The American Civil War was a four-year armed conflict between northern and southern sections of the United States. It also is called the War Between the States, the War of the Rebellion, the War for the Union, and the War for Southern Independence. Many Civil War battles also have more than one name; in this article, the more common names are used, with alternative names in parentheses. The fighting began April 12, 1861, and lasted until April and May, 1865. There was neither a formal declaration of war nor a formal armistice.

The Civil War cost more American lives than any other war in history. What began for many as a romantic adventure soon became a heartbreaking bitter struggle between the two parts of a divided country. Families were divided, sometimes with brother fighting against brother.

The North far surpassed the South in population, wealth, industrial capacity, and natural resources. The South, however, had the advantage of fighting a defensive war. It did not have to conquer the North to win, but had merely to wear it out

Top Five Causes of the Civil War

Leading up to Secession and the Civil War

By Martin Kelly, About.com Guide

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The Civil War lasted from 1861 to 1865 and led to over 618,000 casualties. Its causes can be traced back to tensions that formed early in the nation's history. Following are the top five causes that led to the "War Between the States."

1. Economic and social differences between the North and the South.

With Eli Whitney’s invention of the cotton gin in 1793, cotton became very profitable. This machine was able to reduce the time it took to separate seeds from the cotton. However, at the same time the increase in the number of plantations willing to move from other crops to cotton meant the greater need for a large amount of cheap labor, i.e. slaves. Thus, the southern economy became a one crop economy, depending on cotton and therefore on slavery. On the other hand, the northern economy was based more on industry than agriculture. In fact, the northern industries were purchasing the raw cotton and turning it into finished goods. This disparity between the two set up a major difference in economic attitudes. The South was based on the plantation system while the North was focused on city life. This change in the North meant that society evolved as people of different cultures and classes had to work together. On the other hand, the South continued to hold onto an antiquated social order.

2. States versus federal rights.

Since the time of the Revolution, two camps emerged: those arguing for greater states rights and those arguing that the federal government needed to have more control. The first organized government in the US after the American Revolution was under the Articles of Confederation. The thirteen states formed a loose confederation with a very weak federal government. However, when problems arose, the weakness of this form of government caused the leaders of the time to come together at the Constitutional Convention and create, in secret, the US Constitution. Strong proponents of states rights like Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry were not present at this meeting. Many felt that the new constitution ignored the rights of states to continue to act independently. They felt that the states should still have the right to decide if they were willing to accept certain federal acts. This resulted in the idea of nullification, whereby the states would have the right to rule federal acts unconstitutional. The federal government denied states this right. However, proponents such as John C. Calhoun fought vehemently for nullification. When nullification would not work and states felt that they were no longer respected, they moved towards secession.

3. The fight between Slave and Non-Slave State Proponents.

As America began to expand, first with the lands gained from the Louisiana Purchase and later with the Mexican War, the question of whether new states admitted to the union would be slave or free. The Missouri Compromise passed in 1820 made a rule that prohibited slavery in states from the former Louisiana Purchase the latitude 36 degrees 30 minutes north except in Missouri. During the Mexican War, conflict started about what would happen with the new territories that the US expected to gain upon victory. David Wilmot proposed the Wilmot Proviso in 1846 which would ban slavery in the new lands. However, this was shot down to much debate. The Compromise of 1850 was created by Henry Clay and others to deal with the balance between slave and free states, northern and southern interests. One of the provisions was the fugitive slave act that was discussed in number one above. Another issue that further increased tensions was the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. It created two new territories that would allow the states to use popular sovereignty to determine whether they would be free or slave. The real issue occurred in Kansas where proslavery Missourians began to pour into the state to help force it to be slave. They were called “Border Ruffians.” Problems came to a head in violence at Lawrence Kansas. The fighting that occurred caused it to be called “Bleeding Kansas.” The fight even erupted on the floor of the senate when antislavery proponent Charles Sumner was beat over the head by South Carolina’s Senator Preston Brooks.

4. Growth of the Abolition Movement.

Increasingly, the northerners became more polarized against slavery. Sympathies began to grow for abolitionists and against slavery and slaveholders. This occurred especially after some major events including: the publishing of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the Dred Scott Case, John Brown’s Raid, and the passage of the fugitive slave act that held individuals responsible for harboring fugitive slaves even if they were located in non-slave states.

5. The election of Abraham Lincoln.

Even though things were already coming to a head, when Lincoln was elected in 1860, South Carolina issued its “Declaration of the Causes of Secession.” They believed that Lincoln was anti-slavery and in favor of Northern interests. Before Lincoln was even president, seven states had seceded from the Union: South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas.

Articles of Confederation

To all to whom these Presents shall come, we the undersigned Delegates of the States affixed to our Names send greeting.

Articles of Confederation and perpetual Union between the states of New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia.

I. The Stile of this Confederacy shall be "The United States of America".

II. Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not by this Confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled.

III. The said States hereby severally enter into a firm league of friendship with each other, for their common defense, the security of their liberties, and their mutual and general welfare, binding themselves to assist each other, against all force offered to, or attacks made upon them, or any of them, on account of religion, sovereignty, trade, or any other pretense whatever.

IV. The better to secure and perpetuate mutual friendship and intercourse among the people of the different States in this Union, the free inhabitants of each of these States, paupers, vagabonds, and fugitives from justice excepted, shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of free citizens in the several States; and the people of each State shall free ingress and regress to and from any other State, and shall enjoy therein all the privileges of trade and commerce, subject to the same duties, impositions, and restrictions as the inhabitants thereof respectively, provided that such restrictions shall not extend so far as to prevent the removal of property imported into any State, to any other State, of which the owner is an inhabitant; provided also that no imposition, duties or restriction shall be laid by any State, on the property of the United States, or either of them.

If any person guilty of, or charged with, treason, felony, or other high misdemeanor in any State, shall flee from justice, and be found in any of the United States, he shall, upon demand of the Governor or executive power of the State from which he fled, be delivered up and removed to the State having jurisdiction of his offense.

Full faith and credit shall be given in each of these States to the records, acts, and judicial proceedings of the courts and magistrates of every other State.

V. For the most convenient management of the general interests of the United States, delegates shall be annually appointed in such manner as the legislatures of each State shall direct, to meet in Congress on the first Monday in November, in every year, with a powerreserved to each State to recall its delegates, or any of them, at any time within the year, and to send others in their stead for the remainder of the year.

No State shall be represented in Congress by less than two, nor more than seven members; and no person shall be capable of being a delegate for more than three years in any term of six years; nor shall any person, being a delegate, be capable of holding any office under the United States, for which he, or another for his benefit, receives any salary, fees or emolument of any kind.

Each State shall maintain its own delegates in a meeting of the States, and while they act as members of the committee of the States.

In determining questions in the United States in Congress assembled, each State shall have one vote.

Freedom of speech and debate in Congress shall not be impeached or questioned in any court or place out of Congress, and the members of Congress shall be protected in their persons from arrests or imprisonments, during the time of their going to and from, and attendence on Congress, except for treason, felony, or breach of the peace.

VI. No State, without the consent of the United States in Congress assembled, shall send any embassy to, or receive any embassy from, or enter into any conference, agreement, alliance or treaty with any King, Prince or State; nor shall any person holding any office of profit or trust under the United States, or any of them, accept any present, emolument, office or title of any kind whatever from any King, Prince or foreign State; nor shall the United States in Congress assembled, or any of them, grant any title of nobility.

No two or more States shall enter into any treaty, confederation or alliance whatever between them, without the consent of the United States in Congress assembled, specifying accurately the purposes for which the same is to be entered into, and how long it shall continue.

No State shall lay any imposts or duties, which may interfere with any stipulations in treaties, entered into by the United States in Congress assembled, with any King, Prince or State, in pursuance of any treaties already proposed by Congress, to the courts of France and Spain.

No vessel of war shall be kept up in time of peace by any State, except such number only, as shall

be deemed necessary by the United States in Congress assembled, for the defense of such State, or its trade; nor shall any body of forces be kept up by any State in time of peace, except such number only, as in the judgement of the United States in Congress assembled, shall be deemed requisite to garrison the forts necessary for the defense of such State; but every State shall always keep up a well-regulated and disciplined militia, sufficiently armed and accoutered, and shall provide and constantly have ready for use, in public stores, a due number of filed pieces and tents, and a proper quantity of arms, ammunition and camp equipage.

No State shall engage in any war without the consent of the United States in Congress assembled, unless such State be actually invaded by enemies, or shall have received certain advice of a resolution being formed by some nation of Indians to invade such State, and the danger is so imminent as not to admit of a delay till the United States in Congress assembled can be consulted; nor shall any State grant commissions to any ships or vessels of war, nor letters of marque or reprisal, except it be after a declaration of war by the United States in Congress assembled, and then only against the Kingdom or State and the subjects thereof, against which war has been so declared, and under such regulations as shall be established by the United States in Congress assembled, unless such State be infested by pirates, in which case vessels of war may be fitted out for that occasion, and kept so long as the danger shall continue, or until the United States in Congress assembled shall determine otherwise.

VII. When land forces are raised by any State for the common defense, all officers of or under the rank of colonel, shall be appointed by the legislature of each State respectively, by whom such forces shall be raised, or in such manner as such State shall direct, and all vacancies shall be filled up by the State which first made the appointment.

VIII. All charges of war, and all other expenses that shall be incurred for the common defense or general welfare, and allowed by the United States in Congress assembled, shall be defrayed out of a common treasury, which shall be supplied by the several States in proportion to the value of all land within each State, granted or surveyed for any person, as such land and the buildings and improvements thereon shall be estimated according to such mode as the United States in Congress assembled, shall from time to time direct and appoint.

The taxes for paying that proportion shall be laid and levied by the authority and direction of the legislatures of the several States within the time agreed upon by the United States in Congress assembled.

IX. The United States in Congress assembled, shall have the sole and exclusive right and power of determining on peace and war, except in the cases mentioned in the sixth article -- of sending and receiving ambassadors -- entering into treaties and alliances, provided that no treaty of commerce shall be made whereby the legislative power of the respective States shall be restrained from imposing such imposts and duties on foreigners, as their own people are subjected to, or from prohibiting the exportation or importation of any species of goods or commodities whatsoever -- of establishing rules for deciding in all cases, what captures on land or water shall be legal, and in what manner prizes taken by land or naval forces in the service of the United States shall be divided or appropriated -- of granting letters of marque and reprisal in times of peace -- appointing courts for the trial of piracies and felonies commited on the high seas and establishing courts for receiving and determining finally appeals in all cases of captures, provided that no member of Congress shall be appointed a judge of any of the said courts.

The United States in Congress assembled shall also be the last resort on appeal in all disputes and differences now subsisting or that hereafter may arise between two or more States concerning boundary, jurisdiction or any other causes whatever; which authority shall always be exercised in the manner following. Whenever the legislative or executive authority or lawful agent of any State in controversy with another shall present a petition to Congress stating the matter in question and praying for a hearing, notice thereof shall be given by order of Congress to the legislative or executive authority of the other State in controversy, and a day assigned for the appearance of the

parties by their lawful agents, who shall then be directed to appoint by joint consent, commissioners or judges to constitute a court for hearing and determining the matter in question: but if they cannot agree, Congress shall name three persons out of each of the United States, and from the list of such persons each party shall alternately strike out one, the petitioners beginning, until the number shall be reduced to thirteen; and from that number not less than seven, nor more than nine names as Congress shall direct, shall in the presence of Congress be drawn out by lot, and the persons whose names shall be so drawn or any five of them, shall be commissioners or judges, to hear and finally determine the controversy, so always as a major part of the judges who shall hear the cause shall agree in the determination: and if either party shall neglect to attend at the day appointed, without showing reasons, which Congress shall judge sufficient, or being present shall refuse to strike, the Congress shall proceed to nominate three persons out of each State, and the secretary of Congress shall strike in behalf of such party absent or refusing; and the judgement and sentence of the court to be appointed, in the manner before prescribed, shall be final and conclusive; and if any of the parties shall refuse to submit to the authority of such court, or to appear or defend their claim or cause, the court shall nevertheless proceed to pronounce sentence, or judgement, which shall in like manner be final and decisive, the judgement or sentence and other proceedings being in either case transmitted to Congress, and lodged among the acts of Congress for the security of the parties concerned: provided that every commissioner, before he sits in judgement, shall take an oath to be administered by one of the judges of the supreme or superior court of the State, where the cause shall be tried, 'well and truly to hear and determine the matter in question, according to the best of his judgement, without favor, affection or hope of reward': provided also, that no State shall be deprived of territory for the benefit of the United States.

All controversies concerning the private right of soil claimed under different grants of two or more States, whose jurisdictions as they may respect such lands, and the States which passed such grants are adjusted, the said grants or either of them being at the same time claimed to have originated antecedent to such settlement of jurisdiction, shall on the petition of either party to the Congress of the United States, be finally determined as near as may be in the same manner as is before presecribed for deciding disputes respecting territorial jurisdiction between different States.

The United States in Congress assembled shall also have the sole and exclusive right and power of regulating the alloy and value of coin struck by their own authority, or by that of the respective States -- fixing the standards of weights and measures throughout the United States -- regulating the trade and managing all affairs with the Indians, not members of any of the States, provided that the legislative right of any State within its own limits be not infringed or violated -- establishing or regulating post offices from one State to another, throughout all the United States, and exacting such postage on the papers passing through the same as may be requisite to defray the expenses of the said office -- appointing all officers of the land forces, in the service of the United States, excepting regimental officers -- appointing all the officers of the naval forces, and commissioning all officers whatever in the service of the United States -- making rules for the government and regulation of the said land and naval forces, and directing their operations.

The United States in Congress assembled shall have authority to appoint a committee, to sit in the recess of Congress, to be denominated 'A Committee of the States', and to consist of one delegate from each State; and to appoint such other committees and civil officers as may be necessary for managing the general affairs of the United States under their direction

to appoint one of their members to preside, provided that no person be allowed to serve in the office of president more than one year in any term of three years; to ascertain the necessary sums of money to be raised for the service of the United States, and to appropriate and apply the same for defraying the public expenses -- to borrow money, or emit bills on the credit of the United States, transmitting every half-year to the respective States an account of the sums of money so borrowed or emitted

to build and equip a navy -- to agree upon the number of land forces, and to make requisitions from each State for its quota, in proportion to the number of white inhabitants in such State; which requisition shall be binding, and thereupon the legislature of each State shall

appoint the regimental officers, raise the men and cloath, arm and equip them in a solid-like manner, at the expense of the United States; and the officers and men so cloathed, armed and equipped shall march to the place appointed, and within the time agreed on by the United States in Congress assembled. But if the United States in Congress assembled shall, on consideration of circumstances judge proper that any State should not raise men, or should raise a smaller number of men than the quota thereof, such extra number shall be raised, officered, cloathed, armed and equipped in the same manner as the quota of each State, unless the legislature of such State shall judge that such extra number cannot be safely spread out in the same, in which case they shall raise, officer, cloath, arm and equip as many of such extra number as they judeg can be safely spared. And the officers and men so cloathed, armed, and equipped, shall march to the place appointed, and within the time agreed on by the United States in Congress assembled.

The United States in Congress assembled shall never engage in a war, nor grant letters of marque or reprisal in time of peace, nor enter into any treaties or alliances, nor coin money, nor regulate the value thereof, nor ascertain the sums and expenses necessary for the defense and welfare of the United States, or any of them, nor emit bills, nor borrow money on the credit of the United States, nor appropriate money, nor agree upon the number of vessels of war, to be built or purchased, or the number of land or sea forces to be raised, nor appoint a commander in chief of the army or navy, unless nine States assent to the same: nor shall a question on any other point, except for adjourning from day to day be determined, unless by the votes of the majority of the United States in Congress assembled.

The Congress of the United States shall have power to adjourn to any time within the year, and to any place within the United States, so that no period of adjournment be for a longer duration than the space of six months, and shall publish the journal of their proceedings monthly, except such parts thereof relating to treaties, alliances or military operations, as in their judgement require secrecy; and the yeas and nays of the delegates of each State on any question shall be entered on the journal, when it is desired by any delegates of a State, or any of them, at his or their request shall be furnished with a transcript of the said journal, except such parts as are above excepted, to lay before the legislatures of the several States.

X. The Committee of the States, or any nine of them, shall be authorized to execute, in the recess of Congress, such of the powers of Congress as the United States in Congress assembled, by the consent of the nine States, shall from time to time think expedient to vest them with; provided that no power be delegated to the said Committee, for the exercise of which, by the Articles of Confederation, the voice of nine States in the Congress of the United States assembled be requisite.

XI. Canada acceding to this confederation, and adjoining in the measures of the United States, shall be admitted into, and entitled to all the advantages of this Union; but no other colony shall be admitted into the same, unless such admission be agreed to by nine States.

XII. All bills of credit emitted, monies borrowed, and debts contracted by, or under the authority of Congress, before the assembling of the United States, in pursuance of the present confederation, shall be deemed and considered as a charge against the United States, for payment and satisfaction whereof the said United States, and the public faith are hereby solemnly pleged.

XIII. Every State shall abide by the determination of the United States in Congress assembled, on all questions which by this confederation are submitted to them. And the Articles of this Confederation shall be inviolably observed by every State, and the Union shall be perpetual; nor shall any alteration at any time hereafter be made in any of them; unless such alteration be agreed to in a Congress of the United States, and be afterwards confirmed by the legislatures of every State.

And Whereas it hath pleased the Great Governor of the World to incline the hearts of the legislatures we respectively represent in Congress, to approve of, and to authorize us to ratify the said Articles of Confederation and perpetual Union. Know Ye that we the undersigned delegates, by virtue of the power and authority to us given for that purpose, do by these presents, in the name

and in behalf of our respective constituents, fully and entirely ratify and confirm each and every of the said Articles of Confederation and perpetual Union, and all and singular the matters and things therein contained: And we do further solemnly plight and engage the faith of our respective constituents, that they shall abide by the determinations of the United States in Congress assembled, on all questions, which by the said Confederation are submitted to them. And that the Articles thereof shall be inviolably observed by the States we respectively represent, and that the Union shall be perpetual.

In Witness whereof we have hereunto set our hands in Congress. Done at Philadelphia in the State of Pennsylvania the ninth day of July in the Year of our Lord One Thousand Seven Hundred and Seventy-Eight, and in the Third Year of the independence of America.

Bleeding Kansas

By Martin Kelly, About.com Guide

Definition: Bleeding Kansas refers to the time between 1854-58 when the Kansas territory was the site of much violence over whether the territory would be free or slave. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 set the scene by allowing the territory of Kansas to decide for itself whether it would be free or slave, a situation known as popular sovereignty. With the passage of the act, thousands of pro- and anti-slavery supporters flooded the state. Violent clashes soon occurred, especially once "border ruffians" crossed over from the South to sway the vote to the pro-slavery side.

One of the most publicized events that occurred in Bleeding Kansas was when on May 21, 1856 Border Ruffians ransacked Lawrence, Kansas which was known to be a staunch free-state area. One day later, violence occurred on the floor of the U.S. Senate when Congressman Preston Brooks of South Carolina attacked Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts with a cane after Sumner spoke out against Southerners responsible for violence in Kansas.

Several constitutions for the future state of Kansas were created, some pro- and some anti-slavery. The Lecompton Constitution was the most important pro-slavery Constitution. President James Buchanan actually wanted it to be ratified. However, the Constitution died. Kansas eventually entered the Union in 1861 as a free state.

What Caused the American Civil War?

There were many reasons for a Civil War to happen in America, and political issues and disagreements began soon after the American Revolution ended in 1782. Between the years 1800 and 1860, arguments between the North and South grew more intense. One of the main quarrels was about taxes paid on goods brought into this country from foreign countries. This tax was called a tariff. Southerners felt these tariffs were unfair and aimed toward them because they imported a wider variety of goods than most Northern people. Taxes were also placed on many Southern goods that were shipped to foreign countries, an expense that was not always applied to Northern goods of equal value. An awkward economic structure allowed states and private transportation companies to do this, which also affected Southern banks that found themselves paying higher interest rates on loans made with banks in the North. The situation grew worse after several "panics", including one in 1857 that affected more Northern banks than Southern. Southern financiers found themselves burdened with high payments just to save Northern banks that had suffered financial losses through poor investment.

In the years before the Civil War the political power in the Federal government, centered in Washington, D.C., was changing. Northern and mid-western states were becoming more and more powerful as the populations increased. Southern states lost political power because the population did not increase as

rapidly. As one portion of the nation grew larger than another, people began to talk of the nation as sections. This was called sectionalism. Just as the original thirteen colonies fought for their independence almost 100 years earlier, the Southern states felt a growing need for freedom from the central Federal authority in Washington. Southerners believed that state laws carried more weight than Federal laws, and they should abide by the state regulations first. This issue was called State's Rights and became a very warm topic in congress.

Another quarrel between the North and South and perhaps the most emotional one, was over the issue of slavery. America was an agricultural nation and crops such as cotton were in demand around the world. Cotton was a plant that grew well in the southern climate, but it was a difficult plant to gather and process. Labor in the form of slaves were used on large plantations to plant and harvest cotton as well as sugar, rice, and other cash crops. The invention of the Cotton Gin by Eli Whitney made cotton more profitable for southern growers. Before this invention, it took one person all day to process two pounds of cotton by hand, a slow and inefficient method. Whitney's Cotton Gin machine could process that much within a half hour. Whitney's invention revolutionized the cotton industry and Southern planters saw their profits soar as more and more of them relied on cotton as their main cash crop. Slaves were a central part of that industry.

Slavery had been a part of life in America since the early colonial period and became more acceptable in the South than the North. Southern planters relied on slaves to run larger farms or plantations and make them profitable. Many slaves were also used to provide labor for the various household chores that needed to be done. This did not sit well with many northerners who felt that slavery was uncivilized and should be abolished. They were called abolitionists and thought that owning slaves was wrong for any reason. They loudly disagreed with the South's laws and beliefs concerning slavery. Yet slavery had been a part of the Southern way of life for well over 200 years and was protected not only by state laws, but Federal law as well. The Constitution of the United States guaranteed the right to own property and protected everyone against the seizure of property. A slave was viewed as property in the South and was important to the economics of the Southern cotton industry. The people of the Southern states did not appreciate Northern people, especially the abolitionists, telling them that slave ownership was a great wrong. This created a great amount of debate, mistrust, and misunderstanding.

As the nation grew in size, so did the opportunities for expansion westward. Many felt that slavery should be allowed in the new territories such as Kansas and Missouri, while others were set against it. This led to "bleeding Kansas", a bitter war that pitted neighbor against neighbor. In 1859, a radical abolitionist from Kansas named John Brown raided the Federal armory at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in the hopes of supplying weapons to an army of slaves that would revolt against their southern masters. A number of people were taken hostage and several killed, among them the mayor of Harpers Ferry. Brown was cornered with several of his followers in a fire engine house, first by Virginia militia and then by Federal troops sent to arrest him and his raiders. These troops, commanded by Colonel Robert E. Lee, stormed the building and captured Brown and several of his men. Brown was tried for his crimes, found guilty, and hung in Charlestown. Though John Brown's raid had failed, it fueled the passions of northern abolitionists who made him a martyr. It was reported that bells tolled in sympathy to John Brown in northern cities on the day he was executed. This inflamed passions in the South where southern leaders used the incident as another reminder how little the South's interests were represented in Federal law, labeled as sympathetic to runaways and anti-slavery organizations.

The debate became very bitter. Southern politicians outwardly charged that their voices were not being heard in congress. Some Southern states wanted to secede, or break away from the United States of America and govern themselves. Emotions reached a fever pitch when Abraham Lincoln was elected President of the United States in 1860. He

was a member of the Republican Party and vowed to keep the country united and the new western territories free from slavery. Many Southerners, who were Democrats, were afraid that Lincoln was not sympathetic to their way of life and would not treat them fairly. The growing strength of the Republican Party, viewed by many as the party friendly to abolitionists and northern businessmen, and the election of the party's candidate was the last straw. Southern governors and political leaders called for state referendums to consider articles of secession. South Carolina was the first state to officially secede from the United States soon after the election and they were followed by six other Southern states. These states joined together and formed a new nation which they named the Confederate States of America. They elected Jefferson Davis, a Democratic senator and champion of states rights from Mississippi, as the first president.

On April 12, 1861 the Confederate States of America attacked Fort Sumter, South Carolina. The fort sits at the entrance to Charleston Harbor and was manned by Union troops who flew the United States flag. The bombardment lasted many hours and the fort was heavily damaged, though no one was killed or injured. Major Robert Anderson surrendered the fort and its garrison to the Confederate commanders. Now that open conflict had started, President Lincoln responded with a call for volunteers from states still loyal to the Union, to enlist and put down this treacherous act of rebellion. Alarmed that Lincoln would do this, four more Southern states seceded and joined the Confederacy. The war that President Lincoln had tried to avoid began anyway. War talk was on everyone's lips and sharp divisions took place, even among families and neighbors.

At first, no one believed the war would last very long. Some people said it would take only a few months and the fellows who volunteered to fight would come home heroes within a few weeks. No one realized how determined the South was to be independent, nor did the South realize how determined the North was to end the rebellion. Armies had to be raised in the North and the South, and every state was asked to raise regiments of volunteers to be sent for service in the field. Many young men chose to enlist and volunteered for military service. In the South, men readily went to war to protect their homes and save the Southern way of life. Most did not believe that the government in Washington was looking out for the South's interests and they were better off as a new nation where the states would make up their own laws. Many were happy to be called rebels because they thought they were fighting against a tyrant like their forefathers did against the British during the American Revolution. Northern men volunteered to put down the rebellion of southern states and bind the nation back together. Most felt that the Southerners had rebelled without good cause and had to be taught a lesson. Some also felt that slavery was an evil and the war was a way abolish it. No one knew how terrible war really was and how hard life as a soldier could be. They did not have television or radio to communicate the terrible things that could happen. Politicians did not communicate either, which was one of the main reasons for the war and misunderstandings between North and South. The armies were raised and marched off to war. It was only after many battles and many lives were lost that the American people realized how horrible war really was. The soldiers communicated with their families and loved ones and told them of the hardships they endured and terrible scenes they had witnessed.

The fighting of the American Civil War would last four long years at a cost of 620,000 lives. In the end the Northern states prevailed- our country remained united, the Federal government was changed forever, and slavery came to an end

1861-1865:

The Civil War

The Civil War represented a watershed moment in the history of American taxation. The quick, limited engagement both sides confidently predicted soon proved a chimera. Instead, the exigencies of protracted, destructive warfare engulfing private property and civilian populations as well as commissioned combatants demanded innovations in government financing. While the outcome of the conflict may be attributed to any number of contingent factors, the varying fiscal strategies undertaken by the Union and Confederate governments undoubtedly influenced the capacity of both societies to sustain the war effort. North and South employed markedly different approaches. The North's proved more efficacious in the long run.

Confederate War Financing

The antebellum south enjoyed one of the lightest tax burdens of all contemporary civilized societies. Local or state governments assessed all obligations. By contrast, the hastily assembled Confederate government lacked the bureaucratic infrastructure to levy or collect internal taxes. Its citizens possessed neither a tradition of compliance nor a means to remit payment. Land and slaves comprised the bulk of southern capital; liquid forms of wealth like specie or paper currency were hard to come by in a predominantly agrarian region.

Efforts to raise war revenue through various methods of taxation proved ineffective. The Confederate Congress enacted a minor tariff in 1861, but it contributed only $3.5 million in four years. That same year, Congress implemented a small direct tax (0.5 percent) on real and personal property. But the government in Richmond was forced to rely on the individual states to collect the levy. Reprising the scenario played out during the Revolutionary War, most states did not collect the tax at all, preferring to meet their quota by borrowing money or printing state notes to cover it.

The Davis administration turned to loans to finance the initial bulk of war debts. Riding a wave of patriotic enthusiasm in 1861, the Treasury earned $15 million selling out their first bond issue. The second issue, however, consisting of $100 million in 8 percent yield bonds, sold slowly. Few southerners had the cash to purchase them, but in addition the year-end 12 percent inflation rate threatened to negate any promise of real financial return. It fell to investors to buy up the remainder of the 8 percent bonds, which they purchased with newly minted Confederate Treasury notes.

By necessity rather than choice, the South turned to the printing press to pay most of its bills. In its first year, the Confederate government derived 75 percent of its total revenue from Treasury notes, less than 25 percent from bonds (purchased, of course, with the notes), and under 2 percent from taxes. While the proportion of the latter two would increase slightly in later years, the foundation of Confederate war financing consisted of over $1.5 billion in paper dollars that began depreciating before the ink had a chance to dry. By refusing to establish the notes as compulsory legal tender, Treasury officials hoped to avoid undermining confidence in the currency. They preferred that the currency be backed by public confidence in the Confederacy’s survival (notes were to be redeemable in specie at face value within two years of the end of the war).

This being the case, various state, county, and city notes also circulated widely, diluting the medium further; the fact that these poorly printed bills were easily counterfeited did not help matters. Ironically, the Confederate decision to turn to paper money in lieu of a system of internal taxation abetted the most odious, regressive form of de facto taxation southern society endured: runaway inflation, appearing in the wake of military reversals in 1862, and topping 9,000 percent by war’s end.

By the spring of 1863, the crushing burden of inflation motivated Richmond to come up with an alternative to fiat money. In April, they followed the Union’s lead and enacted comprehensive legislation that included a progressive income tax, an 8 percent levy on certain goods held for sale, excise, and license duties, and a 10 percent profits tax on wholesalers. These provisions also included a 10 percent tax-in-kind on agricultural products. The latter burdened yeoman more than the progressive income tax encumbered urban salaried workers, since laborers could remit depreciated currency to meet their obligations. Adding to the inequity, the law exempted some of the most lucrative property owned by wealthy planters their slaves from assessment. Lawmakers considered a tax on slaves to be a direct tax, constitutionally permissible only after an apportionment on the basis of population. Since the war precluded any opportunity to count heads, they concluded that no direct tax was possible. Accumulating war debts and heightened condemnation of a "rich man’s war, poor man’s fight" led to revision of the tax law in February 1864, which suspended the requirement for a census-based apportionment of direct taxes and imposed a 5 percent levy on land and slaves. These changes came too late, however, to have any sustained impact on the Confederate war effort.

 

Union War Financing

In addition to its developed industrial base, the North entered the war with several apparent institutional advantages, including an established Treasury and tariff structure. With the exodus of southern representatives, the Republican-dominated Congress ratcheted up tariff rates throughout the war, beginning in 1862 with the Morill Tariff Act, which reversed the downward trend instituted by the Democrats between 1846 and 1857. Subsequent tariff legislation, especially the 1864 act, raised rates further. Protective tariffs were politically popular among manufacturers, northern laborers, and even some commercial farmers. But Customs duties amounted to about $75 million annually, only nominally more, after adjusting for inflation, than the value of duties collected during the 1850s. Still, the high rate structure established in the Civil War would remain a hallmark of the post-war political economy of the Republican party.

Ideological reservations tempered some of the Treasury’s supposed institutional advantages. Secretary of the Treasury Salmon Chase, like many northern policymakers, generally distrusted any form of exchange other than specie. They preferred to pay government debts by physically moving gold out of the Treasury instead of transferring funds from demand deposits via check. They also refused to utilize established private banks in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia as repositories for federal funds, further complicating financial transactions. Chase hoped to follow Albert Gallatin’s model of financing the War of 1812, which (initially) emphasized borrowing over taxation. Ultimately, however, mounting debts, a shortage of specie, and the threat of inflation led the Union to adopt innovative plans for both borrowing and internal taxation.

 

In contrast to the Confederacy, which relied on loans for about 35 percent of its war finances, the Union raised over 65 percent of its revenue this way. Having little personal experience, Chase turned to Philadelphia Banker Jay Cooke to administer the sale of war bonds. Although he expected banks and wealthy citizens to purchase most of them, Cooke employed a sophisticated propaganda campaign to market the bonds to the middling classes as well. Patriotic newspaper advertisements and an army of 2,500 agents persuaded almost one million northerners (about 25 percent of ordinary families) to invest in the war effort; bond sales topped $3 billion. In this way, Cooke previewed the techniques with which governments in the 20thcentury would fund modern wars.

In order for the bond program to be successful, the North needed an unrestricted currency supply for citizens to pay for them and a source of income to guarantee the interest. The Legal Tender Act filled the first requirement. Passed in February 1862, the act authorized the issue of $150 million in Treasury notes, known as Greenbacks. In contrast to Confederate paper, however, Congress required citizens, banks, and governments to accept Greenbacks as legal tender for public and private debts, except for interest on federal bonds and customs duties. This policy allowed buyers to purchase bonds with greenbacks while the interest accrued to them was paid in gold (funded, in part, by specie payments of customs duties). Investors enjoyed a bountiful windfall, since government securities purchased with depreciated currency were redeemed with gold valued at the prewar level. Taxpayers essentially made up the difference. Because most bonds were acquired by the wealthy or by financial institutions, the program concentrated investment capital in the hands of those likely to use it, much as Alexander Hamilton’s debt plan had sought to do.

The Union government’s decision to implement a broad system of internal taxation not only insured a valuable source of income, but shielded the northern economy from the sort of ruinous inflation experienced by the South. Despite another $150 million Greenback issue, the overall northern inflation rate reached only 80 percent, comparable with the domestic rates during World Wars I and II. The Internal Revenue Act of 1862, enacted by Congress in July, 1862, soaked up much of the inflationary pressure produced by Greenbacks. It did so because the Act placed excise taxes on just about everything, including sin and luxury items like liquor, tobacco, playing cards, carriages, yachts, billiard tables, and jewelry. It taxed patent medicines and newspaper advertisements. It imposed license taxes on practically every profession or service except the clergy. It instituted stamp taxes, value added taxes on manufactured goods and processed meats, inheritance taxes, taxes on the gross receipts of corporations, banks, and insurance companies, as well as taxes on dividends or interest they paid to investors. To administer these excise taxes, along with the tariff system, the Internal Revenue Act also created a Bureau of Internal Revenue, whose first commissioner, George Boutwell, described it as "the largest Government department ever organized."

The majority of internal taxes and tariffs duties were regressive, consumption-oriented measures that affected lower income Americans more severely than higher-income Americans. In response, Republicans looked to reinforce the system’s fairness by implementing a supplementary system of taxation that more accurately reflected taxpayers’ "ability to pay." The income tax addressed this need.

The first federal income tax in American history actually preceded the Internal Revenue Act of 1862. Passed in August 1861, it had helped assure the financial community that the government would have a reliable source of income to pay the interest on war bonds. Initially, Salmon Chase and Thaddeus Stevens, Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, wanted to implement an emergency property tax similar to the one adopted during the War of 1812. This way, the government could adapt the administrative system that state and local governments had developed for their own property taxes. But legislators understood such a property tax as a direct tax. Article 1, Section 9 of the Constitution required the federal government to apportion the burden among states on the basis of population rather than property values. Emphasizing population over property value would actually render the tax quite regressive. Residents of lower-density western states, border states, and poor northeastern states stood to bear a greater burden than those of highly-populated urban states, despite the latter’s valued real estate. Their representatives also complained that a property tax would not touch substantial "intangible" property like stocks, bonds, mortgages, or cash.

As an alternative, policy makers sought to follow the example of British Liberals, who had turned to income taxation in order to finance the Crimean War without heavy property taxation. Justin Morrill, (R-VT), Chairman of the Ways and Means Subcommittee on Taxation and the architect of the regressive tariff structure, introduced a proposal for the first federal income tax. Because it did not tax property directly, congressional leaders viewed the income tax as indirect, and thus immune from constitutional strictures.

The first income tax was moderately progressive and ungraduated, imposing a 3 percent tax on annual incomes over $800 that exempted most wage earners. These taxes were not even collected until 1862, making alternative financing schemes like the Legal Tender Act critical in the interim. The Internal Revenue Act of 1862 expanded the progressive nature of the earlier act while adding graduations: It exempted the first $600, imposed a 3 percent rate on incomes between $600 and $10,000, and a 5 percent rate on those over $10,000. The act exempted businesses worth less than $600 from value added and receipts taxes. Taxes were withheld from the salaries of government employees as well as from dividends paid to corporations (the same method of collection later employed during World War II). In addition, the "sin" excise taxes imposed in the 1862 act were designed to fall most heavily on products purchased by the affluent. Thaddeus Stevens lauded the progressivity of the tax system:

"While the rich and the thrifty will be obliged to contribute largely from the abundance of their means . . . no burdens have been imposed on the industrious laborer and mechanic . . . The food of the poor is untaxed; and no one will be affected by the provisions of this bill whose living depends solely on his manual labor."

But the war grew increasingly costly (topping $2 million per day in its latter stages) and difficult to finance. The government’s ability to borrow fluctuated with battlefield fortunes. The Confederate navy harassed northern shipping, reducing customs receipts. And inevitable administrative problems reduced the expected receipts from income and excise tax collection.

In response, Congress approved two new laws in 1864 that increased tax rates and expanded the progressivity of income taxation. The first bill passed in June upped inheritance, excise, license, and gross receipts business taxes, along with stamp duties and ad valorem manufacturing taxes. The same act proceeded to assess incomes between $600 and $5,000 at 5 percent, those between $5,000 and $10,000 at 7.5 percent, and established a maximum rate of 10 percent. Despite protest by certain legislators regarding the unfairness of graduated rates, the 1864 act affirmed this method of taxing income according to "ability to pay." An emergency income tax bill passed in July imposed an additional tax of 5 percent on all incomes in excess of $600, on top of the rates set by previous income tax bills. Congress had discovered that the income tax, in addition to its rhetorical value, also provided a flexible and lucrative source of revenue. Receipts increased from over $20 million in 1864 (when collections were made under the 1862 income tax) to almost $61 million in 1865 (when collections were made under the 1864 act and emergency supplement).

The affluent upper middle classes of the nation’s commercial and industrial centers complied widely with the income tax. 10 percent of all Union households had paid some form of income tax by war’s end; residents of the northeast comprised 15 percent of that total. In fact, the northeast, a sector of American society that owned 70 percent of the nation’s wealth in 1860, provided the most critical tax base, remitting 75 percent of the revenues. In total, the North raised 21 percent of its war revenue through taxation, as opposed to the South, which raised just 5 percent this way.

Federal taxes were also instrumental in instituting a system of national banking during the war. The National Banking Acts of 1863 and 1864 imposed a system of "free banking" — banks established by general incorporation as opposed to specific charters — on a national level. State banks were granted national charters and allowed to issue national bank notes (these notes were separate from Greenbacks). One third of a national bank’s capital had to consist of federal bonds, since the new national notes were to be backed by federal bonds. The National Banking Acts thus served as

another means to induce bankers to purchase bonds. In an attempt to avoid increased regulation, however, many state banks declined to seek national charters. To remedy this problem, the 1864 act imposed a 10 percent tax on state bank notes to drive them out of existence. As a result of this tax, the number of national banks tripled by the war’s end, while their purchase of U.S. bonds nearly quadrupled.

Slavery During the Civil WarSlavery in America

The American civil war had a profound effect on the lives of slaves. It ultimately resulted in the abolition of slavery. Slaves first arrived in America in Virginia in 1619. The Underground Railway was a way by which slaves could find freedom. This was a method for northerners to help escaped slaves to find a place to live in free states or Canada. Free black Americans were usually the ones to plan and helped with the Underground Railroad. It is believed about 50,000 to 100,000 people used the Underground Railroad to escape to their freedom. The Underground Railroad was used mostly in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana.

The Civil War was fought partly over the issue of slavery. The people that lived in the North opposed slavery move than the people in the South. The people in the North did not need slavery as much as the South did. The people living in the North owned, operated, and worked in factories and mills. The South required slavery. In the South they grew cotton and needed a lot of people to work in the farms for extremely little or no money.

Slavery during the Civil War

Slavery was not the single cause of the Civil war. The many differences arising from the slavery issue provoked the Southern States to secede. Abraham Lincoln was elected as president of the United States in 1860. Not a single Southern State had voted for him. Lincoln and his Republican party had the goal of only stopping the expansion of slavery not abolishing it. White Southerners were not convinced by Lincoln’s promise to protect slavery where it existed. South Carolina had declared it would secede from the Union if Abraham Lincoln was elected, and it did so in December 1861. It was followed shortly by the other lower South states of Louisiana, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Texas and Florida. In February 1861, a month before Lincoln was inaugurated, these states formed a new nation, the Confederate States of America. After Lincoln's call for volunteers to suppress the rebellion and the firing on Fort Sumter, the other slave states of Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas joined the Confederacy. The border slave states of Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri remained in the Union (not entirely voluntarily).

The main cause of secession for the White South was the right to preserve African American slavery within their borders. But in retrospect its decision to secede proved to be the worst possible choice it could have made in order to preserve that right. There was huge antislavery sentiment in the North, but such sentiment was also strongly anti-Black. White Northerners did not want slavery to expand into new areas of the nation, which they believed should be preserved for white non-slave-holding settlers.

The North went to war to preserve the American Union, and the White South went to war for independence so that it might protect slavery. Initially the Northern goal in the war was the speedy restoration of the Union under the Constitution and the laws of 1861, all of which recognized slavery as legitimate. Opposing slavery would make reunion more difficult. Accordingly, Union generals like George B McClellan in Virginia and Henry W Halleck in the West were ordered not only to defeat the Southern armies but also to prevent slave rebellions. In the beginning months of the war, slaves who escaped to Union lines were returned to their masters in conformity with the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.

The White South used slaves in the war effort. They were used to build fortifications, dig latrines, and haul supplies. Because of the possibility of escape through Union lines, slaves at the front were watched more closely than on their home farms. The slave owners were reluctant to send their slaves to the front for two reasons. First, they risked the loss of their most valuable property, and, second, because the men were overworked and mistreated, they frequently returned to their homes in very poor physical condition. Thus, the owners often contrived to send only their most unmanageable slaves to the army. The shortage of white manpower left the South with no choice but to put slaves to work in its factories and mines. The use of slaves in industry and on the battlefield enabled the South to fight on longer than would have been possible otherwise. In the final days of the war, the Confederacy even considered using blacks as soldiers, offering freedom as a reward.

Slave resistance on the plantations

When given the choice, slaves made it very clear that they wanted emancipation. The overwhelming majority of slaves, however, remained on their plantations in the countryside. Even then these slaves in the Southern interior found ways to

demonstrate their desire for freedom. They did not stop working, but they did considerably less work than they had before the war.

The Emancipation Proclamation

Lincoln detested slavery, but he doubted whether blacks and whites could ever live in America in a condition of equality. The slaves ran way in massive numbers during the spring and summer of 1862, freeing themselves. Abolitionists who insisted that the war should be one for the freedom of the slaves confronted Lincoln at home. The Emancipation proclamation in January 1863 did not legally free a single slave. Through the proclamation Lincoln silenced his abolitionist critics in the North, defused interventionist sentiment abroad, and invigorated black slave resisters to continue their efforts in the South.

Ex-slaves working in the Union army

In the fall of 1862, with Union victory still not inevitable and the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation already announced, Lincoln yielded to pressure and authorized the formation of the first black army units. African Americans were offered a step toward emancipation not because the white North wanted them. It was because the North needed them badly. Black American troops distinguished themselves and were instrumental in the North's victory. Overall, about 180,000 African-Americans served in the Union army, and another 20,000 in the Union navy. Combined, they made up about 15 percent of all Northern forces in the war. Of all the Union troops, the African American soldier was fighting for the most significant of causes--freedom for themselves and their people. In September 1862 Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation made ending slavery in the South a war goal, which complicated the Confederacy's manpower shortages.

End of the war

In the East, Confederate commander Robert Lee won successive victories over Union armies, but Lee's loss at Gettysburg in early July, 1863 proved to be the turning point. The capture of Vicksburg and Port Hudson completed Union control of the Mississippi River. Grant fought bloody battles with Lee in 1864, forcing Lee to defend the Confederate capital at Richmond. Union general William Sherman captured Atlanta, Georgia. Confederate resistance collapsed after Lee surrendered to Grant on April 9, 1865.

Freedom of the slaves

The slaves of the Confederacy were free because of the Emancipation Proclamation. When the thirteenth Amendment banned slavery in the United States. The Thirteenth Amendment said that neither slavery nor involuntary bondage should exist in the United States.

Slavery In The Civil War Era

        Over the years there has been a wealth of information written about the "peculiar institution" (as it was called then) of slavery in the Civil War era.  Some of it accurate, some of it fantasy.   The following attempts to give a brief picture of what it was like.  It consists of three articles: Antebellum Slavery, Slavery During the Civil War, which discusses the "peculiar institution" before and during the war, and finally, Slave Life, which discusses the daily lives of slaves, their society and culture.   The source for this page was:Macmillan Information Now Encyclopedia, "The Confederacy" and the articles by  Robert Francis Engs in that document.

This Page last updated 02/24/02

ANTEBELLUM SLAVERY

        The enslavement of African Americans in what became the United States formally began during the 1630s and l64Os. At that time colonial courts and legislatures made clear that Africans--unlike white indentured

servants--served their masters for life and that their slave status would be inherited by their children. Slavery in the United States ended in the mid-1860s. Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation of January 1863 was a masterful propaganda tactic, but in truth, it proclaimed free only those slaves outside the control of the Federal government--that is, only those in areas still controlled by the Confederacy. The legal end to slavery in the nation came in December 1865 when the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified, it declared:   "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."

Development of American Slavery      The history of African American slavery in the United States can be divided into two periods: the first coincided with the colonial years, about 1650 to 1790; the second lasted from American independence through the Civil War, 1790 to 1865. Prior to independence, slavery existed in all the American colonies and therefore was not an issue of sectional debate. With the arrival of independence, however, the new Northern states--those of New England along with New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey--came to see slavery as contradictory to the ideals of the Revolution and instituted programs of gradual emancipation. By 1820 there were only about 3,000 slaves in the North, almost all of them working on large farms in New Jersey. Slavery could be abolished more easily in the North because there were far fewer slaves in those states, and they were not a vital part of Northern economies. There were plenty of free white men to do the sort of labor slaves performed. In fact, the main demand for abolition of slavery came not from those who found it morally wrong but from white working-class men who did not want slaves as rivals for their jobs.        Circumstances in the newly formed Southern states were quite different. The African American population, both slave and free, was much larger. In Virginia and South Carolina in 1790 nearly half of the population was of African descent. (Historians have traditionally assumed that South Carolina had a black majority population throughout its pre--Civil War history. But census figures for 1790 to 1810 show that the state possessed a majority of whites.) Other Southern states also had large black minorities.        Because of their ingrained racial prejudice and ignorance about the sophisticated cultures in Africa from which many of their slaves came, Southern whites were convinced that free blacks would be savages--a threat to white survival. So Southerners believed that slavery was necessary as a means of race control.        Of equal importance in the Southern states was the economic role that slaves played. These states were much more dependent on the agricultural sector of their economies than were Northern ones. Much of the wealth of Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia came from the cash crops that slaves grew. Indeed, many white Southerners did not believe white men could (or should) do the backbreaking labor required to produce tobacco, cotton, rice, and indigo, which were the regions chief cash crops.        As a consequence of these factors, the Southern states were determined to retain slavery after the Revolution. Thus began the fatal division between "free states" and "slave states" that led to sectionalism and, ultimately, to civil war.        Some historians have proposed that the evolution of slavery in most New World societies can be divided (roughly, and with some risk of over generalization) into three stages: developmental, high-profit, and decadent. In the developmental stage, slaves cleared virgin forests for planting and built the dikes, dams, roads, and buildings necessary for plantations. In the second, high-profit stage, slave owners earned enormous income from the cash crop they grew for export. In these first two phases, slavery was always very brutal.        During the developmental phase, slaves worked in unknown, often dangerous territory, beset by disease and sometimes hostile inhabitants. Clearing land and performing heavy construction jobs without modern machinery was extremely hard labor, especially in the hot, humid climate of the South.        During the high-profit phase, slaves were driven mercilessly to plant, cultivate, and harvest the crops for market. A failed crop meant the planter could lose his initial investment in land and slaves and possibly suffer bankruptcy. A successful crop could earn such high returns that the slaves were often worked beyond human endurance. Plantation masters argued callously that it was "cheaper to buy than to breed"--it was cheaper to work the slaves to death and then buy new ones than it was to allow them to live long enough and under sufficiently healthy conditions that they could bear children to increase their numbers. During this phase, on

some of the sugar plantations in Louisiana and the Caribbean, the life span of a slave from initial purchase to death was only seven years.        The final, decadent phase of slavery was reached when the land upon which the cash crops were grown had become exhausted--the nutrients in the soil needed to produce large harvests were depleted. When that happened, the slave regime typically became more relaxed and less labor-intensive. Plantation owners turned to growing grain crops like wheat, barley, corn, and vegetables. Masters needed fewer slaves, and those slaves were not forced to work as hard because the cultivation of these crops required less labor.        This model is useful in analyzing the evolution of Southern slavery between independence and the Civil War. The process, however, varied considerably from state to state. Those of the upper South--Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia--essentially passed through the developmental and high-profit stages before American independence. By 1790, Maryland and Virginia planters could no longer produce the bumper harvests of tobacco that had made them rich in the earlier eighteenth century, because their soil was depleted. So they turned to less labor-intensive and less profitable crops such as grains, fruits, and vegetables. This in turn meant they had a surplus of slaves.        One result was that Virginia planters began to free many of their slaves in the decade after the Revolution. Some did so because they believed in the principles of human liberty. (After all, Virginian slave owners wrote some of the chief documents defining American freedom like the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and much of the Bill of Rights.) Others, however, did so for a much more cynical reason. Their surplus slaves had become a burden to house and feed. In response, they emancipated those who were too old or feeble to be of much use on the plantation. Ironically, one of the first laws in Virginia restricting the rights of masters to free their slaves was passed for the protection of the slaves. It denied slave owners the right to free valueless slaves, thus throwing them on public charity for survival. Many upper South slave owners around 1800 believed that slavery would gradually die Out because there was no longer enough work for the slaves to do, and without masters to care for them, the ex-slaves would die out as well.        Two initially unrelated events solved the upper South's problem of a surplus slave population, caused slavery to become entrenched in the Southern States, and created what we know as the antebellum South. They were the invention of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney of Connecticut in 1793 and the closing of the international slave trade in 1808.        The cotton gin is a relatively simple machine. Its horizontally crossing combs extract tightly entwined seeds from the bolls of short-staple cotton. Prior to the invention of the gin, only long-staple cotton, which has long soft strands, could be grown for profit. Its soft fibers allowed easy removal of its seeds. But this strain of cotton grew in America only along the coast and Sea Islands of South Carolina and Georgia. In contrast, short-staple cotton could grow in almost any non-mountainous region of the South below Virginia. Before the invention of the cotton gin, it took a slave many hours to dc-seed a single pound of "lint," or short-staple cotton. With the gin, as many as one hundred pounds of cotton could be dc-seeded per hour.        The invention of the cotton gin permitted short-staple cotton to be grown profitably throughout the lower South. Vast new plantations were created from the virgin lands of the territories that became the states of Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, and Arkansas. (Louisiana experienced similar growth in both cotton and sugar agriculture.) In 1810, the South produced 85,000 pounds of cotton; by 1860, it was producing well over 2 billion pounds a year.        There was an equally enormous demand for the cotton these plantations produced. It was so profitable that by 1860 ten of the richest men in America lived not just in the South but in the Natchez district of Mississippi alone. In 1810, the cotton crop had been worth $12,495,000; by 1860, it was valued at $248,757,000.        Along with this expansion in cotton growing came a restriction on the supply of slaves needed to grow it. The transatlantic slave trade was one of the most savage and inhumane practices in which people of European descent have ever engaged. The writers of the Constitution had recognized its evil, but to accommodate the demands of slave owners in the lower South, they had agreed to permit the transatlantic slave trade to continue for twenty years after the Constitution was ratified. Thus, it was not until 1808 that Congress passed legislation ending the transatlantic trade.        These two circumstances--the discovery of a means of making the cultivation of short-staple cotton

profitable throughout the lower South and territories and the restriction on the supply of slaves needed to produce it--created the unique antebellum slave system of the South. It made at least some Southerners very rich and it also made slaves much more valuable. One consequence was that some American slaves were perhaps better treated than those elsewhere in the New World, not because American slave owners were kinder, but because American slaves were in short supply and expensive to replace. The price of slaves increased steadily from 1802 to 1860. In 1810, the price of a "prime field hand" was $900; by 1860, that price had doubled to $1,800.

The Slave System in the Nineteenth Century      Slavery in the antebellum South was not a monolithic system; its nature varied widely across the region. At one extreme one white family in thirty owned slaves in Delaware; in contrast, half of all white families in South Carolina did so. Overall, 26 percent of Southern white families owned slaves.        In 1860, families owning more than fifty slaves numbered less than 10,000; those owning more than a hundred numbered less than 3,000 in the whole South. The typical Southern slave owner possessed one or two slaves, and the typical white Southern male owned none. He was an artisan, mechanic, or more frequently, a small farmer. This reality is vital in understanding why white Southerners went to war to defend slavery in 1861. Most of them did not have a direct financial investment in the system. Their willingness to fight in its defense was more complicated and subtle than simple fear of monetary loss. They deeply believed in the Southern way of life, of which slavery was an inextricable part. They also were convinced that Northern threats to undermine slavery would unleash the pent-up hostilities of 4 million African American slaves who had been subjugated for centuries.        REGULATING SLAVERY. One half of all Southerners in 1860 were either slaves themselves or members of slaveholding families. These elite families shaped the mores and political stance of the South, which reflected their common concerns. Foremost among these were controlling slaves and assuring an adequate supply of slave labor. The legislatures of the Southern states passed laws designed to protect the masters right to their human chattel. Central to these laws were "slave codes," which in their way were grudging admissions that slaves were, in fact, human beings, not simply property like so many cattle or pigs. They attempted to regulate the system so as to minimize the possibility of slave resistance or rebellion. In all states the codes made it illegal for slaves to read and write, to attend church services without the presence of a white person, or to testify in court against a white person. Slaves were forbidden to leave their home plantation without a written pass from their masters. Additional laws tried to secure slavery by restricting the possibility of manumission (the freeing of ones slaves). Between 1810 and 1860, all Southern states passed laws severely restricting the right of slave owners to free their slaves, even in a will. Free blacks were dangerous, for they might inspire slaves to rebel. As a consequence, most Southern states required that any slaves who were freed by their masters leave the state within thirty days.        To enforce the slave codes, authorities established "slave patrols." These were usually locally organized bands of young white men, both slave owners and yeomen farmers, who rode about at night checking that slaves were securely in their quarters. Although some planters felt that the slave patrolmen abused slaves who had been given permission to travel, the slave patrols nevertheless reinforced the sense of white solidarity between slave owners and those who owned none. They shared a desire to keep the nonwhite population in check. (These antebellum slave patrols are seen by many historians as antecedents of the Reconstruction era Ku Klux Klan, which similarly tried to discipline the freed blacks. The Klan helped reinforce white solidarity in a time when the class lines between ex--slave owners and white yeomen were collapsing because of slavery's end.)        SLAVE LABOR IN THE UPPER SOUTH. If there was a "least bad" place to be a slave in the antebellum South, it was in the towns and on the smaller farms of Virginia and Maryland. When those states turned from growing high-yield crops like tobacco to cultivating crops like grains and vegetables, the change carried some benefits for slaves. The new crops required less intensive labor and permitted some slaves to work under the "task system." Slaves were assigned chores individually or in small groups. They were permitted to work at their own pace, often without direct white supervision. They would be assigned another task upon

completion of the first.        The decline in the profitability of slavery appears to have led to a more relaxed and open regime for some slaves in the upper South. Since fewer slaves were needed on plantations, many were allowed by their master to live in town and "hire their own time"--find their own work--paying their masters a portion of their wages, usually two-thirds to three-quarters. This benefited the masters by enabling them to make a profit on an otherwise surplus slave. It was attractive to the slaves because it gave them more independence. Many hoped to save enough from their wages to buy their freedom from their owners.        This more relaxed system extended to other aspects of slave life in the upper South. It appears that most slaves in Virginia and Maryland were allowed to marry and have families, although these families had no legal standing. They existed only through permission of the master. In addition, laws against literacy and holding church services without a white person present were widely ignored or unenforced.        Of course, Virginia slaves were still the property of white masters, to be used as the masters saw fit. To put it bluntly, the chief cash crop of Virginia slave owners after 1807 was the slaves themselves. Historians have been unable to find plantations that openly "bred" slaves for sale, but this does not change the central appalling fact--the number of slaves born in Virginia between 1807 and 1860 was the same number as those sold farther South. So if conditions for slaves were better in Virginia, few of those born there grew up to enjoy them there. Indeed, the standard and most effective way to discipline a slave was to threaten to sell him or a loved one to the Deep South.        SLAVE LABOR IN THE LOWER SOUTH. The possibility of being "sold south" was no empty threat. Slaves in the lower South were often ill housed, ill fed, and ill cared for. It was more profitable to keep them at work on cotton than allow them time to build a decent shelter. It was more profitable to plant every inch of land in cotton than to allot space for growing foodstuffs. Even the little garden plots allowed slaves in the upper South were usually absent in Mississippi. That state, with some of the richest soil in American, was actually a net importer of foodstuffs before the Civil War.        Life on the Deep South plantations was also characterized by the impersonality of master-slave relationships. Owners were often absent, and overseers were paid by how much cotton they produced, not by the condition of the slaves they supervised.        On lower South plantations, like those of the upper South, both men and women slaves were expected to toil in the fields from "first light" to "full dark." Because men were stronger and able to work harder, the plantations often had a much larger number of male slaves than female. This made the possibility of marriage problematic for the slave men. Moreover, women were sometimes seen as liabilities because "female problems" such as the menstrual cycle and pregnancy periodically incapacitated them for hard labor. In the cotton and sugar South, slaves were usually worked in gangs supervised by black drivers and white overseers with whips. The pace for plowing, hoeing, weeding, or picking was set by the overseers, and if a worker fell behind, he or she felt the sting of the lash.

Impact of Slavery on the Southern Economy      As the preceding discussion makes clear, slavery in the antebellum South was overwhelmingly a rural phenomenon. This was, in part, because most slave owners believed that slavery would not work well in an urban industrialized environment. Slaves were thought to be too stupid to understand machinery and too careless to be trusted with complex tools.        In fact, however, slaves were used successfully in factories such as the Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond. They also labored in the salt mines and turpentine plants of North Carolina, the coal mines of western Virginia, and the sugar mills of Louisiana. Moreover, when, during the Civil War, Southerners confronted a manpower shortage and the need for rapid industrialization, they quickly overcame their prejudices against using slaves in factories.        OBJECTIONS TO URBAN SLAVERY. A major reason for slavery being confined mostly to rural areas in the South concerned its dual purpose for the white population. It was both a means of labor exploitation and a means of race control. It was this second aspect that made the institution problematic in urban areas. Simply put, slaves in cities were much more difficult to supervise.

        It was the custom of factory owners to hire slaves from masters rather than purchase them outright. In the upper South, where urban slaves were more common, this allowed slave owners to profit from their excess slaves without having to sell them South. The problem was that industrialists preferred to avoid the burden of overseeing their slave employees outside of the factory, and they tended to give them stipends to pay for their own housing and board. This enabled urban slaves to live in a varied community that included free blacks, slaves who hired their own time, and white people--some of whom might oppose slavery.        As white Southerners saw it, the urban environment exposed slaves to dangerous ideas about freedom. Most Southern cities were ports that provided access to the outside world where slavery was generally outlawed. Free black sailors and sympathetic white ship captains were known to help slaves escape aboard their vessels.        Cities, therefore, were considered antithetical to effective slave control. White Southerners well remembered that the two largest slave conspiracies (those of Gabriel Prosser in Richmond in 1800 and Denmark Vesey in Charleston in 1822) were urban phenomena. Moreover, both men were free blacks who had persuaded urban slaves to join them in their plots.        Yet another factor militating against urban slavery was the attitudes of workers in antebellum America. Southern white men felt demeaned if they were required to perform the same sort of job as a slave. Moreover, slaves, who received no wages, could do the same labor more cheaply than free white men. White workers--like the caulkers in Baltimore who beat up Frederick Douglass when his master sent him to work in the dockyards--often refused to labor along side slaves.        So, to maintain better supervision of slaves and assure white solidarity and the status of white laborers, urban slavery in the antebellum South was minimal. The numbers of urban slaves actually declined between 1830 and 1860.        NEGATIVE EFFECTS OF RURAL SLAVERY. The rural nature of antebellum slavery had unintended negative effects on the Southern economy. The investment of so much capital in land and slaves discouraged the growth of cities and diverted funds from factories. This meant that the South lacked the industrial base it needed to counter the North when the Civil War began. Indeed, in 1860, the South had approximately the same number of industrial workers (110,000), as the North had industrial plants.      Other detrimental effects arose from the South's devotion to rural slavery. Wealthy planters liked to claim they were living out the Jeffersonian ideal of an agrarian democracy. In truth, the South was agrarian because slave owners found that the best way to maintain their wealth and contain their slaves. Moreover, its "democracy" was very limited because the planters had enormous influence over how white yeomen cast their votes. Except in remote areas of the South with few slaves or plantations, it was the needs and beliefs of the planter class that shaped Southern politics on the local, state, and national levels.        The consequences of this planter dominance was seen in many aspects of the society. The South failed to develop a varied economy even within the agricultural realm. All the most fertile land in the South was owned by slaveholders who chose to grow high-profit staple crops--cotton, tobacco, sugar. That left only marginal land for the vast majority of white farmers. This problem was compounded by the dominance of the planters image as the social ideal. Alternative means of advancement were unavailable, so yeomen farmers aspired to become planters themselves. They used some of their land to grow food for their family's consumption and devoted the rest to cash crops like cotton. Their hope was to produce enough to save, buy a few slaves, produce yet more, and, ultimately, accumulate the wealth that would elevate them to planter status. For most, this was a futile dream, but they remained committed to it, thereby neglecting other possible avenues for economic advancement.        One reason for the yeomen farmers lack of aspirations was ignorance. The antebellum South neglected to provide for the education of its people. Planters controlled the governmental revenues that could have financed public education, but they saw no need to do so. Their slaves were forbidden to learn; their own children were educated by private tutors or in exclusive and expensive private academies. As a result, most white yeomen were left without access to education. A few lucky ones near towns or cities could sometimes send their children to fee schools or charity schools, but many were too poor or too proud to use either option.        In a similar vein, the dominating slaveholding class saw no need to create the means to produce

inexpensive consumer goods for ordinary whites or to build an infrastructure by which such goods could be moved from production sites to markets in the countryside. Wealthy planters acquired what they wanted by importing expensive European or Northern goods. Thus poor whites were left to their own minimal resources and were deprived of goods they might have bought, had they been available.        This lack of consumer production and markets also retarded the growth of Southern transportation. Highways, canals, and railroads were constructed to move crops to ports and bring in luxury items for the planter class. The need of yeomen farmers to transport their crops to local markets was ignored. As a consequence, it was usually cheaper for plantation owners to import food from the North or upper South than to purchase it from white farmers in the same region. This deficiency in the Southern transportation system proved a serious liability for the Confederacy during the Civil War.        Slavery in the antebellum South, then, made a minority of white Southerners--owners of large slaveholdings--enormously wealthy. At the same time, it demeaned and exploited Southerners of African descent, left the majority of white Southerners impoverished and uneducated, and retarded the overall economic, cultural, and social growth of the region. Slavery was the institution by which the South defined itself when it chose to secede from the Union. But it was the existence of slavery, with its negative impact on politics, economics, and social relations, that fatally crippled the South in its bid for independence.

SLAVERY DURING THE CIVIL WAR

        Although slavery was at the heart of the sectional impasse between North and South in 1860, it was not the singular cause of the Civil War. Rather, it was the multitude of differences arising from the slavery issue that impelled the Southern states to secede.        The presidential election of 1860 had resulted in the selection of a Republican, Abraham Lincoln of Illinois, as president of the United States. Lincoln won because of an overwhelming electoral college vote from the Northern states. Not a single Southern slave state voted for him. Lincoln and his Republican party were pledged only to stop the expansion of slavery. Although they promised to protect slavery where it existed, white Southerners were not persuaded. The election results demonstrated that the South was increasingly a minority region within the nation. Soon Northerners and slavery's opponents might accumulate the voting power to overturn the institution, no matter what white Southerners might desire.        Indeed, many Southern radicals, or fire-eaters, openly hoped for a Republican victory as the only way to force Southern independence. South Carolina had declared it would secede from the Union if Lincoln was elected, and it did so in December 1861. It was followed shortly by the other lower South states of Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Georgia, Florida, and Texas. in February 1861, a month before Lincoln was inaugurated, these states formed a new nation, the Confederate States of America. After the firing on Fort Sumter and Lincoln's call for volunteers to suppress the rebellion, the other slave states of Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas joined the Confederacy. The border slave states of Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri remained--not entirely voluntarily--in the Union.        The new republic claimed its justification to be the protection of state rights. In truth, close reading of the states secession proclamations and of the new Confederate Constitution reveals that it was primarily one state right that impelled their separation: the right to preserve African American slavery within their borders. But the white South's decision to secede proved to be the worst possible choice it could have made in order to preserve that right.        There was enormous antislavery sentiment in the North, hut such sentiment was also strongly anti-Negro. White Northerners did not wish slavery to expand into new areas of the nation, which they believed should be preserved for white nonslaveholding settlers. This was, in part, why Republicans pledged to protect slavery where it existed. They and their constituencies did not want an influx of ex-slaves into their exclusively white territories, should slavery end abruptly.        Some historians argue that, had the South remained within the Union, its representatives could have prevented any radical Northern plan for emancipation. By leaving the Union, white Southerners gave up their

voice in national councils. Moreover, by seceding, the South compelled the North to realize the extent of its allegiance to a united American nation. Thus, the North went to war to preserve the Union, and the white South went to war for independence so that it might protect slavery. Most participants on both sides did not initially realize that the African American slaves might view the conflict as an occasion that they could turn to their own advantage.       

SLAVES EFFORTS TO UNDERMINE THE SOUTH. In 1861, as the Civil War began, there were four open questions among Northerners and Southerners with regard to the slaves: First, would they rebel? Second, did they want their freedom? Third, would they fight for their freedom? And, finally, would they know what to do with their freedom if they got it? The answer to each question was yes, but in a manner that reflected the peculiar experience of blacks in white America.         First was the question of whether bondsmen would rebel or remain passive. The fear of slave rebellion preoccupied both the Southern slaveholder and the Northern invader. Strikingly, Northerners were as uneasy about the possibility as were Southerners. Initially the Northern goal in the war was the speedy restoration of the Union under the Constitution and the laws of 1861, all of which recognized the legitimacy of slavery. Interfering with slavery would make reunion more difficult. Thus, Union generals like George B. McClellan in Virginia and Henry W. Halleck in the West were ordered not only to defeat the Southern armies but also to prevent slave insurrections. In the first months of the war, slaves who escaped to Union lines were returned to their masters in conformity with the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.        Concern about outright slave insurrections proved unfounded, however. Slaves were not fools, nor were they suicidal. Mary Boykin Chesnut, the famed Southern diarist and one of the South's most perceptive observers of slavery, understood the slaves strategy. She wrote from her plantation: "Dick, the butler here, reminds me that when we were children, I taught him to read as soon as I could read myself. . . . But he won't look at me now. He looks over my head. He scents freedom in the air."        Slaves like Dick knew the war was about their freedom, but they were both shrewd and cautious. To rebel on their own was hopeless; the whites were too powerful. But now the Southern whites had an equally powerful outside enemy, and the odds had changed. The slaves, like successful rebels everywhere, bided their time until a revolt could succeed.        Meanwhile, through desertion and noncooperation, they did much to undermine the South long before Union armies triumphed. When the war began, some Confederates claimed that the disparity in white manpower between North and South (6 million potential soldiers for the North versus only 2 million for the South) was irrelevant. The South, Confederates claimed, could put a far higher proportion of their men in the field because they had slaves to do the labor at home.        The South, however, quickly learned that it had what would now be called a "fifth column" in its midst, providing aid and comfort to the enemy. At the beginning of the war, Southern officers took their body servants with them to the front to do their cooking and laundry. A unit of two thousand white soldiers would sometimes depart with as many as a thousand slaves in tow. The custom did not last beyond the first summer of the conflict. The servants deserted at the first opportunity and provided excellent intelligence to Union forces about Southern troop deployments.        In one incident during the early months of the war, Union soldiers on the Virginia Peninsula, stationed at Fort Monroe, repeatedly set out to capture the nearby city of Newport News, but without success. Their inaccurate maps showed the town to be southwest of Fort Monroe. Each would-be attack concluded with the troops mired in the swampy land bordering Hampton Roads (the bay between the Virginia Peninsula and Norfolk on the "Southside"). In fact, Newport News was slightly northwest of Fort Monroe, and Union forces were unable to find it until an escaped body servant led them there.       

SLAVE LABOR WITH THE CONFEDERATE MILITARY. Despite such subversion by the slaves, the Confederacy nevertheless successfully used them to advance its war effort. White Southerners, though

convinced of the African Americans inherent inferiority, were far less reluctant about putting the slaves to work militarily than were white Northerners. The Confederate government never used them as soldiers, but it did press them into labor brigades to build fortifications, dig latrines, and haul supplies. Tens of thousands of slaves toiled for the Confederacy in a service both the bondsmen and their owners disliked. For the slave impressed into labor on the front-line, the work frequently was not only harder than that on the plantation but also dangerous. Because of the possibility of escape through Union lines, slaves at the front were much more closely supervised than on their home farms. Moreover, those sent to work with the Confederate army were usually men in their prime, between eighteen and forty. Service with the army denied them their accustomed time with their wife and family.        The slave owners, for their part, were reluctant to send their bondsmen to the front for two reasons. First, they risked the loss of their most valuable property, and, second, because the men were usually overworked and mistreated, they frequently returned to their homes in very poor physical condition. Thus, the owners often contrived to send only their most unmanageable and therefore least marketable slaves to the army. During the war, threatening to send a slave to the front became the disciplinary equivalent of threatening to sell a slave farther South in antebellum days. Ironically, as the South's cause became more desperate, masters were increasingly reluctant to send their slaves to the military. Slavery was dying, yet those with the most to lose hung on tenaciously to their human property, thereby withholding the one remaining resource that might have saved their nation--and them.        The exigencies of war also finally settled the decades-old debate as to whether slaves could be used safely and efficiently in industry. The shortage of white manpower left the South with no other choice than to put slaves to work in its factories and mines. In the Tredegar Iron Works of Richmond alone, thousands of slaves were employed. The Augusta munitions plants of Georgia likewise were primarily staffed by bondsmen. Thousands of others labored in the ultimately futile effort to keep Southern rail lines operating. As with service on the front lines, this labor--especially in extractive industries like the coal mines and salt factories--was harsher than life on the plantation, and slaves resisted it if they could. Many made the long-delayed decision to run away when faced with such dire prospects.        Although their service was extracted involuntarily, slaves in industry and on the battlefield enabled the South to fight on longer than would have been possible otherwise. In the final desperate days of the war, the Confederacy even considered using blacks as soldiers, offering emancipation as a reward. The Union had struck that bargain two years earlier. The Southern proposal was made in February 1865 and approved, in part, on March 13 of that year. By then Southerners of both races knew the Confederacy was doomed. Richmond fell less than thirty days later. The provision was never implemented and no slaves officially served as soldiers in the Confederate Military.       

SLAVE RESISTANCE ON THE PLANTATIONS.  When given the option, slaves made it very clear that they wanted freedom. The vast majority of slaves, however, remained on their plantations in the countryside. Nevertheless, even these slaves in the Southern interior found ways to demonstrate their desire for freedom. Their behavior could be described as the first massive labor slowdown in American history. They did not cease to work, but they contrived to do considerably less than they had before the war.        Part of the reason for the drop in their industriousness was the South's ill-advised self-imposed cotton embargo. Although this was never official policy, many Southerners believed they could provoke European intervention in the war by refusing to grow or export cotton. This decision changed the nature of Southern agriculture. The region began to emphasize food production, a less intensive form of agricultural labor. But this change did not necessarily reduce the burden on slave laborers. The war cut off many of the South's antebellum sources of food and other goods in the North and abroad. These shortages had to be replaced by what the slaves could produce at home. Their inability to make up the shortfall meant that they, their masters, the soldiers in the field, and the general population all suffered from increasing deprivation as the war went on. Especially problematic were shortages of wool, leather, and salt for the curing of meat, since most of these were diverted for military use. One consequence was the rapid escalation of prices for such necessities. Frugal planters cut

back on these supplies for their slaves. Bondsmen did not receive their prewar rations of clothes and shoes, and they had less meat and vegetables in their diet. Even those slaves well removed from the front lines throughout the war recalled it later as a time of great privation.        In addition to the change in the kinds of crops grown and the increasing scarcity of necessities, the quality of management on the plantations changed. Once the war intensified in 1862, there were not enough white men left on the farms and plantations to provide adequate supervision of slave laborers. The Confederacy had attempted to defuse this potential problem through the Ten-Slave Law (later, the Twenty-Slave Law), whereby a percentage of white men were exempted from military service in proportion to the number of slaves in a county or on a plantation. The law clearly favored slaveholders and drew a storm of protest from white yeomen who owned no slaves yet were called upon to defend the Southern cause.        As the war progressed, Southern manpower shortages became acute. In some parts of Georgia, it was reported that there was only one able-bodied white man in a ten-square-mile area. As a result, management of agriculture increasingly fell to white women and their youngest children, elderly fathers, and black slave drivers. All proved less effective taskmasters than the earlier overseers, and the efficiency of Southern farm production declined markedly.        Slaves quickly took advantage of the situation, reducing the pace of their labor, disobeying orders, leaving their farms to visit with friends and relatives. Their perceived "impudence" and "laziness" caused enormous frustration for the white women left to oversee them. Although these women had often been most resourceful managers of household economies in the prewar South, they had never been trained or given experience in day-to-day supervision of farming operations. Many were unequal to the burden and resentful that they were being forced to shoulder it.        One important consequence of this management crisis was the disappearance of even the veneer of paternalism in the master-slave relationship. White women and the few white men left in the countryside viewed the increasingly recalcitrant slaves as a threat, especially the young males. Slave patrols composed of the remaining white men became more energetic and violent in "disciplining" slaves. Those accused or suspected of "misconduct" were brutally punished and sometimes murdered.        Despite these draconian efforts, slaves in the South's interior stepped up their resistance and increasingly worked at a much slower pace. More disturbing yet to the whites around them was their outright refusal to obey orders when they could get away with it. Slaves ran off with greater frequency; they stole food and violated curfew with impunity. They began to hold religious services more openly and even created schools for their children in violation of state laws.       

ESCAPING FROM SLAVERY. The second of the four questions preoccupying European Americans, North and South, was: Did the slaves want freedom. Of course they did, as long as they could attain it without losing their lives in the process. The unrest on the plantations clearly indicated their longing for freedom. Even more demonstrable evidence was offered by slaves living on the borders of the Confederacy. Beginning in 1861, and continuing throughout the war, whenever the proximity of Union troops made successful escape likely, slaves abandoned their plantations by the hundreds, even the thousands.        The process of successful slave escapes began in Virginia, in Union--held territory across the Potomac from Washington and around Fort Monroe at the tip of the Virginia Peninsula in Hampton Roads. In May 1861, three slaves fled to the fort and claimed sanctuary because their masters were about to take them South to work on Confederate fortifications. The Union commander there was Gen. Benjamin Butler, a War Democrat from Massachusetts and a perennial thorn in Lincoln's side. Thinking more about the political advantage to be gained among Northern antislavery advocates than about the needs of the fugitives, Butler declared the blacks to be "contraband of war"--enemy property that could he used against the Union. This designation neatly avoided the question of whether or not the escapees were free and turned the Southerners argument that slaves were property against them. Lincoln reluctantly approved the ruling, and as a consequence, escaped slaves throughout the war were referred to by Northerners as "contrabands."        This legal hairsplitting was of no concern to Virginia slaves. All they knew was that fugitives had gone to

Fort Monroe and found sanctuary. Within a month, over 900 had joined those first three. By wars end, there were over 25,000 escaped slaves in and around Fort Monroe. Many of them served in the Union army.        A more massive instance of slaves defecting occurred the following spring in the Sea Islands off South Carolina. The Union navy landed troops on the islands and the whites fled. Despite efforts by masters--some told the slaves that the Yankees were cannibals--the slaves refused to join their owners and fled to the woods until the Southern whites had left. As a consequence, the Union army suddenly had several thousand contrabands to care for. Interestingly, the first task of the Union commanders on the Sea Islands was to stop the ex-slaves from looting and burning their masters mansions.        With the fall of New Orleans, also in the spring of 1862, the informal emancipation process expanded into the lower Mississippi valley. It never reached much of the Trans-Mississippi South until wars end because Union forces did not penetrate deeply there.        Throughout the South, the first slaves to escape were typically house servants and skilled craftsmen. They were the people who had the most access to information about Union troop movements (acquired primarily by overhearing their masters indiscreet conversations around them) and those who had the greatest knowledge of the outside world. Usually the first ones to escape were men. Once they found they would he protected behind Union lines, they returned for their friends and relatives.        The North had not anticipated massive slave escapes. It had no plans about how to care for these black refugees. As a consequence, many escapees found themselves in worse physical conditions than they had known on the plantations. They were herded into camps and given tents and rations in exchange for work. The blacks were put to work in much the way Southern troops were using them, building fortifications, digging latrines, and cleaning the camps. Blacks frequently complained that their Union supervisors treated them worse than their former masters and overseers. In truth. many Union soldiers resented having to serve in the war, especially those who were draftees, and they blamed the blacks for their predicament.        The black refugees in the Union camps usually received no actual income. Most of the money they earned was withheld to pay for their food and clothing, and any remainder was reserved to pay for indigent or crippled escapees who could not work. This was administered by the Quartermasters Department, a notoriously unreliable branch of any army throughout history. Blacks were defrauded at every turn. Often their rations and clothing were sold on the black market--sometimes to the Southerners--by greedy supply officers.        Hearing of the plight of the contrabands in the camps, Northern benevolent organizations, such as the Freedmen's Aid Societies, and religious groups, such as the American Missionary Association, sent hundreds of missionaries and teachers to the South to aid the blacks. They provided much of the food and clothing that enabled the refugees to survive. They also created the first schools and churches most blacks had ever attended.        It was the blacks themselves, however, who were primarily responsible for their survival in these harsh circumstances. The more enterprising of them earned cash through private work with officers of the camps. Those who fared best struck out from the encampments and squatted on lands abandoned by fleeing Confederates. Frequently they were able to make the land far more productive than it had ever been during slavery.       

LINCOLN AND THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION. The extent of slave escapes in the South and the burden it placed upon the Union presented a major dilemma for President Lincoln. From the moment the conflict began at Fort Sumter, Lincoln's foremost goals had been to preserve the Union, to bring the war to an end with a minimum of bloodshed, and to avoid lingering animosity between Northern and Southern whites. If that could best be achieved by preserving slavery, he said, he would do so; if it could be achieved by freeing every slave, he would do that instead. Lincoln despised slavery, but he, like Thomas Jefferson and many others before him, doubted that blacks and whites could ever live in America in a condition of equality.        The spring and summer of 1862 aggravated Lincoln's problem. The slaves, by running away in massive numbers, were freeing themselves. The border slave states of Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri were resisting all of Lincoln's proposals for gradual compensated emancipation. His own schemes to find somewhere outside of the United States where the freed black population could be colonized failed completely.

        At the same time, Lincoln was confronted at home by abolitionists who insisted that the war should be one for emancipation. Abroad, he was faced with growing skepticism about Northern war aims. If the Union goal was simply to reunite the country and preserve slavery, then the North was undertaking a war of aggression. The South's claim that it was fighting for its independence, just as the United States had done during the Revolution, was therefore valid, and foreign powers had the right to intervene as the French had done in 1778. All these pressures forced Lincoln to conclude that emancipation would have to become a Union war goal.        The critics of Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation are technically correct in observing that the proclamation in January 1863 did not legally free a single slave. Slavery's end required a constitutional amendment, which Lincoln advocated and which was ratified as the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865. The symbolic importance of the Emancipation Proclamation should not, however, be underestimated. Lincoln thereby silenced his abolitionist critics in the North, defused interventionist sentiment abroad, and energized black slave resisters to continue their efforts in the South.        Lincoln advised his cabinet of his plan in the early summer of 1862. Because the Union cause was not faring well on the battlefield, he delayed its issuance until a Union victory could be attained. He claimed the bloody Battle of Sharpsburg (Antietam), during which Robert E. Lees first invasion of the North was repulsed, as an appropriate occasion. Slaves in states or territories still in rebellion against the United States on January 1, 1863, would be freed. He hoped, probably only halfheartedly, that this threat would energize Southern moderates and influence them to persuade their leaders to lay down their arms. That was not to be the case.        On January 1, 1863, throughout the Union-occupied areas of the South, contrabands, their Northern white allies, and some Union soldiers gathered to pray, to sing hymns, and to celebrate slavery's demise. (The fact that none of those contrabands had been legally freed was irrelevant.) Moreover, the proclamation welcomed all escaping slaves into Union lines and held out the prospect that ex-slaves could volunteer for service in the Union military. African American slaves had tried to make the Civil War one of black liberation. In the Emancipation Proclamation, Abraham Lincoln and the Union appeared to have embraced their cause.        Certainly this was the belief of Southern slave owners. They wrote that both "misbehavior" on the plantations and escape attempts increased significantly after the issuance of the proclamation. Only in the TransMississippi regions of Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas was the impact of the proclamation minimal. One reminder of that difference is that blacks in that area and their descendants in the Midwest celebrate emancipation not on January 1 but on "Juneteenth," that period in mid-June after the surrender of the last Confederate armies in the West under E. Kirby Smith. Union officers, many now also superintendents of the newly formed Freedmen's Bureau, rode around those western states announcing Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation to slaves and their masters.        In the eastern half of the Confederacy, slavery had collapsed long before those final western Union victories, in part because of the efforts of former slaves as Union soldiers.       

EX-SLAVES IN THE UNION ARMY. The third of the four questions preoccupying white Americans during the Civil War was whether blacks would be willing to fight for their freedom. Once again the answer was yes. The fury of the white South when the North decided to make escaped slaves into soldiers is not surprising. What may be more so is the horror with which much of the white North regarded the idea.        Some Northerners, including the editorial board of the New York Times, claimed that using black troops would sully the purity of the North's cause. "Better lose the War," it cried, "than use the Negro to win it." A more representative statement was made by a Northern soldier who reflected, "I reckon if I have to fight and die for the niggers freedom, he can fight and die for it along with me." That was really the point. The Union needed more men, and its efforts to enlist them were encountering increasing resistance among Northern white men. Why not let the black man fight for his own freedom?         In the fall of 1862, with Union victory still doubtful and the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation already announced, Lincoln yielded to pressure and authorized the formation of the first black army units. African Americans were offered a step toward freedom not because the white North especially wanted them but because the North needed them so much.

        The fashion in which black troops were treated was illustrative of Northern white attitudes toward the whole enterprise. At first, black soldiers were confined to service units and not allowed to fight--until white Union casualties became so high that blacks, though often untrained for combat, were simply thrown into the battle. Moreover, until just before the wars end, African American soldiers received unequal pay for the same duty and were denied the enlistment bonuses given to white troops.        The record of one of the most famous black Union regiments illustrates the contributions of ex-slave soldiers in the Confederacy's defeat. The First South Carolina Volunteers was the darling of Northern imagination. It was the first regiment composed entirely of fugitive slaves, organized, as Northerners loved to say, "in the birthplace of treason."        It was at first unclear that the North was entirely serious about this regiment. The unit was supposed to be made up of volunteers, but the first soldiers were acquired by sending white troops on raiding parties into the refugee camps and hauling back any able-bodied black men they could find. Their uniforms were made up of a bright blue jacket, brighter red pantaloons, and a red fez, making them ideal targets for sharpshooters. Nevertheless, the First South Carolina ran up a credible record in Union service. They were, for example, the first known military unit to consistently return from battle with more soldiers than those which with they entered. Slaves on outlying plantations, seeing them in uniform, simply laid down their hoes, picked up discarded guns, and followed the troops back to their camp.        The soldiers of the First South Carolina were only the first of tens of thousands of former slaves who fought for the Union cause. Despite discrimination throughout the war, African American troops distinguished themselves and were instrumental in the North's victory. Overall, about 180,000 blacks served in the Union army, and another 20,000 in the Union navy. Together, they made up about 15 percent of all Northern forces in the war. Of all the Union troops, the African American soldier was fighting for the most tangible of causes--freedom for himself and his people.       

THE FINAL QUESTION. The determination with which blacks seized freedom shocked whites, both North and South. In an unanticipated and unplanned war, the African Americans behavior may have been the element for which both sides were least prepared. In the end, black slaves played a major role in bringing down the Confederacy. They had demonstrated that they wanted freedom and were prepared to fight for its realization.        The fourth question that whites had posed about the slaves--Would they know what to do with their freedom if they got it?"--would be more candidly phrased--"Would white America let blacks truly exercise their freedom?" That question remains unresolved at the end of the twentieth century. But the limitations that crippled black freedom after Reconstruction did not discourage many African Americans who had been slaves. As one black Union veteran said after the war, "In slavery, I had no worriment In freedom lie got a family and a little farm. All that causes me worriment........But I takes the FREEDOM!"

SLAVE LIFE

        The African American slave society in the antebellum South (1807--1860) was unique among New World slave systems. In the United States, the slave population not only sustained itself; it expanded exponentially. In other New World nations, slave populations were maintained by continuous importation from Africa. In the American South, however, the slave population grew through natural increase--that is, slave mothers had children who also became slaves. As a result, the vast majority of African Americans in slavery in the United States after 1810 were not African captives but native-born Americans, some of whose ancestors had been in this country nearly as long as the oldest white families.        This longevity of residence in America did not mean that slaves lost all their rich heritage from their African origins. White slave owners, however, were frightened by African customs and behaviors they could not understand. They forced their slaves to give up African means of communication such as their own languages and their drums (a widely used means of 'talking" across great distances in West Africa). Indeed, slaves were denied even their original African names and made to accept whatever names their master imposed

upon them.        In these circumstances, Southern slaves were forced into syncretism--the process of mixing divergent cultural elements together to create an entirely new culture. They had to combine what they could retain of their African culture with the new European and Native American cultures imposed upon them by their masters. The result was the first genuinely United States culture. It was part African, part European, and part Native American, but refined and developed in a land new to all but one of these groups.        American slaves were able to carve out a unique culture of their own because of the way in which Southern slavery was structured. Most white Southerners did not own slaves. In 1860 only ten thousand Southern white families owned more than twenty slaves, and only three thousand owned more than fifty slaves. Nevertheless, most slaves lived in units of twenty or more. This meant that, on most plantations, blacks far outnumbered whites. They could not all be kept under constant white supervision.        Masters had to evolve a system of rewards and punishments to maintain control over their more numerous slaves. As in any brutal system of unpaid labor, punishment was used more often than reward. As historian Kenneth Stampp has written, the slave owners strategy in handling their slaves was "to make them stand in fear!" A plantation, however, was not an extermination camp; it was a profit-making enterprise, and blacks had to be given certain rights and privileges to maximize their productivity. They were also valuable pieces of "property." To abuse them too harshly would diminish their value. Slaves seized upon this necessity to create a culture of their own possessing the values that shaped family life, religion, education, and attitudes toward work.        RELIGION. Religion was one of the main buttresses that supported the slave family. African American slaves were denied the right to practice the religion of their ancestors. Some African slaves were Muslims; most believed in a variety of forms of ancestor worship that was more similar to Christianity than Europeans understood. Slave owners viewed African religion as a combination of witchcraft and superstition, and they banned its practice, in part, for fear that slaves might use it to put spells or curses on them.        Most slave owners believed that Christianizing their slaves would make them more passive. They also pointed to Christianization as a justification for slavery; they claimed to be uplifting the slaves from their barbarous past. Although the slave owner extracted unpaid labor from his slaves in this life, he ensured their salvation in the next by making them Christians.        Of course, the Christianity taught to slaves by their masters was very different from that which the masters practiced themselves. Omitted were the implicit and explicit messages in the New Testament about individual freedom and responsibility. Instead, slave owners used the Bible selectively. They argued that Africans were the descendants of Ham, who, in the Old Testament, were cursed by Noah to be "servants of servants." From the New Testament, slave owners cited Christ's admonition to "render unto Caesar that which is Caesars" to justify their right to demand obedience from their slaves. In part to ensure that slaves could not learn all of the other, contrary messages about freedom to be found in the Bible, slavemasters outlawed the teaching of reading and writing to slaves.        Slaves, however, once again combined what they could remember from their old religions with what their masters told them about Christianity and what they learned about Christianity from literate blacks and antislavery whites. From this information they evolved their own form of Christianity, which was a religion of hope and liberation.        In the slaves version of Christianity, Christ and Moses played almost equal roles as heroes who had led their people to freedom. Black religion was very much anchored in the real world rather than in life after death. Slaves learned to phrase the words of their prayers and spirituals to speak of salvation and freedom in heaven, but, in truth, they were praying and singing about deliverance from slavery in this world, not the next. Thus, a black woman like Harriet Tubman who led dozens of slaves to freedom, used spirituals like "Steal Away to Jesus" to signal plans for escape. She became known, as a result, as "The Moses of Her People."        The burdens of slavery led African Americans to different definitions of God, sin, and even the devil. Slaves did not conceive of God as the stern taskmaster envisioned by their white owners. Rather, they thought of God as an all-forgiving Father who understood the tribulations that his people were suffering and who was planning a better world for them. This vision of the Almighty led, among other things, to a very different style

of worship among slaves. As one ex-bondsman tried to explain: "White folks pray powerful sad. Black folks pray powerful glad!"      Slave religion even resulted in a different understanding of sin. It was, for example, a sin to steal from a fellow slave who, like yourself, had nothing. But it was not necessarily a sin to steal food or clothing from the master. He had "aplenty," as the slaves would say, while their children were hungry and naked. God would understand your necessity and forgive you your small transgression.        It was in their conception of the devil that the slaves remembrance of their African religion was most evident. To white Protestant slave owners, the devil was the Antichrist, the embodiment of evil. To the slaves, however, the devil was just another powerful spirit, albeit a malevolent one. African religions often contained such entities. They were spirits one tried to avoid, but if one was trapped by a devil, African faiths taught that through wit and guile, the spirit could be overcome. Thus, white slave owners were befuddled when a slave, threatened with a whipping or worse, would joke and lie. In the slaves eyes, the man about to punish him was simply possessed by a devil with whom he might be able to negotiate. Sometimes this strategy actually worked. A master would become so exasperated, yet amused, by his slaves excuses and self-deprecation that he would withdraw his threat of punishment. This is only one example of how slaves African heritage prevented them from making the European distinction between secular and religious behavior. They used their religious vision of the world to help them cope with everyday crises between themselves and their masters.       

EDUCATION. A scholar once defined education as "all the ways a culture tries to perpetuate itself from one generation to another." Slave owners, in their defense of their peculiar institution, often claimed that slavery was a school" that helped "civilize" the "savage African." White Southerners proved to be right about slavery being a school, but, much to their surprise and dismay, not the sort they had intended. When emancipation came, they discovered that slavery had taught blacks how to be Americans and to demand all the attributes of freedom enjoyed by other Americans.         Slaves were legally denied the foundation of European education--the knowledge to read and write. Nonetheless, thousands of slaves acquired those skills, usually through voluntary or unintentional help from their young masters and mistresses as they were learning their lessons. (Urban slaves like Frederick Douglass sometimes bribed their white playmates or coworkers to teach them.) Literate slaves then tried to pass on their knowledge to others. It was a special goal of older slaves to learn enough to read the Bible before they died.        Because of the peculiar nature of slavery, forms of education within it were frequently unorthodox. One method of education within the slave community clearly had African roots. This was the teaching of survival strategies through folktales, usually ones involving animals. Many of these stories have come down to us as "Brer Rabbit" tales. Too often, these have been dismissed as merely charming stories to entertain children. They were that, but--in the complex society of slavery--they served other purposes as well. Western African folklore is frill of tales about the hare, who is usually a trickster. In the African American stories, Brer Rabbit is the hero; he is a weak animal in a forest full of larger, more powerful animals that could not be overcome through direct confrontation. The big animals, however, tended to be clumsy and stupid because they never had to work hard to get what they wanted; they also tended to be very greedy. As a result, the smaller animals could sometimes triumph over the larger ones through wit and guile, through tricking the big animals into using their greater strength against themselves.        Slave owners tended to see these tales as harmless. In fact, slave elders were using them to teach their young the all-important skills of "handling master. They should never confront whites directly. But whites were not very bright, as was best proven by their belief that blacks were stupid. It was important never to disabuse the master of that belief. You would thereby be able to get away with things that were otherwise forbidden. For example, if you could convince the master that you were so terrified of the dark that he did not try to make you work late at night, you then had the opportunity to sneak away for a secret prayer meeting or to visit a loved one on another plantation.       

ATTITUDES TOWARD WORK. Nowhere were the consequences of this secret education more apparent than in slave work habits on the plantations. There is no doubt that slavery was enormously profitable for large plantation owners. This did not mean, however, that slave labor was efficient. Slaves worked from sunup to sundown in awful conditions. They were usually ill-housed, ill-clothed, and ill-fed. For most slaves their primary motivation for labor was fear of physical punishment. So, without real incentives to be productive, to take pride in their work, slaves did everything they could to minimize their labor and to do it as poorly as they could without being punished.        Slaves were shrewd in their avoidance of work. They feigned ignorance so that the master could not trust them with livestock or complex machinery. They would claim that illness prevented them from working. They pretended to be superstitious to avoid unpleasant tasks. For example, they might claim a swamp that needed draining was inhabited by "haunts" that would attack them.        All of these tactics were known to slaveowners. They knew that slaves often deliberately lost livestock and sabotaged machinery, but they could seldom prove it. Moreover, they themselves claimed that the slaves were stupid. To acknowledge that the slaves were outwitting them would undermine their authority. Slave owners tried to dismiss the slaves superstitions, but secretly they shared some of them. They risked even more inefficiency if they tried to force slaves to work when the majority claimed that they were too terrified to do so. Finally, slave owners were completely confounded by slaves claims of illness. They knew their bondsmen were skilled at faking all kinds of symptoms. They also knew that an unchecked epidemic could sweep through the usually overcrowded and unsanitary slave quarters, incapacitating the entire work force. This could result not only in the loss of the precious cash crop but also in the deaths of equally valuable property: enslaved human beings.        African American slaves, through their commitment to family, their devotion to their religion, their acquisition of education, and their rationing of their labor, forced compromises from their owners. The master unquestionably remained the more powerful force in the relationship. Nevertheless, within the small space that compromises created in the brutal system of bondage, slaves were able to carve out lives that allowed many of them to retain their humanity and courage. When freedom came, they were ready. It was their former masters who were not.

Women of the Civil War

Women played an important role during the American Civil War but it wasn't until 100 years afterwards that they received recognition. Even today history books skip over the important contributions of women.

 Women in the 1860's and even today were not recognized for their abilities outside the home. Even though the men were off to war, women had to fight at home to work. They were considered too frail to work in business. Ironically women had been working beside their

husbands for generations as they went pioneering out west. They worked on their farms and in family store.

The Civil War was important as a watershed event in American history, especially for women. The history books detail the war as told from the men's point of view with battles, and generals. Most history books include a little information on famous women such as Clara Barton, who is served as a volunteer nurse during the Civil War and is credited with starting the American Red Cross. Yet little else is included in those history books about the other heroic women.

Women undertook working outside the home, endured hardships, and the heartbreak and sorrow as their men and young boys were taken away to fight in the war. Many men died or were maimed for live. There were even women who took up arms themselves and dressed in the uniforms of their deceased fathers, brothers, husbands and sons, fought alongside the men. Three hundred such women have been documented but scholars believe there were many more who were never discovered.

Clara Barton was a woman who knew how to organize. She used her skills during the American Civil War. Officially she was not connected to the military. However she collected and delivered supplies to northern troops around Washington, D.C. Her background was as a teacher. She was only twenty when she ran her own school. Later on she was hired to work for the government in Washington, D.C., which was unusual, and a high honor for a woman.

Clara Barton heard about a proslavery group who attacked soldiers in her home state of Massachusetts. Many in the regiment were wounded and some killed. When Barton learned that some of the injured were her former students she rushed back to Massachusetts to offer comfort. She used whatever medical skill she had and organized groups of other women to collect supplies for the men. The proslavers has stolen all their supplies. Her kindness was carried with the remaining troop as they headed south. They wrote their families and told of the wonderful woman who came to their aid. Clara organized ladies aid societies to continue sending supplies to the troops. Wagons of donations were filled and brought right into the camps and battlefields in the Washington area. After the war she continued her humanitarian efforts with the international Red Cross. In 1881 she started the American Red Cross and devoted the rest of her life to it.

Jenny Wade was another young woman caught up in the war effort. She lived in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. It was summer 1863 when the Confederate troops headed for Gettsyburg to find shoes for their troops. The Northern troops were stationed in this small town in Gettysburg. They were added by the 2,000 or so residents who had no idea the war was coming to their doorsteps. Jenny Wade was really Mary Virginia. Her friends called her "Gin" or "Ginnie" and when her brave deed made the newspaper it was inaccurately reported as "Jennie." The name stuck throughout history.

On June 26, 1863, the Confederate troops marched into Gettsyburg looking for supplies. The people hid their food. They stationed themselves around the perimeter of the town. With the Northern troops marching into Gettsyburg, there was bound to be a clash. That came true on July 1st. Many citizens retreated to their cellars as protection against battle shells. Jennie and her family thought her sister's home would be safe since it was not in the direct line of the battle. She prepared bread for the Union soldiers and filled their canteens with water. July 3rd, the Confederates fired on the area, including the Wade house. Jennie refused to retreat to the

basement. She was making biscuits for the Northern soldiers and felt it was her patriotic duty to remain. A confederate soldier, one of the Louisiana infantrymen, fired and the bullet went through the door of the Wade house and struck Jennie in the back.

A lot of people died in the Civil War but Jennie was the only civilian killed in Gettsyburg. The Northern soldier considered her a heroine for all she had done for them. In recognition of her efforts, Congress declared that the U.S. flag be flown over Jenny Wade's tomb. It still flown today as a reminder of the bravery of one young girl.

There are biographies in the library about Clara Barton and Jenny Wade, but there were thousands of other women who helped who never had their names recorded. Northern women were the driving force behind the anti-slavery issue. After Lincoln's Proclamation freeing slaves in the Confederate state, many of these women traveled with the troops at their own expense. They set up schools to teach freed slaves how to read and write and helped them settle on farms and in cities where they got jobs.

Other women formed groups such as the Sanitary Commission and the Christian Commission. These women also traveled with the troops. They saw to the health of the men, both physically and emotionally. They were very good for morale. They comforted the lonely men, wrote letters for them, and shared their food. Many more men would have died from disease if it wasn't for the work of these brave women. Most of them were middle or upperclass ladies, used to lives of privilege. They gave up their comfortable homes to travel by wagons with the troops, live in tents, and cook over open fires.

There are many more famous names associated with the American Civil War. This includes writers Louisa May Alcott who worked as a nurse in a military hospital and Harriet Beecher Stowe, who continued the fight for at home through her writing and speeches.

There are too many names and too many brave deeds to include in this article. Women from all the northern states participated in different ways to help. Some organized charity balls to raise funds for supplies for the troops. Others provided meals for the troops going through Washington, D.C.

The role of women during the Civil War was not recognized for more than 100 years later, and even now people are learning about these accomplishments. Many unnamed women put their own health at risk to volunteer in military hospitals. Other women kept journals and diaries that recorded the day-to-day life during the war years and provided us with a first hand view of history. Women worked in the camps, and fought on the battlefields and on the home front. Some, like Pauline Cushman, even risked their lives as spies for the North. They are all unsung heroines in the greatest battle ever fought on American soil.

Effects of the American Civil War

Government, Big Business, and the National Mentality of Sacrifice

Jan 14, 2009 Michael Streich

The American Civil War created relationships between government and business concerns that continued after the war and sparked Gilded Age industrialization.

The coming of the post Civil War industrial society can be traced to key factors that enabled the North to win the war in 1865. These factors include a laissez faire relationship between government and business, the continuance of population growth through immigration, and a national spirit of sacrifice in order to achieve a goal. At the same time, these factors created significant problems affecting integrity of government, treatment of industrial works and immigrants, and the needs of western farmers.

The Civil War and American Business

The conduct and course of the war necessitated strong bonds between government and business. This was the debut of the billion dollar federal budget and direct governmental relationships with big business, notably the railroad industry. Railroads had played a significant role in Union victory, freighting supplies and carrying soldiers. After the Mississippi was closed, railroads picked up the cargo traffic normally assigned to the river and its tributaries.

As historian Howard Zinn demonstrates, Union generals at times contracted directly with businesses for arms and supplies. Without government regulatory policies, businesses grew through a self-policing financial community, failing when greed overtook prudence as in the Panic of 1873. Congressional leaders curried favor with big businesses, accepting loans that were never repaid, shares of stocks, and seats on corporate boards. As in the railroad industry, the quid pro quo was substantial land grants enabling railroads to connect the oceans and build hundreds of subsidiary lines.

The amount of railroad construction remained the same in the decade of the Civil War as it has the decade before the war. In the decade of the 1870s, however, railroad construction more than doubled from 20,000 miles of track to over 45,000 miles of track. [1] Much of this can be directly traced to Congressional support, often resulting in kickbacks and other favors. The 1872 Credit Mobilier scandal is but one salient example of graft.

Spirit of Sacrifice and Determination

The war had taught average Americans that victory would come if everyone shared in the sacrifices demanded. This included rationing as well as serving on the front lines. Four years of often intense conflict inculcated this mentality in the minds of Americans. As the United States grew and industrialization changed the face of American aspirations, growing a middle class and producing spectacular innovations, Americans worked within the mentality of sacrifice and determination.

Industrialization harnessed the power of millions of workers, men, women, and children that had no other recourse then to working twelve hour days for low wages. Inequities arising out of Gilded Age wealth production produced labor movements – unions – that challenged the status quo and demanded better working conditions.

Many of these workers were immigrants, unskilled, poor Europeans and Asians, thrust into the economic machine of rapid industrialization. Government, for its part, supported big business and viewed unionization as a step toward anarchism and socialism. Governmental leaders, including Presidents and Cabinet members, had close ties to big business and legislation that attempted to regulate businesses, such as the first Interstate Commerce Commission, had no regulatory teeth.

The End of Laissez Faire

The war between capital and labor would not abate until the Progressive Movement of the early 20th Century and legislation passed under the leadership of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. Yet even before Roosevelt, American voters, notably in 1894 and 1896, rejected Populism and chose the status quo conservatism of on-going capitalism. While the 1890 Sherman Anti-Trust Act did little to effectively “curb” the power of the Trusts and rescue American workers from abuse, it was a first step in recognizing that a problem existed

Read more at Suite101: Effects of the American Civil War: Government, Big Business, and the National Mentality of Sacrifice http://us-civil-war.suite101.com/article.cfm/effects_of_the_american_civil_war#ixzz0iGpw9S1x

Women in the American Civil War

Nurses, Soldiers and Spies

Feb 15, 2010 Brenda Ralph Lewis

The American Civil war, like all wars until quite recently, was strictly men's business. Some women, though, had contrary ideas and were determined to participate.

Women’s place in wartime, as in peace, was in the home tending the family and giving moral support. This was why both sides in the War expressly forbad them to enlist. Even those who wanted to serve as nurses found acceptance difficult. Nevertheless, despite resistance, prejudice and sometimes outright disapproval, women found ways to play their own part in the War.

Nurses Volunteered to Serve on Both Sides

Some 2,000 women, both Unionist and Confederate, volunteered as nurses in military hospitals. This, of course, exposed them to the horrors of warfare - amputated arms or legs, disease, mutilation, death - which were not thought fit for women to see.

One woman, Mary Edwards Walker, took an even bolder step and became a military surgeon: she later received the Congressional Medal of Honor for her wartime service, the only woman among the veterans of the Civil War to be so honored.

Unfortunately, few Civil War nurses recorded their experiences, but Clara Barton, one of those who did, left behind a graphic account of life and death on the battlefield. Bullets whizzed overhead at the battle of Antietam on September 17, 1862 and artillery fire thundered in the background as Clara cradled the heads of wounded Union soldiers, prepared their food, and gave them water. One bullet shot straight through her sleeve as she bent down to give one soldier a drink, only to find that the same bullet had killed him.

Organizing a Nursing Corps

Together with Dorothea Dix, Clara Barton pioneered a nationwide effort to organise a nursing corps. From the start, they found that the more traditional kind of military leader extremely hostile. But the fiercely single-minded Dorothea faced them down and got her way.

She was such a daunting character that even the women she recruited called her ‘Dragon Dix’ but at a time when women were widely regarded as decorative and little else, this was the only way to be if the job were to be done. Clara Barton, who was equally determined, went on to help create an American branch of the International Red Cross.

As she frequently proved, Clara was fearless. ‘I went in while the battle raged,’ she recalled after the end of the War. During one of these raging battles, she discovered that a wounded boy was actually a young woman and persuaded her to own up and go home after she recovered from her injuries.

The Women who Fought as Soldiers

This was not an unusual discovery after the wounded were brought in for treatment , died on the battlefield or became prisoners-of-war. One female soldier, Mary Galloway, was found out after she took a bullet in the chest at the battle of Antietam. Two others were revealed as women after they fell into a river and had to be rescued.

An unknown woman wearing a Confederate uniform was found dead after the battle of Gettysburg on July 17, 1863. Seventy years later in 1934, a grave unearthed at Shiloh National Military Park revealed that of every nine Union soldiers buried there had been a woman.

Women who Remained Undiscovered

Many female soldiers got away with their deception by taking care to bathe or answer calls of nature out of sight, though this was not always possible once they were captured.

On the other hand, some female soldiers managed to remain entirely undiscovered throughout their military service. Among them was Sarah Edmonds Seelye who spent two years in the Union’s 2nd Michigan Infantry under the name Franklin Thompson.

Women who became Civil War spies did not have to go in for the same kind of subterfuge. Even so, pretence was an important part of the role they played and discovery a much greater danger. But the risks which, included a death sentence if they were caught, did not deter a number of women from spying for their side in the War.

Spying During the Civil War

Harriet Tubman, the abolitionist, became a spy in the Union Army in South Carolina and organised a network of agents. Elizabeth van Lew, another abolitionist and Unionist spy, joined the Union Army, disguised as a man.

She supplied food and clothing to Union Army prisoners and smuggled out information after she was placed in the household of Jefferson Davis, the Confederate President.

On the Confederate side, Belle Boyd passed information on Union army movements in the Shenandoah to General Stonewall Jackson: she was caught and imprisoned. So was Antonia Ford, who informed the Confederates about Union activity near her home in Fairfax, Virginia. .

One of the most renowned spies of the Civil War was Rose O’Neal Greenhow, who carried dispatches for the Confederates. A passionate secessionist, she even contrived to go on spying while in prison by smuggling out cryptic notes hidden inside a woman’s elaborate hairstyle.

Read more at Suite101: Women in the American Civil War: Nurses, Soldiers and Spies http://us-civil-war.suite101.com/article.cfm/women-in-the-american-civil-war#ixzz0iGrDnC7t

The role of women during the American Civil War

by Molly Carter

During the tumultuous years of the Civil War, women who did not have a right to vote, own property and had few civic liberties of their own, unified in support of the war efforts. Women who had not worked a day in their lives, with grit and determination hid their identity and took up arms of their own, cared for sick and dying soldiers, risked their lives to gather information, cooked, cleaned and care for children. The tenacity and love with which these women served their country was astounding, and yet often overlooked.

Although women were not allowed to serve in the army, that did not stop some women from disguising themselves as men and taking up arms. Women would create masculine names and hide their identity from officials. We do not know how many women served because they did so secretly. On occasion, their sex was revealed. Mary Owens, after being shot in the armed, was discovered to be female. Upon returning home, despite her sex, she was received warmly. Both the Union and Confederate army refused to acknowledge that women had served.

During wartime, women who were not fighting also played very important roles. When battle began, both armies were unprepared for the wounded. Women with no medical training would rush out to the front lines to help injured soldiers. Within two months, it was decided that Dorothea Dix would be appointed Superintendent of Nurses.

Ms. Dix had high standards for women wishing to serve as nurses. Women were to be over the age of thirty, plain looking, wear service dresses, and be interviewed by her personally. These nurses worked strenuously 12 hour shifts sometimes attending to forty patients at a time. Many nurses literally worked themselves to death. A good chronicle of the life of a nurse is Louisa May Alcott's "Hospital Sketches."

Some women chose to nurse independent of Ms. Dix. One such woman was Clara Carton who would later be credited as founder of the American Red Cross. To help assist in the war efforts she would collect and distribute necessities to the soldiers.

Another common job for a woman during the civil war was to become a spy. Since legally they could not serve on the battlefield, some woman anxious to help the war efforts would engage in espionage. One famous spy during that time was Mrs. Rose O'Neal Greenhow. Since she socialized in political circles she was able to gather and pass along information.

Being a spy was a very dangerous contribution to the war effort. If discovered you could be killed or disowned.

Another

job a woman could serve in was being part of the Womens Central Relief Association. This relief organization would gather and distribute items to the battlefield. Women would make uniforms, blankets and bandages, were responsible for keeping inventory, passing out items, and sending thank yous and requests for more supplies.

In addition to the above duties, women took it upon themselves to raise money to support this organization. Soon hospitals, kitchens and transportation were being set up and operated by these ladies.

A Vivandiere was another job a woman could legally do. These women usually followed their husbands or brothers into service and would serve as personal nurses to them if they were to sustain injury. In the camps, they took it upon themselves to clean, feed, and tend to camp while the men were off fighting.

Other jobs women did during the war were writing and printing wartime pamphlets, taking over positions for their husbands to support their families, teaching, and raising their families in political unrest.

Women served patriotically in the wartime effort sometimes receiving little or no praise. Many women died tending to wounds, distributing tools and fighting in their own right. The contribution of women during the American Civil War made an enormous impact.

Native Americans in the American Civil War

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Ely S. Parker was a Union Civil War General who wrote the terms of surrender between the United States and the Confederate States of America.[1] Parker was one of two Native Americans to reach the rank of Brigadier General during the Civil War.

Native Americans in the American Civil War composed various Native American bands, tribes, and nations. [2] Native Americans served in both the Union and Confederate military during the American Civil War. At the outbreak of the war, for example, the minority party of the Cherokees gave its allegiance to the Confederacy, while originally the majority party went for the North.[3] Native Americans fought knowing they might jeopardize their freedom, unique cultures, and ancestral lands if they ended up on the losing side of the Civil

War.[2][3] 28,693 Native Americans served in the Union and Confederate armies during the Civil War, participating in battles such as Pea Ridge, Second Manassas, Antietam, Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, and in Federal assaults on Petersburg.[2][4] Many Native American tribes, such as the Creek and the Choctaw, were slaveholders and found a political and economic commonality with the Confederacy. [5] The Choctaw owned nearly 6000 slaves.[6]

Overview of the War

Many Native Americans served in the Union and confederate military during the Civil War.[2] The Delaware tribe had a long history of allegiance to the U.S. government, despite removal to the Wichita Indian Agency in Oklahoma and the Indian Territory in Kansas.[2] On October 1, 1861 the Delaware people proclaimed their alliance to the Union.[2] During the war 170 out of 201 Delaware men volunteered in the Union Army. A journalist from Harper's Weekly described them as being armed with tomahawks, scalping knives, and rifles.[2]

In January 1862, William Dole, U.S. Commissioner of Indian Affairs, asked Native American agents to "engage forthwith all the vigorous and able-bodied Native Americans in their respective agencies."[2] The request resulted in the assembly of the 1st and 2nd Indian Home Guard.[2] Many Native American tribes fought in the war including: the Delware, Creek, Cherokee, Seminole, Kickapoo, Seneca, Osage, Shawnee, Choctaw, Lumbee, Chickasaw, Iroquois, Powhatan, Pequot, Ojibwa, Huron, Odawa, Potawatomi, Catawba, and Pamunkey. The Cherokee, Choctaw, Seminole, Catawba, and Creek tribes were the only tribes to fight on the Confederate side. Like other American communities, some tribes had members fighting on either side of the war.[7] The majority of the Creek sided with the Union as two-thirds of the people preferred to be guided by the advice of their chief Opothle Yahola. Ex-Chief McIntosh was bought by the South, whose leaders appointed him a colonel in the Confederate Army.[7] During November of 1861, the Creek, Black Creek Indians, and White Creek Indians of their tribe were led by Creek Chief Opothle Yahola, fought three pitched battles against Confederate whites and other Native Americans that joined the Confederates to reach Union lines in Kansas, and offer their services.[8]

People who were Black Indians served in colored regiments with other African American and Native American soldiers.[9] Black Indians served in the following regiments: the 1st Kansas Colored Infantry, the Kansas Colored at Honey Springs, the 79th US Colored Infantry, and the 83rd US Colored Infantry, along with other colored regiments that included men who were identified only as Negro.[9]

Some Civil War battles occurred in Indian Territory.[10] The first battle occurred July 1-2, 1863 which involved the 1st Kansas Colored Infantry.[10] The first battle against the Confederacy outside of Indian Territory occurred at Horse Head Creek, Arkansas, on February 17, 1864, and involved the 79th U.S. Colored Infantry.[10]

Native Americans swearing in for the Civil War.

The Delaware demonstrated their "loyalty", daring and hardihood" during the attack of the Wichita Agency in October 1862. Considered a major Union victory, Native American cavalrymen killed five Confederate agents, took the Rebel flag and $1200 in Confederate currency, 100 ponies, and burned correspondence along with the Agency buildings.[2]

The Cherokee Nation had an internal civil war.[2] The Nation divided, with one side led by principal Chief John Ross and the other by renegade Stand Watie.[2] Chief John Ross wanted to remain neutral throughout the war, but Confederate victories at First Manassas and Wilson's Creek forced the Cherokee to reassess their position.[2]

[7] All other Native American tribes bordering the Cherokee were on the Confederate side, which added to the pressure of possible occupation by the Confederate forces.[2]

Stand Watie, along with a few Cherokee, sided with the Confederate Army, in which he was made Colonel and commanded a battalion of Cherokee.[2] Reluctantly, on October 7, 1861, Chief Ross signed a treaty transferring all obligations due to the Cherokee from the U.S. Government to the Confederate States.[2] In the treaty, the Cherokee were guaranteed protection, rations of food, livestock, tools and other goods, as well as a delegate to the Confederate Congress at Richmond.[2] In exchange, the Cherokee would furnish ten companies of mounted men, and allow the construction of military posts and roads within the Cherokee Nation. However, no Indian regiment was to be called on to fight outside Indian Territory.[2] As a result of the Treaty, the 2nd Cherokee Mounted Rifles, led by Col. John Drew, was formed. Following the Battle of Pea Ridge, Arkansas, March 7-8, 1862, Drew's Mounted Rifles defected to the Union forces in Kansas, where they joined the Indian Home Guard. In the summer of 1862, Federal troops captured Chief Ross, who was paroled and spent the remainder of the war in Washington and Philadelphia proclaiming Cherokee loyalty to the Union army.[2]

In his absence, Col. Stand Watie was chosen principal chief of the Cherokee Nation. He immediately drafted all Cherokee males aged 18-50 into Confederate military service.[2] Watie was a daring cavalry rider who was skilled at hit-and-run tactics. He was considered a genius in guerrilla warfare and the most successful field commander in the Trans-Mississippi West.[2] Promoted to brigadier general in May 1864, Watie was placed in charge of the Indian Cavalry Brigade, which was composed of the 1st and 2nd Cherokee Cavalry and battalions of Creek, Osage and Seminole. He achieved one of his greatest successes at Pleasant Bluff, Arkansas on June 10, 1864, capturing the Union steamboat J.R. Williams. which was loaded with supplies valued at $120,000. At the Second Battle of Cabin Creek, (Indian Territory), Watie's cavalry brigade captured 129 supply wagons and 740 mules, took 120 prisoners, and left 200 casualties.[2] The Cherokee who had not been removed were also caught in the middle of the Civil War. Some chose to side with the Confederate Army since they were located in the southern states.[2]

The Thomas Legion, an Eastern Band of Confederate Cherokee, led by Col. William Holland Thomas, fought in the mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina.[2] Another 200 Cherokee formed the Junaluska Zouaves.[2] Nearly all Catawba adult males served the South in the 5th, 12th and 17th South Carolina Volunteer Infantry, Army of Northern Virginia. They distinguished themselves in the Peninsula Campaign, at Second Manassas, and Antietam, and in the trenches at Petersburg. A monument in Columbia, South Carolina, honors the Catawbas' service in the Civil War.[2] As a consequence of the regiments' high rate of dead and wounded, the continued existence of the Catawba people was jeopardized.[2]

Company K of the 1st Michigan Sharpshooters resting.

In Virginia and North Carolina, the Pamunkey and Lumbee chose to serve the Union.[2] The Pamunkey served as civilian and naval pilots for Union warships and transports, while the Lumbee acted as guerrillas.[2] Members of the Iroquois Nation joined Company K, 5th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, while the Powhatan served as land guides, river pilots, and spies for the Army of the Potomac.[2]

During the Civil War, there was no distinction made when a Native Americans joined the U.S. Colored Troops. Well into the twentieth century, the word "colored" included not only African Americans, but Native Americans as well.[2] Individual accounts revealed that many Pequot from New England served in the 31st U.S. Colored Infantry of the Army of the Potomac, as well as other U.S.C.T. regiments.[2]

The most famous Native American unit in the Union army in the east was Company K of the 1st Michigan Sharpshooters.[2] The bulk of this unit was Ottawa, Delaware, Huron Oneida, Potawami and Ojibwa.[2] They were assigned to the Army of the Potomac just as Gen. Ulysses S. Grant assumed command. Company K

participated in the Battle of the Wilderness and Spotsylvania, and captured 600 Confederate troops at Shand House east of Petersburg.[2] In their final military engagement at the Battle of the Crater, Petersburg, Virginia, on July 30, 1864, the Sharpshooters found themselves surrounded with little ammunition.[2] A lieutenant of the 13th U.S. C.T. quoted their actions as

"splendid work. Some of them were mortally wounded, and drawing their blouses over their faces, they chanted a death song and died - four of them in a group."[2]

By fighting with the European-Americans, Native Americans hoped to gain favor with the prevailing government by supporting the war effort.[2][7] They also believed war service might mean an end to discrimination and relocation from ancestral lands to western territories.[2] While the war raged and African Americans were proclaimed free, the U.S. government continued its policies of submission, removal, or extermination of Native Americans.[2]

General Ely S. Parker, a member of the Seneca tribe, created the articles of surrender which General Robert E. Lee signed at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865. Gen. Parker, who served as Gen. Ulysses S. Grant's military secretary and was a trained attorney, was once rejected for Union military service because of his race. At Appomattox, Lee is said to have remarked to Parker, "I am glad to see one real American here," to which Parker replied, "We are all Americans."[2]

The Cherokee Nation was the most negatively affected of all Native American tribes during the Civil War, its population declining from 21,000 to 15,000 by 1865. Despite the Federal government's promise to pardon all Cherokee involved with the Confederacy, the entire Nation was considered disloyal, and their rights were revoked. At the end of the war, Gen. Stand Watie was the last to surrender, laying down arms two months after Gen. Robert E. Lee, and a month after Gen. E. Kirby Smith, commander of all troops west of the Mississippi.[2]

Problems in the Midwest and West

The last known high-quality photograph of Lincoln, taken March 1865

The west was mostly peaceful during the war due to the lack of U.S. occupation troops. The federal government was still taking control of native land, and there were continuous fights.[3] From January to May 1863, there were almost continuous fights in the New Mexico territory, as part of a concerted effort by the Federal government to contain and control the Apache; in the midst of all this, President Abraham Lincoln peacefully met with representatives from several major tribes, and informed them he felt concerned they would never attain the prosperity of the white race unless they turned to farming as a way of life.[2] The fighting led to the Sand Creek Massacre caused by Colonel J. M. Chivington, whom settlers asked to retaliate against natives.[3] With 900 volunteer militiamen, Chivington attacked a peaceful village of some 500 or more Arapaho and Cheyenne natives, killing women and children as well as warriors.[3] There were few survivors of the massacre.[3]

In July 1862, settlers fought against Santee Sioux in Minnesota.[3][11] Because the war absorbed so many government resources, the annuities owed to the Santee Sioux in Minnesota were not paid on time in the summer of 1862.[11] In addition, Long Trader Sibley refused the Santee Sioux access to food until the funds were delivered. In frustration, the Santee Sioux, led by Little Crow (Ta-oya-te-duta), attacked settlers in order to get supplies.[11] After the Sioux lost the fighting, they were tried (without defense lawyers), found guilty on flimsy evidence,and many were sentenced to death.[11]

When President Lincoln found out about the incident, he immediately requested full information about the convictions. He assigned two attorneys to examine the cases and differentiate between those guilty of murder

and those who simply engaged in battle.[11] General Pope, as well as Long Trader Sibley, whose refusal to allow the Sioux access to food had been largely responsible for the war, were angered by Lincoln's failure to immediately authorize the executions.[11] They threatened that the local settlers would take action against the Sioux unless the President allowed the executions, and they quickly tried to push forward with them.[11] In addition, they arrested the rest of the Santee Sioux, 1,700 people, of whom most were women and children, although they were accused of no crime.

On December 6, 1861, based on information he was given, Lincoln authorized the execution of 39 Sioux, and ordered that the others be held pending further orders, "taking care that they neither escape nor are subjected to any unlawful violence."[11] On December 26, 39 men were taken. At the last minute, one was given a reprieve. It was not until years later that information became public that two men were executed who had not been authorized for punishment by President Lincoln.[11] In fact, one of these two men had saved a white woman's life during the fighting.[11] Little Crow was killed in July 1863, the year in which the Santees were transported to a reservation in Dakota Territory.[11]

Native Americans in the Civil War

        Despite decades of scholarship, many misperceptions persist concerning the Civil War. The war is often viewed, for example, as solely a white man's war; it is also often thought to have taken place solely in the East and South. Modern historians are attempting to dispel these notions, both of which serve to obscure the participation of Native Americans in the Civil War.        During the period of 1861 to 1865, Native Americans all over the continent were struggling for autonomy, as peoples with their own organization, culture, and life-style. Some tribes, like the Cherokees, were directly involved in the war. Other Native Americans living in the war-torn areas of the East made individual decisions as to whether they wished to have anything to do with the situation. Still others, living in the mountains, prairies, and deserts of the rest of the country, suddenly realized they had a chance to take back some of their own land, as they saw fewer and fewer U.S. Army soldiers assigned to forts in their tribal areas.        Statistics show that just under 3,600 Native Americans served in the Union Army during the war. Perhaps the best known of their number was Colonel Ely Parker, who served as an aide to General U. S. Grant, and was present at Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox Court House. Statistics for the Confederacy are not reliably available, but most scholars of Native American involvement in the actual fighting of the war are very well acquainted with the major Southern figure among them: Brigadier General Chief Stand Watie, a three-quarter blood Cherokee who was born in December 1806 near what would become Rome, Georgia. Stand Watie was one of the signers of a treaty that agreed to the removal of the Cherokee from their home in Georgia to what was then the Oklahoma territory; this split the tribes into two factions, and Stand Watie became the leader of the minority party.        At the outbreak of the Civil War, the minority party gave its allegiance to the Confederacy, while the majority party went for the North. Watie organized a company, then a regiment known as the First Cherokee Mounted Rifles; the regiment fought at Wilson's Creek, Elkhorn, and in numerous smaller fights and skirmishes along the border with what was known as Indian Territory. The warriors found curious the white man's strategy of standing still and allowing people to shoot at them, or lob artillery shells at them; the Cherokee tended to be spectacular at wildly brave mounted charges, but once the artillery began to fire, the warriors wanted nothing to do with it. Stand Watie was unreconstructed to the end; it is believed he never surrendered until June 23, 1865, well after other Confederate commanders had given up. He died in 1871 and is buried in the Old Ridge Cemetery in Delaware County, Oklahoma.        While the war was raging back East, out in the West things were seldom quiet or peaceful. Statistics show that nearly 90 engagements were fought by U.S. troops in the West during the war, most of them involving Native American tribes people. From January to May 1863, there were almost continuous fights in the New Mexico territory, as part of a concerted effort by the Federal government to contain and control the Apache; in the midst of all this, Abraham Lincoln met with representatives from several major tribes, and informed them

he felt they would never attain the prosperity of the white race unless they turned to farming as a way of life.        In July 1864, there was fighting against Native Americans in Minnesota; fighting continued throughout the year in New Mexico, as well. Then in November, on the twenty-ninth, there occurred what some historians have called the first major blot of the so-called Indian Wars: the Sand Creek Massacre. Frightened by raids made by warriors in the area around Denver as a result of a reduced military presence in the West, Colorado settlers asked Colonel J. M. Chivington to punish the raiders. Chivington, with 900 volunteer militiamen, attacked a peaceful village of some five hundred or more Arapaho and Cheyenne natives, killing women and children as well as warriors. In his report, Chivington chillingly stated: "It may perhaps be unnecessary for me to state that I captured no prisoners."        Some of the people escaped, however, and at least one of them was pursued by irony in the years to come: Chief Black Kettle of the Cheyenne survived the massacre at Sand Creek, only to die at the hands of George Armstrong Custer's 7th Cavalry in a second attack on a peaceful village some three years later, at a place called the Washita River.        After the Civil War, the white presence in the West rose to new levels. Numerous financial crises and depressions hit the East after the boom of the war years, and many families chose to move onward in hopes of finding gold, or purchasing cheap land to start a farm. Men unable to find work in the cities joined the army. As the tribal peoples fought to defend their sacred places, hunting grounds, and even their very way of life, they attacked crews building railroads and sought to drive off hunters and gold prospectors. Conflicting views of what ownership of the land meant ' as well as numerous other cultural misunderstandings, led to bloodbath after bloodbath; at Little Big Horn and Beecher's Island, the tribes defeated the white man, only to be battered into defeat themselves at places like Wounded Knee. The official army policy was to provide necessities for the tribes during the winter, then to face the reality of fighting the same people when the weather cleared and they wished to change hunting grounds; this policy was known ironically to the common soldier as "feed 'em in winter, fight 'em in summer."        The unofficial government policy, however, was summed up curtly by General Philip Sheridan, the man who in 1864 stated he would so devastate the Shenandoah Valley, breadbasket of the Confederacy, that a crow flying through it would have to "carry his own rations." Sheridan, appointed to command of one of the major administrative departments of the territories in the years after the war, made the now-infamous statement: "The only good Indian I ever saw was dead." With an attitude such as this, it was only a matter of time and attrition before the Native Americans saw their way of life taken from them-not forever, though, as the descendants of those who fought to save the Way are even today striving to bring back the old knowledge and customs.Source: The Civil War Society's "Encyclopedia of the Civil War."

Native Americans

Native Americans

Most tribes and nations of Native Americans did not have amiable relations with the government of the United States. A long history of broken promises and violated treaties meant that thousands of Indians had been pushed off their land and forced to settle further west, or on reservations. During the Civil War, many remained tribes tried to remain neutral. Nevertheless, their loyalty to the Union was often severely tested. Because the war absorbed so many government resources, the annuities owed to the Santee Sioux in Minnesota were not paid on time in the summer of 1862. In addition, Long Trader Sibley refused the Santee Sioux access to food until the funds were delivered. In frustration, the Santee Sioux, led by Little Crow (Ta-oya-te-duta), attacked settlers. After the Sioux lost the fighting, they were tried (without defense lawyers), found guilty on flimsy evidence. After 303 Santees were sentenced to death, and 16 sentenced to long prison

terms, President Lincoln was presented with the situation. According to General John Pope, commander of the Military Department of the Northwest, "the Sioux prisoners will be executed unless the President forbids it, which I am sure he will not do."

Lincoln requested full information about the convictions, and assigned two attorneys to examine the cases and differentiate between those guilty of murder and those simply engaged in battle. General Pope, as well as Long Trader Sibley, whose refusal to allow the Indians access to food had been largely responsible for the war, were angered by Lincoln's failure to immediately authorize the executions. They threatened that the local settlers would take action against the Sioux unless the President allowed the executions quickly. In addition, they arrested the rest of the Santee Sioux, 1,700 people, of whom most were women and children, although they were accused of no crime. On December 6, 1861, Lincoln authorized the execution of 39 Sioux, and ordered that the others be held pending further orders, "taking care that they neither escape nor are subjected to any unlawful violence." On December 26, 39 men were taken. At the last minute, one was given a reprieve, but it would not be publicized until years later that 2 of the men hanged were not authorized by Lincoln. In fact, one of these two men had saved a white woman's life during the fighting. Little Crow was killed in July of 1863, the year in which the Santees were transported to a reservation in Dakota Territory.

Other Native American tribes, including the Cheyennes and the Arapaho, engaged in serious clashes with Union troops. Some of these conflicts were ignited when Union troops, scouting for Confederates, met Native Americans on hunting trips, or raided Indian settlements.

Although there was a war going on, settlers did not stop pressuring the United States government to push Native Americans off their land to facilitated western expansion. In October of 1862, Brig. Gen. James H. Carleton commanded Col. Christopher "Kit" Carson and five companies in the Department of New Mexico to begin operations against Mescalero Apache and Navajo Indians in the District of Arizona. The Native Americans were to be captured and confined in the Bosque Redondo Reservation in the eastern part of the New Mexico Territory. Anyone who resisted was to be killed.

While the Mescalero Indians either escaped to Mexico or were removed to the reservation, the Navajos provided more resistance to the federal removal attempt. Navajos tried to negotiate a peace agreement, but were rejected in their efforts. At that point, they began a struggle for the right to keep their land. The federal troops adopted a "scorched-earth policy," by which they destroyed Navaho farmland and forced the Navajos to the point of starvation. The Indians surrendered as individuals or in small groups, while those who fled were pushed to the Canyon de Chelly in what would become Arizona. Col. Carson led troops to the Canyon de Chelly, killing and capturing some Navajos, and forcing the surrender of 200 people. Eventually, 11,468 Navajos were held at Fort Canby, and marched to the Bosque Redondo Reservation, which 425 miles away. This cruel march is called 'The Long Walk," and is estimated to have caused the death of about 3,000 Navajos from starvation and/or abuse. Within two years of confinement in the reservation, another 2,000 Navajos died.

While Union forces tended to alienate Native Americans, the Confederate leadership expressed an interest in making alliances with the Indians in the Indian Territory. Confederate officer Albert Pike, who had made many contacts among Native American tribal leaders, and had helped the Creeks and other tribes obtain $800,000 in a long court battle with the federal government, was a clear choice for a Confederate envoy to the Native Americans. He was able to convince many Indian leaders to support the Confederacy. On October 7, 1861, he negotiated a treaty with the Chief John Ross of the Cherokee Nation, which provided more generous terms than the treaties with the United States for members of the "Five Civilized Tribes": Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw and Seminole. As a brigadier general, Pike began training three

Confederate regiments of Native Americans. Pike's troops fought victoriously at the Battle of Pea Ridge, but were routed by a Union counterattack. Unable to reassemble his troops, he contributed to the Confederate defeat. Later, the Union claimed that the Native Americans had scalped some of the dead or wounded soldiers on the field.

After the Battle of Pea Ridge, the service of Indian troops was restricted to fighting in Indian Territory. Nevertheless, many Native Americans served as scouts for the Confederacy; and one, Stand Watie, obtained the rank of general in the Confederate Army. Elias Cornelius Boudinot (1835-1890), a prominent Cherokee lawyer, represented the Cherokee Nation at the first and Second Confederate Congresses. Although he helped promote measures to provide food and supplies for Indian refugees, he was apparently involved in rather shady deals , some of which violated Cherokee-Confederate treaties. After the Confederates were defeated, however, Boudinot helped negotiate a peace between the United States and the Cherokee nation.

Neither the Confederacy nor the Indian troops ultimately benefited from their alliances. The Confederacy gained little military advantage from the help of Native Americans, except for the service of scouts. In fact, Confederate warfare was denigrated in the North when the traditional acts of Indian warfare, including scalping, were publicized in the Northern press as indications of Confederate depravity. Native Americans hardly fared better. Confederate coffers being so low, little food or other aid could be provided for Indians struggling with the challenges of a wartime economy. In addition, after the Civil War ended, Native American tribes and nations that fought with the Confederacy had their treaties with the federal government nullified.

Native American Civil War

Dakota Uprising in Minnesota

Jul 24, 2007 Christine Musser

President Lincoln not only had to deal with the Civil War, but he also had to deal with a band of Dakota Indians attacking white settlers in Minnesota in 1862.

On August 17, 1862, four braves from the Lower Sioux Agency along the Little Minnesota River, set out to find food. On their way back to the Agency they came across a farm owned by Robinson Jones. While walking past Jones’ farm fence, they came upon some eggs in a hen’s nest. One of the braves picked up the eggs to carry home with him. A second brave expressed it was wrong to take eggs from a white settler. The first brave become furious, threw the eggs to the ground, and called the second brave a coward. This infuriated the second brave. He exclaimed he was not a coward and to prove it he would kill farmer Jones.

The First Murders

The four braves walked up to the farmer’s house and demanded liquor. When Jones refused to give them the alcohol, the braves became angry. Jones felt he had no reason to fear the braves since they've lived peaceably together.

Mr. and Mrs. Jones needing to visit the Baker homestead, left their farm with the braves in tow. There Jones, his wife, Mr. and Mrs. Viranus Webster (a young couple from Wisconsin), Howard Baker and wife, and the four braves engaged in a shooting contest. After shooting at a target on a tree the braves reloaded their guns and without warning turned on the white settlers. Webster, Baker, Mr. and Mrs. Jones were killed. Mrs. Webster found cover in her Conestoga wagon, while Mrs. Baker found cover in the cellar.

After the murders, the braves rode back to the Agency and told the rest of the Lower Sioux tribe what they did. Immediately a meeting was called between all the Dakota tribe who lived along the Little Minnesota River. At the meeting, the leaders determined that it was time for an uprising due to the following:

Annuity goods and cash that were promised to the tribe never arrived. The winter of 1861 – 62 was extra hard on the Dakota due to a dry fall and little crop harvested and they were near starvation.

Settlers continued to move to Minnesota, pushing the tribe further and further to the west.

Most of the military in Minnesota left to assist in the Civil War, therefore leaving Minnesota settlers without protection.

The Dakota Uprising Officially Begins

While the sun rose on August 18, a band of Dakota, most of them being from the Lower Sioux Agency in the southeast corner of Minnesota, burned buildings, attacked men, women and children at the Redwood Agency.

A trader at the Agency, Andrew Myrick, who was hated the most by the Dakota for refusing to give them credit for supplies and for remarking “let them [Indians] eat grass”, was found with grass in his mouth.

Abraham Lincoln Sends Relief

Requests for more horses, ammuniton, and men were sent to Edwin Stanton, Secretary of War, by Governor Alexander Ramsey, but the requests were refused. On September 8, Ramsey wrote to President Abraham Lincoln and told him, “It is not our war; it is a national war . . . . Answer me at once. More than 500 whites have been murdered by the Indians.” Lincoln responded to Ramsey’s request immediately and by September 23 the Dakota uprising had ended.

The Trial and Executions

By November 5, after being tried by a military court, a total of 303 Dakota were sentenced to death. General Henry Hastings Sibley had the names and the involvements of those found guilty forwarded to President Lincoln. Lincoln reviewed the list and cut it down to 39 prisoners to be executed. This outraged many of the settlers in Minnesota and on December 5 a mob from Mankato made their way towards Camp Lincoln where the prisoners were being kept. Fortunately, the mob was stopped by troops. The following day the Indians were moved to a log structure at Mankato for safekeeping.

On December 26, the 38 (one prisoner died prior to the hanging) prisoners were executed in the largest mass execution in United States history

Read more at Suite101: Native American Civil War: Dakota Uprising in Minnesota http://americanhistory.suite101.com/article.cfm/civil_war_and_native_americans#ixzz0iH2C4NfX

Results of the War

Nearly all the fighting took place on Southern soil, so that section suffered heavy war damage. Some regions, such as central Georgia and the Shenandoah Valley, were deliberately ravaged. Freeing of the slaves added a property loss estimated at two billion dollars. The Federal government spent more than six billion dollars on the war; the Confederacy, perhaps two billion dollars.

Both sides sustained heavy casualties. There were far more deaths caused by disease than by combat. Estimated total deaths are 360,000 for the Union army and 260,000 for the Confederate army.

Reconstruction

Physical reconstruction in the South was a great problem, but more serious difficulties were encountered in the effort to politically reintegrate the Southern states into the Union. Both Lincoln and his successor, Andrew Johnson, wanted the conditions for the readmission of the rebellious states into the Union to be mild and conciliatory. However, some Republican congressmen, known as the Radical Republicans, considered the Presidential conditions to be too lenient, and formulated their own Reconstruction policy.

The objectives of the Radical Republicans were to protect the former slaves (or freedmen) and to punish the leaders of the Confederacy, whom they considered to be traitors. All Confederate leaders were denied their civil rights, but only Jefferson Davis was charged with treason. He spent two years in prison but was never brought to trial.

The Radical Republicans outraged white Southerners by enacting laws that gave political and economic rights to blacks. The Southern response was sometimes violent; the Ku Klux Klan was formed to terrorize blacks and other supporters of Reconstruction. To enforce its Reconstruction policies, Congress imposed military rule on most of the South in 1867. Governments formed under Reconstruction were sometimes inefficient and corrupt, but they enacted much progressive legislation. Eventually the commitment of the Federal government to its Reconstruction policies waned; by 1877 all Southern states were controlled by white supremacists, who began to strip blacks of their political, economic, and civil rights.

Military Lessons

The Civil War is often called the first modern war. It saw the introduction of rapid-fire weapons. Trenches were first used extensively in battle. The railway and the telegraph were first used in a large-scale war. The campaigns of Lee, Jackson, Grant, Sherman, and Joseph E. Johnston were studied abroad for new concepts of strategy and tactics. At sea, ironclad ships and rifled cannon had made the wooden navies of the world obsolete.

Interest in the campaigns, and in the personalities of Lincoln, Lee, and other leaders, made the Civil War one of the most studied periods in American history. It has been a subject for many best-selling novels and much poetry. Its story continues to fascinate historians, writers, and hobbyists.

American history: The outcome of the Civil War

by Jerry Curtis

The U.S. Civil War had several significant outcomes:

It abolished slavery as a legal institution in the United States. The one irreconcilable difference between the North and the South during a time when our country was expanding was the introduction of slavery into new territories. In fact, the main prelude to the bloodbath to come was in "Bleeding Kansas" during the late 1850's as people actively killed one another over the question of slavery. It took two additional amendments to the

U.S. Constitution and an additional hundred years of civil rights struggle to completely erase the stain of slavery, but the Civil War and Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation began the process.

The war settled once and for all an issue not addressed in our Constitution: Does an individual state have the right, through the will of its people, to dissolve its voluntary affiliation with the Federal Union? Jefferson Davis and his cohorts in the eleven states of the Confederacy thought yes and convened state conventions to dissolve their relationship to the federal government. Abraham Lincoln saw the secessionist movement as an unconstitutional attempt to nullify a presidential election. Lincoln, therefore, saw the issue as a simple matter of preserving the democratic process. No government, Lincoln said, could have in its philosophy the means to destroy itself. The issue that was left out of our Constitution, that could not be resolved by peaceful consensus,was settled by the Civil War. The North won, and the seceded states were eventually reabsorbed into the Union.

The Civil War united the country as never before. Prior to the four-year blood bath, there was no particular sense of nation and commonality among the individual states. Sectional differences and profound resentments brought on by slavery, and egalitarian issues brought on by industrialization and immigration in the North became a toxic brew that could only boil over into the struggle our Civil War became. When the North won the struggle through force of attrition and overpowering industrial strength, the South had to succumb and accept what they already knew was true: The United States was an indissoluble country and their future was with the Union. Before the Civil War, sentences began with, "The United States ARE" After the war, it became, "The United States IS"

The war resulted in accelerating invention and technology. Battles on the scale of Gettysburg, for example, required advances in weaponry, transportation and

logistics. The lessons learned in troop movement, supply, and armament were carried over into an exploding industrial revolution that followed the U.S. Civil War. Just four years after the War, the country's rail system became bicoastal as the Union Pacific and Central Pacific Railroads met at Promontory Point Utah.

There were, of course, other significant outcomes of the Civil War. For example, with over one million men mobilized, and the war finished, the United States could once again assert its prerogatives in the Western Hemisphere. One striking example of this was the 1862 French occupation of Mexico and their installation of a puppet "emperor" Maximilian. It was the pressure from the United States, no longer encumbered by internal matters, that caused the withdrawal of French military support and the collapse of their bogus emperor.

There was the human element that the tragedy of war always highlights. Families who lost sons, brothers, and husbands in the carnage of the ghastly battles of the war had their lives altered forever. Young soldiers fortunate enough to survive had their outlook and perspective of their country likewise altered. At the upper echelons of the military, leaders like U.S. Grant became wildly popular and brokered that popularity into political office. A succession of five presidents following the Civil War (Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Arthur, and McKinley) were all veterans.

Finally, no discussion of the outcome of the U.S. Civil War would be complete without acknowledging the legacy of Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln, who had no precedent to follow in his quest to keep our country together, was perhaps the single most important influence on the outcome of the Civil War. It was Lincoln's desire to "let em up easy" and allow the defeated South to return to the Union peacefully and without rancor. What could have degenerated into a conflict with the defeated Confederate armies melting into the countryside to wage a protracted struggle, actually resulted in our country's reunion.

The Consequences of The American Civil War   

Agricultural reform

Diseases

Industrial development

The Phoenix Factor

Agricultural Reform 

The Civil War had different effects in the North and the South agriculture.

In the South, the cotton market decreased because of the northern blockade. Southerners were forced to change from commercial agriculture based in cotton and tobacco to diversify farmed based in food crops.

In the North, particularly in Ohio, the wool, which was always in demand in wartime to make uniforms and blankets, was important during the Civil War because southern cotton was not available. A lot of the corn grew in Ohio before the Civil War was marketed in the south, but when the South market was cut off, the corn production temporarily declined until trade channels were opened with the East side.  The Civil War increased the production of sorghum and wool in Iowa, but corn continued to be principal source of wealth. Also, the production of the great staples and crops offered as substitutes for southern staples were increased. 

In addition, the Western agriculture started the mechanization since the mobilization of the Union armies had intensified in the abandon farms.

The Civil War made possible the approbation of four laws in 1862. These laws established the United States Department of Agriculture, and they helped in the establishment of colleges of agriculture and engineering. 

The major changes from hand methods to animal power were taking place as a result of wartime.

In conclusion, the Civil War stimulated farm production, the development of commercial agriculture, and the farm mechanization.

Diseas

1. Lack of Medical Knowledge and SanitationDisease and infections killed soldiers of American Civil War more than a half of total fatality.  Nobody, even doctors, thought that invisible microorganisms caused illness.  Some doctors believed that poisonous air, Miasmas or Noxious effluvia, caused diseases.  For this reason, chemicals, such as alcohol, bromine, carbolic acid, iodine, nitric acid, mercuric chloride, and sodium hypochlorite, were used to deodorize the air and they reduced mortality from disease and infection.  Many hospitals were built by this idea.  Separating patients as well as ventilation was considered as a very important factor in the hospital.  It saved further lives.  Due to the lack of medical knowledge, mercurous chloride, blue mass(mercury with honey and licorice), lead acetate, silver nitrate, castor oil and magnesium sulfate were commonly used to clean the bowels and repeated use of mercurous chloride or blue mass resulted in mercurial gangrene, which is a condition resulting in the loss of teeth and damage to palate, gums and soft tissues of the mouth.

2. Most common Infections· Diarrhea or Dysentery This intestinal infection resulted in fever, abdominal cramps, frequent stools of blood, pus and mucus.  More than 60,000 soldiers died from diarrhea or dysentery. · Typhoid fever It caused chills, sore throat, headaches, backaches, constipation, abdominal pain and tenderness to touch.  The secondary infection of Typhoid fever could kill 25% of its victims if left untreated. · Typhus(hospital fever or jail fever) High fever, headaches,chills and generalized pain was its symptoms and coma and heart failure could occur without treatment. · Pneumonia, smallpox(Variola), measles(Rubeola and Rubella), and chickenpox(Varicella) also accounted for a large number of hospital cases and deaths.

3. Innovation after the American Civil War. The six-volume �Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion� was published.  It was based on the experiences of doctors during the American Civil War.  Pavilion-type design was used to build military and civilian hospitals and the hospitals improved sanitation, diet and medical procedures.

Industrial Development

The Civil War were years of rapid economic change and industrial retardation The War slowed industrial development. Previously believed that the war made economy grow faster, the more thorough analysis reveled slowing down of the economy during the years of Civil War. For example, pig-iron, copper productions fall to the lowest level. Cotton textiles were the most popular consumer goods industry in the nineteenth century, but also fell by 6% from 1860 to 1870. The rate of construction was declining too. More over, immigration, a major force of the economic growth, was down, and started to increase only after the war. Some researchers believe that some speculative effects of transferring income from wage, salary and interest receivers to those making profits, meaning concentration of savings in the hands of entrepreneurs who invested in the new activities which resulted in the booms of the last half of the 1860's. This boom was viewed as the prosperity resulting from the war, which was not exactly true. So, from point of view of statistics, the economy grew less rapidly during the five Civil War years than at other times. Many Americans, in their positive attitude, like to see the war as the booster of the progress in addition to liberation of the slaves.

The Phoenix Factor   

To understand better the Phoenix Factor, let�s try to explain the mythological Phoenix: The Phoenix is a supernatural creature, living for 1000 years. Once that time is over, it builds its own funeral pyre, and throws itself into the flames. As it dies, it is reborn anew, and rises from the ashes to live another 1000 years. Alternatively, it lays an egg in the burning coals of the fire, which hatches into a new Phoenix, and the life cycle repeats.

 The Phoenix Factor is an observation that after wars in developed countries, both winners and losers

can be recovered in a short period of time.

 The American Civil war is a very good example that the Phoenix Factor can be supported. As we can see at the graphic below, the United States of America, as a whole, recovered from the Civil War very fast. The costs of the war were almost completely recovered in less than twenty years. The American Civil war, tucks only one generation to recover the country from the war and it can be considered a short period of time, in a historical view.  

 In this war the United States were divided in three groups:  

Free:  California, Connecticut, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Wisconsin. WINNERS  

Slave: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia. LOSERS  

Border:  Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, West Virginia. NEUTRAL    

The general results show that states that stagnated before the war, recovered and then returned to the same situation as in the prewar period.  

First, lets analize the free states. As you can see in the graph below, the free states recovered from heavy war looses within less than fifteen years. States such as Massachusetts, which was growing before war,  recovered from war in twenty years. We can see some exceptions like Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire. This states were not growing befor the war, but after war they surpassed the expectations, and in a decade they were in their pre war levels of development.

Free States:

     

Now, lets talk about the borders states. As a group, the borders states recovered from the war in less than fifteen years. But we can see a mix picture in this states. Some states like Missouri fully recovered to its prewar levels. But Kentucky, Maryland and Delaware also recovered but it took them thrity years to get back to their pre war levels of development.

Borders States:

     

As we can see in the graph below, the slave States were stagmant before the war. In fact, the Civil War destroyed flat economies. A good example is Georgia where after war the economy was as flat as was before. Virginia didn't recovered after war and their ecomony went into a severe decline, because one-third of its land was separated to create West Virginia. We can see others exceptions like Arkansas and Texas that showed numbers similar to those from the northen states:  they were groing before war and recovered from war within twenty years.

Slave States:

   

Causes of the War

In his second inaugural address, President Lincoln summarized the war’s causes:

“Both parties deprecated war but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive; and the other would accept war rather than let it perish.”

In Lincoln’s view, everyone knew that the “peculiar and powerful interest” of southern slavery was the root cause of the war and that disunion was the southern gamble to “strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest.” But what explains the coming of the Civil War?

Abolition of Slavery

The moral crusade of abolitionism was a necessary prerequisite. The predominantly northern movement began in the 1830s, denouncing slavery as a sin and sought its end. Abolitionism was born of revivalism aiming to eradicate the ills of American society. Its members were uncompromising, particularly leading spokesman

William Lloyd Garrison who deemed Constitutional protections of slavery “a covenant with death and an agreement with hell.”

Abolitionists urged others to see slaves as tortured humans. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s best-selling novel “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” helped expose slavery’s cruelty. In 1862, Lincoln quipped, “So you’re the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war.”

Despite growth, abolitionism remained a minority movement. Many northerners were unmoved owing to racism and fears of economic competition. Abolitionists were abused, and northern blacks faced severe discrimination. Following antislavery lectures in Philadelphia’s Pennsylvania Hall, an angry crowd burned the building to the ground in 1838.

Bleeding Kansas and Slave States

While abolitionists seethed with moral intensity, others considered slavery’s economic and political consequences. Many championed “free labor” and felt that the expansion of slave labor doomed the opportunities of white workers. This larger segment of society cared less about slavery in the South than its potential spread westward into areas that represented the “American Dream.”

Fierce partisanship and fear-mongering to win votes shaped politics at mid-century. Free labor defenders warned that a group of elite slaveholders conspired to dominate federal government and expand slavery. The specter of this “slave power,” as they termed it, was effective in rallying supporters.

Fears of the slave power loomed over territorial debates in the 1850s. The most volatile episode originated with the ambitious Illinois Democratic Senator Stephen Douglas. In 1858, Douglas wrangled a Congressional bill opening the Kansas and Nebraska territories to settlement under the principle of popular sovereignty; those who settled there would decide the status of slavery in their territory.

While Douglas viewed this as the essence of self-government, he could not prevent the disastrous effects of “Bleeding Kansas,” where pro- and anti-slavery forces clashed violently. The struggle over slavery there foreshadowed civil war and gave life to a new political force in the nation, the Republican Party.

Rise of the Republican Party

The Republican Party was founded in Pittsburgh in 1856 after the disintegration of the old Whig Party, channeling anger over slavery’s expansion and “Bleeding Kansas.”

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“The normal condition of all the territory of the United States is that of freedom.”

Slavery in the South

To many southerners, slavery was not evil but a God-ordained “positive good.” The pro-slavery intellectual George Fitzhugh of Virginia wrote, “our Southern slavery has become a benign and protective institution, and our Negroes are confessedly better off than any free laboring population in the world.”

Anti-slavery attacks fostered alienation and fears of marginalization within a hostile Union. In self-defense, southern politicians contemplated the advantages of disunion, seen as a drastic but legal security of states’ rights. Period speeches brimmed with hardnosed rhetoric but secession required broad agreement.

A New President

Urgency to invoke secession came after the 1860 election of the sectional Republican candidate, Lincoln. Pennsylvania’s hotly contested electoral votes were crucial in helping Lincoln clinch victory.

Before the inauguration, South Carolina led seven states out of the Union prophesying Republican intentions that “a war must be waged against slavery until it shall cease.” Lincoln’s inaugural vainly sought to assuage southerners: “You can have no conflict, without being yourselves the aggressors.”

The war erupted in South Carolina’s Charleston Harbor at the contested federal Fort Sumter. Lincoln’s refusal to abandon the fort goaded impatient Confederates to open fire on April 12, 1861. Following the formal surrender at Fort Sumter, Lincoln appealed for 75,000 Union volunteers to suppress insurrection, pushing four more states into the Confederacy. As Lincoln put it simply,

“And the war came.”

Consequences of the War

The Civil War lasted four years, killed and maimed more than 1 million Americans, cost billions of dollars and changed a generation. One historian, Philip Paludan, wrote:

“No war... in American history has had such an abiding impact as the Civil War. It spawned three constitutional amendments, [influenced] the election of at least five presidents, destroyed the major social and economic institution of half the nation, freed over 4,000,000 people from slavery, [and] swept 3,000,000 men into military service…”

The conflict’s consequences are often considered only in the context of the effects on the war-devastated South, but the war touched the entire nation.

The war particularly affected Pennsylvania, a large border state that contributed more than 10 percent of the 3 million soldiers and provided critical raw materials and manufacturing. Pennsylvania’s citizens and communities were not immune to the dramatic and sometimes tragic consequences of war.

Casualties and psychological cost

The Civil War was America’s costliest war, with 623,000 dead, with approximately 33,000 from Pennsylvania. Estimates of the wounded are less precise, ranging from 1 million to several million. Many of the wounded were amputees who struggled to overcome perceptions of the disabled as less than full members of society.

The war also created less visible wounds; thousands of veterans calmed war-shattered psyches or chronic pain with opium, tobacco and alcohol. S. Weir Mitchell, a leading medical researcher in Philadelphia, pioneered

investigations into soldier addictions and what he called “neurasthenia,” which we would now call post-traumatic stress disorder.

Physical changes and westward migration

South-central Pennsylvania experienced three notable invasions:

J.E.B. Stuart’s raid in 1862; The famous battle of Gettysburg in the summer of 1863; and

The burning of Chambersburg in1864

In each invasion, stores were plundered, buildings and farms damaged, and livestock destroyed. Confederate raiders burned down the town center of Chambersburg in July 1864.

There were other physical changes, more subtle than trenches, craters and charred timbers. With so many men in the military, farm labor was scarce. Some marginal fields—often the soldiers’—were left fallow and became overgrown as the war dragged on.

Returning veterans sometimes had to choose between exerting backbreaking work to restore the land or migrating west and expending similar effort on richer soil. Many chose to bust Midwestern sod rather than start again in the Keystone State; the war gave renewed impetus to westward migration from Pennsylvania.

The war also accelerated agricultural mechanization, but many regions in Pennsylvania, such as Somerset County, were too hilly for reapers—yet another motivation for heading west.

The war also changed Pennsylvania’s labor-management relations. The wartime demand for Pennsylvania’s iron and coal caused individual entrepreneurs to lose out to larger firms who were better able to fill substantial military orders. When striking workers and petty producers attempted to resist these changes, the Union army intervened, taking the side of management and large producers. Many in Pennsylvania’s Republican Party supported the army’s actions. The Civil War began the alliance of big business and the Republican Party.

While the power of the small producers was fading, other groups were hoping to rise. Veterans became a powerful political force as they agitated for pensions and influenced elections and policy toward the South. Many organized themselves into groups such as the Grand Army of the Republic, the North’s leading veteran’s organization.

Civil War veterans are sometimes recognized as one of the first modern political interest groups, and the development of Civil War pensions was an important precursor to the modern Social Security system.

The push for full citizenship

The war brought about several key amendments to the Constitution:

The 13th Amendment ended slavery; The 14th Amendment guaranteed equal rights; and

The 15th Amendment made it illegal to restrict the right to vote by race or color.

Realizing these promises, however, would be difficult. In particular, African Americans demanded full citizenship. The Gettysburg campaign forced Pennsylvania’s governor to accept African American recruits.

Thousands of blacks served for the Union, and prior to being allowed to enlist in the army, hundreds had volunteered for the storied Massachusetts 54th and 55th volunteer infantry regiments. Massachusetts lacked enough African American men to fill a regiment, so recruiters combed through Pennsylvania for free blacks and escaped southern slaves to complete the unit that was to gain fame at Fort Wagner.

Yet African Americans’ aspirations became a dream deferred. A border state, Pennsylvania delayed granting full rights to African Americans and dragged its feet on ratifying the 15th Amendment.

African Americans mobilized, led by those with military service. Octavius Catto, who had served during the war, led the drive to vote in Philadelphia, until he was murdered at a polling place in 1872.

Harriet Tubman agitated against Pennsylvania’s segregated streetcars and railroads after she was significantly injured while being evicted from one. Streetcars were desegregated, but such victories were grudging. Parts of southern Pennsylvania experienced discrimination in education, employment and housing well into the next century.

Women saw their dreams of equality deferred as well. Despite women’s wartime service in providing for the troops and running farms and businesses, they would not gain the right to vote until 1920.

“The moral equivalent of war”

The war defined both the generation who experienced it and their children, much in the way that the Great Depression and World War II did 80 years later.

Veteran Oliver Wendell Holmes declared that his was a “generation touched by fire,” forever altered by the war.

For many veterans, finding an equivalent purpose was difficult. Those who had been too young to fight or were born later tried to live up to the example set by their father’s generation. For some, service in the Spanish-American War or in expanding America’s colonial empire filled the need.

Another manifestation may have been the late 19th century growth in college athletics. The war boosted the growth of new sports like football and baseball as colleges sought to give young men a defining, non-combat experience that stressed struggle, camaraderie and teamwork, or “the moral equivalent of war” as William James called it.

A popular camp game, baseball was introduced to new areas by returning soldiers. To some extent, then, the experience of a Penn State or Pittsburgh football game—or even the Steelers, Eagles, Pirates or Phillies—is a reminder of the Civil War.

The Long Term Effects of the American Civil War

1865 - Present   

Immediate Consequences

1865  

When the Civil War ended in 1865 the nation was deeply divided along geographical and racial lines. As the Confederate Army of Virginia, drug its self in to stack weapons at Appomattox Courthouse, Gen. Joshua L. Chamberlain, commanding the soldiers waiting in reception, in

surprise move, called his troops to attention and rendered the soldiers salute. The startled Confederates, first thinking they were going to be shot, fell into formation and returned the salute. Afterwards soldiers on both sides joined for hugs, tears, tobacco and food. One part of the nation

anyway was willing to get along. Elsewhere, things were not quiet so clear.  

At an Episcopal Church service in Richmond shortly after the war the priest finally reached Communion portion of the service only too find an elderly black man at the rail. No one knew

quiet what to do until an elderly white man came and kneeled next to him, because the white man was Robert E. Lee everyone else decided it was ok to come forward as well. Some people were

willing to rewrite social rules to reflect new social realities, but not everyone was willing to change ideas and attitudes held for a lifetime.

 As the armies disbanded and the soldiers returned home problems began to arise as to the status of

the freed slaves in the south. Most of the great plantations were in ruins from five years of war. Some of the freed backs stayed on to help rebuild because good bad or indifferent the plantation had been their home. A surprisingly large number of freedmen banded together and headed west.

Many of these groups moved into the Oklahoma Territory and other places as far out as the Central Valley in California, and established all black farming communities that survived into the mid

1900’s.  

Other young freedmen left the plantations and their families and struck out for the wild west of Hollywood fame. Fully one third of the cowboys that the drove the big herds lionized in the early

movies were black. Freedmen showed up in the boomtowns as labors and prospectors.  

In some ways it would seem that the freedmen were integrating into the American society just fine but things weren’t really going that well. Nathan Bedford Forest started a drinking club for Southern Civil War veterans called the Ku Klux Klan. They wore white robes because they

considered themselves to be ghosts, the walking dead; but, mostly they sat around and drank and told war stories.

 Unfortunately, at the same time Forrest was starting his club another group was forming called the Night Riders: they wore white sheets to hide their identities. The Night Riders were dedicated to

enslaving the freedmen through the practical application of force and terror. Not surprisingly there were quite a few members of the Night Riders who were also members of the KKK. In a very short

period of time the two groups became completely intertwined. Ultimately, Forrest renounced his organization and walked away from it.

 

Reconstruction 1866 - 1877

 With roving bands of white marauders terrorizing the southern countryside now President U.S.

Grant decided he had to do something to reestablish law and order in the Deep South. Grant sent soldiers to protect the rights of the freedmen.

 Blacks were guaranteed the right to vote and an equal standing under law by the 1866 Civil Right Act. Reconstruction was enacted in no small part to enforce the provisions of the act. Blacks were

elected to both state and national office and began to gain real power.  

For eight years blacks gained a somewhat equal footing in the south, it didn’t last though as Reconstruction was ended when Grant left office. The Army was recalled back north and the KKK was allow to enforce a new kind of slavery on the freedmen who had stayed behind, and on poor

whites as well, called share cropping.  

During this period a large number of veterans from both north and south left their homes and headed west of the Mississippi looking for adventure, now days we would diagnose these men with

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). The James Gang, the Daltons and other were all Civil War veterans, men who had seen and done it all. It’s not hard to understand how life back on the

farm could no longer hold any charms for men who had fought at Shiloh, Pea Ridge, Gettysburg or Cold Harbor. In the case of the Daltons, they had been irregulars in Bleeding Kansas and Missouri,

they couldn’t go home. 

Also, by the end of the Civil War the Nation was awash in guns. No one ever talks about it, but after the big battles there were guns strewn everywhere. It was all the armies could do to gather up the wounded and maybe bury some of the dead. Cannon were rounded up of course but rifles and

pistols were at most stacked out of the way and left. Neither of the armies had the resources to deal with them. It’s not had to imagine some sutler out there loading wagons with salvaged rifles for

resale. 

During the Civil War many of the Far Western Indian tribes was this as their opportunity to revolt and take back their land. The California Column had suffered repeated Indian attacks while chasing

after the Confederate Gen. Sibley. The arms for these rebellions came from the Civil War battlefields, as did the soldiers who put down the rebels.

 If you think of that period we call the Wild West, it was pretty much tamed down by 1885. The

craziest of the bunch were shot or hanged by that point and the rest were moving into their forties and early fifties, a time when men settle down anyways. To tired to cause very much trouble and to sore to do much more than rock on the porch. But, there was another factor in calming things down

nation wide was the beginning of reunions and the rise of the Veterans Movements. The old soldiers began to meet and go back to their old battlefields, sometimes they even staged

reenactments. As then men got together they began to talk among themselves about how much they had suffered and what a raw deal they had got. This lead to marches on Washington and calls for better treatment for war veterans in general; men with a cause don’t have time for making trouble

as there is always another petition to write or a rally to organize.  

Jim Crow 1877 - 1972

 The underlying principle to everything that happened after Reconstruction was a series of local

laws and customs called Jim Crow. People often site slavery as the cause of racial inequality in the United States but really the more significant culprit was Jim Crow. As hard as it might be to

believe, Jim Corw was alive and well into the 1970's.  

While Reconstruction was in effect blacks were gaining in wealth and prosperity. In the west black were working alongside their white counter parts. All of this progress stopped and was reversed by Jim Crow. Those black communities started in Oklahoma and the west? They were all destroyed by racial business practices that guaranteed the communities failure. All of the black politicians were voted out of office when there were no troops to enforce black voting rights. Black business that had been started were burned out and forced to stay closed by threat of whippings and lynching.

 Small farmers who had moved on to abandoned plantations were forced into share cropping and

now not allowed to leave. The KKK became an enforcement tool for the wealthy and the attitudes of racial hatred spread in all directions. We are all still suffering the repercussions of Jim Crow to

this day.

History of African Americans in the Civil War

"Once let the black man get upon his person the brass letters, U.S., let him get an eagle on his button, and a musket on his shoulder and bullets in his pockets, and there is no power on earth which can deny that he has earned the right to citizenship in the United States." - - Frederick Douglass

These words spoken by Frederick Douglass moved many African Americans to enlist in the Union Army and fight for their freedom. With President Abraham Lincoln's issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, the Civil War became a war to save the union and to abolish slavery.

Approximately 180,000 African Americans comprising 163 units served in the Union Army during the Civil War, and many more African Americans served in the Union Navy. Both free African-Americans and runaway slaves joined the fight.

On July 17, 1862, Congress passed two acts allowing the enlistment of African Americans, but official enrollment occurred only after the September, 1862 issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation. In general, white soldiers and officers believed that black men lacked the courage to fight and fight well. In October, 1862, African American soldiers of the 1st Kansas Colored Volunteers silenced their critics by repulsing attacking Confederates at the battle of Island Mound, Missouri. By August, 1863, 14 Negro Regiments were in the field and ready for service. At the battle of Port Hudson, Louisiana, May 27, 1863, the African American soldiers bravely advanced over open ground in the face of deadly artillery fire. Although the attack failed, the black soldiers proved their capability to withstand the heat of battle.

On July 17, 1863, at Honey Springs, Indian Territory, now Oklahoma, the 1st Kansas Colored fought with courage again. Union troops under General James Blunt ran into a strong Confederate force under General Douglas Cooper. After a two-hour bloody engagement, Cooper's soldiers retreated. The 1st Kansas, which had held the center of the Union line, advanced to within fifty paces of the Confederate line and exchanged fire for some twenty minutes until the Confederates broke and ran. General Blunt wrote after the battle, "I never saw such fighting as was done by the Negro regiment....The question that negroes will fight is settled; besides they make better solders in every respect than any troops I have ever had under my command."

The most widely known battle fought by African Americans was the assault on Fort Wagner, South Carolina, by the 54th Massachusetts on July 18, 1863. The 54th volunteered to lead the assault on the strongly-fortified Confederate positions. The soldiers of the 54th scaled the fort's parapet, and were only driven back after brutal hand-to-hand combat.

Although black soldiers proved themselves as reputable soldiers, discrimination in pay and other areas remained widespread. According to the Militia Act of 1862, soldiers of African descent were to receive $10.00 a month, plus a clothing allowance of $3.50. Many regiments struggled for equal pay, some refusing any money until June 15, 1864, when Congress granted equal pay for all black soldiers.

African American soldiers participated in every major campaign of 1864-1865 except Sherman's invasion of Georgia. The year 1864 was especially eventful for African American troops. On April 12, 1864, at Fort Pillow, Tennessee, Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest led his 2,500 men against the Union-held fortification, occupied by 292 black and 285 white soldiers. After driving in the Union pickets and giving the garrison an opportunity to surrender, Forrest's men swarmed into the fort with little difficulty and drove the Federals down the river's bluff into a deadly crossfire. Casualties were high and only sixty-two of the U.S. Colored Troops survived the fight. Many accused the Confederates of perpetuating a massacre of black troops, and the controversy continues today. The battle cry for the Negro soldier east of the Mississippi River became "Remember Fort Pillow!"

The Battle of New Market Heights, Virginia (Chaffin's Farm) became one of the most heroic engagements involving African Americans. On September 29, 1864, the African American division of the Eighteenth Corps, after being pinned down by Confederate artillery fire for about 30 minutes, charged the earthworks and rushed up the slopes of the heights. During the hour-long engagement the division suffered tremendous casualties. Of the sixteen African Americans who were awarded the Medal of Honor during the Civil War, fourteen received the honor as a result of their actions at New Market Heights.

In January, 1864, General Patrick Cleburne and several other Confederate officers in the Army of the Tennessee proposed using slaves as soldiers since the Union was using black troops. Cleburne recommended

offering slaves their freedom if they fought and survived. Confederate President Jefferson Davis refused to consider Cleburne's proposal and forbade further discussion of the idea. The concept, however, did not die. By the fall of 1864, the South was losing more and more ground, and some believed that only by arming the slaves could defeat be averted. On March 13, the Confederate Congress passed General Order 14, and President Davis signed the order into law. The order was issued March 23, 1865, but only a few African American companies were raised, and the war ended before they could be used in battle.

In actual numbers, African American soldiers comprised 10% of the entire Union Army. Losses among African Americans were high, and from all reported casualties, approximately one-third of all African Americans enrolled in the military lost their lives during the Civil War.

Black Soldiers in the Civil War

Background

"Once let the black man get upon his person the brass letter, U.S., let him get an eagle on his button, and a musket on his shoulder and bullets in his pocket, there is no power on earth that can deny that he has earned the right to citizenship."

Frederick Douglass

The issues of emancipation and military service were intertwined from the onset of the Civil War. News from Fort Sumter set off a rush by free black men to enlist in U.S. military units. They were turned away, however, because a Federal law dating from 1792 barred Negroes from bearing arms for the U.S. army (although they had served in the American Revolution and in the War of 1812). In Boston disappointed would-be volunteers met and passed a resolution requesting that the Government modify its laws to permit their enlistment.

The Lincoln administration wrestled with the idea of authorizing the recruitment of black troops, concerned that such a move would prompt the border states to secede. When Gen. John C. Frémont (photo citation: 111-B-3756) in Missouri and Gen. David Hunter (photo citation: 111-B-3580) in South Carolina issued proclamations that emancipated slaves in their military regions and permitted them to enlist, their superiors sternly revoked their orders. By mid-1862, however, the escalating number of former slaves (contrabands), the declining number of white volunteers, and the increasingly pressing personnel needs of the Union Army pushed the Government into reconsidering the ban.

As a result, on July 17, 1862, Congress passed the Second Confiscation and Militia Act, freeing slaves who had masters in the Confederate Army. Two days later, slavery was abolished in the territories of the United States, and on July 22 President Lincoln (photo citation: 111-B-2323) presented the preliminary draft of the Emancipation Proclamation to his Cabinet. After the Union Army turned back Lee's first invasion of the North at Antietam, MD, and the Emancipation Proclamation was subsequently announced, black recruitment was pursued in earnest. Volunteers from South Carolina, Tennessee, and Massachusetts filled the first authorized black regiments. Recruitment was slow until black leaders such as Frederick Douglass (photo citation: 200-FL-22) encouraged black men to become soldiers to ensure eventual full citizenship. (Two of Douglass's own sons contributed to the war effort.) Volunteers began to respond, and in May 1863 the Government established the Bureau of Colored Troops to manage the burgeoning numbers of black soldiers.

By the end of the Civil War, roughly 179,000 black men (10% of the Union Army) served as soldiers in the U.S. Army and another 19,000 served in the Navy. Nearly 40,000 black soldiers died over the course of the war—30,000 of infection or disease. Black soldiers served in artillery and infantry and performed all noncombat support functions that sustain an army, as well. Black carpenters, chaplains, cooks, guards, laborers, nurses, scouts, spies, steamboat pilots, surgeons, and teamsters also contributed to the war cause. There were nearly 80 black commissioned officers. Black women, who could not formally join the Army, nonetheless served as nurses, spies, and scouts, the most famous being Harriet Tubman (photo citation: 200-HN-PIO-1), who scouted for the 2d South Carolina Volunteers.

Because of prejudice against them, black units were not used in combat as extensively as they might have been. Nevertheless, the soldiers served with distinction in a number of battles. Black infantrymen fought gallantly at Milliken's Bend, LA; Port Hudson, LA; Petersburg, VA; and Nashville, TN. The July 1863 assault on Fort Wagner, SC, in which the 54th Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteers lost two-thirds of their officers and half of their troops, was

memorably dramatized in the film Glory. By war's end, 16 black soldiers had been awarded the Medal of Honor for their valor.

In addition to the perils of war faced by all Civil War soldiers, black soldiers faced additional problems stemming from racial prejudice. Racial discrimination was prevalent even in the North, and discriminatory practices permeated the U.S. military. Segregated units were formed with black enlisted men and typically commanded by white officers and black noncommissioned officers. The 54th Massachusetts was commanded by Robert Shaw and the 1st South Carolina by Thomas Wentworth Higginson—both white. Black soldiers were initially paid $10 per month from which $3 was automatically deducted for clothing, resulting in a net pay of $7. In contrast, white soldiers received $13 per month from which no clothing allowance was drawn. In June 1864 Congress granted equal pay to the U.S. Colored Troops and made the action retroactive. Black soldiers received the same rations and supplies. In addition, they received comparable medical care.

The black troops, however, faced greater peril than white troops when captured by the Confederate Army. In 1863 the Confederate Congress threatened to punish severely officers of black troops and to enslave black soldiers. As a result, President Lincoln issued General Order 233, threatening reprisal on Confederate prisoners of war (POWs) for any mistreatment of black troops. Although the threat generally restrained the Confederates, black captives were typically treated more harshly than white captives. In perhaps the most heinous known example of abuse, Confederate soldiers shot to death black Union soldiers captured at the Fort Pillow, TN, engagement of 1864. Confederate General Nathan B. Forrest witnessed the massacre and did nothing to stop it.

The document featured with this article is a recruiting poster directed at black men during the Civil War. It refers to efforts by the Lincoln administration to provide equal pay for black soldiers and equal protection for black POWs. The original poster is located in the Records of the Adjutant General's Office, 1780's–1917, Record Group 94.

CIVIL WAR SOLDIERS Being able to fight in a DIVIDED AMERICA presented a complex set of rules for American Blacks. Some were FREE, some were SLAVES seeking freedom, and some were fighters with LOYALTY to a way of life UNDER CONFEDERATE RULE. Equality was hard to achieve for the African American during this ERA in history. The war was a bloody one, and it cost the lives of over 38,000 Blacks seeking to be a part of the FREEDOM ON AMERICAN SOIL.

African-American Soldiers In The Union Army During The Civil War During the Seventeenth, Eighteenth and part of theNineteenth Century the White people of North America used theBlack people of Africa as slaves to benefit their interests. Whitepeople created a climate of superiority of their race over the BlackAfrican race that in some places, still lingers on today. TheAmerican Civil War however, was a key turning point for theBlack African race. Through their actions and the political actionsof President Lincoln and his administration, Black Africans set apresedent for their freedom, equality and liberation. A very important aspect of Blacks proving themselves wasthat of the Black Man acting as a soldier in the Civil War. Duringthe Civil War the official decision to use Blacks as soldiers in theUnion Army was a slow gradual process and a series of strategicpolitical decisions. The actual use of Blacks as soldiers in theUnion Army was completed by a series of actions the Black Manperformed that won him the respect of becoming a soldier. Thetwo differ in that it was to President Lincoln's benefit to enlistBlacks as soldiers when he did. Whereas the later was the BlackMan's will to fight for his freedom and prove himself as an equal

human being. However, because the Black population was barredfrom entering the army under a 1792 law(4) the Black Manbecoming a soldier was not officially recognized until late 1862. "There was strong anti-Black prejudice among most peoplein the free states, and in the loyal slave states the idea of arming the Black man was anthema"(1). This statement directly reflects thegenerally held fear White people had about putting Blacks on thefighting line of the armies in the Civil War. Whites felt that theCivil War was a war started upon the White Man's issues and whatpossible reason would the Black Man have for wanting to fight inthis war. On the contrary The Black Man saw The Civil War as anopportunity to win...

The Civil War:

Black American Contributions to Union Intelligence

P. K. Rose

P. K. Rose is in the Directorate of Operations.

"Black Dispatches" was a common term used among Union military men for intelligence on Confederate forces provided by Negroes. This source of information represented the single most prolific and productive category of intelligence obtained and acted on by Union forces throughout the Civil War. In 1862, Frederick Douglass wrote:

 

The true history of this war will show that the loyal army found no friends at the South so faithful, active, and daring in their efforts to sustain the government as the Negroes-. Negroes have repeatedly threaded their way through the lines of the rebels exposing themselves to bullets to convey important information to the loyal army of the Potomac. 1

Black Dispatches resulted from frontline tactical debriefings of slaves--either runaways or those having just come under Union control. Black Americans also contributed, however, to tactical and strategic Union intelligence through behind-the-lines missions and agent-in-place operations. Two such Union agents functioned as long-term penetrations of Confederate President Jefferson Davis's "White House" staff in Richmond, Virginia. Even such a prominent woman as Harriet Tubman, best known for her activities involving the "underground railroad," played an important role in Union intelligence activities.

The value of the information that could be obtained, both passively and actively, by black Americans behind Confederate lines was clearly understood by most Union generals early in the war. Popular recognition of this was also apparent through a stream of articles and stories in the Northern press during the war. Gen. Robert E. Lee, commander of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, was equally aware, and in May 1863 he said, "The chief source of information to the enemy is through our Negroes." 2 Because of the culture of slavery in the South, Negroes involved in menial activities could move about without suspicion. Also, officials and officers tended to ignore their presence as personal servants when discussing war-related matters.

After the war, however, the intelligence contributions of black Americans became obscure. While racial prejudice probably played a part in this, as it did regarding the military contributions of black American Union military units, several other factors added to this lack of recognition. Historically, most successful spies do not want their identities made public. Even individuals who may have provided one-time pieces of useful intelligence usually prefer anonymity. This was particularly true in the emotional period after the Civil War, when many of these black Americans lived near people still loyal to the South.

Simple lack of official records of intelligence activities on both sides was another factor. Many of these records were purposely destroyed to protect those involved and still living. One of the last acts of the Confederate secretary of war before fleeing Richmond in 1865 was to destroy virtually all intelligence files, including counterintelligence records regarding Union spies.

In Washington, the War Department turned over portions of its intelligence files to many of the participants involved. Most of these records were subsequently destroyed or lost. Thus, accounts by individuals of their parts in the war or official papers focusing on larger subjects, such as military official correspondence, have become important sources of information on intelligence activities. Much of this information is difficult to substantiate or place in perspective and context due to the lack of supporting documents.

Twenty-four books were published after the war by self-proclaimed spies or counterspies-19 by men and five by women. Seventeen of these books came from the Union side and seven from the Confederate side. None were written by black Americans. Nevertheless, research of existing records does permit the identification of nine black Americans whose intelligence contributions to the Union cause were significant.

One of the first large-scale Civil War battles was the result of information provided by George Scott, a runaway slave. He furnished intelligence on Confederate fortifications and troop movements to Gen. Benjamin F. Butler, commander of Fort Monroe located at the mouth of the James River on the tip of the Virginia peninsula. Shortly after the start of the war, Butler had issued orders that all "contraband" 3 arriving in Union lines be brought to his headquarters for debriefing.

Scott had escaped from a plantation near Yorktown. While making his way toward Fort Monroe, he observed that Confederate forces had thrown up two fortifications between Yorktown and the fortress. Butler's officers were impressed with Scott's information but wanted to confirm it. Scott agreed to accompany a Union officer on several scouting trips behind Confederate lines to obtain more specific intelligence. On one of these missions, Scott barely missed being wounded by a Confederate picket; the bullet went through his jacket.

Based on the intelligence gained from these missions, Butler determined that Confederate forces were planning an attack on Newport News, capture of which would isolate Fort Monroe from Union resupply. He ordered a preemptive attack on the Confederate position, 4 but the military operation was poorly conducted and ended in a Union defeat. Although the intelligence was solid, the military tactics were not

Blacks in the American Civil War

Despite extreme prejudices from the white society, African American soldiers were true heroes in the American Civil War. At the beginning of the Civil War, Lincoln called for a recruitment of 75,000 men. Many blacks came to volunteer, but were sent away unwanted. Most of the white population considered the Civil War to be a 'White man's war.' Gov. David Todd had said, "This is a white man's government, and we are able to defend and protect it"

(McRae). Although very few, there were some white generals who wanted to recruit blacks into the Army. Lincoln's reasoning behind not letting blacks into the Army was because he wanted to preserve the Union, without having to deal with the issue of slavery. In addition, he did not want the Border States to separate from the Union and join the Confederacy. If he let blacks join the Army, then white soldiers would have refused to fight with them. Many people felt that blacks were not able to fight as well as whites, and considered it a waste to enlist them. Gov. John Andrews of Massachusetts said, "It is not my opinion that our generals, when any man comes to the standard and desires to defend the flag, will find it important to light a candle and

In actual numbers, black soldiers comprised 10% of the entire Union Army. see what his complexion is, or to consult the family Bible to ascertain whether his grandfather came from the banks of the Thanes or of the Senegal" (McRae). The Confederate army did not consider the usage of slaves throughout the war. The United States Civil War began as an effort to save the Union, and ended in a fight to abolish slavery. Fredrick Douglass, a powerful black leader in New York, saw the Civil War as a road to emancipation for the slaves. Although known as the "Great Emancipator," Lincoln also thought that blacks were inferior to whites in battle. There were doubts about this group from the beginning. Blacks were to receive $10 a month and $3. Casualties were high and only sixty-two blacks survived the fight. The most widely known battle fought by blacks, was the assault on Fort Wagner, South Carolina. In the beginning when they were caught the Union sent them to their owners, but after a period of time the Union decided to let them perform support service for the Northern war effort. Then make use of the offers Government has made you, for if you are not willing to fight your way up to office, you are not worthy of it. White soldiers and officers believed that blacks lacked the courage to fight and fight well.

Blacks in the Civil WarThe United States Civil War began as an effort to save the Union, and ended in a fight to abolish slavery. This battle for emancipation, some would argue, was won by the slaves themselves. While this remains a debate, it is clear that the slaves did contribute significantly to their own freedom. By running from masters to become contrabands for the Union, laboring behind the scenes for Northern armies, and risking their lives on the battlefront, the slaves centralized the issue of freedom and played a key role in the North's victory.

As slavemasters in the South grew fearful of losing slaves to the Union armies, they implemented harsher restrictions upon their slaves, often moving the entire plantation further inland to avoid Northern contact. These changes, however, only caused the slaves to flee, and those that did stay demanded more freedom from their masters. In this way, the slaves gained some power in the situation, forcing masters to make offerings in exchange for labor.

After initially striving to keep the slavery issue out of the war, the Northeners began enlisting blacks to assist them in the fight. Lincoln's Second Confiscation Act and the Militia Act, both of 1862, were significant in building the Northern military, because together they punished rebel slaveholders and encouraged employment of blacks in the Union army. These black slaves fought both on the line as soldiers and behind the scenes in labor tasks. Many blacks, inspired by their involvement, returned home to free their families and friends. Some even reinhabited the plantations, took over the former masters' possessions, and began their own cropping.

Other plantations had been left in the hands of white women, the old, and disabled when the men had left to fight for the Confederate army. This led to a further breakup in slave discipline and labor production in the South.

While the blacks were making strides toward their own freedom, they were aided by the decisions made by the President. Issued by Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation led to the eventual freedom of all slaves. The historic document officially made free all bondsmen in areas of the Confederacy that were in rebellion. Slavery was not abolished in the boarder states, Tennessee, or Union occupied areas of Louisiana and Virginia, however.

Lincoln delayed in issuing his proclamation to avoid alienating the slave owning boarder states. He feared that Maryland, Deleware, Kentucky, and Missouri would seceed from the Union if he did so. Following the Northern victory at Antietim, Lincoln realized it was time to act. Five days after the battle, on September 22, 1862, he issued a preliminary proclamation. It stated that if the Confederate states did not rejoin the Union by January 1, 1863, he would declare their slaves "forever free". The rebels declined, and the Emancipation Proclamation came into being.

Since the proclamation only affected the states in rebellion, it didn't actually free any slaves. What it did do, however, was strengthen the Northern war effort. They now were fighting for a cause. By the end of the Civil War, over 500,000 slaves had escaped to the North, many of whom joined the Union Army, greatly increasing its man power. The Emancipation Proclamation also led to the 13th Amendment , enacted on December 18, 1865, which legally freed all slaves still in bondage.

A final goal the Emancipation Proclamation accomplished was to discourage England and France from entering the war on the South's side. They were supplied with cotton and tobacco by the South, and wanted them to win. However, when the war became an argument over slavery, the European nations, who were opposed to human bondage, gave their support to the Union, and the fight for freedom was eventually won. In April of 1865, General Lee surrendered and the war was over. When word of freedom finally reached the slaves in midsummer, they created Juneteenth to celebrate their emacipation, a holiday still celebrated in some areas today.

The Fifty-Fourth regiment , the only all black unit in the Union Army, particularly contributed to the Northern efforts and further symbolized a new found unity among blacks. For these reasons, it is worthy of more careful exploration.

In 1863, John Andrew, theWar Govenor of Massachusetts, made a request to the secretary of war, Edwin Stanton, to create a volunteer regiment of African Americans. The Fifty-Fourth would include soldiers not only from Massachusetts, since its own black population was not sufficient, but from all over the country. To aid in the recruiting process, the War Govenor called upon the help of African-American leaders such as Frederick Douglass and William Wells Brown. In two months 1,000 men had enlisted in the volunteer army, with every state being represented. The superior officer, though, would not be black. Some credentials were necessary for the person who would lead this unique regiment. In particular Andrew sought

...young men of military experience, of firm

antislavery principles, ambitious, superior to the

vulgar contempt of colour, and having faith in the capacity of

coloured men for military service...

 

The man for the job was Robert Shaw.

The Regiment and their captain set off for Beaufort, Scouth Carolina on May 28, 1863. Their mission was to attack the Confederates at Fort Wagner. Wagner was the key to Charleston and therefore the attack on it was a significant one, but storming the fort meant marching through bands of Confederate infantry and artillary. Wagner itself was surrounded by a ditch and had thick, high walls. Adding to the list of feats to overcome was the sheer size of the Confederates compared to the size of the Fifty-Fourth. Obstacle after obstacle presented itself to the underprepared and undertrained regiment, but still they marched on. Shaw and a few of his men pushed to the top of the parapet. There the colonel was shot and killed. In spite of the almost total decimation of the regiment,the assault was not a complete failure. Through their heroic actions,the Fifty-Fourth was said to have "blazed a path" for future African American soldiers that would "wind its way to Appomattox."

The unfortunate end to the storming of Fort Wagner did not deter other blacks from volunteering. Rather, the heroic efforts of the Fifty-Fourth served as an incentive. Most African Americans felt as this man did, in his letter to the Boston Daily paper, " ...(we)will go where duty shall call...not as a black man, but as an American..." As often as they attempted, though, some blacks were denied enlistment. A general belief among white leaders was that the war would not last more than one hundred days. Thus to put blacks in the army, to hand them rifles and guns, seemed foolish and futile. If they could not volunteer, then the least they could do was donate food,clothing, or money.

Surprisingly, some Southern blacks wanted to fight for the Confederate cause. A patriotic duty rose above all others in a slave's life. Even though they were not citizens, slaves thought themselves as such. Yet many slaves did not feel like lending their help to the South. In fact, when the Yankee soldiers marched through a Southern town, the slaves often fled to the Northern lines. These fugitives, known as "contraband" to the Union, were often a problem. Yankees did not know whether to return them to the fields or to hand them guns. What they did realize was that the slaves knew the geography of the South far better than any Northern soldier. Eventually, it was declared that these fugitives could be used in a helpful manner to the North, if and only if they were organized into units on a small scale. Therefore, slaves could serve as soldiers, scouts, spies, and messengers to the Union.

The War between the States proved to be a war for democracy. The much awaited liberation of the slaves revived the ideals that founded the country. For once, under the law, men were equal. These changes were more quick to come about due to the persistent efforts made by the blacks themselves. By resisting their masters and through the military aid and other labor tasks they provided the North, the blacks pushed for their own emancipation. Although a formal Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth Amendment freed blacks in America, it would be a long time before they truly gained equality. Only decades of hard work would lessen the racism that had been so engrained in the minds of Americans. Blacks had yet to overcome the prejudice, segregation, and discrimination rampant in the American society.

Free Blacks During the Civil War

Free blacks in Virginia numbered 58,042 on the eve of the American Civil War (1861–1865), or about 44 percent of the future Confederacy's free black population. Of the slave states, only Maryland had a larger population, with 83,942. Free blacks were concentrated in Virginia's cities. According to the 1860 census, the

greatest number, 3,244, resided in Petersburg, followed by Richmond with 2,576, Alexandria with 1,415, and Norfolk with 1,046. Free blacks included men and women of African descent who were born free or who gained their freedom before the war through manumission. Virginia officially required freed slaves to leave the state after 1806, but many remained in violation of the law. Of course, many more African Americans became free during the war, escaping the fighting as refugees or claiming legal freedom through the Emancipation Proclamation (1863). Although Confederate propagandists insisted that free blacks would support the Confederate cause, their service was often rendered only by the threat of violence. In the meantime, concerns about their loyalty combined with their disproportionate wartime suffering contributed to Virginia's internal divisions and exposed the weaknesses of Confederate ideology.

Free Blacks Under Confederate Authority

During the war, free blacks in Virginia suffered the usual oppressions of a slave society. They could not vote or hold office or even testify against whites in courts of law. They were required to carry certification of their free status and were liable to punishment or imprisonment on suspicion of being a slave. The war brought increased vigilance as Confederates became more apprehensive of the free black population. For instance, authorities evicted the James family from their home near Deep Bottom on the James River because they suspected them of providing information to Union gunboats.

Free blacks in Virginia disproportionately suffered the hardships of war. Legislators authorized governmental relief efforts in race-neutral language, technically including free blacks. Few resources, significant hunger, and official indifference, however, meant that free blacks received relatively little aid. Though slaves undoubtedly suffered from scarcity of food, clothing, and medicine during the war, their masters, at least theoretically, were expected to provide for their welfare. With little support outside of their own hard-pressed communities, free blacks were particularly hard hit by Union and Confederate confiscations and the devastations of the war. Free blacks, like poor whites and Confederate deserters, increasingly resorted to crime to survive during the war.

Free Black Unionism

Free blacks in Virginia almost unanimously supported the Union over the Confederacy as a rejection of their subordinate positions within Southern society. Though not personally enslaved themselves, free blacks embraced the abolition of slavery. Elizabeth Wingfield of Dinwiddie County supported the Union side because "I thought they had come to free all the colored people & to give them their rights." Wingfield, like many other free blacks in Virginia, counted a relative—her husband—among the enslaved. Even free blacks without enslaved relatives had reason to support the Union over the Confederacy. William James of Henrico County supported the Union because "I believed that if the Rebels gained their independence they would make slaves of all of us free colored people." White Virginians never passed a re-enslavement law, but the possibility of such legislation rendered freedom for blacks precarious.

Other free blacks hoped that the Union would bring racial equality. Isaac Pleasants of Henrico County believed that "it was to the interest of all colored people to be in favor of the Yankees as I had an idea that slavery was a good deal at stake in the conflict between the states and that the success of the North would improve the condition of the slaves, at least." At most, free blacks hoped that the Union victory would grant them equal rights. Joseph Brown of New Kent County explained, "We had no chance for education & hardly any rights at all. I always believed the Yankees would give me my rights, & I prayed constantly for them to come."

The Union's emancipation measures did not include political or civil equality, but free blacks believed that northern principles better approximated true freedom than southern principles. Reuben Gilliam of Prince George County supported the Union because "I was born free and had traveled at the North. I saw the difference in the condition of free people of color in the two sections. I labored under heavy burdens and I

believed I should be better off in every particular under the Union than under the Confederacy." To free blacks, the Union cause represented abolition and equality.

Free Blacks and the Confederate and Union War Efforts

Though free blacks in Virginia supported the Union cause, they were not always able to act on these principles. Confederates hoped to offset the Union's white manpower advantage by employing blacks as military, agricultural, and industrial laborers. The Virginia legislature passed a law in February 1862 authorizing the impressment of free black labor. The law instructed local courts to register all free black men between the ages of eighteen and fifty for military labor. Under the law, the adjutant general ordered requisitions at the request of commanding officers, a board of three justices chose the laborers from the registration list, and the local sheriff notified free blacks of their impressment. By law, free blacks served for 180 days without their consent, received compensation for their labor, and incurred fines from $50 to $150 if they evaded impressment.

The Confederacy mobilized a large portion of its black population. The majority of the laborers in the Confederate salt, iron, and lead mines, for example, were blacks. In addition, African Americans occupied positions as hospital nurses, cooks, teamsters, and construction laborers. The labor of free blacks in war manufactories, defensive works, and military hospitals allowed the Confederacy to muster a large proportion of its population on the battlefield. In this manner, free black labor contributed to the Confederacy's ability to wage war.

Free blacks in Virginia considered their labors for the Confederacy as coerced and resisted their impressment when possible. Confederates forced William Peters of Rockingham County to labor for the Confederacy, "which I hated to do, but could not help it." He objected, but "they talked about lynching me if I did not do it." Isaac Pleasants, a free black of Henrico County, "deserted" his labor on the batteries around Richmond after about a month. Robert James, a free black of Henrico County, secured a pass to return home temporarily before being sent to the iron mines, but "I didn't go back, but hid in the woods and kept out of the war."

Joseph Brown of New Kent County escaped impressment by claiming to be unfit for service. Warren C. Cumber of New Kent County secured the aid of a lawyer to escape work on the fortifications at Yorktown on the argument that he needed to tend his crops. Confederate officers threatened to hang John T. Gibbs of Norfolk if he refused to work on the breastworks, but he escaped and boasted that he "never shoveled a spadeful for them." Free blacks resisted their impressment at great peril. Benjamin Summers of Norfolk performed his labor on Confederate fortifications with a ball and chain around his leg. He later attempted an unsuccessful escape and "I was given five hundred lashes and then rubbed down with salt brine."

Free blacks in Virginia also voluntarily aided the Union army and navy. They performed similar services for the Union, acting as teamsters, laborers, guides, cooks, and washers, and also as soldiers. Free blacks, sometimes in concert with white Unionists, also helped slaves, Confederate deserters, and Union prisoners escape to Union lines. Free blacks faced considerable Confederate harassment in retaliation for their aid to the Union. Confederate cavalrymen arrested William Pugh of Norfolk in 1861 and beat him with a club for reporting information to the Union army.

While free blacks supported the Union cause, they did not always contribute to the Union war effort voluntarily. The Union army cleaned out the provisions of the Alford family of Spotsylvania County. Catharine Alford objected and "begged them not to take them, but they said they were in need of them and must have them." With these contributions, both reluctant and enthusiastic, free blacks in Virginia, along with slaves, helped the Union to win the war.

Black Civil War Soldiers

The service of black soldiers in the Union army during the American Civil War (1861–1865)

represents one of the most dramatic episodes in African-American history. Over a short time

period, black men went from being powerless chattel to being part of a liberating army, helping

to free nearly four million slaves from bondage. Yet their experience was not entirely positive.

Their services as soldiers were initially refused, and they had to fight for the right to fight. Even

when the Union army did accept them, black men had to serve in segregated units under the

command of white officers. The federal government also tried to pay African Americans less

than white soldiers, and it subjected them to other humiliating forms of discrimination and ill

treatment. Nonetheless, black soldiers served loyally and proved their worth in battle, winning

the grudging admiration of even their Confederate enemies and a permanent place in the post-

war U.S. Army.

The service of black soldiers seemed unlikely at the beginning of the Civil War. White

Northerners and Southerners alike were of the opinion that the conflict would be a war for

white men only. In part, the resistance to black soldiers was the result of racist beliefs that

African Americans were mentally and temperamentally unsuited for military service. Whites

accepted this myth in spite of the participation of black men in the Revolutionary War and the

War of 1812, and African Americans were turned away in both the Union and the Confederate

ranks. However, resistance to black military service also stemmed from conceptions of

citizenship in the nineteenth-century. At the time, Americans tended to see citizenship as not

only bestowing rights, but also entailing duties—the foremost of which was military service. If

black men were allowed to serve, they would have a strong argument for claiming citizenship

rights, having borne the most onerous obligation of citizenship.

Black leaders were keenly aware of this connection between citizenship and military service.

Frederick Douglass famously told an audience in July 1863, “Once let the black man get upon

his person the brass letters U.S.; let him get an eagle on his button, and a musket on his

shoulder, and bullets in his pocket, and there is no power on earth or under the earth which

can deny that he has earned the right of citizenship in the United States” (Foner 1999, p. 536).

This belief helps explain the later presence of Frederick Douglass and other African-American

leaders at the forefront of Union recruitment efforts in free black communities. In addition to

Douglass, prominent leaders such as Henry Highland Garnet, William Wells Brown, Martin R.

Delany, and George T. Downing recruited literally thousands of young blacks for the Union

army in the hope that their service would help transform the struggle into one that would free

the slaves and bring African Americans equal rights in a transformed and redeemed republic.

Some white persons shared the aspirations of black Americans. Army officers and politicians

with abolitionist sentiments, dissenting from racism and the apathy toward slavery in the

North, saw black enlistment as a way to undermine slavery and bolster postwar claims of

African Americans for citizenship, and so they sought to organize black military units without

the blessing of the federal government. James H. Lane, a Kansas abolitionist turned U.S.

senator, organized the first all-black unit in the Union army, the Kansas Colored Regiment, in

July 1862. General John W. Phelps, in the Department of the Gulf in Louisiana, and General

David Hunter, in the Sea Islands region of South Carolina and Georgia, also recruited African

Americans for military service shortly thereafter. None of these men had the authority to

recruit black soldiers, however, but they hoped to force the hand of President Abraham Lincoln

and the War Department to accept black soldiers by presenting their presence as a fait

accompli.

The Lincoln administration disavowed the activities of Lane, Phelps, and Hunter as

unauthorized and premature. Until September 1862, Lincoln was reluctant to take any action

that might alienate slaveholders in the loyal border states and in areas of the Confederacy

under Union occupation. During the fall of 1862, however, Lincoln was reaching the conclusion

that black soldiers in the Union army were a military necessity. Congress pushed the President

in this direction by passing the Militia Act of July 1862. This law authorized the recruitment of

“persons of African descent” for “any military or naval service for which they may be found

competent.”

With the legal obstacles and executive resistance to black recruitment melting away, other

Northern leaders began organizing black regiments in the fall of 1862. Governor John A.

Andrew of Massachusetts had long favored black enlistment in the Union army, and that

autumn he organized the 54th Massachusetts Infantry, recruiting African Americans not only in

Massachusetts but throughout the North. In the wake of the Battle of Baton Rouge, Louisiana,

where Confederate forces had seriously called into question Union control of the state, General

Benjamin F. Butler began recruiting three “Native Guards” regiments to bolster his forces. The

Native Guards, drawn from New Orleans’ free elite, were especially notable because initially

many of their officers were of African descent. Both the 54th Massachusetts and the Louisiana

Native Guards would achieve lasting fame by becoming the first African-American units to see

combat in the Civil War. The 54th would bravely assault Fort Wagner, South Carolina, outside

of Charleston in July 1863; and the Native Guards would go into battle even earlier, at Port

Hudson (May 1863) and Milliken’s Bend (June 1863) in Louisiana.

The success of black soldiers at Fort Wagner, Port Hudson, and Milliken’s Bend, and the

insatiable need of the Union army for fresh soldiers, encouraged the large-scale enlistment of

African Americans. President Lincoln gave his blessing to the effort in his final Emancipation

Proclamation on January 1, 1863. Union recruiters fanned out across the North, the border

states, and the Union-occupied South. They found thousands of willing black men, eager to

enlist to help liberate their race from bondage. Some recruiters, however, were not above using

trickery or coercion when African-American recruits were not immediately forthcoming. With

tens of thousands of black men pouring into Union ranks, it became necessary to regularize the

administrative supervision of black troops. In May 1863, the War Department organized the

Bureau of Colored Troops. It also reorganized existing black regiments as federalized units

(except for the Massachusetts and Connecticut black regiments). By war’s end, the United

States Colored Troops (USCT) consisted of 163 regiments (mostly infantry, but there were also

cavalry and artillery units), and federal statistics indicate that 178,975 black men served in the

Union army during the Civil War. In addition, some 18,000 black men joined the U.S. Navy.

With few exceptions, soldiers in the USCT served under white officers. The War Department

was extremely reluctant to commission African Americans as officers, and few if any white

soldiers or officers were willing to place themselves in a position where they would be required

to take orders from a black man. During the war, qualified African Americans sometimes

received commissions as chaplain or surgeon, which left them outside of the chain of command.

Of course, the Louisiana Native Guards were a significant exception, because they were

organized with African-American officers. General Butler, a former Democratic congressman

from Massachusetts, was in charge of Union-occupied New Orleans. He was impressed with the

intelligence and refinement of the city’s free colored elite, and he shrewdly recognized that the

promise of commissions would make leading men in that community energetic recruiters.

Consequently, the Native Guards regiments were quickly filled, and Butler came through with

the promised commissions. These black officers led the Native Guard regiments into their initial

battles, assaulting Port Hudson some thirty miles above Baton Rouge and blocking Confederate

movement from the west at Milliken’s Bend. Black troops performed heroically at each location.

Yet despite their success as combat leaders, Butler’s successor, Nathaniel Banks, made a

determined, and ultimately successful, effort to purge African-American officers from the

Native Guards. Banks encouraged white soldiers to defy African-American officers. He also

ordered black officers to appear before qualifying boards, a humiliating requirement for men

who had already proven themselves as leaders. A Native Guard officer who resigned as a result

said he did so “because daily events demonstrate that prejudices are so strong against Colored

Officers that no matter what be their patriotism and their anxiety to fight for the flag of their

native Land, they cannot do it with honor to themselves” (Berlin et al 1982, p. 327).

Outside of Louisiana, the struggle for black men was not to keep commissions, but rather to

obtain them in the first place. Leading noncommissioned officers in the Massachusetts 54th and

55th Infantry, drawn from the cream of the prewar African-American community in the North,

were eager to join the ranks of commissioned officers. They had a powerful ally in Governor

Andrew. In March 1864, he commissioned Stephen A. Swails, a light-skinned sergeant in the

54th Massachusetts, as a lieutenant. However, neither Swails nor any of the other six other

men commissioned by Andrew were able to exercise their promotions because the War

Department refused to discharge them as enlisted men, a necessary preliminary step to taking

up an officer’s commission. It was not until early 1865 that the War Department reversed this

position, and only Swails received his commission before the war’s end. During the war itself,

most black commissioned officers were recruiters, physicians, or chaplains, activities that did

not involve commanding anyone.

A small number of African Americans received commissions in the aftermath of the war. For

example, O.S.B. Wall was commissioned as a captain, and Martin Delaney was made a major.

Both men served with the Freedmen’s Bureau after a short stint with the 104th U.S. Colored

Infantry. All told, including the Native Guard regiments, non-line officers, and men

commissioned near the end of the war, about 100 African Americans served as officers during

the Civil War.

Far more troubling to black soldiers than the lack of officers’ commissions for African

Americans was the matter of unequal pay. Black men recruited in 1862 and early 1863 had

often enlisted with the promise that they would receive the same pay and allowances as white

Union soldiers ($13 per month, with an additional $3.50 allowance per month for clothing). In

June 1863, however, the War Department decided that the pay of black soldiers was covered

under the 1862 Militia Act, which fixed the pay of African Americans working for the

government at $10 per month, regardless of their type of employment. Then, adding insult to

injury, the War Department determined $3 per month would be deducted for clothing, leaving

black soldiers with only $7 per month, regardless of rank. (Normally, higher enlisted ranks

above corporal received more pay.)

African-American troops were outraged by this decision. Not only did it make it harder for

black soldiers to support their families, it was also an insult to their manhood. In the 54th

Massachusetts Infantry, black soldiers refused to accept their pay until they were paid the

same as white soldiers. They even declined an offer from Governor Andrew to use state funds to

make up the difference in pay. Clearly, the men of the 54th were concerned about the black

soldiers outside of Massachusetts who would not have their pay differential covered by a

sympathetic state government. In addition, accepting Andrew’s offer would compromise the

principle of equal pay for all Union soldiers. Seeing the racist intent of the War Department in

offering unequal pay, they made a resolute and principled stand, at considerable hardship to

themselves and their families.

Yet the reaction of the men of the 54th Massachusetts was restrained compared to black

soldiers in South Carolina. In November 1863, a company of the 3rd South Carolina Volunteers

(later the 21st U.S. Colored Infantry), led by Sergeant William Walker, stacked their arms and

refused to continue serving until their pay was equalized with those of white men. This action

constituted mutiny in the eyes of federal authorities, and Colonel Augustus G. Bennett, despite

being sympathetic to his men’s plight, had Walker arrested when he refused to lead his men

back to duty. Walker was convicted of mutiny, and he was executed by firing squad in front of

the regiment on February 29, 1864. Upon hearing of Walker’s death, Governor Andrew

declared that “the Government which found no law to pay him except as a non-descript or a

contraband, nevertheless found law enough to shoot him as a soldier” (Trudeau 1998, p.254).

The actions of the 54th Massachusetts and the 3rd South Carolina brought the unequal pay

controversy to the attention of the Northern public. Nowhere else was racial discrimination so

blatant, quantifiable, and demonstrably unfair. Finally, in June 1864, Congress passed

legislation equalizing pay retroactively to Jan. 1, 1864. Later, Congress equalized pay for free

blacks back to the time of their enlistment, and subsequent administrative action by Attorney

General Edward Bates effectively did the same for African-American soldiers who had enlisted

in the Union army straight out of slavery.

The unequal pay issue politicized black troops to a degree neither they nor anyone else could

have anticipated before the war. In protesting the pay inequity, they learned political skills

such as organizing, formulating arguments, wooing allies, and petitioning higher authority for

redress of grievances. They thus came to realize their political power, which they would

continue to exercise in the postwar period.

These soldiers would also discover their power in the execution of their military duties. As

previously indicated, African-African soldiers saw their baptism in blood in the late spring and

summer of 1863. Their contributions in battle disproved the racist ideas that African Americans

were cowardly by nature and lacked either the discipline or intelligence to succeed in combat.

Yet such notions died hard, and the use of black soldiers in battle was largely limited to units

from states that pressed for them to be used in combat, or in places where military

commanders were willing to employ them or could not dispense with their services.

Nevertheless, as a practical matter, the significant use of black soldiers in battle during the

Civil War is indicated by the fact that these soldiers took part in 39 significant battles and 419

skirmishes, even though they did indeed have disproportionate fatigue, picket, and garrison

duties.

Casualty statistics bear out the reality that racism played a role in the use of black troops. Of

the 300,000 Union dead of all causes, 90,638 whites were killed in battle or as a result of

wounds, compared to 7,189 blacks killed in battle or as a result of wounds. Figures compiled by

Frederick H. Dyer (in A Compendium of the War of the Rebellion , Vol. 1) show that a total of

36,847 black men died in Union service, or about one in five of the 178,975 that enlisted in the

USCT. Yet 29,658 of these men died of disease rather than from combat-related causes,

constituting more than 80 percent of all black deaths in the Union army. While the majority of

white soldiers also died of disease, only about 60 percent did so.

Although black troops fought in many engagements in Grant’s yearlong effort to crush Robert

E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, their most prominent moment arguably came in July 1864

at the Battle of the Crater. This engagement occurred early in Grant’s siege of Petersburg,

Virginia. Union troops dug a mine below the Confederate trenches, hoping to literally blast a

hole in the Southern defense. Black troops were initially supposed to lead the charge once

Union engineers exploded four tons of gunpowder charges in the mine, but General Grant

decided he could not use them for this purpose because he feared he would be criticized for

using African Americans as cannon fodder.

As it turned out, casualties were high anyway among African-American troops at the Crater,

because both they and the white troops leading the assault plunged into the crater caused by

the explosion, rather than following its edges through to the Confederate rear. Many found

themselves unable to climb out of the crater and exposed to deadly Confederate fire. Like many

other battles involving black troops in the Civil War, black troops fought bravely but were

poorly used by white commanders who put them into essentially impossible tactical situations.

That African-American soldiers fought bravely nonetheless speaks to their recognition that even

when they fought in a failing effort, they were showing manly fortitude and could win a moral

victory. This courage and determination won them the admiration of their white officers and

soldiers, and of members of the Northern public who read about their exploits in the paper. By

the end of the war, the army had recognized their valor by awarding black soldiers many

decorations, including sixteen Congressional Medals of Honor.

Yet the reality was that most black troops in the Union Army saw little or no combat. Many

Union commanders could not overcome their own racism sufficiently to trust African Americans

in combat, and they chose to utilize them only for labor or garrison duty, thus freeing up white

soldiers for battle. For example, William Tecumseh Sherman refused to use black troops

directly in his 1864-1865 campaign in Georgia and Carolinas, except for “Pioneer” units that

were used to build roads. He detailed most black units under his command to labor and

garrison duty guarding his rear, or to units of General George H. Thomas’s Army of the

Cumberland (with whom black troops did see combat at Franklin and Nashville).

Yet despite this racism, black soldiers in the Union army had lower desertion rates than their

white counterparts. More than 14 percent of white Union soldiers deserted during the Civil

War, compared to fewer than 5 percent of African-American troops. In part, the lower desertion

rate was a reflection of the fact that whether they were free-born volunteers or confiscated

slaves, many black soldiers realized they had no place else to go. Certainly the fate of former

slaves was tied up with Union victory and the end of slavery. These men understood they were

fighting for the freedom of their race and for legal equality and civil rights.

The value of black troops to the Union cause received recognition near the end of the war from

the most unlikely of sources: the Confederate government. In March 1865, on the eve of the fall

of Richmond, the Confederate Congress authorized the recruitment of black soldiers, reversing

a long-standing policy of only using them in noncombatant support roles. In 1861, free southern

blacks had formed quasi-military units in Savannah, Georgia; Richmond, Virginia. Nashville,

Tennessee; Fort Smith, Arkansas; and in New Orleans, Louisiana. Confederate authorities

declined their services, however, including those of the Louisiana Native Guards. But when

faced with a possible defeat, the Confederates were willing to have African Americans, enslaved

or free, work digging trenches, hauling supplies, cooking food, tending to the wounded, and

providing personal service. They would not permit them to serve formally as soldiers, however.

While most Confederate leaders denied throughout the war that the preservation of slavery was

a war aim for the South, it is unlikely that Southern grievances would have ever caused

secession had many white Southerners not feared for the survival of the “peculiar institution.”

For most of the war, Jefferson Davis and other Southern leaders energetically squashed

proposals to arm the slaves, most notably from Confederate Gen. Patrick R. Cleburne on

January 2, 1864. It was not until last desperate hours of the Confederate government that its

leaders were willing to risk slavery’s survival in order to recruit black troops.

Yet their action was not just a sign of how hopeless the Confederate cause had become. It also

was an implicit recognition of the value of black troops. In its desperation, the Confederate

Congress was acknowledging that black men had made a significant enough contribution to the

Union cause, and that it would be worthwhile for the Confederacy to take the same measure.

Yet their decision came too late for significant recruitment to get underway prior to the final

Southern collapse, let alone the organization and deployment of black Confederate troops.

Hence, it can be said with great certainty that the tens or hundreds of thousands of black

Confederate soldiers claimed by modern neo-Confederates did not and could not have existed.

Certainly many thousands of African Americans worked for and moved with the Confederate

army during the course of the war, but they acted in support roles only. Persons of African

descent may have worked as spies and scouts, and a few might even have been formally

enlisted or served by virtue of being able to pass as whites. Yet their existence is poorly

documented at best, and their numbers pale in comparison to the hundreds of thousands of

black men who can be documented to have joined the Union cause. A small minority of African

Americans in the South may have harbored Confederate sympathies, but their existence is an

obscure and insignificant phenomenon.

One governmental organization that needed no education on the value of African Americans,

and recruited them from the earliest days of the war, was the U.S. Navy. Always more

desperate than the army for personnel because of its rougher conditions of service, the navy

had never barred African Americans from enlisting (although prior to the Civil War service was

limited to free persons of color). Likewise, the realities of shipboard service meant it was

impossible to segregate crews by race, although African Americans generally were limited to

the lowest “ratings” or enlisted naval ranks of boys, landsmen, or ordinary sailors. The great

need for new personnel to expand the navy during the Civil War led Navy Secretary Gideon

Wells to authorize the enlistment of slaves in September 1861 (an entire year prior to the

Emancipation Proclamation).

The integration of crews makes it difficult to determine exactly how many black men served in

the Union navy. Figures vary from as high as 29,511, a figure provided by the U.S. Navy and

promoted by the historian Herbert Aptheker, to as low as 10,000, a sum arrived at by David L.

Valuska, who studied enlistment records for the Union navy. Perhaps the most accurate

estimate comes from Joseph Reidy and his Howard University team, which made a more

thorough survey of Civil War navy records than Valuska and arrived at the figure of 18,000

black enlistments. The actual number of black Union sailors is probably immaterial, for

whatever the number, they played an important role in keeping the Union navy in operation,

both in its blockade against the Southern coastline and in its activities on inland waterways,

which were just as essential in defeating the Confederacy.

The U.S. Army did seek to make a permanent place for black men its ranks after the war.

Congress authorized six regiments in the postwar U.S. Army (four infantry, two cavalry), based

on the Civil War pattern of black enlisted men led by white officers (with occasional black

officers, such as Henry O. Flipper). This organization was later scaled back to four regiments:

the 24th and 25th Infantry and the 9th and 10th Cavalry. These black regiments, especially the

10th Cavalry, became renowned for their prowess fighting Native Americans on the frontier.

They got their nickname, “Buffalo Soldiers,” from Plains Indians who thought the curly hair of

many black soldiers reminded them of the buffalo. These units would also serve with distinction

in the Spanish-American War (1898) and the Philippine War (1899-1902). They would win

twenty Congressional Medals of Honor and countless lesser decorations, but they would

continue to be beset by the racism and doubts about their ability that had plagued African-

American troops during the Civil War. They would last see service in the Korean War, when the

U.S. Army implemented President Harry S. Truman’s 1947 order to desegregate the U.S. Army.

The 24th U.S. Infantry was dissolved, and black soldiers thereafter served with white troops in

integrated units.

Black Civil War veterans played a critical role in the early history of the postwar black

regiments in the U.S. Army, providing a cadre of experienced soldiers to teach military ways to

new raw recruits. A small number of these men would remain in the army for some decades,

but the actual number of African-American veterans who served in the postwar army was quite

small. Most black soldiers were eager to leave the army after the Civil War. Particularly for

black troops who had joined as slaves, their discharge was the first moment they could truly

enjoy their own freedom. Black Civil War veterans, whatever their status before the war, were

eager to participate in the possibilities that the postwar period promised.

Former black soldiers would play a prominent role during Reconstruction and in the leadership

of the post-war African-American community. Although veterans would actually be slightly

underrepresented among black officeholders from 1867 to 1877, many of the most prominent

African-American politicians of this period had served in the Civil War. Six of the sixteen black

members of the U.S. House of Representatives during Reconstruction, for instance, claimed

Civil War service. More importantly, as black leaders had hoped, African-American military

service in the Civil War provided an important argument in favor of voting rights, culminating

with the ratification of the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1870. Veterans would

be at the forefront of leadership in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries resisting

efforts to disenfranchise black voters and segregate the races. Even though they failed in this

effort, they remained an honored group in the postwar black community until the death of the

last black Civil War veteran, Joseph Clovese, in July 1951. Their memory as stalwart warriors

against slavery and racism remains strong to the present day

Read more: Black Civil War Soldiers http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/articles/pages/5997/Black-Civil-War-Soldiers.html#ixzz0iJptCr67