Bound in wedlock slave and free black marriage in the nineteenth century. It was published in 2017. A book about African Americans and marriage in the 19th century. The winner of multiple awards, including the Mary Nicholas prize. A variety of prizes that, the list goes on and on. Let me also mention her first book. To enjoy my freedom, southern black womens lives and labors after the civil war. Another multiple prize winning book and wonderful book about African American women in the post emancipation south. Dr. Hunter has agreed to come here today and talk to us specifically about the history of emancipation, the end of slavery during the civil war. A topic that was that is always on peoples agenda for teaching and discussion, but was particularly widely discussed earlier this summer on the anniversary of juneteenth. That is kind of what got us started thinking about inviting her to speak with us about that history, which is complicated, exciting, and always kind of in need of clarification. So let me just turn it over to you, tera hunter, just to talk a little bit about the process of wartime emancipation. What happened and what are some of the most important things that people need to know . So, thank you to greg and kate for inviting me to be a part of this. Thanks to all of the people out there in zoom world who arent listening and watching. I thought i would start with just giving a kind of overview of the process by which slavery was destroyed during the civil war. Its important to keep in mind that this process of emancipation is part of a much longer movement of resistance by African Americans and their allies going back for centuries. But this Movement Really picked up speed in the early part of the decades of the 19th century. It then accelerated a great deal during the civil war between 1861 and 1865. There are three things that i want to sort of emphasize about what we need to understand about this process. How emancipation was achieved. So the first thing to understand is that emancipation was not 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 wasnt the result of a process, a kind of drawn out process, a contentious process, that took place over the course of the war. A lot of people played pivotal roles in bringing about emancipation. Of course, the president , abraham lincoln, commander in chief. Congress, the military, civilians in the north who helped to shape public opinion. But also African Americans, both enslaved and free. I want to particularly highlight the roles that African Americans play. This is a group that typically gets left out of more traditional accounts. Things that typically, the kind of history that you are typically taught below the college level. African americans made it clear from the very start of the war that they saw the war very differently from lincoln, from 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 start to see, at the very start of the war in april, but its the actions of former enslaved men who lived in the hampton roads, virginia area. They set off a chain of events by fleeing to fortress monroe in may of 1861. They ran away basically because theyre slaveowners 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 denim Benjamin Butler decided to treat these four men as contraband of war. Allowing them to stay at the army cap, rather than sending them back, which was the policy previously. Butler realized these were people who were being used, basically to help the other side, and he did not see a reason why that should be allowed to happen. Butlers decision was then copied by other officials in other parts of the areas where the union army was making progress. It was eventually formalized by congress as a policy. So wherever the union army appeared, and confederate territory, enslaved people fled and they were housed in what was called contraband camps. These were kind of makeshift camps sites that were situated next to union army camps. They provided a very important source of labor in those camps. They provided intel, information, that really 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. So African Americans initiated the process of their own emancipation. They forced themselves on to the National Agenda by refusing to stand by on the sidelines. They helped to shape more than northern opinion, congress, and push lincoln to eventually see the military necessity of having the kind of vision that African Americans had for seeing the war as a war for liberation. By the time the war ended, there were 500,000 former enslaved people who had interceded, ran away, who were military workers, who were spies, scouts, worked on plantations that would turn into free labor experiments. There were another hundred and 86,000 or so who served in the army, in the navy. And then there were two to 3 million who basically remained on the plantations in cities and towns, and some of them were basically helping to undermine the institutions where they were. So president lincoln had to be persuaded over the course of the work to promised at the outset of the war not to interfere with slavery. He was forced to see that implementing emancipation was crucial to winning the war. So by the summer of 1862, lincoln basically came to see emancipation in these terms. The union army was not doing as well as expected. They were not winning as soundly or quickly. He understood how African Americans were playing a vital role as military workers. There were man power me needs. There were not enough white soldiers being recruited into the army. Northern opinion was also shifting. So he came to embrace emancipation as well as wanting to stop the possibilities that europeans would side with the confederacy and recognize them as a legitimate breakaway nation. Lincoln in effect did not take the lead on the issue, but i would say he played the most important singular role as the president , as the commander in chief. He was ultimately willing to change his position as 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 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 it did not really do that. The federal government as well as Army Officials initiated several policies before the emancipation proclamation, which helped to kind of 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 the territories. They pass legislation to free the families of black man who worked as military workers, and eventually as soldiers. So 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 it would be a war to bring down slavery. But the proclamation was not the universal kind of emancipation plan that most people assume. It applied primarily to enslaved people in the Confederate States and not those living in the border states where slavery still existed, but where those states had remained in the union. It exempted some areas that were controlled by the union army in areas of louisiana, areas of virginia and tennessee. Historians estimate that it did free about 20,000 people who had already come under union control. These were people who were captured or run away. Those working for the military or working on plantations that were leased to northern entrepreneurs. So there was kind of been 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. They were not abiding by federal authority. But it was important for other reasons. I will mention a few of them. It provided a open invitation for enslaved people to run away and to receive protection for the United States military. Most revolutionary of all, it basically authorized the and list meant of black men as soldiers. This was a thing that slave warner slave owners here and most, enslaved men the armed soldiers. That was the most revolutionary part. Then the third point i want 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 was retaliations by confederates. Not even all people on the union side necessarily supported emancipation. And so it was a process that, it took a while. It took basically working over the course of the entire war for emancipation to be achieved. And then once the war ended, in order to secure emancipation, we need to take another step, which was to abolish slavery. So it required that legal abolition to put the final nail in the coffin, which was done with the 13th amendment, which Congress Passed in january of 1865. Then enough states ratified it by december. So thats a long answer to your opening question. Thank you so much, professor hunter. One of the things 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 19th of this year, on the history of juneteenth. I wonder if you can talk about that. We actually have a number of questions, so we may end up with some followups. But if you could talk about that starting with the history of it and the ways what happens if we understand emancipation shifting by time. What happens if we also understand, as you articulated in that piece and again in your published works, if we understand emancipation is also shaped geographically. As having a geography as well as a chronology. Yeah, so juneteenth is basically the holiday that African Americans in texas declared because they were freed on june 19th, 1865. They began celebrating that emancipation a year later. Theres a couple of key facts to keep in mind about texas. It was the last state where African Americans gain their freedom after the end the civil war. It was on the western edge of the confederacy. It was very isolated from the action that was taken place mostly east of the mississippi your mississippi river. Not entirely, but mostly. So it was largely untouched by the army. It actually became a place of refuge for fleeing slaveowners. They left louisiana. They left arkansas. They left missouri as they were being encouraged upon by the union army. And so it was a kind of a haven for slavery as it was being as it was deteriorating in other parts of the confederacy. There were very few black soldiers who came from texas. 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 try to claim their freedom. They started in galveston and worked their way across the state. They lynched African Americans if they caught them playing. So the process was fiercely contested in texas. Its kind of ironic because texas did not see a lot of action during the war. So the action really heated up, oddly enough, when the war came to him and in april. Texas slave owners were holding out. They thought that they could help sustain slavery. They were hoping they would get compensated if nothing else. So most enslaved people were not freed until the army came in in june and basically had to fight once again to put down those confederates who are living in the state of texas. There is this notion that 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 ive already said, not many people in the confederacy got their freedom as a result of the emancipation proclamation. So what was different in texas was what was happening between april and june and the fact that there were those sort of retaliations going on. 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 fraser came into galveston and announced that they were now free. And so were now having conversations about confederate crime units for example, and so one of the ways that i like to think about it in terms almost kind of a counter history because part of what those confederate lines represent that they were elected to reinforce a counter history of actually would happen in slavery and in the civil war. So African Americans in texas were celebrating this history and their achievement. They really emphasized the fact that this was not something that was given to them, that this was something that they fought for and that they achieved. And when we think about these collaborations, they started in texas, they migrated to other states as African Americans have 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 that is interesting about that story is the emancipation a june 13th commemorates is an example of that process that you described first where freedom comes to different people in the south at different points. Theres a lot of different contingencies involved. Where are the u. S. Forces in any different time . He was able to escape into where . Who has pair locally whether see occupying officers and soldiers and enlisted black man or places the confederacy where the really were no u. S. Forces until the war ended. Its also just an interesting example of that process and their ability of the process. We will come back to these questions about commemoration at holidays and things like that, but before were gonna talk about that more, i wanted to ask you since your work has been so particularly important when youve written about experiences of African American women and more recent flee black families and marriage. If you could talk first of all about how the experience of wartime emancipation as different for women as a parent compared to man. Maybe can add children in there if you want to, and youre welcome to open the door and talk about marriage as well. And just to remind people who are in attendance, please feel free to use the q as button for questions that we will come around to a little bit. So, i guess allstar with one of the ways that men stood out in terms of the opportunities that were open to them in routes to freedom, as compared to African American women. I mentioned those first runaways in lonoke virginia, these were men. Interestingly they were motivated by the fact that they were gonna be separated by their families when they were running away. Initially we have a flood of men running away and then women and children following them. But the men are much more welcomed in the union lines. The military officers can sort of him in vision what to do with them and. They can vision the sort of work that they could put men to doing. They were much more ambivalent about women and not sure what about women can do. They even saw women as interfering in many different ways. One army officer referred to them as a wait and incumbents. But as the war progressed, it became clear that womens labor was very. Crucial they cook, they clean, they wash, they were nurses, they especially a lot of the labor and the plantations,. They were hospital attendance and children as well basically when they were old enough to perform these kinds of jobs were also very important. Some of the people who are tuning in may have read or heard about suzanne king taylor. She was a woman who is a fugitive, former and slaved person who worked as a cook, as a nurse, as a teacher, a laundress for south carolina. If you read her memoir which she read wrote after the civil war, its really striking that shes making a case for future generations to understand that women were important, that they play important roles, that they were brave, that they were loyal, that they basically put their bodies in themselves on the line. Not an exact same way that men did but in ways that were important for the war effort. And they were punished for taking the stance that they did. Then i would say the biggest distinction between women and men of course is the fact that men were allowed to enlist in the army and the navy as soldiers. Being in the military came with privileges. What was really striking to me as well when i did 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 once they were allowed to join the military. That was considered a baptism by blood, we are men literally put their bodies on the line, but their lives on the line for fighting for the United States. That put them in a different position than women so it was men who were considered, being assured into freedom, ushered into citizenship, and women basically were secondary. They received their emancipation and ideas about citizenship basically through, being the daughters of men. So that i