[19] During the Civil War, however, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation under his authority as "Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy" under Article II, section 2 of the United States Constitution.

[27] The Emancipation Proclamation has been ridiculed, notably by Richard Hofstadter, who wrote that it "had all the moral grandeur of a bill of lading" and "declared free all slaves ... precisely where its effect could not reach".

[28][29] Disagreeing with Hofstadter, William W. Freehling wrote that Lincoln's asserting his power as Commander-in-Chief to issue the proclamation "reads not like an entrepreneur's bill for past services but like a warrior's brandishing of a new weapon".

[41] On May 30, after a cabinet meeting called by President Lincoln, "Simon Cameron, the secretary of war, telegraphed Butler to inform him that his contraband policy 'is approved.

"[54] However, Lincoln's position continued to be that, although Congress lacked the power to free the slaves in rebel-held states, he, as commander in chief, could do so if he deemed it a proper military measure.

In the summer of 1862, Republican editor Horace Greeley of the highly influential New-York Tribune wrote a famous editorial entitled "The Prayer of Twenty Millions" demanding a more aggressive attack on the Confederacy and faster emancipation of the slaves: "On the face of this wide earth, Mr. President, there is not one ... intelligent champion of the Union cause who does not feel ... that the rebellion, if crushed tomorrow, would be renewed if slavery were left in full vigor and that every hour of deference to slavery is an hour of added and deepened peril to the Union.

[71] According to Civil War historian James M. McPherson, Lincoln told cabinet members, "I made a solemn vow before God, that if General Lee was driven back from Pennsylvania, I would crown the result by the declaration of freedom to the slaves.

Lincoln continued, however, that the states included in the proclamation could "adopt systems of apprenticeship for the colored people, conforming substantially to the most approved plans of gradual emancipation; and ... they may be nearly as well off, in this respect, as if the present trouble had not occurred".

Most of the verses of the plantation songs had some reference to freedom.... [S]ome man who seemed to be a stranger (a United States officer, I presume) made a little speech and then read a rather long paper—the Emancipation Proclamation, I think.

They produced and prepared food; sewed uniforms; repaired railways; worked on farms and in factories, shipping yards, and mines; built fortifications; and served as hospital workers and common laborers.

News of the Proclamation spread rapidly by word of mouth, arousing hopes of freedom, creating general confusion, and encouraging thousands to escape to Union lines.

Writing on the matter after the sack of Fredericksburg, Lee wrote, "In view of the vast increase of the forces of the enemy, of the savage and brutal policy he has proclaimed, which leaves us no alternative but success or degradation worse than death, if we would save the honor of our families from pollution [and] our social system from destruction, let every effort be made, every means be employed, to fill and maintain the ranks of our armies, until God in his mercy shall bless us with the establishment of our independence.

"[103][104][page needed] The Emancipation Proclamation marked a significant turning point in the war as it made the goal of the North not only preserving the Union, but also freeing the slaves.

Horatio Seymour, while running for governor of New York, cast the Emancipation Proclamation as a call for slaves to commit extreme acts of violence on all white southerners, saying it was "a proposal for the butchery of women and children, for scenes of lust and rapine, and of arson and murder, which would invoke the interference of civilized Europe".

Editor Henry A. Reeves wrote in Greenport's Republican Watchman that "In the name of freedom for Negroes, [the proclamation] imperils the liberty of white men; to test an utopian theory of equality of races which Nature, History and Experience alike condemn as monstrous, it overturns the Constitution and Civil Laws and sets up Military Usurpation in their stead.

The promises of many Republican politicians that the war was to restore the Union and not about black rights or ending slavery were declared lies by their opponents, who cited the Proclamation.

In Columbiana, Ohio, Copperhead David Allen told a crowd, "Now fellow Democrats I ask you if you are going to be forced into a war against your Britheren of the Southern States for the Negro.

"[113] The Copperheads saw the Proclamation as irrefutable proof of their position and the beginning of a political rise for their members; in Connecticut, H. B. Whiting wrote that the truth was now plain even to "those stupid thickheaded persons who persisted in thinking that the President was a conservative man and that the war was for the restoration of the Union under the Constitution.

While throughout the war they had continued to espouse the racist positions of their party and their disdain of the concerns of slaves, they did see the Proclamation as a viable military tool against the South and worried that opposing it might demoralize troops in the Union army.

In light of this and a lack of military success for the Union armies, many War Democrat voters who had previously supported Lincoln turned against him and joined the Copperheads in the off-year elections held in October and November.

Lincoln's friend Orville Hickman Browning told the president that the Proclamation and the suspension of habeas corpus had been "disastrous" for his party by handing the Democrats so many weapons.

[114] Historians James M. McPherson and Allan Nevins state that though the results looked very troubling, they could be seen favorably by Lincoln; his opponents did well only in their historic strongholds and "at the national level their gains in the House were the smallest of any minority party's in an off-year election in nearly a generation.

[119] Confederate General Robert E. Lee called the Proclamation a "savage and brutal policy he has proclaimed, which leaves us no alternative but success or degradation worse than death.

[125] Mayor Abel Haywood, a representative for workers from Manchester, England, wrote to Lincoln saying, "We joyfully honor you for many decisive steps toward practically exemplifying your belief in the words of your great founders: 'All men are created free and equal.

"[140] In his Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, Allen C. Guelzo noted professional historians' lack of substantial respect for the document, since it has been the subject of few major scholarly studies.

These include an "Emancipation Proclamation Centennial Address" he gave in New York City on September 12, 1962, in which he placed the Proclamation alongside the Declaration of Independence as an "imperishable" contribution to civilization and added, "All tyrants, past, present and future, are powerless to bury the truths in these declarations...." He lamented that despite a history where the United States "proudly professed the basic principles inherent in both documents," it "sadly practiced the antithesis of these principles."

That is to make its declarations of freedom real; to reach back to the origins of our nation when our message of equality electrified an unfree world, and reaffirm democracy by deeds as bold and daring as the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation.

"[147] In the early 1960s, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his associates called on President John F. Kennedy to bypass Southern segregationist opposition in the Congress by issuing an executive order to put an end to segregation.

Kennedy, who had been routinely criticized as timid by some civil rights activists, reminded Americans that two black students had been peacefully enrolled in the University of Alabama with the aid of the National Guard, despite the opposition of Governor George Wallace.

"[150] Invoking the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation he said, One hundred years of delay have passed since President Lincoln freed the slaves, yet their heirs, their grandsons, are not fully free.