Lincoln, the North, and the Question of Emancipation

Introduction

For generations, Abraham Lincoln has been known as “the Great Emancipator.” His Emancipation Proclamation of January 1863 effectively declared that, if the North won the Civil War, the American institution of slavery would come to an end. Lincoln abhorred slavery throughout his life. However, that abhorrence did not mean that he always believed abolition was the right course for the country, or that he necessarily embraced racial equality. Lincoln did not assume the presidency or enter the Civil War with the intention of ending slavery in states where it already existed. Rather, his stated goal was to save the Union. It was only midway through the war that Lincoln reached the conclusion that abolishing slavery was an essential component to preserving the nation.

Lincoln was not unique among white Northerners in the way his position on U.S. policy toward slavery evolved, nor in the complex distinctions he drew on matters of slavery and race. Today, we may have trouble grasping how Lincoln could sharply differentiate between, for example, the continuation of slavery in the Southeast and the extension of slavery to Western territories, or between the recognition of slavery as unjust and immoral and the reluctance to embrace full racial equality and integration. But these shifts and nuances of position were shared by many Northern citizens. The North was the seat of a strong abolitionist movement and most Northern states had ended slavery through laws requiring gradual emancipation during the decades following the American Revolution. (The five states that still allowed slavery, but joined the North during the war all occupied the border between the North and the South: Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, and West Virginia, which broke away from Virginia during the course of the war.) But many Northern cities and towns were the site of intense racial hostilities. Some whites feared that the end of slavery would bring an influx of African Americans to the North, flooding the labor market with new workers and therefore driving down wages, or radically reconfiguring the social and political landscape. In July 1863, six months after the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect, working-class whites in New York City rioted for five days. They voiced anger about the war draft and fear of job competition from slaves freed by the Proclamation. Over the course of the week, the rioters lynched 11 black men, burned an orphanage for black children, looted and destroyed numerous black-owned businesses, and forced hundreds of African Americans out of the city. The New York draft riots were extraordinary in the extent of their violence and mayhem, and many white Northerners were horrified by the events and rushed in to aid victims. However, the riots suggest the complexity—and instability—of race relations in the North as well as the degree of fear among white Northerners regarding the consequences of the abolition of slavery. The following collection of documents explores the meaning of slavery and emancipation in the North around the time of the Civil War, and develops the context for Lincoln’s own evolving position.  

Please consider the following questions as you review the documents

• What arguments against slavery do Lincoln and others put forward? When are these arguments made on moral and philosophical grounds, such as ideas of justice and human equality? When are they made on other grounds, such as economic policy or military strategy?
• What distinctions do Lincoln and other white Northerners draw between ending the institution of slavery and achieving racial equality?
• How did the goal of saving the Union expand to include ending the institution of slavery?
• What feelings and concerns do writers and artists—both white and African American—express about the consequences of emancipation? How do published images of escaped slaves reveal the varying beliefs that Northerners held about slavery and emancipation?  

Mapping Slavery and Freedom

The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 effectively overturned the Missouri Compromise of 1820 by allowing U.S. citizens of these territories to vote on whether or not to permit slavery. The act authorized slavery in a region which had previously been free and, as a result, angered many Northerners. Stephen A. Douglas, a Democratic senator from Illinois, promoted the Kansas-Nebraska Act as a necessary component of organizing the territories and encouraging settlement. He also argued that turning the question of slavery over to voters was an essentially democratic solution, which followed the principle of popular sovereignty. Lincoln offered a powerful rebuttal to these claims in a speech delivered in Peoria, Illinois, in October 1854. There is an important distinction, Lincoln argued, between tolerating slavery where it already exists because we don’t see how to end it and promoting slavery in new territories as a democratic right. He said, “I particularly object to the new position which the avowed principle of this Nebraska law gives to slavery in the body politic. I object to it because it assumes that there CAN BE MORAL RIGHT in the enslaving of one man by another…The argument of “Necessity” was the only argument [the founding fathers] ever admitted in favor of slavery.”

The following map was published two years later, during the presidential campaign of 1856. This election pitted Democrat James Buchanan against John Fremont of the recently formed Republican Party and former president Millard Fillmore, who ran for the American Party, or Know-Nothings. (Fremont ultimately carried 11 northern states, but lost the election to Buchanan.) The map’s creator, William C. Reynolds, supported the Republican Party and the map vividly illustrates the party’s condemnation of the Kansas-Nebraska Act.

The main part of the map portrays the United States, including the western territories, colored according to slave, free, and “open to slavery” status. The lower portion of the map provides statistical comparisons of existing slave and free states based on the 1850 census, the 1852 presidential election results, congressional representation, and the number of slaves held by owners. Some of these statistics may appear puzzling or surprising to modern readers. For example, the map informs the reader that, in free states, the U.S. post office operates at a profit of about two million dollars a year, while in the slave states, the post office operates at a loss of about half a million dollars per year. It also suggests that white citizens of slave states enjoyed disproportionate representation in Congress due to factors such as the Constitution’s three-fifths clause and the North’s much higher white population density: “one Free State Representative represents 91,935 white men and women. One Slave State Representative represents 68,725 white men and women.” While slave and free states had roughly the same number of U.S. Senators, those senators from free states represented a voting population approximately twice as large as those from slave states.

Questions to Consider

1. Examine the map’s graphic representation of the United States. How might this visual presentation encourage opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act?
2. What kind of information appears in the statistics at the bottom of the map? Why did Reynolds include this information? What does it demonstrate about the economies of slave and free states? How do the statistics support arguments against the extension of slavery?  

Lincoln’s Evolving Arguments on Emancipation

In these two letters, Lincoln explains the reasoning behind the Emancipation Proclamation, which went into effect on January 1, 1863. The Proclamation declared that “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.” It also authorized freed slaves to serve in the Union army. The Emancipation Proclamation freed slaves only in states that were in rebellion and where, as a result, Lincoln could act independently as commander in chief. In the five Union states that still allowed slavery, Lincoln lacked this constitutional authority and had to defer to Congress and state legislatures. However, one month before the Emancipation Proclamation Lincoln had proposed to Congress a plan of gradual, compensated emancipation, designed to eliminate slavery throughout the United States. This proposal did not become law, but through the passage of various state laws and, ultimately, the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, slavery became illegal in all of the United States by the end of 1865.

Selection: Abraham Lincoln to Albert Hodges, in Greeley on Lincoln, 69-70 (April 4 1864).

Lincoln wrote the first letter included here in response to a request from supporters that he speak at a rally in his hometown of Springfield, Illinois on September 3, 1863. He could not attend the rally, but asked his longtime friend, James C. Conkling, to read the letter on his behalf. This letter was also sent to the New York State Union Convention, which was held at the same time. Lincoln wrote the second letter at the request of Albert Hodges, a Kentucky newspaper editor. In this letter, Lincoln restates thoughts that he had voiced in conversation with Hodges and two prominent Kentucky politicians. The letter illuminates Lincoln’s changing position on the question of emancipation.

Questions to Consider

1. What arguments does Lincoln make for his authority to issue the Emancipation Proclamation? How will the Emancipation Proclamation contribute to the goal of saving the Union?
2. How does Lincoln present the Emancipation Proclamation as serving a military purpose? Why do you think he felt compelled to make this argument? Does this rationale for the Emancipation Proclamation support or conflict with the document’s moral significance?
3. What distinctions does Lincoln draw between his personal position on slavery and the position that he takes as the president of the United States? Why does he make this distinction? What does he see as his primary obligation as president?
4. What does Lincoln mean by the metaphor of amputating a limb to save a life? Why do you think he chooses a metaphor of the body to represent the nation?

The Fugitive

Before Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, escape to the North or Canada was the prevailing means for slaves to obtain freedom. The fugitive slave became an especially potent political and cultural figure following the Compromise of 1850, which significantly strengthened the existing Fugitive Slave Act. This act required citizens of free as well as slave states to assist in the capture of fugitives or face fines and imprisonment. Any slaves who escaped to the North had to be returned to their masters without trial. Many Northerners regarded the act as making them fully—and newly—complicit in the institution of slavery. Representations of escaped or escaping slaves played a crucial role in abolitionist literature, whether autobiography, such as Frederick Douglass’ Narrative, or fiction, such as Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

Selection: Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, title page and frontispiece, 71-73 (1845).

Questions to Consider

1. Frederick Douglass introduces this account of his “battle with Mr. Covey,” the plantation overseer, by telling the reader, “You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man.” Why does Douglass present slavery and manhood as mutually exclusive? In what sense does this physical confrontation transform Douglass from a slave into a man?
2. Stowe’s novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, inspired artists and musicians throughout the North to create works based on the novel’s characters. In this famous scene, the slave woman Eliza leaps across the ice floes on the Ohio River, clutching her small son. The slave trader Haley and his assistants look on in anger and helplessness, unwilling to attempt to cross the river themselves. How is this scene designed to elicit readers’ sympathy for the abolitionist cause?
3. Compare the representations of resistance and freedom in this passage from Douglass’ autobiography and this scene from Uncle Tom’s Cabin. What are the meanings of freedom in these works? How do they present the slave as hero?
4. Examine the two engravings of “The Escaped Slave” that appeared in Harper’s Weekly magazine. The man had fled from Montgomery, Alabama, to enlist in the Union Army. Compare the man’s clothing, expression, and posture in the two images. How has his appearance changed?
5. William Still was a prominent abolitionist and participant in the Underground Railroad, the network of secret routes and safe houses that helped slaves escape to the North and Canada. After the Civil War, Still collected and published stories and illustrations of people’s efforts in the Underground Railroad. One of these stories concerns Henry Box Brown, who escaped slavery by packing himself into a crate and mailing himself from Richmond, Virginia, to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Why is this illustration titled “The Resurrection of Henry Box Brown”? What are the possible meanings of the word resurrection in this context?

The Contraband

As historian Kate Masur explains, Northerners began to use the term contraband to refer to escaped slaves within weeks of the start of the Civil War. Three slaves approached the Union general Benjamin F. Butler at Fortress Monroe, Virginia, in May 1861. At that time, Lincoln had declared his intention not “to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists.” When the slaves’ owner demanded their return, Butler had no authority to retain the men, so he invented a policy on the spot. He declared the men “contraband of war,” meaning that they were “property destined for use in the enemy’s war effort,” and could therefore be held by Union troops. Butler’s contraband policy was soon rendered irrelevant by laws authorizing the Union Army to hold Confederate slaves as confiscated property. Yet, Masur writes, “as a name for fleeing slaves, ‘contraband’ had significance…beyond anything Butler could have predicted… The term jumped immediately into popular culture” and was widely used in Northern publications until the end of the war. Masur argues that the term’s popularity illuminates “the transitional status of the people to whom it referred. They were neither property with a clear owner (as in slavery) nor free people, but something in between.” Representations of escaped slaves as contraband were at least as likely to play on Northern fears of the consequences of emancipation as they were to celebrate abolition.

Questions to Consider

1. The song “Oh, Help the Contraband” was published by antislavery activists. According to its lyrics, what do the contraband desire from the “people of the North”? What does liberty mean to the contraband? How does the song try to reassure people in the North that former slaves would indeed become good citizens?
2. Examine the engraving “The New Place” and its caption, which appeared in the New York humor magazine Vanity Fair days before the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect. How does this illustration portray the newly freed slave? Describe the man’s dress, posture, and facial expression. Why does the caption describe this “contraband” as “inevitable”? What does the man’s speculation about a “new massa” suggest about his readiness for freedom and citizenship?
3. Describe people’s appearances in the two Harper’s engravings below that portray escaped slaves joining Union troops. What are their ages and genders? How are they dressed? What emotions do their postures and faces convey? What do the images suggest about the condition of slavery, the process of escape, or the potential for freed slaves to become full citizens?
4. Compare these images and texts portraying the “contraband” to those grouped under the heading “The Fugitive.” In what ways are the documents similar and in what ways are they different?

Selection: Engravings from Harper’s Weekly showing escaped slaves: “Contrabands Coming into Camp in Consequence of the Proclamation (January 31, 1863) and “The Effects of the Proclamation” (February 21, 1863).

Post-Emancipation

The documents in this section approach the legacy of the Emancipation Proclamation from two different directions: first, in relation to Lincoln’s reputation and, second, in relation to the status and experiences of African Americans during Reconstruction. The portrait of Lincoln was created by W. H. Pratt two years after Lincoln’s assassination and the end of the Civil War in the spring of 1865. The words of the Emancipation Proclamation are written in calligraphy across the page to form a drawing of Lincoln’s face. The second document, an excerpt of an 1883 speech by Frederick Douglass, addresses the nation’s continuing failure to fulfill its commitment to African American freedom and citizenship. Douglass had escaped slavery in 1838 and become a prominent writer and orator for abolition, women’s suffrage, and, after the war, civil rights.

Selection: Frederick Douglass, Speech in Louisville, KY, in Three Addresses on the Relations Subsisting between the White and Colored People of the United States, 8-10 (1883)

Questions to Consider

1. How does Pratt’s portrait of Lincoln commemorate the president? What does the portrait suggest about the status of the Emancipation Proclamation among all of Lincoln’s actions?
2. What does Douglass mean by the phrase “the color line”? What social, economic, and political conditions do African Americans face in the 1880s, according to Douglass? How do Douglass’ concerns about the condition of African Americans following emancipation compare to the concerns of white Northerners expressed elsewhere in this document collection?  

An excerpt from Frederick Douglass’ “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” is featured in the lesson plan “Perspectives on the United States.”

Curriculum Connections: Abolitionism, African American History, Chinese Exclusion Act, Native American and Indigenous History, US Civics, Westward Expansion, World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893

Selected Sources

Leslie M. Harris. In the Shadow of Slavery: African Americans in New York City, 1626–1863. 2003.

Library of Congress. With Malice Toward None: The Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Exhibition [online exhibit]. http://myloc.gov/Exhibitions/lincoln/Pages/Default.aspx.

Abraham Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln, Slavery, and the Civil War. Edited by Michael P. Johnson. 2011.

Kate Masur. “‘A Rare Phenomenon of Philological Vegetation’: The Word ‘Contraband’ and the Meanings of Emancipation in the United States.” Journal of American History (March 2007): 1050–1084.

Newberry Library and Chicago History Museum. Lincoln at 200 [online exhibit]. http://publications.newberry.org/lincoln.

Terra Foundation for American Art. The Civil War in Art: Teaching and Learning through Chicago Collections. www.civilwarinart.org.