Download 2/12# Who Freed the Slaves?

African Americans and the Civil War
African Americans and the Civil War
1.
2.
3.
4.
Who freed the slaves?
Emancipation in Atlantic history
The evolution of an emancipation policy
Black soldiers, freedom, and citizenship
African Americans and the Civil War
• McPherson v. Berlin
• Crittenden Resolution, July
1861
• Gen. George B. McLellan (USA)
• Gen. Benjamin Butler (USA)
• Fortress Monroe, VA
• contrabands
• Gen. John C. Fremont (USA)
• Gen. David Hunter (USA)
• First Confiscation Act (July
1861)
• Second Confiscation Act (July
1862)
• Militia Act (July 1862)
• Preliminary Emancipation
Proclamation
• Emancipation Proclamation
• West Virginia
• Thirteenth Amendment
(1865)
• Clement Vallandingham
• New York City Draft Riots
(July 1863)
• Twenty Negro Law
• Mary Chestnut
• Spotswood Rice
• Andersonville prison
1. Who freed the slaves?
•
•
James M. McPherson, "Who Freed the Slaves?" in Drawn with the Sword:
Reflections on the American Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998),
192-207.
Ira Berlin, "Who Freed the Slaves? Emancipation and Its Meaning," in Major
Problems in the Civil War and Reconstruction, Michael Perman, ed., 2nd ed.
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998), 288-97.
• Which argument did you find more persuasive? Why? What
did you like about each approach?
The debate
• Classically posed historical debate
• McPherson: hopes to revise a revision
– So what is the “orthodox” or “traditional” view?
– The centrality of problem (question)-based history
• Is this a real debate? Is McPherson’s
opponent just a “straw man”?
– History as a rhetorical exercise
McPherson
• Successful prosecution of the war was the
“sine qua non” of emancipation
• Lincoln was the sine qua non of a successful
war
• Thus Lincoln was the sine que non of
emancipation
McPherson
• Should history be written from the “top
down” or “bottom up”? Are both possible? Is
there a middle ground between the two
approaches he identifies?
Critiquing McPherson
• Indiscriminately melds 2 kinds of causation
– Proximate: small-scale triggers of actual events
(Lincoln signing the EP when he did)
– Ultimate: long-term factors (the fact that Lincoln
was elected)
Critiquing McPherson
• Indiscriminately melds intent and consequence
– Consequence:
• Lincoln was elected, and this made a difference (regardless of
Lincoln’s intents)
• The war stalemated, and this made a difference (regardless of
Lincoln’s intents)
– Intent: Lincoln hadn’t started with the intent to destroy
slavery
Is there more virtue in effect than in intent?
Does it matter that Lincoln wanted emancipation yet would’ve foregone it if
necessary?
Did the intent of the enslaved matter?
McPherson often seems to argue that effect more significant than intent
Critiquing McPherson
• Only Lincoln could’ve been elected
(consequence)
• Only Lincoln would’ve waited for just the right
moment to pass the EP (intent)
Are these assumption right? How could we know? How would
we go about testing them?
Critiquing McPherson
• What is the role of great men in history?
• What is the role of great forces?
Lincoln stated, "I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly
that have events have controlled me."
Critiquing McPherson
• Berlin: “Had another Republican been in Lincoln’s
place, that person doubtless would have done the
same.”
• Berlin: “Lincoln was a part of history, not above it.”
• Berlin: “Both Lincoln and the slaves played their
appointed parts in the drama of emancipation.”
• Berlin responds with his own vision rather than
respond to each point
– Which leaves room for us to do so…
Critiquing McPherson
• McPherson’s case:
– Lincoln’s election critical
– Lincoln’s commitment to union critical
– Lincoln’s timing critical (couldn’t be too early or
too late)
– The war was essential – only it permitted
possibility of Lincoln’s move, and total abolition of
slavery
– Critical in the war was the fact of stalemate: only
stalemate justified escalation of war aims
Critiquing McPherson
• But what if the war hadn’t stalemated?
– McPherson and others wonder if the war had
gone on longer. But what if the war had been
over more quickly? What would the
consequences of an early Union victory have
been?
– There would’ve been lots and lots of pressure to
retain slavery as part of an easy peace
– So why/how did the war stalemate?
• That’s what we covered last time.
Critiquing McPherson
• Rael’s sine qua nons:
– Slaves who yearn to be free, and who register that
desire through action
– The war, which creates the possibility of giving
their actions meaning
– A Union army and government capable of
• Understanding how slavery is implicated
• Delivering victory, and hence acting on that
understanding
Lincoln fits somewhere in here
Who cares?
• How emancipation happened mattered
– Emerged through exigencies of war, not through a
revolution in racial sentiment
– Prewar: both sections suffused with racial
prejudice and ideas of white supremacy
– War: military need creates emancipation
– After the war: the fate of the freedpeople??
2. Emancipation in Atlantic
history
Ending slavery in the Atlantic
U.S. North
1777-1827
Gradual emancipation
St. Domingue (Haiti)
Spainsh mainland South
America
1793
Revolution
1823-1831
Gradual emancipation
British West Indies
1833-1838
Immediate emancipation with
apprenticeship
French Caribbean
1794 (1802), 1848
Immediate emancipation
1848
Immediate emancipation with
apprenticeship
Dutch Caribbean
1863
Immediate emancipation with
apprenticeship
U.S. South
1865
War
Cuba
1880
Immediate emancipation with
apprenticeship
Brazil
1888
Immediate emancipation
Danish Virgin Islands
North: 1777-1827
U.S. South:
1865
Haiti:
1791-1804
UK West
Indies:
French
Caribbean:
Danish
Caribbean:
Dutch
Caribbean:
1833-1838
Cuba:
1848
1848
1863
1880
Latin America:
1823-1831
Brazil:
1888
The United State unique
• Emancipation happened late in the United
States
• It took a massive war to end slavery in the
United States
• Only in the United States did slaves become
(for a time) equal citizens (a problem for
Reconstruction)
Metropolitan
“core” in
Europe
Agricultural
“periphery”
in New World
For the
Industrializing
North
South becomes
agricultural
“periphery” . . .
Ending slavery was about…
• Slavery was the labor system of plantation
capitalism, in which humans could be defined as
property
• The values of the liberalism and the industrial
revolution (and various associated ideological
formations) come to question whether property
can be held in man
• Ending slavery was about settling this question
negatively: it’s not legal to hold property in man
Ending slavery in the United States
• But it was more difficult in the United States,
because the “slave power” of the U.S. was
particularly powerful
• The agricultural periphery could not be easily
dominated by the metropolitan core, because the
periphery was “hyper-empowered” in the nation
– Not colonies, but full-fledged states, with equal rights
and full representation in national government
– Hyper-empowered by 3/5 clause
3. The evolution of an emancipation
policy
"War is merely the
continuation of policy
[politics] by other means.“
Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz
"politics is war without
bloodshed while war is politics
with bloodshed."
Mao Zedong
Crittenden resolution, adopted by U.S. House of Representatives, 22 July
1861
“the present deplorable civil war has been forced upon the country by the
disunionists of the Southern States now in revolt against the constitutional
Government, and in arms around the capitol; that in this national
emergency, Congress, banishing all feelings of mere passion or resentment,
will recollect only its duty to the whole country; that this war is not waged
upon our part in any spirit of oppression, nor for any purpose of conquest
or subjugation, nor purpose of overthrowing or interfering with the rights
or established institutions of those States; but to defend and maintain the
supremacy of the Constitution, and to preserve the Union, with all the
dignity, equality, and rights of the several States, unimpaired; and that as
soon as these objects are accomplished the war ought to cease”
General McClellan to President Lincoln, July 7th, 1862
“It should not be a War looking to the subjugation of the people of any
state, in any event. It should not be, at all, a War upon population; but
against armed forces and political organizations. Neither confiscation of
property, political executions of persons, territorial organization of states or
forcible abolition of slavery should be contemplated for a moment.”
A Letter from President Lincoln.; Reply to Horace Greeley, Aug. 22, 1862
“I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the
Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored the nearer
the Union will be "the Union as it was." If there be those who would not
save the Union unless they could at the same time save Slavery, I do not
agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless
they could at the same time destroy Slavery, I do not agree with them. My
paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to
save or destroy Slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I
would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it, and
if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do
that. What I do about Slavery and the colored race, I do because I believe it
helps to save this Union, and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not
believe it would help to save the Union.”
Technological transformations
• Rifled musket with conoidal bullet and
percussion cap
• Fewer misfires, greater accuracy, longer range
• Deepens fire-swept zone, making offensive
actions costly
• Leads to stalemate on the battlefield
• War could not achieve political decision
General Ulysses S. Grant, reflecting on military operations after the Battle
of Shiloh, TN (April 1862)
“I gave up all idea of saving the Union except by complete conquest. Up to
that time it had been the policy of our army, certainly of that portion
commanded by me, to protect the property of the citizens whose territory
was invaded, without regard to their sentiments, whether Union or
Secession. After this, however, I regarded it as humane to both sides to
protect the persons of those found at their homes but to consume
everything that could be used to support or supply armies.”
Union officer at Fort Pickens, Pensacola, Florida (March 1861)
“On the morning of the 12th instant four negroes (runaways) came to the
fort entertaining the idea that we were placed here to protect them and
grant them their freedom. I did what I could to teach them the contrary. In
the afternoon I took them to Pensacola and delivered them to the city
marshal to be returned to their owners. That same night four more made
their appearance. They were also turned over to the authorities next
morning.”
Commander of the Department of Virginia [General Benjamin Butler] to
the General-in-Chief of the Army
[Fortress Monroe, Va.] May 27 /61
“I have therefore determined to employ, as I can do very profitably, the ablebodied persons in the party, issuing proper food for the support of all, and
charging against their services the expense of care and sustenance of the
non- laborers, keeping a strict and accurate account as well of the services
as of the expenditure having the worth of the services and the cost of the
expenditure determined by a board of Survey hereafter to be detailed. I
know of no other manner in which to dispose of this subject and the
questions connected therewith. As a matter of property to the insurgents it
will be of very great moment, the number that I now have amounting as I
am informed to what in good times would be of the value of sixty thousand
dollars. ”
General John C.
Fremont
General David
Hunter
Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner: "under the war power the right
had come to him [Lincoln] to emancipate the slaves.“
In July 1861, the House resolved that "it is no part of the duty of the soldiers
of the United States to capture and return fugitive slaves.“
If war could not pursue politics through other means,
perhaps politics could be made to pursue war
Moves in Congress
• First Confiscation Act (July 1861): masters
cannot reclaim slaves used in aid of rebellion
• Second Confiscation Act (July 1862): slaves of
disloyal citizens “forever free”
• Militia Act (July 1862): authorizes Union army
use of slaves; formally frees them and their
families
• Abolition of slavery in District of Columbia and
U.S. territories (April 1862)
Rejoicing over abolition of slavery in District of Columbia, 1862
Lincoln’s approach to slavery
• Get slaveholding Union (border) states to
relinquish slavery on own
• Delaware, 1861: gradual, compensated
emancipation offer (rejected)
• March 1862: Congress will compensate any
border states adopting gradual emancipation
(rejected)
• May and July offers rejected, too
Lincoln on the need for border-state emancipation
"the war would now be substantially ended. . . . But you cannot divest them
of their hope to ultimately have you join them so long as you show a
determination to perpetuate the institution within your own states. . . .
break that lever before their faces"
"This government cannot much longer play a game in which it stakes all, and
its enemies stake nothing," the President scolded a New York Democrat who
requested leniency for Confederate slaveholders. "Those enemies must
understand that they cannot experiment for ten years trying to destroy the
government, and if they fail still come back into the Union unhurt.“
"a military necessity absolutely essential for the salvation of the Union. . . .
We must free the slaves or be ourselves subdued."
Preliminary draft of the Emancipation Proclamation
September 22, 1862
Warned that emancipation would be declared the
following year unless the rebels subsisted
Final version goes into effect
January 1, 1863
The final end of slavery
• West Virginia enters union as free state, 1863
• Missouri, Maryland, Kentucky, Delaware
• Louisiana, Arkansas, Tennessee
• Thirteenth Amendment
– Intended to guarantee constitutionality of
Emancipation Proclamation
– January 1865 passes Congress
– December 1865 ratified by states
Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution (1865)
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.
Critics of emancipation
"Your anti-slavery crusade adds to the rebel army day after day thousands of
soldiers”
“a St. Domingo-insurrection“
"the saber, the musket, and the torch in the hands of the enfranchised
African”
(Ohio Congressman Samuel Cox)
"King Lincoln“
"crushing out liberty and erecting a despotism.“
Politics in the Union
• Clement L. Vallandingham
– Ohio Democrat arrested May 1863 for incendiary
anti-Union speeches
– Sentenced to imprisonment for the duration
– Becomes anti-Lincoln cause celebre
– Lincoln banishes to Confederate lines;
Vallandingham continues his campaign in exile in
Canada
Cjdraf~1:
Anti-Draft Rioters, New York City: The Union draft triggered controversy throughout the
North, but nowhere was the tension greater than in New York City. That stronghold of
Democratic sentiment erupted into three days of anti-draft rioting in July 1863, shortly
after the Battle of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania. Before Union troops restored order,
black homes and institutions were burned, and nearly 100 African Americans were
killed in the largest civil insurrection in the nation’s history.
In the election of 1864, Republicans
re-formulated their ticket. Running
as the Union Party, they ditched
Maine Republican Hannibal Hamlin,
and added instead Andrew Johnson,
a Jacksonian from the nonslaveholding region of Tennessee. It
was a fateful choice.
The recalcitrant General McLellan ran on a peace
platform that would have left slavery in tact
throughout much of the South.
Lincoln on colonization
• Longtime supporter of Liberian settlement
and American Colonization Society
• How do you end slavery while also appealing
to popular white supremacist values
• E.P.: colonization in preliminary draft
transformed into something else in final
draft….
4. Black soldiers, freedom, and
citizenship
"The slaves were now an element of strength to the Rebels,"
whom they served as "laborers, producers, and army
attendants.”
Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles
Black military participation
• 179,000 Union army
• 7,000 Union navy
• 99,000 raised from Confederate states (liberated
slaves)
• Segregated units (white officers)
• Major actions: Port Hudson, Louisiana; Fort
Wagner, South Carolina; and Milliken's Bend,
Louisiana
• 449 engagements; 39 major battles
Lincoln on the importance of black troops:
"I was opposed on nearly every side when I first favored the raising of colored
regiments," Lincoln recalled, "but they have proved their efficiency, and I am
glad they have kept pace with the white troops in the recent assaults.”
“We can not spare the hundred and forty or fifty thousand now serving us as
soldiers, seamen, and laborers. This is not a question of sentiment or taste, but
one of physical force which may be measured and estimated as horse-power
and Steam-power are measured and estimated. Keep it and you can save the
Union. Throw it away, and the Union goes with it.”
"No human power can subdue this rebellion without using the Emancipation
lever as I have done”
"I thought that in your struggle for the Union, to whatever extent the negroes
should cease helping the enemy, to that extent it weakened the enemy in his
resistance to you," he addressed his critics. "I thought that whatever negroes
can be got to do as soldiers, leaves just so much less for white soldiers to do, in
saving the Union."
Black historian W.E.B. DuBois:
“As soon . . . as it became clear that the Union
armies would not or could not return fugitive
slaves, and that the masters with all their fume
and fury were uncertain of victory, the slave
entered upon a general strike against slavery
by the same methods that he had used during
the period of the fugitive slave. He ran away to
the first place of safety and offered his services
to the Federal Army.”
Confederate response to E.P.
• Amended 1st conscription law of April 1862
– Raise age of service (35 to 45)
– Exemption for owners of 20+ slaves
• Burden of CSA service fell on non-slaveholding
class
– “rich man’s war, poor man’s fight”
– 70% Southern white families owned no slaves
Confederate response to E.P.
"an atrocious servile war”
"gross violation of the usages of civilized warfare"
"an outrage on the rights of private property”
Mary Chestnut, wife of prominent SC planter and politician:
“Not by one word or look can we detect any change in the demeanor
of these negro servants. . . . They carry it too far. You could not tell
that they even hear the awful row that is going on in the bay, though
it is dinning in their ears day and night. And people talk before them
as if they were chairs and tables. And they make no sign. Are they
stolidly stupid or wiser than we, silent and strong, biding their time? .
. . Their faces are as unreadable as the sphinx.”
“the greatest slave rebellion in modern history”?
Missouri Black Soldier (Spotswood Rice) to the Owner of One of the Daughters
(Sept. 1864)
“I want you to understand that mary is my Child and she is a God given rite of my
own and you may hold on to hear as long as you can but I want you to remembor
this one thing that the longor you keep my Child from me the longor you will
have to burn in hell and the qwicer youll get their for we are now makeing up a
bout one thoughsand blacke troops to Come up tharough and wont to come
through Glasgow and when we come wo be to Copperhood rabbels and to the
Slaveholding rebbels for we dont expect to leave them there root neor branch
but we thinke how ever that we that have Children in the hands of you devels we
will trie your [vertues?] the day that we enter Glasgow I want you to understand
kittey diggs that where ever you and I meets we are enmays to each orthere”
"the slave population of South Carolina may at last prove the
most serious check upon disunion“
"might burst forth and spread havoc and death among
slaveholders to an extent never surpassed even in the annals
of St. Domingo”
"every resource of the nation . . . could be well employed to
avert the impending ruin"
"to receive the very class of men which have a deeper
interest in the defeat and humiliation of the rebels, than all
others"
"one black regiment in such a war as this is, without being
any more brave and orderly, would be worth to the
Government more than two of any other"
James Henry Gooding was a Corporal in the 54th
Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, an American Civil
War Union regiment, and a war correspondent to the
New Bedford, MA Mercury newspaper
George E. Stephens (1832 - April 24, 1888) was
a 1st Sergeant and 1st and 2nd Lieutenant in
the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, an
American Civil War Union regiment, and a war
correspondent to the New York Weekly AngloAfrican.
Prominent black activists such as
Martin R. Delany helped recruit
African-American troops into
segregated units such as the 54th
Massachusetts Colored Infantry
CSA policy on black troops
• CSA officers: “to shoot, wherever & whenever
captured, all negroes found armed & acting in concert
with the abolition troops either as guides or brothers in
arms”
• (11/62) CSA Sec’y of War James Seddon: “slaves in
flagrant rebellion are subject to death by the laws of
every slave holding State” … "cannot be recognized in
anyway as soldiers subject to the rules of war”
• Blacks sent into slavery in Antietam and Gettysburg
campaigns
• Fort Pillow and Saltville massacres
Andersonville
• Ft. Sumter, SC: CSA prison camp for USA prisoners
• Major Henry Wirz: only person convicted of war
crimes in CW
• Breakdown of prisoner-of-war exchange cartel over
treatment of black soldiers
• 13,000 deaths
Service and citizenship
• F. Douglass: “Once let the black man get upon his person the brass
letters, U.S., let him get an eagle on his button, and a musket on his
shoulder and bullets in his pocket, there is no power on earth that
can deny that he has earned the right to citizenship”
• Fight for equal pay
• Mutiny of 3rd SC volunteers (11/63)
• Lincoln: “I barely suggest for your private consideration, whether
some of the colored people might not be let in — as, for instance,
the very intelligent and especially those who have fought gallantly
in our ranks”
• Lincoln: the right to vote "were now conferred on the very
intelligent, and on those who serve our cause as soldiers”
• “Let soldiers in war, be citizens in peace”
Confederate recruitment of slaves
• 1st Louisiana Native Guard
• Jan. 1864: CSA Gen. Patrick Cleburne
• Jan. 1865: CSA Gen. Robert E. Lee
• Howell Cobb (GA): “The day you make soldiers of them if
the beginning of the end of the revolution. If slaves will
make good soldiers our whole theory of slavery is wrong”
• March 1865: CSA Congress approves a policy, but too late
to have an effect
• In Atlantic terms, a very weak and belated effort
“if a slave can have a country in this world, it must be
any other in preference to that in which he is born to
live and labour for another.”
- Thomas Jefferson