There is a constitutional clause REQUIRING slaves to be returned to the people to whom their labor is due according to the laws of the state that holds them.
No lesser act of congress can override that. It simply does not matter what congress says on the subject, because the Constitution itself says they have to be returned.
If you want a fig leaf, Lincoln could have ordered his army to force the states to abolish their laws, but what he can't do is free them when state laws hold them, and the constitution requires those state laws to be enforced.
I didn't. I replied to ontop and you put your two cents worth in and I had to reply to you. I believe you began posting your idiotic opinion on the Constitutionality of Lincoln's actions in post 258. I made sure to ignore you then, and continued to do so until you forced it back into the conversation.
That is such blatant nonsense I can't believe DiogenesLamp continues to post it with even a smidgen of sincerity.
And DoodleDawg fully answered in post #307, saying Lincoln:
Lincoln's 1862 Emancipation Proclamation was an executive order to all Federal units under Lincoln's command, declaring Confederate slaves free when they reached Union lines.
Like the previous Confiscation Acts, Emancipation was an act of war under authority of Article 1, section 8 and the 1807 Insurrection Act.
All of which DiogenesLamp well knows but refuses to acknowledge because it shoots down his favorite historical fantasies.
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Note on this map those states & territories colored as "disputed".
By any definition, Confederate efforts to seize those through military force amounted to constitutionally recognized invasion or rebellion, and as such an existential threat to the United States: