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8. The Proclamation as a Weapon of War
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117 8 The Proclamation as a Weapon of War In its final form, the Emancipation Proclamation was based on two of the government’s belligerent rights under the law of war. It relied on the right to seize and destroy enemy property for reasons of military necessity, and on the right to seek allies through promising liberty to an oppressed people. The president had decided “to procure an ally” from the enslaved people of the South months before he accepted Salmon Chase’s suggestions on the wording of the final proclamation. As a military measure, the president saw emancipation primarily as a means of weakening the rebels by withdrawing slave labor from the Confederate economy and adding the labor of newly freed slaves to the Union war effort. This could only be accomplished by persuading Confederate slaves to flee their homes and seek the protection of Union military forces. As an inducement to do this, however, section 9 of the Second Confiscation Act was a seriously flawed instrument because it granted freedom only to slaves whose masters were actively supporting the rebellion, a judgment that would be made by military officers on the scene. Slaves in the Confederacy had little reason to assume that the decisions of white officers would be in their favor even if they succeeded in fleeing to a Union military camp. This had not been a problem in earlier wars. Whether Spanish officials meeting refugees from the Carolinas in the 1690s or Royal Navy officers dealing with American slaves in 1814, military officers had previously had no reason to refuse sanctuary to anyone of African descent coming from enemy territory. In the American Civil War, however, public opinion in the North was still deeply divided on slavery in 1862, and this division was reflected in the officer corps of the army. Although 118 Act of Justice a few officers ardently opposed slavery, most wanted to preserve, or at least tolerate, the South’s peculiar institution. As a practical matter, the effectiveness of section 9 of the Second Confiscation Act depended on the social and political view of the officers called upon to enforce the act. Generals with abolitionist opinions might be willing to assume, without any more evidence, that all persons fleeing from Confederate territory should benefit from section 9. More cautious or conservative officers, as well as those who feared that a massive influx of fugitives would overwhelm their resources, might be unwilling to make this assumption , and refuse aid or shelter to the refugees. In March, Congress had addressed this problem by amending the army’s Articles of War to prohibit military officers from returning any fugitive slave to his or her master.1 However, both this law and section 9 of the Second Confiscation Act could easily be circumvented by simply refusing to allow any refugees from slavery to cross U.S. military lines or enter any army camp. At least one example of how commanders in the field could make acts of Congress ineffective had been brought to President Lincoln’s attention . General Benjamin Butler, commanding the Department of the Gulf, had become the darling of antislavery activists earlier in the war when he gave refuge to fugitive slaves at Fortress Monroe in Virginia. After the government reversed the emancipation measures of General John C. Frémont and General David Hunter, General Butler decided to move in the opposite direction. In late May 1862, he ordered that no refuge be granted to fugitives from slavery in Louisiana, and directed that any refugees from slavery who had already taken shelter within U.S. military lines be expelled unless the army had work for them.2 The inhumanity implicit in Butler’s policy became clear on June 16, after a Louisiana slave owner named LaBlanche, faced with the mounting cost of feeding his human property with no prospect of soon making any profit from their labor, apparently drove many of his slaves away from their homes and told them to seek shelter with the Union army. These displaced persons appeared before Camp Parapet and were stopped by the sentries. The officer of the day reported the situation to the camp commander, General John Phelps, as follows: I beg leave to call your attention to the large and constantly increasing number of blacks who have congregated near the [3.89.116.152] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 20:49 GMT) The Proclamation as a Weapon of War 119 upper picket station on the river road...