African Americans and the Civil War. 1.Who freed the slaves? 2.Emancipation in Atlantic history 3.The evolution of an emancipation policy 4.Black soldiers,

African Americans and the Civil War

African Americans and the Civil War

1. Who freed the slaves?2. Emancipation in Atlantic history3. The evolution of an emancipation policy4. 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

understandingLincoln 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) 1793 Revolution

Spainsh mainland South America 1823-1831 Gradual emancipation

British West Indies 1833-1838Immediate emancipation with apprenticeship

French Caribbean 1794 (1802), 1848 Immediate emancipation

Danish Virgin Islands 1848Immediate emancipation with apprenticeship

Dutch Caribbean 1863Immediate emancipation with apprenticeship

U.S. South 1865 War

Cuba 1880Immediate emancipation with apprenticeship

Brazil 1888 Immediate emancipation

North: 1777-1827

Haiti: 1791-1804

Latin America: 1823-1831

UK West Indies: 1833-1838

French Caribbean: 1848

Danish Caribbean: 1848

Dutch Caribbean: 1863

U.S. South: 1865

Cuba: 1880

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” inEurope

Agricultural“periphery” in New World

South becomesagricultural

“periphery” . . .

For theIndustrializing

North

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 able-bodied 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 ProclamationSeptember 22, 1862Warned that emancipation would be declared the following year unless the rebels subsisted

Final version goes into effectJanuary 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 non-slaveholding 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 Anglo-African.

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