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The Civil War
Chapter 6
Lesson 1-Breaking Away from the Union
The Union is another name for the United
States.
People in the North and South disagreed
on issues such as slavery and states’
rights, or the right to make decisions for
itself.
North and South
The North and South had very different
economies.
The North depended on small farms and
manufacturing industries that paid workers for
their labor.
Manufacturing is the process of making goods
by hand or with machines.
North and South
Many Southern plantations
depended on the labor of
enslaved people.
They thought that having
slaves was a way of life.
Many Northerners were
abolitionists.
An abolitionist wanted to
abolish, or end, slavery.
North and South
States in which people were legally allowed to
own slaves were known as slave states.
States in which people could not own slaves
were known as free states.
People could not agree on the issue of slavery,
so some Southern states wanted to secede from
the Union to protect their right to own slaves.
To secede means to withdraw.
Disagreements
Other disagreements between the North
and South included:
Transportation-North wanted the government
to pay for it; South wanted each state to pay
Land in the West-South was worried that the
land would be too small and too expensive
Tariffs-North wanted high tariffs; South
wanted low tariffs
A tariff is a tax on goods that are brought
into one country from another to be sold.
Abraham Lincoln
When Abraham Lincoln
became president, it
caused Southerners to
become even more
concerned.
Lincoln was against the
spread of slavery to the
West.
They were afraid he would
want to end slavery in the
South.
Seceding from the Union
In December 1860, South Carolina seceded.
Some Alabamians wanted to secede
immediately, and some thought Alabama should
secede only if other states did.
On January 7, 1861, delegates met in
Montgomery to discuss whether to secede.
70 out of 100 delegates had enslaved people.
Why would this be important?
On January 11, the delegates voted to secede
from the Union.
The Confederacy
By February, four more states had
seceded.
There was a meeting in Montgomery
with representatives from all 6 states
on February 4, 1861.
They organized their own government
called the Confederate States of
America, and they became an
independent country.
They elected Jefferson Davis as their
president.
Montgomery served as the first capital
of the Confederacy, but then it moved
to Richmond, Virginia because it had
the largest population.
The War Begins
The Confederacy did not want U.S. troops in their forts.
President Lincoln wanted to protect the forts because he
considered them U.S. property.
So he ordered that supplies be sent to Fort Sumter,
South Carolina.
This made the Confederacy furious!
So they ordered troops to fire on Fort Sumter.
The Civil War had begun!
Lesson 2-Alabama in the Civil War
After the war broke out, many Alabamians
volunteered for military service.
They formed 29 regiments, or units of soldiers.
African Americans also took part in the war:
They fought with their owners on the Confederate
side
Carried supplies
Cared for horses
Worked in Confederate army camps
Escaped from slavery and joined the Union side
Women served as nurses close to the battlefield.
African Americans and Women in the Civil War
Selma
Selma, Alabama became an
important military supply center
because it was close to mineral
resources and had good river and
rail transportation.
The Selma Arsenal made
ammunition, such as cannons,
shells, and gunpowder.
Ships were built at Selma’s Naval
Yard.
Fighting in the War
Robert E. Lee was the general for the
Confederacy.
Ulysses S. Grant was the general for the Union.
The Battle of Gettysburg was one of the main
battles of the war and the Union won.
The Union continued to win most of the battles
for the next two years.
Lee
Grant
Ending the War
By April 1865, Confederate
forces were outnumbered
by Union troops.
General Lee felt he could
do nothing but surrender.
Grant accepted Lee’s
surrender at Appomattox
Court House, Virginia on
April 9, 1865.
The war was over.
After the War
Alabama suffered between 30,000 and 40,000 casualties
in the war.
A casualty is a person who is injured, killed, or captured
during a war.
President Lincoln signed and issued the Emancipation
Proclamation during the war, which freed enslaved
people in Confederate states.
In 1865, the 13th Amendment became part of the U.S.
Constitution, which abolished slavery throughout the
country.
Lesson 3-Rebuilding After the War
When the soldiers came home, they saw that
Alabama’s infrastructure had been heavily
damaged.
Infrastructure is the basic systems a society
needs in order to function.
Plantations and farms had been set on fire.
Confederate troops had burned thousands of
bales of cotton to stop the Union troops from
taking them.
Cities were in ruins, rail cars, rail track, rail
stations, and steamboats were destroyed.
Alabama and other states in the South faced a
long period of rebuilding, known as
Reconstruction.
Rejoining the Union
The U.S. government in
Washington, D.C. helped many
states rebuild.
President Andrew Johnson
appointed temporary governors
for the Southern states.
Johnson became President after
Lincoln was assassinated.
He chose Lewis E. Parsons of
Talladega to be the temporary
governor of Alabama.
Johnson
Parsons
Rejoining the Union
Parsons began by bringing back all of the
laws that Alabama had before the war,
except for the laws on slavery.
Then, President Johnson outlined the
steps that all the Southern states had to
take in order to rejoin the Union:
1. A percentage of voters in each Southern
state had to take an oath of loyalty to the U.S.
2. Each state had to write a new constitution.
Rejoining the Union
Alabama followed President Johnson’s
steps, including a new constitution.
However, Alabama was not immediately
allowed back into the Union. Why?
Because they had passed a series of laws
known as black codes.
Black Codes were laws that limited the
rights of African Americans.
Rejoining the Union
Congress passed a Reconstruction act, or law,
saying that the Southern states had to write new
constitutions.
These new state constitutions had to give
African Americans the right to vote.
In November 1867, delegates met again in
Montgomery to write a new constitution.
Alabama rejoined the Union in 1868!
For the first time in Alabama
history, there were African
American delegates who helped
write the new constitution.
The Freedmen’s Bureau
The Freedmen’s Bureau helped
African Americans who once had
been enslaved.
They helped feed thousands of
Alabamians by providing food to
them.
They treated patients in
hospitals.
It opened schools for African
Americans who had not been
allowed to read and write when
they were slaves.
They also helped some African
Americans get land of their own.
Sharecroppers
After the war many people had no
money, land, animals, goods, etc.
Because of this, some people
became sharecroppers.
Sharecroppers farmed land that
belonged to someone else.
A landowner would provide seeds,
supplies, food, and shelter. In
exchange, the landowner would
receive a part of the crop.
Many sharecroppers and their
families were poor.
Alabama African Americans in Government
Benjamin Turner
James T. Rapier
State House of
Representatives
State Congress
U.S. House of
Representatives
U.S. Congress
Jeremiah Haralson
State House of
Representatives
State Senate
U.S. Congress
Reconstruction
Scalawags were Southerners who
supported Reconstruction.
Carpetbaggers were mostly Northerners
who had moved to the South and
supported Reconstruction.
The Ku Klux Klan and the Bourbon
Redeemers were against Reconstruction
and did not want equality for African
Americans.
Reconstruction Ends
Some members of the Bourbon Redeemers
group were elected to powerful positions in the
state government.
They wanted to bring back the pre-1868
Constitution and told voters that they would save
Alabama from the rule of African Americans.
They wrote a new constitution to replace the
Reconstruction constitution and this marked the
end of Reconstruction in Alabama.