A Case of Command: The Emancipation Proclamation as a Last Resort

Abstract

So often celebrated as Abraham Lincoln's defining achievement, the Emancipation Proclamation is best understood as a “painful last resort” that Lincoln turned to only after repeatedly failing to persuade others to back his preferred policy of gradual, compensated emancipation, accompanied by the voluntary colonization of freed Blacks. For all its fame, the proclamation is a classic “case of command” in which the reliance on unilateral power reveals not mastery but a failure to persuade. Although Lincoln, despite all his political talents and rhetorical abilities, had scant success in persuading others to support his preferred policy, he displayed a keen grasp of the limits and costs of command, which reflected his understanding that command is ultimately, as Richard Neustadt (1960) argues, a method of, rather than a substitute for, persuasion.