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In pursuance of the sixth section of the act of congress entitled “An
act to suppress insurrection and to punish treason and rebellion, to seize
and confiscate property of rebels, and for other purposes” Approved
July 17, 1862, and which act, and the Joint Resolution explanatory thereof,
are herewith published, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States,
do hereby proclaim to, and warn all persons within the contemplation of
said sixth section to cease participating in, aiding, countenancing, or
abetting the existing rebellion, or any rebellion against the government
of the United States, and to return to their proper allegiance to the
United States, on pain of the forfeitures and seizures, as within and
by said sixth section provided.
And I hereby make known that it is my purpose, upon the next meeting of
congress, to again recommend the adoption of a practical measure for tendering
pecuniary aid to the free choice or rejection, of any and all States which
may then be recognizing and practically sustaining the authority of the
United States, and which may then have voluntarily adopted, or thereafter
may voluntarily adopt, gradual abolishment of slavery within such State
or States–that the object is to practically restore, thenceforward
to be maintain[ed], the constitutional relation between the general government,
and each, and all the states, wherein that relation is now suspended,
or disturbed; and that, for this object, the war, as it has been, will
be, prosecuted. And, as a fit and necessary military measure for effecting
this object, I, as Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy of the United
States, do order and declare that on the first day of January in the year
of Our Lord one thousand, eight hundred and sixtythree, all persons held
as slaves within any state or states, wherein the constitutional authority
of the United States shall not then be practically recognized, submitted
to, and maintained, shall then, thenceforward, and forever, be free.
Emancipation Proclamation
as first sketched and
shown to the Cabinet in
July 1862.
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