President lincoln and his scheme of emancipation meaning

America’s promise of freedom is filled with contradiction. Perhaps no people understood this more than the roughly four million enslaved African Americans living in the United States before 1863. Through their actions, large and small, enslaved people worked toward the moment of freedom for more than 200 years. On January 1, 1863, the United States government responded. Invoking presidential wartime powers, Abraham Lincoln decreed that all persons held in bondage within the Confederacy were free. The Emancipation Proclamation cracked open the institution of slavery, changing the course of the Civil War and the nation.

By 1862, Abraham Lincoln realized that to restore the Union, slavery must end. Politically, Lincoln faced pressure on all sides: from African Americans fleeing bondage, from Union generals acting independently, from Radical Republicans calling for immediate abolition, and from pro-slavery Unionists who opposed emancipation.

Lincoln also felt constrained by Constitutional limits on the federal government, which protected private property. Striking a balance, he believed the president only had the authority and political support to free enslaved persons residing within the eleven rebel states. In the summer of 1862, he began to draft the Emancipation Proclamation.