On this day, December 18, 145 years ago, Secretary of State William Seward proclaimed the Thirteenth Amendment banning “slavery and involuntary servitude” from American life a part of the Constitution. The Amendment both ratified a fait accompli from the recent Civil War, and delivered its emancipating reality to the final holdout states of Delaware and Kentucky, which had yet to liberate thousands of its own men and women in bondage. What observers understood then, and historians appreciate today, was that the emancipation of four million African American slaves was inextricably bound up with the Union war effort. Indeed, the first slaves who fled their masters in Tidewater Virginia and escaped to the Union lines of Fortress Monroe in May 1861 initiated the long and convoluted process that would ultimately result in full emancipation. Slaves became contraband of war, then Union military servants, than free subjects, then soldiers in the Union army, and then finally, full and free citizens of the United States of America (cemented by the 14th and 15th Amendments in the late 1860s). But it was the war that made it all possible.
Most striking about the connection between emancipation and Union military service was its reciprocity. Sure, slaves proved their freedom-worthiness by laying down their lives in service of the nation. Classic republican values equated an armed citizenry with universal freedom. Black American men proved to white officers and civilians that they deserved to be free. But, alas, freedom is not free, as the modern bumper sticker announces. And for African Americans in the 1860s the Civil War gave them a unique opportunity to prove their manhood and their willingness to serve the country that had finally promised them freedom. After all, slaves had been told that they were too weak or undisciplined to fight. They would run back to their masters at the first sign of battle. They would turn their guns on their officers and instigate an orgy of rape and murder. They would demoralize their fellow white soldiers who, in most cases, had no interest in fighting for black freedom. Against all of these pressures more than 186,000 black men risked everything and joined the Union military at the darkest hour of our nation’s history.
I’ve argued elsewhere that we should be careful when we make historical comparisons. There are just too many other contingencies in the way. But the parallel between what happened 145 years ago and today is too rich to pass up. Then it was the American people recognizing the radically de-racialized basis of American citizenship. Today, it is not race but sexuality that serves as one of the final frontiers in the fight for civil rights, justice and freedom.
The odyssey of gays and lesbians toward military service bears little resemblance to that of enslaved African Americans in the 1860s. But on one point there is a clear commonality: a major segment of the American population agreed that freedom is not free, was willing to lay down life and limb for the nation, and has, despite persistent, if dubious, counter-arguments, finally won the right to serve the United States of America in arms.
This is an American victory, not just a win for gays and lesbians. We will look back at the Senatorial vote tally and recognize those on the right and wrong side of history (and, sadly, note the regional persistence of wrong on these matters). We will recognize those who fought hard for this day to come. But we should also keep in mind that what America won today was a sort of reciprocity that lay at the heart of the republic. To be free one must be willing to serve one’s country. And to be able to serve one’s country, one is free.