Oct 1862–After Antietam, Lincoln Changes the Game

By Gary Far­row, Danville His­tor­i­cal Society

A vic­to­ry on the field of bat­tle gave Pres­i­dent Lin­coln oppor­tu­ni­ty to issue a doc­u­ment that would change the nature of the Civ­il War.

Com­ing a few days after a nar­row Union vic­to­ry at the Bat­tle of Anti­etam, Lin­coln issued the Pre­lim­i­nary Eman­ci­pa­tion Procla­ma­tion on Sep­tem­ber 22, 1862. It declared “that all per­sons held as slaves” with­in rebel states as of Jan­u­ary 1, 1863 “are, and hence­for­ward shall be free.”

Pri­or to this point, the war had been about quelling the seces­sion of the South­ern states and pre­serv­ing the Union. Now this doc­u­ment, one of the great­est in human his­to­ry, casts the war in a new light. The Civ­il War became a moral con­flict about human freedom.

A bold gam­ble, the Procla­ma­tion also strength­ened the North mil­i­tar­i­ly and polit­i­cal­ly with the announce­ment of the accep­tance of black men into the Union Army and Navy. By the end of the war almost 200,000 black sol­diers and sailors served in the armed forces.

As can be seen by the North Star’s edi­to­r­i­al, the issuance of the Eman­ci­pa­tion Procla­ma­tion was by no means a clear call.

North Star Oct 4, 1862–The President’s Proclamation

The President’s Eman­ci­pa­tion Procla­ma­tion has elicit­ed var­i­ous com­ments from the press. The old abo­li­tion jour­nals applaud it high­ly with reser­va­tions — that is they want­ed it to pro­claim uni­ver­sal eman­ci­pa­tion in all States, loy­al and dis­loy­al — and fur­ther­more, they want imme­di­ate eman­ci­pa­tion, and not have the mat­ter deferred until Jan­u­ary — not because they have any great fears that the rebel­lious States will acqui­esce in the President’s poli­cies but because they do not wish to afford them the least pre­text for return­ing to the Union with slav­ery still exist­ing. Were the rebels to imme­di­ate­ly lay down their arms, and pro­pose to return to their alle­giance, or in any way were the slave states to be brought back to the Union, this class of men would most fierce­ly denounce it. They are thus far dis­union­ists and in this sense have been dis­union­ists for the last thir­ty years. It mat­ters not to them, what sac­ri­fices the bor­der slave states may make to sus­tain the Union and the flag — it mat­ters not what are the guar­an­tees of the Con­sti­tu­tion, nor what may be the effect of attempt­ing to sud­den­ly change the social rela­tions of the whole South­ern pop­u­la­tion — their “one idea” is to them para­mount to all con­sid­er­a­tions in favor of the Union, or the safe­ty and expe­di­en­cy of mak­ing so great a change.

They sup­port the procla­ma­tion sole­ly for the rea­son that they hope it will car­ry out their idea of indis­crim­i­nate imme­di­ate eman­ci­pa­tion. And fur­ther this class of rad­i­cals… are endowed with those human infir­mi­ties which lead to ambi­tious designs; and it is our belief that they will nev­er be ful­ly sat­is­fied unless their lead­ers obtain pow­er and place — unless they can bring about a pol­i­cy where­by McClel­lan will superced­ed, and no one enter­tain­ing con­ser­v­a­tive notions be per­mit­ted to hold impor­tant posi­tions. As to this, time will tell…

…For our own part, we have grave doubts as to its [Eman­ci­pa­tion Procla­ma­tion] ben­e­fi­cial effect. It will be no easy task to lib­er­ate 4,000,000 of bond­men at the point of a bayonet.The his­to­ry of eman­ci­pa­tion through­out the civ­i­lized world presents no sim­il­iar plan. What­ev­er slaves have been eman­ci­pat­ed, it has been done either by a grad­ual process of lib­er­a­tion, or by the free, full assent of the mas­ters accom­pa­nied by com­pen­sa­tion. Nev­er, in civ­i­lized com­mu­ni­ties, have so many mil­lions of slaves been lib­er­at­ed by mil­i­tary force. It there­fore may be regard­ed as a great untried exper­i­ment. If suc­cess­ful, it will only be through ter­ri­ble and san­guinary oppo­si­tion — and is it not ques­tion­able, even then, whether the shock will not be so great as to per­ma­nent­ly divide the Union. If not — if slav­ery is thus forcibly and gen­er­al­ly abol­ished — then will arise anoth­er mighty ques­tion for the com­mu­ni­ty to solve — that of the two races.

It seems to us that there nev­er can be any­thing like social and polit­i­cal equal­i­ty, but that the poor black­man will be worse off, if pos­si­ble, than before he was eman­ci­pat­ed. But in these appre­hen­sions we may be mis­tak­en. We real­ly hope that time and the progress of events will speed­i­ly and effec­tu­al­ly quell the rebel­lion, fol­lowed by a restored Union, with the slav­ery ques­tion for­ev­er at rest.

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October 11, 1862 The North Star–The President’s Proclamation, A Southern View

In anoth­er place, we gave a sketch of the debate and con­tem­plat­ed action of the rebel, the Con­gress on the President’s Eman­ci­pa­tion procla­ma­tion. It will be seen that they pro­pose severe retal­ia­to­ry mea­sures, and sug­gest the pol­i­cy of rais­ing the “black flag” or the pol­i­cy of grant­i­ng no quar­ter. This, it is tru­ly said, is a game that two can play and if adopt­ed by one par­ty, it will prob­a­bly be the oth­er, thus adding new hor­rors to this san­guinary con­test. It is to be hoped that nei­ther side will resort to it: but at best, the President’s procla­ma­tion, if car­ried out, will tend great­ly to exas­per­ate the ene­my, and it is to be feared, will give a bar­barous char­ac­ter to the war, which it is hoped might be avoided.

The Rich­mond Enquir­er of Octo­ber 1… declares [Eman­ci­pa­tion procla­ma­tion] it as ordain­ing a servile insur­rec­tion in the Con­fed­er­ate States and says it is not mis­un­der­stood in the North or South. It is a dash of the pen to destroy four thou­sand mil­lions of our prop­er­ty, and is as much as a bid for the slaves to rise in insur­rec­tion, with the assur­ance of aid from the whole mil­i­tary and naval pow­er of the Unit­ed States. It speaks of the cru­el­ty of the Administration.

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The Bat­tle of Anti­etam on Sep­tem­ber 17, 1862 set the stage for Pres­i­dent Lincoln’s issuance of the Eman­ci­pa­tion Procla­ma­tion which was draft­ed over the sum­mer. While the course of the war was very much uncer­tain, Lin­coln want­ed to wait for pos­i­tive Union devel­op­ment so that the procla­ma­tion did not seem like an act of desperation.

The con­flict fea­tured Gen­er­al Lee against McClel­lan, with the rebels out­num­bered two-to-one, the Fed­er­al com­man­der deployed less than three quar­ters of his troops while Lee went all in, fight­ing the North­ern­ers to a stand­still. The rebel gen­er­al chose to skir­mish with McClel­lan the next day and then with­drew across the Potomac Riv­er to Virginia.

Although the bat­tle was essen­tial­ly a draw, the repulse of Lee from Union soil gave Lin­coln the polit­i­cal cov­er to issue his procla­ma­tion which expand­ed the Union cause beyond a fight against seces­sion to free­ing 4,000,000 peo­ple from bondage and dis­abused the British and French gov­ern­ments from any notion to give recog­ni­tion to the Confederacy.

October 11, 1862 The North Star–Charge of the Vermont Brigade at Antietam

A cor­re­spon­dent of the Ben­ning­ton Ban­ner gives the fol­low­ing account of the charge of the Ver­mon­ters at Antietam.

As we passed through Buck­etsville, we were cheered on by the ladies of the place, who for some rea­son unknown to me, had not been removed from town before the bat­tle com­menced. We passed through the entire length of the vil­lage, the shot and shell from the ene­my fly­ing like Satan’s angels over our heads. Skir­mish­ers were thrown out as we neared the enemy’s line, and hard­ly had they been deployed before they were engaged. By this time, the bul­lets began to whis­tle around our heads in rather close prox­im­i­ty to be safe.

…As we entered the [barn] yard, one of the men was shot through the neck, and fell dead with­out a groan. A few moments after a gal­lant charge was made by a brigade of Slocum’s divi­sion on our right, they dri­ving the ene­my before them like sheep. It was a noble sight. The time had come: it became nec­es­sary for us to “goin:” we filed from behind the barn, pass­ing by the left into a smooth mead­ow, halt­ed and came to a front as cool­ly as if on drill. Next came the order to charge and for­ward we went at the dou­ble quick, our Lt. Colonel — who is in com­mand of the reg­i­ment, lead­ing us a yard or two in front of the col­ors, which were flung out to the breeze show­ing that the stars and stripes were once more mov­ing onward to victory.

The posi­tion which we were ordered to charge upon was one of great strength, and if the ene­my had held it with half the courage with which it was stormed, we should have all gone under before we could have tak­en it. … onward we moved over the wall, through the woods, up the moun­tain sides, sweep­ing with irre­sistible fury, every­thing before us. The top of the moun­tain was gained, and every man was thank­ful that he was alive and real­iz­ing that it was indeed a mir­a­cle that one of us was left to tell the tale. We halt­ed a moment to take breath and then start­ed along the ridge of the moun­tain, deter­mined to take the bat­tery which had been throw­ing all kinds of dead­ly mis­siles dur­ing our charge… Onward we went, how­ev­er, deterred by noth­ing that obstruct­ed our route, yet the rebels got the start of us and had their bat­tery removed before we reached the spot where it was posted.

In our charge, we cap­tured the bat­tle flag of the 19th Vir­ginia, one Major, three Lieu­tenants and six­ty prisoners…The Major states that we utter­ly anni­hi­lat­ed the 19th, and it is now classed among the the things that were.