Today in History, July 22nd
On July 22, 1862, Lincoln told his cabinet he would issue an emancipation proclamation. Plus Wiley Post's solo flight and John Dillinger's death.
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July 22 is best known for 1862, when Abraham Lincoln told his cabinet he planned to issue a proclamation freeing enslaved people in the rebelling states. The date also saw Wiley Post finish the first solo flight around the world in 1933 and federal agents gun down John Dillinger in Chicago in 1934.
The big story: Lincoln tells his cabinet about emancipation (1862)
On July 22, 1862, Abraham Lincoln sat down with his cabinet and told them something big: he intended to declare enslaved people in the rebelling states free. There was a catch, though. He would hold the announcement until the Union Army handed him a significant victory. Lincoln’s public line at the time was that saving the Union came first. In an August letter to newspaper editor Horace Greeley, he called that his paramount object. But he also saw that freeing enslaved people could pull them into the Union ranks and drain the Confederacy of labor. The victory he wanted came at Antietam, and on September 22, 1862, he made the preliminary proclamation public, setting January 1, 1863, as the date freedom would take effect. It covered only areas in rebellion, not the loyal border states, yet it changed the meaning of the war.
More events on July 22
| Year | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1864 | Confederate attacks failed to drive William T. Sherman’s army from the outskirts of Atlanta, tightening his grip on the city. |
| 1894 | The first automobile race ran from Paris to Rouen in France. |
| 1916 | A suitcase bomb went off during a Preparedness Day parade in San Francisco, killing 10 people. |
| 1933 | Wiley Post returned to New York as the first pilot to fly solo around the world, covering 15,596 miles in about seven days. |
| 1934 | Federal agents shot and killed bank robber John Dillinger outside Chicago’s Biograph Theatre. |
| 1942 | Nazi Germany began deporting Jews from the Warsaw ghetto to the Treblinka camp. |
| 1977 | Deng Xiaoping was restored to all his former posts in China, including vice-premier. |
| 1987 | Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev agreed to negotiate a full ban on intermediate-range nuclear missiles, clearing the way for the INF Treaty. |
| 2003 | U.S. forces killed Saddam Hussein’s sons, Uday and Qusay, after a firefight in Mosul, Iraq. |
| 2005 | The French documentary March of the Penguins opened in U.S. theaters. |
| 2013 | Prince George, first child of Prince William and Kate Middleton, was born in London. |
Born on July 22
- 1784: Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel, German astronomer who first measured the distance to a star other than the sun, born in Minden.
- 1923: Bob Dole, Kansas Republican senator and 1996 presidential nominee, born in Russell, Kansas.
- 1932: Oscar de la Renta, fashion designer who dressed U.S. first ladies and celebrities, born in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.
Sources
- Lincoln tells his cabinet about Emancipation Proclamation, History.com
- This Day in History: July 22, History.com
- On This Day: July 22, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Bob Dole, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Oscar de la Renta, Encyclopaedia Britannica
