August 20. 1862---"THe Prayer of Twenty Millions"

AUGUST 20, 1862:    

Horace Greeley, publisher of The New York Tribune publishes a famous editorial, The Prayer of Twenty Millions calling on Lincoln to immediately emancipate the slaves. It reads in part:

“I close as I began with the statement that what an immense majority of the Loyal Millions of your countrymen require of you is a frank, declared, unqualified, ungrudging execution of the laws of the land, more especially of the Confiscation Act. That Act gives freedom to the slaves of Rebels coming within our lines, or whom those lines may at any time inclose–we ask you to render it due obedience by publicly requiring all your subordinates to recognize and obey it. The rebels are everywhere using the late anti-negro riots in the North, as they have long used your officers’ treatment of negroes in the South, to convince the slaves that they have nothing to hope from a Union success---“