80 Southern Historical Society Papers.
declaration. From no authoritative source was any assault meditated upon the institution of slavery.
Even the right of the slave owner to carry his slaves into the terri- tories, which had constituted the great question at issue, was now relinquished by the seceding States, and the territories themselves abandoned to the Union. The right of slavery in the territories was thus forever settled, while the question of the abolition of slavery in the States where it existed, had never been put in issue between the contending parties. The States of the Confederacy avowed the fight to secede, and denied the power of the Federal Government to coerce them. Mr. Lincoln denied the first, and maintained the second. It was on this issue the two parties litigant submitted their controversy to the gage of battle.
How, then, did the emancipation of the slaves become involved in the great war which followed ? The facts are facts of history, and can be quickly declared.
PROCLAMATION OF 1862.
On the 22d of September, 1862, after the war had been in progress for a year and a half, Mr. Lincoln issued his proclamation, in which he declared that the slaves held in the States, or portions of States which should be still in rebellion on the ist of January, 1863, follow- ing, would be, by a subsequent proclamation, emancipated. His justification was found in the fact that, as a war measure, it would deplete the strength of the Confederacy and augment the forces of the Union.
In all other portions of the Union where slavery was legalized, to- wit: Delaware, Maryland, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, and portions of Louisiana and Virginia, the institution would remain unaffected by the proclamation. More than that, by the very terms of the proclamation, the people of the States in which it was made to apply could escape its effects by laying down their arms. Surely if the preservation of the institution of slavery in the seceding States furnished the incentive for their conduct, these States had simply to ground their arms and the institution would have remained.
On the ist of January, 1863, the final proclamation was made, in which it was recited, because of the failure of the people of the States and portions of States above mentioned to lay down their arms, the slaves within those designated localities were declared free, and the President pledged all the powers of the Union to make good
