This is exactly backwards. The EP was constitutional as a war measure. It was the ONLY way the President could free ANY slaves.
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This link will tell you when slavery really began.
On the contrary, Texas was part of the United States on June 19, 1865 and every day prior to that since she first petitioned for inclusion into the United States. The rebellion didn't change that.
Neither did it apply to such Confederate jurisdictions under Federal control as Norfolk and New Orleans, nor to such "free" states as New Jersey that had banned "new" slaves while allowing the owners to keep the "old" ones. Pretty cynical, huh?
(Actually, it's been opined that New Jersey was simply being progressive. Slave owners in such other states as New York that had banned slavery outright commonly sold their former charges "down the river" to markets in New Orleans.
Fortunately our politicians no longer let this obstruct them. < /sarcasm>
Ahhhh....the irony!
It's hard to imagine that the author had any purpose besides sensationalism in writing this. That is because President Lincoln was also a main proponent of the 13th amendment. Although it became law after his death, he helped lay the groundwork through his determined efforts. It should also be noted that he supported voting rights for black soldiers and that he dropped any mention of resettlement or colonization after black soldiers were enlisted, beginning in 1863. And he -never- advocated that anyone be forced out of the country.
President Lincoln turned to colonization as a means to end the war. It was not written in stone that the south be completely destroyed before the war would end. It could have ended at any time upon recognition of the national authority, and later, after the EP, upon condition of Union and freedom. Those terms were anathema to the slave holders, and the war continued until they had had enough.
Walt
Of course, with the majority of Southern men were off fighting, that would mean that Lincoln was condoning revolution against women, children and old men.
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. Was it possible to lose the nation, and yet preserve the constitution? By general law life and limb must be protected; yet often a limb must be amputated to save a life; but a life is never wisely given to save a limb. I felt that measures, otherwise unconstitutional, might become lawful, by becoming indispensable to the preservation of the constitution, through the preservation of the nation. Right or wrong, I assumed this ground, and now avow it. I could not feel that, to the best of my ability, I had even tried to preserve the constitution, if, to save slavery, or any minor matter, I should permit the wreck of government, country, and Constitution all together. When, early in the war, Gen. Fremont attempted military emancipation, I forbade it, because I did not then think it an indispensable necessity. When a little later, Gen. Cameron, then Secretary of War, suggested the arming of the blacks, I objected, because I did not yet think it an indispensable necessity. When, still later, Gen. Hunter attempted military emancipation, I again forbade it, because I did not yet think the indispensable necessity had come. When, in March, and May, and July 1862 I made earnest, and successive appeals to the border states to favor compensated emancipation, I believed the indispensable necessity for military emancipation, and arming the blacks would come, unless averted by that measure. They declined the proposition; and I was, in my best judgment, driven to the alternative of either surrendering the Union, and with it, the Constitution, or of laying strong hand upon the colored element. I chose the latter.
Abraham Lincoln, "To Albert G. Hodges", 4 Apr 1864, Collected Works Of Abraham Lincoln, (Roy P. Basler, Ed.), Vol VII, p. 281.
Lincoln understood what many did not; that slavery was one cause of the war, and maybe the biggest cause, but slavery was not what the war was about. The war was about preserving the Union.
Lincoln expressed his (probably geniune) disinterest in slavery in hopes that doing so would head off a war. Any sane person would have said the same things.
Lincoln was well aware of the Constitutional limits on his power, and respected them. (And yes I know all about habeas corpus. Imagine if the 9/11 terrorists were all white males who look like us and talk like us and dress like us and know all our ways intimately. What would YOU do?) Slavery was legal, like it or not, so he could only act against slavery as a war measure. That is, he could only confiscate the property of those in rebellion, and this he did. Meaning, those Confederates already surrendered, were not affected, nor were slaveholders loyal to the Union affected. However distasteful this may be, or may have been to his contemporaries, this was plain good sense on Lincoln's part. A virtue sadly lacking today.
Tex,
I stopped reading with the following statement;
Where the president had authority (in the border states), he did nothing; where he had no authority (in the CSA), he did something.
It shows that the writer has absolutely no understanding of the constitution and is totally ignorant of what the Emancipation Proclamation said and did.
Contrary to what the writer says above, the exact opposite is true --- Lincoln had no authority under the Constitution to free slaves in areas that remained under the jurisdiction of US Courts, such as the Border States or areas of states in rebellion that were under Union Control as of Jan. 1863 such as New Orleans. There was no order he could issue that could have ended slavery in Kentucky, Delaware, Missouri or Maryland. Slavery could only be ended there by either state action or an amendment to the Constitution. His authority to "free slaves" was in reality the war powers he had as Commander in Chief to seize property used to support rebellion, and “dispose” of that property as he saw fit. The EP was worded very carefully to make it a property issue so it would pass Constitutional muster. Since all the slave states, as well as the US Supreme Court in Dred Scott, legally defined slaves as property, Lincoln’s order “freeing slaves” was no different than the seizing of ships, wagons, horses, railroads, or any other piece of property used to support the CSA’s war effort.
It is also a monstrous lie that the EP freed no slaves. It freed all slaves in areas it covered (about 3 million) between 1863 and the conclusion of the war as Union troops gained control over the entire Confederacy. Nearly 100,000 slaves who were freed by the EP served in the Union Army. The June 19th (1865) date simply refers to when the slaves in Texas finally met the first Union soldiers who told them about the EP and told them they were legally free. June 19 is not the day of Emancipation in any state but Texas. In Savannah it was Dec, 17, 1864, in Atlanta it was Sept 10, (1864) in Vicksburg, it was July 4th, 1863. Pick the day that Union troops went through a given area, and that was the day slavery ended in that area.
Oh please! What swill. June 19th came and went last week and there wasn't even a line in the papers about any kind of celebration. Black people do not celebrate Lincoln and in fact they wouldn't even vote for him if he was running for office today because as a rule, they vote only for liberal, wealth-redistributing Democrats. And Lincoln was a Republican.
As for the Emancipation Declaration, it all but ended slavery whether some Lincoln enemies want to nitpick at the wording or not. Lincoln could not free the slaves in the Union at that time because he needed the border states to win the war. And freeing the slaves in the border states at that time would have sent those states into the arms of the Confederacy, which almost certainly would have made it impossible for the Union to win the war.
So why issue the Emancipation Proclamation at all? Believe it or not, the Union was afraid that the South would free their slaves first. This would have given the CSA not only the moral superiority over the Union, but would have brought in the support of Europe as well, which could have very well have tipped the balance. The Emancipation Proclamation, while toothless, pulled the carpet out from under the Confederates and kept them from seizing the moral high ground for themselves.
Lincoln was also hoping that by hanging freedom in front of the Southern slaves, that they would desert their masters and come to the North. Without slave labor, the ability of the Confederate Army to fight would have been significantly reduced. For it was slave labor that allowed virtually every able-bodied white man to go into battle.
At that point in time, it was more important to save the Union then is was to end slavery. Lincoln was not a hypocrite. He said himself that saving the Union was paramount. If it took keeping slavery in place to save the Union, he would have done it. If it took repealing slavery, he would have done it. Or a combination of the two, he would have done it, as he ended up doing. For Lincoln, it was first save the Union, then the slavery question would resolve itself. But the Union must be saved first! And Lincoln turned out to be right for in the end, it was the Confederates who ended up setting their own slaves free when they finally decided to allow blacks to serve in the Confederate Army. All the top Confederate leaders knew that once they allowed blacks to fight side by side with white soldiers, that slavery was essentially over.