The Civil War: During and After
In 1862, Abraham Lincoln used his annual message to Congress to make a clear connection between the preservation of the Union and the abolition of slavery. “Without slavery the rebellion could never have existed; without slavery it could not continue,” he was quoted as saying. However, several things happened to sabotage the emancipation of slaves. The message came a little more than two months after Lincoln announced the Emancipation Proclamation. It would officially go into effect a month later, on January 1, 1863. It also took place in the wake of an electoral criticism of his political party in the November elections. As a result, Lincoln attempted to strike a peacemaking tone, by saying that, “The great diversity of sentiment, and of policy, in regard to slavery, and the African race amongst us,” is an understandable division. He tried to push a plan of compensating the slave owners that would pay states that abolished slavery before 1900.
Lincoln was trying to play to the greedy interests of the slave owners. He was trying to make it a financial issue for the slave owners instead of a moral crusade, but slave owners would have none of it. Lincoln failed to understand that the poor whites that the slave owners were using to fight their dirty war were not going to accept a reduction in status. If slavery were ended poor whites would get none of the money and their belief that white skin was superior would be shattered. With an end to slavery, Blacks would be the equal of whites. This would disrupt their world of white supremacy.
To prove the point, the southern states did not accept the suggestion of pay at future date, and even when the South lost the war they plotted to undo and sabotage the three Civil Rights Amendments; the 13th, the 14th, and the 15th amendments to the constitution. Do not let anyone tell you that the 13th Amendment abolished slavery—it did not! The 13th Amendment was destroyed in the southern states by their helpers in the Congress that added one litter word, “but.”
The wording of this amendment allowed for slavery to continue by another name which was mainly “vagrancy law.” If Blacks were not working they could be fined and sent back to a plantation to work off the fine often for undefined periods of time. The white racist legislatures in the South conspired to sabotage the 14th Amendment with all white judges, all white juries, and all white law enforcement. They also schemed to prevent Blacks from voting by creating state laws that required poll taxes, literacy tests, grandfather clauses in some states, and their best weapon that only savage lunatics would think of—violence against any Black person trying to vote or register to vote. They also burned all the Freedmen Bureau Schools that were attempting to teach Blacks to learn to read and write.
When the order that slaves were freed in Texas, on Juneteenth, General Gordan Granger sabotaged it by not providing protection for Blacks who gathered around military forts, and went so far as to require Black people to carry passes when traveling. To make matters worse Black people were either chased off plantations with no food or a place to go or prevented from leaving a plantation under the threat of death. Some Blacks were murdered if they celebrated Juneteenth. The true history of white supremacy must be taught even if we must do it on the sidewalk in front of the Governor’s mansion.
