he urged the president to abolish slavery on moral grounds. Owen also believed that emancipation would weaken the Confederate forces and help the Union army win the war. On September 23, 1862, Lincoln issued a preliminary version of the Emancipation Proclamation (as he had first resolved to do in mid-July). In "Emancipation is Peace", a pamphlet that Owen wrote in 1863, he confirmed his view that general emancipation was a means to end the war. In "The Wrong of Slavery, the Right of Emancipation, and the Future of the African Race in the United States", a report that Owen wrote in 1864, he also suggested that the Union should provide assistance to freedmen.