{"id":7575,"date":"2009-10-21T09:39:51","date_gmt":"2009-10-21T14:39:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=7575"},"modified":"2009-10-21T09:39:51","modified_gmt":"2009-10-21T14:39:51","slug":"why-did-lincoln-try-to-buy-a-slave-one-of-lincoln%e2%80%99s-more-troublesome-legacies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2009\/10\/why-did-lincoln-try-to-buy-a-slave-one-of-lincoln%e2%80%99s-more-troublesome-legacies\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Did Lincoln Try to Buy a Slave? (One of Lincoln\u2019s More Troublesome Legacies)"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Legacies of Lincoln Conference<\/em> held on October 1 and 2, 2009 was, as Dean Joseph Kearney reported earlier<\/a>, a terrifically successful program by any measure \u2013 attendance, audience response, and, most certainly, engaging presentations.\u00a0\u00a0Jointly sponsored by the Law School and the History Department, the Conference featured lectures and comments by influential historians and lawyers which will appear later next year in the Marquette Law Review<\/em>, yet another measure of the Conference\u2019s success.\u00a0 This is the first in a series of blog posts by Dean Kearney and me that will highlight each of these submissions, together with links to the audio of the Conference itself.<\/p>\n

We begin most appropriately with the draft article of the Klement Lecture delivered by the distinguished historian Allen C. Guelzo of Gettysburg College, entitled \u201cColonel Utley\u2019s Emancipation; or, How Abraham Lincoln Offered to Pay For a Slave.<\/a>\u201d\u00a0\u00a0The provocative title reveals the subtlety of Guelzo\u2019s analysis and historical judgment.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

On one level we have the apparently simple yet shocking story of Lincoln\u2019s offer to buy a slave from a Kentucky slaveholder in late 1862.\u00a0 The slave, Adam, had fled to Union troops in Kentucky to escape further brutality at the hands of an \u201cIrishman\u201d who had rented Adam from his legal owner, a Judge Robertson.\u00a0 When Robertson discovered Adam\u2019s presence among Union troops from Wisconsin, he demanded Adam\u2019s immediate return, a request denied by Colonel Utley, their fearsomely self-righteous commander.\u00a0 It was after this confrontation, colorfully described by Guelzo, that Lincoln offered to buy Adam from Robertson for not more than $500.\u00a0 Robertson tersely rejected Lincoln\u2019s offer thereby triggering litigation over the rights to Adam (more properly his lost services) that meandered into the early 1870s.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Guelzo uses Adam\u2019s story to illuminate two larger themes.\u00a0 The first is whether Lincoln was a \u201cracist,\u201d as alleged by some historians.\u00a0 For Guelzo, this incident creates \u201cthe most bizarre and most ironic moments in the long see-saw of Lincoln and race.\u201d\u00a0 The second theme relates to Lincoln\u2019s struggles to bring about emancipation while successfully waging civil war.\u00a0 The battle over Adam waged by Colonel Utley and Robertson raised for Lincoln a \u201c\u2019devilish vexed question,\u2019\u201d one that he hesitated to answer.\u00a0 He privately acknowledged that the \u201ctime for petting and cosseting slaveholders\u201d had passed. Yet what so vexed Lincoln was the legal authority for emancipation, which rested on the shaky scaffolding of the president\u2019s war powers.\u00a0 Lincoln offered to buy Adam in the forlorn hope of keeping the case out of the federal court system, which might well rule against Adam\u2019s emancipation in a loyal border state like Kentucky.\u00a0 In sum, Lincoln\u2019s intent was not to buy a slave as such, but to \u201cmove the bomb of the Utley case a safe distance from the federal court system, where someday it could be defused without risk of casualties.\u201d<\/p>\n

We invite this blog\u2019s readers not only to read the draft of Guelzo\u2019s article, but to\u00a0listen to him deliver this paper at the Klement Lecture<\/a>.\u00a0 Guelzo\u2019s reading is at once arresting and engaging, bringing to life colorful characters like Utley (\u201ca Methodist\u201d and \u201cperfectionist\u201d), the slave Adam (\u201c\u2019through rents in his clothing could be seen the scars of brutal beating\u2019\u201d), and Robertson the slaveholder (and lawyer, judge, and law professor).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Legacies of Lincoln Conference held on October 1 and 2, 2009 was, as Dean Joseph Kearney reported earlier, a terrifically successful program by any measure \u2013 attendance, audience response, and, most certainly, engaging presentations.\u00a0\u00a0Jointly sponsored by the Law School and the History Department, the Conference featured lectures and comments by influential historians and lawyers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[97],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-legacies-of-lincoln","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7575"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7575\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}