Perryville and the Emancipation Proclamation

In mid-1862, President Abraham Lincoln wrestled with whether to issue the Emancipation Proclamation while Confederate armies pressed into Maryland and Kentucky, and he believed he needed a major Union military victory before doing so. He also feared the reaction of Unionists in Kentucky, Missouri, and Maryland, even though the Proclamation did not free border-state slaves. Three Confederate failures in the autumn of 1862 gave him the political conditions he needed. The Union victory at Antietam near Sharpsburg, Maryland, on September 17, 1862, provided the first major victory he had been seeking, and five days later he issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, to take effect on January 1, 1863. It gave Union soldiers a moral cause to fight for and helped keep European powers out of the Civil War. Two more Confederate failures in October ensured that the Proclamation would become official: attacking Southern troops were driven from Corinth, Mississippi, on October 3-4, and four days later, although Confederates won a tactical victory at Perryville, they were eventually forced to leave Kentucky. Their inability to hold Kentucky became another Union victory and helped ensure that Lincoln had enough political cachet to make the Proclamation official. Had either or both battles ended differently, he might have delayed issuing the final Proclamation. Instead, this chain of Union victories in the autumn of 1862 ensured that it would take effect. Kentucky slaves were finally freed when the 13th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified in December 1865.

Kentucky · United States