Abraham Lincoln signed the Compensated DC Emancipation bill into law about five months before he released his preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. But that wasn’t the first time he tried to free enslaved people in the Washington, D.C.
On January 10, 1849 Lincoln proposed a bill (as an amendment to a resolution) that would have provided a mechanism for the freedom of slaves within the District of Columbia. The amendment and the bill went nowhere, and three days later Lincoln gave notice that he intended to introduce a bill himself to accomplish this goal. That never happened either. In 1861, Lincoln explained that upon “finding that I was abandoned by my former backers and having little personal influence, I dropped the matter knowing that is was useless to prosecute the business at that time.”
It would be April 16, 1862 before, as President, he was able to sign a law that freed enslaved people in the District.
There were significant differences between the 1849 effort and the final 1862 law, most notably that the emancipation would occur immediately whereas the earlier bill would have had some form of gradual emancipation. This was a function of the timing more than any particular ideology. In both cases there would be compensation for the owners as an incentive to provide freedom.
On April 4, 2020 I will be giving an expanded version of my “Lincoln’s Long Road to Emancipation” talk at the Rock Creek Civil War Roundtable in the District. Some have suggested that Lincoln’s views on emancipation “evolved” throughout his life, but I show that he was remarkably consistent about his belief that the Constitution prohibited the federal government from banning slavery in the states wherein it already existed. But he also argued adamantly that the federal government did have the authority to remove slavery from the federal territories, including the District of Columbia.
Abraham Lincoln has been claimed by both political parties, and yet is often attacked by the current entity carrying the name of his party [it should be noted that the two are very different]. Lincoln was a man of his times, and yet a man ahead of his time. We are lucky to have had him when we did, and many, including myself, long for his leadership during our current fiery trial.
David J. Kent is an avid science traveler and the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America, in Barnes and Noble stores now. His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.
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