Why hadn't Lincoln made an announment about ending slavery sooner?

Answer 1

The way Lincoln and just about everybody else understood the US government to work was as set forth in the US Constitution. That document says that Congress passes bills, and the president, if he thinks he should, signs the bills, and then they become the law. The president has no power to legislate, or "make law" on his own, at least so far as what the Constitution says. (Today presidents are increasingly fond of "Executive Orders", which have the force of law, and maybe even have some slight Constitutional basis in a single sentence of the Constitution). In those days people, especially those in the government, were trying to adhere to the concepts of the Constitution. Thus, in Lincoln's first inaugural address, he said he had no intention of interfering with slavery, but in any case, HE DID NOT HAVE THE POWER to do anything to end slavery, if he were inclined to try. Slavery was legal, and had been since before the US was created under the Constitution. Slavery is implicitly acknowledged in the Constitution, in the language of "three fifths of other persons", and elsewhere, though the Constitution does not EXPLICITLY say that slavery is legal. But every educated person in those days knew of the debates and compromises which went into the creation and passage of the Constitution, and knew it would probably take amending the Constitution to outlaw slavery. Again, that's not something the president can do, all he can do is suggest it ought to be done. People had such reverence for the Constitution that even suggesting amendments to it was hardly ever done, and actually amending it had only been done a few times. There were the first ten amendments ("The Bill of Rights"), which had been promised to the people as a means of obtaining the adoption of the Constitution as the law of the land, and the 11th and 12th Amendments, which were done soon after, and that was all the amending of the framer's work which had been done up to Lincoln's time. But Lincoln, as a politician and as a president trying to preside over a country which was at war with itself, had the border states to consider. There were only 32 or 33 states and 11 had clearly seceded, and there were 8 border states where slavery was legal, practiced freely, and where large slaveholders were politically powerful within the state. Lincoln could not risk alienating the border state leaders, and driving them into the southern Confederacy. This was why, when he did issue the Emancipation Proclamation, by it he freed only the slaves in those states and areas still "in rebellion". The border state slaves were not freed until the 13th Amendment was adopted, in late 1865. Lincoln came to believe, after the war had been going on for more than a year, that he DID have the power to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, as a war measure, outside the usual legislative process, and this was the basis for it he gave, that it would weaken the enemy. But the 13th Amendment was probably necessary to eliminate the possibility of legal challenges in court after the war, from those who had lost their slave property due to his proclamation. Lincoln waited, after having decided to issue the Proclamation, on the advice of his cabinet, until after a Union victory on the battlefield (and Antietam was close enough to a victory), so the Proclamation would not seem like the last desperate shriek of a failing regime. The Proclamation was announced five days after the Battle of Antietam, when it was clear that the Union forces had at least not been defeated in that Battle.