National Archives and Records Administration
Prologue: Quarterly of the National Archives
Summer 1993, vol. 25, no. 2
The Emancipation Proclamation: An Act of Justice
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.
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.
A Union soldier reads the Emancipation Proclamation to newly freed slaves. After Lincoln signed the Proclamation, celebrations took place throughout the country.
(79-CWC-3F8, National Archives)
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."
Ralph Waldo Emerson proclaimed, "Today unbind the captive," in his reading of the "Boston Hymn."
(111-BA-1113, National Archives)
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).
Prologue: Quarterly of the National Archives
25 (Summer 1993): 148-155
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