The First Reading of the Emancipation Proclamation before the Cabinet

Alexander Hay Ritchie, 21 Jan 1822 - 19 Sep 1895 · 1866

Despite his personal objection to slavery, Abraham Lincoln entered the presidency pledging not to interfere with the states where it existed. To avoid alienating slaveholding border states that remained loyal to the Union, he steadfastly resisted pressure from abolitionists who urged him to make the dismantling of slavery a goal of the Civil War. But by fall 1862, Lincoln recognized that emancipation of those enslaved within Confederate-held territory was a military as well as a moral necessity.