Lincoln's Toughest Choice.

Freeing the slaves may seem a no-brainer, but it was a political powder keg in 1862

Abraham Lincoln had a secret. On August 20, 1862, when Horace Greeley s New York Tribune demanded action against slavery, Lincoln had already decided on a proclamation freeing the slaves. He had even read it to his Cabinet. But he pretended to Greeley--and the world --that he hadn't made up his mind.

This Presidents' Day and Black History Month, Americans will recall that Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation freed the slaves. What the tributes may miss is how difficult the decision was, how politically skillful Lincoln was in making it, and the fact that it didn't immediately free a single slave.

Slavery on this continent dated back to 1619. Northern states had banned it by the early 1800s, but it remained strong in the South. By the 1840s, Southerners had begun calling slavery a "positive good." Lincoln had ridiculed this view, noting that although volume upon volume is written to prove slavery a very good thing, we never hear of the man who wishes to take the good of it by being a slave himself.

But Lincoln had to consider more than just his personal views. By 1861, 11 Southern states, whose economies were based on slavery, had seceded from the Union (that is, left it), partly to protect slavery. The South's winning armies threatened to make the separation stick. Lincoln feared that the young American nation might break apart and perish on his watch.

Advocates of emancipation--freeing the slaves--said Union armies should fight to end slavery, not just to put down the Southern rebellion. They argued that slavery was evil, but they also made practical points. Britain would be less likely to intervene against a North it saw as fighting for freedom. And because slave labor aided the South's war effort, a policy of freeing slaves would drain a key resource from the enemy whenever Union armies came near. Without such a policy, wrote the African-American statesman Frederick Douglass, a former slave, the Union was catering to Southern rebels and shunning the blacks who wanted to rally to its flag. The Union, he said, enacts the folly of maiming itself before striking down its enemy ... of abusing its allies to please its implacable foes.... If this is military sagacity [wisdom], where shall we look for military insanity?

But there were also potent reasons not to proclaim emancipation. Four border states that still had slavery--Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri had stayed in the Union. If a proclamation drove these states to secede, the capital would be surrounded and the war probably lost. Even in the North, The New York Times warned, millions of people believe in fighting for the Union ... but they would not give either men, money, or moral support to a war waged for the emancipation of Southern slaves.

By July 1862, Lincoln had decided to issue a proclamation carefully worded to free slaves only in the rebel-held areas, not in Union states. He kept his decision secret, waiting till after a Union victory so that the act wouldn't seem desperate.

Meanwhile, he used his public reply to Greeley to prepare the public for the idea that emancipation might be needed to save the country:

My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that....

In September 1862, Lincoln revealed his secret because another secret got out. In Maryland, a Union soldier found a piece of paper detailing rebel battle plans, wrapped around three cigars. Knowing the enemy's secret orders, the Union army won a victory at Antietam, giving the President an occasion to announce:

I, Abraham Lincoln ... do hereby proclaim and declare ... that on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any state, or any designated part of a state, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.

Technically, the document didn't free anyone, because it applied only to enemy-held land. But it turned Union armies into liberators. Freed blacks helped win the Civil War, and the 13th Amendment to the Constitution soon ended slavery nationally. Lincoln had saved the Union by allying it with universal freedom.