It recited the announcement of the September proclamation; defined its
character and authority as a military decree; designated the States and
parts of States that day in rebellion against the government; ordered
and declared that all persons held as slaves therein "are and
henceforward shall be free"; and that such persons of suitable condition
would be received into the military service. "And upon this act,
sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the
Constitution upon military necessity, I invoke the considerate judgment
of mankind, and the gracious favor of Almighty God."
The conclusion of the momentous transaction was as deliberate and
simple as had been its various stages of preparation. The morning and
midday of January 1, 1863, were occupied by the half-social,
half-official ceremonial of the usual New Year's day reception at the
Executive Mansion, established by long custom. At about three o'clock in
the afternoon, after full three hours of greetings and handshakings, Mr.
Lincoln and perhaps a dozen persons assembled in the executive office,
and, without any prearranged ceremony the President affixed his
signature to the great Edict of Freedom. No better commentary will ever
be written upon this far-reaching act than that which he himself
embodied in a letter written to a friend a little more than a year
later:
"I am naturally antislavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.
I cannot remember when I did not so think and feel, and yet I have never
understood that the Presidency conferred upon me an unrestricted right
to act officially upon this judgment and feeling. It was in the oath I
took that I would, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and
defend the Constitution of the United States. I could not take the
office without taking the oath. Nor was it my view that I might take an
oath to get power, and break the oath in using the power. I understood,
too, that in ordinary civil administration this oath even forbade me to
practically indulge my primary abstract judgment on the moral question
of slavery. I had publicly declared this many times, and in many ways.
And I aver that, to this day, I have done no official act in mere
deference to my abstract judgment and feeling on slavery. I did
understand, however, that my oath to preserve the Constitution to the
best of my ability imposed upon me the duty of preserving, by every
indispensable means, that government, that nation, of which that
Constitution was the organic law. Was it possible to lose the nation and
yet preserve the Constitution? By general law, life and limb must be
protected, yet often a limb must be amputated to save a life; but a life
is never wisely given to save a limb. I felt that measures otherwise
unconstitutional might become lawful by becoming indispensable to the
preservation of the Constitution, through the preservation of the
nation. Right or wrong, I assumed this ground, and now avow it. I could
not feel that, to the best of my ability, I had even tried to preserve
the Constitution if, to save slavery or any minor matter, I should
permit the wreck of government, country, and Constitution all together.
When, early in the war, General Frémont attempted military emancipation,
I forbade it, because I did not then think it an indispensable
necessity. When, a little later, General Cameron, then Secretary of War,
suggested the arming of the blacks, I objected because I did not yet
think it an indispensable necessity. When, still later, General Hunter
attempted military emancipation, I again forbade it, because I did not
yet think the indispensable necessity had come. When in March and May
and July, 1862, I made earnest and successive appeals to the border
States to favor compensated emancipation, I believed the indispensable
necessity for military emancipation and arming the blacks would come
unless averted by that measure. They declined the proposition, and I
was, in my best judgment, driven to the alternative of either
surrendering the Union, and with it the Constitution, or of laying
strong hand upon the colored element. I chose the latter."