Existing comment:
(8) Perryville and the Emancipation Proclamation:
In mid-1862, President Abraham Lincoln wrestled with the idea of issuing the Emancipation Proclamation. With Confederate armies pressing into Maryland and Kentucky, Lincoln realized that he could not issue the Proclamation until the Union secured a major military victory. In addition, Lincoln feared how Unionists in Kentucky, Missouri, and Maryland would react, although the Proclamation did not free border-state slaves.
However, three Confederate failures in the autumn of 1862 gave Lincoln the political conditions necessary to issue the final version of the Emancipation Proclamation.
The Union victory at the battle of Antietam, fought near Sharpsburg, Maryland, on September 17, 1862, provided Lincoln the first military victory that he had been looking for. Five days later, the president issued the preliminary version of the Emancipation Proclamation, which was to take effect on January 1, 1863. It gave Union soldiers a moral cause to fight for and helped keep European powers out of the Civil War.
Two other Confederate failures that October ensured that the Proclamation would become official. On October 3-4, attacking Southern troops were driven from Corinth, Mississippi. Four days later, at Perryville, the Confederates won a tactical victory but were eventually forced to leave Kentucky. The inability of the rebels to hold the Bluegrass State was another Union victory and ensured that Lincoln had enough political cachet to make the Proclamation official.
If the Confederates in Kentucky had linked their armies, won a major victory, and hurled their troops northward into Ohio or Indiana, it is possible that Lincoln would have delayed his Proclamation. Instead, the chain of Union victories in the autumn of 1862 ensured that the Proclamation would take effect.
Kentucky slaves were finally freed when the 13th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified in December 1865. |