Eric Foner: Emancipation Proclamation 150 years later
Posted by Mike E on January 15, 2013
“Up to now, we have witnessed only the first act of the civil war – the constitutional waging of war. The second act, the revolutionary waging of war, is at hand.”
Karl Marx 1862
150 years ago this month, the Emancipation Proclamation went into affect — declaring that ending slavery was now a war aim of the Union armies. A war against secession had become a revolutionary war.
The following essay was written by Eric Foner to commemorate the announcement of this proclamation, which happened in September 1862.
The U.S. Civil War is not just a profound historical event (and one of the rare revolutionary victories in U.S. history) — but also a touchstone for understanding how the U.S. works today — (just look at the debate over the recent films Lincoln and Django!)
The Emancipation Proclamation at 150
by Eric Foner
One hundred and fifty years ago this week occurred one of the crucial turning points of the American civil war and, indeed, of American history. Not on the battlefield, although at Antietam on 17 September 1862, a Union army forced Confederates under Robert E Lee to abandon their invasion of Maryland. Rather, it came five days later, when Abraham Lincoln issued “A Proclamation” warning the south that if the war did not end within 100 days, he would declare slaves in areas under rebellion “forever free”.
Like all great historical transformations, emancipation during the civil war was a process, not a single event. It played out over time, arose from many causes and was the work of many individuals. It began at the war’s outset when slaves, ignoring Lincoln’s insistence that the struggle was about national unity, not slavery, began to seek refuge behind Union lines. It did not end until December 1865, when secretary of state William H Seward announced the ratification of the 13th amendment, irrevocably abolishing slavery throughout the reunited nation. But what came to be known as the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation marked a key step in this process.
Lincoln believed that union, not emancipation, was the lowest common denominator of public support for the war. But he also understood that slavery was the war’s fundamental cause. Beginning in November 1861, he promoted a plan to encourage voluntary abolition in Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri, the border slave states that remained with the union. The federal government would provide financial compensation to states that acted to end slavery, and would encourage the freed people to emigrate to Africa or Central America. (Lincoln had long believed that “colonization”, as this idea was called, would benefit both races; most blacks denounced it as a denial of their right to equality in the United States.)
On 22 July 1862, Lincoln informed his cabinet of a dramatic change in policy. He had decided to issue an order freeing all slaves in Confederate-held areas as of the following 1 January. During the previous months, he had been subjected to enormous pressure to adopt a new course. The Republican majority in Congress had pressed forward with actions against slavery – barring the army from returning fugitives, abolishing slavery in Washington, DC and, in the Second Confiscation Act, freeing slaves held by Confederates if they came within Union lines.
Lincoln signed all of these measures. With the war at a stalemate, he was increasingly convinced that the Union could not emerge victorious without making slavery a target. He was also exasperated with southerners, including the border states, who professed loyalty to the Union but insisted that slavery remain undisturbed. When a prominent citizen of New Orleans complained that the army was encouraging slaves to escape, Lincoln fired back:
“What would you do in my position? … Would you give up the contest, leaving any available means unapplied?”
Not all cabinet members approved of Lincoln’s decision, although all recognized its momentous significance. But Seward warned that issuing the proclamation immediately might seem as an act of desperation – he advised Lincoln to wait until the Union achieved a military victory. Lincoln put the Proclamation aside. During the next two months, he continued to affirm his previous policy regarding slavery, urging a black delegation at the White House to promote colonization among their people, and publishing a widely-noted letter to New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley, reaffirming that preservation of the Union, not abolition, was the war’s primary purpose.
Antietam provided the victory for which Lincoln had been waiting, and on 22 September 1862, he issued the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. The document revealed Lincoln’s thinking at a crucial moment of transition. He reiterated his previous commitment to monetary compensation for slaveholders whose states consented to abolition and his belief that the freed people should be colonized outside the United States. (These elements would be eliminated in the final Emancipation Proclamation.) But he made it clear that after 1 January, the Union army would be fighting not simply to preserve the Union, but to destroy the major institution of southern life.
Lincoln’s proclamation was only a warning. It did not free a single slave – that would come when the Emancipation Proclamation was issued. But contemporaries understood that the character of the civil war was about to change. Perhaps the most penetrating assessment came from Karl Marx, then writing occasional dispatches from London for the New York Tribune:
“Up to now, we have witnessed only the first act of the civil war – the constitutional waging of war. The second act, the revolutionary waging of war, is at hand.”
Kasama 
carldavidson said
The Civil War and the ensuing period of Reconstruction were indeed part of our country’s revolutionary heritage, and it is quite a good thing that the current films, ‘Lincoln’ and ‘Django’, are drawing attention to them. Likewise the recent book by Foner, ‘Fiery Trial,’ which does a lot to understand Lincoln’s own internal conflict and his development in the course of the struggle.
Mike E said
Foner’s Fiery Trial was the single best book I’ve read on the Civil War this year.
chegitz guevara said
Actually, about 50,000 slaves were freed by the Proclamation. Lincoln left a small part of the occupied CSA out the exemption (probably simple oversight), and so slaves in that area were freed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emancipation_Proclamation
carldavidson said
Here’s the point to consider: In order to abolish slavery and defeat the slavocracy, Lincoln needed a popular front vs slavery, comprised of racists and anti-racists, white abolitionists and white workers, including the racists among them, who were of considerable numbers, and also Northern business, especially in rail, telegraph, guns and supplies. The majority of the Union became anti-slavery, but a majority becoming anti-racist was still a ways down the pike.
carldavidson said
…and of course, the slaves and free Blacks themselves as well, who both played the critical role
Gary said
Lincoln (like many of us!) underwent a significant political evolution during his adult lifetime. One should keep that in mind whenever quoting him, and also consider the context (as one should in looking at Thaddeus Stevens’ speech in the House in 1864, when—in order to get the 13th ammendment passed—he emphatically repudiated a commitment to full racial equality but merely insisted on legal equality to placate a faction of the opposition).
Here is the Lincoln of August 1862, while his plan to free all slaves in the Confederate states was being discussed, and before the Antietam victory and the Emancipation Proclamation:
—
Executive Mansion,
Washington, August 22, 1862.
Hon. Horace Greeley:
Dear Sir.
I have just read yours of the 19th. addressed to myself through the New-York Tribune. If there be in it any statements, or assumptions of fact, which I may know to be erroneous, I do not, now and here, controvert them. If there be in it any inferences which I may believe to be falsely drawn, I do not now and here, argue against them. If there be perceptable in it an impatient and dictatorial tone, I waive it in deference to an old friend, whose heart I have always supposed to be right.
As to the policy I “seem to be pursuing” as you say, I have not meant to leave any one in doubt.
I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be “the Union as it was.” If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.
I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men every where could be free.
Yours,
A. Lincoln.
—
What strikes me is his (strategic?) prioritization of unity over the slavery issue (“if I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it”), while reiterating with “no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men every where could be free” at at time when this not means the predominant opinion among his bourgeois peers. But by 1864 Lincoln, bolstered by further military victories and confident that the union would be restored, not only pushed through the 13th ammendment abolishing slavery but did so using risky (and underhanded) means (“by all means necessary”) including lying to Congress about the Confederacy’s bid for peace talks but also told the Confederate envoys seeking to surrender—on the sole condition that the 13th ammendment not be ratified—that slavery was dead and that they would have to accept that.
In other words he as he’d said was able to “adopt new views so fast as they appear to be true views.”
carldavidson said
I think a good number of players at the time understood that if you stopped slavery from expanding, it would implode, whether you were explicity abolitionist or not. It was ‘in the cards,’ so to speak, and would unfold, sooner rather than later. The slavocracy made the point repeatedly.
Gary said
Those focused on ending slavery in the U.S. in the 1860s didn’t throw down a gauntlet, saying: Here’s our position (opposing both the institution of slavery and the thesis of inherent racial inequality) and demand everyone bow and do puja to show reverence for their synthesis of ideas. Rather they negotiated around different views to obtain what was for that time a (limited, if) revolutionary end.
Somewhere (as I recall, I may be wrong) Lenin quotes Goethe to the effect that “theory is grey, but green is the tree of life.”
In observing from afar events in Nepal I think we should assume that our comrades there are dealing with political (and political-cum-military) issues as complex as those confronting the Abolitionists in this country way back when.
carldavidson said
I agree with Gary here. I’d only add that all struggles for radical change and revolution are complex and full of contractions. That’s why I think we do well to study this perid in our history, not because it’s an exception, but because it’s closer to being typical.