Untold Stories: 'Liberty Is Your Birthright;' Lincoln's Meeting with Freed Slaves in Richmond
“[M]ost of the men, women, and children who surrounded Lincoln had remained enslaved until just days or even hours before. They had been considered property, wholly owned chattels. . .If not for the war, the Thirteenth Amendment, and Abraham Lincoln, most feared a fate of permanent servitude, with a good chance their children would be sold away from them. This man seemed the personification of their freedom.
[At] one point, having collected his thoughts, Lincoln spoke to the throng. ‘My poor friends,’ he said, ‘you are free—free as air. . .Liberty is your birthright. God gave it to you as he gave it to others, and it is a sin that you have been deprived of it for so many years.’”
There are so many inspiring, beautiful stories about the great heroes of American history which are scarcely ever told. One happens on them accidentally—buried in a thick, out-of-print biography, in small print on a museum sign, casually and fleetingly mentioned in an obscure educational video. America cannot return to greatness in the future if we do not truly understand the greatness of our past. That is why I am writing an article series to tell a few of these little-known but moving “untold stories” of American greatness.
Previous articles in this series have included the story of the first native American Indian graduate from university, Caleb Cheeshahteaumuck; the remarkable life of slave turned Revolutionary Patriot double agent James Armistead Lafayette; how the white citizens of Greencastle, PA saved their fellow black Americans from Confederate enslavers; and how George Washington single-handedly stopped dangerous infighting in the American Revolutionary Army. Today’s story is about an event almost at the end of the life of Abraham Lincoln, when the Civil War was coming to an end and what had not seemed possible before the war was beginning to become a reality—the end of slavery and the beginnings of full citizenship for former slaves in America.
Abe Lincoln had not begun the war, or even prosecuted much of the war, believing in full citizenship for black Americans; but his mind had changed, partly due to former slave and famous abolitionist speaker Frederick Douglass. At his second inaugural reception, Lincoln eagerly greeted Douglass as his “friend” and insistently asked for Douglass’s opinion of his inaugural address, saying, “There is no one in the country whose opinion I value more than yours.” But a lesser known meeting of Lincoln with very recently freed slaves, recounted in Brian Kilmeade’s The President and the Freedom Fighter, also touched the Great Emancipator to the heart and again elicited from him the affectionate address of “friends.”
The event took place in Richmond in April 1865, in the Virginian city which had for most of Lincoln’s presidency been enemy territory—in fact, the capital of the Confederacy. Richmond had just fallen to the Union.
“With twelve marines pulling against the current, the small, solitary craft reached Rockett’s Landing, roughly a mile south of central Richmond, about 11:00 a.m. Lincoln knew this visit to Richmond had its perils. He entered what, for four years, had been enemy territory, a city where people spoke his name as if it were a curse. The Union general now in charge at Richmond had no idea he was coming, so no escort awaited the barge to convoy Lincoln to U.S. Army headquarters, more than a mile away.
A group of a dozen Black laborers were working nearby when Lincoln stepped ashore. The day was warm and sunny, and the elderly leader of the crew shaded his eyes to peer at the new arrivals. He immediately recognized the gangly figure of Lincoln wearing his stovepipe hat. Glimpses they had seen of woodcuts and caricatures told them this was ‘the Great Emancipator.’
‘Bless the Lord, here is the great messiah!’ the man called, as he and his coworkers dropped their shovels. They ran to meet Lincoln, and the leader fell to his knees, crying ‘Glory, Hallelujah!’
‘It was a touching sight,’ [Admiral] Porter reported in a memoir twenty years later, ‘that aged negro kneeling at the feet of the tall, gaunt-looking man who seemed in himself to be bearing the grief of the nation.’”
But, as Kilmeade wrote, Lincoln “was plainly embarrassed.” In the true American spirit, and displaying the finest side of his character, Lincoln reminded his grateful admirers that there is only One to Whom men should genuflect.
“‘Don’t kneel to me,’ Lincoln instructed the men. ‘That is not right. You must kneel to God only, and thank him for the liberty you will hereafter enjoy.’
Surrounding the president, the formerly enslaved men broke into song, serenading Lincoln with a hymn of thanks. In the quiet city, their voices carried and nearby streets, deserted minutes before, began to come to life. Patrolled by Black troops, Richmond was under martial law, but as word of Lincoln’s arrival spread, men came running from the waterfront. Families emerged from nearby buildings. ‘Some rushed forward to try and touch the man they had talked of and dreamed of for four long years, others stood off a little way and looked on in awe and wonder.’
As the crowd closed in, Admiral Porter worried the crush of happy people posed a danger. He ordered the marines into formation, surrounding the president, who held [his son] Tad’s hand. To shouts of ‘Bless the Lord, Father Abraham’s Come,’ the outnumbered phalanx moved toward the Virginia capitol more than a mile away. [emphasis added]”
Lincoln had seen people who hated him and people who cheered him, but what was different here was that these people had gained their precious freedom because of him—a freedom many of them had probably spent a significant part of their lives thinking of as unattainable. Many moderns vilify or sneer at the seeming adulation that has been applied to Lincoln; but, then again, they did not spend their lives in slavery only to be freed, as it were miraculously, by the victory of Lincoln and the Union in the war.
Kilmeade explains somewhat of this difference in perception about Lincoln by examining why a long-free former slave such as Frederick Douglass—who was Lincoln’s critic before he was Lincoln’s friend—or, perhaps, a modern citizen might see Lincoln in an entirely different light than very newly freed slaves from Confederate territory might see “Honest Abe.”
“The freedmen trailing Lincoln saw him as Frederick Douglass could not. Douglass had been the exception: He was among the minority of enslaved people who, through some mix of bravery, resourcefulness, and opportunity, made their own way to freedom. In contrast, most of the men, women, and children who surrounded Lincoln had remained enslaved until just days or even hours before. They had been considered property, wholly owned chattels. Some would have managed to escape at great personal peril; others would over time have bought their freedom. If not for the war, the Thirteenth Amendment [which Lincoln had worked to pass], and Abraham Lincoln, most feared a fate of permanent servitude, with a good chance their children would be sold away from them. This man seemed the personification of their freedom.
[At] one point, having collected his thoughts, Lincoln spoke to the throng. ‘My poor friends,’ he said, ‘you are free—free as air. . .Liberty is your birthright. God gave it to you as he gave it to others, and it is a sin that you have been deprived of it for so many years.’ The crowd shouted in joyful approval, but when Lincoln resumed speaking, they fell silent.
‘You must try to deserve this priceless boon,’ Lincoln continued. ‘Let the world see that you merit it, and are able to maintain it by your good works.’ The advice might have been spoken by Douglass. . .‘Don’t let your joy carry you into excesses,’ Lincoln continued. ‘Learn the laws and obey them; obey God’s commandments and thank him for giving you liberty.’ [emphasis added]”
Both the Southern sympathizers of the past and the victims of the romanticized Confederate myth in the present are apt to bemoan the sufferings of the Confederates, the “infringement” on the “rights” of the Confederates, the “destruction” of a way of life. These people always leave the millions of slaves who lived in the South and were Confederate “property” out of the equation.
Whenever you read a story from a Confederate slamming the Union or vilifying Lincoln or mourning the loss of his way of life, remember that for that Confederate there was a man—or many men, women, and children—who saw the victory of Lincoln and the Union as their first chance for hope, for equality, for being seen as humans and citizens; who saw the fall of the Confederacy as their miraculous new birth of freedom.
Everyone should read this. Thank you.