July 22, 1862

July 22, 1862: President Lincoln calls an impromptu meeting of his Cabinet, and surprises them by presenting a draft of an Emancipation Proclamation.  The Cabinet members are shocked: Secretary Chase even suggests that it goes too far.  Secretary of State William Seward suggests that Lincoln not issue the document until later---to “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! [McClellan's failed Peninsula Campaign]”.

—The Richmond Daily Dispatch publishes an editorial about the rapid rise of Abolitionist sentiment and rhetoric in Northern newspapers—even the New York Herald, which had been moderate on the slave question in the past:

There is nothing in the recent uncontrolled and uncontrollable away of the Abolitionists at the North to alarm the South. Since the war began it has been virtually one of robbery. The daily journals North and South have furnished the daily evidence of this. The Federal invaders have never spared the property of the Southern people. The slaves were always taken when they could be transported, or when they could be induced to leave their homes. None of them have ever been returned. All other property has been appropriated to the uses of the Yankees wherever they have gone. None but those traitors who took the oath of allegiance to the North were allowed to retain anything that Yankee cupidity or appetite, or Yankee malignity, desired to possess or wished to destroy.

---Gen. Edmund Kirby-Smith, commander of the Confederate troops at Knoxville, Tennessee, writes a poignant heart-felt letter home to his wife:

Knoxville July 22^nd

Darling Wife, I am quite tired but fore going to bed I will write you a few lines. My health is quite restored and I am ready for active service; it is fortunate I went to the mountains. My system reacted and I recovered my strength so rapidly, they say I am fatting and am looking better than I have done for months. Dearest Wife, I do so long for peace and quiet and for a release from my responsibilities. . . . My own precious wife I do so miss you, and do so long to see you once more. it seems I never know how much I love you and how dear you are to me till I lose. it may be that God thus [?] and strengthens our affections. I know darling when away your image fills my mind, and thoughts of you will cheer & comfort me in my labors. Darling you will not think me foolish, you will not any less love me, that I make so much of you. I can not help it, and I love, cherish and spoil you, if making so much of you will spoil. . . . Buel is fast concentrating for attack, Forrest’s operations in middle Tenn. have delayed him as I intended they should, I expected Gen. Bragg to have had time to have cooperated with me by [?] delay, he was to have moved up into Middle Tenn. He telegraphed me now that he cannot move that way, but will send reenforcements via Mobile. God grant they arrive in time. Wife I feel that all will be well with me here, I have the assurance that I have [spared no exertions?], all is in Gods hands & in him is my trust. Pray for me my darling & may he in his mercy watch over and bless you prays

your devoted husband