Loyalty, Citizenship and Suffrage in the Civil War

Loyalty, Citizenship and Suffrage in the Civil War
Forthright words though these were, it took the outbreak of civil war in April, to turn suffrage extension into an issue of central political importance for whites as well as blacks. There were three closely connected reasons for this transformation black participation in the struggle to defeat the
Confederacy; radical Republican attempts to ensure that African-American loyalty to the Union was rewarded with recognition of full citizenship and the evolving federal effort to restore the seceded states to their proper relations within the Union.
Most blacks may have had mixed feelings about their homeland at the time of the secession crisis but several leading figures recognized that the impending clash between the two sections offered the race an opportunity to reassert its demands for abolition and equal rights by dint of proven devotion to the United States. Foremost among them was Frederick
Douglass, who, having become disillusioned with temporizing Republicans during the recent suffrage campaign in New York, spent much of the winter of 1860–61 debunking the idea of attempting to fashion another humiliating compromise with seditious slaveholders. For him the only answer to secession was an unambiguous assertion of federal power. After the
Confederates attacked Fort Sumter in April, 1861, Douglass rejoiced openly at the enemy’s foolishness and threw himself immediately into the task of generating a popular hatred of the South which, he truly believed, could only redound to the benefit of African-Americans. With slaveholders the ultimate negative reference group for Northern whites, surely patriotic blacks were entitled to believe that they might at last be recognized as first-class citizens in their own country It was not long before the dream of a more inclusive American nationality began to evaporate. The Lincoln administration’s desire to conciliate War
Democrats and loyal slaveholders in the border states resulted in a conservative policy on slavery during the first year of the Civil War. Grassroots racism meant that spontaneous African-American offers to fight for the
Union were rejected brusquely by Northern politicians and administrators.
This response appeared to bolster the view of one black New Yorker that it was pointless for African-Americans to fight in the defense of a nation which oppressed them We of the North must have all rights which white men enjoy until then we are in no condition to fight under the flag which gives us no protection.”
10
If black cynicism in the early stages of the Northern war effort was fully justified, the exigencies of war ultimately fulfilled the millennial hope of
Frederick Douglass and other reformers that sacrifice on the battlefield would redeem the nation’s sins, particularly the ultimate sin of slaveholding.
In September, 1862, the failure of Union armies to make significant headway against the Confederacy finally induced President Lincoln to issue a
214
•
Robert Cook

preliminary emancipation proclamation. Citing military necessity rather than any moral imperative, the document declared that from January 1, all slaves belonging to rebel owners would be free under US. law. The measure was far from popular with conservatives (and contributed to a revival of Democrat fortunes in the 1862 congressional elections) but Lincoln held firm and signed the historic proclamation at the beginning of the new year. Importantly, the document also provided for the enlistment of former slaves into the armed forces of the republic, a move which had long been called for by many northerners impatient with what they saw as the government’s overly cautious response to the rebellion. When Congress passed a nonracial Conscription Act shortly afterwards, Douglass and other race leaders responded positively to the government’s belated recognition of black resources by acting as recruitment agents or serving as noncommissioned officers in segregated units. By the end of the war black troops had served in the Union armies and navies, making a substantial contribution to the final defeat of the Confederacy in 1865. Liberated slaves constituted the largest proportion of this total but nearly a fifth of black troops serving in the Union armies were free blacks from the Northern states.
11
Powerful evidence of elite and grassroots black support for the Union during the Civil War indicated the determination of most African-Americans to assert their manhood and devotion to anew Union purged of slavery and discrimination. Through their brave deeds on the battlefield, and continued political agitation, they expected to earn and receive the civil rights enjoyed by the white male citizens of the republic.
From the beginning of 1863 African-Americans and some of their more radical white allies hastened to add suffrage extension to apolitical agenda still headed by the demand for the unqualified abolition of slavery in the United States. Five weeks after promulgation of the Emancipation
Proclamation, Frederick Douglass told an audience in New York City that it was difficult to grasp the significance of the President’s action. The change in the attitude of the Government is vast and startling he said. For more than sixty years the Federal Government has been little better than a stupendous engine of Slavery and oppression, through which Slavery has ruled us, with a rod of iron As further evidence of the dramatic shift in official attitudes to his race, Douglass also noted a recent decision of
U.S. Attorney General Edward Bates that blacks were citizens of the United
States. As a result of this opinion, contended Douglass, he spoke not only as a colored man and an American but as a colored citizen, having, in common with all other citizens a stake in the safety, prosperity, honor, and glory of a common country.”
12
Although Douglass neglected to mention that Bates had distinguished between citizenship and suffrage, it was not long before he was making the connection from A to B. Before a predominantly
Black Suffrage
•
215

white audience in Brooklyn in May, 1863, he asserted that a just realignment of the relationship between whites and African-Americans was critical to the nation’s future well-being. Noting that the term Negro was currently the most pregnant word in the English language he advocated the black man’s most full and complete adoption into the great national family of
America.” Proper integration demanded the most perfect civil and political equality, and that he shall enjoy all the rights, privileges and immunities enjoyed by any other members of the body politic.”
13
Douglass’s effortless shift from citizenship to suffrage was a natural one for an expert political agitator, particularly a black one, to make but it was probably based on a willful misreading of the Attorney General’s opinion,
which had been delivered on November 29, 1862. In that decision Edward
Bates, a conservative Republican from Missouri, had rejected Chief Justice
Taney’s ruling in the Dred Scott case that blacks could not be considered citizens of the United States. Asserting that ancient and contemporary authorities supported abroad definition of national citizenship, Bates undermined Taney’s decision by contending, first, that all free persons born in the United States were citizens of the United States and, second, that the Court’s controversial definition of citizenship was largely “dehors the record and therefore of no authority as a legal decision.
14
While Bates emphasized that he did not concur with the Aristotelian notion that political rights flowed naturally from citizenship (how could he after defining women and children as well as free blacks as citizens) his ruling made the citizenship portion of the Dred Scott decision a dead letter.
Edward Bates was no friend of black suffrage and would emerge from the war a committed opponent of those Republicans who vaunted what he called the absurd theory of the exact equality of all men.”
15
However, his liberal definition of citizenship was meat and drink not only to black leaders like Frederick Douglass but also to progressive Republicans at the heart of the Lincoln administration. Foremost among these humanitarian radicals was the Secretary of the Treasury, Salmon P. Chase. A churchgoing
Episcopalian, committed opponent of Southern slavery, and a supporter of black suffrage as early as 1843, Chase had been one of the supreme architects of the republican coalition in the s. In this capacity he had sometimes subordinated the fight against racial prejudice to the broader struggle against the slave power. Many contemporaries regarded him as an arrogant and aloof figure driven by an overweening ambition for the highest political office. The charge was by no means unjust but it should not be allowed to disguise the fact that Chase possessed a keen moral sense and a remarkably prescient awareness that the fate of the republic was closely bound up with that of African-Americans.
In common with most radical Republicans, Salmon Chase struggled not only with his own racial prejudices (which inclined him towards a
216
•
Robert Cook

paternalistic attitude towards blacks) but also with the white supremacist assumptions of most Northern voters. Even while holding strong antislavery views, therefore, he could delude himself into thinking that blacks might be better off in Africa. Colonization proved to be attractive to many politicians in antebellum America and Chase was not unusual in regarding voluntary emigration as one solution to the problem of race relations in the United
States. But while he gave a cautious welcome to President Lincoln’s scheme to colonize blacks in Central America as late as November, 1861, wartime events convinced him that slavery, the engine of the rebellion, had to be destroyed that blacks were morally entitled to equal rights under the law;
and, crucially, that because Southern slaves were the only substantial loyal population in the South, liberated blacks ought to be enfranchised in order to counter the baleful influence of their former masters. By August, Chase could be heard in cabinet suggesting that eventually loyal blacks in the border slave states might be allowed to vote. For him, proven devotion to the Union—not race or color—should be the principal qualification for manhood suffrage.
Of course, the powerful Minister was well aware that the Dred Scott decision constituted a major obstacle to franchise extension at a time when the process of Reconstruction was already beginning in Union-occupied areas of the South. If the government did not consider blacks to be national citizens then clearly it would find it difficult to convince anyone that the race should enjoy the same political privileges as whites. When, on Augusta black skipper was detained off the coast of New Jersey on the grounds that only US. citizens were allowed to captain vessels engaged in the coasting trade, Chase therefore seized the opportunity to ask Attorney General
Bates to consider the simple question are colored men Citizens of the U.S.,
and therefore Competent to command American vessels?”
16
Although, as shown above, Bates answered in the affirmative without endorsing black suffrage, Chase knew all along that male citizenship and suffrage were closely equated in the public mind and that therefore an official declaration that free blacks enjoyed national citizenship was likely to prove a potent weapon in the nascent struggle to influence Reconstruction. Like Frederick Douglass,
the secretary would make the leap from citizenship to suffrage with consummate ease.

Download 2.25 Mb.

Share with your friends: