Emancipation Proclamation

Main article: Emancipation Proclamation

The Emancipation Proclamation enabled African-Americans, both free blacks and escaped slaves, to join the Union Army.^{[N 8]} About 190,000 volunteered, further enhancing the numerical advantage the Union armies enjoyed over the Confederates, who did not dare emulate the equivalent manpower source for fear of fundamentally undermining the legitimacy of slavery.^{[N 9]}

During the Civil War, sentiment concerning slaves, enslavement and emancipation in the United States was divided. In 1861, Lincoln worried that premature attempts at emancipation would mean the loss of the border states, and that "to lose Kentucky is nearly the same as to lose the whole game."^[248] Copperheads and some War Democratsopposed emancipation, although the latter eventually accepted it as part of total war needed to save the Union.^[249]

Contrabands — fugitive slaves — cooks, laundresses, laborers, teamsters, railroad repair crews — fled to the Union Army, but were not officially freed until 1863Emancipation Proclamation

In 1863, the Union army accepted Freedmen. Here are Black and White teen-aged soldiers.

At first, Lincoln reversed attempts at emancipation by Secretary of War Simon Cameron and GeneralsJohn C. Frémont (in Missouri) and David Hunter (in South Carolina, Georgia and Florida) to keep the loyalty of the border states and the War Democrats. Lincoln warned the border states that a more radical type of emancipation would happen if his gradual plan based on compensated emancipation and voluntary colonization was rejected.^[250] But only the District of Columbia accepted Lincoln's gradual plan, which was enacted by Congress. When Lincoln told his cabinet about his proposed emancipation proclamation, Seward advised Lincoln to wait for a victory before issuing it, as to do otherwise would seem like "our last shriek on the retreat".^[251] Lincoln laid the groundwork for public support in an open letter published letter to abolitionist Horace Greeley's newspaper.^[252]

In September 1862, the Battle of Antietam provided this opportunity, and the subsequent War Governors' Conference added support for the proclamation.^[253] Lincoln issued his preliminaryEmancipation Proclamation on September 22, 1862, and his final Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. In his letter to Albert G. Hodges, Lincoln explained his belief that "If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong... And yet I have never understood that the Presidency conferred upon me an unrestricted right to act officially upon this judgment and feeling... I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me."^[254]

Lincoln's moderate approach succeeded in inducing border states, War Democrats and emancipated slaves to fight for the Union. The Union-controlled border states (Kentucky, Missouri, Maryland, Delaware and West Virginia) and Union-controlled regions around New Orleans, Norfolk and elsewhere, were not covered by the Emancipation Proclamation. All abolished slavery on their own, except Kentucky and Delaware.^[255]

Since the Emancipation Proclamation was based on the President's war powers, it only included territory held by Confederates at the time. However, the Proclamation became a symbol of the Union's growing commitment to add emancipation to the Union's definition of liberty.^[256] The Emancipation Proclamation greatly reduced the Confederacy's hope of getting aid from Britain or France.^[257] By late 1864, Lincoln was playing a leading role in getting Congress to vote for the Thirteenth Amendment, which made emancipation universal and permanent.^[258]

Texas v. White

In Texas v. White, 74 U.S. 700 (1869) the United States Supreme Court ruled that Texas had remained a state ever since it first joined the Union, despite claims that it joined the Confederate States of America; the court further held that the Constitution did not permit states to unilaterally secede from the United States, and that the ordinances of secession, and all the acts of the legislatures within seceding states intended to give effect to such ordinances, were "absolutely null", under the constitution.^[259]

Reconstruction

Main article: Reconstruction Era of the United States

Northern teachers traveled into the South to provide education and training for the newly freed population.

Reconstruction began during the war, with the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863 and continued to 1877.^[260] It comprised multiple complex methods to resolve the war, the most important of which were the three "Reconstruction Amendments" to the Constitution, which remain in effect to the present time: the 13th (1865), the 14th (1868) and the 15th (1870). From the Union perspective, the goals of Reconstruction were to guarantee the Union victory on the battlefield by reuniting the Union; to guarantee a "republican form of government for the ex-Confederate states; and to permanently end slavery—and prevent semi-slavery status.^[261]

President Johnson took a lenient approach and saw the achievement of the main war goals as realized in 1865, when each ex-rebel state repudiated secession and ratified the Thirteenth Amendment. Radical Republicans demanded strong proof that Confederate nationalism was dead and the slaves were truly free. They came to the fore after the 1866 elections and undid much of Johnson's work. They used the Army to dissolve Southern state governments and hold new elections with Freedmen voting. The result was a Republican coalition that took power in ten states for varying lengths of time, staying in power with the help of U.S. Army units and black voters. Grant was elected president in 1868 and continued the Radical policies. Meanwhile the Freedmen's Bureau, started by Lincoln in 1865 to help the freed slaves, played a major role in helping the blacks and arranging work for them. In opposition, paramilitary groups such as the first Ku Klux Klan used violence to thwart these efforts.^[262]

The "Liberal Republicans" argued the war goals had been achieved and Reconstruction should end. They ran a ticket in 1872 but were decisively defeated as Grant was reelected. In 1874, Democrats took control of Congress and opposed any more reconstruction. The disputed 1876 elections were resolved by the Compromise of 1877, which put Republican Rutherford B. Hayes in the White House. He pulled out the last federal troops and the last Republican state governments in the South collapsed, marking the end of Civil War and Reconstruction.^[263]