New York Governor Horatio Seymour described the Proclamation as a 'bloody, barbarous, revolutionary, and unconstitutional scheme.' In October and November, Republicans suffered electoral losses in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, New York, and New Jersey. Radical abolitionists scorned the Proclamation.

Others denounced Lincoln for stirring up anarchy or race war.

Some worried that this rash act would set off an uprising within the Union armies. There was a storm of reaction to the Proclamation. This is the document (you can read it in Lincoln's hand at their website) in which Abraham Lincoln, as 'President of the United States of America, and Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy thereof,' proclaimed on September 22, 1862, 'That on the first day of January in the year of our Lord, one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any state, or designated part of a state, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.' Since 1865, the New York state library has been the proud owner of the original Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. Guelzo’s exploration of Lincoln’s reputation is both accessible and thought provoking.A review of Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America, by Allen C. Guelzo responds to critics of Lincoln’s lack of racial empathy by noting that the president was “the wrong man for expressions of empathy on almost any subject.” Addressing the controversy surrounding demands for reparations for descendants of slaves, Guelzo also illustrates his conviction that students of history must not allow simplicity to crowd out complexity, pointing out the issues that make identifying the affected class a challenge. Guelzo carefully parses and contextualizes Lincoln’s statements and personality, noting that the “problem with our apprehension of Lincoln’s antislavery is that he seems to have gone about it in what we would regard as a bafflingly obtuse fashion.” For example, Lincoln did not view slavery as primarily a racial issue, but as a political and economic one. He begins with a review of the significance of emancipation, and the evidence, which he finds compelling, that Lincoln was deeply committed to ending slavery. Guelzo (Gettysburg: The Last Invasion), a professor of the Civil War era at Gettysburg College, argues that understanding why Lincoln still merits the title of Great Emancipator is essential to healthy race relations in the U.S., explaining his rationale with three lectures he gave at Harvard in 2012.

Abraham Lincoln by Allen C. Guelzo