Vantage Points

BRIAN: OK. So far in this show, we’ve hard about how Lincoln’s thinking about emancipation had developed, and what he ultimately decided to do. Which was issue the Emancipation Proclamation. Ed, what was the response in January of 1863 to that Proclamation?

ED: Ah, Brian, you mean what were the responses to this document. Because Republicans, including many abolitionists, were very pleased at Lincoln had stepped forward. Democrats said, this is just what we were expecting. He is out there to help– well, they use all kinds of racist language, playing on fears of what was going to happen in the North as a result of this act.

And that range of opinions extended even into the Army itself. On the one hand, were soldiers who supported emancipation, a lot of whom were coming into contact with black people for the first time, and who were very impressed with what they were seeing. On the other hand, you still had people like George McClellan, the general in charge of the entire Union war effort. McClellan was adamantly opposed to emancipation, and in fact warned Lincoln many times not to make this into a war to end slavery.

In the South, the range of reactions was even wider. I recently sat down with Christy Coleman, who’s president of the American Civil War Center at Historic Tredegar in Richmond, to talk about some of those reactions. We begin with the point of view of enslaved people. And Christy pointed out that their fight for freedom started well before Lincoln’s Proclamation.

CHRISTY COLEMAN: When the conflict first begins, you have African Americans in the South being brought into the war effort as general laborers with certain specialization and skills that are needed to support the Army that is being developed. But it becomes really fascinating when these folks decide, I’ve had enough of this. I really want to go on the other side of this to the Union forces.

And we see that most notably with what happens at Fortress Monroe here in Virginia, where you have three African American men who had been assigned to digging trenches by their master, to dig the canal. And they managed to steal away on a boat and make their way to Fortress Monroe. And once they get there to offer themselves as labor, as information source, what have you, to Union forces and General Butler.

And Butler decides to give them respite. He gives them their freedom, if you will. And this is happening to Union officers in the Western theater, into the South. Slaves are running away and getting to Union forces. And they are doing this before there’s ever the first confiscation after any of that. I mean, they’re just they’re doing this. They understand that they have to be active in their own freedom.

ED: Now you remember that when Lincoln issued his Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation in September of 1862, it was intended as a kind of warning to the Confederacy. And many enslaved people weren’t sure if he would follow through on it come January.

But even so, throughout the fall of 1862, tens of thousands of African Americans continued to risk their lives to escape to Union lines, wherever they were, whether they were in New Orleans, or South Carolina, or Virginia, or Tennessee. And how did white Southerners respond to all this? Christy Coleman says that there was a combination of dismissal and of horror.

CHRISTY COLEMAN: They claimed that this was an action to incite their happy, peaceful Negroes into insurrection, and insubordination, and murderous rampages. But politically speaking, they recognized that the Proclamation really didn’t have any power, because they didn’t recognize the United States. They were their own sovereign nation as far as they were concerned. So it had no impact.

And I would relate predominantly to what Jefferson Davis’ response to this was. Essentially saying, your Proclamation means nothing to us. I mean, he uses a tad more flowery language than that. But in essence, you’re the criminal. You are the one who is creating unrest. And you are the one who has violated this Constitution. And we don’t care what you say, because in this respect, we have the moral superiority here.

ED: Do you think other white Southerners– did non-slaveholders buy this idea?

CHRISTY COLEMAN: I think they were more likely to buy into this idea that you’re getting ready to unleash something pretty horrible on society as a whole. And it’s going to come back to bite you. Don’t think it’s just going to be contained in the South. It’s going to come into the North as well if you free all of these people.

So I think that the non-slaveholding white, whether, they were North or South, there are many who have the same concern. What does it mean once you free all of these people, who the vast majority of Americans at the time, white Americans at the time, did believe were absolutely inferior?

ED: So what I hear you saying is that in the South, to both black and white people, this document doesn’t really make that much difference.

CHRISTY COLEMAN: The document doesn’t– well–

ED: Because here’s what I just heard you say. African Americans are doing everything they can in every way to make themselves free. And all the Congressional acts along the way that said, you may not return the slaves who come to you to their masters, it basically already has created the main thing they need, which is a refuge.

And the white South, it strikes me that the main result of this could be to solidify them against the Union force. Because it says, not only are we fighting for our national independence, but we are fighting for the very foundation of the society, which is based on racial slavery. Would you give any stock to that? That it actually has a galvanizing effect in the South?

CHRISTY COLEMAN: Yes. I would say it does in that regard. It does have a galvanizing effect.

ED: However grudgingly.

CHRISTY COLEMAN: No, no, no. Not necessarily grudgingly. Because it makes sense. Because here’s the other thing too. For the first time, you have– with this Proclamation, the aims of the North changes. Essentially, it’s going up against what the South was fighting for to begin with. And there are a lot of people who have used and said over these past 150 years, no, no, no. This real war was really about our constitutional rights as Southerners. It was really about our rights to property. It was about state’s rights, and all of those other things. And we understand very clearly that the core of that is the right to the institution of slavery, and to use that and grow that.

Now for the north, starting into this war, it was a war to preserve the Union. Lincoln has just changed the game with this Proclamation. So yes, it does galvanize the South. But at the same time, I think it has an equally interesting shift in the North. So I think it’s a mistake to even try to make this document simple. It is not enough to say, well, the truth of the matter is, the document didn’t really free anybody because the Confederacy didn’t recognize it. And the slaves that were already under Union control in the border states, it didn’t impact them at all. So it really didn’t mean anything.

The psychological effect of this document was enormous.

ED: For everyone involved?

CHRISTY COLEMAN: For everyone involved. Because now we have a date. So now we sit. Now we wait. Now we watch to see what it is really going to happen come January 1.

ED: That’s Christy Coleman, president of the American Civil War Center at historic Tredegar in Richmond.

BRIAN: We’re going to take a short break. When we come back, we’ll bring our story up to the 21st century. How do people understand emancipation today?

PETER: You’re listening to BackStory. We’ll be back in a minute.