by James Oakes
25 William Howard Russell, My Diary North and South, ed. Eugene H. Berwanger (New York, 1863; Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2001), entry for July 22, 1861.
26 The rumors of slaves at Bull Run, armed but not enlisted in the Confederate army, are dissected in Glenn David Brasher, The Peninsula Campaign and the Necessity of Emancipation (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012).
27 Nevins, Diary of George Templeton Strong, entry for July 25, 1861, p. 170; Philip Foner, ed., The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass (New York: International, 1952), vol. 3, p. 128; Siddali, From Property to Persons, p. 75.
28 Cong. Globe, 37th Cong., 1st Sess., p. 219.
29 Ibid.
30 Ibid.
31 Ibid., pp. 189–190.
32 Ibid.
33 Ibid., p. 209.
34 Ibid., pp. 259, 260. Maine Republican William Pitt Fessenden made the same point about “subjugation.” The resolution also declared that it was not the purpose of the Union to subjugate the South. This is true, Fessenden noted; the “purpose” was to restore the Union. But it may be necessary to achieve that purpose by subjugating the South.
35 Ibid., p. 261.
36 Ibid., p. 262.
37 Ibid., p. 264.
38 Ibid., pp. 262, 139–140.
39 Ibid., p. 142.
40 Ibid., p. 410.
41 Ibid., pp. 411, 412. There was never a single “Republican” position on the legal status of the seceded states. Lincoln thought the seceded states were still legally within the Union; others claimed that those states committed “suicide” by leaving the Union; and still others, that they had reverted to the status of territories. For purposes of antislavery policy, these distinctions did not matter very much. All Republicans agreed that the seceded states were “in rebellion,” that the laws of war applied to the situation, and that military emancipation was therefore a constitutionally legitimate means of suppressing the rebellion.
42 Ibid., p. 414.
43 Emmerich de Vattel, The Law of Nations, book 3, sect. 203 (J. Chitty trans., 1852), cited in Burrus M. Carnahan, Act of Justice: Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation and the Laws of War (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2007), p. 115, n. 45 (endnote on p. 186); Cong. Globe, 37th Cong., 1st Sess., pp. 414–415.
44 Cong. Globe, 37th Cong, 1st Sess., p. 415.
45 Salmon P. Chase to Green Adams, Sept. 5, 1861, in Niven, ed., Chase Papers, vol. 3, p. 96; Cong. Globe, 37th Cong., 1st Sess., pp. 410, 411, 415.
46 Cong. Globe, 37th Cong., 1st Sess., pp. 431, 427.
47 Statutes at Large, 37th Cong., 1st Sess., p. 319.
48 OR, ser. 2., vol. 1, pp. 761–762.
49 Ibid., p. 762.
50 Ibid., p. 763; Pierce, Enfranchisement and Citizenship, pp. 23, 20.
51 Gideon Welles, “The History of Emancipation,” Galaxy 14 (Dec. 1872), reprinted in Albert Mordell, comp., Civil War and Reconstruction: Selected Essays by Gideon Welles (New York: Twayne, 1959), p. 231.
52 FSSP, ser. 1, vol. 1, p. 35; OR, ser. 2, vol. 1, p. 791; OR, ser. 1, vol. 6, pp. 176–177. The impact of the War Department instructions along the southern Atlantic coast is discussed in more detail in chapter 6.
CHAPTER 5: THE BORDER STATES
1 On the distinctive attributes of the Border States, see William W. Freehling, The Road to Disunion, vol. 1: Secessionists at Bay, 1776–1854 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990); Freehling, The Road to Disunion, vol. 2: Secessionists Triumphant, 1854–1861 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007). See also Daniel Crofts, Reluctant Confederates: Upper South Unionists in the Secession Crisis (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989); Freehling, The South vs. the South: How Anti-Confederate Southerners Shaped the Course of the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002); Steven Deyle, Carry Me Back: The Domestic Slave Trade in American Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005). On the importance abolitionists attached to the Border States, see Stanley Harrold, The Abolitionists and the South, 1831–1861 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1995). For Lincoln’s policy, see William C. Harris, Lincoln and the Border States: Preserving the Union (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2011).
2 This and subsequent paragraphs draw heavily on Charles L. Wagant, The Mighty Revolution: Negro Emancipation in Maryland, 1862–1864 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1964); Barbara Jeanne Fields, Slavery and Freedom on the Middle Ground: Maryland during the Nineteenth Century (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985).
3 Fields, Slavery and Freedom on the Middle Ground, p. 93.
4 Wagant, Mighty Revolution, p. 13.
5 Much of the political background can be found in Louis S. Gerteis, Civil War St. Louis (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2001).
6 Quotation from William E. Parrish, Turbulent Partnership: Missouri and the Union, 1861–1865 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1963), pp. 6–7. Notwithstanding Claiborne Jackson’s success in the 1860 gubernatorial election, in the presidential balloting Missourians cast 134,000 votes for Douglas, Bell, and Lincoln, all of them unionists, versus 31,317 votes for the pro-southern John C. Breckinridge. The February vote for convention delegates closely mirrored the presidential results.
7 Parrish, Turbulent Partnership, p. 30.
8 John C. Frémont, Memoirs of My Life, introduction by Charles M. Robinson III (Chicago, 1887: New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001), p. 19.
9 Tom Chaffin, Pathfinder: John Charles Frémont and the Course of American Empire (New York: Hill & Wang, 2002), p. 440; William E. Gienapp, The Origins of the Republican Party, 1852–1856 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), pp. 376–377.
10 John Howe to Montgomery Blair, Aug. 4, 1861, ALP-LC.
11 Ibid.
12 OR, ser. 1, vol. 3, pp. 466–467.
13 The War Department’s implementation instructions freed all slaves coming into Union lines in the rebellious states.
14 John C. Frémont to Abraham Lincoln, Sept. 8, 1861, ALP-LC; CW, vol. 3, pp. 506–507, 517–518; Joshua Speed to Lincoln, Sept. 3, 1861, ALP-LC.
15 Abraham Lincoln to Orville H. Browning, Sept. 22, 1861, in CW, vol. 3, p. 531.
16 On Kentucky, see E. Merton Coulter, The Civil War and Readjustment in Kentucky (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1926); Victor B. Howard, Black Liberation in Kentucky: Emancipation and Freedom, 1862–1884 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1983); FSSP, ser. 1, vol. 1, pp. 493–518; Kent T. Dollar, Larry H. Whiteaker, and W. Calvin Dickinson, eds., Sister States, Enemy States: The Civil War in Kentucky and Tennessee (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2009).
17 On the “geopolitical” importance of the Border States for the Confederacy, see Robert E. Bonner, Mastering America: Southern Slaveholders and the Crisis of American Nationhood (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 232ff.
18 Joshua Speed to Abraham Lincoln, Sept. 1 and Sept. 3, 1861; Greene Adams and James Speed to Lincoln, Sept. 2, 1861; Leslie Combs to Lincoln, Sept. 6, 1861; Joseph Holt to Lincoln, Sept. 12, 1861; Robert Anderson to Lincoln, Sept. 13, 1861. Context was crucial. The Confederate invasion, launched only days after Frémont’s order, explains why the reaction was so much stronger in Kentucky than it was in Missouri. To be sure, there were complaints of a similar sort from Missourians, but far fewer and they were far less excited. See, for example, John B. Henderson to James O. Broadhead, Sept. 7, 1861. All these letters are from ALP-LC.
19 CW, vol. 4, pp. 531–532.
20 OR, ser. 1, vol. 4, pp. 185–190.
21 Orville H. Browning to Abraham Lincoln, Sept. 11 and Sept. 17, 1861, ALP-LC.
22 Timothy Davis to William H. Seward, Sept. 16, 1861; Richard M. Corwine and J. P. C. Schanaks to Caleb B. Smith, Sept. 16, 1861; John R. Cannon to Abraham Lincoln, Sept. 17, 1861; Samuel Camp to Lincoln, Sept. 17, 1861; O. B. Clark and John Root, resolutions, Sept. 17, 1861; Thomas H. Little to Lincoln, Sept. 17, 1861; J. C. Woods to Samuel Ward, Sept. 17, 1861; H. Montague to Lincoln, Sept. 1
7, 1861; Mrs. L. C. Howard to Lincoln, Sept. 17, 1861, ALP-LC.
23 Francis P. Blair to Abraham Lincoln, Sept. 1, 1861, ALP-LC; Niven, ed., Chase Papers, vol. 3, pp. 105–106.
24 Chandra Manning, in What This Cruel War Was Over: Soldiers, Slavery, and the Civil War (New York: Knopf, 2007), captures the conflicts within the Union army caused by antislavery recruits flooding into the ranks in 1861.
25 FSSP, ser. 1, vol. 1, pp. 167, 519–520, 172.
26 Ibid., pp. 421–422.
27 Ibid., pp. 429, 418. See also p. 416, for a similar incident in which Missouri slaves provided the Union army with “important information” and who sought the protection of the military “from their masters who threaten to kill them.”
28 Manning, What This Cruel War Was Over, pp. 19–51.
29 FSSP, ser. 1, vol. 1, pp. 352, 361, 177, 427.
30 Ibid., pp. 361–362, 427.
31 Ibid., pp. 344, 345, 349–350.
32 Ibid., pp. 349, 422.
33 Ibid., pp. 413–414; OR, ser. 2, vol. 1, p. 760; Charles Calvert to Abraham Lincoln, ALP-LC.
34 OR, ser. 2, vol. 1, pp. 774, 776–777.
35 Ibid., p. 761.
36 Ibid., p. 762.
37 Ibid.
38 FSSP ser. 1, vol. 1, p. 174.
39 OR, ser. 2, vol. 1, pp. 763, 771.
40 Ibid., pp. 763, 772–723.
41 FSSP ser. 1, vol. 1, pp. 173, 342, 522, 361.
42 Ibid., pp. 174–175, 419–420.
43 OR, ser. 2, vol. 1, p. 775.
44 FSSP, ser. 1, vol. 1, pp. 167, 169, 347. This was the very same Congressman Calvert who, at the very same moment, managed to persuade Lincoln to issue his one and only order to return slaves, those taken by the Union army from Maryland into Virginia. See Calvert to Abraham Lincoln, July 10, 1861, ALP-LC.
45 Ibid., ser. 1, vol. 1, pp. 361–362.
46 OR, ser. 2, vol. 1, pp. 778, 796. General Henry Halleck had originally issued Orders No. 3 in response to reports that slaves coming into Union camps to sell provisions to soldiers were returning to their own farms, where, according to Congressman Frank Blair Jr., “they fell into the hands of the enemy, who exacted information from them.” Blair’s claim was supported by other congressmen from the area. Cong. Globe, 37th Cong., 2d Sess., p. 58.
47 OR, ser. 2, vol. 1, pp. 775–776; FSSP ser. 1, vol. 1, p. 419n.
48 OR, ser. 2, vol. 1, p. 791.
49 Ibid., ser. 1, vol. 8, pp. 405–407.
50 Ibid.
51 FSSP, ser. 1, vol. 1, pp. 421–423.
52 Mark Grimsley, The Hard Hand of War: Union Military Policy toward Southern Civilians, 1861–1865 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 126; FSSP, ser. 1, vol. 1, pp. 424–425, 522–523.
53 Henry Halleck to Frank Blair, Dec. 8, 1861, printed in Cong. Globe, 37th Cong., 2d. Sess., p. 76.
54 FSSP, ser. 1, vol. 1, pp. 353–357.
55 Henry Wilson, History of the Antislavery Measures of the Thirty-Seventh and Thirty-Eighth Congresses, 1861–1864 (Boston: Walker, Wise, 1864), pp. 18, 21; OR, ser. 2, vol. 1, p. 784.
56 Cong. Globe, 37th Cong., 2d Sess., pp. 130, 956.
57 Ibid., p. 1142.
58 Ibid., pp. 358–359.
59 OR, ser. 1, vol. 8, p. 564; FSSP, ser. 1, vol. 1, pp. 429–432.
60 Donald Yacovone, ed., A Voice of Thunder: A Black Soldier’s Civil War (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998), p. 133; Sgt. Edmund Evarts, 8th New York Artillery, Federal Hill, Baltimore, Sept. 9, 1863, in Lydia Minturn Post, Soldiers’ Letters from Camp, Battle-Field and Prison (New York: Bunce & Huntington, 1865), p. 192.
CHAPTER 6: “SELF-EMANCIPATION”
1 William Henry Channing, The Civil War in America, or the Slaveholders’ Conspiracy (Liverpool: W. Vaughn; London: G. Vickers, 1861), pp. 89–90.
2 Rev. William H. Boole, Antidote to Rev. H. J. Van Dyke’s Pro-Slavery Discourse (New York: E. Jones, 1861), p. 8.
3 OR, ser. 2, vol. 1, p. 763; FSSP ser. 1, vol. 1, p. 351.
4 Instructions issued by Union authorities and army officers can seem confusing or even self-contradictory, and often they were. In one sentence soldiers would be ordered to “secure the substantial rights of loyal masters,” and in another they would “avail” themselves of the services of “fugitives from labor.” One officer might order his men to “assure the white inhabitants . . . in the enjoyment of their private property,” while another officer informed slaves that “they were free” once they left their plantations. These seemingly inconsistent instructions reflected different aspects of the “self-emancipation” policy whereby Union soldiers accepted runaway slaves who came voluntarily into their lines, but were forbidden to “entice” slaves from their farms and plantations. As navy Lieutenant Daniel Ammen told a group of fugitives, the Union forces “had not come for the purposes of taking them from their masters, nor of making them continue in a state of slavery.” See the examples in FSSP, ser. 1, vol. 1, pp. 114–116.
5 Rev. Almon Underwood, A Discourse on the Death of the Late Rev. C. T. Torrey, a Martyr to Human Rights (Newark: Small & Ackerman, 1846), pp. 9–10.
6 William Jay, The Creole Case and Mr. Webster’s Dispatch . . . (New York, 1842), pp. 12, 36, 37; Speech of Mr. Giddings of Ohio, Upon The Proposition of Mr. Johnson, of Tennessee . . . (Washington, DC: Printed at the National Intelligence Office, 1842), p. 16. For a discussion of the Creole and Amistad cases, see chapter 1.
7 The Thirteenth Annual Report of the American and Foreign Antislavery Society (New York: Lewis J. Bates, 1853), p. 113; Rev. William H. Marsh, God’s Law Supreme: A Sermon, Aiming to Point Out the Duty of a Christian People in Relation to the Fugitive Slave Law . . . (Worcester, MA: H. J. Howland, 1850), p. 19; Speech of Hon. Horace Mann, of Massachusetts, on the Institution of Slavery (Washington, DC: Buell & Blanchard, 1852), p. 22; Channing, Civil War in America, pp. 89–90. For an earlier reference to the “self-emancipated” slaves who had escaped to Canada, see The Annual Report of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society (New York: A[merican] F[oreign] Anti-Slavery Society, 1849), p. 66. Sometimes abolitionists referred to individuals who escaped from slavery as “self-emancipated.” See, for example, William Lloyd Garrison’s preface to Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave (Boston: Anti-Slavery Office, 1846), p. v.
8 Cong. Globe, 37th Cong., 1st Sess., p. 189.
9 OR, ser. 1, vol. 6, pp. 3–4, 14–16; Craig L. Symonds, Lincoln and His Admirals: Abraham Lincoln, the U.S. Navy, and the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 37–70.
10 Willie Lee Rose, Rehearsal for Reconstruction: The Port Royal Experiment (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1964), pp. 3–31; Charles Joyner, Down by the Riverside: A South Carolina Slave Community (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986).
11 OR, ser. 1, vol. 6, pp. 5, 176–177. Cf. Bell Irvin Wiley, Southern Negroes, 1861–1865 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1938), pp. 295–296.
12 OR, ser. 1, vol. 6, pp. 6, 25, 31.
13 John Niven, ed., The Salmon P. Chase Papers, vol. 3: Correspondence, 1858–March 1863 (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1996), pp. 95–96; pp. 95-96; vol. 1: Journals, 1829–1872 (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1993), entry for Dec. 11, 1861, pp. 315–316.
14 Theodore Calvin Pease and J. G. Randall, eds., The Diary of Orville Hickman Browning (Springfield: Trustees of the Illinois State Historical Library, 1925–1933), entry for July 8, 1860, p. 478; CW, vol. 5, p. 329; Niven, ed., Chase Papers, vol. 1, entry for Mar. 13, 1862, p. 331.
15 CW, vol. 5, p. 48.
16 Niven, ed., Chase Papers, vol. 3, pp. 116–118; Rose, Rehearsal for Reconstruction, p. 33n.
17 Edward L. Pierce, Enfranchisement and Citizenship (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1896), p. 54.
18 Edward L. Pierce, The Negroes at Port Royal, Feb. 3, 1862, in Frank Moore, ed., The Rebellion Record, vol. 12 (New York: D. Van Nostrand, 1869), vol. 1 (Supplement I), Document 51, pp. 303–304.
19 Charles He
yward Diary, Colleton District and Charleston, SC, South Carolina Library, Records of Antebellum Southern Plantations, ser. A, pt. 2, reel 7; Pierce, Negroes at Port Royal, in Moore, ed., Rebellion Records, pp. 303–304.
20 Pierce, Negroes at Port Royal, in Moore, ed., Rebellion Record, pp. 306, 311–313.
21 Elizabeth Ware Pearson, ed., Letters from Port Royal, Written at the Time of the Civil War (Boston: W. B. Clarke, 1906), pp. 1–2.
22 Pierce, “Second Report,” June 2, 1863, in Moore, ed., Rebellion Record, p. 322.
23 Pearson, ed., Letters from Port Royal, p. 13. Letter from “W. C. G.” dated Mar. 24, 1862.
24 Rupert Sargent Holland, ed., Letters and Diary of Laura M. Towne, Written from the Sea Islands of South Carolina, 1862–1864 (Cambridge, MA: Riverside Press, 1912), pp. 7, 8, 13.
25 Niven, ed., Chase Papers, vol. 1, entry for May 1, 1862, pp. 333–334.
26 Ibid., entry for Mar. 13, 1862, p. 331.
27 Pierce, Enfranchisement and Citizenship, p. 55.
28 Allen Parker, Recollections of Slavery Times (Worcester, MA: Chas. W. Burbank, 1895), pp. 84–91.
29 Ibid. Knockum was the name Parker gave; it was more likely Knockern.
30 OR, ser. 1, vol. 9, pp. 352–353, 363–364.
31 Ibid., pp. 369–370, 373.
32 L. R. Ferebee, A Brief History of the Slave Life of Rev. L. R. Ferebee . . . (Raleigh, NC: Edwards, Broughton, 1882), pp. 7–9; W. H. Doherty to Abraham Lincoln, May 13, 1862, ALP-LC.
33 CW, vol. 5, July 7, 1862.
34 Entries for June 30, July 14, and Dec. 6, 1862, Shirley Plantation Journal, Library of Congress, Records of Antebellum Southern Plantations, ser. C, pt. 1. In June of 1864, when George B. McClellan was running for president, one of his supporters in Congress pointed out that “while General McClellan was in command he received and protected every negro who came within his lines. He never refused one, never returned one to slavery. But it was not his ideal to employ the armies of the Union for the purpose of destroying their property, liberating slaves.” Cong. Globe, 38th Cong., 1st Sess., p. 2951. For the importance of the military intelligence provided by slaves, see Glenn David Brasher, The Peninsula Campaign and the Necessity of Emancipation (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012).