Photo from the Warren Mail Ephraim Cowan’s dispatch gave county residents the feel of Washington on the day the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect.

Flash forward to Jan. 10, 1863. The Emancipation Proclamation was issued on Jan. 1, as Lincoln said it would.

There’s no mention of it in the Jan. 3, 1863 Warren Mail.

There is a dispatch from Washington D.C. that mourned the “many vacant seats and aching hearts” that will be experienced by families at Christmas. “How many a brave boy, a loving husband and brother and doting father now slumbering beyond the bugle’s call to arms, will be gratefully and tearfully remembered today in the homes made glad by their presence only one year ago. Alas! What power but God’s can measure the wickedness of that Slave Power which causes so much and such bitter desolation in the land?”

It’s signed “E.C” for Ephraim Cowan, a local newspaperman who went to D.C. to report on the war for the Mail.

The proclamation doesn’t make the front page of the Jan. 10 edition either.

Library of Congress image An 1864 publication of the Emancipation Proclamation.

But it’s there on page two, republished the full column length like it was back in September.

And several pieces in the edition begin to explore the practical implication of the president’s action.

Gen. Nathaniel Banks “issued an address, appended to which is the President’s Proclamation from the Department of the Gulf where he said that “It is manifest that the changes by the proclamation do not take place at any precise period, and Gen. Banks calls upon all persons – citizens or slaves – to govern themselves accordingly.”

This gives some indication that news of the proclamation had spread to many slaves and, potentially reasonably, Banks was concerned about the on-the-ground impact of the move.

He banned “all unusual public demonstrations” and said that “Slaves are advised to remain upon the plantations until their privileges are definitely established, resturing assured that whatever benefits the Government intends will bre secured to them.”

That report commented on the purposes of the war as the author saw it amid what we now know as a era of great change: “The war is not waged for the overthrow of slavery, but to restore constitutional relations between the United States and each of the States. If slavery is to be preserved, the war must cease, and the former constitutional relations again be established for us, and the continuance of the war will leave no other permanent trace of rebellion but emancipation.”

But an account from a Contraband Camp around Washington D.C. from July 1 strikes a vastly different tone.

The Mail editors included this report: “For the first time in the history of the late American slave was the dawn of the New Year awaited for with happy impatience,” the account states. “Heretofore, New Year has been to the slave an universal heart break day, as that has been set apart, by immemorial custom, as the day for a general breaking up of families and change of masters.

“But yesterday was hailed by the contrabands as the dawn, not only of a new year, but of new life. They place implicit faith in the virtue of the President’s proclamation to deliver them from a servitude, the happiness or justice of which they could never appreciate.”

The superintendent of the camp asked the slaves about their experience and here are a couple responses, which have been edited for sensitivity.

One repeatedly said “No more of that” to the New Year’s family breakups.

“I look this way and I look that way and I see the rebels,” another said. “I look up, rebels are forever gone and I am strong.”

“We have a right to rejoice tonight,” said another, “for no such meeting in Dixie as this. I have a right to rejoice for I am free, or will be free in five minutes, and I shall rejoice, for God has placed Mr. Lincoln in the president’s chair and I thank him that he would not let the rebels make peace until we black folks were free.”

A silent prayer commenced at two minutes until midnight on Dec. 31 before more prayer and the singing of a hymn.

The superintendent of the camp told them “that they were no longer slaves; but free men and women, with a right to dispose of their own time, and a duty to prove to the world that, free, they would better their own condition.”

The report concludes this way: “An aged black man now congratulated his brethren that they were “men and women and no longer contrabands.”

Page three was led by a Cowan piece from D.C.

“The first day of January 1863! What a memorable day in the story of our Republic! What a memorable epoch in the history of the world!… I trust the day’s beauty and brightness are emblematic of the Freedom and happiness and greatness of this Republic from this day onward.”

Washington was “agog,” Cowan said.

“I have said the President looked weary (yes, it appears Cowan had White House access which, at that time, meant direct access to Lincoln); and why shouldn’t he? With greater cares and responsibilities than ever rested on one mortal man before, it would not be strange if they crushed him entirely. Having just issued a Proclamation of Freedom to a long enslaved race, and rescued the greater part of our Republic from the legal sin and shame of human slavery, that ‘sum of all villanies,’ and being deeply absorbed body and soul in devising the ways and means of making that glorious declaration good….

“But that is his nature. He would sacrifice himself through his good heart and kindly nature, for the happiness of others, if that alone would make them happy and save our once proud and glorious but now distracted Union. God bless him!”

The Emancipation Proclamation was limited in scope in terms of its practical implications.

But with one stroke of the pen Lincoln re-defined what the war was about. Sure, reunification of the Union was an aim but from Jan. 1, 1863 emancipation became a stated war aim. It was controversial. Without a couple well-timed battlefield victories, he may have lost the 1864 presidential election as at least a partial result.

His action in late 1862 to set this in motion must have been on his mind the following November when he dedicated the Soldiers National Cemetery at Gettysburg.

“(T)hat this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”