This is a series of posts from the cited paper, I will try to divide it into many parts, put titles, and some illustration to fit in blogger and this Blog.
From The Journal of Historical Review, Sept.-Oct. 1993 (Vol. 13, No. 5), pages 4-25. By Robert Morgan
Impact of the Proclamation
As a work of propaganda, the Proclamation proved effective. To encourage discontent among slaves in the Confederacy, a million copies were distributed in the Union-occupied South and, as hoped, news of it spread rapidly by word of mouth among the Confederacy's slaves, arousing hopes of freedom and encouraging many to escape. The Proclamation "had the desired effect of creating confusion in the South and depriving the Confederacy of much of its valuable laboring force," affirms historian John Hope Franklin.
Finally, in the eyes of many people -- particularly in Europe -- Lincoln's edict made the Union army a liberating force: all slaves in areas henceforward coming under federal control would automatically be free.
Crusade for freedom and democracy:
Crusade for freedom and democracy:
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End of the Resettlement Efforts
Lincoln continued to press ahead with his plan to resettle blacks in Central America, in spite of opposition from all but one member of his own Cabinet, and the conclusion of a scientific report that Chiriqui coal was "worthless."
Mounting opposition to any resettlement plan also came from abolitionists, who insisted that blacks had a right to remain in the land of their birth. In addition, some Republican party leaders opposed resettlement because they were counting on black political support, which would be particularly important in controlling a defeated South, where most whites would be barred from voting. Others agreed with Republican Senator Charles Sumner, who argued that black laborers were an important part of the national economy, and any attempt to export them "would be fatal to the prosperity of the country." In the (Northern) election campaign of November 1862, emancipation figured as a major issue. Violent mobs of abolitionists opposed those who spoke out in favor of resettlement.
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Worthless kind of people
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Secretary of State Seward was not able to ignore such protests. After all, why should Central Americans be happy to welcome people of a race that was so despised in the United States?
Accordingly, on October 7, 1862, Seward prevailed on the President to call a "temporary" halt to the Chiriqui project.
Thus, the emphatic unwillingness of the Central American republics to accept black migrants dealt the decisive blow to the Chiriqui project. At a time when the Union cause was still precarious, Secretary of State Steward was obliged to show special concern for US relations with Latin America.
Lincoln Proposes a Constitutional Amendment
In spite of such obstacles, Lincoln re-affirmed his strong support for gradual emancipation coupled with resettlement in his second annual message to Congress of December 1, 1862. On this occasion he used the word deportation. So serious was he about his plan that he proposed a draft Constitutional Amendment to give it the greatest legal sanction possible. Lincoln told Congress:
In this view, I recommend the adoption of the following resolution and articles amendatory to the Constitution of the United States ... "Congress may appropriate money, and otherwise provide, for colonizing free colored persons, with their consent, at any place or places without the United States."
Applications have been made to me by many free Americans of African descent to favor their emigration, with a view to such colonization as was contemplated in recent acts of Congress ... Several of the Spanish American republics have protested against the sending of such colonies [settlers] to their respective territories ... Liberia and Haiti are, as yet, the only countries to which colonists of African descent from here could go with certainty of being received and adopted as citizens ...
Their old masters will gladly give them wages at least until new laborers can be procured; and the freedmen, in turn, will gladly give their labor for the wages, till new homes can be found for them, in congenial climes, and with people of their own blood and race.
Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this administration will be remembered in spite of ourselves ...
The President's December 1862 proposal had five basic elements:
- Because slavery was a "domestic institution," and thus the concern of the states alone, they -- and not the federal government -- were to voluntarily emancipate the slaves.
- Slave-holders would be fully compensated for their loss.
- The federal government would assist the states, with bonds as grants in aid, in meeting the financial burden of compensation.
- Emancipation would be carried out gradually: the states would have until the year 1900 to free their slaves.
- The freed blacks would be resettled outside the United States.