Emancipation Proclamation didn't end Slavery

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette | 6-15-02 | THEMAN R. TAYLOR

[redbaiter]

What a steaming load. I wouldn't bother with it, but someone might read this and take it seriously. So, here goes.

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.

[Non-Sequitur]

The majority of the work was done between 1846 and 1862 and, yes, for most of that period slaves contracted out of Key West did the labor. That supply dried up in 1861 - something to do with Florida being in a state of rebellion - and the fort remained in Union hands and was used as a military prison. However, the implication of robert0122's post seems to be that slave labor was used as late as 1871 and that, as we both know, is impossible. Slavery ended in 1865. That was the gist of my arguement, not that slave labor was never used in the first place.

[4CJ]

And where, from that letter, do you come to the conclusion that Lincoln was condoning revolution against women, children and old men?

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?

[aomagrat]

IIRC, the original Emancipation Proclamation was destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. Soon the history revisionists will have White racists burning the EP as the cause of the fire.

[Tennessee_Bob]

I thought the war ended a long time ago - are some folks still fighting it??

[mafree]

Thanks for the ping.

If the issuing of the EP didn't end slavey why did so many slaves leave their plantations once they heard about the EP?

[weikel]

You forgot Wilson but I like Lincoln he was no socialist.

[4CJ]

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.

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."

[luvbach1]

To The Great Emancipator: Hip hip hooray! Hip hip hooray! Hip hip hooray!

[Texaggie79]

http://www.thewiredpress.com/a rchives/culture/south_rise_aga in.html

[weikel]

Yes it only takes a few guys with guns to control a disarmed, dispirited, and tightly regimented mass.

[4CJ]

I've read it. And in 1869 the U.S. Supreme Court determined that the Texas acts of secession were illegal and that Texas had never ceased to be a state.

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).

[4CJ]

Yes it only takes a few guys with guns to control a disarmed, dispirited, and tightly regimented mass.

"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."
Booker T. Washington, Up From Slavery: An Autobiography, p. 13.

I'll take his word for it.

[rustbucket]

In fact there were no slave uprisings in the south during the war

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.

[weikel]

I will not dispute that many and possibly most slaves on most plantations( not the hell on earth down the river ones) were very loyal to their masters. It corresponds with human nature and some more detailed accounts of such behaviour during the Roman Empire for example when Mark Antony's gladiators stuck with him when his remaining troops deserted or defected after Actium.

[Ditto]

"Where the president had authority (in the border states), he did nothing; where he had no authority (in the CSA), he did something."

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.

[Non-Sequitur]

And nowhere does it say that you may revoke or alter it unilaterally. That was the problem with the southern actions, not that they wanted to leave the Union but that they insisted on doing it in a manner inconsistent with the Constitution and the intention of our founding fathers. Chase said it in the Texas v. White decision:

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.

[Non-Sequitur]

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.

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.

[Ditto]

Neither did it apply to such Confederate jurisdictions under Federal control as Norfolk and New Orleans, nor to such "free" states as New Jersey that had banned "new" slaves while allowing the owners to keep the "old" ones. Pretty cynical, huh?

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.

[Non-Sequitur]

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?

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.