Posted on 06/25/2002 10:40:23 AM PDT by TexConfederate1861
The Emancipation Proclamation, more than any act, exposes the real President Lincoln and hits at the core of why the mythical day of June 19 is celebrated.
Issued on the 22nd day of September in 1862, [the Emancipation Proclamation] stated that on the first day of January 1863, "all persons held as slaves within any state or designated part of a state, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free."
Clearly, this was a war measure for suppressing the so-called rebellion. If the Confederate States of America stop rebelling before Jan. 1, 1863, they could keep their slaves.
This document suggested that one could not own another human unless one was loyal to the United States. Then again, how could the president free anyone in another nation? The document did not apply to the four border states, Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland and Missouri, slave states that remained loyal to and in the United States.
Where the president had authority (in the border states), he did nothing; where he had no authority (in the CSA), he did something.
Why do African-Americans continue to praise Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation? Are we allowing miseducation that flatters our thinking to overtake us? Slavery, legal slavery, ended in December 1865, when three-fourths of the states ratified the 13th Amendment.
"Juneteenth," the 19th of June, started as a traditional Texas celebration and now has expanded. It marks the date when the news of Lincoln's proclamation reached parts of the state of Texas in 1865. The document had first been issued in September 1862. The president had taken advantage of a Union victory during the Civil War, the Battle of Antietam, to make his preliminary announcement of emancipation, to become effective on Jan. 1, 1863. The story goes that it was not until June 19, 1865, after Lincoln had died, that slaves in Galveston, Texas, were read General Order No. 3 "that, in accordance with the president's proclamation, all slaves were free."
The proclamation did not free slaves; nor did the order delivered by Gen. Gordon Granger on June 19, 1865. On that date, Texas was not even part of the United States, thus any orders issued to Texas would be of no consequence. Yet still slaves in Texas were told that the late President Lincoln, with the stroke of his pen, had "freed" them and other slaves in rebelling states.
Now 139 years later, this mythical date of African-American freedom is celebrated, mainly by African-Americans. They turn out with parades, holiday attire and spirit to commemorate and praise Lincoln and the document. Ironically, to many the 19th of June symbolizes African-American Independence Day and is celebrated in lieu of the Fourth of July.
Students are still instructed that Lincoln did away with slavery with the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. To credit the 16th president of the United States with being "the Great Emancipator" is shameless hypocrisy, a pathological exercise in intellectual sissyism.
In his first inaugural address, Lincoln made it very clear that he had no interest, directly or indirectly, in interfering with slavery where it legally existed.
He was opposed to the expansion of slavery. He feared that competition with slavery would have a negative impact on free white laborers in the territories. He could not void the Constitution, which protected and encouraged slavery; an amendment to the Constitution was required.
Any individual, group or organization that parlays June 19 into a freedom-day celebration for blacks is either miseducated, misinformed or just plain hustling people who are seeking validation and acceptance. The ratification date of the 13th Amendment in 1865 would be more appropriate for a celebration.
It is time to face the facts squarely: The plain and painful truth is that Lincoln was not the Great Emancipator of African-American freedom. Neither the Emancipation Proclamation nor General Order No. 3 freed slaves in the United States or in Texas, as the Juneteenth celebration would have it.
In fact, Lincoln was as elusive on the issues of freedom for African-Americans as equality of opportunity is today.
If one interprets the documents literally, slaves in the United States remained in slavery. There is no justifiable cause to celebrate a myth or bad news.
In the abstract, Lincoln used what is known as tricky logic. He moved politically, not morally. In his words, there was an immutable physical barrier of color and probably of mental and moral inferiority separating the black and white races.
Lincoln felt that African-Americans were included in the Declaration of Independence, yet he denied and did not believe in social and political equality of the races. He refused to support the abolitionist movement.
Lincoln was not in favor of African-American citizenship in the United States and he advocated colonization as a solution to the race problem. This might explain why in August 1862, one month before he issued the Emancipation Proclamation, he called so-called African-American leaders to the White House and told them that money had been appropriated by Congress to colonize "their kind" outside the country.
If African-Americans are looking for pre-1865 heroes to praise, David Walker, Nat Turner, Harriet Tubman, Henry Highland Garnet, Denmark Vesey and many more would fit the criteria. If African-Americans need documentation, try reading David Walker's "Appeal," Henry Highland Garnet's "Message to the Slaves" or Frederick Douglass' "What to the Slave Is the 4th of July?"
I suggest African-Americans rethink Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation and Juneteenth when choosing celebrations and be careful that we do not contribute to the continuance of our own ignorance.
Dr. Theman Ray Taylor Sr. is a history professor at the University of Central Arkansas at Conway.
This article was published on Saturday, June 15, 2002
That's not true just because you say it is.
The wording of the 10th amendment is plain enough; no wait. It's vague enough.
"On every question of construction [of the Constitution] let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or intended against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed."
Thomas Jefferson Letter To Justice William Johnson, Monticello, June 12, 1823
Now let's consider the words of the president of the constitutional convention:
"In all our deliberations on this subject we kept steadily to our view, that which appears to the greatest interest of every true American, the consolidation of our Union, in which is involved our prosperity, felicity, safety, perhaps our national existance. This important consideration, seriously and deeply impressed on our minds, led each state in the Convention to be less rigid on points of inferior magnitude, than might have been otherwise expected; and thus the Constitution we present is the result of a spirit of amity, and that mutual deference and concession which the peculularity of our political situation rendered indispensible...."
George Washington, President [of the Constitutional Convention] By Unanimous Order of the Convention", September 17, 1787
So if we accept the words of George Washington, we will see that it was the --unanimous-- wish of the delegates to the convention that the union be consolidated.
So are you going to throw Washington and Jefferson onto the ash heap of history along with J. Davis?
Your simple professions of what you would like to be the truth don't look so hot when they are compared to the historical record.
Walt
That would be tough to prove as the Great Seal of the USA dates from 1782 -- five years before the constiutional convention. Pull out a dollar bill and you'll see the words right on it: E Pluribus Unum -- from many, one.
Walt
I don't pretend to be an expert on anything, but I can read. :)
Mr Lincoln seems like a rather ordinary politician to me. He'd say anything, to anyone, at any time, in order to fulfill his agenda. Here, he plainly admits that the slaves be damned, if necessary, to preserve the union.
I'm sure that neither I nor anyone else will ever know the whole truth about that war. The first things I do tend to disregard in the argument are the words of the politicians who took part, because the one thing that I am quite certain of, is that the truth is not contained within those words.
In my opinion, the only factual argument than can be made by either side today, is whether or not secession was constitutional. One can argue that it was quite legal based on the 10th amendment, and the fact that the Constitution itself, prior to the amendment, did not specifically address the issue. While Article 1 section 9 does prohibit states from entering into treaties and confederations, it in no way states that once a state is admitted, it must remain a state. Once a state has seceded, one would argue that it cannot be bound by this article and section.
The only place that I can see a problem with this argument is in Article 6:
"The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the members of the several state legislatures, and all executive and judicial officers, both of the United States and of the several states, shall be bound by oath or affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States."
Can the state legislature even convene for the purpose of debating secession? hmmmmm.....
Clever liars, I mean lawyers, could debate this one into a billion dollar legal bill.
I guess we'll never really know, will we?
One thing I do know...
The Second Amendment IS the reset button on the Constitution.
Has really all that much changed in 157 years?
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