One Hundred Fifty Years Ago, Today

Lincoln delivers the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring that slaves in the territories held by Confederates are now free. This enables those slaves to enlist in the Union Army, and changes the war from a battle to preserve the Union to a struggle to end slavery.

The Library of Congress has this to say:

In an effort to placate the slave-holding border states, Lincoln resisted the demands of radical Republicans for complete abolition. Yet some Union generals, such as General B. F. Butler, declared slaves escaping to their lines "contraband of war," not to be returned to their masters. Other generals decreed that the slaves of men rebelling against the Union were to be considered free. Congress, too, had been moving toward abolition. In 1861, Congress had passed an act stating that all slaves employed against the Union were to be considered free. In 1862, another act stated that all slaves of men who supported the Confederacy were to be considered free. Lincoln, aware of the public's growing support of abolition, issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, declaring that all slaves in areas still in rebellion were, in the eyes of the federal government, free.

The This Day in the Civil War site comments that an American president could only do this when states were seceding and there was a war on.

But history is so dry and unemotional. The real deal is that today is the sesquicentennial of the Federal Government's decision that slavery was wrong for the Union. 150 years ago, roughly five generations in the past, is not so long, when you start to think about it. The election of 2012 should also show us how tied to history we all are too. All of the descendants of those aristocratic, dumb-as-rocks slave owners, still using nepotism and charm to worm their ways into positions of power.

But that is unfair - really unfair, in the sense that some of those people could be very intelligent, and kind. Some of those people could have an understanding of all things and all people, but the slithering ways of cultural memory and not wanting to make waves, especially when things are going well... Well, no one should be so naive as to believe that the legacy of slavery ended with the end of the institution. No one should be so naive as to believe that racism went away with the Civil Rights Act. No one should be so naive to believe that the Cold Civil War is not still happening.

Yet we are. Somehow, history became "back then" in America, and completely separate from what is happening now. My hypothesis, my gut feeling, based on my study of history and cultural memory is that the Second World War had a severing effect in the United States. The mobilization of the United States was awesome in several ways. Many look at it as a good thing, but there has always been a contingent who saw it as overreach. When peacetime came, and the excesses of truly overreaching governments were clear to Americans, this contingent drew parallels between the United States Federal Government and Stalin or Mao. It was idiotic, of course, but after a while, a generation of new people, born just after the war, began to come of age. Being in the majority, they were catered to in many ways. Their ideas were seen as "edgy" when they may have just been anti-social, or stupid. They did see a lot of problems in the established ways of doing things, so they shook them up. But instead of understanding the historical aspects of the current problems, they got a single victory, like Roe v. Wade, and then thought everything would be solved.

Then of course, in their childhood, Americans forgot how much of a problem Republican administrations created for the economic well-being of the country, and elected a moderate one. So all those kids grew up with a positive, but inaccurate view of actual Republican ideology. Naive, ignorant, children, in the majority. I am encouraged by the fact that their children and grandchildren, with more of an appreciation for the past, are growing up and getting voices. And there is the internet. It is a lot harder to push a rewritten version of history when the internet is there, and people know how to use it.

Past is prologue. Past is always the prologue, and reading it will answer all of your questions. One hundred fifty years ago, today, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared that all slaves in the seceded states were free.