The D.C. Emancipation Act

April 16, 2013 is the 151st anniversary of the District of Columbia's Compensated Emancipation Act. The edict freed all those enslaved persons held in bondage in the Nation's Capital on April 16, 1862. It was a disengenuous act, a ploy to placate local slaveowners though it changed the lives of roughly 4000 enslaved individuals. Its effects rippled through the region and led the way to the general Emancipation Proclamation signed byAbraham Lincoln nine months later. And just as the advance of the Union Army into Confederate territory allowed formerly enslaved people to come into the army's camps where they often suffered and died due to the spread of disease, the Compensated Emancipation Act had unintended consequences -- some good - some bad. When word of the impending law circulated, groups of Maryland slaves entered the District of Columbia and were, in many cases, secreted in the domiciles of freed Black and White Abolitionists. Other unfortunate enslaved people were taken out of the District of Columbia and traded south by callous masters so that they would not be eligible for freedom. Opportunists also saw the chance to line their pockets by making false claims for compensation, i.e. saying they owned individuals they had no legal right to. Another cruel irony:

 "An official commission was appointed to award compensation. This commission employed a 'professional' assessor of the worth of slaves. The secretary of the Treasury reported in 1864 that slaveholders were compensated for 2,991 slave men and women, for a total of about one million dollars. "(from First Freed: Washington, D.C. In The Emancipation Era, edited by Elizabeth Clark Lewis.) One million dollars for compensating slaveholders, but nothing for the formerly enslaved or their descendants? Reparation anybody?

For me, the most stimulating part of writing historical fiction is the opportunity it gives to look deeply into the lives of the people who are the warp and weft of the American historical tapestry. I think it's valuable to bring the focus in close and consider the lives of individuals caught up in the large moments of history.

My novel, Stand The Storm, is set in Washington, D.C.'s Georgetown neighborhood in this exciting, chaotic period in the nation's history. Listen to my reading of an excerpt from Stand The Storm that I believe will illuminate one consequence of this edict on a family of self-emancipated Black residents. The Coats family - Gabriel, Sewing Annie, Mary, Ellen and Gabriel and Mary's three young daughters - are thrown into turmoil when their unscrupulous former owner decides to seek compensation.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8ZJw1Rk_kY




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