HRRIN 1862 ABRAHAM LINCOLN CONCLUDED THAT TO restore the Union, slavery must end. He had always opposed slavery but had never sided with abolitionists who called for its immediate end. Instead, he sought solutions that might make slavery wither away such as restricting its spread into the western territories, offering compensation to owners who freed slaves, and relocating those who were emancipated outside the country. He eventually concluded that the war made those measures woefully inadequate.
Lincoln faced pressure on all sides—from African Americans fleeing bondage and pouring into Union camps, from Radical Republicans demanding an end to slavery, and from proslavery Unionists who threatened to oppose the war if it became a fight for abolition.
In June 1862, while awaiting news at the War Department telegraph office, Lincoln began writing an executive order on slavery. For several weeks he sat at the desk of Major Thomas T. Eckert, using the inkstand below to pen the document. After completing the draft, he explained to Eckert that he had been composing an order “giving freedom to the slaves of the South, for the purpose of hastening the end of the war.”
Although Lincoln’s order would not take effect until the first day of 1863, he prepared the public for it by announcing his Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, 1862. As of January 1, he declared all persons held in slavery in areas still in rebellion would be “then, thenceforward, and forever free.”
Lincoln believed he had the authority as commander in chief to free only those who were enslaved within the eleven rebellious states. The order did not free slaves in Union-controlled areas, but it was widely understood that a Union victory would mean the end of slavery in the United States. “If my name ever goes into history it will be for this act,” Lincoln said, “and my whole soul is into it.” HRR
FREEDOM’S FONT Abraham Lincoln used this brass inkstand to draft the Emancipation Proclamation. He waited until after Union forces prevailed at Antietam to issue his preliminary proclamation, which was finalized on January 1, 1863.