Pigeon Forge Spring time Music in the Park Parade - Part 2

The CSA January 1862 offer to end slavery

Dear Ms. Lunelle,

In my last report I mentioned the clipping Compatriot O’Barr handed to me at the Pigeon Forge Parade on April 28, 2023 from a British newspaper in 1862. I am sending it along with other information sent from him as Part 2 of my report on that wonderful day.

As we discussed, this information should end forever the claim that Lincoln freed any slaves or that the invasion into the Southland of America was to free one single African, and that any reparations should be sought from Africa and not the people of Asheville, NC or anywhere else in the Southland of America, and in fact the US Government should pay the South restitution for its war crimes.

Your Brother,

HK

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From: Rod O'Barr
Date: Sat, Apr 29, 2023, 12:47 AM
Subject: The CSA January 1862 offer to end slavery
To: HK Edgerton

Here is the news clipping in an English newspaper breaking the story that the South was offering to end slavery if the Brits and French would ally with the South. This was a very anti-South newspaper yet it broke this news which it called “accurate” and “great facts,” and never questioned the credibility that an offer was made:

A 17 February 1862 diary entry of Lincoln’s diplomat to England, Charles Francis Adams, records that:

“A visit from Bishop McIlvaine, who came to tell me the result of a conversation he had held at breakfast with Sir Culling Eardley (a member of Parliament) this morning, that gentlemen had apprised him of the existence of rumors that Mr Mason (Confederate diplomat to England) had brought with him authority to make large offers towards emancipation if Great Britain would come to the aid of the confederates. He even specified their nature, as for example, the establishment of the marriage relation, the restoration of the right of manumission, and the emancipation of all born after a certain time to be designated. He had further intimated that these views were received favorably here…. I remarked…. that it needed to be energetically treated both here and at home.”

Giving the time it took Lincoln’s diplomat Adams to compose a message and send it across the ocean to Lincoln (normally an 8+ day trip). Then allowing a few days for Lincoln to decide what to do about this rumored Confederate offer to end slavery in exchange for British and French support in the war, on March 7, 1862 he sends a resolution to Congress proposing an offer of compensated emancipation to the slave States. Up till now Lincoln had refused the abolitionists request for him to do something to emancipate the slaves. He did not want to free slaves unless he had in place a colonization plan that would send them to any godforsaken place but here; for fear they might migrate North if freed. Now suddenly he decides to offer emancipation only days after hearing of a Confederate offer to emancipate. It seems obvious to me Lincoln is attempting to preempt the Confederate offer to keep Britain and France out of the war. 

Lincoln is dismayed when no slave States take him up on his offer. They didn’t because most people in the South knew Lincoln would try to deport the freed slaves and Southerners did not want to see the black folk they had grown up with banished out of the country. It would be like losing a family member. Regarding colonization one Southern magazine published a popular poem in the South expressing opposition to it:

“What! Colonize old coachman Dick!

My foster brother Nat!

My more than mother when I’m sick,

Come, Hal, no more of that!”

(Southern Literary Messenger, November1834, p. 83)

Meanwhile papers all around the British empire are reporting about the Confederate offer to end slavery: 

“The rumors of interference by France and England in American affairs are received, and it is even asserted that the South, in return for the intervention, will guarantee the emancipation of her slaves.”

(The Daily British Colonist, May 29, 1862)

“ the Confederacy have offered to England and France a price for active support. It is nothing less than a treaty securing free trade in its broadest sense for fifty years, the complete suppression of the import of slaves, and the emancipation of every negro born after the date of the signature of the treaty.”

(South Australian Register, Tuesday, April 8, 1862, page 3, BRITISH AND FOREIGN GLEANINGS)

By July Lincoln is getting really worried about this Confederate offer of emancipation. So he calls a meeting with all the representatives of the border slave States on July 12, 1862, to try and convince them to accept his offer of emancipation. They vote against the offer by a 20 to 8 margin. 

Seven of the eight who voted FOR Lincoln’s compensated emancipation give the following explanation for their vote. This is an extract of the letter they wrote Lincoln:

“We are the more emboldened to assume this position from the fact, now become history, that the leaders of the Southern rebellion have offered to abolish slavery amongst them as a condition to foreign intervention in favor of their independence as a nation. If they can give up slavery to destroy the Union; We can surely ask our people to consider the question of Emancipation to save the Union.” 

https://www.loc.gov/resource/mal.1713000/?r=-0.818,-0.749,2.636,3.213,0

loc.gov

The very next day, July 13, after meeting with these seven representatives on July the 12th where they certainly told him about the Confederate plan for emancipation, Lincoln drafts his own Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. Being convinced by the seven representatives that the Confederate offer to end slavery was a “fact, now become history,” Lincoln drafts his own emancipation upping the ante to head off the Confederate emancipation offer. He hopes his own offer will keep the British and French from siding with the CSA. On September 13, 1862, the day after the Preliminary Proclamation was issued, Lincoln met with a delegation of abolitionist Christian ministers, and told them bluntly: “Understand, I raise no objections against it [slavery] on legal or constitutional grounds … I view the matter [emancipation] as a practical war measure, to be decided upon according to the advantages or disadvantages it may offer to the suppression of the rebellion.” Obviously he knew he could not “suppress the rebellion” if the British and French allied with the South! Charles Sumner, a Massachusetts senator, spent months in 1862 trying to make Lincoln understand that emancipation would have far-reaching consequences, cutting off the Confederacy from potential allies in Europe—who opposed slavery—while also drastically undermining the Southern economy.