Period 5 Expansion, Division, & Civil War Part 2

Election of 1860

Abraham Lincoln Won the election leading to South Carolina leaving the Union.

Period 5 to early Period 6; 1861 - 1865

Confederate States of America

• By February 1861, seven Southern states had seceded.

• On February 4 of that year, representatives from South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia and Louisiana met in Montgomery, Alabama, with representatives from Texas arriving later, to form the Confederate States of America.

• Former secretary of war, military man and then-Mississippi Senator Jefferson Davis was elected Confederate president. Ex-Georgia governor, congressman and former anti-secessionist Alexander H. Stephens became vice-president of the Confederate States of America.

Battle of Fort Sumter

The first fight of the Civil war breaking out in Charleston, South Carolina on April 12, 1861.

North during the civil war

• Advantages

  • Railroad network, industrial base, superior navy, larger population, abundant supply of food.

• Disadvantages

  • Shortage of experienced and skilled military commanders, divided population that did not fully support the war.

• Anaconda Plan

  • Goal was isolation and minimal casualties.

  • Blockade southern ports.

  • Divide the south in two via Mississippi River.

    • Many considered this approach too passive, not utilized as planned.

South during the civil war

• Advantages

  • Defensive war on home territory, long coastline difficult to blockade, cotton (cash crop), experienced and skilled military commanders (Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, Nathan Bedford Forrest), close economic relationship with Britain.

• Disadvantages

  • Smaller population, smaller industrial base.

Battle of Antietam

• September 17, 1862

• Bloodiest one-day battle of the Civil War.

• Draw that the Union claimed as a victory enabled Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation.

• Persuaded England and France to remain neutral.  While both European powers saw advantages in a divided America, they remained cautious.

Emancipation Proclamation

• January 1, 1863

• Enslaved Africans living in areas that were rebelling against the United States were now and forever free.

• Actually...did not free even one slave.

  • Shifts the purpose of the war--now reuniting the country AND ending slavery.

March to the Sea (Civil War)

Sherman's March to the Sea, a major military campaign of the American Civil War, was a 62-day campaign led by Union General William Tecumseh Sherman through Georgia from November 15 to December 21, 1864. The campaign aimed to cripple the Confederacy by destroying its infrastructure and demoralizing its civilian population, ultimately contributing to the Confederacy's surrender.

Appomattox

In the Appomattox Court House Robert E. Lee would surrender to Union General Ulysses S. Grant ending the Civil War.

Fun fact:

Wilmer McLean moved his family from northern to central Virginia out of concern for their safety, settling eventually in the home at Appomattox Court House. The First Battle of Manassas (Bull Run) took place on Wilmer McLean’s farm on July 21, 1861 and inspired the move. So, in a most unusual twist of fate, the Civil War started in McLean’s backyard in 1861 and ended in his parlor in 1865.

Gettysburg Address

The Gettysburg Address, delivered by President Lincoln in 1863, is a concise yet powerful speech dedicated to the Union soldiers who died at the Battle of Gettysburg. It redefines the Civil War's purpose, connecting it to the nation's founding principles of liberty and equality, and calls for a renewed commitment to those values. The speech emphasizes the importance of preserving the Union and ensuring that the sacrifices made at Gettysburg will not be in vain.\

Battle of Gettysburg was the most bloodiest and most decisive battle of the war.

10% Plan

• A state could be reintegrated into the Union when 10 percent of the 1860 vote count from that state had taken an oath of allegiance to the United States and pledged to abide by emancipation. 

• The next step in the process would be for the states to formally elect a state government. Also, a state legislature could write a new constitution, but it also had to abolish slavery forever. 

  • At that time, Lincoln would recognize the reconstructed government

13th Amendment

1865

it would abolish slavery and involuntary servitude, completed the work of the Emancipation Proclamation.

Radical republicans

• Thaddeus Stevens and Charles Sumner

• Southern states were “conquered territory” and as such, under the jurisdiction of Congress, not the President.

• Lincoln’s plan was too lenient.

• Wade-Davis Bill

  • This congressional bill from 1864 proposed strict requirements for Southern states’ reintegration into the Union during the Reconstruction era, and was written by two Radical Republicans, Senator Benjamin Wade of Ohio and Representative Henry Winter Davis of Maryland.

  • July 1864.

  • Former Confederate states to be ruled by a military governor.

  • 50% of the electorate to swear an oath of allegiance to the U.S.

  • State convention would then be organized to repeal their ordinance of secession and abolish slavery within their state.

Veto

• Lincoln pocket-vetoed the Wade-Davis Bill.

  • End of Congressional session.

  • President does not sign within 10 days & Congress adjourns within those 10 days.

  • Bill dies.

  • No need for explanation like regular veto.

  • Cannot be overridden.

Assassination of Lincoln

President Abraham Lincoln is shot in the head at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C. on April 14, 1865. The assassin, actor John Wilkes Booth, shouted, “Sic semper tyrannis! (Ever thus to tyrants!) The South is avenged,” as he jumped onto the stage and fled on horseback. Lincoln died the next morning.

Andrew Johson

After Lincoln’s death Johnson became the president. He would buy Alaska and would continue Lincoln’s plan for reconstruction.

He was a southern Democrat.

Period 6; 1865 - 1869

Johnson’s Reconstruction Plan

• Creation of provisional military governments to run the states until they were readmitted to the Union.

• Required all Southern citizens to swear a loyalty oath before receiving amnesty for the rebellion.

• Barred former Southern elite (including plantation owners, Confederate officers and government officials) from taking that vow, thus prohibiting their participation in the new governments.

• Provisional government would hold state constitutional convention, at which time the states would have to write new constitutions eliminating slavery and renouncing secession.

Problems with Johnson’s Reconstruction plan

• Johnson’s Reconstruction plan Didn’t work because he pardoned many of the Southern elite.

• Former Confederate officials were again in positions of great power.

• Constitutions only had slight revisions.

• Black Codes 

  • While the codes granted certain freedoms to African Americans—including the right to buy and own property, marry, make contracts and testify in court (only in cases involving people of their own race)—their primary purpose was to restrict Black peoples’ labor and activity.

Freedmen’s Bureau

• A U.S. federal government agency that aided distressed freed slaves in 1865–1869, during the Reconstruction era of the United States.

• Johnson vetoed a bill to extend the life of the Freedmen’s Bureau.

  • Established in 1865 to care for refugees, being amended to include protection for the black population.

• Congress overrode Johnson’s veto, helping it last until the early 1870s.

Civil Rights bill of 1866

• Granted American citizenship to blacks and denied the states the power to restrict their rights to hold property, testify in court and make contracts for their labor (aimed to destroy the Black Codes).

• Johnson vetoed, but Congress overrode the presidential veto.

14th Amendment

1868

Made all former slaves a citizen, thus invalidating the Dred Scott decision. It would provide for equal protection of the law for all citizens and would enforce congressional legislation guaranteeing civil rights to former slaves.

Military Reconstruction Act 1867

• 5 military districts.

• Required ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment.

• New state constitutions guaranteeing blacks the right to vote.

Johnson’s Impeachment

• Johnson did everything in his power to counteract the congressional plan.

• The House Judiciary Committee initiated impeachment proceedings against Johnson.

  • Violating the Tenure of Office Act.

    • President had to secure the consent of the Senate before removing his appointees one they’d been approved by that body.

    • Johnson had fired Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, a Radical Republican.

    • Really….he was getting in the way of Reconstruction.

    • Johnson was acquitted by one vote, but rendered politically impotent.  Served the last few months of presidency and retired.

Ulysses S. Grant

Hero of the civil war, fought in the mexican american war, and nominated by Republicans in 1868.

Period 6; 1869 - 1877

15th Amendment

1869

provided for suffrage for black males, stirred controversy among women’s rights advocates. Literacy tests and poll taxes were often used to stop blacks from voting.

Civil Rights Act 1875

• Last congressional Reconstruction measure.

• Prohibited racial discrimination in jury selection, transportation, restaurants, and “inns, public conveyances on land or water, theaters, and other places of public amusement.”

• It did not guarantee equality in schools, churches and cemeteries.

• Unfortunately, it lacked a strong enforcement mechanism.

Election of 1876

Rutherford B. hayes would win but Samuel J. Tilden had more popular votes a commission ended up awarding Hayes all 3 contested states. The Republicans won the election by 1 electoral vote.
Period 6; 1877 - 1881

Compromise of 1877

• Democrats agreed that Hayes would take office.(Rutherford B. Hayes #19)

• Republicans agreed to withdraw all federal troops from the South.

• Hayes promised to appoint at least one Southerner to his cabinet.

• The Republicans agreed to support internal improvements in the South.

• The Republicans abandoned their commitment to racial equality.

  • Civil Rights Act of 1875, not enforced.

• The Compromise of 1877 ended Congressional Reconstruction.

Sharecropping

Sharecropping is a system where the landlord/planter allows a tenant to use the land in exchange for a share of the crop. This encouraged tenants to work to produce the biggest harvest that they could, and ensured they would remain tied to the land and unlikely to leave for other opportunities.

Jim Crow Laws

• A collection of state and local statutes that legalized racial segregation. 

• the laws—which existed for about 100 years, from the post-Civil War era until 1968—were meant to marginalize African Americans by denying them the right to vote, hold jobs, get an education or other opportunities. 

• Those who attempted to defy Jim Crow laws often faced arrest, fines, jail sentences, violence and death.

Black Codes

• The roots of Jim Crow laws began as early as 1865, immediately following the ratification of the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery in the United States.

• Black codes were strict local and state laws that detailed when, where and how formerly enslaved people could work, and for how much compensation. The codes appeared throughout the South as a legal way to put Black citizens into indentured servitude, to take voting rights away, to control where they lived and how they traveled and to seize children for labor purposes.

Ku Klux Klan

• Founded in 1865, the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) extended into almost every southern state by 1870 and became a vehicle for white southern resistance to the Republican Party’s Reconstruction-era policies aimed at establishing political and economic equality for Black Americans.

• Leading Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest was chosen as the first leader, or “grand wizard,” of the Klan; he presided over a hierarchy of grand dragons, grand titans and grand cyclopses.

• At least 10 percent of the Black legislators elected during the 1867-1868 constitutional conventions became victims of violence during Reconstruction, including seven who were killed. White Republicans (derided as “carpetbaggers” and “scalawags”) and Black institutions such as schools and churches—symbols of Black autonomy—were also targets for Klan attacks.

Plessy V. Ferguson

In the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson case, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of state-sponsored racial segregation, establishing the "separate but equal" doctrine. This ruling allowed for the continued implementation of Jim Crow laws, which severely limited the civil rights of African Americans.