I. Introduction

A. Of all the changes that occurred during the Crisis of the Union, none was more pivotal than the destruction of slavery and its aftermath. Historians have increasingly recognized this over the course of the past thirty years. As Eric Foner comments, "[A] synthesis is now emerging that sees slavery as the most crucial problem of antebellum American life and the fundamental cause of the Civil War, and the myriad consequences of emancipation as the central themes of the war and Reconstruction."⁽¹⁾

B. American emancipation was almost unique in that it came about through violence. The sole parallel was the slave uprising on Saint-Domingue in 1793, which annihilated the French ruling class and spawned the world's first black republic (and the second republic in the entire New World). Because the end of slavery came about through war, the Army played a significant role--not only in its actual destruction, but more importantly, in the way that emancipation occurred and the manner in which the liberated African Americans experienced their first freedom. The Army's involvement did much to direct the subsequent course of the freedmen's experience.

C. In this lecture I want to examine two main questions: first, what was the relationship of emancipation to the Union military effort against the Confederacy; and secondly, how did the Union army address the problem of the freedmen, both during and after the war?

D. First, however, I'd like to establish a sense of the magnitude of American emancipation and also of the Army's involvement. When the Civil War broke out in 1861, the slave population in the Confederate states numbered about 3.3 million (a figure that excludes another 432,000 slaves in the "loyal" areas od Delaware, the District of Columbia, Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri). By contrast, the slave population of the British empire, at the time of emancipation in 1833, was 700,000⁽²⁾; that of France, 250,000.⁽³⁾ Brazil: 1.5 million.⁽⁴⁾ (The emancipation of 22 million Russian serfs in 1861 is not fully parallel.)

1. By the end of the war, Union armies controlled an expanse of the South that encompassed about a million slaves--just about 30% of the total. Of these, almost 238,000 were under direct Union supervision.⁽⁵⁾ With the creation of the Freedmen's Bureau in March 1865, the entire population of former slaves came under the purview of the War Department.

E. US emancipation shares certain continuities with other societies.

1. But in US case, ruling class had less control over outcome than elsewhere.

2. Continuities owe to other factors, including role of Army. Army's role reflects a) specifically military considerations; but more importantly b) larger American attitudes.

II. Military Attitudes Toward Emancipation, 1861-1862

A. Slavery had been an intractable problem in American political life, especially since 1848, when the American victory over Mexico brought in thousands of square miles of new territory. The question of whether slavery would be permitted to expand into these and other territories led to several acute crises and brought about the creation of the Republican Party, which was committed to the containment of slavery to areas where it already existed.

1. The accession of the Republicans to presidential power formed the occasion for the secession of the Deep South.

B. A minority of Northerners -- the abolitionists -- favored the immediate, uncompensated destruction of slavery. They based their objections to slavery on humanitarian grounds and sought full legal, political and social equality for blacks. But true abolitionists formed no more than 5% of the North's population.

C. Most anti-slavery Northerners, however, shared the racist assumptions on which slavery was partially based. They viewed blacks as inferior.

1. They opposed the extension of slavery because they wanted to keep the territories open to free white labor, unsullied by the presence of blacks.

2. They objected to slavery itself primarily because they perceived it as a threat to republican institutions.

a. In the view of many Republicans, a planter aristocracy, called the Slave Power, dominated Southern political life and had dominated national political life until 1860.

b. Secession itself had been engineered by the Slave Power.

D. Why, then was no blow struck at slavery at the war's outset?

1. In general, because of fears that it would fatally split the North.

a. No consensus that slavery was in fact the root of the rebellion.

(1) Many Northerners, especially Democrats, blamed abolitionists as well as "fire-eating" secessionist politicians for the war. In their view, slavery was an appropriate status for blacks and should not be a divisive issue. Southerners had been stampeded by abolitionist agitation into believing that the North as a whole intended to destroy slavery. If the war could be fought without attacking slavery, many Southerners, reassured, might return to their former allegiance.

b. Perhaps even more importantly, many Northerners also believed that slaves, as a form of property, could not be taken from their owners without due process. A policy of massive emancipation would be unconstitutional.

c. Then too, Lincoln feared that a move to end slavery would cause the slave-holding border states--Missouri, Kentucky and Maryland--to secede as well. In such an event, the problem of subduing the Confederacy would become much more difficult, perhaps impossible.

E. These difficulties in attacking slavery, plus the perception that a relatively small, conspiratorial "Slave Power" had engineered secession, suggested what was called the "conciliatory policy."

1. Decapitate and discredit Southern leadership by taking Richmond, the Confederate capital.

2. Through scrupulous respect for Southern property and constitutional rights--including the right to hold slaves--to woo back the latent Unionists among Southerners. These were assumed to form the "silent majority" in the South.

F. Still, slavery had military significance.

1. Some slaves were directly involved in the Southern war effort.

a. e.g., construction of fortifications.

2. Others were indirectly involved through support of the Southern economy.

a. Their labor freed a large percentage of white manpower to enter the armies.

3. Slaves were also a potential Northern military resource.

a. Acted informally as spies, guides.

b. But much more importantly, black men were a huge reservoir of potential military manpower.

G. This significance is more obvious in retrospect than it was at the time.

1. Those who made such arguments in 1861 were almost exclusively abolitionists--who had a not-so-hidden agenda.

H. Prevalent military attitude: Army wanted to be neither "negro catchers or negro stealers."

1. Some of this sentiment was politically based.

a. e.g., McClellan, who told anti-slavery Republican congressmen that he was fighting to preserve the Union and nothing else.

(1) Perhaps the major military proponent of conciliation.

2. Some sentiment was pragmatically based.

a. e.g., Halleck, Grant and Sherman

(1) Thought involvement with slavery created problems that outweighed countervailing advantages.

(a) Entanglement with politics

(b) logistical burdens of caring for thousands of fugitive slaves

(c) security problems posed by free access and egress of slaves through Union lines.

3. Most soldiers thought the advantages of emancipation were actually fairly slight.

a. Slaves who worked directly for Southern military effort could be taken as "contraband of war," a useful formulation created by political general Benjamin F. Butler and soon afterward made Federal law by the First Confiscation Act.

b. But would emancipation emasculate South's economy? No.

(1) A mere statement of intent without actual military occupation would leave slavery, as a practical matter, virtually untouched.

(2) And once the South was militarily occupied, where, from a military point of view, was the need to emancipate?

c. Union forces could utilize only a small percentage of available black labor. The rest (old, young, women) would be useless mouths to feed.

d. Would blacks make effective soldiers? The conventional wisdom, until well into 1863, was hell no.

(1) Many white soldiers found the very idea of black comrades in arms to be degrading.

(2) Others thought blacks would require a minimum of five years' training to make good soldiers.

(3) Sherman, April 1863:

4. Most officers were like Grant. They thought the war would probably mean "the doom of Slavery." But they were not anxious for emancipation and were content to wait for the Lincoln administration to make the decision.

a. Thus, there were few military pressures to emancipate.

III. Political Pressures

A. Political pressures, however, were great.

1. Abolitionists insisted that the war formed a golden opportunity to end slavery.

2. Radical Republicans agreed, saw it as being at the heart of the rebellion -- the "Slave Power" concept. Eliminate slavery and you would eliminate the Slave Power, make the South open to "free labor" ideology.

3. Lincoln administration began moving against slavery in March 1862, at a time of significant Union successes when the war seemed only months from a conclusion.

a. proposal for compensated emancipation

b. compensated abolition of slavery in DC

c. uncompensated abolition in territories.

B. Even the pressures generated by those with important military responsibilities stemmed from political reasons, not military ones.

1. In August, Major General John C. Frémont, commanding the Department of the West, declared martial law and issued a proclamation freeing the slaves of any persons who aided and abetted Confederate guerrillas.

a. But Frémont was a strong anti-slavery man with strong political ambitions and connections. He had been the Republican presidential nominee in 1856. He did not clear his decision with the Lincoln administration ahead of time and refused to rescind it without a direct presidential order. His military reasons for the proclamation were vague.

2. Secretary of War Simon Cameron, in December 1861, prepared a War Department report that called for both the emancipation of slaves and the use of blacks as soldiers.

a. But Cameron was in hot water with Lincoln for mismanagement of his job. He wrote the report in a bid to gain support from the radical wing of the Republican party and did not consult Lincoln before issuing the report. Lincoln forced him to retract it and removed him from the Cabinet in January 1862.

3. In May 1862, Major General David Hunter, commander of the Department of the South, issued an order emancipating all slaves within his department. He too issued it without consulting Lincoln first, and he clearly intended to do so even before taking command of the department (and hence, before he knew the military conditions in that area).

a. Letter to Stanton, 27 Jan 62:

4. In June and July 1862, Ben Butler, who by then commanded the Union forces around New Orleans, received great pressure to emancipate the slaves from Brigadier General Phelps.

a. Phelps was a staunch abolitionist.

b. His manifesto to Butler, intended to reach the War Department, offers a good illustration of the thinking that animated Frémont and Hunter as well:

C. The common thread in all these arguments was that slavery lay at the heart of the rebellion. If you won the war without destroying slavery, you had achieved nothing. There was considerable wisdom in this argument, but was it an argument from military necessity?

1. Goes back to the question of means v. ends.

2. Essentially, theirs was a political appraisal, not a military one.

IV. The Decision for Emancipation

A. By July 1862, Lincoln had decided to emancipate the slaves. Told his Cabinet as much on the 22nd. Why?

1. Some historians have argued that he could no longer hold together a coalition of conservatives, Democrats and moderate to radical Republicans and was forced to accommodate the radicals in order to maintain his political base. But others have believed he preferred emancipation and moved toward it as quickly as he could.

2. Others have argued that the pressures of a stalemated war forced Lincoln to turn to emancipation as a military necessity. But as we have seen, the military pressures in this direction were not great. Those exerted by Frémont, Cameron and Phelps were essentially extensions of the political pressures. They were also isolated incidents, easily contained, and did not reflect the thinking of most senior commanders.

3. Useful to think back on the original three conditions that had inhibited an immediate attack on slavery in April 1861.

a. Border states -- generally firmly held by Union forces by summer 1862. Lincoln had also come to regard the border state pols with a kind of contempt. They were lukewarm. So unconcerned was he, for example, with the prospect of Kentucky's actually joining the Confederacy that he issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation while Bragg's army was on Kentucky soil.

b. Constitutional difficulties -- argument that president could emancipate through his war powers was becoming more palatable.

c. Why? Because Northern consensus that slavery formed the heart of the rebellion was increasing.

B. Union soldiers played a significant role in shaping the new consensus.

1. Once they operated in the South, many came to believe that slavery was indeed at the heart of the rebellion.

2. Also, slavery depended heavily on stability and order. The very presence of war upset it, and Northern soldiers found that neutrality was, in fact, impossible. They must choose to help sustain slavery or choose to help destroy it. They chose the latter -- particularly the failure of the Peninsula campaign convinced them that the war would be a long one.

3. Most soldiers communicated these views outside official channels.

a. Wrote newspapers, families.

b. helped influence a political reevaluation of the war's nature.

V. Effect of Emancipation From a Military Perspective.

A. Despite the increasing consensus in favor of emancipation, many officers and men were unhappy with the Emancipation Proclamation.

1. Opposition was probably greatest in the Army of the Potomac. Ironically, its victory at Antietam had created the opening for emancipation.

a. McClellan considered publicly opposing the Emancipation Proclamation, and it took a number of his friends in politics and the army to dissuade him.

b. Fitz John Porter, one of McClellan's corps commanders and a favorite of his, thought the rank and file were generally ill-disposed toward the Emancipation Proclamation.

2. Halleck, Grant and Sherman accepted the Lincoln administration's political decision.

a. Halleck actively concurred.

b. Grant and Sherman, however, found the black refugee problem significant. Grant actually barred blacks from his lines at one point until Halleck told him to rescind the order.

(1) Sherman thought it was pointless to try and deal with the negro issue while the war was in progress.

3. Clearly, most military men did not see great military advantages flowing from the proclamation. They accepted it, however, and dealt with the consequences as best they could.

B. Indeed, the short-run results of the Emancipation Proclamation were mainly negative.

1. It significantly increased Confederate resistance, as Southerners closed ranks to prevent an outcome in which their way of life would be overthrown.

a. Said the war had become one of "extermination," because they saw emancipation as an attempt to incite a major servile revolt, like Santo Domingo in 1793.

2. It may also have increased the risk of European intervention. Until recently, historians have argued the opposite -- that emancipation placed the Union war effort on a higher moral plane and made it so that intervention by Britain and France would involve intervention on the side of slavery, which Europeans supposedly found unpalatable.

a. But historian Howard Jones, after considerable research through British government records, argues in a forthcoming book that the British government viewed the Emancipation Proclamation as a reckless flirtation with a bloody slave revolt. Both for humanitarian reasons and because such a revolt would destabilize the economically important Southern cotton-growing region for years to come, Britain came close to calling for a negotiated settlement.

3. It exacerbated the already serious problem of black refugees, who somehow had to be fed, sheltered, and employed.

4. Perhaps most importantly, it greatly intensified Northern opposition to the war effort.

a. Many Democrats broke openly with the administration.

b. In a few instances, officers resigned and soldiers deserted in protest.

c. Opponents of the war interfered with the draft, elected anti-war politicians, and propagandized for a negotiated settlement.

(1) This opposition movement made substantial gains and came close to winning the Presidency in 1864.

C. In terms of the perceived military advantages:

1. Emancipation did not significantly disrupt the Southern economy. Most blacks waited until Federal armies were close by before leaving their plantations; others stayed on even when Union forces passed through. More important disruptions included the strains on the economic infrastructure imposed by the overuse of railroads and conversion to war production; also civilian resistance to impressment of their goods by Confederate agents.

2. Black labor proved only of marginal significance to the Northern military effort. Some assisted in constructing fortifications and performed other fatigue duties. More were put to work on abandoned plantations to produce cotton for sale by the Government. But this contribution was fairly slight.

3. By far the main advantage was the one denigrated at the outset: the tapping of black military manpower.

a. By war's end, 186,000 blacks had donned Federal uniforms. They did well in both garrison and combat duties. By 1865, about 10% of Union soldiers were black.

VI. Summary and Conclusion

A. The decision for emancipation, although called a "military necessity" in order to pass constitutional muster, was pre-eminently a political decision made with political logic.

B. The military advantages of emancipation were slight and problematic; the military drawbacks were major and readily apparent. Most commanders therefore were at best lukewarm about the idea.

C. The decision to emancipate stemmed mainly from the perception that slavery lay at the heart of the rebellion and must therefore be destroyed. Its destruction, then, was seen primarily as an additional national objective, not a means to an end.

1. Those who opposed emancipation were essentially correct in their arguments that had changed a war to preserve the Union into a war to free the negro. Whether they were wise to so object is another matter.

D. The fact that emancipation derived from political logic carries certain implications for the development of the subsequent Union "hard war" policy. If emancipation did not emerge primarily from a military desire to attack the Southern economy, the eventual movement in that direction must have derived from other considerations.

1. It would be better to say that emancipation was a signal to military men to adopt harsher measures if they so chose.

2. But major operations against Southern economic targets did not appear until mid-1863 (e.g., Jackson, MS). When they did, they evolved from logistical imperatives that would have materialized even if emancipation had not occurred.

1. Foner, ed., 73.

2. Foner, 14.

3. Blackburn

4. Blackburn

5. Gerteis, 193.

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