The news of the Emancipation Proclamation has now spread throughout the North, as well as much of the South. Southern whites–including Southern Baptist newspaper editors–largely ignore the news, knowing that Abraham Lincoln‘s words are effectively meaningless as long as the Confederacy exists. Some Southern slaves hear whispers of a freedom announced from far away, hoping…
“Freedom’s Eve” has given way to the morning of January 1, the day U.S. President Abraham Lincoln is to sign the Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln arises in anticipation of signing the Proclamation, only to be distracted by a message from General Ambrose Burnside who, following his defeat at Fredericksburg two weeks earlier, is offended by a…
Today the complicated dynamics of African slavery are on vivid display when, three days prior to U.S. President Abraham Lincoln‘s much-anticipated Emancipation Proclamation, Confederate General Robert E. Lee, now devoted to defending human bondage in the Confederacy, is forced by law to free some 200 slaves previously-owned by his wife’s (Mary Anna Custis) father, George…