Lincoln did not want to antagonize the slaveholding states that were not in “active belligerency” against the Union, e.g., New York, Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri. Therefore, contrary to popular belief, the Emancipation Proclamation did not free all enslaved Africans. It only “freed” enslaved Africans in states that were at war with the Union. By some estimates that left 700,000 to 1 million enslaved Africans in bondage – where they would remain until the passage of the 13th Amendment which completed what the Proclamation had left undone – abolish slavery for all forever! The real question is what was the nature of this “Emancipation?” While a lot of attention is often focused on the glory years of Black political empowerment during Reconstruction, the harsh reality is that the vast majority of formerly enslaved Africans were forced into a state of quasi-slavery. There were reformers who sought to implement programs like the Freedman’s Bureau, to orient the formerly enslaved Africans for freedom, but these programs were half-hearted and achieved limited success. Without the promised “forty acres and a mule,” property or education, many of the newly freed slaves landed back on the very plantations they had fled to become sharecroppers, tenant farmers and agricultural laborers. It was a cruel emancipation that delivered you back into a state of dependency into the hands of your former slave master. For the countless thousands of formerly enslaved Africans who were left to fend for themselves, wandering from place to place like paupers, numerous Southern counties adopted vagrancy laws which provided for the arrest of crowds of people who were not gainfully employed. Once imprisoned, unscrupulous wardens would hire out inmates to local landowners and businesses, utilizing the infamous convict-lease system. After the passage of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments and Reconstruction statutes pushed by radical Republicans like Thaddeus Stephens and Charles Sumner, formerly enslaved Africans did indeed enjoy the greatest period of electoral political power at any time until the present.
Posted on: Tue, 18 Jun 2013 16:39:53 +0000
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