1863: The Rebirth of a Nation

A fierce blizzard ushered the new year into New England. In Boston traffic was brought to a standstill by blowing and drifting snow. Some 3,000 antislavery stalwarts ventured out nonetheless, making their way on foot to the Music Hall, where a program of speeches and music celebrating the signing of the final Emancipation Proclamation was scheduled for late afternoon.

In attendance was a pantheon of American letters: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and John Greenleaf Whittier, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Charles Eliot Norton and Francis Parkman. Many of the antislavery movement's leading lights were there, too, including former Boston mayor Josiah Quincy, Jr., novelist Harriet Beecher Stowe, and newspaper publisher William Lloyd Garrison.

The concert began shortly after 5 p.m., when Emerson walked out on stage and gave a dramatic reading of an ode he had composed especially for the occasion:

The word of the Lord by night
To the watching Pilgrims came,
As they sat by the seaside,
And filled their hearts with flame. . . .

My angel,--his name is Freedom,--
Choose him to be your King;
He shall cut pathways east and west
And fend you with his wing. . . .

I break your bonds and masterships,
And I unchain the slave:
Free be his heart and hand henceforth
As wind and wandering wave.

The Concord bard's passionate declamation brought the audience to its feet clapping and cheering. The rapturous mood was sustained by Oliver Wendell Holmes, who recited his poem "Army Hymn," and by conductor Carl Zerrahn, who led the Boston Philharmonic in stirring renditions of Beethoven's "Ode to Joy,"Mendelssohn's "Hymn of Praise," and Handel's "Hallelujah" chorus.

The high point of the evening was to be the announcement that the president had signed the proclamation, and the anticipation in the stifling theater was palpable. But as the hours passed and no word came, the "watching pilgrims" grew anxious. Rumors that Lincoln had succumbed to political pressure and withdrawn the edict circulated through the crowd. Many people found themselves repeating the warning voiced several days earlier by abolitionist clergyman Henry Ward Beecher: "It is far easier to slide down the banisters than to go up the stairs."

Outside the Music Hall the storm had stopped, and the skies were starting to clear. The renowned black orator Frederick Douglass was walking from his lodgings near Boston Common to Tremont Temple, where he was to be the featured speaker at an emancipation celebration sponsored by the Negro-run Union Progressive Association. Douglass was in a jubilant mood as he trudged along the snow-covered streets, looking up at the stars that twinkled through breaks in the low clouds. The soft glow of the lanterns framing the Temple entrance seemed to him almost divinely radiant, and as he entered the building and took his place on the stage, he gave thanks to God that he had lived to see this day.

A line of messengers had been posted between the Temple and the city telegraph office so that news of the proclamation's signing could be rushed to the waiting audience without delay. "Eight, nine, ten o'clock came and went and still no word," Douglass wrote of the vigil. "At last, when patience was well-nigh exhausted, and suspense was becoming agony, a man advanced through the crowd, and with a face fairly illumined with the news he bore, exclaimed in tones that thrilled all hearts, 'It is coming!' 'It is on the wires!' "

There was a moment of stunned silence; then hats and bonnets were hurled into the air, and people shouted, wept, and jumped for joy. The whole audience joined in singing the jubilee song, "Blow Ye the Trumpet, Blow," after which the text of the proclamation was read aloud. Finally, when the cheering had subsided, Douglass strode to the front of the stage. He raised his arms high and led the throng in a hymn of deliverance, his organlike baritone throbbing with emotion as he sang:

Sound the loud timbrel o'er Egypt's dark sea,
Jehovah hath triumphed, His people are free.

At the Music Hall news of the proclamation's signing caused a commotion "such as was never before seen from such an audience in that place." Casting aside their customary reserve, the Boston abolitionists gave three thunderous cheers for Abraham Lincoln, then three more for William Lloyd Garrison. The crowd was close to hysteria when someone started a rhythmic chant for Harriet Beecher Stowe. The author of Uncle Tom's Cabin acknowledged the huzzahs by coming to the rail of the balcony where she had been inconspicuously seated. She was too overcome by emotion to speak. Gazing down into the sea of upturned faces, she could only wave, bow deeply, and dab at her brimming eyes.

The Music Hall celebrants eventually shouted themselves hoarse and went home. But the black revelers at Tremont Temple were too excited to disperse. At midnight they moved to the nearby Twelfth Baptist Church. There the joyful strains of "John Brown's Body," "Marching On," and "Glory Hallelujah" continued to sound until dawn, when the exhausted but still-ebullient assembly finally broke up.



Nine hundred miles southwest of Boston, in Savannah, Georgia, Colonel Charles Colcock Jones, Jr., scion of a wealthy plantation family, spent New Year's Day worrying about emancipation's effect on the Confederacy. "I look upon it as a . . . most infamous attempt to incite flight, murder, and rapine on the part of our slave population," he wrote. "The North furnishes an example of refined barbarity, moral degeneracy, religious impiety, soulless honor, and absolute degradation almost beyond belief."

The only acceptable response, he argued, was reprisal. "By the statute law of the state, anyone who attempts to incite insurrection among our slaves shall, if convicted, suffer death. Is it right, is it just to treat with milder considerations the lawless bands of armed marauders who will infest our borders to carry into practical operation the proclamation of the infamous Lincoln, subvert our entire social system, desolate our homes, and convert the quiet, ignorant, dependent black son of toil into a savage incendiary and brutal murderer?"

The answer, he concluded, was no, although he was not unmindful of the dire consequences that executing prisoners of war might have. "It does indeed appear impossible to conjecture where all this will end," he lamented.



Twenty-five miles northeast of Savannah, at Camp Saxton in the Union-controlled Sea Islands of South Carolina, the arrival of the new year and the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation were commemorated with patriotic speeches, a dress parade, and a big barbecue.

A large, predominantly black crowd began congregating for the festivities around 10 a.m., arriving at the camp by boat and wagon from the plantations at nearby Beaufort, Port Royal, St. Helena, and Hilton Head Islands. Women wearing gingham frocks, delicately fringed shawls, white aprons, and brightly colored scarfs; men dressed in dark trousers, tightly buttoned vests, and Sunday-go-to-meeting coats, gathered about a speakers' platform that had been erected in a grove of towering live oak trees. The morning was cool and bright, and the beards of Spanish moss trailing from the branches stirred in the brine-scented breeze gusting off Port Royal Sound.

The celebration began at eleven-thirty when the soldiers of the First South Carolina Volunteers, a new all-black infantry regiment, formed into ranks behind the platform. Resplendent in their dark blue jackets and red pantaloons, the troops proudly performed the manual of arms, whipping their rifles through the movements so smartly that watching white officers whistled in amazement.

The commander of the First South Carolina, Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson, stepped forward and unfurled a stand of colors presented to the regiment by the Church of the Puritans in New York City. Before he could begin his prepared remarks, the blacks in the audience burst into song, their voices rising sweet and clear as they sang: "My country, 'tis of thee, Sweet land of liberty." The soldiers quickly joined in and did not stop until they had sung all four verses. It was a spontaneous outpouring "so simple, so touching, so utterly unexpected and startling, that I can scarcely believe it on recalling," Higginson later wrote. "It seemed the choked voice of a race at last unloosed." Deeply moved, he told the crowd that its song had expressed the true meaning of the day far more eloquently than any speech he could make. He presented the flags to the regimental color guards, who led the troops onto the adjoining parade ground, where they marched back and forth, arms swinging and bayonets flashing.

When the close-order drill was finished, the regiment was dismissed and the barbecue began. Ten steers, one for each fifty-five-man company, had been spitted and roasted over a pit of glowing coals, and ten barrels of molasses and water had been mixed and placed on long picnic tables set beneath the trees. Soldiers and spectators alike drank and feasted all afternoon, and when the sun went down, a bonfire was lit and a "grand shout"--a cross between a revival meeting and a Sunday school sing-along--commenced. The winter moon rose over the sound, its pale silver light glittering off the waves, and as the sparks from the fire floated skyward to mingle with the twinkling stars, the ex-slaves sang "some of their sweetest, wildest hymns."



That same evening, four hundred miles to the northwest, Tennessee slaveowner John Houston Bills retired to his study and breathed a sigh of relief: New Year's Day was almost over and his eighty-odd field hands had not run away. "They do not perceive that they are free by Lincoln's proclamation," he scribbled in his diary. He hoped to get several more months' work out of them before they learned of the president's action, but he knew he could not count on it. "We have anticipated trouble," he wrote, "and I think will yet have it with regard to holding them."



One hundred miles north of the Bills plantation, in the bluegrass country of central Kentucky, John Montgomery Ashley assembled his slaves in the great hall of his home and told them about the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. Although Kentucky was a border state and thus exempt from the proclamation's provisions, Ashley had decided to give his servants the choice of continuing as his chattel or striking out on their own. He carefully explained the meaning of the document, then asked them what they wished to do.

For several minutes the blacks were silent. Then Uncle Dan, the oldest of the slaves, stepped forward. "Freedom are an unbroke filly and mighty skittish," he said, looking intently at his master. "But I are goin' to mount her just the same--rheumatiz, cane, and all. Marse Jack, you been a good master to these people, but there's nothin' like freedom--'cepting freedom."

And with that he hobbled out of the house, never to be seen by Ashley again.



Indiana private John McClure had gone to war to save the Union, not to end slavery. He felt betrayed when he learned what Lincoln had done on New Year's Day. "I used to think that we were fighting for the Union and Constitution, but we are not," he wrote with unconcealed bitterness. "We are fighting to free those colored gentlemen."

Like most of his comrades in the Union army, McClure disliked blacks and abhorred emancipation. "If I had my way about things, I would shoot ever[y] nigger I came across," he declared. As for the president's proclamation, he hoped it would fail and that "Old Abe and all the rest of his nigger lovers" would be thrown out of office in the next election.



Five blocks from the White House, in front of the offices of the Washington Evening Star, Henry M. Turner, the black pastor of the Israel Bethel Church, waited impatiently for word that the president had signed the Emancipation Proclamation. Although Congress had freed slaves in the District of Columbia eight months earlier, the local black community remained intensely interested in the fate of friends and loved ones still being held in bondage in Maryland and Virginia, or confined to one of the contraband camps--detention centers for runaway slaves--scattered throughout the city.

The crowd in front of the Star building had grown to several hundred when, shortly after 5 p.m., a man appeared at the door lugging a thick bundle of newspapers. "The first sheet . . . with the proclamation in it was grabbed for by three of us," Turner recalled years later, "but some active young man got possession of it and fled. The next sheet was grabbed for by several, and was torn into tatters. The third sheet was grabbed for by several, but I succeeded in procuring so much of it as contained the proclamation, and . . . down Pennsylvania [Avenue] I ran as for my life."

When he arrived at his church, which was nearly a mile away, he was so out of breath, he could not speak. He handed the paper to another man, who promptly read it to the assembled congregation. "They raised a shouting cheer that was almost deafening," Turner wrote. "Men squealed, women fainted, dogs barked, white and colored people shook hands . . . and cannons began to fire at the navy-yard."

At the contraband camp on North Twelfth Street, a bellman made the rounds of the living quarters, summoning the residents to the chapel. By the hundreds they poured out of the drafty barracks, which had previously housed the dragoons of General McClellan's bodyguard, and made their way across the muddy quadrangle to the meetinghouse. The camp's patriarch, a grizzled old black man known as John the Baptist, led the assembly in prayer. Then Superintendent B. D. Nichols read aloud the edict of emancipation. Ecstatic cries arose as he spoke: "I am free! I am free!" and the entire group sang "Go Down Moses" and "There's a Better Day a-Coming."

When the spirituals were finished, the former slaves took turns telling of their experiences in bondage and of the joy they felt now that the day of jubilee had finally come. "Once the time was, that I cried all night," shouted one, a man named Thornton. "What's the matter? What's the matter? Matter enough. The next morning my child was to be sold, and I never expect to see her no more 'til the day of judgment. Now, no more of that! No more of that! No more of that! They can't sell my wife and child any- more, bless the Lord! No more of that! No more of that! No more of that now!"

After dark, a torch-carrying throng gathered in front of the White House and called loudly for the president. He appeared for an instant at a second-story window. The crowd screamed and cried that "if he would come out of that palace, they would hug him to death." Reverend Turner was in the midst of the wrought-up mob, and the feeling that swept over him when Lincoln showed his face was something he would never forget. "It was indeed a time of times," he marveled; "nothing like it will ever be seen again in this life."