The legal and tax historian discusses his book. Let me introduce todays speaker, dr. Tera hunter, professor of American History and professor of African American studies at princeton. She is a specialist in 19th and 20th century history. She specializes in gender, race, labor, and the history of the United States south. A little bit about her publications, which are multiple awardwinning, her most recent book is bound in wedlock slave and free black marriage in the nineteenth century. Published in 2017. A book about African Americans and marriage in the 19th century, a winner of multiple awards. And a variety of other prizes. The list goes on and on. Congress as a policy. Wherever the union army appeared in confederate territory, enslaved people fled. They were housed in what were called contraband camps. These were makeshift campsites that were situated next to union army camps. They provided very important source of labor in the camps. They provided intel, information, that proved crucial to the war. Also over the course of the war, African Americans, even those who did not run away, basically started to make mischief. Many of them made mischief by being unruly, cutting down on the quantity and quality of their work, sometimes not working at all. In essence, African Americans initiated the process of their own emancipation. They forced the south, by refusing to standby on the sidelines, and they helped to shift northern opinion. They pushed lincoln to eventually push the military to see the war as a war of liberation. By the time the war ended, there were 500,000 formally enslaved people who had ran away, military workers, spies, worked on plantations. There were another 186,000 or so who were found in the army, the navy. And then there were 2 million to 3 million who remained on plantations and in cities and towns. Some of them were basically helping to undermine the institution where they were. President had to be persuaded over the course of the work to embrace emancipation. He had promised at the outset not to interfere with slavery. But he was forced to see implementing emancipation was crucial to winning the war. By the summer of 1862, lincoln came to see emancipation in those terms. He understood how African Americans were playing a vital role as military workers. There were manpower needs. There were not enough being recruited into the army. Northern opinion was also shifting. He came to embrace emancipation, as well as he wanted to stop the possibilities that europeans would side with the confederacy and recognize them as a legitimate nation. Lincoln did not take the lead on the issue, but i would say he played the most important singular role as the president , as commanderinchief. He was ultimately willing to change his position as the demands of the war dictated, which he did quite dramatically when he issued the emancipation proclamation in january of 1863. I will come back to that. The second point, it was not just one person who can take credit for emancipation. No one event or policy can also be attributed to bringing slavery down. Most people think of the emancipation proclamation as ending slavery by itself. But it 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, outline slavery in d. C. , in the territories. They passed legislation to free the families of black men who worked as military workers and eventually 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 a universal emancipation plan that most people assume. It applied primarily to enslaved people in the confederacy, and not those living in the border states where slavery still existed but where those states had remained in the union. And it exempted some areas that were controlled by the union army, in the areas of louisiana, virginia, tennessee. Historians estimate it did free about 20,000 people who had already come under union control. These were people who were captured, who ran away, were in the military, or working on plantations leased to northern entrepreneurs. There were inherent limitations of the emancipation proclamation. President lincoln could not force the confederates to free enslaved people. They had broken away from the United States. But the e. P. Was important for other reasons. It provided an open invitation for enslaved people to run away and to receive protection from the United States military. And most revolutionary of all, it basically authorized the enlistment of black men as soldiers. This was the thing slave owners everywhere feared most, having armed soldiers, enslaved men be armed as soldiers. That was the most revolutionary part of the emancipation proclamation. And then, the third point i wanted to make is that we have to think about this emancipation as a process. As i said, it is a protracted process that began at the outset of the war. It was not a Straight Line from slavery to freedom. There were fits and starts. There were retaliations by confederates. Not even all people on the union side necessarily supported emancipation. And so, it was a process. It took a while. It took basically working over the course of the entire war for emancipation to be achieved. And when the war ended, in order to secure emancipation, we needed to take another step which was to abolish slavery. And so, it required abolition to put the final nail in the coffin which was done with the 13th amendment which Congress Passed in january of 1865. And then enough states ratified if by december. So, that is a long answer to your opening question. Thank you so much, professor hunter. One thing we received a number of questions about was about juneteenth, especially in relationship to your much distributed and widely praised piece that ran on june 19 of this year on the history of juneteenth. I wonder if you can talk about that. We had a number of questions. If you could talk about that, starting with a history of it and the movement was emancipation shifting by time. What happens if we understand emancipation is also shaped geographically . Having a geography as well as a chronology . Dr. Hunter juneteenth is basically the holiday that African Americans in texas declared because they were freed on june 19, 1865. They began celebrating cap emancipation a year later. There are a couple of key facts to keep in mind about texas. It was the last state where African Americans gained their freedom after the civil war. It was on the western edge of the confederacy. It was very isolated from the actions taking place mostly east of the mississippi river, not entirely, but mostly. It was largely untouched by the union army. It actually became a place of refuge fleeing slaveowners. They left louisiana, arkansas, as they were being encroached upon by the union army. It was kind of a haven for slavery as it was deteriorating in other parts of the confederacy. There were very few black soldiers who came from texas. And another key consideration is that 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 African Americans who tried to claim that freedom. They started in galveston and worked their way across the state. They lynched African Americans. They caught them fleeing. And so, the process was fiercely contested in texas. It is kind of ironic because texas did not see a lot of action during the war. And so, the action really heated up, oddly enough, when the war came to an end in april. But texas slaveowners thought that they could help sustain slavery for a longer time. They were hoping they would get compensated, if nothing else. Most enslaved people were not freed until the army came in, in june, and basically had to fight again to put down those confederates who were living in the state of texas. So, i think there is this notion that African Americans did not get their freedom at the time of the emancipation proclamation in texas, and that that is what marks what is different about them. But as i have already said, not very many people got their freedom as a result of the emancipation proclamation. What was different in texas was what was happening between april and june, and the fact that there were those retaliations going on. And so, they were moving backwards while the other states had pretty much resigned themselves in defeat. And so, African Americans started to mark this occasion, this victory, because it really did take another year for them to realize their freedom in 1866. A year from when general frazer came into galveston and announced they were now free. Now, we are 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, because part of what those confederate monuments represent is they were erected to reinforce a counter history of actually what happened in slavery and the civil war. And so, African Americans in texas were celebrating this history and their achievement. They really emphasized the fact that this was not something given to them, but 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 African Americans left texas. And now, they are being celebrated in virtually every state and even in some foreign countries. Thanks so much. I think another thing interesting about that story is the emancipation that 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 and to where . Who has power locally, whether it is occupying Union Soldiers and enlisted black men versus areas of the confederacy where there were no u. S. Forces until the war ended or afterwards . It is an interesting example of that process and the variability of the process. We want to come back to some of these questions about commemoration and things like that. Before we talk about that more, i wanted to ask you, since your work has been so particularly important when you have written about the experiences of African American women and more recently about black families and marriage, if you could talk first of all about how the experience of wartime emancipation might have been different for women compared to men. And maybe, you can add children if you want to. Youre welcome to open the door to talking about marriage, or we can deal with that in a separate question. A reminder for people in attendance, feel free to use the q a button to ask questions which we will come around to in a little bit. Dr. Hunter ok. So i guess i will start with one of the ways in which men stood out was in terms of the opportunities open to them in terms of routes to freedom as compared to African American women. I mentioned the first runaways in virginia. These were men. Interestingly, they were motivated by the fact they were going to be separated from their families when they were running away. Initially, we have a flood of men running away. And then, women and children follow them. But the men are much more welcomed in the union lines. The military officers could sort of envision what they could do with the men. They could envision the kind of work that they could put men to doing. They were much more ambivalent about women and what women could do. They even saw women as interfering and lots of different ways. One army officer referred to them as a weight and encumbrance. As the war progresses, it became clear that womens labor was crucial. They washed. They were nurses. They did a lot of the labor on confiscated plantations. They were hospital attendance. Children as well, when they were old enough to perform these kinds of jobs, were also very important. Some of the people tuning in 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, nurse, teacher, laundress, for the regiment. It is striking she is making a case for future generations to understand that women were important, that they played important roles. That they were brave, they were loyal, that they basically put themselves, put their bodies on the line. Not in the exact same way that men did, but in ways that were important for the war effort. And many of them were punished for taking the stance they did. And then, i would say the biggest difference between women and men is the fact that men were allowed to enlist in the army and navy as soldiers. And being in the military came with privileges. And what was really striking to me when i was doing the research for the book is noticing how quickly northern allies were willing to acknowledge black men as citizens because of their service. Even before they joined the military, but especially when they were allowed to join the military. That was considered a baptism by blood where men literally put their bodies on the line, put their lives on the line, fighting for the United States. That put them in a different position than women. And so, it was men who were considered sort of being ushered into freedom, ushered into citizenship. And women basically were secondary. They received their emancipation and ideas about citizenship basically three men, being the wives of men, the daughters of men. And so, that is the real distinction. But it is important to emphasize that women saw their services as vital. They said things like when we entered the army, so the things they were doing for the army, they saw themselves as making vital contributions. Thank you so much. I wonder if we can bridge from that to the question among the central questions of the book about the gendered experience of emancipation. You make a strong case for the gendered roots of emancipation. What is it about centering marriage that helped you catch that gendered experience in bound in wedlock . Dr. Hunter marriage reached a turning point for African Americans during the war. It is because of the federal government interventions, outsiders coming in, northern missionaries especially, that African Americans were sort of ushered into legal marriage, even though what legal marriage meant in the context of the war was still murky. But northerners really started to embrace the idea. It grew from even antebellum ideas within the abolitionist movement. One of their strongest critiques of slavery was the ways in which it basically destroyed family integrity. And so, they were very eager to put marriage on legal footing for African Americans in the context of the war. And so, when i was doing the research, i was really interested in tracing how that process occurred. I found what i think is the first missionary, reverend lockwood, working at fort monroe, who was very interested in the question of marriage and immediately started to see the value of marrying couples, often in groups, marrying multiples of couples at the same time. Giving them certificates to mark their relationship as being newly sanctioned. And so, the civil war starts to show us this process of African Americans adopting the process of marrying under the flag, marrying under federal authority. We see them on the one hand eagerly embracing marriage, marriage is being formalized, but we also see some resistance because, for many of them, they did not think their relationship needed to have that extra sanction from the state. And so, we see this process unfolding in the contraband camps. We see it on the plantations, confiscated plantations that were taken over by northern entrepreneurs, military officials, and so on. The federal government was really interested in creating what they called free labor experiments, sort of putting slaves, former slaves, into the process of becoming fullfledged citizens, becoming wage workers. And so, they were interested in creating a familybased labor system. So, marriage was considered the basis for organizing those families along a patriarchal ideal. 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 household and basically have wives and children as their dependents. We are seeing that happen on the plantations. And we see also on the plantations the sort of double standards about marriage. Because in those circumstances, women are still expected to work for the patriarchal family ideal not being fully applied in the case of African Americans. Another arena where we see marriage start to take hold is in the case of the military. The federal government is very eager to marry men when they join the army, to encourage those who already have families, who already have wives, to basically formalize those relationships, to remarry again under the flag. To remarry. I was just reminded of one particular man, roger young from florida, who ran away to south carolina. And his wife basically followed behind him shortly thereafter. They had already been married seven years, so when they arrived, he basically he was told by his superior officer that he needed to marry. He was married in the camp. That was a common scene of soldiers being married at campsites. Marriage was also important because it gave men power as soldiers. It became a way for them to advocate for their families. Women and men are in a very different position. But, it allows men to write letters on behalf of their families to ask for resources, ask for protection on behalf of their wives and children. Kate thanks so much. That captures so incredibly well the various ways that marriage was so central to the process of emancipation, but also the different kinds of investments in it