Abstract
Well before Lincoln issued any Emancipation Proclamation—preliminary or otherwise—Civil War Americans were involved in a robust debate about the broader social and ideological dimensions of black wartime freedom. Indeed, it is fair to say that even without the Great Emancipator’s liberating deed, pre-1863 Americans would still have been engaged in the most serious discussion of emancipation since the postrevolutionary period. Much like the so-called “First Emancipation,” when the exigencies of war and nation building compelled the founding generation of statesmen, reformers, and citizens to reexamine slavery’s place in American life (culminating in a series of gradual abolition laws above the Mason-Dixon Line), pre-Proclamation emancipation debate flowed from a complex matrix of wartime concerns. Prompted by a half-dozen “emancipating proclamations,” or proto-abolitionist edicts, issued by military and political officials during the first year and a half of sectional battle, this debate illuminated much more than strategic concerns of the moment. Rather, it reflected continuing concerns about black freedom in the United States.