Bear Grease - Ep. 474: Civil War - Part 4: What You Were Never Told About The Emancipation Proclamation

Episode Date: July 1, 2026

In Part 4 of Bear Grease's Civil War Summer series, Clay Newcomb continues the conversation with JD Huitt and sits down with historian Dr. Brooks Blevins to examine one of the most consequential decisions of the war: Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. Following the bloodshed at Antietam—the single deadliest day in American history—the Union president made a bold political, military, and moral gamble that transformed the conflict forever. Together, they unpack why the proclamation was far more than a declaration of freedom and explore how Lincoln used emancipation as a diplomatic weapon to keep Britain and France out of the war, weaken the Confederate labor force, recruit Black soldiers, and redefine the Union cause. Along the way, they examine the staggering casualties of Civil War combat, the strategic failures of Union generals, and the growing realization that the war would not end in compromise but in total transformation. The Civil War had begun as a fight to preserve the Union. By the end of 1862, it had become something much bigger. Thank you to our sponsor, Tecovas. If you have comments on the show, send us a note to [e-mail] Connect with Clay and MeatEater Clay on Instagram MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Youtube Clips MeatEater Podcast Network on YouTube Shop Bear Grease MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. The Emancipation Proclamation only applied to areas that were under Confederate control. It really didn't free the slaves anywhere where the United States at that point had any jurisdiction to free the slaves. So, you know, it is more of a diplomatic kind of psychological document. But Lincoln believed that if this was issued, as one historian years later commented that the slaves weren't going to read the fine print. And he believed that there would be massive runaways from these plantations in the South

that the word would get around in the enslaved communities and that people would bolt and head for the nearest Union Army. This is the fourth pail of water that we've dipped out of the ocean of the Civil War, meaning this is part four of our series. covered some ground and I've enjoyed every step but it's time to learn about the emancipation proclamation and how it was a huge gamble for lincoln but would be one of the most consequential war acts of the american civil war but how could this seemingly moral proclamation devastate the confederates we're about to find out together and hey guys as my wife misty says

It's a Civil War summer on Bear Greece. Join me as I explore things that I have never known. I really doubt that you're going to want to miss this one. My name is Clay Newcomb, and this is the Bear Greece podcast, where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant, search for insight and unlikely places, and where we'll tell the story of Americans who live their lives close to the land. Brought to you by Tukovas Boots.

I'm a cowboy boot, man, and I've been wearing Toccova's for years. They're the most comfortable boot I've ever put on. Good boots for good times. Test, test, test. Test, test. Yeah. We're rolling, man. Rolling. I'm sitting across from one of my favorite historians, a brilliant man. He's published over 10 books. His name is Dr. Brooks Blevins. He works at Missouri State University. He's wearing a t-shirt and jeans, lace-up leather work boots and a red ball cap. He's unpretentious. He told me he gets a haircut every six months, and he's come and do.

But that's kind of beside the point. I pull out a giant book to try to impress him, and it works. He takes note. I forgot how big that book was. That is a biblical size. Intimidating. So when I got this book, Battle Crive of Freedom by James McPherson, And when you see it on Amazon, you can't see a side angle.

You just see the cover. Right. And I envisioned it being like this little like 300 page, you know, book. Yeah. Just cuddly and nice. Yeah. When I got it, it was not cuddly at all. Yeah.

Giant. There we go. This is the book that you assigned your students back in the 90s. I did. I did. And I think that first time I taught a civil word class, I signed that book. And then I probably came to the realization these people, they're probably not reading a thousand-page book for this course. But I was fresh out of grad school and gung-ho and crazy.

The audacity to assign a book to college students this big is exactly why Brooks is here. As a matter of fact, this book is just one of over 60,000 books written on the American Civil War. And more are pumped out each year. American interest in this topic seems endless. And I want to ask him the question that we started out this whole series discussing. How do you feel like people, your students, but also just the general world? What are your comments on how people or why people are so interested in the Civil War? You know, growing up when I did in the South, I think it almost came with the territory of being a,

a Southern kid. It just seemed like something you just kind of grew up interested in. And so I don't remember ever not being interested in the Civil War. But I think historians have probably spent a lot of time trying to explain why there's so much interest, especially in the South. It's the losers who have historically been more interested in the Civil War than the winners. I guess, you know, my dad, who was an old coach spent most of his career as a basketball coach and sometimes a baseball coach would always say he dwelt a lot more on the losses than he did on the wins and maybe there's some kind of psychology there where the south just couldn't get over it was just hung up on getting beat with all this mythology about being the superior fighters and tougher and meaner and you know better outdoorsmen better better horse and all that kind of stuff than the Yankees were, and then they still get beat. So maybe part of it's just not being able to get over it like that.

But I think in general for Americans, it's one of the few gigantic historic moments that's really our moment. I mean, there's a little bit of foreign intrigue in this, you know, with England and France and trying to, the Confederacy trying to get allies on their side. But for the most part, it's our story. It's not only our story, but it's kind of the fulcrum of all of American history. If you go to high school or go to college today and you take American history classes, it's either up through the Civil War or it's after the Civil War. You know, that's still the dividing line. It was when I was in school a long time ago, and it still is.

I hadn't really thought about it like that. But you're right. That's the way you think about America. American history is like free civil war. I mean, almost like the way we divide time with Christ's birth, which is pretty peculiar really when you think about it. Yeah. Yeah. So much of the world doesn't see history and time that way. Just as, you know, the rest of the world certainly doesn't divide the period, you know, from the 1600s to the 21st century as up through 1865 and then after 1865. You know, I mean, that's our. So.

So that's our peculiar little thing. And I think that's part of the reason it still fascinates us. It is really the defining moment in American history. This is part four of our series. And ashamedly, but also excitedly, I'll admit, we're probably halfway through the Civil War. But it just all seems so consequential, so relevant. But in September of 1862, something terrible.

happened. More terrible than everything that had happened before. And it all starts when Robert E. Lee marches his army into Maryland, into Union territory. His hopes are of victory on enemy's soil would gain international attention and potentially help from Europe. If his rebels could win a battle in the north, it would indicate strength. And he even thought he might take Washington, D.C., or at least make Lincoln buckle and offer peace terms. It was bold. Here is our old buddy, J.D. Hewitt, of the History Underground YouTube channel, introducing us to the name of this battle that's going to get us moving. You probably can't talk about the major battles of the Civil War without talking about the Battle of Antietam. Single bloodiest day in American history, even to this day.

It is the single bloodiest day, September 17th of 1862. There will be almost 23,000 casualties in this single day. That includes the dead, wounded, missing. 3,600 will actually die. Antietam, beyond its bloodshed, will be the catalyst for something historic. But that's coming. So before we get into the battle, I've just got a more relevant question that's going to help us understand Antietam. And it's a question for JD that just demands attention.

and it's about the style of fighting and the civil war that caused so much death. I think everybody has watched a Civil War movie or seen a Civil War painting, and we have a sense of the kind of fighting that they were doing that was causing this number of casualties. Yeah. I mean, it was like an old school style of fighting typically. Yeah. Where they're like lining up in formation and just like marching towards each other's shooting.

Is that about right? I mean, I realize that's simplistic. Yeah, yeah, but essentially, yeah, and people look at that and they're like, well, that doesn't make sense. That's where I'm going with this. That doesn't make sense. Why would they do that? Okay. So what they are doing when they are lining up in formation is you are taking all of your men, you're firing in unison, and you're sending a wall of lead over to the other side. So people say, well, why didn't they just kind of separate and fight like they would in modern times, like in World War II? In the Civil War, with the equipment that they had, well, then what you do is like you have the small pocket of guys over here on the left, well, you're just going to have your entire formation aim there and you're going to take them out. Okay? And then you're going to go take out the smaller one and so on and so forth. So the tactics that they are using are the best that they have with the technology and with the knowledge that they have at the time.

There are people who are going to 150 years from now look back on us and say, wow, I cannot believe that they fought the way that they did in Iraq and Afghanistan. That is completely crazy. The tactics will have advanced so far. If you lined up 200 yards from a thousand soldiers that had one-shot muskets, the kind of artillery they were using, and you were just like, all right, ready, go. I mean, is that not just a suicide mission? I mean, are you just not for like for sure going to die? That's what I just see.

And when you hear the number of casualties, the number of people that died, it just feels like, and maybe there was just no other option, maybe just war during those times, it's like, well, yeah, you're supposed to die. Yeah. I know it's how it feels like, but this war is, is going to put an end to that. Because now with these, you know, we have rifles, you have, you know, the mini ball and things like that. There are all kinds of advances in military technology where, you know, In the Revolutionary War, you were shooting a roundball, and maybe you hit your target and maybe you don't, you know, depending on what the range is. So the best way to fight is to get your whole regiment or your whole company or whatever in a line of battle and then all fire in unison. But the other guys are doing the same thing.

They're doing the exact same thing. Yeah. I mean, it's just no wonder so many people got killed. Yeah. I mean, human casualty, it just seems like it wasn't. I realize human casualty and death at any point in human history would have been hard for people to deal with. But it's hard not to think that human life during those times was just thought about differently. Yeah.

I mean, was it? I mean, you just went to war to die. It just feels like, it's just like, well, Jimmy's going war. He will die. anybody goes in expecting to die or wanting to die. I think that they have a value. It's not like they view human life as as cheap. They probably would have been more familiar with death than what we are. If you want to know what the big killer is in the Civil War, it's disease. That's what's killing a bunch of guys. This was a deadly transition period in military technology. Both sides have been

trained in Napoleonic military strategies. Commanders couldn't control scattered troops, no radios, cell phones, only human-to-human communication. And formerly, firearms didn't have long ranges. So armies just stayed together. This was the first war fought with rifled muskets, which increased the effective range from basically 80 yards to over 300 yards. As a matter of fact, Jeff Davis, Jefferson Davis, when he was Secretary of War, for the United States in 1855 converted the United States military to the 58 caliber Springfield rifled musket.

By 1863, a seven-shot Spencer Carbean was used by the Union. New technology with old tactics created terrible bloodshed. But this would also be the last major war fought on horseback. At close range in a bayonet fight, a horse is a powerful tool.

But it's an easy and easy, and big target at 300 yards. The rifle made the horse obsolete in the battlefield. But we got to get back to Antietam. Lincoln's Union Army had been struggling in the east. He was continually being let down by his generals, and he was waiting on a union victory so he could pull out something that was burning a hole in his pocket,

a document waiting to be signed and proclaimed. He had actually made a covenant with God, said, if his armies drove the Confederates out of Maryland, he'd release the document, which would have more power than a rifled barrel. So hold that document in the back of your mind, while J.D. and Dr. Blevins describe and teetum. In short, the Army of the Potomac under George McClellan, who is following Robert E. Lee into Maryland. Remember, Maryland is a slave state that remains loyal to the union. Robert Lee is taking the fight out of Virginia and taking it into the northern states. So this is an invasion of the north. And so he marches his army up into Maryland.

It's one of those weird things, kind of one of those Hollywood moments in the Civil War where a union soldier finds a bunch of cigars wrapped in this, you know, wrapped in these papers. And he gets the looking at these papers and he realizes he's basically got Robert E. Lee's plans for his expedition that some, you know, some officer had wrapped up his cigars in and lost it somehow on the trip up, up through there. And one of the union guys picks it up. It makes its way up to McClellan. And he says, with this right here, I will finally have what I need to whip Bobby Lee. You know, he, those make it back to headquarters.

George McClellan, General George McClellan is the, he's the commander of the Army of the Potomac, the Union Army, this very stately looking, I mean, you know, if you, if you drew up what a general should look like,

it would look like George McClellan, this big, tall, broad-shouldered, you know, deep-chested guy with a stentorian voice and just, you know, always impeccably dressed and all that stuff. But he gets the orders and it turns out George McClelley,

may look the part of a great general, but he didn't play the part of a great general. And even with Robert E. Lee's plans, he still fights, they fight this major battle, a one-day battle, September 17th. And by all rights, the Union Army should have just wiped up on the Confederates and sent them scurrying back to Virginia right away. But because of McClellan's hesitance, and he was just kind of a naturally slow-moving conservative guy. He always thought he's outnumbered, even when he had twice as many troops as the Confederates. Lincoln is terribly upset and basically gets rid of McClellan after that battle, sends him off to do other things and, you know, it gets him away from the Army of the Potomac.

But Lincoln decides, you know, this may be as good as it gets. at least at the end of that battle, Robert E. Lee turned around and went back to Virginia. We can claim it as kind of a victory. And so five days after the Battle of Antietam, Lincoln issues the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. So emancipation proclamation, of course, this is the proclamation that frees all of the slaves in the Confederate states. So slavery is still going to exist in Missouri, Kentucky, and in Delaware and Maryland. But it's introduced as a war measure. Prior to the Battle of Antietam, he had it ready to go, had it drafted.

But if he just issues it, it looks like a move out of desperation. So he's waiting for a union victory in order to issue this. And then after he announces that all of the slaves in the South are going to be free. It takes effect in January of 1863. That's the bloodiest day in American history. And it's really from that moment that Lincoln and the North wins the diplomatic battle there. Antietam was a tactical draw, but functionally a strategic union victory and good enough for the president to finalize his deal with God

and issue the Emancipation Proclamation. which was a written executive order by Abraham Lincoln. When he signed it, he said, I never in my life felt more certain that I was doing right than I do in signing this paper. If my name ever goes into history, it will be for this act, and my whole soul is in it.

I think it's a unique and important document worth understanding. As a matter of fact, I'd like to read it. This is the transcript of that order that held Lincoln's soul. On the first day of January in the year of our Lord, 1863, all persons held as slaves within any state or designated part of a state, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States shall be thenceforth and forever free. and the executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons and will do no act or acts to repress such persons or any of them

in any efforts they make for their actual freedom. So I'm stepping out of the proclamation, and there is a section where it talks about where this has jurisdiction and a bunch of 1800s legal jargon I'll spare you, but it's all the rebel-seeded states. And by virtue of the power, and for the purpose aforesaid, I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated states and parts of states are and henceforth shall be free, and that the executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authorities thereof,

will recognize and maintain the freedom of. persons. And I hereby enjoin upon the people so declared to be free to abstain from all violence and less in necessary self-defense. And I recommend to them that in all cases when allowed, they labor faithfully for reasonable wages. And I further declare and make known that such persons of suitable condition will be received into the armed service of the United States to garrison forts, positions, stations, and other places, and to manned vessels of all sorts in said service. And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution, upon military necessity, I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind in the gracious favor of

Almighty God. And witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed. done at the city of Washington, the first day of January, and the year of our Lord, 1,863, and of the independence of the United States of America, the 87th. Signed, Abraham Lincoln. End of proclamation. Can you imagine what this meant if you were an enslaved person?

Your family had been in bondage for generations, so long that you didn't know when the last. last free person in your family was alive. And suddenly, you're legally free. But the powers over you don't recognize that proclamation's authority. I'd like to have been a fly on the wall to listen to the conversations that these people had together. An IRR radio experience. Weekend gold tickets to Ilson Inc.

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We've got to learn why this was such a slick and powerful move by Abe Lincoln. When I think about the Civil War, and again, this is just my exploration, this whole series is just my exploration into questions that I have and places of interest. Like if there was a timeline, on that timeline would be the Emancipation Proclamation. and I would have known that proclamation to, you know, declare that all the slaves were free. That's about the extent of what I would have known it as. And I would have, I would have viewed it as this really moral proclamation that just came from this position of, this is an unjust institution that's inhumane and shouldn't exist on planet Earth. And, you know, that's what this whole war is.

about this is what I would have thought before. The more, as I've learned about it, is way more complex than that. Yeah, I would say the first thing is you hit the nail on the head, the Emancipation Proclamation is a, it's a complex story. It's a pretty straightforward document, but the story behind it is full of nuance. And it is certainly not as simple as your armchair history of the United States would suggest. We know Lincoln from the time he first became president had announced that I have no plans to involve the government with slavery where it currently exists. You know, he was from that free soil tradition where the big thing was we don't want it to expand anymore.

We just wanted to keep it kind of contained where it is. But he announced that. Of course, the reason he's announcing that is because by the time he's inaugurated, seven states have already. He seceded and formed the Confederacy. And he's trying to keep the other slave states from seceding. So he makes that announcement. I think he meant it in 1861. Lincoln was a pretty moderate guy.

As the war went on, I do think he drifted more toward the abolitionist side, but he never became a full-out abolitionist, certainly not a kind of radical abolitionist. Nobody was exactly like John Brown. But I do think he drifted more toward a position where he became more and more in favor of abolishing slavery of something that should be done and should be done right now. But there were other reasons for that. There were military reasons for that. There were diplomatic reasons for that.

This proclamation seems like a no-brainer. Something so clear that anyone in power would have done it, but that's just not so. It was a huge gamble. The timing was critical. and it could have backfired. I'd like to crack open this giant book that impressed Brooks and read a passage from McPherson. The proclamation would apply only to states in rebellion on January 1st.

This produced some confusion because the edict thus appeared to liberate only those slaves beyond union authority while retaining in bondage all those within the government's reach. A few disappointed radicals and abolition. looked on it in this way. Where he has no power, Mr. Lincoln will set the Negroes free. Where he retains power, he will consider them as slaves, declared the London Times. This is more like a Chinaman beating his two swords together to frighten his enemy

than like an earnest man pressing forward his cause. But such remarks missed the point and misunderstood the president's prerogatives under the Constitution. Lincoln acted under his war powers to seize enemy research. sources. He had no constitutional power to act against slavery in areas loyal to the United States. The proclamation would turn union forces into armies of liberation on January 1st if they could win the war. And it also invited the slaves to help them win it. Most anti-slavery Americans in Britain recognize this. We shout for joy that we live to record this righteous decree, wrote Frederick Douglass, while William Lloyd Garrison,

considered it an act of immense historic consequence. A British abolitionist pronounced September 22nd, a memorable day in the annals of the great struggle for the freedom of an oppressed and despised race. A radical London newspaper believed it, a gigantic stride in the paths of Christian and civilized progress. Lincoln's own off-the-record analysis showed how much his conception of the war had changed

since 10 months earlier when he had depreciated a remorseless revolutionary struggle. After January 1st, Lincoln told an official of the Interior Department, quote, the character of the war will be changed. It will be one of subjugation.

The Old South is to be destroyed and replaced by new propositions and ideas. This is a powerful statement by Lincoln. He knew it would shift the war knowing that the old South would now have to be destroyed and rebuilt, not negotiated with. This changes everything and would change everything for the South, even to this day. McPherson then writes about the southern response to the emancipation. Quote, the southern response to the emancipation and the enlistment of black troops was ferocious.

Upon learning the preliminary emancipation proclamation, General Beauregard, called for execution of abolition prisoners after January 1st. Jefferson Davis's message to Congress on January 12, 1863, pronounced the emancipation proclamation the most excreable measure in the history of guilty man. Davis promised to turn overcaptured union officers to state governments for punishment as criminal. engaged in inciting civil insurrection. The punishment for this crime, of course, was death. End of quote. The South didn't take to this proclamation very well, but we've got to learn now why Lincoln released it at this time and what it did.

It's got rows of teeth like an alligator. And here's Dr. Brooks Blevins that's going to tell us what this proclamation actually did. The Confederacy, and it's one of the, the things about the Civil War that we don't talk about all that much, but from the beginning of the Civil War, the Confederates had sent basically their diplomats to Europe to try to get European countries involved on their side as allies. Anybody who grew up in the United States at that time, whether it was North or South, knew that the American Revolution probably would not have ended the way it did, probably would not have been successful for the rebels, had it not

been for the intervention of France on the side of the United States and helping this infant country, you know, overcome their traditional enemy, England, and get their independence. And so the Confederates were thinking the same thing. We need, we need some kind of ally to help us in our fight for independence. And the one thing that the Confederacy had, sort of the one bargaining chip, and it was a big bargaining chip, was cotton. It's what we call King Cotton Diplomacy. That's what historians call the Confederate's approach to diplomatic relations with France and England, especially King Cotton diplomacy. So they go over there and they're trying to convince the British and the French to get on our side.

We've got the cotton, especially England. England is the great mill country of the world, you know, making claws. and all kinds of clothing and all that kind of stuff. They've got all these cotton mills everywhere. It kind of be like America's relationship to the Middle East with oil in a way. Yeah, yeah. Cotton was a commodity that valuable. Right, right.

And in this story, Great Britain would be us today. Yes. And the South would be the Middle East. You know, because they've got the raw material that we need. And so that was their bargaining chip. And it was a pretty solid thing. The British had been developing a cotton industry or a cotton growing culture in India by this time and another one of their colonies, one of their Asian colonies.

And so that took a little bit of the, you know, the staying away from keen cotton diplomacy and made the British a little more hesitant to jump into this. And Great Britain had already outlawed slavery. which is, again, when the war starts, Lincoln himself, you know, was saying this is not a war about slavery. It's a war about restoring the union. But as you've already talked about in your earlier episodes, slavery was the, it was at the center of everything in the story. It was the big, it was the big thing that fueled everything. When had Europe outlawed slavery?

I think it was the early 1800s. Okay. 50, 60, 70 years before. Yeah, it had been, you know, for a couple generations. It had been outlawed, and I can't remember the exact year. Slavery was made illegal in Great Britain in 1772, but it was legal in English colonies until 1834 when it was entirely abolished in all places with English authority.

And to go back even further to how it all started, the age of European exploration in the 1400s, found some of the first Europeans on the coast of West Africa, where they found the slave trade had been in full swing for centuries with African kingdoms selling Africans to the Middle East. Europe jumped into the market and exported slaves to Europe and then later to North America. Let's get back to England's involvement with the South and the Civil War. And so, you know, that's part of this too.

England actually does clandestinely support the Confederacy a little bit. They build some ships over there that the Confederates, quote unquote, steal and then use as their own. And England really helped build a Confederate Navy in this. And they did it all off the books behind the scenes. Napoleon III, who was the Emperor of France at the time, told the Confederate, diplomats, if you can get Great Britain to sign off on this and to come in on your side, we'll join you too. He kind of wanted to jump in on the side of the Confederacy, but he didn't want to do it if Great Britain wasn't going to do it. So all this is going on, still going on

in 1862. And of course, Lincoln knows all this. The war in late 1862 is not going well for the union side. Robert E. Lee has just, you know, by the late summer of 1862, Robert E. Lee is now taken over the Army of Northern Virginia, the big, you know, the big main army in the east for the Confederacy. And he turns out to be a really good general, better than anybody that Lincoln has at that point run in the Army, the Potomac, the big army facing each other.

You know, they're like the old Yankees and Dodgers. You know, the two superpowers, you know, in the war kind of fighting each other day after day. And so all of this is going on in the background. And during the late summer, fall, Lincoln starts drafting this proclamation. And it's part diplomatic document. He knows once this thing's issued, if it has any force behind it, if it doesn't look like it's just too desperate and it's a last ditch attempt by the union to do something, then that's going to keep England and France out of the war on the Confederate side.

Explain that to me. Why would the Emancipation Proclamation keep those guys out of the war? Yeah. And that's the other part of this. The Emancipation Proclamation, as Lincoln envisioned it, would make the war about slavery. Okay. It would make the war a war to end slavery from the Union side. We know the war was primarily caused by slavery.

But he'd been tiptoeing around that, trying not to make it about that. Right. It was caused by slavery, but not about slavery. So if he made it about slavery, these guys that had already outlawed it couldn't get behind it. They're not going to get, yeah. France and England, they're not going to touch the American Civil War with a pole, the length of the Atlantic Ocean between North America and Europe. If it's about slavery.

if it's about slavery. Hmm. Why, would that be simply moral concern? It would be that. And it would be a moral concern and just an image thing. I think by this time, Europeans would have seen themselves as, you know, we've, we've gone beyond this. Elevated beyond this institution of slavery. Yeah, we're not, we're not practicing this barbaric system anymore.

We're above that. And we don't want to get back down in the mud. But before when they knew that it really was about slavery and it was about cotton, which was being fueled by slavery, it was still okay to kind of be like, well, we'll probably help you. Right. Because we need cotton. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Yeah.

As long as it's a war to restore the union and we've got. Then that gives us at least a little bit of cover to getting involved with this, even if it's a clandestine type involvement behind the scenes. but once you get that document out into the public, it's a war about slavery. So that's point number one is Lincoln knew that it would keep Europe out of the war. Yeah, it's very much a diplomatic weapon that was effective. I mean, it did its job. And I think Lincoln saw a couple other uses in that. One was that even though, as we've already talked about, the emancipation,

Proclamation only applied to areas that were under Confederate control. So it didn't free the... Border States. The slaves in Kentucky and Maryland and Missouri or anything like that. It was just... It really didn't free the slaves anywhere where the United States at that point had any jurisdiction to free the slaves. So, you know, it is more of a diplomatic kind of psychological document. But Lincoln believed that if this was...

issued that as one historian years later commented that the slaves weren't going to read the fine print. And he believed that there would be massive runaways from these plantations in the South that the word would get around in the enslaved communities and that people would bolt and head for the nearest Union Army. And a lot of people did that. You know, there were a lot of enslaved people who did do that. Of course, a lot of them lived so far. so deep in the South, so far away from a Union Army, that that wasn't going to happen. You know, it just wasn't a reasonable thing to expect. So that was part of it, too. It was this, that not only was a sort of psychological warfare with the South, but it also took away a lot of the

South's labor force. If you could get enough of these enslaved people to run off from their plantations or the mines or the mills where they worked, You know, there you go. You're taking a punch at the South by affecting the labor supply behind the scenes that's helping that, helping the home front keep churning. And then I think the last thing, going back to that morality question, Lincoln realized that by this point, by, let's say by September, you know, he issues the preliminary emancipation proclamation in September of 62. And by this point, the war had been going on for almost a year and a half. And as you talked about in an earlier episode, when this thing starts, they're expecting, you know, a battle or two. And then we're going to declare a winner and go on about our lives. So you're a year and a half into a war that a lot of people in the North didn't want to be involved with.

And he's looking for something to give the North a rallying point and more. more importantly, to give the North kind of a moral point, a moral ground to stand on, to make the war about something that is more biblical, it's more meaningful than just, you know, we need to get these 11 southern states back into the United States. And making it a war about slavery is a thing to do that. So you've got, it's diplomatic, it's psychological, it's economic, trying to chip away at the South Labor Force. it's all of those things rolled into one document.

And it's sitting there in his desk in September of 1862, and he's just waiting for the right time to issue it. Really, what he's waiting on is for one of his armies to actually win a battle, which was no easy task. I mean, if you read about the Civil War, you watch pretty much any Civil War documentary on TV, you know that in the early part of the war, almost the first three years of the war, Lincoln spent way more of his time than he wanted to,

just trying to find the right general, who's going to, especially the right general for the Army of the Potomac, the big one that's protecting Washington, D.C., and trying to put down Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. And so he goes through this long string. It's kind of like when I was a kid and you had George Steinbrenner who owned the Yankees, and he's always firing his managers. You know, every year he's basically firing a manager trying to get the guy. They win a World Series, then they lose the next year. He fires him.

And he's always trying to get the right guy. Steinbrenner never did. Lincoln eventually would, a guy named U.S. Grant. A guy named U.S. Grant. More to come on him. A lot more, actually. Listen. And you're there for heart-wrenching knockout.

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no excuses. Just gear you can count on. head to firstlight.com. That's F-I-R-S-T-L-I-T-E.com. So we've established that the Emancipation Proclamation by Lincoln at this strategic time kept Europe out of the war. But a second point was they needed soldiers in the Union Army. It seems like it took some time and it was kind of politically hazardous, the idea that blacks would fight for the union. But ultimately that's what would happen, is that the Emancipation Proclamation would free the slaves that were in the seceded states. And I've heard a statistic that like one and four slaves would have left an escape to the north and some portion of them join the union.

And I've heard numbers between 130,000, but also heard as many as 200,000. So this was a war effort. Yeah, it's only after the Emancipation Proclamation that the Union Army starts to enlist black troops. And there was a lot of opposition to that even in the North. Yeah, there would have been. Yeah, you had to remember that even after this becomes a war about slavery and not just a war caused by slavery, the philosophies and the opinions of the vast majority of white people in the North would have been what we would today. consider racist. I mean, it's not like they all, all the sudden, believed in black equality. Right. I mean, you could, you could be against slavery and still not think that, that black people

were your equal. Right. And there were a lot of people who believed that. So, so there would, there would have been a lot of opposition to arming black troops, even, even in the north. You know, one of the arguments, I guess, you know, if you wanted to be crass about it, one of the arguments that you could use is, well, it's fewer of your white sons who have to put on uniforms, you know, if we arm black people and who would have more reason to want to go kill Confederates than former enslaved people. But, yeah, that becomes a whole new element of the war in 1863. And there's, as I read this book, there's quote after quote of people in the north that are upset that the war has now become about slavery.

Yeah. There's so many quotes of people just saying wild things about, you know, we don't want our sons to die over the freedom of these people. I mean, stuff that, like, from the armchair of an American, the motivation of the North was just purely this moral compass that was not had anywhere else. You know, I mean, you see that that's not true. And there were lots of people that were like,

hey, we didn't sign up to make, you know, to lose our lives to free the slaves, which is so interesting. Well, I mean, you, you know, you, you discussed that with, with JD. I think the, you know, it's a whole different thing. Why, why war starts and why young men go to fight. I mean, you know, those aren't, those don't have to be the same thing. Yeah. You know, I mean, how many young Americans enlisted in the military after. after 9-11, going over there thinking, we're protecting our oil supplies. You know, I mean, that's what, that's not what they were doing. I mean, that's why the United States is messing around in the Middle East all the time.

It's about oil. Yeah. But it's not, it's not necessarily why young men and women sign up to the Marines and the Navy and the Army and the Air Force to go protect oil. I mean, they're thinking they're patriotic. They're wanting to represent their country in different things. And same way in the Civil War, you know, I would say a pretty small percentage of the northern troops enlisted in 1861 and 62 and went off to war thinking they were going to end slavery.

That wasn't their motivation. Yeah. And after Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation, you have a growing body of discontented people in the northern states who are dissatisfied with the route, the war, is taking. The most radical of those, you know, eventually they call them copperheads. And the copperheads are sometimes are working behind the scenes to kind of undercut union efforts and things like that. But there are plenty of other people who weren't being that disloyal who were just unhappy about what the war was becoming. You know, what I learned is just what a

predicament Lincoln was in. I mean, it just seems so clear. clear cut today. It's like, well, of course, the Emancipation Proclamation was this like masterful political move, that's moral move that was so correct. But, oh, man, when he, when he released that, it was a gamble. I think there's a quote in the book where it's like, he says, if there's a place on this earth that's any more like hell than where I'm at, you know, I don't know where it is. Like, basically, he's just being hammered from every side. There's even political factions of Democrats in the north that are that are trying to come around he made a statement about how basically the war is being fought in front of him and he thinks the war might be one from behind him says something like

that basically like people in the north building up political clout and actually coming and beating him in the election that was coming up i mean he's got stuff coming at him from every side people up even in the north are saying lincoln's not fit to be president he's crazy sure Well, I mean, it's just kind of a given that in the first midterm election after a new president's elected, you know, his party's going to lose seats. And Lincoln, even in the Civil War, you know, Lincoln did the same thing in 62. He gets elected in 1860. In 62, the Democrats gained back seats. And it's easy for us to look back because Lincoln is considered, if not the best president in U.S. history.

certainly, he's literally on the Mount Rushmore of presidents. So it's kind of difficult for us to think back to the fact that almost half the people in the north disagreed with Lincoln enough to vote the Democratic ticket. History has rightfully turned Lincoln into a national icon, a hero. But at the time, it could have gone either way. And he would die so soon after the same. Civil War that he'd really never know his own impact. We're going to pick up with the Union Army at the end of 1862, less than two years into the

war. By the end of that year, you know, the story for the Union Army just continues to get worse because Lincoln replaces McClellan with a new commander, General Ambrose Burnside. Burnside is he's most remembered for his facial hair. With a last name like that. Right. That's where the term sideburns comes from is Ambrose Burnside. He had these, if you look at pictures of him, he's got these huge, just this huge mass of

facial hair down the side of his jaw. And I'm not sure why they didn't call him burn sides, but that hairstyle becomes sideburns. for men. Yeah. And, and, uh, but it was after Ambrose Burnside. I never actually thought about how that's a peculiar name for, you know, the facial hair down on your cheek, sideburns. It's Ambrose Burnside. And Burnside is, he was a rare commander in that he was self-aware enough and humble enough to know that he didn't belong in charge of an army. And he didn't, he reluctantly took the job as head of Lincoln's Army of the Potomac and straight away took the army. And straight away took the army into battle.

They went down and attacked Robert E. Lee's army in the middle of December of 1862 at a time when back in those days, you'd usually retreated to winter camp. You didn't fight much in the wintertime. And he did it sort of because he knew Lincoln wanted him to go fight. Lincoln was looking for somebody who would fight and defeat Robert E. Lee. And it turned into just this terrible defeat for the Union Army. Just a really, it was called the Battle of Fredericksburg. Even though Lincoln had, you know,

he wins the diplomatic battle with the preliminary emancipation proclamation. They still got a long ways to go to win the military battle against the South. And at the end of 1862 and January 1st, 1863, when the proclamation takes effect, pretty much everybody's at a standoff. They're at a standoff in the West. Between the Confederacy and the Union, there are a standoff in, you know, the Washington, D.C., Virginia area,

and there's a lot more war to go. But that proclamation has already set, at least it's established the foundation for a way that the union can win this war. The war is a standoff, but there is one more thing that the Emancipation Proclamation helps usher into this battle. and it's of great consequence, partly because of who it ushers to the front of Lincoln's line of generals. With this proclamation, with this recruitment of black soldiers that are coming into the union,

there also seems to be during this time a new philosophy of war that comes in, and it would be described as total war, which before was, you know, when they first got into this conflict, they felt like it was just going to be a couple battles. We're just going to kind of do a little fist fighting, see who comes out on top and probably come to an agreement. And then by, you know, 63 or so, it's like, this is wild, what's happening. And there's all these great quotes of the generals and Lincoln and them saying, hey, we're not trying to restore the union. we're trying to basically stamp out this southern, you know, these states and rebuild the union from scratch,

which is a complete new aim of something that nobody could have foreseen. And in that total war, I mean, you see it all through the second half of the Civil War. Of just like civilians getting harmed, burning of private property, I mean, all this stuff. Can you tell me about that, like how the flip happened? Right. You know, I think probably the leader who best exemplified that total war concept that starts to take effect in the latter half of the Civil War is U.S. Grant. By the assessment of many, Ulysses S. Grant is the most underrated player in the American Civil War.

He rose from the ashes of the common man to lead the U.S. military, leading the way in this ideology of total war which wreaked havoc and punished the South. On the next episode, I'm planning a deep dive into this warrior's life. I'll be headed to the U.S. Grant Library in Mississippi of all places to talk with the people that know him best. It is a bare Greece civil war summer and I'm answering the questions I've always had and I can't thank you enough for joining me. Please leave us a review and share our podcast with your friends and family. Brent, Lake and I, thank you so much for following along.

Thanks for taking the Bear Grease survey, which over 2,000 of you did. It all was great feedback that we're going to use. Thank you so much. And as always, keep the wild places wild because that's where the bears live. Hunting demands preparation, persistence, and gear that will not quit on you. That is why I wear First Light. This isn't about hype. It's about no compromise gear.

Built to perform, built to last. Whether it's their industry leading merino wool, keeping me comfortable through the cold and the hot, or their durable outerwear shrugging off the elements. First Light is built to help you go farther and stay longer. Designed by hunters, four hunters, with a. deep commitment to conservation and land access, no shortcuts, no excuses. Just gear you can count on. Head to firstlight.com.

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