Transcript Civil War 010 - Marblehead High School

Causes of the Civil War
• Expansion
• Regional differences, states
rights
• Slavery, but most northerners
were not big abolitionists
• Era of Reform
• Fugitive Slave Law
• Uncle Tom’s Cabin
• Unfair advantage
• Immigrants in North
• USA = “home of the free”
• Republican party
Why did Southerners defend
slavery?
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Economic ruin
“American Dream”
States rights
Cultural “elite” want to
keep their privileges
How did the war start?
• Missouri Compromise
• Turner’s Revolt
• Annexation of Texas /
Mexican War
• Compromise of 1850
• Fugitive Slave Act
• Uncle Tom’s Cabin
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Kansas Nebraska Act
Dred Scott
Brown’s Raid
Republican Party
Lincoln’s Election
“A house divided against
itself cannot stand”
Secession
• Seen as a right in the
south
• Buchanan said he
wouldn’t stop it
• Lincoln said he
wouldn’t allow it
• Fort Sumter
• Virginia
• Throughout the year since our last meeting the country has been
eminently prosperous in all its material interests. The general health
has been excellent, our harvests have been abundant, and plenty
smiles throughout the land.
• Why is it, then, that discontent now so extensively prevails, and the
Union of the States, which is the source of all these blessings, is
threatened with destruction?
• The long-continued and intemperate interference of the Northern
people with the question of slavery in the Southern States has at
length produced its natural effects. The different sections of the
Union are now arrayed against each other, and the time has arrived,
so much dreaded by the Father of his Country, when hostile
geographical parties have been formed.
• The immediate peril arises not so much from these causes as from
the fact that the incessant and violent agitation of the slavery
question throughout the North for the last quarter of a century has at
length produced its malign influence on the slaves and inspired
them with vague notions of freedom. Hence a sense of security no
longer exists around the family altar. This feeling of peace at home
has given place to apprehensions of servile insurrections. Many a
matron throughout the South retires at night in dread of what may
befall herself and children before the morning.
President Buchanan: State of the Union December 3,1860
• We, the people of the State of South Carolina, in
Convention assembled, do declare and ordain, and it
is hereby declared and ordained, that the ordinance
adopted by us in Convention, on the 23d day of May,
in the year of our Lord 1788, whereby the Constitution
of the United States of America was ratified, and also
all Acts and parts of Acts of the General Assembly of
this State ratifying the amendments of the said
Constitution, are hereby repealed, and that the union
now subsisting between South Carolina and other
States under the name of the United States of
America is hereby dissolved.
• South Carolina Articles of Secession December
20,1860
• I rise, Mr. President, for the purpose of announcing to the Senate that I have
satisfactory evidence that the State of Mississippi, by a solemn ordinance of
her people, in convention assembled, has declared her separation from the
United States. Under these circumstances, of course, my functions are
terminated here. It has seemed to me proper, however, that I should appear
in the Senate to announce that fact to my associates, and I will say but very
little more. The occasion does not invite me to go into argument; and my
physical condition would not permit me to do so, if it were otherwise; and yet
it seems to become me to say something on the part of the State I here
represent on an occasion as solemn as this.
• A great man who now reposes with his fathers, and who has often been
arraigned for want of fealty to the Union, advocated the doctrine of
nullification because it preserved the Union. It was because of his deepseated attachment to the Union—his determination to find some remedy for
existing ills short of a severance of the ties which bound South Carolina to
the other States—that Mr. Calhoun advocated the doctrine of nullification,
which he proclaimed to be peaceful, to be within the limits of State power,
not to disturb the Union, but only to be a means of bringing the agent before
the tribunal of the States for their judgement.
Jefferson Davis – Farewell address in US Senate January 1861
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CHARLESTON, S. C., November 8, 1860. - Yesterday on the train, just before
we reached Fernandina, a woman called out: "That settles the hash." Tanny touched
me on the shoulder and said: "Lincoln's elected." "How do you know?" "The man
over there has a telegram."
The excitement was very great. Everybody was talking at the same time. One, a
little more moved than the others, stood up and said despondently: "The die is cast;
no more vain regrets; sad forebodings are useless; the stake is life or death." "Did
you ever!" was the prevailing exclamation, and some one cried out: "Now that the
black radical Republicans have the power I suppose they will Brown 1 us all. " No
doubt of it.
I have always kept a journal after a fashion of my own, with dates and a line of
poetry or prose, mere quotations, which I understood and no one else, and I have
kept letters and extracts from the papers. From to-day forward I will tell the story in
my own way. I now wish I had a chronicle of the two delightful and eventful years that
have just passed. Those delights have fled and one's breath is taken away to think
what events have since crowded in. Like the woman's record in her journal, we have
had "earthquakes, as usual" - daily shocks.
Diary of Mary Chestnut – Charleston SC
November 8, 1860 - December 27, 1860
• December 27th. - Mrs. Gidiere came in quietly from her marketing to-day,
and in her neat, incisive manner exploded this bombshell:. "Major Anderson
has moved into Fort Sumter, while Governor Pickens slept serenely." The
row is fast and furious now. State after State is taking its forts and fortresses.
They say if we had been left out in the cold alone, we might have sulked a
while, but back we would have had to go, and would merely have fretted and
fumed and quarreled among ourselves. We needed a little wholesome
neglect. Anderson has blocked that game, but now our sister States have
joined us, and we are strong. I give the condensed essence of the table-talk:
"Anderson has united the cotton States. Now for Virginia!" "Anderson has
opened the ball." Those who want a row are in high glee. Those who dread it
are glum and thoughtful enough.
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A letter from Susan Rutledge: "Captain Humphrey folded the United
States Army flag just before dinnertime. Ours was run up in its place. You
know the Arsenal is in sight. What is the next move? I pray God to guide us.
We stand in need of wise counsel; something more than courage. The talk
is: 'Fort Sumter must be taken; and it is one of the strongest forts.' How in
the name of sense are they to manage? I shudder to think of rash moves."
Diary of Mary Chestnut – Charleston SC
November 8, 1860 - December 27, 1860
Fort Sumter
– April 1861
Strengths and Weaknesses
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Population
North 21 million
South 9 million
Factories
North 110,000
South 20,000
Bank Deposits
North $207million
South $47million
Miles of Railroad Track
North 22,000
South 9,000
So if the North had all the
advantages, why did the war
take so long?
What advantage did South have?
• Army officers
• Defensive war
• Support of England
• To GENERAL WINFIELD SCOTT
Commander-in-Chief, United States Army
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Arlington, Washington City P.O.
April 20, 1861
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General:
Since my interview with you on the 18th instant I have felt that I
ought not longer to retain my commission in the Army. I therefore
tender my resignation, which I request you will recommend for
acceptance. It would have been presented at once, but for the struggle
it has cost me to separate myself from a service to which I have
devoted all the best years of my life & all the ability I possessed.
• During the whole of that time, more than 30 years, I have experienced
nothing but kindness from my superiors, & the most cordial friendship
from my companions. To no one Genl have I been as much indebted as
to yourself for uniform kindness & consideration, & it has always been
my ardent desire to merit your approbation.
• I shall carry with me to the grave the most grateful recollections of
your kind consideration, & your name & fame will always be dear to
me. Save in the defence of my native State, I never desire again to draw
my sword.
• Be pleased to accept my most earnest wishes for the continuance of
your happiness & prosperity & believe me most truly yours
• R. E. LEE
Key People
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Lincoln
McClellan
Burnside
Hooker
Grant
Sherman
Johnson
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Davis
Lee
Jackson
Stuart
Longstreet
Boothe
How Bad Was It? Technology
1812 era tactics with 1860s technology
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Canister
Shells
Rifles
Revolvers
Key Events List
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1st Battle of Bull Run
Strategies Blockade, Mississippi, Attrition
Peninsula Campaign
Shiloh
Antietam
Emancipation Proclamation
Fredericksburg
Gettysburg
Vicksburg
March to the Sea
Appomattox
Lincoln’s Assasination
1st Battle of Bull
Run
• Political Pressure for fight
• Union Army disorganized /
untrained
• March to Manassas
• Washington Society goes as
spectators
• Initial advance repulsed,
– Jackson arrives
– Secondary advance smashed
– Free for all retreat
• Myth of quick war smashed
• Trains / casualties
• String of Rebel Victories follows
Early part of the war
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Lincoln’s general problems – “the slows”
Anaconda Plan
Peninsula Campaign
Antietam
Fredericksburg
Emancipation
• A disloyal portion of the American people have during the whole year been
engaged in an attempt to divide and destroy the Union. A nation which
endures factious domestic division is exposed to disrespect abroad, and one
party, if not both, is sure sooner or later to invoke foreign intervention.
• Nations thus tempted to interfere are not always able to resist the counsels
of seeming expediency and ungenerous ambition, although measures
adopted under such influences seldom fail to be unfortunate and injurious to
those adopting them.
• The disloyal citizens of the United States who have offered the ruin of our
country in return for the aid and comfort which they have invoked abroad
have received less patronage and encouragement than they probably
expected. If it were just to suppose, as the insurgents have seemed to
assume, that foreign nations in this case, discarding all moral, social, and
treaty obligations, would act solely and selfishly for the most speedy
restoration of commerce, including especially the acquisition of cotton, those
nations appear as yet not to have seen their way to their object more directly
or clearly through the destruction than through the preservation of the Union.
If we could dare to believe that foreign nations are actuated by no higher
principle than this, I am quite sure a sound argument could be made to show
them that they can reach their aim more readily and easily by aiding to crush
this rebellion than by giving encouragement to it.
Abraham Lincoln – State of the Union December 1861
• Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, by virtue
of the power in me vested as Commander-In-Chief of the Army and Navy of
the United States in time of actual armed rebellion against the authority and
government of the United States, and as a fit and necessary war measure
for supressing said rebellion, do, on this 1st day of January, A.D. 1863, and
in accordance with my purpose so to do, publicly proclaimed for the full
period of one hundred days from the first day above mentioned, order and
designate as the States and parts of States wherein the people thereof,
respectively, are this day in rebellion against the United States the following,
to wit: (followed by a naming of the states)
• And by virtue of the power and for the purpose aforesaid, I do order and
declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated States and
parts of States are, and henceforward shall be, free; and that the Executive
Government of the United States, including the military and naval authorities
thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons.
• And I hereby enjoin upon the people so declared to be free to abstain from
all violence, unless in necessary self-defence; and I recommend to them
that, in all case when allowed, they labor faithfully for reasonable wages.
Emancipation Proclamation January 1863
Thomas Nast Cartoon of the Emancipation Proclamation - 1863
“Writing the Emancipation Proclamation” – AJ Volck, Baltimore 1862
About that Emancipation
Proclamation…
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Above all it is a war-time measure
Questionable legality
Does not apply to border states
Questionable enforcibility in Confederate States
Allows for confiscation / contraband
Weakens non-military workforce of south
International implications
Shows transition – willingness to destroy the
south in order to keep it
Gettysburg
July 1863
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Lee’s Second Invasion
Junction Point
Shoes
Not an ideal point for Lee to
fight
3 days / 3 attacks
Culminates in Pickett’s Charge
Lee’s army smashed, no
longer able to launch offensive
strikes
Numerical advantage becomes
plain
Vicksburg is nearly
simultaneous
Vicksburg – July 1863
• Controls Mississippi
Traffic
• Thought to be
impenetrable
• Grant’s assaults and
seige
• Splits Confederacy
• Moves Grant to
forefront
• Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this
continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the
proposition that all men are created equal.
• Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or
any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are
met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a
portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave
their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper
that we should do this.
• But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who
struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add
or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say
here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living,
rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who
fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be
here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these
honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they
gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve
that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under
God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the
people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Abraham Lincoln – Gettysburg Address 1863
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Gentlemen: I have your letter of the 11th, in the nature of a petition to revoke my
orders removing all of the inhabitants from Atlanta. I have read it carefully, and give
full credit to your statements of the distress that will be occasioned, and yet shall not
revoke my orders, because they were not designed to meet the humanities of the
case, but to prepare for the future struggles in which millions of good people outside
of Atlanta have a deep interest. …
You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot
refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and
maledictions a people can pour out. I know I had no hand in making this war, and I
know I will make more sacrifices today than any of you to secure peace. But you
cannot have peace and a division of our country. If the United States submits to a
division now, it will not stop, but will go on until we reap the fate of Mexico, which is
eternal war. …
You might as well appeal against the thunderstorm as against these terrible
hardships of war. They are inevitable, and the only way the people of Atlanta can
hope once more to live in peace and quiet at home, is to stop the war, which can only
be done by admitting that it began in error and is perpetuated in pride. …
I myself have seen in Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Mississippi, hundreds of
thousands of women and children fleeing from your armies and desperadoes, hungry
and with bleeding feet. In Memphis, Vicksburg, and Mississippi, we fed thousands
upon thousands of the families of rebel soldiers left on our hands, and whom we
could not see starve. …
Now that war comes home to you, you feel very different. You deprecate its horrors,
but did not feel them when you sent carloads of soldiers and ammunition, and
molded shells and shot, to carry war into Kentucky and Tennessee, to desolate the
homes of hundreds and thousands of good people who only asked to live in peace at
their old homes, and under the government of their inheritance. …
William T. Sherman – Letter to town leaders of Atlanta September 1864
Politics and the Confederacy
• Davis
– Longtime senator,
cabinet member
– West Pointer
• “Revolutionary”
Parallels
• States Rights as
limiting factor
• Foreign Aid?
• Tax / Diplomatic
Machinery
Lincoln as a Leader
• Lincoln and the War
• Lincoln – little formal
education / training
• Lincoln was a minority
president
• Very little Washington
experience
• Has to gain the trust
of his cabinet
• Strength was logic,
get to the point
Politics during the War for Union
• Presidential Power
– Jacksonian
– Taxes and Rise of Federal
Institutions
• Habeus Corpus
– Bill of Rights largely
suspended
– Significant curtailments to free
speech, press
– Why not in the south?
• Draft
– 1st
– Rich can pay or send a
surrogate
– NYC Draft Riots
International Politics
• Europe favors a
divided North America
• European
Industrialists and
Cotton
• British Protection of
CSA ships
– Neutral Ports
– $ and weapons
– Refuse to challenge
the blockade
– Politics of
emancipation in Britain
Politics at the end of the war
• Lincoln’s 2nd Innagural
• Lincoln wants to forgive
the South and patch the
country up as quickly as
possible
• Before end of war he is
making plans for how to
bring Confederates back
in
• Voting Rights?
– For ex – confederates?
– For African Americans?
• “On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were
anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to
avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place,
devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, urgent agents were in
the city seeking to destroy it without war—seeking to dissolve the Union and
divide effects by negotiation. ……..
• Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has
already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might
cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an
easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the
same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the
other. ….. The prayers of both could not be answered. …..
• “With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as
God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to
bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle,
and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish
a just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations."
Abraham Lincoln Second Inaugural Address March 1865
Lincoln’s Death
• Ford’s Theater,
Booth, “sic semper
tyranus,” conspiracy
• 1st President to be
assasinated
• Timing
• Ascension of Andrew
Johnson
– Democrat
– Slaveowner
– Will be impeached
Civil War by the Numbers
• 3 Million + Men fought
• 389,000 Union (224,000 disease)
• 289,000 Confederacy (164,000
disease)
• Total Population of about 30 million
• Male Population of about 15 million
• .6 million dead out of 15 million males
=
• About 1 of every 30 American males
died
• Journalism of the Civil War
– Photography
– Telegraphs
The South
• Impact on Civilians
• Had Lincoln survived…
• Plantation system
destroyed
• Industry destroyed
• Rise of Banditry
• Struggle over
Representation / Suffrage
• Push West
• African American
Suffrage and eventual
backlash
Industrial Growth
• Use of Telecoms /
RRs spurs expansion
• 1870s – 1880s
American business
starts to become Big
Business, multi-state
corporations
• Post War Westward
Push leads to
increase
• End of slavery leads
to Homestead-ism
Power of Federal Government
• Unbreakable union
• Executive vs.
Legislative Power
Struggle
• Precedents
• Paper Money
• Draft
• Suspension of Rights
End of Slavery
• Freedmen’s Bureau
• 13,14,15
Amdendments
• Black Congressmen,
Senators
• Black Codes
• Sharecropping
• Jim Crow Laws
• Plessy v. Ferguson
1896
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I am satisfied that the mass of thinking men of the South accept the present situation of affairs
in good faith. … I was pleased to learn from the leading men whom I met that they not only
accepted the decision arrived at as final but, now that the smoke of battle has cleared away and
time has been given for reflection, that this decision has been a fortunate one for the whole
country, they receiving like benefits from it with those who opposed them in the field and in
council.
I did not meet anyone, either those holding places under the government or citizens of the
Southern states, who think it practicable to withdraw the military from the South at present. The
white and the black mutually require the protection of the general governments.
The presence of black troops, lately slaves, demoralizes labor, both by their advice and by
furnishing in their camps a resort for the freedmen for long distances around. White troops
generally excite no opposition, and therefore a small number of them can maintain order in a
given district. … It is not the thinking men who would use violence toward any class of troops
sent among them by the general government, but the ignorant in some places might; and the
late slave seems to be imbued with the idea that the property of his late master should, by right,
belong to him, or at least should have no protection from the colored soldier.
My observations lead me to the conclusion that the citizens of the Southern states are anxious
to return to self-government within the Union as soon as possible; that while reconstructing they
want and require protection from the government; that they are in earnest in wishing to do what
they think is required by the government, not humiliating to them as citizens, and that if such a
course were pointed out they would pursue it in good faith.
I did not give the operations of the Freedmen’s Bureau that attention I would have done if more
time had been at my disposal. Conversations on the subject, however, with officers connected
with the bureau lead me to think that in some of the states its affairs have not been conducted
with good judgment or economy, and that the belief widely spread among the freedmen of the
Southern states that the lands of their former owners will, at least in part, be divided among
them has come from the agents of this bureau. This belief is seriously interfering with the
willingness of the freedmen to make contracts for the coming year.
Ulysses Grant - Report to President Johnson on conditions in the south
December 1865