Transcript The Civil War

The American Civil War
1861-1865
American Lit. I
Cecilia H.C. Liu
03/01/2005
Civil War Overview
• With the election of the anti-slavery Republican
candidate for President, Abraham Lincoln, the
Southern states decided to take drastic action to
protect their own interests.
• On December 20, 1860, a secession convention met
in South Carolina and adopted an Ordinance of
Secession from the Union, and Jefferson Davis was
chosen as President for a six-year term of office. All
States ratified it and conformed themselves to its
requirements without delay. The Constitution varied
in very few particulars from the Constitution of the
United carefully the fundamental principles of
popular States, preserving representative democracy
and confederation of co-equal States.
The Civil War Time Line
•
•
•
•
•
1861
1862
1863
1864
1865
Cause of the War (1)
• The root of all of problems was the institution of
slavery, which was introduced in North America in
colonial period. The American Revolution had been
fought to validate the idea that all men were created
equal, slavery was legal in all of the thirteen
colonies throughout the revolutionary period.
• Although it was mostly gone from northern states
by 1787, it still enshrined in the new Constitution of
the United States, not only the Southern ones, but
also with approval of many Northern delegates who
saw that there was still much money to be made in
the slave trade by the Yankee shipping industry.
Cause of the War (2)
• There was agitation in the North for abolition of the
slavery on purely moral grounds. Abolitionist leader
William Lloyd Garrison, claimed that slavery was “a
covenant with death, and an agreement with hell.”
• Abolitionists believed not only slavery was wrong,
but that the Federal government should move to
abolish it, and have then projected into the minds of
southerners as a threat out of all their actual power
and influence.
• This threat was greatly magnified in 1859 by John
Brown's seizure of the Harper's Ferry arsenal and his
call for a general insurrection of the slaves. This
caused many of the Southern states to implement
plans for more effective militias for internal defense.
Cause of the War (3)
• The mess went up in smoke in the presidential
election year of 1860. Into this confusion the new
Republican party injected its nominee, Abraham
Lincoln. Lincoln was a moderate Republican. As
such he was a compromise candidate, everybody’s
second choice.
• He was convinced that the Constitution forbade the
Federal government from taking action against
slavery where it already existed, but was
determined to keep it from spreading further. South
Carolina, in a fit of stubborn pride, unilaterally
announced that it would secede from the Union if
Lincoln were elected.
Photographs of the War
• Outmoded, close order
formations, rifled
muskets, breach loaders,
repeating rifles, and
explosive shells, along
with rudimentary medical
procedures, all combined
to make the Civil War
battlefield among the
most horrific in the long
and gruesome history of
warfare.
Frederick Douglass
The Meaning of 4th of July for the Negro
• Fellow-citizens, above your national, tumultuous joy, I
hear the mournful wail of millions! whose chains, heavy
and grievous yesterday, are, to-day, rendered more
intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them. If I do
forget, if I do not faithfully remember those bleeding
children of sorrow this day, "may my right hand forget
her cunning, and may my tongue cleave to the roof of
my mouth!" To forget them, to pass lightly over their
wrongs, and to chime in with the popular theme, would
be treason most scandalous and shocking, and would
make me a reproach before God and the world. My
subject, then, fellow-citizens, is American slavery. I shall
see this day and its popular characteristics from the
slave's point of view.
The Meaning of 4th of July for the Negro
• Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding slave on
this occasion, I will, in the name of humanity which is
outraged, in the name of liberty which is fettered, in the
name of the constitution and the Bible which are
disregarded and trampled upon, dare to call in question
and to denounce, with all the emphasis I can command,
everything that serves to perpetuate slavery ?the great sin
and shame of America! "I will not equivocate; I will not
excuse"; I will use the severest language I can command;
and yet not one word shall escape me that any man,
whose judgment is not blinded by prejudice, or who is not
at heart a slaveholder, shall not confess to be right and
just.
The Meaning of 4th of July for the Negro
• ...Allow me to say, in conclusion, notwithstanding the dark
picture I have this day presented, of the state of the nation, I
do not despair of this country. There are forces in operation
which must inevitably work the downfall of slavery. "The arm of
the Lord is not shortened," and the doom of slavery is certain. I,
therefore, leave off where I began, with hope. While drawing
encouragement from "the Declaration of Independence," the
great principles it contains, and the genius of American
Institutions, my spirit is also cheered by the obvious tendencies
of the age. Nations do not now stand in the same relation to
each other that they did ages ago. No nation can now shut itself
up from the surrounding world and trot round in the same old
path of its fathers without interference. The time was when
such could be done. Long established customs of hurtful
character could formerly fence themselves in, and do their evil
work with social impunity.
The Meaning of 4th of July for the Negro
• Knowledge was then confined and enjoyed by the privileged few, and
the multitude walked on in mental darkness. But a change has now
come over the affairs of mankind. Walled cities and empires have
become unfashionable. The arm of commerce has borne away the
gates of the strong city. Intelligence is penetrating the darkest corners
of the globe. It makes its pathway over and under the sea, as well as
on the earth. Wind, steam, and lightning are its chartered agents.
Oceans no longer divide, but link nations together. From Boston to
London is now a holiday excursion. Space is comparatively annihilated.
-- Thoughts expressed on one side of the Atlantic are distinctly heard
on the other.
• The far off and almost fabulous Pacific rolls in grandeur at our feet.
The Celestial Empire, the mystery of ages, is being solved. The fiat of
the Almighty, "Let there be Light," has not yet spent its force. No
abuse, no outrage whether in taste, sport or avarice, can now hide
itself from the all-pervading light.
References
• The Civil War Overview
http://www.civilwarhome.com/overview.htm
• The American Civil War: The Struggle to
Preserve the Union
http://www.swcivilwar.com/
• Douglass, Frederick. "The Meaning of
July Fourth for the Negro"
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4h
2927t.html