Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation

2020 ◽  
pp. 176-186
Keyword(s):  
Emancipation Proclamation

scholarly journals “The Negro's Peculiar Work”: Jim Crow and Black Discourses on US Empire, Race, and the African Question, 1877–1900

2018 ◽  
Vol 52 (2) ◽  
pp. 330-357 ◽  
Author(s):  
JEANNETTE EILEEN JONES
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
South Carolina ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
West Indians ◽  
Present Generation ◽  
Take Back ◽  
The Us ◽  
Emancipation Proclamation ◽  
Keynote Speech

In 1887, T. Thomas Fortune published an editorial, “The Negro's Peculiar Work,” in the black newspaper theNew York Freeman, wherein he reflected on a recent keynote speech delivered by Reverend J. C. Price on 3 January in Columbia, South Carolina, to commemorate Emancipation Day. Price, a member of the Zion Wesley Institute of the AME Zion Church, hailed from North Carolina and his denomination considered him to be “the most popular and eloquent Negro of the present generation.” On the occasion meant to reflect on the meaning of the Emancipation Proclamation (which went into effect on 1 January 1863) for present-day African Americans, Price turned his gaze away from the US towards Africa. In his speech “The American Negro, His Future, and His Peculiar Work” Price declared that African Americans had a duty to redeem Africans and help them take back their continent from the Europeans who had partitioned it in 1884–85. He railed,The whites found gold, diamonds, and other riches in Africa. Why should not the Negro? Africa is their country. They should claim it: they should go to Africa, civilize those Negroes, raise them morally, and by education show them how to obtain wealth which is in their own country, and take the grand continent as their own.Price's “Black Man's Burden” projected American blacks as agents of capitalism, civilization, and Christianity in Africa. Moreover, Price suggested that African American suffering under slavery, failed Reconstruction, and Jim Crow placed them in a unique position to combat imperialism. He was not alone in seeing parallels between the conditions of “Negroes” on both sides of the Atlantic. Many African Americans, Afro-Canadians, and West Indians saw imperialism in Africa as operating according to Jim Crow logic: white Europeans would subordinate and segregate Africans, while economically exploiting their labor to bring wealth to Europe.

The Political Culture of Emancipation: Morality, Politics, and the State in Garrisonian Abolitionism, 1854–1863

1995 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 159-184
Author(s):  
Mark Voss-Hubbard
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
National Government ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Moral Purpose ◽  
Individual Liberty ◽  
Federal Authority ◽  
Emancipation Proclamation

Historians have long recognized the unprecedented expansion of federal power during the Civil War. Moreover most scholars agree that the expansion of federal power manifested itself most immediately and profoundly in the abolition of slavery. In a sense, through the Emancipation Proclamation, the Republican administration injected the national government into the domain of civil rights, and by doing so imbued federal power with a distinct moral purpose. The passage of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments codified this expression of federal authority, rejecting the bedrock tenet in American republican thought that centralized power constituted the primary threat to individual liberty.

A Practical Army of Liberation

2018 ◽  
pp. 106-132
Author(s):  
Kristopher A. Teters
Keyword(s):  
Moral Reasons ◽  
Border States ◽  
Military Necessity ◽  
Slave Women ◽  
Emancipation Proclamation ◽  
Women And Children

After the final Emancipation Proclamation went into effect in January 1863, western armies generally liberated slaves quite vigorously. But always driving this emancipation policy first and foremost were practical military considerations. Many officers supported emancipation because it would help win the war, and this was exactly how they carried out the policy. As much as possible, officers focused on freeing slaves for the army’s benefit, often targeting able-bodied men who could be of most use as teamsters, pioneers, laborers, and soldiers. Given these military priorities, officers frequently saw the slave women and children flocking to their camps as a military burden and usually sent them to hellish contraband camps or to labor for wages on plantations. In the politically sensitive border states of Kentucky and Missouri, emancipation was especially slow and conflict ridden. Yet even there, military necessity forced commanders to eventually adopt increasingly emancipationist policies. A few officers did support emancipation for moral reasons, but moral imperatives had very little influence on emancipation policies in the field. Officers’ prevailing racial beliefs help explain why many of them were more concerned with former slaves’ ability to help the army than with their welfare.

Looking for Chamberlain

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-7
Author(s):  
Kristopher A. Teters
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Racial Attitudes ◽  
American Civil War ◽  
Military Strategy ◽  
Early Stages ◽  
Fugitive Slaves ◽  
Historical Literature ◽  
Emancipation Proclamation ◽  
Freed Slaves

This study challenges much of the current historical literature about the American Civil War by arguing that western Union officers carried out a practical emancipation policy as part of a pragmatic military strategy, rather than an idealistic moral opposition to slavery. While officers came to accept emancipation as a useful instrument to win the war, their racial attitudes changed very little. In the early stages of the war, the army’s policies towards fugitive slaves were inconsistent and influenced by an officer’s individual attitudes toward slavery. The Second Confiscation Act of 1862 and the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 caused a shift in army policy to become more consistent and emancipationist. Officers, however, carried out emancipation primarily for the army’s benefit, as freed slaves could help the army as pioneers, laborers, servants, and soldiers. Union officers were committed to winning the war and saving the Union, and emancipation proved a practical policy to accomplish these goals.

Slavery Must Die

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Myers Asch ◽  
George Derek Musgrove
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Public Debate ◽  
Black Migration ◽  
Emancipation Proclamation ◽  
The City

This chapter describes the increasingly bold efforts by local abolitionists to challenge slavery and the slave trade in Washington, as well as the attempts by local white leaders to protect slavery and discourage black migration to the city. Washington served as a central stage in the growing national drama over slavery. Despite Congress’s attempt to squelch public debate with the “gag rule,” the question of slavery in the nation’s capital would not die. Frustrated abolitionists, unable to overcome what they called the “Slave Power,” went “underground” to help Washington-area slaves escape to freedom. As more and more enslaved people “absconded” (the term often used in advertisements for fugitives), city leaders struggled to preserve the peculiar institution by capturing and punishing runaways. With the nation tilting ominously toward civil war, slavery’s opponents and its defenders placed Washington on the front lines of the struggle over human bondage in America. The chapter culminates with the emancipation of D.C.’s 3,100 enslaved people in April 1862, more than eight months before the Emancipation Proclamation.

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