Civil War

Results of the 1860 ElectionStates Rights? – Why SC seceded

A House Divided – advantages of N and S

What is surprising about the electoral vote and the popular vote?

States Rights?• South Carolina was the first

state to secede on Dec. 20, 1860• Major Complaints:

– Fugitive Slave Clause• (Should states in the North enforce these laws? Is it up to

individual states at all?)• Problem for Southerners who wanted to vacation in the North

and bring house slaves.

– Should states be allowed to grant citizenship to blacks? (A state right?)

– Attacks on the North for allowing abolitionist societies.• Is this free speech?

Fugitive Slave laws

• Countered in the North by “Personal Liberty Laws” – mandated a trial before a slave could be returned in order to prevent kidnapping.

• Supreme Court decision, Prigg v. Pennsylvania states not required to help in hunting or capturing slaves (This weakened a Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, and led to a new Act in 1850).

• F.S.A. of 1850: Any federal marshal who did not arrest a runaway slave could be fined $1000; Slaves not entitled to a trial – slave owner only needed an afidavit.– This presented a constitutional problem. It meant the North was

responsible for enforcing slavery.

A right to secede?

• Should states have the right to secede?

• Why not let

states

secede?

Jefferson, 1804

• “Whether we remain in one confederacy or form into Atlantic and Mississippi confederations, I believe not very important to the happiness of either part.”

Lincoln, 1860

• 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 do it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could do it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. What I do about slavery and the colored race, I do because it helps to save the union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the union…I intend no modification of my oft expressed personal wish that all men, everywhere, could be free.

What changed between Jefferson and Lincoln?

• Why did saving the union go from beingn not very important to critically important?

• Gold Rush/Western expansion• RR connecting East and West, and North to

South• Economic value of the South to the North• Secession as treason/denial of national destiny

Advantages of North and South

North• Control of the Navy

(Could blockade the South and continue trade with Europe)

• Gained moral advantage (also helped with

foreign support) with the Emancipation proclamation

South• Better generals (7 of the

8 military colleges were in the South)

• Defensive war• Hoped for the support

of European countries.

The Incredible advantage of the North

• In 1860, the North manufactured 97 percent of the country's firearms, 96 percent of its railroad locomotives, 94 percent of its cloth, 93 percent of its pig iron, and over 90 percent of its boots and shoes. The North had twice the density of railroads per square mile. There was not even one rifleworks in the entire South.

• All of the principal ingredients of GUNPOWDER were imported. Since the North controlled the navy, the seas were in the hands of the Union. A blockade could suffocate the South.

Fort Sumter. April, 1861

• After Fort Sumter, Lincoln asked Northern states to provide 75,000 militia to serve for three months to put down the insurrection.

• Virginia, North Carolina, Arkansas and Tennessee, all refused to send troops and joined the Confederacy. – Troops were only asked to serve for three

months. What does that tell you about how they thought the war would go?

Esprit du Corps

• Which side do you think had more motivation to fight?

• Do you think this changed over the course of the war? – What factors might increase or decrease the

will to fight?

Admitting Blacks into the Army

• ~180,000 Black soldiers enlisted in the Union army after Sept. 1862. (about half were former slaves).

• Black soldiers were paid$10 a week , while white soldiers got $13 (plus a clothing allowance, in some cases). Congress passed a bill authorizing equal pay for black and white soldiers in 1864.

Blacks in the Confederate Army

• Confederate President, Jefferson Davis, signed an order allowing slaves to be conscripted into the Southern Army in early 1865.

• Should the South celebrate their black confederate soldiers?

• Why might this be controversial?

Emancipation Proclamation

• Lincoln did not start out with a policy to free slaves. But as the war went on, he saw both military and political advantages to pursuing an abolishionist policy.

• Military: To boost the ranks of the Union army

• Political: To add a moral argument to the war. This would help gain support from European countries that might have otherwise supported the South.

• “That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free; and the Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom.”

But it didn’t emancipate all slaves!

• Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, (except the Parishes of St. Bernard, Plaquemines, Jefferson, St. John, St. Charles, St. James Ascension, Assumption, Terrebonne, Lafourche, St. Mary, St. Martin, and Orleans, including the City of New Orleans) Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia, (except the forty-eight counties designated as West Virginia, and also the counties of Berkley, Accomac, Northampton, Elizabeth City, York, Princess Ann, and Norfolk, including the cities of Norfolk and Portsmouth[)], and which excepted parts, are for the present, left precisely as if this proclamation were not issued.

• And by virtue of the power, and for the purpose aforesaid, I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated States, and parts of States, are, and henceforward shall be free; and that the Executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons.

And I hereby enjoin upon the people so declared to be free to abstain from all violence, unless in necessary self-defence; and I recommend to them that, in all cases when allowed, they labor faithfully for reasonable wages.

Free to join!

• And I further declare and make known, that such persons of suitable condition, will be received into the armed service of the United States to garrison forts, positions, stations, and other places, and to man vessels of all sorts in said service.

Impact of the Proclamation

• Was this a significant move by Lincoln, given that he only freed slaves in those areas where he had no jurisdiction?

• Did the proclamation free the slaves, or did it encourage slaves to free themselves? (Who gets to take credit for freeing the slaves?)

"by giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free."

• Could the emancipation of the slaves be seen as a revolutionary act?

• Jefferson Davis called the Emancipation Proclamation“the most execrable measure in the history of guilty man” and promised that black prisoners of war would be enslaved or executed on the spot.

Sherman’s March

• In November, 1864, General Sherman marched with his troops from Atlanta to the Atlantic coast with 62,000 troops.

• Finally, on April 18, 1865, the Civil War ended with the surrender of the Confederate army. 617,000 Americans had died in the war, approximately the same number as in all of America's other wars combined. Thousands had been injured. The southern landscape was devastated.

• the Thirteenth Amendment, passed in January of 1865, was implemented. It abolished slavery in the United States, and now, with the end of the war, four million African Americans were free.

• The Fourteenth Amendment, passed in June 1865, granted citizenship to all people born or naturalized in the United States.

• The Fifteenth Amendment, passed in February of 1869, guaranteed that no American would be denied the right to vote on the basis of race. For many African Americans, however, this right would be short-lived. Following Reconstruction, they would be denied their legal right to vote in many states until the Voting Rights Act of 1965.