If my name ever goes into history, it will be for this act, and my whole soul is in it.
— A. Lincoln, 1863The Development of Lincoln's Views on Slavery
In this section...
Abraham Lincoln. Document
signed: Emancipation
Proclamation. 01 January
1863. (GLC 742)
Among President Lincoln's many great acts and accomplishments, one of the most significant was the issuing of the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. By this act, he legally and formally initiated a profound shift in moral perception. The document was developed during the months that Lincoln spent at the Soldiers' Home.
In all my interviews with Mr. Lincoln I was impressed with his entire freedom from popular prejudice against the colored race. He was the first great man that I talked with in the United States freely, who in no single instance reminded me of the difference between himself and myself, of the difference of color, and I thought that all the more remarkable because he came from a State where there were black laws...
- Frederick Douglass, abolitionist. 1
During the summer of 1862, President Lincoln developed his view that emancipation of the slaves would benefit the Union. When he took office in 1861, while personally opposed to slavery, the President had believed that the slaves should be freed gradually, and their owners should be compensated. At the same time, Lincoln believed that all people should be free, yet he also believed it would be overstepping his authority as president to end slavery at once without compensating slave owners.
I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel. And yet I have never understood that the Presidency conferred upon me an unrestricted right to act officially upon this judgment and feeling... I did understand however that my oath to preserve the Constitution to the best of my ability, imposed upon me the duty of preserving, by every indispensable means, that government "that nation" of which that Constitution was the organic law...
— President Abraham Lincoln to Albert G. Hodges, April 4, 1864. 2
By June 1862, President Lincoln became convinced that the emancipation of slaves in the states that had seceded from the Union would be necessary to win the war. He believed that such a measure would encourage African Americans to join the Union Army to fight for their own freedom at a time when the Union was desperately in need of additional volunteers. In addition, he expected that Great Britain and France, each of which had considered supporting the Confederacy, would find it impossible to do so once the Union took a clear position against slavery.3
I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be "the Union as it was." If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. 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 save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.
— Abraham Lincoln to Hon. Horace Greeley, August 22, 1862. 4
1Frederick Douglass, "Lincoln and the Colored Troops," in Allen Thorndike Rice, ed., Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln (New York and London, 1909), 319, 323, 325.
2President Abraham Lincoln to Albert G. Hodges, April 4, 1864, Robert Todd Lincoln Family Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.
3For a good explanation of Lincoln's shifting views on emancipation, see David Herbert Donald, Lincoln (New York: Touchstone, 1995), especially chapters 13 and 14.
4Abraham Lincoln to Horace Greeley, 22 August 1862, in Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Vol. V, 389.