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By Root 1592 0

the cabinet in July and the preliminary proclamation of September had contained references to the Second Confiscation Act, giving the impression that Lincoln was acting under the authority of Congress. The Emancipation Proclamation made no mention of any congressional legislation. It began with the words, “I, Abraham Lincoln.” Lincoln now claimed full authority as commander in chief to decree emancipation, and accepted full responsibility. Nonetheless, he continued to worry that local courts might refuse to recognize the freedom of those covered by the proclamation. Moreover, although he had appointed three members, the Supreme Court still had a Democratic majority and was still headed by a chief justice who had declared in no uncertain terms that the Constitution protects slavery. Lincoln was convinced, as one Washington reporter wrote the day before the document was issued, that the proclamation could only survive judicial scrutiny “as a war measure,” not “one issuing from the bosom of philanthropy.” To ground emancipation, he later remarked to Chase, on anything other than military necessity, including the notion that it was “politically expedient and morally right,” would “give up all footing upon constitution or law.”82

In fact, however, the Emancipation Proclamation was as much a political as a military document. Attorney General Bates had cautioned Lincoln that its provisions about which areas were or were not in rebellion “must be truly declared.” Yet Lincoln’s decision to exempt parts of the Confederacy reflected not only the actual military situation but also his judgment about the prospects for winning over white support. Even the Unionists who pleaded with Lincoln to exempt all of Tennessee acknowledged that large portions of the state remained “in possession of the rebel army.” But in order to bolster Andrew Johnson’s regime and attract cooperation from slaveholders, Lincoln acceded to their wish. In the process, he sacrificed, for the time being, the interests of Tennessee’s slaves.83

Critics at home and abroad charged that the proclamation actually freed no slaves at all, since it applied only to areas under Confederate control. In fact, Lincoln did not exempt occupied areas where the number of white Unionists was small or nonexistent and political reconstruction had made little or no progress—parts of Arkansas, Florida, Mississippi, North Carolina, and the Sea Islands of South Carolina. Here, emancipation was immediate. The failure to exempt eastern North Carolina surprised many observers. Military Governor Stanly resigned as a result. Overall, tens of thousands of slaves—50,000 according to one estimate—gained their freedom with the stroke of Lincoln’s pen. To be sure, on the day it was issued, there was no way to enforce the proclamation in most of the South; its implementation would await Union victories. But as the Boston entrepreneur and Republican activist John Murray Forbes wrote, “In such a Proclamation words become things and powerful things too.”84

The Emancipation Proclamation differed dramatically from Lincoln’s previous policies regarding slavery and emancipation, some of which dated back to his days in the Illinois legislature and Congress. It abandoned the idea of seeking the cooperation of slaveholders in emancipation, and of distinguishing between loyal and disloyal owners. It was immediate, not gradual; contained no mention of monetary compensation for slaveowners; did not depend on action by the states; and made no reference to colonization (in part, perhaps, because gradualism, compensation, and colonization had no bearing on the “military necessity” that justified the document). Lincoln had long resisted the enlistment of black soldiers; now he welcomed them into the Union army. The proclamation addressed slaves directly, not as the property of the country’s enemies but as persons with wills of their own whose actions might help win the Civil War.

Lincoln had not entirely abandoned his previous thinking, elements of which would reappear in the next two years. From time to time he