The Emancipation Proclamation Summary and Analysis

"That ill-fated, much-injured race" [African-Americans] has at last been delivered from the bondage of slavery with the Emancipation Proclamation, Emerson notes with relief and hope for the future. By signing the proclamation Sept. 22, 1862, President Lincoln fulfilled the fiery rhetoric of the Declaration of Independence and thus freed not only blacks, but whites as well from the ongoing "pestilence" of slavery, according to Emerson. Let the southern state secede, he says, but history will show that Lincoln and the Union did the right thing.