Jan. 1 marked the 160th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, which was a major step in a process of world historical importance, the abolition of human slavery in the United States.
In fewer than 700 words, President Abraham Lincoln “transformed the federal government’s approach to slavery,” in the view of historian James Oakes, by turning the Union Army into an army of liberation and by enticing enslaved people to flee to Union lines, among other measures. Lincoln and the Republicans completed the destruction of slavery in 1865 with the passage of the 13th Amendment, the successful culmination of a conflict over slavery and race that dated to the dawn of the republic.
But a strange trend has gathered pace among historians as well as activists who view these towering accomplishments as failures, even betrayals. One major scholar argues the Emancipation Proclamation was illegal and that Lincoln trampled the Constitution. Another historian claims the 13th Amendment actually reenslaved Black people through unpaid convict labor. Thirteentherism, as critics call it, turns the abolition of slavery into a racist plot in an unbroken line of white supremacy from 1619 to present.
In this episode of History As It Happens, Mr. Oakes, the author of several cutting-edge interpretations of antislavery politics in the antebellum United States, dismantles the modern distortions of the importance of the American crusade to end slavery.
“There’s a curious tendency among people who think of themselves as progressives, as I do, to focus on things that I consider essential to the history of progressive movements in the United States, by focusing on their shortcomings, what they failed to do,” said Mr. Oakes, the author of “The Scorpion’s Sting: Antislavery and the Coming of the Civil War.”
SEE ALSO: History As It Happens: Slavery and the Constitution
“I’m not a ‘Great Man’ historian. I’m not somebody who writes hero worship-style history. But there’s so much that’s awful about human history that when you get something good, something desirable, like the abolition of slavery … that instead of recognizing the things that were progressive, and to focus entirely on the things these progressive achievements didn’t achieve, deprives us of the crucial precedents for the things we want to do now.”
Listen to Mr. Oakes explain the significance of the Emancipation Proclamation at 160 by downloading this episode of History As It Happens.
