President Abraham Lincoln and the Northern States entered the Civil War to preserve the Union rather than to free the slaves, but within a relatively short time emancipation became a necessary war aim. Yet neither Congress nor the president knew exactly what constitutional powers they had in this area; according to the Supreme Court under Chief Justice Roger Brooks Taney, they had none. Lincoln believed that the Constitution gave the Union whatever powers it needed to preserve itself, and that he, as commander-in-chief in a time of war, had the authority to use those powers.
Between March and July of 1862, Lincoln advocated compensated emancipation of slaves living in the "border states", i.e., slave states of Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri which remained loyal to the Union. He also endorsed colonization of freed slaves to foreign lands. But by July 1862, the Union war efforts in Virginia were going badly and pressure was growing to remove the Union commander, General George B. McClellan. Mr. Lincoln decided that emancipation of slaves in areas in rebellion was militarily necessary to put an end to secession and was constitutionally justified by his powers as commander in chief.
Members of Abraham Lincoln's cabinet gathered at the White House on July 22, 1862, to hear the president read his draft of the Emancipation Proclamation. Written by Lincoln alone, without consultation from his cabinet, the proclamation declared that all persons held as slaves in states that were still in rebellion on January 1, 1863, "shall be then, thenceforward, and forever, free."
In September 22 1862, after the Union's victory at Antietam, Lincoln met with his cabinet to refine his July draft and announce what is now known as the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. In this document, he issued an ultimatum to the seceded states: Return to the Union by New Year's Day or freedom will be extended to all slaves within your borders.
The decree also left room for a plan of compensated emancipation. No Confederate states took the offer, and on January 1 Lincoln presented the Emancipation Proclamation. At one stroke, Lincoln declared that over 3 million African American slaves "henceforward shall be free," that the "military and naval authorities" would now "recognize and maintain" that freedom, and that these newly freed slaves would "be received into the armed service of the United States" in order to make war on their former masters. This allowed black soldiers to fight for the Union -- soldiers that were desperately needed. It also tied the issue of slavery directly to the war. By the end of the war, almost 200,000 black soldiers and sailors had fought for the Union and freedom.
It is important to remember that the Emancipation Proclamation did not free all slaves in the United States. Rather, it declared free only those slaves living in states not under Union control. William Seward, Lincoln's secretary of state, commented, "We show our sympathy with slavery by emancipating slaves where we cannot reach them and holding them in bondage where we can set them free." Lincoln was fully aware of the irony, but he did not want to antagonize the "border states" by setting their slaves free.
Intended both as a war and propaganda measure, the Emancipation Proclamation initially had far more symbolic than real impact, because the federal government had no means to enforce it at the time. But the document clearly and irrevocably notified the South and the world that the war was being fought not just to preserve the Union, but to put an end to the "peculiar institution." Eventually, as Union armies occupied more and more southern territory, the Proclamation turned into reality, as thousands of slaves were set free by the advancing federal troops.
The proclamation set a national course toward the final abolition of slavery in the United States. No one appreciated better than Lincoln that to make good on the Emancipation Proclamation was dependent on a Union victory. No one was more anxious than Lincoln to take the necessary additional steps to bring about actual freedom. Thus, he proposed that the Republican Party include in its 1864 platform a plank calling for the abolition of slavery by constitutional amendment. The passage of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution on December 18, 1865 declared slavery illegal in every part of the newly restored Union.
The Emancipation Proclamation was, in the words of Professor Allen Guelzo, "the single most far-reaching, even revolutionary, act of any American president." Lincoln rated the Proclamation as the greatest of his accomplishments: "It is the central act of my administration and the great event of the nineteenth century."
