Abraham Lincoln didn’t have to wait for a Union Victory to issue the emancipation proclamation, at least, there was no law that said he needed to. But Lincoln felt he needed to for political reasons. He waited so it didn’t look like he was issuing it out of desperation. Since those in the north viewed the war as bringing the union back together not as a war against slavery it was simpler for Lincoln to simply call it a war against secession not slavery. Especially since the south didn’t really want to end slavery. But he felt that slavery had pretty much ended after the war so it was okay for him to draft the emancipation proclamation, but since the union army wasn’t doing so well at that time he waited so the North and his government didn’t look weak. When he issued it he did it so it looked like the right thing to do to free slaves and not in order to win the war.
