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Emancipation, 1864-1865
| - | -"Let me know if we are free," a slave's letter to Lincoln, 1864 |
| - | Freedwomen's retaliation, Virginia, 1864 |
| - | "You is free as I is," narrative selections, 19th-20th c. (PDF) |
| - | Emancipation parade, Charleston, 1865 |
| - | "American citizens of African descent," freedmen's statement, Tennessee, 1865 |
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. 13th Amendment,
Dec. 1865
Although Lincoln had announced the Emancipation Proclamation two years earlier, freedom did not come for most African Americans until Union victory in April 1865 and, officially, in December 1865 with the ratification of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution. Since the arrival in 1619 of the first Africans in Jamestown, 246 years had elapsed. "This is a short time for the historical imagination," historian Colin A. Palmer reminds us, "but a long time for the successive generations of black people who lived as chattel."1 "A long time" must describe the last months of the war, which were chaotic through much of the South. For many slaves their notification of emancipation, often from their master or a Yankee soldier, occurred as a footnote to the immediate tumult of the war and the demands of two questions—What now? Where now?
In these selections we read African Americans' responses to the end of the war and to emancipation. In a brief letter to Abraham Lincoln in 1864, Annie Davis asks if slaves are free or not, as her mistress forbade her leaving to visit family. Living in Maryland, she probably knew of the Emancipation Proclamation and of Union victories in the South. Just two hundred miles south of her home, a group of newly freed women had earlier been allowed by a Union commander to whip their former master, captured the day before. Their retaliation is described by a black sergeant in a letter to the Christian Recorder. "Oh, that I had the tongue," he concludes, "to express my feelings while standing upon the banks of the James river, on the soil of Virginia, the mother state of slavery, as a witness of such a sudden reverse!" From the narratives of African Americans who were enslaved until Union victory, including Booker T. Washington, we read how they learned they were free and what lives they first constructed as free people.
Finally, we read two documents that represent the ebullience of freedom and the anxiety of the future. Both documents represent both emotions. The first is a description in a white northern newspaper of an emancipation parade organized by African Americans in Charleston, South Carolina, just days before the final Confederate surrender in April 1865. The second is representative of the numerous statements published by freedmen across the South in 1865 and 1866 addressing "the future condition of our unfortunate and long suffering race." Carefully balancing deference to their former masters with a pride in their new status as freemen, these "American citizens of African descent" declare their patriotism for a vaguely defined "America" which includes the South, and their pride in their newly gained status as citizens. Finally they caution their defeated and angry white audience that "the nation is fighting for its life, and cannot afford to be controlled by prejudice." The postbellum period had begun. (xx pages.)
Discussion questions
- How did enslaved African Americans respond to being emancipated?
- What factors influenced their responses and subsequent decisions?
- How did white Southerners respond to defeat and the emancipation of slaves?
- How did newly freed slaves perceive and adjust to white Southerners' responses? (This cycle of questions is worth the insight you may gain to the tumultuous year of 1865.)
- How did newly freed African Americans perceive and create their futures?
- How did they set the stage for later civil rights campaigns in postbellum America?
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Framing Questions
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How did enslaved African Americans construct communities over time? What were their principal characteristics? |
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What obstacles did slaves confront in constructing communities? |
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How did white Americans respond to the collective behavior of African Americans? |
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How was autonomy exercised through community by antebellum African Americans? |
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Printing
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Supplemental Sites
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| *PDF file - You will need software on your computer that allows you to read and print Portable Document Format (PDF) files, such as Adobe Acrobat Reader. If you do not have this software, you may download it FREE from Adobe's Web site. |
Images:
- Photograph labelled "Richmond, Va. Barges with African Americans on the Canal; ruined buildings beyond," April-June 1865, photograph by Alexander Gardner (detail). [LOC note: Photograph from the main eastern theater of war, fallen Richmond, April-June 1865. Photograph shows African American refugees on a boat with household belongings.]
- Photograph labelled "Slave pen, Alexandria, Va.," in collection of photographs of Washington, DC, and vicinity, most taken in April, May, and August 1865, by Mathew Brady and his field staff, A. J. Russell, George Barnard, and Timothy H., O'Sullivan. [LOC note: Interior view of a slave pen, showing the doors of cells where the slaves were held before being sold].
Photographs courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division.
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1 Colin A. Palmer, Passageways: An Interpretive History of Black America, Vol. I: 1619-1863 (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Group, 2002), p. 284.
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