ABSTRACT
On September 22, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln announced his intention to emancipate the slaves in those areas still in rebellion against the Union on January 1, 1863. Historian John Hope Franklin identified the Emancipation Proclamation as among the most significant documents in the American political tradition for its revolutionary implications for civil rights and racial equality. Lincoln defended the Emancipation Proclamation as a war measure authorized by the president's power as commander-in-chief. Lincoln's decision to emancipate the slaves was a war measure taken to salvage a Union in increasingly desperate shape. In a July 4, 1861, speech to Congress, he had already assumed and defended a vast array of questionable executive powers. Lincoln appreciated the Constitution's conventional protection of the right to property in a slave, and justice demanded that he warn those in rebellion of his intention.
