Month: June 2011

Going to See the Elephant, part 3

“Going to see the ele­phant” was an expres­sion used by enlis­tees in the Union Army describ­ing the expe­ri­ence of coun­try boys going off to war where they would expe­ri­ence life in ways they could not have imagined.

At the out­set of the Civ­il War the stat­ed objec­tive of the North was to main­tain the Union. The Con­fed­er­ate States iden­ti­fied “states rights” as their major objec­tive which would give them the right to func­tion inde­pen­dent­ly. Main­stream his­to­ri­ans have com­mon­ly agreed that: “Every­thing stemmed from the slav­ery issue,” as stat­ed by Pro­fes­sor James McPher­son, whose book Bat­tle Cry of Free­dom is wide­ly judged to be the author­i­ta­tive one-vol­ume his­to­ry of the Civ­il War.

It was not until Sep­tem­ber 22, 1862, fol­low­ing the bloody Bat­tle of Anti­etam that Lin­coln issued a pre­lim­i­nary Procla­ma­tion of Eman­ci­pa­tion, which declared that all slaves in states or parts of states still fight­ing against the Unit­ed States on Jan­u­ary 1, 1863 would from that time on be for­ev­er eman­ci­pat­ed. On Jan­u­ary 1, 1863, Lin­coln issued his final Eman­ci­pa­tion Procla­ma­tion. How­ev­er, it did not free slaves in states then in the Union, the Bor­der States, nor cer­tain parts of Vir­ginia and Louisiana that were under Union con­trol. The Eman­ci­pa­tion Procla­ma­tion did have the effect of clear­ly iden­ti­fy­ing slav­ery as a vital issue of the war for both cit­i­zens of the Unit­ed States and for its allies.

THE NORTH STAR

JUNE 8, 1861

From Fortress Monroe

Great activ­i­ty is per­ceived at Fortress Mon­roe. Troops and ammu­ni­tion are con­stant­ly arriv­ing, the gar­ri­son now amount­ing to thir­teen thou­sand men, and large bod­ies were mov­ing into the inte­ri­or, it was thought, with the inten­tion of mak­ing for Nor­folk by a cir­cuitous route. Up to Thurs­day evening, slaves were still flock­ing to the fort. It was dis­cov­ered that thir­ty of the slaves belonged to one man in Rich­mond. He obtained per­mis­sion to vis­it the fort to con­fer with Gen­er­al But­ler on the sub­ject of get­ting his live prop­er­ty back. The Gen­er­al said they came there of their own accord, and could go back with him if they desired it. They were asked if they desired to return with their mas­ter. They quick­ly decid­ed that they pre­ferred to remain with the sol­diers in the fort…