Emancipating Lincoln: The Proclamation in Text, Context, and Memory by Harold Holzer (review)

Considering Lincoln's true role in emancipation, Harold Holzer steers between glorification and exaggerated criticism. Indeed, we are still debating Lincoln's true devotion to human freedom. The author wants to tackle the myths and misunderstandings surrounding the Emancipation Proclamation. His goal is to explore "the incomprehensibly severe pressures" on Lincoln and to "parse the actual words," for one cannot "apply twenty-first century mores to a nineteenth-century man" (4).

Holzer first covers Lincoln's considerations during the second interregnum, from spring through summer 1862, in great detail. He demonstrates that with so many interests to please, Lincoln had to offer the public mixed messages. Lincoln doubted sufficient political support existed for a new policy on slavery: thus, "obfuscation became not only a tactic but a life preserver" (19). He catered to northern white opinion by couching eventual emancipatory steps as military need, adopting equanimity and patience, and envisioning black deportation. Holzer avers that Lincoln's concern was not with black public opinion, but "free and fearful whites" (41). His 1862 northern popularity grew because he failed to take action against slavery, which in turn enabled him to do precisely that. Awaiting a major Union victory before advancing, he strove "to remove his action from the realm of sympathy with actual slaves" and "to remind Northern whites that he was no friend of black people" (43-44). The white public accepted Lincoln's hints about emancipation, which ultimately set the stage for its emergence.

Others too have illustrated such factors: Eric Foner, James McPherson, LaWanda Cox, and Richard Current, to name a few. Some see different stages or give greater attention to the precursor movement to emancipate in the District of Columbia, which bore fruit in the period Holzer emphasizes. Others explore more deeply the actions of slaves as an impacting force. For W. E. B. Du Bois's contention in Black Reconstruction that notwithstanding wartime denial or even public ignorance of slavery as an issue, the prominent position of African Americans remains pertinent. Holzer tends to slight other contextual aspects outside of white pressures, although he later suggests that the thousands of escaped slaves in nearby contraband camps made a strong impression on the president.

Chapter 2 studies the proclamation's language, described by new and old critiques as dull, "trite," "generic," and emotionless. Holzer attributes the stripped-down tone to Lincoln's need to hold off Democratic opponents while retaining the loyalty of border-state slaveholders. Its "numbing legalese" sought not to "enthrall the enslaved" but to "seal the cooperation of the . . . white men who had no tolerance for black men" (99-100). Lincoln kept exuberant language out of the document precisely to win whites over to emancipation. Lincoln's success elicited only conservative contempt, but his strategy paid dividends in otherwise growing popularity. The border states remained loyal; African American troops joined Union forces; and, having sown the seeds, Lincoln could speak out more forcefully. Understanding Lincoln's language depends, Holzer writes, on contextual precision. In "looking at history from the comparatively enlightened future backward, not from the past forward," one creates a mythology: "And diagnoses from ever-widening distances unavoidably distort history" (125).

The final chapter investigates artistic depictions of emancipation in several genres. Foes of freedom first demeaned emancipation in painting and print, maintaining that it would create racial equality and shatter norms in American life. White artists favoring Lincoln, but not desiring to emphasize black rights, found a handle in his martyrdom, for "it took widespread public grief over Lincoln's death to truly animate the image of Lincoln as the Great Emancipator" (133). Slaves were shown on the sidelines of emancipation, suffering beforehand, yet saved by benefactor Lincoln in the center. Heroic Lincoln and grateful slaves exemplified a myth rendering controversial subjects now safe for popular audiences, characterized by production of prints for home decoration. Sculpture sustained the marginality of African Americans to the proclamation...