Chapter XII

THE CIVIL WAR AND EMANCIPATION

At the outbreak of the Civil War two great questions affecting the Negro overshadowed all others—his freedom and his employment as a soldier. The North as a whole had no special enthusiasm about the Negro and responded only to Lincoln's call to the duty of saving the Union. Among both officers and men moreover there was great prejudice against the use of the Negro as a soldier, the feeling being that he was disqualified by slavery and ignorance. Privates objected to meeting black men on the same footing as themselves and also felt that the arming of slaves to fight for their former masters would increase the bitterness of the conflict. If many men in the North felt thus, the South was furious at the thought of the Negro as a possible opponent in arms.

The human problem, however, was not long in presenting itself and forcing attention. As soon as the Northern soldiers appeared in the South, thousands of Negroes—men, women, and children—flocked to their camps, feeling only that they were going to their friends. In May, 1861, while in command at Fortress Monroe, Major-General Benjamin F. Butler came into national prominence by his policy of putting to work the men who came within his lines and justifying their retention on the ground that, being of service to the enemy for purposes of war, they were like guns, powder, etc., "contraband of war," and could not be reclaimed. On August 30th of this same year Major-General John C. Fremont, in command in Missouri, placed the state under martial law and declared the slaves there emancipated. The administration was embarrassed, Fremont's order was annulled, and he was relieved of his command. On May 9, 1862, Major-General David Hunter, in charge of the Department of the South (South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida) issued his famous order freeing the slaves in his department, and thus brought to general attention the matter of the employment of Negro soldiers in the Union armies. The Confederate government outlawed Hunter, Lincoln annulled his order, and the grace of the nation was again saved; but in the meantime a new situation had arisen. While Brigadier-General John W. Phelps was taking part in the expedition against New Orleans, a large sugar-planter near the city, disgusted with Federal interference with affairs on his plantation, drove all his slaves away, telling them to go to their friends, the Yankees. The Negroes came to Phelps in great numbers, and for the sake of discipline he attempted to organize them into troops. Accordingly he, too, was outlawed by the Confederates, and his act was disavowed by the Union, that was not ready to take this step.

Meanwhile President Lincoln was debating the Emancipation Proclamation. Pressure from radical anti-slavery sources was constantly being brought to bear upon him, and Horace Greeley in his famous editorial, "The Prayer of Twenty Millions," was only one of those who criticized what seemed to be his lack of strength in handling the situation. After McClellan's unsuccessful campaign against Richmond, however, he felt that the freedom of the slaves was a military and moral necessity for its effects upon both the North and the South; and Lee's defeat at Antietam, September 17, 1862, furnished the opportunity for which he had been waiting. Accordingly on September 22nd he issued a preliminary declaration giving notice that on January 1, 1865, he would free all slaves in the states still in rebellion, and asserting as before that the object of the war was the preservation of the Union.

The Proclamation as finally issued January 1st is one of the most important public documents in the history of the United States, ranking only below the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution itself. It full text is as follows:

Whereas, on the twenty-second day of September, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-two, a proclamation was issued by the President of the United States containing among other things the following, to-wit: That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any state or designated part of a state, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free; and the executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom. That the Executive will, on the first day of January aforesaid, by proclamation, designate the states and parts of states, if any, in which the people thereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States; and the fact that any state, or the people thereof, shall on that day be in good faith represented in the Congress of the United States, by members chosen thereto at elections wherein a majority of the qualified voters of such state shall have participated, shall, in the absence of strong countervailing testimony, be deemed conclusive evidence that such state, and the people thereof, are not then in rebellion against the United States. Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, by virtue of the power in me vested as Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, in time of actual armed rebellion against the authority and government of the United States, and as a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion, do on this first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and in accordance with my purpose so to do, publicly proclaimed for the full period of one hundred days from the date first above mentioned, order and designate as the states and parts of states wherein the people thereof respectively are this day in rebellion against the United States, the following to-wit: Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana (except the parishes of St. Bernard, Plaquemine, Jefferson, St. John, St. Charles, St. James, Ascension, Assumption, Terre Bonne, Lafourche, Ste. Marie, St. Martin, and Orleans, including the city of New Orleans), Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia (except the forty-eight counties designated as West Virginia, and also the counties of Berkeley, Accomac, Northampton, Elizabeth City, York, Princess Anne, and Norfolk, including the cities of Norfolk and Portsmouth), and which excepted parts are, for the present, left precisely as if this proclamation were not issued. And by virtue of the power and for the purpose aforesaid, I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated states and parts of states are and henceforward shall be free, and that the executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons. And I hereby enjoin upon the people so declared to be free to abstain from all violence, unless in necessary self-defense; and I recommend to them that, in all cases when allowed, they labor faithfully for reasonable wages. And I further declare and make known that such persons, of suitable condition, will be received into the armed service of the United States to garrison forts, positions, stations, and other places, and to man vessels of all sorts in said service. And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution upon military necessity, I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind, and the gracious favor of Almighty God. In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my name, and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed. Done at the City of Washington, this first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the independence of the United States the eighty-seventh. By the President, ABRAHAM LINCOLN. WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State.

It will be observed that the Proclamation was merely a war measure resting on the constitutional power of the President. Its effects on the legal status of the slaves gave rise to much discussion; and it is to be noted that it did not apply to what is now West Virginia, to seven counties in Virginia, and to thirteen parishes in Louisiana, which districts had already come under Federal jurisdiction. All questions raised by the measure, however, were finally settled by the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, and as a matter of fact freedom actually followed the progress of the Union arms from 1863 to 1865.

Meanwhile from the very beginning of the war Negroes were used by the Confederates in making redoubts and in doing other rough work, and even before the Emancipation Proclamation there were many Northern officers who said that definite enlistment was advisable. They felt that such a course would help to destroy slavery and that as the Negroes had so much at stake they should have some share in the overthrow of the rebellion. They said also that the men would be proud to wear the national uniform. Individuals moreover as officers' servants saw much of fighting and won confidence in their ability; and as the war advanced and more and more men were killed the conviction grew that a Negro could stop a bullet as well as a white man and that in any case the use of Negroes for fatigue work would release numbers of other men for the actual fighting.

At last—after a great many men had been killed and the Emancipation Proclamation had changed the status of the Negro—enlistment was decided on. The policy was that Negroes might be non-commissioned men while white men who had seen service would be field and line officers. In general it was expected that only those who had kindly feeling toward the Negro would be used as officers, but in the pressure of military routine this distinction was not always observed. Opinion for the race gained force after the Draft Riot in New York (July, 1863), when Negroes in the city were persecuted by the opponents of conscription. Soon a distinct bureau was established in Washington for the recording of all matters pertaining to Negro troops, a board was organized for the examination of candidates, and recruiting stations were set up in Maryland, Missouri, and Tennessee. The Confederates were indignant at the thought of having to meet black men on equal footing, and refused to exchange Negro soldiers for white men. How such action was met by Stanton, Secretary of War, may be seen from the fact that when he learned that three Negro prisoners had been placed in close confinement, he ordered three South Carolina men to be treated likewise, and the Confederate leaders to be informed of his policy.

The economic advantage of enlistment was apparent. It gave work to 187,000 men who had been cast adrift by the war and who had found no place of independent labor. It gave them food, clothing, wages, and protection, but most of all the feeling of self-respect that comes from profitable employment. To the men themselves the year of jubilee had come. At one great step they had crossed the gulf that separates chattels from men and they now had a chance to vindicate their manhood. A common poster of the day represented a Negro soldier bearing the flag, the shackles of a slave being broken, a young Negro boy reading a newspaper, and several children going into a public school. Over all were the words: "All Slaves were made Freemen by Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, January 1st, 1863. Come, then, able-bodied Colored Men, to the nearest United States Camp, and fight for the Stars and Stripes."

To the credit of the men be it said that in their new position they acted with dignity and sobriety. When they picketed lines through which Southern citizens passed, they acted with courtesy at the same time that they did their duty. They captured Southern men without insulting them, and by their own self-respect won the respect of others. Meanwhile their brothers in the South went about the day's work, caring for the widow and the orphan; and a nation that still lynches the Negro has to remember that in all these troublous years deeds of violence against white women and girls were absolutely unknown.

Whatever might be the questions of the moment, however, about the supreme blessing of freedom there could at last be no doubt. It had been long delayed and had finally come merely as an incident to the war; nevertheless a whole race of people had passed from death unto life. Then, as before and since, they found a parallel for their experiences in the story of the Jews in the Old Testament. They, too, had sojourned in Egypt and crossed the Red Sea. What they could not then see, or only dimly realize, was that they needed faith—faith in God and faith in themselves—for the forty years in the wilderness. They did not yet fully know that He who guided the children of Israel and drove out before them the Amorite and the Hittite, would bring them also to the Promised Land.

To those who led the Negro in these wonderful years—to Robert Gould Shaw, the young colonel of the Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts, who died leading his men at Fort Wagner; to Norwood Penrose Hallowell, lieutenant-colonel of the Fifty-Fourth and then colonel of the Fifty-Fifth; to his brother, Edward N. Hallowell, who succeeded Shaw when he fell; and to Thomas Wentworth Higginson, who commanded the first regiment of freed slaves—no ordinary eulogy can apply. Their names are written in letters of flame and their deeds live after them. On the Shaw Monument in Boston are written these words:

The White Officers Taking Life and Honor in their Hands—Cast their lot with Men of a Despised Race Unproved in War—and Risked Death as Inciters of a Servile Insurrection if Taken Prisoners, Besides Encountering all the Common Perils of Camp, March, and Battle. The Black Rank and File Volunteered when Disaster Clouded the Union Cause—Served without Pay for Eighteen Months till Given that of White Troops—Faced Threatened Enslavement if Captured—Were Brave in Action—Patient under Dangerous and Heavy Labors and Cheerful amid Hardships and Privations. Together They Gave to the Nation Undying Proof that Americans of African Descent Possess the Pride, Courage, and Devotion of the Patriot Soldier—One Hundred and Eighty Thousand Such Americans Enlisted under the Union Flag in MDCCCLXIII-MDCCCLXV.