Some Presidential ActionsGeorge Washington
A slave owner, Washington was "outraged at the practice of re-enslaving those who had fought in the Revolutionary War. In one case where a slave owner... demanded return of an African American who had fought in the Massachusetts army, Washington interceded in 1783 and appointed a commission of officers to investigate the claim and African American's record of service."
However, African Americans were not accepted into the Continental Army until Washington reversed himself in 1778, approving enlistment of free Negroes. Several African Americans, including Oliver Cromwell and Prince Whipple, were among the troops the general used in his daring nighttime crossing of the Delaware, Christmas, 1776." Incidentally, "A free Black man, Peter Salem, at the battle of Bunker Hill shot British Major John Pitcairn "through the head just after the latter yelled, 'The day is ours,'" rallying his "disorganized British troops" for counterattack. Salem was honored with a collection of money from his "fellow soldiers and with a visit to meet George Washington."
Washington's relationship to slavery has created much debate. "He freed all the slaves he held in his own right (123 in number) after his wife’s death. He did not free them during her lifetime, he explained, because many were married to dower slaves, (of whom there were then 153) who would feel “the most painful sensations, if not disagreeable consequences” from seeing their family members freed."
"During the fall of 1796, George Washington's final months in office, Ona Judge Staines, a slave belonging to the First Family, escaped the Executive Mansion in Philadelphia (equivalent to today's White House) and made her way to Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The President, upon learning of her whereabouts, penned several correspondences and solicited help from friends and family in order to retrieve her. Despite these attempts, Ona eluded Washington and eventually settled in Greenland, NH." Historian Henry Wiencek discusses these issues in his book, An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America.
Thomas Jefferson
Jefferson's original draft of the Declaration of Independence included "anti-slave trade sentiment as an indictment" of England's King George III:
(The king) has waged cruel war against human nature itself violating its most sacred right of life liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither... Determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce.
"The Continental Congress struck this passage from the Declaration."
Abraham Lincoln
Lincoln actually issued a preliminary Emancipation Proclamation on Sept. 22, 1862, following the Union prevalance at Antietam... No rebellious states ceased armed resistance by January 1863, so Lincoln issued the well-known Emancipation Proclamation:
'do...declare that all persons held as slaves with said designated States, and parts of States, are, and henceforward shall be free...'
On a practical level, Lincoln's proclamation did not really physically "free any slaves. Left untouched were the numerous slaves in the border states that had remained loyal to the Union. Lincoln (apparently) feared he would alienate those states if their slaves were freed, so he exempted them. And those slaves living in the Confederate states would be freed only when, or if, the Union Army won. The proclamation did free those slaves, called 'contrabands of war,' already in Union lines, but this (action was technically) redundant, as they had already been freed by the Confiscation Act of 1862. Despite this, Lincoln's proclamation was still pivotal. It gave needed meaning to the conflict as a war to end slavery in America."
Karl Marx responded to the proclamation: "And this is the character the recent Proclamation bears - the most important document of American history since the founding of the Union, a document that breaks away from the old American Constitution - Lincoln's manifesto on the abolition of slavery."
Andrew Jackson
"Americans suffered several devastating losses in the first year of the War of 1812..." The stage was set for a proclamation from General Andrew Jackson made 'To the Free Colored Inhabitants of Louisiana' in September of 1814, reversing U.S. policy and calling for African American volunteers. Jackson reneged. From the The Narrative of James Roberts, a slave who had served during the Revolutionary Army, but had been returned to slavery:
But after the battle was won and 'sixty or seventy or more of the colored men were killed ...(who) were, without doubt, as Jackson himself acknowledged, the instrumental cause of the victory,' Jackson told the men to 'go home to your masters.' Roberts challenged Jackson about his promise to free them, and Jackson answered: 'If I were to hire you my horse, could you sell it without my leave? You are another man's property, and I have not money sufficient to buy all of you, and set you free.' infuriated at the betrayal, Roberts cocked his gun but discovered Jackson had had the guns of the African Americans unloaded. 'Han my gun been loaded,' Roberts recalled, 'doubtless Jackson would have been a dead man in a moment... Jackson asked me if I contended for freedom. I said I did. He said, 'I think you are very presumptuous.' I told him, the time had come for us to claim our rights. He said, 'You are a day too late.' Some of the Whites standing round said 'He ought to be shot,' Now, just think of that! Two days before, I had, with my fellow soldiers, saved their city from fire and massacre... now, 'he ought to be shot!' simply for contending for my freedom, which, both my master and Jackson had solemnly before high heaven promised, before I left home."
Rutherford B. Hayes
"In the presidential election of 1876, the Republican and Democratic candidates, Hayes and Sam Tilden, received equal numbers of electoral votes, which threw the election in the House of Representatives. The three states in which Reconstruction (administrations) had not been overthrown - South Carolina, Louisiana, and Florida - reported fraudulent election results and the Democrats and Republicans both claimed victory. In order to gain the votes of southern states in the House to secure his election, Hayes promised to withdraw federal troops from the South and give control of remaining loyal Republican governments to the Conservative Democrats. Hayes also promised assistance to the South in getting federal money for internal improvements. Upon his selection by the House as president, Hayes quickly removed the troops and left Black southerners at the mercy of southern White Democratic state governments," thus helping to end the Radical, or 'Black,' Republican program of Reconstruction, supporting with federal troops the so-called carpetbag state governments in the South. But Reconstruction was already on its way out" - in part because of waning Northern interest, and Democratic progress in regaining power.
Historians argue over evidence of this as an actual "Bargain of 1877," as part of the so-called "Last Stolen Election" (ha, ha...), but Hayes appointed a leading Democrat as Postmaster General (the major patronage position in the government) and remove federal troops that had been guarding the La., Fla., and SC state houses, allowing the new Democratic governors to be inaugurated.
"In 1883 the Supreme Court held the Civil Rights Act of 1875 unconstitutional, with only one justice in dissent. More importantly, the Court thenceforth ignored the 14th amendment as applied to civil rights issues, and applied it instead to protect corporations from regulation."
Interestingly, Hayes, in the remaining years of his life "began more definitely to express social ideas that classed him as a rather advanced liberal for his day" - including "promoting such causes as public education (especially in the South), prison reform, aid to blacks..."
An 18th-century idealistic depiction of slaves at Mount Vernon, source unknown
Study of Peter Salem at "Battle of Bunker Hill" by John Trumbull, 1786
SOURCES:
http://seacoastnh.com/blackhistory/ona.html
http://ap.grolier.com/article?assetid=0196450-00&templatename=/article/article.html
http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~polisci/calvert/PolSci3103.fall02/classnotes.reconstruction.html
http://www.ucd.ie/amerstud/archives/Morgan.htm
http://www.worldalmanacforkids.com/explore/presidents/hayes_rutherford.html
Jeffrey C. Stewart. 1001 Things Everyone Should Know About African American History. New York: Doubleday, 1996; reprint, New York: Gramercy, Random House, 2006.
Yesterday's Black History Month Thread #5: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x469948
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