Emancipation in Washington, D.C.: How the Capital Ended Slavery in 1862

An abolitionist poster about slavery in Washington. Library of Congress.

A capital built beside a slave trade

Washington, D.C., was meant from the start to be the nation's capital — a symbol of liberty and equality. Yet, grimly, it also became home to a busy trade in enslaved people. Not until 1862 did Congress end slavery in the District, in a law signed by President Abraham Lincoln that is now part of the city's heritage.

First attempts at freedom

Soon after the city was founded, many observers pointed out the contradiction of slavery in the capital. Congressmen and citizen activists worked to abolish it there, against strong proslavery opposition, while enslaved people resisted on their own. On April 15, 1848, 77 enslaved men and women tried a daring escape aboard the ship Pearl. It failed, but the Pearl affair set off fierce debate over slavery in Congress. More: "Running from the Temple of Liberty: The Pearl Incident," White House Historical Association.

Lincoln's first try

Abraham Lincoln, beardless, in 1846. Library of Congress.

Lincoln entered national politics — and the national fight over slavery — in 1847, as a thirty-eight-year-old congressman. He boarded with other young congressmen near the Capitol and befriended some of the most outspoken abolitionists in Congress. His own views were mixed: he despised slavery, but doubted any national emancipation law could pass.

Because Congress had complete control over the District's laws, Lincoln saw room for a compromise: a bill to free enslaved people in D.C. while compensating their enslavers for the loss of their "property." Abolitionist housemate Joshua Giddings backed it and helped write it, but it never won enough support to become law.

The 1862 act

Abraham Lincoln in 1863. Alexander Gardner, Library of Congress.

Fifteen years later, Lincoln was back — now president of a nation split by civil war. By spring 1862, the war was transforming Washington: thousands of people escaped Confederate plantations to shelter with the U.S. Army, and Lincoln was pressing border states such as Kentucky and Maryland to end slavery. D.C. abolitionists judged the moment right. "This is the best place to try the experiment of emancipation," Senator John Sherman wrote. "Let us try it."

Sherman and others drafted the law, modeled on Lincoln's plan for the border states:

• enslaved people in the District were free at once;
• the federal government compensated enslavers for their "property";
• controversially, it funded resettlement of freed people in Africa or South America — an idea with little support in the Black community.

Congress passed it by a landslide, and Lincoln signed it on April 16, 1862. "I have ever desired to see the national capital freed from the institution in some satisfactory way," he told Congress. It was the first emancipation law the U.S. government passed — the start of the road to national abolition.

The first page of the D.C. emancipation act. National Archives.

Freedom, and payment

The act declared about 3,000 enslaved Washingtonians forever free. Enslavers could receive up to $300 a person from the federal government by petitioning a three-member commission, with proof of ownership, descriptions of the people they had held, and proof that they "had not borne arms against the United States in the present rebellion."

Clark Mills's petition for compensation, valuing his 11 enslaved workers at $5,350. Philip Reid's name is at the bottom, his life valued at $500. National Archives.

Philip Reid, 42, was one of those freed. The famous sculptor Clark Mills depended on Reid's mechanical skill at his bronze foundry in northeast Washington. When the law took effect, Reid was at work casting the 19 1/2-foot-tall Statue of Freedom for the top of the Capitol dome. Mills listed him with 10 other men, women and children, describing him as "not prepossessing in appearance, but smart in mind, a good workman in a foundry." After the war, Reid opened his own plaster shop in the city.

The Statue of Freedom, cast by Philip Reid while he was enslaved by Clark Mills. Architect of the Capitol.

Some enslavers ignored the law and kept people in bondage. A supplemental law in July 1862 let those held illegally petition for themselves — winning freedom by their own advocacy, though they received no $300 payment.

The act also freed people whose enslavers had aided the Confederacy. Philip Meredith, 30, a waiter enslaved by Confederate General Robert E. Lee, had spent 25 years working in Washington, sending most of his wages to Lee and supporting his wife Lydia and eight children on what was left. When Lee left the U.S. Army to join the rebellion, Meredith stayed — free in all but name. He petitioned to make it official, the commissioners approved almost at once, and, not surprisingly, paid Lee nothing.

Philip Meredith's petition for freedom from Robert E. Lee. National Archives.

These petitions are now valuable to historians and genealogists, offering rare glimpses of slavery and the lives of those it held. One described Louisa Gant, thirty, as "not of perfect health and reduced in flesh by nursing her infant and, probably by overwork, and her condition is not free from danger."

D.C. Emancipation Day

Black Washingtonians celebrate Emancipation Day in 1866. Harper's Weekly, Library of Congress.

For Washingtonians, April 16 is Emancipation Day, a landmark in the city's history, celebrated since the Civil War with parades, speeches and fairs. In 2005 the city made it an official public holiday, one that "symbolizes for Americans the triumph of the human spirit over the cruelty of slavery."

More: the National Archives' online exhibit, The District of Columbia Emancipation Act, and scans and transcriptions of the petitions at Civil War Washington.

Sources

Based on "Emancipation in Washington, D.C.," Ford's Theatre and National Mall and Memorial Parks, National Park Service; a work of the United States government in the public domain. The source spells the sculptor's name both "Clark Mills" and "Clark Mill"; this page uses Mills.