Chapter 32: Lincoln Issues His Emancipation Proclamation

Even before the elections, President Lincoln senses that support for the conflict may be waning. He leverages the good new victory at Antietam with Executive Proclamation 95, issued on September 22, 1862. The Emancipation Proclamation announces that all enslaved persons living in states still in rebellion as of January 1, 1863 shall be considered free.

The order is widely opposed in the north, including reservations from Cabinet members Seward, Welles, Smith and Blair. They fear that it will shift the aim of the war from saving the Union to freeing the slaves, and raise concerns about a flood of unwanted blacks escaping into the north. Abolitionist Frederick Douglas denounces it for failure to free all slaves everywhere.

Lincoln’s motives are tactical and profound. Freeing the enslaved will eliminate the South’s temptation to enlist the upwards of one million fighting age men in the army. But it also signals his emerging conviction that once freed, black assimilation into white society would follow.