In 1862 Owen wrote a series of open letters to U.S. government officials, including President Abraham Lincoln and U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase, to encourage them to support general emancipation. Owen's letter of July 23, 1862, was published in the "New York Evening Post" on August 8, 1862, and his letter of September 12, 1862, was published in the same newspaper on September 22, 1862. In another open letter that Owen wrote to President Lincoln on September 17, 1862,