Emancipation Proclamation
Background and Purpose
President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, in the middle of the Civil War. He had warned the South first: his Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation of September 22, 1862, issued days after the Union victory at Antietam, said that enslaved people in any state still in rebellion on January 1 would be declared free. When the rebellion continued, Lincoln followed through. At the start of the war the North fought mainly to save the Union, not to end slavery, so the Proclamation changed the purpose of the war.
What It Did
- Freed enslaved people in the rebelling areas: Lincoln declared "that all persons held as slaves" within the states and parts of states in rebellion "are, and henceforward shall be free."
- Based on war powers: Lincoln didn't claim a general power to end slavery. He acted as "Commander-in-Chief" and called the order "a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion." Taking enslaved labor away from the Confederacy weakened its war effort.
- Limits: it applied only to areas in rebellion, so it left slavery untouched in the loyal border states (Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri) and exempted Southern areas already under Union control, such as Tennessee and parts of Louisiana and Virginia. Freedom in practice also depended on the Union army winning.
- Black soldiers: it announced that freed men would be "received into the armed service of the United States." By the end of the war, almost 200,000 Black soldiers and sailors had fought for the Union.
Why It Needed the Thirteenth Amendment
Because the Proclamation was a wartime order from the president, it was unclear whether it would still hold after the war, and it never covered the border states. To end slavery everywhere and for good, Congress passed the Thirteenth Amendment on January 31, 1865, and the states ratified it on December 6, 1865: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States." This shows the difference between an executive action, which rests on the president's power and can be challenged, and a constitutional amendment, which locks a change into the supreme law.
Big picture
The Emancipation Proclamation was the first big crack in the dam, and the Thirteenth Amendment knocked the dam down for good. It shows a president stretching a formal power (commander in chief) to meet a crisis, and it's a turning point in how the national government treats minority rights: the original Constitution protected slavery through compromises, and the Proclamation started the shift toward civil rights for the formerly enslaved.
Uses for Argumentative Essays
- Principles: natural rights and equality, protecting minority rights, and the scope of presidential power.
- Where it shows up: Unit 3, Topic 3.12 (EK 3.12.A.1, which names it, along with the Thirteenth Amendment, as an example of the government protecting the rights of a minority group). The CED also links it to Topics 1.1 and 1.5 (democratic ideals and the Constitution's compromises over slavery), Topics 2.4 and 2.5 (the president's powers and the checks on them), and Topic 3.10.
- In an argument essay: use it as evidence that presidents expand their power during crises by stretching their formal powers (it pairs with Federalist No. 70's case for an energetic executive), or as evidence that the national government has at times stepped in to protect minority rights that states denied.