Article - Abraham Lincoln and Slavery
Article - The American Colonization Society
Article - The Historical Debate on Lincoln and Colonization
A. Slaves as Active Agents in their own Liberation
Well before the Civil War, slaves had been following national political developments, especially elections. Being influenced by Christianity, they believed their deliverance had been prophesied and looked for signs that the prophesy was nearing fulfillment.
Slaves picked up information from various sources (e.g. at southern political meetings they attended with their owners, and from the masters' dinner table conversations, and from newspapers they would have someone who was literate explain to them). They had secret meeting places where they discussed what they had learned.
Slave established long information networks to transmit and interpret news (one ran from Mississippi to Kentucky).
While Confederates thought slave labor would benefit the war effort, thousands of slaves saw Lincoln's election and secession as their time for gaining freedom (well before emancipation became a Union war aim).
Even before the war breaks out, slave owners note increased levels of slave defiance and increasing slave escape attempts. (including Jefferson Davis' plantation, where in 1862 slaves led Union soldiers to his home to plunder Davis' belongings. Slaves also sacked his Davis' brother's nearby plantation home and burned his cotton). Slave owners pressured state officials to allow men to remain home to control the slaves thus affecting the numbers of men available to fight in the armies. Female slaves participated in these actions nearly as much as male slaves.
In the first year of the war, slaves along the east coast try to get to the Union ships and forts as the Union increasingly occupies the southern coastline.
After the Emancipation Proclamation took effect, escaped slaves would lead Union soldiers to farms and plantations to liberate more slaves.
In militarily volatile places like the Shenandoah Valley, Confederate armies often recaptured freed slaves. But increasingly, slave owners could not count on Confederate authorities to control their slaves. And slave owners let the authorities know they were displeased.
During the Pennsylvania campaign, Robert E. Lee captured free men in the North and sent them south into slavery in retaliation for the E.P. .
Some escaped slaves during the war:
Prince Rivers (second article) - Rivers escaped his S.C. plantation and was "freed" by General David Hunter in August of 1862 under the 1861 Congressional Confiscation Act. Hunter's actions were controversial, but several hundred slaves stayed with Hunter's unit throughout the war. Rivers too a lead role in organizing the slaves and Hunter spoke of Rivers' contributions in glowing terms.
After the war Rivers became a judge and state legislator. He was known for his writing and oratory skills. When Reconstruction ended in 1877, Rivers lost his elected positions because of new voting restrictions on blacks. He became a house painter until his death 10 years later.
Robert Smalls - He freed himself, his crew and their families from slavery on May 13, 1862, by commandeering a Confederate transport ship, CSS Planter, in Charleston harbor, and sailing it from Confederate-controlled waters to the U.S. blockade. His example and persuasion helped convince President Lincoln to accept African-American soldiers into the U.S. Army and the U.S. Navy.
Smalls was born in Beaufort, South Carolina. After the American Civil War, he returned there and became a politician, winning election as a Republican to the South Carolina State legislature and the United States House of Representatives during the Reconstruction era. As a politician, Smalls authored state legislation providing for South Carolina to have the first free and compulsory public school system in the United States. He founded the Republican Party of South Carolina
B. Abraham Lincoln's Views on Race
Like the vast majority of American whites, North and South, in the mid-19th century (95 percent?), Lincoln did not believe in full racial equality. He did not believe that blacks should be able to marry whites, that blacks should serve on juries, or that blacks should be able to vote. In the final year of his life, Lincoln made statements that he was now for black men who had served in the Union army and "very intelligent" blacks should be able to vote. (Lincoln's views on race should be understood as continually evolving).
C. Abraham Lincoln Views on Slavery
Lincoln seems to have always believed that slavery was wrong morally, economically, and politically. But Lincoln's primary allegiance was to republican government as defined in the Constitution. Lincoln saw the Constitution as guaranteeing the rights of white men to own slaves in the states where slavery already existed. The only means to abolish slavery would be a Constitutional amendment to do so, and there was not enough public support for abolishing slavery in Lincoln's lifetime for this to happen.
But Lincoln did believe that Congress had the right to make laws prohibiting the expansion of slavery into the Federal territories in the west. (A precedent for this was the prohibition of slavery in the Northwest Territories in 1787). This was the basis of the Republican Party's 1860 platform on which Lincoln was elected.
Lincoln was a long time supporter of colonization (exportation) of freed slaves. As president, he received Congressional approval of funds to relocate slaves who voluntarily wanted to go emigrate. An attempt to colonize 453 slaves on Ile à Vache (off Haiti) failed miserably when a small pox outbreak and lack of supplies killed over 100. The U.S. government rescued the survivors.
"I can not make it better known than it already is that I strongly favor colonization; and yet I wish to say there is an objection urged against free colored persons remaining in the country which is largely imaginary, if not sometimes malicious."
Lincoln, Second Annual Message to Congress, 12/01/1862
D. The Emanicpation Proclamation
Some Preceding Events
05/27/1861 - Major General Benjamin Butler in charge of captured Fort Monroe in Virginia, declares that runaway slaves are war "contraband" of the U.S. government and should not be returned to their owners.
August 6, 1861 - Lincoln signs the Confiscation Act of 1861 authorized the confiscation of any Confederate property by Union forces ("property" included slaves). This meant that all slaves that fought or worked for the Confederate military were confiscated whenever court proceedings "condemned" them as property used to support the rebellion. The bill passed in the United States House of Representatives 60-48 and in the Senate 24-11.
08/30/1861 - Major General John C. Frémont, in charge of the Department of the West, puts Missouri under Martial Law and emancipates Missouri's slaves. Lincoln revokes Frémont's emancipation order in November.
December 1861 - Lincoln sent his first annual message to Congress (the State of the Union Address, but then typically given in writing and not referred to as such). In it he praised the free labor system, as respecting human rights over property rights; he endorsed legislation to address the status of contraband slaves and slaves in loyal states, possibly through buying their freedom with federal taxes, and also the funding of strictly voluntary colonization efforts.
January 1862 - Radical abolitionist Thaddeus Stevens, the Republican leader in the House, called for total war against the rebellion to include emancipation of slaves, arguing that emancipation, by forcing the loss of enslaved labor, would ruin the rebel economy.
March 13, 1862 - Congress approved a "Law Enacting an Additional Article of War", which stated that from that point onward it was forbidden for Union Army officers to return fugitive slaves to their owners.
On April 10, 1862 - Congress declared that the federal government would compensate union slave owners who freed their slaves. Slaves in the District of Columbia were freed on April 16, 1862, and their owners were compensated.
Early July, 1862 - Lincoln creates the first draft of the Emancipation Proclamation. He reviews it with his entire cabinet on July 22. Secretary of State William Seward suggests Lincoln waits for a Union victory before announcing the proclamation. Lincoln agrees to that.
July 17, 1862 - The Confiscation Act of 1862
The act called for court proceedings for seizure of land and property from disloyal citizens (supporters of the Confederacy) in the South as well as the emancipation of their slaves that came under Union control. Under this act, conviction of treason against the U.S. could be punishable by death or carry a minimum prison sentence of five years and a minimum fine of $10,000. This law specifically targeted the seizure of property of any Confederate military officer, Confederate public office holder, persons who have taken an oath of allegiance to the Confederacy or any citizen of a loyal Union state who has given aid or support to any of the aforementioned traitors to the United States of America. This act helped the Union military because freed slaves could supply the forces with information to gain a strategic advantage over the Confederates.
August 22, 1862 - Not knowing Lincoln had already planned to issue the E.P., Republican newspaperman and abolitionist Horace Greeley publishes the Prayer of Twenty Millions in his widely read New York Tribune urging Lincoln to free the slaves on moral grounds. Lincoln responds two days later with this letter...
The Horace Greeley Response Letter
September 22, 1862. Following the Union "victory" at Antietam on September 17, Lincoln announces the E.P. will go into effect on January 1, 1863.
The E.P. only frees slaves in states in rebellion against the government or in regions of those states that that the Union had no control over. This was because:
1) As president, Lincoln had no authority to free slaves in areas not in rebellion. Only Congress could do that. The E.P. was issued as a war measure of the president as commander in chief of the U.S. military.
2) Lincoln did not want to upset Unionist slaveholders whose support he needed.
Text of the The Emancipation Proclamation
The Purposes of the Emancipation Proclamation
1. To deprive the Confederacy of slave labor for the war effort to hurt the Confederate economy, and enlist freed slaves in the U.S. military.
2. To keep Great Britain out of the war (Britain, although the major foreign consumer of cotton, also had a strong abolitionist segment in it populace).
3. [This one is debated by historians]: Either Lincoln issued the E.P. only as a measure to win the war, or he also did it to guide the northern populace towards accepting further emancipation measures.
The Effects of the Emancipation Proclamation
In the North - The E.P. was generally accepted by the majority of the population as a war measure. However, Copperheads (Peace Democrats) caustically protested it and claimed it was evidence that, from the very beginning, the war had been about freeing the slaves. The E.P. combined with the later Federal Draft Act of 1863 ignited a deadly draft riot in New York City in July of 1863.
In the South - The E.P. infuriates southerners. The same claims are made as those of the Copperheads. They also accuse Lincoln of intending to start a deadly slave rebellion. The first "20 Negro Law" is passed to allow some southern men exemption from conscription to stay home and keep the slaves under control.
April 16, 1862 - The Confederate Congress passes the first Conscription Act, making all white males between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five eligible to be drafted into military service. (This is the first such draft in U.S. history.)
September 22, 1862 - President Abraham Lincoln issues the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation.
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October 11, 1862 - The Confederate Congress passes the Twenty-Slave Law, creating an exemption to military conscription for the owners of twenty or more slaves. A $500 application fee is charged.
May 1, 1863 - The Confederate Congress amends the Twenty-Slave Law to apply only to overseers on plantations belonging solely to "a minor, a person of unsound mind, a femme sole [single woman], or a person absent from home in the military or naval service of the Confederacy."
February 17, 1864 - The Confederate Congress changes the requirement of the Twenty-Slave Law to fifteen able-bodied slaves and requires planters with exempted overseers to deliver one hundred pounds of bacon or its equivalent for every slave to the government and to sell his or her surplus to the government or to soldiers' families at government prices.
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The Union army confiscated the plantations of high level Confederates including Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee and liberated their slaves.
But, before the Emancipation Proclamation, some Union commanders did not engage in liberating slaves (the April law only said they could not send them back to their owners). The E.P. made liberating slaves a uniform military policy.
Contraband (Slave Refugee) Camps.
Interactive Map - Union Contraband (Slave Refugee) Camps
Notable Contraband Camps:
The Grand Contraband Camp of Virginia
Trent River Contraband camp at New Berlin, N.C. protected over 10,000 slave refugees.
Freedman's Colony of Roanoke Island, NC
150,000 ex-slaves enlist in the U.S. military. Tens of thousands more supported the war effort in non-military positions. Union recruiters use the image of the 1790s slave revolt in Saint-Dominique (Haiti) to inspire slaves to fight against the Confederates.
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