I decided to visit Hampton University (HU) Art Museum today. I pulled up to the campus gate where he looked over my driver’s license.
“Where to?”
“The museum,” I told him.
“Any particular reason?” He asked, followed by a rapid-fire request to see my driver’s license.
I thought it was a strange question, but understandable given our school shooting times.
“I work for a tribe on the west coast and am researching a book…”
“Okay,” he said, handing me a cardboard visitor pass for my dashboard.
“You should visit the Emancipation Oak, too,” he replied. “You won’t regret it.”
I grew up in the shadow of the university in the 1970s and could see a portion of the Emancipation Oak on my daily commute to high school. I never really got a good look at it. But in all honesty, I had no interest in seeing the tree, or any of the HU campus for that matter. HU was a private university, and, in my mind, the campus gave off the vibe of an exclusive country club. And there was the gate with security people that I wanted no part of.
But that was then and today, armed with a determination to finish my book and an adult mind, I decided to take the security guard’s advice and drove over to see the Emancipation Oak up close. And it made me shiver.
Emancipation Oak on the Campus of Hampton University
First off, the tree is massive. It’s 100 feet wide. Don’t know how tall it is, but it’s up there. Its formal scientific name is southern live oak.
Under this oak tree in 1863, was the first public reading of the Emancipation Proclamation in Southern territory. It was the height of the Civil War and Lincoln was drawing a line in the sand with the Emancipation Proclamation, dramatically telling the South that slavery was over and the northern Army was going to make sure the south abided by the new law.
The proclamation would be the backdrop of a war where an estimated 620,000 men were killed.
They say that civil wars are often the bloodiest. Brother against brother. Neighbor against neighbor. The American civil war was like that. More people were killed in the American Civil War than all other wars up to Vietnam combined. Taken as a percentage of today’s population, the toll would have risen as high as 6 million souls.
Here’s a portion of a Lincoln speech after he had won the presidency for the second time in 1865. I always find it difficult to follow the speaking style of the 19th century, so I had to read it twice. Maybe three times. But if you read it carefully, you’ll see that in Lincoln’s mind, the killing was necessary to end slavery in America.
Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”
Abraham Lincoln’s 2nd Inaugural Address, March 4, 1865
A week later, Lincoln was assassinated by a unhinged man unhappy with the Emancipation Proclamation.
