 Good evening. I'm David Ferriero, Archivist of the United States, and it's a pleasure to welcome you this evening to the William G. McGowan Theater here at the National Archives. Are they here with us in the theater or joining us through YouTube or Facebook? And a special welcome to our C-SPAN audience. I'm pleased you could join us for tonight's discussion on the significance of the Emancipation Proclamation and the D.C. Emancipation Act, and I hope that those of you who are here had a chance to view both documents upstairs. We present this program in partnership with the Government of the District of Columbia, the Lincoln Group of the District of Columbia, and David Kent, and we thank them all for their support. Before we start, I'd like to tell you about two other programs coming up soon in this theater. On Thursday, April 18th at 7 p.m., Donna Brasil, Yolanda Caraway, Lea Dardi, and Minion Moore will be here to share their personal journeys, marked by incredible successes and milestones, and offer roadmap for other women of color. Their new book is called For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Politics, and a book signing will follow the program. And on Wednesday, April 24th at 7, bestselling author Evan Thomas will be here to talk about his new book first, Sandra Day O'Connor, and American Life. Presidential historian Michael Beschloss will also join him in discussion. Check our website at archives.gov. You can sign up outside in the lobby to get email updates. You'll also find information about other National Archives programs and activities. And another way to get more involved with the National Archives is to become a member of the National Archives Foundation. This foundation supports all of our education and outreach activities. And you can check out the foundation website at archivesfoundation.org to learn more about them and join the foundation online. On this day, 157 years ago, an act for the release of certain persons held to service or labor in the District of Columbia became law, the DC Emancipation Act, ended slavery in Washington, D.C., freeing 3,100 enslaved individuals. For the past year, as war raged between the Union and the Confederacy, opponents of slavery had decried the scandal of slavery continuing to exist within the nation's capital. Eight and a half months later, President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, which did not free all enslaved persons, but sent a powerful signal that slavery would no longer be tolerated. As a milestone in the long journey toward abolishing slavery, the Emancipation Proclamation has assumed a place among the greatest documents of human freedom. The story of the Emancipation Proclamation is one that would help to redefine freedom and eventually change the course of history. Both the proclamation and the D.C. legislation represent a promise of hope, freedom, and justice that continues to inspire and resonate with the American people more than 150 years after its creation. Now it's my pleasure to welcome the Reverend Thomas Bowen to the stage. He is the Director of the Office of Religious Affairs and the Executive Office of the Mayor and the Interim Director of the Mayor's Office of African American Affairs and the Commission on Fathers, Men, and Boys. He serves as a liaison for the faith community in the District of Columbia and he also provides support to the Mayor's Interfaith Council. Please welcome Reverend Bowen. Well, thank you, Mr. Ferraro and good evening, everyone. It's a pleasure on behalf of Mayor Muriel Bowser, who perhaps should come back for that book discussion. You'll get that later. For she is the second two-term Mayor in Washington, D.C. in quite some time and the first woman two-term Mayor here in D.C. I'd be a greeting because it's a pleasure to join with the National Archives for this occasion, the Emancipation Proclamation and the Compensated Emancipation Act of 1862. President Lincoln signed that document, although he did not author it, on April the 16th because of that we have since 2005 claimed April the 16th as a holiday here in Washington, D.C. In the proper way, as many other holidays, King Holiday and others, to celebrate a day like D.C. Emancipation Day is not with a day off. It's not with spending our time in commerce, but it's to come to events like this to study our history, our culture, to know from whence we have come. I must say that I'm also considered myself a member of the National Archives family, for as a proud disciple of Alton Hornsby at Morehouse when the first job I landed was at the National Archives Southeast region. But it's with all that I've understood about history that I believe you with these words. I believe the words of George Santayana that those of us who do not remember our history or our past are condemned to repeat it. And I would just append to that statement that the best way to value, to appreciate our democracy is with a knowledge of our history. And so today is a special day. So I come just like you have to view those sacred documents and to hear from these esteemed panelists just about the road that we have traveled to pause as we continue along the struggle and the journey for total freedom for everyone. Thank you. Thank you, Reverend Bowen. And now on to our panelists and a special musical tribute. Our moderator this evening is Edna Green-Medford who is a professor, current chair and former director of graduate and undergraduate programs in Howard University's Department of History. Our panelists are Elizabeth Clark-Lewis, professor of history at Howard University, Roger Davidson, associate professor of history and government at Bowie State University, and historian and author, C.R. Gibbs. Before we, yes. Before we start our discussion, we have a special musical performance by the artist group Corral of Washington. The Corral is composed of professional and community singers who have been delighting audiences in this region since 2008 and very recently upstairs in the Rotunda. They are under the direction of co-founder Kelvin Page, who is president of the Ben Holt branch of the National Association of Negro Musicians and is active in teaching the performing arts. Now they will perform the song, Soon I Will Be Done by William Dawson. Soon I Will Be Done will be done to wake the travels of the world, Going home to live with God. Soon I Will Be Done will be done to wake the travels of the world, Soon I Will Be Done will be done to wake the travels of the world, Going home to live with God. I want to meet my mother. This evening, it's a very nice evening outside. So I know that some of us would rather be out there enjoying that beautiful weather. But you're going to be imprisoned here for about an hour and a half or so. But we know it will be well worth slight correction. I am no longer chair of the Department of History. I'm sure that Dr. Nikki Taylor, who is the chair, would want me to let you know that. I am at the moment, I'm currently interim dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Howard. But I will be returning to the department. You know, I will be returning to the department in August. And I'm really looking forward to it. We are here to commemorate two very important documents. The first is the DC Compensated Emancipation Act, which was signed by President Lincoln on April 16th, 1862. It was actually passed by Congress on April 11th. And President Lincoln signed it on April 16th. And we'll talk about that little period where there was lingering doubt about whether or not he was going to sign it. Of course, the Emancipation Proclamation was signed by President Lincoln on January 1st, 1863. So the DC Compensated Emancipation Act was enacted or passed more than eight months before the Emancipation Proclamation and about three and a half years before the 13th Amendment. And we will get into a discussion of how each of those differed. Before I start grilling my colleagues, I want to indicate just a little bit about each one of those documents. DC Compensated Emancipation actually stipulated that all enslaved people in the District of Columbia would be declared free. Their owners would be compensated for the loss of their property at the rate of no more than $300 per enslaved person lost. We will talk about the fact that some people did get more than that. Owners had to be loyal. They had to declare allegiance to the United States and that they could not have taken up arms in order to get compensated for their loss. There was also a colonization stipulation as well. $100,000 was allocated to enable African-Americans to go voluntarily, it says, out of the country, either to Liberia or to Haiti. And that's a part of the measure that we don't talk about a lot. There was commission established, a commission that three men established who would investigate the claims that these people were owned, that enslaved Africans were actually owned by these particular slaveholders. There was testimony given by African-Americans, which was really unusual for this period, especially in the South. And DC was the South during this period. And so black people could testify about that. I missed that, but I'm sure someone will fill me in later. And it declared it a felony to re-enslave anyone or to transport them outside of the city once the law was passed. And of course, the Emancipation Proclamation issued eight months later stipulated or at least promised the freedom of enslaved African-Americans in those areas, in states and in those areas of states still in rebellion. And so it referred specifically to certain of the Southern slaveholding states, but the states that were a part of the Confederacy. As you know, the states that were still in the Union, the slaveholding states that were still in the Union were exempted from the proclamation. One of the most important things beyond the fact that it is freeing 3.1 million people is that it authorizes the recruitment and enlistment of African-American men into the Union Army and Navy. And that was extremely important to the winning of the war. Let me turn to the panel. And any of you can answer these questions. When I want one of you specifically to answer, I will call you out. But for this first question, anyone can answer at the beginning of the Civil War. DC had a population, I believe, of about 75,000 people. 14,000 of them consisted of people of color, people of African-American descent. Among the latter, there were just over 3,000 who were enslaved. So if one of you would briefly describe the characteristics of slavery in the city on the eve of the Civil War. I think the thing that we probably should keep in mind is that the district was becoming more and more urban. It was switching economies from rural to urban. And we begin to see a change. Now, both characters still prevailed in many parts of the city. I'm reminded of a slave owner who would be compensated. She was the fourth largest slave owner in the district. Her name was Annemarie Biscoe. And she was shy, retiring, elderly woman, who they say seldom went out. Her address was Rock Creek, Georgetown. She decided to take advantage of the changing nature of the city by hiring out. She had 32 enslaved people. And she was able to provide folks who wanted to do the rural stuff, and folks who wanted, such as cooks and maids, to do something a little bit more urban. So she could go either way. And to show you the wisdom of her investment, it is estimated that she made about $900 per annum a 5% return on her investment. I don't think we can make 5% on anything we have invested today, just to give you an idea. And when compensated emancipation occurred, Miss Lady, who never went out, went out. And she decided to get quarters in a boarding house on P Street in Georgetown. And with her financial windfall, lived her best life. I think that's probably the best way you'd want to put it. So we have a city in the ferment of change. And they were able to ride it out. I'll just say in closing, my colleagues are aware of a recent article on the 7th of this month in The Washington Post that talked about how quickly the elite slave owners were able to recoup their losses within about 20 years or so. And so when we hear people, we were talking backstage about a lady who's still mad. Isn't that right, Roger? Yes, she's still angry. She's still angry. She said her family lost everything. And I don't want to take it away from Roger. So go ahead. No, I was just going to say when it came to it, just to add on to what Professor Gibbs was saying. You have a situation in the city that urban slavery is just a little different. You have a lot of skilled individuals. You have domestics. You have mechanics. You have people engaged in all sorts of trades. So their routines are somewhat different. And in this city where you have a majority of free blacks intermingling with the enslaved, sometimes their lifestyle is a little different. You had situations in which the enslaved intended church with free blacks and intermingled with free blacks. And so though they were enslaved, there was some feeling of freedom. They could see it. They could walk amongst it. They could feel it. So DC was a little different. Baltimore was similar in that vein. One way to get a feel for how similar they are, if you read one of Frederick Douglass's autobiographies, he talks about being hired out in Baltimore, which would have been similar in which he had a room and he had a little stipend that he could live on. So these people are living, though enslaved, on the edge of freedom. They can smell it. They can taste it. They can touch it. There's a notation somewhere in the census list for 1860 where the census taker listed an enslaved black man as free. And then he had to correct himself. And he noted that the black man had said, we live like free. We live like free. So this is why we appreciate the pencil mark, but he wanted to express the nature of his existence in a changing environment. However, in a diary at the Library of Congress, there's a gentleman who talks about this intermingling with enslaved and free people. And there is this back and forth. But I do think that even on the preface of freedom, there is still that distinction and that you are unfree. And that I think the work of Ida Jones in her work looking at the church in Georgetown, there were clear stipulations that individuals who were enslaved talked about, in one case, feeling the strangling effects of enslavement. So although there is that interface, I do think that there are those stipulations that in the end, there are those differences. And even for those persons who are free, with the black codes that are instituted in the district near the middle of the 19th century, it becomes a situation which freedom becomes a lot more tenuous and a lot more difficult to maneuver about this city, particularly in the evenings. So I do think that there are those, as you said, there's that incorporation of freedom and enslavement. But in the end, non-white people are far more vulnerable. And I think that that becomes a part of what pushes the president in this era as he thinks about and re-thinks enslavement. Dr. Clark Lewis, there had been intense debate over the issue of slavery and emancipation in the District of Columbia for a number of years. What's happening during this period, especially, other than that the war is on, of what's happening that intensifies that debate during the winter and the spring of 1861-62? I think in that period, everyone in the city feels, as you said, the intense pressure of the war all around them. And it, of course, comes to a head for people living in the city. But I think as a city that, from its inception, had slavery as a significant part of it, it never really becomes something that they ever can hope to get away from other than a dramatic action by the part of Lincoln. I don't think that there's a belief that these individuals who owned enslaved people were going to freedom. I think it took bold action on the part of the president to take this step. I'm not sure if it was always what he wanted to do, but it was a reality of war. And as the war raged all around the city, the idea that these enslaved individuals could create an internal problem or other issues, I think that he tried to balance everything out. It was a horrific situation for him as the leader of the union, but I also think he was very sensitive to the realities of the city. And so trying to balance both, as you said, created these tensions. And in, I would say in a way that is at the least bold, he made the decision. It was a decision slow and coming, but when he made the decision, he stuck by it. And it was a decision to end enslavement. Even if it was just an experiment, he was going to end it, and it was going to be in a way that allowed the union to make a statement, in particular to the Europeans. They had to do something. So I think that there were a number of realities that pushed him and pulled him toward this decision. So in terms of what's happening in 61, 62, with Emancipation in the District of Columbia specifically, who's pushing that? I mean, it certainly it would not have happened if not for the secession of those states because there would have been men in Congress who would have voted against it. And certainly there were men in Congress who voted against it this time as well. But who are the people who are actually pushing it? Lincoln does sign it, but who are the folk who are introducing this into Congress during this period? I think that any conversation that opens as you did, there's several people we must consider. And I happen to be a fan of a man who was originally not born under the name he's going to be better known as. He was born as Jeremiah Coolman. He is, he was called the Natic Cobbler who was born in New Hampshire in 1812. And he will go on to be the 18th Vice President of the United States. He will also be the Senator from Massachusetts. And I'm going to leave that to the audience. I know we have some people here. Does anyone know who I might be speaking with? That's right. That's right. And thank you, by the way. And we understand that it may have been his own upbringing. I mean, here is a man whose father offered him, according to tradition at least, if you would take my son, I'm willing to change his name to whatever it might be, whatever yours might be, in order to give him an occupation. And yet, the fact that Henry is not properly recognized at not since his demise. I mean, black people in the city knew him for two things. Being a major force on behalf of abolition and emancipation, they also honored him for being a motive force behind getting rid of the black code in the district as well. But it's important to know that there had been a push over a 30-year period. The historian Tyndall talks about an attempt during the administration of Martin Van Buren to strike slavery from all of the law books on the eve of the renewal of the city's charter. And yet, the Southern powers defeat that at the last moment. So, and Lincoln himself had an idea in 1849 as well. But what we see also are efforts by citizens in the district that there is the founding of the Washington Abolition Society in 1827. And in various attempts, there's also an abolition society in Alexandria. And prior to retrocession, both groups existed in the same area. So we have people, and one of the earliest petitions was signed by all of the judges on the local court. So we saw people that were repulsed by the sight of slave coffers in the district, walking across Capitol Square. One of the earliest female reporters talks about being surprised at a slave sale at the foot of Capitol Hill. And she talks about how the, it's near where the Peace Memorial is. So for you hardcore DC historians, and they haven't moved the Peace Memorial. So it gives you a sense of, that was literally at the foot of Capitol Hill. She was so discomfited and disoriented. She stepped by accident on the very platform where the slave sale was going to occur and her husband had to pull her off of it. So things and things got a little dicey there. So what we see are legislators like Henry Wilson, we see the judges of the court who realize for good or ill, we need to take action. This is a national embarrassment as the capital city of a nation which prides itself on being the land of the free and the home of the brave. There is a fundamental contradiction here that has to be dealt with. And I think that pressure going back several decades only accelerates as we get to 1861 and early 1862. The issue of embarrassment is critical because we know that in 1850 with the compromise of 1851 part dealt specifically with the ending of the buying and the selling of enslaved people in the District of Columbia. It is an international embarrassment that several times at least twice a week you have as you said on the national mall the buying and selling of human beings and all the drama that surrounds it. So in 1850 they make the decision as one of the compromises to end the buying and selling. An offshoot of that is of course that the growth of enslaved, the sale of enslaved people would then shift to Alexandria and in those areas contiguous to the District of Columbia. But I think as the nation's capital with the focus on the capital and the people who come here internationally in particular it gets a lot of exposure and it is an embarrassment. But I also think you have to always consider not just those individuals like Sumner and others but there are lots of individuals who are working against the institution because of as I said it's political impact which is so negative. And the international work and international articles that are constantly being written about this institution and its flourishing and its existence in the nation's capital. Let's talk a bit about that time span between April 11th when Congress passed the bill and April 16th when Lincoln signed it. There are suggestions that Lincoln delayed signing in order to give a friend of his the opportunity to remove two of his enslaved laborers from the city. On the, with the suggestion perhaps that they were too old to take care of themselves. And so can either of you tell us about what the conditions were once freedom arrived? Were there any kinds of institutions in the city that sort of made certain that this transition from slavery to freedom was smoother or was there some truth in the idea that people who were older would just be left out on the street to bend for themselves? What was in place that made it possible for people to survive? At that point really there was nothing but charitable organizations. And so you have people like Elizabeth Keckley, you have visitors coming from Virginia, Jacobs, who are trying to do what they can to put together organizations. You have contraband camps that are actually beginning to start up here to help the formerly enslaved. But there's a big problem because as the war goes on and you have the breakdown of slavery or the progress of emancipation. So you have the Confiscation Acts in which starts in Virginia and Hampton Roads where General Benjamin Butler confiscates three men or actually they push the issue by running into federal lines. And when they run the federal lines they, the official policies to return the enslaved so that the South will know that Lincoln wants to reunify the country. That he won't attack slavery. But the people in the field realized the best way to attack slaveholders would take the property. The British realized that in 1812 and in the revolution. But anyway, you have a situation now where these three men are telling the commander here, Ben Butler, that they're being used to augment the Confederate forces. They're bringing food, they're bringing supplies, they're nursing the sick, they're building fortifications. So as a lawyer, he decides, well I confiscate them as contraband and war. This catches on with the Republican Congress. And in July, if a slave could state that they were being used for the benefit of the enemy to the Confederate forces then they would be confiscated as contraband. Well, people are running into DC and wanting to be confiscated even if they're from Loyal Maryland. They're making their way across the bridges, they're coming in and you have these contraband camps. So at this point, as emancipation takes place in DC there's nowhere really to absorb the formerly enslaved. And that's becoming a problem. The quarter master corps offers jobs but the camps that they throw up, the government isn't doing much to help. So you have squalor, you have disease, you have other issues. Absolutely. And so we know that enslaved people are freed in the District of Columbia. But what's happening with, you talked about hiring out. What's happening with those enslaved people who had been hired out to Maryland but their owners lived in DC? Or people whose owners were in Maryland but were hired out to people in DC? What's happening with them? Are they freed as well? No, I mean, technically the Marylanders are not, because the owners are in Maryland. But a lot of slaveholders, even those in Washington who were trying to resist the and not the emancipation proclamation but compensated emancipation in DC. So they would remove their slaves from DC and take them into Maryland. Baltimore's jail was full of people that were taken from DC to Baltimore. Others were taken to other areas of Maryland because Maryland, since it was a loyal border state, slavery would be protected. You have 3,100 people approximately being freed as a consequence of compensated emancipation. It's a small fraction of the people who are enslaved in the South. Does DC emancipation really have a major impact on the emancipation movement, considering there are so few people who are freed? I think it's a forced multiplier. I think that the symbolic importance of DC emancipation cannot be underestimated. It effectively puts the nation on a freedom road where we begin with April 16th, 1862. Then the success of DC emancipation emboldens Lincoln so that in June, 19th, 1862, he signs legislation ending enslavement in the Western territories. Then in September of 1862, we have the preliminary emancipation proclamation, which is something even bigger is coming. Get ready for it. And then we have, of course, the emancipation proclamation. After that, we have Juneteenth. Now, even though Texas is listed in the Emancipation Proclamation, the Texans are not going to give up their folk, more than a quarter million enslaved people. They have to be forced to do it. And slavery itself is not yet dead. It is still quivering. Its arms are still moving. It just won't die. We have to have a 13th Amendment. Oftentimes people ask, well, didn't that other stuff do it? And the answer is most certifiably, no, it's insufficient. Something else must be done. But the fact that the nation is put on this road begins here 157 years ago today. And of course the 13th Amendment does not truly get rid of slavery in the United States. There are pockets of slavery that still exist. Pockets of slavery still remain. I know in a lecture I do, and there are those slave masters who simply don't tell the black folk that work for them that they are free. They're not going to bother with that last little detail. They're just going to keep it going. And that ranges from, we now believe that members of Jesse James' family kept enslaved people well after emancipation in a lecture I do on Juneteenth. A man shows up in Eagle Pass, Texas in the early 1900s wanting to know if we are free. So, unfortunately, the way it's taught in the schools, Abraham Lincoln is like the Tooth Fairy. He comes along with a star on a stick and touches people and they change their minds overnight. That is not the way it works. Harriet Tubman said in the wider society she was speaking about the fact that just like freedom, emancipation was declared, but there was no one there to welcome the emancipated. She talked about the fact that DC, and she was saying in general, but specifically freedom, DC emancipation, this whole issue of emancipation, it was like a stranger in a strange land, that there's constantly this ebb and flow about freedom and it can be contested, it can be legislated, but frequently on the local level. That's where really the issue has to come to head. The situations in Virginia, in which people, as you said, are running to the union line and saying, I want to be a part, please confiscate me, please I want to be a part of whatever helps the demise of enslavement. Those individuals, through family members, through talk, through whatever means, they get, the word is continually spreading, but as you said very well, it's an issue that is not easily resolved, either socially and even with politics, it still takes time for these issues to be resolved. And we know that DC emancipation checks some of actually most of the boxes that Lincoln wanted in place in terms of in order for emancipation to actually occur nationally. We know that it was compensated. We know that colonization was a stipulation as well, or the possibility there. What Lincoln had hoped for though was gradual emancipation and that didn't happen. And he had hoped that there would be consent of the owners and that didn't happen. We know that DC residents who are slave owners in general did not approve of what was happening. What similarities do you see between compensated emancipation in DC and the emancipation proclamation, if any, or what were the differences other than that? You had a great deal of public resentment, almost either way. There were people who refused to see that there was change coming, that that perhaps mirrored the nature of the response from the compensated emancipation act and DC emancipation and the emancipation proclamation. They had to be convinced. They had to be forced to let this happen to them. We must realize that these forces once set in motion did oftentimes meet with, if you will, speed bumps or brick walls, and the nation would have to be dragged into a new racial geometry. And we find this in response to DC emancipation when people, as Roger's told the story of one man who moves his enslaved labor force to the Maryland side of his plantation, anything he can do to hold off that dreaded date and defend off the freedom that he so dreads in coming on a larger role we see as a result of the emancipation proclamation, tremendous resistance by the slave owners, because they don't wanna see their movable property actually move. It will be ultimately up to black people to make these documents real to give them a sense of tissue and blood and muscle. And I don't think even today we fully understand how strong the desire for freedom was and the risks that people were willing to take. I'm recalling right now an account given by a soldier who would ultimately join the USCT, and this is in the Southern States, he has to evade bloodhounds and crocodiles in order to get to the union lines. And he observes that the bloodhounds, the crocodiles rather seem to prefer the meat of the bloodhounds rather than human meat. I mean, these things, I mean, just think about it for a second. And if our children knew of the risks that were taken in order to be free, I was telling an audience earlier today about an event that we all know in the, that Seth Gates, Congressman Seth Gates, witnessed, actually witnessed, he told Frederick Douglass about it. It's in Douglass's second autobiography, My Bondage and My Freedom, if not Douglass's third, The Life in Times, about a young lady he saw great loose from a slave pin just off Seventh Street. Geez, just down the street. And she's running toward the Long Bridge, which is approximately where the 14th Street Bridge is today. She is probably desheveled, she is desperate. And in her desperation, we don't know how she got out of the slave pin, but she did, and with the strength that desperation gives, she makes it to the bridge, but by this time, their slave owners pursuing her from the DC side and down along the span of the bridge, she can see men with angry faces coming toward her. They are yelling, catch her, seize her. And so she looks and she chooses to go over the side of the bridge. She chose the cold, gray waters of the Potomac rather than live one more millisecond as an enslaved person. I think that we take a moment like that. She wasn't around to make a lofty speech about give me liberty or give me death. She didn't have time to do that, but she showed with her actions that she was willing to make the ultimate sacrifice if she could not have her freedom. And that's a powerful lesson. I also think that there's a social fabric that we have to remember. This nation had this social fabric and enslavement was woven into it. You can't get around it, whether it is the people involved in the commerce end in North or the actual owners who were reaping the benefit of the individual's labor. Enslavement was worked into an essential part of the social fabric of this country. And to end it, whether you see it, as you said, from a very dynamic way or individuals who see it in a very static way, its ending was going to force this nation to reframe everything it stood for. And it makes it almost impossible for people on either side to really understand, as you said, how all-encompassing this issue is and why it's changed, why this shift, this paradigm shift that changes everything is so critical to the history of this country. Everything changes with this era. And you cannot take it away from Lincoln. It had to be a heavy burden that he carried. But I also think there were so many people and particularly those African-Americans advising him who continued to push and insist by writing the times they had to speak with him, they made it clear to him, lucidly clear that this was a change that was inevitable. So what role are district residents playing? African-Americans in the district playing in terms of influencing Lincoln to move forward with the Emancipation Proclamation? We know that people like Frederick Douglass, certainly they're doing that. But what about local people? What is it about this city and black people in this city that might have convinced Lincoln that he needed to move forward in this? Or was it just simply for military expediency? I think that, again, David Terry's article, he talks about the rise of the powerful individuals in the District of Columbia. The fact that you had so many schools here. When you look at the early histories of the District of Columbia, they talk about the advent of schools. They talk about the activism of the churches. I think George Washington Williams' work chronicled how extensive the church network, the limited number of schools, but there was also a social network that was extensive. I think the pressures of the, I would say to me the church leadership and the church congregations that was paramount with places like 15th Street Presbyterian. You have 19th Street Baptist, which is literally at the door of Lincoln. These individuals were individuals writing, doing everything that they can to encourage the president, but in the end it is Lincoln that has to make these hard decisions and he has to live with those hard decisions. And I think it is not easy on either side, but I do think that in the end it is a moral decision for him. It is military, it is economic, but I also believe in the end, it becomes a moral decision and he makes the decision in favor of emancipation, pushed by all these other factors, but I think the moral issue is critical to him as an individual, as a person. I have to agree with that because, I mean, I know there was some military expediency, I know that it served the purposes of diplomacy during the time of war, but with Lincoln to some aspect, it like I said in the 1840s, when he was a congressman, he was pushing the idea of compensating emancipation. When war broke out, with the preliminary emancipation proclamation, he was pushing the idea of compensating emancipation primarily so that slaveholders would buy into it. And so with the two documents, the one with DC would be sort of a test and somewhat easy to do because Congress controlled DC so they could mandate this is going to happen whether you like it or not. Now he can't lose the border states. So he tries to convince them to buy into the compensated emancipation, but they won't. In fact, Maryland won't emancipate until 1864, you know, when they write a new constitution and that barely happened. And this is after the emancipation proclamation because the emancipation proclamation actually protected slavery in those loyal regions. And in fact, when midnight struck on January 1st, though people were supposedly free in those days still in rebellion, no one really gained their freedom. I mean, as my colleagues have stated, people had to take their freedom. They had to get up and move towards the lines. And this is an erosion of slavery. This erodes slavery even more. But yes, I think Lincoln had to make a moral decision and live with that. He was a man of his times. Yes, he would be considered a bigot by some in the 21st century. He stated, this is a white man's country. He did push, he did push colonization. But at the end of the day, he thought slavery was immoral. And so much so that he acted upon it. And one last thing, in D.C. with the people here, with Maryland and Virginia bordering in Washington, he couldn't help but see those people streaming towards freedom, fighting their way towards freedom. And then reading the reports from his commanders in the field, he knew what was going on. That they would risk death just to get to where they could find refuge, where they could claim some freedom if any at all. And in one report from Maryland, slaveholder named Samuel Cox rode into the camp of the Excelsior Brigade, these guys from New York, they're no angels. Of course, they were men of their times as well. But when they saw the enslaved for the first time, some of them were truly shocked. Some of them wanted to aid, just like anyone would if you saw someone coming to you for refuge. Slaveholder called up, Sam Cox caught up with one of his slaves in their camp. And to prove the point when the officers made them give up this enslaved individual, he threw a rope around him and dragged him behind his horse, dragged him to his death. And that's just to let people know, well, this is my property, well, you just made a few more anti-slavery adherents by doing that. But Lincoln had to hear about these sort of things. We know that DC Emancipation occurs before other areas during the war. To what extent does it serve as a model in terms of the post-emancipation era? What are the differences or the similarities between what happens in DC after Emancipation and what happens in the former Confederacy? You're going to have people coalesce like iron filings around a magnet. They're going to come in from the countryside and to a lesser extent in the cities and they're going to go to Union Post. They're going to go to places where they feel some measure of safety. They're going to take havens or refuge under the Union guns. I'm often thinking about a little place insignificant up in the Palisades called Battery Kimball. And if any of you know the area around Palisades, if you've driven along the George Washington Parkway, you know the river and the high cliffs dominate that drive. And so you just wonder how these folks coming in from Montgomery County, even after in post-emancipation, they're coming, they're going to build a community in what is now the edge of Palisades. But they have to get there. They are willing to surmount the physical, formidable physical obstacles to come in from Montgomery County to come into and under the guns of Battery Kimball. And that same road is still there today if you turn on Chain Bridge Road. And there's a cemetery there. It's one of the few reminders in an upscale neighborhood that black people live there in some force, in some amount. And then if you go a few more yards up that colonial Irrow Road, there is the Chain Bridge Road Colored School, which is a reminder that there was a significant number of freedom seekers that came from hardship in Maryland and came into the district and settled there, willing to establish their own communities in peace and safety if people would leave them alone and contribute to the country at large. That's all these men and women and children ever saw was to take part in the full banquet of American rights and liberties. I have to say in answer to your question when you ask what happens, one of the articles in First Free talks about it. It's a brief moment in the sun that you have individuals in the District of Columbia who through their own tenacity, pull together literally grassroots political parties. They become activists. They really work very hard to economically, socially, and politically move the city forward in very progressive ways. In education, for example, they begin to move all the stipulations away so that there's access to education for every individual. But you ask what happens. There was this brief period of progress, but with the return of the Southern states in Congress, there's this clear, heavy hand that begins to move over the District of Columbia. And many of these progressive experiences are slowly but surely scaled back so that you begin to have the, even if it's not segregation by law, it's understood by custom. You have limited access to economic and social activity. And of course, political power is cut off. And that slow moving scale that you're talking about comes to a head in the 20th century when President Wilson absolutely reinstitutes segregation in all the federal agencies. It was always believed that these federal areas were somehow these islands against segregation in Washington, which is in the South. Well, with the advent of President Wilson after 1912, that changes. So you begin to see just as you said in the District of Columbia, there was this brief time for progress, but those exterior forces who are focused on recreating, if not enslavement, at least a world in which segregation dominates, they become the powers that be in the nation's capital. So I do think that there is this pendulum that for a short time there is this progress, but very soon the pendulum swings back and individuals in the city experience it. But in spite of that, I'm thinking in terms of emancipation, that no matter what, they continue to celebrate emancipation. Even when the scholar said it ended in 1900, when I was doing my own research, I was interviewing an older person, my great aunt. And I was explaining, and she was talking about emancipation programs in the 30s. And I, with my aunt, you had to be gentle. And I was gently correcting her because emancipation ended. And as a person at her age, I figured she was mixed up and she politely told me that I don't care what those books say, emancipation didn't end. And she went on to talk about the daughters of ISIS, the masons, the Elks, all the different civic organizations and helped me understand that I had to go back to local records, places like the Nanny Helen Burrow School that have flyers. They have individual material that shows they were celebrating emancipation up through the 1950s. So even though there is this almost invisible celebration that continues in the African-American community, even if it's ignored in the wider community, emancipation still resonates with individuals in the District of Columbia in spite of those external forces. Mm-hmm. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We're going to open the discussion up for questions from the audience. I do have one last question for you. You have large numbers of people coming into the District who were not born there, who had not labored there, who had not lived there before the war. They are mixing with a group, a large group of free black people, people who had been free before the war, some of them had become quite prominent in their own communities. What kind of mix was there? What was the dynamic between that new group and the group that had been there already? What was the relationship between the two? I guess it would be similar to some of the stuff that happened during the Great Migration where you have people, rural people, moving and coming from rural areas, migrating into urban areas. And so you have the established individuals there that have the difference between a middle class and a working class to some extent. And so they saw some of the newcomers as loud and sometimes uncouth, but nonetheless they worked together when they had to move things forward. You see some of that. And I grew up in a neighborhood called Shepherd Park named after Alexander R. Shepherd. So he brought in a lot of people and provided jobs for them. And they were somewhat menial jobs, but then you have veterans who are coming in who are gaining jobs as clerks and whatnot. And in Congress you have other activists like George W. Hatt, he was a Sergeant in the First United States called an infantry. So these individuals are making the best of it, but not everyone gets along, but they make it happen. There are tensions that we see as Roger's pointed out. This is sometimes reflected in the Emancipation Parade where they're going to ultimately have two parades because folks are not getting along. This leads to the end of the parades, but not, let me make this clear, not the end of the Emancipation Celebration. And that is important. And as Professor Clark Lewis has pointed out, there are black organizations that take it over and are responsible for the celebrations and then they lateral it off to another group that that's responsible. And they're doing this in the face of an increasingly hostile Congress. Understand that one of the basic reasons that DC lost the vote is because there were southerners in Congress and the Senate who were repulsed by seeing black men and white men standing in line to vote. And they never forgot this. There was one Southern Senator who had been a Confederate general and a member of the Klan. So not surprisingly, he was not in favor of this, but in the halls of the Senate, he compared this to burning down the barn to killing all the rats. That was his, and one of his, fellow senators said, so this is what you mean, you wanna burn down the barn. It is to say, kill the vote for everybody in order to cripple black political growth. And he said, yeah, I wanna burn down the barn. I wanna kill all the rats by burning down the barn. And the barn is the franchise. These, this represents a portion of the obstacles we had to face in those times as we're moving supposedly into the 20th century when way too much of the most negative aspects of the 19th still hung like a shroud over the District of Columbia. First question. Frederick Douglass in 1888 had a speech about emancipation and he denounced emancipation as a stupendous fraud, a fraud on the Negro and a fraud on the world. The history of emancipation or man, you mentioned, never produced a citizen. And so how valuable is freedom without full citizenship? Our emancipation was followed by black coats, peonage, a prison industrial complex. Emancipation created a situation of not a slave and not a citizen, a middle position that can be exploited. And so my question to you is, what is the value of freedom without full citizenship? I'd like to remind you that history, John Henry Clark said, history is not everything, but it's a starting point. History is a clock that people use to tell their political and their cultural time of day. It is a compass to find themselves on the map of human geography. It tells them where they are, but more importantly, it tells them where they must be. Emancipation is not the answer, and that's clear. However, it is a significant part of people moving forward and they're not moving forward easily, they're not moving forward without resistance, but there is still that forward movement. And as Professor Clark has said, it is the compass, it is that clock, and it may not always move the way people think it should, but there is movement. Thank you. And of course, we know that from the period of emancipation right down to 1875, people are pushing to make sure that those citizenship rights that were not granted with emancipation now will be a part of the lives of African-Americans with the 14th and the 15th Amendment and the act of 1875, but of course, that's overturned by 1883. And that's when things start going downhill. Yes. Good evening, folks. First off, I'd like to acknowledge one of Ms. Harriet Tubman's descendants who are here today, Ms. Ernestina White, who's in the audience. I appreciate her being here. Please stand. Please stand. Come on, Tina. Let's welcome her in. Now to my point, there was no embarrassed slave masters in America, period. And Abraham Lincoln was a racist to the core. He said there was two races, one white, one black. The whites just happened to be superior. If you have any questions about that, you can read the book by the author, Jerome Bennett. He used to be Ebony Magazine writer. Did an excellent book on him. And in fact, remember, Abraham Lincoln refused to allow black folks in the Union Army. Could we get to the question? Could you please ask the question? Okay, my question is, with Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman putting pressure on Abraham Lincoln to finally allow black folks into the Civil War and their courageous fighting gave rise to, then Abraham Lincoln decide what was he gonna do in relationship to aiding those black men for his legislation. What did he decide? I'm confused. I'm not confused. Let me clear it up for you then. The South and the North, they was winning sometimes. And the other side winning sometimes. It was even Stephen's. But then Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass put pressure on him to finally allow black folks like Harriet Tubman became the first spy and officer beside being a nurse in the Union services. Their courageous fighting of those black men with weapons in their hand killing white folks. And as I think Ms. Clark said earlier, those black men then coming back to DC, African-American soldiers from the Civil War, they would become a problem because they would not give up their guns, they could fight. So the question is, what about those black soldiers fighting gave rise to Abraham Lincoln deciding I'm going to pass the legislation to give them what to do? Well, if you're talking about compensated emancipation, that was prior to blacks being enlisted formerly into the United States Army, even though African-American sailors had been serving in the Navy from the outset and even before the war and 19,000 will serve. But I didn't get a good clear sense about the what as far as afterwards, after the war, a lot of these veterans will come home and be involved in community formation. So in Maryland in the rural areas, you have them coming home and creating small areas. And well throughout the South, actually, they're building schools, they're forming towns. They'll later be part of a militia movement. There were black militias in various southern states. In DC, they were part of a early civil rights movement. So they are quite active. And even before Lincoln gave his approval, you had African-Americans free blacks drilling in various cities and petitioning Congress and the president to be able to serve. So... And actually there, Lincoln writes a letter to a friend in August of 1863 in which he talks about the fact that he is freeing black people to help win the war. And so what he says to his friend is, when the war is over, there will be some black men who can hold their heads high because they helped to preserve the union. And there will be some white men who will lower their heads in memory that they did all they could to hinder it. And so he certainly recognized the significance of the black soldier and sailor. Yes. Yes, good evening. My question is revolving around the freedmen. You know, we mentioned the 3,000 slaves that were emancipated, but this is in the face, according to Carter G. Woodson's A Century of Negro Armagation. This is in the face of 74,000 freedmen in Maryland. 54,000 freedmen in Virginia, which at that time I think included parts of Washington, DC and the district notates another 11,000 freedmen. This is in 1850. So I guess the concept of freedom I guess is what I'm saying is that these freedmen had homes, these freedmen had businesses, these freedmen had built churches. They were prosperous in business. They had carriage companies, they were blacksmiths, they were masons, they were coppersmiths. They had a life outside of the dialogue that always goes on around emancipation. We get this image of this raggedy field person that has this just always running. So the point that I'm making is that these neighborhoods, you're talking Georgetown, that was a black built neighborhood. Logan Circle, that was a black built neighborhood. Foggy Bottom, these freedmen built hospitals, these freedmen built churches. These freedmen had, it's not the image that would continue to push. So, and then there's the Freedmen's Bureau Act, which no one ever talks about in history, which was really one of the first forms of reparations. Now, can we ever deal with that? Because the records are in this building and they would probably fill up that stage three times over. And they're probably the most complete records of American history in the country. Can we have your question, please, so that we could, what about, what do you think about the Freedmen's Bureau Act and what do you think about General Grant, who was another guy we never talk about, who set up the Justice Department to enforce our freedoms. And he was in president for eight years and we never mentioned him, he enforced it. I'd just like to say with regard to some of this. That stuff is out there, there's tons of material written about it, it's been researched and it may not seem that it's popular, but you could go, let's say, do an Amazon search and you can find some of this stuff there. There's literature on the Freedmen's Bank, on the Freedmen's Bureau. Three of us up here are closely associated with a school founded by Oliver Oldish Howard. So, I don't want to belabor it, but, and when we talked about DC, we did talk about a free black community and yes, they had that throughout the South, especially in the upper South. Whether you're talking, no matter where you are, you're going to find these free black people. So, I apologize if it seems as though we were talking about ragged individuals running to freedom when we had thriving churches here and I think we mentioned that 15th Street Presbyterian is something, in 19th, these places are historical landmarks. And so, maybe we should highlight it more or shed more light on it, but there are books on DC during the Antebellum period that discuss this and one of the greatest events is the Pearl, where black people were put together in an escape plan to get away. So, the stuff that's out there, it may not be as prominent as it needs to be and maybe we, I'm sorry. In terms of grant, there's a lot out there about grant. There are volumes and volumes and volumes about general grant and there will be more very soon because we're about to commemorate the bicentennial of his birth and there's a commission that has been established that will be doing all kinds of activities all over the country. I know because I'm on that commission. So, okay. So, you will be hearing a lot more about general grant. You're absolutely right. There are some presidents that don't get a lot of attention. He certainly should get more, but he should get more not just because of what he did do but some of the things he didn't do as well. So, there's a lot of stuff out there that people need to learn about. I quickly would like to add that in spite of, as you said, the images of the ragged and the persons who like my ancestors were enslaved in Virginia, eventually the 33 children, they imbued in these children the desire for freedom and that doesn't wax and wane. And when my colleague here who went to Hampton, they have an emancipation tree. Howard University in its earliest periods had specific programs that address these issues of enslavement and freedom and the responsibilities. No matter what group you will in, this whole movement toward emancipation doesn't necessarily take on a class issue. It is something that is important to all African-Americans. It meant freedom for individuals no matter where, whether it's at a college, whether it is in a community, whether it's the civic organizations, emancipation and the ending of enslavement is significant for people at all levels, no matter what and where and what their status. I just think that that has to be added. On the evening before D.C. emancipation, Daniel Alexander Payne, the great AME prelate, made a speech in a church at 2626 O Street in Georgetown. That was AME, that Ebenezer AME. And the speech is called Ransom of the Oppressed or the duties of the black folk that are doing better than the people who are going to be free and what our responsibilities are. This is, since sets forth the relationship between those free blacks and those about to be free black folk. So that was discussed, was reflected on, and there was unity. It was never going to be easy. It was never going to be perfect. But whatever we had immediately after emancipation in my humble judgment beat the heck out of slavery. So I think that we, as we trace this scheme from slavery to freedom to the use of our rights, this is an unfinished road. We ain't done. And so this is not finished. This is not finished. And it's a reminder that whether we're in D.C. where we continue to press for the vote, or whether we're in other parts of the country where it seems the vote is being taken from us, this is an unfinished journey. This is still true freedom is an undiscovered country. Yes. Thank you. This was a fascinating discussion. I've always been a Civil War buff. I grew up with Ken Burns, Civil War, Glory. That's where I've come from. And, but the more I read about this, the more I want to learn more. And when it comes to Abraham Lincoln, and again, Ken Burns, of course, dealt with this subject I thought fairly honestly, accurately. Lincoln, of course, is the same person who said I would preserve the union by freeing all the slaves, some of the slaves, none of the slaves. So, are we perhaps discounting a fact that he's with a party, Republican party, and it's Congress, and Congress does have Democrats, it does have slave owners, right, in Congress. So, but as a political cover for the emancipation started with the D.C. emancipation, could it have been the political cover he had that this was revenge against the South? In other words, they are going to pay for breaking up the union. And isn't that what the abolitionist said from the beginning, that the slave, that the price of this union will be the end of slavery? Are you saying that this is, that you have to be- I'd say perhaps that Lincoln himself knew he had political cover because of this. Yeah, I think we've got it. There's a triumphant of power in Europe. England, France, and although Germany isn't unified until 1871, the Prussians, et cetera, there's external pressure on Lincoln that is unceasing. There is the internal issue of how to preserve this union. I think that, I know that one of the leaders in London wrote that this union was not, Lincoln should just let the South go. And the South would be choked off by the international pressure. He refused to do that. I think that the external pressure, the internal problems, and this issue of how to create a union in spite of this institution is what we have to understand, or we try to understand. We have the records, we have oral testimonies, but it is a period that is very complex on every level. And so that's what makes it so fascinating. But I don't think there are any easy answers, and it's not simply the domestic issues that these international pressures are very real. And he has to figure out how to do it in a way in which he doesn't destroy his precious union. And I don't think anyone could read the second inaugural address and think that Lincoln is trying to punish the South. There is absolutely no way that that's happening. Just take another look at that. And yeah, it's... Sherman, maybe, but that's the case. Sherman, definitely. Yes, yes. Sherman's coming, now maybe. Yes, yes, yes. Thank you to the panel. Ma'am, you talked about a pendulum shift. As DC has emancipated, and African-Americans are making their way to the district, what can you say about our current history in the pendulum shift of African-Americans leaving the city, and how will this perhaps impact the celebration of this holiday? It is one of the most nettlesome issues that we're confronting today. We are worried about the continual drain. We're worried about the difficulty of getting information into the schools and in a gentrifying environment. And we're still working on that. That's the only way I know how to say it, is we are aware of it. We are dissatisfied with the status quo, and there are people working valiantly to talk about this history and to inspire our young folk. It seems like right now, many of them, because they're unfamiliar with it, because it's not really taught in the schools, they don't want to approach it, thinking that they're only gonna get a tale of woe and sadness, when in fact, there are marvelous episodes of resistance and inspiring courage shown. So we're gonna continue to tell that story, and we hope it will catch on. It's still worthy of being noted that DC is about 40, it's still 47% African-American, and according to Greater Greater Washington, there are small numbers of African-Americans continuing to move into the district. So they at least see something worthy and salvageable in coming here, and perhaps for the future, the black community, it may very well lie in increasing those numbers of young people, several of whom I know personally, that have decided to make the district their home. And I think that part of that reclaiming of history, you have to look at people like Dr. Paul Phillips Cook, who as a leader in what was minor teachers college and then becomes DC teachers college, which eventually becomes federal city college, which becomes the University of District of Columbia. There's a long legacy of teachers up through the 1960s. It was required that they did one important segment of civic history on emancipation. That begins to change when you have teachers who are coming in from other areas who don't have the same sensitivity. But I think that this issue of gentrification and movement is not new. If you look at Georgetown, if you look at the West End, if you look at other communities, there is this constant pendulum and a constant shift because if there's nothing more in the District of Columbia, land is finite. And people come here for employment, whether it was at 1800, 1900, 2000, this draw is continuous. And Woodson and others talk about the District of Columbia and its impact and that importance of land and land ownership. But it is not necessarily just an issue that is going to be resolved very quickly. It has been an ongoing issue. You have people writing in the 1930s and 1940s about displacement on Capitol Hill. In the 1970s, the push of displacement in Southwest. It is an ongoing issue. I know you talk about in several of your articles, Palisade and the issues up near what is today American University. This is an ongoing issue. It's not new. It just takes on a different form. And with regard to the continuation of the emancipation celebration, it has to go beyond the black community. You can't see this as just a black holiday or a black celebration. This is a celebration of our city. This is a celebration of American progress. So you have now this thing about make America great again. Well, let's go back to the Constitution and talk about making this a more perfect union. What happened here in 1862 made this a more perfect union and it has to go beyond the city and have to go beyond black communities to be celebrated nationwide. Well, I'm so sorry. We are out of time. So we're not going to be able to take any additional questions. I'm really sorry, but. So thank you all for coming. Thank you for your wonderful questions. And I'd like to thank this marvelous panel. And can we thank our marvelous moderator. Have a good evening.