Events Preceding the Civil War: Missouri and Constitution

In the Presidential election of 1860 the rapid growth of anti-slavery sentiment in the North was evidenced in the election of Abraham Lincoln, the Republican candidate, to the Presidency, while the bitterness of hostile feeling in the South was indicated in the secession movements that quickly followed. Though it was declared by Congress, after the outbreak of the war, that hostilities were not prosecuted with any intention of interfering with the "established institutions" of the seceding States, yet it proved impossible to keep measures of abolition out of the contest.

Slavery was at first dealt with from the immediate stand-point of war. Slave property employed in acts against the government was declared confiscated, the army was forbidden to return fugitive slaves, and slavery was abolished in the District of Columbia and in the Territories. Later, the employment of negroes as soldiers was authorized. Two army commanders, Fremont in Missouri and Hunter in South Carolina, took it upon themselves to issue proclamations abolishing slavery within their fields of command. This unauthorized action was disavowed by the President. Though in favor of abolition, he belevied that slave-holders ought to be compensated for their lost property, and in December, 1862, he offered to the consideration of Congress three constitutional amendments, in which he proposed to compensate States which should abolish slavery before 1900 and to colonize free negroes out of the country. Though these recommendations were not considered, yet gradual emancipation was incorporated in 1862 in the Constitution of West Virginia, and in that of Missouri in 1863. Maryland, in 1864, adopted immediate abolition. On September 22, 1862, President Lincoln issued a preliminary proclamation, and on January 1, 1863, a final one, definitely abolishing slavery in the hostile States, with the exception of the parishes of Louisiana and the counties of Virginia which were then within the Union lines. Though it has been claimed that the President had neither constitutional nor physical power to abolish slavery in these States, and that therefore his action was nugatory, yet its effect proved sufficiently positive. As the Federal armies advanced, slavery disappeared behind them. Of the slave States not included in the proclamation, Kentucky and Delaware alone took no action on the subject of slavery, but the institution was everywhere near its death. On April 8, 1864, the thirteenth amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery within the limits of the United States, was offered in Congress, and in 1865 it was ratified by thirty-one of the thirty-six States. The work begun by The Liberator in 1830 was thus completed, and every man, woman, and child within the United States of America was declared free from the date of December 18, 1865.