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January 1, 2024 Heather Cox Richardson
On January 1, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln signed his name to the Emancipation Proclamation. “I never in my life felt more certain that I was doing right,” he said, “than I do in signing this paper. If my name goes into history, it will be for this act, and my whole soul is in it.”
The Emancipation Proclamation provided that as of January 1, “all persons held as slaves” anywhere that was still controlled by the Confederate government would be “then, thenceforward, and forever free.”
Historian Richard Hofstadter famously complained that the Emancipation Proclamation had “all the moral grandeur of a bill of lading,” but its legalistic tone reflected that Lincoln was committed to achieving change not by dictating it, which he recognized would destroy our democracy, but by working within the nation’s democratic system.
Although Lincoln personally opposed human enslavement, he did not believe the federal government had the power to end it in the states. With that limitation, his goal, and that of the fledgling Republican Party he led, was only to keep it from spreading into the western territories where, until the 1857 Dred Scott decision, Congress had the power to exclude human enslavement. The spread of enslaved labor would enable wealthy enslavers to dominate the region quickly, they thought, limiting opportunities for poorer white men and gradually turning the entire country over to enslavers.
When the war broke out in 1861, the newly elected Lincoln urged southern leaders to reconsider leaving the Union, reassuring them that “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.” When Confederates fired on Fort Sumter, the federal fort at the mouth of Charleston Harbor, Lincoln called not for a war on slavery, but for “all loyal citizens to favor, facilitate, and aid [an] effort to maintain the honor, the integrity, and the existence of our National Union.”
From the earliest days of the war, though, Black Americans recognized that the war must address enslavement. Immediately, they began to escape across Union military lines. At first, hoping to appease border state residents, Union officers returned these people to their enslavers. But by the end of May, as it became clear that enslaved people were being pressed into service for the Confederate military, Union officers refused to return them and instead hoped that welcoming them to the Union lines would make them want to work for the U.S.
In August 1861, shortly after the First Battle of Bull Run left the Union army battered and bleeding, Congress struck a blow at enslavement by passing a law that forfeited the right of any enslaver to a person whom he had consented to be used “in aid of this rebellion, in digging ditches or intrenchments, or in any other way.”
When northern Democrats charged that Republicans were subverting the Constitution and planning to emancipate all southern enslaved people, Republicans agreed with the old principle that Congress had no right to “interfere with slavery in any slaveholding state,” but stood firmly on a new argument: the war powers the Constitution assigned to Congress enabled it to pass laws that would help the war effort. That included attacking enslavement.
As Confederate armies racked up victories, Republicans increasingly emphasized the importance of Black people to the South’s war effort. “[I]t has long been the boast of the South…that its whole white population could be made available for the war, for the reason that all its industries were carried on by the slaves,” the New York Times wrote. Northerners who before the war had complained that Black workers were inefficient found themselves reconsidering. The Chicago Tribune thought Black workers were so productive that “[F]our millions of slaves off-set at least eight millions of Northern whites.”
At the same time, Republicans came to see Black people as crucially important in the North as well, as they worked in military camps and, later, in cotton fields in areas captured by the U.S. military. While Democrats continued to harp on what they saw as Black people’s inability to support themselves, Republicans countered that “[n]o better class of laborers could be found…in all the population of the United States,” and Republican newspapers pushed back on the Democratic idea that Black families were unwelcome in the North.
By July 1862, as Union armies continued to falter, Lincoln decided to take the idea of attacking enslavement through the war powers further, issuing a document that would free enslaved southerners who remained in areas controlled by the Confederacy. His secretary of state, William Henry Seward, urged him to wait until after a Union victory to make the announcement so it would not look as if it were prompted by desperation.
When U.S. troops halted the advance of Confederate troops into Maryland at the September 17 Battle of Antietam, Lincoln thought it was time. On Monday, September 22, he issued the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation under the war power of the executive, stating that in 100 days, on January 1, 1863, enslaved persons held in territories still controlled by the Confederacy would be free. He said to a visiting judge: “It is my last trump card…. If that don’t do, we must give up.”
The plan did not sit well with Lincoln’s political opponents. They attacked Lincoln for fighting a war on behalf of Black Americans, and voters listened. In the 1862 midterm election, held a little over a month after the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln and the Republicans got shellacked. They lost more than 25 seats in the House of Representatives and lost control of Ohio, Illinois, and Indiana. Democrats did not win control of Wisconsin and Michigan, but they made impressive gains. Voters were undoubtedly unhappy with the lackluster prosecution of the war and concerned about its mounting costs, but Democrats were not wrong to claim their victory was a repudiation of emancipation.
Voters had spoken, and Lincoln responded by offering to give Democrats exactly what they said they wanted. In his message to Congress on December 1, 1862, he called for it to consider amendments to the Constitution that would put off emancipation until January 1, 1900, and pay enslavers for those enslaved people who became free. Slavery was going to end one way or another, he made it clear, and if Democrats wanted to do it their way, he was willing to let them lead. The ball was in Congress’s court if congressmen wanted to play.
But Democrats had won the election on grievance; no lawmaker really wanted to try to persuade his constituents to pay rich enslavers to end their barbaric system. Northerners recoiled from the plan. One newspaper correspondent noted that compensated emancipation would almost certainly cost more than a billion dollars, and while he seemed willing to stomach that financial hit, others were not. Another correspondent to the New York Times said that enslavers, who were at that very moment attacking the U.S. government, were already making up lists of the value of the people enslaved on their lands to get their U.S. government payouts.
Lincoln won his point. On December 31, 1862, newspapers received word that the president would issue the Emancipation Proclamation he had promised. Black congregations gathered that afternoon and into the night in their churches to pray for the end of enslavement and the realization of the principle of human equality, promised in the Declaration of Independence, starting a tradition that continues to the present.
And the following day, after the traditional White House New Year’s Day reception, Lincoln kept his word. Because his justification for the Emancipation Proclamation was to weaken the war effort, the areas affected by the proclamation had to be those still held by the Confederacy, but the larger meaning of the document was clear: the U.S. would no longer defend the racial enslavement that had been part of its birth and would admit Black men to national participation on terms of equality. Lincoln welcomed Black men into the service of the U.S. Army—traditionally a route to citizenship—and urged Black Americans to “labor faithfully for reasonable wages.”
In less than two years, the nation had gone from protecting enslavement to ending it, completely reworking the foundations of our government. But while the victory was moral, Lincoln and the Republicans had achieved it within the confines of a system that allowed the vote only to white men, a significant number of whom opposed ending enslavement altogether. Thanks to pressure from Black Americans and public opinion, they were able to thread a narrow political needle, preserving democratic norms while achieving revolutionary ends.
Lincoln concluded: “[U]pon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution, upon military necessity, I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind, and the gracious favor of Almighty God.”
The sausage-making of the Emancipation Proclamation had long-term repercussions. The redefinition of Black Americans as superhuman workers undercut later attempts to support formerly enslaved people as they transitioned to a free economy, and the road to equality was not at all as smooth as the Republicans hoped. But that such a foundational change in our history emerged from such messy give and take, necessary in order to preserve our democratic system, seems a useful thing to remember in 2024.
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Notes:
Jacque Voegeli, “The Northwest and the Race Issue, 1861–1862,” The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 50 (Sep. 1963), pp. 235–251.
https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/second-annual-message-9
https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/lincoln1.asp
https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured-documents/emancipation-proclamation/transcript.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/30/opinion/watch-night-new-years-eve.html
New York Times, December 12, 1862, p. 2.
New York Times, December 28, 1862, p. 8.
Dmytro Filimonov, 41, is a Ukrainian journalist based in Kyiv. He was one of the first reporters to travel to the separatist-controlled territories of Donbas in 2014–2015 at the very onset of the conflict that would trigger Russia’s full-scale invasion eight years later. Now, having observed the war up close for the last three years, talking to both soldiers and civilians, Russians and Ukrainians, he has found that many of his compatriots just want the conflict to end, but avoid saying so out of fear of being labeled a traitor. Here, he tells his story to our Tanya Lukyanova.
KYIV, Ukraine — On February 24, 2022, I woke up to a phone call from a friend. “It’s started,” he said.
“What started?” I asked. “The war,” he replied. Only then did I hear the sound of the sirens in Kyiv signaling that yes, Russia had begun an invasion, announcing itself with bombs and shellings.
Every hour of that first day brought fresh news of air strikes—in Kyiv, Kharkiv, Mariupol, Mykolaiv, Kherson, Kramatorsk, Odessa. By evening, president Volodymyr Zelensky reported that 137 Ukrainians had died. He also imposed martial law that day.
My younger brother, Anton, enlisted on that first day of the war. I’ve always thought that if war ever came, I would be a conscientious objector. But when the bombs began falling on my hometown, I found myself consumed with an animalistic rage and nearly enlisted, too. Instead, however, I instinctively began helping people escape from Ukraine—organizing transportation for women, children, and the elderly. Leaving wasn’t an option for me. Kyiv is my home. I wasn’t afraid to die. I just wanted to help as much as I can. Within a week, I had four drivers who traveled all over Kyiv, evacuating civilians. Soon, we were helping organize escape routes in other cities, too.
That sense of unity in Ukraine, in those early days of the invasion, was unlike anything I’ve ever seen. I was amazed by my compatriots—by their courage, their humor, the strength of their spirit. During the first week of the war, I saw women handing flowers to soldiers as they marched off to war. When a man who had used his truck to block approaching Russian tanks was given a medal, he shrugged and said, “I don’t know why I did it. I was just drinking.”
At the same time, Ukrainian men from all over the world were rushing home. People had a clear idea what they were fighting for. Hundreds of thousands were standing up as one to defend their land against the Russians who had invaded our country.
And in just over a month, Ukraine managed to achieve the impossible—we drove the mighty Russian army out of the Kyiv region. It was hailed as “the defeat of the ages.” Russian soldiers fled in disarray, abandoning equipment and supplies as our forces pushed them out. In dozens of villages all over Ukraine, citizens emerged from their shelters and hugged soldiers in the streets. Despite the devastation, there was a profound sense of triumph. It felt like a moment of victory. To me, it was victory.
But instead of seizing that moment to negotiate from a position of strength, a political decision was made to push forward. As a former actor, our president, Zelensky, is highly attuned to public perception—and perhaps that’s his biggest weakness. His image is of paramount importance to him. His heroic actions in the early days of the invasion rightly earned him a place in history, but by April 2022, his focus appeared to shift. Optics took priority over human lives. And now, nearly three years later, that sense of unity feels like a distant memory.
The current FBI Director, Christopher Wray, was appointed by Donald Trump during his first term. The FBI Director serves a 10-year term, so Wray is not scheduled to depart until 2027. The purpose of having a 10-year term is to insulate the position from political pressures.
Trump, however, is unhappy with Wray for a variety of reasons. At the top of the list is Wray’s oversight of the FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago, which revealed that Trump was storing highly classified documents in a bathroom. Trump was later indicted based, in part, on evidence collected in the raid. (A federal judge appointed by Trump later dismissed the case.)
On November 30, Trump announced his intention to replace Wray with Kash Patel. Trump considered appointing Patel as Deputy FBI Director at the end of his first term. But the move was blocked by former Attorney General Bill Barr. “I categorically opposed making Patel deputy FBI director. I told [Trump Chief of Staff] Mark Meadows it would happen ‘over my dead body,'” Barr wrote in his book. Barr said that Patel lacked any qualifications for the job.
What Patel lacks in experience, he makes up for in subservience and loyalty to Trump. He validates Trump’s conspiratorial view of the FBI. In his book, “Government Gangsters,” Patel called the FBI “so thoroughly compromised that it will remain a threat to the people unless drastic measures are taken.” Trump endorsed the book on Truth Social, calling it “the roadmap to end the Deep State’s reign.”
In a podcast appearance promoting the book, Patel vowed to “find the conspirators, not just in government but in the media.” He said that “[w]e’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections.” The appendix of the book includes 60 members of the “deep state” that Patel would target, including President Joe Biden, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Barr, and Wray. Trump called the book a “blueprint to take back the White House and remove these Gangsters from all of Government.”
Patel has little experience in law enforcement other than a brief tenure as a federal prosecutor. But he has spent many years monetizing his cartoonish loyalty to Trump.
A $37 “Trumpamania” T-shirt
Patel has translated his devotion to Trump into a massive following on Truth Social, with nearly 1.4 million followers. He uses that following to sell pro-Trump clothing through his apparel brand, Based Apparel. You can buy a “Trumpamania” t-shirt for $37, a hoodie featuring a glamour shot of Trump’s attorney Alina Habba for $59.99, or a Trump “Comeback” t-shirt for $40.
Patel often wears his own gear during podcast and TV appearances.
Patel’s pro-Trump children’s book trilogy
Patel published a children’s book trilogy portraying himself as a wizard and Trump as king. His first children’s book, entitled “The Plot Against the King,” follows “Hillary Queenton and her shifty knight” who “spread lies that King Donald had cheated to become King,” by “claim[ing] he was working with the Russionians!” Patel is depicted as a “Distinguished Discoverer” seen wearing blue wizard robes. On the cover, Trump is shown wearing a crown.
Trump said the “amazing book” should be “in every school in America.”
Patel’s second children’s book, “The Plot Against the King 2,000 Mules” follows “Dinesh and Debbie” as they “search for the truth and uncover evidence of a terrible scheme to elect Sleepy Joe instead of King Donald on Choosing Day.” The book also includes a “special message from Dinesh D’Souza,” a far-right polemicist behind the documentary 2000 Mules which contains baseless allegations about election fraud. The movie was pulled by its distributor and D’Souza recently issued an apology for misrepresenting key video footage.
The third book in Patel’s trilogy is “The Plot Against the King 3: The Return of the King.” The book “continues the silly yet important journey of the MAGA King as he returns to take down Comma-la-la-la and reclaim his throne.” It is described as a “fun story” and “great way to start a conversation with your kids about the election.” You can buy a special signed copy of the book for $99.99.
“Rid your body of the harms of the vax”
Patel has also sought to exploit health conspiracy theories popular with Trump supporters. Earlier this year, Patel pushed “Nocovidium” and other dietary supplements produced by Warrior Essentials. Patel marketed the supplements as a “mRNA vaccine detoxification system,” which Patel claimed would “rid your body of the harms of the vax.”
COVID vaccines are life-saving, not toxic. NBC News reported that “there is no evidence that Warrior Essentials’ supplements are effective at reducing vaccine side effects — which are mostly mild or moderate and tend to resolve quickly.” A month of the “treatment” costs $150 and the company recommends taking the supplements for “3 to 12 months.”
K$H cabernet
Patel has used his fealty to Trump to develop his own brand, K$H. Through “Great American Craft Spirits” Patel sells cases of “K$H Cabernet Sauvignon,” which has “hints of blackberry, dark chocolate, plum and a touch of French oak.” A case of 6 bottles sells for $243.99.
$10 of every sale benefits an unnamed charity.
An alternative to “credit cards for libs”
Patel has promoted Coign, “the conservative credit card.” On Truth Social, he said Coign was perfect for people sick of “Harris credit cards for libs.” A video posted by Patel says, “every transaction supports conservative causes” and advances a “conservative future.” The company donates 0.25% of each transaction to “non-profits or charitable organizations that have been pre-vetted by Coign.”
Among the charitable beneficiaries is The Heritage Foundation, the group responsible for Project 2025.
Payment processing “tailored for American patriots”
Patel has “joined forces with Revere Payments,” which he describes as payment processing that is “designed for those who hold the values of this great nation close to their heart.” In a Truth Social post promoting the service, Patel said the choice was to work with Revere Payment or be “in zuckerbucks mafia.” (It is unclear what Mark Zuckerberg has to do with payment processing.)
Pro-Trump “consulting”
In addition to hawking pro-Trump merchandise and services, Patel has also been paid handsomely for offering consulting services to entities connected to Trump and his allies. According to an SEC filing, Trump Media & Technology Group paid Patel at least $130,000 in consulting fees. (The consulting contract ended in March 2024.) Patel was also paid “$325,000 over two years for ‘strategy consulting’ for the pro-Trump Save America PAC.” Former Congressman Matt Gaetz (R-FL), who Trump nominated for Attorney General but was forced to withdraw, paid Patel $145,000 for “fundraising consulting.”
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