March 6, 2019
Although is
considered one of the two greatest of American presidents Martin Luther King
didn't seem to think too highly of him calling Lincoln a waffler when it came
to freeing slaves.
MLK made this remark in
regard to the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation which supposedly freed slaves but
really didn't.
The proclamation only
affected slaves that were in Confederate States and none that were actually in
Union states or areas controlled by the Union.
In other words, the
proclamation freed slaves that could not be free because they were in Southern
States and did not free slaves who were in states where they could have simply
walked away.
Liberals mistakenly
believed that all of the slaves at the time of the Civil War were in states
that seceded from the union. This was not the case.
Martin Luther King of
course was wrong about Lincoln.
Lincoln moves were
calculated he was no waffler. Although considered an abolitionist also Lincoln
differed from other abolitionists in that he respected the rule of law.
Slavery was legal in
more than half the states and Lincoln -- while appalled by the horrors of
slavery -- thought that the law should be obeyed until it could be changed.
Abolitionist – fed on
propaganda like the extremely flawed and largely inaccurate Uncle Tom’s Cabin
-- in general saw the law as so immoral that nobody should obey it and wanted
slavery ended immediately.
The South was
actually on its way to eventually outlawing slavery by the mid-1830s because it
had become completely unprofitable but needed to end slavery slowly because of
just how deeply entrenched it was in the entire economy.
While most Southerners
did not own slaves those who did either use them or rent them out to various industries
so that slaves accounted for the labor force in the entire structure not just
farm industry.
There were many
reforms already underway in the South especially in regard to the education of
African Americans which would ultimately prepare them to become a wage labor
force in the South.
Two events ultimately
change the course of American history and led directly to the Civil War.
A massive slave uprising
in Haiti that the resulted in the slaughter of 80,000 whites, massive rape of
white women and other atrocities by slaves caused a massive panic in the south.
Overnight the reform
movement in the South especially the Abolitionist Movement – which at the time
was larger in the South than even in the North -- evaporated. Laws were passed to prohibit the education of
black people, laws largely ignored by many of the prominent generals who fought
for the south in the Civil War including Stonewall Jackson and General Forrest.
Both of them ho continued to provide education for their slaves with the aim of
their eventual freedom.
By far am even more
significant event was the invention of the cotton gin which needed massive
labor to feed and caused the South to rethink its plan to abolish slavery.
Lincoln although seen
as an abolitionist president and someone whose election lead directly to the
Civil War was far more interested in containing slavery to those states that
already had it and to keep it from spreading to emerging territories out west.
He hoped to keep the
union together by allowing slavery to slowly wither out in the south.
The problem was that
as territories became states, they brought with them votes in Congress that
eventually would have led to non-slave states out voting those states which
maintained slavery.
This is the actual
reason for the Civil War.
In order to avoid the
inevitable takeover of federal government by non-slave States the South decided
to form its own country.
Going into the Civil
War the South knew it could not win but hoped to force Lincoln and the North to
allow the south to secede.
There was significant
opposition in the North to freeing the slaves and the prospect of war was
unpopular except with the most fervent abolitionists.
The South hoped to
get the North to pressure Lincoln into a compromise that would allow the South to
walk away without a conflict.
Lincoln walked a very
fine line when it came to the war effort and each move was calculated in order
to keep the fragile balance of the north intact.
The emancipation
Proclamation was extremely unpopular in the North and Lincoln resorted to it as
a desperate move to create discord in the south at a time when the outcome of
the war was still in doubt.
The Emancipation
Proclamation managed to actually free no slaves at all.
The proclamation only
affected those States that had seceded where no one could be freed without
military force. It did not free slaves in those areas controlled by the Union
Lincoln feared that
if he freed the slaves in those states that had not seceded, he would drive
them into the other camp and prolong the war. It is for the same reason that
Lincoln could not possibly have freed the slaves at the beginning of the war. The
southern states had left the union and by declaring slaves free this might have
pushed those states that remained neutral into the southern camp.
Although slavery was
outlawed in many states it was still considered legal in the South and some of
the border states. Even more important
at the beginning of the war was the lack of total support from northern states.
Freeing the slaves
from the get-go might have completely unraveled the north as well.
New Jersey was the
last of the northern states to outlaw slavery and this came barely a decade
before the Civil War. New Jersey was so sympathetic to the South that it nearly
succeeded when the South did, remaining in the union only by a single vote
majority in the legislature.
New York City which
was the home of most of the slave traders operated right up until the
Emancipation Proclamation in 1863.
Many portions of the
North we're appalled by this Proclamation and actually opposed the freeing of
the slaves because they feared that the slaves would come north and take jobs
from the new immigrant population now coming into the United States
The South had
actually outlawed importing of any new slaves well before the beginning of the
Civil War not a well-known fact but appeared to want to rescind this as they
became a major producer for cotton for the world. Many northern merchants that
made their money off cotton also opposed the war – especially those who
actually owned the ships that transported slaves. These merchants largely resided
in New York City.
The one thing the
Emancipation Proclamation actually accomplished was to shut down New York
City's slave Traders.
In reality the
Emancipation Proclamation did little to disrupt the war effort but created a lot
of confusion in the South where slaves abandoned plantations in the presumption
that they were immediately freed. Union soldiers were forced to bring them back
to the plantations for their own safety because they were chasing Union
regiments onto Battlefield.
The Emancipation
Proclamation made no provisions for feeding, transporting or housing freed
slaves from the south. This means it was
never intended to actually free anyone. It was merely a political ploy to
temper down the anger of abolitionists who needed to have some real
accomplishment to take home to their own radical groups.
As with many of the
Contemporary radical groups a rallying around reparations and other racial
issues the abolitionists were largely all talk.
While some Quakers were involved in the Underground Railroad for the
most part that Railroad was operated by slaves and former slaves helping their
own.
The abolitionists had
no plan to help the masses of freed slaves that would have been freed and
Lincoln knew this, leaving them in place until after the war when he apparently
had plans of his own for helping them.
Those plans
unfortunately went for naught when he was assassinated, and the abolitionists
took over the federal government and went South as Carpetbaggers to exploit the
land and its population in the name of slave reparations and reconstruction.
So, when Martin
Luther King called Lincoln a waffler on the freedom of slaves, he may have misread
the situation -- although I personally think he knew perfectly well what he was
saying and what the conditions were and we're simply playing to his audience
the way most radicals do.
This is not to
condemn Martin Luther King for such rhetoric. He and Lincoln are the two
Monumental figures in the history of African-American freedom. MLK supplied the dream that allowed people to
have hope; Lincoln had to deal with the ugly details of making that freedom a
reality.