Posted by: antihellenistic
« on: March 25, 2024, 08:54:57 pm »Confrontative, not Democratic Method which Ending American Slavery
Source :
Black AF History: The Un-Whitewashed Story of America page 156, 157, 158
Quote
When the fighting started, Union military leaders were unprepared for the influx of escaped slaves ready to open long-preserved cans of whoop-ass on their pro slavery taskmasters. The debate over the legal status of “contrabands” like Robert Smalls was as contentious as the ongoing debate over the value of Black Lives. In 1861, Frank Baker, James Townsend, and Shepard Mallory stole a skiff near the spot where the White Lion landed with the first enslaved Africans in America. The enslaved men had been leased to the Confederate army to defend batteries in Virginia; instead, they rowed to Union-occupied Fort Monroe and presented themselves to Major General Benjamin Butler. When scouts informed Confederate major John B. Cary about the escape, he requested the return of his leased “property.” Butler refused.* Trained as an attorney, Butler explained to the un-American troop leader that since Virginia considered itself an enemy combatant, the rules of war dictated that the men were now property seized during formal hostilities. Following Butler’s informal declaration, Congress passed the Confiscation Act of 1861, stripping Confederate volunteers and their co-conspirators of their enslaved property that managed to reach Union-occupied spaces
A few months later, Union major general David Hunter issued General Order No. 11, declaring:
The three States of Georgia, Florida and South Carolina, comprising the military department of the South, having deliberately declared themselves no longer under the protection of the United States of America, and having taken up arms against the said United States, it becomes a military necessity to declare them under martial law. This was accordingly done on the 25th day of April, 1862. Slavery and martial law in a free country are altogether incompatible; the persons in these three States—Georgia, Florida and South Carolina— heretofore held as slaves, are therefore declared forever free.17
According to established military tradition, Butler and Hunter were technically correct, but the implications were enormous. If the runaways were “contraband of war,” then, by extension, the army, not Lincoln, held authority in the Confederate States of America. Butler and Hunter’s acts incensed Lincoln. He had no intention of wading into the fight over slavery, knowing it would exacerbate the resistance of the already incorrigible slaveholding states. “If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it,” Lincoln explained to New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley, “and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. What I do about slavery and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save this Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union.”18 Lincoln quickly rescinded Hunter’s order, but it was too late. The Confederate States were officially recognized as a separate entity.
But General Hunter’s controversial order that would eventually set Lincoln, Congress, and the Union forces on the path toward enlisting free Black recruits and emancipating slaves was not his own idea. Hunter often consulted with a battlefield nurse who had been helping slaves flee to freedom, enlarging Hunter’s crew of renegade soldiers. Hunter had even been paying her, but after the army stopped Hunter from recruiting Black soldiers, she gave up her salary so she wouldn’t be seen as Hunter’s favorite. Instead, she baked pies in the evening to sell to the white soldiers. Reenter Harriet Tubman. The famed conductor of the Underground Railroad was instrumental in Hunter’s success in the South. Tubman’s years of experience facilitating escapes gave Hunter access to a veritable super-soldier. Tubman could map the terrain for other troops, gather intelligence from the enslaved, and lead reconnaissance missions without being detected. Clearly understanding the advantage Black soldiers gave the Union, Hunter continued to antagonize the treasonous Southerners, enlisting their fugitive slaves to fight against them.
Source :
Black AF History: The Un-Whitewashed Story of America page 156, 157, 158