How Did Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation Work?

changed nothing. The proclamation only covered the Confederate States, where Congress had already passed laws essentially outlawing enslavement. Lincoln the politician didn't want to risk alienating his voters in the border states, and he didn't issue the proclamation until January first of eighteen sixty three, two years after the Civil War began. So what took Lincoln so long? He was waiting for a big Union win. Issuing such a decree while the North was losing the war would have looked

like an unenforceable, hollow threat. He got his win at Antietam in the fall of eighteen sixty two, which turned the tide. But unless they've lived in a state that had abolished the institution of slavery. Enslaved people living in the Union had to wait for their freedom until December of eighteen sixty five, after Lincoln's assassination for the passage of the thirteenth Amendment, which nationally abolished the practice, and

many people in the South waited nearly as long. June nineteenth of eighteen sixty five was the day that news of the proclamation finally reached parts of Texas, with the Union soldiers two and a half years after it was issued and two months after the Confederacy surrendered. The day is now observed as June teenth. The Emancipation Proclamation wasn't necessarily meant to free anyone. It was part of Lincoln's

strategy to demoralize the South, and it worked. Poorer white people in the South were upset the war's cause could no longer be claimed to be about states' rights. They resented fighting to protect the quote unquote property of wealthy landowners who themselves could buy their way out of having to serve in the Confederate Army. Additionally, the proclamation ended the quiet support that European countries like England and France

had given the Confederacy. Early in the war, the South had hoped that these European powers would officially recognize the Confederacy as an independent country, but England and France had abolished slavery decades earlier and would not openly oppose a country fighting to eradicate it as were it. Of the proclamation, spread,

formerly enslaved people left the South en mass. Some joined the war effort on the Union side, which the proclamation officially allowed, and the Confederacy suffered for the lack of their labor. For example, the Union's victory at Vicksburg, which gave them control of the Mississippi River, has been attributed to the South's lack of fortifications there post proclamation. All of which is why, despite its hefty limitations, the Emmancipation

Proclamation is remembered. It's still impressive for a seven hundred word document. Unlike Lincoln's famous Gettysburg Address, the Proclamation is very legal and dry, apparently very much on purpose. The Supreme Court was heavy with Southern sympathizers, so Lincoln knew that if there was any sort of legal loophole that the Court could use to challenge the proclamation. The Institution

of slavery would be preserved. In the document, Lincoln used his authority as the commander in chief to end enslavement, specifically as leverage against the rebelling states. He claimed that this was a military tactic to suppress the rebellion, thus skirting the Supreme Court's jurisdiction. Of course, by confining the proclamation to areas of open rebellion, Lincoln had to exclude

areas that had been recaptured by the Union. Knowing this, he actually issued a preliminary version of the proclamation back in September of ai eighteen sixty two, with a note that it wouldn't be enacted until January first of eighteen sixty three. He was giving the rebels one last chance to hold onto the institution of slavery for a little while longer as long as they agreed to rejoin the Union.

So in the proclamation, there's an entire paragraph devoted to which states and in some cases, individual counties, were currently in rebellion. Lincoln left this paragraph with blanks in it until the day before it was published, a waiting for word from military commanders about any new territories that could be added to the list of exceptions. By listing counties individually, Lincoln was able to avoid enslaver's lawsuits in federal courts.

The border states Missouri, Delaware, Kentucky, and Maryland were also excluded, though enslaved people sometimes were able to cross to freedom before those states governments revised their constitutions to include freedom from enslavement. Lincoln may have wanted to completely abolish slavery, but his main objectives were preserving the Union and winning

the war. He couldn't do that if he continued to bleed states and the popular support of voters who were at the time entirely white men, many of whom were landowners. He told newspaper reporter James Scovell that the proclamation would be quote my greatest and most enduring contribution to the history of the war. Many abolitionists were unhappy with the proclamation's limitations, though some did celebrate January first as Freedom Day.

In April of eighteen sixty four, the U. S. Senate pushed for a constitutional amendment to abolish the institution of slavery, which Lincoln supported. Though it was ultimately defeated in the House of Representatives, the issue nearly caused lincoln re election and his party, the Republicans, control of Congress. But Lincoln's dedication is an argument that not all of his anti

slavery measures were politically motivated. A two other national constitutionals that Lincoln had pushed for were passed in the five years after his death. In addition to the Thirteenth, there's the fourteenth, which grant citizens due process, and the fifteenth,

which opened voting rights to black men. We've talked about these amendments on the show before and how they were moves towards equity, but how they ultimately fell short of guaranteeing these rights to black people in the face of both racist policies enacted by state and local governments and discriminations enforced by private companies and citizens. These rights didn't stand on firm ground across the United States until the

Civil rights movement of the nineteen sixties. A full century later, and we are still coping and sometimes failing to cope with the repercussions of these centuries of inequity. So if you're listening to this episode the day it comes out on June teenth, or any day really we hear it, brain stuff, hope that you'll observe it. Well, anyway that

you want to. I'm not going to tell you what to do, but I would suggest continuing to seek out the real, complicated history of our world as so to better understand the way that it is and to see how it could be better. Today's episode is based on the article how the Band's Patient Proclamation Work on how stuffworks dot Com, written by Tiffany Connors. Brain Stuff is production of by Heart Radio in partnership with how stuffworks

dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.