how the document is remembered
there is history and then there is
historical memory
and those two things sometimes overlap
and then sometimes they don't
so i want to look at the ways in which
the memories about
emancipation are created
during and after the civil war and what
those memories
bequeath to us in terms of a legacy of
being
forever free
so with that sort of intro
i'd like to start actually with an image
this is a picture from
a image of uh drawn by famous cartoonist
thomas nast um and you can see his
signature down here in the corner
he's a fairly recognizable style as a
cartoonist
we associate him with the creation of
the modern santa claus
uh the democratic donkey and the
republican elephant
and as a cartoonist in the era of the
civil war
he did spend a lot of his time
drawing for harper's weekly this
particular magazine here
various scenes of what he thought
were great political and national events
like emancipation and
this cartoon from 1863
situates emancipation in the center
of a domestic bubble so we have
a formerly enslaved family now enjoying
the fruits of freedom
and those fruits of freedom
are essentially going to be
around hearth and home
next to them on the side
are scenes of the horror and the
violence that they endured
under the system of american slavery and
on the other side
are the other fruits of emancipation
namely we've got people being able to go
to school
we've got being able to participate in
american
civic life on equal terms with
everyone else so with this sort of
image in mind um drawn
during the war itself let's take a
moment to review the actual
facts about emancipation and maybe these
are things that
you haven't thought about in a while
or maybe these are things that if you're
my student you thought about these
in december so
as the story of the facts go you can't
really tell
uh this the tale of emancipation without
talking about runaways
because it's african-americans
themselves
that put great pressure on the united
states
to end slavery and they do that
with their feet at the very outset of
the civil war
african-americans seek union lines
and union forts as they
run away from their condition in the
south and
hope that the northern armies will
accept them
at the time they were called contrabands
we might today call them refugees
political uh you know people seeking a
political asylum so to speak
about 400 000 of them by 1865 will show
up in union camps
and you might think so what does that
have to do with emancipation
it's the sheer number of these folks
showing up
that forces lincoln and others to say
what are we going to do we've got all of
these
people running away from the south do we
return them
do we take them in and feed them exactly
what are we going to do
with these bodies that are showing up at
our doors
at first lincoln is actually behind
the times his generals on the ground are
the ones
innovating emancipation many of them
with very strong
abolitionist leanings say
i'm going to accept these folks they
are free i'm going to put them to work
and over time over the course of about a
year or so
lincoln and congress catches up to this
and they decide that what's necessary is
to treat these folks
as contraband war
material that is if in the south
the enslaved or property well then the
north can confiscate them
as property to prevent southerners from
using them
during the war so we actually have two
confiscation acts 1861 and
a subsequent one in 1862 that treat the
enslaved
as war material
by bringing them in as war material
that will forever alter the course of
the war
because once you've opened the door to
these people coming
being a part of the northern war effort
that's going to make it a lot harder to
return them
to enslavement at the end of the war
so the union is essentially going to
consider them free
even though we don't have a statement
announcing that just yet
so many of them will be put to work they
will do work on the fortifications
you know the women will cook and do
washing
as as the generals are sending frantic
notes to lincoln
saying uh we need to create a policy
here we need to figure out exactly what
we're going to do
lincoln was um pressured into the idea
of utilizing runaway labor in the war
effort
by this stream of contrabands and
eventually
he came to the idea of a preliminary
announcement of emancipation
as a war maneuver and this is september
22nd 1862.
lincoln did talk about this with his
cabinet in july
and uh news of it was leaked to the
press which lincoln would have to
respond to
in the preliminary announcement lincoln
gave
southerners 100 days to re-enter the
union
with slavery they could keep
their people that they had held in
bondage
but if the south did not return to the
union
emancipation would be used against them
as an act of war policy
so notice again how lincoln here is
not necessarily pushing for freedom
on behalf of a group of people um who
are running to the north
and and seeking their liberty he is
seeing this as
a way of addressing the war goals
and we can also tie this onto
antietam which was a northern victory
that lincoln
desperately wanted as a sign that the
north was capable of sustaining the war
effort
um and it would generate enough goodwill
that lincoln's would say
i'm gonna do something that's big
something that's important
and namely i'm going to use emancipation
as an instrument of war the actual
emancipation proclamation is january 1st
1863
and in that we have to take note
of the crucial fact that emancipation
did not apply to border states
so we're talking missouri kentucky
maryland and delaware these are states
where there are 400
000 enslaved african-americans
and those people will not be set free by
the emancipation proclamation
lincoln is careful to situate
emancipation
as an act of war with his
power as the commander-in-chief of the
u.s military
so this will only apply in areas
under rebellion so areas engaged in
actual treason against the united states
will have emancipation used against them
so lincoln is seeing this as an
application of his war power
and that will limit the impact um
we won't get actual full constitutional
ending of slavery until december of 1865
with the 13th amendment and in a side
story that we don't often talk about
the cherokee had enslaved about
4 000 african-americans and they will
not be legally freed until july of 1866
in a separate treaty with the cherokee
nation
so the story of emancipation is
a little bit more complicated than i
think the memory we have of emancipation
and i'm going to try to show you why the
facts that we just looked at
and the memories don't often line up
so what does the actual text say
the preliminary announcement is slightly
different than the later emancipation
because lincoln continually brought it
to his cabinet and said could you give
me
some suggestions about wording for the
text
the actual text that deals with freedom
contains the phrase shall be free
henceforward shall be free
the preliminary announcement said
forever free
slightly different wording and in the
sort of
legalistic mind of lincoln as a lawyer
um there are of course differences uh
between
henceforward shall be free and forever
free
at the time lincoln though is not
thinking
beyond the war's end and sort of what we
can do
at that point he's just thinking how can
i use this as an instrument
of ending this conflict
i would point out saying forever free
shall be free once that door is
open there is no going back
you can't sort of put the toothpaste
back in the tube
so to speak once people are set at
liberty
a second part of the emancipation
proclamation
does underscore the nature of the
freedom that the emancipated will
experience and that is their ability to
work
for wages so in enslavement
and enslavement you don't get to work
for wages
because that's the condition of being
enslaved and lincoln is going to make it
clear
that under freedom you get to work
faithfully it says for reasonable wages
so not only will freedom be forever free
labor will be the norm
and that norm is going to be consistent
with the republican party's talking
points
even before the civil war
finally in the text it says that lincoln
will
accept any of these emancipated folks
into the armed service of the united
states
who better to fight on behalf of the
united states
than people who have a grudge against
the south
and are willing to get a weapon and go
down south
and fight the people that used to
work them from dawn till dusk and
mistreat them
so not only will freedom be forever and
free labor will be the norm
fighting for your nation will be
welcomed
and that's going to set us up for a
crucial uh war development namely
the enslaved becoming emancipated
and saying if i fight what about
citizenship
there's got to be more than just freedom
so how do textbooks deal with this i
just pulled the three textbooks that i
happen to use
in my classes when i teach
if you look at brinkley and henrietta
two of the textbooks that we use
they talk about emancipation as not
being a practical
matter of freedom immediately
it's only practical once the union army
gains a portion of the south where then
you can run away to
um them says exactly almost the same
thing
emancipation proclamation does not
immediately free anyone
eric foner being eric foner because he's
written extensively about this time
period
um talks about the lofty nature of
emancipation that is looking forward to
the end of the war
this is a momentous altering of the
civil war's direction
and it will point to what will happen
post-war he will also point to
um a change in lincoln's thinking which
um he followed up on this idea in a book
that he wrote called this fiery trial
about the changing ways that lincoln
thought about african americans
and freedom and emancipation during the
course of the war
so that's going to lead us to now the
memory portion
because as soon as emancipation is made
a reality
the act of making memory out of this
is going to begin in the public mind
lincoln himself even recognized that he
said if my name ever goes into history
it will be for this act and my whole
soul is in it very very lofty words
spoken on the day he signed the
emancipation
and this cartoon um this painting here
this lithograph
showing lincoln drafting the
emancipation
is is quite uh you know the story of the
myth making itself
there are more symbols in this image
than we have
time to delve into um from the map
of the u.s with the sword on top of it
to the flag draped over the window
the busts hanging the key
all those sorts of things the freemason
symbol in the background
what i really want to draw attention to
is lincoln himself
with the emancipation proclamation in
hand
as he's sitting cozy with his uh one
slipper off
hand resting on the bible on top of the
constitution
you can't get a more iconic picture of
emancipation
as the act of a single man
than this image and i want to talk about
the ways
in which this kind of image
makes the memory of lincoln and
emancipation
different than the text itself
if we go across the pond to england
there is a slightly different story told
there so i wanted to sneak in this
cartoon
this is lincoln as the desperate gambler
um lincoln's last card and he's about to
throw it down on a barrel of gunpowder
notice he's got some horns there his
product has made his hair stand up just
a bit
but i want to draw your attention to the
card from a distance
it looks like a spade but you bring it
close up
and you realize there is an
african-american
face in the spade
what's lincoln's gamble well
emancipation in this cartoon
is not heroic it's a
desperate throwing down of your last
best card in an explosive situation
this is a desperate gamble so keep in
mind the story of emancipation could be
told from the european perspective
let's talk about complicating the
lincoln story
just for a moment
we focus a lot on lincoln but we should
acknowledge the other players
in the room namely people like frederick
douglass
and lots of african-american northerners
who put
pressure on lincoln to say we need to
make this a war about ending slavery
many of them met with lincoln douglas
would not until late
in 1863 but they certainly use their
voices
to say to lincoln this needs to be a war
about freedom
and you need to not keep talking about
colonizing african americans outside of
the united states
which was a pet project lincoln offered
until late in the war when he kind of
finally got convinced that
colonization's not going to happen
we could point to lincoln's own
political party members
radical republicans like sam and chase
charles sumner
thaddeus stevens these are people
who are acting in their congressional
capacities
in their cabinet capacities to press
lincoln towards a more definitive
statement on emancipation
and freedom congress for example will
end slavery in washington d.c in 1862
with compensation so they will actually
pay
for the ending of slavery and then
outlaw slavery in the u.s territories
so lincoln's not the only player in this
story of government here
you've got lincoln's awareness
of public opinion so for example in july
of 1862
when he first talks about his
preliminary draft to his cabinet
it gets linked to the leaked to
the public and lincoln takes that
opportunity to write a very famous
letter about his war goals
and how he hopes to save the union
and if it includes emancipation then so
be it
lincoln is keenly aware of northern
public opinion
he's aware of these runaways and these
contrabands
and he's aware of the need for military
success
these things are pushing him as much as
he is sitting in some room somewhere
with his hand on the bible drafting
emancipation proclamation
finally we can ignore lincoln's own
um enemies politically that would be the
northern democrats
who are hammering lincoln as
engaging in an unconstitutional act of
freeing people that he has no authority
to do
and they raise the the threat of
a race war they raise the threat of
african americans flooding into the
north and stealing white jobs
and in fact because of this inflammatory
language there will be race riots in new
york
cincinnati chicago toledo and
new orleans in this time period
but let's focus a little bit more on
the enslaved and the way in which
their actions also shape the memory of
emancipation
we have to keep in mind they don't
encounter the document
there is no mailing of this document to
them to the south and they each get a
copy
they hear about this through the
grapevine they hear about this through
a group of agents that are sent into the
south they're about 237 of them to
announce emancipation
um they're they hear about through
rumors and so
they don't see this as a legal text what
they
hear is they have been set free
and if they've been set free and abe
lincoln
signed that agreement then they are
going to set themselves free on foot
as pictured here um from this
illustration
of the refugees the contrabands
flocking into the union armies
and they do this even before the january
first announcement in 1863.
so for these folks emancipation is not
about a legal document not about
war strategy it's about something
fundamentally different
so we've got this picture then of
lincoln
the great emancipator sometimes he's
called the reluctant emancipator
and lots of imagery at the time put him
at the center
and then we have all these other players
in the story
we have the people who are emancipated
themselves
actually seeking freedom on foot
so how does it come to be that lincoln
is the center of our tales about
emancipation
and how do we come to talk about
the memory of emancipation in light of
the holidays
that we are thinking of celebrating here
in the bexley community
that we're planning for
[Music]
and that african americans have
celebrated since the 1860s
namely emancipation day and juneteenth
so in these images notice that lincoln
is the center of both of them
freedom is not just about african
americans in this first image
it's about white folks as well
killing slavery sets free
white americans according to this first
image
in the second image you notice the
enslaved man thanking
president lincoln with his family off to
the side
how does lincoln get to be the center of
that
tonight right here that's won three
games ahead here tonight
and head back to boston for second
period
trees um unmuted themselves accidentally
um so check the commutes
um alma check your batteries some of you
will get that movie reference
um i want to say first of all the memory
of lincoln as the center
comes from the enslaved themselves
we can see this in the wpa narratives
which were collected in the 1930s
from people who were still alive that
remembered the civil war and
reconstruction many of them
quite elderly at this point in the 1930s
and they talk about lincoln as the man
who sets us free
says charlie moses hannah crasson
in her wpa narrative talks about lincoln
as the instrument of god
god worked freedom into the lives of the
enslaved
through lincoln even southerners
look at lincoln as the key uh figure in
emancipation
and in the post-war period when they're
rewriting the history of the war
as the lost cause mythology lincoln is
the
evil villain figure he's a black
republican in their eyes
his imperial edict uh makes him the
center of the story
and i would like to also argue that
lincoln's assassination can't be ignored
here
lincoln is shot on good friday
and he dies by easter
you can't get a more religiously
significant linkage between him
and his life story and the story of
christianity
it makes him a martyr so for many people
his death will cement
and essentially close off that story of
emancipation
in 1865 april of 1865.
so what we get then are
celebrations of emancipation and lincoln
will be at the center of them
september 22nd 1862 or january 1st 1863
are the most common celebrations
here in columbus emancipation day
was almost always september 22nd
juneteenth wasn't a thing in the city of
columbus
until the 1930s and i'll talk about why
in just a second
so here in columbus african americans
would gather
march down broad street they'd have
parades black veterans would march in
their uniforms
and usually it'd end up in franklin park
where they'd have a picnic and speeches
um september was more favored it's
warmer who wants to have a parade and a
picnic in january
i mean that totally makes sense so where
does juneteenth come from
juneteenth is a celebration coming out
of the announcement by general gordon
granger
to the enslaved in texas june
19 1865.
so this is two years after the
emancipation proclamation
texas is sort of a front
war in fact we know many southerners
fled to texas with
their slaves in order to try to escape
the effects of emancipation
but they could not outrun the long arm
of freedom
and so gordon granger announces this to
a group of stunned folks
in public on june 19th so
juneteenth becomes the southern
emancipation proclamation story
and that will be the celebration
almost exclusively in the southern part
of the united states
until the 20th century when the great
migration will bring african-americans
to the north
and they will bring juneteenth with them
so what keeps this story alive besides
you know these images the emancipation
day celebrations
quite simply it's merch if i can borrow
a contemporary slang term merchandise
emancipation will be sold it will be
sold through images
copies of the emancipation proclamation
pictures of lincoln as the great
emancipator
like this image here everyone
who wants to recall the story will have
an
image like this one in their homes or
even a facsimile of the emancipation
proclamation itself
i'd like to end with another way the
story gets retold
since um i'm a pianist and i sing
i have been studying the musical history
of emancipation
and there are quite a number of pieces
written about emancipation some of them
are
songs to be sung in public others
are piano marches emancipation hymns
and so i'm gonna take you through a
couple of them and then we'll
end with the story of someone set free
and what he thought emancipation was for
in his own life
um this is a song that was written
based on things the um the refugees sang
today we would call this song go down
moses
oh let my people go
which the enslaved actually sang as they
approached
union armies it's a little different
than our version the one that we know
um but you'll recognize a little bit of
the similarity if i sing it for you
the the first verse goes like this the
lord by moses to
pharaoh said o let my people go
if not i'll smite your firstborn dead
then let my people go
oh go down moses
away down in egypt land
and tell king pharaoh
to let my people go
so a different meter than the go down
moses you might know
um the very final verse of this
has a very interesting parody of
the song based in the civil war the lord
now doth to this nation speak oh let my
people go
the bruised reed you shall not break oh
let my people go
then go down free men
the formerly enslaved the union army
a way down not to pharaoh's land but
dixieland
and tell uncle sam to let my people go
there are more formal pieces uh that are
more
coral in nature such as this
emancipation hymn
um which does not include women it
envisions emancipation as
setting free men to be men
um so this one goes as brothers old
then follow the call for freedom and
emancipation
a man is a man deny it who can
it shall be so at last in this nation
very military very uh
sort of hin-like is the
feeling you're supposed to get here it
is
about manhood though a man is a man
freedom makes you a man
there are others um i'm not going to
sing the emancipation hymn by manuel
fenilosa because i'd actually need a
quartet to do it
um it's it's like more operatic
but i do have some of the words through
the slave hounds lair appeals the manned
out mandate of salvation let my people
go
notice the quote from go down moses
asking for a land for a land united
we forgot the slave prayed we for
our country for our country blighted
what's interesting about these words is
that emancipation is
an answer to a national sin
slavery is not a southern sin
it's the nation's sin our whole
country is affected by this horrific
thing that we've allowed to develop
some of the songs are more in the sort
of line of blackface minstrelsy
so they employ dialect and they employ
more um sort of
get down go to town kind of rhythms
we're going to have a little bit of fun
with this this is a humorous one known
as away goes coffee so you'll notice in
the dialect here
the way abraham lincoln is spelled
this is meant to imitate
african-american dialect
which often times
comes off as racist these are white
folks writing these songs
trying to imitate what they think they
hear so abram lincoln last september
told
the south lest you surrender for the
last of next december
away goes cuffy cuffy
is a corruption of an african day name
and it's a common name used for many
enslaved
men in the south
so you would hear this name almost
in this mocking way here as a stand-in
for all
african-americans african-american males
enslaved south days mad at north's
invasion said abe lincoln's proclamation
don't go down in nation norway
goes cuffy
abe sustains his trying station says to
france an english nation just stand back
with mediation
away goes cuffy this song also
pays attention to the international
story of emancipation which i haven't
really dealt with
namely by making the civil war about
freedom
we can keep france and england out of
the war effort
okay i'm going to end now with a voice
of a formerly enslaved man
jordan anderson because i think
what he is able to tell us about
emancipation gives us some more
insight into how this story can be told
and it's not just a story about lincoln
you'll notice
jordan anderson moved from tennessee
after getting his freedom papers
from the union army and he moved to
dayton ohio so
just about an hour and a little bit of
ways from here
um jordan went to work for a man named
valentine winters
and jordan got a letter from his former
master
so his former roster said dear jordan i
want you to come back to tennessee
um i will pay you wages um
your daughters can go to school so
imagine getting you know a letter from
the person who had once
treated you as property how you might
respond
valentine helped jordan craft a letter
and then valentine published the letter
in the cincinnati commercial
so jordan's response is quite
tongue-in-cheek
and it says look i make
25 a month now so emancipation is about
a paycheck for me
i get to work
i made a choice and who employs me
and i get to bring money home
emancipation is economic
i think significantly too significantly
jordan says my wife mandy
is now mrs anderson
emancipation has not only freed this man
but it has elevated the status of his
wife
she is not reduced to a first name
anymore she has now adjoined the ranks
of
mrs and his children millie jane and
grundy
well thank you very much they do go to
school
so for jordan emancipation is a new life
for his
children it's the promise of a better
future for them
and he didn't stop there he goes
on in this extraordinary letter to say
to his former master
i want you to tell me exactly what you
would pay me
if i came down south and as
proof that you're serious i want you to
pay me
for your years of service
where i worked for you what you owe me
and my wife so jordan goes through a
long complicated list of calculations
and he comes up with the figure of
eleven thousand six hundred and eighty
dollars
for all of the work he did for his
former master
just put that in context that's about
189 000
today jordan says
if you want to show proof
that you're serious about having me move
back
then you need to owe me for the past
emancipation is about making
up for the wrongdoing of the past
it's not just about i am now
no longer a slave
so i like ending with that story because
this once again brings us to the the
center
of someone who was enslaved
and what they get to see as
the conditions of their emancipation
which he had to walk on his own feet to
get to dayton ohio
he was not rescued by lincoln and he
certainly has in his
own mind a vision of freedom
that lincoln never considered
that's it for me so i will turn it over
now to
question time awesome thank you so much
for this amazing presentation um first
question
do you sing for all of your classes
because i will take i will come back to
high school
just to see you sing in a class
i can't go a day without singing
something um
every day has a song and every day in
class i'll be
saying something and a song will pop
into mine i
do have historic songs that i bring into
class and teach
i've even written a presentation for the
ap national conference
to share historical music that you could
teach students
i like singing so hopefully they like it
too
and they aren't sort of like oh my god
dko sing it again
that's awesome thank you so much for
sharing it here tonight
because i haven't been able to witness
that before and that was just really
awesome
now we can talk about the presentation
point the
the meat and the potatoes of it and i
think
for me i feel like i learned a lot about
like the emancipation proclamation
honestly
um i grew up in chicago
and you know i took ap
american history and i'm sure i read the
emancipation proclamation but i think in
my mind
i just thought oh well abraham lincoln
freed slaves
like i don't even really need to read
that because
yeah that's what it did and i think you
have such a really
good point about what's the difference
between
history and historical memory
and it's so interesting how historical
memories
build throughout time like unquestioning
you know like one of the things that i
thought about
um you know as an african-american woman
and honestly my background
to let you know my grandf
my grandmother's grandfather was
emancipated um on juneteenth
in texas um and so
for me that's really tangible we never
really celebrated juneteenth
um but i think in our household it was
just
not a question of abraham lincoln
lincoln being good we just always
assumed he was good
because this is what he did um and i
think
when you actually go back and you read
the text of the emancipation
proclamation
and it didn't free the slaves you know
and it definitely didn't free all the
slaves like you were saying
there were a bunch of slaves around the
border states that weren't freed
there were you know um slaves the
enslaved people that
were with the um cherokees or
yeah that weren't free then
um but i think it was still
important um
and even like lincoln and maybe we can
talk about this
more still about how he kind of evolved
a bit more in his thinking about wanting
to
give some not all african
informally enslaved people from africa
the right to vote um
i think he
did all that and even like in my mind
now
in 2021 i go well yeah of course
that should have happened but i think
in the day in that context those were
major advancements for the day
whether it comes from you know it being
just a you know uh
a random gamble a desperate ploy
you know a military act um
still it was a very major
thing to do so i guess my question
and all of that is how do you teach your
students
as a historian the significance of
interpreting the events of the day
versus
us being able to look back and say oh
yeah that should have happened anyway
because at that time it was very
significant
even to the point like you were saying
that african americans
when he was assassinated would say
things like i've lost my best friend
so how do you know how do you
tease out the history and the actual
historical meanings and the generational
meanings
and all of that that kind of get
embedded
into these historical facts
i think the first thing that we try to
do is
we look at the context for any action
so if you're looking at january 1st 1863
what's going on in that moment that
makes a historical event
um and makes the significance of that
event
uh something that we can try to
understand
as it was happening because
once you open the door for emancipation
once the enslaved come to the union
lines and say i'm here
free me that genie is out of the bottle
there is no going back from that even if
lincoln hadn't quite gotten to
where you know he may have gone had he
survived
um had he not been assassinated
so i think we look at the moments and
then we try to put the context around
the moment and say what do we know about
that moment and what led up to the
moment
we talk a lot about that in my class
context is incredibly important
the other thing is and this is sometimes
we forget this
we live our lives forward
not knowing what's coming next
historians we're always living
going back and we know where things land
and sometimes it's important for us to
get out of
the moment now in our own brains
and remember that when lincoln woke up
on january 2nd 1863
he didn't know what was happening next
he responded to
everything as it happened in time
unfolding to him
um i wish we'd had him survive
to see where his thinking would have
gone as you pointed out
um he was moving he's a he's a moving
target
he's a man who talks about colonization
at the beginning of the war
he actually says very rudely to a
delegation of african americans um
incredibly rudely white and black folk
cannot get along
it would be better if you just went
outside the united states
they actually proposed a colony in
central america lincoln said the climate
would be
tropical so it would suit
african-american bodies
and they would have enough resources to
be successful
by 1865 lincoln we know
is pondering things like citizenship
he's pondering things um like voting
because he's being you know thoughtful
about what it means
to put the union back together
he's already unleashed the idea of his
10
plan and african americans all along the
way
are saying to him very publicly saying
to him
okay abram lin abraham lincoln
next step next step if you want our
service
we need the right to vote and we just
don't get to see lincoln get there
because you know his life gets stopped
and so that story for him gets stopped
[Music]
so i think it's important for us
to remember when we read backwards in
the past
our our ancestors didn't know what was
next
and then remember the context in which
they made their decisions
okay awesome there's a question in the
chat
and it says what were the obstacles
process
for claiming one's identity as a free
person with no personal records
so you would appear before the union
army
and you would get emancipation um
records you get an emancipation form or
freedom papers as they were typically
called by most folks
um and the freedom papers would document
as much as you could say
um as much as you knew um because
yes records are scarce
um we do know um quite a bit of things
about
some folks um if you think of the
enslaved as property
you're gonna keep property records but
those records won't be complete
and they won't have an identity attached
to them
um necessarily though some do
if you read some plantation records
there's some very clear markings about
people's behavior and identity from a
white point of view
so you know the the enslaved are just
walking up to the union lines i'd like
my freedom papers
[Music]
i've read several of these for
um african-american gentleman who came
and actually settled in bexley
in 1868 his name was thomas payton
and he came from west virginia um in an
area where the enslaved worked in
salt manufacturing and the
the records for him basically our
physical description
when he thinks he was born
and that's it so a lot of emancipation
is about
how much can i give
for this physical record and then how
much do i get to create
like jordan anderson did in his new life
in dayton
is that when you're also seeing a lot of
formally enslaved people like
declaring new names and taking on new
like
what am i going to be called being able
to decide that as well
or like what kinds of things have you
found
so they do um many of them keep the
names
they've been known by it just is
up for a lot that remain in the south in
particular um we know that many stay
on the plantations where they were
raised it's the only thing they've ever
known the only area they've ever known
and they retained the last name of their
former owner
um we know though that some do
actively create sort of a new persona
for themselves
people move as they're looking for
family members that have been you know
split apart from them
and this is a chance for reinvention for
some which
if you do genealogy for this time period
it is
a nightmare to track people
right right okay oh there's another
question that popped up
it says we often hear about the northern
response to the proclamation but
what was the general southern response
to the act
we hate it
um the south universally
hates the emancipation proclamation they
see it first of all as incitement to
race war
because they they expect that what this
is going to do
is make the enslave bold the bold are
going to seize weapons
and then you know households will be
destroyed
they hate lincoln um they look at
lincoln as the central figure here
i mean he's the villain he's the cruella
deville of this story
um they call him a black republican
there's actually a pamphlet during the
civil war called
abraham africanus which details all
kinds of secret
mysteries of abraham's life and mystical
influences on his decision making
and so many of these things reinforce
this notion that lincoln is
is dead evil and he's wrong um
if any southerners welcome it um it's
generally
people who
the ones who are closest to the border
states we do have
records where many of them voluntarily
emancipate
and they do it out of a sense of this is
coming
i'm not going to fight it because they
know
um that they're gonna have to uh
deal with a post war world in which
african americans are free but in
general
the south is they're pretty bitter
they're very to use a modern term
they're very salty
well weren't there also northerners who
were in opposition to you know the civil
war
and the emancipation proclamation and
all all of that
like that we're just against lincoln as
well
oh yes columbus in fact was a hotbed of
anti-lincoln democrat hatred
um eventually those folks got nicknamed
copperheads
so there these they're these snakes
waiting to strike at the heart of the
union effort
the most famous of the northerners here
in ohio was a man named clement
vallandigham
who was so obnoxious
in his condemnation of lincoln that he
was arrested by the union army
and thrown over the border into the
south and told if you like the south so
much
go live there wow did he come back or
did he stay
he did come back he snuck back into the
united states via canada
came back down into ohio and had a
fairly successful career as a lawyer
after the civil war
expressing very racist things
the columbus newspapers post-war the
democratic ones
um say some of the most heinous things
you would think they're southern
when you read them
and then what happens to those
thoughts those mentalities like
so in the south um there's the
the making of what's called the lost
cause mythology
and that is the southern attempt to deal
with they lost a war that they thought
they weren't gonna lose
they they enter it convinced that god
was on their side
and when they lose that's a severe
religious below their
god it really
it's a crisis of confidence for them so
they actively construct a mythology that
says that the civil war was not about
slavery at all they go back and rewrite
their own past
um and they try to explain to themselves
you know how they're going to create a
new future
and that future is going to evolve into
jim crow
we will create a second class
citizenship for african americans
and we will hem them in socially
economically and politically by 1900
that system will be firmly in place
across the entirety of the south
segregation
discrimination violence lynching the kkk
it is repressive
the northern way of dealing with this
is slightly different in the north
african americans
joined the republican party and so
the african-american support for
republicans
is long-standing it will last until 1936
and so they become part of the political
process they
join in political conventions they serve
in office
and they will live a kind of
quasi-integrated experience but as we
know
now looking back they live
in a geographically segregated
experience
so for example here in columbus most
african americans will be concentrated
on the near east side
so king lincoln bronzeville old town
east
that area um and
they will remain largely concentrated in
that area
through the 19th and 20th centuries
and that area will grow thanks to the
great migration
where you do see elements of segregation
here
for example there's a church on broad
street where african americans
can only sit in the balcony um it's
broad street prez
and i gave a version of a talk to that
church so
they that's not a surprise to them they
know um
franklin park generally african
americans were only allowed in the park
on certain days of the week and the park
superintendent
actually carried a club to walk around
and like run people out of the park
um when they weren't welcome so we had a
similar kind of system here in the north
it seemed a little softer and a little
bit more gentle
but um in many ways it was more
pervasive and harder to deal with
um by the time we get to the 1960s
okay so i kind of heard you say there's
a danger in
revision in this history like saying
january 6 was a peaceful protest
they were tourists we won't get into
that now um
so you know you had spoken a little bit
about how
lincoln is sort of this moving target as
far as his views
and i think i've always been confused
about his relationship
with like frederick douglass um where he
sat with that
um you know towards the end of his life
he was
considering giving some
african-americans the
ability to vote so thereby you know
being
american citizens like how do you
interpret
abraham lincoln's evolution i guess you
could say
when it comes to not just
uh the enslaved as being part of the war
effort but then slaved as actually being
persons worthy of citizenship
and rights etc i've just always been
i i because there have been so many
like to me disjointed things that i've
seen
about um abraham lincoln and his stance
towards african americans
and it to me gets confusing and so
if you could help clear that up a little
bit
if i could make a book recommendation it
would be eric foner's this fiery trial
it's the best i think modern volume on
lincoln's evolution
and if i can summarize it um
lincoln has his own
anti-slavery ideas even before the war
um so we know that he has some
deep concerns about slavery we
know that um he has some feeling about
the ownership of
other human beings um he does bear the
prejudices of his time in not seeing
african-americans as equal um the the
rude comments he makes in 1862 to a
delegation of african americans about
essentially they are the cause of the
war and uh you know
whites and blacks will never get along
um
that gives lincoln sort of like this not
very nice image
i think one of the things that we can
look at is
lincoln's core identity lawyer
anti-slavery president
but then also lincoln as evolving in
response to things that he encounters
um and a good example would be frederick
douglass um
douglas just tap
attacks lincoln in the press repeatedly
but doesn't meet with lincoln until
august of 1863
so they don't actually have a sit-down
face-to-face meeting
lincoln meets with other folks and as he
is meeting with
these men um who are saying
freedom is more than just ending this
system
it's got to be about equality it's got
to be participation in civic life
our freedom will mean nothing
if the power to re-enslave
exists and lincoln i think
in my reading and eric foner's reading
lincoln is hearing that
lincoln is picking up on that and
realizing we do actually have to think
about
a future um he
just never got there um there's like
almost like a
a set of well we might do this i'm
thinking about that this is a
possibility
and then you know john wilkes booth
comes along um
i i do think it's significant that
lincoln was
giving a speech where he mentioned
the possibility of citizenship
and voting and john wilkes booth was in
the audience
now the speech was an off-the-cuff set
of remarks
so lincoln hadn't planned that out sort
of like thinking out loud
but john wilkes booth absolutely
interpreted those words
as you are going to give citizenship and
voting rights to these people
i will not allow that
so even from the perspective of his
assassin
lincoln arrives a place that is
unacceptable
for white southerners and for even some
white northerners well let me ask you a
question there are a couple questions
now
um about the european opinion
and then we'll bring it back to like
well how do we move forward
knowing all this information how do we
move in the future okay
so based on the general european
negative response towards slavery
and the response to emancipation
proclamation how did the proclamation
prevent foreign powers from getting
involved in the civil
war and how did this impact the outcome
of the war
so england and france were both
um in the sort of running for the
southern attempt to court them
and the south was making a desperate
effort to to bring
britain and france and on their side and
they were using cotton as their leverage
that didn't work out in the end and part
of the reason is if you look at
parliamentary debates in the house of
commons in the house of lords
the british are saying by 1862
if we come into this war and mediate
at even a way that suggests we are
partial to the south
it will make our stance on emancipation
look hypocritical the british
empire had ended slavery in 1832
with compensation so they did the
compensated emancipation route
so by the civil war um they've got
a good bit of history under their belts
now
of not having enslavement in the british
empire
and what would it look like to intervene
on the side of the south
now we actually do know that
some british shipyards built some ships
for the south
and in fact those ships um
became part of a lawsuit after the war
for damages that the union claimed
against england for having built them
but that's basically the extent of the
british
and the french intervention the french
the french also another complicated
story um
they were meddling about in mexico under
emperor maximilian
and lincoln actually uh threatened the
the french to stay out of
of the americas under the monroe
doctrine um
so the french you know quietly said you
know um
goodbye oppa we're gonna take off now
so that's what happened in the european
story uh
as far as the british and french go and
the south never got the help they wanted
okay was the south looking to other
places as well or no
just britain and france primarily their
trade partners
people that they had been used to
trading with um
in the past so that's britain and france
britain buys a lot of southern cotton
for textile manufacturing okay
cool cool now so
this this has been like such an
enlightening
conversation about history but i kind of
want to
shift gears a little bit to now what do
we do with this information
now that we know it so um
you know abraham lincoln himself was
never an abolitionist
but part of his actions wound up in
freeing a lot of enslaved people um
also he was you know one of the first
correct me if i'm wrong public officials
to talk about black suffrage
correct or the possibility um
so my question now is
what lessons do you think that
those things hold like him not being an
abolitionist but
his actions freeing slaves and you know
talking about
black people voting what lessons do you
think that holds today
for allyship partners right for like
black lives matters
and for the a pi communities
how people can get involved even though
they're not
necessarily a part of that community or
organization
does that make sense that's an excellent
question to think about lincoln's
position
as sort of an ally right
and african americans are speaking with
him meeting with him
pressuring him um but yet not being
fully committed to their cause in the
way they would want so
how can we go forward today thinking
about that
that is a great example of a historical
analogy
translating the past to the present
one thing i would say is in politics
a lot of what happens is
not the art of idealism
[Music]
right politics they'd like to say is you
don't want to know how it's made because
it's like making sausages
and so when we're talking about
political actors
compromising balancing competing
objectives
that sometimes makes us take a very
dismal view
of what happens in the political realm
because we see
idealism get diluted we see
um really lofty goals
be sort of reduced to the the
nitty-gritty of
backroom dealing and you know balancing
competing interests
and i think lincoln does illustrate that
um as much as he has a very
um war minded la uh
gold here saving the union um
does that make emancipation in some way
sorted
or tarnished um does it just complicate
the story
um do we look at the situation and say
we shouldn't let you know our our
expectations for the best
be you know sort of limiting us from
achieving what is good and possible now
those are very political questions that
i think we can think about
in the here and now we think about
dealing with you know the historical
legacies of segregation the way that
economically has affected people in the
20th
century and where they live and what
occupations they hold
as we think about the historical
legacies of policing people
i mean black lives matter might be a
relatively recent
a movement but you can trace the the
history
back to the 19th century in the policing
of african american bodies
um and when you think about
what can we do if you put that in the
political realm
it's going to get murky
because we have to deal with a very real
issue of power and
power means somebody has control
somebody has
interests lincoln had interests the
border state had interests
northern african-americans had interests
so i think
politics is one way to look at that
question
and to realize that the political
does impose some limits on what we can
get done
um reforms political reforms
are necessarily going to get messy
if you move that question to another
realm that is
purely the allyship realm
i like to think about
how we can you know
get people on board with
creating the conditions that enable
other people to thrive
and prosper and whether that means
you know converting a neighbor or
converting the politician down the
street
you know honestly and authentically
saying to them you know i would like for
you to understand the situation that i
care about
i realize this is a heavily political
topic
i mean what what isn't political
according to political scientists
um the personal is political says kate
millet
but at the end of the day can i bring
you into
um the situation where we can try to
make a world
that will create the most good for the
most
people um even though i realize you
might be balancing goals
but can i also help you to understand
that
um it's not necessarily the role of the
ally
to rescue to see lincoln as the rescuer
for example
but enable people to be tools of their
own emancipation
[Music]
for me as a teacher that's incredibly
important
um if there's always a fine line in the
classroom when i think about this
between me helping you
and me rescuing you versus me
sustaining you and helping yourself
so in in some ways i am your educational
ally
i can be the ally for whatever social
movement you care about as well
and when i think about that for me at
least i think okay what is my role here
are are you wanting me to be a lincoln
because i don't necessarily know that
that aligns with my personal values
or are you wanting me to exert my power
in a way if i have it if i have
privilege if i have power
are you asking me to use that power to
help you help yourself
well and i think i think what you just
said is
completely beautiful and um
i'm very grateful as a parent um with
kids in the district
that have had you that you feel that way
i i think too about like allyship
about getting people just to understand
that there are different ways
of viewing situations and
how do you as a historian
and as a human you have your own
personal bias
that you carry around with you i have my
own personal bias that i carry around
with me
how do you get in terms of like helping
people understand
allyship and spaces that
they occupy how do you get people to
be able to see past themselves so that
they can
become an ally and even begin to
understand
how history and their interpretation of
history is very different
kind of like the enslaved africans
saw it as freedom this is freedom
i don't care what you call it this is
freedom whereas you know the northerners
might have seen it as something
different and just economic or whatever
but
for them getting out of that space as
the northerner
being able to see hey no for
enslaved africans this was absolutely
about
um freedom so how do you or how have you
in the past
helped to get people to look at those
different lenses
of historical context
for me i talk about perspective all the
time
so i'm constantly asking students to
shift their perspective
to say um let's look at this information
now imagine that you are a southerner
what would a southerner say
now imagine that you are
a native american on the frontier and
you're having to take a side
uh the cherokee for example split um
part of them sided with the south part
of them sided with the north
um so how would you get people to
realize the different perspectives there
and that i think has to involve
some set of awareness that there are
perspectives
um if you go through life seeing history
as
one thing one story one narrative
you automatically discount
that there might be dozens of other
viewpoints out there
all seeing the same story but from
slightly different angles
and i work real hard at the all through
my classes
to destabilize this idea that there is
even one
story um things that we read
things that i ask people to think about
things that i lecture on
even my own personal reading when
i read a new book that challenges
something that i read in grad school
that has
asked me to rethink i work that into
class because that's
me showing that i can evolve i can adapt
and i think that's really important to
model
but in the real life situation of
just everyday experience in the here and
now
i think there's nothing like
spending time with people who are
different from you
amen i was fortunate enough
growing up i grew up in extremely deep
poverty in the south
um appalachian poverty where you know my
my father cannot read or write
my mother never graduated from high
school so i grew up with one set of
ideas about how the world worked
[Music]
met and married a woman who was more
middle class
learned middle class sort of that world
from her perspective
i sat with people who were different
than me
i went to different church experiences
i was fortunate enough that my church
as a child actually exchanged services
with an
african-american baptist church so we
sang in their choir their car saying
with us
and you just there's nothing like
seeing the world from someone else's
viewpoint when you stand where they
stand
so i think here in columbus for example
one of the best things you can do is get
out of bexley
i love it it's great the bubble is
awesome and wonderful but also
walk through old town east and walk
through king lincoln
you know just notice the fact that for
example we have sidewalks here in bexley
um many of those neighborhoods do not
right
right and you just see the world from a
different viewpoint i think that's very
helpful
it reminds you to get outside yourself
that's great that's great are you
just dying to share one last song
with us before we leave
one last song oh my goodness
um there really aren't um any other
singable pieces
for this time period there's like a
piano piece that i
i picked up and learned it's a march
it's not all that exciting
i will say the song of the contrabands
the go down moses
has 11 verses oh wow
um do you know them all
i did print them um i learned go down
moses in high school
i learned the one that everybody's
familiar with uh today
you know the when israel was in egypt's
land
let my people go that one
this one is completely different um
with lots of verses that i've never
heard before
um let me see if i can find one that i
really like
this is a good one they'll sink
like lead to rise no more
let my people go and you'll hear
a shout on the other shore
let my people goals
go down moses
away down in egypt land
and tell king pharaoh
let my people go
when you get freedom you want to shout
about it
yeah yeah thank you so much for
enlightening us tonight
my pleasure thank all of you for joining
us
um i hope everybody is energized and
excited about bexley's juneteenth
celebration
and maybe you know we'll just hold an
emancipation day in september too
listen you put ideas out somebody's
going to pick it up i promise you that
listen before we before we jump off i
want to say
thank you so much to dr scott king oh
and that was an
amazing presentation i had a sneak in
suspicion it would be
but you definitely exceeded my
expectation and courtney thank you for
being such a great moderator tonight
um i know that's not always an easy
thing to do and you handled it very well
and
asked such great questions i wanted to
just before we jump off
i know you had mentioned um this fiery
trial
as a really great book i just pulled it
up on amazon it is available you can
just order that right now if you want to
but i also um at the suggestion of one
of our other
um juneteenth committee members picked
up a book by annette gordon reed
um i'm reading it right now called on
juneteenth
and so many of the things that you
touched on
in tonight's presentation i had to go
run get the book because i wanted to
make sure that i showed it
um it's a series of five or six essays
that
annette writes and she is from texas
leaves texas to go to school on the east
coast and
spends a lot of she was the ruby ridge
of her elementary school
or ruby bridges i'm sorry of her
elementary school and
ruby ridge is something else entirely
she was not bad
but it is such an insightful um
really really beautifully written book
that touches on a lot of the subjects
that you touched on but
really with a magnifying glass on texas
and how that is an example for the rest
of the country so
for those of you who are interested in
doing it's a very thin book
um you're interested in another book um
we have quite a library of books that i
think we can put together
after all the presentations we've done
so dr king owen
thank you um next time you need a
quartet or a duet person you know who to
call
i'm i've got you and we'll bring
courtney and she can be our
trio or naomi snap that's that's my
talent i can snap
you guys thank you all so much thank you
for all of you who are in attendance
today um this will be recorded and
it was recorded and will be posted for
um any of you who are here who want to
share it with those who had
other events tonight but thank you so
much we look forward to seeing you at
our next event
which we'll be announcing soon and for
any information that you'd like to learn
about our juneteenth event here in
bexley please visit
bexley.org backslash juneteenth we will
be updating that page on our website
with all of the new information we have
of the marketplace and the entertainment
and the mcs for uh the event on june
19th right here on capitol
on the lawn at capitol university so
thank you all have a wonderful evening
go enjoy what's left of the sunset and
we will see you all real soon thank you
good night
thank you