Here is a succinct account of how emancipation happened in the 19th Century by an historian from Howard University published just this year. I take notes as I go.
Understanding the man who is given credit for freeing the slaves requires separating myth from reality. Lincoln remains an enigma. His motivations and actions to end slavery remain mired in controversy. P. 3
Tocqueville took note of American inequality. P. 7
When Tocqueville was touring the States in 1830/31 the conditions of African Americans, both free and enslaved, were deplorable. P. 9
Abolitionism was regional: concentrated in the North and reviled in the South as an affront to their cherished social and economic institutions. P. 10
The restrictions of the black codes in Illinois in Lincoln's time. P. 13
Why did some antislavery people think that the public exclamations of abolitionism made the evils of slavery worse? P. 14
Lincoln's views on slavery in Illinois reflected prevailing Whig ideology. P. 14
The enslaved people deserved basic rights yet the Constitution protected their status as property. Slavery was protected in the Constitution as matter of necessity but looked forward to its ultimate extinction. P. 18
Lincoln's anti-expansion/containment view of slavery made him a moderate on the issue. P. 18
I have yet to understand the implications of the Dred Scott Decision. P. 23
Lincoln's Cooper Union speech on February 27, 1860 was originally scheduled for a church in Brooklyn but was switched for some unknown reason.Republicans were merely carrying out the desires of the founders. It was the Democrats who were introducing something new. "Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it." P. 26
The overriding issue cited by the seceding states was the desire to protect slavery. P. 30
It didn't matter to the South that the country had elected a "moderate" on the slavery issue who was opposed to its expansion but said he wouldn't disturb slavery where it already existed. P. 30
The way I read this text Lincoln opposed the Crittenden Compromise which would have extended slavery's life in perpetuity. I seem to remember reading otherwise from other sources. P. 31
This business about the Corwin Amendment, the original 13th Amendment, greatly puzzles me. P. 32-33
For African Americans the issue was less about preserving the Union than about slavery. Douglass said that if the country could not rid itself of the stain of slavery, then let the South go. P. 35
At the beginning of the war, Lincoln tried to convey to all that slavery was safe where it already existed. P. 37
Was the war defensible without the destruction of slavery? P. 44
How the Lincoln led North persevered long enough to win the war militarily with the President being attacked vociferously on every side amazes me. P. 46
I do not understand the Fremont Missouri imbroglio.
Lincoln tried mightily to appease the border states---to keep them in the Union with offers of gradual, compensated emancipation. Was he right in doing so? P. 49
Congress passed a law in 1862 that prohibited slavery in areas where the federal government had jurisdiction. Why have I never heard of this? It superseded the Dred Scott decision. How is this possible? P. 51-52
I get the impression that Lincoln did everything he could to get the 4 border states to accept gradual, compensated emancipation, but they consistently declined. P. 53
When Lincoln met those black leaders in August of 1862, suggested colonization, and blamed them for the war, why can't we take him seriously and not think he was preparing white American for his emancipation proclamation? After all, he had been favoring colonization all his public career. The author says he was preparing the public for the EP. How does she know his mind on this? P. 58
Likewise when he told Horace Greeley that he if necessary he would save the Union by not freeing any slaves, why can't we take simply at his world? P. 60
Emancipation was a simple war measure. P. 60
The author says the South feared the EP. P. 63
Across the country the reaction was mixed to the EP. p. 65
By design the EP was "inelegant." P. 69
The EP was strictly of military justification yet was an act of justice. P. 69
Frederick Douglass saw the EP as a revolutionary document. P. 71
Jeff Davis and the South thought the EP would incite a servile insurrection. P. 74
The EP did get the slave population riled up where they heard about it. P. 75
Lincoln had to learn from experience that the black man was qualified to fight. P. 79
Black soldiers distinguished themselves in battle. P. 81
Was Lincoln right to believe in gradualism? P. 87
A system of apprenticeship? P. 87
General Sherman's Field Order #15. P. 89
Lincoln was afraid to push the slave states too hard? P. 92
The author obviously believes that Lincoln appeased the border states. P. 95
Until late the 13th Amendment process Lincoln continued to favor state controlled abolition. He did not support the amendment until it passed the Senate and failed the House in June of 1864. P. 96
"Several states ratified (the 13th Amendment) after the requisite number had been reached." Mississippi did not make official notification until 2013! P. 100
In his second inaugural Lincoln blamed both sides for the war. P. 101
I turn to Frederick Douglass for the best synopsis of Abraham Lincoln.
"The great orator and abolitionist declared that Lincoln 'was not, in the fullest sense of the word, either our man or our model. In his interests, in his associations, in his habits of thought, and in his prejudices, he was a white man. In Douglass's estimation, Lincoln was "preeminently the white man's President, entirely devoted to the welfare of the white men.' What followed was a candid critique of the President's actions in the first years of the war: the return of would be self-emancipators to their rebel owners; his colonization scheme; his stated willingness to save the Union at the expense of black freedom, of need be; his initial rejection of black soldiers; his revocation of Fremont's proclamation of freeing enslaved people in Missouri. White people are his children; black people are at best his step-children. Yet we have to give Lincoln credit. Though the Union meant ore to him that black freedom, his actions did ultimate help speed emancipation. P. 107
The question will always remain: how much credit does Lincoln deserve for emancipation? P. 109
On the last page of this book the author exaggerates the importance of the EP. The Declaration of Independence reverberates throughout history much more than the Emancipation Proclamation. P. 112
No comments:
Post a Comment