If my name ever goes into history, it will be for this act, and my whole soul is in it.
— A. Lincoln, 1863The Drafting of the Emancipation Proclamation
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Without telling his advisors, Lincoln apparently began working on shaping his ideas on emancipation into an official document. On July 13, 1862, he startled Secretary of State William H. Seward and Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles by telling them of his determination that the government should order the emancipation of the slaves. 1
On July 22, Lincoln informed the entire Cabinet of his decision by reading the first draft of his Emancipation Proclamation. This draft called for states that had seceded to return to the Union and gradually abolish slavery but concluded that as of January 1, 1863, slaves in states then in rebellion would be declared free.
Lincoln likely worked on the document throughout the summer, probably revising it at the White House during the day and at the Cottage during the evenings. Many years after the fact, the painter Francis B. Carpenter quoted Lincoln as saying that he finished writing the second draft, or Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, while he was at the Soldiers' Home one evening.
The wisdom of the view of the Secretary of State [that the Emancipation Proclamation should not be announced until after a Union victory] struck me with very great force. It was an aspect of the case that, in all my thought upon the subject, I had entirely overlooked. The result was that I put the draft of the document aside, waiting for a victory. From time to time I added or changed a line, touching it up here and there, anxiously waiting the progress of events. Well, the next news we had was of Pope's disaster at Bull Run. Things looked darker than ever. Finally came the week of the Battle of Antietam. I determined to wait no longer. The news came, I think, on Wednesday, that the advantage was on our side. I was then staying at the Soldiers' Home. Here I finished writing the second draft of the preliminary proclamation; came up on Saturday, called the Cabinet to hear it, and it was published the following Monday.
— Lincoln's account of the writing of the Emancipation Proclamation, as reported by F.B. Carpenter. 2
Wherever he was when he actually wrote and revised the Emancipation Proclamation, it is clear that Lincoln was thinking long and hard about the idea during the time he lived at the Soldiers' Home.
While the Emancipation Proclamation was motivated in part by practical considerations and was limited in scope, it has been hailed ever since as one of the most important documents in American history. It was considered then as it is now a declaration that the Union was fighting for universal freedom.
1Pinsker, Matthew. Lincoln’s Sanctuary. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. p58.
2Browne, Francis F. The Every-Day Life of Abraham Lincoln. 1915. p437.