by James Oakes
Wade-Davis Bill, 454–56, 550
Wallace, Lew, 551
Wallace, William, 389–90
Ward, Artemus, 301
War Department, U.S.:
black enlistment instructions by, 378, 383, 387, 463
Bureau of Colored Troops of, 383
contraband policy instructions of, 99–100, 139, 193, 198, 199, 203, 212, 215, 218, 513
Emancipation Proclamation instructions of, 368, 370, 371, 387
First Confiscation Act instructions of, 138–39, 140, 141–43, 144, 146, 157, 174–75, 176, 193, 198, 199, 203, 212, 215, 218, 221, 225, 283, 337, 513
Kentucky officer resignations in, 487
Lieber code issuance by, 352
Louisiana contraband policy instructions of, 247
Preliminary Proclamation’s distribution by, 317, 324
see also Cameron, Simon; Stanton, Edwin M.
Waring, George, 168, 171, 183–84
War of 1812, 36, 38, 261
Washburne, Elihu, 321
Washington, D.C.:
abolition compensation scheme in, 274–75
abolition in, 257, 268, 269–77, 300, 313, 328, 331, 344, 394, 438
abolitionist position on, 9, 17, 18, 27, 31, 33, 270
colonization scheme in, 274–75, 279, 280
congressional sovereignty over, 18, 269, 270, 271, 272, 273
constitutional status of, 270–71, 272–73
contraband camps in, 419
Crittenden proposal for, 73
Democratic position on, 44
First Confiscation Act’s inapplicability in, 143
fugitive slave clause enforcement in, 189–90, 275–76
fugitive slave escapes to, 167, 189, 190, 271, 275, 276, 316, 419
gradual abolition proposals for, 53, 270, 271, 273
Lincoln’s position on, 53, 63, 270
Republican position on, 51, 59, 257, 271–73, 274, 275–76, 300
slavery in, 269–70, 272
Union army protection of, 90, 271
Webster, Daniel, 23, 24
Webster-Ashburton Treaty, 262
Weed, Thurlow, 509
Weekly Pantagraph, 68
Weld, Theodore Dwight:
Adams’s relationship with, 36, 39, 41
constitutional arguments of, 17–18, 39, 47, 347
District of Columbia abolition argument of, 271, 272
Welles, Gideon, 101, 142, 303, 306, 532, 533
West, Thirteenth Amendment ratification in, 481
see also Mississippi Valley
West Virginia:
abolition in, 257, 295, 304, 328, 331, 367, 550
black enlistment in, 543
Emancipation Proclamation’s exemption from, 299, 343, 363, 543
gradual abolition proposal in, 295, 296, 297, 298, 299, 431, 486
independence of, 294
slave population in, 296
slavery position of, 294, 295, 297, 298
Thirteenth Amendment ratification in, 481
Union’s admission of, 257, 294–300, 304, 328, 331, 431, 486, 550
Wheaton, Henry, 37
Whig Party, U.S.:
Butler’s opinion of, 90
in Massachusetts, 91
Republican party members from, 50
slavery position of, 29
Whiting, William, 350
Wickliffe, Charles A., 287
Wigfall, Louis, 48
Willey, Waitman T., 295, 422
Wilmot Proviso, 256, 265
Wilson, Henry, 125, 186, 188, 189, 191, 226, 227, 228, 231, 258, 276, 298, 434, 444, 549
Wilson, James T., 430
Wilson’s Creek, 156
Womble, George, 89
women:
emancipation’s consequences for, 366, 386, 387, 414
Thirteenth Amendment support by, 479
Wood, Fernando, 448, 452, 453
Woods, J. C., 164
Worcester Palladium, 70
ILLUSTRATIONS
The published version of Charles Sumner’s first important speech after his election to the U.S. Senate in 1851. In it the senator spelled out a number of antislavery policies the federal government could pursue despite the constitutional prohibition of direct federal abolition in any state where slavery was legal.
After a slave rebellion in 1839 aboard La Amistad led by Joseph Cinqué (top right), the rebels ended up in New England, where federal authorities tried to have the slaves returned to their Cuban owners. Abolitionists took up the cause of the rebels, arguing that slavery had no legal standing on the high seas. Massachusetts congressman and former president John Quincy Adams (top left) defended the slave rebels when the case reached the Supreme Court in 1841 (bottom; The Granger Collection, New York). The justices voted against the slave owners, though for technical rather than abolitionist reasons, and the rebels were ultimately able to return to their homes in West Africa.
In one of the first legal moves against slavery during the Civil War, Union General Benjamin F. Butler (top left) refused to return fugitive slaves who escaped from their owners to Fortress Monroe, Virginia (bottom). The fugitives arrived in such large numbers that Butler appointed a New England abolitionist, Edward L. Pierce (top right), as supervisor of “contrabands”—as the fugitives were popularly known. Pierce later assumed a similar position in the Sea Islands, where he organized the first important wartime experiment in free labor.
ANTI-SLAVERY ADVOCATES
* * *
Lyman Trumbull. Republican senator from Illinois and chairman of the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee.
Thaddeus Stevens. Republican congressman from Pennsylvania, a leading radical and skillful parliamentarian.
Charles Sumner, senator from Massachusetts, a leading voice of radical Republican principles.
Salmon P. Chase. secretary of the Treasury, the most radical member of Lincoln’s cabinet.
OPPONENTS OF EMANCIPATION
* * *
General in chief of the Union army in the first years of the war, George B. McClellan objected to a war whose purpose extended beyond the restoration of the Union. (The Granger Collection, New York)
John J. Crittenden, senator from Kentucky, advocated a proslavery compromise during the secession crisis and spoke out against all Republican efforts to undermine slavery during the war.
Willard Saulsbury, senator from Delaware, a pugnacious defender of slavery and a leading congressional critic of Republican antislavery policies.
Fernando Wood, Democratic congressman from New York, led the successful move to block passage of the Thirteenth Amendment in June 1864. (The Granger Collection, New York)
Republicans based the policy of military emancipation on the assumption that slaves would escape to Union lines if given the chance.
Escaping slaves increasingly ran to one of the many contraband camps set up by the Union army.
Camp Nelson, Kentucky (top and bottom), one of the largest contraband camps in the South and the major recruiting center for black troops.
Lincoln brought a draft of the Emancipation Proclamation with him to the cabinet meeting of July 22, 1862. On the advice of Secretary of State William H. Seward (seated, third from right), however, Lincoln decided to wait for a military victory to make the announcement.
In January 1863 Harper’s Weekly published an “Emancipation” drawing by Thomas Nast (top). After the war and Lincoln’s assassination, an adulterated version of Nast’s drawing that dramatically enhanced Lincoln’s role in emancipation was widely circulated (bottom).
Lincoln drafted the Emancipation Proclamation himself, meticulously editing and reediting it before allowing it to be published.
“All Slaves were made Freemen.” Handbills like this, distributed by Union agents in the Confederate states, were designed to entice slaves to leave their plantation homes and escape to Union lines.
A recruitment poster, probably from late 1863, urging black men to enlist in the Union army. The recru
itment agents, among them the prominent black activist Martin Delany, besides promising substantial bounties and good pay, also boasted of the bravery and indispensability of black troops in engagements as far afield as Honey Springs, Arkansas, and James Island, South Carolina.
On June 7, 1863, six months after Lincoln formally lifted the ban on black troops in the Union army, African American soldiers at Milliken’s Bend, Louisiana, stood their ground against superior numbers of Confederate soldiers, even as white Union troops fled the battlefield. News of the event swept the nation and helped turn the tide of northern public opinion strongly in favor of black troops. Lincoln came to think of black troops as indispensable to Union victory, and therefore to slavery’s destruction.
Lincoln’s conduct of the war was the central issue in the 1864 presidential election. But as this cartoon demonstrates, the issues of slavery and the war could not be separated. Lincoln and his fellow Republicans stood for “Union and Liberty.” His Democratic opponent, George McClellan, stood for the swiftest possible restoration of the Union, even if that meant the survival of slavery.
After his decisive reelection in November 1864, Lincoln threw himself into an intense campaign to secure the handful of Democratic votes needed to pass the Thirteenth Amendment. As evidence of his commitment to the cause, Lincoln affixed his signature to the congressional resolution sending the amendment to the states for ratification. That signature provoked some controversy because under the Constitution the president has no formal role in the amendment process. (The Granger Collection, New York)
Until the final vote was taken on January 30, 1865, no one could be certain that there were enough votes in the House of Representatives to pass the Thirteenth Amendment. When the result was announced, the House erupted in chaos and celebration.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
James Oakes is Distinguished Professor of History and Graduate School Humanities Professor at the City University of New York Graduate Center. He is the author of several acclaimed works on the South and the Civil War, including The Ruling Race: A History of American Slaveholders, Slavery and Freedom: An Interpretation of the Old South, and, most recently, The Radical and the Republican: Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and the Triumph of Antislavery Politics, winner of the Lincoln Prize.
COPYRIGHT
Copyright © 2013 by James Oakes
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Oakes, James.
Freedom national : the destruction of slavery in the United States,
1861–1865 / James Oakes. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-393-06531-2 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-0-393-08971-4 (ebook)
1. Slaves—Emancipation—United States. 2. Slavery—United States—
History. 3. Antislavery movements—United States—History. 4. United
States. President (1861–1865 : Lincoln). Emancipation Proclamation.
5. United States—History—Civil War, 1861–1865. I. Title.
E453.O13 2013
973.7'14—dc23
2012035601
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