Last year on the anniversary of Abraham Lincoln issuing the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation in 1862, a Lincoln statue was unveiled in September of 2025. The statue depicts Lincoln signing the Emancipation Proclamation, which occurred on January 1, 1863. The memorial was put up by a coalition of organizations including The Lincoln Group of D.C., the African American Civil War Memorial Museum, and others.
The memorial is located at 1925 Vermont Ave NW, in the Shaw neighborhood, Washington, D.C. at the site of the African American Civil War Memorial Museum. It is across the street from the African American Civil War Memorial. The statue was designed and sculpted by artist Stan Watts of Salt Lake City, Utah.
In 1862, Abraham Lincoln had tried to begin ending slavery in America. He offered the four border states help with compensated gradual emancipation. They rejected his offer. On July 13, 1862, Lincoln told two members of his cabinet that he intended to end slavery. According to Secretary of the Navy Gideon Wells, Lincoln told them he “dwelt earnestly on the gravity, importance, and delicacy of the movement, said he had given it much thought and had about come to the conclusion that it was a military necessity absolutely essential for the salvation of the Union, that we must free the slaves or be ourselves subdued…”
After this discussion with Wells and Secretary of State William Seward, Lincoln began writing the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. For ten years Lincoln had attacked the immorality of slavery. However, under the Constitution he could not unilaterally end slavery. He decided to begin to end slavery as a war measure by giving the Southern states a short period to rejoin the Union. If they did not, Lincoln would end it in those states in rebellion through an executive order. Lincoln argued that slaves involuntarily aided the Confederacy by producing food and other goods for the Confederate forces, building fortifications, and serving non-combat roles with the Confederate armies. Ending slavery would take this support from the Confederacy.
The base dedicates the memorial to the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation.
On July 20, 1862 John Hay, Lincoln’s secretary wrote that the president “has been, out of pure devotion to what he considers the best interests of humanity, the bulwark of the institution he abhors, for a year. But he will not conserve slavery much longer. When next he speaks in relation to this defiant and ungrateful villainy it will be with no uncertain sound.” At a cabinet meeting the next day, Lincoln, according to Treasury Secretary Salmon Chase, said that he “had been profoundly concerned at the present aspect of affairs, and had determined to take some definitive steps in respect to military action and slavery.” On July 22, the cabinet meeting resumed. Lincoln told the secretaries that as long as their states were in revolt against the United States, slaveowners would have their slaves confiscated by the Federal forces. Secretary of State Seward, long an opponent of slavery, cautioned that “foreign nations will intervene to prevent the abolition of slavery for sake of cotton.” The two countries he was concerned with were England and France.
Seward also said that “I approve of the proclamation, but I question the expediency of its issue at this juncture. The depression of the public mind, consequent upon our repeated reverses, is so great that I fear the effect of so important a step. It may be viewed as the last measure of an exhausted government, a cry for help; the government stretching forth its hands to Ethiopia, instead of Ethiopia stretching forth her hands to the government.” Seward told Lincoln that “while I approve the measure, I suggest, sir, that you postpone its issue, until you can give it to the country supported by military success, instead of issuing it, as would be the case now, upon the greatest disasters of the war!” Seward’s words had a big impact on Lincoln. He told a confidant that Seward’s argument “struck me with very great force. It was an aspect of the case that, in all my thought upon the subject, I had entirely overlooked. The result was that I put the draft of the proclamation aside, as you do your sketch for a picture, waiting for a victory.” Lincoln decided to withhold his Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation until after a victory for the Union forces. Unfortunately for the next two months the Federal armies in the East suffered repeated defeats.
On September 13, 1862, right before the Union victory at Antietam, Lincoln met with a group of clergymen who had come to him advocating for emancipation. While Lincoln had already decided to issue the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, he asked the clergymen “[w]hat good would a proclamation of emancipation from me do, especially as we are now situated? I do not want to issue a document that the whole world will see must necessarily be inoperative, like the Pope’s bull against the comet!” Lincoln said that slavery was the cause of the war, but, he said that “slavery is the root of the rebellion, or at least its sine qua non.” Southern politicians “would have been impotent without slavery as their instrument.” Lincoln said he did not disagree with the ministers but he wanted to “indicate the difficulties that have thus far prevented my action in some such way as you desire. I have not decided against a proclamation of liberty to the slaves, but hold the matter under advisement. And I can assure you that the subject is on my mind, by day and night, more than any other. Whatever shall appear to be God’s will I will do.” He told them “there is a question of expediency as to time, should such a proclamation be issued. Matters look dark just now. I fear that a proclamation on the heels of defeat would be interpreted as a cry of despair. It would come better, if at all, immediately after a victory.”
The Battle of Antietam took place on September 17, 1862. On September 22, Lincoln met with his cabinet. Lincoln had spoken with several people about the Emancipation Proclamation. He told one Congressman that “When Lee came over the river, I made a resolution that if McClellan drove him back I would send the Proclamation after him.”
At his cabinet meeting, Lincoln told the secretaries that:
“I have, as you are aware, thought a great deal about the relation of this war to Slavery; and you all remember that, several weeks ago, I read to you an Order I had prepared on this subject, which, on account of objections made by some of you, was not issued. Ever since then, my mind has been much occupied with this subject, and I have thought all along that the time for acting on it might very probably come. I think the time has come now. I wish it was a better time. I wish that we were in a better condition. The action of the army against the rebels has not been quite what I should have best liked. But they have been driven out of Maryland, and Pennsylvania is no longer in danger of invasion. When the rebel army was at Frederick, I determined, as soon as it should be driven out of Maryland, to issue a Proclamation of Emancipation such as I thought most likely to be useful. I said nothing to any one; but I made the promise to myself, and (hesitating a little)—to my Maker. The Rebel army is now driven out, and I am going to fulfill that promise. I have got you together to hear what I have written down. I do not wish your advice about the main matter—for that I have determined for myself. This I say without intending any thing but respect for any one of you. But I already know the views of each on this question. They have been heretofore expressed, and I have considered them as thoroughly and as carefully as I can. What I have written is that which my reflections have determined me to say.” He asked for suggestions about the form but not the content of the proclamation, a four-page document much longer than the brief one he had read to them two months earlier. Modestly Lincoln acknowledged to the cabinet that “many others might, in this matter, as in others, do better than I can; and if I were satisfied that the public confidence was more fully possessed by any one of them than by me, and knew of any Constitutional way in which he could be put in my place, he should have it. I would gladly yield it to him. But though I believe that I have not so much of the confidence of the people as I had some time since, I do not know that, all things considered, any other person has more; and, however this may be, there is no way in which I can have any other man put where I am. I am here. I must do the best I can, and bear the responsibility of taking the course which I feel I ought to take.”
Lincoln told the secretaries that “he had power to issue the proclamation only in virtue of his power to strike at the rebellion, and he could not include places within our own lines, because the reason upon which the power depended did not apply to them, and he could not included such places”
On September 23, the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation was published. It gave the Confederates one hundred days to lay down their arms, after which slaves would be free. It also said that even before January 1, 1863 any slave who escaped into the Union lines would not returned to his or her “owner.”
In November of 1862 many voters were outraged that Lincoln was going to free slaves. War Democrats felt that they had been promised the war was about reunion, not emancipation. The Republicans suffered defeat after defeat in the midterm elections. The anti-emancipation Democrats nearly doubled the number of seats they occupied in the House of Representatives in the 1862 elections. Democrats adopted a new motto; “The Constitution as it is, the Union as it was, and the negroes where they are.” In spite of the wave of popular resentment, Lincoln went ahead with his planned freeing of the slaves. In spite of his political danger, Lincoln told a delegation from Kentucky that “that he would rather die than take back a word of the Proclamation of Freedom.”
That Fall Lincoln fired General George McClellan, replacing him with Ambrose Burnside. Just three weeks before the final Emancipation Proclamation was to be signed, Burnside suffered major losses at the Battle of Fredericksburg.
On New Year’s Eve, Lincoln met with clergymen who assured the president that he was carrying out God’s will in freeing the slaves. Lincoln responded that he had doubts about God’s will. He said: “I am not so certain that God’s views and feelings in respect to it are the same as mine. If his feelings were like mine, how could he have permitted it to remain so long? I am obliged to believe that God may not, after all, look upon it in the same light as I do.”
On January 1, 1863 Lincoln hosted the traditional New Year’s Day reception for citizens at the White House. After three hours of shaking hands with everyone at the reception, Lincoln left to sign the Emancipation Proclamation. Later he recalled “I could not for a moment, control my arm…I paused, and a superstitious feeling came over me which made me hesitate.” Lincoln explained “I have been receiving calls, and shaking hands since nine o’clock this morning, till my arm is stiff and numb.” Lincoln did not want his signature to appear shaky, so he took time to steady himself and then signed the document. Lincoln told Seward that “I never, in my life, felt more certain that I was doing right, than I do in signing this paper.”
The memorial is in front of the African American Civil War Memorial Museum. When I visited the statue the museum was closed for renovation, but it is now reopened.
Behind the memorial is the full title of the statue.
Here is a picture of the statue in front of the two white doors. The building is the Grimke School, which opened in 1887.
Abraham Lincoln: A Life Volume 2 by Michael Burlingame published by The Johns Hopkins University Press (2008)
The Speeches & Writings of Abraham Lincoln Edited by Don E. Fehrenbacher published by Library of America (2018)
Lincoln by David Herbert Donald published by Simon & Schuster (2011)
