-
Chapter 4: The Black Flag Is Raised
- The University Press of Kentucky
- Chapter
- Additional Information
The Black Flag Is Raised The purest treasure mortal times afford Is spotless reputation. Richard the Second, 1.1 One of Abraham Lincoln's great hopes for resolving the slavery crisis lay in his plan of compensated emancipation. Realizing that ending slaveryby military force could come about only with great loss of life and national treasure, Lincoln wanted to shorten the war and accomplish emancipation by having the Federal government compensate slave owners by purchasing their "property ." In his message to Congress on March 6, 1862, Lincoln pointed out that "any member of Congress, with the census-tables and Treasury reports before him, can readily see for himself how very soon the current expenditures of this war would purchase, at fairvaluation, all the slaves in any named State."' Lincoln believed that purchasing the slaves urould save thousands of lives and millions of dollars. It was a simple case of common sense to Lincoln . His compensation plan was aimed at the Border States of Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri. These four slave states remained loosely tied to the Union. Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri formed a broad buffer zone or "border" between the Northern states and those of the South. Their place in the Union was crucial and Lincoln andJefferson Davis placed them high on their agendas. Davis hoped that these critical states would eventually secede and cast their lot with the Confederacy. To do so would prove the deathblow to reunion. This was especially true of Kentucky, the state of Lincoln's birth. Lincoln's connections with Kentucky ran deep. His three law partners were Kentuckians, as was his wife. ~ e n i ~ l a ~ his Lbeauideal," andJoshua Speed, his closest friend,were both Kentuckians.?Lincoln wanted Kentucky in the Union, but more than that, he needed Kentucky. Lincoln had said"to lose Kentucky is to lose the whole game."' ~onversei~, Lincoln believed that if Kentucky and her sister Border States were to declare against slavery by accepting compensated emancipation, the Confederacy was doomed to fail. OnJuly 12, 1862,he addressed an appeal to representatives of the Bor- 40 Blood on the Moon der States offering a plan for gradual emancipation: "Let the states which are in rebellion see, definitely and certainly, that, in no event, will the states you represent everjoin their proposed Confederacy,and they cannot, much longer maintain the contest."' OnJuly 14,Lincoln followed his appeal by introducing his own draft of a bill that would result in compensation for slave property among the Border States. The bill called for the transfer of six-percent interest-bearing bonds of the United States Treasury to each state equal to the aggregate value of all the slaves within that state based on the census of 1860. The Congress would fix the price per slave. The transfer would be coordinated with emancipation in installments as slaveswere set free, or the whole amount turned over at once if emancipation were immediate.' One day later, on July 15, a majority of Border State representatives rejected the proposal on the ground that "the Federal government could not stand the expen~e."~ This, of course, was not true. As Lincoln pointed out in a letter to newspaper editor HenryJ. Raymond following his March 6 message to the Congress, "one half-day's cost of this war would pay for all the slaves in Delaware, at four hundred dollars per head-that eighty-seven days cost of this war would pay for all [the slaves]in Delaware, Maryland, the District of Columbia, Kentucky, and Missouri at the same price."? Did anyone really believe that to continue the war would cost less money, let alone fewer lives, than purchasing all of the slavesin the Border States,thus isolating the Confederacy even further? Frustrated in his efforts at compensation, Lincoln pulled the trigger on the Confederacy's slavocracyby issuing his preliminary Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, 1862.In it he declared, "All persons held as slaves within any state, or designated part of a state, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free."8 What prompted Lincoln to issue his proclamation after seventeen months of war is arguable, but its effect, which became official onJanuary 1, 1863,established severalimportant objectives.First, by declaring those slaves who were covered by its provisions "forever free," it irrevocably linked any future reunion with emancipation. Second, it called for the enlistment of Black men into the Union army.' And third, it...