Question

Did President Lincoln have the authority to end the institution of slavery with the Emancipation Proclamation? Please explain your answer.

Answer 1

When the American Civil War (1861-65) began, the conflict was carefully framed by President Abraham Lincoln as being about preserving the Union rather than abolishing slavery. Although he found the practice of slavery abhorrent, he knew that as a war objective, neither Northerners nor the residents of the border slave states would support abolition. Slavery was "an unqualified sin for the Black, the White, and the Government," Abraham Lincoln said in the 1850s. In his first inaugural address, however, Lincoln stated that he had "no intention, directly or indirectly, to interfere with slavery in the states where it exists." In his first message to Congress on July 4, 1861, when the Civil War was three months old, he reiterated this commitment.

Lincoln hated slavery as an individual. As a Democrat, he wanted to exclude it from the colonies as the first step towards putting the practice "in the path of absolute elimination," but as U.S. president, Lincoln was constrained by a constitution that covered slavery in any country where people wanted it. Lincoln was also concerned about the aid of the four frontier slave states and the Northern Democrats as commander-in-chief of the armed forces in the Civil War. If the Republicans had made a move against slavery in 1861, these groups would probably have turned against the war for the Union.

Northern armies suffered demoralizing defeats in July and August after a series of military victories in the early months of 1862. Increasingly compelling became the case that emancipation was a military necessity. By siphoning off part of the Southern labor force and adding this manpower to the Northern side, it would weaken the Confederacy and strengthen the Union accordingly. In July 1862, Congress enacted two laws based on this premise: a second confiscation act that freed slaves from persons engaged in rebellion against the U.S., and a militia act that empowered the president to use freed slaves in the army in whatever capacity he considered fit even as soldiers.Lincoln had already decided to release some and was in effect forewarning potential opponents of the Proclamation of Emancipation to accept it as a necessary measure to save the Union. In an advertised meeting with Washington's black residents, also in 1862, Lincoln urged them to consider emigrating abroad in order to escape the prejudice they encountered and to help persuade conservatives that this would mitigate the much-feared racial consequences of emancipation.

The proclamation exempted the border slave states and all or parts of three Confederate States under Union army control on the grounds that these areas were not in rebellion against the United States. Earlier, Lincoln had tried to persuade border states to accept gradual emancipation, with federal government compensation to slave owners, but they had refused. The proclamation also permitted the recruitment of freed slaves and free blacks as Union soldiers; 180,000 of them fought in the Union army and 10,000 in the navy over the next 2 1/2 years, making a vital contribution to the victory of the Union as well as to their own freedom.