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This chapter talks about the second year of Abraham Lincoln's presidency. It explores how Abraham Lincoln was able to sustain his popularity among Americans through his advance administration programs. His opposition to slavery (through his enactment of the Emancipation Proclamation) won the hearts of many slaves, for they were suddenly freed from their oppressors.

Many religious Northerners believed that God demonstrated his care for his chosen people by chastening them when they had sinned and disobeyed his laws. Slavery was one of those national sins, and devout civilians often asserted that God intended the war to destroy the peculiar institution. By the second year of war, many observers claimed that victories had been few because the government had failed to act decisively against slavery. President Lincoln, however, had determined to settle the matter by issuing the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. In contrast to most religious Northerners, he did not presume to know the mind of God but sounded a note of humble uncertainty regarding the Divine Will. The politicization of the pulpit continued as ministers promoted the war and claimed that God would preserve the Union, but some church members expressed concern that political interests had detracted from genuine spiritual vitality.

This lecture discusses the evolution of Abraham Lincoln's views on slavery and race. It looks at his eventual role as the Great Emancipator, which was given to him in light of the events of the Civil War. During the War Lincoln accepted the idea of ‘colonizing’ former slaves and developed concrete policies regarding slavery. Even before and after the War Lincoln made steps to improve the situation of slaves in America. The Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 is discussed in the lecture as well.

This chapter discusses briefly Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation. It looks at some questions that will be answered in the following chapters, and looks at the consequences of Lincoln's decision to rely on the law of war as a source of executive power. It further notes the irony that the same legal theory that has deprived hundreds of Guantanamo prisoners their freedom was the same theory used by Abraham Lincoln to free thousands of enslaved Americans.

This chapter discusses the final form of the Emancipation Proclamation, which was based on two of the belligerent rights of the government 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.

This chapter spans the period from the onset of Union occupation of Knoxville until March 1865. It focuses on two themes, the range of responses among Confederate civilians to Federal military occupation, and the growing schism among local Unionists over emancipation. Abraham Lincoln did not include Tennessee in the Emancipation Proclamation, but by early 1864 it was clear that the presence of Union troops was promoting the collapse of the institution nonetheless. A minority of Unionists labored to preserve slavery and forge an alliance with northern Democrats who were similarly objecting to the Republican emancipation policies. The majority, however, came to accept the end of slavery as an inevitable product of the war and endorsed emancipation as a justifiable response to treason. The chapter closes with local Unionists' overwhelming endorsement of a state referendum abolishing slavery in February 1865, only two months before the conclusion of the war.

The Emancipation Proclamation by Lincoln was a historic moment for men and women alike who continued to experience new forms of bondage and oppression. Martin Luther King's rhetoric at the Lincoln Memorial highlights the curious fact that Americans have customarily honored the abolition of slavery as a glorious moment of national rebirth and in the next breath have acknowledged that emancipation was in many ways a failure. The chapter argues that “manumission” was only a voluntary speech act that annihilated a status without altering the status quo. Therefore, the ritual of “national rebirth” merely legitimated a new relationship that had already evolved. For example, over half the manumissions in Maryland were delayed until an adult had worked for a specified number of years or until a child had reached the age of thirty.

This chapter discusses the contribution of General William T. Sherman to the black church. Gen. Sherman's brilliant and bloody march through Georgia and the Carolinas during the fall and winter of 1864–65 profoundly affected the black community and the black church. Just as profoundly did the black people and their church affect the success of Sherman's mission. After Sherman's conquest, the Zion Baptist Church would become separate and free, and Brother Ephraim would lead this independent church into the early years of freedom. The quest of Gen. Sherman from Atlanta to Savannah is described. Twenty black religious leaders were the special guests of the general. They were summoned to help the general and President Lincoln on how to implement the Emancipation Proclamation. After six weeks in Savannah, Sherman left the city for his campaign through the Carolinas.

Kentucky, added more strain to the fraying relationship between Lincoln and his native state. All along, almost all Kentucky Unionists favored a Union with slavery. Nearly every Kentucky soldier in blue was fighting for the preservation of the Union, not for the abolition of slavery. Across the state, thousands of Kentuckians who were prowar turned to the “Peace” Democrats. The Purchase stayed stubbornly secessionist.

Chapter fifty-one examines Hodge’s growing animosity toward slavery. While his biblical position on slavery never changed, he became convinced during the Civil War that slavery as it was practiced in the South with its high racial component was a great evil. He stood against polygenism. Through a series of important Repertory articles on the War, Hodge showed his support for Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, his complete commitment to monogenism and his aversion to England coming to the aid of the South.

This chapter considers the impact of the Emancipation Proclamation against the backdrop of the Civil War. London perceived a lack of consistency in the measure, as it freed the enslaved in areas where he had no control and allowed bondage to persist in areas where he did have control. It expressed concern over the practical effect of declaring emancipation, not as an act of justice and benevolence but as an act of punishment and retaliation. Jefferson Davis remarked that this decree could “lead to one of three possible consequences: the annihilation of the slaves, the exile of the whole white population from the Confederacy, or the absolute and total separation of these States from the United States”. The chapter also describes how the end of the war and slavery's extinction normalized relations between the republic and the Crown.

This chapter illustrates one of the ways in which African Americans asserted their independence in the wake of the Emancipation Proclamation in occupied Carteret and Craven counties. Many slaves felt emboldened by the Proclamation as a direct acknowledgment of their right to freedom and, as a consequence, their right to assert themselves. Perhaps it was under the influence of such feelings that on a brisk, early January 1863 day, an African American woman sought out Davis, a man she knew well, to insist that her daughter be released from servitude, provoking an incident recounted at the beginning of the chapter. The woman's ability to “support herself” and her assertion of her independence probably rankled the former slaveholder Davis as much as any Federal policy did. In southern society, whites believed a black person's proper role was as a dependent.

This chapter presents Griffin's wartime letters to his wife Leila dated from December 1, 1864 to February 27, 1865. These letters are about Griffin's first fear of invasion because while the Union forces threatened from without, the home front also had enemies from within which include Confederate deserters. Griffin was appointed colonel of the First South Carolina Militia and his letters were filled with nationalism and patriotism. He was also concerned about his slaves because the Union army were already enforcing the Emancipation Proclamation.

This chapter covers the beginning to Civil War, the recruitment of black men into the Union army, and the challenges their families faced both in their absence and as a result of their military service. African American men such as Jerry Skillman, America Murphy's husband and Isaac's father, enlisted to fight for his and his family's freedom. The chapter discusses events at Camp Nelson, where the wives and children of the black soldiers stationed there came for protection. At one point, the families were turned out, with tragic consequences, but eventually Camp Nelson became an educational resource for the newly freed. The chapter also recognizes the colored regiments that served with distinction during the Civil War, especially those attached to the Twenty-Fifth Corps led by Major General Godfrey Weitzel, a man of considerable integrity and honor.

Most of this criticism focuses on the pre-Emancipation Proclamation Abraham Lincoln and all, but ignores Lincoln's handling of black freedom after the Proclamation. This chapter takes up the subject of what Lincoln learned and did not learn during the war. First, it examines the subject of Lincoln's effort to colonize African-Americans outside the United States. Then the chapter turns to the large subject of Lincoln's attitudes toward the intellectual capacities of African-Americans. The chapter poses the question on how Lincoln's attitudes toward African-Americans in the post-Proclamation period might inform the understanding of the wisdom, necessity, and possible process of some modern system of restitution for the crime of American slavery. It also argues that Lincoln's emphasis on education for the freed people may have helped sow the seeds of failure during the Reconstruction era, and funding for African-American education today may again do only half the work that is needed.

After the final Emancipation Proclamation went into effect in January 1863, western armies generally liberated slaves quite vigorously. But always driving this emancipation policy first and foremost were practical military considerations. Many officers supported emancipation because it would help win the war, and this was exactly how they carried out the policy. As much as possible, officers focused on freeing slaves for the army’s benefit, often targeting able-bodied men who could be of most use as teamsters, pioneers, laborers, and soldiers. Given these military priorities, officers frequently saw the slave women and children flocking to their camps as a military burden and usually sent them to hellish contraband camps or to labor for wages on plantations. In the politically sensitive border states of Kentucky and Missouri, emancipation was especially slow and conflict ridden. Yet even there, military necessity forced commanders to eventually adopt increasingly emancipationist policies. A few officers did support emancipation for moral reasons, but moral imperatives had very little influence on emancipation policies in the field. Officers’ prevailing racial beliefs help explain why many of them were more concerned with former slaves’ ability to help the army than with their welfare.

Harriet Beecher Stowe, at age twenty-one, moved with her family from Hartford to Cincinnati, where her father headed Lane Theological Seminary and where she met her husband, Calvin Ellis Stowe. It was here that she became interested in the public questions of the day, especially abolition. She later published, in 1852, Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life among the Lowly became, next to the Bible, the best-selling book of the century. In 1853, she received a document from the women of Great Britain and Ireland, some half-million of them, imploring their sisters in America to devote themselves to the destruction of slavery. The address remained unanswered, until the British themselves disgusted Stowe and other Unionists with their tacit support of the Confederacy, until Abraham Lincoln gave assurances that the Emancipation Proclamation would indeed be issued on the first of January.