Emancipation and the Emancipation Proclamation

In the fall of 1862, President Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) gave the Confederacy an ultimatum: return to the Union with slavery intact, or come January 1, 1863, he would free the slaves in the Confederate states. Lincoln announced this decision on September 22, following the Union victory at Antietam at the advice of his secretary of state, William Seward (1801–1872), who had suggested that giving the orders after a military victory would keep the North from appearing desperate. The South, however, refused to rejoin the Union.

So 100 days later, on January 1, 1863, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. The proclamation, often credited with freeing all slaves, actually had a much narrower scope. A military maneuver, Lincoln's proclamation freed only the slaves in the Confederacy, not in slaveholding states that had not seceded. He declared that "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" (Franklin 1965, p. 91). He promised that the federal government and Union military would recognize and protect their freedom. This, naturally, led to complications because the Confederacy did not see Lincoln as their president, so his Emancipation Proclamation was moot in states not in control of the Union army. Therefore, despite his announcement that slaves in the Confederacy were freed, many slaves remained on the plantations because slaveholders did not believe Lincoln had jurisdiction over them.

Years earlier, in the months after Lincoln's election in 1860, many slaves thought that because the Republican had been elected president meant that slavery had come to an end. Historian Steven Hahn began his acclaimed work, A Nation under Our Feet, with slaves' reactions to the election: "Some were absolutely convinced that freedom was at hand; indeed, on a plantation just outside Petersburg, Virginia, seventeen slaves marked Lincoln's inauguration by proclaiming that they were free and marching off of their master's property" (2003, p. 13). If two years before President Lincoln delivered the Emancipation Proclamation, confusion regarding liberation arose; his proclamation did not end this confusion.

Many slaves quickly learned of Lincoln's preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. White southerners became so obsessed that they often discussed the issue openly in the presence of their enslaved labor, and slaves shared the news with each other. When the southern press printed and distributed Lincoln's ultimatum, a slave that could read would steal away with the owner's copy of the document and read it to other slaves. In this way, word spread among slaves that they were on the verge of a great change. In some cases, slaves learned of the proclamation before their owners did, and the African Americans actually informed the whites of the order. Even before Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, many slaves took it upon themselves to leave their plantations and emancipate themselves based on news of Lincoln's ultimatum (McPherson 1965, pp. 61 and 65).

Much of the enslaved labor in the border states thought Lincoln had freed them as well with his Emancipation Proclamation. In Kentucky, for example, many slaves believed the proclamation applied to them. The confusion proved so great that the Louisville Journal asked African American community leaders to explain to slaves that Lincoln's proclamation did not affect them. Likewise, in Maryland, many slaves left their owners and moved to the capital as freedmen, not realizing that they were exempt from emancipation because their state remained within the Union (Franklin 1965, p. 77).

Former slaves in the Deep South remembered the effects of the Emancipation Proclamation. One, Charlie Davenport, recalled that when he was about fifteen years old, Lincoln came to Natchez, Mississippi. Lincoln "went all th'ough de country jus' a-rantin' an' apreachin' 'bout us bein' his black brothers. De marster didn' know nothin' 'bout it, 'cause it was sorta secretlak. It sho' riled de [blacks] up, an' lots of 'em run away. I sho' hear'd him, but I didn' pay 'im no min'" (Mississippi Narratives, vol. 9, p. 38). Another former slave, Bob Maynard, held Lincoln in high regard for his Emancipation Proclamation. Maynard stated, "I think Abe Lincoln was next to de Lawd. He done all he could for de slaves: he set 'em free" (Oklahoma Narratives, vol. 13, p. 225). Although African Americans effectively remained enslaved in the Confederate states, they knew of their freedom, and some acted on it by running away from the plantations. Regardless of their official state of freed or enslaved, it seems that the Emancipation Proclamation and Lincoln left an indelible mark on their memories.

In addition to its varying effectiveness, the question of constitutionality surrounded the Emancipation Proclamation. In regards to such criticisms, President Lincoln responded:

You dislike the Emancipation Proclamation, and perhaps would have it retracted. You say it is unconstitutional. I think differently. I think the Constitution invests its Commander-in-Chief with the law of war in time of war. The most that can be said, if so much, is, that slaves are property. Is there, has there ever been, any question that by the law of war, property, both of enemies and friends, may be taken when needed? (Lincoln 1863, p. 20)

This response to questions of the proclamation's legality led to other questions surrounding its purpose. Did Lincoln issue the Emancipation Proclamation out of military necessity or out of a drive for justice?

On January 6, 1863, only days following Lincoln's delivery of the Emancipation Proclamation, the New York Times wrote that while many African Americans celebrated, abolitionists "looked glum, and grumbled with dissatisfaction because the unexpected proclamation was only given on account of military necessity." Yet the same article also quoted Henry Ward Beecher (1813–1887) as saying "The Proclamation may not free a single slave, but it gives liberty a moral recognition" (Franklin 1965, p. 103). The article demonstrated views of the Emancipation Proclamation as both a military necessity and in line with republican liberty.

Lincoln himself admitted that he issued the Emancipation Proclamation as a military measure "in time of actual armed rebellion against authority and government of the United States, and as a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion" (Franklin 1965, p. 92). Despite criticism that military measures called for the proclamation, Lincoln did not seem to view that as excluding justice. He wrote in the Emancipation Proclamation, "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" (Franklin 1965, p. 93). So while critics in both the North and the South decried the proclamation as military action, albeit from different perspectives, Lincoln did not see that military necessity detracted from the genuine belief that the slaves should be freed.

Regardless of the motives for the Emancipation Proclamation, the declaration had immediate and profound effects on the course of the Civil War (1861–1865). According to the provost-marshal of St. Louis, "the Proclamation of Freedom has done more to weaken the rebellion … than any other measure that could have been adopted" (McPherson 1965, p. 65). First, by explicitly making the war about slavery and freedom, Lincoln kept European powers from joining the southern war effort. Second, it gave the Union army the moral high ground and new motivation to fight. More directly, the South now had to concentrate more resources on controlling their enslaved labor, which took away from their war effort. Finally, African Americans began to enlist in the Union army (Burton 2007, p. 166).

Before, as a way of keeping slaveholding states in the Union, the military refused to have fugitive slaves in their lines (Hahn 2003, p. 71). Only after the Emancipation Proclamation did the Union officially enlist African Americans; most came from slaveholding states, and especially from Confederate states (Hahn 2003, pp. 91-92). In the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln encouraged freedmen to join the military. He stated, "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" (Franklin 1965, p. 93). The prominent African American leader Frederick Douglass (1817–1895), whose two sons enlisted, also called on African Americans to join the army. He declared, "A war undertaken and brazenly carried on for the perpetual enslavement of colored men, calls logically and loudly for colored men to help suppress it. Only a moderate share of sagacity was needed to see that the arm of the slave was the best defense against the arm of the slaveholder" (Foner 2005, p. 253). He called on his fellow African Americans to "Remember Denmark Vesey of Charleston; remember Nathaniel Turner of Southampton; remember Shields Green and Copeland, who followed noble John Brown, and fell as glorious martyrs for the cause of the slave" (Foner 2005, p. 256).

With the Emancipation Proclamation, new soldiers flooded into the Union army. Despite pay discrimina-tion, thousands of African Americans enlisted in the army. Hahn estimated 140,313 African American soldiers fought in the Civil War (2003, p. 92), while, according to John Hope Franklin, the Bureau of Colored Troops, a segregated unit, recruited roughly 134,000 soldiers from slave states and 52,000 from free states (1965, p. 123). Regardless of the exact numbers, a significant number of African Americans joined the army following the Emancipation Proclamation, renewing Union strength at the same time that the South lost its labor system.

The effects of the Emancipation Proclamation varied across the nation. As the September 26, 1862, issue of the Richmond Whig predicted following Lincoln's preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, "Its effects will, in no wise, differ from the effects already experienced in those districts of the South which have been subjected to the rule of the enemy…. Whenever a Yankee army has appeared practical emancipation has followed" (Franklin 1965, p. 64). Plantations' enslaved laborers had run away to the Union army throughout the war, and, falling outside President Lincoln's jurisdiction, the proclamation did little officially to change the Confederacy.

Likewise, the Emancipation Proclamation did not apply to enslaved labor in the border states. Years following the Emancipation Proclamation, slaves in the border states still were not free. African Americans in Tennessee, excluded from the proclamation because it was already in Union hands and no longer in a state of rebellion, petitioned the government to extend freedom to them as well. In January 1865, they asked Lincoln "to abolish the last vestige of slavery by the express words of your organic law" and to allow free blacks to vote. They argued, "If we are called on to do military duty against the rebel armies in the field, why should we be denied the privilege of voting against rebel citizens at the ballotbox?" (Hahn 2003, p. 107). Perry Sid Jemison, a former slave, also demonstrated that it took more than emancipation to be free. Jemison explained:

Abraham Lincoln fixed it so de slaves could be free. He struck off de handcuffs and de ankle cuffs from de slaves. But how could I be free if I had to go back to my mama and beg for bread, clothes and shelter? It is up to everybody to work for freedom … I think it's a good thing dat slavery is ended, for God hadn't intended there to be no man a slave. (Ohio Narratives, vol. 12, p. 54)

They touched on issues that the Reconstruction government would address with the forthcoming Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments.

Many historians argue that Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation should not be seen as foreshadowing universal emancipation because the generals believed that after the war ended, loyal slaveholders would be compensated for their lost "property" (Hahn 2003, p. 71). Others, however, give the sentiment behind the Emancipation Proclamation more credit. Franklin, for example, conceded that its goal was limited: "At best it sought to save the Union by freeing some of the slaves. Nor did it do it by the sublimity of its language. It had neither the felicity of the Declaration of Independence or the simple grandeur of the Gettysburg Address." Franklin went on, however, to note that "in a very real sense it was another step toward the extension of the ideal of equality about which Jefferson had written" (1965, p. 145). While the proclamation may have had differing effects on the everyday lives of slaves across border states and the Confederacy, an end to slavery was now official U.S. policy. The Emancipation Proclamation changed the course of the Civil War and brought to surface questions surrounding the nature of freedom and liberty. The Reconstruction government would attempt to answer such questions.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936–1938. Manuscript and Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress. Mississippi Narratives, vol. 9. Available from http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/snhtml/snhome.html.

Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936–1938. Manuscript and Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress. Ohio Narratives, vol. 12. Available from http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/snhtml/snhome.html.

Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936–1938. Manuscript and Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress. Oklahoma Narratives, vol. 13. Available from http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/snhtml/snhome.html.

Burton, Orville Vernon. The Age of Lincoln. New York: Hill and Wang, 2007.

Foner, Eric, ed. Voices of Freedom: A Documentary History, Vol. 1. New York: Norton, 2005.

Franklin, John Hope. The Emancipation Proclamation. Garden City, NY: Anchor, 1965.

Hahn, Steven. A Nation under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South, from Slavery to the Great Migration. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2003.

Lincoln, Abraham. The Letters of President Lincoln on Questions of National Policy. New York: H.H. Lloyd, 1863.

Litwack, Leon F. Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery. New York: Knopf, 1979.

McPherson, James M. The Negro's Civil War: How American Negroes Felt and Acted during the War for the Union. New York: Pantheon, 1965.

Perman, Michael, ed. Major Problems in the Civil War and Reconstruction: Documents and Essays. Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath, 1991.

                                                Beatrice Burton