The Proving Ground: The Decline of Slavery and the Emergence of Black Codes in Antebellum Delaware

Abstract

Introduction: Delaware as Proving Ground President Lincoln thought that he had a great idea-a great idea that involved Delaware. Shots had been fired at Fort Sumter seven months earlier, and Lincoln was hard at work trying to figure out the quickest way to end this insurrection and start repairing a deeply divided but unquestionably intact Union. To convince everyone to move past this rebellion, Lincoln believed that he needed to propose and successfully demonstrate an economically viable model for eliminating slavery. Historian Allen C. Guezlo sums up Lincoln's thought process: if the president could find a way to get rid of slavery without eating into slaveholders' profits, then "the rebels would see the handwriting on the wall, the Union would be restored, and slavery would be on the short road to extinction." 1 A brief note on terminology: I would like to take this opportunity to offer a disclaimer in line with a note in legal and cultural historian Martha S. Jones' book Birthright Citizens: A History of Race and Rights in Antebellum America. Jones explains that she uses the "black" and "African American" interchangeably, though she recognizes the distinctions between the terms-the former is "a broader term that would also encompass African-descended people from Africa, the Caribbean, and South America" (164). I have followed this convention. Moreover, I, like Dr. Jones, do not intend to use either term in an effort to demean or insult any group of people, and I understand that race is a social construct and not a fundamental difference, biological or otherwise (164). Also, when I use the term "free black" in this paper, I use it only as a term of distinction from literal chattel enslavement. I recognize that African Americans who were nominally free were still often denied many of the rights associated with freedom (for instance, the right to vote). Finally, I have followed the Chicago Manual of Style's recommendation that "African American" be spelled without a hyphen (8.39), unless I am quoting directly from an author who uses the hyphen.