Emancipation Was Not Enough

The sesquicentennial of the Emancipation Proclamation, issued January 1, 1863, is fast approaching. Yet in anticipation of what will undoubtedly be an atmosphere of celebration, those professional killjoys known as historians are striking a more somber note. Where once the abolition of slavery was seen as the great watershed of African-American life—a point of view epitomized in the title of John Hope Franklin’s highly influential black history textbook, From Slavery to Freedom—historians of late have taken to emphasizing the failure, or at least the inadequacy, of the freedom brought about by the Civil War. Current scholars tend to stress continuity as much as change over the course of the nineteenth century. Racism and black subordination persisted despite emancipation; Reconstruction (when an alternative outcome seemed possible) failed. A few months ago, Yale University’s Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery hosted a conference on new directions in the study of emancipation titled “Beyond Freedom.”