Transcript lecture_ch11

Chapter 11
Liberation:
African Americans
and the Civil War
I. Lincoln’s Aims
• Preserve the Union
– Everything else secondary
– Especially concerned about the border states
– Call for 75,000 volunteers
– Black volunteers rejected
II. Black Men Volunteer and Are
Rejected
• Fate of Union tied to issue of slavery
• Fate of slavery tied to the outcome of war
• Black people understood before northerners
• Anglo-African newspaper
• New York, Philadelphia, Boston
• Black men offered their services
III. Union Policies toward Confederate
Slaves
• No coherent policy to deal with slaves
• Union military commanders showed more
concern for slave owner’s interests
“Contraband”
• General Benjamin Butler
– Fortress Monroe, May 1861
– Refused to return three runaway slaves, calling
them “Contraband”
• Contraband=Enemy property, or slaves
• First Confiscation Act, August 1861 allowed Union
soldiers to take confederate slaves
Lincoln’s Initial Position
• Reluctant to move against slavery, 1861
– Border state loyalty
– Supported compensated emancipationcolonization
– Wanted to end slavery in border states, April
1862
– Warned border states to accept compensation
or risk getting nothing, July 1862
Lincoln Moves toward Emancipation
• Victory and Union tied to slavery issue
– “Strike at the heart of the rebellion”
– Tells his cabinet, summer 1862
– William Seward warns Lincoln to wait
– Montgomery Blair feared fall elections
Effects of the Emancipation
Proclamation
•
Map 11–1. Effects
of the
Emancipation
Proclamation
When Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, it applied only to
slaves in those portions of the Confederacy not under Union authority. No southern slave owners
freed their slaves at Lincoln’s command. But many black people already had freed themselves, and
many more would liberate themselves as well as family and friends in the aftermath of Lincoln’s
order. The Emancipation Proclamation was of extreme importance. It helped the Union win the war. It
meant that at long last the U.S. government had joined the abolitionist movement.
Lincoln Delays Emancipation
• Waited for a victory on the battlefield
– Northern defeats, spring and summer 1862
• Antietam
– Justification for announcing emancipation
– Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation gave confederacy 100
days to return to union
Black People Reject Colonization
• Would not retreat from colonization
– Liberia
– Haiti
– Black people not interested
IV. Preliminary Emancipation
• White southerners ridiculed it
• Many white northerners had little
enthusiasm
– Antiblack riots
– Northern Democrats almost all opposed
• Denounced Lincoln and Republicans
• Most black people gratified
V. Emancipation Proclamation
• Limited to areas still in rebellion
• Did not include border states
• Changes war goals
1. Preserve the Union
2. Make people free
How would the Emancipation
Proclamation affect the war:
•
•
•
•
Socially?
Politically?
Economically?
Militarily?
Effects of Proclamation
on the South
• Ended chance of foreign recognition
• Encouraged
– Slaves to flee
– Slaves to resist
VI. Black Men
Fight for the Union
• Emancipation Proclamation
– Authorized black men to enlist
– Union defeats and the need for manpower
– Thomas Wentworth Higginson
– Robert Gould Shaw
Black Men
Fight for the Union (cont.)
• Discrimination and hostility
– Segregated units
• White officers
– Often held racist beliefs
– Lower pay scale
• White privates $13/month
• Black privates $10/month
Black Men Fought for the Union
• 185,000 black men fought for
the Union during the Civil
War.
Black Men
Fight for the Union (cont.)
• Combat
– Suffered disproportionately more casualties
– Battery Wagner
• William H. Carney
– Olustee
– The Crater
Battery Wagner on Morris Island
•
On the evening of July 18, 1863, more than six hundred black men led by their white
commander, Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, attacked heavily fortified Battery Wagner on Morris
Island near the southern approach to Charleston harbor. They made a frontal assault through
withering fire and managed to breach the battery before Confederate forces threw them back.
Shaw was killed and the 54th suffered heavy losses. It was a defining moment of the Civil War,
demonstrating to skeptical white people the valor and determination of black troops.
VII. Confederate Reaction to Black
Soldiers
• Enraged
– Refused to recognize black men as soldiers
• Treat as rebellious slaves
• General Order Number 11
– Fort Pillow Massacre
• Union response
• Union commanders angry
It ordered the expulsion of all Jews in his military district,
comprising areas of Tennessee, Mississippi, and Kentucky. The
order was issued as part of a Union campaign against a black
market in Southern cotton, which Grant thought was being run
"mostly by Jews and other unprincipled traders.
Fort Pillow
• In April 1864 fifteen hundred Confederate forces under General Nathan
Bedford Forrest attacked and captured Fort Pillow, a Union installation on the
Mississippi River forty miles north of Memphis, Tennessee, that was defended
by 550 black and white troops. After the Union forces surrendered,
Confederate troops executed some of the black soldiers. Forrest and his men
denied the atrocity, but there is little doubt it occurred
.
VIII. Black Men
in the Union Navy
• Tradition of serving in the U.S. Navy,
1790s
– Integrated
– Early 19th century many black sailors
• Attempts to ban them from the navy
IX. Liberators, Spies, and Guides
• Black men and women
– Robert Smalls
– Harriet Tubman—helped free over 800 slaves,
destroyed plantations
– Mary Elizabeth Bowser
– John Henry Woodson
Robert Smalls
• Robert Smalls was born a slave in
Beaufort, South Carolina in 1839.
In May 1862 while still a slave and
working as a pilot in Charleston on
a 150-foot Confederate vessel, The
Planter, Smalls devised an
audacious plan to seize the ship.
With the ship’s white officers
enjoying a night on the town.
Smalls sailed The Planter with
family and friends aboard to the
Union Navy outside the harbor.
Smalls’ exploits created a
sensation in the North. He went
on to become a successful
Republican politician in South
Carolina in the decades following
the Civil War.
X. Violent Opposition to Black People
• New York City Draft Riot, July 1863
– Draft
– Irish men angry that black men “took their
jobs,”
– Also angry about rich whites purchasing
exemption from war
Draft Riot in New York City
• During the draft riot in New York City in July 1863, black people
were attacked, beaten, and killed. A mob lynched this black man
near Clarkson Street.
SOURCE: Illustrated
London News, August
8, 1863.
Violent Opposition to Black People
(cont.)
• Union troops and slaves
– Often treated slaves horribly
• Rapes and assaults were not uncommon
– Others found compassion for enslaved people
• “I have no heart in this war if the slaves cannot be
made free,” a Union soldier wrote.
XI. Refugees
• Thousands of black people escaped bondage
– Some followed Union armies
– Others struck out on their own
• Faced re-enslavement or execution if caught
Black People and
the Confederacy (cont.)
• Impressment of black people
– Military demands for manpower
• Slave owners contributed slave labor
– Built fortifications
• Government first asked then compelled
– Registration and enrollment of free black people military labor
• Confederate conscription law of 1862—Exempted
men who owned twenty slaves from draft
Black People and
the Confederacy (cont.)
• Confederates enslave free black people after
Emancipation Proclamation
– Davis counter proclamation
• “All free negroes . . . shall be placed on the slave status
and be deemed to be chattels. . . forever.”
• Ordered Confederate armies to capture free black
people in the North and enslave them.
– Robert E. Lee, Pennsylvania 1863
Black Confederates
– Free black people volunteered services to
show loyalty and gain white acceptance
• Southern leaders generally ignored offers
unless for menial labor
Black Confederates (cont.)
• Small number of black men fight for CSA
– Some black civilians profit if South wins
• John Wilson Buckner
• William Ellison
Black Enlistments
• March 1865 Confederate Congress voted to enlist 300,000
• Too little, too late—In April 1865 confederate troops
surrendered at Appomattox Court House
• Receive same pay as white soldiers
• Slaves freed only with consent of owners and state agreed
XIII. Conclusion
• 185,000 black soldiers and sailors served in the
Union military
– Most had been former slaves
– Almost 40,000 died in combat or of disease during the
war
• Abraham Lincoln and the shift in public attitudes
–
–
–
–
1. White man’s war
2. Colonization
3. Enlistment
4. Appreciation
Charleston, South Carolina
• Black troops were among the first Union military forces to
“liberate” the devastated city of Charleston, South Carolina, in
the waning weeks of the Civil War. On February 21, 1865, the
55th Massachusetts Regiment occupied Charleston. Black
residents—many of them former slaves—eagerly welcomed
the soldiers. Defeated and discouraged white residents
remained secluded indoors.
SOURCE: Harper’s Weekly,
March 18, 1865.