African American Soldiers 385Most white Northerners did not surrender their
comforting belief in black inferiority, and Lincoln was
no exception. Yet Lincoln was evolving. He talked
about deporting freed slaves to the tropics, but he did
not send any there. And he began to receive black
leaders in the White House and to allow black groups
to hold meetings on the grounds.
Many other Americans were changing too. The
brutality of the New York riots horrified many white
citizens. Over $40,000 was swiftly raised to aid the vic-
tims, and some conservatives were so appalled by the
Irish rioters that they began to talk of giving blacks the
vote. The influential Atlantic Monthlycommented, “It
is impossible to name any standard... that will give a
vote to the Celt [the Irish] and exclude the negro.”
The Emancipated People
To blacks, both slave and free, the Emancipation
Proclamation served as a beacon. Even if it failed
immediately to liberate one slave or to lift the bur-
dens of prejudice from one black back, it stood as a
promise of future improvement. “I took the procla-
mation for a little more than it purported,” Frederick
Douglass recalled in his autobiography, “and saw in
its spirit a life and power far beyond its letter.”
Lincoln was by modern standards a racist, but his
most militant black contemporaries respected him
deeply. Douglass said of him, “Lincoln was not...
either our man or our model. In his interests, in his
association, in his habits of thought and in his preju-
dices, he was a white man.” Nevertheless, Douglass
described Lincoln as “one whom I could love, honor,
and trust without reserve or doubt.”
As for the slaves of the South, after January 1, 1863,
whenever the “Army of Freedom” approached, they laid
down their plows and hoes and flocked to the Union
lines in droves. “We-all knows about it,” one black con-
fided to a northern clergyman early in 1863. “Only we
darsen’t let on. Wepretendsnot to know.” Such behavior
came as a shock to the owners. “[The slaves] who loved
us best—as we thought—were the first to leave us,” one
planter mourned. Talk of slave “ingratitude” increased.
Instead of referring to their workers as “servants” or
“my black family,” many owners began to describe them
as “slaves” or “niggers.”African American Soldiers
A revolutionary shift occurred in white thinking about
using black men as soldiers. Although they had fought
in the Revolution and in the Battle of New Orleans
during the War of 1812, a law of 1792 barred blacks
from the army. During the early stages of the rebel-
lion, despite the eagerness of thousands of free blacks
to enlist, the prohibition remained in force. By 1862,
however, the need for manpower was creating pres-
sure for change. In August Secretary of War Edwin M.
Stanton authorized the military government of the
captured South Carolina sea islands to enlist slaves inThis lithograph of the New York draft riots, 1863, shows that although the rioters mainly targeted blacks, they also attacked homes and
businesses of prominent Republicans: Brooks Brothers, Horace Greeley's newspaper, and the Times.