Library of CongressAfrican American Union soldiers participate in Emancipation Day celebrations at Port Royal, South Carolina, on January 1, 1863. Two years later, a similar celebration took place in New Bern, North Carolina.
Sometime in early 1865, Massachusetts officer S.R. Keenan, stationed in New Bern, North Carolina, wrote the following letter to Miss Sarah Southworth of Winthrop, Maine, to wish her a Happy New Year. Kennan brims with confidence at the state of the Union war effort while documenting an early “Emancipation Day” commemoration in North Carolina, where, on January 1, 1865, New Bern’s African American population celebrated Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation. Keenan’s letter is reproduced below.
This will be, I think, a really happy new year. The great question will be finally settled between a free or despotic slave government before another year dawns upon us. What a superb affair was Sherman’s march in Georgia, and how true has [Confederate vice president] “Alexander Stephen’s prophecy” turned out! “If they went out of the Union, they would ‘sow with the wind and reap the whirlwind!’ Their homes would be laid waste with fire and sword!”
The invincible chivalry thought they had only to say to the North, “Down, sir!” and we would cower like a whipped cur. The “greasy mechanics” and “mudsills” won’t fight: “a Southerner can whip five Yankees!” What a grand mistake “somebody” made to be sure! Let the world produce a finer spectacle than the uprising of the North, or an army that more perfectly understands what they are fighting for, sustained in that work by the glorious result of the election, and I’ll say no more. It cannot be done.
The flight of the slaves in Sherman’s march brings to mind the flight of the Israelites out of Egypt. As the army advanced, there came in crowds from every direction slaves of all sexes and ages, going, they knew not where, but following the stars and stripes with the one thought of freedom, their blessed birthright, restored to them. Twenty thousand, old and young, took up the wearisome march at scarce a moment’s notice, with heart and soul rejoicing. They were free. Twenty thousand people born again!…
The great celebration of January 1st came off on Monday. Just imagine, if you can, a procession of some 5,000 or 6,000 men, women, and children, with flags and banners, and all in their brightest colors, marching about the city for hours, stopping at almost every street corner to shout and laugh. To a stranger it would seem as though they were all crazy; it may be so, but there was “method in their madness.” The motto on one banner was this: “North Carolina colored volunteers, as good on the battle-field as on the cotton-field.”
Late in the afternoon they came to a halt in the big square, and some hours were then devoted to speeches, General [Innis] Palmer, [Edward] Harland, and others addressing them; the bands at intervals playing national airs. My ears yet ring with their hearty cheers for “President Lincoln,” and “de Yanks General,” [Benjamin] Butler. The scene will not readily be forgotten by those who witnessed it. Ah, it was a day we never dreamed of seeing two years ago! Thank God for it!
Captain S.R. Keenan
56th Mass.
Source: Soldiers’ Letters, from Camp, Battlefield and Prison (1865)
The Sanitary Commission’s postwar publication of “Soldiers’ Letters” was edited quite carelessly, and this is not the first of those letters I’ve found the editor attributing to the wrong author. Usually, it was a matter of attaching the actual author of one letter to the text of someone else’s. In this case, the author may not have even existed. The only S. R. Keenan in a Massachusetts regiment was Corporal Samuel R. Keenan of the 7th Massachusetts, who was discharged in March of 1862. He never reenlisted, and anyone who identified himself as a captain in the 56th Massachusetts would have been an impostor. Furthermore, the 56th Massachusetts never set foot in North Carolina during its term of service. The letter itself is nonetheless interesting as the first reference I’ve noticed to any significant anniversary celebration of the Emancipation Proclamation.