A Glimpse at History

President Lincoln is known as the “Emancipator”. He freed the slaves. But, I have some questions and many concerns about the use of this term when we speak about our 16th president. I am interested in hearing your reaction to the information contained in this blog after you read what I have uncovered during my research. It is another reason I continue to dig for the truth. It has become so evident to me that the North invented the notion that the war was about slavery and not the deeply rooted reasons previously descussed in part 1-3 civil war blogs.

Remember that at the signing of the Declaration of Independence, there were slaves in every state. There was no law ever passed in the North that granted freedom to a person already in slavery. According to record, all people who were slaves when the law was passed would remain slaves.  For the slave to become free, in New Jersey, for example, he or she would have to be born after 1804 and have reached the age of twenty-one years. A slave woman who was fifteen in 1804 would remain a slave for life. If, at the age of thirty (the year being 1829), she gave birth to a child, that child had to live in bondage until the age of twenty-one years (in 1850) before it would be free. Now the mother in that year was still a slave.1 If the North was indeed the land of equality and freedom then why didn’t it do away with slavery in one quick move? By freeing only the people born into slavery after a certain time and age, the North protected and recognized the Master’s right in his property.

Now, knowing that….Let’s try to get to know Lincoln a little bit through reading his various speeches and reponses to situations. For example, Lincoln’s white supremacist ideas are a well-kept secret and can be found within an 1858 debate. Lincoln made the following statements:

“I will say, that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in anyway the social and political equality of the white and black races-that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with the white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races…I, as much as any other man, am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.”2

This is clear to me that not only did he believe in white supremacy, but also in the strict seperation of races at least before the war. Before he saw a device, such as the issue of slavery, as a band wagon he could get the common, Northern uneducated man to join in order to gain support which perpetuated men to join up to fight. Without this, the war was a political one only understood by the educated.

The Emancipation Proclamation was not designed to free the slaves. A closer reading of it shows that Lincoln freed only those slaves who were held within any state or designated part of a State the people shall then be in rebellion against the United States.3  In other words, he declared free only those slaves over whom he had no control. but what about all of the slaves in those states or portions of states in which Lincoln had control and supposedly could have declared free? Not one single word! In fact, the six parishes of Louisiana that were under Northern control at that time were specifically excluded form this supposedly great document of freedom, as were the forty-eight counties designated as West Virginia! The proclamation states that these excepted areas are left precisely as if this proclamation were not issued.4

Now, on the subject of Lincoln as the protector of “Liberty” let us look at the fact that he removed habeas corpus and then moved to silence his critics in the North, not in the South. Some writers place the number of Lincoln’s political prisoners as high as forty thousand. They were held indefinitely without knowing the charges, if any, was being brought against them. Many of their families didn’t even know, where they were. Over three hundred newspapers and journals were shut down by executive order.

General Ulysses S. Grant’s wife held personal slaves at the beginning of the war and during the war. The slaves were freed, but not by the Emancipation Proclamation. They were freed by the Thirteenth Amendment passed after the war.5 According to the Gray book, as I have cited before in references categorized under works cited,when Grant was asked why he did not free his slaves, he responded by saying, “good help is so hard to come by these days.” Can you imagine what CNN would do with that comment today?

It is just shocking to me that after all of the history we have encountered in school that portrays Lincoln as “The Man Who Freed The Slaves,”  “The Great Emanicipator”, “The Protector of Liberty” it is in fact, no more than a Northern Myth….. To the victor go the spoils? ….I am beginning to believe it is the collection of misinformation that we have been fed all of our lives, that has lead to Southerners not being able to be publically proud of their heritage. They have been forced to take down their flags, destroy their statues, quit playing the song “Dixie” (which was written by a Northern Man) and rename their streets. Let’s be fair and give both sides their fair share of blame and their fair share of credit for shaping the country. Southerners have the right to their heritage, and the right to be proud of it, as does any other race or religion. Their heritage was not based on the perpetuation of slavery as we have been taught in our history books in school, it was a more deeply rooted collection of problems that started long before the war. None of us have the right to deny them their past. Before denying anyone the right to be proud of where they come from…let us all, first, become educated about what we speak against.

Let us all live Civil…ly

Works Cited:

1  R.L. Dabney, A Defense of Virginia and the South (Sprinkle Publications, Harrisburg, VA; 1977), p.85 

2  Abraham Lincoln, as cited in The Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858, edited by R.W. Johannsen (Oxford University Press, New York, NY; 1965), pp. 162-63

3  Abraham Lincoln, “Emancipation Proclamation” as cited in The Gray Book, sons of confederate Veterans, p9

4  Ibid

5  Ibid p.36 

Filed under: Civil War Blogs by Savannah Meade