The Emancipation Proclamation: The New York Times and Martin Delany Respond

In conjunction with a current exhibit, the Brooklyn Historical Society blog is featuring a series of blog posts called “The Emancipation Proclamation: Americans Respond.” Learn more here.

The Emancipation Proclamation was considered the most radical of the Union’s war initiatives, not in the least because it publicized the legalization of black men’s military recruitment--publicized, not legalized.

The Militia Act of 1862, issued weeks before Lincoln's September 1862 preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, first sanctioned black military service in the form of armed combat and manual labor. Union loyalists maintained varied opinions about black Americans’ relationship to the war effort.

The following excerpt drawn from a New York Times editorial addresses the military elements of the Proclamation:

“Whenever our armies reach their immediate vicinity, they will doubtless assert their freedom, and call upon us to ‘recognize and maintain’ it. Until then, they will work for their masters and wait for deliverance.”

The editorial illustrates the racism prevalent among many Northerners - not all those who supported emancipation believed in racial equality. The writer depicts black Americans as complacent dependents. That African Americans had lobbied for the opportunity to enlist in the Union army from the outset of the war was a fact completely lost on most white people. Most considered black Americans to be a needy people who would simply “wait for deliverance.”

The reality was quite different. By the end of the war, over 200,000 black men served in the the Army and Navy, constituting over 10% of the Union 's military force. Historians today consider black recruitment to be the tipping point for the Union’s eventual victory, providing the military with fresh troops at a time when enlistment and morale was waning.

The patriotism and valiant service of black soldiers would do much to bolster their claims to citizenship and enfranchisement in the war’s aftermath. Those who fought alongside African Americans came to see their fellow soldiers not as passive unequals waiting to be freed, but as brave men capable of sacrificing for their country.

A more accurate depiction of black military service comes from Martin Delany. He was a black nationalist, abolitionist, Union recruiter, and army major, originally from South Carolina. In 1865, he spoke to a gathering of former slaves, telling them:

“Do you know that if it was not for the black man this war never would have been brought to a close with success to the Union, and the liberty to your race? I want you to understand that. Do you know it? Do you know it?...”

...Did you know?

Sources:

"The President's Proclamation," The New York Times, January 3, 1863.

Martin Delany, "Slavery is Over," speech at St. Helena Island, South Carolina, July 23, 1865.

To learn more about black soldiers:

Berlin, Ira, et al. editors, Freedom: A Documentary History Of Emancipation, 1861­-1867.  Series 2, The Black Military Experience. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982.  

Glatthaar, Joseph T. Forged in Battle: The Civil War Alliance of Black Soldiers and White Officers. Louisiana: LSU Press, 2000.