Emancipation exclusion
Date: Thu, 9 May 1996
From: Porter Raper
Subject: Emancipation exclusion query
I've just read a reference to the emancipation proclamation, and learned that seven counties in Virginia were excluded from the proclamation: does anyone know which counties, and why only these seven? i think i know why, but I'd like my suspicions confirmed....thanks.
Porter G. Raper
Portland Community College
Date: Fri, 10 May 1996
From: David Herr
<<--I've just read a reference to the emancipation proclamation, and learned that seven counties in Virginia were excluded from the proclamation: does anyone know which counties, and why only these seven? i think i know why, but I'd like my suspicions confirmed....thanks. Porter G. Raper, Portland Community College-->>
Here's a case in which going to the source solves a lot of problems:
"Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, by virtue of the power in me vested as Commander-In-Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States in time of actual armed rebellion against the authority and government of the United States, and as a fit and necessary war measure for supressing said rebellion, do, on this 1st day of January, A.D. 1863, and in accordance with my purpose so to do, publicly proclaimed for the full period of one hundred days from the first day above mentioned, order and designate as the States and parts of States wherein the people thereof, respectively, are this day in rebellion against the United States the following, to wit:
Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana (except the parishes of St. Bernard, Palquemines, Jefferson, St. John, St. Charles, St. James, Ascension, Assumption, Terrebone, Lafourche, St. Mary, St. Martin, and Orleans, including the city of New Orleans), Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia (except the forty-eight counties designated as West Virginia, and also the counties of Berkeley, Accomac, Morthhampton, Elizabeth City, York, Princess Anne, and Norfolk, including the cities of Norfolk and Portsmouth), and which excepted parts are for the present left precisely as if this proclamation were not issued."
The reason, of coruse, is that the above-mentioned jurisdictions were not "in actual armed rebellion against the authority and government of hte United States," having been recaptured by the Union. Hence, Lincoln considered that his wartime authority as commander-in-chief to abolish slavery as a war measure under his status as Commander in Chief under Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution.
Incidentally, William Lee Miller, in his new book ARGUING ABOUT SLAVERY, has an intriguing suggestion that Lincoln initially obtained the idea for abolishing slavery constitutionally during wartime from John Quincy Adams, through Charles Sumner, who supposedly discussed it with him in 1861.
Robert P. Forbes
Department of History
Yale University
New Haven, CT 06520
Tel.: (203)432-0714 Fax: (203)773-9777
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The Virginia counties exempted from the final Emancipation Proclamation of January 1863 were Berkeley, Accomac, Northhampton, Elizabeth City, York, Princess Anne, and Norfolk.
These were the counties under Union military control by that point, I believe.
Mike Fitzgerald
St. Olaf College
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