Source: Emancipation Memorial, Wikimedia

In July 1862, Abraham Lincoln informed his Cabinet that he intended to free the slaves and showed them a draft of the Emancipation Proclamation. His Cabinet advised Lincoln that he needed to wait for a major Union victory in order to issue the document. Otherwise, it would look like an act of desperation, trying to get the slaves to rise up against their masters because the Union army could not beat the Confederate army.

Lincoln used the battle of Antietam as his significant victory. Both sides lost roughly the same number of soldiers on that bloody day. However, Lincoln used the fact that Lee had to retreat from Maryland back to Virginia afterwards as cause for celebration and emancipation. He signed the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation on Sept. 22, 1862 announcing his intention to formally free the slaves on New Year's Day, 1863.

Primary Source Analysis

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Click here to read an excerpt for the Emancipation Proclamation below and answer the questions that follow using your notes. I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States of America, and Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy thereof, do hereby proclaim . . . that on the first day of January in the year of our Lord, one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State, or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.

Questions

1. Why do you think Abraham Lincoln introduced himself as President and Commander-in-Chief? Interactive popup. Assistance may be required.

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   The Emancipation Proclamation is a wartime decision. Lincoln is emphasizing his role as the commander-in-chief of the military. In addition to the moral reasons to free the slaves, emancipation has potential military benefits especially if Southern slaves rebel against their masters and join the North.
2. What slaves did Lincoln actually free? Interactive popup. Assistance may be required.

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   Lincoln frees the slaves in any state "in rebellion." In other words, he only frees the slaves in the Confederacy.
3. Why do you think that Lincoln did not free all the slaves in the United States, including in those slave states that stayed in the Union? Interactive popup. Assistance may be required.

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   There are four states that have slavery, but remained loyal to the U.S. Lincoln does not want to risk angering them and having them join the Confederacy.

Evolution of Emancipation

Source: Come and Join Us Brothers, Smithsonian

The Emancipation Proclamation did not actually free any slaves. Lincoln only freed the slaves in states under rebellion, which his government does not control. Slaves will become free only as the Union army rolls through the South and takes control of its territory.

It does, however, offer a powerful incentive for slaves to try and join the Northern army as it approached their plantations. Southerner leaders threatened to execute captured Union officers for trying to inspire slave rebellions. Interactive popup. Assistance may be required. Jefferson Davis called the Emancipation Proclamation, "the most execrable (utterly detestable, very bad) measure in the history of the guilty man."

Interactive popup. Assistance may be required. General Sherman will try to inspire slave rebellions by issuing his famous Special Field Order No. 15 promising to any slave who joins his army "forty acres and a mule" to start a farm after the war.

The 13th amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolished slavery everywhere in the country.