Leon Scioscia: Good afternoon.
My name is Leon Scioscia, and I'm with the law Library of Congress.
It is my honor and pleasure to welcome you today to the library,
and to this Law Day program.
Before we begin, I've been asked to inform you that the Library
of Congress is filming this program, for later web broadcasting.
And to remind you that the comments expressed today reflect the opinions
of our guests.
The comments do not represent the opinions or thoughts
of the Library of Congress.
In 1957, ABA President Charles S. Ryan envisioned a special day
for celebrating our legal system.
In 1958, President Dwight D. Eisenhower proclaimed Law Day,
to strengthen our great heritage of liberty, justice
and equality under the law.
In 1961, May 1 was designated by a joint resolution of Congress
as the official date for celebrating Law Day USA.
A portion of that resolution says, and I quote, "Law Day is set aside
as a special day of celebration by the American people.
In appreciation of their liberties, and the re-affirmation
of their loyalties to the United States of America,
of their rededication to the ideals of equality and justice under law,
and in their relations with each other as well as with other nations,
and for the cultivation of that respect, for law that is so vital
to the democratic way of life."
Today's program is being presented by the Law Library of Congress.
However, it is being sponsored by the friends
of the Law Library of Congress.
This group, which has been in existence for over 75 years,
is led by a volunteer board of directors.
Its president is a gentleman who is a partner
at the law firm of Wiley Rein.
And he has been representing clients on all aspects
of international trade law and policy for many years.
He has been named one of America's leading lawyers for business
in international trade, by Chambers USA,
and is listed in the International Who's Who of Business Lawyers.
His accomplishments actually are too numerous to mention,
and are best reflected by what he gives back to the legal community,
with his long-term tenure as an adjunct professor
at Georgetown University Law Center, and as the senior lecturing fellow
at Duke University's School of Law,
as well as his non-profit board involvement
with the International Law Institute, and the Friends
of the Law Library of Congress.
Ladies and gentlemen, I don't how he finds time to do it all,
the President of the Friends of the Law Library
of Congress, Mr. Charles Verrill.
[applause] Charles Verrill: Thank you, Leon.
I am pleased to be here today, representing the Friends
of the Law Library of Congress on this very, very important occasion.
And on this very important day.
Throughout the Law Library's history,
it has always had a strong cadre of friends and supporters
who have helped build the library into the largest, most wide-ranging
and most complete law library in the world.
The tradition continues.
The goal of the Friends of the Law Library
of Congress remains the same.
We are here to stimulate interest in the Law Library
of Congress in a global sense.
We are here to encourage donations, gifts and bequests in order
to develop its collections.
And we are here to create an environment
that fosters legal research.
To that end, you will find more information about the Friends
in your chairs, it also includes information
on how to become a member.
I encourage you to read it, and to become a member of the Friends
of the Law Library of Congress,
of which I am very, very proud to be a part.
It is now my pleasure to introduce a special person
who is now wearing 2 hats here at the Law Library of Congress.
Donna Scheeder is currently a director
of the Law Library's service directorate.
In that position, she provides leadership for a wide range
of information and collections services for the US Congress,
for the courts, for the executive branch,
and for the executive branch agencies.
In addition, Ms. Scheeder has now been asked,
and accepted to be the acting law librarian of Congress.
In this role, she provides the leadership not only
for the Law Library's services directorate,
but also for the legal research directorate.
She serves, also, on the Library of Congress' executive committee.
She has a long, 35-year career record of volunteer public service,
and has done it all in that time.
She is a former president and treasurer of the SLA,
she is also a SLA Fellow and a recipient
of the John Cotton Dana Award, given in recognition
of outstanding contributions to the field of special librarianship.
She has served as a member of the governing board
of the International Federation
of Library Associations and Institutions.
Leon said he doesn't know how I do it all.
I can honestly say, I don't know how Acting Law Librarian
of Congress does it all.
Ladies and gentlemen, Ms. Donna Scheeder.
[applause] Donna Scheeder: Good afternoon,
and welcome to this program and to the Law Library of Congress.
We're very pleased to have you all here.
This being the Lincoln Bicentennial, it was a foregone conclusion
that the focus of Law Day would be on Abraham Lincoln,
and one of the most profound documents in US history,
the Emancipation Proclamation.
Nearly a hundred years later, Lyndon Baines Johnson said,
"until justice is blind to color, until education is unaware of race,
until opportunity is unconcerned with the color of mens' skins,
emancipation will be but a proclamation, but not a fact."
It is that context that our panel will explore today.
It is an honor and a privilege to be joined here today by a quartet
of distinguished gentlemen: Congressman G.K. Butterfield
from North Carolina's 1st District, Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr.
from Illinois' 2nd District, who, incidentally,
co-sponsored the legislation
that named the new Capitol visitor's center Emancipation Hall.
As well as Dean Kurt Schmoke from Howard University's School of Law,
and professor emeritus Roger Wilkins, who some of you will know
from George Mason University, and for his commentary on PBS' NewsHour,
but who most of us revere as a icon in the Civil Rights movement.
Thank you all for taking the time to frame your thoughts on the subject
at hand, and for sharing them with us.
I also, before we begin, want to call everyone's attention
to an exhibit in the back of the room, in partnership
with the manuscript division, the print and photographs division,
and the Library of Congress rare book division,
we have some items today that I think you will find remarkable,
relating to Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation.
In addition, when you go home today,
I invite you to peruse the Law Library's virtual exhibit on Lincoln
and the Law, which can be found on our website at www.loc.gov/law,
where we have digitized volumes
from the law rare collection relating to Lincoln and the law.
We set the stage for this talk by giving you some remnants of history,
but now I'd like to introduce our guide for the next hour or so,
Congressional Correspondent for PBS' NewsHour, Kwame Holman.
Kwame has been with the NewsHour since 1983,
and there's so much happening on the Hill right now, that you can see him
or hear his voice almost every night.
This is a good thing.
This is his second official visit to the library this year.
The first was for a talk commemorating his father,
M. Carl Holman, a writer, a poet, and a major figure
in the civil rights movement.
I'd like to thank Kwame in advance of the talk,
for his extensive research he's done on the Emancipation Proclamation,
in order to host this discussion with the same ease he shows
when he delivers the news to us every night.
Please join me in welcoming Kwame Holman.
[applause] Kwame Holman: Donna, thank you very much.
We'll see about the ease.
It is a great honor for me to be here in this magnificent room,
that I had never had the opportunity to be in before.
I was told, a little while ago, that these were offices, and I imagined
that the people who staffed them, must have had to have been dragged
out when they were told that it would be turned into a reading room,
and then to the members' library.
Donna, Mr. Scioscia and Mr. Verrill, thank you both for having me here.
Donna talked about research, and I did try to do some research,
and I tried to remember what I could from junior high school,
and not much in college, but some, about Lincoln and the Proclamation,
but I, I hope, like you, expect to learn a lot we didn't know
and appreciate before from these four gentlemen, these four lawyers.
In talking to them a little while ago, and knowing about them
as you do, and their careers and achievements,
I think we can look forward to a magnificent perspective
that will come to us from each of them
in the order they're seated now, beginning with Congressman Jackson,
who will talk, first, about whether, he told us this was his question:
whether the Proclamation really freed the slaves, and I think that's
as intriguing a question as we could hope to try
to answer here at the outset.
I imagine that each would like to come up here for the remarks,
and then I imagine we'll sit and talk, going forward.
The one thing I did want to do, I invite you all
to read the wonderful biographies prepared for these gentlemen,
about these gentlemen, by Christine Herman [spelled phonetically]
and others, but I thought I just should mention each man's law
school, this being Law Day.
Congressman Jesse Jackson is a graduate of the University
of Illinois College of Law,
Congressman G.K. Butterfield is a graduate
of the North Carolina Central University School of Law,
Mayor Schmoke is a graduate of Harvard Law School,
and the man I call Uncle Roger, Roger Wilkins,
is a graduate of the University of Michigan Law School.
Please join me in getting us started by welcoming
to the podium Congressman Jesse Jackson,
Jr. [applause] Jesse Jackson, Jr.: Well let me first begin
by expressing my appreciation to the Library of Congress
for hosting today's forum.
And I want to dive right into the subject matter,
so that we can leave sufficient questions and answers at the end
of our formal presentations.
Interpreting Lincoln's life and work is extremely important.
Recently, there have been questions raised
as to whether Lincoln should be credited with freeing the slaves.
The arguments go, given some of Lincoln's history,
his racial attitudes and statements, his moderate views on the subject,
his non-interference with slavery where it already existed,
his once-proposed solution of colonization,
his gradualist approach to ending the institution,
his hesitancy with respect
to issuing the Emancipation Proclamation
and using colored troops in the war, his late conversions
to limited voting rights for Blacks and more,
why should he be credited with freeing the slaves?
Some have even argued that it was the various actions taken
by the slaves themselves, and I have participated
for the last several months in a number of panels across the country
where others have argued that self-emancipation was, in fact,
the factor in moving Lincoln towards emancipation,
including the power given to the Union cause as a result
of the moral case for overturning slavery.
Plus, the actual military role of working and fighting
in Union campaigns that actually freed them.
By forcing the issue of Emancipation on to the agenda,
first of military officers, then of Congress, and finally of Lincoln,
it was the actions of the slaves themselves that led to freedom.
Well, clearly just as Congress
and Lyndon Johnson would not have been able to pass the Civil Rights
and social legislation of the 60's, apart from the modern
and human rights movements, so too the military commanders,
the Congress and Lincoln would not have been able
to achieve what they did without the agitation and movement of the slaves
and their allies, including John Brown.
On the other hand, the slaves would not have become freed men apart
from what these leaders did, either.
Because historical interpretation has played up the role
of white male leaders, while downplaying the role
of mass movements and leaders of color and women, our understanding
of history has been skewed.   Some of the current put-down
of current historical interpretation is legitimate rejection and reaction
to this past limited and distorted understanding
and interpretation of our history.
The search now, it seems to me, as I was invited to participate
in this panel discussion, should be for a more balanced interpretation,
which includes striving to put many forces and multiple players
in proper balance and perspective.
That, I think, is what is at issue with regard to the question,
did Lincoln free the slaves?
To answer this question, James McPherson says,
in "Drawn with the Sword," that we must ask,
what was the essential condition,
the one thing without which it would not have happened?
The clear answer is the war.
Slavery had existed for nearly 2 1/2 centuries,
it was more deeply entrenched in the South than ever, and every effort
at self-emancipation, and there were plenty,
including the Underground Railroad, many of them had failed.
Without the Civil War, there would not have been a Confiscation Act,
no Emancipation Proclamation, no 13th Amendment, not to mention
and 14th or 15th Amendment.
And almost certainly no end to slavery
for several more decades, at least.   Abraham Lincoln, our 16th president,
was able to accomplish what 15 presidents before him had failed
to do.
As to the first question, what brought on the war,
there are two interrelated answers.   What brought on the war was slavery.
What triggered the war was disunion over the issue of slavery.
Disunion resulted because initially 7, and ultimately,
11 Southern States, saw Lincoln as an anti-slavery advocate
and candidate, running on an anti-slavery party
and an anti-slavery platform, who would be an anti-slavery president.
Rather than abide by such a, and I quote, "black president,"
and "black Republican Party," Southern States,
led by the Democratic Party, severed their ties to the Union.
Through Secession, which Lincoln and the Union refused to accept,
they went to war over preserving the Union.
And while Lincoln was willing to allow slavery to stand
where it had stood from 1854, when he entered politics, onward,
Lincoln never wavered or compromised on one central issue.
The extension of slavery into the territories.
And while gradualist in approach, Lincoln and the slave states
of the South knew this would eventually mean the end of slavery.
It was Lincoln who brought out and sustained all of these factors.
Thus, while Lincoln's primary emphasis throughout was
on saving the Union, the result
of saving the Union was emancipation for the slaves.
If the Union had not been preserved, slavery would not have been ended,
and may have even been strengthened.   Strategically, Lincoln understood
that the Union was a common-ground issue
around which he could rally the American people, while slavery
and anti-slavery issues were divisive.
And looked at, in perspective, by holding this coalition together
around the issue of union,
enough Unionists eventually saw the connection between the two issues
that he could ease into emancipation in the middle of the war,
while giving the North a huge boost.
Even when Lincoln believed he was going to lose the presidency
in 1864, he said, and I quote, "there have been men who proposed
to me to return to slavery the black warriors
who had fought for the Union.
I should be damned in time and eternity for doing so.
The world shall know that I will keep my faith to my friends
and enemies, come what will."
In effect, he was saying he would rather be right than president.
As matters turned out, he was both right and president.
Clearly, many slaves did self-emancipate
through the Underground Railroad before the war,
and through fighting during the war.
Even so, this is not the same as bringing it
in to the peculiar institution of slavery, which only the Civil War,
and Lincoln's leadership, did.
By pronouncing slavery a moral evil that must come to an end,
and winning the presidency in 1860, provoking the South to secede
by refusing to compromise on the issue of slavery's expansion
or on Fort Sumter, by careful leadership and timing
that kept a fragile Unionist coalition together,
in the first year of the war, and committed it to emancipation
in the second, by refusing
to compromise this policy once he had adopted it.
Real presidential leadership.
And by prosecuting the war to unconditional victory
as commander-in-chief of an army of liberation,
Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves.
I thought it particularly important to put the life of Lincoln,
and 1863, in a broader context than just,
did he free the slaves or did he not?
The magnificent presidency of our 16th president was
about managing a number of forces that came together
to create a climate, to bring about the idea of emancipation.
Given the politics of the South, given the politics
of those pro-slavery states that chose to stay in the Union
and remain part of Abraham Lincoln's coalition along with those states
that chose to stay in the Union where there was no slavery,
Lincoln's balancing act in the midterm congressional elections
after his presidency was about making sure that pro-slavery,
but pro-Union states, would not find themselves joining the
southern coalition.
And at the appropriate time, at the right moment,
Abraham Lincoln pulled the trigger and set the climate
for an enormous moral, as well as military, victory for the Union.
Thank you.
[applause] G.K. Butterfield: I too want to thank you
for planning this extraordinary event this afternoon,
and thank you so much for the invitation to participate.
I told the organizers a few minutes ago
that I could not arrange the four o' clock flight today, typically I can,
and so now I'm on the three o' clock flight, and so I will have
to ask your indulgence as I leave today at two o' clock.
But it is fitting that you have taken the time today
to honor the valuable contributions of the 16th president
of the United States of America, President Abraham Lincoln.
It is certainly true that Abraham Lincoln had a very difficult
presidency, but as my colleague a moment ago said,
Congressman Jackson, he was able
to pull the trigger and do it correctly.
And so you are to be honored for honoring this great man of our time.
At the time of Lincoln's election in November of 1860,
the nation was greatly divided over the question of slavery.
Those who benefitted from slavery, mostly in the southern part
of the country, wanted it to continue at all costs.
Others wanted slavery to end,
because they recognized the inhumanity of slavery,
and the reality that slavery was dividing the nation.
At the time of Lincoln's election,
there were four million slaves in this country.
Most of those in the southern part of our country.
Though the transatlantic slave trade legally ended in 1808,
it actually continued for many, many more years.
Slavery was a system that divided the nation so much,
that states were threatening, threatening to leave the Union.
And many did.
Lincoln's presidential campaign was about the need
to preserve the Union, but his election did not settle the issue.
It actually exacerbated it.
Immediately following Lincoln's election
and even before his inauguration, southern states began
to dissolve their connection to the Union, and,
despite the president's plea, they refused to rejoin.
That actually started before the inauguration.
During those days, presidents were inaugurated
in March every four years.
Today, we celebrate January 20th as the date of inauguration.
At the time of Lincoln's inaugural, the country was actually torn apart.
Very soon, the Civil War erupted that all
of us know so painfully well.   That was a difficult war
that actually cost more than 600,000 lives.
And finally, after about 18 months of war, President Lincoln,
as my colleague said, pulled the trigger.
Finally on September 22nd, 1862,
President Lincoln issued what we refer
to as the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation.
That proclamation, and I don't have time to read it, simply was a decree
by the president that in 100 days, January 1 of 1863,
that those persons held against their will in states that were
in rebellion to the Union, that those subjects would be set free.
It was a 100-day warning.
It was a warning shot that, effective January 1st of 1863,
slaves would essentially, in the southern states, would be set free.
Some have questioned Lincoln's authority to issue such a document,
but Lincoln used his power as commander-in-chief,
as a necessary war measure, as opposed to a statute
that could be enacted by the Congress.
And speaking of the Congress, I might actually say to you
that there was even a rule in effect before the Civil War,
that even the word slavery could not be mentioned on the floor
of the House of Representatives.
No petition, no bill could be dropped in the hopper
that pertained to the issue of slavery.
If so, there was a rule that would automatically table that issue.
It was called the gag rule.
But the interesting point about the Emancipation Proclamation is that,
had any of the states rejoined the Union before January 1 of 1863,
they could have kept slavery.
At least temporarily, they could have.
The legality of the proclamation was greatly in doubt
by legal scholars and critics.
Some said that it only applied as a war measure.
And therefore, at the conclusion of the war, it would be unenforceable.
Others said that the President had no authority over areas
that were no longer part of the Union.
And so, as we say in the law, it was a quagmire.
Lincoln proceeded to enforce his proclamation
by deploying the military to enforce his order.
He did that as commander-in-chief.
And thousands of black people in the South became free.
But by that time, it was again time
for another presidential election of 1864.
Lincoln was running for re-election, campaigning on the promise of a,
this time, of a constitutional amendment to abolish slavery.
He, of course, won re-election, and he pressed the outgoing Congress,
even before he re took the oath of office,
he pressed the outgoing Congress and the outgoing president
to pass the 13th Amendment, which would ban slavery
in all states and territories.
In January of 1865, Congress sent the amendment
to the states for ratification.
By December 6, 1865, enough states had ratified that amendment,
and the institution of slavery was once and for all abolished.
And so it was the Emancipation Proclamation,
coupled with the 13th Amendment,
that legally brought freedom to the slaves.
On a personal note, my grandmother was born in 1843.
She was one of those who gained her freedom.
Either through the Emancipation Proclamation
or through the 13th Amendment.
I'm not sure which, and we're still researching that.
When slavery ended, she was pregnant
with her only son, who was my grandfather.
And her son's father was the slave owner.
And that's very common in the South.   That accounts for the complexion.
[laughter] President Lincoln did not live to see the result
of his vision and his work.
He was assassinated on Good Friday, April 14th, 1865, days after,
days after the end of the Civil War.
And then it was necessary for the Congress and the states
to adopt the 14th Amendment, which you are all familiar with,
and then the 15th Amendment was added to the Constitution in 1870.
The passage of the 15th Amendment made significant gains,
enabled significant gains
in electoral progress during reconstruction.
In my congressional district in North Carolina, we had the benefit
of four African-American congressmen during reconstruction.
But those four congressmen no longer were able to serve,
as a result of disfranchisement amendments that were adopted
by the state legislature in 1900.
Those disfranchising amendments simply said that,
in order to be able to vote, you had to read and write
and comprehend the Constitution to the satisfaction of the registrar.
And that made it an impossibility for the former slaves
and their descendants to be able to register to vote.
As a consequence, African-American voters were taken off
of the voter rolls.
In many counties, they were the majority in those counties.
But they were removed from the voter rolls,
and no longer could we have the service
of an African-American congressman,
but no elected officials at the local level.
And so, although reconstruction was active
and robust, it came to a quick end.
And, starting in 1900, there were no African-Americans
in the South whatsoever.
And that continued until the enactment
of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
The 1965 Voting Rights Act simply interpreted
and enforced the provisions of the 15th Amendment.
But because of the Voting Rights Act, I'm happy to tell you
that we now have serving African-Americans all
across the South.   In my congressional district alone,
we have 302 African-Americans serving
in a single congressional district.
They are state senators, state representatives,
superior court judges, district court judges,
I have 7 sheriffs elected in my district out of 23 counties.
County commissioners, city council-people, and mayors,
and the list goes on and on.
And so I have hopefully connected the dots from slavery
to reconstruction to the enactment of the 1965 Voting Rights Act
that has now made significant progress.
The challenge is, do we continue to enforce the 15th Amendment?
Those of you who observe this issue,
would know that the Supreme Court heard a case this week,
that if it turns in the wrong direction,
we could lose a significant provision of the Voting Rights act,
it's called Section 5, which is a section that requires jurisdictions
to get pre-clearance for their change in election procedures.
It would be a mistake, it would be a setback to all of us
who love freedom and justice if that were to happen.
Thank you very much for having me today.
[applause] [low audio] Roger Wilkins: Good afternoon.
I'm going to take a little different tack,
simply because my two colleagues
who have already spoken have eaten up a lot of territory.
So I'll just try to grab a little territory off to the side.
Talk about the Gettysburg Address.
It is irrevocably stapled to my mind as one of the centerpieces
of the freedom that our ancestors got.
When I was a law student, the summer of 1955, I got a job working
for Thurgood Marshall, and I was just a little researcher.
And he asked me, when I first came, "what do you know
about the 14th Amendment, boy?"   And I had known him,
he had literally known me since I was a child.
I said, well, I learned about the 14th Amendment, what you know,
obviously I'm talking to the lawyer who, at that time,
in the United States, knew more
about the 14th Amendment than anybody else.
And he said, "well, you know,
I've been doing all this equal protection stuff,
but I haven't done very much on due process, so I want you to look
at this case, and talk to me about how the due process clause works.
If I had been talking to anybody else, I'd have said "are you crazy?"
You're asking me, to tell you, about the 14th Amendment?
You must be joking!
Well I looked at him, and he was looking kind
of growly [spelled phonetically] like he always did,
[laughter] But when he got the, and I felt terrible.
I felt that I could not do justice to this assignment.
That there was no way that I could look at the 14th Amendment
and give Justice Marshall, or Mr.Marshall,
at the time, any new insights.   Anything that he hadn't seen before.
But I did, in fact, do a little bit of brushing the Gettysburg Address
into the meaning of the 14th Amendment.
Sometime later, and, but as I wrote this,
every sentence I wrote appeared to me to be inadequate, terrible,
stupid, why are you doing this?
And when I gave him the paper, I felt that the paper was stupid,
Two days later, I would send the internal library
of the Legal Defense Fund, and I realized there were, kind of,
more lawyers in there doing work than usual.
All of the sudden, Marshall appeared on the doorjamb of the library,
and he has a document in his hand, and he was leaning
against the doorjamb, and he was reading this document,
all of the sudden, to my horror, I realized it was my memorandum.
So, he finished it, and he looked up and I was ready to die.
And he said, "hey, all, this boy ain't as stupid as he looks!"
[laughter] And later, I said, gee, I didn't think that was all that good.
He said "are you kidding?"
He said, "you know the 14th Amendment is just washed
with the symbols of the Gettysburg Address and the depth of it.
And so he had a discussion about that, and I felt good about it,
and so, for many years, I've gone back to the Gettysburg Address,
and thought of its impact on our society.
What Lincoln did with the Gettysburg Address was, essentially,
amend the meaning of the founding.
Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth
on this continent a new nation.
Conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition
that all men are created equal.
That is not what the Constitution said or intended to say.
It didn't say that.
As a matter of fact, not only did it not suggest that blacks were equal,
but it strengthened the hand of the slaveholders.
But what Lincoln did with this was just to ignore the stuff that was
in there about extending the slave trade, the three-fifths clause,
or the Fugitive Slave document.
The Fugitive Slave segment, and all that was left to see,
if you leave that out, is a sense that the words of the Declaration
of Independence really did define our aspirations as a people.
And that, when this was poured into the 14th Amendment
as it was being written, indeed,
the spirit of the Gettysburg Address was just painted
into that Amendment.   And I am moved by that.
And by the Emancipation Proclamation, because I,
too had ancestors whom we can remember and touch.
My great-grandparents were teenagers, young teenagers,
when the war, the Civil War was coming to an end.
They were in Mississippi, in a town right outside,
right outside a town called Holly Springs.
And one day, according to my great-grandfather's account
to my Uncle Roy, [spelled phonetically], was that one day,
the master came out, and he had all of the slaves brought
up to the big house, and he said, "the Yankees are coming.
And they gon' set y'alls free.   So you can go if you want to.
Or else, you can stay here.
And I'll take care of you, just as I always have."
I think it didn't matter, considering the way Mississippi went
in two years, whether they had stayed or gone.
Because Mississippi did a very good job of slamming as many slaves as,
former slaves, as they could, back into semi-slavery.
And that's what this man did to my great-grandparents.
But they passed on to the people who came after, my grandfather,
his wife, and the only one of the next generation that they knew,
my Uncle Roy, and in it, they said to him, and to them,
their own children and the grandchildren, just remember:
all men are created equal.
That's what we believe, that's who we are, that's what we work for.
But he knew what he wanted.
He was fighting for a country to be put together again.
And he was fighting for country, which would be freed
of its horrible original sin.   Thank you.
[applause] Kurt Schmoke: For those of you who are baseball fans,
you will know I'm batting cleanup.
I first of all, want to thank my colleagues, and on the panel,
particularly Congressmen, for the establishment
of the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission.
I had the pleasure, as part of, actually, it wasn't a part
of my duties as Dean at Howard Law School, but it was a great privilege
to be selected to be a participant in one
of the Bicentennial Commission's programs,
and that participation allowed me
to question the great historian John Hope Franklin,
in a program that occurred at the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church,
so that was questioning an historian at a historical place
about an important issue and an important gentleman,
Abraham Lincoln, in the history of our country.
And I remember, at that program, trying to be a little controversial,
and I said, to start, Dr. Franklin,
you know that there are some historians who believe
that American literature is divided into three parts.
Fiction, non-fiction, and biographies of Abraham Lincoln.
[laughter] Dr. Franklin didn't smile at all about that,
having written a biography of Abraham Lincoln.
But, his work in this area is so important
that we remember him fondly, and I really want to thank the commission
for that opportunity to once again allow us to hear
from John Hope Franklin about an issue that continues to be
of vital importance to all of us.
As my colleagues on the panel have really underscored, Lincoln's legacy
and the document Emancipation Proclamation, as well as, of course,
the Gettysburg Address, continue
to be important issues having an impact, even until today.
And I wanted to talk a little bit, in just a few moments,
about the importance of that legacy in today's debate,
particularly when we talk about the issue
of the war powers of a president.
I wanted to set, in a little bit of context, why I'm a part
of this distinguished panel, and I think it is primarily
because I represent an institution that is clearly Lincoln's legacy.
Howard University School of Law is celebrating its 140th anniversary
this year.   [applause] Thank you, thank you.
Please give.   No, I'm just kidding.
The university itself, as you know, was established just two years
after the end of the Civil War.
There was a debate going on, during, while Lincoln was still alive,
what happens post-emancipation.
There had already been a great deal of debate
as Congressman Jackson mentioned.
There were some who thought about colonization as an issue.
Lincoln himself wrestled with that.
Lincoln talk about compensation of slave owners,
and then what should be done with the sons
and daughters of these freed slaves.
But it was very clear that education was going to play a vital role
in their future, and so Frederick Douglass lobbied very hard
for an educational institution, and of course the leader of an agency
that Lincoln was greatly involved in, that is, the Freedmen's Bureau,
that leader, Oliver Otis Howard, was one who took the lead in working
to establish the institution which eventually bore his name.
So I am pleased that Howard University,
which emerged from the Emancipation period,
can be involved in this program.
Lincoln, some questioned, obviously, about whether Lincoln was pushed
or forced, as one Illinois historian has said,
forced into the Emancipation, or whether this was something done
with a cleverness, with skill, with clear foresight.
And I believe it was the latter.
Because, I think that one of the things that is important to note
about Lincoln, first and foremost, is that he was a lawyer.
He acted, in many ways, as a lawyer would in addressing this problem,
and looking at it from many sides.
He was not only working as a politician and trying
to hold a coalition, but, as Congressman Butterfield recognized,
there were significant legal questions at stake here,
about exactly what power he had, Lincoln had, on emancipation.
Some say that he was a, Lincoln was kind of the great leader,
not only of North America, but Latin America,
in terms of his actions in freeing slaves.
Clearly more slaves in South America than there were in the United States
at that time, but the record does show that at the time
of the U.S. Civil War, the legal institutions
of slavery had been eliminated, throughout Latin America,
with only Cuba and Brazil still having legal slavery
at the time of our Civil War.
So Lincoln really didn't lead in that way;
there had already been action taken by others, but Lincoln did stand
as an inspiration to many people, and one, that I talk about a lot,
in terms of Lincoln's inspiration for others
who were fighting a struggle for freedom, was a man named Jose Marti.
Marti was an outstanding writer, he was a poet,
he was a renaissance man, but he was also an activist,
and a revolutionary.
And Marti, as you know, became the great symbol for the liberation,
for independence for Cuba, and is still, to this day, revered in Cuba.
But Marti wrote a great deal about Abraham Lincoln.
He was so inspired by the man and his work
that throughout his commentary on liberation for Cuba, he went back
and back to his references of Abraham Lincoln.
So Lincoln did have a tremendous impact on the work of others,
not only here, but abroad.   And clearly the impact
of the Emancipation Proclamation had an impact on foreign powers.
It is argued, and I know Dr. Franklin argued in his work,
that because of the Emancipation Proclamation,
European powers did not come in to recognize the Confederacy
in support of the Confederacy.   Some debate about that, but,
since that's Dr. Franklin's thesis, I'll accept it.
I also want just to touch upon this whole question about war powers.
There was a great deal of debate, as has been mentioned,
about the legal authority of the President to do what he did.
There has always been, throughout our history, that discussion.
I look back at some of the other questions from the time of the Alien
and Sedition Act in the 1790s, up until President Roosevelt's action,
in his executive order in which he ordered the internment
of Japanese-Americans during World War II.
This debate about the extent of the president's power
as commander-in-chief
to take actions affecting people domestically,
the Emancipation Proclamation is clearly a part of that debate.
The Constitution says that it is the Congress that declares wars,
but then what happens during the course of wars, what is the role
of the commander-in-chief, how far may the commander-in-chief go,
well Lincoln, I think, put on his lawyer's hat while he was
in the White House, debated those questions, took his time,
sorted through the Constitutional issues,
recognized that there would be a challenge, and also recognized
that he had, at the time, a hostile chief justice of the Supreme Court,
who would probably, if given the chance,
overturn an action of the president.
But sorted through all that, as the great lawyer he was,
and came out with a document that not only changed everything ,
in the words of Frederick Douglass, it changed everything in the 1860's,
it led to the change for the better, for the entire country
that still resonates to this day.   Thank you.
[applause] Kwame Holman: Thank you, Mayor Schmoke.
And if we would thank again, Congressman Butterfield, who,
as we can see, was quite serious about needing to make that flight.
And so, but we appreciate his wonderful dissertation,
and I think each man has taken us an extra step
in understanding the history and the process.
I would invite, and I appreciate Congressman Jackson, doing my duty,
which I failed to do, which was to mention that we will have questions
from the audience, very soon.
I hope to engage the panel, first, on.
Kurt Schmoke: Kwame, I forgot one point.
Kwame Holman: Yes, sir.
Kurt Schmoke: One point that I wanted to make.
Because it related to what you did at the beginning, and that was,
to introduce us all, and talk about our law schools.
Abraham Lincoln didn't go to law school.
And I forgot to mention that.
He was a graduate of No U U. But did an outstanding job and, as you know,
many states continue to allow people to read for admission to the bar,
and have experiences in office.
But some will question the value of law schools.
But I think that they have high value now, in our time.
Kwame Holman: Rather like the question
of whether there should be citizen legislators,
or whether people ought to be re-elected.
Mayor Schmoke talked about the lawyer and,
though not formally trained, who was going through these processes
that also were political, and personal,
in terms of deciding whether the Proclamation, when to do it,
how to do it, its legal basis, but, within Lincoln himself, as we read,
the question evolving of who he was, and what about these people
of African descent and their rights in this new country.
The three things were going on at once were then, Congressman Jackson.
Jesse Jackson, Jr.: Well, there's no doubt that the myriad
of circumstances upon with Lincoln the non-lawyer would have
to function within the context of the framework of the Constitution.
Well, Lincoln the lawyer,
but not Lincoln the formally educated lawyer.
And this question of, I think, federalism, Mr.Holman,
is something that Lincoln obviously had to wrestle with.
We see, before Lincoln, the fierce independence of the states.
And the allegiance of individuals to their states.
Remember, Robert E. Lee would be a Union general, who,
when the rubber met the road, chose to identify himself as a citizen
of Virginia, and not as a citizen of the United States.
And so during this period-- - Roger Wilkins: Well they got him back,
when they took his front yard
and they put all the dead soldiers in it.
[laughter] Jesse Jackson, Jr.: That's true.
But what we see here is,
which I think the Gettysburg Address helps clarify, is that from 1776
until the tragic events of Gettysburg in July of 1863,
we see an independence celebration every July 4th,
and you have Frederick Douglass looking at July 4th, I guess, 1852,
looking at the hypocrisy of a nation celebrating its independence,
you have another July 4th, in Gettysburg 1863,
and then you have Lincoln with the dead, still having been unburied
at Gettysburg, delivering this magnificent address,
saying that a new nation will be born.
And that new nation would give us a very different July 4th in 2007,
when Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama would be locked in a contest
for the presidency, it would give us a very different July 4th on 2008,
when President Obama, the democratic nominee,
would be the presumptive nominee of the party, and by July 4th, 2009,
the 44th president of the United States.
So we see a redefinition of the character of how we viewed ourselves
as American through these periods,
and I believe that Abraham Lincoln saw that.
Kwame Holman: Professor Wilkins, his personal journey,
as you perceive it, there are stories some
of his writings include mocking references to African-Americans,
some of, during the Lincoln-Douglas debates,
there are various indications of the journey he took away
from colonization, toward full emancipation,
even prior to the Proclamation.
Roger Wilkins: Well, you know, I think, we've deified this guy
so that every little flaw is magnified.
And it's really amazing-- - I was up taking from friends from out
of town around, and we of course went to the Lincoln Memorial.
And all the other places, you know, tourists act like tourists.
And, you know, they eat their candy bars and throw the paper
on the ground and all that stuff.
But if you go into the Lincoln Temple, there's reverence.
I mean, really, some people, they whisper to each other, you know,
and they-so, he's a figure set apart.
I would argue that virtually every president who's
in a war does something illegal.
I mean, that's just-- - FDR, you don't think that FDR was not only
with the internmentship [spelled phonetically] of the Japanese,
but he was slipping aid to Churchill before he got authorization
from Congress.
I mean, when you're in a to-the-death fight,
sometimes it's pretty hard to remember all the rules.
And, you know, I think that Lincoln's suspension
of habeas corpus in Baltimore, of all places-- -
Kurt Schmoke: I know, I'm telling you.
[laughter] Man must have not liked crab cakes or something.
[laughter] Roger Wilkins: But, you know, I think that was outrageous.
But, in the end, I'd say this about Lincoln: that he really was a,
I don't mean to say anything about law schools, but he learned,
he really learned, and by the time he ran for president,
he was just about the leading railroad lawyer
in the United States.
I mean, he was self-taught, obviously,
a genius, but self-taught.
So I guess my sense of it is that he grew enormously in all ways.
Did he, you know, he was a big jokester,
liked to tell stories and jokes.   Were some of those nigger jokes?
Of course they were.   You know, he's born in Kentucky.
In 1812 or something.   He was poor.
And he was a blue-collar guy, you know?
Well, he talked the conversation, I think the remarkable thing
about him is that he grew out of all that.
Kurt Schmoke: Yeah.
I think, Kwame, that that's the point.
This whole question of Lincoln's growth, I think, is very important,
if you watch from the time he enters politics
until the Emancipation Proclamation.
Of course, there were many problems along the way, comments that,
you know he'd probably look back on, but I think anybody
in the elected office, if you look, the early days of being in office,
and then later on, as you've had a chance to grow and mature,
there are some things that you wish you hadn't said.
I'm sure Lincoln, we're all happy that C-SPAN wasn't there when,
you know, he was giving some of his early speeches.
But it raises the question that a lot of historians debate,
the great "what ifs," that had he not been assassinated,
that here's a man that had moved from saying that, you know,
my focus is preserving the Union, and if I can preserve it
and keep slavery, I'll do it, to a person that becomes such an advocate
for this Constitutional amendment to abolish slavery,
the reconstruction year might have been very different.
A whole different tone would have been set.
We might have had subsequent leaders in the White House
that were very different, would have made different
political compromises.
The tremendous impact, the great what-ifs,
are something I'm sure we will be debating, but I do think we have
to give him credit, Professor Wilkins says, for the growth,
for not staying solid, and not just taking unprincipled action,
but looking at the entire situation, wrestling with the legal problems,
also with the political problems, and coming out with a direction
that really clearly made our country a beacon of hope to many others,
is a remarkable achievement.
Kwame Holman: And indeed, Mayor Schmoke, the law then
and the law now are very different things.
The Dred Scott decision was 1857,
African-Americans were not legal persons.
Kurt Schmoke: Another Marylander.
[laughter] You guys are making it tough on us today, aren't you?
Kwame Holman: Within the framework of what Lincoln was dealing with,
and, indeed, as Professor Wilkins suggests, Congressman Jackson,
the Emancipation Proclamation itself was an instrument,
a piece of strategy within the war effort itself.
As you talked about.
Jesse Jackson, Jr.: I want to pick back up on something
that Mayor Schmoke, the Dean talked about, and that is the growth
of Lincoln, and then come right back to Dred Scott.
I think when you answer the question about growth,
you look at Lyndon Johnson, Master of the Senate.
And the word "nigra" rolled off of his tongue more often as Master
of the Senate than probably any other single racially
derogatory term.
But as President Johnson, I think those who lived through the era,
probably acknowledged that his accomplishments from '64, '65,
and through the open housing periods, credit him with some
of the most profound growth we've ever seen
in an individual in the White House.
Johnson, among our greatest presidents, on the question
of human rights for all Americans, and for all people.
On this question of Dred Scott, and, when I think about Lincoln,
and Dred Scott, for me, I have
to answer the question, what did Lincoln see?
So we have Dred Scott before Lincoln is president.
So it's one of the data points that Lincoln sees before he is president.
It is the Supreme Court's decision.
It is, blacks had no rights that whites were bound through respect.
But also, Lincoln saw in Dred Scott, that Congress did not have the power
to outlaw slavery in the territories.
Lincoln sees, in Dred Scott, a profound, another profound question.
Not just the racial-social question, but the limitations
of Congress itself to do something about the peculiar institution
that keeps rearing its head.
Which really takes us, I think, to the dean's point about the 13th,
14th, and ultimately the 15th Amendment, that, in Lincoln's mind,
somewhere beyond the Emancipation Proclamation,
is this idea that a Constitutional change, to keep the country
from slipping back into the peculiar institution,
would become inevitable and necessary.
Kwame Holman: Yes, he knew that he had to seek another way to deal
with this conundrum that he was coming to oppose more and more.
Roger Wilkins: Well, if you read biographies, it's very clear
that his goal was to preserve the Union.
And he also knew that the most divisive subject
in the country was slavery.
And so the only way that you could preserve the Union, when you're 1865
and looking forward, is to, everything you can to make sure
that slavery does not grow back into the soil of the South.
And, you know, he'd experienced the fight
about the South trying to move slavery west.
So, he wanted that over.
And so 13, 14 and 15 were designed to do that.
And also, designed to give the freedmen some traction
in this society.
Kwame Holman: And all three of you, then, believe that,
as the dean said, that the evolution would have been toward something
really remarkable in terms of a President Lincoln
in the next term doing things to establish these freed men
and women in a new United States.   Kurt Schmoke: Well, I think so.
I mean, one of Dr. Franklin, in one of his books, actually commented on,
he makes a reference to the Russian Tsar,
and how the Tsar viewed the serfs.
In freeing the serfs, the Russians provided some land,
and he was saying, how can the Americans free these people,
and not provide them with their 40 acres and a mule, and so,
the question came, where was the leadership after the end
of the Civil War, to really provide these freed slaves what they needed
to get on their feet and move forward.
And there's where you started the lack of a Lincoln, he did not get
that strong support, at least for a long enough period
of time to make a difference.   And the compromises, of course,
were made that took away what little rights,
as Congressman Butterfield commented,
what little rights they did have, they were taken away.
So there was a reversion without that kind
of presidential leadership.   Kwame Holman: Professor,
I don't know if you had an interjection there,
but I would invite those of you that have a question, or two,
very quickly, in these last ten minutes or so,
to identify yourselves, and I think, I don't know if we're going
to use a microphone, it appears that we will.
Jesse Jackson, Jr.: Here she comes.
Kwame Holman: Thank you, Gail [spelled phonetically].
[break] David Dulles: This is for Roger Wilkins, with whom I was
in the Justice Department, David Dulles [spelled phonetically].
Is it not a big lie to say that no substantial numbers of slaves
in the affected territories physically exercised freedom
as an immediate consequence
of the first and/or second Emancipation Proclamations?
Roger Wilkins: The answer, my honest answer to you is, I don't know.
And I'm, would you just elaborate on your question?
David Dulles: [unintelligible] Nobody was liberated,
nobody was liberated.
As I understand it, thousands of slaves exercised their freedom
as soon as they got the word.
Roger Wilkins: Well, a lot of slaves did it before there was an
Emancipation Proclamation.
When the Union Army would come through,
they would just leave their plows
and leave the fields and go to the Army.
And that's why they were called contraband.
Because they were taken, they were property taken
from the slave owners, and it was really in response to all of this
that General Sherman, in his march through Georgia,
the number of people who were behind him,
self-freed people was just enormous.
So he said, we've got to have some rule.
We've got to have some goal in mind, some program.
And that's where 40 acres and a mule came from.
And it was the pressure,
the pressure from these self-freed people.
Jesse Jackson, Jr.: I'd like to add to that.
I mean obviously, there is no CNN, there's no C-SPAN
and there's no web broadcast of the Emancipation Proclamation.
So the word makes it through the traditional channels of the era
about what the Emancipation Proclamation means.
For some, Martin Luther King, Jr. said in the I Have a Dream Speech,
it was a momentous decree about a long,
dark night that the people had suffered, and reacted to.
For others in Texas, it would lead to the Juneteenth Holiday.
They wouldn't get the word for several years
after the Emancipation Proclamation.
And Juneteenth is subsequently celebrated,
because by the time slaveholders in Texas let people know
of such a decree, in fact the 13th Amendment might have been part
of the Constitution by the time Texas slaves got the word,
and there might be some confusion for Texans, about whether
or not it is the Emancipation Proclamation
that actually frees the slaves,
or whether it is the 13th Amendment itself.
Coincidentally, there is an interesting historical note
that the first 13th Amendment
to the Constitution actually passes before the war,
and it legalizes slavery everywhere in the United States.
Very different than the one that's ultimately adopted,
but as the states seceded from the Union, there were not enough states
to ratify the first 13th Amendment,
they would ultimately ratify the 13th Amendment
that all Americans presently enjoy.
And last but not least, when one looks at the legal document,
the Emancipation Proclamation itself, you can't but help but look
at the political nature of what the president is also trying to do.
He frees slaves where he has no political power or military power.
In the southern states.
But he keeps slavery in place in the states that chose to stay
in the Union, to keep those states from making slavery the issue
and joining the South, the president issues a document
that helps create a moral cause for the Union case,
without completely settling the issue of Emancipation.
And so there are many different interpretations,
depending upon how it's delivered.
Kwame Holman: I think we have time for a couple more.
Kurt Schmoke: There was a gentleman.
Male Speaker: [unintelligible] to this country, and what I want
to ask you, I have many question, but one question:
did the Emancipation declaration apply also to the Indians?
Roger Wilkins: Well, it applied to any Indians who were enslaved.
But they, basically, were not enslaved, and they were out,
usually in the West, and not deeply involved in this.
Kurt Schmoke: They were in the West, though,
because of some unfortunate decisions of a prior president
of the United States, but this document was not written
with the intent of impacting their Native American condition.
Jesse Jackson, Jr.: My great-grandmother,
Matilda Burns, was Cherokee.   Half-Cherokee.
And all of her relatives were in slavery.
So, the intermarriage also between African-Americans
and Native Americans created a very unique dynamic,
but it did not change their caste or their class situation.
If they were from South Carolina,
and that's where my people were from.
Male Speaker: [unintelligible] interesting book is
"Bury My Heart In Wounded Knee."   It's very painful.
And, in that book, I read that, frankly, the greed, the death,
of a certain Indian chief.   I wonder what happened.
Because I am trying to make sense of this.
Citizens of the states, citizens of the United States,
the 14th Amendment, the article fourth
of the United States [spelled phonetically], under protection
of property, I am [speaking simultaneously] Kurt Schmoke: Well,
the country had then, and still has a number of complicated problems,
and president Lincoln had to, you know, deal with this one matter
in order to do what he thought was necessary to preserve the Union.
But again, after the Civil War, I mean, throughout the 1870s
and 1880s, we have troops going into the western states,
really confiscating land, and driving the Native Americans further
and further into reservations.
So those were very difficult times in the issue
that President Lincoln had to deal with, unfortunately, could not deal
with these other issues that are so aptly described
in the Wounded Knee book.
Kwame Holman: Is there a final question?
Cynthia Jordan: My name is Cynthia Jordan.
I have wanted to know if any
of you had any comments regarding those places that were accepted
from the listing in the Emancipation Proclamation,
as to where it was effective?
Kurt Schmoke: By 1865, all of the border states had taken action,
legislative action to abolish slavery.
But, by just the act of the Emancipation Proclamation,
you still had border states there that allowed the institution
Kwame Holman: Right, and as we've discussed,
there were reasons related to the war
that Lincoln did certain things regarding slavery,
as respects the states that were loyal to the Union or in areas
such as Louisiana where Union soldiers already were in control.
Jesse Jackson, Jr.: Right, and I think it's also fair
to say while this debate often centers around states loyal
to the Union, states disloyal to the Union, and states that had slavery
but stayed loyal to the Union,
if we take it to the next political common denominator,
these places that you talk about include counties within states
that were pro-Union, but the whole state went with the Confederacy.
And so some of these counties are quote unquote, places,
that are loyal to the proposition of keeping the country together,
even though they may have different points of view on the question
of slavery and whether or not the states themselves had the right
to secede from the Union in the first place.
So it's very difficult but very carefully-crafted by Lincoln,
to make sure that he is not excluding cities, places,
little territories within states that left the Union,
to cast a huge aspersion on all of them by saying,
"all y'all want slavery in this particular state."
Lincoln's saying, very carefully, "that's not true."
There are counties that vote for me for Republican.
There are counties that keep sending pro-anti-slavery congressmen
to the United States Congress.
And they need to be treated in a way that keeps the political balance
in the building across the street very, very, just like Barack has
to deal with President Obama has to deal with the Blue Dogs
and the conservatives, and people, Senator Specter, a state that's kind
of going that way, but he's joining the other party,
Lincoln has to wrestle with the politics of people who are trying
to get back to Washington, but are in an intense debate back home
about do they have the right to leave the Union, where do they stand
on the question of slavery, and he has to look
at these places very carefully in order
to keep his pro-Unionist coalition together across the street.
Roger Wilkins: Well, also, you have to remember
that the Emancipation Proclamation was,
it really was a war-created instrument.
And part of what he wanted to do
with that instrument was to weaken the enemy.
And a great way to weaken the enemy is
to drain their slaves away from them.
They had less wealth, they were confused, their families were upset
when the slaves walked away, that's what they wanted to happen.
This just sucked the strength out of the South.
Kwame Holman: For these great lessons in history and the law
and the Emancipation Proclamation and Abraham Lincoln, thank you.
Jesse Jackson, Jr.: Thank you.   Kurt Schmoke: Thank you, very much.
[applause] Female Speaker: This has been a presentation
of the Library of Congress.
Visit us at loc.gov.   [end transcript]