Unit 3: Slavery and The Civil War

First Attempts to End Slavery
  1. Slave Revolts

   

  1. Prosser’s Rebellion 1800

       1. Blacksmith Prosser planned to make weapons and lead a revolt 2. betrayed by 2 other slaves causing it to never happen

  1. Denmark Vesey 1822

       1. Preacher; Won the lottery, buys his own freedom 2. Arrested for planning a rebellion, tried in secret, and executed 3. Later revealed that he never actually planned a rebellion 4. This shows how scared the white people were of a slave rebellion

  1. Nat Turner’s Rebellion 1831

       1. 60ish white people killed, 55 blacks hanged 2. federal support to put down the rebellion

  1. 1 Slave at a time

   

  1. Underground Railroad

       1. Harriet Tubman- as soon as she was free she turned back to help others get freedom

  1. Moral and Cultural Change

   

  1. Trying to convince others of the evils of slavery
  2. Harriet Beecher Stowe- “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”, fictional stories
  3. William Loyd Garrison’s- “The Liberator” newspaper, told real stories
  4. Fredrick Douglass- brilliant former slave whose speeches challenged people to see slavery differently (most famous slave order at the time)
Politics before the Civil War
  1. Political Actions connected to slavery

   

  1. Written in the constitution is an agreement to not talk about slavery for 20ish years
  2. ⅗ths rule- slaves were counted as ⅗ths for census
  3. As division increases between north and south, a balance of power becomes necessary to keep unity
    1. The Missouri compromise of 1820

   

  1. Henry Clay- compromiser
  2. Missouri can be a slave state but the northern part of Massachusetts will be Maine as a free state
  3. Missouri compromise line- North free, South slave

       1. About keeping the balance of power

  1. 1832 “gag rule”- legislation preventing the discussion of slavery
    1. Compromise of 1850

   

  1. California and Texas will both be added; CA as free, TX as slave state
  2. Replaced Missouri compromise to keep the balance of power
  3. “popular sovereignty”- a state can choose whether or not they want to be slave or free
    1. Fugitive Slave Act- forced northerners to return escaped slaves to their masters

   

  1. Kansas-Nebraska Act 1854

       1. Kansas and Nebraska territory was going to become states and they would choose whether to be slave or free 2. “Free soilers”- a political party that pushed for people to move to Kansas or Nebraska and vote for those territories to be free 3. People on both sides moved to Kansas

  1. Bleeding Kansas- Term referring to bloodshed over popular sovereignty in a particular western territory
  2. 1856 Summer of Bloody Kansas

       1. A cycle of violence between these two groups erupts 2. Millions of dollars of damages and 200 dead 3. The government refused to let Kansas be a state

  1. John Brown 1859

       1. Attacked a southern federal arsenal in Virginia called Harper’s Ferry 2. Goal to form a slave army to overthrow their masters 3. No slaves help them 4. Captured and eventually executed for treason 5. Was he a hero (north) or a villain (south)?

  1. Election of 1860

   

  1. Abraham Lincoln, Douglas, Breckenridge, & Bell
  2. South learned they had no political power
The Civil War
  1. 1861-1865
  2. South (confederate) advantages

   

  1. Better trained officers- Robert E Lee

  2. Better trained soldiers

  3. More recent experience in war- Mexican American war

  4. Fighting a defensive war

  5. More unified in belief

    1. North advantages

   

  1. Better supply- more industrialized

  2. More soldiers, a stronger navy

  3. Supported by Lincoln aka the president

  4. Strong central government

    1. Key idea: one of the first truly Industrial Wars

   

  1. Ironclads, bolt-action rifles, artillery canisters & shells, minie ball (bullet)

  2. The capability of killing goes way way up

  3. Military tactics weren’t caught up

    1. Strategies

   

  1. First strategy: take the enemy capital
  2. Both sides quickly realized that a short war wouldn’t happen
    1.  1st Battle of the Bull Run 

   

  1. Stonewall Jackson wins the battle for the South
  2. Realizes he doesn’t have enough troops to raid the capital
  3. Southern strategy: wanted to hold on long enough to convince England or France to recognize them as a country and help defend them
  4. Anaconda Plan: leverage the northern navy, capture southern ports and the Mississippi to squeeze the life out of the South
  5. 1863- the turning point of the war

       1. Battle of Gettysburg- 3 days, northern victory 2. The south lost so many troops that they couldn’t afford to loose 3. This ended any hope of the south attacking the north

  1. Battle of Vicksburg

       1. The defeat of the last southern fort on the Mississippi 2. Total war- nothing and no one is off-limits 3. William T Sherman attacks the town behind the fort 4. Ulysses S Grant- leveraged value of American numbers advantage

  1. Emancipation Proclamation- Lincoln

       1. Freed slaves (in confederate states) 2. Changes what the North was fighting for

  1. “March to the Sea”

       1. Sherman destroys everything he finds in a march across the southern states 2. South gives up 3. North reclaims the southern states

  1. Reconstruction 1865-1877

    1. Rebuilding of the physical destruction 2. Dealing with new problems presented 3. Question: How do blacks fit into this new society? 4. Blacks were 90% illiterate

        1. They only know how to work the fields 2. They own nothing 5. Other issues:

        1. Anger and vengeance 2. Differences in morals and values 6. 3 phases

        1. Lincoln’s plan

           1. General Amnesty- once enough members of a state swore allegiance to the US they would be allowed back in 2. Freedmen’s Bureau- a governmental organization to support black’s, teach skills, integrate them into society 3. Ended by his assassination 7. Andrew Johnson’s plan

        1. Bring the country together no oaths are required just forgiveness 2. He’s impeached and left powerless by congress 8. Radical Republican plan

        1. Congress turns the south into military districts with martial law- freedom and rights are suspended, and the union generals were dictators 9. 13th, 14th, 15th amendments were passed- ended slavery and gives black men the right to vote

        1. Many southern blacks were elected to office 2. Prevented ill-treatment of blacks in the south 3. White southerners resisted 4. Rise of the KKK

           1. Fight for race and nation 2. Started as militant group that attacked African Americans and northerners during the reconstruction

  1. 1877 states were admitted to the union slowly and by 1877 they had reclaimed political power
  2. Northern troops were removed from the south
  3. The south entered the time of “Jim Crow”