Disunion follows the Civil War as it unfolded.

Throughout the first six months of 1862, Radical Republicans, abolitionists and border state legislators all entertained uncertainties about Abraham Lincoln’s stance on the future of slavery. The president seemed to act as “a moderator between contending factions,” wrote William M. Dickson, a Cincinnati judge and eventual commander of one of the first black units in the Union Army (and husband to Mary Todd Lincoln’s first cousin). He is “helping the one today & the other tomorrow & and holding . . . [each] by the hope that . . . he will finally be with one of them. Neither breaks with him because each yet hopes him to be on its side.”

The president had already twice countermanded orders emancipating slaves issued by Union commanders in the field, first by Gen. John C. Frémont in Missouri in September 1861 and more recently by Gen. David Hunter in South Carolina, Georgia and Florida in May 1862. The latter action led the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison to predict a future “pregnant with sorrow and disaster,” one sure “to increase the disgust and uneasiness felt in Europe at our shilly-shallying course . . . and to inspire the rebels with fresh courage and determination.”

At the same time, in March 1862 Lincoln successfully lobbied Congress for money to compensate any state adopting a program of gradual emancipation. Border-state legislators rejected Lincoln’s initial plea, one that he renewed when rescinding Hunter’s order in May. Gradual, compensated emancipation, he argued, “would come gently as the dews of heaven, not rending or wrecking anything. Will you not embrace it? . . . You cannot . . . be blind to the signs of the times.”

But Congress seemed eager to move faster than the president. It forbade members of the Army and Navy from returning fugitive slaves to their owners. In April it passed, and Lincoln signed, legislation to abolish slavery and compensate slave-owners in the District of Columbia, while also appropriating money for the colonization of former slaves to Haiti, Liberia or other countries. And in June, a law prohibiting slavery in the territories fulfilled an 1860 Republican campaign plank denying “the authority of congress, of a territorial legislature, or of any individuals, to give legal existence to slavery in any territory of the United States.” The cumulative impact of these actions was not lost on antislavery leaders, although many agreed with the wish of the abolitionist Lydia Maria Child that Lincoln was “a man strong enough to lead popular opinion, instead of following it so conscientiously.”

Then came the events of July 1862.

The month began with the Union withdrawal to Harrison’s Landing on Virginia’s James River, bringing an end to the ill-fated attempt to capture Richmond. After a hurried trip to Virginia to confer with Gen. George McClellan, Lincoln returned to Washington on July 11 and immediately recalled Gen. Henry Halleck from the western theater of operations to replace McClellan as general in chief. The next day he met once again with border-state congressmen, warning them that if they did not “emancipate gradually . . . the institution in your states will be extinguished . . . by the mere incidents of the war . . . and you will have nothing valuable in lieu of it.” Two days later, the border states representatives rejected Lincoln’s proposal as an unwarranted “interference” in a state matter.

In the meantime, Lincoln confided in Secretary of State William Seward and Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles that he intended to issue an emancipation proclamation. “We must free the slaves or be ourselves subdued,” he argued. “The slaves were undeniably an element of strength to those who had their service, and we must decide whether that element should be with us or against us.”

On July 17, the Congress pushed events forward by sending Lincoln two acts that would irrevocably redefine the purpose and nature of the Union cause. The Militia Act authorized Lincoln “to receive into the service of the United States, for the purpose of constructing entrenchments, or performing camp service or any other labor, or any military or naval service for which they may be found competent, persons of African descent.” The Second Confiscation Act went even further, authorizing the president to seize “all the estate and property, money, stocks, credits, and effects” of anyone in rebellion against the United States and to use “the proceeds thereof for the support of the army of the United States.” Furthermore, “all slaves of persons . . . engaged in rebellion . . . that [come] under the control of the government of the United States . . . shall be deemed captives of war, and shall be forever free of their servitude.”

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For a time Lincoln considered vetoing the act, even going so far as to draft a message to that end. Alarmed Senate Republicans denounced the president “as the deliberate betrayer of the freedmen and poor whites,” but at the last minute Congress passed a resolution addressing Lincoln’s major concern — that the forfeiture of property called for in the legislation not extend beyond the life of the offender. On July 17 he signed the bill, though he sent his veto message to Congress and asked that it be read, a request that infuriated his Republican colleagues in both legislative chambers. Congressman George Julian of Indiana, a member of the Committee on the Conduct of the War, reported that “no one at a distance could have formed any adequate conception of the hostility of Republican members toward Mr. Lincoln. . . . [Ohio Senator Benjamin] Wade said the country was going to hell, and that the scenes witnessed in the French Revolution were nothing in comparison with what we should see here.”

The Second Confiscation Act itself hardly merited such vitriol: the absence of any enforcement mechanism or provisions for oversight rendered the act almost completely ineffectual. Attorney General Edward Bates detailed a civil procedure whereby the interested party filed an action against the owner or property; a hearing was held; and, if condemned, the property was seized by marshals and sold at public auction. Yet a postwar report noted that only $129,680.67 had been paid into the department from Southern property confiscated through the courts (although the Direct Tax Act of 1862 and the Captured and Abandoned Property Act of 1864 both also led to the seizure and sale of Southern land, cotton and livestock).

Years later Senator John Sherman of Ohio wrote, “The confiscation act was more useful as a declaration of policy than as an act to be enforced.” And at the time William Lloyd Garrison summed up the disappointment felt by many abolitionists. “What was wanted, what is still needed, is a proclamation, distinctly announcing the total abolition of slavery.” Garrison got just what he wanted on July 22 (although he would have to wait some time to learn of it). That day Abraham Lincoln told his cabinet of his intention to issue a proclamation freeing slaves in the rebel states, reluctantly agreeing to withhold a public announcement until Union forces had won a suitable victory. That opportunity would come two months later at Antietam Creek, near Sharpsburg, Md.

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Sources: Michael Burlingame, “Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Vol. II”; Allen C. Guelzo, “Lincoln’s Emancipation Act: The End of Slavery in America”; William C. Harris, “Lincoln and the Border State: Preserving the Union”; Harold Holzer, “Emancipating Lincoln: The Proclamation in Text, Context, and Memory”; Henry Mayer, “All On Fire: William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery”; James McPherson, “Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era”; Silvana R. Siddali, “From Property to Person: Slavery and the Confiscation Acts, 1861-1862”; Richard Slotkin, “The Long Road to Antietam: How the Civil War Became a Revolution”; and John Syrett, “The Civil War Confiscation Acts: Failing to Reconstruct the South.”

Rick Beard is an independent historian and coordinator of the Civil War Sesquicentennial for the American Association for State and Local History.