Download Student Resource Sheet 3a Why Did Lincoln Issue the

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Student Resource Sheet 3a
LESSON 23
SOCIAL STUDIES
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Why Did Lincoln Issue the Emancipation Proclamation?
For over a year President Lincoln resisted pressures to expand the war’s aims to
include the abolition of slavery. As he told the newspaper editor, Horace Greeley:
My paramount object . . . is to save the Union . . . If I could save the Union
without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all
the slaves, I would do it; and if I could do it by freeing some and leaving
others alone, I would also do that.
Lincoln hoped to persuade the southern states to cease their rebellion and he was worried
about alienating those slave-holding states, like Kentucky, that had remained loyal to the
Union. At most, Lincoln was prepared to support a gradual and voluntary ending of slavery.
By the summer of 1862, Lincoln had become convinced that winning the war required
him to adopt the last of the three alternatives he had stated in his letter to Greeley—
to free those enslaved Africans in the rebellious states. For Lincoln, this partial
emancipation was a military necessity, and he was prepared to use his wartime powers
as commander in chief to carry it out. He believed that the abolition of slavery would
destroy the South’s ability to make war.
Five days after the North’s victory at Antietam (Sharpsburg) in September 1862,
Lincoln issued his preliminary announcement of the Emancipation Proclamation. He
announced that all enslaved Africans in states or parts of states still in rebellion on
January 1, 1863, “shall be then, henceforward, and forever free.” The president’s action
was a small step, justified only as a “fit and necessary war measure.” Critics
denounced it as an empty gesture. It left alone slavery in areas under federal control
and abolished it only where the government then lacked the power to make emancipation a reality. Moreover, had all the Southern states ceased their rebellion before the
January deadline, the war would have ended with slavery intact.
For all its limitations, the Emancipation Proclamation had a very important political
and symbolic significance. The fight for the Union was now committed in principle to a
partial ending of slavery by force of arms. Lincoln had taken the first step in making
the war not only a struggle for the preservation of the Union but for its founding
principles as well. In his annual message to Congress, issued a month before the
Emancipation Proclamation was to take effect, Lincoln outlined a plan for the total
abolition of slavery and declared:
© Copyright 2005 Maryland State Department of Education and Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History and Culture
M
LESSON 23
Student Resource Sheet 3b
607
SOCIAL STUDIES
Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. . . The fiery trial through which we
pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation . . . In
giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free—honoring alike in
what we give, and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the
last best hope of earth.
The Civil War finally resolved this great constitutional issue. The victory of the North also
ended forever the idea of secession as a constitutional right and with it, the vision of the
Union as a mere federation of states. Though states would continue to enjoy a significant
amount of power and independence in the system of federalism created by the
Constitution, the Civil War marked the beginning of a development that has continued
to the present day. This is the supremacy of the national government, with powers
sufficient to promote the “general welfare” of the people as a whole.
The nature of the Union was not the only issue to be resolved in the war’s outcomes.
The issue of slavery had been settled as well. As Lincoln declared at Gettysburg, the
war had made possible “a new birth of freedom.”
From We the People: The Citizen and the Constitution, edited by Center for Civic Education (Calabasas, California:
Center for Civic Education, 1995), p. 120-121.
Guide Questions
1.
What did the Emancipation Proclamation state would happen to slaves?
2.
When would it be effective?
3.
Why did it not apply to all slaves?
4.
Which slaves were affected by the Proclamation, and which were not?
© Copyright 2005 Maryland State Department of Education and Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History and Culture