“I have a right to rejoice, for I am a free man…”
The Emancipation Proclamation went into effect 160 years ago tonight. This is how a group of freedmen in Washington DC marked the moment.
After sunset on December 31, 1862, a reporter for Washington’s Evening Star made his way to the corner of 12th and Q Street to witness a singular moment in U.S. history.
This was the site of Camp Barker, a so-called “contraband camp” for enslaved families who began fleeing across Union lines at the start of the Civil War; the Star had reported on poor conditions at the camp many times since it was established in early 1862. Perched on a swampy piece of land on the outskirts of the city, with limited access to fresh water, it was perpetually overcrowded and underfunded. No amount of cajoling seemed to be able to propel the government to provide more aid.
Despite these shortcomings, for the desperate, the camp provided food, shelter, clothing, rudimentary medical care and schooling, access to jobs, and the psychological safety of a sturdy six-foot wall to keep would-be slave catchers at bay. Most stayed only until they could secure employment elsewhere, but by Christmas 1862, the camp was home to around 700 men, women, and children.
Slavery had been abolished in the District of Columbia on April 16, 1862, so as a legal matter, the residents of Camp Barker were no longer enslaved. Still, as the clock ticked toward midnight on December 31, they were looking forward to a larger freedom — one that would protect not just them, but all those loved ones they had left behind in the South.
In late September, President Abraham Lincoln issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, stating that on January 1, 1863, all those who were held as slaves “shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free….” The document was full of exemptions and was legally unenforceable in the seceded states, but the goal was clear: win the war, free the slaves.
Within the camp, this imperfect document was still worth celebrating — offering as it did a hope and a promise to end the pain and separation they had long suffered under their owners and overseers — and as New Years Day approached, they began to look for a way to commemorate the moment. Finally, Superintendent Danforth B. Nichols decided to call a meeting of prayer and reflection at the camp’s schoolhouse.
This was perhaps the only such celebration in the city. There was no formal recognition that midnight would ring in a new phase in American history, no advertised religious services or public meetings. Even the White House, less than a mile away from the camp, was quiet. President Lincoln had finalized the draft of the formal Emancipation Proclamation with his Cabinet that morning, with plans to sign it the next afternoon. He spent the final hours of the year pacing the floors of the mansion, trying to decide if he should approve the act creating the new free state of West Virginia.
By 8 pm on the 31st, the little building was filled to capacity and an overflow crowd pressed up against open doors and windows. Nichols, a Methodist minister, gave a short sermon before turning the floor over to any freedman who wished to speak. The Star reporter captured some of their testimonies in crude dialect:
“I cried all night,” said an older man named Thornton. “‘What de matter, Thornton?’ Tomorrow my child is to be sold, never more see it till Judgement…no more dat! No more dat! With my hands on my breast, I feel bad, overseer behind me..No more dat! No more dat! Can’t sell your wife and children anymore!”
“I looks dis way and I look dat way, and I see the rebels. I looks up, rebels forever gone and I am strong,” said another.
“We have a right to rejoice tonight, for no such meeting in Dixie as dis,” said George Payne. “I have a right to rejoice, for I am a free man, or I will be in a few minutes, and I shall rejoice, for God has placed Mr. Lincoln in de President’s chair…”
These testimonies went on for hours. At two minutes to midnight, Nichols asked the group to kneel, and “a once the whole number dropped on their knees in silent prayer. After the church bells marking midnight faded, he asked one of the camp elders to lead them in one final prayer. Known in camp as ‘John the Baptist,’ the preacher “eloquently implored that the army might be successful; that the rebellion be speedily crushed; that the blessings of Heaven would rest on President Lincoln; and that their friends left behind in Dixie might be saved.”
With the formal program complete, the crowd gave way to emotion, and “old and young seemed frantic with joy, singing, dancing, and shouting,” said the reporter. At around 1 am, they formed a procession and marched in circles around the camp perimeter, singing “an extemporaneous song, ‘I’m a Free Man,’” and a variety of hymns.
After the procession, many of the people went back to their tents to sleep, but others could not. They stayed awake, singing and celebrating, until daybreak.
The day before had been cloudy and gloomy, but the clouds “began gradually to melt away on the approach of the first hours of morn, and as darkness took flight, scarce a cloud remained to obscure the brilliant rays of light emitted from the great alchemist,” wrote the National Republican. “So may it be with the ushering in of our national horizon.”
This piece was originally published on my Substack newsletter, Long Remember, a newsletter focusing on Abraham Lincoln and his times. If you would like to subscribe, please visit https://longremember.substack.com/
