document 12.9 “Emancipation of the Slaves by the
confederate Government,” Charleston Mercury
1864As the war became increasingly desperate for the South, the Confederate government
offered emancipation to male slaves who were willing to fight for secession. In this
excerpt from November 3, 1864, the Charleston Mercury comments on this proposal.Now, if there was any single proposition that we thought was unquestion-
able in the Confederacy it was this—that the States, and the States alone, have
the exclusive jurisdiction and mastery over their slaves. To suppose that any
slave-holding country would voluntarily leave it to any other power than its
own, to emancipate its slaves, is such an absurdity, that we did not believe a
single intelligent man in the Confederacy could entertain it. Still less could we
believe that after what had taken place under the United States, with respect to
slavery in the Southern States, it was possible that any pretension to emancipate
slaves could be set up for the Confederate States. It was because the exclusion
of slaves from our Territories by the Government of the United States, looked
to their emancipation, that we resisted it. The power to exercise it was never
claimed by that Government. The mere agitation in the Northern States to effect
the emancipation of our slaves largely contributed to... [our] separation from
them. And now, before a Confederacy which we established to put at rest for-
ever all such agitation is four years old, we find the proposition gravely submit-
ted that the Confederate Government should emancipate slaves in the States.
South Carolina, acting upon the principle that she and she alone had the power
to emancipate her slaves, has passed laws prohibiting their emancipation by any
of her citizens, unless they are sent out of the State; and no free person of color
already free, who leaves the State, shall ever afterwards enter it. She has laws
now in force, prohibiting free negroes, belonging either to the Northern States,
or to European powers, from entering the States and by the most rigid provi-
sions, they are seized and put into prison should they enter it. These were her
rights, under the Union of the United States, recognized and protected by the
Government of the United States, and acquiesced in by all foreign nations. And,
now, here, it is proposed that the Government of the Confederate States, not
only has the right to seize our slaves and to [make] them soldiers, but to eman-
cipate them in South Carolina, and compel us to give them a home amongst us.
We confess, that our indignation at such pretensions is so great, that we are at
a loss to know how to treat them. To argue against them is self-stultification.
They are as monstrous as they are insulting.
The pretext for this policy is, that we want soldiers in our armies. This pretext
is set up by the Enquirer [a rival newspaper] in the face of the fact disclosed by290 ChapTER 12 | War and eManCipation | period Five 18 44 –187713_STA_2012_ch12_275-306.indd 290 31/03/15 4:53 PM