Todays first todays speaker. Ata hunter is a professor princeton. She specializes in 19th and 20th century history. A little bit about her publications, which are multiple awardwinning, her most recent in wedlock slave and free black marriage in the 19th century published in 20 17, a book about africanamericans and marriage in the 19th century. It won a memorial prize from the aha and a variety of other prizes. The list goes on and on. Let me mention her first book, to join my freedom, southern. Lack womens freedom another prizewinning book about women in the postemancipation south. Dr. Hunter has agreed to speak with us about the history of emancipation in the civil war, a topic that is always on the peoples agenda for teaching and discussed but we earlier this summer on the history of juneteenth and that is what got us started thinking about inviting her to speak to us about that history that is complicated, exciting and always in need of clarification. Let me turn it over to you tera hunter. Talk about the process of wartime emancipation. What happened and what are the most important things people need to know . Dr. Hunter thank you to greg and kate for inviting me be a part of this. Thank you to everyone resisting and watching. I wanted to start by giving an overview of the process by which slavery was destroyed during the civil war. It is important to keep in mind that this process of emancipation is part of a much longer movement of resistance by africanamericans and their allies going back centuries, but this movement picked up speed in the early part of the decades of the 19th century into than accelerated a great deal during andcivil war between 1861 1865. There are three things i want to emphasize about what we need to understand about this process, how emancipation was achieved. The first thing to understand is emancipation was not the achievement of one person alone. The second thing is that emancipation was not the result of one event or one policy. The third thing is that emancipation was the result of a process, a drawn out process, a contentious process that took place over the course of the war. Lots of people played pivotal roles in bringing about him its patient of course. The president , bringing about emancipation. Of course the president , abraham ,incoln, citizens in the north and africanamericans both enslaved into free. I want to highlight the roles africanamericans played. This is the group that typically gets left out of more traditional accounts, the kind of history were typically taught low the College Level below the College Level. Africanamericans made it clear from the start of the war that they saw it differently from lincoln, the other leaders on the union side for the most part because they saw it as an opportunity to end slavery. They made themselves a thorn in the sides of both the United States and the confederacy by running away from slavery whenever they could. We started to see this at the start of the war in april, but it is the actions of four enslaved men who lived in the hampton roads, Virginia Area who set off a chain of events by fleeing to fortress monroe in 1861. They ran away because their slaveowner was planning to take them with him when he was going to fight in the war going to the battlefields in north carolina. Benjamin butler, general Benjamin Butler decided to treat these four men as contraband of war, which allowed them to stay at the army camp rather than sending them back, which is what the policy was previously. Butler realized these were people being used basically to help the other side and he didnt understand why that should be allowed to happen. Butlers decision was then copied by other officials in areas whereof the the union army was making progress and was eventually formalized by congress as a policy. Wherever the union army appeared in confederate territory, slaved people fled and were housed in contraband camps, campsites that were situated next to union army camps. They provided an important source of labor in those camps. They provided intel, information the war. Ed crucial to over the course of the war, africanamericans, even those who did not run away, began to make mischief by being unruly, cutting down on the quality or quantity of their work, sometimes not even working at all. Africanamericans initiated the process of their own emancipation. Onto theed themselves National Agenda by refusing to standby on this the sidelines. They pushed to lincoln basically to eventually see the military necessity of having the kind of the vision that africanamericans had foreseeing the war as a war of Liberation War as aor seeing the war of liberation. There were another 186,000 africanamericans who served in the army, the navy, and then whoe were two to 3 million stayed on the plantations, helping to undermine the institution where they were. President lincoln had to be persuaded over the course of the war to embrace emancipation. He had promised at the outset not to interfere with the slavery, but he was forced to see that implementing emancipation was crucial to winning the war. 1862, lincolnof came to see emancipation in these terms. At the union army was not doing as well as expected. They were not winning soundly or quickly. He understood how africanamericans were playing a vital role. There were manpower needs. There were not enough white soldiers being recruited into the army. At northern opinion was also shifting. He came to embrace emancipation. To stop the possibilities that europeans would side with the confederacy and recognize them as a legitimate breakaway nation so takeln in a sense did not a lead on the issue but he played the most important singular role as the commander in chief. He was ultimately willing to change his position as the war dictated, which he did quite dramatically when he issued the emancipation proclamation in january of 1863. It was not just one person that can take credit for emancipation. No one event or one policy can also be attributed to bringing slavery down. Most people think of the emancipation proclamation as ending slavery by itself but he did not really do that. The federal government as well as Army Officials initiated several policies before the emancipation proclamation, which helped to chip away at slavery as an institution. Butlers contraband policy was one step. Congress followed up with other policies prohibiting the return of fugitives, outlawing slavery in d. C. And the territories, freepassed legislation to the families of black men who worked as military workers and eventually as soldiers. When the emancipation proclamation was issued in january it announced a major change in the objective of the war. Initially it was a war to bring the union back together again. Now in addition it would be a war to bring down slavery. But the proclamation was not the universal emancipation. It applied primarily to enslaved people in confederate states, not those living in the border states where slavery still existed but those states had remained in the union. It exempted some areas controlled by the union army in the areas of louisiana, areas of virginia and tennessee. Historians estimate it freed 20,000 people who had come under union control, people who were captured or had run the way, those working for them military or working on plantations released to northern entrepreneurs. There was an inherent limitation of the emancipation proclamation. President lincoln could not force the confederates to free enslaved people. They had broken away from the United States. There were not abiding by federal authority. It worked for other reasons and i will mention a few of them. It provided an open invitation for enslaved people to run away and to receive protection from the United States. All, itolutionary of basically authorized the enlistment of black men as soldiers. This was a thing that slave owners everywhere feared the most, having armed soldiers basically, enslaved men be armed soldiers. That was the most revolutionary part of the emancipation proclamation. The third point i wanted to make was that we have to think about emancipation is a process. It is a protracted process. It began at the outset of the war. It was not a Straight Line from slavery to freedom. ,here were fits and starts retaliations by confederates, not even all people on the union side necessarily supported emancipation. Process. It took a while. It took basically working over the course of the entire war for emancipation to be achieved. Once the war ended, in order to neededemancipation, we to take another step, which was to abolish slavery. It required legal abolition to put the final nail in the coffin, which was done with the 13th amendment, which Congress Passed in 1865. Enough states ratified it by december. That is the long answer to your opening question. You. Downs thank one of the things we received a number of questions about was about juneteenth and especially in relationship to your much distributed and widely praised once in essence that ran june 19 of this year. I wonder if you can talk about that. We may end up with some followups. If you could talk about that starting with the history of it and you talked about the movement, what happens if we understand emancipation shifting by time . What happens if as you weiculated in that piece, if understand emancipation as a shape to geographically, as having a geography endocrinology . A chronology . Nd thatunter it is a holiday former slaves in texas declared when they were freed on june 19, 1865. They started celebrating that emancipation a year later. There are a few key facts to remember about texas. It was the last day where africanamericans receive their after the civil war. It was isolated from the action taking place. It was on the far western side of the confederacy. By theargely untouched union army. It actually became a place for fleeing slaveowners that left louisiana, arkansas as they were being encroached upon by the union army. It was a haven for slavery as it was deteriorating in other parts of the confederacy. There were very few black soldiers who came to texas. Another key consideration was there was a violent backlash by confederates. That is partly what caused the delay. After the war ended in april, they were still armed, still basically attacking africanamericans who tried to claim their freedom. They started in galveston and worked their way across the state. They lynched africanamericans, they caught them fleeing. The process was fiercely contested in texas. It is ironic because texas did not see a lot of action in the war. The action heated up oddly enough when the war came to an. Nd in april texas slaveowners were holding out. They thought they could help sustain slavery for longer period of time. They were hoping they would get compensated if nothing else. Most people were not freed until the army came in in june and basically had to fight once again to put down those confederates who were living in the state of texas. I think there is this notion that africanamericans did not get their freedom at the time of the emancipation proclamation in texas and that is what marks what is different about them, as i have already said, not very many people in the confederacy got their freedom as a result of the emancipation proclamation. What was different in texas is what happened between april into june and the fact that there were retaliations going on april and june and the fact that there were retaliations going on. Africanamericans started to mark this occasion, because it did take another year for them to realize their freedom in 1866, a year from when general granger came into galveston and announced that they were free. We are now having conversations about confederate monuments for example. One of the ways that i like to think about juneteenth is to think about it in terms of almost a kind of counter history part of what those confederate monuments represent assert aere erected to counter history of what happened in slavery and the civil war. Africanamericans in texas were celebrating this history and their achievement. They emphasize the fact that this was not something given to them, this was something they fought for and they achieved. When we think about these commemorations, they started in texas, they migrated to other states as africanamericans left texas and now they are being celebrated in virtually every state and even in some foreign countries. Prof. Masur thanks so much. Another thing that is interesting about that story is thatthe emancipation juneteenth commemorates is an example of that process you described at first where freedom comes to different people in the south at different points. There are a lot of contingencies involved. Where are the u. S. Forces at any given time . Who is able to escape into to where . Who has powers locally whether it is occupying Union Officers or enlisted black men versus areas of the confederacy where there were no u. S. Forces until after the war ended . Of that process into the variability of the process. We want to come back to some of these questions about commemoration and holidays, but before we talk about that more, i wanted to ask you because your work has been so particularly important when you have written about the experiences of africanamerican women and more recently about black families, could you talk first of all about how the experience of wartime emancipation might have been different for women as opposed to men may be you can add children if you want. You can open the door to talking about marriage as well. Just euro mind the people in it people in remind the attendance, you can ask a question in the q a box. Dr. Hunter one of the ways in which men stood out were the opportunities available to them compared to africanamerican women. I mentioned those first runaways in fort monroe virginia. These were men. They were motivated by the fact that they would be separated from their families when they ran away. We initially have a flood of men running away and then the women into children follow them women and children follow them. The men are welcome. The military officers could envision what to do with the men. Much more unsure about women and what women do. Could do. They saw women interfering in many ways. One officer referred to them as encumbrance. An womens labor was crucial. They washed, they cleaned, they. Ooked, they were nurses they did labor on confiscated plantations. They were hospital attendants. Children when they whirled enough to perform these kinds of jobs were they were old enough to perform these kinds of jobs were also important. Some of those tuning and may have read or heard about susie king taylor. She was a woman who was a fugitive, former enslaved person who worked as a cook, teacher, laundress for a South Carolina regimen. If you read her memoir, it is striking that she is making a case for future generations to understand women were important. They played an important role. They were brave, loyal, they put themselves, their bodies on the same way in the exact that men dead but in ways that were important for the war effort. Many of them were punished for taking the stance that they did. The biggest distinction between women and men of course was the fact that men were allowed to enlist in the army and navy as soldiers. Being in the military came with privileges. What was striking to me too while i was doing the research for the buck was noticing how quickly northern allies were was noticinge book how quickly northern allies were willing to recognize black men their ns after because of their military service it wasnt considered a baptism by blood where men literally their military service. It was considered a baptism by blood or men literally their lives on the line for the United States. Men were considered ushered into freedom, ushered into citizenship and women basically were secondary. They received their emancipation and ideas about citizenship basically through men, being the wives of men, being the daughters of men. That is the real distinction there. It is important again to emphasize that women saw their services as vital. When we things like so they sawrmy themselves as making vital contributions. Much. Downs thanks so i wonder if we can bridge from in boundhe question in wedlock, it is one of the central questions, which is the gendered experience of emancipation, to make a strong case for the gendered roots of emancipation. What is it about centering marriage that helps you to capture that gendered experience of emancipation in bound in wedlock . Dr. Hunter marriage reached a turning point for africanamericans turning the civil war during slavery marriages were not legally recognized. Because of the federal governments intervention, outsiders coming in, northern missionaries especially that africanamericans were sort of marriage,to legal even though what legal marriage meant during the context of war was murky, but northerners embraced the idea. It grew from antebellum ideas within the abolitionist movement. One of their strongest critiques of slavery was the ways in which familycally destroyed integrity. Eager to puty marriage on legal footing for africanamericans in the context of the war. When i was doing the research i was interested in tracing how that process occurred. I found what i think is the first missionary reverend lockwood who was working at fort monroe who was very interested in this question of marriage and immediately started to see the value of marrying couples, often in groups, marrying multiple couples at the same time, giving certificates to mark their relationship. This process of africanamericans adopting this marriage adopting under federal authority, we see them on the one hand eagerly embracing marriage. Your marriage is being formalized. We also see resistance because for many of them they did not think their relationship needed fromve that extra sanction the state. Insee this process unfolding the contraband camps. We see it on the plantations. These were confiscated plantations that were taken over by northern entrepreneurs, military officials and so on. The federal government was interested in creating what they called free labor experiments, on intomer slaves the process of becoming fullfledged citizens, becoming wage workers. They were interested in creating a familybased labor system. Marriage was considered the basis for organizing those families along a patriarchal idea. Federal agents into missionaries saw marriage as a way to inculcate certain values like sexual morality, work ethic, married men were told to assume the role of being the head of the household and basically have a wives and children as your dependents. We see that happening on the plantations and also we see on those plantations how the sort of double standards about measure about marriage because in those circumstances womenthe patriarchal family ides not being fully applied in the case of africanamericans. Another arena where we see isriag