Editing David Hunter (section)

====General Orders No. 7 and 11====
[[File:General Orders No. 7, Ft. Pulaski, GA, US.jpg|thumb|Historical marker about General Orders No. 7, erected by the Georgia Historical Society in 2008]]
After the [[Battle of Fort Pulaski]] in April 1862, when Hunter's troops bombarded and reclaimed the Confederate-held fort at the mouth of the Savannah River, Hunter issued General Orders 7 and 11. General Orders 7, issued on April 13, freed slaves in the fort and on Cockspur Island. Following the success of this order, Hunter hoped to further his abolitionist cause beyond the confines of this small Georgia island. 

Hunter was also a strong advocate of arming [[African-Americans|black]] men as soldiers for the Union cause. He planned to form multiple segregated regiments but first needed to grow his recruitment pool. In May 1862, Hunter caused controversy by issuing General Orders 11, an order emancipating slaves in the states of Georgia, South Carolina, and Florida:

{{Blockquote|The three States of Georgia, Florida and South Carolina, comprising the military department of the south, having deliberately declared themselves no longer under the protection of the United States of America, and having taken up arms against the said United States, it becomes a military necessity to declare them under martial law. This was accordingly done on the 25th day of April, 1862. Slavery and martial law in a free country are altogether incompatible; the persons in these three States — Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina— heretofore held as slaves, are therefore declared forever free.|Maj. Gen. David Hunter|Department of the South, General Order No. 11, May 9, 1862<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.freedmen.umd.edu/hunter.htm#HUNTER|first=Maj. Gen. David|last=Hunter|publisher=Department of the South|title=General Order No. 11|date=May 9, 1862}}</ref>}}

President Abraham Lincoln quickly rescinded this order,<ref>[http://www.freedmen.umd.edu/hunter.htm President Lincoln's Proclamation Overruling Hunter's Emancipation, May 19, 1862]. Freedmen.umd.edu (December 10, 2017). Retrieved on 2018-05-02.</ref> because he was concerned about its political effects in the [[Border states (Civil War)|border states]], which he was trying to keep neutral. Their leaders advocated instead a gradual emancipation with compensation for slave owners.<ref>Berlin et al., pp. 46–48</ref>  Despite Lincoln's concerns that immediate emancipation in the South might drive some slave-holding Unionists to support the Confederacy, the national mood was quickly moving against slavery, especially within the Army.<ref>Berlin et al., chapter 1</ref> 

The president and Congress had already enacted several laws during the war to severely restrict the institution, beginning with the [[First Confiscation Act]] in August 1861 <ref>Berlin et al., p. 11</ref> and culminating in Lincoln's own [[Emancipation Proclamation]] issued in September 1862, and to take effect January 1, 1863. Concerned Confederate slaveholders had worried since before the war started that its eventual goal would become the abolition of slavery and they reacted strongly to the Union effort to emancipate Confederate slaves. [[President of the Confederate States|Confederate President]] [[Jefferson Davis]] issued orders to the [[Confederate States Army|Confederate army]] that Hunter was to be considered a "felon to be executed if captured".<ref name=Spartacus/>