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Paul D. Escott - What Shall We Do with the Negro?: Lincoln, White Racism, and Civil War America

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Book:
What Shall We Do with the Negro?: Lincoln, White Racism, and Civil War America
Author:
Paul D Escott
Publisher:
University of Virginia Press
Genre:
Books / Politics
Year:
2009
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Throughout the Civil War, newspaper headlines and stories repeatedly asked some variation of the question posed by the New York Times in 1862, What shall we do with the negro? The future status of African Americans was a pressing issue for those in both the North and in the South. Consulting a broad range of contemporary newspapers, magazines, books, army records, government documents, publications of citizens organizations, letters, diaries, and other sources, Paul D. Escott examines the attitudes and actions of Northerners and Southerners regarding the future of African Americans after the end of slavery. What Shall We Do with the Negro? demonstrates how historians together with our larger national popular culture have wrenched the history of this period from its context in order to portray key figures as heroes or exemplars of national virtue.

Escott gives especial critical attention to Abraham Lincoln. Since the civil rights movement, many popular books have treated Lincoln as an icon, a mythical leader with thoroughly modern views on all aspects of race. But, focusing on Lincolns policies rather than attempting to divine Lincolns intentions from his often ambiguous or cryptic statements, Escott reveals a president who placed a higher priority on reunion than on emancipation, who showed an enduring respect for states rights, who assumed that the social status of African Americans would change very slowly in freedom, and who offered major incentives to white Southerners at the expense of the interests of blacks.
Escotts approach reveals the depth of slaverys influence on society and the pervasiveness of assumptions of white supremacy. What Shall We Do with the Negro? serves as a corrective in offering a more realistic, more nuanced, and less celebratory approach to understanding this crucial period in American history.

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WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH THE NEGRO?

Lincoln, White Racism,
and Civil War America

PAUL D. ESCOTT

UNIVESITY OF VIRGINIA PRESS

CHARLOTTESVILLE & LONDON

University of Virginia Press

2009 by the Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

First published 2009

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Escott, Paul D., 1947

What shall we do with the Negro?: Lincoln, white racism,

and Civil War America / Paul D. Escott.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-8139-2786-2 (alk. paper)

1. Lincoln, Abraham, 18091865Political and social views.

2. Lincoln, Abraham, 18091865Relations with African

Americans. 3. SlavesEmancipationUnited States.

4. African AmericansCivil rightsHistory19th century.

5. African AmericansLegal status, laws, etc.History

19th century. 6. RacePolitical aspectsUnited States

History19th century. 7. RacismUnited States

History19th century. 8. United StatesRace relations

History19th century. 9. United StatesPolitics and

government18611865. 10. WhitesUnited States

AttitudesHistory19th century. I. Title.

E457.2.E73 2009

973.7092dc22

2008034652

To David Wright Escott

What shall we do with the negro?

New York Times, 12 December 1862

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

UPON COMPLETION of a large project, one feels satisfaction and gratitude toward those who have helped him reach that point. Throughout my career I have been fortunate to receive enormous help and encouragement from Robert Durden, Raymond Gavins, Jeffrey Crow, and Emory Thomas. In polishing this book I have benefited greatly from the comments and advice of Ray Gavins, Jeff Crow, Bill Freehling, Michele Gillespie, and my editor, Dick Holway. I thank these individuals for their invaluable assistance and friendship. In addition, John David Smith and an anonymous reader for the University of Virginia Press provided extremely useful comments and suggestions. I thank Simone Caron, the chairperson of my department, for her steady support and two students, Katherine Powell and Amy Mueller, for research assistance. Any deficiencies of this text remain solely my responsibility.

INTRODUCTION

IN THE TRAGIC AFTERMATH of the invasion of Iraq, Americans began to reexamine basic assumptions about their nations foreign policy. Several decades ago the diplomat George F. Kennan undertook the same task and reached important conclusions. Kennan identified a persistent, unrealistic strain of thought in American diplomacy. Throughout the United States history as a world power, he wrote, Americans have been attracted to professions of high moral and legal principle as the basis of U.S. diplomatic practice. Kennan noted several ill effects of this attitude, among them a tendency to feel a moral superiority over other nations and the fact that these traits work a certain abuse on public understanding of international realities. The characteristics that Kennan regretted in foreign affairs also distort popular understanding of our nations domestic history. They work an abuse on an informed understanding of our past.

The idealistic and celebratory character of American attitudes toward the history of the United States has deep roots. Puritan settlers dedicated themselves to the task of creating a model communitya city on a hill. Many subsequent groups shared their idealism about the country and the sense, as Woodrow Wilson put it, that Columbuss discovery had given humankind an opportunity to set up a new civilization. The United States, Wilson declared in 1912 as he campaigned for the presidency, was to be a new human experiment... a new start in civilization... life from the old centres of living, surely, but cleansed of defilement. In Wilsons view, the Founding Fathers aspired to bring liberty to mankind, to create on consecrated soil a new government that would be a beacon of encouragement to all the nations of the world.Long ago, exalted patriotic images, rather than a realistic and factual appraisal, reflecting an awareness of societal shortcomings and difficulties, became the standard in popular culture for discussion of U.S. history. In public discourse about their history, Americans tend to emphasize only the nations successes, hiding inevitable human failures or disappointments behind images of greatness.

This pattern has deeply affected popular understanding of the Civil War era. An internecine conflict that claimed 625,000 lives should be undeniable proof that all has not gone well, that U.S. history is not an unbroken record of success. Perhaps the very carnage of that era has impelled many to search for consoling arguments rather than realistic appraisals. In any case, inspiring myths and idealistic themes of progress dominate popular reflections on what was undeniably an era of widespread destruction, tragedy, and unsolved problems. A casual observer could be excused for concluding that the years in which the American political system broke down and citizens slaughtered each other on a huge scale were actually a time of unalloyed progress. For in many comforting and rose-tinted interpretations, Americans discovered a leader of timeless greatness, eliminated the scourge of human slavery, moved toward equality for all, reined in state particularism to forge a stronger nation, and perfected the Constitution for future generations. In crisis, citizens met the challenge and speedily laid the foundation for a brighter destiny.

Professional historians have, of course, produced a far more detailed, accurate, factual, and sometimes sobering account of the Civil War than the one that prevails in popular culture. But scholars, too, often emphasize the positive and minimize the negative. This seems to be especially true in contemporary treatments of Abraham Lincoln and racial issues. Lincoln is a mythical figure in American culture. His eloquent prose has touched hearts and minds more profoundly through later decades than it did while he was alive. Invariably, historians rate him as one of the greatest, if not the greatest, of chief executives. If some of his positions disappoint modern sensibilities, studies typically compensate by emphasizing change and growth in his views. This attitude allows readers to think that, had Lincoln lived, he would have come to hold views of which they could uniformly be proud. Not coincidentally, a positive depiction of Lincoln facilitates positive conclusions about matters of race, the most serious and enduring of all the nations social problems. Scholarly studies generally focus more attention on wartime

This book takes a candid approach to the struggle of Civil War governments, North and South, with the issue of race. My purpose is not to deny that any good came out of the Civil War or to attack the reputation of Abraham Lincoln, but rather to present an undistorted, accurate analysis of Civil War policies and thought that related to the future of race relations and the future status of African Americans. To address this subject, I look at developments in both the Union and the Confederacy. Although this book covers events throughout the war period, my aim is to illuminate attitudes and policies affecting the future status of the freed people rather than to focus on the decision to emancipate. As we shall see, there is less to celebrate on these matters than on the narrowerbut still ambiguous and complicatedsubject of emancipation.

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