The Prayer of Twenty Millions
Grand Old Partisan celebrates more than seventeen decades of Republican heroes and heroics. Today, I spotlight The Prayer of Twenty Millions , an editorial published on August 20th 1862. Its author, Horace Greeley, criticized President Lincoln for not having yet issued an emancipation proclamation: "As the first servant of the Republic, charged especially and preeminently with this duty, that you EXECUTE THE LAWS… you are strangely and disastrously remiss in the discharge of your official and imperative duty with regard to the emancipating provisions of the new (Second) Confiscation Act. Those provisions were designed to fight Slavery with Liberty... All attempts to put down the Rebellion and at the same time uphold its inciting cause are preposterous and futile." Page 71 of Back to Basics for the Republican Party explains that Lincoln had already drafted the Emancipation Proclamation, but was waiting for a good opportunity to issue it. In the ...