Emancipation
I. Slave politics before the
Civil War
 Kinship
 Independent Economies
 Church
 Kinship, economies & church developed circuits of
communication which was base of political activity
 Political Consciousness
“Largest Slave Revolt in History”
Stampede of Slaves to Fortress Monroe: Harper's Pictorial History of the Civil War, May 1861
Courtesy of The Gilder Lehrman Collection, New York
Kinship
 The: “obligations and responsibilities of kinship were crucial
to the achievement of the slaves’ short term political
objectives: to protect themselves and each other from the worst
of the regime’s violence and exploitation; to carve out spheres
of activity in which they could provide for themselves and
establish relations and values suitable to a world without
enslavement; and to turn a system based on the absolute
power and personal domination of the master into one based
on reciprocities…
• Hahn, A Nation Under Our Feet, 19
Independent
economy & 
petty production
Task Work
Overpay
Hiring Out
“Master Hughes…took me to the shipyard of
which he was a foreman…There I was
immediately set to calking…After learning to
calk, I sought my own employment, made
my own contracts, and collected the money
which I earned…I was now getting, as I have
said, one dollar and fifty cents per day. I
contracted for it; I earned it; it was paid to
me; it was rightfully my own; yet, upon each
returning Saturday night, I was compelled to
deliver every cent of that money to Master
Hugh. And why? Not because he earned it, –
not because he had any hand in earning it,not because I owed it to him,-nor because he
possessed the slightest shadow of a right to it;
but solely because he had the power to
compel me to give it up. The right of the
grim-visaged pirate upon the high seas is
exactly the same."
The Black
Church
 “Go Down, Moses”
“Thus spoke the Lord,”
Bold Moses said,
Let my people go,
“almost every large plantation and
in every neighborhood of small
ones…there is one man who has
come to be considered the head or
pastor of the local church”—
Frederick Law
Olmstead
If not I’ll smite
Your first born dead,
Let my people go.
Go down, Moses,
Way down in Egypt land,
Tell old Pharaoh,
To let my people go.
Communication
 “The negroes have a wonderful art of communicating
intelligence among themselves; it will run several hundred
miles in a week or fortnight.”
• John Adams
 A Northern teacher later wrote of “secret signs,” & “an
underground telephone” …which provided slaves with
“their own way of gathering news from the whole country.”

“intelligence”
 “Master would tell me, ‘Loosana, if you keep you ears
open and tell me what de darkies talk about, there’ll be
something good in it for you…But all the time I must
a-ad a right smart mind because I’d play around the
white folks and hear what they’d say and then go tell
the niggers.”
• Anna Baker
Political Consciousness

In September 1860 local editor
complained that “every political
speech …delivered in Macon
[Georgia] had attracted a
number of negroes, who,
without entering the Hall, have
managed to linger around and
hear what the orators say.”

The slaves evinced such an
“interest in politics” that fall in
nearby Columbus that the
“mayor ordered city police to
chase them away.”
Northern Influence

Frederick Douglass told by Irish
dock workers that he should run
away.

Charles Ball told by a free black of
the “liberty enjoyed there by black
people” in Philadelphia.

Tom slave in Montgomery County
VA, found out about public affairs
“from poor people”

James Curry who lived on border of
North Carolina and Virginia before
flight north “Knew there were free
states” and “had heard of England
and there were no slaves.”
Lincoln elected

Slaves “making preparations to aid
[Lincoln] when he makes his
appearance”

Kentucky sixty slaves marched
through town singing political songs
and shouting for Lincoln.”

“In some way they have gotten a
confused idea of Lincolns’ Congress
meeting and of the war” “They
think it is all to help them, and they
expected for ‘something to turn up.”

Booker T. Washington remember
being “wakened…early one
morning, “by my mother kneeling
over her children and fervently
praying that Lincoln and his armies
might be successful.”
II. African American
Soldiers & Emancipation
Harper's Weekly, October 11, 1862
General Benjamin Butler
 “I went to him [Butler]
and asked him to let me
enlist…but he said it
wasn’t a black man’s
war…I told him it would
be a black man’s war
before they got through.”
“The Effects of The Proclamation – Freed Negroes coming into Our Lines at Newbern, North
Carolina” Harper’s Weekly. A Journal of Civilization. February 21, 1863
Fugitive slaves crossing the Rappahannock River, 1862
Slaves, Plantation of James Joyner Smith, Beaufort, South Carolina, 1862
First Confiscation Act
Second Confiscation Act
Preliminary Emancipation
Proclamation
Emancipation Proclamation
Contraband
Camps
“They have obtained in the camps,
and wherever they have been…a
spirit of independence—a feeling
that they are not longer slaves, but
hired laborers and demand to be
treated as such.”
Quiet Insurrection
 “John Houston Bills owner of three plantations in Tennessee in 1864
“My Negroes all at home, but working only as they see fit, doing
little”; “some disposition amongst the servants to serve the federals
rather than work on the farm”
 “ My people preparing cotton land for themselves at Cornucopia;”
 “Negros all going off with returning troops. Some come back to urge
others to go and they are easily persuaded: the females have quit
entirely or nearly so [at hickory Valley] , four of the men come and go
where and when they please”
 “many of my servants have run away and most of those left had as
well be gone, they being totally demoralized and ungovernable.”
 Louisiana, slaves on plantation told overseer that “they would not
work any more unless they got paid.”
“Emancipation”
Proclamation
Emancipation in the North
January 1863
Supporting Emancipation
180,000-200,000
Black troops
“I am for liberty—but not for
equality—not fraternity—
except in the limited sense.”
“a Negro has rights as a dog
has rights and [we] think his
rights should be respected.”
 About the Emancipation
Proclamation: “I never in all my
days saw such inthusiasm.” A
“Large majority” of the men greet
the proclamation and the speech
with “shouts & hurrahs.”
 Others “many of his
fellow soldiers like the
Negro no better now
than we did then but we
hate his master worse
and I tell you when Old
Abe carries out
Proclamation he kills
this Rebellion and not
before. I am henceforth
an abolitionists and I
intend to practice what I
preach.”
EXPERIENCE
in the Military
1) Lower pay than whites
2) Excluded from officers rank
3) Treatment if captured
4) Fatigue duty
5) Care for sick and wounded soldiers
6) Food, clothing, equipment
To accept lower pay would “acknowledge ourselves the inferiors of our
white comrades in arms, and thus by our own actions, destroy the very
fabric we originally intended to erect.”
A former slave in Vicksburg
remembered his father’s recruitment
“they put a pick in his hand instead of
a gun …made him dig a big ditch. He
worked harder for his Uncle Sam than
he’d ever done for the master.”
African American Teamsters 1864
III. The Meanings of War
Liberators
To African American soldiers, the Civil
War promised…
 1) salvation of the Union and realization of the legacy
of the American Revolution
 2) the destruction of slavery
 3) the attainment of equal rights and justice
 4) the establishment of what they called the “manhood
of the race”
 Resolution from 54th about pay explained: “ even as the
founders of our Republic resisted the British tax on tea,
on the ground of principle, so did we claim equal pay with
other volunteers because we believed our military and
civil equality its issue”

"When I donned my Union blues, I felt freedom in my
bones."
Manhood of race
Black troops of the 55th said
volunteering “make us
men when we enlisted”
…Robert Fitzgerald was
eager to “go to the front”
to “prove our love of
liberty,” which in turn
would prove “that we be
men.”
Meanings of Freedom
August 5, 1865 illustration entitled "Franchise" from
Harper's Weekly.
Equality
 June Blacks in Congo Square “Only think of
it…colored people marching through the streets of
New Orleans on their own holiday with fire-arms.”
 Another soldier in New Orleans noted how he “walked
fearlessly and boldly through the streets of this
southern city…without being required to take off his
cap at every step”
 Leander Parker saw slaves in Mississippi dressing
themselves in their masters’ “Best apparels” and
valuables” and parading about town presuming to the
status usually associated with such finery.
Postwar Political
Ascendance
 National Convention of
Colored Citizens
 National Equal Rights
League
Conclusions
 Blacks in Military Service: Second Fronts
 1948
 Emancipation until Reconstruction?
 Inclusion of slaves and soldiers in the narrative of
Black Civil Rights
Sources
 Chandra Manning, What This Cruel War Was Over:
Soldiers, Slavery and the Civil War
 Freedom’s Soldiers: The Black Military Experience in the
Civil War, Edited by Ira Berlin, Joseph P. Reidy, and
Leslie S. Rowland
 Stephen Hahn, A Nation Beneath Our Feet: Black Political
Struggle in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great
Migration