More than eight months before the Emancipation Proclamation broke the bonds of slavery across the South, a much more singularly focused experiment in equality was playing out in the country’s capital. The Compensated Emancipation Act, signed in April 1862, ordered all slaves in the District of Columbia to be freed.

It was the first time the U.S. government had officially liberated any group of slaves — and unlike the Emancipation Proclamation, it permitted their former masters to petition the government for compensation in exchange for their slaves’ freedom.

Though controversial, the act produced exceptionally rare documentation of the era: reimbursement petitions that showed the names, ages, histories and descriptions of an entire community of 3,000 African Americans.

As the 150th anniversary of the Compensated Emancipation Act approaches, University of Nebraska-Lincoln scholars have transcribed hundreds of the petitions and have published digital versions at Civil War Washington, an interdisciplinary digital research project that studies life in the nation’s capital during the pivotal period. The documents are viewable here.

“Slaves at this time were generally anonymous,” said Kenneth Winkle, UNL’s Sorensen Professor of American History and co-director of the project. “In the 1860 Census, for example, Southerners objected to providing their slaves’ names as if it would make them more real, more human.

“Now, with these petitions, they have documented lives that we can interpret, study and share with scholars, students and the public. We can tell their story, which has been largely overlooked. And it is a remarkable story.”

Winkle will take part in an April 11 commemoration of the act’s anniversary at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. The UNL historian will speak about the importance of the petitions in elevating understanding of emancipation in real, human terms.

Winkle and UNL’s Kenneth Price, Hillegass University Professor of American Literature; Susan Lawrence, associate professor of history; Elizabeth Lorang, research assistant professor of English, and others have been poring through the documents and today have about 200 of the roughly 1,000 petitions incorporated into Civil War Washington. The act’s official 150th anniversary is April 16.

The petitions, Winkle said, paint a fuller portrait of who the District’s slaves were, how they lived and how slavery and emancipation changed their lives. They also contain difficult truths — because the forms were used to establish a slave’s value for compensation, they share physical details that often underscore the brutality of slavery.

“They can be, at points, horrible to read,” Winkle said. “And their physical descriptions are just one example of what they went through. These documents show in real, human terms what slavery did to people, and then, what freedom would mean when they were released from that inhuman servitude.”

Price, who co-directs UNL’s Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, said the addition of the petitions to Civil War Washington enriches the project by unearthing new understandings of the era’s effect on the city and Washington’s transformation into the symbolic center of the Union and the nation.

“Washington, D.C., was a laboratory of democracy, where Congress had chosen to take a more aggressive hand,” Price said. “Those who supported the radical Republican agenda of the day had the ability to push through, without the hurdle of a state legislature, experiments they wanted to see play out locally before it spread nationally. This was one of their most profound experiments.”

The petitions highlight a number of new features at Civil War Washington, which also include a refreshed design, a new mapping application, a new project database, improved and expanded content from the Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion and new newspaper content. More than 15 UNL faculty, staff and students currently contribute to the project.

The Compensated Emancipation Act project was made possible through a three-year, $220,000 National Endowment for the Humanities grant to examine how race, slavery and emancipation affected the capital during the war.

“I believe there will be an outpouring of interest and scholarship once these petitions are more accessible to the public,” Winkle said.

Contact: Ken Winkle, professor of history, (402) 472-5911 or kwinkle1@unl.edu

Coverage: Chronicle of Higher Education |

Panelists featured in the Born This Way Foundation Launch, from left: Harvard President Drew Faust; Harvard Law Professor Charles Ogletree; Alyssa Rodemeyer; Kathleen Sebelius; Deepak Chopra; David Burtka; and UNL’s Susan Swearer.

On a typical Wednesday, Susan Swearer would be in her office in the basement of Teachers College Hall, preparing for classes and perhaps chatting with co-workers about her family or unseasonably warm weather.

Instead, on Feb. 29, she was in snowy Boston, on a Harvard University stage with Lady Gaga, asking the pop icon how best to empower young people during the kickoff of Gaga’s much-ballyhooed Born This Way Foundation.

Maybe not a typical day at the office, but for UNL’s nationally renowned anti-bullying expert, it’s starting to come with the territory.

Swearer, a professor of school psychology in the College of Education and Human Sciences, helped Gaga launch the new foundation — which addresses issues like self-confidence, well-being, anti-bullying, mentoring and career development through research, education and advocacy — by leading sessions at a morning symposium at Harvard and then by participating on a select panel with the singer and others.

Those “others” included Oprah Winfrey, author Deepak Chopra, TV personality and actor David Burtka and U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius.

“It was, in many ways, a surreal day,” Swearer said Thursday after arriving back in Lincoln. “But it was a great day. (Gaga’s) platform is huge — which is the attraction for me, for linking academic research and findings to her voice, which has such far reach.”

Gaga’s representatives contacted Swearer, who co-directs the Bullying Research Network that promotes and assists international collaboration among bullying and peer victimization researchers, last summer in preparation for the foundation’s launch. Over the next several months, Swearer consulted with and helped create resources for the foundation as it prepared to officially enter the national anti-bullying discussion.

On Thursday, anti-bullying’s place among the foundation’s “three pillars” was clear, Swearer said: The foundation stressed that all youth have a right to be safe, all youth need skills and all youth need opportunities to engage in positive activities.

“The message that I’m glad we were able to put out there on a large scale is that bullying is a mental health problem,” Swearer said. “The fact that (Gaga) wanted a psychologist on the panel tells me she recognizes that bullying is a complex and complicated issue.”

Also, Swearer said, she was able to emphasize during the kickoff event that it’s not just bullying victims that need help — focus, too, must be placed on children who are doing the bullying.

“That’s the program we’ve been working on for years,” Swearer said of her research. “How do we help these kids change their bullying behaviors? (Gaga) really drove that message home; it’s important to recognize that kids do both. They might be victimized at home and bully at school.

“That was the main point I wanted to get out there as a psychologist — and during the day, I felt like it did get out there,” she said.

On Thursday, she echoed Gaga’s blunt answer to a Wednesday question about BTWF’s likelihood of creating a kinder youth culture. She said progress, as always, takes time, but that events like Wednesday’s are an important way to move toward that change.

And, Swearer said, she would be happy to continue to help in any way with the mission of the foundation.

“It really is unprecedented,” she said. “During the launch I had the sense of being part of an historic moment. I was honored to be a part of it.”

This week, Lady Gaga and her mother, Cynthia Germanotta, will officially launch the Born This Way Foundation to promote tolerance and empowerment among youth. Susan Swearer, a UNL professor of school psychology and an anti-bullying expert, will be among a select group of scholars to help lead the kickoff event.

The pop icon’s new foundation tapped Swearer to lead one of five discussion topics during an all-day symposium on Feb. 29 as part of the foundation’s official opening event at Harvard University. Swearer will be the point person on discussions about putting research into action in the classroom to stem the effects of bullying.

“I’m incredibly honored to be a part of the official launch of the Born This Way Foundation,” Swearer said. “Lady Gaga’s voice reaches billions, and her ability to get anti-bullying messages out into the world is unparalleled. I and others involved are eager to do anything we can to help form and inform those messages.”

Lady Gaga’s representatives contacted Swearer, who co-directs the Bullying Research Network that promotes and assists international collaboration among bullying and peer victimization researchers, last summer in preparation for the foundation’s launch. She has consulted with and helped to create resources for them as the foundation has prepared to officially enter the national anti-bullying discussion. Swearer said throughout the process, she has been impressed with the singer’s involvement and engagement.

“This is much more than a celebrity giving lip service to a cause. (Lady Gaga) is thoughtfully, intellectually trying to solve the problem of bullying,” she said.

Swearer said she plans to lead discussions throughout the day about how to translate the latest research into anti-bullying action. Also, she will focus on what kind of anti-bullying curricula and programs exist for schools at all levels, where gaps exist and how to fill them, and what needs to be happening for schools to get access to effective anti-bullying curricula.

“We’ll take a good look at what barriers teachers, administrators and schools as a whole face in making this a priority,” she said.

Swearer has shared her expertise in a number of public forums. Last March, she was invited to the White House by the Obama administration to speak at and participate in a conference focused on finding solutions to the issue in conjunction with the Department of Education’s Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools.

The Born This Way Foundation will host a kickoff event at Harvard’s Sanders Theatre. Gaga will be joined by her mother and other guests during the official unveiling. The foundation has partnered with the John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, The California Endowment and The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard to explore the best ways to reach youth and “create a new culture of kindness, bravery, acceptance and empowerment,” according to the foundation’s official materials.

BTWF, a nonprofit charitable organization, will address issues like self-confidence, well-being, anti-bullying, mentoring and career development through research, education and advocacy. With a focus on digital mobilization to create positive change, BTWF will lead youth into a braver new society where each individual is accepted and loved as the person they were born to be.