THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATIONS AND THE
VIRGINIA PEOPLE
Our review of the record of the Federal Government with respect to
slavery and the attitude of the Republican Party, which had just assumed
control of its Executive and Legislative Departments, in regard thereto,
is sufficient to demonstrate that, at the time Virginia seceded, she
could not have been actuated by a selfish desire to defend the
institution against the hostile power of the Nation. There was no
rallying of the people of Virginia to resist a threatened edict of
emancipation because no such proclamation had ever been suggested. As we
shall see, the proclamation which aroused them to arms was the call of
President Lincoln for seventy-five thousand men to re-establish the
authority of the National Government in the Southern Confederacy and the
demand that Virginia should furnish her quota of soldiers for the
momentous undertaking. Virginia, denying the right of the Federal
Government to enter upon this policy of armed coercion, withdrew from
the Union along with North Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas. On this
great issue the battle was joined and men by the thousands gave their
lives to the rival claims of Home Rule versus National Supremacy. The
war thus precipitated went onward with its terrible fruitage of death
and destruction for nearly a year and a half when President Lincoln
issued his first Proclamation of Emancipation. Could any change or
attempted change, by the Federal Government, of the motives for the
struggle on the part of the Northern people change the motives which
actuated the people of Virginia and shift for them the gage of battle?
That the proclamations did not in fact convert the contest on the part
of the Southern States from a war waged for their independence into one
for the maintenance of slavery is manifest from the terms of the
proclamations themselves and the unchanged attitude of the Southern
people. The first proclamation threatened the emancipation of the slaves
in states, or portions of states, which might still be found in arms
against the Union one hundred days thereafter, and exempted from
emancipation slaves in states and portions of states which would
surrender their battle for independence. Had the Federal Government
offered to accord the Southern States their independence provided they
would abolish slavery then their rejection of such an offer and their
continuance to do battle might have rendered them liable to the charge
of fighting to maintain the institution. But the offer and threat
presented just the other alternative and were alike unavailing to stop
the struggle on the part of the Southern people. To quote the language
of Mr. Lincoln:
"After the commencement of hostilities, I struggled nearly a year and
a half to get along without touching the institution, and when finally
I conditionally determined to touch it, I gave a hundred days fair
notice of my purpose to all the states and people within which time
they could have turned it wholly aside by simply again becoming good
citizens of the United States."[338]