Imagine yourself as if it were the first day of January, and it’s 1863. And you are black. And you live in Missouri. You are not a free person. You rise when the master says, you eat when the master says, you work where the master says. Or else. You wear the one suit of clothes your master gives you, and you work for him or whoever he has leased you to. There is no choice. You have no say.
You have heard all the talk about President Lincoln and his Proclamation. He has freed the slaves, they said. Wait! Not you though. Missouri is a “border state.” That means you are caught in the crosshairs of the Yankees and the Rebels. Neighbors take up arms against their own neighbors, their friends, and even their own family. You know, not everyone supports President Lincoln, and some even call him a monster! Your Master has made sure that you heard nothing about this, or so he thinks. People talk, and they forget about you standing there holding his horse or setting his dinner table. They think you are too dumb to know what they are talking about. Then you start to think, what about your brother back in Virginia! What it must have been like waiting, watching, and listening. Did his master inform him he was a free man? How it must have been waiting up for the New Year! It became what was called Watch Night everywhere. New Years day was the first day of Freedom in 1863.
Then you go back to sleep; nothing has changed here. All you have to wait for is the morning bell, telling you it’s time to get up and head to your chores.
President Lincoln would announce his plans for the end of slavery on September 22, 1862, at Gettysburg. Threatening the states in rebellion of what was about to happen. On December 31, 1862, slaves would watch, they would listen and wonder what would happen next. With this, also came the ability to fight! Fight for Freedom! Some states, like Missouri would not willingly recognize the call to form troops for black soldiers. Men would have to leave their families, and risk their lives in order to answer that call. More men in the U.S. Colored Troops would die from disease than from battle because of the poor conditions. Oh what a New Year that must have been. Missouri’s enslaved would not see freedom until January 11, 1865, but that freedom would come to all.
President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation
President Abraham Lincoln January 1, 1863“That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord, one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free; and the executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom.”
If ever there was a day to celebrate FREEDOM
New Years Day is it!
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