ABSTRACT
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) was for many years revered by Negro and whites alike for his promulgation of the Emancipation Proclamation. Yet his views on the race question were plainly moderate, and it was the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, and not the Proclamation, which ended slavery as a legal system in the United States. The Thirteenth Amendment, validated December 18, 1865, provided that (\n]either slavery nor involun tary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place sub ject to their jurisdiction.99 Close reading of the Proclamation, on the other hand, reveals that whether or not it wounded slavery as an institution, it did not expunge it. The Proclamation freed slaves wherever its people were in re bellion, and specifically ruled out from its provisions such parishes, counties, and cities in the South held by Federal troops, where slavery could have been immediately eradicated. The Proclamation asserted itself to be “a fit and necessary war measure” and no more. Lincoln's justification lay in his need to hold together for the Union states not yet ready to accept full emancipa tion. Their disaffection could have destroyed the Union effort, and riveted slavery within a triumphant Confederacy.
