Sept. 22, 1862: The Beginning of the End

President Lincoln Writing the Proclamation of Freedom
oil on canvas by David Gilmour Blythe, 1863
(Library of Congress collection)

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….
—from the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, Page 2


On Sept. 22, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, alerting the Confederacy of his intention to free the 3.1 million slaves in the ten states still in rebellion at the time. The four-page document pertained only to persons held as slaves in the rebellious states; another nearly one million slaves existed in seven slave states that were at least partially exempted. The four so-called “border states” — Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri — were not included in the order because they did not secede. Tennessee, though part of the Confederacy, already was occupied by Union forces, as were portions of Louisiana, including New Orleans. Forty-eight Virginia counties were exempted because they were in the process of forming the free state of West Virginia, which joined the Union in June 1863.


First Reading of the Emancipation Proclamation of
President Lincoln (Lincoln and his cabinet)
oil on canvas by Francis Bicknell Carpenter, 1864

Lincoln wrote a draft of the proclamation in July 1862 and presented it to his cabinet on July 22. Some cabinet members wanted the proclamation issued immediately; others urged delaying the order until after the coming election. Lincoln remained adamant that, as Commander in Chief, he possessed the authority to suspend civil law in the rebellious states. He also was of the opinion the proclamation would hasten the end of the war, as the order would not apply to any states that returned to the Union on or before Jan. 1, 1863.

None did. Texas slave owners completely ignored the proclamation. In the other nine Confederate states specifically named in the final version of the document, an estimated 50,000 slaves were freed on the day the proclamation was issued. The remainder gradually gained their freedom over the next two and one-half years.

Instead of encouraging capitulation as the president and his supporters had hoped, the proclamation galvanized the Confederacy, which viewed Lincoln’s order as an arrogant attempt to countermand the laws of a sovereign nation. Robert E. Lee suggested the proclamation was a Union move to bolster its dwindling military ranks with freedmen.

The order also countermanded the wishes of the U.S. Congress, which in an April 1862 attempt to placate Southern slaveholders, declared the federal government would compensate everyone who freed their “property.” The Emancipation Proclamation notably rescinded that offer, authorizing Union forces to employ military muscle in separating slaves from their owners, thereby forcing massive financial losses on struggling Confederates. In effect, the proclamation broke the back of the Confederacy’s economy and its war machine, which relied on slaves to produce and prepare food, build fortifications, repair railways, work in hospitals, and provide other manual labor. Consequently, European countries backed away from providing further aid to the South.

1865 copy of the Emancipation Proclamation
(part of a private collection on display
at the Lincoln Boyhood Memorial)

The proclamation precipitated a vitriolic outcry in the North, as well, because it shifted the focus of the Union’s war effort from reuniting the country to the abolition of slavery. Racism was palpable on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line, and many Northerners found morally unsupportable the idea of fighting a war over the rights of Negroes. Lincoln’s political party lost 28 congressional seats in the October and November elections that year.

While the Emancipation Proclamation officially freed the slaves in ten states when it was issued Jan. 1, 1863, it neither abolished slavery outright nor granted the rights of citizenship to freedmen and their descendants. That required several acts of Congress: The Thirteenth (outlawed slavery), Fourteenth (equal protection), and Fifteenth (voting rights) amendments to the Constitution were ratified in 1865, 1868, and 1870, respectively.

The entire text of the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation is here.

The complete text of the proclamation as issued is here.