The History Book Club discussion

This is a thread devoted to discussion about The Emancipation Proclamation. This is not a non spoiler thread and anybody can post and add comments. I have attached a url with the text itself and other helpful information.

National Archives:

http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/feat...

Transcript of the Proclamation itself:

http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/feat...

The Emancipation Proclamation: Three Views

by Harold Holzer
Synopsis
The Emancipation Proclamation is the most important document of arguably the greatest president in U.S. history. Now, Edna Greene Medford, Frank J. Williams, and Harold Holzer—eminent experts in their fields—remember, analyze, and interpret the Emancipation Proclamation in three distinct respects: the influence of and impact upon African Americans; the legal, political, and military exigencies; and the role pictorial images played in establishing the document in public memory. The result is a carefully balanced yet provocative study that views the Proclamation and its author from the perspective of fellow Republicans, anti-war Democrats, the press, the military, the enslaved, free blacks, and the antislavery white establishment, as well as the artists, publishers, sculptors, and their patrons who sought to enshrine Abraham Lincoln and his decree of freedom in iconography.

Medford places African Americans, the people most affected by Lincoln’s edict, at the center of the drama rather than at the periphery, as previous studies have done. She argues that blacks interpreted the Proclamation much more broadly than Lincoln intended it, and during the postwar years and into the twentieth century they became disillusioned by the broken promise of equality and the realities of discrimination, violence, and economic dependence. Williams points out the obstacles Lincoln overcame in finding a way to confiscate property—enslaved humans—without violating the Constitution. He suggests that the president solidified his reputation as a legal and political genius by issuing the Proclamation as Commander-in-Chief, thus taking the property under the pretext of military necessity. Holzer explores how it was only after Lincoln’s assassination that the Emancipation Proclamation became an acceptable subject for pictorial celebration. Even then, it was the image of the martyr-president as the great emancipator that resonated in public memory while any reference to those African Americans most affected by the Proclamation was stripped away.

This multilayered treatment reveals that the Proclamation remains a singularly brave and bold act—brilliantly calculated to maintain the viability of the Union during wartime, deeply dependent on the enlightened voices of Lincoln’s contemporaries, and owing a major debt in history to the image-makers who quickly and indelibly preserved it.

A recently released book on the topic:
Envisioning Emancipation: Black Americans and the End of Slavery

by Deborah Willis

Synopsis
The Emancipation Proclamation is one of the most important documents in American history. As we approach its 150th anniversary, what do we really know about those who experienced slavery?

In their pioneering book, Envisioning Emancipation, renowned photographic historian Deborah Willis and historian of slavery Barbara Krauthamer have amassed 150 photographs--some never before published--from the antebellum days of the 1850s through the New Deal era of the 1930s. The authors vividly display the seismic impact of emancipation on African Americans born before and after the Proclamation, providing a perspective on freedom and slavery and a way to understand the photos as documents of engagement, action, struggle, and aspiration.

Envisioning Emancipation illustrates what freedom looked like for black Americans in the Civil War era. From photos of the enslaved on plantations and African American soldiers and camp workers in the Union Army to Juneteenth celebrations, slave reunions, and portraits of black families and workers in the American South, the images in this book challenge perceptions of slavery. They show not only what the subjects emphasized about themselves but also the ways Americans of all colors and genders opposed slavery and marked its end.

Filled with powerful images of lives too often ignored or erased from historical records, Envisioning Emancipation provides a new perspective on American culture and will be a keepsake for many years to come.

The Emancipation Proclamation
by John Hope Franklin

Synopsis
While many historians have dealt with the Emancipation Proclamation as a phase or an aspect of the Civil War, few have given more than scant attention to the evolution of the document in the mind of Lincoln, the circumstances and conditions that led to its writing, its impact on the course of the war, and its significance for later generations. Professor John Hope Franklin's answer to this need, first published in 1963, is available again for the first time in many years. Includes a new preface, photo essay, and a reproduction of the 1863 handwritten draft of the Emancipation Proclamation.

Emancipation Hell
by Kirkpatrick Sale

Synopsis
A careful, lively look at the creation of the Emancipation Proclamation 150 years ago (January 1, 1863) and the tragic results that followed in the war, in Reconstruction, and the aftermath, by an often-published historian.

Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America
by Allen C. Guelzo

Synopsis
One of the nation's foremost Lincoln scholars offers an authoritative consideration of the document that represents the most far-reaching accomplishment of our greatest president.

No single official paper in American history changed the lives of as many Americans as Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. But no American document has been held up to greater suspicion. Its bland and lawyerlike language is unfavorably compared to the soaring eloquence of the Gettysburg Address and the Second Inaugural; its effectiveness in freeing the slaves has been dismissed as a legal illusion. And for some African-Americans the Proclamation raises doubts about Lincoln himself.

Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation dispels the myths and mistakes surrounding the Emancipation Proclamation and skillfully reconstructs how America's greatest president wrote the greatest American proclamation of freedom.

Great adds, Alisa, thanks!!

Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States, 1861-1865

by James Oakes

Synopsis
The consensus view of the Civil War that it was first and foremost a war to restore the Union, and an antislavery war only later when it became necessary for Union victory dies here. James Oakes' groundbreaking history shows how deftly Lincoln and congressional Republicans pursued antislavery throughout the war, pragmatic in policy but steadfast on principle.

In the disloyal South the federal government quickly began freeing slaves, immediately and without slaveholder compensation, as they fled to Union lines. In the loyal Border States the Republicans tried coaxing officials into abolishing slavery gradually with promises of compensation. As the devastating war continued with slavery still entrenched, Republicans embraced a more aggressive military emancipation, triggered by the Emancipation Proclamation. Finally it took a constitutional amendment on abolition to achieve the Union's primary goal in the war. Here, in a magisterial history, are the intertwined stories of emancipation and the Civil War.

Alisa wrote: "Interesting, Patricrk. Let us know what you think when you finish." I have now finished

. James Oakes I found it a very readable and interesting account of how anti-slavery legislation came about. There were Constitutional limits on what the Federal government could do about slavery to which both the Republicans and Democrats ageed. There was great concern that the Civil War might be ended and the Southern states able to reestablish slavery because of these limitations. (as they tried to do with their black codes) Even so the 13th amendment was not passed by the necessary 2/3 for a Constitutional amendment by the House the first time it came to a vote. Only 1/7 of the slaves had actually been freed by the end of the war and Delaware and Kentucky, two states which never left the Union, only had their slaves freed by the ratification of the 13th amendment as the emancipation proclamation did not apply to those states.

Patricrk wrote: "Alisa wrote: "...and Delaware and Kentucky, two states which never left the Union, only had their slaves freed by the ratification of the 13th amendment as the emancipation proclamation did not apply to those states. "

Also Maryland, Missouri and West Virginia were in the same posture, as was the Eastern Shore of Virginia.

The courage and strong will of Lincoln to draft a document to abolish slavery is well documented in this prestigious book.


Lincoln's Hundred Days

by Louis P. Masur

Synopsis

The time has come now, Abraham Lincoln told his cabinet as he presented the preliminary draft of a Proclamation of Emancipation. Lincoln's effort to end slavery has been controversial from its inception when it was denounced by some as an unconstitutional usurpation and by others as an inadequate half-measure up to the present, as historians have discounted its import and impact. At the sesquicentennial of the Emancipation Proclamation, Louis Masur seeks to restore the document s reputation by exploring its evolution.

"Lincoln s Hundred Days" is the first book to tell the full story of the critical period between September 22, 1862, when Lincoln issued his preliminary Proclamation, and January 1, 1863, when he signed the final, significantly altered, decree. In those tumultuous hundred days, as battlefield deaths mounted, debate raged. Masur commands vast primary sources to portray the daily struggles and enormous consequences of the president s efforts as Lincoln led a nation through war and toward emancipation. With his deadline looming, Lincoln hesitated and calculated, frustrating friends and foes alike, as he reckoned with the anxieties and expectations of millions. We hear these concerns, from poets, cabinet members and foreign officials, from enlisted men on the front and free blacks as well as slaves.

Masur presents a fresh portrait of Lincoln as a complex figure who worried about, listened to, debated, prayed for, and even joked with his country, and then followed his conviction in directing America toward a terrifying and thrilling unknown.

Act of Justice: Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation and the Law of War

by Burrus M. Carnahan (no phone)

Synopsis:

In his first inaugural address, Abraham Lincoln declared that as president he would "have no lawful right" to interfere with the institution of slavery. Yet less than two years later, he issued a proclamation intended to free all slaves throughout the Confederate states. When critics challenged the constitutional soundness of the act, Lincoln pointed to the international laws and usages of war as the legal basis for his Proclamation, asserting that the Constitution invested the president "with the law of war in time of war." As the Civil War intensified, the Lincoln administration slowly and reluctantly accorded full belligerent rights to the Confederacy under the law of war. This included designating a prisoner of war status for captives, honoring flags of truce, and negotiating formal agreements for the exchange of prisoners -- practices that laid the intellectual foundations for emancipation. Once the United States allowed Confederates all the privileges of belligerents under international law, it followed that they should also suffer the disadvantages, including trial by military courts, seizure of property, and eventually the emancipation of slaves.

Even after the Lincoln administration decided to apply the law of war, it was unclear whether state and federal courts would agree. After careful analysis, author Burrus M. Carnahan concludes that if the courts had decided that the proclamation was not justified, the result would have been the personal legal liability of thousands of Union officers to aggrieved slave owners. This argument offers further support to the notion that Lincoln's delay in issuing the Emancipation Proclamation was an exercise of political prudence, not a personal reluctance to free the slaves. In Act of Justice, Carnahan contends that Lincoln was no reluctant emancipator; he wrote a truly radical document that treated Confederate slaves as an oppressed people rather than merely as enemy property. In this respect, Lincoln's proclamation anticipated the psychological warfare tactics of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Carnahan's exploration of the president's war powers illuminates the origins of early debates about war powers and the Constitution and their link to international law.

An upcoming book:
Release date: September 9, 2014

Lincoln's Gamble: How the Emancipation Proclamation Changed the Course of the Civil War

by Todd Brewster (no photo)

Synopsis:

A brilliant, authoritative, and riveting account of the most critical six months in Abraham Lincoln’s presidency, when he penned the Emancipation Proclamation and changed the course of the Civil War.

On July 12, 1862, Abraham Lincoln spoke for the first time of his intention to free the slaves. On January 1, 1863, Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, doing precisely that. In between, however, was perhaps the most tumultuous six months of his presidency, an episode during which the sixteenth president fought bitterly with his generals, disappointed his cabinet, and sank into painful bouts of clinical depression. Most surprising, the man who would be remembered as “The Great Emancipator” did not hold firm to his belief in emancipation. He agonized over the decision and was wracked by private doubts almost to the moment when he inked the decree that would change a nation.

Popular myth would have us believe that Lincoln did not suffer from such indecision, that he did what he did through moral resolve; that he had a commanding belief in equality, in the inevitable victory of right over wrong. He worked on drafts of the document for months, locking it in a drawer in the telegraph room of the War department. Ultimately Lincoln chose to act based on his political instincts and knowledge of the war. It was a great gamble, with the future of the Union, of slavery, and of the presidency itself hanging in the balance.

In this compelling narrative, Todd Brewster focuses on these critical six months to ask: was it through will or by accident, intention or coincidence, personal achievement or historical determinism that he freed the slaves? The clock is always ticking in these pages as Lincoln searches for the right moment to enact his proclamation and simultaneously turn the tide of war. Lincoln's Gamble portrays the president as an imperfect man with an unshakable determination to save a country he believed in, even as the course of the Civil War remained unknown.

Thank you Jerome for the adds.

Here are some wonderful courses on Khan Academy in AP - US Government and Politics - Foundations of American Democracy.

https://www.khanacademy.org/humanitie...

Source: Khan Academy

Khan Academy tackles the Constitutional Convention: - this is pretty good


James Madison - age 32 in 1783

In this video, historian Joe Ellis and Aspen Institute President and CEO Walter Isaacson discuss the Constitutional Convention and the replacement of the Articles of Confederation, the Virginia Plan and national government vs. states rights. Created by Aspen Institute.

https://www.khanacademy.org/partner-c...

Source: Khan Academy, Youtube, Aspen Institute

More:
The Constitution and democracy - Ellis and Isaacson for Khan Academy - pretty good - they get into the discussion of a republic versus a democracy which is part of the Federalist 14 essay
https://www.khanacademy.org/partner-c...
The Constitution and the role of the President - Ellis and Isaacson - pretty good
https://www.khanacademy.org/partner-c...
The Constitution and slavery part 1 - - Ellis and Isaacson - pretty good - they discuss the Constitution and ideological divide around slavery in addition to the Three-Fifths compromise
https://www.khanacademy.org/partner-c...

Note: I have decided to include all of these brief presentations by Ellis and Isaacson because they are very good and give some excellent background information either about the discussions at the Constitutional Conference itself or repercussions later on.

More (cont'd):
The Constitution and slavery part 2 - Ellis and Isaacson continue the discussion of the Constitution and slavery and what compromise meant at the Constitutional Convention and George Washington's involvement with slaves - pretty good
https://www.khanacademy.org/partner-c...
The Constitution and proportional representation - this one has relevance to Federalist 14 in terms of the states - Ellis and Isaacson talk about the following: In the Constitutional Convention of 1787, the delegates compromised on state representation by dividing the legislative branch between the Senate, in which every state has two representatives regardless of size, and the House of Representations, where representatives are apportioned to the states according to their population. For the purposes of apportionment, the delegates agreed to the now-infamous Three-Fifths Compromise, which counted each enslaved resident of the Southern states as three-fifths of a person - this one was excellent and describes extremely well what is wrong in Congress and other branches today - lack of humility - quite good when they discuss Ben Franklin's letter
https://www.khanacademy.org/partner-c...
The Constitution and "We, the People of the United States" - Joe Ellis and Walter Isaacson discuss the beginning of the Constitution and the term "We, the People of the United States" and what that means - relevant to Federalist 14 and the power of the people - very good
https://www.khanacademy.org/partner-c...
The Constitution and the Bill of Rights: Amendments 1-3
Ellis and Isaacson discuss the Constitution's Bill of Rights, Amendments 1-3 - Relevant to Federalist 14 in many ways because Madison is the author of the Bill of Rights which was a compromise to the Anti Federalists to get their votes to ratify the Constitution - 7 states ratified the constitution with suggested amendments - the amendments were not stipulations by recommendations (Madison wanted to make that point) - there were actually 124 suggested original state recommended amendments - many overlapped and repeated themselves - but Madison said in order to get the full cooperation of the states - remember Rhode Island had not certified, North Carolina was lingering, New York really signed against its will that we need to prove and show that we have listened to them. Madison writes them on his own time when he was then in the House of Representatives and is a codicil to the Constitution - very good
https://www.khanacademy.org/partner-c...
The Constitution and the Bill of Rights: Amendments 4, 5, 10
Ellis and Isaacson discuss the Constitution's Bill of Rights, Amendments 4, 5, and 10. - this is interesting because the 10th amendment was a catch all for everything not discussed in the Constitution about the rights of the states and its people - but this amendment has caused quite a bit of ire and confusion. - good
https://www.khanacademy.org/partner-c...
For Fun - there is a Practice Test:
https://www.khanacademy.org/partner-c...--

An upcoming book:
Release date: February 24, 2025

Lincoln's Last Card: The Emancipation Proclamation as a Case of Command

by Richard J. Ellis (no photo)

Synopsis:

There is a certain comfort in being able to see Lincoln—or any president—simply as either a hero or a villain. The truth, however, is more complicated. Lincoln’s Last Card helps us look beyond the myths to see Lincoln as the flawed and consequential leader that he was.

Few presidential edicts are more famous or misunderstood than the Emancipation Proclamation. The traditional myth about the proclamation is that President Lincoln freed the slaves with a bold stroke of his pen. This popular understanding deifies Lincoln as the sagacious Great Emancipator and constructs a narrative of American history centered around the heroic deeds of our “great” presidents. A more cynical view, bolstered by recent historical examinations of Lincoln’s own racial biases, says the proclamation was much ado about nothing; a largely hollow gesture that freed no slaves at all and lacked even a moral indictment of slavery. Both views, however, see presidential power as largely unrestricted and unilateral, so that Lincoln’s decisions occur in a virtual vacuum—a timeless display of his moral virtue, or lack thereof.

Richard Ellis, a veteran scholar of the American presidency, suggests that we look at Lincoln’s proclamation through the lens of presidential weakness rather than greatness. To do so, Ellis draws on the work of renowned political scientist Richard Neustadt, who explored “three cases of command” from the twentieth century in his 1960 work, Presidential Power. Where the public saw presidential success, Neustadt saw presidents engaged in “a painful last resort,” suggesting not political mastery but rather the failure to achieve goals through other means. Ellis applies this same perspective to the Emancipation Proclamation, showing how Lincoln’s great success was, in fact, his last card. Lincoln’s original hope was to persuade the border states to endorse his plan for gradual, compensated abolition, preferably coupled with some level of voluntary colonization. Contrary to conventional wisdom and in contrast to Lincoln’s reputation as the greatest presidential orator, Ellis shows how the Emancipation Proclamation was a sign of Lincoln’s failure to persuade.