%441.  Emancipation of the Slaves%.—­More than two years had now passed since South Carolina had seceded, and during this time a great change had taken place in the feeling of the North towards slavery.  When Lincoln was inaugurated, very few people wanted the slaves emancipated.  But two years of bloody fighting had convinced the North that the Union could not exist part slave, part free.  As Lincoln said in his speech at Springfield in 1858, “It must be all one thing, or all the other.”  Seeing that the people now felt as he did, Lincoln, in 1862 (March 6), asked Congress to agree to buy the slaves of the loyal slave states, and urged the members of Congress from those states to advise their constituents to set free their slaves and receive $300 apiece for them.  This they would not do; whereupon he decided to act upon his own authority, and declared all slaves within the lines of the Confederacy to be freemen.

For this he had two good reasons:  1.  So far the war had been one for the preservation of the Union.  By making it a war for union and freedom the North would become more earnest than ever. 2.  The rulers of England, who wanted Southern cotton, were only waiting for a pretext to acknowledge the independence of the South.  If, however, the North engaged in a war for the abolition of slavery, the people of England would not allow the independence of the Confederacy to be acknowledged by their rulers.

The time to make such a declaration was after some victory gained by the Union army.  When McClellan and Lee stood face to face at Antietam, Lincoln therefore “vowed to God” that if Lee were defeated he would issue the proclamation.  Lee was defeated, and, on September 22, 1862, the proclamation came forth declaring that if the Confederate States did not return to their allegiance before January 1, 1863, “all persons held as slaves” within the Confederate lines “shall be then, thenceforth, and forever free.”  The states of course did not return to their allegiance, and on January 1, 1863, a second proclamation was issued setting the slaves free.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Nicolay and Hay’s Life of Lincoln, Vol.  VI., Chaps. 6, 8.]

Now, there are three things in connection with the Emancipation Proclamation which must be understood and remembered: 

1.  Lincoln did not abolish slavery anywhere.  He emancipated or set free the slaves of certain persons engaged in waging war against the United States government.

2.  The Emancipation Proclamation did not apply to any of the loyal slave states,[1] nor to such territory as the Union army had reconquered.[2] In none of these places did it free slaves.

[Footnote 1:  Delaware, Maryland, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri.]

[Footnote 2:  Tennessee, thirteen parishes in Louisiana, and seven counties in Virginia.]

3.  Lincoln freed the slaves by virtue of his power as commander in chief of the army of the United States, “and as a fit and necessary war measure.”