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Act of Justice : Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation and the Law of War
In his first inaugural address, Abraham Lincoln declared that as president he would "have no lawful right" to interfere with the institution of slavery. Yet less than two years later, he issued a proclamation intended to free all slaves throughout the Confederate states. When critics challenged the constitutional soundness of the act, Lincoln pointed to the international laws and usages of war as the legal basis for his Proclamation, asserting that the Constitution invested the president "with the law of war in time of war." As the Civil War intensified, the Lincoln administration slowly and reluctantly accorded full belligerent rights to the Confederacy under the law of war. This included designating a prisoner of war status for captives, honoring flags of truce, and negotiating formal agreements for the exchange of prisoners -- practices that laid the intellectual foundations for emancipation. Once the United States allowed Confederates all the privileges of belligerents under international law, it followed that they should also suffer the disadvantages, including trial by military courts, seizure of property, and eventually the emancipation of slaves. Even after the Lincoln administration decided to apply the law of war, it was unclear whether state and federal courts would agree. After careful analysis, author Burrus M. Carnahan concludes that if the courts had decided that the proclamation was not justified, the result would have been the personal legal liability of thousands of Union officers to aggrieved slave owners. This argument offers further support to the notion that Lincoln's delay in issuing the Emancipation Proclamation was an exercise of political prudence, not a personal reluctance to free the slaves. In Act of Justice, Carnahan contends that Lincoln was no reluctant emancipator; he wrote a truly radical document that treated Confederate slaves as an oppressed people rather than merely as enemy property. In this respect, Lincoln's proclamation anticipated the psychological warfare tactics of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Carnahan's exploration of the president's war powers illuminates the origins of early debates about war powers and the Constitution and their link to international law.
After Slavery : Race, Labor, and Citizenship in the Reconstruction South
"Is there really anything new to say about Reconstruction? The excellent contributions to this volume make it clear that the answer is a resounding yes. Collectively these essays allow us to rethink the meanings of state and citizenship in the Reconstruction South, a deeply necessary task and a laudable advance on the existing historiography."--Alex Lichtenstein, Indiana University In the popular imagination, freedom for African Americans is often assumed to have been granted and fully realized when Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation or, at the very least, at the conclusion of the Civil War. In reality, the anxiety felt by newly freed slaves and their allies in the wake of the conflict illustrates a more complicated dynamic: the meaning of freedom was vigorously, often lethally, contested in the aftermath of the war. After Slavery moves beyond broad generalizations concerning black life during Reconstruction in order to address the varied experiences of freed slaves across the South. Urban unrest in New Orleans and Wilmington, North Carolina, loyalty among former slave owners and slaves in Mississippi, armed insurrection along the Georgia coast, and racial violence throughout the region are just some of the topics examined. The essays included here are selected from the best work created for the After Slavery Project, a transatlantic research collaboration. Combined, they offer a diversity of viewpoints on the key issues in Reconstruction historiography and a well-rounded portrait of the era.
Encyclopedia of Emancipation and Abolition in the Transatlantic World
Examines every effort to end slavery in the United States and the transatlantic world. It focuses on massive, broad-based movements, as well as specific incidents, events, and developments, and pulls together in one place information previously available only in a wide variety of sources.
Juneteenth Texas : Essays in African-American Folklore
Juneteenth Texas, Publications of the Texas Folklore Society #LIV, received a San Antonio Conservation Society award for the preservation of historic buildings, objects and places relating to the history of Texas and its natural beauty and all that is admirably distinctive of our state, and to educate the public with knowledge of our inherited regional values.
Lincoln's Proclamation : Emancipation Reconsidered
The Emancipation Proclamation, widely remembered as the heroic act that ended slavery, in fact freed slaves only in states in the rebellious South. True emancipation was accomplished over a longer period and by several means. Essays by eight distinguished contributors consider aspects of the president's decision making, as well as events beyond Washington, offering new insights on the consequences and legacies of freedom, the engagement of black Americans in their liberation, and the issues of citizenship and rights that were not decided by Lincoln's document. The essays portray emancipation as a product of many hands, best understood by considering all the actors, the place, and the time. The contributors are William A. Blair, Richard Carwardine, Paul Finkelman, Louis Gerteis, Steven Hahn, Stephanie McCurry, Mark E. Neely Jr., Michael Vorenberg, and Karen Fisher Younger.
Voices of Emancipation Understanding Slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction Through the US Pension Bureau Files
Voices of Emancipation seeks to recover the lives and words of former slaves in vivid detail, mining the case files of the U.S. Pension Bureau, which administered a huge pension system for Union veterans and their survivors in the decades following the Civil War. The files contain an invaluable, first-hand perspective of slavery, emancipation, black military service, and freedom. Moreover, as Pension Bureau examiners began interviewing black Union veterans and their families shortly after the Civil War, the files are arguably among the earliest sources of ex-slaves reflecting on their lives, occurring decades before better-known WPA Slave Narratives of the 1930s took place. Voices of Emancipation explores the words of former slaves topically, beginning with recollections of slavery, moving on to experiences of military service in the Civil War, the transition to freedom, and finally to reflections on marriage and family before and after emancipation. With an introduction that places the pension files in context and presents the themes of the book, and historical commentary interwoven throughout the excerpts of the interviews themselves, Elizabeth A. Regosin and Donald R. Shaffer effectively introduce the files and the treasures they contain to students and general readers, but also provide specialists with an indispensable research tool.
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Envisioning Emancipation
The Emancipation Proclamation is one of the most important documents in American history. As we commemorate its 150th anniversary, what do we really know about those who experienced slavery?In their pioneering book, Envisioning Emancipation, renowned photographic historian Deborah Willis and historian of slavery Barbara Krauthamer have amassed 150 photographs--some never before published--from the antebellum days of the 1850s through the New Deal era of the 1930s. The authors vividly display the seismic impact of emancipation on African Americans born before and after the Proclamation, providing a perspective on freedom and slavery and a way to understand the photos as documents of engagement, action, struggle, and aspiration.Envisioning Emancipation illustrates what freedom looked like for black Americans in the Civil War era. From photos of the enslaved on plantations and African American soldiers and camp workers in the Union Army to Juneteenth celebrations, slave reunions, and portraits of black families and workers in the American South, the images in this book challenge perceptions of slavery. They show not only what the subjects emphasized about themselves but also the ways Americans of all colors and genders opposed slavery and marked its end.Filled with powerful images of lives too often ignored or erased from historical records, Envisioning Emancipation provides a new perspective on American culture.
Island of Color by
On this island calledGalveston,Texas, African-Americans have a unique position in the history of the world. Natives of this city, and incoming residents, who were people of color, were the pioneers of much of the civilization that occurred in this part of the world. "Juneteenth" has become a term used by persons all over the nation who recognize the validity of the term now synonymous with freedom of the former black-skinned slaves. This term comes from the fact that, in Galveston, Texas, General Granger arrived by ship with orders that were read to the public at Ashton Villa on June 19, 1865. He actually arrived in the harbor onJune 17, 1865, and the news leaked out from the deckhands on that date. But the dates are both worthy of the title "Juneteenth", which is the way the former slaves passed down the news to their progeny. This news came from the official document called the Emancipation Proclamation, which was a law signed by President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, and sent to the southern states involved in the Confederacy. SoTexaswas the first of these states to receive this law, andGalvestonwas the entry port, and therefore had the distinction of being the first place to embrace the freedom of persons of color in the southern part of the newUnited States of America. There were free men and women of color inGalvestonbefore this announcement was made, so the progress of the city toward racial harmony was already underway. Pioneers of all kinds of institutions and businesses came fromGalveston. It is no accident thatGalvestonhas been a city of "firsts". The titles of "first" have been proven for the state ofTexas, because these were recorded and documented in many journals and publications. Some visionaries of African descent have been recorded by name, but since the freed persons of color usually could not read or write (they were forbidden to learn to read or write in slavery), there is little written from their perspective. It is the purpose of this book to reveal what was written by a man of color, my grandfather, who came toGalvestonwith his family as a small child, immediately after freedom was declared. His words are proven to be true by later documentation of official sources in the city. In addition, recorded words of interviews with numbers of citizens who were alive when this book was begun have been used and preserved on audio tapes. Quite a number of persons who contributed to this book were African-Americans who were imported toGalvestonfor the sole purpose of educating its segregated citizens in their churches and schools. Until now, this story, told from the perspective of the persons who lived it, has been untold. Because of its far-reaching effects in the whole world, this story fairly screams to be acknowledged and revealed. It is with great excitement that I bid you to indulge yourself in the luxury of discovery!
Juneteenth
Shot on the Senate floor by a young Black man, a dying racist senator summons an elderly Black Baptist minister from Oklahoma to his side for a remarkable dialogue that reveals the deeply buried secrets of their shared past and the tragedy that reunites them.
On Juneteenth
Weaving together American history, dramatic family chronicle, and searing episodes of memoir, Annette Gordon-Reed's On Juneteenth provides a historian's view of the country's long road to Juneteenth, recounting both its origins in Texas and the enormous hardships that African-Americans have endured in the century since, from Reconstruction through Jim Crow and beyond. All too aware of the stories of cowboys, ranchers, and oilmen that have long dominated the lore of the Lone Star State, Gordon-Reed-herself a Texas native and the descendant of enslaved people brought to Texas as early as the 1820s-forges a new and profoundly truthful narrative of her home state, with implications for us all. Combining personal anecdotes with poignant facts gleaned from the annals of American history, Gordon-Reed shows how, from the earliest presence of Black people in Texas to the day in Galveston on June 19, 1865, when Major General Gordon Granger announced the end of legalized slavery in the state, African-Americans played an integral role in the Texas story. Reworking the traditional "Alamo" framework, she powerfully demonstrates, among other things, that the slave- and race-based economy not only defined the fractious era of Texas independence but precipitated the Mexican-American War and, indeed, the Civil War itself. In its concision, eloquence, and clear presentation of history, On Juneteenth vitally revises conventional renderings of Texas and national history. As our nation verges on recognizing June 19 as a national holiday, On Juneteenth is both an essential account and a stark reminder that the fight for equality is exigent and ongoing.
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