On January 1, 1863 Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation freeing slaves in those states that were then in rebellion against the federal government. It is not a document frequently remembered or celebrated despite its intention to liberate slaves in the Confederate States of America. The document itself is careful, lawyerly, and tedious. Written with no explicit appeal to grand philosophic principles, authorized under the President’s war powers, the Emancipation Proclamation is also bound up with the destructiveness of the Civil War, arguable constitutional claims about executive power, and the extension of war beyond the battlefield to civilians and society. Needless…
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