{"id":616,"date":"2015-09-27T16:58:22","date_gmt":"2015-09-27T16:58:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-american\/?p=616"},"modified":"2015-09-27T16:58:22","modified_gmt":"2015-09-27T16:58:22","slug":"essay-emancipation-moments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-american\/essay-emancipation-moments\/","title":{"rendered":"ESSAY –Emancipation Moments"},"content":{"rendered":"

The essay excerpted below originally appeared in\u00a0Emancipation at 150: The Impact of Emancipation<\/a>, a special e-book anthology produced in 2013 on the anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation by President Lincoln’s Cottage and the US Commission on Civil Rights.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Emancipation Moments<\/strong><\/p>\n

By Matthew Pinsker<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Late in December 1936, a ninety-two-year-old woman from Washington, D.C. walked a couple miles from her residence on T Street to the Soldiers\u2019 Home, a federal retirement facility for combat veterans. Anna Harrison Chase made that long, cold walk because she regarded the site as the birthplace of emancipation. \u00a0\u201cMother\u201d Chase, as she was known in the local black community, remembered the Soldiers\u2019 Home from when she had just been a young \u201ccontraband\u201d or runaway slave in the District, staying at one of the nearby contraband camps. Chase had always heard that President Abraham Lincoln had written the first drafts of the proclamation during the summer of 1862 while residing in a cottage on the grounds of the Home. Now, she wanted to see the sacred place before she died. The unexpected visit by a former slave caused a small stir and soon the Washington Post<\/em> sent a reporter over for an interview. \u201cI used to see Mr. Lincoln almost every day riding out to the Soldiers\u2019 Home that summer,\u201d she recalled proudly. \u00a0\u201dOf course, we did not know what he was doing, but he was such a great man. \u00a0And I can remember how we laughed and cried when he set the slaves free.\u201d[1]<\/a><\/p>\n

When eighteen-year-old Anna Harrison \u201claughed and cried\u201d on January 1, 1863, she was experiencing emancipation on its most human terms. Mother Chase\u2019s abiding memory illustrates the visceral power of that emancipation moment and suggests the need for anniversary celebrations of the policy to take personal testimony of its impact more seriously. How did people \u2013especially slaves and masters\u2014actually experience emancipation during the war itself?\u00a0\u00a0 Answering that question also helps explain several of the nuances that complicate \u2013and humanize– the grand story of slavery\u2019s destruction.<\/p>\n

First, as Anna Harrison\u2019s recollections suggest, there was emancipation before Emancipation. She and her family escaped from Caroline County, Virginia in early summer 1862, as the chaos of war descended on their master\u2019s household. \u201cOur old master and missus were dead, and we heard that our young master had been killed in the war,\u201d she told the reporter. \u00a0\u201dSo we hitched up the ox carts and I led my family away to the Free State.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 Like thousands of other freedom-seeking slaves during that first year of the conflict, Harrison and her family sought refuge behind Union lines (\u201cthe Free State\u201d) by taking their master\u2019s ox carts across the Rappahannock River and then traveling by train from Fredericksburg. In August 1862, photographer Timothy O\u2019Sullivan captured a now-famous image of escaping slaves, called \u201cFugitive African Americans Fording the Rappahannock,\u201d that depicts what the Harrisons must have experienced as they made their way toward the District.[2]<\/a><\/p>\n

Contrabands were not simply fugitive slaves. By invoking international laws of warfare, anti-slavery Union generals such as Benjamin Butler, John Fremont, and David Hunter were building serious legal arguments that helped pave the way to emancipate these human \u201ccontraband of war.\u201d Although Lincoln curtailed some of these early emancipatory actions, both the War Department and Congress took several steps in 1861 and 1862 \u2013with the president\u2019s approval– that protected contraband freedom. Most notably, Congress passed two \u201cconfiscation\u201d acts (August 6, 1861 and July 17, 1862) that promised to punish rebels by seizing and explicitly freeing their slaves. The Congress also adopted an Article of War on March 13, 1862 that forbade the Union Army from returning fugitives. Local courts could still attempt to enforce fugitive slave laws on behalf of loyal masters, but such efforts became increasingly futile.<\/p>\n

Nobody knows exactly how many slaves achieved freedom under these conditions, but the numbers were astounding \u2013and sometimes infuriating– for those who lived through it. James Rumley was a North Carolina slaveholder who experienced Union occupation along the Outer Banks. \u201cSlaves are now deserting in scores from all parts of the country,\u201d he confided to his diary in May 1862, \u201cand our worst fears on this subject are likely to be realized.\u201d\u00a0 Rumley particularly condemned the March 13th Article of War, claiming that it \u201cenables these fanatics to make their quarters perfect harbors of runaway negroes,\u201d while also noting, \u201cThe soldiers go, without hesitation, into the kitchens among the negroes and encourage them to leave their owners.\u201d \u00a0\u00a0 By June, Rumley was complaining that \u201cthe mask\u201d of Union occupation, which had \u201cconcealed at first the hideous features of fanaticism,\u201d was now entirely \u201cthrown off.\u201d [3]<\/a> Slavery around Beaufort, North Carolina was essentially dead. Rumley\u2019s account matters because it illustrates a point made by historian John Hope Franklin in his classic book, The Emancipation Proclamation <\/em>(1963). Regardless of widespread concerns about cultivating loyal slaveholders, according to Franklin, \u201cwhen Union forces won control of an area[,] slavery\u00a0merely\u00a0ceased\u00a0to exist.\u201d[4]<\/a><\/p>\n

Franklin did not mean that all slaves achieved freedom right away, but that slavery as an institution<\/em> collapsed soon after masters such as Rumley lost their monopoly of force and law.\u00a0\u00a0 This new reality was most evident by 1862 along the coastal regions of the Carolinas and Georgia, especially in South Carolina, where Federal occupiers created a \u201crehearsal for reconstruction\u201d as historian Willie Lee Rose once put it, by turning over abandoned plantations on the Sea Islands to ex-slaves and by inviting abolitionists to organize freedmen\u2019s schools.[5]<\/a> The federal army in the Department of the South also commandeered part of a cotton plantation owned by John Joyner Smith in Port Royal and began experimenting with training black soldiers.<\/p>\n

Prince Rivers, a former slave from Beaufort, South Carolina, rushed to join the fight. Rivers had been a coachman for Henry M. Stuart, a prominent Beaufort planter, and like Anna Harrison, he took advantage of the war\u2019s chaos to \u201cborrow\u201d his master\u2019s horse and flee toward Union lines. The nearly forty-year-old ex-slave was also literate and quickly earned an appointment as a sergeant in what eventually became the First South Carolina Volunteers of African Descent. On August 1, 1862, General David Hunter provided Rivers and hundreds of other men in the regiment (which was being temporarily disbanded) with what might be termed their own private emancipation proclamations:<\/p>\n

The bearer, Prince Rivers, a sergeant in First Regiment S.C. Volunteers, late claimed as a slave, having been employed in hostility to the United States, is hereby agreeably to the [First Confiscation] law of 6th of August, 1861, declared free for ever. \u00a0His wife and children are also free.[6]<\/a><\/p>\n

Hunter\u2019s action came as much out of pique as principle. The fiercely anti-slavery general was angry because his efforts against slaveholders were being undermined by civilians back in Washington. President Lincoln himself had rescinded Hunter\u2019s most sweeping emancipation edict in May and now the War Department was refusing to pay the black men in \u201cHunter\u2019s Regiment\u201d because he had never been authorized to enlist them.[7]<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0 Though the administration would shortly reverse its decision and endorse Hunter\u2019s experiment with black troops, it was a difficult period for unionists, filled with bad news from the war and increasing signs of political division over the slavery issue. There was no consistency in the implementation of military policies regarding slavery, and no clear sense that either the president or the Congress was in charge (or even in agreement) over the emancipation issue.<\/p>\n

During this summer of northern discontent, which culminated with a very tense public exchange between New York Tribune <\/em>editor Horace Greeley and President Lincoln, abolitionists invoked Prince Rivers as a model for what freedom could accomplish.[8]<\/a> During an extended visit to Port Royal, Pennsylvania abolitionist James Miller McKim had asked Rivers if blacks would \u201cfight\u201d when \u201cthey had a chance.\u201d \u201cYes, sah,\u201d Rivers apparently replied, \u201cOnly let \u2018em know for sure \u2013for sure<\/em> mine you\u2014dat de white people means right; let \u2018em know for sure dat dey\u2019s fighting for demselves, and I know<\/em> dey will fight.\u201d[9]<\/a> McKim then arranged to bring both General Hunter and Sergeant Rivers to the North for a few weeks of lobbying on behalf of emancipation in cities such as Philadelphia and New York.<\/p>\n

The lingering uncertainty helps explain why President Lincoln\u2019s emancipation announcement on September 22 represented such a political thunderbolt. Lincoln\u2019s proclamation, issued following the Union victory at Antietam, specified that all previous congressional measures against slavery were to be fully enforced and that the commander-in-chief would go well beyond those measures starting on January 1, 1863 by emancipating all slaves throughout the rebel areas. The clarity and scope of the new policy was stunning. White House aide John Hay reported in his diary that when some cabinet members gathered after the announcement at the residence of Secretary of Treasury Salmon P. Chase, they seemed almost giddy. The 24-yearo-old Hay observed that \u201cthe old fogies \u2026 gleefully and merrily called each other and themselves abolitionists,\u201d noting they now \u201cbreathed freer\u201d because, as he put it wisely, \u201cthe Pres[identical] Proc[lamatio]n. had freed them as well as the slaves.\u201d[10]<\/a><\/p>\n

From his perch on the Outer Banks, slaveholder James Rumley felt anything but free. He hated the proclamation and dreaded its consequences. On January 1st, however, Rumley appeared almost baffled, admitting that the proclamation \u201chas taken effect today \u2026 without producing a ripple on the face of the waters.\u201d \u00a0He had expected the September announcement to produce bloody slave insurrections, like the ones at St. Domingo or Haiti in the 1790s.\u00a0\u00a0 Instead, all was quiet. \u201cThat the shackles should suddenly fall from the hands of thousands of slaves,\u201d he noted in his diary, \u201cas silently as snowflakes fall upon the earth \u2026 was not to be believed.\u201d Rumley attributed the relative peace to the occupation of the Federal Army, which \u201cby their conduct towards the slaves, anticipated the Proclamation and virtually set them free.\u201d He also observed with shrewd insight that \u201cthe slaves may not be entirely certain that their freedom is permanent, and may have some secret dread of the approach of Confederate power.\u201d[11]<\/a><\/p>\n

The great value of Rumley\u2019s foreboding emancipation account is how it demolishes a common misunderstanding about the proclamation. Lincoln\u2019s executive order did free some slaves immediately<\/em>, with the stroke of a pen –\u201cthousands\u201d of them in the Outer Banks and tens of thousands more in Union-occupied areas along the Atlantic Coast and across the Mississippi Valley in places such as Corinth, Mississippi.\u00a0\u00a0 Yes, there were some notable exceptions to the policy carved out in the January 1st decree \u2013such as certain parishes in Louisiana, \u201cforty-eight counties designated as West Virginia\u201d and parts of the Union-occupied peninsula in Virginia\u2014 but Rumley and many other slaveholders did not benefit from those limitations. While praying that the proclamation with its \u201cdiabolical purpose\u201d and \u201castounding stretch of power\u201d would never break the \u201cwall of southern bayonets\u201d still guarding the rest of the Confederacy, the professional clerk also acknowledged that, \u201cHere [in Beaufort, North Carolina] this paper has, for the present, all the force of a constitutional legislative act.\u201d[12]<\/a> It is tempting to brush aside those thousands of emancipation moments in places such as the Outer Banks while millions more still remained in bondage elsewhere, but that single day on January 1, 1863 witnessed more individual acts of freedom than any other date in American history.<\/p>\n

If there had been a center of gravity that day for emancipation, it might have been at Port Royal, South Carolina, not Washington, DC. While President Lincoln was inside his White House office trying to steady his hand before signing the final proclamation at around 2 p.m., a remarkable ceremony on the site of Smith\u2019s former cotton plantation was just then drawing to a close \u2013the largest single gathering in the South of people actually being freed. At what they now called Camp Saxton, the Federal army had organized an official ceremony and celebratory feast for several hundred men of the First South Carolina Volunteers and hundreds more of their contraband guests from around the Sea Islands. The black men stood at attention in specially designed uniforms that included standard-issue blue frock coats and bright scarlet pants. The visitors gathered in a beautiful live-oak grove with just \u201ca glimpse of the blue river\u201d visible, according to Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson, a writer and former ally of John Brown who now sat on the speaker\u2019s platform and served as commanding officer of the regiment.[13]<\/a><\/p>\n

The three-hour ceremony included a few too many speeches and presentations, but it was stirring nonetheless. William H. Brisbane, a former South Carolina planter-turned-abolitionist, read Lincoln\u2019s September proclamation since the final version was not yet available \u2013\u201ca South-Carolinian addressing South-Carolinians,\u201d as the Massachusetts-born Higginson framed it. The cheers were loud. But the excitement reached a crescendo following presentation of new regimental colors, which included a beautiful hand-sewn silken U.S. flag containing the phrase, \u201cThe Year of Jubilee has come!\u201d Yet before Higginson could formally accept the colors, a lone voice rose from the crowd of freed people, singing, \u201cAmerica\u201d (1832), and soon many of them joined in this patriotic hymn:<\/p>\n

My country, \u2018tis of thee,<\/p>\n

Sweet Land of Liberty\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cI never saw anything so electric,\u201d Higginson exclaimed afterwards. The regimental surgeon reported, \u201cNothing could have been more unexpected or more inspiring.\u201d Another observer noted that when some of the whites around the platform began to correct the lyrics, Higginson remarked quietly, \u201cLeave it to them.\u201d[14]<\/a><\/p>\n

Higginson finally addressed the assembly, received the colors, and called Sergeant Prince Rivers from Company A to his side. He warned Rivers that as color sergeant he was now \u201cchained\u201d to this flag and must be willing to defend it to his death. \u201cDo you understand?\u201d the colonel barked. \u201cYas, Sar,\u201d the sergeant replied. Higginson then presented a second bunting flag to Corporal Robert Sutton, and, in a scene brilliantly captured by a sketch artist from Frank Leslie\u2019s Illustrated Newspaper<\/em>, the two black men offered inspiring remarks while holding aloft their colors. Rivers said \u201che would die before surrendering [the flag] and that he wanted to show it to all the old masters.\u201d Sutton went even further, stating that \u201che could not rest satisfied while so many of their kindred were left in chains,\u201d vowing that they would one day \u201cshow their flag to Jefferson Davis in Richmond<\/em>.\u201d The correspondent from the New York Tribune<\/em> described both men as \u201cnatural orators.\u201d Later in the war, Higginson claimed that Rivers had \u201cmore administrative ability\u201d than any white officer in the regiment, adding, \u201cif there should ever be a black monarchy in South Carolina, he will be its king.\u201d[15]<\/a><\/p>\n

Without doubt, that ceremony at Port Royal was the grandest emancipation moment of the Civil War, but it was by no means the last. For most of the next three years, the Federal army spread word of the proclamation state by state, sometimes plantation by plantation, as it struggled to restore the union. Eye-witness testimony is harder to come by for these more isolated moments, but it does exist. There was, for example, a remarkable diary kept by James T. Ayers, who served as a recruiting agent for black soldiers in the Tennessee Valley. The 57-year-old lay Methodist preacher from Illinois had a number of dramatic \u201cadventures\u201d as he spread the \u201cgood news\u201d of emancipation.[16]<\/a> Ayers recorded one encounter in May 1864 at the John M. Eldridge plantation near Huntsville, Alabama that offers as vivid a window as any into the process of Civil War-style liberation.<\/p>\n

Ayers described riding along, encountering a \u201cblack patch in a cornfield\u201d and determining from the field hands that he was on the Eldridge plantation. Then he asked, \u201cAre you all his slaves.\u201d \u201cYes, massa,\u201d came the answer. \u201cIs he good to you?\u201d Ayers wondered. \u201cNot mighty good, massa.\u201d Then Ayers asked if Eldridge was a \u201cUnion man or secessionist.\u201d The answer, even with the dialect, was clear: \u201cOh Godamighty! Master, him cusses de yankees all de time [and] says day come here to kill us all and carry us away and sell us all and dat massa Lincum gwiin send us all Clean off.\u201d Ayers then showed the Eldridge slaves a broadside which many recruiting agents carried that depicted an image of \u201cFreedom to the Slave\u201d on one side and an abridged, two-sentence version of the Emancipation Proclamation on the other. They were curious, but unmoved.[17]<\/a><\/p>\n

So Ayers directed them to gather their things and follow him to the plantation house where he was going to confront the master. By the time Ayers arrived, however, John Eldridge knew all about him. The 54-year-old planter was a native Virginian and descendant of Pocahontas who had about 25 slaves, ranging in ages from 4 to 76, according to the 1860 census and was absolutely determined to keep them. \u201cMy niggers say you Come into the field and set them all free,\u201d Eldridge snarled. \u201cYes, sir,\u201d Ayers replied coolly. \u201cWell I would like to know how you got the autherity to do so, sir,\u201d said Eldridge. \u201cBy the War Department, sir, I get my Autherity,\u201d Ayers replied, adding wryly, \u201cthe very best of Autherity, aint it?\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 Ayers continued to argue with Eldridge and one of his bolder daughters before he finally drew a revolver and closed the debate.[18]<\/a><\/p>\n

Ayers departed Huntsville with four new recruits for the Union army and several other newly freed people following along, but not all of the slaves he encountered at the Eldridge plantation ended up leaving. James Rumley had predicted the sad truth a year earlier. Many slaves were just not \u201centirely certain\u201d that their \u201cfreedom\u201d was \u201cpermanent\u201d and dared not risk their families\u2019 lives on the word of men like Ayers, Higginson, Rivers or even Abraham Lincoln. The best recollected accounts of emancipation, such as Booker T. Washington\u2019s Up From Slavery <\/em>(1901), highlighted the deep anxiety that freedom often unleashed. \u201cWas it any wonder,\u201d Washington wrote, \u201cthat within a few hours the wild rejoicing [following emancipation] ceased and a feeling of deep gloom seemed to pervade the slave quarters?\u201d[19]<\/a><\/p>\n

Freedom did prove hard but most adjusted to the new realities. James Ayers became disenchanted with his recruiting work, and tried to reinvent himself as an army chaplain before dying from disease not long after the war ended. James Rumley regained his government job but never his \u201cproperty\u201d and lived until 1881. Prince Rivers mustered out of the Union army as a hero and became a politician in Reconstruction-era South Carolina. He was dragged into the Hamburg Massacre of 1876, one of the period\u2019s worst acts of terror against blacks. Denied a chance to secure justice and then driven out of politics altogether, Rivers was finally forced to find work \u2013once again– as a coachman before he died in 1887.\u00a0\u00a0 White House aide John Hay became a diplomat, editor of the New York Tribune<\/em>, and eventually secretary of state before his death in 1905. Mother Chase died two years after making her pilgrimage to the Soldiers\u2019 Home, at the age of 94. She was buried next to her husband, Thomas W. Chase, who had also once been enslaved. The two had met and fallen in love during the Civil War, in \u201cthe Free State.\u201d<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> \u201cContraband Remembers Summer of Emancipation,\u201d Emancipation Digital Classroom, House Divided Project at Dickinson College, http:\/\/goo.gl\/K0keu<\/a> James J. Cullinane, \u201cMrs. Thomas Chase Visits House Where Lincoln Wrote Act,\u201d Washington Post<\/em>, December 27, 1936, p. M5.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Washington Post<\/em>, December 27, 1936. Mathew Pinsker, Lincoln\u2019s Sanctuary: Abraham Lincoln and the Soldiers\u2019 Home <\/em>(New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 66.\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cAfrican Americans Fording the Rappahannock Photograph, August 1862,\u201d Virginia Memory, Library of Virginia, http:\/\/goo.gl\/x9XlJ<\/a><\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Diary entries, May 1862 and June 7, 1862, \u201cNorth Carolina Slaveholder Comments on Emancipation,\u201d Emancipation Digital Classroom, House Divided Project at Dickinson College, http:\/\/goo.gl\/F5SMU<\/a>. See also Judkin Browning, The Southern Mind Under Union Rule: The Diary of James Rumley, Beaufort, North Carolina, 1862-1865 <\/em>(Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2009), 36-9.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> John Hope Franklin, The Emancipation Proclamation <\/em>(Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1963), 115.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> Willie Lee Rose, Rehearsal for Reconstruction: The Port Royal Experiment <\/em>(orig. pub. 1964; Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1999).<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> Reprinted in Frank Leslie\u2019s Illustrated Newspaper, <\/em>August 30, 1862. August 1st<\/sup> was often celebrated by American blacks as \u201cEmancipation Day,\u201d to commemorate the abolition of slavery in the British Empire (August 1, 1834). Hunter\u2019s choice of date was no coincidence.<\/p>\n

[7]<\/a> Daniel W. Crofts, \u201cRunaway Masters\u201d in \u201cDisunion,\u201d New York Times, <\/em>June 22, 2012, http:\/\/opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com\/2012\/06\/22\/runaway-masters\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[8]<\/a> Horace Greeley, \u201cThe Prayer of the Twenty Millions,\u201d New York Tribune, <\/em>August 19, 1862. <\/em>Abraham Lincoln to Horace Greeley, Washington, DC, August 22, 1862. This was the exchange that produced Lincoln\u2019s famously slippery line: \u201cMy paramount object in this struggle is to save the union and is not either to slave or to destroy slavery\u201d even though he had already decided a month earlier to destroy slavery. For one of the best accounts of the Greeley-Lincoln exchange, see Chapter Six, \u201cPublic Opinion,\u201d in Douglas L. Wilson, Lincoln\u2019s Sword: The Presidency and the Power of Words <\/em>(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006), 143-61.<\/p>\n

[9]<\/a> \u201cThe Freed Blacks of South Carolina,\u201d The Liberator, <\/em>August 8, 1862; see \u201cGeneral Hunter \u2018Confiscates\u2019 Prince Rivers,\u201d Emancipation Digital Classroom, House Divided Project, http:\/\/goo.gl\/XjECu<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[10]<\/a> Diary entry, September 24, 1862 in Michael Burlingame and John R. Turner Ettlinger, eds., Inside Lincoln\u2019s White House: The Complete Civil War Diary of John Hay <\/em>(Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1997), 41.<\/p>\n

[11]<\/a> Diary entry, January 1, 1863, \u201cNorth Carolina Slaveholder Comments on Emancipation,\u201d Emancipation Digital Classroom, House Divided Project at Dickinson College, http:\/\/goo.gl\/F5SMU<\/a>. See also Browning, 49-50.<\/p>\n

[12]<\/a> Diary entry, January 1, 1863, \u201cNorth Carolina Slaveholder Comments on Emancipation,\u201d Emancipation Digital Classroom, House Divided Project at Dickinson College, http:\/\/goo.gl\/F5SMU<\/a>. See also Browning, 54.<\/p>\n

[13]<\/a> For the fullest account of the day\u2019s events, see Stephen V. Ash, Firebrand of Liberty: The Story of Two Black Regiments That Changed the Course of the Civil War <\/em>(New York: W.W. Norton, 2008), 13-30. For an abbreviated selection from nearly a dozen different eye-witness accounts of the ceremony, see \u201cEmancipation Among Black Troops in South Carolina,\u201d Emancipation Digital Classroom, House Divided Project, http:\/\/goo.gl\/U7Dq0<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[14]<\/a> Comments from Higginson, Dr. Seth Rogers, and observer Harriet Ware are available at \u201cEmancipation Among Black Troops in South Carolina,\u201d Emancipation Digital Classroom, House Divided Project, http:\/\/goo.gl\/U7Dq0<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[15]<\/a> For image and reporting, see Frank Leslie\u2019s Illustrated Newspaper, <\/em>January 24, 1863 and New York Tribune, <\/em>January 14, 1863, p. 8:2-3. For quotations, see entries from Mansfield French and Harriet Ware, \u201cEmancipation Among Black Troops in South Carolina,\u201d Emancipation Digital Classroom, House Divided Project, http:\/\/goo.gl\/U7Dq0<\/a>. For Higginson\u2019s assessment of Rivers, see \u201cGeneral Hunter \u2018Confiscates\u2019 Prince Rivers,\u201d Emancipation Digital Classroom, House Divided Project, http:\/\/goo.gl\/XjECu<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

[16]<\/a> John Hope Franklin, ed., Civil War Diary of James T. Ayers <\/em>(Springfield: Illinois State Historical Society, 1947). Historian James Oakes has helped rediscover the value of Ayers\u2019 depiction of emancipation in action and his book offers the most penetrating account of Union emancipation policy. See James Oakes, Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States, 1861-1865<\/em> (New York: W.W. Norton, 2012).<\/p>\n

[17]<\/a> For excerpts from the Ayers diary, see \u201cUnion Recruiting Agent Spreads the \u2018Good News,\u2019\u201d Emancipation Digital Classroom, House Divided Project, http:\/\/goo.gl\/3YAYb<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[18]<\/a> \u201cUnion Recruiting Agent Spreads the \u2018Good News,\u2019\u201d Emancipation Digital Classroom, House Divided Project, http:\/\/goo.gl\/3YAYb<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[19]<\/a> Booker T. Washington, Up From Slavery: An Autobiography <\/em>(New York: Doubleday, 1901), 19-20, http:\/\/www.bartleby.com\/1004\/1.html<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The essay excerpted below originally appeared in\u00a0Emancipation at 150: The Impact of Emancipation, a special e-book anthology produced in 2013 on the anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation by President Lincoln’s Cottage and the US Commission on Civil Rights.   Emancipation…<\/p>\n

Read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":373,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[77947,23792,119181,854,2179],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-african-american","category-civil-war","category-memory","category-slavery","category-southern"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-american\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-american\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-american\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-american\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/373"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-american\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=616"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-american\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-american\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-american\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-american\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}