By the summer of 1862, Lincoln decided to issue an emancipation proclamation. It was not simply that he was wisely biding his time and waiting for Northern anti-slavery sentiment to mature in order to move on emancipation. He himself had to be convinced of the failure of his appeasement of border state slaveholders and Northern conservatives and of the military necessity to free the slaves and enlist Black men. The emancipationist arguments of abolitionists and radical Republicans, especially those who shared a personal relationship with the president, like Sen. Charles Sumner of Mass., made headway when border state slaveholders proved to be completely obdurate regarding the president’s proposals for gradual, compensated emancipation, and the war reached a stalemate amid heavy Union losses. Abolitionists realized that Lincoln’s presidency and the war presented them with a golden opportunity to make their case for emancipation anew. During the Civil War, the long-reviled abolition movement gained new respectability in the eyes of the Northern public. Abolitionist leaders, branded as disunionists and fanatics until the very eve of the war, acquired public authority as influential proponents of the policy of emancipation especially as the war dragged on. They revived their earliest tactics and deluged Congress with petitions as they had not done since the 1830s. The crucial difference was that an anti-slavery party now controlled Congress and their petitions were read with respect rather than gagged as incendiary documents. Abolitionists, who had been political outsiders as radical agitators throughout the antebellum period, now walked the halls of power as influential advocates for the slave, though a sizeable minority advocated emigration outside the United States in the 1850s.
The Making of an Abolitionist
Lincoln also became one of the first American presidents to receive African Americans in the White House and the first to solicit their opinion in matters affecting them. African Americans had served as domestic workers in the White House since the inception of the republic and the presidency but they had never before been consulted on matters of state. (One exception was James Madison who met with the Black Quaker Capt. Paul Cuffe, whose ships had been impounded during the 1812 war.) For Black abolitionists, as much as their white counterparts, a Republican presidency meant having for the first time the political opportunity to pressure the federal government to act on abolition. Perhaps no other Black abolitionist leader was more influential in this regard than Frederick Douglass, who used his monthly magazine and speeches to vent his views on abolition, black rights, and military service. When Lincoln met Douglass, he acknowledged having read his criticisms of Lincoln’s slowness to act on emancipation. African Americans who struggled to have their voices heard both within and outside the abolition movement had gained the president’s ear and Lincoln’s ability to meet with Black people without any condescension impressed them. It also enabled him to listen to the opinions of Black abolitionists on some important occasions.