The emancipation proclamation: was Abraham Lincoln a reluctant emancipator or a political genius?

• Author: Majerol, Veronica
• Position: TIME PAST: 1863 - Chronology

Abraham Lincoln spent mid-day greeting visitors at the annual New Year's reception at the Executive Mansion in Washington, D.C.--what we now call the White House. By the time the festivities ended, the president was exhausted, but he had no time to rest. He wanted to take one last look at the final version of the proclamation he was about to sign.

His hands wobbly from all the hands he'd shaken, Lincoln put his unsteady signature on the Emancipation Proclamation and it was released to the world. It was Jan. 1, 1863, the Union was at war with the Confederacy, and the president had just declared that all slaves in the rebel states were "forever free."

Long recognized as the defining act of Lincoln's presidency, the Emancipation Proclamation didn't end slavery outright. But it transformed the nature of the Civil War, helped the Union secure victory, and was a crucial turning point in America's long struggle with race.

A lawyer from Kentucky who'd served four terms in the Illinois legislature and one in the U.S. Congress, Lincoln had always hated slavery. But it wasn't until the 1850s that he committed himself publicly to an antislavery platform. It was during that decade that federal laws like the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and court rulings like the Dred Scott decision, escalated tensions over the issue of slavery.

Secession & Civil War

Lincoln endorsed an antislavery stance that became the rallying cry of the new Republican Party. Its platform called for banning slavery in all federal territories and in Washington, D.C., withdrawing federal protection of slavery on the high seas, and relieving federal officials of their duty to return fugitive slaves to their masters under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.

Lincoln won the presidency in November 1860 with out the support of any Southern states. Within a few weeks of his victory, South Carolina seceded from the Union. And by the time Lincoln was inaugurated on March 4, 1861, six other states had seceded and four more threatened to leave. These 11 states would eventually become the Confederacy under President Jefferson Davis. On April 12, the Confederate bombardment of Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina, marked the beginning of the Civil War.

Lincoln had run for president promising to contain the spread of slavery. But he believed the Union couldn't survive without the loyalty of the slave-holding border states (Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri), so he proceeded cautiously. He also felt constrained by the Constitution, which deliberately avoided using the term slavery but contained clauses that implicitly protected slavery in the states where it already existed.

In August 1861, Lincoln signed the First Confiscation Act. It said any slaves being used to support the rebellion who came within Union lines would be emancipated. But Union soldiers in the South were forbidden to entice slaves working on farms and plantations to leave.

A year later, in July 1862, Lincoln signed an even stronger Second Confiscation Act. It authorized him to issue an order freeing slaves in Confederate territory. Sometime over the following weekend, Lincoln drafted the Emancipation Proclamation and read it to his cabinet on July 22.

William Seward, the secretary of state, urged Lincoln to wait before issuing it. The Union Army had recently suffered a humiliating setback in Virginia...