Freedom's Witness: The Civil War Correspondence of Henry McNeal Turner

Chapter 1. Emancipation and Enlistment

33 Chapter One Emancipation and Enlistment March 22, 1862–April 18, 1863 Turner’s first letter to the Christian Recorder was published on March 22, 1862, just over two years after Elisha Weaver relaunched the newspaper. He wrote to Weaver in response to President Lincoln’s March 6 message to Congress, where he recommended the passage of a joint resolution that would provide financial compensation to any state that would “adopt gradual abolishment of slavery.” Turner was skeptical of this “Message”; while many believed that it was a cause for “hope for a brighter day”—that is, full emancipation—he believed it was nothing more than an “ingenious subterfuge,” a sop to the abolitionists that would in fact accomplish little. In fact, Lincoln’s message almost immediately bore fruit: the District of Columbia Emancipation Act was passed in April 22, an event that Frederick Douglass described to the abolitionist senator Charles Sumner as feeling like “a dream.” Soon after the District of Columbia Emancipation Act was passed, Turner relocated to Washington from Baltimore and was 34 CHAPTER ONE installed as pastor of the Israel A.M.E. Church.1 Washington at this time was experiencing explosive growth due to the war; the historian Shelby Foote relates that the “ante-bellum population of 60,000 . . . nearly quadrupled under pressure from the throng of men and women rushing in to fill the partial vacuum created by the departure of the Southerners who formerly had set the social tone.” Turner found himself engaged in a tone-setting exercise of his own, writing in his diary that he found “this church very much delapidated [sic] both in a spiritual and temporal point of veiw [sic].”2 During his first months as pastor, he led services on weeknights and several times each Sunday. He also initiated renovation projects to the church building, established a speaker series that featured prominent African American citizens (including Robert Smalls, one of the best-known African Americans to serve in the U.S. Navy), started up the Israel Lyceum, a debating society for young male members of the church, and organized aid for the contrabands—the name given to slaves who were received as “contraband ” by the Union troops as they overtook Confederate territory . The contrabands, in particular, excited Turner’s deepest sympathies . From these “homeless, shoeless, dressless, and moneyless” refugees of the war he heard stories of “horrid, hideous, shocking and inconceivable scenes of suffering”; some, he was told, killed their own children to prevent them from being killed by their masters , while others narrowly escaped being executed themselves. 1. In a December 12, 1862 journal entry, Turner wrote that he had been appointed pastor “7 months” previous, which would mean that Turner probably would have still been in Baltimore when the District of Columbia Emancipation Act was passed. 2. Shelby Foote, The Civil War: A Narrative: Fredericksburg to Meridian (Vol. 2), 152; Henry McNeal Turner Diary, Howard University, Moorland -Spingarn Research Center, Manuscript Division, Henry McNeal Turner Papers, Box 106–1, Folder 2. EMANCIPATION AND ENLISTMENT 35 Turner also spent hours attending the legislative sessions of Congress, located several hundred yards away, in the yet-to-becompleted Capitol Building. Perhaps his familiarity with congressional debates and the views aired by his representatives led him to change his views about Lincoln. By the time Lincoln issued the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, 1862, Turner’s skepticism had turned into admiration. To those who doubted Lincoln’s sincerity, Turner responded: But suppose the president did not deliver his proclamation in good faith? What need I care? Or suppose he was driven to it by force of circumstances . What of it? That is nothing to cavil over. Let us thank God for it, for to him be the glory forever and ever. . . . Mr. Lincoln loves freedom as well as any one on earth, and if he carries out the spirit of his proclamation , he need never fear hell. God grant him a high seat in glory. Once the proclamation did, indeed, go into effect in January 1863, Turner quickly embraced the idea of arming black soldiers (an idea that his contemporary, Frederick Douglass, had strongly advocated from the outset of the war in 1861). He lamented war’s violence, for “it only shows how low down in the scale of moral depravity we are. . . . The pugnacity of a man does not establish his greatness.” At the same time...