
Episode 79
Proclamation: American New Year 1863
The American Story · Christopher Flannery
January 12, 20218m 7s
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Show Notes
On New Year's Day 1863, President Lincoln signed the proclamation he had promised a hundred days before. Lincoln understood better than anyone the constitutional challenges to emancipation. He took the greatest care to draft the proclamation in terms that could be defended before the highest court in the land. Then in the last weeks of his life, he "left no means unapplied" to getting the Thirteenth Amendment, abolishing slavery, approved by Congress.