Why did the US free the slaves after the Civil War?

Great Debates
1

While I think slavery was basically* the cause of the Civil War, it’s not like the Union treated it as a grand crusade to free the slaves. True, they did the emancipation proclamation, but that was for the states in rebellion. It was silent on Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri. And many of the soldiers weren’t too keen on freeing slaves either (NYC draft riots).

How was it decided that after the fighting, the slaves should all be freed?

  1. Was it a punitive measure against the South? We’ll take away your slaves, that’ll teach you for rebelling.
  2. Acknowledgement that slavery caused this recent unpleasantness, so now’s a good time to get rid of it?
  3. After freeing and even arming the CSA’s slaves, was it going to be too tough to put them back on the plantation upon readmission to the US? (like “Guns of the South”)
  4. Did they all the sudden wake up amidst all the chaos and saw the moral inhumanity of slavery?

How did the end of the Civil War go from emancipating rebelling states’ slaves, to all slaves? Upon re-reading my question, it would would seem #3 would be the best answer, but that doesn’t answer why the loyal Border States lost their slaves, too.

  • I said “basically”! Don’t hijack!
2

I think you’ve got the makings of a doctoral thesis, there. As far as my understanding of American History goes, all of the listed factors could have been in play to varying degrees. (Wikipedia entry.) It looks like the 13th Amendment was proposed about midway between the Emancipation Proclamation and the end of the war. The process also started ahead of the 1864 presidential election, which may have been another contributing factor.

3

While there were other issues behind the Civil War, slavery is the one that made it a constant and heated battle. The compromises and accommodations made up to that point had simply become unworkable. Every time a state entered the Union, every time a slave escaped, and every decision made by a state regarding slavery threatened to send the country into a crisis. Keeping slavery was simply not a practical way of the country moving forward after the Civil War.

4

They did not need them any more.

5

How’d you guess? I’ll be sure to give you credit when I get published :smiley:

It just sort of dawned on me while re-reading “Guns of the South”. It basically made me think: Why did Maryland and the other Border States have to give up their slaves, since they were not affected by the Emancipation Proclamation?

6

There was a strong block of anti-slavery voters in the United States. In the immediate aftermath of the war, the majority of pro-slavery voters were out of power and their views had been discredited by becoming associated with rebellion. So the anti-slavery group was able to get its position enacted into the Constitution.

7

Prior to the Civil War, slavery was the hot-button issue of the day. Compromises had to be hammered out every time a state was admitted to the Union in order to maintain parity in the Senate — for every free state admitted, a slave state had to be admitted also. There is no gerrymandering comparable in today’s politics: they manipulated the structure of the federal government to avoid being voted out of power. You might even make the observation that it has only been since the Civil War that it’s been possible to even hope to control the Senate.

My guess is that they abolished slavery so that it would not be necessary to continue the free-state-slave-state admission procress and permit the “losing side” to hijack the legislative branch.

8

What Little Nemo said. The Republicans were the anti-slavery party. They were cautious in their strategy for containment and eventual abolition because slavery was such a divisive issue. But once the Southern states seceded and as the war wore on it became less and less important to moderate their opposition to the “peculiar institution”. On the contrary, it became politically convenient to turn the war into a crusade against an evil institution. That not only resonated not with many Americans but also strengthened their diplomatic position vis a vis Europe.

9

One contributing factor not touched on yet was that roughly 9.5% of the massive Union army was Black. There was alot of early resistance to this on both sides with people like Frederick Douglass saying that these men would prove themselves and be owed full citizenship and some hand-wringing from the other side that this genie would never be able to be put back in the bottle. Both sides were right on tehse scores.

10

Lincoln did not believe that he had constitutional authority as president to abolish slavery; that required an amendment (which he pushed for.) Instead, Lincoln issued the EP under the authority he had as the commander-in-chief–the Southern states were in rebellion and the Constitution gives the president some expanded powers in such situations. As soon as the war ended the EP would expire and theoretically Southern states would be allowed slaves. Lincoln knew this was extremely unlikely for multiple reasons which would mostly bore the pants off you.

11

I don’t really have anything to add to the discussion, but it might be useful to look at the Congressional debates leading up to the post-Civil War Amendments.

12

620,000 deaths had to mean something more than just the restoration of the Union.

13

“My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause.” – Abraham Lincoln

14

Little Nemo and 2sense have each alluded to a strong driving force: the GOP’s primary election plank was abolition of slavery. Prior to (and pretty much resulting in) the Civil War, the Democrats splintered into multiple factions, reducing their clout. Following the Civil War, the Democrats were much weaker in the North and (temporarily) banished from participation in the country’s government in the South. This left the Republicans with pretty much a free hand to impose their will on the country.

In addition, while the initial goal of the North was to preserve the union, regardless of the matter of slavery, abolition became a major propaganda point throughout the war. Partially this was due to newspaper publishers such as Horace Greeley. Partially this was due to Lincoln’s need to push the issue to keep Britain and France from supporting the South. However, it was also good strategy to make abolition a centerpiece of support for the war. If, in addition to cheering the preservation of the union, the North could call for a moral crusade to free people, they had that much stronger a rallying cry.
(It did not hurt such a campaign that the North could point to so many speeches and declarations of independence in the South that made maintenance of slavery their primary rationalization for secession. If our foes take one position, we will take the opposite.)

15

Lincoln said that in 1862. Granted, a lot of men had already died, but there was still a lot more bloodshed to come–I may be wrong but I believe that the heaviest casualties were in the endgame, in 1864, when Grant finally began aggressively attacking Lee in the East.

By 1865, when nearly all of the dying was done, Lincoln had this to say about the subject:

In addition to a number of other points made above (eliminating the root cause of such an enormously destructive conflict; that the Republican Party had always been an anti-slavery party, if not originally in favor of immediate and total abolition; and that it would have been impossible in any event to have not abolished slavery after the Emancipation Proclamation in theory freed the vast majority of slaves within the original limits of the Union and after the Union armed and made into soldiers millions of black men), I think it is also accurate to say that by 1865 there was a sense that the deaths of 620,000 men needed to be about more than just saving the Union.

16

Plus there was the real fear that if slavery wasn’t abolished, the slave states would lick their wounds and eventually try again. In one of his speeches Lincoln avowed that the South would not be permitted to “experiment for a hundred years” with further seccession attempts.

17

slightly off topic, but I have a question:
Why was ‘saving the Union’ so important? What made millions of soldiers think that saving the union was worth dying for? Why did the North care if the South split off?
The south would have deteriorated into a culture with very different, and undemocratic, values. But Goverment of the people, by the people and for the people would not have perished. It would still live on, strongly and proudly, on all the rest of the continent.

18

The United States had and still has a Constitution committed to “a more perfect Union,” succeeding Articles of Confederation which referred to a “Perpetual Union.” Given the many problems which brought them to Philadelphia in 1787, the Framers could hardly have intended to create a national government that was less permanent than its predecessor.

Lincoln was concerned that, if a right of secession were conceded, the U.S. would gradually fall apart as this or that state took issue with this or that national policy. Washington and Jackson were particularly insistent on the supremacy of the national government in the face of state or local intransigence, and Lincoln thought likewise. He believed that, having sworn an oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution,” he was morally and politically obligated to do his utmost to hold the Union together. He was right, and many others saw it the same way, but it was not until Confederate batteries fired upon Ft. Sumter that war fever seized the North, as many thousands enlisted to preserve the Union and “avenge the insult to our flag.”

Most Northerners were not motivated by abolitionism at the outbreak of hostilities, but they warmed to it as time passed. The Emancipation Proclamation was a military measure, issued under Lincoln’s authority as CINC. It recognized that slavery was a major bulwark of the Confederacy. With its issuance, tens of thousands of blacks escaped northward, further ruining the Southern economy. Many of them went on to enlist in the U.S. armed forces, doing further damage to the Confederacy and assuring the eventual victory of the United States. As Northerners recognized slavery as the absolutely necessary but not sufficient precondition of the war, both moral and practical support for its abolition grew. The Thirteenth Amendment was passed by Congress with Lincoln’s strong support in 1865, and ratified by the requisite states by the end of the year, after his death.

19

In the outside part of the reason for that was that some people believed, honestly, that the union was perpetual and no dissolution was allowed.

For a weltpolitik stance it was clear to most on the scene that the union, as a whole, was far stronger than either of the two remaining nations would be had the CSA succeeded in their secession. In addition, allowing the secession would have effectively killed the Monroe Doctrine of not permitting any European interference with political affairs in the Americas and opened up a continual European monarchical influence both in North and South America. Especially had Britain and France allied with the CSA against the USA there would have been little recourse for the USA in terms of making its own way in the world. Knuckling under to the wishes of the global powers would have been a fait accompli and American power and influence wouldn’t have grown as it did.

And that, my friends, is a cause worth fighting for. It was already apparent by the 1850s that the United States could eventually be a world-bestriding power. Allow the break up of the union would have prevented that for a century or more. Possibly forever.

20

The Emancipation Proclamation left slavery untouched in all of six states (Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, Delaware, Tennessee, and West Virginia) and part of two others (Louisiana and Virginia).

The exemption of Louisiana and Viriginia was temporary and tactical, designed to confer legitimacy on embryonic Unionist governments in each state. Everyone understood that these governments would be required to abolish slavery within their states, and both did so in 1864.

The exemption of Tennessee was a personal favor to Andrew Johnson, who said that emancipation would hurt the Unionist cause there. But again, there was little doubt that Congress would require emancipation before readmitting any representatives from Tennessee. When Tennessee organzed a civil government in 1865–dominated by east Tennesseans who owned few slaves–it abolished slavery of its own accord.

Congress required West Virginia to provide for gradual abolition of slavery when it was admitted as a new state, in 1862. Few protested when the legislature advanced to immediate emancipation two years later.

Missouri and Maryland were “internally reconstructed” during the Civil War. Republicans gained control of each state (helped by proscription of pro-Confederate voters) and abolished slavery in Maryland in fall 1864 and Missouri in winter 1865.

By the time Congress debated the Thirteenth Amendment in January 1865, slavery was viable in exactly two states–Kentucky and Delaware. Conservative Democrats remained in control of both states, and slavery remained in force.

In the long term, how could you have a nation with two slave states? Would the other 34 states be expected to return runaways and put down the inevitable slave revolts?

The wonder isn’t that Congress passed the Thirteenth Amendment in January 1865, but that the vote was so close (119-56 in the House, barely over the necessary two-thirds majority). The House had a lot of Democrats, however, from the election of 1862, and many of them felt duty-bound to uphold slavery to the end.