“Welcome to the Ransomed”

Less than a week after the carnage at Shiloh, Congress voted to free enslaved people and to compensate slaveowners in Washington, DC. Daniel A. Payne, a bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, visited President Lincoln and encouraged him to sign the bill, which he did on April 16, 1862. That same week, Payne preached his most influential sermon, Welcome to the Ransomed, or, Duties of the Colored Inhabitants of the District of Columbia. Lincoln impressed Payne as a man of “real greatness.” High praise for Lincoln would be in short supply, especially from African Americans. Lincoln had wavered on emancipation, many believed, and he needed to pursue a harder war focused on abolishing slavery. The war grew in intensity, and so did debates over slavery’s role in the conflict. Through this phase of the war, Americans turned to scripture to defend an even more brutal war for and against emancipation.