The morning and
midday of January 1, 1863, were occupied by the half-social,
half-official ceremonial of the usual New Year's day reception at the
Executive Mansion, established by long custom. At about three o'clock in
the afternoon, after full three hours of greetings and handshakings, Mr.
Lincoln and perhaps a dozen persons assembled in the executive office,
and, without any prearranged ceremony the President affixed his
signature to the great Edict of Freedom. No better commentary will ever
be written upon this far-reaching act than that which he himself
embodied in a letter written to a friend a little more than a year
later:
"I am naturally antislavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.
I cannot remember when I did not so think and feel, and yet I have never
understood that the Presidency conferred upon me an unrestricted right
to act officially upon this judgment and feeling. It was in the oath I
took that I would, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and
defend the Constitution of the United States. I could not take the
office without taking the oath. Nor was it my view that I might take an
oath to get power, and break the oath in using the power. I understood,
too, that in ordinary civil administration this oath even forbade me to
practically indulge my primary abstract judgment on the moral question
of slavery.
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