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Condition: Perfect signature, full margins, minor matte burn from prior framing, very minor mended tears in the margins. Overall, one of the finest copies in existence. The Emancipation Proclamation was the single most important act of Lincoln’s presidency. The preliminary proclamation, announced on September 22, 1862, warned Southern states that if they did not abandon the war they would lose their slaves. As the final version took full effect on January 1, 1863, slavery in the United States at last approached its demise, allowing the nation to take the crucial first steps in granting citizenship to African Americans. Rarely has a single document affected so much of the nation’s history—perhaps no other besides the Declaration of Independence so clearly created the vision of a new future. In sounding the death knell of slavery, the national government took a decisive stand on the most contentious issue in the country’s history. American society was remade in the Northern image, without a counterbalancing “Slave Power” in the national government. The rural, agricultural, slaveholding South gave way as the United States joined several western European nations in embracing a future of industrial capitalism—with all the cultural change that came with it. The text of the Proclamation reveals the major themes of the Civil War: the importance of slavery to the war effort on both sides, the courting of border states, Lincoln’s hopes that the rebellious states could somehow be convinced to come back into the Union, the role of black soldiers, constitutional and popular constraints on emancipation, the future place of black people in American society and America’s place in a worldwide movement toward the abolition of slavery. In addition to the moral impact of this “sincerely believed…act of justice,” the Proclamation aided the Union cause tangibly and decisively. It deprived the Confederacy of essential labor by giving slaves a reason to escape to Union lines. It encouraged the enlistment of black soldiers, who made a crucial contribution to the war effort. It restrained England and France, which had already abolished slavery, from pursuing their economic interests and supporting the Confederacy. Lincoln summed up the Proclamation’s importance in 1864: “[N[o human power can subdue this rebellion without using the Emancipation lever as I have done” (McPherson, 769). As historian John Hope Franklin has written, Lincoln’s Proclamation “was a step toward the extension of the ideal of equality about which Jefferson had written” in the Declaration of Independence. And in time, “the greatness of the document dawned upon the nation and the world. Gradually, it took its place with the great documents of human freedom” (Franklin, 143-144). The Leland-Boker Edition of the Proclamation, Authorized for the Sanitary Commission This “Authorized Edition”
of the Emancipation Proclamation was printed and signed in June of
1864, as a special souvenir to be sold for the Philadelphia Great
Central Sanitary Fair of June 7-29, 1864. A soldier in the Civil War was ten times more likely to die of disease than a soldier in World War I. The Sanitary Fair’s role in ameliorating conditions was of paramount importance, and Lincoln’s support of the Sanitary Commission, though given begrudgingly at first, grew warmly as its work progressed. The Great Central Sanitary Fair, held in Philadelphia’s Logan Square June 7-29, 1864, had the honor of being the only event of its kind attended by President Lincoln. His address, delivered on June 16, caused such an outpouring of emotions among spectators that officials decided it would be dangerous for him to attend another. His impassioned speech explained the importance of the Sanitary Commission’s work: War at its best, is terrible, and this war of ours, in its magnitude and in its duration is one of the most terrible. … it has carried mourning to almost every home, until it can almost be said that the “heavens are hung in black.” Yet the war continues … The Sanitary Commission, with all its benevolent labors ... [has] contributed to the comfort and relief of the soldiers.... The Commission provides voluntary contributions, given zealously, and earnestly, on top of all the disturbances of business, of all the disorders, of all the taxation, and of all the burdens that the war has imposed upon us, giving proof that the national resources are not at all exhausted, and that the national spirit of patriotism is even firmer and stronger than at the commencement of the war (Basler, 394-396). The Sanitary Commission also allowed those at home to feel as if they were a part of the war effort. When Northerners attended fairs, donated money or goods or volunteered their time, they were actively aiding “their” soldiers at the front. Autographs of leading Americans were often sold at the Sanitary Fairs. However, only the Great Central Sanitary Fair commissioned a printing of the Proclamation. The present dramatic printing was created by two eminent Philadelphia men dedicated to the Union and profoundly opposed to slavery. Charles Godfrey Leland (1824-1903) studied with transcendentalist Amos Bronson Alcott as a youth and later attended Princeton. A successful journalist, from 1857 he was the editor of Graham’s magazine, and in 1862 he took charge of the Continental Monthly, a Boston paper dedicated to the Union cause. In that role he later claimed to have “coined the term emancipation as a substitute for the disreputable term abolition” (DAB). In 1863, he enlisted in a Pennsylvania artillery regiment that fought at Gettysburg. George Henry Boker (1823-1890), his partner in this edition of the Emancipation Proclamation, was the scion of a Philadelphia banking family and also attended Princeton. A founder of the Union League Club of Philadelphia, Boker was active in raising funds for the Union wounded and aiding families of soldiers and sailors. During the Civil War, he published a poem, “Tardy George,” critical of General McClellan, and another entitled “Black Regiment.” Only forty-eight copies of this “Authorized Edition” were printed, and signed by Lincoln. We cannot be sure how many survived the war or its aftermath. The Writing of the Emancipation Proclamation Lincoln’s stance on emancipation evolved over the course of the war. At the beginning, he aimed only to keep the Union together, regardless of slavery. In a message to Congress on July 4, 1861, Lincoln restated that he had “no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with slavery in the States where it exists” (McPherson, 312). In 1862, freeing slaves became, in McPherson’s words, “a means to victory, not yet an end in itself,” as the government decided to confiscate slaves as “contraband of war.” Lincoln privately told advisers, “We must free the slaves or be ourselves subdued. The slaves were undeniably an element of strength to those who had their service, and we must decide whether that element should be with us or against us” (McPherson, 504). By 1864, Lincoln insisted on both reunion and emancipation as preconditions of any peace negotiations, even though he was sure it would cost him the election. And by the war’s end the President, who commended black soldiers and sailors for their decisive role in the Union victory, supported not only freedom but suffrage for black veterans. Finally, in promoting the Thirteenth Amendment (1865), which formally ended slavery, Lincoln was finally willing to change the Constitution itself. Major Thomas Thompson Eckert, the chief of the War Department’s telegraph staff, recalled the quiet drama of watching the President draft his famous document. Lincoln often went to the War Department building to wait, head in hands, for telegraphed news of battles. In the first week of July 1862, he asked Eckert for some paper, “as he wanted to write something special.” The president seated himself at Eckert’s desk, took the special foolscap writing paper, picked up a Gillot small barrel pen and began to write what has been regarded as the first draft of the Proclamation. Eckert remembered that Lincoln “would look out of the window a while and then put his pen to paper, but he did not write much at once. He would study between times and when he had made up his mind he would put down a line or two, and then sit quiet for a few minutes “ (Eberstadt, 6). Lincoln returned to Eckert’s office to work on this and other documents almost daily over the next few weeks. By the end, Eckert became “impressed with the idea that he [Lincoln] was engaged upon something of great importance, but did not know what it was until he had finished the document and then for the first time he told me that he had been writing an order giving freedom to the slaves in the South. He said he had been able to work at my desk more quietly and command his thoughts better than at the White House, where he was frequently interrupted” (Eberstadt, 6). Lincoln first informed his cabinet of his intent to issue the proclamation on July 22, 1862. Secretary of State William Seward advised him to wait for a federal victory, fearing the Proclamation would be considered a desperate act if issued before the North won a major battle. Two months later, when federal troops stopped Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s invasion of Maryland at Antietam Creek, Lincoln finally had the opportunity to issue his preliminary Proclamation. Southern and even some Northern newspapers condemned it as a usurpation of property rights and an effort to start racial warfare. During two cabinet meetings at the end of 1862, Lincoln listened to suggestions for final revisions of his draft. Salmon P. Chase, Secretary of the Treasury, proposed one that was adopted: to close the document by invoking the “judgment of mankind and the gracious favor of Almighty God.” Lincoln had always believed slavery to be immoral and had championed against it for most of his political career. However, he also believed that the president did not possess the constitutional power to abolish slavery, except as a matter of military necessity; only Congress had that authority. Furthermore, Lincoln feared that attempting to enact the Proclamation at the wrong time would doom its chances for public acceptance while harming the Union cause. Emancipation threatened one of his most crucial goals in the first half of the war: keeping the support of the slaveholding border states that were still in the Union. Lincoln reportedly said that while he hoped to have God on his side, he must have Kentucky (McPherson, 284). Therefore, the president carefully worded the final document to affect only those states still in rebellion as of January 1, 1863: I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, by virtue of the power in me vested as Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States in time of actual armed rebellion against the authority and government of the United States, and as a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion ... do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated states and parts of states are, and henceforward shall be, free; and that the executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons. ... And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution upon military necessity, I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind and the gracious favor of Almighty God. But in his final Proclamation, Lincoln went beyond the preliminary version . He eliminated earlier references to colonizing freed blacks and compensating slaveowners for voluntary emancipation. He also added provisions for black military enlistment. Pausing before he signed the final Proclamation, Lincoln reportedly said: “I never, in my life, felt more certain that I was doing right that I do in signing this paper.” The Proclamation and Black Troops One of the more controversial and successful aspects of the Proclamation was its support of black troops. Lincoln declared that “such persons of suitable condition will be received into the armed service of the United States to garrison forts, positions, stations, and other places, and to man vessels of all sorts in said service.” The impact was soon revealed. Black men, promised at last that they were fighting for their people’s liberation, redoubled their efforts to join the army, and the army finally accepted them, abandoning the notion that the conflict was “a white man’s war.” Three hundred thousand African-Americans fought for the Union between 1863 and 1865. They would form ten percent of Union forces by the war’s end, performing key roles in the federal victory and giving crucial support to future claims on citizenship. African Americans’ battle for full participation in the army, with equal wages, was yet to be won. But, as in many other ways, this provision of the Emancipation Proclamation marked an important new stage in the evolution of Abraham Lincoln—and the nation. The Myth of Non-Emancipation The Emancipation Proclamation has faced criticism as a document of little actual impact, because it offered freedom only to slaves “within any state or designated part of a state … in rebellion against the United States”—not to slaves in areas that the Union actually controlled. (The March 1862 Confiscation Act had freed slaves in rebellious states, though it only described such slaves as “captives of war” who would not be returned to “claimants.”) Some have therefore challenged the Proclamation’s importance in ending slavery. But in formally tying the Union’s war aims to a policy of abolishing slavery, Lincoln dramatically expanded the scope of the conflict. From black soldiers to European statesmen, from Lincoln’s political enemies in the North to outraged rebels in the South, observers understood that the war, and the future course of the nation, had undergone a fundamental change. Whether they approved or not, after January 1, 1863, Americans no longer could deny that freedom for African Americans was now a central part of the Union war effort. As issued in September 1862, The Proclamation would turn Union forces into armies of liberation after January 1— if they could win the war. And it also invited the slaves to help them win it. Most antislavery Americans and Britons recognized this. “We shout for joy that we live to record this righteous decree,” wrote Frederick Douglass, while William Lloyd Garrison considered it “an act of immense historical consequence” (McPherson, 558). Slaves themselves were instrumental in forcing Lincoln and the Northern public to make emancipation a central goal of the war. In historian Ira Berlin’s words, Lincoln and the slaves played “complementary roles” in bringing about emancipation (Berlin, 284): By abandoning their owners, coming uninvited into Union lines, and offering their assistance as laborers, pioneers, guides, and spies, slaves forced federal soldiers at the lowest level to recognize their importance to the Union’s success. That understanding traveled quickly up the chain of command. In time, it became evident even to the most obtuse federal commanders that every slave who crossed into Union lines was a double gain: one subtracted from the Confederacy and one added to the Union. The slaves’ resolute determination to secure their liberty converted many white Americans to the view that the security of the Union depended upon the destruction of slavery (Berlin, 279-280). But, though slaves could put emancipation on the wartime agenda, “They could not vote, pass laws, issue field orders, or promulgate great proclamations. That was the realm of citizens, legislators, military officers, and the President.” (Berlin, 280). When Lincoln decided to act, he seized the moment and acted decisively. In 1860, Lincoln had been elected with less than half the popular vote in Union states, with no mandate for abolition. By 1863, when his Proclamation took effect, it did find significant support among the Northern public and Union soldiers, demoralized by nearly two years of fighting. An Indiana colonel wrote that few soldiers were abolitionists, but they wanted “to destroy everything that in aught gives the rebels strength,” so “this army will sustain the emancipation proclamation and enforce it with the bayonet” (McPherson, 558-559). But by no means was such acceptance universal. A newspaper editor in New York told a mass meeting that “when the President called upon them to go and carry on a war for the nigger, he would be d___d if he believed they would go” (McPherson, 609). Draft riots in that city in July 1863 constituted the worst mob violence in American history. Threatened with being conscripted to fight a war now bound up with emancipation, rioters targeted black people with beatings, lynchings and the destruction of property, including the burning of the Colored Orphan Asylum. A total of 105 people were killed, eleven of whom were African-American. Even with its limited powers, the Emancipation Proclamation seriously threatened Lincoln’s re-election in 1864. The chairman of the Republican National Committee told the president: [T]he tide is setting strongly against us… Two special causes are assigned to this great reaction in public sentiment,—the want of military success, and the impression…that we can have peace with Union if we would… [but that you are] fighting not for Union but for the abolition of slavery (McPherson, 769). Lincoln denied that emancipation was his only goal but pointed to the 130,000 black soldiers and sailors then fighting for the Union cause: “The promise being made, must be kept… Abandon all the posts now possessed by black men, …& we would be compelled to abandon the war in 3 weeks” (McPherson, 769). He invoked a moral commitment as well: There have been men who have proposed to me to return to slavery the black warriors of Port Hudson and Olustee. I should be damned in time & in eternity for so doing. The world shall know that I will keep my faith to friends & enemies, come what will (McPherson, 769). But Lincoln worried that he had failed to convince the Northern public. He and many others thought he would be defeated in 1864, and his likeliest replacements, including General George B. McClellan, did not support abolition. His campaign was only saved by William Tecumseh Sherman’s decisive military victory in Atlanta, aided by Philip Sheridan’s in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. Emancipation was therefore a precarious undertaking even as late as 1863. Lincoln issued the Proclamation at a precise moment of opportunity, when the exigencies of war made the radical step of abolition possible. The abolitionist cause would not have rallied the Northern public to support the war in 1861. And as students of Reconstruction would recognize, the radicalism that finally did lead to Constitutional amendments granting African Americans freedom, citizenship and suffrage would not survive many years after the war. Though emancipation was not what Lincoln had planned when he was elected, he rightly regarded his Proclamation as “the central act of my administration, and the great event of the nineteenth century” (Eberstadt, 16). As Ira Berlin observes, “The Emancipation Proclamation transformed the war in ways only the President could.” He concludes, The Emancipation Proclamation’s place in the drama of emancipation is thus secure—as is Lincoln’s. To deny it is to ignore the intense struggle by which freedom arrived. It is to ignore the Union soldiers who sheltered slaves, the abolitionists who stumped for emancipation, and the thousands of men and women who—like Lincoln—changed their minds as slaves made the case for universal liberty. Reducing the Emancipation Proclamation to a nullity and Lincoln to a cipher denies human agency as fully as writing the slaves out of the struggle for freedom (Berlin, 283). The Emancipation Proclamation in Global Context The forces behind the “great event” of proclaiming emancipation were not limited to the United States. In ending slavery, America took its place in a worldwide movement that began in the late eighteenth century and continued through the middle of the nineteenth. Western European nations first abolished the slave trade—though enforcement was usually weak—and then slavery itself, out of a combination of economic inducements (such as the Industrial Revolution, which more profitably used free labor) and ideological arguments. By the middle of the nineteenth century, industrializing nations formed a consensus that slavery had no economic or social place in their future. Northerners in America had reached that conclusion in the antebellum era, but they focused their efforts on keeping slavery out of new territories in the West, believing that slavery would eventually die out if confined to its current borders. The Civil War was the necessary catalyst for more direct action. A conflict of ideals and pragmatism had confounded America on the subject of slavery from the nation’s beginnings. The Emancipation Proclamation wedded the ideal and the pragmatic into a single purpose—in its own words, emancipation was “sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution upon military necessity.” The republican ideals protected by a Union victory offered, in Lincoln’s words, the “last, best hope of Earth.” This Leland-Boker Edition shows Lincoln publicly commemorating his Proclamation, at a time when widespread disapproval of it threatened his re-election. By offering signed copies to raise money for the Sanitary Commission, Lincoln directly tied the emancipation of slaves to one of the best examples of Northern public support for the war effort. This rare document captures a dramatic moment in the nation’s history, when the country embraced a new commitment to ending slavery—thereby rededicating itself to the inalienable right of liberty. ________________________________________________________________________ References Basler,
Roy P. The
Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln Vol. 7: 394-396
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