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
Lincoln understood what many did not; that slavery was one cause of the war, and maybe the biggest cause, but slavery was not what the war was about. The war was about preserving the Union.
Lincoln expressed his (probably geniune) disinterest in slavery in hopes that doing so would head off a war. Any sane person would have said the same things.
Lincoln was well aware of the Constitutional limits on his power, and respected them. (And yes I know all about habeas corpus. Imagine if the 9/11 terrorists were all white males who look like us and talk like us and dress like us and know all our ways intimately. What would YOU do?) Slavery was legal, like it or not, so he could only act against slavery as a war measure. That is, he could only confiscate the property of those in rebellion, and this he did. Meaning, those Confederates already surrendered, were not affected, nor were slaveholders loyal to the Union affected. However distasteful this may be, or may have been to his contemporaries, this was plain good sense on Lincoln's part. A virtue sadly lacking today.
And the implication is that blacks were stupid? Here's an announcement that (a limited portion of) the slaves are going to be freed (admittedly illegal by Lincoln), the men are off fighting, and any slaves thinking they are freed are going to play tiddly-winks?
In fact there were no slave uprisings in the south during the war, perhaps because the southern leadership was terrified of that very thing and kept tens of thousands of able men out of the army and in state militias to protect against it.
Tens of thousands of men were going to stop millions of slave from revolting?
If the issuing of the EP didn't end slavey why did so many slaves leave their plantations once they heard about the EP?
SCOTUS disagreed:
"The Constitution of the United States is a law for rulers and people, equally in war and in peace, and covers with the shield of its protection all classes of men, at all times and under all circumstances. No doctrine involving more pernicious consequences was ever invented by the wit of man than that any of its provisions can be suspended during any of the great exigencies of government."
Justice Davis, ex parte Milligan, 71 U.S. 2 (1866).
And this letter is dated 4 Apr 1864. Long after the Conklin letter. Skewed and unsupported? It was Lincoln that said "I felt that measures, otherwise unconstitutional, might become lawful."
Yet there was a decision prior that held otherwise:
"What is a Constitution? It is the form of government, delineated by the mighty hand of the people, in which certain first principles of fundamental laws are established. The Constitution is certain and fixed; it contains the permanent will of the people, and is the supreme law of the land; it is paramount to the power of the Legislature, and can be revoked or altered only by the authority that made it. The life-giving principle and the death-doing stroke must proceed from the same hand."
Justice Patterson, Vanhorne's Lessee v. Dorrance, 2 Dall. 304, (1795).
"In order to defend and protect the women and children who were left on the plantations when the white males went to war, the slaves would have laid down their lives. The slave who was selected to sleep in the "big house" during the absence of the males was considered to have the place of honour. Any one attempting to harm "young Mistress" or "old Mistress" during the night would have had to cross the dead body of the slave to do so. I do not know how many have noticed it, but I think that it will be found to be true that there are few instances, either in slavery or freedom, in which a member of my race has been known to betray a specific trust."I'll take his word for it.
Booker T. Washington, Up From Slavery: An Autobiography, p. 13.
Old Confederate newspapers led me to one uprising where slaves burned the courthouse and about a dozen houses. This was at Yazoo City in 1864. I don't know the details.
Tex,
I stopped reading with the following statement;
Where the president had authority (in the border states), he did nothing; where he had no authority (in the CSA), he did something.
It shows that the writer has absolutely no understanding of the constitution and is totally ignorant of what the Emancipation Proclamation said and did.
Contrary to what the writer says above, the exact opposite is true --- Lincoln had no authority under the Constitution to free slaves in areas that remained under the jurisdiction of US Courts, such as the Border States or areas of states in rebellion that were under Union Control as of Jan. 1863 such as New Orleans. There was no order he could issue that could have ended slavery in Kentucky, Delaware, Missouri or Maryland. Slavery could only be ended there by either state action or an amendment to the Constitution. His authority to "free slaves" was in reality the war powers he had as Commander in Chief to seize property used to support rebellion, and “dispose” of that property as he saw fit. The EP was worded very carefully to make it a property issue so it would pass Constitutional muster. Since all the slave states, as well as the US Supreme Court in Dred Scott, legally defined slaves as property, Lincoln’s order “freeing slaves” was no different than the seizing of ships, wagons, horses, railroads, or any other piece of property used to support the CSA’s war effort.
It is also a monstrous lie that the EP freed no slaves. It freed all slaves in areas it covered (about 3 million) between 1863 and the conclusion of the war as Union troops gained control over the entire Confederacy. Nearly 100,000 slaves who were freed by the EP served in the Union Army. The June 19th (1865) date simply refers to when the slaves in Texas finally met the first Union soldiers who told them about the EP and told them they were legally free. June 19 is not the day of Emancipation in any state but Texas. In Savannah it was Dec, 17, 1864, in Atlanta it was Sept 10, (1864) in Vicksburg, it was July 4th, 1863. Pick the day that Union troops went through a given area, and that was the day slavery ended in that area.
When, therefore, Texas became one of the United States, she entered into a indissoluble relation. All the obligations of perpetual union, and all the guaranties of republican government in the Union, attached at once to the State. The Act which consummated her admission into the Union was something more than a compact; it was the incorporation of a new member into the political body. And it was final. The union between Texas and the other States was as complete as perpetual, and as indissoluble as the Union between the original States. There was no place for reconsideration, or revocation, except through revolution, or through consent of the States.
Revolution is the path that the southern states chose. They certainly shouldn't be surprised if the other states took exception to their actions. And, as it turned out, their rebellion was unsuccessful. I suppose you'll blame Lincoln for that, too.
And I'll bet Nat Turner and Denmark Vesey were spinning in their graves with envy, too. There was no slave uprising in the manner that 4CJ says Lincoln was promoting. Even though the southern press and politicians were terrified of the idea.
Pretty false too. the US Census for 1860 says the State of New Jersey had ZERO slaves! Not one!
Snifff, snifff ---- another Lost Cause Myth bites the dust. Click the link and check the records.
Gee, I don't know 4CJ. Maybe they took Lincoln seriously when he said "And I hereby enjoin upon the people so declared to be free to abstain from all violence, unless in necessary self-defence; and I recommend to them that, in all cases when allowed, they labor faithfully for reasonable wages." And maybe they thought that instead of hanging around down south, they might take Lincoln up on his suggestion that "such persons of suitable condition, will be received into the armed service of the United States to garrison forts, positions, stations, and other places, and to man vessels of all sorts in said service." Which, of course, they did. By the hundreds of thousands.
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