You must not of read the rest of it. It might be fact but it was against Lincoln’s War Policy. The overwhelming number of War Democrats embraced the EP as a War Measure. “The disintegration of our present armies” essentially didn’t happen. Federals, recruited and Forced over 180K Negro Replacements. Buying German and Irish Immigrants got too expensive. War was taking a harder Turn. McClellan refused Lincoln’s Policy. Questioning his Commander In Chief authority.
In what respect did McClellan refuse any policy of Lincoln's that had already been set out? The Emancipation Proclamation does not yet exist as of July 7; McClellan is offering his opinion on what the policy should be, because no such policy yet exists.
McClellan's argument (as you can see if you read the Harrisons Landing letter) is that the President already has the authority under existing law to do what needs to be done, and that a policy should be laid out:
The time has come when the Government must determine upon a civil and military policy covering the whole ground of our national trouble. The responsibility of determining, declaring, and supporting such civil and military policy, and of directing the whole course of national affairs in regard to the rebellion, must now be assumed and exercised by you, or our cause will be lost. The Constitution gives you power sufficient even for the present terrible exigency.
He says what he thinks should
not be done, which is what gets most of the attention, but then he says what he thinks
should be done:
Slaves, contraband under the act of Congress, seeking military protection, should receive it. The right of the Government to appropriate permanently to its own service claims to slave labor should be asserted, and the right of the owner to compensation therefor should be recognized. This principle might be extended, upon grounds of military necessity and security, to all the slaves of a particular State, thus working manumission in such State; and in Missouri, perhaps in Western Virginia also, and possibly even in Maryland, the expediency of such a measure is only a question of time. A system of policy thus constitutional, and pervaded by the influences of Christianity and freedom, would receive the support of almost all truly loyal men, would deeply impress the rebel masses and all foreign nations, and it might be humbly hoped that it would commend itself to the favor of the Almighty.
What McClellan is outlining here is that:
- Slaves belonging to rebels (contraband under the act of Congress) who seek out the US armies (seeking military protection) should be given that military protection.
- The Government should appropriate
permanently claims to slave labour (The right of the Government to appropriate permanently to its own service claims to slave labor should be asserted), in
entire states (all the slaves of a particular state) and thereby work manumission in a state, naming specifically Missouri, West Virginia and Maryland which were all slave states entirely under Union control.
Note that this hypothetical policy provides for the freeing of all slaves. If they are under the ownership of Rebels, then they are contraband under the act of Congress; if they are under the ownership of Unionists, then they can be appropriated to Government use and subsequently manumitted.
It's not a perfect system, but in some important respects (the fate of slaves in Maryland and Missouri, for example) it is explicitly more pro-emancipation than the system in the Emancipation Proclamation.
The first way in which it is flawed is that it does not outline an explicit path to freedom for the slaves of Confederates, though I can see how in practice (since Contrabands were US government property by the 1861 Confiscation Act and it was illegal to return them to their owners according to the 1862 Act Prohibiting the Return of Slaves) they could simply be manumitted - as Federal property the Union government gets to decide what to do with them.
The second way in which it is flawed is that it is a system of compensated emancipation for pro-union slave owners (i.e. slave owners get money in return for losing their slaves), but it is worth realizing that uncompensated emancipation was quite a fringe position in 1862 while compensated emancipation had worked on a large scale in the British Empire about 25 years ago.
Given that among the most recent governmental measure on slavery was Lincoln countermanding Hunter's order freeing all slaves in his department, and given that the passage of the 1862 Confiscation Act a week or so later occasioned significant debate in the Union government about whether you even
could confiscate slaves, the Harrisons Landing letter in some important respects is as much "please set a consistent policy, here's one you could do which would free slaves without breaking the constitution or making new laws" as objecting to anything Lincoln's already done.