THE ROAD TO THE ROAD TO EMANCIPATION,EMANCIPATION,

PART 1PART 1

Northern War Aims,1861-1862

November 6, 1860 to March 4, 1861November 6, 1860 to March 4, 1861

Context: Nov: Lincoln elected with no Southern electoral votes

just 39% of the popular vote (54% in the North)

Dec: SC seceded started a chain reaction: six more Deep South states by early

February Feb: seceded states drafted a constitution and formed a

government: the Confederate States of America

Feb: all eight slave states of the Upper South rejected secession

decided to remain in the Union at least until the Republicans took definite action against slavery

1. Lincoln’s Inaugural Address, March 4, 1. Lincoln’s Inaugural Address, March 4,

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Apprehension seems to exist among the people of the southern States that by the accession of a Republican Administration their property and their peace and personal security are to be endangered. There has never been any reasonable cause for such apprehension. Indeed, the most ample evidence to the contrary has all the while existed and been open to their inspection. It is found in nearly all the published speeches of him who now addresses you....

I now reiterate these sentiments, and in doing so I only press upon the public attention the most conclusive evidence of which the case is susceptible that the property, peace, and security of no section are to be in any wise endangered by the now incoming Administration. I add, too, that all the protection which, consistently with the Constitution and the laws, can be given will be cheerfully given to all the States when lawfully demanded, for whatever cause -- as cheerfully to one section as to another.

March 4 to July 4, 1861March 4 to July 4, 1861Context: Problem of federal troops stationed at Southern forts

March: plan of masterly inactivity” undermined by supply issue

April: Lincoln announces supply ships heading for SC

puts burden of aggression on Confederates

April 12-13: Battle of Fort Sumter surrenderApril 15: Lincoln declares the Deep South to be in rebellion and calls on the states for troops to quell itfour of the eight remaining slave states secede and join the Confederacythe remaining four remain in the Union for now

In Maryland, Lincoln suspends habeas corpus and arrests several leading secessionists

2. Lincoln’s Address to Congress, July 2. Lincoln’s Address to Congress, July

4, 18614, 1861This issue embraces more than the fate of these United States. It presents to the whole family of man, the question, whether a constitutional republic, or a democracy – a government of the people, by the same people – can, or cannot, maintain its territorial integrity, against its own domestic foes. It presents the question, whether discontented individuals, too few in numbers to control administration...can...break up their Government, and thus practically put an end to free government upon the earth....

Lest there be some uneasiness in the minds of candid men as to what is to be the course of the Government toward the Southern States after the rebellion shall have been suppressed, the Executive deems it proper to say ... that he probably will have no different understanding of the powers and duties of the Federal Government relatively to the rights of the States and the people under the Constitution than that expressed in the inaugural address....

July 4 to July 25, July 4 to July 25,

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July 21: Confederate forces badly defeated Union forces at the Battle of Bull Run (Manassas)

Upper South and Northern Democratic congressmen feared that the defeat would prompt Republicans to push for abolition

Led by Kentucky Representative John J. Crittenden and Tennessee Senator Andrew Johnson, Congress passed a resolution clarifying Union war aims

3. The Crittenden-Johnson Resolutions, 3. The Crittenden-Johnson Resolutions,

July 25, 1861July 25, 1861Resolved ... That 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 capital; 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 on 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.

July 25 to September 22, 1861July 25 to September 22, 1861 the problem of runaway slaves

no guidance from the Lincoln Administration Gen. Benjamin Butler: “contraband of war”

August 6: Lincoln signed the Confiscation Act

giving Union officers the authority to confiscate all property of rebels

including slaves but set no policy regarding the status of

these slaves

In Missouri, pro-Confederate and pro-Union forces clashed in a series of conventional and guerrilla battles and raids August 30: Union General John C.

Fremont issued a proclamation confiscating rebels’ property and freeing their slaves

Lincoln immediately rescinded the order and soon transferred Fremont

4. Lincoln to Senator O.H. Browning, 4. Lincoln to Senator O.H. Browning, September 22, 1861September 22, 1861

[With regard to the legal confiscation of slaves]: If the General needs them he can seize them, and use them; but when the need is past, it is not for him to fix their permanent future condition. That must be settled according to laws made by lawmakers, and not by military proclamations. The proclamation, in the point in question, is simply "dictatorship." It assumes that the General may do anything he pleases — confiscate the lands and free the slaves of loyal people, as well as of disloyal ones.... Can it be pretended that it is any longer the government of the U. S. — any government of constitution and laws, — wherein a General, or a President, may make permanent rules of property by proclamation?

...So much as to principle.... The Kentucky Legislature would not budge till that proclamation was modified; and ... I was so assured as to think it probable that the very arms we had furnished Kentucky, would be turned against us. I think to lose Kentucky is nearly the same as to lose the whole game. Kentucky gone, we can not hold Missouri, nor as I think, Maryland. These all against us, and the job on our hands is too large for us. We would as well consent to separation at once, including the surrender of this capitol....

September 22 to December 3, 1861September 22 to December 3, 1861 August: George B. McClellan appointed

general-in-chief Fall-Winter: recruiting, equipping, and

training soldiers by February, a 120,000+ man army in DC

September: a Confederate general violated Kentucky neutrality by occupying and fortifying a key railroad junction KY legislature ordered them out and

declared its loyalty to the Union

Fall: Northern defeats on the battlefield minor engagements

Late November: Lincoln proposed that Delaware adopt a gradual emancipation law

offered federal funds for compensating owners

Delaware’s congressional delegates refused the offer

5. Lincoln’s First Annual Message to Congress, 5. Lincoln’s First Annual Message to Congress,

December 3, 1861December 3, 1861

...Under and by virtue of the act of Congress entitled "An act to confiscate property used for insurrectionary purposes," approved August 6, 1861, the legal claims of certain persons to the labor and service of certain other persons have become forfeited, and numbers of the latter thus liberated are already dependent on the United States and must be provided for in some way....

I recommend that steps be taken for colonizing [such persons] at some place or places in a climate congenial to them. It might be well to consider, too, whether the free colored people already in the United States could not, so far as individuals may desire, be included in such colonization.

December 3, 1861, to March 6, December 3, 1861, to March 6,

18621862 December: Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War

formed led by Radical Republicans in both houses of Congress investigations and leaks targeted Democratic army officers

especially McClellanput pressure on Lincoln and the Army to move toward

emancipation would continue to do so all the way through the war

Meanwhile, pressure raised by fugitive slaves increased

Growing questions about what officers should do with themFugitives aided the war effort – volunteering in camp as

laborers, cooks, laundresses, etc. Also served as guides, scouts, and spies

Many Union officers and soldiers becoming convinced that the government must take action against slavery

And wrote home with that opinion

December 3, 1861, to March 6, December 3, 1861, to March 6,

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February-March: Northern military successMcClellan launched his Peninsular Campaign against

RichmondGrant captured two key forts in western Tennessee,

opening the door to central Tennessee, including Nashville

the Navy captured New Orleans

6. Lincoln’s Message to Congress, 6. Lincoln’s Message to Congress,

March 6, 1862March 6, 1862.... In my judgment, gradual, and not sudden emancipation, is better for all. In the mere financial, or pecuniary view, any member of Congress...can readily see for himself how very soon the current expenditures of this war would purchase, at fair valuation, all the slaves in any named State. Such a proposition, on the part of the general government, sets up no claim of a right, by federal authority, to interfere with slavery within state limits....It is proposed as a matter of perfectly free choice with them....

The leaders of the existing insurrection entertain the hope that this government will ultimately be forced to acknowledge the independence of some part of the disaffected region, and that all the slave states North of such part will then say ‘the Union, for which we have struggled, being already gone, we now choose to go with the Southern section.’ To deprive [the rebels] of this hope, substantially ends the rebellion; and the initiation of emancipation completely deprives them of it, as to all the states initiating it.

March 6 to July 12, 1862March 6 to July 12, 1862Confederate Momentum on the BattlefieldTennessee: the Battle of Shiloh

Union victory, but Grant’s army was caught by surprise and almost annihilated; Grant relieved of command

caution and Confederate guerrillas paralyze the Union advance

Louisiana: Navy advance up the Mississippi stalled

Port Hudson

Virginia: McClellan’s Peninsula Campaign

advances toward Richmond at a crawl from February to June

defeated and forced to retreat in the Seven Days’ Battles

7. Appeal to Border State 7. Appeal to Border State Representatives to AcceptRepresentatives to Accept

Compensated Emancipation, July 12, Compensated Emancipation, July 12, 18621862

....In my opinion, if you all had voted for the resolution in the gradual emancipation message of last March, the war would now be substantially ended. And the plan therein proposed is yet one of the

most potent, and swift means of ending it....

If the war continue long, as it must, if the object be not sooner attained, the institution in your states will be extinguished by mere friction and abrasion– by the mere incidents of the war. It will be

gone, and you will have nothing valuable in lieu of it. Much of it's value is gone already. How much better for you, and for your people, to take the step which, at once, shortens the war, and secures substantial compensation for that which is sure to be wholly lost in any other event....

I do not speak of emancipation at once, but of a decision at once to emancipate gradually. Room in South America for colonization, can be obtained cheaply, and in abundance;

and when numbers shall be large enough to be company and encouragement for one another, the freed people will not be so reluctant to go....

8. Initial Draft of a Proclamation on 8. Initial Draft of a Proclamation on Emancipation, July 22, 1862Emancipation, July 22, 1862

 ....I hereby make known that it is my purpose, upon the next meeting of congress, to again recommend the adoption of a practical measure for tendering pecuniary aid to the free choice or rejection, of any and all States which may then be recognizing and practically sustaining the authority of the United States, and which may then have voluntarily adopted, or thereafter may voluntarily adopt, gradual abolishment of

slavery within such State or States – that the object is to practically restore, thenceforward to be maintain[ed], the constitutional relation between the general government, and each, and all the states, wherein that relation is now suspended, or disturbed; and that, for this object, the war, as it has been, will be, prossecuted.

And, as a fit and necessary military measure for effecting this

object, I, as Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy of the

United States, do order and declare that on the first day of January in the year of Our Lord one thousand, eight hundred and sixtythree, all persons held as slaves within any state or states, wherein the constitutional authority of the United States shall not then be

practically recognized, submitted to, and maintained, shall then, thenceforward, and forever, be free.