Professor Matthew Warshauer (Central Connecticut State University) tells us how Lincoln was not an abolitionist, and neither was his Republican Party. The Party was only anti-Southern, with only a small fraction actually being anti-slavery. Both Lincoln, a moderate Republican, and his party were against slavery expansion in the western territories. He issued the Emancipation Proclamation for military reasons, first promising money to slaveholders in compensation for the loss of their human property. Then, the money sentence disappeared. He also realized the Proclamation was not enough, legally speaking, he needed to modify the Constitution itself in order to really end slavery. Professor Warshauer also advises us not to equate “emancipation” and “abolition”, he tells us about North’s and Connecticut’s racism, their opposition to Lincoln, and praises Steven Spielberg’s 2012 movie, Lincoln, for depicting the backstage atmosphere at the time.
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Professor Matthew Warshauer - Speech: “Connecticut’s Battle Over Emancipation: Lincoln, Copperheads, and…Steven Spielberg?” - January 19, 2023
Professor Matthew Warshauer – Book: Connecticut in the American Civil War: Slavery, Sacrifice, and Survival
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*Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863, is done more really as his power as Commander-in-Chief, than as President of the United States.
*Lincoln in his Inaugural Address had made very, very clear that his goal as the President of the United States and the first Republican president to ever be elected to the United States as Chief Executive - was not to engage in abolition or emancipation.
*In fact, he didn’t believe that he had the constitutional authority, because the Constitution of the United States protected the institution of slavery. Thus Lincoln’s Republican Party wasn’t so much an anti-slavery party as it was an anti-Southern party.
*Many historians equate the Republican Party with abolitionism. When in fact only a portion, and in fact a small portion of the Republican Party was abolitionist.
*Just the way that we look at political parties today, we know that most political parties have a left, a center and a right. And this was very true of Abraham Lincoln’s Republican Party. Abraham Lincoln was a moderate. He was in the middle. He was devoted to the Republican Party platform of the non-extension of slavery. He didn’t want slavery to extend into the west. He was committed to that and wouldn’t back away from that. He was not committed to the institution of abolition.
*Lincoln’s goal was gradual emancipation, which is, you pass on this particular date, any African-American person born into slavery, after that Act is passed, they will be freed by, let’s say, age 21. This in fact is the way that Connecticut had gotten rid of emancipation or gotten rid of slavery. They had gone through the process of gradual emancipation, and they started that in 1784. Connecticut actually doesn’t get rid of slavery in its entirety until 1848.
*And so Lincoln goes into the White House not thinking he’s going to emancipate anyone, and if he’s going to do it, it’s going to be through gradual emancipation, and in fact, the government is going to pay slaveholders for the value of their slaves. So, it’s going to be compensated, gradual emancipation, and then the third leg of that stool is colonization. Send all blacks who have been freed out of the United States.
*My responsibility as Commander-in-chief is to save the Union, first and foremost and in order to do that, I must take the South’s most powerful weapon, and that most powerful weapon is their labor force, right? While most of the white Southerners are off fighting the war, who is at home, plowing the field growing crops, providing the supplies to the Confederate Army? It’s the enslaved 4 million who are in the South and Lincoln says, I can destroy their economy in one fell swoop, right? Why wouldn’t I do this? And that’s what Lincoln does.
*So, if you read the January 1st Emancipation Proclamation, it does not read like, say, the Declaration of Independence. It’s not a lot of flowery language about liberty, and equality and human rights and the rights of men given to us by the Creator, none of that is in there. This is a legal document, right? It is a legal document explaining that as Commander-in-chief, this is a war measure. This is a measure of war necessity, and I’m invoking it as president.
*But here’s the problem. What happens when Lincoln is no longer president? Is another president going to come in? And say, you know, that Emancipation Proclamation, that was unconstitutional. Lincoln didn’t have that authority. I’m reversing it. And I’m imposing slavery again.
*Now, imagine, Andrew Johnson, right? When Lincoln is assassinated, Andrew Johnson comes in as president. He does everything that he possibly can to mess up Reconstruction, and to enamor the South, so that they would support him going on as president, ok? So, imagine what Johnson might have done. Had he had the ability to remove the Emancipation Proclamation, or the other way that it could be gotten rid of is simply the Supreme Court.
*Supreme Court > Roger B. Taney, who had been the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court and the principal writer of the Dred Scott decision which determined that no black person, whether they were slave or free, they could never be a citizen of the United States. And if you pay attention at all to this Confederate monument and statue issue, you will know that just probably three weeks ago the House of Representatives voted to have the bust of Roger B. Taney removed from the Capitol Rotunda.
*Lincoln devotes himself towards the end of the war to get this legislation through, to get it through the Senate, to get it through the House of Representatives, and you know that this is the first new amendment that has been passed in a generation, right? And he’s got to push through the 13th amendment, making slavery, involuntary servitude in the United States, completely dead.
*One of the key things that you need to know about abolition and Emancipation, is that they are not synonymous. They are not interchangeable with one another. Emancipation is the release of all of these enslaved people and making them free. Abolition is the same thing, except abolition is also devoted to some level of social and political equality for the formerly enslaved. Emancipation doesn’t promise that. That’s why you get the 14th, the 15th Amendment that follow. And one of the things that occur in the midst of the war, and this is one of the big problems when you’re dealing with the history of the American Civil War is that we want to think that it was the mighty moral North versus the terrible immoral South. And it’s just simply not that simple. It’s far more convoluted, it’s far more conflicting, it’s far more problematic than that.
*Spielberg makes an entire three-hour movie [Lincoln, 2012] just about all of the backroom dealing and the moving back and this is the key. There is so much backroom maneuvering, and dealing and double dealing that’s going on behind the scenes to get the 13th Amendment passed. Lincoln has to use every bit, everyone of his talents to get, as I said, not just Democrats to cross over, but members of his own Republican Party to cross over and to support this change in the United States Constitution.
*Kushner [script writer] describes Lincoln’s ability to engage in politicking. Like Mozart’s ability to write music. He said, Mozart could see the notes in the air. He could see the notes in his head, and that’s how he wrote music. Kushner said, that’s the way Lincoln was about politics. He was so amazingly adept. He just knew how to work everything, from the lowest level all the way up to the top, and in fact that’s what the movie is about. That’s what Lincoln is about. It is Lincoln’s ability to pull all of these strings and get it to all come together.
*So, it’s the last 50 years. Connecticut and much of the North has been impacted by sort of a Civil War amnesia. Where we think we went and just we fought the good fight, and we were always in it for the good fight, and it was always about marching down into the South and engaging abolition and freeing the enslaved, and we were the good guys. We were the white hats. And it’s just not that simple.
* – this room [Connecticut’s Old State House] – this the room where Prudence Crandall, who had found a school in Canterbury for, as it was advertised, young black misses. She decided to educate young black girls in Canterbury. The town broke the windows of her school, poured manure into her well, and ran her out of town, had her arrested, and she ended up leaving the State. And this, too, is a part of Connecticut’s legacy.
*Now, this was all 1863. So, one could argue, well, but got way better, right? They learnt something from that. And in fact, I had a graduate student who did a lot of original work for her Master’s thesis on Whyndham County, where Canterbury is, and one of her arguments is, the Canterbury issue, the Prudence Crandall issue really did impact Whyndham. It did help to develop abolitionism a bit in that region. Even saying that, it’s not the eraser on the chalkboard that cleans everything off.
*Connecticut has serious, serious anti-black, pro-Southern racial, racist issues that run well into the 20th century, and especially up to the American Civil War. And so, I say here that we have issues on slavery, emancipation and Lincoln, and Connecticut.
*Let’s look at it. James English [Connecticut representative] votes against it on June 15th, he doesn’t vote on the tabling amendment. He sort of looks at his party, and I’m sure that this is the way it went. He looked at his party. He goes, I’m not getting involved in this. I’m going to sit to the side, if you can get it passed, that’s great. But if you can’t get it pass, then I have to do what I’m going to do. And then, in the next vote, after the tabling measure fails, he votes in favor of the Amendment. So, this complicates James E. English as a character, as one of the people in this story.
*Why did English change his vote? English made a deal for his vote: support in the gubernatorial election. Though he didn’t win in 1866, but did in 1867-70. This is his path to power in the State of Connecticut. This is why he changes it. So, again, the point of this is the point of the movie, the wheeling and dealing that goes on behind the scenes to get the 13th Amendment pass. And Connecticut had a long tradition of anti-abolition, support for slavery in the South, and opposition to Lincoln.
*William Lloyd Garrison [most famous white abolitionist] has connections to Connecticut. His wife is from Brooklyn, Connecticut, the northwest corner. He is married in Brooklyn, Connecticut. There is a reason that Massachusetts was, and Boston in particular was, the biggest and most effective and important abolitionist region in the entire country. It is one simple answer to it.– William Lloyd Garrison. Because William Lloyd Garrison set up his newspaper, The Liberator, in Boston, and therefore, the New England Anti-Slavery Society is formed there, the American Anti-Slavery Society is formed there. This is why Massachusetts is such a bastion of abolitionism, because people flock to Boston to speak with, and study with, and talk with William Lloyd Garrison. And people of a like mind, therefore, go to Boston.
*There are some who have argued that Prudence Crandall was influenced in creating her school by William Lloyd Garrison. So Garrison plays an incredibly important role in the abolition movement. He called the US Constitution a pact with death and a covenant with hell. And he burns mock copies of the Constitution, hangs the US flag upside down. He is outlandish, incredibly effective – abolitionists during the 1830s and 1840s make up maybe 10% of the population, maybe. They are hated. They are viewed as fanatics, and radicals, and disturbers of the Union. There are those not just in the South, but in the North, that say, it’s the abolitionists who’s the problem. If they would just sit down and shut up, we wouldn’t have all of this disturbance in our country.
*Well, he knows Connecticut. And this is what he has to say about it. “Connecticut has been left alone too long by us meddlesome and pestiferous abolitionists. And I am rejoiced to learn that you have resolved to commence operations in this Georgia of New England – not having the fear of Canterbury before your eyes” – 1833. So, he’s writing to somebody who wants to get something started in Connecticut and he says, oh, this Georgia of New England. That’s what he refers to Connecticut as. That should give you an indication of where Connecticut is in relation to a place like Massachusetts. I found more indications and more evidence of anti-abolition activity, than I found of abolition activity.
*There are abolition movements all over the state…the door is literally kicked down, and the abolition meetings are broken up. There are ministers who go up and preach in their churches against slavery and they are removed from being the minister of that town. So, it is a hard-fought battle in the State of Connecticut over these issues.
*The New Haven Register:
“Men of America! Behold the picture of Abolition barbarism! THE PROGRAM OF ABOLITIONISM IS, ALL THINGS CONSIDERED, THE MOST MONSTROUS AND BLOODY PROJECT EVER INVENTED BY THE BRAIN OF MAN OR FIEND!”
*Hartford Times (Democrats newspaper):
“Emancipation ‘is a John Brown raid on a gigantic scale.’ ‘The noble old Flag, so dear to the heart of every true American – the starry Banner that was once the symbol of Power, and the enforcer of respect, among all foreign nations – is indeed sadly lowered and foully prostituted when it waves over a broken, weakened and warring country, and is cheered by the disciples of Garrison!”
“A negro army! To fight the battles of this once mighty nation! If anything remained that could humiliate us still more before the world, ‘these Architects of ruin’, now in power, have surely found it, in this measure. The project is a very degrading one. It is a confession of weakness. It is for the purpose of calling 'an inferior race to do for us what we are unable or unwilling to do for ourselves!'”
“The measure is demoralizing to the army, as well as humiliating to the Union, and this whole scheme of negro soldiers, will fall, as the Emancipation Proclamation must inevitably fall, after doing much more harm than good.”
*Lincoln believes he’s going to lose the 1864 election, in part, because the war is not going great, and in part because of the Emancipation Proclamation.
You may see the entire speech here
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