160 years ago, yesterday.

Despite the fact that Abraham Lincoln was a minority President (he won with 39.8% of the vote, which meant 60.2 % of the voters opposed his candidacy- and that he had long stated he was not going to change the status of slavery in those states that practiced it), the Emancipation Proclamation was declared the law of the land on New Year’s Day 1863.

He had hinted at this change in his thinking back in the middle of May, 1862.  That was right after David Hunter, Union Commander of the Department of the South in Hilton Head, had decreed that the slaves of Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina were now free.  Lincoln rescinded that order.  But, he was considering that the war had given him the power to emancipate the enslaved in a stroke. This was a very bold assertion of executive power.  He was advising the nation that he could move forward unilaterally to emancipate the slaves, despite the near century of acceptance that such a practice was legal in certain states.

And, so the Emancipation Proclamation was soon issued,  on 22 September 1862.   At that time, he declared that the Confederate States should abandon the war and rejoin the Union within 100 days [that would be 1 January 1863] or their slaves would be declared “thenceforward, and forever free”.

Basically, this recast the war Between the States  (the Civil War) from being one to preserve the union to one that was end slavery in the USA.  (Lincoln’s May 1862 notice was more formally developed in an article penned in the Daily National Intelligencer in August 1862:

“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.”

(I have been reading the wonderful new book written by Jon Meacham about Lincoln.  “And There Was Light” . This tome puts these events in better perspective [and also allows one to consider the events of 6 January in a different light as well.])

The granting of freedom, according to the proclamation, only applied to those states that seceded from the union. And, since they seceded, it was pretty obvious this proclamation was not going to be immediately implemented.  (“Who died and left you boss?, Mr. Lincoln, would be the typical reaction.   Unless of course, the Union got its ducks in a row and began winning the war.)

What it did mean is that after every battle that the Union fought and won would expand the area where slavery would not be tolerated.   And, it meant that the slaves that had just been liberated were free to join the Union forces.   With 4 million slaves in the South, that was a pretty big pool.

Our Library of Congress holds the original order, with its 5 pages of text. (Even parts of the ribbon that were used to seal the document remain!)

One of the more importune changes of law that came about with the changing of the calendar page.

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