Chapter 5 Notes

These notes are part of the Black Reconstruction Reading Group‘s study material.

Book: Black Reconstruction in America, W.E.B. DuBois

Chapter: __5__

Authors: John K.

Time period: _____1862-1866_______ Location: _______________________________________

Main Topic: The Emancipation Proclamation, how it fit into the war, and how it codified what self-liberating slaves were already doing, and how the Negro soldier was the critical actor in winning the war.
Notes and Quotes:

In the ears of the world, Abraham Lincoln on the first of January, 1863, declared four million slaves “thenceforward and forever free.” The truth was less than this. The Emancipation Proclamation applied only to the slaves of those states or parts of states still in rebellion against the United States government. Hundreds of thousands of such slaves were already free by their own action and that of the invading armies, and in their cases, Lincoln’s proclamation only added possible legal sanction to an accomplished fact.

[The EP] was designed to make easier the replacement of unwilling Northern white soldiers with black soldiers; and it sought to put behind the war a new push toward Northern victory by the mighty impact of a great moral ideal, both in the North and in Europe.

Lincoln: “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 slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would also do that.”

Lincoln’s thoughs on emancipation, nine days before drafting it, speaking to Chicago Protestants (presumably an Abolitionist group):

“I admit that slavery is at the root of the rebellion, or at least its sine qua non. … I will also concede that Emancipation would help us in Europe. … I grant, further, that it would help somewhat at the North, though not so much, I fear, as you and those you represent imagine. .. . And then, unquestionably, it would weaken the Rebels by drawing off their laborers, which is of great importance; but I am not so sure we could do much with the Blacks. If we were to arm them, I fear that in a few weeks the arms would be in the hands of the Rebels. . . .” He thought making the Emancipation Proclimation would be hollow.

Yet only nine days later he was working on the Emancipation Proclamation.

Creating the Emancipation Proclamation was contentious. White naysayers from all over, South and North, said it wouldn’t work.
“Only among Negroes and in England was the reaction favorable, and both counted. The Proclamation made four and a half million laborers willing almost in mass to sacrifice their last drop of blood for their new-found country. It sent them into transports of joy and sacrifice. It changed all their pessimism and despair into boundless faith. It was the Coming of the Lord.“

The war created a cotton famine, and the looms in England were not spinning, causing pain to the working class in 1865.

“Public opinion [in England] stood back of the English government and was, on the whole, in favor of the South; but (Abolitionists) … had influenced the opinion of the middle and laboring classes.”  “…the English workers stood up for the abolition of Negro slavery, and protested against the intervention of the English… as soon as Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, the workingmen of England held hundreds of meetings… and hailed his action.”

The workingmens meetings in 1863 in London and Manchester wrote a supportive letter to Lincoln, drafted by Karl Marx (See the book for the full letter.)
So, due to working class opposition England didn’t take sides during the war.

France also didn’t take sides during the war, because the masses of French were opposed, even though Napoleon III was favorable to recognizing the Confederacy.
“In the North, the Emancipation Proclamation meant the Negro soldier, and the Negro soldier meant the end of the war.”

(missing a lot here)

“Here was indeed revolution. At first, this was to be a white man’s war. First, because the North did not want to affront the South, and the war was going to be short, very short; and secondly, if Negroes fought in the war, how could it help being a war for their emancipation? And for this the North would not fight. Yet scarcely a year after hostilities started, the Negroes were fighting, although unrecognized as soldiers; in two years they were free and enrolling in the army.”

DuBois described different generals, and their approach to forming a Black military:

General Hunter: getting no support from the Union, formed his own regimens of Black soldiers, and argued in a letter to Congress that the soldiers were doing great, and should be supported. Congressmen laughed at the letter.

General Butler: enters into New Orleans, and encounters the Free Negro Army, an army of Creoles who organized under the Confederates, but immediately switched sides to the Union. Butler was unable to get reinforcements from the Union to defend New Orleans. To staff up, recruited Black people to enlist, and got many free Negroes and fugitive slaves.

General Phelps: asked to arm the Black people, and was told to get them to cut wood. He refused.

Kansas Home Guard: see Indian Home Guard, had 2500 Negroes.

In the North, the attitudes of most white people were not supportive of liberation:

“Private Miles O’Reilly expressed in the newspapers a growing public opinion: “Some say it is a burnin’ shame To make the naygurs fight, An’ that the thrade o’ bein’ kilt Belongs but to the white; “But as for me ‘upon me sowl’ So liberal are we here, I’ll let Sambo be murthered in place o’meself On every day in the year.””

“…the Copperheads of the North (see Vallandigham), and the commercial interests of New York, in particular, were enabled to turn the just indignation of the workers against the Negro laborers, rather than against the capitalists; and against any war, even for emancipation.”

Describes: New York City Draft Riots July 13, 1863 “…the attempt to enforce the draft led particularly to disturbances in New York City, where a powerful part of the city press was not only against the draft, but against the war, and in favor of the South and Negro slavery.”

About the Black people fleeing the riots: “Driven by the fear of death at the hands of the mob… these people had been forced to take refuge… At these places were scattered some 5,000 homeless men, women and children.”

“It had been a commonplace thing in the North to declare that Negroes would not fight. Even the black man’s friends were skeptical about the possibility of using him as a soldier… But when he rose and fought and killed, the whole nation with one voice proclaimed him a man and brother.”

Lists stories of pilots stealing boats for the Union: William Tillman on the S J Waring, Smalls on the Planter in Charleston. The story of the manhunt for J W Booth, aided by everyday Black people.

After the EP, the North was more open to organizing Negro regimens to fight in the war. Congressional debate was cotentious, but the US voted to pay Black soldiers, and raised up Black armies from the North. (However, Northern white hostility to Black people remained. They were still being blamed for starting the war.)

Massachusetts: 54th and 55th Regiments; Union League Club of New York; Pennsylvania: United States Regiments; Nashville: Corps d’Afrique

Petty discrimination against Black soldiers: lower pay (which the soldiers protested, and won), few officership opportunities, white people didn’t want to be led by Black people.

DuBois inserted Frederick Douglass speech: Should the Negro Enlist in the Union Army? [July 6, 1863] The speech makes an accounting of past or existing attitudes and wrongs of the country against Black people, argues that with the EP, the promise of democracy is being made real, and rallies Black people to enlist.

General Morgan: “History has not yet done justice to the share borne by colored soldiers in the war for the Union.” DuBois then goes on to list battle after battle, successful and not.

“The recruiting of Negro soldiers was hastened after the battle of Fort Wagner, until finally no less than 154 regiments, designated as United States Negro troops, were enlisted…” “Official figures say that there were in all 186,017 Negro troops, of whom 123,156 were still in service… Without doubt, including servants, laborers and spies, between three and four hundred thousand Negroes helped as regular soldiers or laborers…”

As the war went on, the Confederacy got weaker, and considered arming and freeing enslaved people to fight for the South.

“In a letter to President Davis, another correspondent added: “I would not make a soldier of the Negro if it could be helped, but we are reduced to this last resort.”” DuBois went into many stories about the progression of this idea.

“It was this plain alternative that brought Lee’s sudden surrender. Either the South must make terms with its slaves, free them, use them to fight the North, and thereafter no longer treat them as bondsmen; or they could surrender to the North with the assumption that the North, after the war, must help them to defend slavery, as it had before. It was then that Abolition came in as a determining factor, and itself was transformed to a new democratic movement.” The Abolitionist position gained respect, and became a mainstream position.

“It was not the Abolitionist alone who freed the slaves. The Abolitionists never had a real majority… Freedom for the slave was the logical result of a crazy attempt to wage war in the midst of four million black slaves, and trying the while sublimely to ignore the interests of those slaves in the outcome of the fighting…”

Then, DuBois goes on an extended sermon about the revolutionary change.

“There was to be a new freedom! And a black nation went tramping after the armies no matter what it suffered; no matter how it was treated, no matter how it died. First, without masters, without food, without shelter; then with new masters, food that was free, and improvised shelters, cabins, homes; and at last, land. They prayed; they worked; they danced and sang; they studied to learn; they wanted to wander. Some for the first time in their lives saw Town; some left the plantation and walked out into the world; some handled actual money, and some with arms in their hands, actually fought for freedom.”