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.

scholarly journals Historiography and Research Problems of Slavery and the Slave Trade in a Global-Historical Perspective

2012 ◽  
Vol 57 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-111 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Zeuske
Keyword(s):  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Historical Thinking ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
The World ◽  
Slave Women ◽  
Research Problems ◽  
Women And Children

SummaryThis article takes a global-historical perspective on all slaveries and slave trades (and contraband trading of human bodies) in relation to today's state of capitalist accumulation. It follows the different “national” schools of slavery research in different imperial traditions, as well as the sections of historical thinking stimulated through slavery research. Although legal ownership over humans does not exist any more, more women and men are in conditions of slavery today than in any other period of history since 1200. Against this background, the article criticizes the concentration in historiography on “hegemonic” slaveries (antique, Islamic, and American plantation slaveries) and proposes a focus on smaller “slaveries” all over the world (first of all of women and children), and on the agency of slaves and slave women, rather than on “great” slavery in a tradition of “Roman Law”.

Practical Liberators

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristopher A. Teters
Keyword(s):  
Racial Equality ◽  
Union Army ◽  
The West ◽  
Black Soldiers ◽  
Military Necessity ◽  
Army Officers ◽  
Differences Of Opinion ◽  
Emancipation Proclamation ◽  
Pragmatic Strategies ◽  
Internal Strains

During the first fifteen months of the Civil War, the policies and attitudes of Union officers toward emancipation in the western theater were, at best, inconsistent and fraught with internal strains. But after Congress passed the Second Confiscation Act in 1862, army policy became mostly consistent in its support of liberating the slaves in general, in spite of Union army officers' differences of opinion. By 1863 and the final Emancipation Proclamation, the army had transformed into the key force for instituting emancipation in the West. However, Kristopher Teters argues that the guiding principles behind this development in attitudes and policy were a result of military necessity and pragmatic strategies, rather than an effort to enact racial equality. Through extensive research in the letters and diaries of western Union officers, Teters demonstrates how practical considerations drove both the attitudes and policies of Union officers regarding emancipation. Officers primarily embraced emancipation and the use of black soldiers because they believed both policies would help them win the war and save the Union, but their views on race actually changed very little. In the end, however, despite its practical bent, Teters argues, the Union army was instrumental in bringing freedom to the slaves.

An Emancipationist Turn of Policy

2018 ◽  
pp. 36-59
Author(s):  
Kristopher A. Teters
Keyword(s):  
Union Army ◽  
The West ◽  
Border States ◽  
Military Necessity ◽  
Official Policy ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Military

During the second half of 1862, most Union officers in the West adopted more emancipationist policies. They routinely confiscated the slaves of rebels and employed many of them as scouts, spies, laborers, cooks, etc. This became the predominant policy across the several armies operating in the West. Official policy not only authorized confiscation but also made the practice more uniform. In July of 1862, Congress passed the Second Confiscation Act, which allowed for the seizure of any slaves belonging to rebels. At the same time, army commanders such as Samuel Curtis and Benjamin Butler began to realize how slaves could serve the Union army and the military necessity of taking them away from rebels, and developed pro-emancipationist policies and attitudes as a result. Though some radical officers, like John Phelps, were on a mission to eliminate slavery, Butler and many others were simply hard-nosed realists who shifted towards emancipationist policies out of military necessity. There remained conflict over the status of fugitive and confiscated states, mainly in border states like Kentucky and Missouri. Yet on the whole, by the end of 1862, Union armies were much more consistent and emancipationist in their policies.

Restoring the Founding Purposes, 1862

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
William F. Moore ◽  
Jane Ann Moore
Keyword(s):  
Federal Government ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
Abraham Lincoln ◽  
Congressional Committee ◽  
Declaration Of Independence ◽  
Founding Fathers ◽  
Exclusive Jurisdiction ◽  
Border States ◽  
Emancipation Proclamation ◽  
The Right

This chapter examines Abraham Lincoln and Owen Lovejoy's commitment towards holding together the Union while restoring the Founding Fathers' ideology as articulated in the Declaration of Independence. It first considers the debate in the Joint Congressional Committee on the Conduct of the War about who had the right to investigate whether Democratic generals were not sufficiently committed to the Union cause to engage the rebels in battle. It then discusses laws enacted in the Thirty-Seventh Congress with the aim of promoting the nation's welfare; Lovejoy's bill “to secure freedom to all persons within the exclusive jurisdiction of the Federal Government”; Lincoln's proposal for gradual emancipation in the four border states; and the growing friendship between Lincoln and Lovejoy. The chapter also analyzes the Second Confiscation Act; factions within the Republican Party in the House; Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation; and Lovejoy's reelection in 1862. Finally, it addresses the question of whether Lincoln was a radical.

Testing the Boundaries of Marginality: Twentieth-Century Slavery and Emancipation Struggles in Nkanu, Northern Igboland, 1920–29

1996 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-80 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carolyn A. Brown
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Forced Labor ◽  
Historical Study ◽  
Political Equality ◽  
Slave Women ◽  
Colonial Economy ◽  
Women And Children ◽  
Colonial Order ◽  
Labor Requirements ◽  
Reign Of Terror

In 1914 the Enugu Government Colliery and the construction of its railway link to the Biafran coast used slave-owning chiefs as labor recruiters. Although aware of slavery in the Nkanu clan area the state simply outlawed the slave trade and excessive treatment but left it to slaves to secure their ‘freedom’. Nkanu slavery was unusually pervasive, incorporating over half of some villages, with few opportunities for manumission or marriage to the freeborn. Severe ritualistic proscriptions excluded slave men from village politics. But forced labor destabilized slavery, causing unrest which reached crisis proportions in the fall of 1922. The revolt presents a unique opportunity for historical study of the goals, ideology and strategies of indigenous slave populations creating ‘freedom’ within the emergent colonial order.When owners demanded slaves' wages, the slaves resisted and demanded full social and political equality with the freeborn. Slaves who remained in the village struggled to provision Enugu's urban working class. For both slavery hindered opportunities in the colonial economy. In retaliation owners evicted slave families, increased their labor requirements and unleashed a reign of terror, abduction and sacrifice of slave women and children. By the fall of 1922 local government collapsed forcing the state to develop a policy on emancipation. It is significant that this struggle converted the slaves from a scattered subordinate group of patrilineages to an aggressive and cohesive community.

Keeping Faith

2018 ◽  
pp. 179-208
Author(s):  
Amy Murrell Taylor
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Free Space ◽  
Religious Freedom ◽  
The United States ◽  
New School ◽  
United States Colored Troops ◽  
Emancipation Proclamation ◽  
Women And Children ◽  
Over Time

This chapter follows Burdett, and many other enslaved people from Kentucky, into Camp Nelson, a Union supply depot that became a recruiting post for the United States Colored Troops. It emphasizes the constraints faced by those entering the camp in 1863 and 1864, especially due to its location in the Union slaveholding state of Kentucky, which was exempt from the Emancipation Proclamation. Union officials proved more determined to limit the progress of emancipation in this state than in any other exempted region, leading to impressments of men and expulsions of women and children. But Gabriel Burdett still found a free space in which to begin preaching, and over time, with the assistance of missionaries like John Fee, he worked to establish a new school and an independent church at Camp Nelson. By 1865 the camp had become a place to seize and experience the religious freedom that enslaved people like Burdett had long imagined.

Iron and Malaria: Absorption, Efficacy and Safety

2010 ◽  
Vol 80 (45) ◽  
pp. 279-292 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Hurrell
Keyword(s):  
Pathogenic Bacteria ◽  
Intestinal Barrier ◽  
Systemic Circulation ◽  
Malarial Parasite ◽  
Asymptomatic Malaria ◽  
Iron Supplements ◽  
Fortified Food ◽  
Care Giving ◽  
Single Meal ◽  
Women And Children

Febrile malaria and asymptomatic malaria parasitemia substantially decrease iron absorption in single-meal, stable isotope studies in women and children, but to date there is no evidence of decreased efficacy of iron-fortified foods in malaria-endemic regions. Without inadequate malarial surveillance or health care, giving iron supplements to children in areas of high transmission could increase morbidity and mortality. The most likely explanation is the appearance of non-transferrin-bound iron (NTBI) in the plasma. NTBI forms when the rate of iron influx into the plasma exceeds the rate of iron binding to transferrin. Two studies in women have reported substantially increased NTBI with the ingestion of iron supplements. Our studies confirm this, but found no significant increase in NTBI on consumption of iron-fortified food. It seems likely that the malarial parasite in hepatocytes can utilize NTBI, but it cannot do so in infected erythrocytes. NTBI however may increase the sequestration of parasite-infected erythrocytes in capillaries. Bacteremia is common in children with severe malaria and sequestration in villi capillaries could lead to a breaching of the intestinal barrier, allowing the passage of pathogenic bacteria into the systemic circulation. This is especially important as frequent high iron doses increase the number of pathogens in the intestine at the expense of the barrier bacteria.

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