RAHHHH APUSH (UNIT 5) AP REVIEW

Great Irish Famine

• 1845-1851

• Ireland’s population had grown rapidly during the Napoleonic Wars

• Most Irish farmers, working as tenants for English landlords, were required to send their grain crop to England

• The potato blight destroyed almost the entire crop, depriving the majority of families of food

• Over one million people died of malnutrition or diseases that preyed on the hungry

• Those who could took passage for the US– over 1.5 million (one-sixth of Ireland’s people) emigrated to the US

Wilmot Proviso

• 1846

• Proposed by David Wilmot, an antislavery Democrat from PA

• What it did: Proposed a ban on slavery in any states gained from the war with Mexico

• Quickly passed by the Whigs and antislavery Democrats in the HoR, but it divided Congress along sectional lines

Election of 1848

• Taylor elected

• The conflict over slavery took a toll on Polk and the Democrats; Polk declined to run for a second term

• Democrats nominated Lewis Cass of MI, an avid expansionist who advocated buying Cuba, annexing Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, and taking all of Oregon; Cass advocated squatter sovereignty

• Northern Democrats joined with Van Buren under the Free Soil Banner

• Whigs nominated Taylor, a LA slave owner firmly committed to defending slavery in the South but not in the territories, a position that made him popular in the North

• Taylor won partly because Free Soilers took away enough Democratic votes to block Cass’ victory in NY

Gold Rush

• 1848

• Forty-niners included Mexican Californios, Anglo-Americans from all around the nation, South Americans, Europeans, china, and Australia

• Most prospectors were men, living in crowded, chaotic towns and camps admit gamblers, saloonkeepers, and prostitutes

• Anglo-American miners fiercely expelled Native Americans, Mexicans, Chileans, and Asians

• Many faced disease and death

• Thousands of disillusioned forty-niners were too ashamed, exhausted, broke, or ambitious to go home

• Some ex-forty-niners became wageworkers for companies that engaged in mining and others turned to farming

Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo

• 1848

• After the war, Polk, Buchanan, Douglas of IL, and Davis called for annexation of a huge swath of Mexican territory south of the Riot Grande

• Calhoun and others feared having to assimilate many mixed-race people, favoring annexation of sparsely settled New Mexico and CA

• To unify the party, Polk ceded to Calhoun’s policy

• What it did: The US agreed to pay Mexico $15 million in return for more than one-third of its territory and declared that property owned by Mexicans would be “inviolably respected”

Foreign Miner’s Tax

• 1850

• Charged a prohibitive fee that drove out many Latinx and Asian miners

Compromise of 1850

• Calhoun’s argument: Calhoun argued that the Constitution had no authority to regulate slavery in the territories, as the Constitution allegedly restricted Congress’ power to abrogate/limit property rights

  • His position that planters could take slave property into new territories won growing support in the Deep South

• Other southerners proposed extending the Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific Ocean; also backed by some northern Democrats

• Stephen Douglas and others proposed popular sovereignty

  • Many supported it because they hoped it would elieve Congress from having to make explosive decisions about slavery and frontier citizens would appreciate the power it gave them

• Free soilers and antislavery activists refused to accept any proposal for CA or other territories that allowed slavery

• Seward’s plan: federal laws to restrict slavery within its existing boundaries and eventually ending it completely

• What it did: A passsage of five separate laws

  • Included a stronger FSA

  • Admitted CA as a free state

  • Resolved a boundary dispute between New Mexico and TX in favor of NM

  • Abolished the slave trade (but not slavery) in DC

  • Invoked popular sovereignty

Fugitive Slave Act

• 1850

• Passed under the Compromise of 1850; designed to mollify southern planters

• What it did:

  • Set up federal courts to determine the legal status of alleged runaways

  • An owner’s word was considered proof, while defendants could not receive a jury trial or even the right to testify

  • US marshalls and clerks were paid $10 for each person remanded to slavery and only $5 when they set a captive free

• The plight of runaways and the presence of slave catchers aroused popular hostility in the North and Midwest, broadening support for the abolitionist cause

• Black and white abolitionists increasingly helped fugitives escape

American (Know-Nothing) Party

• 1851

• Formed from various local nativist societies that banded together as the Order of the Star-Spangled Banner

• Supporters wanted to mobilize native-born Protestants against the “alien menace” of Irish and German Catholics, discourage further immigration, and institute literacy tests for voting

• Drew from former Whigs in the South and equally from Whigs and Democrats in the North

• Also hostile to the expansion of slavery

• The emergence of a Protestant-based nativist party to replace the Whigs became a real possibility

Uncle Tom’s Cabin

• 1852

• Written by Harriet Beecher, it conveyed the moral principles of abolitionism by depicting heart-rendering personal situations and describing the brutality of slavery

  • Discussed whippings, sexual abuse, the separation of families, and the sin and guilt of slaveowners

• Quickly sold 310,000 copies in the US and ouble that number in England, where it prompted an antislavery petition signed by 560,000 English women

• Uncle Tom’s Cabin was soon performed theatrically, introducing broad popular audiences to its characters

Beecher later published Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin presenting the evidence she had used, including autobiographies and other testimony

Election of 1852

• Pierce elected

• The Whigs floundered– the Free soil Party ran another spirited campaign, and many northerners demanded that Whigs take a stronger stand against slavery expansion

• Democrats strengthened their base in the South by arguing that the Whigs were not doing enough to protect slavery

• Many northern and midwestern Democrats hoped to nominate advocates of popular sovereignty, including Buchanan, Cass, and Douglas

• The Democrats eventually nominated Pierce of NH

Gadsden Purchase

• 1853

• Pierce and his secretary of state, William Marcy, first sought to buy extensive Mexican lands south of the Rio Grande

• Pierce later settled for a smaller slice of territory in the Gadsden Purchase, obtaining part of AZ and NM

Personal liberty laws

• Passed in response to the Fugitive Slave Act as northern legislators protested that the FSA violated state sovereignty

• What they did: Guaranteed to all residents, including alleged escapees, the right to a jury trial

Treaty of Kanagawa

• 1854

• Americans wanted coal stations in Japan, and argued that trade would extend “commerce, knowledge, and Christinaity”

• Commodore Matthew Perry forced Japanese officials to sign the Treaty of Kanagawa, which allowed US ships to refuel at two ports

Ostend Manifesto

• 1854

• Southern expansionists had long urged Cuban slave owners to declare independence from Spain and join the US

• To assist the expansionists and American traders who shipped slaves to Cuba, Pierce threatened war with Spain and supported private military expiditions

• What it did: Marcy arranged for American diplomats in Europe to compose the Ostend Manifesto, which urged Pierce to seize Cuba by force

• When the Ostend Manifesto was revealed, northern Democrats and Free Soilers all denounced it, calling it evidence of southern “slave power” machinations

Kansas-Nebraska Act

• 1854

• Southern politicians hoped to extend slavery throughout the Louisiana Purchase and have a southern city serve as the eastern terminus of a transcontinental railroad

• What it did:

  • Douglas amended the bill to repeal the MO compromise, potentially enabling slavery to extend further west

  • Douglas agreed to the formation of two territories, Nebraska and Kansas, raising the prospect that Kansas would choose slavery

• Galvanized many northerners, especially Whigs, to stand up against the “slave power”

Republican Party

• 1854

• Formed due to opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act

• Former Democrats joined ex-Whigs and Free Soil supporters to form the Republican Party

• Many abolitionists refused to join, arguing that the Republicans compromised too much on the need for immediate abolition

• Almost all Republicans disliked and wished to limit slavery, which they argued, drove down the wages of free workers and degraded the dignity of manual labor

• Praised a society based on the “middling classes who own the soil and work it with their own hands”

• Advocated social mobility

• Envisioned an order of independent farmers, artisans, and proprietors

• Celebrated middle-class values of domesticity, respectability, religion, and capitalism

William Walker in Nicaragua

• 1856

• Walker, a forty-niner, gathered other disappointed gold-seekers to capture Sonora

• After failing, he organized three separate expeditions to Central America

• Walker was later hired as a mercenary to help a faction in a civil war in Nicaragua; Walker and his 300 men overthrew the country’s government and established their own

• Walker’s government declared slavery legal

• Walker could not hold on to power; he later fled Nicaragua and returned to Central America twice more before being captured and killed

• Significance: Walker’s exploits confirmed many northerners’ belief that the “slave power” would stop at nothing to expand

Bleeding Kansas

• 1856

• Thousands of settlers rushed into the Kansas Territory to put popular sovereignty to the test

• Atchinson of MO encouraged residents of his state to vote in Kansas, while the New England Emigrant Aid society dispatched its supporters to Kansas

• Both sides turned to violence

  • A proslavery force looted and burned the antislavery town of Lawrence

  • Brown and his followers murdered five proslavery settlers at Pottawatomie, declaring that abolitionist must “fight fire with fire”

Election of 1856

• Buchanan elected

• The Republicans nominated Fremont, a free soiler

  • The Republican Party stoked anger over Bleeding Kansas, denouncing the Kansas-Nebraska Act

  • Republicans demanded the prohibition of slavery in all the territories

  • Republicans also called for federal subsidies to build transcontinental railroads

• The American Party split sectional lines over slavery, with southerners nominating a former Whig president, and the north endorsing Fremont

• Republicans won the votes of many northern Know-Nothings by demanding legislation banning foreign immigrants and imposing high tariffs on foreign manufactures

Ableman v. Booth

• 1857

• The WI SC ruled that the FSA was unconstitutional because it violated the rights of WI’s citizens

• Took a states’ rights stance– traditionally a southern position– which Taney later countered with an affirmation of federal court supremacy

Dred Scott v. Sandford

• 1857

• Aimed to clarify Congress’ constitutional authority over slavery

• Dred Scott was a slave had lived in the free state of IL and WI territory with his owner, where the MO Compromise prohibited slavery

• Scott argued that residence in a free state and territory had made him free

• Buchanan opposed Scott’s appeal and secretly pressured tow justices from PA to side with their southern colleagues

• Taney argued that black people, whether enslaved or free, could not be citizens of the US and therefore had no rights → declared that African Americans could not sue in federal court

  • Controversial argument, given that free blacks were citizens in many northern states

• Taney also endorsed Calhoun, stating that Congress could not prevent southern citizens from maving slave property into the territories → consequently, the provisions of the Northwest Ordinance and the MO Compromise had never been constitutional

• Taney sided with Calhoun in declaring that only when territories became states could they prohibit slavery

Buchanan urges Congress to admit Kansas

• 1858

• Ignoring pleas from his advisers, who saw that antislavery residents held a clear majority in Kansas, he refused to allow a popular vote and urged Congress to emerge Kansas as a slave state

• Angered by Buchanan, Douglas broke with the president and persuaded Congress to deny Kansas statehood

Mormon War

• 1858

• Intended to stem the growing controversy over slavery

• Tensions between Mormons and federal authorities simmered troughout the 50s, and pressured by Protestant leaders to end polygamy and angered by Mormons’ threat to nullify federal laws, Buchanan dispatched a small army to Utah

• Buchanan later backed down, deciding that forced abolition of polygamy might be a risky precedent for ending slavery

Buchanan and Cuba

• 1858

• Buchanan resumed negotiations to buy Cuba

Lincoln-Douglas debates

• 1858

• Lincoln ran for the US Senate seat held by Douglas

• Lincoln predicted that American society “cannot endure permanently half slave and half free…. It will become all one thing, or all the other”

• The Senate race attracted national interest because of Douglas’ prominence and Lincoln’s reputationn as a formidable speaker

• Douglas declared his support for white supremacy, attacking Lincoln for supporting “negro equality”

• Licoln countered by arguing that free blacks should have equal economic opportunities but not equal political rights

• Ultimately, Douglas was re-elected to the Senate, but Lincoln won a national reputation

John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry

• 1859

• Brown led eighteen heavily armed black and white men in a raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry in VA

• Brown hoped to arm slaves with the weapons and mount a major rebellion to end slavery

• The raid failed, and Brown was quickly captured

• Brown made an excellent martyr

• Southerners were shocked to find that a group of abolitionists had funded Brown’s work and that church bells tolled on the day of Brown’s hanging

• Democrats called the raid “a natural, logical, inevitable result of the doctrines and teachings of the Republican party”

Election of 1860

• Lincoln elected

• Northern and midwestern Democrats nominated Douglas for president

• Meeting separately, southern Democrats nominated Breckinridge of Kentucky

• Republicans courted white voters with a free soil platform that opposed both slavery and racial equality, choosing Lincoln for their president

• Lincoln conveyed an egalitarian image that appealed to smallholding farmers, wage earners, and midwestern voters

• Significance: 

  • Lincoln recieved less than 1% of the popular vote in the South but won by winning every northern and western state (except NJ)

  • Lincoln won the electoral college but only 40% of the popular vote

  • Southerners panicked, realizing that all their legal, democratic might could not stop the North’s hostility to slavery

Secession winter

• 1860-1861

• Following Lincoln’s election, secessionist fervor swept through the Deep South

• Deep South:

  • South Carolina was the first to secede

  • Fire-eaters elsewhere called for conventions, with FL, LA, and MS enacting secession ordinances

  • By February, all the Deep South states had seceded, and secessionists met in Alabama to proclaim a new nation, the Confederate States of America

• The Confederacy adopted a provisional constitution and named Davis of MS the president and Alexander Stephens the vice president

• Upper South

  • Secessionist fervor was less intense, as there were fewer slaves

  • White opinion was highly divided in the four border slave states (MD, Delaware, Kentucky, and MO), where yeomen farmers held greater political power, and over whose ground any civil war would be fought

• Buchanan declared secession illegal but claimed that the federal government lacked authority to restore the Union by force

• The president urged Congress to find a compromise

  • Crittenden’s plan: Called for a constitutional amendment to protect slavery from federal interference in any state where it already existed, and called for the westward extension of the MOC line to CA, allowing slavery to the South

  • Lincoln urged Republicans to reject Crittenden’s plan, fearing that it would unleash new imperialist adventures

• Lincoln promises to safeguard slavery where it existed by vowed to prevent its expansion

• Lincoln declared that the Union was “perpetual” and consequently, the secession of the Confederacy was illegal

• VA joined the South, followed by Arkansas, TN, and NC

Fort Sumter

• 1861

• Lincoln dispatched an unarmed ship to resupply Fort Sumter

• Davis and his associates decided to seize the fort, opening fire on April 12

• The Union defenders soon capitualated, and Lincoln organized a call to arms

• Northerners enthusiastically responded to Lincoln’s call to arms, with most Northern Democrats lending their support

“Cornerstone” speech

• 1861

• Opposed Jefferson and other founders who had declared slavery an “evil”-- an institution they inherited and practiced reluctantly

• Stephens declared that slavery’s corner-stone rests “upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.”

Wheat boom

• Mexicans and Americans in the West began using the latest agricultural machinery and scores of hired workers

• These workers produced huge crops of wheat and barley, which SFO merchants exported to Europe at high prices

Conscience Whigs

• Northern Whigs who opposed the US-Mexico War on moral grounds

• Accused Polk of waging the war to add new slave states and increase slave-owning Democrats’ control of the federal government

Free soil movement

• Joined by thousands of ordinary northerners

• Drew on a popular movement for access to public lands; increasingly pressured the US government to give land to poor farmers

• Free soilers placed less emphasis on slavery as a sin; depicted slavery as a threat to republicanism and the Jeffersonian ideal of a freeholder society, winning support from farmers

• Douglass himself became a Free Soiler, arguing that they could achieve more political clout than abolitionists could

• Other abolitionists condemned the new party’s stress on the rights of freeholders as racist “whitemanism”

Lewis Cass

• The Democratic candidate in the Election of 1848

• An avid expansionist– advocated buying Cuba, annexing Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, and taking all of Oregon

• Promoted squatter sovereignty, which would allow settlers in each territory to determine its status as free or slave

Zachary Taylor

• A LA slave owner firmly committed to defending slavery in the South but not in the territories, a position that made him popular in the North

• Elected to the presidency in 1848

• A popular war hero in the US-Mexico War, known as “Old Rough and Ready”

Native Americans in the West

• Some miners sexually assaulted Native women and forced them into virtual slavery as domestic workers

• European diseases took the rights of thousands

• Congress largely abetted any assaults, instead repudiating the treaties that federal agents had negotiated with Indigenous nations

Mexicans in the West

• Many had land protected under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo

• Land claims were highly complex, so Congress created a Land Claims Commission that ultimately upheld the validity of 75% of the claims

• Farmers found that they could grow most eastern crops, such as corn and oats, potatoes, beans, peas, grapes, and more

• Ranchers gradually replaced Spanish cattle with American breeds that yielded more milk and meat

Pierce

• Sympathetic to the South

• Pursued an expansionist foreign policy, seeking a trans-Pacific commercial empire

Irish immigrants

• Famine refugees were largely family groups comprised of young, healthy adults

• These Irish immigrants made up more than a third of all American immigrants in the 1850s

• Largely clustered in urban areas, unable to afford land– a third of Irish-born Americans lived in just ten cities

• Found jobs as laborers, factory workers, and domestic servants

  • Boosted the American economy as factories expanded on low-wage Irish labor and elite and middle-class women hired Irishwomen for domestic labor

• Some managed to work their way up to becoming shopkeepers, policemen, or farmers

• Many founded mutual aid groups to support their communities and found support through the Catholic Church

• Many migrants sent positive reports home, sparking a pattern of chain migration; consequently, a steady stream of immigrants arrived long after the famine

German immigrants

• German-speaking migrants were a mix of Protestants, Catholics, and Jews

• Included many skilled workers who came in family groups

• Fled from oppressive governments, bringing socialist ideals

• Some enrolled in the abolitionist cause

Nativists

• Native-born Americans looked with dismay on the crowded tenement districts that sprang up to house low-paid factory workers

• Feared the erosion of wages, as employers often used immigrants to break strikes and reduce pay

• Temperance advocates scorned drinking among immigrant populations

• Anti-Catholicism– argued that Catholics could not develop the independent judgement that would make them good citizens

  • Expected the pope to tell immigrants how to vote

  • Alleged crimes of Catholic priests and nuns– books such as The Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk claimed that sexual debauchery and infanticide went on behind closed doors

• Mob violence from Irish immigrants provoked opposition

• Many Irish allied with the Democratic Party, fueling allegations that Irish voters and politicians were corrupt and clannish

Calhoun

• Advanced the argument that congress had no constitutional authority to regulate slavery in the territories

  • Argued that slaves were property, and the Constitution restricted Congress’ right to abrogate or limit property rights

Republicans

• Formed due to opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act

• Former Democrats joined ex-Whigs and Free Soil supporters to form the Republican Party

• Many abolitionists refused to join, arguing that the Republicans compromised too much on the need for immediate abolition

• Almost all Republicans disliked and wished to limit slavery, which they argued, drove down the wages of free workers and degraded the dignity of manual labor

• Praised a society based on the “middling classes who own the soil and work it with their own hands”

• Advocated social mobility

• Envisioned an order of independent farmers, artisans, and proprietors

• Celebrated middle-class values of domesticity, respectability, religion, and capitalism

• Called for federal federal subsidies to build transcontinental railroads

Buchanan

• From PA and staunchly prosouthern

• Pursued a pro-slavery agenda in Kansas and Cuba

Abraham Lincoln

• Lincoln came from a hardscrabble yeomen farm family; Lincoln rejected his father’s life as a subsistence farmer and became a store clerk in IL; Lincoln later rose to the middle class

• Later became a Whig in the IL legislature promoting education, banks, canals, and railroads

• As a congressman, he voted for military appropiations during the US-Mexico War while endorsing the Wilmot Proviso’s ban on slavery; also introduced legislation that would gradually emancipate slaves in DC

• Strongly opposed slavery in the territories– the Kansas-Nebraska Act propelled him back into politics as a Republican; opposed popular sovereignty and the repeal of the MOC

• Lincoln believed that Congress couldn’t interfere with slavery in existing states, but likened slavery to a cancer that had to be cut out if the nation’s republican ideals and moral principles were to endure

“Slave power” conspiracy

• The Senate’s rejection of the Wilmot Proviso revived charges of the “slave power” conspiracy

• Northerners claimed that southern politicians were leading a conspiracy to dominate the federal government

• Other examples included the three-fifths clause

Popular sovereignty

• Introduced by Lewis Cass and championed by Stephen Douglas of IL

• Many supported it because they hoped it would elieve Congress from having to make explosive decisions about slavery and frontier citizens would appreciate the power it gave them

• Originally called “squatter sovereignty” but was renamed to link it to republican ideology, which placed ultimate power in the hands of voters

Lincoln’s speech to Congress

• 1861

• Portrayed secession as an attack on representative government, America’s great contribution to world history

• Lincoln framed the Civil War as the question of “whether a constitutional republic” had the will and means to “maintain its territorial integrity against a domestic foe”

• Northern leaders believed that the collapse of the Union would destroy the possibility of republican governments

Butler declares refugee slaves “contraband of war”

• 1861

• When slaves reached the camp of Union general butler in VA, he labeled them as “contraband of war” (enemy property that can legitimately be seized, according to international law)

• Soon, thousands of so-called “contrabands” were camping with Union armies

  • An average of 200 black folks appeared every day

• The influx of refugees created a humanitarian crisis– many were packed in tight quarters where smallpox and dysentery ran rampant

First Battle of Bull Run

• 1861

• Lincoln hoped a quikc strike against the Confederate capital of Richmond, VA, would end the rebellion; many northerners were equally optimistic

• At Bull Run, McDowell’s army attacked the South’s force; Confederate soldiers counteracted and forced them to retreat

• The Confederate victory showwed the rebellion’s strength

First Confiscation Act

• 1861

• Authorized the seizure of all property, including slave property, used to support the rebellion; provided legal status to slave refugees

West VA created

• 1861

• Lincoln sought to hold onto strategic border areas where relatively few whites owned slaves

• Ordered Mcclellan to take northwestern VA to secure a railroad

• Unionist-leaning voters in that area chose overwhelmingly to create a breakaway territory, West VA

  • Many were unwilling to sacrifice themselves to sustain an unwarrantable rebellion

US Sanitary Commission

• 1861

• Established by New Yorkers to provide Union troops with clothing, food, and medical services

• Aside from the men, over 200,000 women supported the commission as volunteers

• Dysentery, typhoid, and malaria spread through the camps, as did mumps and measles, viruses that were often deadly to recruits

• The Sanitary Commission persuaded key military leaders that their troops should dig latrines for proper waste disposal

Battle of Shiloh

• 1862

• Left 20,000 dead or wounded, a total larger than most of the war’s prior battles combined

• The carnage was astounding on both sides, leaving both the Confederacy and the Union few illusions about the war’s supposed romance and glory

Legal Tender Act

• 1862

• The Union financed 5% of the war by printing paper money

• The Legal tender Act authorized $150 million in paper currency (greenbacks) and required the public to accept them as legal tender

• The Treasury issued a limited amount of paper money so it only lost  small part of its face value

Second Confiscation Act

• 1862

• Declared “forever free” the thousands of refugee slaves and all slaves captured by the Union army

Union captures New Orleans

• 1862

• The Union army took control of New Orleans under Farragut’s leadership

• Also took control of fiteen hundred plantations and 50,000 slaves in the surrounding region, striking a strong blow against slavery

• Significantly undermined Confederate strength in the Misssisippi river Valley

Confederacy military draft

• 1862

• Twenty-Negro rule

  • One loophole in the Confederate draft

  • Exempted one white man for each twenty slaves, allowing some whites on large plantations to avoid military service

  • Aroused a spirit hostility in some places

• Allowed wealthier draftees to hire substitutes

• Laborers and poor farmers complained that these loopholes made the war a “por man’s fight”

• Some southerners refused to serve– many independent-minded governorsignored Davis’ draft call

• Other state judges issued writs of habeus corpus, but the Confederate Congress later overrode judges’ authority to free conscriped men

• The Confederate militia scoured areas that harbored large groups of deserters

Union halts Confederates at Antietam

• 1862

• After the Second Battle of Bull run, Lee divided his force, sending Jackson to capture Harpers Ferry

• A copy of Lee’s orders fell in McClellan’s hands, but he forced to eloit his advantage, delaying an attack against Lee’s army and allowing it to secure a strong defensive position west of Antietam Creek

• Lee fought off McClellan’s attacks until Jackson’s troops arrived and saved the Confederates from a major defeat

• The fighting was savage– the bloodiest single day in US military history

  • The Union and Confederacy had 4,800 dead and 18,5000 wounded combined

• Lincoln claimed Antietam as a Union victory, but privately criticized McClellan for not pursuing Lee to seek a full Confederate surrender

• McClellan refused to rsik his troops, fearing heavy casualties would undermine public support for the war while Lincoln worried about the cost of a lengthy war

• Lincoln dismissed McClellan

Explosions in Pittsburgh

• 1862

• Working-class women did dangerous work in munitions factories, where gunpowder frequently caused explosions

• On the same day as the battle of Antietam, a spark in a factory full of predominantly Irish immigrants itriggered a series of explosions

  • The building was destroyed and seventy-eight were dead

Britain and France refuse to recognize the Confederacy

• 1863

• The Emancipation Proclamation helped persuade Britain and France to refrain from recognizing the Confederacy, a war now being fought between slavery and freedom

Emancipation Proclamation

• 1863

• Lincoln initially rejected emancipation as a war aim

• Lincoln confronted Radical Republican pressure and reports from his field commanders of overwhelming throngs of African American refugees, many of whom risked their lives to reach the Union and expressed strong support for the North

• Lincoln began drafting a general proclamation of emancipation, proclaiming to the public that his paramount goal was to save the Union and planting the idea that emancipation might be the best way to achieve it

• Seward advised Lincoln to wait for a Union victory, fearing that the Union would look desperate if it threatened emancipation after a string of military losses

• Lincoln issued the Proclamation after Antietam

• What it did: Lincoln warned that he would abolish slavery in all states that remained out of the Union; rebel states could preserve slavery by renouncing secession

  • Lincoln left slavery intact in Union-controlled border states and areas occupied by Union armies

  • Invited former slaves to serve in the Union army

• Significance:

  • Moved slavery to the edge of destruction, ready to sweep it over the brink

  • Helped persuade Britain and France to refrain from recognizing the Confederacy, a war now being fought between slavery and freedom

• Despised by Davis and other Democrats, who denounced the proclamation as unconstitutional, warned of slave uprisings, and predicted that freed blacks would take white jobs

• Lincoln fiercely defended emancipation, calling it an “act of justice”; “if my name ever goes into history, it was for this act”

One-tenth tax

• 1863

• Imposed in the Confederacy

• Required all farmers to turn over a tenth of their crops and livestock to the government for military use

• Pushed many struggling citizens to the brink of starvation– many families had fathers serving in the army

• As food prices soard, riots erupted in more than a dozen southern cities and towns

Lieber Code

• 1863

• An innovative statement of the laws of war drafted by German immmigrant law professor Francis Lieber, who had sons serving in both the Union and Confederacy

• Declared that the “law of nations and of nature” had never recognized slavery; anyone who escaped a slaveholding locality was therefore free, and African American soldiers must be treated exactly as whites were

• Argued that the most humane war was one that ended quickly

• Defined “military necessity” liberally, permitting many military actions if they would “hasten surrender”

• Spelled out protections for prisoners of war, outlawed the use of torture, and forbade attacks for the sake of suffering or revenge

Gettysburg

• 1863

• General Lee favored a new invasion of the North, arguing that it would draw Grant’s forces to the east or give the Confederacy a major victory that would destroy the North

• The Union and Confederate armies met by coincidence

• Meade, the Union general, placed his troops in a well-defended hilltop position and called for reinfrocements, holding his ground against Lee’s troops

• Lee decided on a dangerous frontal assault against the center of the Union line, sending Pickett and his 14,400 men to charge across open terrain, facing deadly fire

• Meade allowed the Confederate units to escape, infuriating Lincoln

• A major Union victory, marking a military and political turning point along with vicksburg

Vicksburg

• 1863; Union victory

• Grant mounted a major defense to split the Confederacy in two; Grant drove south along the west bank of the Mississippi in Arkansas and ten crossed the river near Vicksburg

• Grant then defeated two Confederate armies and laid siege to the city

• The Vicksburg garrison later surrendered

Union Draft

• 1863

• Some recent German and irish immigrants refused to serve; immigratn hostility to the draft sparked draft riots in NYC

• The Union government treated draft resisters and enemy sympathizers ruthlessly; Lincoln imprisoned about 15,000 southern sympathizers without trial

  • Lincoln also gave military courts jurisdiction over civilians who discouraged enlistments or resisted the draft, preventing local acquittals

• Used incentives to lure recruits– offered cash bounties

Draft riots

• 1863

• In NYC, immigrants hostile toward the draft and black rolks sparked virulent riots

• Ran rampant, burned draft offices, sacked the homes of influential Republicans, and attacked the police

• Rioters lynched and mutilated dozens of African americans, drove many black families from their homes, and burned down the Colored Orphan Asylum

• Lincoln suppressed the mobs by sending in Union troops who then killed more than a hundred rioters

Woman’s Loyal National League

• 1863

• Women’s rights advocates hoped that energetic war service would bring recognition and voting rights

Gettysburg Address

• 1863

• Lincoln dedicated a national cemetery at the battlefield

• Lincoln argued that the victory of the Union would extend the promise of the DoI that “all men are created equal”; suggested that Americans could draw “from those honored dead” the determination not only to preserve the Union, but also to bring about “a new birth of freedom”

Sherman takes Atlanta

• 1864

• Instead of pursuing a retreating Confederate army northward into TN, Sherman proposed moving south, living off the land, ande cutting a swath to the sea

• Sherman argued that his march would be “a demonstration to the world” against “hostile enemies [and] a  hostile people”

• Sherman left Atlanta in flames

  • His army consumed or demolished everything in its path

  • Focused on demolishing property, demoralizing many Confederate soldiers

• Georgia’s African Americans treated Sherman as a savior

Special Field Order No. 15

• Set aside 500,000 acres of prime rice-growing land for the exclusive use of freedpeople

• By 1865, about 40,000 African Americans were cultivating “Sherman lands”

Sherman’s army devastates GA and SC

• 1864

• Sherman moved methodically toward Atlanta, a railway hub at the heart of the Confederacy

• Sherman pulled his troops around the city of Atlanta, destroying its rail links to the South and forcing the Confederate general to abandon the city

• The winning of Atlanta prompted Democrats to change their campaign, focusing instead on the dangers of emancipation

• The Republicans renamed themselves the National Union Party to attract border-state and Democratic votters

• The National Union Party attacked McClellan’s inconsistencies and deemed Peace Democrats traitors

Election of 1864

• Lincoln re-elected

• The Republican convention endorsed the president’s war strategy, demanded unconditional Confederate surrender, and called for a constitutional amendment to abolish slavery

• The Democrats nominated McClellan, who rejected emancipation and condemned Lincoln’s repression of domestic dissent

  • War Democrats vowed to continue fighting until the rebellion ended

  • Peace Democrats called for a “cessation of hostilities” and a constitutional convention to negotiate a peace settlement

• McClellan promised, if elected, to recommend to Congress an immediate armistice; quickly reversed his position after hearing of the fall of Atlanta

Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address

• Lincoln sought to explain the carnage by eloquently suggesting that the war’s purpose had not been to preserve the Union but to end slavery

  • “...the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, until every rop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword”

• Lincoln named the sin of slavery as the central cause of the war– an proposed that both the Union and confederacy shared guilt for that sin

• Unfortunately failed to acknowledge African American contributions during the war, who were active participants as soldiers and refugees

Confederacy refuses to exchange African American prisoners

• The Union responded by suspending prisoner exchanges

• Both sides accumulated large numbers of prisoners of war, who suffered horrific conditions in crowded prison camps

• Amid public outrage, Lee and Grant tried to reopen prisoner exchanges, but they could not agree on the treatment of black Union troops

McClellan

• Lincoln replaced McDowell after Bull Run with mcClellan

• McClellan was a cautious military engineer, ignoring Lincoln’s advice to “strike a blow” quickly and failing to exploit Confederate losses

Radical Republicans

• Members of the Republicans who had bitterly opposed the “slave power” began to use wartime legislation to destroy slavery

• Led by Salmon Chase, Charles Sumner of MA, and Thaddeus Stevens of PA

Planters

• Members of the Republicans who had bitterly opposed the “slave power” began to use wartime legislation to destroy slavery

• Led by Salmon Chase, Charles Sumner of MA, and Thaddeus Stevens of PA

African American soldiers

• The Emancipation Proclamation invited former slaves to serve in the Union

• Observers realized that black soldiers fighting from the seceded states had a triple impact– in addition to strengthening the Union army, their liberation demoralized white southerners and robbed the Confederacy of much-needed labor

• Faced discrimination in the military

  • Earned less than white soldiers ($10 a month versus $13)

  • Served in segregated regiments under white-commissioned officers

• Lincoln, among others, believed that the Union could not have won the war without black troops

Women in the war

• Many were drawn into the wage-earning workforce as clerks and factory oepratives

• Thousands of educated Union women became government clerks in offices

• Confederate women staffed the postal service

• In both the North and the South, millions of women took over farm tasks, filled jobs in hospitals and schools, and worked in factories

• Some women worked as spies and scouts, and at least five hundred disguised themselves as men to serve in the Union or Confederate armies

• Other women adhered to domesticity by writing, penning patriotic songs, poems, editorials, and fiction

Southern whites during the war

• Throughout the war, rising class resentment emerged among poor whites

  • Angered by slave owners’ exemptions from military service; feared that the Confederacy was doomed

• Grew to repudiate the draft

Maryland

• When MD secessionist destroyed railroad bridges and telegraph lines, Lincoln ordered Union troops to occupy the state and arrest Confederate sympathizers, including legislators

  • Only released them once Unionists had secured control of MD’s government

• Lincoln’s actions provoked bitter debate over his suspension of habeus corpus (a legal instrument that protected citizens from arbitrary arrest)

• Lincoln pointed to the Constitution, which stated that Habeus Corpus could be suspended ”in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion” as “the public Safety may require it”

  • Lincoln continued to use occasional habeus corpus suspensions throughout the war when he deemed them essential

Kentucky

• Secessionist and Unionist statements were initially evenly balanced

• Allowed Kentucky’s thriving trade with the Confederacy to continue until Unionists took over the state government

• The Confederacy responded to the trade cutoff by invading Kentucky

• Grant later drove the Confederacy out, and public opinion swung against the Confederacy

Grant

• Placed in charge of all Union armies in 1864

• Knew how to fight a war that relied on industrial technology and targeted the enemy’s infrastructure

• Was willing to accept heavy casualties, a stance that earned him a reputation as a butcher

• Followed the tenets of Lieber’s code; pursued any “military necessity” to bring the war to its end

William Tecumseh Sherman

• Shared Grant’s harsh outlook

• Sympathized with the planter class and felt that slavery upheld social stability, but felt secession meant anarchy

• Helped develop the philosophy and tactics of hard war

Northern advantages in the war

• Its economy lent itself better to wartime needs thanks to state-of-the-art transportation

  • Canals

  • Railroads, which had been funded bt state charters; carried wheat and freight from the Midwest to northeastern Atlantic ports, returning with machine tools, hardware, and furniture made in the Northeast

• Agricultural technology

  • John Deere’s upgraded plow– enabled farmers to cut through deep, tough roots of prairie grasses and open new regions for farming

  • New reapers were incredibly productive

• New industries to support the war

  • The need for guns, clothes, and food

  • Chicago railroads built new lines to carry thousands of hogs and cattle to Chicago’s stockyards and slaughterhouses

  • Significance: In the long term, immense concentrations of capital in many industries fueled industrialization

• Government-assisted economic development– won the allegiance of farmers, workers, and entrepreneurs while bolstering the Union’s ability to fight a long war

  • High tariffs that excluded foreign goods, encouraging domestic industries

  • Offered free land to farmers

• Created an integrated network of national banks and implemented Clay’s program for a nationally financed transportation system

Northern financing of the war

• Raised money directly by increasing tariffs, placing high duties on alcohol and tobacco, and imposing taxes on business corporations, large inheritances, and the incomes of wealthy citizens

  • Financed about 20% of the war

• Interest-paying bonds issued by the US paid about 65%

• The Union paid 15% by printing paper money (greenbacks)

Confederate financing of the war

• True to its states’ rights philosophy, the Confederacy initially left most matters to the state governments

• Davis’ administration built and operated shipyards, armories, foundries, and textile mills; comandeered food and scarce resources; set prices; requisitioned slaves to work on fortifications; and directly controlled foreign trade

• The government only financed about 10% of its expenditures through taxation; paid another 30% by borrowing; and 60% of its costs by printing paper money

• The flood of currency led to spectacular inflation

  • Many citizens eventually refused to accept paper money

Southern advantages

• Southerners banked on cotton’s centrality (King Cotton) to the national and world economy

• Strong military traditions and culture of masculine honor made recruitment highly successful

• Only had to defend– needed only to preserve their new national boundaries to achieve independence

• Could mobilize massive armies

King Cotton

• Southerners naked on cotton’s centrality to the national and world economy to achieve independence

• Banked on the sale of cotton to purchase clothes, boots, blankets, and weapons from abroad

• Southerners believed that Britain and France, with their large textile industries, were too dependent on cotton not to recognize and assist the Confederacy

• Ultimately failed the US– the Britain had long condemned slavery and praised emancipation

Twenty-Negro rule

• One loophole in the Confederate draft

• Exempted one white man for each twenty slaves, allowing some whites on large plantations to avoid military service

• Aroused a spirit hostility in some places

Lincoln’s Ten Percent Plan

• Granted amnesty to most ex-Confederates and allowed each rebellious state to return to the Union as soon as 10% of its voters had taken a loyalty oath and approved the Thirteenth

• Rejected by Congress

Wade-Davis Bill

• 1864

• A stricter plan that required an oath of allegiance by amajority of each state’s adult white men; government formed by those who had never taken up arms against the Union, and permanent disenfranchisement of confederate leaders

• Lincoln defeated the Wade-Davis Bill with a pocket veto

Freedmen’s Bureau

• 1865

• Established by Congress to aid displaced blacks and other war refugees

• After the war, it took the responsibility of settling freed black folks

• In 1866, Congress voted to extend the bureau, giving it direct funding and authorizing its agents to investigate southern abuses

• Johnson attempted to veto its expansion, but Congress overrode his veto

• Kept a sharp eye out for unfair labor contracts and often forced landowners to bargain with workers and tenants

• Advised freedmen on economic matters; provided direct payments to desperate families; and heloped establish schools

• Played a key role in founding African American colleges and universities such as Fisk, Tougaloo, and the Hampton Institute

Black Codes

• 1865

• Passed by southern slate legislatures under johnson

• Designed to force former slaves back to plantation labor; reflected plantaion owners’ economic interests

• Imposed severe penalties on blacks who did not hold full-year labor contracts and set up procedures for taking black children from their parents and apprenticing them to former slave masters

Civil Rights Act

• 1866

• Declared formerly enslaved people to be citizens and granted them equal protection and rights of contract, with full access to the courts

• Johnson attempted to veto the CRA, but Congress overrode his veto

Republicans gains in congressional elections

• 1866

• Gave republicans a 3-to-1 majority in Congress

• Shifted power to the Radical Republicans, who sought sweeping transformations in the south

Reconstruction Act of 1867

• Divided the conquered South into five military districts, each under the command of a US general

• Each military commander was reqired to register all eligible adult males, black and white; supervise state constitutional conventions; and ensure that new constitutions guaranteed black suffrage

• Congress woudl readmit a state once these conditions were met and the new state legislature ratified the Fourteenth

• Vetoed by Johnson, but overrode by Congress