|
Contents
INTRODUCTION
The Emancipation Proclamation is probably the
strangest document in American history; strange because it is susceptible of
at least three interpretations which appear to be mutually exclusive, but
which are
not, and strange because its genesis is equally enigmatic, with at least three
solid reasons offered for it. The only thing not strange about it is its
effects, North, South, and abroad, immediate and long term. It won the war,
preserved the United States as one nation, and ended slavery. Quite a lot for
a one page document. How could it be? Let's see.
 |
Abraham Lincoln delivers the Emancipation Proclamation to his Cabinet
|
I. GENESIS
A. The Moral Imperative
1. Lincoln
Some historians and students of the period
are fond of pointing to this or that statement made by Lincoln prior to
emancipation that evidences his unwillingness to think of the Negro as an
equal, a refusal to accept him or her as such, and a refusal to interfere with
the institution of slavery in those states of the Union where it already
existed. These statements are easily explained in terms of political
expediency, i.e., that to a degree, Lincoln, as with all politicians, was
playing to his audience and the convictions he knew they held. But a careful
reading of the literature and his record demonstrates beyond any doubt his
utter loathing of the institution of slavery and his desire and intention to do
something about it if and when he could, but not in such a way as to effect a
cure that would be worse than the disease, which is to say to lose the Union
in the process of destroying human bondage in that Union. If we want to know
what Lincoln really felt about the institution, it is enough to know that the
Southern leaders of his day announced in advance that if he were elected to
the Presidency they would secede from the Union, and also to know that upon
the fulfillment of that condition they promptly did so.
2. The Abolitionists
In addition to his personal imperative
regarding the peculiar institution, Lincoln was under pressure from
abolitionists who, though their hostility to slavery was no greater than his,
appeared to be more principled than he because they openly advocated immediate
and total freedom for all slaves regardless of consequences. Thus, men like
William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, John Greenleaf Whittier and
Frederick Douglas, and women like Harriet Beecher Stowe and Susan B. Anthony,
could and did question the antislavery credentials of a President who in their
eyes moved so slowly on the issue. These people were anything but stupid
Americans. They were, in fact, very bright. But they either didn't know, or if
they knew, they didn't care, that precipitate and comprehensive action of the kind they
advocated would very likely result in the loss of Delaware, Maryland,
Kentucky, and Missouri to the Confederacy, border states whose loyalty to the
government had, in some cases, been assured by Lincoln only by heavy-handed
and even extra-Constitutional means and therefore remained precarious. Lincoln
knew and cared a great deal about the border states because he realized that
to lose them was to lose the war, the Union, and, at least for the foreseeable
future, emancipation.
3. The Radicals
From the radicals in his own party, too, came
pressure. The South did not have a monopoly on fire-eaters. There were just as
many in the North, but of a different stripe. Men like Thaddeus Stevens of
Pennsylvania in the House, Charles Sumner of Massachusetts and Benjamin Wade
of Ohio in the Senate, and Salmon P. Chase, Lincoln's Secretary of the
Treasury, spoke often and forcefully against the "evil" of slavery,
made almost daily visits to the White House, and demanded that steps be taken
as quickly as possible to assure the extinction of "the harlot,
slavery." Faced with secession of their southern brethren, they
steadfastly opposed compromise of any kind with "the Slave Power."
As with the abolitionists, these men were intelligent and dedicated, but
whereas the abolitionists' altruism was unalloyed, the Radical Republicans'
was somewhat diluted by a strain of personal animus against
slaveholders.
4. Commanders In the Field
On at least three occasions prior to
Lincoln's issuance of the Proclamation, the fear of loss of one or more of the
border
states to the Confederacy forced him to countermand, and in one case to sack
the author of, orders of his commanders in the field who had taken it upon
themselves to liberate slaves in their areas of command. These commanders were
General Benjamin Butler, in command of Fort Monroe, Virginia, General John C.
Fremont, Commander of the Union Army in St. Louis (who was sacked), and
General David Hunter, commanding the Department of the South.
5. Lincoln Redux
It was left to Lincoln to steer a safe and
sane path between and around extremes, to wend his way through the forest of
conflicting interests and ideologies. He did not have the luxury of being a
radical, a conservative, or a liberal. He knew what he wanted - Union and
Emancipation - but he knew, too, that he could accomplish both only in the
fullness of time. "There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at
flood, leads on to fortune" (said Shakespeare in Julius Caesar). None
knew it better than Lincoln. None made decisions, based on that truism, with
greater sagacity. None, ultimately, had better results.
But there was another factor that separated
Lincoln from his abolitionist and radical Republican contemporaries. Like
them, he detested slavery, but unlike them, he did not detest the slaveholders. As
he so often did, Lincoln put himself in the place of his adversary and
imagined that he would behave about the same if he had been a product of the
same circumstances. It was for these reasons that he explored measures short
of war to deal with the slavery issue, the issue that had bedeviled the Union
since its inception, i.e., colonization, return to Africa, gradual emancipation with
compensation, and action by individual states.
B. Issuance as War Measure
Lincoln issued his Proclamation as a
war measure, i.e., under his Constitutional authority as Commander in Chief of
the Union armies, as to which he had a plenary concept (Art. II, Section 2).
He did so for several reasons. First, he believed that the Constitution did
not otherwise empower him to interfere with the institution of slavery in
those states in which it already existed. Second, he had tried and failed to
persuade the border states to voluntarily and gradually free slaves within
their jurisdictions with compensation to slaveholders from the Federal
Government. Indeed, in December, 1862, after he had issued his Proclamation,
but before its effective date, he proposed a Constitutional Amendment that
would authorize Congress to compensate slave owners in those states that agreed
to legislate slavery out of existence. When he realized that the border states
would not accept gradual emancipation, he resolved to accomplish what he could
with the military edict that he had already prepared in the event of such
refusal. He was convinced that the tide had reached flood stage, that events,
foreign and domestic, required a bold stroke and that to fail to make it, and
quickly, was to risk catastrophe. Thus, his resort to his Constitutional war
powers.
In what sense was the Proclamation a war
measure? In several senses. In the second paragraph it refers to the
preliminary Proclamation of September 22 wherein it is stated that "…the
executive government of the United States, including the military and naval
authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons
(i.e. slaves in those states or parts of states whose people were in rebellion
against the United States)…" Accordingly, the slaves encountered by
conquering Union armies in those states or parts of states previously in
rebellion were free men and women who could never again be enslaved by any
person under the jurisdiction of the United States. Further, and still
alluding to the preliminary Proclamation, Lincoln unequivocally invoked the
war powers of the Constitution for his authority, i.e., "…by virtue of
the power in me vested as Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy of the
United States." Still further, in the same paragraph, he makes the
purpose of the Proclamation as a war measure crystal clear, i.e., "…and
as a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion…"
So that there will be no mistake about his
authority, purpose, or intent, and now no longer alluding to the Proclamation
of September 22, he restates all three in the sixth paragraph:
And by virtue of the power and for the
purpose aforesaid, I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves
within said designated states and parts of states are, and henceforward
shall be, free; and that the Executive Government of the United States,
including the military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and
maintain the freedom of said persons.
In the eighth paragraph he announces that
newly freed slaves will be accepted into the armed service of the United
States for non-combat duty and "to man vessels of all sorts in said
service." Again, in the final paragraph, he refers to the Proclamation as
an act "…warranted by the Constitution upon military necessity."
The Proclamation was made as a military measure, and as a military measure it
worked.
C. Foreign Intervention
1. England
In England's case, the ruling class was, not
surprisingly, pro-Southern. It easily identified with the planter aristocracy
and had been, for many years, close to the South economically (cotton) and
socially. The Times of London, its major mouthpiece, was strongly
pro-Southern. The Confederacy, of course, made a concerted effort to tap into
the veins of support for its cause. In March, 1861, i.e., even before the war
began, it sent William L. Yancey, Pierrre A. Rost, and A. Dudley Mann to
England, France, Russia, and Belgium for this purpose. Later, other missions
were sent to Ireland, Spain, the Vatican, Mexico, and West Indian colonies.
These missions failed largely because the countries solicited were chary of
committing themselves to one side or the other in the conflict at such an
early date. They failed, further, because of the efforts of the energetic and
superbly able American Minister, Charles Francis Adams. It has been said that
ultimate Union success owes as much or more to the work of this man than to
all the battlefield victories.
Nevertheless, in the late summer of 1862,
after Confederate successes on the battlefield (the Peninsular Campaign,
Second Bull Run) gave the distinct impression that the Confederacy might
indeed prevail, Adams warned Seward that a British offer to mediate the
conflict was imminent. Such an offer would be tantamount to formal recognition
of the Confederacy, because after it was rejected by the Administration, as it
surely would be, the rejection would be taken by the British as justification
for recognition and intervention. Earl Russell, the British Foreign Secretary,
and Lord Palmerston, the Prime Minister, agreed that in late summer or early
fall they would call a meeting of Palmerston's Cabinet and ask for their
approval of the offer of mediation. They agreed, further, however, to
condition the calling of the meeting on the outcome of Lee's invasion of the
North in Maryland. If Lee were successful, they would go ahead with it. If
not, they would postpone it and wait to see what developed. In a very real
sense, then, the one in a million chance of Lee's losing his battle plans and
McClellan's finding them changed the entire course of history by assuring the
continuation of the United States as one country. After Antietam, the threat
receded. After the Emancipation Proclamation, it was almost gone. After the
twin Federal victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, it disappeared
completely.
There was still another reason that mitigated
against the British recognition and intervention. By chance, in the years
leading up to the war, Europe had had poor grain harvests. Productivity in the
United States remained high, despite the war, due to the use of new reapers
and binders. American exports of grain went a long way toward relieving
Britain's food shortage. Bad as it wanted cotton, it wanted American wheat
even more, and it was unlikely, therefore, to do anything that would
jeopardize those imports.
2. France
As for France, she, like Britain, was a
monarchy and therefore suspicious if not hostile to democracy. Napoleon III,
her monarch, did not give a fig about the Union either and would have been
only too happy to see the experiment on the other side of the Atlantic fail,
but he would not do anything unilaterally, i.e., without the backing of
England. France's real interest was Mexico, where she had taken advantage of
the war to set up a puppet government under Maximilian as Emperor. After
Appomattox, Phil Sheridan was sent to the border with 50,000 troops. France
got the message and pulled its troops out. The natives took over and
Maximilian was executed.
3. Russia
Russia, the other major power, presented an
interesting case. Because of her distance from the United States, intervention
would have been much more difficult for her than for the other two major
powers. Regardless, it now appears that St. Petersburg had no inclination to
support the Southern cause, though elements of its ruling class may have been
sympathetic. The economic ties that bound the United States to England and
France were all but nonexistent in the case of Russia. That two Russian fleets
dropped anchor in the fall of 1863 in American waters, one at San Francisco
and the other at New York, had nothing to do with supporting the North. Their
purpose was to prevent them from being icebound in their own waters in the
event of war with England and France, which, at the time and due to the
imperial ambitions of all three countries, notably in Central Asia, was a
distinct possibility.
II. THE PROCLAMATION
Lincoln's state of mind in July, 1862, is
best described in his own words. In a conversation with the painter, Frank
Carpenter, who painted the famous illustration of the first reading of the
Emancipation Proclamation, he said:
It had got to be midsummer, 1862. Things had
gone on from bad to worse, until I felt that we had reached the end of our
rope on the plan of operations we had been pursuing; that we had about played
our last card, and must change our tactics or lose the game. I now determined
upon the adoption of the emancipation policy; and without consultation with,
or knowledge of, the cabinet, I prepared the original draft of the
proclamation, and after much anxious thought called a cabinet meeting upon the
subject… I said to the cabinet that I had resolved upon this step, and had
not called them together to ask their advice, but to lay the subject-matter of
a proclamation before them, suggestions as to which would be in order after
they had heard it read.
Actually, Lincoln omitted to say that on July
13, 1862, the day after his last meeting with representatives of the border
states and nine days before the cabinet meeting to which he refers, he
discussed emancipation with the two cabinet members who were closest to him,
Gideon Welles and William Seward. He read a draft of the Proclamation to them.
They were left nearly speechless, but what they did manage to say was
generally favorable. Encouraged, Lincoln, at a regularly scheduled meeting on
July 22, 1862, presented his entire cabinet with what he called his
"preliminary" Emancipation Proclamation, advising them that he
wished to issue it immediately. Their reaction, not surprisingly, was mixed,
but Lincoln had taken the precaution of telling them in advance that he was
asking for their advice only as to the form of the document, not its
substance. The latter, he said, he was firmly committed to. Seward suggested
that because of recent military reversals in the eastern theater (the
Peninsular Campaign), immediate issuance would be construed as an act of
desperation (which, in a sense, it was) and that it would be better,
therefore, to wait for a more propitious time, i.e., after a Union victory, to
issue it. This was sage advice and Lincoln accepted it. Assured that foreign
intervention was not imminent (though it remained a serious threat), he would
wait for a Union victory. Thanks to the loss of Lee's battle plans during his
invasion of Maryland, McClellan gave Lincoln his victory at Antietam on
September 17. Again, in Lincoln's own words:
When Lee came over the river, I made a
resolution that if McClellan drove him back I would send the proclamation
after him. The battle of Antietam was fought Wednesday, and until Saturday I
could not find out whether we had gained a victory or lost a battle. It was
then too late to issue the proclamation that day; and the fact is I fixed it
up a little Sunday, and Monday I let them have it.
This was September 22. After reading a second
draft to the Cabinet, he issued his preliminary Proclamation, which announced
that emancipation would become effective on January 1, 1863, in those states
"in rebellion" that had not, during the interim period, ceased
hostilities. He issued and signed the supplementary or real Emancipation
Proclamation on January 1, 1863. It is not a particularly long document, so
here it is in full:
Whereas, on the September 22, in the year of
our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-two, a proclamation was issued
by the President of the United States, containing, among other things, the
following, to wit:
"That on the first day of January, in
the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons
held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people
whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then,
thenceforward, and forever free; and the Executive Government of the United
States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and
maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress
such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual
freedom.
"That the Executive will, on the first
day of January aforesaid, by proclamation, designate the States and parts of
States, if any, in which the people thereof, respectively, shall then be in
rebellion against the United States; and the fact that any State, or the
people thereof, shall on that day be, in good faith, represented in the
Congress of the United States by members chosen thereto at elections wherein a
majority of the qualified voters of such State shall have participated, shall,
in the absence of strong countervailing testimony, be deemed conclusive
evidence that such State, and the people thereof, are not then in rebellion
against the United States."
Now, therefore I, Abraham Lincoln, President
of the United States, by virtue of the power in me vested as
Commander-in-Chief, of the Army and Navy of the United States in time of
actual armed rebellion against the authority and government of the United
States, and as a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion,
do, on this first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight
hundred and sixty-three, and in accordance with my purpose so to do publicly
proclaimed for the full period of one hundred days, from the day first above
mentioned, order and designate as the States and parts of States wherein the
people thereof respectively, are this day in rebellion against the United
States, the following, to wit:
Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, (except the
Parishes of St. Bernard, Plaquemines, Jefferson, St. John, St. Charles, St.
James Ascension, Assumption, Terrebonne, Lafourche, St. Mary, St. Martin, and
Orleans, including the City of New Orleans), Mississippi, Alabama, Florida,
Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia, (except the forty-eight
counties designated as West Virginia, and also the counties of Berkley,
Accomac, Northampton, Elizabeth City, York, Princess Ann, and Norfolk,
including the cities of Norfolk and Portsmouth), and which excepted parts, are
for the present, left precisely as if this proclamation were not issued.
And by virtue of the power, and for the
purpose aforesaid, I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves
within said designated States, and parts of States, are, and henceforward
shall be free; and that the Executive government of the United States,
including the military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and
maintain the freedom of said persons.
And I hereby enjoin upon the people so
declared to be free to abstain from all violence, unless in necessary
self-defense; and I recommend to them that, in all cases when allowed, they
labor faithfully for reasonable wages.
And I further declare and make known, that
such persons of suitable condition, will be received into the armed service of
the United States to garrison forts, positions, stations, and other places,
and to man vessels of all sorts in said service.
And upon this act, sincerely believed to be
an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution, upon military necessity, I
invoke the considerate judgment of mankind, and the gracious favor of Almighty
God.
In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my
hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.
Done at the City of Washington, this first
day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty
three, and of the Independence of the United States of America the
eighty-seventh.
Abraham Lincoln
Just before affixing his signature, Lincoln
said to the few friends who were with him in his study, "I never, in my
life, felt more certain that I was doing right than I do in signing this
paper."
III. INTERPRETATIONS
A. Background
In truth, the Emancipation Proclamation was
both an end and a beginning. It was the capstone on all the measures that had
until then been taken to prohibit slavery or to free slaves and that had
therefore seriously eroded the institution and prepared the nation for the
Thirteenth Amendment. These included:
-
The Northwest Ordinances of 1784, 1785,
and 1787, wherein Congress prohibited slavery in the area north of the
Ohio River to the Great Lakes and west of Pennsylvania to the Mississippi
River;
-
Article I, Section 9 (I), of the
Constitution, which authorized Congress to prohibit the importation of
slaves after 1807, a clear signal that the framers - most of them - found
the institution to be loathsome and planned for its eventual
extinction;
-
Lincoln's order of March 13, 1862,
forbidding all Union officers to return fugitive slaves, thus in effect
annulling the fugitive slave laws despite the fact that they were enacted pursuant
to Art. IV, Section 2, of the Constitution;
-
Congress's abolition of slavery in the
District of Columbia (by the Senate on April 3, 1862; by the House on
April 11, 1862; signed into law by the President on April 16, 1862);
-
Congress's declaration on April 10, 1862,
that the Federal Government would compensate slave owners who freed their
slaves;
-
Congress's prohibition of slavery in
United States territories, on June 19, 1862, thus nullifying the Supreme
Court's Dred Scott decision and putting to rest the question that had set
region against region since 1847, i.e., would the territories acquired
from Mexico be slave or free?;
-
The
Second Confiscation Act (signed into law on July 17, 1862), which provided
for the liberation of the slaves (in addition to other penalties) of
persons convicted of rebelling or in any way aiding and abetting the
rebellion against the authority of the United States, as well as those
slaves who escaped from such persons and sought refuge within Union lines,
or who were captured by Union forces or deserted by their masters and came
under control of the United States Government, or who were in places
occupied by rebel forces that were afterwards occupied by Union
forces.
Some observers felt that this last Act made
the Emancipation Proclamation superfluous, but it was not so: the former was
much more limited than the latter. It did not, for example, apply to loyal
slaveholders. Further, by its language, slaves could be freed only on a case by
case basis in Federal courts. The Proclamation, by contrast, freed all slaves,
of loyal slaveholders and of disloyal ones, in all areas of the country in
rebellion against the national authority, i.e., its duly elected government -
all 4,000,000 of them in one fell swoop.
At the same time that it was the
capstone of all the piecemeal measures that had preceded it and that had
eroded the peculiar institution, it represented the beginning of the end of
the Confederacy, made possible the freedom of slaves everywhere in the
country, de jure and de facto, and paved the way for the
Thirteenth Amendment, which guaranteed that the institution would never
reappear within our borders.
There are basically three interpretations of
the Proclamation, all three of them true or substantially true.
B. The First Interpretation
The first interpretation is that the
Proclamation freed no slaves. Those slaves who were in states and parts of
states that were in rebellion remained slaves because the power of the Federal
Government could not reach them, or in any case had not reached them. Their
masters, obviously, completely ignored Lincoln's edict. Those slaves who were
in states or parts of states that had never been in rebellion, or that were no
longer in rebellion because they were then in Union hands, were exempt from
emancipation. Therefore, it follows that the document did not free one single
slave.
Though there was much truth in this
sentiment, it was never entirely true, which is to say that the Proclamation
did in fact give de facto as well as de jure freedom to some
slaves, albeit only a few, immediately. These were slaves who were being held
by Union forces as "contraband of war," in contraband camps, after
escaping from their masters and reaching Union lines. Upon the effective date
of the Proclamation, they were told by their keepers that they were free to
leave. Still other slaves had stayed behind on the Sea Islands off the coast
of Georgia after their occupation by Union forces early in the war and after
whites had fled to the mainland. They, too, were told that they were free to
leave after the Proclamation became effective and after it was read to them.
It needs to be said, further, that Lincoln
did not have the constitutional authority to abolish slavery in the entire
nation. He could do so in the South because of his war prerogatives, but that
authority did not extend to areas where there was no war, i.e. free states and
border states.
C. The Second Interpretation
The second interpretation is that the
Proclamation freed some slaves, but left others in bondage. The only
distinction between this and the first interpretation is the recognition that
the slaves in states and parts of states that were in rebellion were free de
jure even if not yet free de facto - a distinction of enormous
significance. According to the first interpretation, the slaves in the
Confederacy were simply, and conveniently for the scoffers, interpreted as
being still in bondage because their masters willed it and because the
physical power to undo their masters' will had not reached them. The second
interpretation rests upon the premise, as Lincoln and his Attorney General,
Edward Bates, contended, that the states that comprised the Confederacy were
never out of the Union; that the Constitution made no provision for secession;
and that the Union was, therefore, perpetual.
Accordingly, the slaves in states and parts
of states still in rebellion on January 1, 1863 (and they are named in the
Emancipation Proclamation), were, from that date forward, free in law, and
when the Union armies regained control of those states and parts of states,
they would encounter not slaves, but free men and women whose status as such
had already been proclaimed by a document that had the force of law (unless
and until a court of competent jurisdiction would declare otherwise) because
it had been prepared and issued by the Commander in Chief of the Union Armies
as a measure whose purpose was to subdue persons who had taken up arms against
those armies. The slaves remaining in bondage, of course, were those in border
states and those in areas that were then in Union hands but could not yet be
said to be parts of states that were not in rebellion.
D. The Third Interpretation
The third interpretation is that the
Proclamation freed all the slaves everywhere. As with the second
interpretation, this interpretation rests on the premise that the states and
parts of states that were in rebellion were never out of the Union, but also
upon the premise that once the slaves in the states or parts of states that
were in rebellion were given their de facto freedom by conquering Union
armies, slavery was as good as dead in the border states as well because its
maintenance therein would have been a hopeless anachronism in a Union of free
states. All of this was quite likely foreseen by William Lloyd Garrison, the
foremost and fervent abolitionist, when he said that the Emancipation
Proclamation was "an act of immense historical consequence," and by
Frederick Douglas, who wrote that "We shout for joy that we live to
record this righteous decree."
IV. EFFECTS
A. In General
If the genesis of the Proclamation was
multifaceted, and the interpretations fluid, there never was the slightest
ambiguity about its effects. They were immediate, profound, and changed the
course of history. Lincoln, of course, knew that his Proclamation would be
very controversial. But Lincoln also knew that the benefits far outweighed the
risks. When the dust had cleared, it was obvious that the Proclamation had
changed the whole character of the war because it had infused the Federal
Government and the forces fighting for it with a new purpose, greater even
than the cause of Union. That purpose, of course, was freedom and its
extension to a class of persons who had been torn from their native habitats
and brought to our shores by force and under the most despicable conditions
and who, once here and for two and half centuries thereafter, had been yoked
to endless toil and poverty and made to suffer virtually every indignity,
every cruelty and every atrocity that one people could conceive of visiting
upon another. This, more than any other factor in the Civil War, with the
possible exception of John Frances Adams's diplomacy, assured Union victory.
B. The Political Fallout
Reaction, of course, was mixed. Predictably,
the radicals and abolitionists said the Proclamation did not go far enough.
Conservatives and Northern Democrats, particularly Copperhead Democrats, who
opposed the war and who were willing to accept both secession and slavery,
said it went too far. But most Northerners were neither radical, nor
abolitionist, nor anti-war Democrats; they were a part, rather, of the great
middle ground that eschews extremes, and it was not long, therefore, before
there were celebrations all over the land as the new spirit - the moral
impetus provided by the Proclamation - took hold of the minds and hearts of
most citizens, black and white. Later, however, the enemies of emancipation
would have their say, expressing themselves violently in the New York draft
riots of July, 1863, in which blacks were specially targeted, even a black
orphanage, and in which many were killed, including orphans. In the mid-term
elections, the Democrats, running on an anti-emancipation platform, gained 28
seats in the House and also captured the governorships of New York and New
Jersey. The results persuaded some historians to conclude that most
Northerners were opposed to the Proclamation, but it was not so. Critics
pointed out that Democratic victories were by narrow margins, that the
Republicans had actually gained five seats in the Senate and that soldiers who
were unable to vote because they were in the field were mostly Republican.
Moreover, even with the Democratic gains, and even with the loss of support of
some War Democrats, who had supported Lincoln on the goal of Union, but who
would not support emancipation as a war goal, the Republicans maintained a
comfortable control of the Congress due to their alliance with the Unionist
Party of pro-war Democrats.
C. The Slaves
The slaves heard and believed, because, of
course, they wanted to believe. Legal niceties had no meaning for them. All
they knew was that they were free because "Mistuh Linkum" said they
were. His Proclamation was read to them wherever it could be, usually by a
Union soldier. They rejoiced, they wept. Booker T. Washington, writing 35
years later (Up From Slavery (1901)), remembered 1865, when he was a
nine year-old boy:
As the great day drew nearer, there was
more singing in the slave quarters than usual. It was bolder, had more ring,
and lasted later into the night. Most of the verses of the plantation songs
had some reference to freedom… Some man who seemed to be a stranger (a
United States officer, I presume) made a little speech and then read a
rather long paper - the Emancipation Proclamation, I think. After the
reading we were told that we were all free, and could go when and where we
pleased. My mother, who was standing by my side, leaned over and kissed her
children, while tears of joy ran down her cheeks. She explained to us what
it all meant, that this was the day for which she had been so long praying,
but fearing that she would never live to see.
The slaves did not have to be literate (word
of mouth would do) to know that the Proclamation was an open invitation to
desert their masters and make their way to Union lines, where they would not
only acquire their de facto freedom, but also be "received into the armed
service of the United States." What more could a slave ask for? - freedom
and a uniform to go with it! The effect was immediate and electric. A Union
officer in Virginia said that he saw slaves in his camp that had come all the
way from North Carolina, that the slaves "know all about the Proclamation
and they started on the belief in it." Then and later, slaves told how
they had been motivated to run by the Proclamation, how they considered it
their ticket to freedom. The Union officers noted that the attitude of
"the negroes" had changed dramatically, that they no longer
considered themselves slaves, but free and independent men and women. Nothing
could more unfit a man or women for slavery than a belief that he or she was
no longer a slave, but free. And why should they not believe it? Did not the
Proclamation say that "…the executive government of the United States,
including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and
maintain the freedom of such persons and will do no act or acts to repress
such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual
freedom." And did it not also say that "…such persons of suitable
condition will be received into the armed service of the United States to
garrison forts, positions, stations, and other places, and to man vessels of
all sorts in said service." If the invitation had been embossed in gold
it could not have been clearer or more effective. All it lacked was an R.S.V.P. The meaning of these lines was as clear to Southern leaders as it was
to slaves. On January 12, 1863, Jefferson Davis said that the Proclamation
meant the extermination of the Negro race. He also said that it encouraged
mass assassination of their masters. Well, not quite, but Davis knew that the
trickle of runaway slaves would soon become a flood and that the Union's gain
in manpower and soldiers was the Confederacy's loss in labor.
Interestingly, when the war was over and as
time passed, it was the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation rather than
any of the piecemeal measures that had preceded it, and rather, even, than the
adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment, that blacks remembered as the defining
moment in their long and painful march from bondage. For many years, they
would assemble on New Year's Day, at some convenient location - most likely a
church - and listen to a reading of the Proclamation, usually accompanied by
singing, prayer and/or an oration. In commemoration of the 50th anniversary of
the Proclamation (1913), James Weldon Johnson, a black poet, penned these
memorable lines:
Fifty Years
O Brothers mine, to-day we stand
Where half a century sweeps our ken,
Since God, through Lincoln's ready hand,
Struck off our bonds and made us men.
Just fifty years--a winter's day--
As runs the history of a race;
Yet, as we look back o'er the day,
How distant seems our starting place!
Then, in a more assertive tone, making
certain that humility did not replace self-
confidence, he said:
This land is ours by right of birth,
This land is ours by right of toil
We helped to turn its virgin earth,
Our sweat is in its fruitful soil.
To gain these fruits that have been earned,
To hold these fields that have been won,
Our arms have strained, our backs have burned,
Bent bare beneath a ruthless sun.
Then should we speak but servile words,
Or shall we hang our heads in shame?
Stand back of new-come foreign hordes,
And fear our heritage to claim?
No! stand erect and without fear,
And for our foes let this suffice--
We've brought a rightful sonship here,
and we have more than paid the price . . .
That for which millions prayed and sighed
That for which tens of thousands fought,
For which so many freely died,
God cannot let it come to naught.
Blacks, indeed, had a very long way to go to
achieve true equality of opportunity and equality before the law. Years,
decades, more than a century of intimidation, violence, lynchings,
disenfranchisement, and discrimination lay ahead of them. But the Proclamation
represented a beginning, a first step, and no one knew it better than they.
D. The Armies
Many in the military protested the
Proclamation, as Lincoln knew they would. It was not, they said, what they had
signed on for, not what they were fighting for. Some soldiers even deserted.
But when it became clear that the effect of the Proclamation would be to put
more numbers in their ranks, thereby increasing their chances of victory and
hastening the war's end, the great majority of servicemen accepted the
Proclamation and the blacks who were soon in uniform, if not as equals, then
at least as the enemy of my enemy and therefore my friend. Further, it would
not be long before they proved their worth on the battlefield and therefore
came to be regarded as more than the enemy of my enemy, but as comrades in
arms.
Between 1863 and 1865, 300,000 blacks fought
for the Union. By the end of the war, 186,000 blacks were in uniform, armed
and fighting for the cause of Union and "a new birth of freedom,"
93,000 from Confederate states, 40,000 from border states and 53,000 from free
states. In addition, another 19,000 blacks served in the Navy. This was a
tremendous plus for the Union cause and a deathblow to the Confederacy.
Further, it should not go unsaid that 38,000 black Union soldiers gave the
last full measure of devotion, many of whom were killed in cold blood when
they were taken prisoner.
E. Foreign Intervention
The Proclamation put an immediate end to the
threat of recognition of the Confederacy and intervention in the war by
England or France, the only countries that posed the threat of either.
Regardless of what the ruling classes in each country thought about the
democratic experiment across the ocean, and regardless of the advantages that
might accrue to them by a division of the United States, their governments
simply could not ignore public opinion, which, after the issuance of the
Proclamation, was solidly on the side of the Federal government now that it
had committed itself to the abolition of slavery, which both countries had
previously abolished. Neither country's government could afford to be seen as
supporting slavery.
V. THE THIRTEENTH
AMENDMENT
Towards the end of the war, when it became
increasingly clear that the Union would prevail, Lincoln and those who
supported emancipation, by then a clear majority in the North, became
concerned that the Proclamation, as a war measure, would not survive a legal
challenge when the war was finally over. "A question might be
raised," Lincoln said, "whether the proclamation is legally valid.
It might be urged that it only aided those that came into our lines, and that
it was inoperative as to those who did not give themselves up." There was
also concern for the freedom of those slaves who had not been freed by the
Proclamation (about 40,000 in Kentucky; somewhat less than 2,000 in Delaware)
as well as for the children of slaves who had been freed by it, but whom, the
court's might decide, were not affected by it. For these reasons, Lincoln
pushed hard, during his 1864 campaign for re-election, for a constitutional
amendment that would prohibit involuntary servitude throughout the country and
thus make its return to any part of the country impossible. His work was made
easier by the abolition of slavery by state action in the border states of
Maryland and Missouri. Maryland's new Constitution, which abolished slavery,
passed by a narrow vote of its people, including its loyal soldiers in the
field, in October, 1864, and took effect the following month. In Missouri, the
institution was ended on January 11, 1865, by an executive proclamation of
Governor Thomas C. Fletcher.
The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States
Constitution provided that:
Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary
servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have
been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place
subject to their jurisdiction.
Section 2. Congress shall have power to
enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
The Amendment was first introduced in the
House in the spring of 1864 and failed to pass. It was re-introduced and
finally passed by the House on January 31, 1865, after Lincoln took energetic
measures to support it. He insisted that its passage be added to the
Republican Party platform for the Presidential election of 1864. Further, he
persuaded fence-sitters of the necessity of passage, sometimes with promises
of patronage. He even went as far as to release from military prisons certain
Confederates who were related to Democratic members of Congress. Lincoln
prevailed, but by means that caused Thaddeus Stevens to remark that "The
greatest measure in the nineteenth century was passed by corruption, aided and
abetted by the purest man in America."
The Amendment was proposed to the
legislatures of the several states by the 38th Congress on January 31, 1865.
The following day, Lincoln approved the Joint Resolution of Congress
submitting the proposed Amendment. It was declared, in a proclamation of the
Secretary of State (Seward), dated December 18, 1865, to have been ratified by
the legislatures of 27 of the 36 states. Dates of ratification extended from
February 1, 1865, through December 6, 1865. The Amendment was subsequently
ratified by eight additional states, from December 8, 1865, through March,
1995.
The last nail had finally been driven into
the coffin of slavery in the United States, but it was a nail that would not
have been driven had not the Emancipation Proclamation paved the way by
preserving the United States as one nation. The Amendment, of course, made the
Proclamation superfluous and moot any challenge that might have been made to
its legality. But all of this was merely legal conclusion. Though superfluous
in law, it remained a beacon in fact, a brilliant burst of light that had
illuminated a dark and dreary landscape and that finally brought reality in
line with the principle set forth in the Declaration of Independence four
score and seven years earlier: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that
all men are created equal…
|
Related Links
|
