be attended by every circumstance of deliberation. Vast as were its consequences, the act itself was only the simplest and briefest formality. It could in no wise be made sensational or dramatic. Those characteristics attached, if at all, only to the long-past decisions and announcements of July 22 and September 22 of the previous year. Those dates had witnessed the mental conflict and the moral victory. No ceremony was made or attempted of this final official signing. The afternoon was well advanced when Mr. Lincoln went back from his New Year's greetings, with his right hand so fatigued that it was an effort to hold the pen.

There was no special convocation of the Cabinet or of prominent officials. Those who were in the house came to the executive office merely from the personal impulse of curiosity joined to momentary convenience. His signature was attached to one of the greatest and most beneficent military decrees of history in the presence of less than a dozen persons; after which it was carried to the Department of State to be attested by the great seal and deposited among the archives of the Government." References: This eyewitness account appears in: Nicolay. John G. and John Hay, Abraham Lincoln, a History vol. 6 (1890); Goodwin, Doris Kearns, Team of Rivals (2005). How To Cite This Article: "President Lincoln Signs the Emancipation Proclamation, 1863" EyeWitness to History, (2006). Slavery was eliminated in the Union with the ratification of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution in 1868.

The Emancipation Proclamation – Abraham Lincoln Responds | Posted on February 11, 2014 by Julie Golia In conjunction with a current exhibit , the Brooklyn Historical Society blog is featuring a series of blog posts called “The Emancipation Proclamation: Americans Respond.” Learn more here . For 150 years, historians have debated Abraham Lincoln’s motivations, feelings, and beliefs about slavery and emancipation. What motivated him to issue the Emancipation Proclamation? Did he free slaves in rebel states for political expediency, or for moral reasons? What did Lincoln think or say in the moments before he signed the document that declared “forever free” over 3,000,000 enslaved men, women, and children? In the months and years after 1863, and certainly after Lincoln’s death, friends and colleagues recorded their recollections of Lincoln’s more personal moments. One of those people was Frederick Seward, the son of Secretary of State William Seward. The younger Seward was serving as Assistant Secretary of State when Lincoln signed the proclamation.

On New Years Day 1863, he accompanied his father, who brought the Emancipation Proclamation to the White House, and witnessed Lincoln put pen to paper. He later recalled Lincoln’s words just before he signed the document: “I never in my life felt more certain that I was doing right than I do in signing this paper. But I have been receiving calls and shaking hands since nine o’clock this morning til my arm is stiff and numb. Now, this signature is one that will be closely examined, but if they find my hand trembled, they will say, ‘he had some compunctions.’ But anyway, it is going to be done.” Of course, many other friends and witnesses gave slightly different accounts of the events of that morning. The discrepancies between them remind us that memories, reshaped by the scrim of hindsight and the strains of time, often tell us more about the time in which they are recorded than the time they recall. After Lincoln’s death, moreover, many used their stories of Lincoln to reinforce aspects of his beliefs and to shape his legacy.

The Lincoln quote recalled by Frederick Seward tells the reader that if Lincoln’s hand trembled, it was because it was fatigued, not because he had any reservations whatsoever about the freeing of millions of people in bondage. Recall that Lincoln did in fact advocate more conservative paths to emancipation – including colonization and compensated emancipation – even up to the months before the proclamation was issued. Seward’s recollection was meant to obscure that conservatism, to counteract any lingering belief that Lincoln was ambivalent about ending slavery. Tomorrow, on Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, recall that Lincoln was himself a man – a complex, visionary, and imperfect man – but that after his death, his persona also shouldered an enormous legacy. For better or for worse, it can be difficult to locate the “real” Lincoln 150 years later. Source: Abraham Lincoln as recollected by Frederick W. Seward, from Don Edward Fehrenbacher and Virginia Fehrenbacher, eds. The Recollected Words of Abraham Lincoln (Stanford University Press, 1996), 397.

The Emancipation Proclamation is 150 Years Old | whitehouse.gov The Emancipation Proclamation is 150 Years Old September 21, 2012 at 2:04 PM ET by Matt Compton Twitter Facebook Email Summary: We're marking the 150 anniversary of the initial Emancipation Proclamation, which President Lincoln first issued on September 22, 1862. President Barack Obama views the Emancipation Proclamation with a small group of African American seniors, their grandchildren and some children from the Washington DC area, in the Oval Office. This copy of the Emancipation Proclamation, which is on loan from the Smithsonian Institution, was hung on the wall of the Oval Office today and will be exhibited for six months, before being moved to the Lincoln Bedroom where the original Proclamation was signed by Abraham Lincoln on Jan. 1, 1863, January 18, 2010. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza) One hundred fifty years ago Monday, on September 17, 1862, the Union army commanded by Major General George McClellan met a Confederate force under Robert E.

Lee at Antietam Creek in western Maryland, outside the town of Sharpsburg. For 12 hours, 87,000 Union soldiers launched a series of attacks against 45,000 Confederates. The result was a staggering loss of human life. When dark approached and the fighting ended, almost 25,000 were dead, wounded, or missing. Neither before nor since have more Americans been killed in a single day. But when it was over, Lee's advance into Northern territory had been halted. Union forces held the field. And in the space of that victory, President Abraham Lincoln issued the initial Emancipation Proclamation -- specifically joining the cause of the Union with the advancement of freedom. President Lincoln signed that preliminary order five days after Antietam -- on September 22. When it went into effect on January 1, 1863 -- 100 days later -- the Proclamation freed all those held as slaves in the Confederate states. And even though it would take two more years of combat and the Thirteenth Amendment to bring an end to the institution of slavery in all U.S.

states and territories, President Lincoln’s Proclamation made possible what he would later call at Gettysburg "a new birth of freedom." In 2010, a copy of the Emancipation Proclamation signed by President Lincoln was hung in the Oval Office above a bust of Martin Luther King, Jr. Emancipation Proclamation - American Civil War - HISTORY.com Google Lincoln’s Position on Slavery Slavery was “an unqualified evil to the negro, the white man, and the State,” said Abraham Lincoln in the 1850s. Yet in his first inaugural address, Lincoln declared that he had “no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with slavery in the States where it exists.” He reiterated this pledge in his first message to Congress on July 4, 1861, when the Civil War was three months old. Did You Know? When it took effect in January 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation freed 3.1 million of the nation's 4 million slaves. What explains this apparent inconsistency in Lincoln’s statements? And how did he get from his pledge not to interfere with slavery to a decision a year later to issue an emancipation proclamation?

The answers lie in the Constitution and in the course of the Civil War. As an individual, Lincoln hated slavery. As a Republican, he wished to exclude it from the territories as the first step to putting the institution “in the course of ultimate extinction.” But as president of the United States, Lincoln was bound by a Constitution that protected slavery in any state where citizens wanted it. As commander in chief of the armed forces in the Civil War, Lincoln also worried about the support of the four border slave states and the Northern Democrats. These groups probably would have turned against the war for the Union if the Republicans had made a move against slavery in 1861. Contrabands and The Confiscation Acts But the president’s role as commander in chief cut two ways. If it restrained him from alienating proslavery Unionists, it also empowered him to seize enemy property used to wage war against the United States. Slaves were the most conspicuous and valuable such property. They raised food and fiber for the Southern war effort, worked in munitions factories, and served as teamsters and laborers in the army. Gen.

Benjamin Butler, commander of Union forces occupying a foothold in Virginia at Fortress Monroe on the mouth of the James River, provided a legal rationale for the seizure of slave property. When three slaves who had worked on rebel fortifications escaped to Butler’s lines in May 1861, he declared them contraband of war and refused to return them to their Confederate owner. Here was an opening wedge for emancipation, and hundreds of such “contrabands” voted with their feet for freedom by escaping to Union lines in subsequent months. By 1862 the trickle had become a flood. Some Union commanders gave them shelter and protection; others returned them to masters who could prove their loyalty to the United States. In August 1861 Congress passed a confiscation act that conferred “contraband” status on all slaves who had been used in direct support of the Confederate war effort. In March 1862 Congress enacted a new article of war forbidding army officers to return fugitive slaves to their masters. Before the war was a year old, therefore, the slaves themselves had taken the initiative that forced Northern authorities to move toward making it a war for freedom.

The Move Towards Emancipation Most Republicans had become convinced by 1862 that the war against a slaveholders’ rebellion must become a war against slavery itself, and they put increasing pressure on Lincoln to proclaim an emancipation policy. This would have comported with Lincoln’s personal convictions, but as president he felt compelled to balance these convictions against the danger of alienating half of the Union constituency. By the summer of 1862, however, it was clear that he risked alienating the Republican half of his constituency if he did not act against slavery. Moreover, the war was going badly for the Union. After a string of military victories in the early months of 1862, Northern armies suffered demoralizing reverses in July and August. The argument that emancipation was a military necessity became increasingly persuasive. It would weaken the Confederacy and correspondingly strengthen the Union by siphoning off part of the Southern labor force and adding this manpower to the Northern side.

In July 1862 Congress enacted two laws based on this premise: a second confiscation act that freed slaves of persons who had engaged in rebellion against the United States, and a militia act that empowered the president to use freed slaves in the army in any capacity he saw fit—even as soldiers. By this time Lincoln had decided on an even more dramatic measure: a proclamation issued as commander in chief freeing all slaves in states waging war against the Union. As he told a member of his cabinet, emancipation had become “a military necessity…. We must free the slaves or be ourselves subdued…. The Administration must set an example, and strike at the heart of the rebellion.” The cabinet agreed, but Secretary of State William H. Seward persuaded Lincoln to withhold the proclamation until a major Union military victory could give it added force. Lincoln used the delay to help prepare conservative opinion for what was coming.

In a letter to journalist Horace Greeley, published in the New York Tribune on August 22, 1862, the president reiterated that his “paramount object in the struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or destroy slavery.” If he could accomplish this objective by freeing all, some, or none of the slaves, that was what he would do. Lincoln had already decided to free some and was in effect forewarning potential opponents of the Emancipation Proclamation that they must accept it as a necessary measure to save the Union. In a publicized meeting with black residents of Washington , also in 1862, Lincoln urged them to consider emigrating abroad to escape the prejudice they encountered and to help persuade conservatives that the much-feared racial consequences of emancipation might be thereby mitigated.

Lincoln Issues the Emancipation Proclamation One month later, after the qualified Union victory in the Battle of Antietam , Lincoln issued a preliminary proclamation warning that in all states still in rebellion on January 1, 1863, he would declare their slaves “then, thenceforward, and forever free.” January 1 came, and with it the final proclamation, which committed the government and armed forces of the United States to liberate the slaves in rebel states “as an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution, upon military necessity.” The proclamation exempted the border slave states and all or parts of three Confederate states controlled by the Union army on the grounds that these areas were not in rebellion against the United States. Lincoln had tried earlier to persuade the border states to accept gradual emancipation, with compensation to slave owners from the federal government, but they had refused. The proclamation also authorized the recruitment of freed slaves and free blacks as Union soldiers; during the next 2 1/2 years 180,000 of them fought in the Union army and 10,000 in the navy, making a vital contribution to Union victory as well as their own freedom.

Emancipation would vastly increase the stakes of the war. It became a war for “a new birth of freedom,” as Lincoln stated in the Gettysburg Address, a war that would transform Southern society by destroying its basic institution. The Thirteenth Amendment Meanwhile Lincoln and the Republican party recognized that the Emancipation Proclamation, as a war measure, might have no constitutional validity once the war was over. The legal framework of slavery would still exist in the former Confederate states as well as in the Union slave states that had been exempted from the proclamation. So the party committed itself to a constitutional amendment to abolish slavery. The overwhelmingly Republican Senate passed the Thirteenth Amendment by more than the necessary two-thirds majority on April 8, 1864. But not until January 31, 1865, did enough Democrats in the House abstain or vote for the amendment to pass it by a bare two-thirds. By December 18, 1865, the requisite three-quarters of the states had ratified the Thirteenth Amendment, which ensured that forever after “neither slavery nor involuntary servitude … shall exist within the United States.” The Reader’s Companion to American History. Eric Foner and John A.

Garraty, Editors. Copyright © 1991 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved. The groundbreaking series reimagined. ROOTS premieres Memorial Day at 9/8c on HISTORY. Tags The Emancipation Proclamation 1863 < Abraham Lincoln < Presidents < American History From Revolution To Reconstruction and beyond The Emancipation Proclamation 1863 Context On Jan. 1, 1863, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln declared free all slaves residing in territory in rebellion against the federal government. This Emancipation Proclamation actually freed few people. It did not apply to slaves in border states fighting on the Union side; nor did it affect slaves in southern areas already under Union control. Naturally, the states in rebellion did not act on Lincoln's order. But the proclamation did show Americans-- and the world--that the civil war was now being fought to end slavery. Lincoln had been reluctant to come to this position. A believer in white supremacy, he initially viewed the war only in terms of preserving the Union. As pressure for abolition mounted in Congress and the country, however, Lincoln became more sympathetic to the idea. On Sept.

22, 1862, he issued a preliminary proclamation announcing that emancipation would become effective on Jan. 1, 1863, in those states still in rebellion. Although the Emancipation Proclamation did not end slavery in America--this was achieved by the passage of the 13TH Amendment to the Constitution on Dec. 18, 1865--it did make that accomplishment a basic war goal and a virtual certainty. DOUGLAS T. MILLER Bibliography: Commager, Henry Steele, The Great Proclamation (1960); Donovan, Frank, Mr. Lincoln's Proclamation (1964); Franklin, John Hope, ed., The Emancipation Proclamation (1964). By the President of the United States of America: A PROCLAMATION Whereas on the 22nd day of September, A.D. 1862, a proclamation was issued by the President of the United States, containing, among other things, the following, to wit: "That on the 1st day of January, A.D.

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; 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 persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom.

"That the executive will on the 1st day of January aforesaid, by proclamation, designate the States and parts of States, if any, in which the people thereof, respectively, shall then 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 thereto at elections wherein a majority of the qualified voters of such States shall have participated shall, in the absence of strong countervailing testimony, 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 supressing said rebellion, do, on this 1st day of January, A.D.

1863, and in accordance with my purpose so to do, publicly proclaimed for the full period of one hundred days from the first day above mentioned, order and designate as the States and parts of States wherein the people thereof, respectively, are this day in rebellion against the United States the following, to wit: Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana (except the parishes of St. Bernard, Palquemines, Jefferson, St. John, St. Charles, St. James, Ascension, Assumption, Terrebone, Lafourche, St. Mary, St. Martin, and Orleans, including the city of New Orleans), Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia (except the forty-eight counties designated as West Virginia, and also the counties of Berkeley, Accomac, Morthhampton, Elizabeth City, York, Princess Anne, and Norfolk, including the cities of Norfolk and Portsmouth), and which excepted parts are for the present left precisely as if this proclamation were not issued.

And by virtue of the power and for the purpose aforesaid, 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 said persons. And I hereby enjoin upon the people so declared to be free to abstain from all violence, unless in necessary self-defence; and I recommend to them that, in all case when allowed, they labor faithfully for reasonable wages. 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. 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.

Question: Who signed and issued the Emancipation Proclamation on New Year's day 1863?
Answer: Abraham Lincoln