The human problem, however, was not long in presenting itself and forcing attention.  As soon as the Northern soldiers appeared in the South, thousands of Negroes—­men, women, and children—­flocked to their camps, feeling only that they were going to their friends.  In May, 1861, while in command at Fortress Monroe, Major-General Benjamin F. Butler came into national prominence by his policy of putting to work the men who came within his lines and justifying their retention on the ground that, being of service to the enemy for purposes of war, they were like guns, powder, etc., “contraband of war,” and could not be reclaimed.  On August 30th of this same year Major-General John C. Fremont, in command in Missouri, placed the state under martial law and declared the slaves there emancipated.  The administration was embarrassed, Fremont’s order was annulled, and he was relieved of his command.  On May 9, 1862, Major-General David Hunter, in charge of the Department of the South (South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida) issued his famous order freeing the slaves in his department, and thus brought to general attention the matter of the employment of Negro soldiers in the Union armies.  The Confederate government outlawed Hunter, Lincoln annulled his order, and the grace of the nation was again saved; but in the meantime a new situation had arisen.  While Brigadier-General John W. Phelps was taking part in the expedition against New Orleans, a large sugar-planter near the city, disgusted with Federal interference with affairs on his plantation, drove all his slaves away, telling them to go to their friends, the Yankees.  The Negroes came to Phelps in great numbers, and for the sake of discipline he attempted to organize them into troops.  Accordingly he, too, was outlawed by the Confederates, and his act was disavowed by the Union, that was not ready to take this step.

Meanwhile President Lincoln was debating the Emancipation Proclamation.  Pressure from radical anti-slavery sources was constantly being brought to bear upon him, and Horace Greeley in his famous editorial, “The Prayer of Twenty Millions,” was only one of those who criticized what seemed to be his lack of strength in handling the situation.  After McClellan’s unsuccessful campaign against Richmond, however, he felt that the freedom of the slaves was a military and moral necessity for its effects upon both the North and the South; and Lee’s defeat at Antietam, September 17, 1862, furnished the opportunity for which he had been waiting.  Accordingly on September 22nd he issued a preliminary declaration giving notice that on January 1, 1865, he would free all slaves in the states still in rebellion, and asserting as before that the object of the war was the preservation of the Union.

The Proclamation as finally issued January 1st is one of the most important public documents in the history of the United States, ranking only below the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution itself.  It full text is as follows: