Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography

THE PENNSYLVANIA MAGAZINE OF HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY VOLUME CXXXVII January 2013 NO. 1 EDITORIAL Tamara Gaskell 7 INTRODUCTION Erica Armstrong Dunbar and Randall M. Miller 9 THE CONTESTED HISTORY OF AMERICAN FREEDOM Eric Foner 13 THE AGE OF EMANCIPATING PROCLAMATIONS:EARLY CIVIL WAR ABOLITIONISM AND ITS DISCONTENTS Richard S. Newman 33 “GOD IS SETTLEING THE ACCOUNT”: AFRICAN AMERICAN REACTION TO LINCOLN’S EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION Daniel R. Biddle and Murray Dubin 57 “YOU FEEL SO OUT OF PLACE”: GERMANTOWN’S J. GORDON BAUGH AND THE 1913 COMMEMORATION OF THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION David W. Young 79 REVIEW ESSAY “A MEASURE ALIKE MILITARY & PHILANTHROPIC”: HISTORIANS AND THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION Douglas R. Egerton 95 BOOK REVIEWS 115 BOOK REVIEWS NEWMAN and MUELLER, eds., Antislavery and Abolition in Philadelphia: Emancipation and the Long Struggle for Racial Justice in the City of Brotherly Love, by Katrina Anderson 115 GRIVNO, Gleanings of Freedom: Free and Slave Labor along the Mason-Dixon Line, 1790–1860, by Howard Bodenhorn 116 DAVIS, “We Will Be Satisfied With Nothing Less”: The African American Struggle for Equal Rights in the North during Reconstruction, by W. Fitzhugh Brundage 118 COVER ILLUSTRATION: Lithograph of illustration by Thomas Nast commemorating the Emancipation Proclamation in January 1863. This image appeared as an illustration in the January 24, 1863 issue of Harper’s Weekly as a celebration of President Abraham Lincoln’s decree emancipating slaves during the Civil War. At the top of the illustration, the female figure Columbia, an early symbol of the United States, cheers emancipation and a portrait of President Lincoln is inset below. Nast depicts the horrors of slavery on the left-hand side, which feature scenes from a slave auction and whip-weilding plantation master. In contrast, the scenes of the right-hand side show free blacks attending school and gathering with family, as well as suggest harmony between blacks and whites. Online at http://digitallibrary.hsp.org/index.php/Detail/Object/Show/object_id/694. Editorial Advisory Committee BETH BAILEY WALTER LICHT Temple University University of Pennsylvania DANIEL B. BARR SALLY MCMURRAY Robert Morris Univeristy Pennsylvania State University SETH BRUGGEMAN RANDALL MILLER Temple University St. Joseph’s University ERICA ARMSTRONG DUNBAR CARLA MULFORD University of Delaware Pennsylvania State University CAROL FAULKNER EDWARD MULLER Syracuse University University of Pittsburgh JOHN FEA JUDITH RIDNER Messiah College Mississippi State University JUDITH GIESBERG FRANCIS RYAN Villanova University Rutgers University ANN N. GREENE DAVID SCHUYLER University of Pennsylvania Franklin & Marshall College LISA LEVENSTEIN ANDREW SHANKMAN University of North Carolina, Rutgers University, Camden Greensboro Editor TAMARA GASKELL Assistant Editor RACHEL MOLOSHOK THE PENNSYLVANIA MAGAZINE OF HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY (ISSN 0031-4587) is published each quarter in January, April, July, and October by THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF PENNSYLVANIA, 1300 Locust Street, Philadelphia, PA 19107-5699. Periodicals postage paid at Philadelphia, PA and additional mailing offices. Postmaster: send address changes to PMHB, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 1300 Locust Street, Philadelphia, PA 19107-5699. AAuthorizationuthorization for academic photocopying: For permission to reuse material, please access www.copyright.com or contact the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc. (CCC), 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, 978-750-8400. CCC is a nonprofit organization that provides licenses and registration for a variety of uses. Submissions: All communications should be addressed to the editor. E-mail may be sent to [email protected]. Manuscripts should conform to The Chicago Manual of Style. Electronic submissions are welcome. For submission guidelines, visit the PMHB web page (http://hsp.org/publications/pennsylvania-magazine-of-history-biography). The editor does not assume responsibility for statements of fact or of opinion made by the contributors. Contributors DANIEL R. BIDDLE is the co-author, with Murray Dubin, of Tasting Freedom: Octavius Catto and the Battle for Equality in Civil War America (2010). He is politics editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer, and his investigative stories with two other reporters on Philadelphia’s troubled courts won a Pulitzer Prize and other national awards. He has taught urban journalism at the University of Pennsylavania and nineteenth-century civil rights history at Villanova. MURRAY DUBIN is co-author, with Daniel R. Biddle, of Tasting Freedom: Octavius Catto and the Battle for Equality in Civil War America (2010). He was a journalist for thirty-six years, thirty-four of them as a reporter and editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer. ERICA ARMSTRONG DUNBAR is associate professor of history and black American studies at University of Delaware and author of A Fragile Freedom: African American Women and Emancipation in the Antebellum City (2008). She has participated in documentaries including PBS’s The Abolitionists (2013). Her latest book project is entitled Never Caught: The President’s Runaway Slave. DOUGLAS R. EGERTON is professor of history at Le Moyne College. His most recent books include Year of Meteors: Stephen Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, and the Election That Brought on the Civil War (2010) and The Wars of Reconstruction: The Brief, Violent History of America’s Most Progressive Era (2013). ERIC FONER is DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University and the author of numerous works on American history. His most recent book is The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery, winner, among other awards, of the Bancroft, Lincoln, and Pulitzer Prizes. RANDALL M. MILLER is the William Dirk Warren ’50 Sesquicentennial Chair and Professor of History at Saint Joseph’s University. He is the author or editor of numerous books, including, most recently, Lincoln and Leadership: Military, Political, and Religious Decision Making (2012) and is a former editor of the Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography. RICHARD S. NEWMAN is a professor of history at Rochester Institute of Technology and the author of numerous books on African American history and abolitionism, including The Transformation of American Abolitionism: Fighting Slavery in the Early Republic (2002) and Freedom’s Prophet: Richard Allen, the AME Church, and the Black Founding Fathers (2008). DAVID W. YOUNG is executive director of Cliveden, a historic site of the National Trust for Historic Preservation located in Philadelphia. He is a lecturer in the graduate program in historic preservation at the University of Pennsylvania and holds a PhD in American History from Ohio State University. The full run of the Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography is available in electronic format on JSTOR (http://www.jstor.org). Information on both print and electronic subscriptions can be found at http://shop.hsp.org/catalog/publications/pmhb/subscription. Both sites can also be accessed from the journal’s website at http://hsp.org/publications /pennsylvania-magazine-of-history-biography. Editorial This month marks the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, signed by President Lincoln, which declared over three million enslaved African Americans free. Lincoln considered the Proclamation the “central act” of his administration and “the great event of the nineteenth century.” It remains perhaps the most revolutionary act of any American president. While it most directly impacted slaves and masters in the seceded states, its consequences were much more far reach- ing. For African Americans in Pennsylvania—which had led the way toward emancipation with its Gradual Abolition Act of 1780—and throughout the nation, the Proclamation represented a major step in the fulfillment of the promise of the nation’s founding. But emancipation, as the essays in this special issue commemorating this important document make clear, is a process—one which began well before January 1, 1863, and which continues to the present day. The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, published in our nation’s birthplace, thought it fitting to recognize and celebrate the new birth of freedom brought forth by Lincoln’s Proclamation 150 years ago so that we may be reminded of its promise and better work to nurture its growth in the years to come. Erica Armstrong Dunbar and Randall Miller, of the University of Delaware and St. Joseph’s University, respectively, are the true midwives of this issue of PMHB. I am fortunate to have been able to rely upon their energy and expertise. I leave you now in their capable hands. Tamara Gaskell Editor Emancipation Proclamation, 1863, owned by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, signed by President Lincoln and Secretary of State Seward. This copy is one of forty-eight autographed printings by Frederick Leypoldt in Philadelphia for Charles Godfrey Leland and George H. Boker for sale as fundraisers at the Great Central Sanitary Fair held in Philadelphia in June 1864. http://digitallibrary.hsp.org/index.php/Detail/Object/Show/object_id/691 Introduction N THE MONTHS SURROUNDING the sesquicentennial of the Emancipation Proclamation, much has been and is being written Iabout this liberating document and its meanings—in its own time and over the decades. Indeed, important new books are already recasting the story of how and why Abraham Lincoln’s emancipation proclamations of 1862 and 1863 came when they did, and with what consequences. Many note that—for blacks, at least—the

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