In part two of Civil War in Virginia, we investigate the war issues of slavery and emancipation on both sides, Union and Confederate. In part three, we focus on Virginians and local histories of the war.
We begin our look at Civil War slavery and emancipation with “Without Consent or Contract” that surveys the rise and fall of American slavery, along with “Abraham Lincoln and the Road to Emancipation, 1861-1865”. The question of slaves and freedmen serving under arms is considered in “A Grand Army of Black Men” and “Confederate Emancipation”. A final overview is taken in the volumes “Final Freedom: the Civil War, the Abolition of Slavery, and the Thirteenth Amendment, and “The Reintegration of American History”.
Additional reviews on books about the Civil War are available at Antebellum, Civil War and Reconstruction under the subheading “Wars in Virginia, 1820-1883”.
These books are all used in bibliographies found in peer-reviewed surveys of Virginia history of scholarly merit currently used in Virginia university history departments. Additional insights are used from articles in the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, the Journal of Southern History and the Journal of American History.
For book reviews at The Virginia Historian.com in this historical period addressing other topics, see the webpage for Antebellum, Civil War, Reconstruction. General surveys of Virginia History can be found at Virginia History Surveys. Other Virginia history divided by topics and time periods can be found at the webpage Books and Reviews.
Without Consent or Contract
Robert William Fogel wrote Without Consent or Contract: The Rise and Fall of American Slavery in 1989. It is now available in paperback. Fogel combines two efforts, first a cliometrician’s analysis of the profitable institution of slavery, and second an account of the anti-slavery abolition movements in Britain and America, concluding that the Civil War was a necessary tragedy to end the powerful and sustainable slave economy of the American South.
Industrial development in the South has been masked by census data that classified rural sugar factories, rice cleaning mills, flour mills, blacksmith and carpentry shops as “agriculture” in the South and “industry” in the rural North. Immigrants into Northern cities disaffected native workmen from Democratic and Whig Parties, sending them into the Republican Party and alliances with Abolitionists. Learn more to buy “Without Consent” here for your bookshelf.
Lincoln and the Road to Emancipation
William K. Klingman wrote Abraham Lincoln and the Road to Emancipation, 1861-1865 in 2001. It is available on Kindle and online new and used. Lincoln played a central role in the abolition of slavery but he began with merely opposing its extension, and at the outbreak of the Civil War he sought to keep border states in the Union, negotiate peace and restore a voluntary Union.
With the onset of war, Lincoln gradually approached universal emancipation through Confiscation Acts, compensation plans, the selective Emancipation Proclamation among Virginia counties, for instance, and finally supporting the Thirteenth Amendment to abolish slavery universally within the U.S. Learn more to buy “Lincoln and the Road to Emancipation” here for your bookshelf.
A Grand Army of Black Men
Edwin S. Redkey wrote A Grand Army of Black Men: Letters from African American Soldiers in the Union Army in 1992. It is available on Kindle and in paperback. Over 200,000 black men served in Union forces of the Civil War: more than twenty-five percent of the Navy and over ten percent of the Army. While most were illiterate freed slaves, Redkey traces their experience through the correspondence of literate black free men. Their venues include blacks irregularly attached to white regiments, and black units fighting in Virginia, the South Atlantic Coast and Gulf States.
The letters give accounts of the horrors of war, routine life in the Army, and of the larger political and social issues of concern for African Americans in uniform looking forward to their return home in a land of racial freedom. Thematic chapters include “For the Rights of Citizens”, “The Struggle for Equal Pay”, and “Racism in the Army”. Learn more to buy “A Grand Army of Black Men” here for your bookshelf.
Confederate Emancipation
Bruce Levine wrote Confederate Emancipation: Southern Plans to Free and Arm Slaves during the Civil War in 2006. It is available on Kindle and in paperback. With the South’s population 40 percent in a war of mass conscription, as early as 1861 the Virginian, Brig. Gen. Richard S. Ewell observed that the Confederacy could offset the 3-1 manpower superiority of the North by enlisting slaves. Letters making the proposal appeared in Confederate newspapers and petitions were sent to the Richmond government, yet Jefferson Davis famously quashed Gen. Cleburne’s plan of January 1863.
Only at the verge of collapse did President Davis, then General in Chief Robert E. Lee and Secretary of State Judah P. Benjamin advocate arming and emancipating slaves to replace the ranks thinned by death and desertion. In the event, Confederate legislation only provided for voluntary manumission by slave owners for military service, a promise too little to motivate slave recruitment for a plan too late to effect the war’s outcome. Levine observes that Confederate nationalism could never overcome the planter slave-power determination to preserve slavery with an uncompromised white supremacy in Southern society. Learn more to buy “Confederate Emancipation” here for your bookshelf.
Final Freedom
Michael Vorenberg wrote Final Freedom: The Civil War, the Abolition of Slavery, and the Thirteenth Amendment in 2001. It is available on Kindle and online. The focus in on the final years of the Civil War and the immediate post war period, a time of many still enslaved African Americans, and a time of unsure prospects for the freemen. Should universal freedom for enslaved blacks come from a presidential proclamation, congressional law, or Constitutional Amendment? No side remained committed to a Thirteenth Amendment but vocal Abolitionist blacks.
There were intraparty battles between Peace and War Democrats, Conservative and Radical Republicans, and ex-Confederates against former Whig Unionists. The scope of the Amendment was also at issue, whether to be restricted to ending slavery, or to civil rights protections, or to include reconstruction of the South. Learn more to buy “Final Freedom” here for your bookshelf.