<P> Lincoln further alienated many in the Union two days after issuing the preliminary copy of the Emancipation Proclamation by suspending habeas corpus . His opponents linked these two actions in their claims that he was becoming a despot . In light of this and a lack of military success for the Union armies, many War Democrat voters who had previously supported Lincoln turned against him and joined the Copperheads in the off - year elections held in October and November . </P> <P> In the 1862 elections, the Democrats gained 28 seats in the House as well as the governorship of New York . Lincoln's friend Orville Hickman Browning told the president that the Proclamation and the suspension of habeas corpus had been "disastrous" for his party by handing the Democrats so many weapons . Lincoln made no response . Copperhead William Javis of Connecticut pronounced the election the "beginning of the end of the utter downfall of Abolitionism in the United States". </P> <P> Historians James M. McPherson and Allan Nevins state that though the results looked very troubling, they could be seen favorably by Lincoln; his opponents did well only in their historic strongholds and "at the national level their gains in the House were the smallest of any minority party's in an off - year election in nearly a generation . Michigan, California, and Iowa all went Republican...Moreover, the Republicans picked up five seats in the Senate ." McPherson states "If the election was in any sense a referendum on emancipation and on Lincoln's conduct of the war, a majority of Northern voters endorsed these policies ." </P> <P> The initial Confederate response was one of expected outrage . The Proclamation was seen as vindication for the rebellion, and proof that Lincoln would have abolished slavery even if the states had remained in the Union . In an August 1863 letter to President Lincoln, U.S. Army general Ulysses S. Grant observed that the Proclamation, combined with the usage of black soldiers by the U.S. Army, profoundly angered the Confederacy, saying that "the emancipation of the Negro, is the heaviest blow yet given the Confederacy . The South rave a great deal about it and profess to be very angry ." A few months after the Proclamation took effect, the Confederacy passed a law in May 1863 demanding "full and ample retaliation" against the U.S. for such measures . The Confederacy stated that the black U.S. soldiers captured while fighting against the Confederacy would be tried as slave insurrectionists in civil courts--a capital offense with automatic sentence of death . Less than a year after the law's passage, the Confederates massacred black U.S. soldiers at Fort Pillow . </P>

When did emancipation proclamation officially end in the united states of america