January 5, 1863---The Anti-Emancipation Proclamation

JANUARY 5, 1863:              

An enraged Confederate President Jefferson Davis gives two separate speeches (reproduced in part) in Richmond, one addressed to Southerners, nobly praising the Confederacy and denigrating the “old Union”, and the other, addressed to the North, lambasting the Emancipation Proclamation, and declaring that the entire “negro race”---even freeborn blacks in the South and in any captured Union territory---will be reduced to absolute perpetual slavery. Black soldiery will henceforth be treated as rebellious slaves and lynched.

Forward-thinking Southerners such as Robert E. Lee had hoped that Lincoln’s example would inspire Davis to free slaves to serve in the undermanned Confederate armies, but Davis, in his anger, gave way to irrationality, and carried the mass of war-hysterical Confederates with him.

Anyone who thinks “The South Will Rise Again!” needs to read the “Anti-Emancipation Proclamation” which is dated to take effect on February 22, 1863. 

[Note: Some Southern apologists claim the second speech is a forgery; however, whether or not “this” speech was ever written or given, Davis unquestionably repeated the essential points of the speech numerous times in the future]:

I

Friends and Fellow-citizens: Of the title as corrected, I am proud---the other I would scorn to hold---I am happy to be welcomed on my return to the Capital of our Confederacy--the last hope, as I believe, for the perpetuation of that system of government which our forefathers founded--the asylum of the oppressed and the home of true representative liberty…Recently, my friends, our cause has had the brightest sunshine to fall upon it, as well in the West as in the East. Our glorious Lee, the valued son, emulating the virtues of the heroic Light-horse Harry, his father, has achieved a victory at Fredericksburg, and driven the enemy back from his last and greatest effort to get "on to Richmond."…Every crime which could characterize the course of demons has marked the course of the invader…and every indignity which the base imagination of a merciless foe could suggest inflicted…In New Orleans Butler has exerted himself to earn the execrations of the civilised world, and now returns with his dishonors thick upon him to receive the plaudits of the only people on earth who do not blush to think he wears the human form…It is in keeping, however, with the character of the people that seeks dominion over you, claim to be your masters, to try to reduce you to subjection…and incite servile insurrection. But in the latter point they have failed save in this that they have heaped if possible a deeper disgrace upon themselves. They have come to disturb your social organizations on the plea that it is a military necessity. For what are they waging war? They say to preserve the Union. Can they preserve the Union by destroying the social existence of a portion of the South? Do they hope to reconstruct the Union by striking at everything which is dear to man?...War is an evil in every form in which it can be presented, but it has its palliating circumstances…. May God prosper our cause and may we live to give to our children untarnished the rich inheritance which our Fathers gave to us. Good night.  

II

Citizens of the non-slave-holding States of America: Swayed by peaceable motives, I have used all my influence, often thereby endangering my position as the President of the Southern Confederacy, to have the unhappy conflict now existing between my people and yourselves, governed by those well-established international rules...Heretofore, the warfare has been conducted by white men--peers, scions of the same stock; but the programme has been changed, and your leaders…have degraded you and themselves, by inviting the co-operation of the black race…Thus, while they deprecate the intervention of white men---the French and the English---in behalf of the Southern Confederacy, they, these Abolitionists, do not hesitate to invoke the intervention of the African race in favor of the North…The time has, therefore, come when a becoming respect for the good opinion of the civilized world impels me to set forth the following facts:

 First. Abraham Lincoln ....has issued his proclamation, declaring the slaves within the limits of the Southern Confederacy to be free...Second. Abraham Lincoln has declared that the slaves so emancipated may be used in the Army and Navy now under his control...Now, therefore, as a compensatory measure, I do hereby issue the following Address to the People of the Non-Slaveholding States---On and after February 22, 1863, all free negroes within the limits of the Southern Confederacy shall be placed on the slave status, and be deemed to be chattels, they and their issue forever… All negroes who shall be taken in any of the [Northern] State[s] in the progress of our arms, shall be adjudged, immediately after such capture, to occupy the slave status, shall, ipso facto, be reduced to the condition of helotism, so that the respective normal conditions of the white and black races may be ultimately placed on a permanent basis, so as to prevent the public peace from being thereafter endangered...It ought not to be considered polemically or politically improper in me to vindicate the position which has been, at an early day of this Southern republic assumed by the Confederacy, namely, that slavery is the corner-stone of a Western Republic…In view of these facts, and conscientiously believing that the proper condition of the negro is slavery or a complete subjection to the white man---and entertaining the belief that the day is not distant when the old Union will be restored with slavery nationally declared to be the proper condition of all of African descent---and in view of the future harmony and progress of all the States of America, I have been induced to issue this address, so that there may be no misunderstanding in the future.