Kaamilah Furqah, 13, views the Emancipation Proclamation on Sept. 22, 2007 at the William J. Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock, Ark. (AP)
On January 1st, 1863, Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation — the historic document that freed America’s slaves, sort of.
In the midst of civil war and politics and military challenge, Lincoln’s act was narrowly aimed at slaves under Confederate control. Their bondage remained unbroken — and once broken, gave way to many decades of Jim Crow oppression.
But the Emancipation Proclamation stands as a national watershed. Now, with Barack Obama headed for the White House, its history speaks again. On January 20, Obama will lay his hand on Lincoln’s Bible to take his oath as President of the United States. It’s a good moment to look back on history.
This hour, On Point: The Emancipation Proclamation and its resonance today.
You can join the conversation. Barack Obama reveres “the Great Emancipator,” Abraham Lincoln. Do you? And how do Lincoln’s acts echo this year in Washington? Tell us what you think.
-Tom Ashbrook
Guests:
Joining us from Washington is Edna Greene Medford, associate professor of history at Howard University. She specializes in 19th-century African-American history and is co-author of “The Emancipation Proclamation: Three Views,” with Harold Holzer and Frank Williams.
And from Hanover, N.H., is Jack Beatty, On Point news analyst and senior editor at The Atlantic. He’s written about 19th-century American history himself, most recently in his book “Age of Betrayal: The Triumph of Money in America, 1865-1900.”
More links:
The National Archives website features a digital reproduction of the original Emancipation Proclamation, as well as the text version; the “preliminary” proclamation of September 22, 1862; and a background essay by historian John Hope Franklin.
In the November 1862 issue of The Atlantic Monthly, Ralph Waldo Emerson reacted to Lincoln’s Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation in an essay, and the national mythology was born before the proclamation had even been signed:
It is not a measure that admits of being taken back. Done, it cannot be undone by a new Administration…. This act makes that the lives of our heroes have not been sacrificed in vain….
With this blot removed from our national honor, this heavy load lifted off the national heart, we shall not fear henceforward to show our faces among mankind. We shall cease to be hypocrites and pretenders, but what we have styled our free institutions will be such.
In December 1866, also in The Atlantic, Frederick Douglass appealed to the United States Congress to live up to the promise of Lincoln’s proclamation:
Whether the tremendous war so heroically fought and so victoriously ended shall pass into history a miserable failure, barren of permanent results, — a scandalous and shocking waste of blood and treasure … or whether, on the other hand, we shall, as the rightful reward of victory over treason have a solid nation, entirely delivered from all contradictions and social antagonisms, based upon loyalty, liberty, and equality, must be determined one way or the other by the present session of Congress.
As we know, it would be a century, and more, before liberty and equality began to be realized for African Americans.
Tags: Abraham Lincoln, African Americans, American history, Barack Obama, history, slavery
I am positive toward our future. Just think about our modern, politically correct but equally corrupt ongoing emancipation struggle. Illegal aliens working at reduced wages and zero tax, the WTO and jobs moving overseas, this is nothing more than a kinder, gentler, modern version of the past. Yes, I am optimistic because I see things changing in America. 2008 was an incredible year, positive and negative.
I prefer to look at the positives that have come. We have witnessed an American electorate who was finally fed up with the status quo. An American electorate who realized hypocracy when they saw it. We have witnessed the final effects of trickle down economics and realized that real change was desperately needed. America realized that change was more important than money and big business. For the first time in my adult life, we have voted for people, for the individual. For the first time in my adult life, we didn’t care about race because there was a much bigger issue involved. Monetary gain and big business has taken a back burner and are realing in our wake, in our new-found power and strength. Yes, the pendulum has swung and this is a good thing.
I remain optimistic that President Obama will at least deliver part of the dream he has given me. I pray he works on legislation that will continue to empower the individual. Legislation that continues to destroy multi-national corporations and big business. Any bank or institution too big to fail, is too big to survive.
We need legislation that empowers the individual through the creation of homeowner owned power generation and the reselling of that electricity back into the grid at retail price for the homeowner. We need massive funding for geothermal heating in northern climates to free ourselves from foreign oil. This would be the best money spent against tyranic middle-eastern rulers who also keep their people powerless. We need to empower the individual, not multinational corporations and I see this happening already through the collapse of our economy and the closing of so many large corporations. I live in Vermont and enjoy the local CSA for farm vegetables and beef. I enjoy food that I remember as a kid before multi-nationals took over our food supply and filled it with chemicals. I burn bio-fuel in my pellet furnace. It is locally produced as well. I do these things while enjoying a cheaper and better lifestyle.
I too am now proud of America because we have finally stood up and rejected the former American consumer attitude. We finally realized we were slaves to the multi-nationals, consumer slaves to the man who is now too big to fall yet is falling anyway. We are living in a different world than we were just a year ago and I finally can be optimistic because the direction we are now going in, is a good one.
Posted by Scott Legendre, on January 2nd, 2009 at 2:09 pm ESTVery good show today. It was surprising to learn that Professor Medford had never attended a Watch Night Service.
I am a fifth generation member of the African Methodist Episcopal Church,(AME) one of the oldest black denominations in the US, and Watch Night services date back to that Civil War era. (The AME church was founded in the late 1700s.)
Yes, there might be other cultural and ethnic connections to the tradition, but the black church has paid homage to the Watch Night tradition for 146 years.
-Carole Copeland Thomas, MBA
Posted by Carole Copeland Thomas, on January 2nd, 2009 at 5:08 pm ESTDiversity Professional
C. Thomas & Associates http://www.TellCarole.com