"What Shall We Do with the Negro?": Lincoln, White Racism, and Civil War America

Prologue: First Declarations

Prologue FIRST DECLARATIONS W hat was the Civil War about? This simple question has produced an unending debate in American culture. Because so many soldiers died in the war, because the war left deep scars in the body politic, and because human behavior is inherently complex, it is not surprising that individuals argue passionately about the answers even today. Beyond these reasons, however, lies an intensely complicating fact: the institution of slavery—America’s greatest civil wrong—was at the heart of the conflict. Abraham Lincoln reflected in his Second Inaugural Address that the slavery interest “was somehow the cause of the war.”1 Millions of Americans have agreed with his sure but imprecise judgment. The centrality of the “peculiar institution” has made the Civil War eternally controversial. For if the bloodletting was about slavery, then the verdict of history and morality came down against those who defended human bondage and honored those who liberated the slaves. In that way, the war continued to produce winners and losers long after Appomattox. Once the conflict of arms ended, a battle of words began, as each section tried to persuade the public that its version of this shared and bloody history was correct. Southerners rejected the identification of their cause with slavery, insisting that they had fought for state rights and constitutional liberty. Northerners claimed the credit for emancipation, picturing themselves as proponents of freedom and human equality. Both oversimplified, and both contributed to a celebratory narrative, deeply rooted in the popular culture, that has distorted the truth, minimized the shortcomings of both sides, and exaggerated the progress and advances that came out of the war. For the Civil War soon concerned more than the long-established institution of slavery. With the end of slavery would come the question of the future 2 what shall we do with the negro? status of the freedmen. Taking this issue into account redefines the contest over credit and blame and points toward different conclusions. Focusing on how Americans addressed the future of the slaves yields a darker, more disappointing , and more convoluted picture than the triumphant national narrative about the breaking of bondsmen’s chains. This other picture, though less flattering and less inspiring, is more accurate and more useful for understanding our nation’s history. It reveals the extent of deeply engrained problems and expands the ground for understanding American society’s long history of racial problems after emancipation. The unvarnished record is more significant and more informative than the myth. In the Civil War era both Northern and Southern whites were creatures of their time and society, fallible human beings wrestling with the profound questions that the war raised about slavery and race. What would be the future of slavery? If slavery came to an end, what would be the future status of the slaves? What would become of them? As so many contemporaries put it, “What shall we do with the negro?” The answers of Northerners and Southerners to this racially biased question came reluctantly and imperfectly, under the pressure of war. When the fighting began, both sides agreed on the preservation of slavery. As to possible changes in the future, one section had a definite answer, while the other evaded or dismissed the question. In the secession crisis, as years of heated controversy culminated in precipitous action, the leaders of the South gave a clear answer to the question , “What shall we do with the negro?” These white men, predominantly slaveholders, assumed that it was their right to decide the future of black Southerners. Slavery was central to the decision to secede, and they did not shrink from acknowledging that fact. Unhesitatingly, they voiced their determination to preserve and maintain slavery, and as they reviewed history they recited a host of grievances that had a connection to the slavery issue. Although Southerners would later deny it, their leaders in the crisis of secession were explicit about what they wanted to do with African Americans: they wanted to keep them in slavery. South Carolina seceded first, on December 20, 1860. Following the example of the Revolutionary patriots, its convention cited respect for world opinion as the reason to issue a declaration of the causes that justified secession . This document emphasized the constitutional history of the United States and argued that Northern states had broken the “compact” by refus- Prologue 3 ing to honor their obligations on “rendition . . . of fugitives,” the...