TH HE Emancipation Proclamation must be understood in the perspective of the events preceding it, and as a catalyst of events to come. While it formalized the changed legal status of the Negro, emancipation did not of its own weight secure to him an equivalent change in economic, social, and political status. Antecedent to emancipation were some two centuries of struggle, and of changing legal and political institutions. Dramatic as emancipation may have been in 1863, it followed efforts by Negroes, working in slavery and subjection, to gain freedom for themselves by purchase, by flight, by insurrection, and by the good will of slaveholders. It also followed decades of individual and organized activities by abolitionists, white and Negro, from both North and South. The introduction of slavery into this country set in motion a historical process leading directly to the Emancipation Proclamation. In this connection, Frederick Douglass, distinguished Negro American abolitionist, has said: 1 No one can tell the day of the month, or the month When the artist was giving conception to the Freedmen's Memorial to Abraham Lincoln for erection in Lincoln Park, 1 1 Douglass, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass 608 (1884). Washington, D.C., in 1876, his original cast represented the slave kneeling in a completely passive position, receiving his freedom at the hands of Lincoln, his liberator. Under criticism, this conception was changed, so that the slave, although kneeling to receive freedom at the hands of the emancipator, was also represented as exerting his own strength to break his chains. This change in symbolism is supported by a brief review of the slave's struggle for equality prior to emancipation. 2 Early History 4 In 1619, John Rolfe, secretary and recorder of the Virginia colony, reported that "about the last of August there came to Virginia a Dutch man of warre that sold us twenty negers." " The first Negroes were not regarded as slaves. Prior to 1661, there was no legal sanction for slavery in the colony of Virginia. During this early period the Negro was looked upon as an indentured servant, a bondsman for a period who could look forward to his freedom after a term of years. One of the Negroes in the first shipment, Anthony Johnson, received his freedom in a few years. He became a landowner and a man of wealth who, at one time, was himself an owner of "slaves." It was not long, however, before the Negro, unlike the white indentured servant, was regarded as a bondsman for life. Once given legal recognition, the institution of slavery was firmly established. Hundreds of Negroes obtained freedom by flight. They not only fled to the Indian tribes, to Canada, and to the Spaniards in Florida, but also made their way to northern colonies where slavery was not so fixed as in the southern 2 See generally Durman, He Belongs to the Ages; The Statues of Abraham Lincoln 45 (1951). 3 Phillips, American Negro Slavery (1918); Woodson and Wesley, The Negro in Our History (1962). *Davie, Negroes in American Society 17 (1949). 5 Woodson and Wesley, op. cit. supra note 3, at 82. colonies. The open country and its unsettled areas made possible an extensive use of this avenue of escape. Free Negroes and whites gave shelter to the runaway slaves. Penalties were placed upon the free Negroes for this action, but this method was in use from the colonial era until emancipation. The United States came late to the worldwide movement for the abolition of slavery. In England the institution had been attacked in the 18th century by individuals such as John Locke, Daniel Defoe, Alexander Pope, Adam Smith, Thomas Paine, and John Wesley. The Society of Friends became the first group to petition Parliament for the abolition of slavery in 1784. At the urging of the 20-year-old Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, Britain forbade the trade by act of Parliament in 1808. The critics then beban to agitate for the abolition of slavery itself in British colonies and territories. After a conditional emancipation plan launched in 1834 proved unsatisfactory an act providing immediate emancipation for all slaves in British territories was passed in 1838. Other European nations took similar steps during this period and in 1841, by the Treaty of London, the leading European powers attempted to stamp out the remnants of the slave trade.10 Slavery was also abolished in the newly independent South American nations. Chile, Colombia, Bolivia, Guatemala, 6 Arnold, History of Abraham Lincoln and the Overthrow of Slavery 35 (1866); Dumond, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America 335 (1961); Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom: A History of American Negroes 250 (1956). 7 Greenidge, Slavery 127–29 (1958). 8 Id. at 132, 138. 9 10 • Wilson, Emancipation: Its Course and Progress 17-18 (1882). Greenidge, op. cit. supra note 7, at 172. During the Civil War the United States entered into a similar treaty with Great Britain. Id. at 172-73. Mexico, Uruguay, Argentina, and Peru had acted by 1854." But the United States lagged behind, although sentiment for the freedom of the Negro had begun almost with his enslavement and had continued throughout American history. Slavery was attacked on moral, religious, and philosophical grounds. However, except for the organized Quaker agitation, the anti-slavery movement in the early colonial period was largely the work of individuals. It took nearly a century after the first of the organized protests, the Germantown protest of 1688, for organized protest to become widespread.12 The free Negro population was increased by individual manumissions, which were continuous over the decades of slavery. Several methods were used. One of these was by acts of the legislature and others were by deeds and wills. Manumissions by deeds grew out of the custom of granting papers to indentured servants on the expiration of their terms of service. Some slaveholders manumitted their slaves because slavery was contrary to their religious beliefs and they thought it morally wrong. As the practice grew, manumissions were opposed and discouraged in State after State. Legislation often forbade manumission and, when permitted, bond was required so that the slave manumitted would not become a community charge.13 Some Negroes secured their freedom by purchase. They were often permitted to work as artisans and mechanics and to labor outside of the hours due their masters. They were also hired to other masters. If they were allowed to keep and save a portion of the earnings, they could eventually pay for their own freedom.1 11 Wilson, op. cit. supra note 9, at 13, 21; Booth, Zachary Macaulay: His Part in the Movement for the Abolition of the Slave Trade and of Slavery 73 (1934). 12 2 Channing, History of the United States 395-97 (1930). 13 Simkins, A History of the South 117 (1953); Franklin, op. cit. supra note 6, at 214-15 (1956). 14 Franklin, op. cit. supra note 6, at 214. 668898-63 9 |