U.S. Labor and Work

Week 11: The Civil War and Reconstruction: America’s Second Revolution

U.S. Labor and Work 201 Prof. Brucher

Agenda

• Paper 2 draft 1 due tonight at 11:59 pm, peer review due tomorrow at 11:59 pm, draft 2 due the following night at 11:59 pm

• Discussion question: What are the ongoing legacies of the Civil War?

• Presentation: The Civil War and Reconstruction

The American Civil War, 1861-1865

• What are the ongoing legacies of the Civil War?

Public Memory

Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument, New Brunswick NJ, 1893

Confronting “The Lost Cause” and White Supremacy Left: removal of Robert E. Lee statue, New Orleans LA, 2017. Right: removal of J.E.B. Stuart statue from Monument Ave, Richmond VA, 2020 Below: Jefferson Davis memorial chair and ransom note, Selma, AL, 2021

The Dred Scott Decision, 1857 In the opinion of the court, the legislation and histories of the times, and the language used in the Declaration of Independence, show, that neither the class of persons who had been imported as slaves, nor their descendants, whether they had become free or not, were then acknowledged as a part of the people, nor intended to be included in the general words used in that memorable instrument...They had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit. – Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393

Bleeding Kansas, 1854-1861

John Brown’s Raid on Harper’s Ferry, VA, October 16, 1859

I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land can never be purged away but with blood. - December 2, 1859

Lincoln’s Election and Inauguration, 1860-1861

• Southern politicians, slave owners, and elites were threatened by Abraham Lincoln’s election to the presidency and the ascendancy of the Republican Party.

• Lincoln received zero electoral votes from southern states. He won overwhelming support in the north and the west.

Why did the southern states (The Confederacy) secede from the United States (The Union)?

• SLAVERY – The secession acts and declaration of causes for secession

for the southern states plainly state that they were leaving the U.S. over the issue of slavery.

– Were “states’ rights,” “heritage,” and “northern aggression” also valid reasons for secession? • Slavery was also at the core of these reasons.

Support for Secession • Support for secession was not

universal among white southerners in 1861. Many were indifferent or even hostile to leaving the Union.

• The slaveholding border states (Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, and Delaware) remained in the Union (though they had many confederate sympathizers).

• West Virginia officially split from Virginia and joined the Union.

Northern Advantages

Did economic and military advantages make northern victory inevitable?

Southern Advantages • The south could

pursue a defensive strategy.

• The south retained some highly trained military officers, including Robert E. Lee.

Problems Facing Both Sides

• Both sides lacked highly trained armies.

• Both sides faced logistical problems.

• Both sides had to maintain the political will to fight.

• Neither side was prepared for a modern, total war.

U.S. Army wagon train

The Course of the War

New Technologies and Strategies

Who Did the Fighting? • Union forces: approx. 2.2 million, including:

– 1 million native born whites – 216,000 German immigrants – 210,000 African Americans – 200,000 Irish immigrants – 50,000 Anglo Canadians – 50,000 English – 40,000 French Canadians and Franco

Americans – 20,000 Nordic/Scandinavians – 7,000 Italians – 7,000 Jews – 6,000 Mexicans – 5,000 Polish – 4,000 Native Americans – Hundreds from other nationalities and

ethnicities.

20 year old German Immigrant Joseph Haag, 26th

Wisconsin

Who Did the Fighting?

• Confederate Forces: approx. 750,000 to 1 million: – 91% native born white – Some Irish, German, and Mexican

immigrants – Several thousand Native Americans,

mostly from the Cherokee and Choctaw nations.

Edwin Francis Jemison, 16 years old, 2nd Louisiana Volunteers

Total War, Total Carnage U.S. War Deaths Civil War Battle Deaths

Confederate War Deaths Union War Deaths

The Draft, Desertion, and Class Conflict • Both the U.S. (1863) and Confederacy

(1862) used conscription to draft soldiers. • Conscription was deeply unpopular. • Dissident southerners compared the

confederate law to slavery. • Working class northerners were angry that

the rich men could buy their way out of the draft for $300, with poorer men taking their place.

• NYC Draft Riot, July 13-16, 1863: 120 killed, 2,000 injured. Most rioters were Irish immigrants who attacked abolitionist families and free blacks; destroyed public buildings and burned protestant churches.

• At least 180,000 soldiers deserted from the Union Army.

• At least 103,00 soldiers deserted from the Confederate Army.

The Second American Revolution?

• Why was the Civil War “America’s Second Revolution?”

• How did it permanently change U.S. politics and laws, the economy and labor, and society and culture?

African Americans in the Civil War • Missouri, 1861: Union General John C. Fremont

declared martial law and freed the slaves of confederate sympathizers.

• Monroe, VA, 1861: Union General Benjamin Butler declared that slaves were military “contraband,” offering sanctuary to escaped slaves.

• Slaves flocked to Union forces throughout the war, offering military service and intelligence.

• By 1863, the Union army formed units of free blacks and ex-slaves, including the 54th Massachusetts, a unit led by the abolitionist Col. Robert Gould Shaw. The 54th is the subject of the 1989 Academy Award winning film, Glory.

• African American units faced pay discrimination and racism within the army, though they proved their bravery on the battlefield.

The 54th Massachusetts Infantry

The Emancipation Proclamation, January 1, 1863 “We are all liberated by this proclamation. Everybody is liberated. The white man is liberated, the black man is liberated, the brave men now fighting the battles of their country against rebels and traitors are now liberated… I congratulate you upon this amazing change—the amazing approximation toward the sacred truth of human liberty.” - Frederick Douglass, 1863

The 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, 1865 The Glorious Labor Amendment: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”

The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, 1868

“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

Reconstruction, 1865-1877: Radical Possibilities

• Reconstruction, 1865-1877, held the promise and possibility of creating citizenship, rights, and democracy in the post-Civil War South.

• Passed over President Andrew Johnson’s veto, the Reconstruction Acts of 1867 established new state governments in the South, empowered black men to vote, and barred several thousand confederates from the ballot.

• African Americans voted in great numbers. According to historian Eric Foner, Reconstruction “was a remarkable, unprecedented effort to build an interracial democracy on the ashes of slavery.”

Freedmen voting in New Orleans, 1867

Radical Republicans • The Radical Republicans pushed the

Reconstruction Acts and the 15th Amendment through congress (granting black men the right to vote), overriding the objections to Pres. Andrew Johnson, who had been a “war democrat.”

• The Radical Republicans nearly impeached Johnson in 1867 and successfully backed their presidential candidate and war hero, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, in the 1868 election.

Freed People Rebuild Their Lives

• The Radical Republicans tried to support the aspirations of freed African Americans in the South.

• Freed people sought to reunite with loved ones, establish churches and schools, gain access to land, and exercise their rights to vote.

Freedmans School, North Carolina

Violent Opposition to Reconstruction

• Though confederates were barred from office, white southerners violently opposed reconstruction.

• Whites in New Orleans started a race riot in 1866 to block freedmen from voting and to attempt to uphold segregationist “black codes.”

Violent Opposition to Reconstruction

• Founded in 1865 and led by Nathan Bedford Forrest and other confederate veterans, the first Ku Klux Klan violently attacked, tortured, and killed African Americans and white republicans throughout the south.

• Even though Pres. Grant and Congress deemed the Klan a terrorist organization and used military intervention to arrest Klan leaders and stop Klan violence, the Klan and other white vigilantes helped intimidate republican voters.

The End of Reconstruction

• Klan and vigilante violence helped suppress the republican vote in the south, allowing white supremacist governments regain control of southern state legislatures.

• The end of Reconstruction was also part of the “compromise” election of 1876, where republican nominee Rutherford B. Hayes took office in return for pulling federal troops from the south.

The Legacies of Reconstruction • The failure and abandonment of

Reconstruction led to the reestablishment of the racial order.

• By the late 1800s/early 1900s, southern state governments enacted “Jim Crow” laws and restricted the right of African Americans to vote.

• In 1896, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the “separate but equal” segregationist doctrine in its Plessey v. Ferguson decision.

• Segregation and discrimination remained in the public and private spheres: in housing, in education, in the job market, in public transportation—everywhere.

The Legacies of Reconstruction

• Reconstruction held the promise and possibility of creating citizenship, rights, and democracy: causes African Americans and their allies continued to fight for in the Civil Rights movements of the 20th Century.

The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, 1963.