Timeline

• 1846: Beginning of the Mexican-American War

• 1848: Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ends the Mexican-American War

• 1850: Compromise of 1850

• 1852: Publication of Uncle Tomʼs Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

• 1854: Ostend Manifesto

• 1856: Beginning of “Bleeding Kansas”

  • The beating of Senator Charles Sumner

• 1857: Dred Scott v. Sandford decision

• 1859: John Brownʼs raid on Harperʼs Ferry arsenal

• 1860: Election of Abraham Lincoln

  • South Carolina secedes from the United States

• 1861: Inauguration of Lincoln

  • Six more states, all from the Deep South, secede

  • Fighting at Fort Sumter; Civil War begins

  • Four more states, from the upper South, secede

  • First Confiscation Act

• 1862: Homestead Act Morrill

  • Land Grant Act

  • Second Confiscation Act

  • Robert E. Lee becomes commander of Confederate army; achieves significant battlefield victories

  • Dakota War

• 1863: The Emancipation Proclamation goes into effect

  • Union victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg

  • New York City Draft Riots

• 1864: Grant besieges Richmond

  • Reelection of Lincoln

  • Shermanʼs March to the Sea

• 1865: Freedmanʼs Bureau established

  • Richmond Falls; Confederacy surrenders

  • Lincoln assassinated; Andrew Johnson assumes presidency

  • Southern states begin to pass Black Codes

  • Thirteenth Amendment ratified

• 1866: Civil Rights Act passes

  • Ku Klux Klan formed

  • Ex parte Milligan

• 1867: Reconstruction Acts passed; beginning of Congressional Reconstruction

  • Tenure of Office Act

• 1868: Johnson impeached

  • Fourteenth Amendment ratified

• 1870: Fifteenth Amendment ratified

• 1875: Civil Rights Act

• 1876: Disputed election between Samuel J. Tilden (Democrat) and Rutherford B. Hayes (Republican)

• 1877: Compromise ends Reconstruction; Hayes becomes president

Manifest Destiny

Westward Migrations

• Americans Respond to the Call of “Manifest Destiny”

  • The term "manifest destiny" was coined in an 1845 newspaper column by journalist and editor John OʼSullivan to describe the fervor of the westward expansion movement, implying that it was God's plan for the United States to take over and populate the land from coast to coast.

  • However, most Americans who settled out west were driven by economic factors, not by a desire to fulfill a divine plan.

• Overland Trails

  • Migrants to the West traveled along several overland routes, including the Oregon Trail, Santa Fe Trail, and California Trail.

  • It is estimated that 300,000 people traveled these trails between 1840 and the Civil War, and stories of death and desperation are often repeated.

  • However, the death rate on these trails was only slightly higher than for Americans in general, and American Indians were more likely to work for the migrants as guides and engage in trade with them than to ambush them.

• The California Gold Rush

  • Discoveries of mineral resources in the West led to a pattern of rushes, boomtowns, and economic consolidation from 1848 until the 1880s.

  • The most significant strike of precious metals in the antebellum period was at Sutterʼs Mill in Coloma, California, in 1848.

  • As word spread, thousands of people came to California to try to strike it rich, leading to the nickname "Forty-niners".

  • However, the easily accessible gold was panned from riverbeds, requiring capital-intensive methods that were beyond the reach of ordinary prospectors.

• The Mormon Exodus

  • In 1847, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also known as Mormons, settled in the Great Salt Lake region of Utah.

  • The territory belonged to Mexico, and the Mexican War had already begun.

  • Following the United States' military triumph, Utah and the balance of the Mexican Cession became American territory.

  • Persecution in more populous regions drove the Mormons to Utah.

The Ideological Foundations of Manifest Destiny

• Manifest Destiny and Race

  • The ideology of manifest destiny reinforced contemporary notions of race, with white Americans believing that the variety of peoples who inhabited the North American continent were incapable of establishing or participating in democratic, efficient governance.

  • This racial justification for westward expansion was based on European Romanticism, scientific racialism, and the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon race over the "savage tribes" of the West.

• The Spread of Democratic Civilization

  • Americans justified manifest destiny by asserting the superiority of American institutions and practices, such as the conquest of Mexico, which was seen as a victory by liberty-loving Protestants over tyrannical Catholics.

Government Promotion of Western Expansion

• Morrill Land Grant Act (1862)

  • It promoted secondary public education primarily in the West.

  • Under the act, the federal government transferred substantial tracts of its lands to the states.

  • The states could build public colleges on these lands, or they could sell the land to fund the building of educational facilities.

  • The land-grant colleges in the West were designed to train and educate the next generations of western residents.

• Pacific Railroad Act (1862)

  • This act and other supplementary acts passed in the 1860s extended government bonds and tracts of land to companies engaged in building transcontinental railroads.

  • These acts ended up granting 130 million acres of federally held land to railroad companies.

  • Individual states sweetened the pot for railroad construction by extending another 50 million acres to railroad companies.

• Homestead Act (1862)

  • This act provided free land in the region to settlers who were willing to farm it.

  • It reflected the “free labor” ideal of the Republicans.

  • Hundreds of thousands of people applied for and were granted homesteads.

  • Several of these homesteaders went bankrupt because they lacked farming expertise. 3

  • During the late 1800s, small farmers, even good ones, struggled to compete with large-scale farms.

Economic Expansion beyond the Western Hemisphere: The United States and Asia

• The United States became increasingly interested in trading with Japan due to the growth of the economy and the development of West Coast ports.

• The Tokugawa shogunate had isolated Japan from Western countries since the seventeenth century, and the Tokugawa government resisted attempts by Americans and Europeans to establish business and diplomatic ties.

• Commodore Matthew C. Perry led a naval expedition to Japan, and through vague threats and skillful diplomacy, he was able to secure a treaty with Japan that opened Japan up to American trade.

The Mexican-American War

The Mexican-American War and Westward Expansion

• The Election of 1844 and the Annexation of Texas

  • Texas annexation became a national issue after the 1844 election.

  • Democratic candidate James K. Polk pledged to acquire Texas and resolve the Oregon border dispute with Great Britain.

  • Polk defeated Whig candidate Henry Clay as a compromise Democratic nominee.

  • Tyler used Polk's election to push Texas annexation through Congress before Polk entered office.

  • The Mexican-American War and the 1850s political schisms would revisit the concerns presented by Texas's 1845 annexation.

• Origins of the War with Mexico

  • The Mexican government was furious that Texas had become part of the United States, while President James Polk and American expansionists were eager to incorporate the remainder of Mexico's northern provinces into the United States.

  • This led to a dispute over the southern border of the new United States territory of Texas, with Mexico claiming the border was at the Nueces River and the United States claiming it was at the Rio Grande.

  • In 1846, skirmishes led to war between Mexico and the US.

• Victory over Mexico on the Battlefield

  • The United States won several early battles in the Mexican-American War (1846-1848).

  • One prong of the invasion, in the area of Mexico south of Texas, was led by General Zachary Taylor.

  • U.S. forces also won victories in present-day California.

  • However, Mexico was determined not to part with its northern provinces after having lost Texas.

  • It took the hard-fought capture of the Mexican capital, Mexico City, led by General Winfield Scott, to force the Mexican government to capitulate.

• The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo

  • In 1848, the Mexican government signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, giving up its claims to the disputed territory in Texas and agreeing to sell the provinces of California and New Mexico, known as the Mexican Cession, to the United States for $15 million.

  • This territory includes present-day California, Nevada, Utah, and parts of Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Wyoming.

• Gadsden Purchase

  • The final land acquisition in what would become the continental United States was the Gadsden Purchase, acquired from Mexico in 1853, five years after the Mexican-American War.

  • It added more area to the vast swath of land obtained by the United States following the war and was sought by the United States as a possible southern route for a transcontinental railroad.

• The Acquisition of the Mexican Cession and the Slavery Question

  • The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848) granted the United States a huge portion of Mexico for a mere $15 million.

  • Gold was discovered in California, leading to a rapid and substantial growth in the population.

  • The question of whether the newly acquired territories would be admitted as free or slave states became a pressing issue in the years following the war.

  • The Wilmot Proviso (introduced in 1846) never became law, leading to national controversy in the 1850s.

Conflict on the Frontier Following the Mexican-American War

• Expansion and Violence on the Frontier

  • The federal government removed American Indians from the South and forced them to relocate to Indian Territory in the 1830s.

  • The Trail of Tears (1838) was a well-known episode of removal, but the idea of setting aside vast areas of land in the West for use by American Indians was superseded as more and more white settlers pushed westward.

  • The government began to take control of Indian land and restrict American Indians to reservations in the 1850s, creating tension and conflict.

• The Growth of the Reservation System

  • The Indian Appropriations Act of 1851 established reservations in present-day Oklahoma to keep American Indians off lands that white settlers wanted to settle.

  • In the following years, reservations were established in other states, reducing the land of American Indians from fifteen million acres to less than 1.5 million acres.

  • Many tribal groups resisted being put into reservations.

• The Treaty of Fort Laramie (1851)

  • It was signed in 1851 between the United States government and 10,000 Plains Indians to provide a corridor for wagon trains to the Far West, in exchange for the government guaranteeing the remaining Indian lands in the West would not be encroached upon. White settlers refused to honor the treaty.

• The Dakota War (1862)

  • In the 1850s, Eastern Dakota Sioux in Minnesota were relegated to an inadequate reservation due to treaties and force.

  • In 1861 and 1862, crop failures and lack of government annuities caused desperate conditions for the Dakota Sioux, leading to attacks on white settlers.

  • Over 300 settlers and 100 troops were killed, and 150 Sioux were also killed.

  • A military commission tried and sentenced 303 Dakota Sioux men to death, but President Abraham Lincoln commuted 264 of them and allowed 39 of them to proceed.

• The Colorado War and the Sand Creek Massacre (1864)

  • The Colorado War (1864–1865) was a conflict between U.S. army forces, the Colorado militia, and white settlers against the Southern Cheyenne, Arapaho, and allied Brulé and Oglala Sioux (or Lakota) peoples in Colorado Territory.

  • It included the Sand Creek Massacre, where Colonel John M. Chivington led an attack on a peaceful Cheyenne village, killing between 150 and 500, mostly women and children.

  • A congressional investigating committee condemned the "brutal and cowardly acts" of Chivington and his men.

• American Indians in the Mexican Cession

  • In the aftermath of the Mexican-American War, the settlement of white Americans in California had devastating effects for Indian peoples.

  • The Indian population of California dropped from 150,000 in 1848 to less than 30,000 by the beginning of the Civil War.

  • In 1853, the federal government reduced the size of reservations set aside for Indians, and farmers were eager to exploit the labor of Indians.

  • As the 1850s progressed, thousands of Indians were either murdered or enslaved, and the Yuki people of Round Valley in northern California were viciously targeted.

  • Several Indian groups simply ceased to exist, with their people either killed or dispersed.

The Compromise of 1850

Territorial Acquisition and the Slavery Question

• The Wilmot Proviso (1846)

  • It was an attempt by Northern politicians to ban slavery in territories gained in the Mexican-American War.

  • They wanted additional land for white settlers to set up homesteads without competition from the slave system.

  • The proviso was passed by the House of Representatives, but failed in the Senate.

• The Election of 1848 and the Free-Soil Party

  • In the election of 1848, both the Whigs and the Democrats avoided taking strong stands on the issue of slavery.

  • Antislavery men in both parties founded the Free-Soil Party, which ran candidates in the presidential elections of 1848 and 1852.

  • It garnered 10% of the vote in 1848, but only 5% in 1852. Many of its members later joined the Republican Party, which was founded in 1854.

• Popular Sovereignty

  • Senator Lewis Cass proposed a compromise measure on the question of slavery in newly acquired territories, known as popular sovereignty.

  • Northerners wanted the vote to occur early on, while Southerners wanted it to occur later, giving the slave system time to develop.

  • Cass' idea alienated many northern Democrats, but it became an important issue in the 1850s.

• Cuba and the Ostend Manifesto

  • Southern expansionists sought to extend their slavery empire beyond the continental United States in the 1850s, with Cuba being one of their targets.

  • Polk offered to purchase the island from Spain, but Spain balked. Later, American diplomats tried to secretly buy Cuba, resulting in the Ostend Manifesto (1854), which provoked anger from northern politicians.

California Application for Statehood

• The Compromise of 1850 was a series of measures to resolve the contentious issue of California's admission as a free state.

• It included the admittance of California, a more stringent Fugitive Slave Law, allowing New Mexico and Utah to decide the question of slavery based on popular sovereignty, accepting a new boundary between Texas and Mexico, and banning the slave trade in Washington, D.C.

• However, neither antislavery senators from the North nor proslavery "fire-eaters" from the South would vote "yes" on the Omnibus Bill.

• Stephen Douglas proposed "unbundling" the legislative package and voting on each measure separately, and President Millard Fillmore signed them into law.

• The lack of agreement on the 1850 "compromise" highlights the hardening of sectional tensions.

Sectional Conflict: Regional Differences

The North and Immigration

• Large-scale immigration from Ireland in the antebellum period transformed American cities and contributed to a strong nativist movement.

• The largest destination for Irish immigrants in the United States was the Five Points neighborhood of New York City, which was one of the most desperate urban slums in the Western world in the midnineteenth century.

• The Five Points was the first American melting pot, blending African-American and Irish cultures. Irish immigrants, African Americans, and smaller numbers of other immigrant groups worked together, lived in the same boarding houses, intermarried, and danced and sung at dancehalls and saloons.

• This cultural race-mixing, combined with bitter racism, became an important element of American identity into the twentieth century.

Anti-Immigrant Sentiment in the Antebellum Period

• Nativism

  • The first half of the nineteenth century saw a surge in European immigration and a strong xenophobic nativist movement.

  • New immigrants, largely non-Protestant, were seen to lack the self-control of "decent," middle-class Protestant Americans.

  • Nativists saw this lack of self-control in immigrants' drinking habits. They tried to control immigrant drinking culture in Irish pubs and German beer halls.

• The “Know-Nothings”

  • The party was the political wing of a growing anti-Catholic, antiIrish movement that gained traction in the wake of the large-scale Irish immigration of the late 1840s and 1850s.

  • Formally known as the American Party, it emerged in the 1840s and, by the 1850s, had achieved electoral success in several states, especially in the Northeast.

Differing Economic Models: The “Free Labor” Ideal Versus the Slave System

• The economies of the North and South were moving in different directions in the period leading up to the Civil War.

• The economy of the North was increasingly focused on a free labor model, with manufacturing industries at its base; the economy of the South was increasingly dependent on a slave labor, agricultural economy.

• The population of the North grew rapidly during this period while the Southʼs population growth was slow.

Abolitionism in the North—Strategies and Tactics

• The Fugitive Slave Act and Personal Liberty Laws

  • The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 led to a backlash among northerners, with many states passing "personal liberty laws" and forming vigilance committees to protect fugitives from slave catchers.

  • The Supreme Court had long protected slave catchers from state restrictions on their activities, and in Prigg v. Pennsylvania, the Court overturned the abduction conviction of Edward Prigg on the grounds that federal law was superior to state law.

  • In Ableman v. Booth (1859), the Court overturned a Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling that Sherman Booth was not guilty, asserting the supremacy of federal statutes and court decisions over state courts.

• Uncle Tomʼs Cabin

  • Sectional tensions were further enflamed by the publication in 1852 of the novel Uncle Tomʼs Cabin.

  • The novel, written by Harriet Beecher Stowe of the antislavery Beecher family, depicted in graphic and emotional detail the brutality of slavery.

  • For many northerners, slavery now had a human face.

  • The novel outraged southern supporters of slavery, who attempted to ban it.

• John Brown and the Raid on Harperʼs Ferry

  • John Brown carried out a raid to acquire weapons from a federal armory in Harper's Ferry, Virginia in 1859, which pushed North–South relations to the breaking point.

  • Brown recruited a small group of men to capture the weapons, intending to distribute them to slaves.

  • The men managed to capture the armory, but were soon overwhelmed by reinforcements led by future Confederate Commander Robert E. Lee.

  • Brown was tried and executed later in 1859.

  • His raid had a lasting impact on history, convincing pro-slavery southerners that there was a conspiracy to violently interfere with the institution of slavery.

  • Brown's raid was roundly condemned by most northern politicians, but the perception of a united front among northerners persisted in the South.

The Southern Response to the Slavery Question

• Racism and the Defense of Slavery

  • In the first half of the nineteenth century, white southerners often defended slavery as a "necessary evil."

  • Thomas Jefferson likened the institution to grabbing "the wolf by the ear" and John C. Calhoun dismissed such views as "folly and delusion".

  • By the middle of the century, southern whites, influenced by writers such as George Fitzhugh, asserted that slavery was actually a "positive good" and these arguments proliferated and shaped cultural and religious practices in the South.

• Racism and Culture

  • Racist ideas were reflected in popular culture of the pre-Civil War period, notably in the growing popularity of minstrel shows.

  • These shows presented racist caricatures of African Americans as lazy, shiftless, dim-witted, and happy-go-lucky.

  • The shows were not restricted to the South, but reinforced political and social ideas about the position of African Americans in society.

  • In the 1840s and 1850s, southern slave-owners became increasingly interested in the religious practices of their slaves, often building churches on their plantations and mandating attendance.

  • Christian views in the South evolved in this context, with ministers citing biblical passages about the importance of servants obeying their masters.

Failure to Compromise

The Deterioration of Relations Between the North and the South

• The Kansas-Nebraska Act

  • Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois introduced the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854 to divide the northern section of the Louisiana Purchase territory into two organized territories.

  • The most contentious part of the act was allowing for the possibility of slavery in the territories of Kansas and Nebraska, which had been closed to slavery by the Missouri Compromise.

  • Many northerners were angry at the act and at Douglas.

• “Bleeding Kansas”

  • Violence erupted in Kansas as proslavery and antislavery men fought for control of the state.

  • In 1855, elections were held for a territorial legislature, and more than 6,000 votes were cast.

  • Antislavery Kansans chose their own shadow legislature, and each side wrote up a constitution for Kansas.

  • President Franklin Pierce recognized the proslavery government, and called the antislavery government traitorous.

  • In May 1856, John Brown initiated the killing of proslavery men along the banks of the Pottawatomie Creek in Kansas.

  • Open violence continued for the next several years, and the question of slavery in Kansas was unresolved when Abraham Lincoln was elected president (1860).

  • After southern secession began, Kansas joined the Union as a free state in January 1861.

• The Beating of Senator Charles Sumner

  • The growing tensions between North and South were evident in a violent incident that occurred on the floor of the Senate in 1856.

  • Senator Charles Sumner from Massachusetts had given a pointed antislavery speech, called “Crimes against Kansas, ” in which he singled out Senator Andrew P. Butler of South Carolina.

  • Butlerʼs nephew, a South Carolina representative named Preston Brooks, heard about the speech and attacked Sumner at his desk in the Senate chamber, beating him viciously with a heavy cane.

  • The injuries le Sumner incapacitated for four years.

  • Northerners saw the beating as a further sign of southern barbarity; southerners made Brooks a hero.

• The Dred Scott Decision

  • The Supreme Court decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) further divided Northern and southern relations by ruling that Scott was still a slave and that Congress had overstepped its bounds in declaring the northern portion of the Louisiana Purchase territory off-limits to slavery.

  • The decision also declared that no African Americans, not even free men and women, were entitled to citizenship in the United States because they were "beings of an inferior order."

  • Northerners were astounded at the sweep of the decision, which seemed to argue that slavery was a national institution and that Congress could do little to stop it.

The Death of the Second Two-Party System

• Party Realignment

  • The Kansas-Nebraska Act became a lightning rod for sectional divisions (see pages 200–201).

  • The Whigs were bitterly divided between proslavery “Cotton Whigs” and antislavery “Conscience Whigs.”

  • Meanwhile, the Democratic Party became increasingly a regional southern, proslavery party.

• The Republican Party and the Free Labor Ideal

  • The modern Republican Party was formed in 1854 and was composed of many different factions.

  • Central to the ideology was the "free labor" ideology, which upheld civic virtue and the dignity of labor and put a great deal of emphasis on economic growth and social mobility.

  • The economic superiority of free labor to slave labor became a major part of the Republican argument against slavery.

  • The Republican slogan in the 1856 presidential campaign of John C. Fremont, "Free soil, free labor, free men, Fremont," encapsulated this ideology.

  • The party was critical of slavery, but did not advocate abolition.

  • It adopted the position that slavery should not be allowed to spread to the new territories.

• The Election of 1856

  • The election of 1856 marked the end of the Democrat-Whig two-party system, with the Whig Party dissolved and the Know-Nothing Party divided over the slavery issue.

  • The Democratic Party won the election by picking a northern candidate with southern sympathies, James Buchanan, and the two main parties remained the Democrats and the Republicans.

Election of 1860 and Secession

• The Election of 1860

  • The election of 1860 demonstrated the fractured nature of the American political system, with the Democratic Party divided between a northern and a southern wing. Stephen Douglas won Missouri and part of New Jersey, while the southern Democrats carried the Deep South.

  • The Constitutional Union won the upper South, while the Republican Party chose Abraham Lincoln as its standard bearer.

• Lincolnʼs Electoral Victory in 1860

  • Abraham Lincoln was a Whig congressman from Illinois who ran for Senate in 1858 and lost to Stephen Douglas.

  • He ran for president in 1860 and promised not to interfere with slavery, but to block its expansion to new territories in the West.

  • He won 40% of the popular vote, but carried the electoral vote, winning virtually all the states of the North.

  • His electoral victory alarmed southern defenders of slavery, leading to seven southern states seceding before Lincoln was inaugurated.

• The Onset of War

  • President Lincoln made it clear that he would not permit southern secession, but he did not want to initiate a war with the breakaway states.

  • The presence of U.S. troops at Fort Sumter, in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, sparked the American Civil War.

  • In April 1861, Confederate president Jefferson Davis ordered bombardment of the fort, which was forced to surrender.

  • Four additional states seceded, and Lincoln reacted by issuing a proclamation calling for 75,000 troops to "cause the laws to be duly executed."

  • Soon, the United States and the seceded southern states, calling themselves the Confederate States of America, were at war.

Military Conflict in the Civil War

Mobilizing for War

• Industrialization

  • The Civil War spurred rapid industrialization of the North, as the Union government required an enormous amount of war materials.

  • Manufacturers rapidly modernized production, speeding up the process of industrialization.

  • This stimulated a long period of economic growth, turning the United States into a world economic power.

  • Many of the "captains of industry" who came to dominate the economy during the Gilded Age, such as Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Jay Gould, J. P. Morgan, and Phillip D. Armour, began their economic rise through supplying the Union war effort.

• Funding the War

  • The United States government funded the war effort in three ways: issuing currency, borrowing money, and levying new taxes.

  • Congress issued three Legal Tender Acts in 1862 and 1863, allowing the government to issue paper currency, or "greenbacks".

  • To standardize the issuing of bank notes, stabilize the banking system, and stimulate economic growth, the government passed a series of National Banks Acts (1863–1864).

  • For the first time, the government appealed to the public to purchase bonds in order to fund the war. Banks and other financial institutions ended up loaning the government the vast majority of the $2.6 billion borrowed during the war.

  • Tax rates remained modest during the war, but the call for additional income taxes became popular during the Gilded Age.

  • A new income tax was enacted in 1894 but was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.

  • Later, the Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution allowed Congress to levy income taxes.

• New York City Draft Riots

  • President Abraham Lincoln faced resistance to Union policies in the loyal states, including riots against the Enrollment Act (1863) in New York City in July 1863.

  • Protesters were angry about a stipulation of the law that allowed men to pay a $300 commutation fee, which was beyond most workingclass men.

  • The rioters targeted the city's African-American population, killing at least 120 people.

• Civil Liberties and Home Front Opposition

  • President Abraham Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus during the Civil War, authorizing the arrest of rebels and traitors without due process.

  • Congress supported Lincoln's move by passing the Habeas Corpus Suspension Act (1863).

  • After the war, the Supreme Court ruled that the suspension did not empower the president to try and convict citizens before military tribunals.

Turning the Tide: Factors in the Union Victory

• Strengths and Weaknesses of the Two Sides

  • The Union side had several key advantages in the war, including a far greater population than the Confederacy, a more diverse economy, and an extensive railroad network.

  • The Union also had the capability to resupply its troops and recruit reinforcements for fallen soldiers.

  • The Confederacy's greatest advantage was its ability to fight a defensive war, while the Union had to fight an offensive war in southern territory.

  • The South also had a rich military tradition, with able generals and a cohort of military men to draw from.

• Fighting the Civil War

  • The Union had a three-part strategy to defeat the Confederacy: blockade southern ports, divide Confederate territory in half, and march on the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia.

  • President Lincoln and much of the northern populace expected the war to be quick and easy, but this was shattered after the First Battle of Bull Run in Virginia.

  • Lincoln went through several generals-in-chief to lead the Union army before settling on Ulysses S. Grant.

  • The 1862 Battle of Antietam was considered a Union victory, but a more aggressive Union general might have inflicted heavier damage.

  • The early years also saw the first encounter between two ironclad ships, the Confederacyʼs Merrimac and the United Statesʼ Monitor, which resulted in a draw.

  • The Union Navy maintained a successful blockade of the South, preventing the Confederacy from selling its surplus cotton on the world market.

  • At first, the Confederacy initiated an embargo on selling cotton to Great Britain, with the idea of bringing British factories to a standstill until Great Britain agreed to recognize the Confederacy and aid its war effort.

  • Successful negotiating with Great Britain in 1862 assured the Union that Great Britain would stay on the sidelines unless it were certain that the Confederacy would become an independent nation.

  • An important turning point in the war was the Battle of Gettysburg (1863), which was the high-water mark for the Confederacy.

    • An important Union victory was at Vicksburg, Mississippi (1863).

  • In 1864, General William Tecumseh Sherman's "March to the Sea" shattered the South's last hope for a negotiated peace.

  • Confederate general Robert E. Lee finally surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia (1865).

Government Policies During the Civil War

The Focus of the War: From Union to Emancipation

• President Lincoln and Slavery

  • President Abraham Lincoln's greatest wartime achievement was playing a key role in the emancipation of the slaves, partly motivated by his desire to keep Great Britain at bay.

  • However, abolitionists, Radical Republicans, and free Blacks and slaves themselves all contributed to the effort to put the issue of liberation on the wartime agenda.

  • Lincoln ushered in this historic event of emancipation while guiding the country through a devastating civil war, convincing a reluctant country that ending slavery was consistent with American values.

• The Confiscation Acts (1861)

  • Lincoln opposed the Confiscation Acts of 1861 and 1862, which declared any slaves pressed into working for the Confederacy to be "contraband of war" and considered "confiscated property".

  • The second act allowed for the seizure of slaves owned by Confederate officials.

• The Emancipation Proclamation (1862)

  • President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, 1863, ordering the freeing of all slaves in rebel-held territory as of January 1, 1863.

  • The order did not free slaves in the loyal border states or in Union-held areas of Confederate states, but it changed the goals and tenor of the war and made clear that this was as much a war for the liberation of the slaves as it was a war to preserve the Union.

• The End of Slavery

  • President Abraham Lincoln saw the Civil War as divine punishment for the sin of slavery.

  • After years of brutal warfare, the Emancipation Proclamation was enforced and slavery was brought to an end over a month after the formal end of the war.

  • On June 19, 1865, Union General Gordon Granger and his troops announced that all slaves were free, known as "Juneteenth".

  • In 2021, President Joe Biden signed legislation making "Juneteenth" a federal holiday.

Lincoln and the Meaning of the Civil War

• The Battle of Gettysburg (1863) was a major turning point in the Civil War.

• President Abraham Lincoln dedicated a military cemetery at the site and invoked the Declaration of Independence.

• He stated that the United States was "conceived in Liberty" and that an important founding principle was that "all men are created equal".

• The Civil War was a test of whether a nation conceived around the principles of liberty and equality can last.

• The outcome of the conflict played an important role in the growth of the United States as a modern nation, as it made it clear that the states did not have the autonomy to secede.

• The United States was increasingly referred to as a nation, rather than a union of states.

Reconstruction

The Expansion of Citizenship Following the Civil War

• The Thirteenth Amendment

  • Slavery had been virtually destroyed as Union troops defeated the Confederacy.

  • Yet, by the end of the Civil War, some slaves were still not freed, especially in areas that had not been under Confederate control, such as Kentucky and Delaware.

  • This amendment freed the remaining slaves but, more importantly, it enshrined in the United States Constitution that slavery was illegal in America.

• The Fourteenth Amendment

  • Adopted in 1868, asserted that all people born in the United States are citizens.

  • It also stated that the "privileges and immunities" of citizens shall not be abridged by states, and that no citizens shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.

  • The amendment undid long-held custom and provided a guarantee of equality before the law, but it did not guarantee them the right to vote.

  • It addressed voting rights by stating that for each male inhabitant denied the vote, the state would be forced to deduct a whole person from its total population count.

  • Republicans hoped that this would apply strong pressure on the states not to disenfranchise African Americans, but Southern states resisted extending the vote to African American men, leading to the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment.

• The Fifteenth Amendment

  • Granting African-American men voting rights, was ratified in 1869.

  • It states states that the vote may not be denied to someone based on “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”

  • African-American women, like white women, still could not vote.

  • Women were not guaranteed the right to vote until ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment (1920). T

  • he guarantee of voting rights for African-American men was a key element of the Reconstruction program of the “radical Republicans.”

The Womenʼs Rights Movement and the Constitution

• The proposal to ratify the Fifteenth Amendment sparked debate within the women's rights movement due to its inclusion of the word "male" in the Constitution.

• Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony refused to support the amendment because it did not extend the right to vote to women.

• Other feminists, led by Lucy Stone and Henry Blackwell, argued that it was important to support Reconstruction and the Republican Party and that women's suffrage could be accomplished on a state-by-state basis.

• These divisions led to the formation of rival organizations. Stanton and Anthony formed the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) in 1869.

• Stone, Blackwell, and others established the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA), also in 1869.

• The AWSA and NWSA eventually reconciled and in 1890 merged to become the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA).

The Limited Successes of Reconstruction

• Reconstruction

  • Refers to the process of reuniting the nation following the Civil War and restructuring the political, legal, and economic systems in the states that had seceded.

• Approaches to Reconstruction

  • President Abraham Lincoln and the Republican Party began to address several questions regarding the postwar world, such as what accommodations would be made for freed men and women of the South, how would the secessionist South be reintegrated into the United States, and who held responsibility for reuniting and reconstructing the country.

  • The president argued that the secessionist states still exist as political entities, while congressional Republicans argued that they had ceased to exist and needed to be readmitted by Congress.

  • These questions formed the basis of competing visions of what Reconstruction would entail.

• Wartime Reconstruction

  • President Lincoln was eager to restore the Union and announced his "ten percent" plan in 1863.

  • In 1864, he vetoed the Wade-Davis Bill, which would have required half of the voters in a state to sign a loyalty oath to the United States before Reconstruction could begin.

  • In 1865, he announced that he wanted to reunite the country with malice toward none and charity for all.

  • Lincoln was assassinated less than a month after his second inauguration, making it difficult to predict how he would have negotiated the difficulties of the Reconstruction era.

• Presidential Reconstruction

  • Andrew Johnson assumed power after President Lincoln's assassination and pursued a lenient and rapid approach to Reconstruction.

  • He recognized the new southern state governments as legitimate after they renounced secession and ratified the Thirteenth Amendment banning slavery.

  • However, many members of the old slave-owning class were back in power and tried to replicate the conditions of the Old South, including passing restrictive laws known as the Black Codes.

  • Many northerners wondered if they had won the war, but lost the peace.

• Black Codes

  • Black Codes were laws passed by Southern states in 1865 and 1866 that regulated the activities of African Americans and recreated the conditions of slavery.

  • These laws included vagrancy laws, which allowed for the arrest of freed people for minor infractions.

  • Punishments for violations of Black Codes included forcing African Americans to labor on a plantation for a period of time.

  • In 1865, Mississippi was the first state to pass Black Codes, and all ten states of the former Confederacy soon followed suit.

  • In 1866, Republicans in Congress initiated a more sweeping Reconstruction program, overriding President Andrew Johnson's vetoes.

• Congress and the President Clash over Reconstruction

  • In 1866, President Andrew Johnson and congressional Republicans fought over two measures passed by Congress.

  • The biggest fight was over the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, which Johnson saw as further congressional interference in Reconstruction.

  • He urged Southerners to reject the amendment, confident that his allies would prevail in the 1866 midterm elections.

• Radical Reconstruction

  • Racial Reconstruction, also known as "Congressional Reconstruction", was a phase of Reconstruction that showed the potential for a biracial democracy in the United States and the limits of federal resolve against the Fourteenth Amendment.

  • It was a success for Republicans, but it was backfired when they won a resounding victory in the 1866 midterm elections.

• Reconstruction Acts of 1867

  • Congressional Republicans were able to pass the Reconstruction Acts of 1867, which divided the South into five military districts and guaranteed basic rights to African Americans.

  • Representative Thaddeus Stevens introduced a bill to redistribute land so that each freedman could be granted forty acres, but the idea ran against the Republican value of protecting private property.

  • The issue of land reform died in committee in the summer of 1867.

• The Impeachment of President Johnson

  • The clash between President Andrew Johnson and the congressional Republicans led to the impeachment of Johnson in 1868.

  • The House charged Johnson with violating the Tenure of Office Act, which prohibited the president from firing cabinet members without Senate approval.

  • The Senate narrowly found Johnson not guilty, but the whole procedure rendered Johnson powerless to stop Congress' Reconstruction plans.

• The Composition of Reconstruction Governments

  • The southern governments during the Reconstruction period were composed of a variety of elements, with Democrats still in the minority and Republicans made up of several different groups.

  • Southern whites who joined the Republicans were labeled "scalawags" by their Democratic opponents, while northerners came to the South to participate in Reconstruction.

  • Many of the Republican legislators were African Americans, but only in South Carolina did African Americans control the majority of seats in even one legislative chamber.

  • African Americans were elected to public office in the South at all, with two African Americans elected to the US Senate and more than a dozen elected to the House of Representatives in the 1870s.

• The Record of Reconstruction Governments

  • The record of the Reconstruction governments in the South is still a subject of controversy, with some accusing them of corruption and ineptitude.

  • However, historians have pointed out that these governments accomplished a great deal, including the establishment of schools for African Americans.

  • Schools thrived despite the costs and risk, and important African American institutions such as Howard University and Morehouse College were established.

  • Additionally, the governments established hospitals, rewrote constitutions, updated penal codes, and began the physical rebuilding of the war-torn South.

• The Waning of Reconstruction

  • The decline of the Reconstruction was caused by Southern conservative Democrats, who sought to regain power, aided by networks of white terrorist organizations that used violence to silence African Americans and intimidate them from participating in public life.

  • The bloodiest single act against African Americans during Reconstruction occurred in Colfax, Louisiana, in 1873, in the wake of the contested 1872 election for governor.

  • In April, a large group of white insurgents, including many Ku Klux Klan members, descended upon the courthouse, killing over a hundred African Americans before taking over the building.

  • The Supreme Court, in the case of United States v. Cruikshank, issued a decision that greatly weakened Reconstruction, holding that the federal Enforcement Act of 1870, which enabled federal authorities to protect the constitutional rights of African Americans from vigilante violence, was unconstitutional.

  • In the end, northern whites lost their zeal for reforming the South, as they were more interested in the industrial development of the North than in the "race problem" in the South.

• The Formal End of Reconstruction: The Election of 1876

  • The disputed presidential election of 1876 was the final nail in the coffin of Reconstruction.

  • Samuel J. Tilden won the majority of the popular vote, but neither he nor his Republican opponent, Rutherford B. Hayes, were able to claim enough electoral votes to be declared the winner.

  • A special electoral commission declared Hayes the winner in three states, but Democrats protested, leading to an informal agreement known as the Compromise of 1877.

  • In return, the Republicans agreed to end Reconstruction, paving the way for rule by the Democratic Party in the South.

Failure of Reconstruction

From Slavery to Sharecropping

• African Americans were still engaged in agricultural work following the Civil War, but some Radical Republicans urged the government to divide up former slave plantations and distribute the land to freedmen.

• Short of this, African Americans began to rent land, paying "rent" with a portion of their yearly crop.

• This "sharecropping" system was somewhat of a compromise, but it created a cycle of debt that prevented African Americans from acquiring wealth and owning land.

Conflicts over Notions of Citizenship and American Identity

• Segregation in the South

  • The term "Jim Crow laws" originated from a song-and-dance routine from the 1830s, which included white actors in blackface caricaturing African Americans.

  • These laws segregated public facilities, relegated African Americans to second-class status, and first appeared in the South in 1881.

• The Supreme Court and the Narrowing of the Fourteenth Amendment

  • The passage of Jim Crow laws in the South after Reconstruction was aided by a narrow interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment by the Supreme Court.

  • The amendment prevents states from making laws that limit the "privileges or immunities" of any United States citizen.

  • In the Slaughterhouse cases (1873), the Court made a distinction between national citizenship and state citizenship.

  • In the case of Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), the Supreme Court specifically asserted that racial segregation did not violate the equal protection provision of the Amendment.

• The Exclusion of African Americans from the Political Process

  • African Americans were systematically excluded from the political process due to literacy tests, poll taxes, and the "grandfather clause".

  • The Democratic Party often held "whites only" primaries, and African Americans who spoke out against this were targets of violence and murder.

  • The Ku Klux Klan was first organized in 1866, and thousands of African Americans were killed by lynch mobs.

• A “Second Reconstruction”

  • Reconstruction lasted only a decade; its accomplishments were limited and short lived.

  • However, in many respects the failures of Reconstruction in the nineteenth century set the stage for a “second reconstruction” in the twentieth.

  • The democratic spirit of the Reconstruction period inspired civil rights activists in the twentieth century

Period 6: 1865-1898 The Challenges of the Era of Industrialization