Which non-war law enacted by the US Congress was most important - Essay Example

Congress enacted for the initial purpose of discouraging acts of insurrection which supported the Confederacy. President Abraham Lincoln was reluctant at first to approve the act in 1861, considering impracticalities in view of the former triumphs and spirit of the secessionists to sustain the old slaveholding tradition. It gradually served him, nevertheless, a foresight that confiscation of properties by the federal government could make ends meet in resolving to abolish and keep black slavery from use for rebellion upon employment to labor by the federal authority.

Alongside the militia act, in the findings of J. McPherson, the author explicates “one section of the confiscation act authorized the president to employ contrabands for the suppression of the rebellion ‘in such manner as he may judge best’” (McPherson 378). Though such did not necessitate for the president to recruit black soldiers, somewhere, the substance of the act brought Lincoln to ponder on what could be more sensibly and productively achieved. When blacks were charged with military duties – he pondered as though he was inclined to prefer registration of the colored men for labor in that manner so that they may divert services, originally possessed by their previous masters, to the government honoured by the Union.

In a way, hence, the permission of the law of confiscation enabled slaves to be identified as contrabands, nullifying ownerships by slave bearers in the seceded states. To analyze, the act seemed flexible and its implication at this stage leads to manifestation of liberty that it could well be a strategic move to make southern rebels account for new perspectives in treating the essence of revolution. Apparently, confiscation acts became altogether a driving force for Lincoln in his pursuit of enlisting black soldiers that, in one of his conversations with a military governor, he expressed “The colored population is the great available and yet unavailed of, force for restoring the Union” (379).

His motivation, as such, stirred further interests in his administration to support him as he managed to realize probable competencies of the black laborers in a number of aspects as “troops to garrison forts, protect supply dumps and wagon trains, and perform rear-area duties” (380). Hence, designating the colored men for these functions could be perceived as an indirect approach of possibly easing racial discrimination as blacks blended with the whites in order for the whites to be relieved of exhaustive menial tasks since able-bodied negroes may come to their aid to save energy and other crucial resources necessary for the Union to cope with the demands of the civil war.

This was especially an advantage for, at the time, a militia draft was ordered by the government to address the scarcity of the volunteering northern whites. By 1862, several Republicans particularly the radicals among them sought to enlist blacks, or the confiscated contrabands, to be armed for a dual cause of helping the Union by turning them against the confederate south as well as stimulating their hope of being delivered from the unwanted bondage to oppression and social injustice through combative efforts.

When the law took effect, the system governed by confiscation acts, however, exhibited unequal wages – a feature of an unpleasant outcome yet despite which, colored regiments proceeded to operate “as labor battalions to dig trenches, load and unload supplies, and perform heavy fatigue duty for white troops”