The Manifesto established a lengthy, bureaucratic, “three-stage process” of serf liberation. Alexander II had signed the Emancipation Manifesto on 19 February, 1861, but delayed announcing it until 5 March, 1861, “Forgiveness Sunday,” in the hope that the start of Lent would heighten the peasants’ gratitude. 2 A few years earlier, Lincoln similarly commented to his friend Joshua Speed, “When the Know-Nothings get control … I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty-to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.” 3 Yet, Tsar Alexander II emancipated millions of Russian serfs almost two years before Lincoln publicly announced the Emancipation Proclamation. In the fifth Lincoln-Douglas debate, Abraham Lincoln contrasted “our national Democracy” with the tyranny of “emperors and monarchies in Russia” stifling free political speech. Let us bow in reverent submission to the divine will, and hold forever the friendship between the people of Russia and America.’” 1 ‘I cannot but regard this coincidence as the work of that Providence which inscrutably designs and ever advances in monarchies and in republics, the liberties and the civilization of the human race. “t was the fortune of both of these rulers of two great nations to have devoted their lives to the liberation of the enslaved, and to the elevation of the whole people to the equality before the law.
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