Who Freed the Slaves?

On this day, General David Hunter, issued an order emancipating the slaves in Georgia, South Carolina, and Florida.

This order was quickly rescinded by Abraham Lincoln who advocated instead a gradual emancipation with compensation for slave holders. 

The Confederate army were under orders that if Hunter was captured, he was to be executed. 

Hunter later wrote:

"You say you are fighting for liberty. Yes you are fighting for liberty: liberty to keep four millions of your fellow-beings in ignorance and degradation;–liberty to separate parents and children, husband and wife, brother and sister;–liberty to steal the products of their labor, exacted with many a cruel lash and bitter tear;–liberty to seduce their wives and daughters, and to sell your own children into bondage;–liberty to kill these children with impunity, when the murder cannot be proven by one of pure white blood.This is the kind of liberty–the liberty to do wrong–which Satan, Chief of the fallen Angels, was contending for when he was cast into Hell."