The End of Civil War1865

I. Aftermath of War

The Geography of Division….

And the Landscape of Destruction

Ruins of Richmond, Virginia 1865

Richmond, Virginia

In 1860 Richmond, Virginia’s capital, had a population of 37,910 inhabitants, ranking it as the nation’s twenty-fifth largest city. A total of 23,595 of these residents were white. The remaining 14,315 inhabitants were composed of 11,739 slaves and 2,576 free African Americans.

Richmond’s location on the James River allowed it to become a city of commerce and a significant manufacturing center, as it was ranked thirteenth nationally in manufacturing—much of it due to its many flour and meal mills and tobacco factories. In addition, the city contained a number of rolling mills, foundries and, most notably, the Tredegar Iron Works, the largest employer in the city with 900 employees.

(below) Tredegar Iron Works, (above) home of Robert E. Lee, (right) Virginia State House.

A city during wartime…

A view of Richmond, Virginia, 1865, showing the columned state house.

“Generals Grant, Meade and Sheridan were on the field, or in its vicinity, during the day. All the prisoners, and several deserters who came over to us, assert this fact…. Both prisoners and deserters state that the enemy's intention is to strike the Southside railroad--probably at the junction. These statements are so uniform as to cause some credence to be placed in them. The prisoners state their loss to be very heavy….It is supposed that the battle will be renewed to-day unless the enemy intrenches and assumes the defensive.” –Richmond Daily Dispatch, April 1865

April 1865, the Battle of Richmond…

“The fire in the largely abandoned city spread out of control, and large parts of Richmond were destroyed, reaching to the very edge of Capitol Square mostly unchecked.”

Leaves a landscape of destruction…

“…our bleeding, bankrupt, almost dying nation.” -- Horace Greeley

April 1865. Ruins of the State Arsenal at Richmond showing stacked and scattered ammunition.

‘When This Cruel War Is Over’ -- popular song in 1865

“Ruins of Richmond” photograph taken by Matthew Brady

“…a country where the devastations of war and the exhausting exertions of defence against overwhelming odds, had reduced the people nearly to famine.” -- Richmond Daily Dispatch, December 1865

“These Southern States have passed through an ordeal of trial and suffering seldom the lot of a generation of people…. a bitter and disastrous war ”-- Richmond Daily Dispatch, December, 1865

Confederate soldiers’ graves, Richmond, Virginia

Another American city laid to ruins…

Charleston, South Carolina, 1865

The Civil War began in Charleston Harbor in the spring, 1861.

Charleston, S.C. 1865.

Ruins of railroad depot, Charleston

Ruins of “Secession Hall” Charleston, SC

Columbia, South Carolina

Atlanta, Georgia

Atlanta’s railroad depot destroyed during Union occupation

Shell-damaged Potter House, Atlanta

A whole landscape littered by war…

Confederate dead after Battle of Antietam, Maryland 1862.

Nearly 620,000 Americans died in the Civil War

II. A New Birth of Freedom?

Excerpt from the handwritten text of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address

A search for the meaning of war…

Nearly 8,000 American soldiers – North and South – lost their lives in the Battle of Gettysburg (July, 1863). President Lincoln accepted an invitation to speak at the dedication of a national battlefield cemetery built in Gettysburg in November.

As the war began in 1861 it was commonly understood …

…. that disagreement over slavery was at the heart of the conflict.

1861 cartoon from Harper’s Weekly magazine showing the union being torn in half by slavery (center) while the South (left) and North (right) look on.

When Lincoln was first inaugurated in March, 1861…

… seven states had already seceded.

“Apprehension seems to exist among the people of the Southern States that by the accession of a Republican Administration their property and their peace and personal security are to be endangered. There has never been any reasonable cause for such apprehension. Indeed, the most ample evidence to the contrary has all the while existed and been open to their inspection. It is found in nearly all the published speeches of him who now addresses you. I do but quote from one of those speeches when I declare that—I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.” – Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1861

Yet Lincoln pledged no interference with the rights of slave owners:

Two years later the war had imposed a new meaning…

… as thousands of slaves themselves forced the issue of freedom.

Photograph shows a group of African American ex-slaves in Virginia, 1862, declared by the U.S. Army to be “contrabands of war” of the enemy and no longer bound to slavery. Thousands of slaves first found freedom by escaping to Union army lines during the war.

“Where we are drifting, I cannot see, but we are drifting somewhere; and our fate, whatever it may be, is bound up with these… ‘contrabands.’” –Lydia Maria Child, northern resident

Lincoln issues an ‘Emancipation Proclamation’To take effect January 1, 1863:

Lincoln issued a presidential proclamation during wartime that all slaves in the areas still under Confederate control…

“are and henceforth shall be free.”

Eleven months later: Lincoln at Gettysburg…

(right) Lincoln, in center of picture without hat, after delivering the address at Gettysburg.

(left) Crowd, numbered at about 15,000, photographed at the Gettysburg battlefield cemetery dedication.

Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address (1863)

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon 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 battle field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of it, as a final resting place for those who died here, that the nation might live. This we may, in all propriety do. But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow, this ground -- The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have hallowed it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here; while it can never forget what they did here. It is rather for us, the living, we here be dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that, from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here, gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve these dead shall not have died in vain; that the nation, 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.

Copy of the 13th Amendment: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” (ratified 12/1865)

By the war’s end almost 4 million men and women freed…

What would the ‘new birth of freedom’ mean for the United States?