Transcript of the Proclamation
January 1, 1863
A Transcription
By the President of the United States of America:
A Proclamation.
Whereas, on the twenty-second day of September, in the year of our
Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-two, a proclamation was issued
by the President of the United States, containing, among other things,
the following, to wit:
"That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one
thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves
within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall
then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then,
thenceforward, and forever free; and the Executive Government of the
United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will
recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do no act
or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may
make for their actual freedom.
"That the Executive will, on the first day of January aforesaid, by
proclamation, designate the States and parts of States, if any, in which
the people thereof, respectively, shall then be in rebellion against
the United States; and the fact that any State, or the people thereof,
shall on that day be, in good faith, represented in the Congress of the
United States by members chosen thereto at elections wherein a majority
of the qualified voters of such State shall have participated, shall, in
the absence of strong countervailing testimony, be deemed conclusive
evidence that such State, and the people thereof, are not then in
rebellion against the United States."
Now, therefore I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, by
virtue of the power in me vested as Commander-in-Chief, of the Army and
Navy of the United States in time of actual armed rebellion against the
authority and government of the United States, and as a fit and
necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion, do, on this first
day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and
sixty-three, and in accordance with my purpose so to do publicly
proclaimed for the full period of one hundred days, from the day first
above mentioned, order and designate as the States and parts of States
wherein the people thereof respectively, are this day in rebellion
against the United States, the following, to wit:
Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, (except the Parishes of St. Bernard,
Plaquemines, Jefferson, St. John, St. Charles, St. James Ascension,
Assumption, Terrebonne, Lafourche, St. Mary, St. Martin, and Orleans,
including the City of New Orleans) Mississippi, Alabama, Florida,
Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia, (except the
forty-eight counties designated as West Virginia, and also the counties
of Berkley, Accomac, Northampton, Elizabeth City, York, Princess Ann,
and Norfolk, including the cities of Norfolk and Portsmouth[)], and
which excepted parts, are for the present, left precisely as if this
proclamation were not issued.
And by virtue of the power, and for the purpose aforesaid, I do order
and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated
States, and parts of States, are, and henceforward shall be free; and
that the Executive government of the United States, including the
military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain the
freedom of said persons.
And I hereby enjoin upon the people so declared to be free to abstain
from all violence, unless in necessary self-defence; and I recommend to
them that, in all cases when allowed, they labor faithfully for
reasonable wages.
And I further declare and make known, that such persons of suitable
condition, will be received into the armed service of the United States
to garrison forts, positions, stations, and other places, and to man
vessels of all sorts in said service.
And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice,
warranted by the Constitution, upon military necessity, I invoke the
considerate judgment of mankind, and the gracious favor of Almighty God.
In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.
Done at the City of Washington, this first day of January, in the
year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty three, and of the
Independence of the United States of America the eighty-seventh.
By the President: ABRAHAM LINCOLN
WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State.
The Emancipation Proclamation
An Act of Justice
Summer 1993, Vol. 25, No. 2
By John Hope Franklin
Thursday, January 1, 1863, was a bright, crisp day in the nation's
capital. The previous day had been a strenuous one for President
Lincoln, but New Year's Day was to be even more strenuous. So he rose
early. There was much to do, not the least of which was to put the
finishing touches on the Emancipation Proclamation. At 10:45 the
document was brought to the White House by Secretary of State William
Seward. The President signed it, but he noticed an error in the
superscription. It read, "In testimony whereof I have hereunto set my
name and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed." The
President had never used that form in proclamations, always preferring
to say "In testimony whereof I have hereunto set my hand. . . ." He
asked Seward to make the correction, and the formal signing would be
made on the corrected copy.
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| John Hope Franklin |
The traditional New Year's Day reception at the White House began
that morning at 11 o'clock. Members of the Cabinet and the diplomatic
corps were among the first to arrive. Officers of the Army and Navy
arrived in a body at half past 11. The public was admitted at noon, and
then Seward and his son Frederick, the Assistant Secretary of State,
returned with the corrected draft. The rigid laws of etiquette held the
President to his duty for 3 hours, as his secretaries Nicholay and Hay
observed. "Had necessity required it, he could of course have left such
mere social occupation at any moment," they pointed out, "but the
President saw no occasion for precipitancy. On the other hand, he
probably deemed it wise that the completion of this momentous executive
act should be attended by every circumstance of deliberation."
After the guests departed, the President went upstairs to his study
for the signing in the presence of a few friends. No Cabinet meeting was
called, and no attempt was made to have a ceremony. Later, Lincoln told
F. B. Carpenter, the artist, that as he took up the pen to sign the
paper, his hand shook so violently that he could not write. "I could not
for a moment control my arm. I paused, and a superstitious feeling came
over me which made me hesitate. . . . In a moment I remembered that I
had been shaking hands for hours with several hundred people, and hence a
very simple explanation of the trembling and shaking of my arm." With a
hearty laugh at his own thoughts, the President proceeded to sign the
Emancipation Proclamation. Just before he affixed his name to the
document, he said, "I never, in my life, felt more certain that I was
doing right than I do in signing this paper."
When I made my first serious study of this document, several copies
of the December 30 draft were in existence. The copies of Cabinet
officers Edward Bates, Francis Blair, William Seward, and Salmon P.
Chase were in the Library of Congress. The draft that the President
worked with on December 31 and the morning of New Year's Day is
considered the final manuscript draft. The principal parts of the text
are written in the President's hand. The two paragraphs from the
Preliminary Proclamation of September 22, 1862, were clipped from a
printed copy and pasted on to the President's draft, "merely to save
writing." The superscription and the final closing are in the hand of a
clerk in the Department of State. Later in the year, Lincoln presented
his copy to the ladies in charge of the Northwestern Fair in Chicago. He
told them that he had some desire to retain the paper, "but if it shall
contribute to the relief and comfort of the soldiers, that will be
better," he said most graciously. Thomas Bryan purchased it and
presented it to the Soldiers' Home in Chicago, of which he was
president. The home was destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.
Fortunately, four photographic copies of the original had been made. The
official engrossed document is in the National Archives and follows
Lincoln's original copy.
It is worth observing that there was no mention, in the final draft,
of Lincoln's pet schemes of compensation and colonization, which were in
the Preliminary Proclamation of September 22, 1862. Perhaps Lincoln was
about to give up on such impracticable propositions. In the Preliminary
Proclamation, the President had said that he would declare slaves in
designated territories "thenceforward, and forever free." In the final
draft of January 1, 1863, he was content to say that they "are, and
henceforward shall be free." Nothing had been said in the preliminary
draft about the use of blacks as soldiers. In the summer of 1862 the
Confiscation Act had authorized the President to use blacks in any way
he saw fit, and there had been some limited use of them in noncombat
activities. In stating in the Proclamation that former slaves were to be
received into the armed services, the President believed that he was
using congressional authority to strike a mighty blow against the
Confederacy.
It was late afternoon before the Proclamation was ready for
transmission to the press and others. Earlier drafts had been available,
and some papers, including the
Washington Evening Star had
used those drafts, but it was at about 8 p.m. on January 1 that the
transmission of the text over the telegraph wires actually began.
Young Edward Rosewater, scarcely 20 years old, had an exciting New
Year's Day. He was a mere telegraph operator in the War Department, but
he knew the President and had gone to the White House reception earlier
that day and had greeted him. When the President made his regular call
at the telegraph office that evening, young Rosewater was on duty and
was more excited than ever. He greeted the President and went back to
his work. Lincoln walked over to see what Rosewater was sending out. It
was the Emancipation Proclamation! If Rosewater was excited, the
President seemed the picture of relaxation. After watching the young
operator for a while, the President went over to the desk of Tom Eckert,
the chief telegraph operator in the War Department, sat in his favorite
chair, where he had written most of the Preliminary Proclamation the
previous summer, and gave his feet the proper elevation. For him, it was
the end of a long, busy, but perfect day.
For many others in various parts of the country, the day was just
beginning, for the celebrations were not considered official until word
was received that the President had actually signed the Proclamation.
The slaves of the District of Columbia did not have to wait, however,
for back in April 1862 the Congress had passed a law setting them free.
Even so, they joined in the widespread celebrations on New Year's Day.
At Israel Bethel Church, Rev. Henry McNeal Turner went out and secured a
copy of the
Washington Evening Star that carried the text of
the Proclamation. Back at the church, Turner waved the newspaper from
the pulpit and began to read the document. This was the signal for
unrestrained celebration characterized by men squealing, women fainting,
dogs barking, and whites and blacks shaking hands. The Washington
celebrations continued far into the night. In the Navy Yard, cannons
began to roar and continued for some time.
In New York the news of the Proclamation was received with mixed
feelings. Blacks looked and felt happy, one reporter said, while
abolitionists "looked glum and grumbled . . . that the proclamation was
only given on account of military necessity." Within a week, however,
there were several large celebrations in which abolitionists took part.
At Plymouth Church in Brooklyn, the celebrated Henry Ward Beecher
preached a commemorative sermon to an overflow audience. "The
Proclamation may not free a single slave," he declared, "but it gives
liberty a moral recognition." There was still another celebration at
Cooper Union on January 5. Several speakers, including the veteran
abolitionist Lewis Tappan, addressed the overflow audience. Music
interspersed the several addresses. Two of the renditions were the "New
John Brown Song" and the "Emancipation Hymn."
A veritable galaxy of leading literary figures gathered in the Music
Hall in Boston to take notice of the climax of the fight that New
England abolitionists had led for more than a generation. Among those
present were John Greenleaf Whittier, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver
Wendell Holmes, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Francis Parkman, and Josiah
Quincy. Toward the close of the meeting, Ralph Waldo Emerson read his
"Boston Hymn" to the audience. In the evening, a large crowd gathered at
Tremont Temple to await the news that the President had signed the
Proclamation. Among the speakers were Judge Thomas Russell, Anna
Dickinson, Leonard Grimes, William Wells Brown, and Frederick Douglass.
Finally, it was announced that "It is coming over the wire," and
pandemonium broke out! At midnight, the group had to vacate Tremont
Temple, and from there they went to the Twelfth Baptist Church at the
invitation of its pastor, Leonard Grimes. Soon the church was packed,
and it was almost dawn when the assemblage dispersed. Frederick Douglass
pronounced it a "worthy celebration of the first step on the part of
the nation in its departure from the thraldom of the ages."
The trenchant observation by Douglass that the Emancipation
Proclamation was but the first step could not have been more accurate.
Although the Presidential decree would not free slaves in areas where
the United States could not enforce the Proclamation, it sent a mighty
signal both to the slaves and to the Confederacy that enslavement would
no longer be tolerated. An important part of that signal was the
invitation to the slaves to take up arms and participate in the fight
for their own freedom. That more than 185,000 slaves as well as free
blacks accepted the invitation indicates that those who had been the
victims of thraldom were now among the most enthusiastic freedom
fighters.
Meanwhile, no one appreciated better than Lincoln the fact that the
Emancipation Proclamation had a quite limited effect in freeing the
slaves directly. It should be remembered, however, that in the
Proclamation he called emancipation "an act of justice," and in later
weeks and months he did everything he could to confirm his view that it
was
An Act of Justice. And no one was more anxious than Lincoln
to take the necessary additional steps to bring about actual freedom.
Thus, he proposed that the Republican Party include in its 1864 platform
a plank calling for the abolition of slavery by constitutional
amendment. When he was "notified" of his renomination, as was the custom
in those days, he singled out that plank in the platform calling for
constitutional emancipation and pronounced it "a fitting and necessary
conclusion to the final success of the Union cause." Early in 1865, when
Congress sent the amendment to Lincoln for his signature, he is
reported to have said, "This amendment is a King's cure for all the
evils. It winds the whole thing up."
Despite the fact that the Proclamation did not emancipate the slaves
and surely did not do what the Thirteenth Amendment did in winding
things up, it is the Proclamation and not the Thirteenth Amendment that
has been remembered and celebrated over the past 130 years. That should
not be surprising. Americans seem not to take to celebrating legal
documents. The language of such documents is not particularly inspiring,
and they are the product of the deliberations of large numbers of
people. We celebrate the Declaration of Independence, but not the
ratification of the Constitution. Jefferson's words in the Declaration
moved the emerging Americans in a way that Madison's committee of style
failed to do in the Constitution.
Thus, almost annually--at least for the first hundred years--each New
Year's Day was marked in many parts of the country by a grand
celebration. Replete with brass band, if there was one, an
African-American fire company, if there was one, and social, religious,
and civic organizations, African Americans of the community would march
to the courthouse, to some church, or the high school. There, they would
assemble to hear the reading of the Emancipation Proclamation, followed
by an oration by a prominent person. The speeches varied in character
and purpose. Some of them urged African Americans to insist upon equal
rights; some of them urged frugality and greater attention to morals;
while still others urged their listeners to harbor no ill will toward
their white brethren.
As the 50th anniversary of the Proclamation approached, James Weldon
Johnson, already a writer of some distinction, was serving a tour of
duty as U.S. Consul in Corinto, Nicaragua. His biographer, Eugene Levy,
tells us that Johnson for some time had considered writing a poem
commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation. In
September 1912, when he read of the ceremonies marking the Preliminary
Proclamation, he realized that he had only 100 days in which to write
the poem. Using all of his spare time, of which there was little,
Johnson hammered out "Fifty Years." There was not enough time to publish
it in one of the major literary monthly journals, so he turned to the
New York Times, which published it on its editorial page on January 1, 1913.
Addressing his fellow African Americans in the first stanzas, Johnson said:
O Brothers mine, to-day we stand
Where half a century sweeps our ken,
Since God, through Lincoln's ready hand,
Struck off our bonds and made us men.
Just fifty years--a winter's day--
As runs the history of a race;
Yet, as we look back o'er the day,
How distant seems our starting place!
Then, in a more assertive tone, making certain that humility did not replace self-confidence, he said:
This land is ours by right of birth,
This land is ours by right of toil
We helped to turn its virgin earth,
Our sweat is in its fruitful soil.
To gain these fruits that have been earned,
To hold these fields that have been won,
Our arms have strained, our backs have burned,
Bent bare beneath a ruthless sun.
Then should we speak but servile words,
Or shall we hang our heads in shame?
Stand back of new-come foreign hordes,
And fear our heritage to claim?
No! stand erect and without fear,
And for our foes let this suffice--
We've bought a rightful sonship here,
And we have more than paid the price. . . .
That for which millions prayed and sighed
That for which tens of thousands fought,
For which so many freely died,
God cannot let it come to naught.
In the second half of the Proclamation's first century, the annual
celebrations diminished in extent as well as in fervor. Some celebrants,
with an eye on a quick buck, began to promote June 19, the day on which
President Lincoln signed a bill abolishing slavery in the territories.
The bill did not apply to Texas, which was a state in the Confederacy,
but slick promoters there soon drew attention to that day and persuaded
Texans, Oklahomans, and others in the Southwest that this was indeed the
day of emancipation. It was never quite clear to me, moreover, why we
in Oklahoma celebrated August 4 as well as Juneteenth
and January 1, but clearly the summer months had many advantages over a January observance.
Something else was diluting the celebrations of the anniversary of
the Emancipation Proclamation. It was bad enough that a casual reading
of the Proclamation made clear that it did not set the slaves free. It
was also clear that neither the Reconstruction amendments nor the
legislation and Executive orders of subsequent years had propelled
African Americans much closer to real freedom and true equality. The
physical violence, the wholesale disfranchisement, and the widespread
degradation of blacks in every conceivable form merely demonstrated the
resourcefulness and creativity of those white Americans who were
determined to deny basic constitutional rights to their black brothers.
Several years before 1963, the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People began to use the motto "Free by '63."
Other groups adopted the motto and focused more attention on the drive
for equality. Many leaders were especially sensitive to the significance
of the Emancipation Centennial in pointing up racial inequality in
American life. On September 22, 1962, when Governor Nelson Rockefeller
of New York spoke in Washington to mark the opening of the exhibit of
the Preliminary Proclamation, "the state's most treasured possession,"
he said, "the very existence of the document stirs our conscience with
the knowledge that Lincoln's vision of a nation truly fulfilling its
spiritual heritage is not yet achieved."
During the centennial year itself, the United States Commission on
Civil Rights presented to the President a report on the history of civil
rights, most of which I wrote on contract with the Commission. Knowing
that I would be out of the country during most of the centennial year, I
published my history of the Emancipation Proclamation as my
contribution to the observance.
*
On Lincoln's birthday in 1963, President and Mrs. Kennedy received more
than a thousand black and white citizens at the White House and
presented to each of them a copy of the report of the Civil Rights
Commission, called
Freedom to the Free. Speaking at Gettysburg
later that year, Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson said, "Until justice
is blind, until education is unaware of race, until opportunity is
unconcerned with the color of men's skins, emancipation will be a
proclamation but not a fact." President Kennedy took note of the absence
of equality when he said, "Surely, in 1963, 100 years after
emancipation, it should not be necessary for any American citizen to
demonstrate in the streets for an opportunity to stop at a hotel, or eat
at a lunch counter . . . on the same terms as any other customer."
Although it is now possible for most African Americans to eat at a
lunch counter in most parts of the United States, the extension of these
civilities has been accompanied by subtle, yet barbarous forms of
discrimination. These forms extend from redlining in the sale of real
estate to discrimination in employment to the maladministration of
justice. In issuing the Emancipation Proclamation and wording it as he
did, Lincoln went as far as he felt the law permitted him to go. In
subsequent months he went a bit further, inch by inch, until before his
death he was calling for the enfranchisement of some blacks. The
difference between the position of Lincoln in 1863 and Americans in 1993
is that our leaders in high places seem not to have either the humanity
or the courage of Lincoln. The law itself is no longer an obstruction
to justice and equality, but it is the people who live under the law who
are themselves an obvious obstruction to justice. One can only hope
that sooner rather than later we can all find the courage to live under
the spirit of the Emancipation Proclamation and under the laws that
flowed from its inspiration.
This essay is based on a talk given by John Hope Franklin
at the National Archives, January 4, 1993, on the occasion of the 130th
anniversary of the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation.
*The Emancipation Proclamation (Garden City, NW: Doubleday and Company, 1963; reprint, Arlington Heights, IL: Harlan Davidson, Inc., 1994).
John Hope Franklin has taught at Fisk University,
the University of Chicago, and most recently, Duke University, where he
is James B. Duke Professor of History Emeritus. Past president of the
American Historical Association and the Society of Phi Beta Kappa, his
publications include
From Slavery to Freedom (1947),
The Emancipation Proclamation (1963), and
Race and History: Selected Essays, 1938-1988 (1990).
NOTE: John Hope Franklin was born in Rentiesville, Oklahoma - an All Black Town -which still exists today as one the 13 remaining of 67 originally All Black Towns - GDW 02/12/2020
Articles published in
Prologue do not necessarily represent the views of NARA or of any other agency of the United States Government.
NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND RECORDS ADMINISTRATION
The Emancipation Proclamation, 1863
"When you are dead and in Heaven, in a thousand years that
action of yours will make the Angels sing your praises."
Hannah Johnson, mother of a Northern Black soldier,
writing to President Abraham Lincoln about the Emancipation Proclamation,
July 31, 1863
President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation
on January 1, 1863, as the nation approached its third year of bloody
civil war. The proclamation declared "that all persons held as slaves"
within the rebellious states "are, and henceforward shall be free."
Despite that expansive wording, the Emancipation Proclamation
was limited in many ways. It applied only to states that had seceded from
the Union, leaving slavery untouched in the loyal border states. It also
expressly exempted parts of the Confederacy that had already come under
Northern control. Most important, the freedom it promised depended upon
Union military victory.
Although the Emancipation Proclamation did not immediately
free a single slave, it captured the hearts and imagination of millions
of African Americans, and fundamentally transformed the character of the
war from a war for the Union into a war for freedom. Moreover, the proclamation
announced the acceptance of black men into the Union army and navy, enabling
the liberated to become liberators. By the end of the war, almost 200,000
black soldiers and sailors had fought for the Union and freedom.
For more about the Emancipation Proclamation please visit:
Emancipation Proclamation
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DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA EMANCIPATION ACT APRIL 12, 1862
https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured-documents/dc-emancipation-act
