Climbing Up to Glory
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As the spring of 1862 emerged, Lincoln and the Republican Congress collaborated on ways to battle at the outer defenses of slavery. The president was sent a bill by Congress that forbade Union officers from returning fugitive slaves to the Confederacy. Lincoln signed it. While the bill represented on the surface a progressive attack against the institution of slavery, this was not entirely why Lincoln supported it. Uppermost in his mind was Confederate defeat, which would equal preservation of the Union. By denying the Confederates the return of fugitive slaves who in turn could be used in their war effort, Lincoln was striking a blow against the Confederacy’s chances of survival. He also signed a bill, sent to him by Congress, that outlawed slavery in all federal territories. Thus, in one fell swoop Lincoln reversed the Dred Scott Decision and implemented the Republican goal of slave containment. Shortly thereafter, Washington would witness something scarcely dreamed of when the war began—black diplomats strolling about the streets of a slaveless capital city.27
Nonetheless, Lincoln remained adamantly opposed to military emancipation in the rebel states. In fact, Lincoln’s reaction to news that General David Hunter had issued on May 9, 1862, a military order that applied to slaves on Union-held islands off South Carolina, reminiscent of Frémont’s emancipation edict in Missouri, underscores this point. Because slavery was inconsistent with a free country, Hunter declared, the slaves inside his lines were “free forever.” 28 When Lincoln found out about the order, he revoked it at once. Although he believed “that all men everywhere could be free,” he thought that only the president alone could decide when military emancipation was necessary to save the country.29 In time, Lincoln would reach this conclusion, but events had not moved him to this point by the spring of 1862.
In the summer of 1862, Congress began to intensify its attacks against slavery and also increased its efforts to persuade a reluctant Lincoln to follow suit. Radical Republicans, led by men such as Representative Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania, wanted to punish rebels by confiscating their property, including their slaves. In an effort to accomplish this objective, the Republican-controlled Congress on July 17 passed the second Confiscation Act, which defined the rebels as traitors. Not surprisingly, Lincoln voiced concerns about many of its provisions. He was troubled the most by one that declared that after a period of sixty days, the slaves of rebels should be “forever free of their servitude, and not again held as slaves.” The president simply did not believe that Congress had the right to free a slave within a state. Lincoln did not sign the bill until he had secured modifications of some of the more stringent provisions, and even then he took the unprecedented step of placing before Congress his statement of objections to the bill that he had just approved.30 Why, specifically, did Lincoln feel the need to go to such an extraordinary length to sign into law the Second Confiscation Act? Was it because the act was truly a revolutionary measure?
Since the act provided that the slaves of rebels could be made free if they came under the control of the army, one might conclude that this would mean emancipation for all the slaves whom victory by Union forces could guarantee. Therefore, whenever Union soldiers appeared, slaves could conceivably obtain their freedom. However, while the goal was revolutionary, the means to reach it were not. Indeed, actual freedom would be difficult to obtain because of the red tape involved. For example, freedom could only be acquired by appearing before a federal court on a case-by-case basis. There were estimated to be 350,000 slave owners in the South when the Second Confiscation Act became law. Thus, if their individual slaves were to seek freedom under this act, there would have to be one case for every owner. These cases would tie up the courts for several years and render them useless in terms of dealing with other legal matters. It is little wonder that Lincoln could say as late as September 13, 1862, “I cannot learn that that law has caused a single slave to come over to us.”31 Historian David H. Donald was correct when he wrote of the Second Confiscation Act, “it had little effect except as an expression of opinion.”32
Nevertheless, one ought not completely to minimize the importance of the act. It did, in fact, represent another example of slavery being undercut by the force of military necessity. There was a provision in the bill that authorized the president to “receive into the service of the United States, for the purpose of constructing entrenchments or performing camp service, or for any other labor or any military or naval service for which they may be found competent persons of African descent.” The law even provided pay for that service. On the day that the measure passed, Lincoln informed Congress that he was ready to let military commanders “employ, as laborers, as many persons of African de[s]cent, as can be used to advantage.”33 As had been the case earlier, he was still concerned about the political implications of military emancipation, but he had no major problem in endorsing the utilization of blacks as laborers to assist the Union war effort. Again, Lincoln’s primary concern was the defeat of the Confederacy and the salvation of the Union. He realized that his actions would inevitably lead to the emancipation of slaves, and he had concluded at this time that emancipation was a military necessity. Thus, it is little wonder why Lincoln would sign the Militia Act into law on the same day that he signed the Second Confiscation Act.
The Militia Act empowered the president to call 300,000 nine-month militiamen, ages eighteen to forty-five, from the states, based on their population. Lincoln had the authority under the act to fill the necessary quota if the states did not supply the men. Although recruitment and surreptitous conscription were the main elements of this measure, it also expedited the evolution of black military service. Blacks could now be accepted as soldiers to fill the state quotas. Moreover, as a consequence of the Militia Act, Lincoln had the authority to emancipate any slaves who enlisted, along with their families, if their masters were rebels. Therefore, some blacks who fought in the armed forces were freed even before the Emancipation Proclamation was issued.34 By signing the bill, for the first time during the war, Lincoln had endorsed a limited form of military emancipation. In the coming days his support for military emancipation would steadily grow as it became tied to the preservation of the Union.
While Lincoln had reached the conclusion by the summer of 1862 that military emancipation was a necessary prerequisite for Union victory, throughout 1862 he continued to promote his colonization scheme that he had unveiled early in his presidency and that he hoped would lead to the peaceful, gradual liberation of blacks. Lincoln’s plan for emancipation was twofold: compensation for the slaveholders and colonization for blacks, slave and free. First, he proposed a plan aimed at freeing slaves gradually, over a 30-year period, and compensating their masters out of the national treasury. In order for his proposal to be carried out, Lincoln had to solicit the cooperation of Congress and the particular states involved. He sent Congress a message in March 1862 urging gradual emancipation and proposing that the Federal government assist states initiating such a plan. Congress sided with the president, and on April 10 passed a joint supporting resolution, which specified that federal financial aid should be given to any state that adopted a plan for the gradual abolition of slavery. But spokesmen from the Border states on Capitol Hill responded negatively. They argued that the cost of the program would be $478 million and that their constituents would vote down the proposal even if this sum were appropriated beforehand. This response was a setback for Lincoln, who had hoped that an offer to compensate slaveholders might tip the balance in favor of his plan.35
Lincoln’s state-run compensated emancipation scheme contained several weaknesses. Fundamentally it was far more sensitive in its appeal to whites to accept the process than it was in foreseeing the consequences for blacks. The prospect of civil and political rights for blacks would surely have been limited had states and the existing white leadership of 1862 retained control over emancipation. Since it would have been implemented before blacks proved their capacities and earned national obligation by their service in the war, it is likely that st
ate-controlled emancipation would not have advanced the course of black rights very much. No national power would have been able to checkmate local oppression of blacks under Lincoln’s state-controlled emancipation scheme, since no Fourteenth or Fifteenth Amendments would have been on the horizon.36
The second part of Lincoln’s plan was a proposal to ship slaves and free blacks out of the country. Deportation would rid the nation of slavery and all African Americans along with it. Again, Congress supported the president. In spring 1862 it voted to appropriate $600,000 for the purpose of colonizing slaves and free blacks.37 Afterward, Lincoln began to launch a campaign to persuade free blacks to agree to be colonized and endeavored to find somewhere for them to settle. On August 14 he met with a delegation of five free black men, led by Edward M. Thomas, and tried to persuade them that all blacks would be better off if they were to leave the United States and resettle in Liberia, Central America, or the Caribbean.38 Like Thomas Jefferson, Lincoln believed that blacks were innately inferior to whites and that it would be impossible for blacks and whites to live together in the United States as equals.39 Thus, Lincoln had come to believe that colonization was the only viable solution to the race problem in America. He expressed the sentiments of many whites, as few of them could contemplate a situation where all blacks were free. One of the most ardent defenders of the white South and its institutions, Senator Henry Clay of Kentucky, expressed the view in 1830 that it “would be unwise” to liberate the slaves “without their removal or colonization.” One Mississippi farmer believed that “the majority would be right glad [to abolish slavery] if we could get rid of the niggers. But it wouldn’t never do to free ‘em and leave ’em here. I don’t know anybody hardly, in favor of that.”40
Most black leaders, however, were furious with Lincoln for suggesting that they should abandon the only country they had known. They were adamantly opposed to all colonization schemes, believing that blacks, as productive members of society, had just as much right to live in the United States as did whites. Like whites, their ancestors had helped build America into what it now was—a powerful, though divided, nation. Their forebears had fought, bled, and died for the country in all the wars that the nation had been engaged in. Furthermore, some free blacks believed that if they left the country, their brothers and sisters who were held as slaves in the South would be left even more vulnerable to white oppression. They expressed their anguish in open letters. Frederick Douglass, for example, in the pages of his newest publication, Douglass Monthly, in September 1862 asserted that “Mr. Lincoln assumes the language and arguments of an itinerant Colonization lecturer, showing all his inconsistencies, his pride of race and blood, his contempt for Negroes and his canting hypocrisy.”41 Free blacks in various cities held protest meetings condemning the president’s colonization scheme. The general sentiment of these gatherings was expressed as an “Appeal” sent to Lincoln by free blacks in Philadelphia: “Many of us have our own house and other property, amounting in the aggregate, to millions of dollars. Shall we sacrifice this, leave our homes, forsake our birthplace, and flee to a strange land, to appease the anger and prejudice of the traitors now in arms against the government?”42
Not all free blacks were opposed to colonization. Alienated by discrimination and abuse, some grasped at the opportunity. Hundreds emigrated to Haiti during the first year of the war. By 1862, promoters were touting Central America as a new destination, and some free blacks petitioned the U.S. government in efforts to acquire financial backing to emigrate there. The Reverend Henry M. Turner, a prominent clergyman in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, was among the signers of one of these petitions. Free blacks in support of colonization, however, represented a small minority.43
Without the support of Northern free blacks, it was unlikely that any colonization scheme would succeed. Lincoln’s efforts to locate a place where blacks could create a new life for themselves proved as fruitless as his efforts to persuade them to leave America. Although representatives from the government of Liberia had assured the president that black Americans would be welcome in their country, Lincoln did not regard Liberia as the most feasible place for black resettlement because it was so far from the United States. He preferred somewhere closer. Chiriqui, a province of Colombia (now in Panama), appeared to be satisfactory to him. In attempting to make the necessary arrangements, however, Lincoln allowed himself to negotiate with members of a fraudulent land company. As a consequence, the project collapsed. Moreover, Colombia’s neighbors in Central America had protested vigorously against the proposal. Once Lincoln had abandoned the Chiriqui scheme, he tried to persuade the European powers that owned territories in Latin America to provide a place for blacks to be colonized. But these powers saw no political dividends therein and were not responsive to his overtures. By October 1862, Lincoln had nearly exhausted all his options for colonization in the Western Hemisphere. His last remaining one was Haiti, but, here again, he made the mistake of dealing with land speculators of questionable honesty. Late in December, Lincoln signed a contract with Bernard Kock for the settlement of five thousand blacks on Cow Island in Haiti but was saved from further embarrassment by Secretary of State William H. Seward, who was suspicious of Kock’s integrity and refused to certify the contract. Thus, by the fall of 1862 neither of Lincoln’s plans for compensation and colonization had caught on.44
FREDERICK DOUGLASS, THE CELEBRATED ABOLITIONIST, UNION RECRUITER, FEMINIST, AND SOCIAL ACTIVIST.
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THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION
During the summer of 1862, while Lincoln tried to work out a plan for the colonization of blacks, he was facing increasing pressure from black and white abolitionists and from the more progressive elements of his party for a commitment to end slavery. Furthermore, it had become clear to the president and other government officials that the war would be long and bloody. Lincoln was confronted with Confederate resistance that was more massive and effective than he had thought possible. He had believed that the Union was on the verge of victory in the spring of 1862, but any hope of success at that time was shattered by General Robert E. Lee’s successful counteroffensives in the Seven Days. As he wrestled with the problem of emancipation, he also worried how he could meet the spiraling demands on Union manpower for both combat and logistical duties. By linking emancipation with arming the former slaves, he found a solution. As a war measure, he would issue a proclamation freeing the slaves. He first mentioned this possibility to his cabinet in the summer of 1862, knowing that he had to move cautiously. Politically and strategically, he was restrained by the fear that forced emancipation would turn the loyal Border states of Missouri, Kentucky, and Maryland against the Union. The loss of these states’ vital industry and manpower would hurt the Union cause. Furthermore, Lincoln did not want to do anything that would provoke the lower Southern states to launch a war of total resistance—something they were likely to do if he were to free the slaves in that section of the country.45
In the end, Lincoln recognized that the Confederate war effort that to date had resisted Union advances was vulnerable at one major point: it rested on an economy and a social structure that depended on slave labor. The only way to combat it effectively was to undermine it by removing that base. Thus, Lincoln argued in July 1862 that a proclamation of emancipation “was a military necessity absolutely essential for the salvation of the Union.” Furthermore, “we must free the slaves or be ourselves subdued.”46 And so, on September 22,1862, just five days after the Union victory at Antietam, Lincoln decided to act, proclaiming that on January 1, 1863, “All persons held as slaves within any State, or designated part of the state, the people whereof shall be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.”47 The Emancipation Proclamation stipulated that freed slaves would be accepted by the Union military “to garrison forts, positions, stations, and other places, and to man vessels of all sorts in said service.”48 In this document he also revi
ved the possibility of compensated emancipation and said that he would continue to encourage the voluntary colonization of blacks “upon this continent or elsewhere.”49 Lincoln, therefore, either continued to believe that white hostility would be too massive for emancipated blacks to live in the same vicinity with whites, or still thought that blacks were inferior to whites and could never live as equals in society. Perhaps he was also trying to placate Northern whites, many of whom were fearful that emancipated blacks would settle in the North. If they were to be colonized somewhere in Central America, there was no need to worry.
RESPONSE TO LINCOLN’S PROCLAMATION
When news of Lincoln’s preliminary proclamation reached the South, slaves by the thousands responded by fleeing plantations and rushing into the lines of the Union army. Years later, Mary Crane, a former slave, recalled the event in Larue County, Kentucky: “When President Lincoln issued his Proclamation, freeing the Negroes, I remember that my father and most all of the other younger slave men left the farms.”50 Most slaves were illiterate, but the news of emancipation reached them through an oral network called the “grapevine telegraph.”
PRESIDENT ABRAHAM LINCOLN, WITH CABINET MEMBERS, ISSUING THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION.
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