Happy Saturday. Recently, in our episode on Susie King Taylor, we talked about her account of celebrating the Emancipation Proclamation with a barbecue. Originally, that section of the episode also had a discussion of the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, which basically gave the rebelling slave states a deadline to stop fighting and rejoin the Union, otherwise all enslaved people in those states would be free. Taylor was a laundress for the first South Carolina Volunteers, which were officially mustered in on November seventh, eighteen sixty two, in the window between when Lincoln issued the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation and when the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect. Yeah, she did a lot of things besides being a laundress, but that's how she was enrolled in the volunteers. So that part of the episode I cut that out. It wound up feeling kind of like a digression. But we do have a whole episode on the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation and the political strategy behind it and its impact on a civil war. This was an interview with doctor John B. King, Junior, who at the time was the Secretary of Education under President Barack Obama. Today he is Chancellor of the State University of New York. This originally came out on August thirty first, twenty sixteen. Enjoy Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy B. Wilson and I'm Holly Frye. We have an interview today. Yeah, that you did, I did, I did do it. We haven't had an interview in a while, that's correct. Today we are talking to the Secretary of Education, John B. King, Junior and Secretary King joined the United States Department of Education as a principal senior Advisor in twenty fifteen, and before that he was the commission of Education for the State of New York. But his career really began as an educator. He taught social studies in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and Boston, Massachusetts. And then earlier this year, we got an email from the Department of Education asking whether we might like to have him on the show. I just I'm gonna go ahead and thank the Department of Education for asking that, because this turned out to be quite lovely, because the answer was immediately uh huh, yes, yes, yes, so I was yes, But then it was also okay, how would that work because we're not really, you know, an education policy podcast, and that that wouldn't really be what our listeners would be up for. So what we did was we quickly decided on a topic that at that point was completely new to me and I think also to Holly. It was the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. I had never heard of this before. It was never mentioned in any of my history classes. It also didn't come up in any of our many previous episodes about slavery, the Civil War and reconstruction, of which we have a lot until our recent episode on contraband camps that Holly researched, that actually was researched after this whole interview was scheduled, Yes, but hadn't happened yet. It hadn't happened yet. And I think part of it is that this particular document gets amassed into like a big, kind of glossed over thing of well, there was a lot of back and forth leading up to the Emancipation Proclamation, and it kind of gets lumped in and it doesn't get a moment to stand on its own and be examined. Yeah, the Emancipation Proclamation, the final one, issued by Abraham Lincoln on January first of eighteen sixty three, is of course way more familiar to most people. That's the one that declared that people enslaved in states that were rebelling against the Union quote are and henceforward shall be free. That January first Emancipation Proclamation did not immediately free everyone who was enslaved in the United States. It only applied to the Confederate states that were in rebellion, but it did just set the stage for the eventual abolition of slavery in the entire United States. Another date that comes up pretty regularly is June teenth, which is June nineteenth of eighteen sixty five, which is when the people of Galveston, Texas finally got the news the Emancipation Proclamation had happened. At that point, the war had also ended, so a lot of times that comes up as like the like the last holdout of chattel slavery in the United States. Slavery was formally abolished nationwide with the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment on December eighteenth of eighteen sixty five. So what we're talking about today is all stuff from way before that. The preliminary Emancipation Proclamation was basically a one hundred day warning of the proclamation that was to come that following January. The document itself is one of Secretary King's particular interests, and while he was Commissioner of Education in New York, he took the document itself on a seven city tour as part of an exhibition called First Step to Freedom. The exhibition started out at the Schomberg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York City and from there, as we said, it toured to seven other cities. Secretary King also co authored the text that went along with that exhibition, and the first part of our interview with him, we are going to talk about why Lincoln decided to basically warn the rebelling states of what was coming, and how that document fit into the arc of how the Civil War progressed from originally from the Union point of view being more about retaining the Union, to eventually from the Union point of view being about abolishing slavery. So joining us today is Secretary of Education John B. King Junior. Thank you so much for being on the show today. Happy to do it. So I have heard from so many folks on your staff that one of your passions is the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. And so on September twenty second, eighteen sixty two, which was one hundred days before he issued the Emancipation Proclamation, President Abraham Lincoln issued this preliminary Proclamation that said, among other things, that if the rebelling States did not return to the Union, their enslaved populations would be forever freed. So what led to President Lincoln basically warning the rebelling states that this was going to happen. Well, so you know, in many ways it was for Lincoln a manner of political strategy right to build public will around the Emancipation Proclamation. He wanted to both convey that the South had had an opportunity to return to the Union and also build public understanding that this was essential step in order to successfully prosecute the Civil War. And interestingly, he sort of timed issuing the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation for a moment when the North was doing better in the Civil War. So the date that it was issued is actually bound up with the Battle at Antietam, and it was the success there that allowed him to issue it because he had been warned by Secretary Seward back in July that if he issued the preliminary emancipation Proclamation at a low moment in the conflict, it would seem like desperation, but if he did it after a victory, it would seem like a more confident maneuver done to give it South a chance to return to the Union on the right terms, or to move forward to finish the war. Was there any chance at all that the rebelling states were going to rejoin the Union after this essentially threat. No. I think this really was Lincoln, as master politician, figuring out what it would take to build public will. He also wanted realized the historical importance of the Emancipation Proclamation, that in many ways it was fulfillment of the promise of the Declaration of Independence, critical defining moment for the country, And I think wanted to have the Emancipation Proclamation have the strongest possible foundation because he recognized its importance. So part of this was, as you said, laying this legal groundwork for future emancipation. So what would have happened if these states had rejoined the Union in an effort to not have their slaves emancipated well. Interestingly, in the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, there's language around the possibility that there would be some sort of financial renumeration for the owners of slaves if the slave states returned. That language does not appear in the in the January eighteen sixty three Amancipatient Proclamation. And so Lincoln had a vision that least in theory, that the institution of slavery could have been on a kind of a path to disappearance, eliminated in the territories, sort of phased out in the states that had slavery in place. But I think ultimately Lincoln understood that this was a step that would ultimately change the nature of the war and make the war fundamentally not just about protecting the Union, but about ending the institution of slavery. Oh and that really leads really well into my next question, which is, at the start of the war, several slave states had basically promised that they would secede if Lincoln was elected, And so then he was elected and they did secede. But from Lincoln's point of view, the war at the beginning was not really so much about slavery as it was about preserving the Union, and it was like the focus gradually became it came around to the abolition of slavery as the war progressed. So where does the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation fit into this arc of moving from it being about preserving the Union to also being about ending the institution of slavery. You know, it's an interesting question, I'm one that really the scholars of Lincoln have debated. So there's one view that is that Lincoln all ways intended to make progress towards the eventual abolition of slavery, but was a savvy and thoughtful politician understood that the first step was to not have slavery expand into the into the territories. As the war began, saw the opportunity to move towards emancipation, and pursued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation and the Emancipation Proclamation as as a tactic to satisfy his ultimate goal of the elimination of slavery. So that's one view. Another view is that Lincoln was most focused always on preservation of the Union and would have chosen that above all else. And you know, there's of course the you know, the famous language from Lincoln where he tries to make that make the point that he would preserve the Union above all else, whether that was with or without the institution of slavery. So one view is that that was a genuine articulation of his view, and another view would be that it was a political strategy and that he realized he had to build public will over time. And you know, and some of Lincoln's writing, you hear him talking about the idea that public will is essential to accomplishing things that are hard, and that you need to bring the public along with you. So I love his idea of the president needing to bring the public along with him as he and the nation were gradually moving toward abolishing slavery. That idea has been present and so so many social changes we have talked about on the show before, Like we've talked about some really difficult times in the United States where a change needed to be made and it took a while to bring the people along to be more on board with the change. So it's really interesting to talk about this document as one piece of a more gradual attempt to change the public view to the idea that abolishing slavery was really something that needed to happen entirely it is. It's, uh, you know, we often think about this period, I think, particularly in history in a way where it gets taught in a very black and white way. And I don't mean that to be punny, but it's like this happened, and then everybody got it, and then this happened and everybody and it's like no, no, no, no no, no. It was a slope for like, none of these steps were immediate. They were not you know, like a door opening or closing. It was all like gradual. You really had to like coax it through its processes. So then continue the coaxing for more than a century afterwards. So we were going to take a brief break for a word from a sponsor before we get back to talking to Secretary King. So next up in Tracy's talk with Secretary King, they're going to talk about the language of the document, which is a lot more formal and legal than the Lincoln era documents that a lot of US school kids wind up memorizing four class It does not at all sound like four score and seven years ago, not remotely. So one of the things that I think a lot of people remember most about Lincoln from their just regular history classes is the get the Gettysburg address, And that is an address that you would probably describe as being beautifully written. It has this almost poetic, flowing language, and this document does not really have that. It is a lot more formal and egal in its tone. Can you talk about that difference a little bit? Sure? Well, you know, Lincoln was a lawyer, and he thought about this as a as a legal action that would need to be legally defensible, and view the emancipation Proclamation as exercise of the sort of presidential war powers. And so the document is in very legalistic prose and intentionally so. And he took great care and personally authoring the document and the version of the primary Emancipation Proclamation that the New York State Library has, the original in Lincoln's own hand, even has cut and pasted sections from the confiscation Acts where you can see that he literally cut them out and pasted them. And there's even that spot where you can see Lincoln's thumb print in glue um on the document as he cut and pasted into it. So this was this was for Lincoln a very careful step, and it's it's you know, I think one of the powerful things as a teacher UM as you're teaching these documents is to see the complexity of the role of historic figures. You know that Lincoln was president making political judgments, thinking about um his legacy, thinking about the importance of these events in the grand sweep of history, their significance for the country. He wanted to make sure that that emancipation succeeded. He wanted to make sure he built public support, that he had a strong legal position, and that he could navigate to emancipation while preserving the role of the border states that were members of the Union. So this is all very very carefully executed by Lincoln. The first time that I actually read this, it was a transcript of the document because I have a very hard time with historical handwriting, and I didn't realize until much later that those sections of the previous acts were literally cut out and pasted to the document. And that quickly became one of my favorite things about it, was that he cut it out and pasted it on there so it would be exactly the word for word, and then also not have to rewrite the whole thing yeah, yeah, old fashioned before before long before the cutting and pasting of Microsoft word. Yea, So there is there's one copy of this document that's in the president's own handwriting. What happened to that physical copy once he signed it? Well, so you know. Later the document was donated to a commission that was set up for the care of soldiers, of medical care of soldiers, and that commission then held a auction and an abolitionist won the documented an auction. He bought a lot of tickets in the auction or raffle, and then the New York State Legislature allocated funding to buy the document from him, and that's how it came to be in the possession of New York State. And New York State has periodically shared the document with the public. And when I was State Commissioner in New York, I was privileged to be a part of an effort where we developed an exhibit with the Pulmonary Mancipation Proclamation and also a speech that doctor King gave on the hundredth anniversary of the Pulmonary Mancipation Proclamation, And we built an exhibit for kids with the two documents and took it all around the state and it was during the time that the Lincoln movie was coming out, and there was a lot of interest when we had thousands of people and thousands of students from schools all over the state come to see this exhibit and come to see the document, and you can really see people's appreciation for Lincoln in their enthusiasm just to stand in the same space as this document. So, I don't know if this is the case now. And when I was studying, you know, k through twelve American history, this was in the late nineteen eighties, early nineteen nineties, and this whole idea that there was a preliminary Emancipation Proclamation and that there was a process of setting legal foundations in order to abolish the institution of slavery, that was skipped completely over and it seemed more like the Emancipation Proclamation and just kind of appeared out of whole cloth, and then the slaves were free, and that's it's that's not at all what happened. Why do you think so much of that process is omitted from so many history lessons about the Civil War and the abolition of slavery. Well, you know, I thinks as a country, you know, we so celebrate Lincoln's legacy and the notion of Lincoln as the emancipator, which is true and right, but there's also nuance behind that. And you know, one of the things I tried to do when I taught in high school history and also high school Civics was to China have students get a sense of the complexity of politics throughout our history. You know, It's one of the great things about the Hamilton Musical is I think it's given a generation of Americans a better under standing that these figures in history aren't just two dimensional characters that a pr and our currency. That they're complicated people operating in complicated times, making political judgments, making very strategic decisions. And you know, from my perspective, it makes Abraham Lincoln even more heroic because you understand that that that he had to have carefully plotted legal strategy, a carefully plotted political strategy to accomplish emancipatient and ultimately to win the Civil War. It's one of the nice things about some of the recent books and study on Lyndon Johnson and the path to the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. Yeah, these important achievements are the product not of a sudden inspiration, but rather careful execution by very capable politicians. And sometimes the word politician is put in a negative light, but Abraham Lincoln was a very very capable politician. So before we get to the end of our interview, we're going to stop for one more brief word from a sponsor, and after we hear from that sponsor, we are going to talk about why this particular document is so personally important to Secretary King. Okay, so let's get to the end of the interview. Secretary King is going to talk about the documents personal importance to him and as also how it fits into the greater arc of progress toward racial equality in the United States. So every person I spoke with while arranging this interview with you talked about this document being really important to you. So what does this document specifically mean to you? And why why is it the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation in particular that has so captivated you. You know, I think for me, it's a reflection of um both the ways in which United States has fallen short of the founding values. You know that that we have to acknowledge that the United States began very much with the institution of slavery as fundamental to how the country works. And there was a real tension between the institution of slavery and the promise of the Declaration of Independence and then and the notion, the notion that all men aren't created equal, and so there was this gap, and we all as Americans need to appreciate that complexity of our history around issues of race. At the same time, the document also illustrates and something the President often talks about, that the trajectory of America is towards greater equality, greater opportunity over time. And so this period, the Civil War and reconstruction are really a second birth of the United States. You know, when you look at the thirteenth fourteen, fifteenth Amendments, which were really products of the Civil War and reconstruction, they expanded the definition of American equality and American democracy, and this document was very much a part of that journey. And then the last pieces this document is also about the complexity of government, the importance of leaders figuring out how to bring the public along on things that are hard, the importance of leaders having a good political strategy, a good legal strategy, as well as moral higher purpose, and Lincoln really combined all of those things, and you see that very much in this document and the eventual January Emancipation Proclamation January eighteen sixty three. So is there anything else about this document or its history that you really think that listeners to our show should know? You know, the one thing I would say is, just speaking as a teacher, I just think there's so much power in students engaging with primary source documents. And it's one thing to read, you know, a textbook and what the textbook might say, but it's another to delve into a historical document and really appreciate what the author was trying to accomplish, the choices the author made. You can imagine a powerful unit comprised of this preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, the Mancipation Proclamation of January eighteen sixty three, the Gettysburg Address, the Second Inaugural Address, the thirteenth, fourteen, fifteenth Amendments. You know, just study through those powerful historical texts, and it can be a way to inspire students both about literacy and about social studies. It also can be a way to help students see the nuances in our history. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us today. Was a pleasure to have you on the show. Thanks, it's fun to talk with you, and thanks for what you do making sure folks are learning about our history. Thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday. Since this episode is out of the archive, if you heard an email address or a Facebook RL or something similar over the course of the show, that could be obsolete now. Our current email address is History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. Our old health stuff works email address no longer works, and you can find us all over social media at missed in History. And you can subscribe to our show on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, and wherever else you listen to podcasts. Stuff You Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Happy Saturday. Recently, in our episode on Susie King Taylor, we talked about her account of celebrating the Emancipation Proclamation with a barbecue. Originally, that section of the episode also had a discussion of the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, which basically gave the rebelling slave states a deadline to stop fighting and rejoin the Union, otherwise all enslaved people in those states would be free. Taylor was a laundress for the first South Carolina Volunteers, which were officially mustered in on November seventh, eighteen sixty two, in the window between when Lincoln issued the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation and when the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect. Yeah, she did a lot of things besides being a laundress, but that's how she was enrolled in the volunteers. So that part of the episode I cut that out. It wound up feeling kind of like a digression. But we do have a whole episode on the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation and the political strategy behind it and its impact on a civil war. This was an interview with doctor John B. King, Junior, who at the time was the Secretary of Education under President Barack Obama. Today he is Chancellor of the State University of New York. This originally came out on August thirty first, twenty sixteen. Enjoy Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy B. Wilson and I'm Holly Frye. We have an interview today. Yeah, that you did, I did, I did do it. We haven't had an interview in a while, that's correct. Today we are talking to the Secretary of Education, John B. King, Junior and Secretary King joined the United States Department of Education as a principal senior Advisor in twenty fifteen, and before that he was the commission of Education for the State of New York. But his career really began as an educator. He taught social studies in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and Boston, Massachusetts. And then earlier this year, we got an email from the Department of Education asking whether we might like to have him on the show. I just I'm gonna go ahead and thank the Department of Education for asking that, because this turned out to be quite lovely, because the answer was immediately uh huh, yes, yes, yes, so I was yes, But then it was also okay, how would that work because we're not really, you know, an education policy podcast, and that that wouldn't really be what our listeners would be up for. So what we did was we quickly decided on a topic that at that point was completely new to me and I think also to Holly. It was the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. I had never heard of this before. It was never mentioned in any of my history classes. It also didn't come up in any of our many previous episodes about slavery, the Civil War and reconstruction, of which we have a lot until our recent episode on contraband camps that Holly researched, that actually was researched after this whole interview was scheduled, Yes, but hadn't happened yet. It hadn't happened yet. And I think part of it is that this particular document gets amassed into like a big, kind of glossed over thing of well, there was a lot of back and forth leading up to the Emancipation Proclamation, and it kind of gets lumped in and it doesn't get a moment to stand on its own and be examined. Yeah, the Emancipation Proclamation, the final one, issued by Abraham Lincoln on January first of eighteen sixty three, is of course way more familiar to most people. That's the one that declared that people enslaved in states that were rebelling against the Union quote are and henceforward shall be free. That January first Emancipation Proclamation did not immediately free everyone who was enslaved in the United States. It only applied to the Confederate states that were in rebellion, but it did just set the stage for the eventual abolition of slavery in the entire United States. Another date that comes up pretty regularly is June teenth, which is June nineteenth of eighteen sixty five, which is when the people of Galveston, Texas finally got the news the Emancipation Proclamation had happened. At that point, the war had also ended, so a lot of times that comes up as like the like the last holdout of chattel slavery in the United States. Slavery was formally abolished nationwide with the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment on December eighteenth of eighteen sixty five. So what we're talking about today is all stuff from way before that. The preliminary Emancipation Proclamation was basically a one hundred day warning of the proclamation that was to come that following January. The document itself is one of Secretary King's particular interests, and while he was Commissioner of Education in New York, he took the document itself on a seven city tour as part of an exhibition called First Step to Freedom. The exhibition started out at the Schomberg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York City and from there, as we said, it toured to seven other cities. Secretary King also co authored the text that went along with that exhibition, and the first part of our interview with him, we are going to talk about why Lincoln decided to basically warn the rebelling states of what was coming, and how that document fit into the arc of how the Civil War progressed from originally from the Union point of view being more about retaining the Union, to eventually from the Union point of view being about abolishing slavery. So joining us today is Secretary of Education John B. King Junior. Thank you so much for being on the show today. Happy to do it. So I have heard from so many folks on your staff that one of your passions is the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. And so on September twenty second, eighteen sixty two, which was one hundred days before he issued the Emancipation Proclamation, President Abraham Lincoln issued this preliminary Proclamation that said, among other things, that if the rebelling States did not return to the Union, their enslaved populations would be forever freed. So what led to President Lincoln basically warning the rebelling states that this was going to happen. Well, so you know, in many ways it was for Lincoln a manner of political strategy right to build public will around the Emancipation Proclamation. He wanted to both convey that the South had had an opportunity to return to the Union and also build public understanding that this was essential step in order to successfully prosecute the Civil War. And interestingly, he sort of timed issuing the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation for a moment when the North was doing better in the Civil War. So the date that it was issued is actually bound up with the Battle at Antietam, and it was the success there that allowed him to issue it because he had been warned by Secretary Seward back in July that if he issued the preliminary emancipation Proclamation at a low moment in the conflict, it would seem like desperation, but if he did it after a victory, it would seem like a more confident maneuver done to give it South a chance to return to the Union on the right terms, or to move forward to finish the war. Was there any chance at all that the rebelling states were going to rejoin the Union after this essentially threat. No. I think this really was Lincoln, as master politician, figuring out what it would take to build public will. He also wanted realized the historical importance of the Emancipation Proclamation, that in many ways it was fulfillment of the promise of the Declaration of Independence, critical defining moment for the country, And I think wanted to have the Emancipation Proclamation have the strongest possible foundation because he recognized its importance. So part of this was, as you said, laying this legal groundwork for future emancipation. So what would have happened if these states had rejoined the Union in an effort to not have their slaves emancipated well. Interestingly, in the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, there's language around the possibility that there would be some sort of financial renumeration for the owners of slaves if the slave states returned. That language does not appear in the in the January eighteen sixty three Amancipatient Proclamation. And so Lincoln had a vision that least in theory, that the institution of slavery could have been on a kind of a path to disappearance, eliminated in the territories, sort of phased out in the states that had slavery in place. But I think ultimately Lincoln understood that this was a step that would ultimately change the nature of the war and make the war fundamentally not just about protecting the Union, but about ending the institution of slavery. Oh and that really leads really well into my next question, which is, at the start of the war, several slave states had basically promised that they would secede if Lincoln was elected, And so then he was elected and they did secede. But from Lincoln's point of view, the war at the beginning was not really so much about slavery as it was about preserving the Union, and it was like the focus gradually became it came around to the abolition of slavery as the war progressed. So where does the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation fit into this arc of moving from it being about preserving the Union to also being about ending the institution of slavery. You know, it's an interesting question, I'm one that really the scholars of Lincoln have debated. So there's one view that is that Lincoln all ways intended to make progress towards the eventual abolition of slavery, but was a savvy and thoughtful politician understood that the first step was to not have slavery expand into the into the territories. As the war began, saw the opportunity to move towards emancipation, and pursued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation and the Emancipation Proclamation as as a tactic to satisfy his ultimate goal of the elimination of slavery. So that's one view. Another view is that Lincoln was most focused always on preservation of the Union and would have chosen that above all else. And you know, there's of course the you know, the famous language from Lincoln where he tries to make that make the point that he would preserve the Union above all else, whether that was with or without the institution of slavery. So one view is that that was a genuine articulation of his view, and another view would be that it was a political strategy and that he realized he had to build public will over time. And you know, and some of Lincoln's writing, you hear him talking about the idea that public will is essential to accomplishing things that are hard, and that you need to bring the public along with you. So I love his idea of the president needing to bring the public along with him as he and the nation were gradually moving toward abolishing slavery. That idea has been present and so so many social changes we have talked about on the show before, Like we've talked about some really difficult times in the United States where a change needed to be made and it took a while to bring the people along to be more on board with the change. So it's really interesting to talk about this document as one piece of a more gradual attempt to change the public view to the idea that abolishing slavery was really something that needed to happen entirely it is. It's, uh, you know, we often think about this period, I think, particularly in history in a way where it gets taught in a very black and white way. And I don't mean that to be punny, but it's like this happened, and then everybody got it, and then this happened and everybody and it's like no, no, no, no no, no. It was a slope for like, none of these steps were immediate. They were not you know, like a door opening or closing. It was all like gradual. You really had to like coax it through its processes. So then continue the coaxing for more than a century afterwards. So we were going to take a brief break for a word from a sponsor before we get back to talking to Secretary King. So next up in Tracy's talk with Secretary King, they're going to talk about the language of the document, which is a lot more formal and legal than the Lincoln era documents that a lot of US school kids wind up memorizing four class It does not at all sound like four score and seven years ago, not remotely. So one of the things that I think a lot of people remember most about Lincoln from their just regular history classes is the get the Gettysburg address, And that is an address that you would probably describe as being beautifully written. It has this almost poetic, flowing language, and this document does not really have that. It is a lot more formal and egal in its tone. Can you talk about that difference a little bit? Sure? Well, you know, Lincoln was a lawyer, and he thought about this as a as a legal action that would need to be legally defensible, and view the emancipation Proclamation as exercise of the sort of presidential war powers. And so the document is in very legalistic prose and intentionally so. And he took great care and personally authoring the document and the version of the primary Emancipation Proclamation that the New York State Library has, the original in Lincoln's own hand, even has cut and pasted sections from the confiscation Acts where you can see that he literally cut them out and pasted them. And there's even that spot where you can see Lincoln's thumb print in glue um on the document as he cut and pasted into it. So this was this was for Lincoln a very careful step, and it's it's you know, I think one of the powerful things as a teacher UM as you're teaching these documents is to see the complexity of the role of historic figures. You know that Lincoln was president making political judgments, thinking about um his legacy, thinking about the importance of these events in the grand sweep of history, their significance for the country. He wanted to make sure that that emancipation succeeded. He wanted to make sure he built public support, that he had a strong legal position, and that he could navigate to emancipation while preserving the role of the border states that were members of the Union. So this is all very very carefully executed by Lincoln. The first time that I actually read this, it was a transcript of the document because I have a very hard time with historical handwriting, and I didn't realize until much later that those sections of the previous acts were literally cut out and pasted to the document. And that quickly became one of my favorite things about it, was that he cut it out and pasted it on there so it would be exactly the word for word, and then also not have to rewrite the whole thing yeah, yeah, old fashioned before before long before the cutting and pasting of Microsoft word. Yea, So there is there's one copy of this document that's in the president's own handwriting. What happened to that physical copy once he signed it? Well, so you know. Later the document was donated to a commission that was set up for the care of soldiers, of medical care of soldiers, and that commission then held a auction and an abolitionist won the documented an auction. He bought a lot of tickets in the auction or raffle, and then the New York State Legislature allocated funding to buy the document from him, and that's how it came to be in the possession of New York State. And New York State has periodically shared the document with the public. And when I was State Commissioner in New York, I was privileged to be a part of an effort where we developed an exhibit with the Pulmonary Mancipation Proclamation and also a speech that doctor King gave on the hundredth anniversary of the Pulmonary Mancipation Proclamation, And we built an exhibit for kids with the two documents and took it all around the state and it was during the time that the Lincoln movie was coming out, and there was a lot of interest when we had thousands of people and thousands of students from schools all over the state come to see this exhibit and come to see the document, and you can really see people's appreciation for Lincoln in their enthusiasm just to stand in the same space as this document. So, I don't know if this is the case now. And when I was studying, you know, k through twelve American history, this was in the late nineteen eighties, early nineteen nineties, and this whole idea that there was a preliminary Emancipation Proclamation and that there was a process of setting legal foundations in order to abolish the institution of slavery, that was skipped completely over and it seemed more like the Emancipation Proclamation and just kind of appeared out of whole cloth, and then the slaves were free, and that's it's that's not at all what happened. Why do you think so much of that process is omitted from so many history lessons about the Civil War and the abolition of slavery. Well, you know, I thinks as a country, you know, we so celebrate Lincoln's legacy and the notion of Lincoln as the emancipator, which is true and right, but there's also nuance behind that. And you know, one of the things I tried to do when I taught in high school history and also high school Civics was to China have students get a sense of the complexity of politics throughout our history. You know, It's one of the great things about the Hamilton Musical is I think it's given a generation of Americans a better under standing that these figures in history aren't just two dimensional characters that a pr and our currency. That they're complicated people operating in complicated times, making political judgments, making very strategic decisions. And you know, from my perspective, it makes Abraham Lincoln even more heroic because you understand that that that he had to have carefully plotted legal strategy, a carefully plotted political strategy to accomplish emancipatient and ultimately to win the Civil War. It's one of the nice things about some of the recent books and study on Lyndon Johnson and the path to the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. Yeah, these important achievements are the product not of a sudden inspiration, but rather careful execution by very capable politicians. And sometimes the word politician is put in a negative light, but Abraham Lincoln was a very very capable politician. So before we get to the end of our interview, we're going to stop for one more brief word from a sponsor, and after we hear from that sponsor, we are going to talk about why this particular document is so personally important to Secretary King. Okay, so let's get to the end of the interview. Secretary King is going to talk about the documents personal importance to him and as also how it fits into the greater arc of progress toward racial equality in the United States. So every person I spoke with while arranging this interview with you talked about this document being really important to you. So what does this document specifically mean to you? And why why is it the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation in particular that has so captivated you. You know, I think for me, it's a reflection of um both the ways in which United States has fallen short of the founding values. You know that that we have to acknowledge that the United States began very much with the institution of slavery as fundamental to how the country works. And there was a real tension between the institution of slavery and the promise of the Declaration of Independence and then and the notion, the notion that all men aren't created equal, and so there was this gap, and we all as Americans need to appreciate that complexity of our history around issues of race. At the same time, the document also illustrates and something the President often talks about, that the trajectory of America is towards greater equality, greater opportunity over time. And so this period, the Civil War and reconstruction are really a second birth of the United States. You know, when you look at the thirteenth fourteen, fifteenth Amendments, which were really products of the Civil War and reconstruction, they expanded the definition of American equality and American democracy, and this document was very much a part of that journey. And then the last pieces this document is also about the complexity of government, the importance of leaders figuring out how to bring the public along on things that are hard, the importance of leaders having a good political strategy, a good legal strategy, as well as moral higher purpose, and Lincoln really combined all of those things, and you see that very much in this document and the eventual January Emancipation Proclamation January eighteen sixty three. So is there anything else about this document or its history that you really think that listeners to our show should know? You know, the one thing I would say is, just speaking as a teacher, I just think there's so much power in students engaging with primary source documents. And it's one thing to read, you know, a textbook and what the textbook might say, but it's another to delve into a historical document and really appreciate what the author was trying to accomplish, the choices the author made. You can imagine a powerful unit comprised of this preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, the Mancipation Proclamation of January eighteen sixty three, the Gettysburg Address, the Second Inaugural Address, the thirteenth, fourteen, fifteenth Amendments. You know, just study through those powerful historical texts, and it can be a way to inspire students both about literacy and about social studies. It also can be a way to help students see the nuances in our history. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us today. Was a pleasure to have you on the show. Thanks, it's fun to talk with you, and thanks for what you do making sure folks are learning about our history. Thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday. Since this episode is out of the archive, if you heard an email address or a Facebook RL or something similar over the course of the show, that could be obsolete now. Our current email address is History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. Our old health stuff works email address no longer works, and you can find us all over social media at missed in History. And you can subscribe to our show on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, and wherever else you listen to podcasts. Stuff You Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.