Download Unit 5 the Ante-Bellum US and the Civil War and Reconstruction

Unit 5 the Ante-Bellum US and the Civil War and Reconstruction
Unit Overview:
This is a lengthy unit that requires students to remember a large amount of material over several topics. This memorization
is a skill that will benefit students when they take the IB History Exam. This unit tackles how Americans responded to
the dramatic changes that took place during the first half of the nineteenth century. Immigration, industrialization, and
urbanization transformed the North while the South remained an agricultural society based on slave labor. The
differences between the two regions finally became so severe that a murderous civil war broke out to resolve the issue.
The Northern victory in the war freed the slaves, but did not bring blacks into the mainstream of US society.
Lesson 5:1 ante-bellum reform:
Objectives:
• Understand that Transcendentalism helped raise the social conscious of some Americans and these reformers attempted
to improve what they perceived as weaknesses in American society. Ante-bellum reform movements helped set the
foundation for future successes and they raised many people's awareness of societal ills.
• Understand that "reform" is always a double-edged sword. What is perceived as reform for one person may be viewed as
oppression by another—immigration restrictions and prohibition are obvious examples. Less obvious may be abolition; the
abolitionists believed they were fighting to free people from an inhumane system, while slaveholders viewed the
abolitionists as crazed radicals who were attacking their constitutional property rights.
Topic:
• Ante-Bellum Reform.
 Transcendentalism.
 Social reform.
 Prohibition and immigration.
 The Know-Nothings.
 The Second Great Awakening.
 The Abolitionist Movement.
Content Background:
Transcendentalism
All ante-bellum reformers believed in trying to perfect the society in which they lived. The philosophy of
transcendentalism put forth by Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson proclaimed that God was in everyone, and
therefore everyone had the ability of becoming '"Christ-like." A person could transcend [rise above] his human weakness and
achieve perfection. This perfection would be achieved through education which would raise a person's consciousness about
society's imperfections. The transcendentalists believed that once people were educated about society's evils these
problems would disappear. In his essay Civil Disobedience Thoreau declared that above man's law was a higher law—God's Law—
and that if man's laws were unjust and violated the higher law, a citizen had a duty to disobey these laws. Thoreau's ideas were
first played-out in a major way during the Mexican War (1846-1848). Most transcendentalists thought that the Mexican War
was immoral for two reasons. First, they saw it as a war of aggression, and second, they believed it was a war to spread slavery.
Since slavery was sanctioned in the Constitution, Thoreau's theory allowed a person to protest slavery and the Mexican War in
good conscience. Thoreau emphasized that people should not use violence in their disobedience, but through their actions
raised the consciousness of people who by following man's law violated the "higher law." This philosophy had a great influence
on Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.
Social reform
Reformers tried to improve American society by improving conditions and treatment for those less privileged than others—
women, the blind, deaf, prisoners, and the insane. Dorothea Dix publicized the plight of the insane and prisoners in
Massachusetts. Women like Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton tried to improve the legal status of women. Women could
not vote nor hold public office. Most colleges and professions were closed to them. Married women could not control their own
property, and in divorce the husband received the children. The New York Seneca Falls Conference and Declaration in 1848 was an
unsuccessful attempt to correct these faults.
Prohibition and immigration
Americans had always been heavy drinkers. Nevertheless, drunkenness was universally regarded as sinful and socially unacceptable.
In the moral improvement campaigns of the ante-bellum period, reformers published statistics that illustrated that a
considerable number of crimes were committed by people who were drunk. They also drew a connection between poverty and
drinking. Drunkenness, the reformers claimed, led to poverty. Once evangelical preachers took up the subject of temperance, the
movement spread rapidly. By 1835 over one million Americans belonged to temperance societies, and several states passed
prohibition laws. In the 1830s and 1840s the crusade against alcohol took on a new energy because of the huge influx of immigrants
who had different customs than native Americans, among which was supposedly drinking to excess. Only 8,400 Europeans came
to the US in 1820. More than 23,000 arrived in 1830 and 84,000 immigrated in 1840. In 1850 at least 370,000 people
immigrated into the US. Not only were the numbers larger than before, most of the new immigrants were Catholics and many did
not speak English. In 1820 3,600 Irish came to the US and most of them were Protestant. Primarily because of the Irish
Potato Famine, 164,000 Irish arrived in 1850, and the vast majority were Catholic. In 1820, 968 Germans entered the US; in
1850, hard economic times caused 79,000 to immigrate to the US and many of them were from Catholic southern Germany.
Between 1830 and 1860 the Catholic population of the US increased from 300,000 to more than three million or from three
percent of the total population to thirteen percent. In the view of the prohibitionists, restricting alcohol consumption would reduce
child and spousal abuse and ensure that immigrant factory workers came to work sober and not hung-over. In addition, much of the
immigrants' political and union activities took place in local bars, and although not often publicly stated, nativists realized
that without those meeting places, the political and union activity of the immigrants would be restricted.
The Know-Nothings
The growth of Catholicism in the US was difficult for many Protestant Americans to accept. Since the days of the
Puritans they had been taught Catholicism was not just another Christian denomination but a source of evil. In addition, in
the Italian Papal States the Pope was seen as the leader of a backward-looking and authoritarian state. The political
principles of Catholicism seemed to be the exact opposite of the American traditions of democracy. Because many of the
Irish immigrants were devote Catholics, many Protestant Americans feared their values and culture. Moreover, the vast
majority of the Irish immigrants were impoverished. Once in the US, they were willing to work for low rates of pay. Native
workingmen regarded them as a threat to their own standard of living. Economic fears combined with the evangelical
campaign against the new immigrants' religious beliefs and their apparently heavy drinking caused a strong anti-Catholic,
anti-immigrant movement to develop in the 1840s. Fights between Protestant and Irish Catholic workingmen regularly took
place in northeastern cities. Anti-Catholicism took on political form with the founding of the Order of the Star Spangled
Banner, a secret organization that was dedicated to restricting Catholic immigration. The order's members came to be
known as "Know-Nothings" because when asked by outsiders about the organization, they replied, "I know nothing." After
1850, the organization formed the American political party. At its zenith, the American Party elected 75 congressmen. By
1860 the American Party was incorporated into the Republican Party.
The Second Great Awakening
In the Second Great Awakening, as in the First in the mid-eighteenth century, persuasive preachers traveled across New
England and New York with the message that human nature was contaminated with original sin. This was the same message
that Puritan ministers had preached. Unlike the Puritans, however, these preachers stated that not just a few "Elect"
were saved through God's grace; everyone who repented and prayed for deliverance from their sinful natures would be
granted salvation. This vision of religion fit in with well with the American version of democracy—Heaven was not reserved
for the elite, it was a democratic place. A high-quality revivalist sermon began with an emotional description of the
sinfulness of human beings. The second part of the sermon frighteningly detailed the sufferings of hell, for which all
unrepentant sinners were destined. The preacher then concluded on a note of optimism. Any person could be saved if he
repented and declared faith in Jesus Christ. While the revivalism of the Second Great Awakening spread through every state
to some extent, it was strongest in New England and in upstate New York, regions that seemed left behind in America's
economic growth, and on the frontier, where life was equally difficult and tenuous. The message was spread through camp
revival meetings. People who lived remote, lonesome lives responded to the calls by the thousands—more than 20,000 in
one instance—and came to the camp meeting from long distances. The atmosphere of the camp meeting was exhilarating. At
the largest revivals 25 to 40 preachers simultaneously sermonized to the multitude. The meeting went on day and night for a
week or more. Conversions were fervent. Some people fell to the ground, weeping uncontrollably. Others scurried around on
their hands and knees, barking like dogs. A common symptom was the "jerks." Caught up in the mass frenzy, people
staggered about, their limbs jerking uncontrollably. Many Americans went just for the entertainment and the opportunity to
steal, pick pockets, jeer preachers, drink heavily, and meet members of the opposite sex. The excesses of the camp meeting
eventually led to a negative reaction. In place of the revival the Methodists, and later other Protestant groups, developed
the circuit rider parson. He was a minister who was assigned to visit ten or twenty settlements on regular bases that were too
poor or too small to support a permanent preacher.
Lesson 5:2 causes of the Civil War:
Objectives:
• Understand that the North began to develop as an urban, industrial society dominated by industrial capitalists and with
a large working class. The South remained an agricultural society based on slave labor. These differences increased regional
conflict.
• Understand that Southerners realized that slavery needed to expand to survive. Northerners opposed the spread of slavery
into the Western territories because they wanted western land to be farmed by free whites and not black slaves.
• Understand that Southerners believed that since the states created the United States, states could secede from the union
of states. Northerners believed that the United States was created by the citizens of the states. Therefore, while individuals
could remove themselves from the nation, the states could not.
• Understand that the fundamental conflict between the North and South during this period was the expansion of slavery into the
West. The US victory in the Mexican War exacerbated this conflict because it brought so much new land into the nation.
• Understand that between 1820 and 1860 the North and the South tried to reconcile their differences. When Abraham
Lincoln, who campaigned on a platform of no slave expansion, was elected President, the South realized that it had lost any
opportunity to expand its way of life. The South seceded from the United States and organized itself into an independent nation.
Topic:
• The events that illustrate the conflicts that existed between the North and the South prior to the Civil War.
 The development of regional differences.
 The Missouri Compromise (1820).
 The Texas-Mexican War (1835).
 The Oregon Question (1846).
 The Mexican War (1846-1848).
 The Compromise of 1850.
 Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852).
 The Gadsen Purchase (1853).
 The Ostend Manifesto (1854).
 The Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854).
 The breakdown of political parties.
 The Brooks-Sumner Affair (1856).
 The Dred Scott Decision (1857).
 John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry, Virginia (1859).
 The election of Abraham Lincoln to the presidency in 1860.
Content Background:
The development of regional differences
The South and North had similarities in that they had a shared history, their economies were interdependent, they both
were nationalistic, and they both looked to the lands of the West for their future. But slavery divided the two regions
more than the similarities pulled them together. By 1820 manufacturing in the North was more important than foreign
trade. Manufacturing developed in the Northeast because it had urban centers, a large labor supply, and the necessary
capital. In the North, manufacturing production increased from less than $200 million in 1815 to over $1 billion in 1859.
Increased immigration (1830s: 500,000; 1840s: 1,500,000; 1850s: 2,500,000) supplied the necessary labor for the
increase in production. The technological revolution and the railroad increased productivity dramatically. For example,
prior to the invention of the McCormick Reaper in 1831, one man could reap one-half acre of wheat a day. With the reaper
two men could reap six acres a day—an increase of in productivity of 600 percent. This increase meant that: 1) bread
could be sold at half it previous price; 2) US grain production was increased enough to make many countries in Europe
dependent upon American wheat to feed their people; and, 3) manpower previously concentrated in agriculture could be
diverted into manufacturing. A working class grew up in the North.
The development of manufacturing created two new social classes: industrial capitalists and factory workers who viewed
slavery as degradation to free labor and as a system that helped keep wages low. The West's economy was based on small
family farms. The people of the West wanted internal transportation improvements so goods could be cheaply transported
to eastern and world markets, and to enable them to purchase eastern and imported goods at lower prices. By 1820 the
steamboat had driven river traffic costs down by 90 percent, and unlike keelboats, steamboats could efficiently travel
upstream. The Erie Canal reduced the cost of transportation from the Great Lakes region to New York City to $8.00 a
ton—a 90 percent reduction over hauling goods by wagon. The South's economy was based on plantation slavery. The
invention of the cotton gin made cotton production economical, and the number of slaves in the South increased from
800,000 in 1800 to 1,500,000 in 1820. Southerners viewed slavery as a way of controlling blacks and as a practical and
profitable labor system that represented an enormous capital investment.
Southerners feared that if slavery could not expand into the Western territories the number of "free" states would
become great enough to pass a Constitutional amendment abolishing slavery. Additional territory was also needed to sell off
the "excess" slaves that were accumulating in the Old South. Without the ability to expand slavery would become
uneconomical and over time would cease to exist.
The North wanted to stop the expansion of slavery into the Western territories for the following reasons: 1) By 1860, many
Northerners viewed slavery as an outdated labor system and an embarrassment to American democracy; and, 2) the
North wanted to ensure that Western land would be settled by free white labor, not black slave labor. Northerners
wanted this settlement not because slavery was bad for black people, but because it was bad for white people. Every acre
farmed by a black slave was an acre that could not be farmed by a free white person. Thus, in many aspects the Civil War was a
conflict between two different societies over which one would control the political, economic, and social destiny of the
nation. The North represented the wave of the future—urban, industrial, and mechanized. The South represented the past: a
rural, agricultural society based on slave labor. When Abraham Lincoln was elected President in 1860 on a platform that opposed
the further expansion of slavery, the South correctly understood that it had lost the struggle for the soul of the nation. It had two
choices: either accept the inevitable loss of control (from 1788 to 1860 the South controlled the presidency for fifty years,
and the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court for sixty years), or secede. The South seceded because it believed that secession
was the only way it could preserve and spread slavery— Confederate leaders planned on spreading slavery into the Caribbean
and Central America after the war.
Most Southerners believed that the states had created the federal government; the federal government had not created
the states. Under this theory of constitutional law, most powerfully espoused by John C. Calhoun in The South Carolina Exposition
and Protest, since the states (not the people) created the Union, the states could secede from it at their pleasure. Lincoln held
that the Union could not be dissolved because it was created by the citizens of the country as a whole and not by the states ("We
the people of the United States in order to form a more perfect union. . . ." [Italics added]). Unionists like Lincoln also argued
that the states had never been independent. They went directly from colonial status, to confederation, to union. Thus, to
Lincoln, session was not only illegal, it was also treason. Lincoln always maintained that the states had not seceded since they
could not, and he treated, in as much as possible, Southerners as insurgents (hence the Union name "Rebels" for the soldiers of
the Confederacy) rather than members of a separate country that was at war with the United States. That is why he never
negotiated directly with the Confederate government during its entire period of existence. This debate over the nature of the
nation was ended by the Union victory in the Civil War. Prior to the Civil War, "the United States" was always a plural noun: "the
United States are a great nation." After the Civil War, it became singular: "the United States is a great nation."
The Missouri Compromise (1820)
In 1819 Missouri applied to Congress for statehood as a slave state. Representative Tallmadge (D-NY) put forth an amendment to the
statehood bill forbidding slavery in Missouri. This was the first time that slavery became a national issue. After much debate a
compromise allowed Maine to come into the Union as a Free State and Missouri to enter as a slave state. Slavery was
forbidden in the Louisiana Purchase territories north of 36 degrees 30 minutes with the exception of Missouri. The issue over
slavery in Missouri did not involved the rights of black slaves (since Missouri came into the Union as a slave state), but the political
power of the regions (there was an equal number of slave and free states in the US Senate), and which region, the North or the
South, would control the development of the West.
The Texas-Mexican War (1835) and the annexation of Texas (1846)
Beginning in 1821, Americans, under the leadership of Stephen Austin, began moving into eastern Texas. The Mexican government, in a
short-sighted move, wanted the Americans to move into its isolated province of Texas to act as a safeguard against future US
expansion. In return for land, the Americans agreed to follow the laws of Mexico, learn Spanish, and become Catholics. By the
early 1830s Texas had a population of about 30,000 American settlers and several thousand slaves. The Mexican
government belatedly became alarmed at the large numbers of American settlers (who were not becoming Mexican
citizens), and in 1830 it barred further immigration from the USA, banned the additional importation of slaves (in 1831
Mexico abolished slavery), reinforced the requirement for the acceptance of the Catholic faith, and increased the number
of Mexican troops in Texas.
In 1835, the Mexican President Santa Anna, who had gained power in an 1832 coup d'etat, tried to establish firm Mexican
control over the Americans in Texas. Up to this time they had considerable autonomy. The American settlers rebelled at his
attempts and established an interim government. Santa Anna led an army into Texas to put down the rebellion. In March
1835 the 188 defenders at the Alamo held out against 4,000 Mexican solders for thirteen days and bought the Texans in
east Texas time to prepare for Santa Anna's army. Santa Anna's execution of the prisoners captured at the Alamo
hardened the Texans' resolve, and at the battle of San Jacinto (April 1835) Santa Anna was defeated and captured. Santa
Anna recognized Texas independence as a condition of his release, although he repudiated his agreement once he was back in
Mexico City. The Mexican army was too weak to recapture Texas.
Texas applied for admission to the Union, but Presidents Jackson and Martin Van Buren refused to bring Texas in because they
did not want to split the Democratic Party over the slavery issue, and they wanted to avoid war with Mexico. From 1835-1845
Texas was an independent country. In 1846 James K. Polk, a slave-owning Democrat from Tennessee, was elected President.
Polk had advocated annexing Texas during his campaign and three days before he was inaugurated Congress admitted Texas
into the Union. Texas become a state in 1846 because: 1) Texas cotton was competing with US cotton for European markets; 2)
The US was afraid that Britain and France were interested in securing territory in Texas (an unrealistic fear that Texans were
encouraging to help get themselves annexed); and, 3) Polk had been elected on a program of "Manifest Destiny"—a slogan
coined by a journalist that implied that God and nature intended Americans to possess the North American continent. Texas'
location made its annexation a necessary part in Folk's plan to expand the borders of the United States to the Pacific.
Politically, the slave state of Texas could be counterbalanced by the soon-to-be-acquired free territory of Oregon.
Northern Whigs like Abraham Lincoln opposed the annexation of Texas because of the slavery issue.
The Oregon Question
Both the United States and Britain had legitimate claims to Oregon and neither country was eager to let the other control
it. The election of Polk to the presidency brought matters to a head since in his campaign Polk had insisted upon "the reoccupation of Oregon." The US claimed as far north as the southern border of Russian Alaska (54° 40" latitude), and after
Folk's victory there was wild talk about "54-40 or fight." Britain claimed down to the southern border of present day
Oregon (42° latitude). Yet neither Britain nor the US wanted war. A similar border dispute had existed a few years earlier
over 12,000 square miles of disputed land between British Canada and Maine, and in the 1842 Webster-Ashburton Treaty the
two countries had peacefully resolved the issue. British and American diplomats used the resolution of that dispute as a model,
and in 1846 the US and Britain agreed to extend the Convention Line of 1818 (the 49° parallel) from the Rocky Mountains to
the Pacific. Both sides were satisfied with this compromise because the major issue involved was harbors on the Pacific
for trade with Asia, not a few thousand more miles of territory. The US received the Strait of Juan de Fuca with the
port of Seattle and Britain got Vancouver.
The Mexican War (1846-1848)
Mexico refused to recognize the US annexation of Texas, and President Polk was determined to acquire Mexican controlled
California with its fine harbor of San Francisco. While neither country was actively seeking war, neither side was willing to
go out of the way to avoid one. Polk offered Mexico $30 million for California and New Mexico. When Mexico refused his
offer he ordered US troops into land claimed by both the US and Mexico that was located between the Rio Grande and
Nueces Rivers. There was a clash between US and Mexican troops, killing sixteen American soldiers, and Polk used this incident
as an excuse to have Congress declare war.
Considering the advantages of the US, the conclusion of the war was predictable. The two countries had a similar amount of
territory, but the US had a population of 20 million, whereas Mexico had only seven million people. Mexico's economy was bankrupt
and stagnant in contrast with the United States' vibrant one. While both nations suffered from political divisions and
factionalism, many Americans could overlook their differences in the name of continental expansion. Mexico was easily
defeated. The US suffered 13,000 deaths, 2,000 by combat—the rest from disease—9,000 men deserted. On September 14,
1847 an American armed force of around 14,000 men under General Winfield Scott captured Mexico City ("the halls of
Montezuma" in the Marine Corps Hymn). The landing of these troops at Vera Cruz, 220 miles east of Mexico City, was the largest
amphibious landing in the world up to this time. This record would last until the landing at Gallipoli, Turkey in World War I.
Mexico sued for peace, and in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (February 1848) Mexico ceded to the US the Rio Grande boundary,
California, and the province of New Mexico. The US paid Mexico $15 million and assumed responsibility for about $3 million
that the Mexican government owed US citizens. The war added over 500,000 square miles to the US at a total cost of 48 cents an
acre. On January 22, 1848, eleven days before the peace treaty was signed, gold was discovered in California. By 1858 over $550
million worth of gold had been extracted from California's mines.
The Mexican War forced Congress to grapple with the slavery question. After the Mexican War Congress would have to decide on
the status of the new territory—would it be slave or free? During the war itself, Pennsylvania Representative David Wilmot (D)
had proposed a proviso [amendment] to a war appropriations bill that would have forbidden slavery in any land taken from Mexico.
The Wilmot Proviso passed the House in 1846 and 1847, but it was defeated in the Senate where half the seats were held by men
from slave states.
The Compromise of 1850
The discovery of gold in California caused the population of California to increase from 15,000 in 1848 to 100,000 by the end of
1849 and California applied for admission to the Union as a free state. Southern Congressmen were infuriated over this
application. Southerners, who had supplied most of the troops for the Mexican War, had assumed that slavery would
expand into the Mexican cession and, that at the very least, southern California would be slave territory. Southerners
regarded this action as an extreme crisis in which the continuation of the slave system and the entire social structure of
the South was at stake. If slavery could be excluded from California it would probably be excluded from many future
states. Southerners feared that if slavery could not expand into the West the following would happen: 1) The political balance
of power between slave and free states would be destroyed in the Senate; 2) slavery would wither and die because it could
not expand; and, 3) ultimately enough free states would come into the Union to pass a constitutional amendment abolishing
slavery. In 1850, after complicated political maneuvering, the members of Congress reached a compromise between the
advocates of expanding slavery and those favoring a restriction on slavery.
The provisions of the Compromise of 1850: 1) California came into the Union as a free state; 2) the rest of the Mexican
cession was organized as territories with no reference to slavery under the concept of popular sovereignty—the people of
the territory would decide upon application for statehood if their state would be slave or free—it was assumed that the
citizens of Arizona and New Mexico would choose slavery; 3) the slave trade was abolished in Washington, DC; 4) a stronger
fugitive slave law was enacted. Laws guaranteeing the constitutional property rights of slaveholders in escaped slaves who had
escaped into "free states" had been in place since 1793; under the terms of the Compromise, the enforcement of these
laws became a national responsibility. This change meant that Southern slaveholders could enlist federal law enforcement
officials in their efforts to hunt down and retrieve escaped slaves in the North, thereby overriding the authority of local
officials and state "liberty laws."
The new Fugitive Slave Law was the least-debated item in the Compromise of 1850, but it radicalized the North. It
pushed many previously inactive unionists into active hostility toward the South—not because they considered the law an
encroachment on the liberties of black Americans, but because they considered it an infringement on the liberties of
Northern whites. Near the end of his life, Ulysses S. Grant, the Commander in Chief of the Union Army during the Civil
War, wrote that the Fugitive Slave Act was "a degradation which the North would not permit." Grant regarded the Fugitive
Slave Act as a major cause of the Civil War: "The great majority of the people of the North had no particular quarrel with
slavery, so long as they were not forced to have it themselves. But they were not willing to play the role of police for the
South in the protection of this particular institution." These acts were not actually compromises in that a majority of both
Northern and Southern congressmen refused to vote for the provisions that benefited the other side.
Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852)
Written by Harriet Beecher Stowe, this novel emphasized the cruel and dehumanizing nature of slavery. After the Bible it
was the best selling book of the nineteenth century. It reinforced regional stereotypes. The North believed that all slave
owners were evil, and Southerners believed that they were being unfairly vilified.
The Gadsden Purchase (1853)
The US paid Mexico $10 million for an area now part of New Mexico and Arizona that was desired for the purpose of a
possible transcontinental railroad route. The purchase would have originally cut Mexico off from Baja California. In
approving the purchase Northern Senators removed 9,000 square miles from the purchase to ensure that Baja did not fall
into American hands since they did not want slavery to spread into the area. This was the only time in US history that the
Senate rejected land offered to the US. The inconsistency of American thought on slavery is illustrated by this action. Since
slavery would be able to exist in the rest of the purchase area, the action was largely symbolic, but both the North and the
South understood the message being sent when the Senate reduced the size of the purchase.
The Ostend Manifesto (1854)
The US ambassadors to Britain, Spain and France met at the resort town of Ostend, Belgium. One of the items they dealt with
at their meeting was the US annexation of Spain's colony of Cuba. In the report they sent to President Pierce they wrote
that "Cuba is as necessary to the United States as any of its present members." When the document was leaked to the press,
many Northerners objected to what they believed was a conspiracy by the "slave power" to increase slave territory by annexing
Cuba.
The Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854)
Every major city in the East wanted to be the eastern terminus for the first transcontinental railroad. The Democratic
Senator Stephen Douglas from Illinois was the chairman of the Senate Committee on the Territories. He wanted to organize the
unorganized northern territories so a railroad could be built through them to the California coast with Chicago as the eastern
terminus. The southern territories between Texas and California had already been organized under the Compromise of 1850.
Douglas had to give Southern congressmen (most of whom were also Democrats) an incentive to vote for the organization of the
northern territories. He gave them this incentive by introducing the Kansas-Nebraska Act which organized the northern territories
under the provision of popular sovereignty. The passage of this act created a huge public uproar since it nullified the Missouri
Compromise agreement in which slavery would not be allowed in the Louisiana Purchase above 36° 30" with the exception of
Missouri. A mini-civil war soon broke out in Kansas over the introduction of slavery into that territory. This conflict kept the
slavery issue consistently before the public and helped destroy the Whig party. Kansas-Nebraska caused the Democratic Party to
become, to a large extent, a Southern party, and compromise between the regions became extremely difficult.
The breakdown of political parties
A disastrous consequence of Kansas-Nebraska was the effect which it had on the system of political parties. At the time of
Franklin Pierce's election to the presidency in 1852 there were two national parties. The winner of presidential elections,
whether he was a Whig or Democrat, usually won by winning the electoral votes from some Northern and Southern states.
This situation had a moderating influence on sectional extremism in both parties, for each wing needed allies in the other
section to win against challengers in its own section who belonged to the opposite party. The Kansas-Nebraska Act caused this
delicate sectional balance to begin to collapse.
The Whig party was being seriously weakened because of steadily increasing immigration. Irish Catholic immigrants overwhelming
voted Democratic. The potato famine sent 1,200,000 Irish to the United States in the 1840s. Total immigration in the four years
preceding the defeat of the Whig candidate Winfield Scott in 1852 exceeded the total of Scott's popular vote. After
1852 most Whigs believed that the Whig Party was a losing proposition. Whigs recognized that continued immigration
would be fatal to a party which failed to attract immigrants.
The Kansas-Nebraska Act offered the Northern Whigs a way out of a dying party, because it bitterly antagonized
Northern antislavery Democrats. After the opposition that swept the North over Kansas-Nebraska in 1854, the number of
Northern Democrats in the House of Representatives fell from 91 to 25. As the antislavery Democrats left the Democratic
Party, the Northern Whigs recognized the potential allies whom they so badly needed. But they knew that Democrats would
never join the hated Whig Party. After all, the party had been formed in opposition to the Democratic hero Andrew
Jackson. Hence Northern Whigs abandoned the Whig Party and searched for new label to attract dissatisfied Northern
Democrats. Southern Whigs, because of their proslavery stance, joined the Democratic Party.
In the political uncertainty of the 1850s two central points began to emerge. Antislavery sentiment began to concentrate
in the Republican Party; anti-immigrant sentiment in the American or Known Nothing Party. Since the Know Nothings were
partly a secret order, it was possible for a person to be both a Know Nothing and a Republican—in the Congress elected in
1854, a majority of free state members were both. Through complicated political manipulation, the Republicans were able to
out-maneuver the American Party to become the dominate party in Congress and they replaced the Whigs as the second
major political party. The Know Nothing influence meant that the Republican Party received a nativist infusion which
continues to this day. Because the expansion of slavery was the dominate issue of the ante-bellum era and because the slavery
issue soon overwhelmed the concern people had about Irish immigration—which was diminishing anyway because of the end of
the potato famine—the Republican party was able to avoid any explicit identification with nativism.
The Brooks-Sumner Affair (1856)
Senator Charles Sumner (R., Massachusetts) made a bitter speech against slavery and the "slave power" that included
personally insulting remarks about Senator Butler who was an elderly South Carolinian. Butler's nephew, Representative
Preston Brooks, observing the "Code of the Southern Gentleman," beat Sumner on the floor of the Senate with his cane.
Sumner was out of the Senate for three years because of the attack. Southerners praised Brooks and sent him more canes
"to whip the Yankees with," while Northerners concluded that the attack on a defenseless man was anything but honorable.
Sumner's harsh words and Brooks' assault made it easier for each region to form unattractive stereotypes of each other.
The Dred Scott Decision (1857)
The Supreme Court decision in Dred Scott vs. Sanford made all compromise over slavery impossible because it declared the
concept of popular sovereignty unconstitutional. The slave Dred Scott had been taken by his master, a surgeon in the army,
into free territory where slavery was forbidden under the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 and the Missouri Compromise. Scott
lived as a slave for four years on free soil and when his master returned him to the slave state of Missouri, Scott sued for
his freedom. The suit was a set-up. Scott's master used Scott as his surgical nurse and he hoped that Scott would win the
case, thereby setting the precedent that slaves would be free if they could reach free territory. Chief Justice Roger B. Taney,
a Southerner, wrote the majority opinion for the Supreme Court. The Court stated that slaves were not citizens of the US,
since they were property, and therefore they could not sue for their freedom. Since, according to Taney, Scott could not sue,
he should have ended his decision at that point. But Taney went on to claim that Congress could not forbid the importation of
slavery into any region of the United States—as it had done in the Missouri Compromise—because that would discriminate
against the citizens of the states and violate their right to take their property wherever they pleased. This decision completely
polarized positions on slavery. The South believed that the decision allowed slavery to be extended into all the territories, and
the North believed that the Court's decision should be ignored and slavery should be kept out of all the territories.
John Brown's Raid on Harper's Ferry, Virginia (1859)
John Brown was a radical abolitionist who had earlier murdered pro-slavery men in Kansas. On October 16, 1859, Brown and
22 other men (some of them black), attacked the federal armory at Harper's Ferry with the idea of capturing weapons and
using these arms for a general slave uprising. The raid failed, Brown was captured by troops led by Lieutenant Colonel
Robert E. Lee, tried by a Virginia court, and executed. To many in the North, Brown was a martyr. To the South, Brown was
an example of the extent the North would go to destroy slavery and the Southern way of life.
The Election of Abraham Lincoln to the Presidency in 1860
In the election of 1860 the Democratic Party split over the issue of slavery. The Southern Democrats nominated John C.
Breckinridge of Kentucky. He ran on a platform of supporting the Dred Scott decision and a federal slave code. The Northern
Democrats nominated Stephen Douglas who believed that the Dred Scott decision could be ignored because without slave
codes, slavery could not exist. Therefore, even though popular sovereignty was technically unconstitutional, in reality it
would be what decided the status of slavery in a territory that applied for statehood. Douglas was blind on the moral issue
of slavery. The Republicans nominated Abraham Lincoln who was an ex-Whig and the wealthiest trial lawyer in Illinois. Lincoln
had gained fame when he ran against Douglas for the Senate in 1858. The Republican platform supported the transcontinental
railroad, a Homestead Act, a high protective tariff, and the non-expansion of slavery; including the repeal of the KansasNebraska Act. Representatives from the Border States sought a compromise and formed their own party, the ConstitutionalUnion party, and nominated John Bell of Tennessee. Lincoln won the election with only 39 percent of the popular vote—the
smallest percentage in history. In the South, Bell and Breckenridge received 85 percent of the popular vote; Lincoln was
not even on the ballot in some Southern states. In the North, Lincoln and Douglas received 86 percent of the popular vote.
Lincoln received 180 Electoral votes, Breckinridge 76, Bell 39, and Douglas 12. The polarization of the nation was complete.
Lesson 5:3 the Civil War:
Objectives:
• Understand that superior resources and political leadership allowed the North to defeat the South in a bloody war.
• Understand that the Emancipation Proclamation modified the issues of the war by adding the abolishment of slavery to
the initial causes of preserving the unity of the nation or the establishment of Southern independence.
• Understand the significance of Lincoln's "Gettysburg Address."
Topic:
• The Civil War.
Content Background:
'
After his election Lincoln supported a constitutional amendment that would guarantee the protection of slavery in the
states where it already existed against any further interference by the federal government. This amendment could not be
repealed. Lincoln though, was clear that he would allow no further expansion of slavery. This compromise was not acceptable
to the South. Lincoln was elected on November 6, by February 22, seven states had left the Union, and set up their own
nation—the Confederate States of America—and elected Jefferson Davis their first president.
The South seceded because when Lincoln was elected with no Southern electoral votes, Southern leaders realized that they
could not block the election of an anti-slavery president. It was just a matter of time until slavery was frozen where it
presently existed and eventually eliminated by a constitutional amendment. Freezing slavery meant killing it because
without the ability to sell slaves the capital investment that Southerners had in their slaves would become worthless. The
restriction on slave expansion meant that plantation owners could not send their sons off to the West with some slaves to
establish their own plantations. And, finally, Southerners understood that without the "safety value" of the West, they
would eventually be overwhelmed with a black slave population that they would have a harder and harder time controlling.
By the time of Lincoln's inauguration on March 2, 1861, the Confederacy had taken over most of the federal property in the
South. Fort Sumter, located on an island in Charleston harbor, was still under federal control. If there was going to be war,
Lincoln wanted the Confederacy to fire the first shot so they would appear to be the aggressor. This action would help
unite the North and make it easier for the Border States to choose to stay in the union. When Lincoln found out that the
garrison was running out of food he sent a re-supply ship to the fort, and the Confederate forces opened fire on the fort on
April 12, 1861. Fort Sumter surrendered the next day, with no loss of life, and the Civil War began. The Confederate
attack forced every state to choose between the Union and the Confederacy and the upper Southern states seceded at this
time. West Virginia, which had few slaves and had always believed itself slighted by eastern Virginia, refused to secede and
stayed in the Union by seceding from Virginia.
Few in the North approved of slavery, but even fewer approved of black equality. The North was anti-slavery and anti-black.
But, the South, by secession, changed the issue from one of slavery to the survival of the United States as one nation. To
many Northerners the support of slavery was wrong, but the support of secession was treason. Secession united the North. Race
relations were not perceived as an issue by either side. The North also objected to Southern secession for an extremely
practical reason: free navigation of the Mississippi River. If the Confederacy controlled New Orleans, the exports and
imports of the United States could be severely and easily restricted.
Northern resources were much greater than the South's. Northern assets allowed it to win a war of attrition. Even agriculture
showed a Northern advantage—two-thirds of the nation's improved farmland was in the North. It had three times as many horses
as the South (an important military advantage since by the end of the war the Union army was losing around 500 horses per day). Of
the over 128,000 industrial firms in the nation, only 18,026 were in the South. New York alone produced four times as much in
terms of value of manufactured products as the entire Confederacy. More firearms were made by the Colt Firearms Company
than by the entire South.
Northern population:
Southern population:
Northern industrial workers:
Southern industrial workers:
Northern railroad mileage:
Southern railroad mileage:
22,200,000
10,600,000 (including 3,500,000 slaves)
1,300,000
110,000
22,000
9,280
The Union Army outnumbered the Confederate Army by a ratio of 5 to 2.
The fundamental problem of the South was that the North could replace equipment faster than it wore out. Almost all of the
South's manufactured goods came from the North or from Europe, and when it was expended or worn out it could not be replaced.
In addition to having fewer resources than the North, the South made a major error in putting its faith in "King Cotton" to win
European support. The South believed that because of the British and, to a lesser extent, the French need for Southern
cotton, they would recognize Southern independence and perhaps even enter into the war on the side of the South. Britain
imported 35,000 tons of cotton from the South every year (out of a total cotton import of 45,000 tons annually). In
Britain, at least four million people, out of total population of 21 million, were dependent, either directly or indirectly, upon
employment in the textile industry.
The Southern cotton policy failed for several reasons. The South should have kept the supply of cotton low by hording it after
secession; instead, the South sold every pound of cotton it grew. By the time the war started European industry had stockpiled
over a year's supply of cotton. While the British and French textile industries languished, the rest of their economies were
stimulated by the Union demand for British and French goods—Lincoln directed that orders for Union Army goods be placed
overseas as well as domestically. Britain was dependent on northern wheat to feed its people and Lincoln was very clear that
any aid to the Confederacy would mean the end of wheat shipments. The British also realized that Canada was an extremely
vulnerable possession, and Britain understood that if it helped the South the North might compensate itself by grabbing
Canada. By the end of 1862 Union armies had penetrated the South at many points and began to ship cotton to Europe;
the Border States were also able to supply some of Europe's cotton needs. When Lincoln made freeing the slaves a
Northern war aim through the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation, he won many sympathizers in Britain and
France. Finally, the Union victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg convinced the European nations that the North would win
the war and they did not want to back a loser.
The Confederacy always overestimated Northern anti-war sentiment and they did not believe that the northern public would
support a war of invasion against the South. On the other hand, a Southern invasion of the North would tend to unite the
North. Because of these factors, and because of its disadvantages in material and men, the South decided to fight a
defensive war. In strictly tactical terms, defensive warfare is less costly. Military men figure that for an attack on a
fortified position to succeed the attacking force usually needs a ratio of at least 4-1 against the defense. Also, a Northern
invading army would have to maintain long supply lines. Historically, no large army on the offensive had ever maintained supply
lines as long as the Union would have to maintain in order to penetrate the lower South. The South used Napoleon's failed
invasion as Russia as a model while forgetting that Napoleon did not have railroads and Lincoln did. The role of the
railroads in re-supply was seriously underestimated by the South. The South lacked railroads (there was not even one
railroad line that ran east-west across the entire South) and the North had them in abundance. A defensive war meant that
the Confederacy would forgo an effort to win; it would confine itself to preventing the Union from wining. This strategy
meant that if the North did not get tired of fighting the South would lose. A long defensive war also meant the South would
steadily use up its resources, and that the South would be exposed to the devastation of war while the North would not.
Even though both sides resorted to conscription by 1862, both armies were primarily made up of civilian volunteers. In the
North a potential recruit would not have to serve if he could hire a substitute to take in his place, or by paying a fee of
$300—as President Lincoln did for his son. The substitute system gave rise to the saying: "rich man's war, poor man's
fight." Over 25 percent of the 776,829 men drafted failed to report, and an additional 200,000 men deserted. Nearly
90,000 Americans immigrated to Canada during the war, nearly 30,000 of them deserters; others were men trying to dodge
the draft in the first place. In the South, plantation owners could avoid service if they were needed to oversee their slaves.
In April 1861 the US army was about 16,000 strong with most of the force involved in Indian fighting in the West. Many
of the army's best and most experienced commanders were Southerners who took their expertise into the Confederate
army. The Civil War involved armies ten times larger the US had ever seen. In the Mexican War officers had only
commanded a few thousand troops. There was an acute shortage of men possessing any kind of military experience; there were
no officer-candidate schools to train officers, and during the first part of the war many officers were appointed because of
their family or political connections. There was no command structure that could coordinate the operations of the various
Union armies
The supply system was archaic. Hardtack was the staple food of the Union army. It was a solid cracker, some three inches square
and nearly half an inch thick; solid, hard and nourishing. If the hardtack got moldy it was usually thrown away as inedible, but if it
just had weevils in it, it was eaten anyway. Heating it over a fire would drive the weevils out; at night, when the combat
situation precluded fires, soldiers simply ate it in the dark and tried not to think about it.
Sanitation was poor in both armies—about 220,000 Union soldiers died of disease during the war. Half of the deaths from
disease were caused by intestinal ailments, mainly typhoid, diarrhea, and dysentery. Half of the remainder came from
pneumonia and tuberculosis. Battle deaths were high for the number of troops involved. Hardly anybody realized it at the time,
but the Civil War soldier went into battle just when improvements in the design of weapons created a great increase in fire power
and gave the defense a heavy advantage over the attack. By the end of 1862 almost all the soldiers on both sides had rifled
muskets. With an accurate range of 250 yards, and firing a .50 caliber bullet, the rifled musket brought advancing troops under
accurate fire much sooner than used to be the case with smooth-bore weapons. Like the introduction of the machine gun in
World War I, here was a weapon which destroyed all the old methods of conducting wars. The invention of rifled artillery
doubled its range and accuracy over the old smooth bore pieces, and they could often be used to break up an attack before it even
got started. Yet field tactics were still based on concept of sending massed troops straight into and over the enemy line. These
tactics were based on the knowledge that smooth bore weapons were inaccurate at any range. Thus, foot soldiers were
primarily spear carriers who would fire their muskets a couple of times in mass volleys to keep the enemy's head down in an
attempt to get close enough to use their bayonet on the enemy. With the development of the rifled musket and artillery it just did
not work that way any more, but the generals did not have the maneuverability to do it any other way. It would take the invention of
the tank and aircraft to change the tactics of combat.
The Northern strategy was to: 1) divide the South along the Mississippi River; 2) penetrate the heart of the Confederacy
through Georgia (Sherman's March to the Sea); 3) capture the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia; and, 4) blockade the
Confederate coast.
On July 21, 1861, 35,000 Union soldiers (mostly 90 day volunteers) moved South on Richmond. At the Battle of Bull Run they were
defeated. Later, under General George B. McClellan the Union Army landed on the tip of the peninsula between the York and
James River, only 50 miles from the southern capital. In this operation McClellan characteristically moved too slowly, although
he was opposed only by a weak force Confederate force which fooled him by painting large logs black and mounting them to
resemble cannon and by marching the same men repeatedly around the front lines. By July 1862 after some failed attacks,
the campaign was called-off, and McClellan was recalled to defend the area around Washington, DC.
Using its superior naval forces the Union forces seized all the Confederate island positions off the Southern coast. In March
1862 the Confederate ironclad vessel the Merrimack attacked the Union blockade ships at Hampton Roads, Virginia and sank two
of them. The next day, in the first battle in history between ironclad ships, the Union ironclad, the Monitor, fought the
Merrimack to a standstill, thereby neutralizing its ability to attack Union wooden vessels. After this fight Union naval superiority
was never challenged.
After extensive and bitter warfare, by March 1862 the Confederates were driven out of Missouri and eastern Kentucky. In
February 1862 Major General Ulysses S. Grant, who had once been dismissed from a captaincy in the peacetime army
because of frequent drunkenness, captured the Confederate forts of Henry and Donelson where the Tennessee and
Cumberland rivers entered the Ohio. This action opened the Cumberland River as a highway for the Union forces into the
heart of Tennessee, and most of Tennessee was under Union control and readmitted back into the Union nine months after its
secession. Lincoln appointed Andrew Johnson as military governor. On April 24, 1862 Admiral David Farragut steamed past
the Confederate forts south of New Orleans and took the city.
Thus, by the time McClellan started seriously engaging the Confederates outside of Richmond, the Union had already
regained control of most of Missouri, West Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee. It had taken the Confederate islands; it
had defeated the South's bid for naval supremacy through the use of ironclads; it had captured New Orleans and denied
the South the use of its largest port.
Yet, a Northern victory was not a forgone conclusion. Southern counteroffensives in the summer of 1862 reversed the
momentum of war and by September brought the Confederacy to the threshold of victory and to diplomatic recognition of
its independent status by foreign powers. Both North and South understood the importance of foreign recognition to the
survival of the Confederacy. Both sides remembered that it was French recognition of the US during the War for
Independence that had ensured the country's victory. The Confederate victories helped convince many in Britain and
France that the North could never defeat the South. Many of the upper-class in Britain sympathized with the Confederacy,
while the working class supported the Union as the defender of free-labor democracy. But the lack of Confederate cotton
was beginning to hurt workers as hundreds of textiles mills in Britain and France shut down or put their workers on
reduced hours. Unemployment soared. Influential people in Britain and France began to believe that the only way to restore
cotton imports and revitalize the economy was to end the war.
Slavery was also an important issue to Europeans. Like Americans, Europeans were also inconsistent in their attitudes
toward slavery. The American cotton needed by British and French mills was primarily grown by slaves. Yet most Europeans
were antislavery. Britain had abolished slavery in 1833 and France had done the same in 1848. The British were proud of their
Navy's role in controlling the African slave trade. Many in Britain who were inclined to sympathize with the Confederacy
for economic reasons found slavery a large impediment.
Lincoln recognized the importance of slavery on European recognition of the Confederacy, yet he could not move too quickly
on the matter. He had to keep the border slave states and Northern Democrats in his war coalition, and any attack on slavery
might alienate them to the point where they would stop supporting the war. Yet, as the war continued unabated the
Northern hatred toward Southern planters increased. Many Northerners began to believe that destroying slavery was a
sure-fire way to destroy the economic and political power of the planter class. There were also practical benefits to the
North in abolishing slavery. Slave labor freed Southern whites to fight for the Confederacy by providing much of the
logistical support for the Confederate armies. Northerners began to realize that emancipation would not only remove a large
labor force from the Southern war effort, the freedmen could be put to work for the Union army. Combining such practical
considerations with its own anti-slavery convictions, during the first half of 1862 Congress passed laws that forbad army
officers from returning escaped slaves to their masters, that abolished slavery in the District of Columbia, and that prohibited
slavery in the territories.
In July 1862 President Lincoln gave Border State congressmen one last chance to accept an earlier offer of compensated
emancipation. Once again the majority of the Border State representatives turned him down. Disappointed and
frustrated, Lincoln decided to issue a proclamation of emancipation, based in his war powers as commander in chief to seize
enemy property (in this case slaves) being used to wage war against the US. Lincoln did not want the Northern public and
Europeans to view the emancipation of the slaves as an act of desperation so he decided to wait for a Union military victory.
The Confederate commander, Robert E. Lee, understood that a long war would allow the greater numbers, resources, and industrial
capacity of the North to defeat the South. Thus Lee believed that the South should try to decisively defeat the North while its
armies still had the power to do so. A major Southern victory might also encourage the Northern electorate to vote for the Peace
Democrat candidates running for Congress in the off-year election of 1862. With an important victory, the Europeans might even
recognize the Confederacy. In September 1862 Lee moved the Army of Northern Virginia into Maryland with the objective of
relieving the Union Army's pressure on Richmond and with a hope of even threatening Washington, DC.
Fortunately for the Union, Lee's plans to invade Maryland, wrapped around three cigars, were lost and found by some Union
soldiers. General McClellan, in charge of Union forces around Washington, DC, displayed his usual caution and did not take full
advantage of his knowledge of Lee's plans. During four days of ferocious fighting at Antietam Lee's army was stopped in its
plans to invade the North. Lee's army was not destroyed at Antietam but it was badly damaged, and it was the victory that
Lincoln was looking for to enable him to issue the Emancipation Proclamation.
Five days after Antietam, Lincoln warned the Confederate states that unless they returned to the Union by January 1, 1863,
their slaves "shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free." The Proclamation did not actually free anyone because it applied
only to areas over which the Union government had no control. The Proclamation was one last attempt by Lincoln to get the
seceding states to cease their resistance. If they stopped fighting they would save the institution of slavery, at least for the
time being. The Confederacy rejected the offer because it realized that without the ability to expand Southern slavery had no
future. Slavery was legal in Kentucky and Delaware until eight months after the war, when the ratification of the 13th amendment
brought it to an end.
The importance of the Emancipation Proclamation should not be minimized. The Proclamation changed the objectives of the war.
Along with its original goal of preserving the Union, the North was now fighting for "freedom." Along with its original goal
of "states' rights" and Southern independence, the South was now fighting to preserve slavery. After the Proclamation it was
absolutely clear to both sides that if the North won the war slavery was over and done with. The battle of Antietam and the
Emancipation Proclamation meant that foreign recognition of the Confederacy would not take place. Public opinion would not
allow the governments of France and Britain to support a country that was fighting to maintain slavery. In the November
elections, in large part because of the Union victory at Antietam, Republicans retained the governorships of all but two of
the eighteen Northern states and the legislatures of all but three. They gained five seats in the Senate, and they kept a
majority of twenty-five in the House. The continued Republican control of both the legislative and executive branches
meant that the war would go on until the South was defeated. Finally, the North was becoming appalled by the high casualties
of the war and the Proclamation allowed the Union to use freedmen in the army. About 179,000 blacks served in the
military—12 percent of the total Union force at the end of the war was black. They were paid about $7 a month; half of a
white soldier's pay.
Lee's army succeeded in keeping a session of Union commanders from taking Richmond. But the fierce battles took a heavy
toll of Southern men that could not be replaced. In July 1863 Lee again moved north hoping to cut Northern railroad lines,
and force Lincoln to move more troops to the defense of Washington, and away from Richmond. At Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
on July 2 and 3 the Confederate army made its supreme effort. Lee's attempt failed—after losing at least a third of his
force, he was lucky to get the remainder of his army back across the Potomac. The Army of Northern Virginia's great
offensive power was forever broken.
After a forty-seven day siege, on July 4, 1863 Vicksburg, Mississippi surrendered to a Northern army under the command
of Ulysses S. Grant, yielding 30,000 prisoners and control of the Mississippi River. The war would go on for another twentyone months, but the Union victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg assured that the North would win the war.
In March 1864 Grant was made General-in-Chief of the Union forces. Using his superior numbers, Grant relentlessly
drove Lee back into a defensive position at Petersburg where he stayed until the last week of the war. Simultaneously,
General William T. Sherman began his march through Georgia, destroying everything of use to the Confederacy in a swath
sixty miles wide. After torching Atlanta, Sherman reached Savannah. Re-supplied from the sea, Sherman then turned
north to join Grant.
During these final campaigns, the Confederacy had no hope of winning. The only reason it continued to fight was the hope
that the North might grow weary of its heavy losses and decide not to finish the war that it had won. However Grant's
heavy casualties declined significantly after June 1864 and the capture of Atlanta in September caused the morale of the
Northern public to rise. In November 1864 Lincoln was reelected with 55 percent of the vote. In April 1865, the
Confederate capital of Richmond was captured and burned. Lee surrendered the remnants of the Army of Northern Virginia
on April 9,1865 at Appomattox Court House.
The war had cost the lives of 40 percent of the total combined forces for both sides. The Union army lost 360,000 men and
the Confederates' lost 258,000, for a total of 618,000 combat related deaths. Over half-a-million men were wounded. In
World War II, the second bloodiest war in American history, 405,000 Americans died. Because of the smaller population
base during the Civil War, had World War II produced the same proportion of casualties as the Civil War, over 2.5 million
Americans would have died. The Battle of Gettysburg killed more men than died in the Revolutionary War and the War of
1812 combined. One out of eleven men of service age was killed in the war. About one out of six was either killed or wounded.
On April 14, 1865 President Lincoln attended a play at Washington's Ford Theater. He was assassinated by John Wilkes
Booth, a pro-Confederate fanatic.
The Gettysburg Address is one of the most important speeches in American history. Although almost every adult American
knows that the speech starts with the words "Four score and seven years ago ...," few Americans understand the long-term
significance of the Gettysburg Address. This exercise is an attempt to redress that deficiency.
Background material: The section of Ken Burns' PBS series The Civil War that deals with 1863 has a lengthy segment that
focuses on the Battle of Gettysburg, and a shorter portion that explains the circumstances leading up to Lincoln's speech.
Near the end of the second segment, the actor Kevin Costner renders a magnificent reading of the Address. The Address may be
more meaningful to your students if you can show them the portion of Burns' film that deals with the Battle of Gettysburg. Gary
Wills' short, but brilliant, Pulitzer Prize winning book Lincoln at Gettysburg: the Words that Remade America is essential
reading for anyone who wants to fully understand the Address's impact on core American values.
The Gettysburg Address
Abraham Lincoln
Delivered at the Dedication of the National Military Cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
November 19, 1863
"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated
to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure.
We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting-place for those
who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and
dead, who struggled here have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long
remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to
the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the
great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the
last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation under God,
shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from
the earth."
Ask your students: "what year was 'Four score and seven years' prior to 1863?" The students should answer: "1776." Ask
"why is that a significant date?" The answer is that it was the year the thirteen colonies declared their independence via
the Declaration of Independence. Ask: "according to Lincoln, what was the new nation dedicated to?" Students should
respond that the country was "dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." Ask, "What was the status of
slavery in the Constitution of 1863?" The correct response is that the Constitution not only recognized slavery, it still
allowed slave owners to recapture their run-away slaves (you may want to remind the students that the Border States still
had slaves). This may be an "ah-ha" moment for some of your brighter students. They will understand that Lincoln had just
changed the rules with the Gettysburg Address. From November 19, 1863 onward, the United States is "dedicated to the
proposition that all men are created equal." Discrimination, even if sanctioned by the Constitution, is no longer the American
way. Encourage a discussion on this idea.
In the second paragraph Lincoln indicated that the Civil War was a "great" test to see if a nation like the United States—
conceived in liberty and dedicated to equality—could survive. Have the students discuss the significance of this concept.
Help them understand how radical Lincoln's ideas were in 1863. What is Lincoln inferring about Southern war objectives?
In the final paragraph of the Address Lincoln stated that the "brave men" who died at Gettysburg did not die in vain. They
died for the noblest of causes and it was the duty of those still living to ensure that their sacrifice did not go unfulfilled:
"that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the
people, shall not perish from the earth." Discuss—do Lincoln's words still apply to Americans today?
This may be a good time to show the students the Visual 5:3 Photos of Lincoln and engage them in a discussion of why Lincoln
looks so much older in 1865 than he did in 1860 and how war can ravage a caring leader.
Lesson 5:4 Northern Racial Views and Reconstruction:
Objectives:
• Understand that the North was anti-slave and anti-black. Lincoln's primary objective was to win the Civil War. He
realized that a Northern victory would not only preserve the Union, it would also end slavery.
• Understand that the South refused to show remorse for its responsibility in causing the Civil War and the more radical
aspects of Reconstruction were an attempt to punish the leaders of the South for their role in the war—they lost their
slaves and any money they had leant the Confederacy; many ex-Confederates were temporarily disfranchised and not
allowed to hold political office.
• Understand that social or economic equality for African-Americans was never a Republican Party goal during
Reconstruction. Male blacks were primarily allowed to vote to help keep the Republican Party in power.
• Understand that the "Civil War" amendments to the Constitution were an attempt by the Republican Party to maintain
political power and to ensure the permanency of some of its social, political and economic objectives.
• Understand that the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson was, in large part, caused by the conflict between
Congress and the Presidency over which branch of government was going to be the most influential in controlling
Reconstruction and in making future national policy.
• Understand that Democratic Southern leaders were determined to keep economic and political control of their states and
with the Compromise of 1877 they succeeded.
• Understand that the Civil War devastated the South's economy and weakened its national political influence through the
early part of the twentieth century.
Topics:
• Northern Racial Views.
• Reconstruction
 Lincoln's plan of Reconstruction.
 The Wade-Davis Bill.
 The Johnson Plan of Reconstruction.
 Radical (Military) Reconstruction.
 The Civil War Amendments.
 The Compromise of 1877.
Content Background:
Northern racial views
The North was divided on the issue of race and slavery. Southern secession transformed the issue in America from a question
of slavery or race to a question of Union, on which most Northerners would unite. Lincoln always had to be aware that support
for the war was based upon a coalition of unionists who knew they could not defeat the Confederacy without antislavery
support and antislavery men who knew they could not abolish slavery without the unionist support, nor without defeating
the Confederacy. The Northern victory put an end to the coalition, since the two groups ceased to need each other. The
Confederate surrender did just what secession had done, but in a reverse direction: it transformed the issue back again from a
question of union to a question of black rights, and on this question blacks had far fewer supporters in the North as freedmen
than they had ever had as slaves. Whenever a successful coalition breaks up after a war because of disagreement among the
winners, the defeated find an opportunity to assert themselves. This is what happened in the South after its defeat.
Abraham Lincoln's views are a good example of Northern racial opinions. The strongest evidence of Lincoln's racist beliefs
appeared in one of his debates during his 1858 senatorial campaign against Stephen A. Douglas. Lincoln said: "I will say then, that I
am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races; that I
am not, nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to
intermarry with white people; and I will say, in addition to this, that there is a physical difference between the white and black
races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And
inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior and I as
much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white man."
Yet among Lincoln's papers historians have found a 1854 document in which he wrote: "If A can prove conclusively that he may of
right enslave B—why may not B snatch the same argument, and prove equally, that he may enslave A? You say A is white and B is
black. It is color then; the lighter having the right to enslave the darker? Take care. By this rule, you are to be the slave to the
first man you meet with a fairer skin than your own. You do not mean color, exactly? You mean the whites are intellectually the
superiors of blacks, and therefore you have the right to enslave them? Take care again. By this rule, you are to be slave to the
first man you meet with an intellect superior to your own. But you say, it is a question of interest; and if you make it your interest,
you have the right to enslave others. Very well. And if he can make it his interest, he has the right to enslave you."
Lincoln also stated in the Lincoln-Douglas Debates that he and the Republicans looked upon slavery as "a wrong . . . a moral,
social, and political wrong." Thus, to Lincoln, and many Northerners, it was not racial prejudice and discrimination that caused
them their concerns about slavery, it was the institution itself. Segregation and legal inequality were acceptable, but slavery was not.
Lincoln spelled out the question of the priority of his values to Horace Greeley in an August 1862 letter: "My paramount object in
this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any
slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving
others alone [which is exactly what he did in the Emancipation Proclamation], I would also do that. What I do about slavery and
the colored race, I do because I believe it helps save this Union and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would
help save the Union. . . .I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere be free."
In short, for Lincoln acting on one belief—the value of the Union—was more important than acting on another belief—attacking
the moral wrong of slavery. Lincoln never forgot that he was fighting a war supported by an unstable coalition of conservative
unionists and radical antislavery men, and that if the coalition ever broke down, the North would lose the war. He also understood
that any aggressive action for blacks or against slavery would send the Border States into the Confederacy. Lincoln was smart
enough to realize that with a Northern victory he could save the Union and end slavery. If the South won the war the Union would
be permanently divided and slavery would still exist. Holding the war coalition together would achieve all of his goals.
Reconstruction
During Reconstruction (1865-1877) the nation had to grapple with the following problems: 1) what role would the freed slaves
play in American society? 2) How much power should the ex-Confederates be allowed in Southern and national politics? 3)
Which branch of the federal government—executive or legislative—would dominate the national government? The different plans
of reconstruction were attempts to deal with these problems.
Lincoln's plan of Reconstruction (December 8, 1863): When 10 percent of the whites of a state took an oath supporting the
Constitution, the Union, and the war measures that emancipated the slaves, they could organize a republican form of
government for the state, which would be recognized as the true government of the state, and they might receive a full
pardon for any service to the Confederacy "with restoration of all rights of property, except as to slaves." The process of
reconstruction would be managed by former Confederates. Lincoln's plan did not contain any guarantees of black rights
beyond emancipation. Tennessee reentered the Union in 1866 under this plan.
The Wade-Davis Bill (July 1864): This bill was an attempt by the Radical Republicans in Congress to take the reconstruction
process away from the executive branch and to ensure that ex-Confederates would have little power on the national level. It
required 50 percent of the body of citizens eligible to vote in an ex-Confederate state to petition the national government for the
right to form a new state government. Ex-Confederates were excluded by requiring an oath—the so-called "ironclad oath"—of
continuous loyalty to the Constitution. The Radicals did not encourage a speedy restoration to the Union for it was unlikely that
any former Confederate state could easily meet these demands. Blacks were excluded from participation in the political
process. The bill was vetoed by Lincoln. This bill drew the issue not only as to what the policy of reconstruction should be, but also
where the authority for deciding policy lay—with the Congress or the President. After the assassination of Lincoln and the
impeachment of President Andrew Johnson, Congress would win this fight
The Johnson Plan for Reconstruction (May 1865): Andrew Johnson was a Union Democrat from Tennessee and appointed by Lincoln
as the state's governor after Union forces conquered the state. He was an inflexible, anti-black, anti-southern planter, and
he never understood the attitudes of Northerners. He stayed loyal to the Union because, like many people from hilly east
Tennessee, he despised the social airs of the planter class and the political control they had over his state. In 1864 he was
selected as Lincoln's running-mate by the Republicans in an attempt to prove that it was a Union Party in the broadest sense, and to
draw votes from the Border States to the Republican Party. Lincoln's assassination made him President for a term only forty
days short of the full four year presidential term.
Johnson issued two proclamations while Congress was in recess. He granted amnesty to former Confederates who took an
oath of loyalty to the Constitution and federal laws. Their property was restored to them, except for slaves and any lands
and goods that were already in the process of being confiscated. Fourteen classes of people were excepted from the
general amnesty, including the highest-ranking civil and military officers, all those who had abandoned judicial posts or
seats in Congress, and persons whose taxable property was worth more than $20,000. These men had to make individual
applications for amnesty (this clause illustrates Johnson's hatred of the planter class—they would have to beg him for
forgiveness).
In the second proclamation Johnson outlined his requirements for the reconstruction of North Carolina. This was the
policy he followed with other ex-Confederate states. Johnson appointed a Unionist provisional government, with the
authority to hold an election for a constitutional convention to reorganize the government of the state. Eligibility to vote
in this election was restricted to those who had taken a pledge of loyalty to the Constitution (which admitted exConfederates), and who were eligible to vote under the laws prior to the war (which excluded blacks). In order to be
readmitted to the Union the southern states had to nullify their ordinances of secession, show their acceptance of the
abolition of slavery by ratifying the 13th Amendment, and repudiate the Confederate war debts (since most of the loans to
the Confederacy had been made by planters, this provision illustrates Johnson's loathing of them). Johnson failed to enforce
these terms (for example Mississippi failed to ratify the 13th Amendment until 1995) yet Johnson nevertheless recognized the
new governments.
In elections held in the fall of 1865 the voters of the South sent many prominent ex-Confederates to Congress including four
former rebel generals and Alexander Stephens the Confederate vice president. Congress rejected Johnson's plan because
they wanted to ensure black participation in future Southern elections (for their Republican votes), and they wanted to
reduce the power of the planter class (who were the leaders of the Southern Democrats). The Southern congressmen were
turned away at the doors of Congress. Congressional Republicans informed Johnson that they would not welcome traitors
into their midst. Members of Congress also wanted to regain the power that they had lost to the Executive during the Civil
War.
In an attempt to continue to regulate black labor the Southern states passed a series of "black codes" that restricted the
rights of blacks. In some states, blacks were permitted to work only as domestic servants or in agriculture. Other states
made it illegal for blacks to live in urban areas. In no state were blacks allowed to vote or bear arms. Mississippi required
freedmen to sign twelve month labor contracts before January 10 of each year. Those who failed to do so could be arrested
and their labor sold to the highest bidder. These laws infuriated the Radical Republicans in Congress and helped make them
determined to control the South. Psychologically the North needed the South to apologize for the Civil War, and when
Southern leaders not only refused to do so, but thumbed their noses at Northern wishes, a majority of Northerners
wanted some sort of retribution against Southern actions.
Radical (Military) Reconstruction (March 1867): The Republicans in Congress were determined to assert their authority over
the South and President Johnson. They passed a Freedmen's Bureau Act (1866) that oversaw the welfare of the freed
slaves, and removed all cases involving a freedman from the state courts and dealt with it by military law. The Civil Rights
Act of 1866 sought to protect the freedmen's rights by bringing such rights under federal jurisdiction.
The Radicals then took control of Reconstruction by imposing military reconstruction upon the South. The South was divided into
five military districts with an army general in charge of each. The military governors of each state were to conduct a voter
registration, for which blacks would be eligible, but whites who held any public office before the Civil War and supported the
Confederacy would not. When the registration was completed, the governors were to hold elections for new constitutional
conventions for each state. These conventions were required to write black suffrage into the new state constitutions. When the
constitutions had been drafted by the conventions and ratified by the voters and when the 14th Amendment had been ratified by the
state, the state's constitution would be submitted to Congress for approval. If approved, the state would be readmitted.
The fight for control of the national government led to the impeachment and trial of Andrew Johnson. In 1867 Congress
passed the Tenure of Office Act forbidding the President from removing officeholders who had been appointed by him and
confirmed by the Senate (in 1926 the Supreme Court ruled that Congress cannot interfere with the President's control over
the executive branch). Johnson removed Secretary of War Stanton who had been appointed by Lincoln and who was working
closely with the Radicals in Congress. In March 1868 the House of Representatives, by a vote of 126 to 47, impeached Johnson on
eleven counts. Nine of these counts dealt with the Tenure of Office Act and two of them accused Johnson of attempting to
discredit Congress. The Senate tried the President. The vote to convict him was 35 to 19, one short of the two-thirds majority
required for conviction. With the failure of impeachment the independence of the executive branch was maintained and the
attempt to remove Johnson from office collapsed, but for the rest of his term, Congress, not Johnson, made the major
policy decisions for the country.
The Civil War amendments
The Civil War amendments (13, 14, and 15) to the Constitution were an attempt by Congress to ensure that the goals of
Reconstruction could not be overturned by Southern state legislatures after ex-Confederates had regained control.
The Thirteenth Amendment ended slavery and gave Congress the power of enforcement.
The Fourteenth Amendment: 1) declared that everybody born or naturalized in the United States is a citizen of both the nation and
state that he lives in (this provision was necessary because of the Dred Scott decision). A state cannot make laws limiting the
rights of citizens, nor refuse due process of the law. 2) Apportioned representatives on the basis of the entire population of
the state (thus nullifying the three-fifths clause)—except non-taxpaying Indians—and threatened to reduce the number of
representatives in any state that denied the vote to male citizens over 21. This provision was an attempt to help the
Republican Party since the South would pick up representatives in Congress with the ex-slaves counting as full people. If blacks
were allowed to vote they would vote Republican and the assumption was that the additional congressional seats would be
Republican. If blacks were denied the vote, the Southern representation would be reduced accordingly, and the Democrats
would not get the extra seats. This provision was never enforced because the Republicans could maintain power without it. 3)
denied public office to most former US officials who had joined the Confederacy, and repudiated the Confederate war debt.
Since upper-class Southerners had lent most of the money to the Confederacy, this last clause was another attempt to
reduce the power and influence of Southern planters.
The Fifteenth Amendment proclaimed that neither the federal nor state governments could deny the right to vote because
of race, color, or previous condition of slavery. If the Republicans could outlaw disfranchisement of blacks on a nationwide
basis by a constitutional amendment, there would be several advantages: 1) it would avoid arousing the anti-black electorate
in the Northern states—the state legislatures, which had to ratify the amendment, understood the advantage of the black
vote to the Republican Party; 2) they would fight one battle instead of a whole series; and, 3) the amendment would gain
them black votes as a partial offset to the anti-black votes which they had already antagonized by their Southern
policies. Black enfranchisement added about 146,000 voters to the Republican Party and these voters were strategically
distributed in states that usually were toss-ups in presidential elections. The Fifteenth Amendment was primarily directed
toward the North because at the time Republicans assumed that the Southern black vote was protected by the provisions
forced into Southern state constitutions during Military Reconstruction.
The Compromise of 1877
The presidential election of 1876 marked the official end of Reconstruction. The Republicans nominated Rutherford B.
Hayes, and the Democrats Samuel J. Tilden. Tilden won the popular vote (52 percent to 48 percent), but Republicancontrolled election boards in Florida, South Carolina, and Louisiana claimed victory—despite higher Democratic votes. They
claimed that blacks had been prevented from voting in those states. Without the electoral votes of these states, Tilden had
184 undisputed votes—one short of the majority he needed. If the disputed votes all went to Hayes, he would have the 185
electoral votes necessary to win. Congress appointed an Electoral Commission consisting of fifteen men selected from the
House, Senate and the Supreme Court. Since the Commission divided on strict party lines, eight Republicans to seven
Democrats, in all of its decisions, it lost any moral authority which it might have had. Democrats were convinced, probably
correctly, that the Republicans were stealing the election they had fairly won. Because they controlled the House of
Representatives, they were in a position to prevent the completion of the count of votes by refusing to meet with the
Senate in a joint session, which is constitutionally required for receiving the electoral votes.
The Election Commission awarded the Presidency to Hayes and after some posturing, the Democrats agreed not to try
block the election (since Tilden would not be elected anyway) and the Republicans agreed to withdraw the last remaining
troops from the South (which Hayes was probably going to do after the election anyway). Southern Democrats gave great
publicity to their action in "ransoming" the last two of the states—South Carolina and Louisiana—which were still
"unredeemed," but they said much less about the fact that they had also gained a promise for large railroad subsidies and
perhaps land grants for a Texas and Pacific railroad, which would permit wealthy Southerners to enjoy some of the
governmental munificence which they had been denouncing the Republicans for receiving.
After the Compromise of 1877 the Southern Democratic Party completely subordinated Southern blacks. They were treated
as an inferior class, not yet legally segregated, but segregated in practice, and legal segregation would come by 1900.
The Civil War was not fought for black rights. It was a conflict between two forms of society over which one would dominate the
United States' future. Southerners recognized that their way of life—a life built on black slave labor—was doomed with the
election of Lincoln and that is why they seceded. Slavery was seen as an obstruction to future American progress by the North.
But once the slaves were emancipated, most Northerners thought of the freed slaves simply as a local Southern problem During
Reconstruction Congress considered policy for the freedmen primarily as a feature of protecting the program and the power of the
Republican party. White Southerners did not want blacks to have social, political, or economic equality and their programs reflected
that objective. Thus, neither side was committed to black rights. When Republicans realized that they could remain in power
without Southern black votes, they abandoned them. When white Southerners regained local control after Reconstruction,
they ensured that blacks would be disfranchised and segregated. It was not until the 1960s when a growing Northern black
vote became important in national elections, when television showed the world Southern racism, and segregation became an
embarrassment in the fight against Communism, that blacks gained the legal rights that had been denied them since they had been
brought to the New World. Thus, while the American people had achieved what Lincoln called his "paramount objective"—saving the
Union—they had not been able to decide a dilemma which was perhaps unsolvable in nineteenth century America—the dilemma of
reconciling the North and the South after the Civil War without sacrificing the desire for a new life by American blacks. To the
white Northerner, the reconciliation of the white Southerner to the Union was more important than the protection of the legal,
social, and political rights of the black Southerner.
The Civil War devastated the South's economy. At the beginning of the war a Confederate paper dollar was worth 80 cents US; by
the end of the war it was worth 1.5 cents. After the Civil War, Southern political leaders hoped to copy the economic success
of the North. They invited Northern business people to invest money in industry and transportation in the South. Despite
some limited advances, however, the South (and West) remained an economic "colony" of the North. The South essentially
produced raw materials for Northern factories. Industrial expansion in the rest of the country was so rapid that by 1900 the
South had a smaller percentage of the nation's factories and capital than it had in 1860.
Throughout this period, Southerners were poorer and less urbanized than Northerners. In 1860, the income of the average
Southerner was about 72 percent of the national average—in 1900 it was 51 percent. Only 8.5 percent of the population of the
South Atlantic states below Maryland was urban in 1890, as compared with 51.7 percent of the population of the North Atlantic
states from Pennsylvania up. In 1880 the estimated per capita wealth in the South was $376 as compared with a national
average of $870. In 1919 it was estimated that per capita income in the South was about 40 percent lower than the national
average. Closely related to Southern poverty was a lag in literacy, education, libraries, public health, and living standard.
The South also lost political power during this period. Between 1789 and 1861, Southerners controlled the presidency for
fifty of the seventy-two years. In sixty of those years the Chief Justice was Southern. The South had also furnished about
half of the Supreme Court justices, nearly half of the men of Cabinet rank, and more than half of the Speakers of the
House of Representatives. It was not until 1912 that another Southerner was elected President. From 1860 until 1910 Southerners
made up only about ten percent of the Supreme Court justices, diplomats, and Cabinet members of the federal government. Well
into the twentieth century, the South remained a satellite of both Northern industry and Northern politics.