The Emancipation Proclamation
Jeremy Simmons December 15, 2008 Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation On January 1, 1863, as the nation approached its third year of bloody civil war, United States President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. The proclamation declared "that all persons held as slaves" within the rebellious states" are, and henceforward shall be free." The Emancipation Proclamation consisted of two executive orders. The first one, issued September 22, 1862, declared the freedom of all slaves in any state of the Confederate States of America that did not return to Union control by January 1, 1863. The second order, issued January 1, 1863, named the specific states where it applied. When the proclamation came into effect, it was widely criticized, because it freed the slaves over whom some people said the Union had no power over. In practice, it committed the Union to ending slavery, which was a controversial decision in the North. Lincoln issued the Executive Order by his authority as "Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy" under Article II, section 2 of the United States Constitution. Initially, the proclamation did not free any slaves of the border states (Kentucky, Missouri, Maryland, Delaware, and West Virginia), or any southern state (or part of a state) already under Union control. It first directly affected only those slaves who had already escaped to the Union side. However, when the slaves heard of the Proclamation, they quickly escaped to Union lines as the Army units moved South. As the Union armies conquered the Confederacy, thousands of slaves were freed each day until nearly all “approximately 4 million”, according to the 1860 census, were freed by July 1865. (Slave Census, 1860). When the war finally came to an end, the people who had come up with the idea of the proclamation were concerned, since the proclamation was a war measure; it had not permanently ended slavery. Several former slave states passed legislation prohibiting
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