We will hear a lot today about the anniversary of the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, issued by Abraham Lincoln on September 22, 1862.

It's often confused with the Emancipation Proclamation itself, which was issued on January 1, 1863.

All too often the former is read in light of the latter, if indeed it is read at all. Anyone who reads them both will see real differences between them in a number of areas.

That practice warps our understanding of how freedom came and the context in which it evolved.

The PEP (for the 9/22/62 document) is best understood as a document of reconstruction based on reconciliationist premises that contained a threat of revolution should reconciliation fail again.

Had white southerners accepted its terms, history would be far different.

And by white southerners, I mean unionists as well as Confederates. People often overlook Lincoln's frustrations in dealing with white southern unionists in 1862, who seemed more interested in protecting slavery than in laying the foundations of a revived unionism.

People also overlook that between these two documents Lincoln made his final big bid for his preferred policy of gradual and compensated emancipation followed by the voluntary relocation of free and freed African Americans outside the boundaries of the United States.

Lincoln may have reminded his fellow citizens that "we cannot escape history," but all too often the reality of the situation during those hundred days escapes us. Lincoln saw colonization as best way to preserve that "last, best hope" through thinking anew and acting anew.

People often cite the eloquence of the Second Annual Message while forgetting that such eloquence was being put into service to advance colonization. How would Americans "nobly save" the republic? By adopting his plan. Otherwise they might "meanly lose" it.

As he put it, "Other means may succeed; this could not fail."

Guess what "this" is? Lincoln's version of compensated emancipation and colonization.

If Lincoln was a great politician, then we must remember that his greatest failed project was colonization.

There are other differences between the PEP and the EP concerning black freedom, reflecting concerns that emancipation would inspire insurrection, as well as defining the boundaries of what areas were included and excluded.

Among the excluded areas? Tennessee, courtesy of Andrew Johnson, although large parts of it were occupied by US forces.

That was to facilitate Johnson's own efforts at Reconstruction. The parts of Tennessee that were most Unionist were still under Confederate control.

The PEP did signal a different approach to emancipation than did the Second Confiscation Act, however. That legislation made confiscation of slaves dependent on the political sympathies of the people who claimed to own them. Unionist slaveholders were protected.

The PEP and EP emancipated slavery in areas, regardless of the sympathies of the people who claimed to own slaves. Unionists would lose their claim to slaves in these areas.

The provision reflected Lincoln's exhausted patience with white southern Unionists.

The PEP mentions the forthcoming proposal on colonization in a carefully-phrased section. Maybe that's why people miss it.

It also reminded everyone of congressional actions dictating how US military authorities should address issues relating to slavery.

It mentioned compensation to Unionist slaveowners.

Historians read documents and interpret them. Want to see both documents? https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured-documents/emancipation-proclamation#:~:text=President%20Abraham%20Lincoln%20issued%20the,and%20henceforward%20shall%20be%20free.%22

Read the PEP. Note how it makes reference to colonization and compensation. We often see the EP as a rejection of colonization (as opposed to displacing it for a number of reasons), but the PEP offers it as part of a larger plan.

I believe that black military service rendered colonization moot. You can't ask people to fight for a nation they are then asked to leave.

We must also remember how few takers there ever were for colonization. To have buyers, you must have sellers.

Those people who claim that Lincoln simply could have bought the slaves forget this basic fact: white southerners were not going to sell them.

Those people often forget that southern whites had anything to do with slavery, anyway. Heritage, not hate, right?

We as Americans have a complicated and complex history of defining what words mean and how we apply them. Ruth Bader Ginsberg understood that. We set forth inspiring principles that we then struggle to realize ... and not everyone is committed to realizing them in the same way.

We as historians need to make that complicated and complex world understandable without simplifying it lest we distort it. So let's view the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation in its full meaning and implication, not as something to rush over on the way to emancipation.