Common Misconceptions/Myths

Not at first but the US government did end slavery.
Leftyhunter
You are correct. Specifically, the 13th Amendment abolished slavery everywhere in the United States on January 31st, 1865. Lincoln's emancipation order of 1863 only applied to those states in rebellion, but once issued, it became a battle cry among Union abolitionists and a significant number of Federal soldiers as well.
 
I suppose, but what about the 75% who didn't own slaves? If you are not counting the slave population that's enormous working class.
75% is typical for a working class, especially in the 19th century. If anything the worrying thing about the number would be that it's too low.
 
You are correct. Specifically, the 13th Amendment abolished slavery everywhere in the United States on January 31st, 1865. Lincoln's emancipation order of 1863 only applied to those states in rebellion, but once issued, it became a battle cry among Union abolitionists and a significant number of Federal soldiers as well.
Technically it abolished slavery on December 18 of that year - you can't skip the ratification and proclamation steps.
 
You are correct. Specifically, the 13th Amendment abolished slavery everywhere in the United States on January 31st, 1865. Lincoln's emancipation order of 1863 only applied to those states in rebellion, but once issued, it became a battle cry among Union abolitionists and a significant number of Federal soldiers as well.
Of course - and it was indeed a great feat.
I hope you don’t believe I am trying to negate that (or am falling in “whatsaboutism”) but I feel there should be some differentiation: It’s one thing to fight for upkeeping slavery or for destroying slavery - but it’s quite another thing to stand up for racial equality in the 19th century.
I am pretty sure that you could count the people who desired the latter in 1865 with your two hands...

Hence I deem it possible that not everybody especially not everybody in the non-slave-owning class of the South fought to upkeep slavery.
I found it also very convincing what @Saphroneth, @archieclement and others said about intricate motivations of soldiers to fight.

I even feel the need to get even more on everybody’s nerve: could it be that in their prevalent repudiation of racial equality northern and southern soldiers shared a trait?

And recounting how strong northern and southern sentiments are visible even here in this forum I am still convinced that this factor cannot be left out of calculation.
 
I think that it's fairly evident from statements from contemporaries that the North was still racist during the war. In fact, I'll go ahead and say these things:

- The North was not particularly interested in racial equality before the Civil War.
- They became somewhat more interested in it during the Civil War.
- Great Britain was one of the most pro-racial-equality places in the world before and during the Civil War.
- Both of those latter points were because a rival (the South/the US) was considered to be very racist, and with slavery.
- After the South no longer had slavery, the strongest anti-racism driver for Great Britain went away and so Britain became more racist over the course of the last few decades of the 19th Century.
 
You are correct. Specifically, the 13th Amendment abolished slavery everywhere in the United States on January 31st, 1865. Lincoln's emancipation order of 1863 only applied to those states in rebellion, but once issued, it became a battle cry among Union abolitionists and a significant number of Federal soldiers as well.
In rebellion and not occupied by the Federal government. It specifically excluded the counties in Virginia, Louisiana etc. that were occupied, and Lincoln declared that states that formed a loyalist government (Virginia, Tennessee, and Louisiana I think being the only three) were also exempt. The observation in Britain and elsewhere that where Lincoln has the power to free slaves, he keeps them in chains, and where he has no power to free them he declares that they are free wasn't incorrect.

Indeed, in 1865 Lincoln made a speech repudiating his prior commitment to allow slavery to continue intact in Virginia. In the crowd was one John Wilkes Booth, who didn't respond well to that speech...
 
I think that it's fairly evident from statements from contemporaries that the North was still racist during the war. In fact, I'll go ahead and say these things:

- The North was not particularly interested in racial equality before the Civil War.
- They became somewhat more interested in it during the Civil War.
- Great Britain was one of the most pro-racial-equality places in the world before and during the Civil War.
- Both of those latter points were because a rival (the South/the US) was considered to be very racist, and with slavery.
- After the South no longer had slavery, the strongest anti-racism driver for Great Britain went away and so Britain became more racist over the course of the last few decades of the 19th Century.
For the north one has to remember that diehard abolishionists were a minority......then even in that minority they weren't all motivated by some civil rights aspect, some simply didn't want to have to compete against cheaper and more reliable labor.

I do think one has to make a distinction for either side in whatever their personal political views, it often has little to do with ones desire to serve ones community/state......nowadays when we say ones state we think ones country, but in 1860 many people's idea of state was indeed actually the state.
 
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In rebellion and not occupied by the Federal government. It specifically excluded the counties in Virginia, Louisiana etc. that were occupied, and Lincoln declared that states that formed a loyalist government (Virginia, Tennessee, and Louisiana I think being the only three) were also exempt. The observation in Britain and elsewhere that where Lincoln has the power to free slaves, he keeps them in chains, and where he has no power to free them he declares that they are free wasn't incorrect.

Indeed, in 1865 Lincoln made a speech repudiating his prior commitment to allow slavery to continue intact in Virginia. In the crowd was one John Wilkes Booth, who didn't respond well to that speech...
Keep in mind before the war Lincoln said any man who would not be a slave should not own a slave. I think it is pretty clear where Lincoln stood on slavery as I have never seen nor read anything in which he defends the practice. His disapproval of the practice was clear as early as 1854 in his Peoria Speech. Lincoln was morally opposed to the institution and from a political standpoint was opposed to its expansion. As to Booth, he managed to kill the best friend the South had at the end of the war.
 
It's important to realize that it is quite possible to say "Lincoln could have gone further on ending slavery" without that automatically being "Lincoln was not anti slavery".

It's not a reflection on Lincoln so much as on the political environment in which he moved; he felt motivated on many occasions to reverse emancipationist measures by Union army generals, not because he personally was pro-slavery but because the country wouldn't accept it; even the Emancipation Proclamation, which the British saw as not going far enough, went far enough that he was disappointed with the reaction of the American public.
 
In rebellion and not occupied by the Federal government. It specifically excluded the counties in Virginia, Louisiana etc. that were occupied, and Lincoln declared that states that formed a loyalist government (Virginia, Tennessee, and Louisiana I think being the only three) were also exempt. The observation in Britain and elsewhere that where Lincoln has the power to free slaves, he keeps them in chains, and where he has no power to free them he declares that they are free wasn't incorrect.
If that's what they said and believed then they were incorrect.
The Southern states were in rebellion to the Federal government of the United States as far as Lincoln, the Congress, and the U.S. Supreme Court were concerned. Since they were in rebellion, Lincoln as Commander in Chief had certain War powers he could use against the states in rebellion but could not use in the other states who were not in rebellion. One of those powers was to deprive the areas in rebellion of property that was used or COULD be used to aid their rebellion against the U.S. government and one of those properties was slaves. Lincoln's justification for the Emancipation Proclamation was that the freeing of slaves only in areas not under Federal control, was a military necessity and limited application, and therefore it was within the scope of the President's war powers. There was some precedent for his action; John Quincy Adams in an 1836 speech before Congress stated that the presidential war powers could free the slaves:
"From the instant that your slave-holding states become the theatre of war, civil, servile, or foreign from that instant the war powers of the constitution extend to interference with the institution of slavery in every way in which it can be interfered with."
Adams reiterated in an April 1842 speech before the House that "[w]hether the war be civil, servile, or foreign, I lay this down as the law of nations: I say that the military authority takes for the time the place of all municipal institutions, slavery among the rest; and that, under that state of things, so far from its being true that the states where slavery exists have the exclusive management of the subject, not only the president of the United States, but the commander of the army has power to order the universal emancipation of the slaves."

While the Proclamation was not about to be obeyed by Confederate authorities, it did in fact free the slaves in those areas of rebellion once Union forces took control, and those areas of control were increasing almost daily as Federal soldiers moved throughout the South. *Any* slave that could make it to Union lines were automatically free in these areas and their manumission was not subject to judicial review unlike the earlier Confiscation Act that freed only the slaves of owners aiding the Confederacy. Under the Confiscation Act prior to the Emancipation Proclamation, any slaves that encountered Union forces in the rebellious areas and were siezed had to be returned to their owners if disloyalty could not be proved in court. Again, Lincoln could only do this in areas that were in rebellion as of January 1, 1863 -- he could not free the slaves in any border state or Northern state because they were not in rebellion nor could he free the slaves in certain areas of the South that were back under Union control as of January 1, 1863, because that area was no longer in rebellion to the United States.
 
The thing to realize, though, is that there were other options besides the course Lincoln actually took which would have been more anti-slavery. There were several anti-slavery measures taken by generals which Lincoln then reversed, such as those by Fremont and Hunter, and in addition to that these things could have been done:

- Emancipation of "contrabands" rather than keeping them for later return to their masters
- Appropriation of all slaves within a loyal state, with compensation, as a war measure (in the manner of eminent domain) and subsequent emancipation
- The Emancipation Proclamation issued straight away, right at the start of the war
 
In rebellion and not occupied by the Federal government.
Not so. This is one of the myths of the war
It specifically excluded the counties in Virginia, Louisiana etc. that were occupied, and Lincoln declared that states that formed a loyalist government (Virginia, Tennessee, and Louisiana I think being the only three) were also exempt.
It only excluded those parts of those states that had formed loyalist governments.
It did not exclude other areas occupied by federal troops, such Helena Arkansas; Corinth Mississippi; Baton Rouge Louisiana; Beaufort and Hilton Head South Carolina; Winchester and Manassas Virginia; or New Bern, Washington, and Plymouth North Carolina


The observation in Britain and elsewhere that where Lincoln has the power to free slaves, he keeps them in chains, and where he has no power to free them he declares that they are free wasn't incorrect.
It was entirely incorrect

Indeed, in 1865 Lincoln made a speech repudiating his prior commitment to allow slavery to continue intact in Virginia.
Umm irrelevant. Loyalist government of Virginia had adopted a new Constitution in 1864 ending slavery in that state
 
In rebellion and not occupied by the Federal government. It specifically excluded the counties in Virginia, Louisiana etc. that were occupied, and Lincoln declared that states that formed a loyalist government (Virginia, Tennessee, and Louisiana I think being the only three) were also exempt. The observation in Britain and elsewhere that where Lincoln has the power to free slaves, he keeps them in chains, and where he has no power to free them he declares that they are free wasn't incorrect.

Indeed, in 1865 Lincoln made a speech repudiating his prior commitment to allow slavery to continue intact in Virginia. In the crowd was one John Wilkes Booth, who didn't respond well to that speech...
Britain was actually wrong about that. Lincoln had no constitutional authority to free slaves that were in states not in rebellion. He did have the constitutional authority, under the confiscation acts passed by congress during the war, to free them in states in rebellion.
 
Perhaps some quotes will help. Most of these are from British newspapers, but I conclude with a couple from the United States.


"Slaves [Frank Baker, Shepard Mallory and James Townsend] have fled to the camp of General Butler; and when their owner, under a flag of truce, claimed their restoration, Yankee ingenuity raised the curious pretence that they were 'contraband of war', but said they should be restored on the owner taking an oath of fidelity to the Union... After great perplexity, the Cabinet of Washington has instructed the Commanders to receive escaped slaves and set them to work, keeping an account of their work and the cost of their keep. Is it thus that men make war to put down slavery?... what is 'the anti-slavery sentiment' that, instead of saying to these fugitive slaves- 'Go forth; we shall do nothing to return you to bondage;' detains them, keeping an account of their food and earnings, that a balance may be duly made when they shall be returned to their former owners, or sold to reimburse the Federal treasury? Dr Beecher and Mr Phillips had better teach 'the anti-slavery sentiment' at Washington, before they trouble themselves to cross the Atlantic. Our 'anti-slavery sentiment' tells us to scorn this miserable paltering. Providence has destroyed, by the appalling judgement of civil war, the old devices by which the Free States propped up the system of the Slave States; and even in the midst of that war, the men who say they are fighting for liberty, actually embarrass themselves with the care of the human chattels in the interest of slave owners. We console ourselves with the belief that this shallow expedient will break down. The army may take charge of a few hundred slaves, but it can do nothing with them when they come forth by thousands; and the movement of slaves having commenced, it must go on spreading and strengthening while the war continues." (Sheffield Independent, 15 June 1861, p. 7)

“They have proclaimed theirs to be the land of freedom, while they have become utterly oblivious to the fact that their Union involved a system of slavery more cruel, degrading, and damning to the human feelings, intellect, and spirit, than ever before disgraced the world… Do the Northern States seek to free themselves from these heavy charges? Hypocrisy impotent as contemptible! Where under the canopy of heaven did colour stamp a man with such hopeless misery as in the streets of New York, Philadelphia, or Boston?... The triumph of the South cannot make Slavery worse; the triumph of the North can hardly make the position of the slave better, when even now she designates him as a 'chattel', and talks of him as being 'contraband of war'.” (Huddersfield Chronicle, 13 July 1861 p. 5)

“It was the dread of emancipation which led the South to accept Mr Lincoln’s election as the signal for revolt… It is, perhaps, just as well to bear in mind that these fears of the South were declared by the President and by the North generally to be perfectly futile.” (Leeds Mercury, 10 September 1861)

"Another piece of news brought by the last steamer, is the remarkable proclamation which General Fremont has issued in Missouri... The slaves held by rebels are, by this proclamation, declared to be free, and not 'contraband of war', as has hitherto been the case. This is a most important distinction, and we regard it as the first step towards making the present struggle a war of emancipation... A movement of this kind will not be easily put back... We are thankful that the patriotic Fremont... has had the courage to act as he has done, and we trust that before long, the principle which he has thus broadly and publicly avowed, will obtain the enlightened and energetic support of the Federal Government." (York Herald, 21 September 1861, p. 8)
(As you can see, there was genuine enthusiasm for Fremont's emancipation measures, which is why it was so disappointing when they were repudiated.)

“It is certainly stretching the doctrine of contraband of war very far… the argument is as absurd and untenable as an argument could possibly be… when the necessity of emancipating the slaves is so strongly felt that people are ready to seize upon the most obviously absurd pretext as reasons to justify it, it is evident that the day of action is drawing nigh. We have always anticipated its advent, and are not at all surprised to see it coming so soon, nor sorry to see it coming with such ridiculously awkward excuses.” (Leeds Mercury, 8 October 1861)


"Mr Lincoln- long the chosen representative of Illinois, a State which has always signalised itself by a reluctance to allow of the settlement of free negroes on its soul... It is probable that even at the seat of the Federal Government no one is able to tell exactly what becomes of the 'contrabands' who flock to the camp of the army of the Potomac, and few persons, perhaps, feel much curiosity on the subject. Every military officer is allowed carte blanche, and follows his own lights in the matter. Wherein it is observable that those belonging to the regular army generally show a disposition to pay more attention to the vested rights of the master than to the inherent rights of the fugitive." (Bradford Observer, 6 February 1862, p. 7)



"The principle asserted is not that a human being cannot justly own another, but that he cannot own him unless he is loyal to the United States" (Spectator, 11 October 1862).

The proclamation was created "as a weapon against the foes of the United States' Government, rather than a frank but tardy exposition of what is just between man and man" (Illustrated London News, 11 October 1862).

“Walter S. Cox, the commissioner under the Fugitive Slave Law, to-day [11 June 1863] remanded seven runaway slaves, two of them children, from Maryland, to their claimants. An affidavit of the loyalty of the claimants had been made.” (Leeds Mercury, 25 June 1863)

"Although I would not discourage in those who differ from me any demonstration of sympathy with the American president in the emancipation proclamation he has recently issued, I must confess I could not myself conscientiously unite in or promote any such demonstration, without being able to perceive in the decree something more deserving of sympathy than appears to be the case... His decree cannot be looked upon otherwise than a mere time-serving act of policy or expediency, which has been wrung out as a sort of last resort… It does not therefore call for any expression of sympathy from us, however much we may rejoice that the thing has been done at last, which ought to have been done at first, and which had it been done earlier, much carnage and many thousands of lives might have been spared... Let us thank God, and take courage in the belief that out of the distant hemisphere, He will still work deliverance for the slave. - Wilson Armistead, President of the Leeds Anti-Slavery Society (Leeds Mercury 15 October 1863)




Of course, they could just be listening to what Lincoln said. ("If Jefferson Davis wishes...to know what I would do if he were to offer peace and re-union, saying nothing about slavery, let him try me", Lincoln to Charles D Robinson , 17 August 1864.)

Or it could be that the same view was held by people in the US government at the same time:

"We show our sympathy with slavery by emancipating slaves where we cannot reach them and holding them in bondage where we can set them free." - William H. Seward.

If William H. Seward says the Emancipation Proclamation isn't as much as it could be, then perhaps this isn't just a British misunderstanding of the situation.
 
Or it could be that the same view was held by people in the US government at the same time:

"We show our sympathy with slavery by emancipating slaves where we cannot reach them and holding them in bondage where we can set them free." - William H. Seward.
Whether or not Seward said this (quote comes from a book by Don Piatt written over a decade after Seward's death) , it is factually wrong as I pointed out. Corinth, Helena, Winchester, Baton Rouge,
coast of North Carolina all were places where the army could reach them and slaves were emancipated.
At the same time., Lincoln worked with state authorities to advance emancipation in states within federal control yet outside of his direct powers -- state governments in Maryland, Louisiana, Arkansas, Tennessee and Virginia ended it in 1864, West Virginia and Missouri in 1865
 
The key point to consider here is that the Emancipation Proclamation was just one way of freeing slaves, and it was conditional upon the slave-owner being in rebellion (by swearing loyalty a slave-owner from Virginia could keep his slaves); there were other ways in which slaves could have been freed by direct application of governmental powers (through the forced-purchase approach, for one) but these were not pursued.

The number of slaves actually freed the moment the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect was quite small; they certainly existed, but the British (who'd been doing the same sort of thing over eighty years before) can perhaps be forgiven for thinking of it as nowhere near what could have been accomplished.


Of course, the reason why Lincoln had to work in the way he did to slowly enact emancipation without the use of his direct powers, and the reason why he had to take so much care to avoid breaking with existing laws rather than those laws just being changed, is that public opinion prevented those steps from being taken... which is the cause of the ill feeling the British have towards the Emancipation Proclamation. It's seen as nowhere near as big a step as it was portrayed as by Union propogandists in Britain; if the Union genuinely was strongly in favour of freeing slaves, then there wouldn't be any problems with just freeing them by an Act of Congress (say) and being done with it.




This is why the Spectator article and the Illustrated London News quote from 11th October note that the Proclamation only frees the slaves of owners who are not loyal. The act would be just the same if it were "This is literally all that can be done for legal reasons" and "This is an attempt to punish revolters for cynical reasons without respect to the actual moral aspects".

To try and translate it into modern terminology, imagine if - after decades of criminalization of homosexuality in Country X - it was proudly announced that Country X had enacted the Law of Freedom, in that it was now legal to have homosexual relations so long as it was in private.
It's technically a step in the right direction, and it could be the start of a general awakening, but Pink News isn't exactly going to put the country at the top of the list...
 
The key point to consider here is that the Emancipation Proclamation was just one way of freeing slaves, and it was conditional upon the slave-owner being in rebellion (by swearing loyalty a slave-owner from Virginia could keep his slaves); there were other ways in which slaves could have been freed by direct application of governmental powers (through the forced-purchase approach, for one) but these were not pursued.
This is incorrect. The Confiscation Acts allowed for that but not the Emancipation Proclamation. All slaves were free in the areas declared in the proclamation.
 
Proclamation 95 states the area as:




⁠Now, Therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, by virtue of the power in me vested as Commander-in-Chief, of the Army and Navy of the United States in time of actual armed rebellion against the authority and government of the United States, and as a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion, do, on this first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and in accordance with my purpose so to do publicly proclaimed for the full period of one hundred days, from the day first above mentioned, order and designate as the States and parts of States wherein the people thereof respectively, are this day in rebellion against the United States, the following, to wit:


Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana (except the parishes of St. Bernard, Plaquemines, Jefferson, St. John, St. Charles, St. James, Ascension, Assumption, Terrebone, Lafourche, St. Mary, St. Martin, and Orleans, including the city of New Orleans), Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia (except the forty-eight counties designated as West Virginia, and also the counties of Berkeley, Accomac, Northhampton, Elizabeth City, York, Princess Anne, and Norfolk, including the cities of Norfolk and Portsmouth), and which excepted parts, are for the present, left precisely as if this proclamation were not issued.



As of 1st January 1863 this is a pretty fair description of the front line. It completely leaves out Tennessee and Kentucky, though (so it doesn't apply in those places) and it defines the whole of the Carolinas plus Northern Virginia as being in rebellion (so it does apply in those places; these are the places where slaves were immediately freed, though the numbers seem to have been on the order of 20,000. It wouldn't surprise me if many slaveowners who'd picked a side had sort of left Northern Virginia during the previous months of campaigning, as they'd swept through the area).

ED: It has been pointed out to me that I missed a few other specific locations, those being Helena (AK), Corinth (MS) and Baton Rouge (LA). Mea culpa; I really should have known about Corinth at least.


So the area which the proclamation defines as being in rebellion is the area which is not currently under the control of the Federal government, except for certain specific areas.

Proclamation 93 also restates the relevant portion of the Confiscation Acts, complete with the mention of the oath of loyalty; it's probably this which the British newspapers noticed.


In Union-held Louisiana, Union-held southeastern Virginia, all of Tennessee, all of Kentucky, and Missouri/Maryland/Delaware, the Confiscation Acts continued to apply and so an oath of loyalty would suffice to let you keep your slaves. This was probably the great majority of slaves under Union control at the time, though as the armies advanced that changed - but as of early 1863 the armies hadn't advanced.
 
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The number of slaves actually freed the moment the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect was quite small; they certainly existed, but the British (who'd been doing the same sort of thing over eighty years before) can perhaps be forgiven for thinking of it as nowhere near what could have been accomplished.
"While the Emancipation Proclamation’s reach was limited by exceptions (loyal border states, all of Tennessee, and certain Louisiana parishes), 'emancipation was immediate,' Eric Foner has written, in Union-occupied parts of Arkansas, Florida, North Carolina, Mississippi and the South Carolina Sea Islands. 'Overall,' he points out, 'tens of thousands of slaves—50,000 according to one estimate—gained their freedom with the stroke of Lincoln’s pen.'”
The Myth of Non-Emancipation
 
It may also be important to remember some of the recent events in the British mind and news at the time.

The slave trade was one which the US had a treaty obligation to stamp out, but US ships were rarely committed to the role and often spent their time on the anti-slavery patrol wasting time instead of helping to stop slave traders. Meanwhile the slave traders flew the US flag, because the British had reciprocal right of search with just about every maritime country in the world except the United States (which refused any suggestion of agreeing to this reciprocal treaty, and would continue to do so well into the Civil War); thus, with the US ships that could board them slacking off and the Royal Navy ships unable to do so, slaver traders would just put up the US flag and bask in their immunity even when they'd been literally just throwing dead slaves overboard.

There's the 1858 boarding dispute - in which the Royal Navy, tired of how the US flag was the only one in the world which slave traders could fly for protection, began illegally boarding US shipping to check if they were slave traders. The response and the resultant outcry in the United States resulted in at least one regiment of New York militia volunteering for active service to avenge the insult to the US flag and an incendiary speech by William Seward about not letting the insult go unavenged.

Then there's the 1860 Anderson case in which the State of Missouri attempted to have a fugitive slave extradited from Canada in order to have him burned alive.

And in 1861-2 Seward originally told US diplomats not to talk about the slavery issue; when this prohibition was lifted, it was instead to start making a point about warning the British that an attempt to intercede would lead to the provocation of a race war.


These events are part of what forms the backdrop in which the Emancipation Proclamation is being viewed. The US has a treaty obligation to help stamp out the slave trade, but does almost nothing to do so while also refusing to allow the British permission to handle it themselves; when the British take matters into their own hands, meanwhile, this incites violent passions even from the North. Thus the British have reason to believe that the North doesn't care about anti-slavery measures for their own sake.
Meanwhile Missouri is entirely exempted from the Emancipation Proclamation, despite being such a recent and celebrated case; Seward has just recently hinted that the North would be willing to spark a race war if needed.


This is why the British originally considered the Emancipation Proclamation to be such a weak bit of work. Their opinion changed when the advance of the Union armies genuinely did start freeing large numbers of slaves, but when the proclamation was issued no such reassurance had yet happened.
 
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