4148 HISTORIC DOCUMENTS
THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION
[Editor's Note: If the Emancipation Proclamation is to be regarded as the
cause of the freedom of the African race in the United States, then indeed must it
be considered as among the most important documents known in history: perhaps the most important of all. The President himself and the chief supporters
of his administration had for years made no concealment of their desire that
all men everywhere should be free. The occasion was at hand. Mr. Lincoln
seized and generalized the facts, embodied them in his own words, and became
for all time the oracle and interpreter of National Necessity.]
Whereas, on the twenty-second day of September, in the year of
our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-two, a Proclamation was issued by the President of the United States, containing
among other things the following, to-wit:
"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 designated part of a State, the people whereof
shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then,
thenceforth and forever free, and the executive government of the
United States, including the military and naval authority thereof,
will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons, and will
do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any
efforts they may make for their actual freedom.''
"That the executive will, on the first day of January aforesaid,
by proclamation, designate the States and parts of States, if
any, in which the people thereof respectively shall then be in rebellion against the United States, and the fact that any State or the
people thereof, shall on that day be in good faith represented in
the Congress of the United States by members chosen thereto at
elections wherein a majority of the qualified voters of such State
shall have participated, shall, in tthe absence of strong countervailing testimony, be deemed conclusive evidence that such State and
the people thereof are not then in rebellion against the United States."
Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United
States, by virtue of the power in me vested as Commander-in-Chief
of the Army and Navy of the United States in time of actual armed
rebellion against the authority and government of the United States,
and as a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion,
do, on this first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand
eight hundred and sixty-three, and in accordance with my purpose
so to do, publicly proclaim for the full period of one hundred days
from the day the first above mentioned, order and designate, as the