Saturday marked the 150th anniversary of President Abraham Lincoln issuing the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. On Sept. 22, 1862, in the midst of the Civil War, the embattled president issued the document that stated that if rebels did not end the war and rejoin the Union by Jan. 1, 1863, all slaves would be free. There were heated debates on the legitimacy and constitutionality of the document, and the Chicago Tribune did not mince words as to where it stood on the issue.
In the book titled “A Century of Tribune Editorials,” editors note that: “Emancipation presented a difficult constitutional problem and a matter of conscience to Abraham Lincoln. He hated slavery but had pledged repeatedly not to interfere with it in the states where it lawfully existed. In the end, he solved the dilemma by asserting that the Constitution conferred extraordinary powers on the executive in time of war, as suggested in these excerpts from two Chicago Tribune editorials. They were published almost a year before the decision was taken. Here we present only the concluding lines of a much longer editorial, entitled ‘The demands of loyalty.‘“
Oct. 11, 1861
It is not necessary that men should believe that slavery is an evil, in order to enlist them against it. For the argument’s sake, we will call it a blessing — a humane beneficent Christian institution. What then? This excellent institution has grown strong. It is becoming more powerful than our Government and threatens to engulf and swallow it up. Good as it may be, or as we may fancy it to be, it has inaugurated a civil war; and if unrestrained is certain to terminate our national existence. Then as loyal men we must sacrifice it. “If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee.”
In any view that we may take, we arrive at the same conclusion, and that is, that loyalty and patriotism demand an unanimous public opinion in favor of such military action as will insure the most speedy overthrow of this wicked rebellion, and that action is embraced in one word — emancipation — if not emancipation by act of Congress or the proclamation of the President, emancipation as a military necessity. If not the emancipation of all slaves, those at least of rebel masters, remembering all the while that loyal slaveholders who observe the obligations of the Constitution have claims that other loyal men cannot afford to disregard.
July 23, 1862
“Our general fault is to be in advance of public opinion.”
We can afford at this time, when the direction of the popular opinion of the country and the army is indubitably tending toward that goal at which the Tribune long ago arrived, to congratulate our thirty thousand daily subscribers in the Northwest — the men who through good and evil report have adhered to us — some because they loved plain and honest speaking, some because they agreed with us from the beginning, and some because they were curious to know what the Tribune has to say — we can afford to congratulate them on the great change which has been wrought in the portion of the Union, since we commenced our labors for a more vigorous and comprehensive policy in the conduct of war.
The change is indeed wonderful and no less wonderful than timely and necessary. When we began to throw bombshells at do-nothing pro-slavery generals, and stupid orders like Order No. 3; when we began to denounce the tomfoolery which would not permit black men to do their share in the terrific struggle, and which sent them back to their masters to work for the rebels; when we become the advocates of emancipation — compensated emancipation — compensated emancipation in the Border States — emancipation at the point of the bayonet in all States that had committed treason against the Federal Government; when in every issue we urged upon the Administration the employment of all the means permitted by our advanced civilization, more vigor, more severity, more activity and more zeal — we are threatened as no newspaper guiltless of purposely outraging public sensibility, was ever threatened before. Not a day passed in which anonymous letters from cowardly assailants, and real warnings from timid friends did not command and adjure us to desist, and save ourselves from ruin and our printing establishment from destruction.
And more than once, and among men who should have known better, the plan of getting up a riot which should silence us, has been attempted; and more than one cowardly rascal offered to lead it if he could get a hundred men to back him. A simultaneous attack in country and city, by politicians, rival newspapers, and semi-secessionists, was made upon our circulation, to cut it down to a figure lower than that of the aggregate circulation of all the other daily papers in Chicago. And as one of the proprietors of the Tribune happened, by Mr. Lincoln’s favor, to be Postmaster, a rush was made to upset him and put some less earnest and less patriotic man in his place. In a word, malevolence, indulged within the limits of reasonable discretion, exhausted itself to do us injury, and make our influence in the West less potent than it has proved.
Lo, what a change! The whole country is at this moment almost abreast of the Tribune; and the doctrines and policy upon which it insisted, against such opposition, and with such a thorough and enlightened conviction of their necessity, are now commending themselves with overwhelming force to the favor of the whole people; and men who hardly sixty days ago, delighted to abuse their self-respect by saying that they were “conservatives,” opposed to all “rash measures,” to reducing this to a “nigger war,” to “allowing black men to fight,” are now ready to make affidavit that they were all wrong, and that the well abused and everywhere read Chicago Tribune had, of all the journals in the country, the clearest insight into the nature, duration and cost of the struggle, and the best idea of the policy by which that struggle could be terminated for the glory of the Republic.
This is a compliment to our farsightedness, to the correctness of our judgments of men, and to our intimate knowledge of the wide field of operations, that would make less modest men strut themselves out of their journalistic breeches. But we claim only the honor of having been right, when error was the rule; the credit of having looked deep into the causes and character of the contest, when limited views and feeble comprehension were the baneful fashion; and the praise which should always be awarded those, who, from a sense of duty, dare brave an excited and angry public opinion. That is our claim; and the voice of the Northwest will award us all we ask.
We take this occasion to warn those who have been honestly influenced by the clamor that has been raised, that our general fault is to be in advance of public sentiment. We have means of obtaining intelligence, from which the public is disbarred. We have quick instincts, and are not slow in forming accurate judgments of men and things. We have studied the whole question in the light of history and philosophy. Hence it is not wonderful that we should be in advance. We shall be so again. Some fine morning we shall pain our friends and gratify our enemies by an article challenging their criticism, and shocking their pre-conceived opinions; and another contest and another period of attempted persecution will only bring us out as now, ahead with banners flying, proving once again that in what makes a powerful if not popular journal, the Tribune will remain unsurpassed — the great newspaper and leading organ of opinion in the West.
