Editing Emancipation Proclamation (section)

==Background==
===Military action prior to emancipation===
The [[Fugitive Slave Act of 1850]] required individuals to return runaway slaves to their owners. During the war, in May 1861, Union general [[Benjamin Butler (politician)|Benjamin Butler]] declared that three slaves who escaped to Union lines were [[contraband (American Civil War)|contraband of war]], and accordingly he refused to return them, saying to a man who sought their return, "I am under no constitutional obligations to a foreign country, which Virginia now claims to be".<ref name="NYT_20110411">{{cite news| url=https://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/03/magazine/mag-03CivilWar-t.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220101/https://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/03/magazine/mag-03CivilWar-t.html |archive-date=2022-01-01 |url-access=limited| date=April 1, 2011| title=How Slavery Really Ended in America| author=Adam Goodheart| work=[[The New York Times]]| access-date=April 3, 2011}}{{cbignore}}</ref> On May 30, after a cabinet meeting called by President Lincoln, "Simon Cameron, the secretary of war, telegraphed Butler to inform him that his contraband policy 'is approved.'"<ref>Oakes, James, ''Freedom National'', p. 99.</ref> This decision was controversial because it could have been taken to imply [[diplomatic recognition|recognition]] of the Confederacy as a separate, independent sovereign state under international law, a notion that Lincoln steadfastly denied. In addition, as contraband, these people were legally designated as "property" when they crossed Union lines and their ultimate status was uncertain.<ref>{{cite web | url=http://www.nps.gov/cwdw/historyculture/living-contraband-former-slaves-in-the-capital-during-and-after-the-civil-war.htm | title=Living Contraband – Former Slaves in the Nation's Capital During the Civil War | work=Civil War Defenses of Washington | publisher=National Park Service | access-date=June 29, 2013}}</ref>

===Governmental action toward emancipation===
<imagemap>
Image:Emancipation proclamation.jpg|thumb|upright=1.25|''[[First Reading of the Emancipation Proclamation of President Lincoln]]'' by [[Francis Bicknell Carpenter]] (1864) {{Clickable|use cursor to identify.}}|alt=A dark-haired, bearded, middle-aged man holding documents is seated among seven other men.]]

poly 269 892 254 775 193 738 130 723 44 613 19 480 49 453 75 434 58 376 113 344 133 362 143 423 212 531 307 657 357 675 409 876 [[Edwin M. Stanton|Edwin Stanton]]
poly 169 282 172 244 244 201 244 148 265 117 292 125 305 166 304 204 321 235 355 296 374 348 338 395 341 469 [[Salmon P. Chase|Salmon Chase]]
poly 569 893 535 708 427 613 357 562 377 456 393 404 468 351 451 317 473 259 520 256 544 283 530 339 526 374 559 401 594 431 639 494 715 542 692 551 693 579 672 546 623 552 596 617 698 629 680 852 [[Abraham Lincoln]]
poly 692 514 740 441 788 407 772 350 800 303 831 297 861 329 867 381 868 409 913 430 913 471 847 532 816 533 709 533 [[Gideon Welles]]
poly 703 783 752 769 825 627 907 620 929 569 905 538 886 563 833 563 873 502 930 450 1043 407 1043 389 1036 382 1042 363 1058 335 1052 333 1052 324 1081 318 1124 338 1133 374 1116 412 1132 466 1145 509 1117 588 1087 632 1083 706 [[William H. Seward|William Seward]]
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poly 625 555 595 620 699 625 730 550 [[Emancipation Proclamation]]
poly 120 80 120 300 3 300 3 80 [[Simon Cameron|Portrait of Simon Cameron]]
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In December 1861, Lincoln sent his first annual message to Congress (the [[State of the Union Address]], but then typically given in writing and not referred to as such). In it he praised the free labor system for respecting human rights over property rights; he endorsed legislation to address the status of contraband slaves and slaves in loyal states, possibly through buying their freedom with federal money; and he endorsed federal funding of voluntary colonization.<ref>[https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-speeches/december-3-1861-first-annual-message December 3, 1861: First Annual Message: Transcript]</ref><ref>{{cite book|last=Striner|first=Richard|title=Father Abraham: Lincoln's Relentless Struggle to End Slavery|year=2006|publisher=Oxford University Press|pages=[https://archive.org/details/fatherabrahamlin0000stri/page/147 147–148]|isbn=978-0-19-518306-1|url=https://archive.org/details/fatherabrahamlin0000stri/page/147}}</ref> In January 1862, [[Thaddeus Stevens]], the [[History of the United States Republican Party|Republican]] leader in the [[United States House of Representatives|House]], called for total war against the rebellion to include emancipation of slaves, arguing that emancipation, by forcing the loss of enslaved labor, would ruin the rebel economy. On March 13, 1862, Congress approved an [[Act Prohibiting the Return of Slaves]], which prohibited "All officers or persons in the military or naval service of the United States" from returning fugitive slaves to their owners.<ref>[http://www.freedmen.umd.edu/artwar.htm "Law Enacting an Additional Article of War" (the official name of the statute).]</ref> Pursuant to a law signed by Lincoln, slavery was abolished in the [[Geography of Washington, D.C.|District of Columbia]] on April 16, 1862, and owners were compensated.<ref>{{cite web |last=Mann |first=Lina |title=The Complexities of Slavery in the Nation's Capital |url=https://www.whitehousehistory.org/the-complexities-of-slavery-in-the-nations-capital |access-date=2020-09-20 |website=White House Historical |language=en}}</ref>

On June 19, 1862, Congress prohibited slavery in all current and future [[Organized incorporated territories of the United States#List of organized incorporated territories|United States territories]] (though not in the states), and President Lincoln quickly signed the legislation. This act effectively repudiated the 1857 opinion of the [[Supreme Court of the United States]] in the ''[[Dred Scott v. Sandford|Dred Scott]]'' case that Congress was powerless to regulate slavery in U.S. territories.<ref>Guminski, Arnold. ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=5uFS7SOBHd8C&dq=%22June+19%2C+1862%22+slavery+Lincoln&pg=PA241 The Constitutional Rights, Privileges, and Immunities of the American People]'', page 241 (2009).
</ref><ref>
Richardson, Theresa and Johanningmeir, Erwin. ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=K_7Tba0v3ogC&dq=%22June+19%2C+1862%22+slavery+Lincoln&pg=PA129 Race, ethnicity, and education]'', page 129 (IAP 2003).
</ref> It also rejected the notion of [[popular sovereignty]] that had been advanced by [[Stephen A. Douglas]] as a solution to the slavery controversy, while completing the effort first legislatively proposed by [[Thomas Jefferson]] in 1784 to confine slavery within the borders of existing states.<ref>Montgomery, David. ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=A24AAAAAYAAJ&dq=%22June+19%2C+1862%22+slavery+Lincoln&pg=PA428 The Student's American History]'', p. 428 (Ginn & Co. 1897).
</ref><ref>
Keifer, Joseph. ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=GBq0gjrfxRgC&dq=%22June+19%2C+1862%22+slavery+Lincoln&pg=PA109 Slavery and Four Years of War]'', p. 109 (Echo Library 2009).</ref>

On August 6, 1861, the [[Confiscation Act of 1861|First Confiscation Act]] freed the slaves who were employed "against the Government and lawful authority of the United States."<ref>[http://www.freedmen.umd.edu/conact1.htm First Confiscation Act]</ref> On July 17, 1862, the [[Confiscation Act of 1862|Second Confiscation Act]] freed the slaves "within any place occupied by rebel forces and afterwards occupied by forces of the United States."<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.history.umd.edu/Freedmen/conact2.htm |title=The Second Confiscation Act, July 17, 1862 |publisher=History.umd.edu |access-date=May 29, 2011 |archive-date=August 6, 2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080806144911/http://www.history.umd.edu/Freedmen/conact2.htm |url-status=dead }}</ref> The Second Confiscation Act, unlike the First Confiscation Act, explicitly provided that all slaves covered by it would be permanently freed, stating in section 10 that "all slaves of persons who shall hereafter be engaged in rebellion against the government of the United States, or who shall in any way give aid or comfort thereto, escaping from such persons and taking refuge within the lines of the army; and all slaves captured from such persons or deserted by them and coming under the control of the government of the United States; and all slaves of such person found on [or] being within any place occupied by rebel forces and afterwards occupied by the forces of the United States, shall be deemed captives of war, and shall be forever free of their servitude, and not again held as slaves."<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.freedmen.umd.edu/conact2.htm|title=The Second Confiscation Act, July 17, 1862|website=www.freedmen.umd.edu}}</ref> However, Lincoln's position continued to be that, although Congress lacked the power to free the slaves in rebel-held states, he, as commander in chief, could do so if he deemed it a proper military measure.<ref>Donald, David. ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=fuTY3mxs9awC&q=Second+Confiscation+Act Lincoln]'', p. 365 (Simon and Schuster, 1996)</ref> By this time, in the summer of 1862, Lincoln had drafted the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, which he issued on September 22, 1862. It declared that, on January 1, 1863, he would free the slaves in states still in rebellion.<ref name=Dear/>

===Public opinion of emancipation===
[[File:Gordon, scourged back, NPG, 1863.jpg|thumb|upright|''[[Carte de visite]]'' image of [[Peter (enslaved man)|Peter]], taken in [[Baton Rouge, Louisiana|Baton Rouge]] spring 1863; widely distributed by abolitionists to expose the brutality of slavery]]

[[Abolitionism in the United States|Abolitionists]] had long been urging Lincoln to free all slaves. In the summer of 1862, Republican editor [[Horace Greeley]] of the highly influential ''[[New-York Tribune]]'' wrote a famous editorial entitled "The Prayer of Twenty Millions" demanding a more aggressive attack on the Confederacy and faster emancipation of the slaves: "On the face of this wide earth, Mr. President, there is not one ... intelligent champion of the Union cause who does not feel ... that the rebellion, if crushed tomorrow, would be renewed if slavery were left in full vigor and that every hour of deference to slavery is an hour of added and deepened peril to the Union."<ref>{{cite book |first=Harold |last=Holzer |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=05ggngEACAAJ |title=Dear Mr. Lincoln: Letters to the President |publisher=Southern Illinois University Press |date=2006 |pages=160–161 |edition=second |isbn=978-0-8093-2686-0}}</ref> Lincoln responded in his open [[q:Abraham Lincoln#Letter to Horace Greeley (1862)|letter to Horace Greeley]] of August 22, 1862:

{{Blockquote|If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time ''save'' slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time ''destroy'' slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle ''is'' to save the Union, and is ''not'' either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing ''any'' slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing ''all'' the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do ''not'' believe it would help to save the Union.... I have here stated my purpose according to my view of ''official'' duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed ''personal'' wish that all men everywhere could be free.<ref>{{cite book |title=The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln |editor-first=Roy P. |editor-last=Basler |volume=V: 1861–1862 |pages=[https://books.google.com/books?id=Q4ysBXMyg8UC&pg=PA388 388]–[https://books.google.com/books?id=Q4ysBXMyg8UC&pg=PA389 389] |publisher=Rutgers University Press |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Q4ysBXMyg8UC&pg=PA388 |location=New Brunswick |date=1953|isbn=9781434477071 }}</ref>}}

Lincoln scholar [[Harold Holzer]] wrote about Lincoln's letter: "Unknown to Greeley, Lincoln composed this after he had already drafted a preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, which he had determined to issue after the next Union military victory. Therefore, this letter, was in truth, an attempt to position the impending announcement in terms of saving the Union, not freeing slaves as a humanitarian gesture. It was one of Lincoln's most skillful public relations efforts, even if it has cast longstanding doubt on his sincerity as a liberator."<ref name=Dear>{{cite book |first=Harold |last=Holzer |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=05ggngEACAAJ |title=Dear Mr. Lincoln: Letters to the President |publisher=Southern Illinois University Press |date=2006 |page=162 |edition=2nd |isbn=978-0-8093-2686-0}}</ref> Historian [[Richard Striner]] argues that "for years" Lincoln's letter has been misread as "Lincoln only wanted to save the Union."<ref name="Striner">{{cite book |last=Striner |first=Richard |title=Father Abraham: Lincoln's Relentless Struggle to End Slavery |year=2006 |publisher=Oxford University Press |page=[https://archive.org/details/fatherabrahamlin0000stri/page/176 176] |isbn=978-0-19-518306-1 |url=https://archive.org/details/fatherabrahamlin0000stri/page/176}}</ref> However, within the context of Lincoln's entire career and pronouncements on slavery this interpretation is wrong, according to Striner. Rather, Lincoln was softening the strong Northern white supremacist opposition to his imminent emancipation by tying it to the cause of the Union. This opposition would fight for the Union but not to end slavery, so Lincoln gave them the means and motivation to do both, at the same time.<ref name="Striner"/> In effect, then, Lincoln may have already chosen the third option he mentioned to Greeley: "freeing some and leaving others alone"; that is, freeing slaves in the states still in rebellion on January 1, 1863, but leaving enslaved those in the [[Border states (American Civil War)|border states]] and Union-occupied areas.

Nevertheless, in the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation itself, Lincoln said that he would recommend to Congress that it compensate states that "adopt, immediate, or gradual abolishment of slavery". In addition, during the hundred days between September 22, 1862, when he issued the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, and January 1, 1863, when he issued the Final Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln took actions that suggest that he continued to consider the first option he mentioned to Greeley — saving the Union without freeing any slave — a possibility. Historian [[William W. Freehling]] wrote, "From mid-October to mid-November 1862, he sent personal envoys to Louisiana, Tennessee, and Arkansas".<ref>Freehling, William W. (2001). ''The South vs. The South: How Anti-Confederate Southerners Shaped the Course of the Civil War'', New York: Oxford University Press, p. 111.</ref><ref> Cohen, Henry, [https://static1.squarespace.com/static/61e83d709f319913599d9eff/t/65654294056d981e17a815ec/1701135003723/2023+%2354+LF+Fall+Bulletin++%E2%80%93+WEB.pdf "Was Lincoln Disingenuous in His Greeley Letter?"], ''The Lincoln Forum Bulletin'', Issue 54, Fall 2023, pp. 8-9.</ref> Each of these envoys carried with him a letter from Lincoln stating that if the people of their state desired "to avoid the unsatisfactory" terms of the Final Emancipation Proclamation "and to have peace again upon the old terms" (''i.e.'', with slavery intact), they should rally "the largest number of the people possible" to vote in "elections of members to the Congress of the United States ... friendly to their object".<ref>[https://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/lincoln5/1:1126.1?rgn=div2;view=fulltext ''Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln'', Vol. 5, pp. 462-463, 470, 500.]</ref> Later, in his [[State of the Union|Annual Message to Congress]] of December 1, 1862, Lincoln proposed an amendment to the [[Constitution of the United States|U.S. Constitution]] providing that any state that abolished slavery before January 1, 1900, would receive compensation from the United States in the form of interest-bearing U.S. bonds. Adoption of this amendment, in theory, could have ended the war without ever permanently ending slavery, because the amendment provided, "Any State having received bonds ... and afterwards reintroducing or tolerating slavery therein, shall refund to the United States the bonds so received, or the value thereof, and all interest paid thereon".<ref>[https://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/lincoln5/1:1126.1?rgn=div2;view=fulltext ''Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln'', Vol. 5, p. 530.]</ref>

In his 2014 book, ''[[Lincoln's Gamble]]'', journalist and historian [[Todd Brewster]] asserted that Lincoln's desire to reassert the saving of the Union as his sole war goal was, in fact, crucial to his claim of legal authority for emancipation. Since slavery was protected by the Constitution, the only way that he could free the slaves was as a tactic of war—not as the mission itself.<ref name="Brewster">{{cite book| last=Brewster| first=Todd| title=Lincoln's Gamble: The Tumultuous Six Months that Gave America the Emancipation Proclamation and Changed the Course of the Civil War|year=2014|publisher=Scribner|page=59|isbn=978-1451693867}}</ref> But that carried the risk that when the war ended, so would the justification for freeing the slaves. Late in 1862, Lincoln asked his Attorney General, [[Edward Bates]], for an opinion as to whether slaves freed through a war-related proclamation of emancipation could be re-enslaved once the war was over. Bates had to work through the language of the ''Dred Scott'' decision to arrive at an answer, but he finally concluded that they could indeed remain free. Still, a complete end to slavery would require a constitutional amendment.<ref>{{cite book |last=Brewster |first=Todd |title=Lincoln's Gamble: The Tumultuous Six Months that Gave America the Emancipation Proclamation and Changed the Course of the Civil War |year=2014 |publisher=Scribner |page=236 |isbn=978-1451693867}}</ref>

Conflicting advice as to whether to free the slaves was presented to Lincoln in public and private. [[Thomas Nast]], a cartoon artist during the Civil War and the late 1800s considered "Father of the American Cartoon", composed many works, including a two-sided spread that showed the transition from slavery into civilization after President Lincoln signed the Proclamation. Nast believed in equal opportunity and equality for all people, including enslaved Africans or free blacks. A mass rally in Chicago on September 7, 1862, demanded immediate and universal emancipation of slaves. A delegation headed by [[William W. Patton]] met the president at the [[White House]] on September 13. Lincoln had declared in peacetime that he had no constitutional authority to free the slaves. Even used as a war power, emancipation was a risky political act. Public opinion as a whole was against it.<ref>{{harvnb|Guelzo|2006|p=[https://books.google.com/books?id=MOFHPTQYqzgC&pg=PA18 18]}}</ref> There would be strong opposition among [[Copperhead (politics)|Copperhead]] Democrats and an uncertain reaction from loyal border states. Delaware and Maryland already had a high percentage of free blacks: 91.2% and 49.7%, respectively, in 1860.<ref>{{cite book |first=Peter |last=Kolchin |title=American Slavery: 1619–1877 |location=New York |publisher=Hill and Wang |date=1994 |page=82 |isbn=978-0-8090-1554-2}}</ref>