Abstract
On New Year’s Day in 1863, a hundred days after giving notice of his intentions, Abraham Lincoln steadied his weary hand to sign the Proclamation of Emancipation. In the main, the edict declared free those slaves still in Confederate hands but for whom the advancing Union forces promised to be an army of liberation. 1 Lincoln’s action won him the instant salute of abolitionists, black and white: “God bless you for the word you have spoken! All good men upon the earth will glorify you, and all the angels in Heaven will hold jubilee… The civilized world congratulates you, and every loyal American responds Amen . We now have ‘Liberty and Union, one and inseperable [sic], now and forever.’ Forward to Victory!” 2 African American communities within the Union hailed the president for inaugurating the Day of Jubilee. Foreign admirers added their voices to the chorus of praise. European liberals and nationalists led the way. “Heir of the thought of Christ and of [John] Brown,” wrote Italian nationalist Giuseppe Garibaldi, “you will pass down to posterity under the name of the Emancipator ! more enviable than any crown and any human treasure!” 3 From Constantinople, the American consul exulted, “The proclamation of freedom & the declaration to the world of its immutability are destined to an immortality as luminous as the Declaration of Independence & the Farewell Address of Washington.” 4 Further east—Lincoln learnt—“among the oppressed Nestorians of Persia and of Koordistan,” the edict of emancipation, now translated into Syriac, was prompting “hundreds and perhaps thousands to reverence your name.” 5
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Notes
Indispensable to an understanding of the forces at work in the evolution of the Lincoln administration’s policy over slavery and emancipation are: Eric Foner, The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery (New York: W. W. Norton, 2010)
Allen C. Guelzo, Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004)
Douglas L. Wilson, Lincoln’s Sword: The Presidency and the Power of Words (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006), 105–161.
Richard Carwardine, Lincoln: A Life of Purpose and Power (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006), 198–221.
Jennifer L. Weber, Copperheads: The Rise and Fall of Lincoln’s Opponents in the North (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 63–66
Howard Jones, Abraham Lincoln and a New Birth of Freedom: The Union and Slavery in the Diplomacy of the Civil War (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999), 115–119
R. J. M. Blackett, Divided Hearts: Britain and the American Civil War (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2001), 29–32, 107–108.
Roy P. Basler et al., eds., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln . [CW] 9 vols. (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953–1955), 7: 281–282 (“To Albert G. Hodges,” April 4, 1864).
Lerone Bennett, Jr., Forced Into Glory: Abraham Lincoln’s White Dream (Chicago: Johnson Publishing Company, 2000).
James M. McPherson, Drawn with the Sword: Reflections on the American Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 192ff
Ira Berlin, “Who Freed the Slaves? Emancipation and Its Meaning” in David W. Blight and Brooks D. Simpson, eds., Union and Emancipation: Essays on Politics and Race in the Civil War Era (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1997), 105–122.
See, for example, Michael Lind, What Lincoln Believed: The Values and Convictions of America’s Greatest President (New York: Doubleday, 2005). For a sensitive reading of Lincoln’s support for black colonization within the framework of the tumult of war, see Phillip W. Magness and Sebastian
N. Page, Colonization after Emancipation: Lincoln and the Movement for Black Resettlement (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2011).
Don E. Fehrenbacher and Virginia Fehrenbacher, comps. and eds., Recollected Words of Abraham Lincoln (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), 164.
Douglas L. Wilson and Rodney O. Davis, eds., Herndon’s Informants: Letters Interviews, and Statements about Abraham Lincoln (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1998), 677, 684–685.
Elizabeth Brown Pryor, “Brief Encounter: A New York Cavalryman’s Striking Conversation with Abraham Lincoln,” Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association , 30 (Summer 2009): 9–10.
For astute readings of Lincoln’s letter to Greeley, see in particular Don E. Fehrenbacher, Lincoln in Text and Context: Collected Essays (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987), 283–284; Guelzo, Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, 133–137; Wilson, Lincoln’s Sword, 125, 148–161
Phillip S. Paludan, “Greeley, Colonization, and a Deputation of Negroes,” in Brian R. Dirck, ed., Lincoln Emancipated (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2007)
William Lee MillerPresident Lincoln: The Duty of a Statesman (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008), 150–154; Foner, The Fiery Trial , 227–229.
; F. B. Carpenter, The Inner Life of Abraham Lincoln: Six Months at the White House (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995; originally published New York, 1866), 21–22.
Michael Burlingame, ed., An Oral History of Abraham Lincoln (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1996), 49
John G. Nicolay and John Hay, Abraham Lincoln: A History, 10 vols. (New York: The Century Company, 1886), 6: 153–154.
Alexander K. McClure, Abraham Lincoln and Men of War-Times (Philadelphia, PA: Times Publishing Co., 1892), 90.
John Drinkwater, Lincoln: The World Emancipator (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1920). For Lincoln’s international influence and reputation, see
Richard Carwardine and Jay Sexton, eds., The Global Lincoln (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011).
Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln (New York: Simon & Schuster, New York, 2005), 471.
James M. McPherson, The Struggle for Equality: Abolitionists and the Negro in the Civil War and Reconstruction (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1964), 117.
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© 2013 Iwan W. Morgan and Philip John Davies
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Carwardine, R. (2013). Lincoln and Emancipation: The Lessons of the Letter to Horace Greeley. In: Morgan, I.W., Davies, P.J. (eds) Reconfiguring the Union. Studies of the Americas. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137336484_2
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