Lincoln’s Hundred Days: The Emancipation Proclamation and the War for the Union by Louis P. Masur (review)

Because he signed the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, many Americans continue to identify Abraham Lincoln as the “Great Emancipator.” Louis P. Masur contends, however, that in recent decades increased recognition of the shortcomings of black freedom has changed the way that people view the Emancipation Proclamation, with many disparaging it as being “too little, too late.” Meanwhile historians, thanks to their changing methodological trends, have redirected their focus on enslaved people’s efforts to secure their freedom. “And so,” Masur observes, “the decree, deeply contested in its time, has become devalued in ours” (7).

Rejecting this assessment of the Emancipation Proclamation, Masur holds it and the Declaration of Independence as constituting “the pole stars of American liberty” (8). The Emancipation Proclamation lifted Lincoln into the ranks of “America’s transcendent figures,” with his path to transcendence making “the story all the more compelling” (8–9). Lincoln’s Hundred Days presents this compelling story well by centering it around the one-hundred-day interval that separated the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation of September 22, 1862, and the final one that Lincoln signed on January 1, 1863. Uncertain at first, Lincoln, according to Masur, went from sustaining emancipation reluctantly to embracing it wholeheartedly.

Masur also regards the Emancipation Proclamation as the keystone to understanding the Civil War. At the war’s beginning, some contemporaries immediately recognized how armed conflict threatened slavery. Yet Lincoln assured white southerners that neither he nor his administration would interfere with slavery. Developments in 1861 and 1862, however, moved the Union toward adopting emancipation. Masur relies on a variety of sources but fuels his narrative by consistently returning to several contemporaries’ responses to how the Civil War altered slavery’s landscape, including Frederick Douglass, Orestes Brownson, Count Adam Gurowski, Salmon Chase, William Lloyd Garrison, John Lothrop Motley, Charles Sumner, and George Templeton Strong. Masur thus views Lincoln as one agent of many who accelerated the push toward emancipation. Lincoln’s Hundred Days also evaluates the public response to the Emancipation Proclamation, the steps that preceded the proclamation, and those that followed. The result is an often complicated public response, with people liking and disliking the proclamation for different reasons.

Masur highlights Lincoln’s growth in office, particularly the period separating the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation from the final document. During these months Lincoln “became bolder” and “felt reassured” by soldiers and the public “that he had the rightful power to act” (281). That boldness transformed the final proclamation into something significantly different from the preliminary one: the final proclamation provided for the enlistment of African Americans in the Union military and excised references to colonization found in the preliminary one. Lincoln’s increased boldness also affected how abolitionists viewed him. Many abolitionists, initially frustrated by Lincoln’s slowness toward emancipation, accepted the sixteenth president when he embraced positions they had long held.

Although Masur criticizes contemporary historians and the public for purportedly devaluing the proclamation, the book contains few explicit disagreements with scholars who have written on Lincoln and emancipation. Yet a few comparisons between Masur’s and other historians’ arguments reveal how Lincoln’s Hundred Days treads on contested scholarly ground. While Masur’s interpretation of Lincoln’s broadening views regarding slavery and evolving relationship with abolitionists parallels Eric Foner’s analysis in The Fiery Trial, Masur differs significantly with Allen Guelzo and James Oakes, both of whom deemphasize Lincoln’s “growth.” Guelzo underlines how Lincoln’s approach to politics derived from the president’s core principles, prudence in particular; asserts that Lincoln stood committed to ending slavery from the beginning of his presidency; and draws sharp distinctions between Lincoln and the abolitionists regarding their methods and motivations. Oakes also argues against Lincoln’s being a reluctant emancipator, but he contends that most Republicans, even before the Civil War’s outbreak, embraced emancipation through executive edict...