Editing Emancipation Proclamation (section)

===Political impact===
{{more citations needed section|date=September 2020}}
[[File:TRUMP.JPG|thumb|"Abe Lincoln's Last Card; Or, Rouge-et-Noir" (Red and Black), a cartoon by [[John Tenniel]] printed by ''Punch''{{Refn|''Punch'', Volume 43, October 18, 1862, p.&nbsp;161}} after the ''London Times'' wrote in October 1862 that Lincoln had played his "last card" in issuing the Proclamation.<ref>{{cite web | url=http://www.millikensbend.org/articles-docs/london-times/lt-01-003.html | title=London Times Editorial | date=October 6, 1862 | access-date=November 28, 2012}}</ref><ref>{{cite web | url=http://www.mrlincolnandfreedom.org/inside.asp?ID=45&subjectID=3 | title=International Reaction}}</ref> Lincoln's hair is in points, suggesting horns. The cartoon was reprinted often in the [[Copperheads (politics)|Copperhead]] press.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.historygallery.com/prints/PunchLincoln/1862lastcard/1862lastcard.htm |title=Abe Lincoln's Last Card|date=October 18, 1862 }}</ref><ref>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=aQQXbIE--ggC&q=London%20Times%20freeing%20the%20slaves%20Lincoln's%20%22desperate%20last-trump%20card%22&pg=PA236-IA10 |title=Abraham Lincoln, a Press Portrait: His Life and Times from the Original Newspaper Documents of the Union, the Confederacy, and Europe |first=Herbert |last=Mitgang |publisher=Fordham University Press |year=2000 |isbn=978-0-8232-2062-5}}</ref>{{page needed|date=September 2020}}]]
<!--http://www.shipofstate.com/prints/PunchLincoln/1862lastcard/1862lastcard.htm has more detail about poem on same page in ''Punch'', but, as a commercial site, is probably not an appropriate ref-->

The Proclamation was immediately denounced by [[Copperheads (politics)|Copperhead Democrats]], who opposed the war and advocated restoring the union by allowing slavery. [[Horatio Seymour]], while running for governor of New York, cast the Emancipation Proclamation as a call for slaves to commit extreme acts of violence on all white southerners, saying it was "a proposal for the butchery of women and children, for scenes of lust and rapine, and of arson and murder, which would invoke the interference of civilized Europe".<ref name="Weber">{{cite book |last=Weber |first=Jennifer L. |url=https://archive.org/details/copperheads00jenn |title=Copperheads: The Rise and Fall of Lincoln's Opponents in the North |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2006 |isbn=978-0-19-530668-2 |location=New York City |page=64 |url-access=registration}}</ref> The Copperheads also saw the Proclamation as an unconstitutional abuse of presidential power. Editor Henry A. Reeves wrote in Greenport's ''Republican Watchman'' that "In the name of freedom for Negroes, [the proclamation] imperils the liberty of white men; to test an utopian theory of equality of races which Nature, History and Experience alike condemn as monstrous, it overturns the Constitution and Civil Laws and sets up Military Usurpation in their stead."<ref name="Weber"/>

Racism remained pervasive on both sides of the conflict and many in the North supported the war only as an effort to force the South to stay in the Union. The promises of many Republican politicians that the war was to restore the Union and not about black rights or ending slavery were declared lies by their opponents, who cited the Proclamation. In Columbiana, Ohio, Copperhead David Allen told a crowd, "Now fellow Democrats I ask you if you are going to be forced into a war against your Britheren<!--quote in cited source uses 'i', not 'e'--> of the Southern States for the Negro. I answer No!"<ref name=":2">{{Cite book |last=Weber |first=Jennifer L. |url=https://archive.org/details/copperheads00jenn |title=Copperheads: The Rise and Fall of Lincoln's Opponents in the North |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2006 |isbn=978-0-19-530668-2 |location=New York City |page=65 |url-access=registration}}</ref> The Copperheads saw the Proclamation as irrefutable proof of their position and the beginning of a political rise for their members; in Connecticut, H. B. Whiting wrote that the truth was now plain even to "those stupid thickheaded persons who persisted in thinking that the President was a conservative man and that the war was for the restoration of the Union under the Constitution."<ref name=":2" />

[[War Democrats]], who rejected the Copperhead position within their party, found themselves in a quandary. While throughout the war they had continued to espouse the racist positions of their party and their disdain of the concerns of slaves, they did see the Proclamation as a viable military tool against the South and worried that opposing it might demoralize troops in the Union army. The question would continue to trouble them and eventually lead to a split within their party as the war progressed.<ref name=":2" />

Lincoln further alienated many in the Union two days after issuing the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation by [[Habeas corpus in the United States#Presidential suspension of habeas corpus|suspending habeas corpus]]. His opponents linked these two actions in their claims that he was becoming a despot. In light of this and a lack of military success for the Union armies, many War Democrat voters who had previously supported Lincoln turned against him and joined the Copperheads in the off-year elections held in October and November.<ref name=":2" />

In the [[United States House of Representatives elections, 1862|1862 elections]], the Democrats gained 28 seats in the House as well as the governorship of New York. Lincoln's friend Orville Hickman Browning told the president that the Proclamation and the suspension of habeas corpus had been "disastrous" for his party by handing the Democrats so many weapons. Lincoln made no response. Copperhead William Jarvis of Connecticut pronounced the election the "beginning of the end of the utter downfall of [[Abolitionism in the United States|Abolitionism]]".<ref name=":1">{{Cite book |last=Weber |first=Jennifer L. |url=https://archive.org/details/copperheads00jenn |title=Copperheads: The Rise and Fall of Lincoln's Opponents in the North |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2006 |isbn=978-0-19-530668-2 |location=New York City |page=69 |url-access=registration}}</ref>

Historians James M. McPherson and Allan Nevins state that though the results looked very troubling, they could be seen favorably by Lincoln; his opponents did well only in their historic strongholds and "at the national level their gains in the House were the smallest of any minority party's in an off-year election in nearly a generation. Michigan, California, and Iowa all went Republican.... Moreover, the Republicans picked up five seats in the Senate."<ref name=":1" /> McPherson states, "If the election was in any sense a referendum on emancipation and on Lincoln's conduct of the war, a majority of Northern voters endorsed these policies."<ref name=":1" />

====Confederate response====
[[File:Negroes Leaving Home - April 9 1864 issue Harper's Weekly - uncropped, Internet Archive copy.jpg|thumb|"NEGROES LEAVING THEIR HOME: The view on page 237 illustrates a phase of the war which the rebels have found it difficult to contemplate with any complacency. The exodus of the slaves from the bondage which has so long oppressed them has been steady and continuous from the moment the first blow was struck against the national honor, and it still goes on, hundreds and thousands of the poor, outraged creatures cowing weekly into tho Union lines at all points in the field. Our sketch gives an admirable view of the desolation which surrounds the homes of the negroes, and the heartiness and energy with which they make their way to freedom upon the slightest opportunity. The Federal gun-boat, it will be seen, lies far out at sea, but the sharp eyes of the waiting, watching bondmen have caught sight of the flag she carries; they know there is shelter under it for them, and launching their little boat, they carefully put the aged and infirm, with their few more valuable effects, aboard, and, with a pang, it may be, at leaving their rude home, but with hope and joy in their hearts at the prospect of deliverance, pull away from the shore, which henceforth is to be to them only a dark dreary line marking a yet darker past. There is pathos as well as history in the picture." (''Harper's Weekly'', April 9, 1864)]]
The initial Confederate response was outrage. The Proclamation was seen as vindication of the rebellion and proof that Lincoln would have abolished slavery even if the states had remained in the Union.<ref>{{cite web|title=The Rebel Message: What Jefferson Davis Has to Say|url=http://infoweb.newsbank.com/iw-search/we/HistArchive/?p_product=EANX-K12&p_theme=ahnp_k12&p_nbid=E59Q56PUMTMyNTY5MTAwNy4yOTAyNjM6MToxMzozOC4xMDUuOTYuMjM4&p_action=timelinedoc&p_docref=v2:11A050B7B120D3F8@EANX-11AE489CABB99E68@2401523-11AE489CB81982E0@0-11AE489D1F55ED48@The+Rebel+Message.+The+Document+in+Full.+What+Jeff.+Davis+Says+of+President+Lincoln%27s+Emancipation+Proclamation&d_doclabel=The+Rebel+Message%3A+What+Jefferson+Davis+Has+to+Say|work=New York Herald|publisher=America's Historical Newspapers|access-date=January 4, 2012}}</ref> It intensified the fear of slaves revolting and undermined morale, especially spurring fear among slave owners who saw it as a threat to their business.<ref>{{cite web |title=The Emancipation Proclamation: Striking a Mighty Blow to Slavery |url=https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stories/emancipation-proclamation-striking-mighty-blow-slavery |website=[[National Museum of African History and Culture]] – Smithsonian |publisher=[[Smithsonian]] |access-date=13 February 2024}}</ref> In an August 1863 letter to President Lincoln, U.S. Army general [[Ulysses S. Grant]] observed that the proclamation's "arming the negro", together with "the emancipation of the negro, is the heavyest [''sic''] blow yet given the Confederacy. The South rave a greatdeel [''sic''] about it and profess to be very angry."<ref>{{cite web|quote=I have given the subject of arming the Negro my hearty support. This, with the emancipation of the Negro, is the heaviest blow yet given the Confederacy. The South rave a greatdeel about it and profess to be very angry. |first=Ulysses |last=Grant |author-link=Ulysses S. Grant |url=http://www.civil-war-tribute.com/us-grant-letter-to-lincoln-08231863.htm |location=Cairo, Illinois |title=Letter to Abraham Lincoln |date=August 23, 1863 |access-date=May 3, 2014 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140503212700/http://www.civil-war-tribute.com/us-grant-letter-to-lincoln-08231863.htm |archive-date=May 3, 2014 }}</ref> In May 1863, a few months after the Proclamation took effect, the Confederacy passed a law demanding "full and ample retaliation" against the U.S. for such measures. The Confederacy stated that black U.S. soldiers captured while fighting against the Confederacy would be tried as slave insurrectionists in civil courts—a capital offense with an automatic sentence of death. Less than a year after the law's passage, the Confederates massacred black U.S. soldiers at [[Battle of Fort Pillow|Fort Pillow]].<ref>{{Cite book|first=Bruce|last=Tap|title=The Fort Pillow Massacre: North, South, and the Status of African Americans in the Civil War Era|publisher=Routledge|date=2013}}</ref>{{page needed|date=September 2020}}

Confederate President [[Jefferson Davis]] reacted to the Emancipation Proclamation with outrage and in an address to the Confederate Congress on January 12 threatened to send any U.S. military officer captured in Confederate territory covered by the proclamation to state authorities to be charged with "exciting servile insurrection", which was a capital offense.<ref>{{cite web | url=http://www.awb.com/dailydose/?p=822 | title=January 12, 1863: Jefferson Davis responds to the Emancipation Proclamation &#124; the Daily Dose | access-date=January 13, 2023 | archive-date=January 13, 2023 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230113000330/http://www.awb.com/dailydose/?p=822 | url-status=dead }}</ref>

Confederate General [[Robert E. Lee]] called the Proclamation a "savage and brutal policy he has proclaimed, which leaves us no alternative but success or degradation worse than death."<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20210514095239/https://leefamilyarchive.org/family-papers/letters/letters-1863/9-family-papers/1180-robert-e-lee-to-james-a-seddon-1863-january-10 Lee Family Digital Archive]</ref>

However, some Confederates welcomed the Proclamation, because they believed it would strengthen pro-slavery sentiment in the Confederacy and thus lead to greater enlistment of white men into the Confederate army. According to one Confederate cavalry sergeant from Kentucky, "The Proclamation is worth three hundred thousand soldiers to our Government at least.... It shows exactly what this war was brought about for and the intention of its damnable authors."<ref>{{Cite book|last=McPherson|first=James M.|date=1997|url=https://archive.org/details/forcausecomrades00mcph|url-access=registration|title=For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War|publisher=Oxford University Press|page=[https://archive.org/details/forcausecomrades00mcph/page/107 107]|location=New York City|author-link=James M. McPherson|isbn=0-19-509-023-3|oclc=34912692|access-date=March 8, 2016}}</ref> Even some Union soldiers concurred with this view and expressed reservations about the Proclamation, not on principle, but rather because they were afraid it would increase the Confederacy's determination to fight on and maintain slavery. One Union soldier from New York stated worryingly after the Proclamation's issuance, "I know enough of the southern spirit that I think they will fight for the institution of slavery even to extermination."<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/forcausecomrades00mcph|url-access=registration|title=For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War|publisher=Oxford University Press|page=[https://archive.org/details/forcausecomrades00mcph/page/108 108]|location=New York City|author-link=James M. McPherson|last=McPherson|first=James M.|date=1997|isbn=0-19-509-023-3|oclc=34912692|access-date=March 8, 2016}}</ref>

As a result of the Proclamation, the price of slaves in the Confederacy increased in the months after its issuance, with one Confederate from South Carolina opining in 1865 that "now is the time for Uncle to buy some negro women and children...."<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/forcausecomrades00mcph|url-access=registration|title=For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War|publisher=Oxford University Press|page=[https://archive.org/details/forcausecomrades00mcph/page/108 108]|location=New York City|author-link=James M. McPherson|last=McPherson|first=James M.|date=1997|isbn=0-19-509-023-3|access-date=March 8, 2016|oclc=34912692}}</ref>