August 31, 2016 • 32 mins
Secretary of Education Dr. John B. King Jr. discusses the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, which gave rebelling states 100 days to return to the Union or have their enslaved population freed during the U.S. Civil War.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to steph you missed in History Class from how
works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Tracy B. Wilson and I'm Holly Frying. We have an
interview today. Yeah you did, I did I did do it.
(00:22):
We haven't had an interview in a while, that's correct.
Today we are talking to the Secretary of Education, John B. King, Jr.
And Secretary King joined the United States Department of Education
as a principal senior advisor in and before that, he
was the Commissioner of Education for the State of New York.
But his career really began as an educator. He taught
(00:44):
social studies in San Juan, Puerto Rico and Boston, Massachusetts,
and then earlier this year, we got an email from
the Department of Education asking whether we might like to
have him on the show. I'm gonna go ahead and
thank the Department of Education for asking that because this
turned out to be quite because the answer was immediately
uh huh, yes, yes, yes, that was yes. But then
(01:04):
it was also okay, how would that work because we're
not really, you know, an education policy podcast, and that
wouldn't that wouldn't really be what our listeners would be
up for. So what we did was we quickly decided
on a topic that at that point was completely new
to me and I think also to Holly. It was
the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. I had never heard of this before.
(01:27):
It was never mentioned in any of my history classes.
It also didn't come up in any of our many
previous episodes about slavery, the Civil War and reconstruction, of
which we have a lot until our recent episode on
contraband camps that Holly researched, that actually was researched after
this whole interview was scheduled. Yes, but had it happened yet.
(01:47):
It hadn't happened yet. And I think part of it
is that this particular document gets amassed into like a big,
kind of glossed over thing of well, there was a
lot of back and forth, you know, leading up to
the Emancipation Proclamation, and it kind of gets lumped in
and it doesn't get a moment to stand on its
own and be examined. The Emancipation Proclamation, the final one
(02:11):
issued by Abraham Lincoln on January one of eighteen sixty three,
is of course way more familiar to most people. That's
the one that declared that people enslaved in states that
were rebelling against the Union quote are and henceforward shall
be free. That January first Emancipation Proclamation did not immediately
free everyone who was enslaved in the United States. It
(02:33):
only applied to the Confederate states that were in rebellion,
but it did just set the stage for the eventual
abolition of slavery in the entire United States. Another date
that comes up pretty regularly is June tenth, which is
June nineteenth of eighteen sixty five, which is when the
people of Galveston, Texas finally got the news the Emancipation
(02:54):
Proclamation had happened. At that point, the war had also ended,
so a lot of times that come up as like
the last uh, like the last holdout of Chattle slavery
in the United States. Slavery was formally abolished nationwide with
the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment on December eighteenth of
eighteen sixty five, So what we're talking about today is
(03:15):
all stuff from way before that. The preliminary Emancipation Proclamation
was basically a one day warning of the proclamation that
was to come that following January. The document itself is
one of Secretary King's particular interests, and while he was
Commissioner of Education in New York, he took the document
itself on a seven city tour as part of an
(03:35):
exhibition called First Step to Freedom. The exhibition started out
at the Schomberg Center for Research in Black Culture in
New York City and from there, as we said, it
toured to seven other cities. Secretary King also co authored
the text that went along with that exhibition, and the
first part of our interview with him, we are going
to talk about why Lincoln decided to basically warn the
(03:58):
rebelling states of what was coming, and how that document
fit into the arc of how the Civil War progressed
uh from originally from the Union point of view being
more about retaining the Union, to eventually from the Union
point of view being about abolishing slavery. So joining us
(04:20):
today is Secretary of Education John B. King, Jr. Thank
you so much for being on the show today. Happy
to do it. So I have heard from so many
folks on your staff that one of your passions is
the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, and so on September eighteen sixty two,
(04:42):
which was a hundred days before he issued the Emancipation Proclamation,
President Abraham Lincoln issued this preliminary Proclamation that said, among
other things, that if the rebelling States did not return
to the Union, they're enslaved populations would be forever freed.
So led to President Lincoln basically warning the rebelling states
(05:05):
that this was going to happen. Well, so, you know,
in many ways it was for Lincoln a matter of
political strategy right to build public will around the Emancipation Proclamation.
He wanted to both convey that the South had had
an opportunity uh to return to the Union and also
(05:29):
build public understanding that this was essential step um in
order to successfully prosecute the Civil War. Um and interestingly,
he sort of timed issuing the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation for
a moment when the North was doing better in the
(05:49):
Civil War. So the date that it was issued is
actually um bound up with the Battle at Antietam, and
it was the success there that allowed him to issue it.
Because he had been warned by Secretary Seward back in
July that if he issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation at
(06:10):
a low moment in that conflict, it would seem like desperation,
But if he did it after a victory, it would
seem like a more confident maneuver done to give it
South a chance to return to the Union on on
the right terms, or uh, to move forward to finish
the war. Was there any chance at all that that
(06:33):
the rebelling states were going to rejoin the Union after
this essentially threat. No. I think this really was Lincoln,
as master politician, figuring out what it would take to
build public will. He also wanted it realized the historical
importance of the Emancipation Proclamation that in many ways it
(06:56):
was um fulfillment of the promise of the Declaration of Independence,
critical defining moment for the country, and I think wanted
to have the Emancipation Proclamation have the strongest possible um
foundation because he recognized its importance. So, uh, part of
(07:21):
this was, as you said, laying this legal groundwork for
future emancipation. So what would have happened if these states
have rejoined the Union in an effort to not have
their slaves emancipated. Well, Interestingly, in the preliminary emancipation Proclamation,
there's language around the possibility that, uh, there would be
(07:44):
some sort of financial remuneration for UM, the owners of
slaves if the slave states returned UM. That language does
not appear in the UM in the January eighteen sixty
three Emancipation Proclamation. And so Lincoln had a vision that,
(08:05):
at least in theory, that the institution of slavery could
have been on a kind of a path to disappearance,
eliminated in the territories, sort of phased out in the
UM states that had slavery in place. UM. But but
I think ultimately Lincoln understood that this was a step
(08:29):
that would ultimately change the nature of the war and
make the war fundamentally UM, not just about protecting the Union,
but about ending the institution of slavery. And that really
leads really well into my next question, which is, at
the start of the war, several slave states had basically
promised that they would succeed if Lincoln was elected, and
(08:52):
so then he was elected and they did SUCCEEDE. But
from Lincoln's point of view, the war at the beginning
was not really so much about slavery as it was
about preserving the Union, and it was like the focus
gradually became it came around to the abolition of slavery
as the war progressed. So where does the preliminary Emancipation
(09:15):
Proclamation fit into this arc of of moving from it
being about preserving the Union to also being about ending
the institution of slavery. You know, it's an interesting question
and one that that really the scholars of Lincoln have debated.
So there's one view that is that Lincoln always intended
(09:39):
to UH make progress towards the eventual abolition of slavery UM,
but was a savvy and thoughtful politician understood that the
first step was to not have slavery expand into the
into the territories UM. As the war began, saw the
opportunity UH to move towards emancipation, and pursued the preliminary
(10:06):
Emancipation Proclamation and the Emancipation Proclamation as UH as a
tactic to satisfy his ultimate goal of the elimination of
slavery UM. So that's one view. Another view is that
Lincoln was most focused always on preservation of the Union
and would have chosen that above all else. And you know,
(10:30):
there's of course the um you know, the famous language
from Lincoln where he tries to make that make the
point that he would um, preserve the Union above all else,
whether that was with or without the institution of slavery UM.
So one view is that that was a genuine articulation
of his view, and another view would be that it
(10:52):
was a political strategy UM, and that he realized he
had to build public will over time. And you know,
and some of Link's writing, you hear him talking about
the idea that public will is essential to accomplishing things
that are hard, and that you need to bring the
public along with you. So I love this idea of
(11:17):
the president needing to bring the public along with him
as he and the nation were gradually moving toward abolishing slavery.
But idea has been present and so so many social
changes we have talked about on the show before, Like
we've talked about some really difficult times in the United
States where a change needed to be made and it
took a while to bring the people along to be
(11:39):
more on board with the change. So it's really interesting
to talk about this document as one piece of a
more gradual attempt to to change the public view UH
to the idea that abolishing slavery was really something that
needed to happen. Entirely, it is it's uh, you know,
we often think about this period, I think, particularly in history, uh,
(12:02):
in a way where it gets taught in a very
black and white way. And I don't mean that to
be penny, but it's like this happened, and then everybody
got it, and then this happened and everybody and it's
like no, no, no, no, no. It was a slope.
Like none of these steps were immediate. They were not
you know, like a door opening or closing. It was
all like gradual. You really had to like coax it
(12:26):
through its processes. So then continue the coaxing for more
than a century. Afterwards, we're going to take a brief
break for a word from a sponsor before we get
back to talking to Secretary King. So next up in
(12:48):
Tracy's talk with Secretary King, they're going to talk about
the language of the document, which is a lot more
formal and legal than the Lincoln era documents that a
lot of U. S. School kids wind up memorizing for class.
It does not at all sound like four score and
seven years ago, not not remotely. So. One of the
(13:12):
things that I think a lot of people remember most
about Lincoln from their just regular history classes is the
Getty the Gettysburg address, and that is an address that
you would probably describe as being beautifully written. It has
almost poetic, flowing language, and this document does not really
(13:33):
have that. It is a lot more formal and legal
in its tone. Can you talk about that difference a
little bit? Sure? Well, you know, Lincoln was a lawyer,
and he thought about this as a um as a
legal action that would need to be legally defensible, and
(13:53):
view the emancipation Proclamation as a exercise of presidential war power.
And so the document is in very legalistic prose and
intentionally so, and he took great care and personally authoring
the document and the version of the primary emancipation Proclamation
(14:16):
that UM. The New York State Library has um the
original in Lincoln's own hand even has uh cut and
pasted sections from the confiscation x UM where you can
see that he literally cut them out and pasted them.
And there's the even that spot where you can see
(14:38):
Lincoln's thumb print in glue um on the document UM
as he cut and pasted into it. So this was
this was for Lincoln a very careful step and it's
it's a you know, I think one of the powerful
things as a teacher UM, as you're teaching these documents
is to see the complexity of the role of historic
(15:01):
UM figures. You know that Lincoln was president making political judgments,
thinking about UM his legacy, thinking about the importance of
these events in the grand sweep of history, their significance
for the country. He wanted to make sure that that
(15:22):
emancipation succeeded. He wanted to make sure he built public support,
that he had a strong legal position, and that he
could navigate to emancipation UH while preserving the role of
the border states that were members of the Union. This
was all very very carefully executed by by Lincoln. The
(15:46):
first time that I actually read this, it was a
transcript of the document because I have a very hard
time with historical handwriting, and I didn't realize until much
later that those sections of the previous Acts were literally
cut out and pasted to the document. And that quickly
became one of my favorite things about it, was that
he cut it out and pasted it on there so
(16:07):
it would be exactly the word for word, and then
also not have to rewrite the whole thing. Yeah, yeah,
old fashioned before me before long before the cutting and
pasting of microsoft word. Yeah. Uh, so there is there's
one copy of this document that's in the president's own handwriting.
(16:28):
What happened to that physical copy once he signed it? Well,
so you know. Later the document was donated to a
commission that was set up for the care of soldiers
and medical care of soldiers, and that commission then held
(16:48):
a auction and an abolitionist won the documented an auction.
He bought a lot of tickets in the auction and
or raffle, and then the New York State Legislature allocated
funding to buy the document from him, and that's how
it came to be in the possession of New York State,
(17:10):
and uh New York State this periodically shared the document
with the public. And when I was State Commissioner in
New York, I was privileged to be a part of
an effort where we developed an exhibit with the preliminary
mancipation proclamation and also a speech that UH doctor King
gave on the hundredth anniversary of the pluminary Mancipation Proclamation.
(17:31):
And we built an exhibit for kids um with the
two documents, and uh took it all around the state.
And it was during the time that the Lincoln movie
was coming out, and there was a lot of interest,
and we had thousands of people and um thousands of
students from schools all over the state come to see
(17:53):
this exhibit and come to see the document. And you
could really see people's appreciation for UM Lincoln in their
enthusiasm just just to stand in the same space as
as this document. So I don't know if this is
the case now. And I when I was studying, you know,
k through twelve American history, this was in the late eighties,
(18:17):
early nineteen nineties, and this whole idea that there was
a preliminary emancipation Proclamation and that there was a process
of setting legal foundations in order to abolish the institution
of slavery, that was skipped completely over. And it it
seemed more like the Emancipation Proclamation just kind of appeared
(18:38):
out of hull cloth and and then the slaves were free,
and that's it's that's not at all what happened. Why
do you think so much of that process is omitted
from so many history lessons about the Civil War and
the abolition of slavery. Well, you know, I think as
as a country, um, you know, we so celebrate Lincoln's
(19:02):
legacy and the notion of of Lincoln as the emancipator Um,
which is true and right, but there's also nuance behind that.
And you know, one of the things I tried to
do when I taught in high school history and also
high school Civics was to try to have students get
(19:23):
a sense of the complexity of UM politics throughout our history.
And it's one of the great things about the Hamilton's
musical is I think it's given a generation of Americans
a better understanding that these UM figures in history aren't
just two dimensional characters that appear in our currency. That
(19:45):
they're complicated people operating in complicated times, making political judgments, UH,
making very strategic decisions. And you know, from my perspective,
mace Um Abraham Lincoln even more heroic because you understand
that that that he had to have a carefully plotted
(20:09):
legal strategy, a carefully plotted political strategy to accomplish UM
emancipation and ultimately to win the Civil War. UM. It's
one of the nice things about some of the recent
UM books and study on UH Lyndon Johnson and the
(20:31):
path to the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights
Act UM. You know, these important achievements are UM the
product not of a sudden inspiration, but rather careful execution
by UM very capable politicians. And sometimes the word politician
(20:55):
is put in a negative light, but Abraham Lincoln was
a very, very cap upon politician. So before we get
to the end of our interview, we're going to stop
for one more brief word from a sponsor, and after
we hear from that sponsor, we are going to talk
(21:16):
about why this particular document is so personally important to
Secretary King. Okay, so let's get to the end of
the interview. Secretary King is going to talk about the
documents personal importance to him and as also how it
(21:38):
fits into the greater arc of progress towards racial equality
in the United States. So every person I spoke with
while arranging this interview with you talked about this document
being really important to you. So what does this document
(21:59):
specifically mean to you and why is why is it
the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation in particular that has so captivated you?
You know, I think for me it said it's a
reflection of UM both the ways in which United States
has fallen short of the founding values. You know that
(22:21):
that that we have to acknowledge that the United States
began very much with the institution of slavery as fundamental
to how the country worked. And there was a real
tension between the institution of slavery and the promise of
the Declaration of Independence and and the and the notion um,
(22:45):
the notion that all men are created equal, and so
there was this gap, and we all as Americans need
to appreciate that complexity of our history around issues of
race uh UM. At the same time, the document also
illustrates um and something the President often talks about, the
(23:07):
the trajectory of America is towards greater equality, greater opportunity
over time. And so this period, the Civil War and
reconstruction are really a second birth of the United States.
You know, when you look at the thirteenth fourteen, fifteenth Amendments,
(23:28):
which were really products of the Civil War and reconstruction. UM,
they expanded the definition of American equality and American democracy.
And this document was very much a part of that journey.
And then the last pieces this document is also about
the complexity of government, the importance of leaders um, figuring
(23:56):
out how to bring the public along on things that
are hard. The importance of UM leaders having a good
political strategy, a good legal strategy UM, as well as
UH moral higher purpose. And Lincoln really combined all of
(24:18):
those things. And you see that very much in this
document and the and the eventual January Emancipation Proclamation January
ten sixty three. So is there anything else about this
document or its history that you really think that listeners
to our show should know? UM? You know, I I
the one thing I would say, it's just speaking as
(24:39):
a teacher. I just think there's so much power in
students engaging with primary source documents. And it's one thing
to read, you know, a textbook and what the textbook
might say, but it's another UM to delve into a
historical document and really appreciate, UM, what the author was
(25:01):
trying to accomplish, the choices the author made. UM. You
can imagine a powerful unit comprised of this preliminary emancipation Proclamation,
the Mancipation Proclamation of January eighteen sixty three, the Gettysburg Address,
the Second Inaugural Address, the thirteen fourteen fifteenth Amendments. You know,
(25:26):
just study through those powerful historical texts and it can
be a way to inspire students UM both about UM
literacy and about social studies. UH. It also can be
a way to help students see UM the nuances in
our history. Thank you so much for taking the time
(25:51):
to speak with us today. Was a pleasure to have
you on the show. Thanks it's fun to talk with you,
and thanks for what you do making sure folks are
are learning about our history. Travo Tracy, thank you, and
thank you so much to Secretary King. Yes, incredibly just
(26:14):
that that was a pleasure of a conversation to have.
Thank you so much to the folks of the Department
of Education who got in touch with us and helped
arrange this interview in the first place. We have photos
on our on our website where you can get a
glimpse of what this document looks like, complete with the
cut and pasted parts of other of other acts that
were pasted on there. We will also link to you
(26:36):
more information about it, including the full text for people
who want to read the whole thing. You got some
listener mail we can enjoy I do. I'm actually going
to read two pieces of listener mail that are short
and are related to each other, and they are along
the same theme of several things that we heard about
following our Butter Versus Margarine podcast, and the first is
from Goldie, and Goldie said, I just listened to the
(26:58):
Butter and Margarine Pie cast, and I have a question.
In your research, did you come across any requested or
granted exceptions to Marjarine but Marjarine bands for religious or
health reasons. I was raised in a kosher home, and
if we didn't have Marjarine, we would have been unable
to have mashed potatoes with our meat meals, among other things.
By the way, I love your podcast. Thanks, thank you yours, Goldie.
(27:21):
Then the other is from Jason, and Jason says, I
really enjoyed this episode, except for the part about pink Margarine,
which seems horrendous. I'm chuckling because I know that Holly
disagrees with the idea that pink Margine is horrendous. To
return to the letter, Jason says, while I am not Jewish,
(27:42):
I believe there is a judaic threat to this story.
Marjarine opened a whole new chapter for kosher cooks as
it was not dairy but could be used in a
recipe as if it was a butter substitute. When not
made from animal fats, are containing milks, milk salads. Here's
some background, and then he has a link to an article.
The article is actually really fast sinating because it is
an article about one year when there was a shortage
(28:04):
of kosher margarine and it threatened to ruin a lot
of passover meals because there was no kosher for passover
margarine available in stores. This is so interesting. Yeah, So
number one, it did not not what GOLDI asked about,
what Jason and asked talked about. Neither of those things
came up in the research at all, in part because
(28:27):
a lot of the time we were talking about was
when margarine was made from beef, tallow and darry like
a little bit of milk for flavor, so that would
not have been considered kosher. It was much later in
margarine's history that like kosher margarine's did come out that
would have been appropriate for use in kosher cooking. So
I started looking into this really super interesting. Uh. The
(28:51):
first kosher margarine was introduced in Europe in nineteen o four,
but for the most part, for a few years kosher
margarine's were mostly being made locally in businesses in like
towns and communities that had a large Jewish population, so
they were made in much smaller batches and not so
much available in the United States. In the United States,
(29:13):
the debut of margarine into kosher cooking was in nineteen
eleven with the introduction of Crisco. We don't really think
of Chrisco as margarine, or I didn't until I looked
into this. Chrisco, even though it is advertised as vegetable shortening,
is basically a greasy white margarine, although sometimes it's yellow.
(29:36):
Sometimes did make it yellow to look like butter. So
I guess that wouldn't make sense and it never connected
for me. And yeah, it didn't connect to me at all. Uh.
So that really changed a lot of Jewish cooks in
terms of what they could make. Um. So it's it's
that was really when, uh, when things that were more
(29:59):
butter like started being introduced, um into more Jewish cooking.
And it's one of those things where when I started
looking into this, a lot of people uh sort of
talked about it. It was like sort of taken for
granted that like that had always been the way that
that a kosher home worked, even though it was only
in nineteen eleven. Or or after that margin was introduced
(30:22):
into Jewish cooking. So that's fascinating. Uh. I do not
think I started looking specifically to try to find if
there were um like religious exemptions to margarine bands. Uh.
And it seems like, at least from what I could gather,
that by that point, the law had progressed so that
(30:42):
at most places that were banning margarine, we're only banning
yellow margarine. So you can still get margarine, just couldn't
be yellow, So there wouldn't really have needed to be
an exemption because you could still get it, it just
wasn't yellow. So thank you to all the folks that
wrote in we got we got um I would say
four or five other emails that were about margarine in
(31:04):
Jewish cooking. Many of the folks I know who are
Jewish don't really keep kosher h kitchens, and it's so
it did not ever occur to me at all. Yeah
me either, you know, and I will certainly confess what
I know about kosher cooking is is very nominal. But yeah,
(31:24):
it never would have even crossed my mind. Yep. So
thanks thanks to all the folks who wrote us in
with that other perspective. Yeah, if you would like to
write to us. We're a history podcast at how stuff
works dot com. We're also on Facebook at Facebook dot
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(31:44):
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find lots of information about anything your heart desires. You
can also come to our website missed in History dot
(32:05):
com and you will find show notes for all the
episodes Tally and I have worked on. In the show notes,
we will put links about the preliminary Ima Spation Proclamation
where you can see pictures of it in the full
text and all that. Um. We also have an archive
of every episode that High and I have ever ever done.
And one more time before we go, I want to
thank Secretary King and the staff at the Department of
(32:27):
Education who leaned up this whole interview because it was great.
You can do all of these things and so much more.
How stuff works dot com or a misstant history dot
com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Does it? How stuff works dot com
Welcome to steph you missed in History Class from how
works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Tracy B. Wilson and I'm Holly Frying. We have an
interview today. Yeah you did, I did I did do it.
(00:22):
We haven't had an interview in a while, that's correct.
Today we are talking to the Secretary of Education, John B. King, Jr.
And Secretary King joined the United States Department of Education
as a principal senior advisor in and before that, he
was the Commissioner of Education for the State of New York.
But his career really began as an educator. He taught
(00:44):
social studies in San Juan, Puerto Rico and Boston, Massachusetts,
and then earlier this year, we got an email from
the Department of Education asking whether we might like to
have him on the show. I'm gonna go ahead and
thank the Department of Education for asking that because this
turned out to be quite because the answer was immediately
uh huh, yes, yes, yes, that was yes. But then
(01:04):
it was also okay, how would that work because we're
not really, you know, an education policy podcast, and that
wouldn't that wouldn't really be what our listeners would be
up for. So what we did was we quickly decided
on a topic that at that point was completely new
to me and I think also to Holly. It was
the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. I had never heard of this before.
(01:27):
It was never mentioned in any of my history classes.
It also didn't come up in any of our many
previous episodes about slavery, the Civil War and reconstruction, of
which we have a lot until our recent episode on
contraband camps that Holly researched, that actually was researched after
this whole interview was scheduled. Yes, but had it happened yet.
(01:47):
It hadn't happened yet. And I think part of it
is that this particular document gets amassed into like a big,
kind of glossed over thing of well, there was a
lot of back and forth, you know, leading up to
the Emancipation Proclamation, and it kind of gets lumped in
and it doesn't get a moment to stand on its
own and be examined. The Emancipation Proclamation, the final one
(02:11):
issued by Abraham Lincoln on January one of eighteen sixty three,
is of course way more familiar to most people. That's
the one that declared that people enslaved in states that
were rebelling against the Union quote are and henceforward shall
be free. That January first Emancipation Proclamation did not immediately
free everyone who was enslaved in the United States. It
(02:33):
only applied to the Confederate states that were in rebellion,
but it did just set the stage for the eventual
abolition of slavery in the entire United States. Another date
that comes up pretty regularly is June tenth, which is
June nineteenth of eighteen sixty five, which is when the
people of Galveston, Texas finally got the news the Emancipation
(02:54):
Proclamation had happened. At that point, the war had also ended,
so a lot of times that come up as like
the last uh, like the last holdout of Chattle slavery
in the United States. Slavery was formally abolished nationwide with
the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment on December eighteenth of
eighteen sixty five, So what we're talking about today is
(03:15):
all stuff from way before that. The preliminary Emancipation Proclamation
was basically a one day warning of the proclamation that
was to come that following January. The document itself is
one of Secretary King's particular interests, and while he was
Commissioner of Education in New York, he took the document
itself on a seven city tour as part of an
(03:35):
exhibition called First Step to Freedom. The exhibition started out
at the Schomberg Center for Research in Black Culture in
New York City and from there, as we said, it
toured to seven other cities. Secretary King also co authored
the text that went along with that exhibition, and the
first part of our interview with him, we are going
to talk about why Lincoln decided to basically warn the
(03:58):
rebelling states of what was coming, and how that document
fit into the arc of how the Civil War progressed
uh from originally from the Union point of view being
more about retaining the Union, to eventually from the Union
point of view being about abolishing slavery. So joining us
(04:20):
today is Secretary of Education John B. King, Jr. Thank
you so much for being on the show today. Happy
to do it. So I have heard from so many
folks on your staff that one of your passions is
the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, and so on September eighteen sixty two,
(04:42):
which was a hundred days before he issued the Emancipation Proclamation,
President Abraham Lincoln issued this preliminary Proclamation that said, among
other things, that if the rebelling States did not return
to the Union, they're enslaved populations would be forever freed.
So led to President Lincoln basically warning the rebelling states
(05:05):
that this was going to happen. Well, so, you know,
in many ways it was for Lincoln a matter of
political strategy right to build public will around the Emancipation Proclamation.
He wanted to both convey that the South had had
an opportunity uh to return to the Union and also
(05:29):
build public understanding that this was essential step um in
order to successfully prosecute the Civil War. Um and interestingly,
he sort of timed issuing the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation for
a moment when the North was doing better in the
(05:49):
Civil War. So the date that it was issued is
actually um bound up with the Battle at Antietam, and
it was the success there that allowed him to issue it.
Because he had been warned by Secretary Seward back in
July that if he issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation at
(06:10):
a low moment in that conflict, it would seem like desperation,
But if he did it after a victory, it would
seem like a more confident maneuver done to give it
South a chance to return to the Union on on
the right terms, or uh, to move forward to finish
the war. Was there any chance at all that that
(06:33):
the rebelling states were going to rejoin the Union after
this essentially threat. No. I think this really was Lincoln,
as master politician, figuring out what it would take to
build public will. He also wanted it realized the historical
importance of the Emancipation Proclamation that in many ways it
(06:56):
was um fulfillment of the promise of the Declaration of Independence,
critical defining moment for the country, and I think wanted
to have the Emancipation Proclamation have the strongest possible um
foundation because he recognized its importance. So, uh, part of
(07:21):
this was, as you said, laying this legal groundwork for
future emancipation. So what would have happened if these states
have rejoined the Union in an effort to not have
their slaves emancipated. Well, Interestingly, in the preliminary emancipation Proclamation,
there's language around the possibility that, uh, there would be
(07:44):
some sort of financial remuneration for UM, the owners of
slaves if the slave states returned UM. That language does
not appear in the UM in the January eighteen sixty
three Emancipation Proclamation. And so Lincoln had a vision that,
(08:05):
at least in theory, that the institution of slavery could
have been on a kind of a path to disappearance,
eliminated in the territories, sort of phased out in the
UM states that had slavery in place. UM. But but
I think ultimately Lincoln understood that this was a step
(08:29):
that would ultimately change the nature of the war and
make the war fundamentally UM, not just about protecting the Union,
but about ending the institution of slavery. And that really
leads really well into my next question, which is, at
the start of the war, several slave states had basically
promised that they would succeed if Lincoln was elected, and
(08:52):
so then he was elected and they did SUCCEEDE. But
from Lincoln's point of view, the war at the beginning
was not really so much about slavery as it was
about preserving the Union, and it was like the focus
gradually became it came around to the abolition of slavery
as the war progressed. So where does the preliminary Emancipation
(09:15):
Proclamation fit into this arc of of moving from it
being about preserving the Union to also being about ending
the institution of slavery. You know, it's an interesting question
and one that that really the scholars of Lincoln have debated.
So there's one view that is that Lincoln always intended
(09:39):
to UH make progress towards the eventual abolition of slavery UM,
but was a savvy and thoughtful politician understood that the
first step was to not have slavery expand into the
into the territories UM. As the war began, saw the
opportunity UH to move towards emancipation, and pursued the preliminary
(10:06):
Emancipation Proclamation and the Emancipation Proclamation as UH as a
tactic to satisfy his ultimate goal of the elimination of
slavery UM. So that's one view. Another view is that
Lincoln was most focused always on preservation of the Union
and would have chosen that above all else. And you know,
(10:30):
there's of course the um you know, the famous language
from Lincoln where he tries to make that make the
point that he would um, preserve the Union above all else,
whether that was with or without the institution of slavery UM.
So one view is that that was a genuine articulation
of his view, and another view would be that it
(10:52):
was a political strategy UM, and that he realized he
had to build public will over time. And you know,
and some of Link's writing, you hear him talking about
the idea that public will is essential to accomplishing things
that are hard, and that you need to bring the
public along with you. So I love this idea of
(11:17):
the president needing to bring the public along with him
as he and the nation were gradually moving toward abolishing slavery.
But idea has been present and so so many social
changes we have talked about on the show before, Like
we've talked about some really difficult times in the United
States where a change needed to be made and it
took a while to bring the people along to be
(11:39):
more on board with the change. So it's really interesting
to talk about this document as one piece of a
more gradual attempt to to change the public view UH
to the idea that abolishing slavery was really something that
needed to happen. Entirely, it is it's uh, you know,
we often think about this period, I think, particularly in history, uh,
(12:02):
in a way where it gets taught in a very
black and white way. And I don't mean that to
be penny, but it's like this happened, and then everybody
got it, and then this happened and everybody and it's
like no, no, no, no, no. It was a slope.
Like none of these steps were immediate. They were not
you know, like a door opening or closing. It was
all like gradual. You really had to like coax it
(12:26):
through its processes. So then continue the coaxing for more
than a century. Afterwards, we're going to take a brief
break for a word from a sponsor before we get
back to talking to Secretary King. So next up in
(12:48):
Tracy's talk with Secretary King, they're going to talk about
the language of the document, which is a lot more
formal and legal than the Lincoln era documents that a
lot of U. S. School kids wind up memorizing for class.
It does not at all sound like four score and
seven years ago, not not remotely. So. One of the
(13:12):
things that I think a lot of people remember most
about Lincoln from their just regular history classes is the
Getty the Gettysburg address, and that is an address that
you would probably describe as being beautifully written. It has
almost poetic, flowing language, and this document does not really
(13:33):
have that. It is a lot more formal and legal
in its tone. Can you talk about that difference a
little bit? Sure? Well, you know, Lincoln was a lawyer,
and he thought about this as a um as a
legal action that would need to be legally defensible, and
(13:53):
view the emancipation Proclamation as a exercise of presidential war power.
And so the document is in very legalistic prose and
intentionally so, and he took great care and personally authoring
the document and the version of the primary emancipation Proclamation
(14:16):
that UM. The New York State Library has um the
original in Lincoln's own hand even has uh cut and
pasted sections from the confiscation x UM where you can
see that he literally cut them out and pasted them.
And there's the even that spot where you can see
(14:38):
Lincoln's thumb print in glue um on the document UM
as he cut and pasted into it. So this was
this was for Lincoln a very careful step and it's
it's a you know, I think one of the powerful
things as a teacher UM, as you're teaching these documents
is to see the complexity of the role of historic
(15:01):
UM figures. You know that Lincoln was president making political judgments,
thinking about UM his legacy, thinking about the importance of
these events in the grand sweep of history, their significance
for the country. He wanted to make sure that that
(15:22):
emancipation succeeded. He wanted to make sure he built public support,
that he had a strong legal position, and that he
could navigate to emancipation UH while preserving the role of
the border states that were members of the Union. This
was all very very carefully executed by by Lincoln. The
(15:46):
first time that I actually read this, it was a
transcript of the document because I have a very hard
time with historical handwriting, and I didn't realize until much
later that those sections of the previous Acts were literally
cut out and pasted to the document. And that quickly
became one of my favorite things about it, was that
he cut it out and pasted it on there so
(16:07):
it would be exactly the word for word, and then
also not have to rewrite the whole thing. Yeah, yeah,
old fashioned before me before long before the cutting and
pasting of microsoft word. Yeah. Uh, so there is there's
one copy of this document that's in the president's own handwriting.
(16:28):
What happened to that physical copy once he signed it? Well,
so you know. Later the document was donated to a
commission that was set up for the care of soldiers
and medical care of soldiers, and that commission then held
(16:48):
a auction and an abolitionist won the documented an auction.
He bought a lot of tickets in the auction and
or raffle, and then the New York State Legislature allocated
funding to buy the document from him, and that's how
it came to be in the possession of New York State,
(17:10):
and uh New York State this periodically shared the document
with the public. And when I was State Commissioner in
New York, I was privileged to be a part of
an effort where we developed an exhibit with the preliminary
mancipation proclamation and also a speech that UH doctor King
gave on the hundredth anniversary of the pluminary Mancipation Proclamation.
(17:31):
And we built an exhibit for kids um with the
two documents, and uh took it all around the state.
And it was during the time that the Lincoln movie
was coming out, and there was a lot of interest,
and we had thousands of people and um thousands of
students from schools all over the state come to see
(17:53):
this exhibit and come to see the document. And you
could really see people's appreciation for UM Lincoln in their
enthusiasm just just to stand in the same space as
as this document. So I don't know if this is
the case now. And I when I was studying, you know,
k through twelve American history, this was in the late eighties,
(18:17):
early nineteen nineties, and this whole idea that there was
a preliminary emancipation Proclamation and that there was a process
of setting legal foundations in order to abolish the institution
of slavery, that was skipped completely over. And it it
seemed more like the Emancipation Proclamation just kind of appeared
(18:38):
out of hull cloth and and then the slaves were free,
and that's it's that's not at all what happened. Why
do you think so much of that process is omitted
from so many history lessons about the Civil War and
the abolition of slavery. Well, you know, I think as
as a country, um, you know, we so celebrate Lincoln's
(19:02):
legacy and the notion of of Lincoln as the emancipator Um,
which is true and right, but there's also nuance behind that.
And you know, one of the things I tried to
do when I taught in high school history and also
high school Civics was to try to have students get
(19:23):
a sense of the complexity of UM politics throughout our history.
And it's one of the great things about the Hamilton's
musical is I think it's given a generation of Americans
a better understanding that these UM figures in history aren't
just two dimensional characters that appear in our currency. That
(19:45):
they're complicated people operating in complicated times, making political judgments, UH,
making very strategic decisions. And you know, from my perspective,
mace Um Abraham Lincoln even more heroic because you understand
that that that he had to have a carefully plotted
(20:09):
legal strategy, a carefully plotted political strategy to accomplish UM
emancipation and ultimately to win the Civil War. UM. It's
one of the nice things about some of the recent
UM books and study on UH Lyndon Johnson and the
(20:31):
path to the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights
Act UM. You know, these important achievements are UM the
product not of a sudden inspiration, but rather careful execution
by UM very capable politicians. And sometimes the word politician
(20:55):
is put in a negative light, but Abraham Lincoln was
a very, very cap upon politician. So before we get
to the end of our interview, we're going to stop
for one more brief word from a sponsor, and after
we hear from that sponsor, we are going to talk
(21:16):
about why this particular document is so personally important to
Secretary King. Okay, so let's get to the end of
the interview. Secretary King is going to talk about the
documents personal importance to him and as also how it
(21:38):
fits into the greater arc of progress towards racial equality
in the United States. So every person I spoke with
while arranging this interview with you talked about this document
being really important to you. So what does this document
(21:59):
specifically mean to you and why is why is it
the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation in particular that has so captivated you?
You know, I think for me it said it's a
reflection of UM both the ways in which United States
has fallen short of the founding values. You know that
(22:21):
that that we have to acknowledge that the United States
began very much with the institution of slavery as fundamental
to how the country worked. And there was a real
tension between the institution of slavery and the promise of
the Declaration of Independence and and the and the notion um,
(22:45):
the notion that all men are created equal, and so
there was this gap, and we all as Americans need
to appreciate that complexity of our history around issues of
race uh UM. At the same time, the document also
illustrates um and something the President often talks about, the
(23:07):
the trajectory of America is towards greater equality, greater opportunity
over time. And so this period, the Civil War and
reconstruction are really a second birth of the United States.
You know, when you look at the thirteenth fourteen, fifteenth Amendments,
(23:28):
which were really products of the Civil War and reconstruction. UM,
they expanded the definition of American equality and American democracy.
And this document was very much a part of that journey.
And then the last pieces this document is also about
the complexity of government, the importance of leaders um, figuring
(23:56):
out how to bring the public along on things that
are hard. The importance of UM leaders having a good
political strategy, a good legal strategy UM, as well as
UH moral higher purpose. And Lincoln really combined all of
(24:18):
those things. And you see that very much in this
document and the and the eventual January Emancipation Proclamation January
ten sixty three. So is there anything else about this
document or its history that you really think that listeners
to our show should know? UM? You know, I I
the one thing I would say, it's just speaking as
(24:39):
a teacher. I just think there's so much power in
students engaging with primary source documents. And it's one thing
to read, you know, a textbook and what the textbook
might say, but it's another UM to delve into a
historical document and really appreciate, UM, what the author was
(25:01):
trying to accomplish, the choices the author made. UM. You
can imagine a powerful unit comprised of this preliminary emancipation Proclamation,
the Mancipation Proclamation of January eighteen sixty three, the Gettysburg Address,
the Second Inaugural Address, the thirteen fourteen fifteenth Amendments. You know,
(25:26):
just study through those powerful historical texts and it can
be a way to inspire students UM both about UM
literacy and about social studies. UH. It also can be
a way to help students see UM the nuances in
our history. Thank you so much for taking the time
(25:51):
to speak with us today. Was a pleasure to have
you on the show. Thanks it's fun to talk with you,
and thanks for what you do making sure folks are
are learning about our history. Travo Tracy, thank you, and
thank you so much to Secretary King. Yes, incredibly just
(26:14):
that that was a pleasure of a conversation to have.
Thank you so much to the folks of the Department
of Education who got in touch with us and helped
arrange this interview in the first place. We have photos
on our on our website where you can get a
glimpse of what this document looks like, complete with the
cut and pasted parts of other of other acts that
were pasted on there. We will also link to you
(26:36):
more information about it, including the full text for people
who want to read the whole thing. You got some
listener mail we can enjoy I do. I'm actually going
to read two pieces of listener mail that are short
and are related to each other, and they are along
the same theme of several things that we heard about
following our Butter Versus Margarine podcast, and the first is
from Goldie, and Goldie said, I just listened to the
(26:58):
Butter and Margarine Pie cast, and I have a question.
In your research, did you come across any requested or
granted exceptions to Marjarine but Marjarine bands for religious or
health reasons. I was raised in a kosher home, and
if we didn't have Marjarine, we would have been unable
to have mashed potatoes with our meat meals, among other things.
By the way, I love your podcast. Thanks, thank you yours, Goldie.
(27:21):
Then the other is from Jason, and Jason says, I
really enjoyed this episode, except for the part about pink Margarine,
which seems horrendous. I'm chuckling because I know that Holly
disagrees with the idea that pink Margine is horrendous. To
return to the letter, Jason says, while I am not Jewish,
(27:42):
I believe there is a judaic threat to this story.
Marjarine opened a whole new chapter for kosher cooks as
it was not dairy but could be used in a
recipe as if it was a butter substitute. When not
made from animal fats, are containing milks, milk salads. Here's
some background, and then he has a link to an article.
The article is actually really fast sinating because it is
an article about one year when there was a shortage
(28:04):
of kosher margarine and it threatened to ruin a lot
of passover meals because there was no kosher for passover
margarine available in stores. This is so interesting. Yeah, So
number one, it did not not what GOLDI asked about,
what Jason and asked talked about. Neither of those things
came up in the research at all, in part because
(28:27):
a lot of the time we were talking about was
when margarine was made from beef, tallow and darry like
a little bit of milk for flavor, so that would
not have been considered kosher. It was much later in
margarine's history that like kosher margarine's did come out that
would have been appropriate for use in kosher cooking. So
I started looking into this really super interesting. Uh. The
(28:51):
first kosher margarine was introduced in Europe in nineteen o four,
but for the most part, for a few years kosher
margarine's were mostly being made locally in businesses in like
towns and communities that had a large Jewish population, so
they were made in much smaller batches and not so
much available in the United States. In the United States,
(29:13):
the debut of margarine into kosher cooking was in nineteen
eleven with the introduction of Crisco. We don't really think
of Chrisco as margarine, or I didn't until I looked
into this. Chrisco, even though it is advertised as vegetable shortening,
is basically a greasy white margarine, although sometimes it's yellow.
(29:36):
Sometimes did make it yellow to look like butter. So
I guess that wouldn't make sense and it never connected
for me. And yeah, it didn't connect to me at all. Uh.
So that really changed a lot of Jewish cooks in
terms of what they could make. Um. So it's it's
that was really when, uh, when things that were more
(29:59):
butter like started being introduced, um into more Jewish cooking.
And it's one of those things where when I started
looking into this, a lot of people uh sort of
talked about it. It was like sort of taken for
granted that like that had always been the way that
that a kosher home worked, even though it was only
in nineteen eleven. Or or after that margin was introduced
(30:22):
into Jewish cooking. So that's fascinating. Uh. I do not
think I started looking specifically to try to find if
there were um like religious exemptions to margarine bands. Uh.
And it seems like, at least from what I could gather,
that by that point, the law had progressed so that
(30:42):
at most places that were banning margarine, we're only banning
yellow margarine. So you can still get margarine, just couldn't
be yellow, So there wouldn't really have needed to be
an exemption because you could still get it, it just
wasn't yellow. So thank you to all the folks that
wrote in we got we got um I would say
four or five other emails that were about margarine in
(31:04):
Jewish cooking. Many of the folks I know who are
Jewish don't really keep kosher h kitchens, and it's so
it did not ever occur to me at all. Yeah
me either, you know, and I will certainly confess what
I know about kosher cooking is is very nominal. But yeah,
(31:24):
it never would have even crossed my mind. Yep. So
thanks thanks to all the folks who wrote us in
with that other perspective. Yeah, if you would like to
write to us. We're a history podcast at how stuff
works dot com. We're also on Facebook at Facebook dot
com slash miss in History, and our on Twitter at
miss in History. Our tumbler is missed in History dot
tumbler dot com, and we're also on Pinterest at pinterest
(31:44):
dot com slash missed in History, our Instagram missed in History.
It's all the things except for our email address or
missed in History. If you would like to learn more
about what we talked about today, come to our parent
company's website. It is how stuff works dot com. You'll
find lots of information about anything your heart desires. You
can also come to our website missed in History dot
(32:05):
com and you will find show notes for all the
episodes Tally and I have worked on. In the show notes,
we will put links about the preliminary Ima Spation Proclamation
where you can see pictures of it in the full
text and all that. Um. We also have an archive
of every episode that High and I have ever ever done.
And one more time before we go, I want to
thank Secretary King and the staff at the Department of
(32:27):
Education who leaned up this whole interview because it was great.
You can do all of these things and so much more.
How stuff works dot com or a misstant history dot
com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Does it? How stuff works dot com
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