Reveille in Washington, 1860 - 1865 by Margaret Leech

[David Lockmiller]

Emancipation Proclamation, according to “Reveille in Washington 1860-1865” pages 248-49.

The country, in the main, received the proclamation without enthusiasm. Democrats interpreted their gains in the State elections which soon followed as a protest against the President’s capitulation to the radicals. Abolitionists, on the other hand, were still dissatisfied with Mr. Lincoln’s moderation. His whole-hearted support came from the Negroes themselves. From the beginning, his name had been to the race the simple synonym of their deliverance. Colored folk, when crowds gathered at the White House, wildly demonstrated their love for the President, shouting and swinging their hats with abandon. In long columns, the contrabands came toiling over the dusty roads to the city he inhabited. Some were in rags, some wore the rough and sweat-stained garments of the field, and some were decked in the antique finery of their masters and mistresses.

For these were primitive and childlike people, adrift without a plan from the dependence of slavery. They understood nothing of the political complexities in which their destinies were involved. They took no account of the abolitionists who pressed the President to his reluctant decision. They knew only that Lincoln was a man raised up by God to work the miracle of their deliverance. Their simple imagination had its own power. They and other millions like them, flocking to the Union armies of the West and South, or waiting on the plantations of their masters, impressed their faith on a nation’s mind. The abolitionists of Congress – Wade, Stevens, Chandler, Wilson, Lovejoy, even the lofty Sumner – have been all but forgotten by their countrymen. The Lincoln who lives in the American legend was shaped in the slave’s long dream of a kindly master who should set his people free.

In their crowded and comfortless barracks, the contrabands patiently awaited the coming of the day of jubilee. On New Year’s Eve, they filled the chapel to overflowing. An old man named Thorton arose to testify. “I cried all night. What de matter, Thorton? Tomorrow my child is to be sold, never more see it till judgment – no more dat! No more dat! . . . Can’t sell your wife and children any more!”
Ecstasy mounted with the passing hours, and the silent prayer enjoined by the superintendent at midnight gave place to fervent invocations and hallelujah hymns. Young and old wrung one another’s hands, dancing and shouting in a frenzy of joy. Around the bleak, dark camp, they paraded, singing. Many marched until daybreak.

The sun rose on the first day of January, 1863. The air was clear and brilliant. The President opened his tired eyes on a momentous day. Since he had issued his preliminary proclamation, the defeat of his party in the State elections had been followed by the military disaster of Fredericksburg. The radical senators, demanding the removal of the conservative Seward, had nearly wrecked his Cabinet. The thing that he was about to do had alienated some of his warmest adherents among moderate men. In Washington, that winter, he seemed to stand alone, almost without friends.

Threading his way through the mob of New Year’s callers about the White House came the slender, amiable man whom the radicals hated, with his slender, amiable son by his side. William and Frederick Seward climbed the stairs to the President’s office. There were less than a dozen persons in the room to witness the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. Conscious of a moment of history, the President closed his aching fingers on a pen. His whole right arm was numb form the ordeal of the morning’s receptions. He feared his hand might tremble; but he signed his name firmly.