9. Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation
The Emancipation Proclamation was an executive order issued under the President’s war powers, and as such only applied to the areas which were still deemed to be in rebellion. It had no effect on the slaves in areas already under Union control or in the slave states which had not seceded. About 500,000 slaves remained slaves, with 3.5 million declared by the President to be “henceforth and forever free”. Despite the executive order, Lincoln was aware that slavery was protected by the Constitution, and that he was powerless to take steps to end it except as a tactic of war under his power as Commander in Chief. There was also debate over whether the slaves, considered property under the Constitution, would legally remain the property of their owners after the war.
Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation changed the war into a declared crusade against slavery, but the President knew the order stood on shaky legal ground, and that the only way to truly end slavery in the United States was through passage of the 13th Amendment. When that amendment went into effect in December 1865, slavery was gone from the defeated Confederacy, and the last states to have slavery legal in the United States – Delaware and Kentucky – saw it ended with ratification. Scholars still debate the legality of the Emancipation Proclamation and whether it would have prevailed against challenges in the courts, but it was unquestionably an example of the expansion of Presidential power in time of war, though no state of war was declared during the Civil War.
