In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

IMAGINED PROMISES, BITTER REALITIES African Americans and the Meaning of the Emancipation Proclamation EDNA G R E E N E M E D F O R D INTRODUCTION And Upon this act sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution upon military necessity, I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind, and the gracious favor of Almighty God. —ABRAHAM LINCOLN, Januaryi, 1863 One month after secessionists bombarded Fort Sumter and plunged the country into a bloody and protracted civil war,three men "held to service" by the Confederate colonel Charles K.Mallory sought asylum at Union-held Fortress Monroe in Virginia. Believing that they were about to be taken out of Virginia and employed in defense of thepurported new nation, Shepard Mallory, Frank Baker, and James Townsend presented themselves to the picket guard. The next morning they stood before the fort's commander, Maj.-Gen. BenjaminF. Butler, who had just arrived from duty in Maryland, where he had pledged his cooperation "in suppressing most promptly and effectively" any slave revolt.1 Acting on the belief that he was justified in confiscating "property designed, adapted, and about to be used against the United States," General Butler declared the three men "contraband-of-war." Mallory, Baker, and Townsend's bold bid for freedom set in motion forces that had profound and far-reachingconsequences, for in the weeks after their arrival, the slave grapevine alerted other bondsmen and women to the potential for sanctuary at the fort. ByAugust, more than 900 fugitives—many of them women, children, and the infirm (property not quite fitting the contraband-of-war designation)—had sought and gained refuge with the Union forces.2 This and similar occurrences in the opening weeks of the conflict constituted the first waves in the quest for black freedom and presaged the role enslaved African Americans played in their own liberation during the war. While the rest of the nation debated the efficacy of linking preservation of the Union to the demise of slavery (theinstitution that stood as the root cause ofthe conflict), black men and women had immediately recognized the opportunities that the struggle between white men afforded them. Hence, they seized upon every chance to achieve freedom. Their efforts received presidential support when on January i, 1863, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. In recent years, scholars pondering the meaning and significance of Lincoln's proclamation of freedom have focused essentiallyon the president's motivations for issuing the document and his actions leading up to that momentous event. Asa consequence, a debate has ensued between those who consider the document revolutionary and Lincoln deserving of the title "Great Emancipator,"and others who see his policies as unnecessarily conservative and initially deleterious to black freedom.3 2 Edna Greene Medford While this debate is important to understanding the meaning of the Emancipation Proclamation, it fails to fully convey the document's significance to freedom's beneficiaries. If popular wisdom and scholarly disquisition have largely credited Abraham Lincoln with black freedom, that attribution was shared by many of the freed people themselves and concurred in by their unfettered brothers and sisters in the North and South. The proclamation engendered Lincoln's veneration in the African-American community and encouraged the belief that he was the premier white friend of the race. Children, schools, and businesses bore his name; speeches in his honor found expression in annual Emancipation Dayprograms; and his martyrdom served as inspiration to a strugglingpeople to press on. But as freedom's first generation passed away, its children and grandchildren grew less reverent of the president and more skeptical ofhis proclamation. Ironically,they came to regard Lincoln with the same restraint they felt for the founding fathers, who had sanctioned holding men as property (indeed, many ofwhom held human chattel themselves). That shift in sentiment reflected the disillusionment that emanated from the dichotomybetween black perceptions ofthe document's promise and the realities they experienced in the postwar years and beyond. Despite its restrained tone and limited scope, African Americans had viewed the proclamation as the instrument by which their lives would be radically transformed. Defining freedom in broad terms, they imagined more from the decree than Lincoln,or even many abolitionists, had intended. They believed that the document , and consequently Lincoln as author, had tacitly promised them equality of opportunity and unrestricted citizenship, the chance to claim their birthright after more than two hundred yearsof denial in America. The proclamation's significance, hence, must be considered not simply...

Share