Posted on 06/25/2002 10:40:23 AM PDT by TexConfederate1861
The Emancipation Proclamation, more than any act, exposes the real President Lincoln and hits at the core of why the mythical day of June 19 is celebrated.
Issued on the 22nd day of September in 1862, [the Emancipation Proclamation] stated that on the first day of January 1863, "all persons held as slaves within any state or designated part of a state, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free."
Clearly, this was a war measure for suppressing the so-called rebellion. If the Confederate States of America stop rebelling before Jan. 1, 1863, they could keep their slaves.
This document suggested that one could not own another human unless one was loyal to the United States. Then again, how could the president free anyone in another nation? The document did not apply to the four border states, Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland and Missouri, slave states that remained loyal to and in the United States.
Where the president had authority (in the border states), he did nothing; where he had no authority (in the CSA), he did something.
Why do African-Americans continue to praise Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation? Are we allowing miseducation that flatters our thinking to overtake us? Slavery, legal slavery, ended in December 1865, when three-fourths of the states ratified the 13th Amendment.
"Juneteenth," the 19th of June, started as a traditional Texas celebration and now has expanded. It marks the date when the news of Lincoln's proclamation reached parts of the state of Texas in 1865. The document had first been issued in September 1862. The president had taken advantage of a Union victory during the Civil War, the Battle of Antietam, to make his preliminary announcement of emancipation, to become effective on Jan. 1, 1863. The story goes that it was not until June 19, 1865, after Lincoln had died, that slaves in Galveston, Texas, were read General Order No. 3 "that, in accordance with the president's proclamation, all slaves were free."
The proclamation did not free slaves; nor did the order delivered by Gen. Gordon Granger on June 19, 1865. On that date, Texas was not even part of the United States, thus any orders issued to Texas would be of no consequence. Yet still slaves in Texas were told that the late President Lincoln, with the stroke of his pen, had "freed" them and other slaves in rebelling states.
Now 139 years later, this mythical date of African-American freedom is celebrated, mainly by African-Americans. They turn out with parades, holiday attire and spirit to commemorate and praise Lincoln and the document. Ironically, to many the 19th of June symbolizes African-American Independence Day and is celebrated in lieu of the Fourth of July.
Students are still instructed that Lincoln did away with slavery with the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. To credit the 16th president of the United States with being "the Great Emancipator" is shameless hypocrisy, a pathological exercise in intellectual sissyism.
In his first inaugural address, Lincoln made it very clear that he had no interest, directly or indirectly, in interfering with slavery where it legally existed.
He was opposed to the expansion of slavery. He feared that competition with slavery would have a negative impact on free white laborers in the territories. He could not void the Constitution, which protected and encouraged slavery; an amendment to the Constitution was required.
Any individual, group or organization that parlays June 19 into a freedom-day celebration for blacks is either miseducated, misinformed or just plain hustling people who are seeking validation and acceptance. The ratification date of the 13th Amendment in 1865 would be more appropriate for a celebration.
It is time to face the facts squarely: The plain and painful truth is that Lincoln was not the Great Emancipator of African-American freedom. Neither the Emancipation Proclamation nor General Order No. 3 freed slaves in the United States or in Texas, as the Juneteenth celebration would have it.
In fact, Lincoln was as elusive on the issues of freedom for African-Americans as equality of opportunity is today.
If one interprets the documents literally, slaves in the United States remained in slavery. There is no justifiable cause to celebrate a myth or bad news.
In the abstract, Lincoln used what is known as tricky logic. He moved politically, not morally. In his words, there was an immutable physical barrier of color and probably of mental and moral inferiority separating the black and white races.
Lincoln felt that African-Americans were included in the Declaration of Independence, yet he denied and did not believe in social and political equality of the races. He refused to support the abolitionist movement.
Lincoln was not in favor of African-American citizenship in the United States and he advocated colonization as a solution to the race problem. This might explain why in August 1862, one month before he issued the Emancipation Proclamation, he called so-called African-American leaders to the White House and told them that money had been appropriated by Congress to colonize "their kind" outside the country.
If African-Americans are looking for pre-1865 heroes to praise, David Walker, Nat Turner, Harriet Tubman, Henry Highland Garnet, Denmark Vesey and many more would fit the criteria. If African-Americans need documentation, try reading David Walker's "Appeal," Henry Highland Garnet's "Message to the Slaves" or Frederick Douglass' "What to the Slave Is the 4th of July?"
I suggest African-Americans rethink Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation and Juneteenth when choosing celebrations and be careful that we do not contribute to the continuance of our own ignorance.
Dr. Theman Ray Taylor Sr. is a history professor at the University of Central Arkansas at Conway.
This article was published on Saturday, June 15, 2002
Sensationalism.
Walt
Of course, with the majority of Southern men were off fighting, that would mean that Lincoln was condoning revolution against women, children and old men.
I did understand however, that my oath to preserve the constitution to the best of my ability, imposed upon me the duty of preserving, by every indispensable means, that government --- that nation --- of which that constitution was the organic law. Was it possible to lose the nation, and yet preserve the constitution? By general law life and limb must be protected; yet often a limb must be amputated to save a life; but a life is never wisely given to save a limb. I felt that measures, otherwise unconstitutional, might become lawful, by becoming indispensable to the preservation of the constitution, through the preservation of the nation. Right or wrong, I assumed this ground, and now avow it. I could not feel that, to the best of my ability, I had even tried to preserve the constitution, if, to save slavery, or any minor matter, I should permit the wreck of government, country, and Constitution all together. When, early in the war, Gen. Fremont attempted military emancipation, I forbade it, because I did not then think it an indispensable necessity. When a little later, Gen. Cameron, then Secretary of War, suggested the arming of the blacks, I objected, because I did not yet think it an indispensable necessity. When, still later, Gen. Hunter attempted military emancipation, I again forbade it, because I did not yet think the indispensable necessity had come. When, in March, and May, and July 1862 I made earnest, and successive appeals to the border states to favor compensated emancipation, I believed the indispensable necessity for military emancipation, and arming the blacks would come, unless averted by that measure. They declined the proposition; and I was, in my best judgment, driven to the alternative of either surrendering the Union, and with it, the Constitution, or of laying strong hand upon the colored element. I chose the latter.
Abraham Lincoln, "To Albert G. Hodges", 4 Apr 1864, Collected Works Of Abraham Lincoln, (Roy P. Basler, Ed.), Vol VII, p. 281.
I also in the other thread quoted the Conkling letter from August, 1863, where Lincoln states unequivocally that he had the power to issue the EP as commander in chief of the armed forces.
Yet 4CJ is on this thread now with the same skewed unsupported interpretation.
Walt
A state is more than a political subdivision of a nation. Texas, a free, independent, sovereign nation, chose to become one of the united States. Later, Texas chose to dissolve that relationship. You can read the Texas Declaration of Seccession at http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/csa/texsec.htm
Does that seem odd to you? The US Supreme Court deciding whether or not it's legal for a sovereign entity to leave? Do you think they might be just a little biased? Not to mention questions of jurisdiction.
The government derives its power to govern by the consent of the governed. If the people so governed choose to change their government, who can say no? The government must resort to military conquest and occupation, which is precisely what happened. The United States turned into simply a name, not an accurate description of our nation.
Yes, but THIS event, taken alone doesn't prove he was. What? You want people to quit living in a vacuum? :)
Look for a big fort.
Just goes to show how wrong you can be. There are as many histories and as many realities as there are people to interpret them.
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