Seventy-One Years Ago Lincoln Freed the Slaves

Abstract Seventy-one years have passed since Lincoln signed the emancipation proclamation-the first step in the freeing of America’s 4,000,000 slaves. The act was, indeed, only a legal step; the slaves were not made free; they were merely turned loose. They were loosed, illiterate, penniless and homeless; thrown instantly into a civilization, into an economic, a social and political system with which they had not had the least opportunity to learn to cope. They were thrown not into a helpful but a hostile environment, the hostility of which was made more bitter by subsequent events. In the revolution that resulted in the liberation of the slaves, the only factors directed toward the Negro were military and political factors. By the one he was freed, and by the other given an unstable status of citizenship. At the present time it is not possible to contemplate the statemanship of the seventh decade of the last century without being amazed at its utter lack of social vision (“vision” is the precise word)-and social vision was what the epoch, as it concerned the freed men, demanded most of all. The only social wisdom manifested in the situation was shown not by statesmen but by missionaries, men and women who, following quickly behind the victorious Union armies, went into the South and set up schools.