THE EMANCIPATION OF THE SLAVES

(A.D. 1863)

JAMES SCHOULER

OSTERITY, which finds the pathway cleared, must do justice to the humane generation of Americans that hesitated, while considering its honest legal duty. Most admirably did the President himself express Dominant the dominant loyal sentiment of his times, of the day. which forbade that emancipation should sup

sentiment

plant the original cause for taking up arms instead of applying in furtherance of it. "My paramount object in this struggle," as he declared in an oft-quoted letter to Horace Greeley, "is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that." *

But a year of desperate and indecisive conflict had shown to the North God's guidance

*This was written only a month before he issued the preliminary proclamation of emancipation.

Speech

toward new social conditions. Scarcely were Northern troops seen hastening to the defence of John Quincy of the capital, when John Quincy Adams's Adams. speech was recalled and reprinted in Northern presses, with that ominous threat that slaves might be lawfully freed by a constitutional exercise of the war power in case of disloyal rebellion. It was impossible that

the war.

the rebellious States should be invaded at all without making slavery omnipresent in its military aspects. And one point soon became clear, that troops from the free and loyal States were not to be used at the seat of war as slave-catchers or the police of social oppression. Butler, who, though of Democratic and Doughface antecedents, was a quick-witted slavery and politician, read those signs speedily. On reaching Maryland at the first call to arms, he offered the use of his regiments as a Massachusetts brigadier to put down any slave uprising which might occur there, and joined issue through the press with his governor on that subject; but a month later, when in Federal command at Fortress Monroe, he was of all generals zealous to formulate a policy which should compel slavery to endure its own disadvantage. Of slave insurrection there was never a serious danger; but these 'docile children of nature would come flocking into the Union lines like estrays, because the master's hold was loosened. Butler framed the ingenious plea that such fugitives were

Slaves

of war.

contraband of war, since the enemy used the contraband able-bodied slave to build batteries and dig intrenchments. That expression was a happy one, and became immensely popular. "I'se contraband," the grinning runaway was supposed to say to the master who sought to reclaim him; and the idea of self-confiscation tickled so greatly the Northern sense of humor that the chattel was left unsurrendered. For negro freedom was popular enough with the North if only the Constitution were obeyed.

of some Northern generals.

Strict confiscation had in law but a limited Conserva- range; and in the practical denial of a surtiveattitude render for such waifs of bondage our department generals found occasion to differ. Thus, in 1861, while Butler in southeastern Virginia virtually freed the slaves who came to him, Sherman and Buell in Kentucky, Dix in Maryland, and Halleck in Missouri, slave regions less positively disloyal, took a more conservative attitude and ordered slaves kept out of their lines. This latter course avoided, were it possible, all implied obligation of surrendering to loyal masters; for, as Dix wrote, "we have nothing to do with slaves." some rare instances orders issued that fugitives should be restored; but the undercurrent of military practice strengthened in the direction of permitting freedom. The love of curiosity, of novelty, of vagrancy, and his own irrepressible longing for liberty, brought the slave into the Union camps, ragged and shift

In

less; and humanity enjoined that he should be fed and sheltered. Officers kept such negroes as servants or set them to work as cooks, teamsters, and laborers; and when campaigns of invasion began, whole families of slaves were found upon plantations, deserted by their owners and helpless. In the mildest sense of lost and abandoned property government might well have claimed reimbursement for its care and support of such creatures.

A new

Plainly, then, as things tended after the real struggle of civil war began, this Union could never have been restored to its previous condition, as concerned slavery, with that institu- awakening tion strong as before. The awakening of the Northern mind was shown in the second session, in which were debated long and earnestly the new and shifting aspects of this always perplexing problem. Had McClellan's spring campaign in Virginia ended in the speedy capture and downfall of Richmond, a practical, though somewhat negative, emancipation must in the nature of things have largely resulted from his military operations. Public opinion moved onward. A treaty with Win& Great Britain for a joint suppression of the slave-trade, with a mutual right to search suspected merchant vessels, was concluded at Washington in April of the new year. And of other practical measures tending in the same direction, passports were to be granted without distinction of color; Hayti and Li

with Great Britain.

beria gained recognition for diplomatic intercourse; freedom was declared henceforth within all territories of the United States; slavery was eradicated in the District of Columbia by a measure such as Lincoln had proposed years earlier, while in Congress; and the curse was removed from the soil of the nation's capital.

Conscious that this philanthropic drift must continue, the President now procured the sanction of Congress to a general plan of compensated abolition for winning the loyal border States to freedom. A joint resolution of April 10th, which passed Congress at his suggestion, offered the co-operation of government to any State that might emancipate, whether gradually or at once, by giving pecuniary indemnity for the inconvenience, public and private, of changing the system. Recompense, in other words, was offered to the loyal border States, on the principle just applied as of constitutional right in the District of Columbia. Lincoln's message of message of March 6th, solemnly commending such co1862. operation, was meant to avert more violent results, and to tender seasonably to slaveholders the olive branch.

Lincoln's

March 6,

Lincoln was a man of expedients; and, impressed though he was by the moral aspects of the struggle forced upon him, he took anxious care not to foster dissensions among loyal States, nor suffer a strife for the integrity of