Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America.

Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America. By Allen C. Guelzo. (New York and other cities: Simon and Schuster, c. 2004. Pp. xviii, 332. Paper, $14.00, ISBN 0-7432-6297-2; cloth, $26.00, ISBN 0-7432-2182-6.)

In his own time and for more than a century after his death, Abraham Lincoln's hagiographers and detractors alike created a larger-than-life image of the man--one that represented and was somehow made answerable for American democratic ideals and disappointments. It is hardly necessary to comment on the immense historiography of Lincoln's life and times. Although it is somewhat surprising to note that the Emancipation Proclamation--the foundation of Lincoln's waxing and waning reputation--has received so little scholarly attention. Allen C. Guelzo's beautifully written study provides a detailed narrative of the political, military, and social context of the issuance of the proclamation, as well as an important new analysis of Lincoln's statesmanship.

All Lincoln biographers have discussed the Emancipation Proclamation. Most have done so with reverence, a few with cynicism (especially since Richard Hofstadter's well-known 1948 essay on Lincoln), and some with outright repugnance. Indeed, any modern Lincoln scholar must "get right with Hofstadter," who famously derided the Emancipation Proclamation as possessing all the "'moral grandeur of a bill of lading'" (p. 2). Most historians admit the importance of contextualizing Lincoln's racial attitudes and his purported hesitancy to emancipate southern slaves, albeit with rather sheepish reluctance to justify his stance on these issues.

Guelzo explicitly tells the reader that it is not his intention to defend Lincoln. Instead he aims to recontextualize the document and its creation and to restore its full weight to the process of ending slavery. Certainly this is not a bloodless recounting of the events leading to and resulting from the issuance of the proclamation. Guelzo clearly reveres Lincoln, arguing that he had always opposed slavery, that he had planned emancipation from the beginning of the Civil War, and that his actions were far riskier and more courageous than is usually assumed.

The overarching theoretical framework for this book rests on the author's use of the eighteenth-century definition of good statesmanship. Guelzo argues that Lincoln's caliber as a political leader rested upon the Enlightenment virtue of prudence, which Montesquieu defined as a combination of wisdom, experience, and ethics. Because of Lincoln's reliance on reason, balanced integrity of means and ends, shrewd judgment, and a grasp of and respect for consequences, Guelzo considers him "our last Enlightenment politician." Finally, and perhaps most significant for Guelzo's argument, is a classical definition of prudence that includes a distaste for "the politics of passion" (p. 3). Here Guelzo treads terrain that would give most historians pause when he criticizes radicals and abolitionists as passionate, lacking reason, and careless of consequences--in other words, hardly prudent.

The author reminds us that slavery remained one of the most explosive issues of the Civil War era. The process of emancipation required vigilant navigation between Lincoln's lifelong belief that slavery was an unmitigated evil and his conviction that the institution of slavery could be removed only through political action by the American people. As long as it was feasible, Lincoln insisted on gradual and voluntary emancipation and on compensation to slave owners. Moreover, Lincoln's plans for emancipation included colonization, for which he still is sharply criticized. But even radicals recognized that efforts against the institution of slavery (such as the emancipation clauses in the Second Confiscation Act) would fail to be passed if they did not include some provisions for colonization.

According to Lincoln, legislative and military attempts at emancipation during wartime--possibilities such as the confiscation of Confederate property, military efforts at liberating fugitive slaves, and martial law proclamations--were at best impermanent and at worst unconstitutional. In a republic where the Constitution was paramount, slavery could not be legislated away even during wartime. And for Lincoln military emancipation was never an option. A president who possessed sufficient courage and faith in the democratic process to hold elections in the midst of a civil war would not use military force to violate private-property rights, even if those property rights were morally repugnant. Lincoln struck down various attempts at emancipation by military officers, including John Charles Fremont's proclamation of martial law in 1861 and David Hunter's emancipation edict in 1862, because they contravened the law or trespassed on executive privilege. Moreover, even with a plurality of Republicans in Congress, the radicals could not force emancipation in the border states, where they arguably had some control. Nor would the northern public have stood for it, as evidenced by elections in the fall of 1862 that robbed many Republicans of congressional and gubernatorial offices.

To elucidate the situation in the slave border states, Guelzo analyzes Lincoln's efforts to initiate emancipation in Delaware, the state with the smallest slave population and the most to gain by a process of compensated, gradual, voluntary emancipation. Yet voluntary emancipation failed in Delaware, as in the other border states, leaving Lincoln with no alternative but to take responsibility for emancipation upon himself and issue an official proclamation. He justified his action through reliance on presidential war powers, and the policy eventually was backed by the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment.

One of the book's most significant contributions is its methodology. Guelzo weaves a close reading of primary sources with a meticulous retelling of historical narrative. He insists throughout on a strict nineteenth-century understanding of the scope, purpose, and power of public documents such as proclamations and public letters (which incidentally makes this book a useful teaching tool for history students). For example, in Guelzo's analysis of the well-known bill-of-lading metaphor, the author masterfully turns Hofstadter's skeptical comment on its head by recovering the vitality and importance of a nineteenth-century bill of lading.

In his conclusion Guelzo contends that the Emancipation Proclamation was a "stake in the heart of slavery," and he shows how powerful and necessary the document was (p. 215). He reminds the reader that in spite of the long-term American battles and disappointments over racial injustice, Lincoln's action on emancipation was, in the words of Frederick Douglass, "swift, zealous, radical, and determined" (p. 250).

SILVANA R. SIDDALI

Saint Louis University