Indeed, there are multitudes of fairly
intelligent people who believe that slaveholding in this country
ceased the very day and hour the proclamation appeared. In a recent
magazine article, so intelligent a man as Booker Washington speaks of
a Kentucky slave family as being emancipated by Mr. Lincoln's
proclamation, when, in fact, the proclamation never applied to
Kentucky at all.
The emancipationists of Missouri were working hard to free their State
from slavery, and they would have been only too glad to have Mr.
Lincoln do the work for them. They appealed to him to extend his edict
to their State, but got no satisfaction. The emancipationists of
Maryland had much the same experience. Both Missouri and Maryland were
left out of the proclamation, as were Tennessee and Kentucky and
Delaware, and parts of Virginia and Louisiana and the Carolinas. (See
Appendix.) The explanation is that the proclamation was not intended
to cover all slaveholding territory. All of it that belonged to States
that had not been in rebellion, or had been subdued, was excluded. The
President's idea was to reach only such sections as were then in
revolt.
Pages:
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179