Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avergan.

This day, August 30, 1861 in Missouri, which at this point is basically the Western

frontier of the United States, John C. Fremont, the commanding officer of the Union

military's Western Department Department issues a proclamation, immediately

emancipating the enslaved people of Confederate supporters in that territory.

This is of course 16 months before the much more famous Emancipation Proclamation issued by President Lincoln,

but here we are in the summer of 1861 with Fremont kind of going a little rogue issuing his own edict causing a bit of confusion to say the least

my favorite detail in all this president Lincoln himself first learned about this proclamation

by reading about it in the newspaper. So let's talk about Missouri Emancipation, the fallout from it, what it says about the Western

frontier of the Civil War.

We were tipped off to this story by a listener in St. Louis, who was saying that they were kind of getting into local history and particularly fascinated by that region's role during the Civil War, so thank you for that.

But here, as always to discuss, Nicole Hammer Hammer of Vanderbilt and Kelly Carter Jackson of Wellesley. Hello there.

Hello Jody. Hey there.

Kelly I wonder if you can just paint a larger picture of maybe Missouri as a kind of Western frontier state but just

in general like we've touched on this a number of times during the during some conversations about the Civil War.

The Edge States, the War contested murkier states and kind of just all these parts of the

country you know we think of it as so monolithic south versus north but gosh there

were all these parts that were just living in a sort of much murkier or limboish state.

Yeah.

Missouri, Kentucky, Delaware, and Maryland are four states that are pro-union but also pro-slavery.

And so we don't talk enough about what it means to stay with the union

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