Download African Americans and the War

11.2
 Analyze why Lincoln decided to issue the
Emancipation Proclamation and what it achieved.
 Assess the different roles that African Americans
played in the Civil War.
 The Push Toward Emancipation
 Emancipation at Last
 African Americans Join the Fight
 Read Section 11.2
 Answer questions 4 and 6 on pg. 371.
 Pressures at home and abroad urged Lincoln to
address the issue of slavery again.
 On the battlefield Union officers faced a dilemma of
what do with the African Americans who came under
their control in the lands they were conquering.
 Most didn’t want to return them to their masters so
they put them to work doing manual labor in the
Union Camps.
 The abolitionists during this time were becoming very
frustrated with Lincoln and the slow progression of his
anti-slavery plan.
 Lincoln began secretly working on a plan for the
emancipation for enslaved African Americans living in
Confederate states.
 But he needed a Union victory in battle to gain the
support he would need for the emancipation to be
effective.
 After his army’s recent victories General Lee was
becoming very confident and he felt as though the
south could go on the offensive.
 If successful he believed he would receive his foreign
aid and the border states would combine with him and
he could take the fight to the Union.
 Everything was going pretty close to plan for Lee
except, he didn’t receive as much support from the
border states as he thought he would.
 One of General Lee’s couriers had wrapped Lee’s
invasion plans around a couple of cigars that were
suppose to be delivered to one of his generals. The
courier left the plans at a campsite where a Union
soldier later found them.
 The Union soldier immediately got the plans to
General McClellan.
 With this Lee lost his complete element of surprise.
 McClellan reviewed the plans and exclaimed “Here is a
paper with which if I cannot whip Bobbie Lee, I will be
willing to go home”
 The two armies met at Sharpsburg, Maryland and
McClellan’s troops fanned out near Antietam Creek.
 On September 17, 1862 Union troops attacked Lee’s
army in three phases, moving from one side of the
Confederate line to the other.
 During the battle McClellan had the upper hand
because he knew every move Lee was going to make
and he had a larger army.
 However Lee and his disciplined army were able to
inflict more casualties on the Union than they took
themselves.
 By the end of the day there were more than 23,000
soldiers dead or wounded from both sides of the fight.
 Lee was able to inflict 2,000 more casualties on the
Union than they were able to inflict on him.
 This was the single most bloody day of battle during
the Civil War.
 Lincoln claimed this as a victory for the Union even
though they lost more men, Lee retreated back to
Virginia to regroup.
 McClellan had a larger army and plenty of
reinforcements to come in and Lee did not have that
because he was on the offensive so he made the right
decision of moving back to Virginia to save the rest of
his army and get resupplied.
 On September 22, 1862 Lincoln formally announced
the Emancipation Proclamation.
 It freed all enslaved people in states still in rebellion
after January 1, 1863.
 Many thought that the proclamation did not go far
enough and others thought it was to drastic.
 Although the Emancipation Proclamation did not
actually free a single slave, it was an important turning
point in the war for the north.
 The north now fought to end slavery and the south
now knew they must fight to the very end to preserve
their livelihood.
 For African Americans in the North the proclamation
made them eager to join the Union army and fight
against slavery.
 Congress had passed the Militia Act mandating that
black soldiers be accepted into the military.
 By the wars end more than 180,000 African American




volunteers had served in the Union army.
Of the ones that fought in battle most performed very
well due to the hatred they had for the south.
They still dealt with prejudice in the military but to
them it was much better than slavery.
By the end of the war 70,000 had lost their lives in
battle.
This was a slight turning point for African Americans
in the Union.