VI. The Civil War and Reconstruction
Learning Objective:
Understand the similarities and differences that existed between
the ante-bellum North and the South.
The South and North had similarities in that they shared 50
years of history, they had economies that were interdependent,
they both were nationalistic, and they both looked to the West
for their future. But slavery divided the two regions more than
the similarities pulled them together.
In the North, manufacturing production increased from less
than $200 million in 1815 to over $1 billion in 1859. Increased
immigration (1830s: 500,000; 1840s: 1,500,000; 1850s: 2,500,000)
supplied the necessary labor for the increase in production.
The technological revolution and the railroad increased productivity
dramatically. For example, prior to the invention of the McCormick
Reaper in 1831, one man could reap 1/2 acre of wheat a day.
With the reaper 2 men could reap 6 acres a day — an increase
of 600% in productivity. This meant that: l) bread could be
sold at half it previous price; 2) grain production could be
increased sixfold, thus making the U.S. a grain producer for
Europe; and 3) manpower previously concentrated in agriculture
could be diverted into many other forms of production. A working
class grew up in the North.
Typically a worker worked 12-15 hours a day 6 or 7 days a week.
Skilled workers made $4-$10 a week; unskilled workers made from
$1-$6 a week. This wage was enough to support a single man,
but not a family. To survive, married laborers had to have their
wives and children work. Wealth was maldistributed in both the
North and the South. By 1860 the top 10 percent of the Northern
population held an estimated 68 percent of the total wealth.
Nearly 95 percent of the wealth of the nation was held by 30
percent of the population.
Southerners accepted slavery as a necessary part of southern
society for the following reasons: l) Slavery was a profitable
institution. Southern capital was primarily invested in slaves
and land. By 1860, the average price of a field hand was around
$1,000. In 1860 the South grew over a billion pounds of cotton
— it was 2/3 of all U.S. exports; 2) The ownership of slaves
determined one's social status; 3) slavery was a method of race
control. By 1860, there were 3.5 million black slaves in the
South out of a total population of 10.6 million. Southerners
feared that emancipation would bring about black equality or
even black retaliation against whites. 4) slavery insured the
labor force necessary for a plantation economy.
Nat Turner's rebellion in 1831 killed 60 whites and after that
the fear of a slave revolt caused the South to tighten its grip
on slavery. Thirteen out of every 15 southern whites did not
own slaves—they had a social interest in slavery; to them slavery
was a means of keeping the black race subjugated (as segregation
would be to a later generation of whites).
Slaves had almost no rights under state laws. They were chattel
— movable property. They did not have the right to marry, to
govern their children, to read and write, to worship as they
pleased, to testify against white people in court, or to sell
their labor. The master set the terms of the relationship between
himself and his slaves.
Southerners feared that if slavery could not expand into the
western territories the number of "free" states would
become great enough to pass a Constitutional amendment abolishing
slavery. Additional territory was also needed to sell off the
"excess" slaves that were accumulating in the Old
South. The North wanted to stop the expansion of slavery into
the western territories for the following reasons: l) By 1860,
many Northerners saw slavery as an outmoded labor system and
an embarrassment to our democracy. In addition to the U.S.,
only Cuba and Brazil still had legal slavery. 2) The North wanted
to insure that western land would be settled by free white labor,
not black slave labor. They wanted this settlement not because
slavery was bad for black people, but because it was bad for
white people. Every acre farmed by a black slave was an acre
that could not be farmed by a free white.
Thus, the Civil War was a conflict between two different societies
over which one would control the political, economic, and social
destiny of the nation. The north represented the wave of the
future — urban, industrial, and mechanized. The South represented
the past: a rural, agricultural society based on slave labor.
When Abraham Lincoln was elected President in 1860 on a platform
that opposed the further expansion of slavery, the South correctly
understood that it had lost the struggle. It had two choices:
either accept the inevitable loss of control (during the 72
years from 1788 to 1860, the South controlled the presidency
for 50 years, and the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court for
60 years), or secede. The South seceded because it believed
that secession was the only way it could preserve and spread
slavery (Confederate leaders planned on spreading slavery into
the Caribbean and Central America after the war).
Most Southerners believed that the states had created the federal
government, the federal government had not created the states.
Under this theory of constitutional law, most eloquently espoused
by John C. Calhoun during the nullification crisis, since the
states (not the people) created the Union the states could secede
it at their pleasure. Lincoln held that the Union could not
be dissolved because it was created by the citizens of the country
as a whole and not by the states ("We the people of the
United States in order to form a more perfect union . . . ").
Thus, to Lincoln, session was illegal. Lincoln always insisted
that the states had not seceded since they could not, and he
treated, in as much as possible, Southerners as being in a state
of insurrection rather than in a state of warfare against the
United States. This debate over the nature of the Union was
ended once and for all by the Civil War. Prior to the Civil
War, "the United States" was invariably a plural noun:
"the United States are a free government." After the
Civil War, it became a singular: "The United States is
a free government."
Learning Objective:
Understand the events that illustrate the conflicts between
the North and the South from the Compromise of 1850 to the election
of Abraham Lincoln.
Review: The Missouri Compromise (1820); Abolitionists turn
militant (1830s); the tariff crisis of 1832; the question of
Texas, 1836-45; and, the Wilmont Proviso.
The Compromise of 1850. In 1849 gold was discovered in California
and California applied for admission to the Union as a free
state—the population of California increased from 15,000 in
1848 to 100,000 by the end of 1849. Southern Congressmen were
incensed over this action, they had assumed that slavery would
expand into the Mexican cession. The South regarded this action
as a supreme crisis in which the preservation of the slave system
and the entire social structure of South was at stake. If slavery
could be excluded from CA it could probably be excluded from
all of the many future states that would follow. The South feared
that if slavery could not expand into the recently acquired
territory the following would happen: l) The political balance
of power between slave and free states would be destroyed in
the Senate; 2) slavery would wither and die because it could
not expand; and, 3) ultimately enough free states would come
into the Union to pass a constitutional amendment abolishing
slavery.
Provisions of the Compromise of 1850. 1) California came into
the Union as a free state. 2) The rest of the Mexican cession
was organized as territories with no reference to slavery (popular
sovereignty). 3) The slave trade was abolished in Washington,
DC 4) A stronger fugitive slave law was enacted. The North refused
to enforce this act and the South felt betrayed. These acts
were not actually compromises in that a majority of both northern
and southern congressmen refused to vote for the provisions
that benefited the other side.
Uncle Tom's Cabin. Written by Harriet Beecher Stowe in 1852,
this book emphasized the cruel and impersonal nature of slavery.
After the Bible it was the best seller of the 19th century.
It reinforced regional stereotypes. The North believed that
all slave owners were evil, and the South believed that they
were being unfairly vilified.
The Ostend Manifesto (1854). The U.S. ambassadors to Britain,
Spain and France met at Ostend, Belgium. One of the items they
covered in their meeting was the U.S. annexation of Spain's
colony of Cuba. They claimed that "Cuba is as necessary
to the U.S. as any of its present members." When the document
they sent to President Pierce urging Cuban annexation was leaked
to the press many Northerners objected to what they believed
was slave conspiracy to increase slave territory.
The Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854). Every city in the east wanted
to be the eastern terminus for the first transcontinental railroad.
Senator Stephen Douglas (D. Ill) was the chairman of the Senate
Committee on the Territories. He wanted to organize the northern
territories so a railroad could be built through them to the
Pacific with Chicago as the eastern terminus. The southern territories
to the Pacific had already been organized under the Compromise
of 1850. Douglas had to give southern congressmen an incentive
to vote for the organization of the northern territories. He
gave them this incentive by introducing the Kansas-Nebraska
Act which organized the northern territories under the provision
of popular sovereignty — this act nullified the Missouri Compromise.
A mini-civil war soon broke out in Kansas over the introduction
of slavery into the territory. This conflict kept bitterness
in the nation over the slavery question at a white heat, and
helped kill the Whig party. The Democratic party became, to
a large extent, a southern party, and compromise became even
more difficult.
The Breakdown of Political Parties. A disastrous consequence
of Kansas-Nebraska was the effect which it had on the system
of political parties. At the time of Pierce's election there
were two national parties. In presidential elections, the winner,
whether Whig or Democrat, usually won both in the North and
in the South. This situation had an immensely moderating influence
on sectional extremism in either party, for each wing needed
allies in the other section to win against adversaries in its
own section who belonged to the opposite party. In 1852 this
delicate sectional balance began to weaken, and with the Kansas-Nebraska
Act it almost collapsed.
The Whig part was hurting because of steadily increasing immigration.
The mostly Irish Catholic immigrants affiliated overwhelming
with the Democrats. The potato famine sent 1,200,000 Irish to
the United States in the 1840s. Total immigration in the four
years preceding the defeat of the Whig candidate Winfield Scott
in 1852 exceeded the total of Scott's popular vote. After 1852
most Whigs felt that Whiggery was a losing proposition. Each
sectional wing felt that its alliance with the other sectional
wing cost more locally than it was worth nationally; all recognized
that continued immigration would be fatal to a party which failed
to attract the immigrants.
Kansas-Nebraska offered the northern Whigs a way out, for it
bitterly antagonized northern antislavery Democrats. After the
storm of opposition that swept the North over Kansas-Nebraska
in 1854, the number of northern Democrats in the House of Representatives
fell from 91 to 25. As the antislavery Democrats swarmed out
of the Democratic party, the northern Whigs recognized the potential
allies whom they so badly needed. But they knew the Whig label
would be an obstacle to alliance. Hence they abandoned the Whig
organization. Southern Whigs, because of their proslavery stance,
joined the Democratic party.
In the political confusion of the 1850s two focal points began
to emerge. Antislavery sentiment began to concentrate in the
Republican party; anti-immigrant sentiment in the American or
Known Nothing party. Since the Know Nothings were partly a secret
order, it was possible for a person to be both a Know Nothing
and a Republican—in the Congress elected in 1854, a majority
of free state members were both. Through complicated political
maneuvering, the Republicans were able to become the dominate
party and they replaced the Whigs as the second major political
party. The Know Nothing influence meant that the Republican
party received a nativist infusion which continued to make itself
felt for more than a century. Yet the Republican party was able
to avoid any explicit identification with nativism.
The Brooks-Sumner Affair (1856). Senator Charles Sumner (R.
Mass.) made a bitter speech against slavery and the "slave
power" that included personally insulting remarks about
elderly Senator Butler from SC. Butler's nephew, Rep. Preston
Brooks, observing the "Code of the Southern Gentleman,"
attacked Sumner on the floor of the Senate with his cane. Sumner
was out of the Senate for 3 years because of the attack. Southerners
praised Brooks and sent him more canes "to whip the Yankees
with," while northerners concluded that southern honor
was a fraud. Sumner's bitter words and Brooks bitter deed made
it easier for each region to form an ugly stereotype of each
other.
The Dred Scott Decision (1857). The Supreme Court decision
in Dred Scott v. Sandford made all compromise impossible because
it declared the concept of popular sovereignty unconstitutional.
The slave Dred Scott had been taken by his master into free
territory where slavery was forbidden under the Northwest Ordinance
of 1787 and the Missouri Compromise. Scott lived as a slave
for 4 years on free soil — when his master returned him to
the slave state of Missouri, Scott sued for his freedom. Chief
Justice Roger B. Taney, a Southerner, wrote the majority opinion
for the Supreme Court. The Court stated that slaves were not
citizens of the U.S. (since they were property) and therefore
they could not sue in U.S. courts. In addition, Taney stated
that Congress could not forbid the importation of slavery into
any region of the U.S. (as had been done in the Missouri Compromise),
because that would discriminate against the citizens of the
states and violate their right to take their property wherever
they please. This decision completely polarized positions on
slavery—the South believed that the decision allowed slavery
to be extended into all the territories, and the North believed
that the Court's decision should be ignored and slavery should
be kept out of all the territories.
John Brown's Raid on Harper's Ferry, Virginia (1859). John
Brown was a radical abolitionist who had earlier murdered pro-slavery
men in Kansas. On October 16, 1859, Brown and 22 other men (some
of them black), attacked the federal armory at Harper's Ferry
with the idea of getting arms and using these arms for a general
slave uprising. The raid failed, Brown was captured, tried by
a Virginia court, and executed. To many in the North, Brown
was a martyr, to the South, Brown was an example of the lengths
the North would go to destroy slavery and the southern way of
life.
The election of Abraham Lincoln to the Presidency in 1860.
The Democratic party split over the issue of slavery. The Southern
Democrats nominated John C. Breckinridge of KY. He ran on a
platform of supporting the Dred Scott decision and a federal
slave code. The Northern Democrats nominated Stephen Douglas.
The Republican party had been formed in 1854 by northern Whigs
who realized that their party had been killed by Kansas-Nebraska.
The Know-Nothings, a secret anti-immigrant group, also played
a large role in forming the party. The Republican platform supported
the transcontinental railroad, a Homestead Act, a high protective
tariff, and the non-expansion of slavery; including the repeal
of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. The Republicans nominated Abraham
Lincoln who was an ex-Whig, and the richest trial lawyer in
Ill. Lincoln had gained fame when he ran against Douglas for
the Senate in 1858. Representatives from the border states sought
a compromise and formed their own party, the Constitutional-Union
party, and nominated John Bell of TN. Lincoln won the election
with only 39% of the popular vote—the smallest percentage in
history. In the south, Bell and Breckenridge received 85% of
the popular vote; Lincoln was not even on the ballot in some
southern states. In the North, Lincoln and Douglas received
86% of the popular vote. Lincoln received 180 Electoral votes,
Douglas 12, Breckinridge 76, and Bell 39. Thus, the polarization
of the nation was complete.
Learning Objective:
Understand why the South seceded from the Union and understand
why the North objected to secession.
After his election Lincoln supported a constitutional amendment
that would guarantee the protection of slavery in the states
where it already existed against any further interference by
the federal government. This amendment could not be repealed.
Lincoln though, was very clear that he would allow no further
expansion of slavery. This compromise was not acceptable to
the South. Lincoln was elected on November 6, by February 22,
seven states had left the Union, set up their own nation—the
Confederate States of America—and elected Jefferson Davis their
first president.
By the time of Lincoln's inauguration on March 2, 1861, the
Confederacy had taken over most federal property in the South.
Fort Sumter, in Charleston harbor, was still in federal hands.
Lincoln wanted the Confederacy to fire the first shot so they
would appear to be the aggressor. This action would help unite
the North and make it easier for the border states to choose
to stay in the union. When Lincoln found out that the garrison
was running out of food he sent a resupply ship to the fort,
and the confederate forces opened fire on the fort on April
12, 1861. It surrendered the next day and the war began. The
Confederate attack forced every state to choose between the
Union and the Confederacy and the upper south states seceded
at this time.
Few in the North approved of slavery, but even fewer approved
of black equality. The North was anti-slavery and anti-black.
But, the South, by secession, changed the issue from one of
slavery to the survival of the republic. To the North the support
of slavery was wrong, but the support of secession was treason.
Secession united the North. The root cause of the conflict—the
issue of race relations—was not even perceived as an issue.
Learning Objective:
Understand the military aspects of the Civil War.
Northern resources were much greater than the South's. These
resources allowed the North to win a war of attrition. Even
agriculture showed a Northern advantage — two-thirds of the
nation's improved farmland was in the North. It had three times
as many horses as the South (an important military advantage
since by the end of the war the Union army was losing around
500 horses per day). Of the over 128,000 industrial firms in
the nation, only 18,026 were in the South. New York State alone
produced four times as much in terms of value of manufactured
products as the entire Confederacy. More firearms were made
in one Connecticut county than in the entire South.
Northern population: 22,200,000
Southern population: 10,600,000 (including 3,500,000 slaves)
Northern industrial workers: 1,300,000
Southern industrial workers: 110,000
Northern railroad mileage: 22,000
Southern railroad mileage: 9,280
The Union Army outnumbered the Confederate Army 5 to 2.
The crucial handicap of the South was that the North could
replace equipment faster than it wore out. The South's equipment
was virtually all from the North or from Europe, and when it
was used up it could not be replaced.
In addition to having fewer resources than the North, the Southern
military and political strategy was flawed by three basic errors.
The First Major Southern Error: Romantic Concept of War. The
romantic ideal of chivalry created a state of mind which caused
Southerners to think of war somewhat as if it were an extension
of the medieval tournament — a test of bravery upon the battlefield,
and not a matter of firepower, transport, commissary, and logistics.
The Civil War stood at the dividing line between the old and
the new, between a war fought by machines and a war fought by
men. The southern folk, who were completely preindustrial in
their culture and largely preindustrial in their lives, were
slow to understand the new concept of warfare.
The Second Major Southern Error: Faith in King Cotton to Win
British Support. The South believed that because of the British
need for southern cotton, Britain would come into the war on
the side of the South. Britain imported 700 million lbs. of
cotton from the south every year (out of a total import of 900
million lbs. annually); two-fifths of Britain's exports were
manufactured cotton goods; and out of a population of 21 million,
not less than 4 million were dependent, either directly or indirectly,
upon employment in the textile industry. This policy failed
because: l) British industry had stockpiled over a year's supply
of cotton; 2) while the textile industry languished, the British
economy was stimulated by the Union demand for British goods;
3) Britain was dependent on northern wheat to feed its people;
4) by the end of 1862 Union armies had penetrated the South
at many points and began to ship cotton to Britain; 5) the Emancipation
Proclamation won many sympathizers in Britain; and, 6) the Union
victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg convinced Britain that
the North would win the war and they did not want to back a
looser.
The Third Major Southern Error: Fighting a Defensive War. The
Confederacy supposed that northern sentiment was so badly divided
that the northern public would not support a war of invasion
against the South. And, on the other hand, a southern invasion
of the North would tend to unite the North. In strictly tactical
terms, defensive warfare is less costly. Military men figure
that for an attack to succeed the attacking force needs a ratio
of 4-1 against the defense. Also, an invading army has to maintain
supply lines of wagon trains. Historically, no large army on
the offensive had ever maintained supply lines as long as the
Union would have to maintain in order to penetrate the lower
South. The role of the railroads in resupply was underestimated
by the South. A defensive war meant that the Confederacy would
forgo an effort to win; it would confine itself to preventing
the Union from wining. This meant that the war would continue
until the North got tired of fighting. But a long war meant
the South would steadily use up its resources, and that the
South would be exposed to the ravages of war while the North
would not.
Even though both sides resorted to conscription by 1862, both
armies were primarily made up of civilian volunteers. In the
north a potential conscript could secure permanent immunity
from service by hiring a substitute to serve in his place, or
by paying a fee of $300 — as President Lincoln did for his
own son. The substitute system gave rise to the saying: "rich
man's war, poor man's fight."
Over 25% of the 776,829 men drafted failed to report, and an
additional 200,000 men deserted. Canada received nearly 90,000
Americans during the war, nearly 30,000 of them deserters, others
trying to dodge being enrolled in the first place. In the South,
plantation owners could avoid service if they were needed to
oversee their slaves.
In April, 1861 the U.S. army was about 16,000 strong with most
of the force involved in Indian fighting in the west. The Civil
War involved armies ten times larger the U.S. had ever seen,
with no officers who had ever commanded more than a few brigades,
with an acute shortage of men possessing any kind of military
experience, with no officer-candidate schools to train officers,
and with no coordinating machinery to keep the operations of
various armies in coherent relationship with one another.
The supply system was primitive. Hardtack was the staple food
of the Union army. It was a solid cracker, some three inches
square and nearly half an inch thick; solid, hard and nourishing.
If the hardtack got moldy it was usually thrown away as inedible,
but if it just got weevily it was issued anyway. Heating it
over a fire would drive the weevils out; more impatient soldiers
simply ate it in the dark and tried not to think about it.
Sanitation was poor in both armies — about 220,000 Union soldiers
died of disease during the war. Half of the deaths from disease
were caused by intestinal ailments, mainly typhoid, diarrhea,
and dysentery. Half of the remainder came from pneumonia and
tuberculosis. Battle attrition was high. Hardly anybody realized
it at the time, but the Civil War soldier went into action just
when technical improvements in the design of weapons created
a great increase in fire power and gave the defense a heavy
advantage over the attack. By the fall of 1862 almost all the
troops on both sides used rifled Springfield muskets. With an
effective range of 250 yards, and firing a .50 caliber bullet,
the rifled musket brought advancing troops under killing fire
four or five times as far off as used to be the case with smooth-bore
weapons. Like the machine gun in 1914, here was a weapon which
upset all the old theories. The invention of rifled artillery
doubled its range over the old smooth bore pieces, and generals
who knew how to use them could often break up an attack before
it even got started. Yet field tactics were still developed
around the idea of sending massed troops smack into and over
the enemy line. Smooth bore weapons were inaccurate at any range.
Thus, the foot soldier was actually a spear carrier in disguise,
the bayonet was the decisive weapon, and an infantry charge
was based on the idea of getting close enough to the enemy where
they could either impale their opponents or force them to run
away. But with development of rifled musket and artillery it
just didn't work that way any more.
A battle line whose flanks were anchored and which had any
kind of protection in front was, in fact, just about invulnerable
to a frontal attack. Unless one had a huge advantage in numbers,
about the only way to overrun a defensive position was to flank
it. In front, a brigade might have the direct power of 1,500
rifles; caught end-on, at either extremity of its line, it had
a fire power of exactly two, and so was utterly helpless unless
it could shift its position fast. If a whole army could be flanked,
the inevitable result was complete defeat.
The Northern strategy was to: 1) divide the South along the
Mississippi River; 2) penetrate the heart of the Confederacy
through Georgia (Sherman's March to the Sea); 3) capture the
Confederate capital of Richmond; and, 4) blockade the Confederate
coast.
On July 21, l861, 35,000 Union soldiers (mostly 90 day volunteers)
moved South on Richmond. At the Battle of Bull Run they were
defeated. Later, under General McClellan the Union Army landed
on the tip of the peninsula between the York and James River,
only 50 miles from the southern capital. In this operation McClellan
characteristically dragged his feet, although he was opposed
only by a very weak force which fooled him by painting large
logs black and mounting them to resemble cannon. By July 1862
the campaign was called-off, and McClellan was relieved of his
command.
Using its superior naval forces the Union forces seized all
the Confederate island positions off the southern coast. In
March 1862 the Confederate ironclad vessel the Merrimack attacked
the Union blockade ships at Hampton Roads and sank two of them.
The next day the Union ironclad, the Monitor, fought the Merrimack
to a standstill, thereby neutralizing her. After that time Union
naval superiority was never challenged.
After extensive and bitter fighting, by March 1862 the Confederates
were driven out of Missouri. By January 1862 the Confederates
were forced out of eastern KY. In February 1862 Major General
Ulysses S. Grant, who had once been dismissed from a captaincy
in the peacetime army because of frequent drunkenness, captured
the Confederate forts of Henry and Donelson where the Tennessee
and Cumberland rivers entered the Ohio. This action opened the
Cumberland river as a highway for the Union forces into the
heart of Tennessee, and most of Tennessee was back in the Union
within nine months of secession. Lincoln appointed Andrew Johnson
as military governor. On April 24, 1862, Admiral David Farragut
ran the Confederate forts south of New Orleans and took the
city.
Thus, by the time McClellan started seriously engaging the
Confederates outside of Richmond, the Union had already won
most of Missouri, West Virginia, and much of Kentucky and Tennessee.
It had occupied the Confederate islands; it had defeated the
South's bid for naval supremacy through the use of ironclads;
it had captured the largest city in the Confederacy; and it
gained control of the Mississippi River south as far as Memphis
and north as far as Port Hudson, Louisiana.
The Southern army under Robert E. Lee succeeded in keeping
a session of Union commanders from taking Richmond. But the
fierce battles took a heavy toll of Southern men that could
not be replaced. In July, 1863, Lee moved north hoping to cut
northern railroad lines, and force Lincoln to move more troops
to the defense of Washington (and away from Richmond). At Gettysburg,
Pennsylvania on July 2 and 3 the Confederate army made its supreme
effort which failed — after loosing over 25,000 men, Lee was
lucky to get the remainder of his army back to Virginia. On
the balance, despite all the heroic action, the fighting in
the east was inconclusive. Inconclusive results spelled defeat
for the Confederacy. The Army of Northern Virginia's great offensive
power was forever broken.
After a 47 day siege, on July 4, 1863 Vicksburg surrendered,
yielding 30,000 prisoners and northern control of the Mississippi
River. The war would go on for another 21 months, but in effect
the result was assured — the Confederate forces were hopelessly
overpowered.
In March, 1864 Grant was made general-in-chief. Grant, using
his superior forces relentlessly, drove Lee back into a defensive
position at Petersburg where he stayed until the last week of
the war. Simultaneously, William T. Sherman began his march
to the sea, destroying everything of use to the Confederacy
in a swath sixty miles wide. On December 10, Sherman reached
Savannah. Resupplied from the sea, Sherman then turned north
to join Grant.
During these final campaigns, the Confederacy had no hope of
winning. The only reason they continued to resist was the hope
that the North might grow weary of the heavy losses and therefore
choose not to finish the war that it had won. However Grant's
heavy casualties dropped off sharply after June 1864, and the
capture of Atlanta in September caused the morale of the northern
public to soar. In November, 1864 Lincoln was reelected with
55 percent of the vote. In April, 1865, Richmond was captured
and burned. Lee surrendered the remnants of the Army of Northern
Virginia on April 9, 1865 at Appomattox Court House.
The war had cost the lives of 40% of the total combined forces
for both sides. 618,000 soldiers died and almost 500,000 were
wounded: 360,000 Union and 258,000 Confederate deaths (World
War II deaths: 405,000). The Battle of Gettysburg killed more
men (7,058) than had died in the Revolutionary War and the War
of 1812 combined. One out of 11 men of service age was killed
in the war. About 1 out of 6 was either killed or wounded. Because
of the smaller population base during the Civil War, had World
War II produced the same proportion of casualties as did the
Civil War, over 2.5 million men would have died.
On April 14, 1865 President Lincoln attended a play at Washington's
Ford Theater. He was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth, a pro-Confederate
fanatic.
Yet among Lincoln's papers historians have found a 1854 document
which stated: "If A can prove conclusively that he may
of right enslave B — why may not B snatch the same argument,
and prove equally, that he may enslave A? You say A is white
and B is black. It is color then; the lighter having the right
to enslave the darker? Take care. By this rule, you are to be
the slave to the first man you meet with a fairer skin than
your own. You do not mean color, exactly? You mean the whites
are intellectually the superiors of blacks, and therefore you
have the right to enslave them? Take care again. By this rule,
you are to be slave to the first man you meet with an intellect
superior to your own. But you say, it is a question of interest;
and if you make it your interest, you have the right to enslave
others. Very well. And if he can make it his interest, he has
the right to enslave you."
Learning Objective:
Understand Northern racial views.
Southern secession transformed the issue in America from a
question of slavery or race to a question of Union, on which
most of the North could unite. Northern support of the war was
based upon a coalition of Unionists who knew they could not
defeat the secessionists without antislavery support and antislavery
men who knew they could not abolish slavery without the unionist
support, nor without defeating the Confederacy. The victory
of the coalition put an end to its reason for existence, for
the two allies ceased to need one another. The Confederate surrender
did just what secession had done, but in a reverse direction:
it transformed the issue back again from a question of union
to a question of the status of blacks, and on this question
blacks had far fewer supporters in the North as freedmen than
they had ever had as slaves. Whenever a successful coalition
breaks up after a war because of dissension among the victors,
the vanquished find an opportunity to assert themselves. This
is what happened in the defeated South.
Abraham Lincoln's racial views illustrate the ambivalence that
many northerners had concerning slavery and blacks. The strongest
evidence of the racist strain in Lincoln's thinking appeared
in one of his debates with Stephen A. Douglas in 1865. Lincoln
said: "I will say then, that I am not, nor ever have been
in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political
equality of the white and black races; that I am not, nor ever
have been in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor
of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white
people; and I will say, in addition to this, that there is a
physical difference between the white and black races which
I believe will forever forbid the two races living together
on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they
cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be
the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any
other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned
to the white man."
Lincoln also stated in the Lincoln-Douglas Debates that the
Republicans looked upon slavery as "a wrong. . .a moral,
social, and political wrong." Thus, to Lincoln, and many
northerners, it was not the racial prejudice and discrimination
that bothered them about slavery, it was the institution itself.
Segregation and legal inequality were acceptable, but slavery
was not.
Lincoln spelled out the question of the priority of his values
to Horace Greeley in an August, 1862 letter: "My paramount
object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either
to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without
freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by
freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it
by freeing some and leaving others alone [which is exactly what
he did in the Emancipation Proclamation], I would also do that.
What I do about slavery and the colored race, I do because I
believe it helps save this Union, and what I forbear, I forbear
because I do not believe it would help save the Union. . . .
I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that
all men everywhere be free."
In short, for Lincoln one belief — about the value of the
Union—was more important than another belief — about the moral
wrong of slavery. Lincoln never lost sight of the fact that
he was fighting a war supported by an unstable coalition of
conservative Unionists and radical antislavery men, and that
if the coalition ever broke down, he would lose the war. The
other crucial circumstance was that the border slave states
were on hair-trigger, and the slightest false step would send
them into the Confederacy.
With the preceding in mind, Lincoln issued the Emancipation
Proclamation September 22, 1862 after the Northern victory at
Antietam. Basically, it stated that in those areas still in
rebellion against the United States on the first of January,
1863, all slaves should be emancipated. The document did not
physically free anyone, even after three months, because it
applied only to areas over which the Union government had no
control. The Proclamation was one last attempt by Lincoln to
get the seceding states to cease their resistance and thus save
their slaves. Slavery was legal in Kentucky and Delaware until
8 months after the war, when the ratification of the 13th amendment
brought it to an end.
Lincoln also knew that the Proclamation would make it difficult
for Britain and France to support the Confederacy once the Civil
War became a war of slave emancipation. Finally, the North was
becoming sickened by the high casualties of the war. The Proclamation
allowed the Union to use freedmen in the army. About 179,000
blacks served in the military — 12 percent of the total Union
force at the end of the war was black. They were paid about
$7 a month (half of white pay).
Learning Objective:
Understand the goals and objectives of the different plans of
reconstruction put forth by President Lincoln, President Johnson,
and the "Radicals" in Congress.
During Reconstruction (18651877) the nation had to grapple
with the following problems: 1) what role would the freedmen
play in American society? 2) how much power should the ex-Confederates
be allowed in southern and national polity 3) which branch of
the federal government — executive or legislative—would dominate
the national government? The different plans of reconstruction
were attempts to deal with these problems.
Lincoln's plan of Reconstruction (December 8, 1863). When 10%
of the whites of a state took an oath supporting the Constitution,
the Union, and the wartime measures emancipating slaves, they
might organize a republican form of government for the state,
which would be recognized as the true government of the state,
and they might receive a full pardon for any service to the
Confederacy "with restoration of all rights of property,
except as to slaves." The process of reconstruction would
be managed by former Confederates. Lincoln did not anticipate
black participation in the forming of these governments; the
proclamation contained no guarantees of rights for blacks, beyond
the recognition of emancipation. Tennessee came back into the
Union in 1866 under this plan.
The Wade-Davis Bill (July, 1864). An attempt by the Republicans
in Congress to take the reconstruction process away from the
executive branch and to insure that ex-Confederates would have
little power on the national level. Required 50% of the body
of citizens eligible to vote (excluding ex-Confederates by requiring
an oath of continuous past loyalty: the so-called "ironclad
oath") to petition to form a new government. Implicitly
the Radicals did not encourage a speedy restoration to the Union
for it was unlikely that any former Confederate state could
easily meet these demands. Blacks were excluded from participation.
Vetoed by Lincoln. This bill drew the issue not only as to what
the policy of reconstruction should be, but also where the authority
for deciding policy lay—with the Congress or the President.
The Johnson Plan for Reconstruction (May, 1865). Andrew Johnson
was a Union Democrat from Tennessee. He was a rigid, anti-black,
anti-southern planter, and he never understood the attitudes
of northerners. He was selected as Vice President by the Republicans
in an attempt to prove that it was a Union Party in the broadest
sense. In April 1865 John Wilkes Booth made him President for
a term only 40 days short of the full four years.
Johnson issued two proclamations while Congress was in recess.
He granted amnesty to former Confederates who took an oath of
loyalty to the Constitution and federal laws. Their property
was restored to them, except for slaves and any lands and goods
that were already in the process of being confiscated. 14 classes
of persons were excepted from the general amnesty, including
the highest-ranking civil and military officers, all those who
had deserted judicial posts or seats in Congress, and persons
whose taxable property was worth more than $20,000. These men
had to make individual applications for amnesty (this clause
illustrates Johnson's hatred of the planter class).
In the second proclamation in which Johnson outlined his requirements
for the reconstruction of North Carolina, and which foreshadowed
the policy he would follow in future proclamations to other
states, Johnson appointed a unionist provisional government,
with authority to hold an election for a constitutional convention
to reorganize the government of the state. Eligibility to vote
in this election was restricted to those who had taken the loyalty
pledge (which admitted ex-Confederates), and who were eligible
under the laws prior to secession (which excluded blacks). The
southern states had to nullify their ordinances of secession,
show their acceptance of the abolition of slavery by ratifying
the 13th amendment, and repudiate the Confederate war debts
(again attacking the planter class). Johnson failed to enforce
these terms (for example MS failed to ratify the 13th amendment)
yet Johnson nevertheless recognized the reconstructed governments.
In elections held in the fall of 1865 the voters of the South
sent many prominent ex-Confederates to Congress including 4
former rebel generals and the Confederate vice president, Alexander
Stephens. Congress rejected Johnson's plan because they wanted
to insure black participation (for their Republican votes),
and they wanted to reduce the power of the planter class (who
were the leaders of the southern Democrats). The Southern congressmen
were turned away at the door. The Radicals informed Johnson
that they would not welcome traitors into their midst. Congress
also wanted to regain the power that it had lost to the Executive
during the Civil War.
In an attempt to continue to regulate black labor the Southern
states passed a series of "black codes" that restricted
the rights of blacks. In some states, blacks were permitted
to work only as domestic servants or in agriculture. Other states
made it illegal for blacks to live in urban areas. In no state
were blacks allowed to vote or bear arms. Mississippi required
freedmen to sign 12 month labor contracts before January 10
of each year. Those who failed to do so could be arrested, and
their labor sold to the highest bidder.
The Republicans in Congress were determined to assert their
authority over the South and the president. They passed a Freedmen's
Bureau Act (1866) that oversaw the welfare of the freedmen,
exercised military jurisdiction in the South by taking a case
involving a freedman out of the civil courts and dealt with
it by military law. The Civil Rights Act of 1866 sought to protect
the freedmen's rights by bringing such rights under federal
jurisdiction.
The Radicals then took control of reconstruction by imposing
military reconstruction upon the South (March, 1867). The South
was divided into 5 military districts with a general of the
army in charge of each. The military governors were to conduct
a voter registration, for which blacks would be eligible, but
whites who held public office before the Civil War and supported
the Confederacy would not. When the registration was completed,
the governors were to hold elections for new constitutional
conventions for each state. These conventions were required
to write black suffrage into the new state constitutions. When
the constitutions had been drafted by the conventions and ratified
by the voters and when the 14th amendment had been ratified
by the state, the state's constitution might be submitted to
Congress for approval. If approved, the state would be readmitted.
The fight for control of the national government led to the
impeachment and trial of Andrew Johnson. In 1867 Congress passed
the Tenure of Office Act forbidding the President from removing
officeholders who had been appointed by him and confirmed by
the Senate (in 1926 the Supreme Court ruled that Congress can
not interfere with the President's control over the executive
branch). Johnson removed Secretary of War Stanton who had been
appointed by Lincoln. He was working with the Radicals in Congress
in an attempt to undermine Johnson's authority. In March, 1868
the House of Representatives, by a vote of 126 to 47, impeached
Johnson on 11 counts. Nine of these counts dealt with the Tenure
of Office Act and two of them accused Johnson of trying to discredit
Congress. The Senate tried the President. The vote to convict
him was 35 to 19, one short of the 2/3 majority required for
conviction. With this result the independence of the executive
branch was maintained and the attempt to remove Johnson from
office collapsed, but for the rest of his term, Congress, not
Johnson, made the major policy decisions for the country.
Learning Objective:
Understand the "Civil War amendments" to the Constitution.
The "Civil War amendments" were an attempt by Congress
to insure that the goals of Reconstruction could not be overturned
by southern state legislatures after ex-Confederates had regained
control.
The Thirteenth Amendment ended slavery and gave Congress the
power of enforcement.
The Fifteenth Amendment proclaimed that neither the federal
nor the state government could deny the right to vote because
of race, color, or previous condition of slavery. If the Republicans
could outlaw disfranchisement of blacks on a nationwide basis
by a constitutional amendment, there would be several advantages:
1) it would avoid arousing the electorate in the northern states—the
state legislatures understood the advantage of the of the black
vote to the party; 2) they would fight one battle instead of
a whole series; and, 3) the amendment would gain them black
votes as a partial offset to the anti-black votes which they
had already antagonized by their southern policies. Black enfranchisement
added about 146,000 voters to the Republican party and these
voters were strategically distributed in states that usually
were very close in presidential elections.
Learning Objective:
Understand the Compromise of 1877.
The presidential election of 1876 marked the official end of
Reconstruction. The Republicans nominated Rutherford B. Hayes,
and Democrats Samuel J. Tilden. Tilden won the popular vote
(52% to 48%), but Republican-controlled election boards in Florida,
South Carolina, and Louisiana claimed victory — despite higher
Democratic votes. They claimed that blacks had been prevented
from voting in those states. Without the electoral votes of
these states, Tilden had 184 undisputed votes — 1 short of
the majority he needed. If the disputed votes all went to Hayes,
he would have the 185 necessary to win. Congress appointed an
Electoral Commission consisting of 15 men selected from the
House, Senate and the Supreme Court. Since the Commission divided
on strict party lines, 8 Republicans to 7 Democrats, in all
of its decisions, it lost any moral authority which it might
have had. Democrats were convinced, probably correctly, that
the Republicans were stealing the election they had fairly won.
Because they controlled the House of Representatives, they were
in a position to prevent the completion of the count of votes
by refusing to meet with the Senate in a joint session, which
is constitutionally required for receiving the electoral votes.
The Election Commission awarded the Presidency to Hayes and
the Democrats agreed not to try block the election (since Tilden
would not be elected anyway) and the Republicans agreed to withdraw
the last remaining troops from the South (which Hayes was probably
going to do after the election anyway). Southern Democrats gave
great publicity to their action in "ransoming" the
last two of the states (SC & LA) which were still "unredeemed,"
but they said much less about the fact that they had also extorted
from Hayes a promise to support large subsidies and perhaps
railroad land grants for a Texas and Pacific railroad, which
would permit southern financial adventurers to enjoy some of
the governmental largesse which they had been denouncing the
Republicans for receiving.
With the Compromise of 1877 the Democratic ascendancy completely
subordinated Southern blacks. They were a subordinate caste,
not yet legally segregated, but segregated in practice, and
legal segregation would come by 1900.
The Civil War was not fought for black rights. It was a conflict
between two forms of society over which one would dominate the
American system. Slavery was seen as a impediment to future
American progress by the North. Most Northerners thought of
the freedmen simply as a local southern problem, and during
Reconstruction considered policy for them primarily as an aspect
of protecting the program and the power of the Republican party.
White Southerners did not want blacks to have social, political,
or economic equality and their programs reflected that goal.
Thus, neither side was committed to black rights. When the Republicans
realized that they could remain in power without the black Southern
vote, they abandoned them. When Southerners regained local control
in the 1880s they insured that blacks would be disfranchised
and segregated. It was not until the 1960s when a growing northern
black vote became important, and television showed the world
southern racism, that blacks gained the legal rights that had
been denied them since they had been brought to the New World.
Thus, while the American people had achieved what Lincoln called
his "paramount objective"—saving the Union — they
had not been able to resolve a dilemma which was perhaps insoluble
in any case — the dilemma of reconciling the sections without
sacrificing the quest for a new life by American blacks, or
of creating the basis for such a new life without making the
hostility between the sections permanent. To the North, the
reconciliation of the white Southerner to the Union was more
important the protection of the legal, social, and political
rights of the black Southerner.
Learning Objective:
Understand the economy of the South after Reconstruction.
After the Civil War, Southern political leaders hoped to copy
the economic success of the North. They invited Northern business
people to invest money in industry and transportation in the
South. Despite some limited advances, however, the South remained
a "colony" of the North. The South essentially produced
raw materials for Northern factories. So rapid was the expansion
of the North and West that by 1900 the South had a smaller percentage
of the nation's factories and capital than it had in 1860.
Throughout this period, Southerners were poorer and less urbanized
than Northerners. In 1860, the income of the average Southerner
was about 72 percent of the national average—in 1900 it was
51 percent. Only 8.5 percent of the population of the South
Atlantic states below Maryland was urban in 1890, as compared
with 51.7 percent of the population of the North Atlantic states
from Pennsylvania up. In 1880 the estimated per capita wealth
in the South was $376 as compared with a national average of
$870. In 1919 it was estimated that per capita income in the
South was about 40 percent lower than the national average.
Closely related to Southern poverty was a lag in literacy, education,
libraries, public health, and living standard.
The South also lost political power during this period. During
the 72 years between Washington and Lincoln, Southerners controlled
the presidency for 50 years. In 60 of those years the Chief
Justice had been from the South. The South had also furnished
about half of the Supreme Court justices, nearly half of the
men of Cabinet rank, and more than half of the Speakers of the
House of Representatives. During the next 50 years no Southerner
was elected president or vice president, and Southerners made
up only about 10 percent of the Supreme Court justices, diplomats,
and Cabinet members. Well into the twentieth century, the South
remained a satellite of both northern industry and northern
politics.
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Chapter >
Courtesy of George Burson, Aspen School District,
Aspen, Colorado.
