Emancipation in Maryland 150: The Maryland Constitution of 1864

150 years ago today, a new constitution for the state of Maryland came into effect, abolishing slavery in the state. This article is a look at how that constitution came into being, and it places the events of 150 years ago in the context of the American Civil War...

The Maryland Monument at Antietam National Battlefield

Baltimore, Maryland. April 19, 1864…

Ladies and Gentlemen—Calling to mind that we are in Baltimore, we can not fail to note that the world moves. Looking upon these many people, assembled here, to serve, as they best may, the soldiers of the Union, it occurs at once that three years ago, the same soldiers could not so much as pass through Baltimore. The change from then till now, is both great, and gratifying. Blessings on the brave men who have wrought the change, and the fair women who strive to reward them for it.

But Baltimore suggests more than could happen within Baltimore. The change within Baltimore is part only of a far wider change. When the war began, three years ago, neither party, nor any man, expected it would last till now. Each looked for the end, in some way, long ere to—day. Neither did any anticipate that domestic slavery would be much affected by the war. But here we are; the war has not ended, and slavery has been much affected—how much needs not now to be recounted. So true is it that man proposes, and God disposes.

But we can see the past, though we may not claim to have directed it; and seeing it, in this case, we feel more hopeful and confident for the future.

The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty, and the American people, just now, are much in want of one. We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men’s labor. Here are two, not only different, but incompatable things, called by the same name—liberty. And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective parties, called by two different and incompatable names—liberty and tyranny.

The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep’s throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as a liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty, especially as the sheep was a black one. Plainly the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of the word liberty; and precisely the same difference prevails to-day among us human creatures, even in the North, and all professing to love liberty. Hence we behold the processes by which thousands are daily passing from under the yoke of bondage, hailed by some as the advance of liberty, and bewailed by others as the destruction of all liberty. Recently, as it seems, the people of Maryland have been doing something to define liberty; and thanks to them that, in what they have done, the wolf’s dictionary, has been repudiated.

President Abraham Lincoln delivered these remarks in Baltimore, Maryland, in April 1864. Just 19 months before, in that same state, Union and Confederate forces clashed at the Battle of Antietam, leading to over 23,000 casualties and becoming forever known as the bloodiest single day in American history. Through all the bloodshed of September 1862 at Antietam, the battle there had afforded President Lincoln an important opportunity—it was a Union victory, as Confederate forces were effectively pushed out of Maryland after the guns fell silent. Five days after Antietam, Lincoln issued his Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, setting the stage for the final version to be signed, issued, and placed into effect on January 1, 1863. The proclamation declared that all slaves in those states then in rebellion would be “then, thenceforward, and forever free.” Yet, as we previously discussed on our blog, Maryland was unaffected by this document because of its status as a Border State. Thus, when Lincoln spoke in Baltimore in April 1864, there was still more work to be done to advance the cause of freedom in Maryland.

A divided Border State during the Civil War, Maryland was the scene of both military and political struggles during the four year conflict. Early in the war, in April 1861, as Southern states were banding together and the onset of war was occurring at Fort Sumter in South Carolina, the people of Maryland were caught up in the middle of the great secession crisis. Maryland shared strong ties with the states of the Southern Confederacy—of the nearly four million slaves in the United States at the time of the Civil War, over 87,000 lived within Maryland’s borders.

With numerous slave states breaking away from the Union in early 1861, Maryland felt the pull of her sister slave states to protect her interests and leave the Union behind. In fact, the same secession commissioners who journeyed through the South during the winter of 1860-1861 preaching secession, states’ rights, and slavery, also made their way to Maryland. In December 1860, Judge Alexander Hamilton Handy from Mississippi addressed large crowds in Annapolis and Baltimore. Handy was born in Maryland but moved to Mississippi several decades before the Civil War. Mississippi’s own declarations of secession made clear the purpose of their cause: "Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world."

In Baltimore on December 19, 1860, Handy spoke with similar language and purpose, declaring, “The moment that slavery is pronounced a moral evil—a great sin—by the general government, that moment the safety of the rights of the South will be entirely gone.” There was no ambiguity; when Handy spoke of Northern Republicans and their intent to “overthrow the constitution and subvert the rights of the South,” the one right above all others which was in jeopardy was that “by which one man can own property in his fellow man.”

Three years later, when Lincoln spoke in Baltimore, enough history to fill three decades had occurred, and the situation in Maryland had changed dramatically. Because of political and military actions, Maryland did not follow the call of other slave states, and it remained in the Union. Lincoln himself was involved with this, suspending Habeas Corpus in Maryland in April 1861, after Union soldiers were attacked coming through Baltimore. General Benjamin Butler declared martial law in Baltimore, and the Maryland legislature’s convention on secession was moved to Frederick, a much more pro-Union location than Baltimore or Annapolis on the Chesapeake.

With Maryland still in the Union, it was a prime target for Confederate forces. In September 1862—with the goal of possibly peeling Maryland away from the Union in mind—Confederate General Robert E. Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia came north looking for a battlefield victory over Union forces on Union soil. His hopes for such a victory were dashed along the banks of Antietam Creek on September 17, in the bloodiest single day in American history. After Antietam, Lincoln issued his Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, and everything changed once again.

After Antietam, pro-Unionists became increasingly powerful in the state of Maryland, taking greater control of the state government. Starting in 1861, Unionists made gains in the Maryland legislature. As a result, pro-Union representatives imposed harsh penalties on those who had Confederate sympathies, including loyalty oaths to the Union as a condition for future voting. Many pro-slavery Democrats fled for the Confederacy, leaving a mixture of conservative and radical Republicans and Unionists in Maryland. Through the course of the war, this mix led to a growing number of abolitionists—men who before the war never dreamed of abolishing slavery began to see it as a positive political move for the state. Of the two factions, two plans emerged.

The conservative plan, headed by Montgomery Blair, suggested a path toward emancipation that involved compensation for slave owners and was drawn out over time. Radicals in the legislature, led by Henry Winter Davis, favored an immediate and total emancipation of slavery in Maryland. In support of this latter plan, Davis declared that slave owners needed no further compensation for slaves, as the lands which had been farmed and cultivated for them for hundreds of years by slave labor was compensation enough. With increased gains in the 1863 elections, pro-abolition forces gained more control and power in the state. A convention was called to write a new constitution for Maryland in early 1864. President Lincoln himself weighed in on the issue, writing, “I am very anxious for emancipation to be effected in Maryland.”

The same month that Lincoln spoke at the Sanitary Fair in Baltimore, Maryland held a constitutional convention. Meeting in Annapolis on April 27, 1864, the convention lasted for several months, wrapping up its work on September 6, two years to the day from when Confederates under Lee came north on their way to Antietam. The end result of the convention was a constitution with provisions declaring the immediate emancipation of all slaves in Maryland. All that was necessary was a public vote, scheduled for October 12, to ratify the new document. Now, for over 80,000 slaves in Maryland, freedom would be determined by the ballot box.

The day of the scheduled vote—when the people of Maryland went to the polls to decide the future of freedom in their state—a major figure who had influenced national policy on slavery for decades passed from the scene. Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court Roger Brooke Taney died on October 12, 1864. The author of the infamous Dred Scott Decision, it was Taney whose words had spelled out the increasing plight of sectionalism and slavery in the years before the Civil War. In the 1857 case, Taney declared that property rights of slave owners precluded any restrictions on where they could and could not take their slaves, seemingly opening the door for slavery to spread throughout the land. Taney’s court had also ruled that blacks were never intended as citizens of the United States, and thus had no right to sue for their freedom. Taney passed at the age of 87—he was born the year after the Declaration of Independence—and his passing served as a reminder that the old Union, one where the Dred Scott decision was issued, was quickly fading, giving way to a new Union that was made possible by the sacrifices of soldiers on the battlefield and political advances throughout the nation.

On October 12 and 13, Marylanders went to the ballot box. Across the state, in the varied political climate of wartime Maryland, individuals decided the fate of the new constitution. In Washington County, where the Battle of Antietam was fought just two years before, the constitution received significant support, with 2,441 for and 1,633 against. Washington county had seen a sharp drop in the number of slaves in the years prior to the Civil War: in 1820, out of a population of 23,075, there were 3,201 slaves and only 627 free blacks. Forty years later, when Lincoln was elected and the secession of the South began, out of 31,417 people, there were 1,435 slaves and 1,677 freed blacks. Clearly, Washington County was a strong example of Maryland’s trend toward being a Unionist state.

Elsewhere, the vote totals did not go as well for the pro-emancipation side. Overall, of the civilians voting in Maryland, the tally was 27,541 for, 29,536 against the new constitution. Based solely on this, the 1864 Constitution would have failed.

However, much as would happen in the presidential election just a few weeks later, the soldier vote made a tremendous impact on the final count. Maryland sent nearly 80,000 men off to war in between 1861 and 1865, many of whom fought for the Union. Of the nearly 60,000 votes that were ultimately cast for the 1864 Constitution, roughly 3,000 were absentee ballots from soldiers in the field. Of that number, 2,633 were in favor if its passage, and only 263 were against. This made the final count 30,174 in favor, and 29,799 against. The 1864 Maryland Constitution passed with a margin of fewer than 400 votes.

On October 29, Governor Augustus Bradford, who had only until recently been opposed to emancipation in his state, declared that the new constitution passed. The document was to take effect on November 1, 1864. On October 31, 1864, Frederick resident Jacob Engelbrecht recorded his feelings in his diary, proclaiming, “The foul blot of slavery will be stricken from the Constitution of Maryland, Huzzah for Liberty!”

The reaction to the new Constitution reflected its importance for the state. In Baltimore, the act was greeted with proclamations and a salute of five hundred guns. The Baltimore American and Commercial Adviser editorialized on the magnitude of the occasion:

This is the birth-day of Maryland freedom. This day the shackles fall from the oppressed within our borders. The bonds are broken forever, and the captive is set free. This is a proud day for Maryland. It is the day of her regeneration. It is the dawn of a new regime and a healthier existence. The triumph of justice is consummated; the aims of a sound economy are satisfied. Henceforth the first of November will be a blessed day in the calendar. It will be commemorated with thanksgiving and praise.

Later that month, Frederick Douglass—a man who was born in Maryland, lived in slavery in Maryland, and successfully escaped from Maryland—spoke in Baltimore on the coming of emancipation within his native state.

What a wonderful change a few short years have wrought! I left Maryland a slave; I return to her a freeman! I left her a slave state; I return to find her clothed in her new garments of Liberty and Justice, a free state! My life has had two crises—the day on which I left Maryland, and the day on which I return… The Common Council and city authorities have promised to be present at the next meeting in Baltimore. I shall be glad to see them. I shall return to them with freedom in my hand, and point to her Free Constitution, and as the olive branch was a sign that the waters of the flood were retiring, so will the freedom which I shall find there be a sign that the billows of slavery are rolling back to leave the law blooming again in the purer air of liberty and justice.

The same day the new constitution took effect, President Lincoln also offered his thoughts on what the day meant for both Maryland and the nation. Addressing a group of free blacks who had gathered at the White House, Lincoln spoke in broad terms, both expressing his joy at the occasion and his desire to see the end of slavery:

It is no secret that I have wished, and still do wish, mankind everywhere to be free. And in the State of Maryland how great an advance has been made in this direction. It is difficult to realize that in a state, where human slavery has existed for ages, ever since a period long before any here were born—by the action of her own citizens—the soil is made forever free. I have no feeling of triumph over those who were opposed to this measure and who voted against it, but I do believe that it will result in good in the white race as well as to those who have been made free by this action of emancipation….

Lincoln’s words described the magnitude of the event, placing it in historical context. An institution which had held people as slaves for generations had been eradicated by the people of a slave holding state. Certainly, the vote was close, and it had required the soldier vote to push over the margin of victory, but the political process had resulted in a move toward freedom in Maryland.

Yet, while these oft quoted remarks are indeed a reminder of how important the Maryland Constitution was, perhaps Lincoln’s remarks the day before, on October 31, 1864, while addressing the soldiers of the 42nd Massachusetts, are yet an even more fitting summation to the story of freedom finally arriving in Maryland. As Lincoln spoke to the men from Massachusetts, soldiers whose enlistments were coming to an end, he praised them and those like them who had served in the long and grueling war. Lincoln was sure to note the link between service and sacrifice on the battlefield and the advance of freedom across the nation. Without battles such as Antietam, fought within the state of Maryland, the momentous occasion would not have occurred. Lincoln said as much when speaking to the soldiers:

Tonight, midnight, slavery ceases in Maryland, and this state of things in Maryland is due greatly to the soldiers. Again I thank you for the services you have rendered the country.

Without the measures to keep Maryland in the Union, the bloodshed of Antietam, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the political maneuvering by radicals and Republicans, the new constitution of 1864 would have never been possible in the state of Maryland. The constitution was not perfect—it still only allowed while males the right to vote—but it was a major step in a state that just a few years before had seriously considered joining the Confederate States of America, which itself had a constitution forever protecting the institution of slavery. The Maryland Constitution was in some ways a precursor for the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution in 1865. It reminds us that the long road towards freedom and progress is always complicated, never easy, and only made possible through hard work and sacrifice.

Sources:

Burlingame, Michael. Abraham Lincoln: A Life. Volume 2. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008.

Dew, Charles. Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 2001.

Flood, Charles Bracelen. 1864: Lincoln at the Gates of History. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2009.

Foner, Eric. The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2010.

Levine, Bruce. The Fall of the House of Dixie: The Civil War and the Social Revolution that Transformed the South. New York: Random House, 2013.

Mitchell, Charles, ed. Maryland Voices of the Civil War. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007.

Oakes, James. Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States, 1861-1865. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2013.

Emancipation in Maryland 150: Antietam and the Emancipation Proclamation

150 years ago today, the people of Maryland went to the polls to vote on a new constitution that would abolish slavery throughout the state. This post is the first of a series on freedom in Maryland. Today, we look at Antietam and the Emancipation Proclamation, and why there was a need for a new state constitution 150 years ago.

The Maryland State Monument at Antietam National Battlefield

The Battle of Antietam, fought Sept 17, 1862, was a epochal moment in American history. Its claims to fame and notoriety are numerous, ranging from the human cost of the battle—over 23,000 casualties in one day, being the bloodiest day in American history—to its impact on the nation at large.

On July 22, 1862, during a Cabinet meeting in Washington, President Abraham Lincoln introduced a potential emancipation proclamation, freeing the slaves in the southern states in rebellion. Lincoln presented the document by stating that he had decided to issue it, but was open to advice on when and how to declare the slaves to be free. After much discussion, Secretary of State William Seward suggested that the president wait for a military victory; the summer of 1862 had many setbacks for Federal forces, and issuing such a measure amidst defeat, Seward suggested, could give the proclamation an appearance of a desperate move. Lincoln thought this advice to be wise, and thus decided to wait for a Union victory before issuing his proclamation.

During the Maryland Campaign, in the weeks leading up to Antietam, President Abraham Lincoln was awaiting the outcome of the impending battle with great anxiety. Lincoln had made a solemn promise to himself and to God.  He decided that should Union forces successfully push Confederates out of Maryland in September 1862, he would then have the military victory necessary to issue his proclamation freeing the slaves in the South. As the armies of Lee and McClellan closed in on the town of Sharpsburg and the banks of Antietam Creek, much more than the fate of the soldiers in the field was at stake. For Lincoln, and for the nation, the future of freedom in the United States hung in the balance. 

On the 17^th of September, over 23,000 men fell as casualties in the Battle of Antietam. On the evening of September 18^th, Confederate forces began to withdraw from Maryland. Once news reached Washington of the final Confederate withdrawal, Lincoln made some final edits on his proclamation, and decided to go forward with emancipation. Two months to the day from when Lincoln first announced that he would issue the document, he finally went ahead with the measure. On September 22, 1862, as a direct result of the bloodshed at Antietam, Lincoln issued his preliminary proclamation.

In what is arguably the greatest single presidential action in American history, Lincoln’s proclamation declared that, as of January 1, 1863, when he signed the final version, all slaves in those states then in rebellion against the federal government would be “then, thenceforward, and forever free.”

The proclamation was a landmark event, signaling that the war—and indeed the nation—had crossed a point of no return. There was now no possibility of going back to the country as it once was. The Union of 1860 had died alongside the soldiers who were slain at Antietam. Now, the war would be fought for a new and better Union. It would be a Union without slavery. The war had a higher purpose. The link between these events and Antietam give all the more meaning to the casualties who fell on that fateful September day. As one Antietam veteran, Colonel Ezra Carman, said at a monument dedication speech upon the battlefield years later, “On this field died human slavery.”

While all of this is true, the story of the Emancipation Proclamation has another side to it, a more complex one. Throughout the decades, many historians have questioned the efficacy of the proclamation. Its language does not appeal to our hearts and minds, as Lincoln did on other occasions such as the dedication of the cemetery at Gettysburg on November 19, 1863. Rather, the Emancipation Proclamation was a legal document with precise and somewhat dry specifics. Esteemed historian Richard Hofstadter noted that the proclamation had “the moral grandeur of a bill of lading.”

While the proclamation was a broad, powerful, and important statement, it still left some questions unanswered and did have some limitations, as any legal document would. Lincoln issued this document as a result of his authority as commander-in-chief. Along these lines, Lincoln was freeing slaves according to their status as “rebel property” during the war. Therefore, the proclamation was in a sense limited to the scope of the war. Once the war was over, questions would emerge regarding the status of those impacted by the proclamation. Slavery itself still needed to be abolished throughout the Union—a task that was completed in 1865 with the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Thus, the constitutional status of these slaves was still to be determined. Lincoln wrote in the proclamation that the government would “recognize and maintain” slaves’ freedom, but more work was still needed in that regard.

Perhaps the greatest issue of limitations with the Emancipation Proclamation has to do with where it applied and where it did not. Because the proclamation was issued as a war measure, President Lincoln could only apply it to areas that were actually in rebellion against the Union. Thus, those portions of the South that were held by Union forces on January 1, 1863, were excluded. The presence and movement of the Union army would ultimately bring freedom to those in these territories, as the proclamation ultimately empowered the armed forces of the Union to become armies of liberation.

Also excluded from the direct impact of the proclamation were the slave holding states that remained in the Union during the war. Known as Border States, Missouri, Kentucky, Delaware, and Maryland were a collective source of great consternation, frustration, and worry for both Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis. Each leader watched the actions of these states carefully, hoping and wishing that they would influence the war one way or another. In fact, one of the primary reasons why Lincoln did not declare emancipation sooner was that he was terribly worried over the impact a proclamation could have on the Border States. With slavery still present in these areas, and with their geographic locations being crucial to the outcome of the war, Lincoln had to walk a fine line regarding his policies in theses states. If Lincoln were to act too soon or too strongly in bringing freedom to slaves, a state such as Maryland could break away from the Union and join the Confederacy. In that event, Washington D.C., the Federal capital, would be located between two Confederate states, and the war—and the Union—would surely be lost. Thus, throughout the war, Lincoln had to create his policy regarding slavery with one eye towards his personal goal of emancipation and the political realities of the Border States.

And thus, one of the great ironies of the battle of Antietam was that it was perhaps the single most important battle of the war when it came to influencing national policy regarding slavery and freedom, yet there were still limits. Antietam was the battle that led to the Emancipation Proclamation, a document which did not apply to the state where the battle was fought—Maryland.

Is all this to say that the Emancipation Proclamation was unimportant? Certainly not. In fact, the Emancipation Proclamation still remains a tremendously important document in American history. It set a standard for expanding freedom throughout the nation during the Civil War, a standard that ultimately led to forever eradicating slavery in the United States. Yet, just as the Declaration of Independence declared the thirteen colonies to be free and sovereign states, the job was not yet finished. George Washington and the Continental Army still had to endure the long, grueling, and perilous war to finally secure the independence and freedom of the United States of America. Both the Declaration of Independence and the Emancipation Proclamation promised freedom to millions—more work was still needed in each case to turn that promise of freedom into the reality of freedom. That work involved Union forces continuing on in the war, the government continuing to pass legislation expanding freedom for slaves and free blacks, and the various states enacting measures impacting slavery within their own borders.

This work, as Lincoln saw it, was crucial not just for those who were held as slaves, but for the nation as a whole. In December 1862, at the conclusion of his annual message to Congress, Lincoln included a plea to the nation to continue with the struggle for freedom during the war.

Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation. We say we are for the Union. The world will not forget that we say this. We know how to save the Union. The world knows we do know how to save it. We -- even we here -- hold the power, and bear the responsibility. In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free -- honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth. Other means may succeed; this could not fail. The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just -- a way which, if followed, the world will forever applaud, and God must forever bless.

Thus, even with the Emancipation Proclamation, more work was still needed. While the events of 152 years ago at Antietam led to the Emancipation Proclamation, the events of 150 years ago within Maryland carried the mission of freedom the rest of the way for the slaves in this crucial Border State. In 1864, an event occurred in Maryland which overcame the legal and practical restrictions of the Emancipation Proclamation, and it happened in a way that was reflective of politics during the Civil War. 150 years ago today, citizens in the state of Maryland voted to either approve or reject a new constitution which would abolish slavery within its borders. 

Let’s learn more about how this amazing event came to occur 150 years ago, and how it fits in with the broader story of slavery and freedom during the Civil War. Stay tuned to our blog for more on this historic anniversary of emancipation in Maryland.

Emancipation and the Union Army: Part 2

The Pivot of the War: Emancipation and the Union Army

Part 2

Tom Nank,

Interpretation Intern, CWI, Gettysburg College

(This is the second of a two part series on the impact of the Emancipation Proclamation and African American troops on the Union army. Part 1 can be found here.)

            On January 1, 1863, 100 days after issuing the preliminary version, Abraham Lincoln signed and finalized the Emancipation Proclamation. This document declared that all slaves in the states in rebellion would be forever free. The Proclamation also called for the enlistment of regiments of black soldiers led by white officers.  Whether Union soldiers liked it or not, the war had taken on a larger meaning.  Reaction in the camps to the Proclamation varied widely.  Most viewed emancipation as favorable to the Union war effort, but did not immediately embrace abolition of slavery on moral or ethical grounds.  A New York Sunday Mercury newspaper circulating in army camps in early February 1863, one month before the Enrollment Act established the first national draft, displayed an article titled “The Negro Soldiers Bill”.  The article stated that “the Negroes should be made to fight.  The North has sacrificed hundreds of thousands of her brave and generous sons.  No further drain can be made on the white population without withdrawing from society its chief pillars of support… It would be preposterous to draft white men to fight, while hosts of the sable sons of Africa are ready to be transformed into soldiers, and whose services the Government has a right to claim.” 

            In the officer ranks of the Army of the Potomac, the Union army with the closest proximity to the nation’s capital, opinions were divided between rear-echelon, anti-Lincoln, pro-George B. McClellan loyalists on one side, and those mostly junior officers who had seen the war up close and were more likely to see Lincoln’s true purpose on the other.  Major General Fitz-John Porter, V Corps commander, was the political soul-mate of his superior McClellan.  Porter wrote to a friendly New York World newspaper reporter after issuance of the Proclamation: “The proclamation was ridiculed in the Army -- caused disgust, discontent, and expressions of disloyalty to the views of the administration and amount, I have heard, to insubordination.”  Soldiers did their best, Porter claimed, only to see their efforts “upset by the absurd proclamations of a political coward.”  A New York Herald correspondent, traveling with McClellan’s army, wrote that if the sampling of the officers he talked to was at all typical, emancipation “will go far towards producing an expression on the part of the Army that will startle the Country and give us a Military Dictator.”¹  Other soldiers had a different view.  In the same army camp, Colonel Charles Fessenden Morse of the 2nd Massachusetts Infantry, a battle-hardened veteran of the Peninsula Campaign, the Shenandoah Valley and Antietam, wrote of the Proclamation:

            I believe its effect will be good. It is going to set us straight with foreign nations. It gives us a decided policy, and though the President carefully calls it nothing but a war measure, yet it is the beginning of a great reform and the first blow struck at the real, original cause of the war. No foreign nation can now support the South without openly countenancing slavery.²

            Colonel Rufus R. Dawes, commanding the 6th Wisconsin Infantry, a veteran of some of the most horrific fighting at Antietam and Gettysburg, saw clearly that Lincoln’s masterstroke had given meaning to the war.  In December 1863, after Lincoln’s Annual Message to Congress, he wrote that Emancipation “must command the respect of the world, and inspire confidence in the ultimate success of a cause so firmly planted on the right.  If the full success we hope shall crown our struggle and slavery with rebellion be swept from the land… All hail to old Abe!”³   The enlisted men, in small numbers at first but in larger numbers over time, seemed to understand the effect of the Proclamation on the war.  Private John B. Kay of Woodhall, Michigan, serving in the 6th Michigan Cavalry wrote: “Life has to be taken to preserve the Union [and] slavery has to be abolished to save the Union.”⁴  A week after the Proclamation was issued, Oliver Norton, from the 83rd Pennsylvania Infantry, wrote to his sister back in Springfield: “I approve of the proclamation, but I don't think it is going to scare the South into submission.  I think it will result in the total overthrow of slavery, but next winter will witness scenes so bloody that the horrors of the French Revolution will be peace in comparison to it.  If the South will have it so, the blood be on her own head.  Seward was right -- the ‘irrepressible conflict’ will continue till freedom or slavery rules the nation.”⁵

            In late 1862, the first black regiments, including Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson’s 1st South Carolina, began organizing and training.  On May 22, 1863, the War Department established the "Bureau of Colored Troops" to facilitate the recruitment of African-American soldiers to fight.  Regiments and batteries of infantry, cavalry, engineers and artillery were recruited across the Union.  The colored soldiers knew what they were in for if they were captured.  The Rebel army frequently executed black prisoners, and Confederate President Jefferson Davis ordered that captured white officers leading black troops be charged with “inciting servile insurrection”, a crime punishable by death.⁶  By mid-1863, white soldiers were not the only ones demonstrating heroism and valor on the battlefield.  Black soldiers were earning their blue uniforms in Union armies east and west.  General Nathaniel P. Banks, commanding forces in Louisiana, spoke highly of black troops under his command at Port Hudson in May of 1863.  “On the extreme right of our line I posted the First and Third regiments of negro troops… The position occupied by these troops was one of importance, and called for the utmost steadiness and bravery.  It gives me great pleasure to report they answered every expectation.  Their conduct was heroic.  No troops could be more determined or more daring.  Whatever doubt may have existed before as to the efficiency of organizations of this character, the history of this day proves conclusively that the Government will find in this class of troops effective supporters and defenders.”⁷  In General Ulysses S. Grant’s Army of the Tennessee facing Vicksburg, Mississippi at Milliken’s Bend, Captain M. Miller, Commander of Company I, 9th Louisiana Colored Troops, wrote to his aunt about his unit’s experience in combat.  “Two of my colored sergeants were killed, both brave, noble men; always prompt, vigilant, and ready for the fray.  I never more wish to hear the expression, ‘The [blacks] wont fight.’  Come with me 100 yards from where I sit and I can show you the wounds that cover the bodies of 16 as brave, loyal, and patriotic soldiers as ever drew bead on a rebel.”⁸   By late 1864, black soldiers and their white officers were suffering and dying together.  Major General Henry Thomas led a Union colored brigade into battle at the Crater in the siege lines outside Petersburg, Virginia in July, 1864.  He was clearly proud of his men, white officers and black soldiers alike, and moved by their valor, mentioning them by name as he watched them fall:

            My brigade moved gallantly on the right over the bombproofs and over the men of the First Division.  As we mounted the pits, a deadly enfilade from eight guns on our right and a murderous crossfire of musketry met us.  Among the officers, the first to fall was the gallant Fessenden of the 23rd Regiment.  Ayers and Woodruff of the 31st dropped within a few yards of Fessenden.  Ayers being killed, and Woodruff mortally wounded.  Liscomb of the 23rd then fell to rise no more; and then Hackhiser of the 28th and Flint and Aiken of the 29th.  Major Rockwood of the 19th then mounted the crest and fell back dead with a cheer on his lips.  Nor were these all; for at that time hundreds of heroes ‘carved in ebony’ fell.  These black men commanded the admiration and respect of every beholder.⁹

            Casualties were horrific.  The 29th U.S. Colored Infantry entered the attack with 450 troops and exited with 128.¹⁰   Old racial prejudices would die hard, however.  The senior army command held a different view of the unit’s assault on the Crater: Thomas’s men and other black troops were blamed for the defeat.¹¹

            In the end, African American troops were critical to the Union war effort.  By the end of the war, one-tenth of the men in the Union armies were black soldiers.  Most had been slaves two years earlier.  Lincoln himself acknowledged the contribution of former slaves fighting to earn the freedom that had been given them.  “Any different policy in regard to the colored man,” Lincoln said, “deprives us of his help, and this is more than we can bear.  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… Keep it and you can save the Union.  Throw it away, and the Union goes with it.”¹²  There was something more important, however, than blacks serving as a combat force-multiplier.  In Army Life in a Black Regiment, Colonel Thomas Higginson summarized the importance of black regiments during the war:

            We who served with the black troops have this peculiar satisfaction, that, whatever dignity or sacredness the memories of the war may have to others, they have more to us. The peculiar privilege of associating with an outcast race, of training it to defend its rights and to perform its duties, this was our especial meed... We had touched the pivot of the war. Whether this vast and dusky mass should prove the weakness of the nation or its strength, must depend in great measure, we knew, upon our efforts. Till the blacks were armed, there was no guaranty of their freedom. It was their demeanor under arms that shamed the nation into recognizing them as men.¹³

            Higginson, the other white officers who led black soldiers, and the white soldiers who fought beside them, had done much more.  They had let them fight for the right to live as free men.

Notes:

1.             Stephen W. Sears, George B. McClellan: The Young Napoleon (New York: Ticknor & Fields, 1988), 325.

2.             Charles Fessenden Morse, letter in private collection, October 6, 1862, Maryland Heights, privately published, 1898.

3.             Rufus R. Dawes, A Full Blown Yankee of the Iron Brigade: Service with the Sixth Wisconsin Volunteers (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1962), 230.

4.             Bak, Distant Thunder, 47.

5.             Oliver Wilcox Norton, to sister, September 29, 1862, Sharpsburg Ferry MD, Army Letters, Chicago IL, 1903.

6.             James B. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 566.

7.             Henry Carey Baird, Gen. Banks on the Bravery of Negro Troops (Philadelphia: 1863), OpenLibrary.org edition, accessed 1 December 2013.  https://openlibrary.org/books/OL6549622M

8.             Manning, A Vexed Question, 47.

9.             Henry Goddard Thomas, “The Colored Troops at Petersburg” in Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, Volume IV (Century Magazine), 564.

10.          Joseph Glatthaar, The Civil War’s Black Soldiers (Eastern National Publishing, for the National Park Service, 2007), accessed 30 November 2013.  http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/civil_war_series/2/sec1.htm

11.          Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Series I, Volume XL, Operations in Southeast Virginia & North Carolina, June 13 - July 31, 1864, Part 1, p. 166.

12.          Glatthaar, Black Soldiers.

13.          Higginson, Army Life, 206.

Emancipation and the Union Army: Part 1

The Pivot of the War: Emancipation and the Union Army, Part 1

By Tom Nank,

Interpretation Intern, CWI, Gettysburg College

            On September 17, 1862, one of the great battles in history was fought near the banks of Antietam Creek. On that day alone, over 23,000 men fell killed, wounded, and missing in action in the span of just twelve hours.

            Union General George B. McClellan’s success at Antietam in September 1862 had finally given President Abraham Lincoln the battlefield victory he wanted.  Lincoln was ready that July to change the face of the war.  He knew that the increasingly long casualty lists must come to mean more than a simple reunion of the states that existed before his election.  Lincoln knew, finally, once and for all, there was an opportunity that summer of 1862 to bring to an end 86 years of argument, compromise and delay on the issue of slavery in the United States.  The time was now, not just militarily but morally, to emancipate the slaves in areas in rebellion against the government.  With victory finally in hand, Lincoln issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, five days after Antietam.  Almost as an afterthought, the last clause of the final version of the Proclamation, effective January 1, 1863, provided also that “such persons of suitable condition will be received into the armed service of the United States”.  This would effectively double the offensive punch of the Proclamation: not only would the freed slaves and their labor be subtracted from the southern war effort, but they would also be armed and added to the Union ranks to fight rebel armies.  How, or whether at all, the Union armies that year would welcome African American soldiers would be critical to the winning of the war to preserve Lincoln’s new United States.

            In Army Life in a Black Regiment, Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson, the commander of the colored 1st South Carolina Infantry regiment, the first all-black unit mustered into Union Army service, lamented the intense public focus his new command had generated.  The “constant surveillance”, he wrote, “guaranteed the honesty of any success, while fearfully multiplying the penalties had there been a failure.”  A single mutiny, he continued, “a single Bull Run, a stampede of desertions, and it would have been all over for us; the party of distrust would have got the upper hand, and there might not have been, during the whole contest, another effort to arm the negro.”¹   Higginson was right to be concerned.  For the first time, free African-Americans were being armed, equipped and trained as soldiers in the U. S. Army.  Black leaders, abolitionists and radical Republicans had pushed since the beginning of the war for the enlistment of black soldiers, and Higginson’s regiment was the vanguard of what would ultimately be over 180,000 free blacks and former slaves serving in Union blue.  Not everyone approved of the initiative; bigotry and racial undertones ran strong through the country in the mid-19th century.  Some of the most important members of the “party of distrust” Higginson referred to were white Union soldiers. 

            In April 1861, immediately after the shelling of Fort Sumter, Abraham Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers to suppress the rebellion by the southern states.  Some men joined to fight the Rebels, some men joined to fight for the Union, some joined just to fight.  Songs, posters, parades and newspaper broadsides celebrated patriotism, the Constitution and the founding fathers. Few, if any, of these calls to action mentioned freeing slaves.  In the early days of the war, most men of the Union armies were ambivalent on the issue of slavery.  Some, however, were aware of the importance of the issue as the cause of the conflict.  Sergeant Andrew Walker, a schoolteacher from Illinois, enlisted after Fort Sumter to help the north “forever set aside Slavery.”²  A private in the 2nd Vermont wrote his fiance’ in late 1861, that “slavery was the cause of all our animosities and wranglings and this accursed rebellion… I hope the dark stigma upon our nation may be wiped out.”³  Some believed pre-war North-South political compromise should continue.  Captain Henry Potter, a schoolteacher before joining the 4th Michigan Cavalry, wrote home “I am not willing to fight one moment for Slavery.  Whenever [the rebels] are ready to come back, then I say stop fighting, for God’s sake, and let reason once more be heard on both sides.”⁴  Some, perhaps a majority, openly opposed freedom.  Private Edward H. C. Taylor of the 4th Michigan Infantry wrote home to his family: “When we cease to fight for the Union and begin to fight for Negro equality, I am ready to lay down my arms and will.”  True to his word, Taylor did not reenlist when his 3-year term of enlistment was up.⁵

            Like nothing else could, first-hand exposure to the southern slave-holding aristocracy changed minds.  For many Union soldiers, the fiction of slavery that they had only heard and read about became fact and took on life as the armies moved south.  In a letter home to his family in Buffalo County, Private Chauncey Cook in the 25th Wisconsin Infantry described his interaction with slaves in Union-occupied Kentucky:

            I listened for two hours this morning to the stories of a toothless old slave with one blind eye who had come up the river from near Memphis.  He told me a lot of stuff.  He said his master sold his wife and children to a cotton planter in Alabama to pay his gambling debts, and when he told his master he couldn’t stand it, he was tied to the whipping post, stripped, and given 40 lashes.  The next night he ran into the swamps.  The bloodhounds were put on his track and caught him and pulled him down.  They bit him in the face and put out his eye and crushed one of his hands.  He stripped down his pants and showed me a gash on one of his hips where the hounds dug into him until he nearly bled to death… I told this to some of the boys and they said it was all bosh, that [they] were lying to me.  But this story was just like the ones in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and I believe them.⁶

            By early 1862, as Union armies moved south into the slave states, most soldiers realized that slavery was supporting the southern army’s war effort, and took efforts to stop it where they could.  Union Major General John C. Fremont, on his own initiative, freed the slaves of Missouri secessionists in the Western Division where he commanded.  His order was rescinded as premature, and when he was removed from command, Private Adam Marty of the 1st Minnesota Infantry wondered why the administration had “interfered” with an action that “would soon end this war by removing the cause of it.”⁷   Lieutenant Evan Woodward of the 2nd Pennsylvania Reserves observed up close slaveholders who “preferred a system of labor that gave wealth and luxuriant ease to the few, at the expense of the prosperity and elevation of the masses and the degradation of labor.”⁸  In some cases, the soldier’s views changed over time.  When he enlisted, Jasper Barney and his brother-in-law were both ambivalent about slavery.  Two years into the war, after campaigns in Missouri and Tennessee with the 16th Illinois, Barney wrote his relative: “I was of the same opinion as yourself when I first came in service, but I have learned better.  The war will never come to a close while the Negro is left where they are…. But if we take away the main root of evil and confiscate all their property they will have nothing to fight for.”⁹

            Jasper Barney and Abraham Lincoln were thinking the same thing.  The Emancipation Proclamation later that fall would change everything. 

This is the first of a two part series on the impact of the Emancipation Proclamation on African Americans serving in the Union army during the Civil War.

Notes:

1.             Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Army Life in a Black Regiment, reprint ed. (New York: Penguin Books, 1997), 4.

2.             Andrew J. Walker, to parents, April 1861, Henderson IL, Andrew J. Walker Papers, Library of Congress.

3.             Jerome Cutler, to fiance’ Emily, November 11 1861, Camp Griffin, Fairfax County VA, Jerome Cutler Letters, Vermont Historical Society.

4.             Richard Bak, A Distant Thunder: Michigan in the Civil War (Huron River Press, 2004), 49.

5.             Bak, Distant Thunder, 47.

6.             Chauncey H. Cook, “Letters of a Badger Boy in Blue: Into the Southland,” Wisconsin Magazine of History, IV (1920-1921), 328-329.

7.             Chandra Manning, A Vexed Question: White Union Soldiers on Slavery and Race (University Press of Kentucky: 2007), 35.

8.             Evan M. Woodward, Our Campaigns (Philadelphia: John E. Potter, 1865), 14.

9.             Jasper Barney, to brother-in-law John Dinsmore, October 24, 1862, Mound City Hospital, KS, John C. Dinsmore Letters, Illinois State Historical Library.