history essay

Regional Divisions

Regional Divisions U.S. circa 1850

Southern States Northern States Western Territories

The United States

The Rise of Sectionalism

• Abolitionist call slavery a sin against God

immediate end to slavery

• Quakers appeal to moral sense

• Beginning of a distinct approach to slavery and

labor

• Southerners note biological difference of slaves

• Southerners defend on grounds of property and states rights

• Southern slave owners appeal to everyday man on race and close in on itself

Underlying Causes for Tension

• Expansion (Manifest Destiny)

• Slavery

• Land

• Sectionalism

Southern Interests

• The Preservation of States Rights

• The Extension of the Slave Labor system

• The Preservation of Property Rights vis a vis slaves

Northern Interests

• Structural Changes and or limitations to the slave labor system

• A measured opening of territories west of the Mississippi

• Expansion of the industrial capital system

Western Interests

• Massive opening of the land west of the Mississippi to exploration and settlement

• Federal subsidization of east/west railways

• Federal subsidization of agricultural research and development

Anti-Abolitionism and the

Abolitionist Response • “Gag Rule” - A procedural motion that

required that the House of Representatives

automatically table antislavery petitions and

not consider them.

The Proslavery Argument

• “Peculiar Institution” - A term that John C. Calhoun coined to describe Southern slavery. In Calhoun’s view slavery was

not “an evil” or a cause of shame but rather “a good—a

positive good” to be championed.

The New Domestic Ideal

• “Cult of True Womanhood” - A set of beliefs in which women’s values were defined in opposition to the

aggressive and competitive values of the marketplace.

The Path towards Seneca Falls

• Seneca Falls Convention - A convention of women’s rights supporters, held in Seneca Falls, New York, whose resolves

emphatically declared that “all men and women are created

equal.”

Triggers to Sectional Crisis

• Wilmot Proviso of 1846

• Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo of 1848

• Discovery of Gold in California 1849

The Compromise of 1850

• California admitted Free, Texas Slave

• All other territories would follow popular sovereignty

• Slavery ended in District of Columbia

• Passage of Fugitive Slave Act of 1850

The Coming Crisis

• Senator and railroad baron proposes to build a transcontinental railroad with a terminus in Chicago Kansas - Nebraska Act 1854

• Would open Kansas - Nebraska Iowa - Missouri to popular sovereignty expansion

• Whigs and Democrats split along sectional as opposed to party lines

Consequences of K - N Act

• Indians lose land guaranteed by treaty

• Free soilers (anti-slavery) and border ruffians (pro-slavery) pour into the Kansas territory in anticipation of statehood

vote for free or slave designation

• John Brown and other bands roamed across countryside

Inflammation by Courts

• Dred - Scott 1857

• Invalidates Missouri compromise by stating that feds no rights to limit movement of private property

• Declare blacks free or slave not citizens

• Throws case out of the court

1860 Election

• Abraham Lincoln becomes first non-southerner to win the

Presidency

• Runs on an explicit anti-slavery ticket

• Wins all Northern and no southern states

Splitting the Union

• Dec. 20 1860 South Carolina leaves the union followed by Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas

• February 1861 form the Confederate States of America (Jefferson Davis, President)

• April 12, 1861 attack begins on Ft. Sumter

• Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina join the Confederacy

Union Response

• Homestead Act (1862)

• Pacific Railroad Act (1862)

• Land Grant College Act (1862)

The First Two Years

• Lincoln in speeches makes it clear that the war is to unify the union not to end slavery

• The Big Four (Stanford, Huntington, Crocker) capitalized with $15, 000 by 1869 had $200 million in personal fortunes

• Government contracting created fortunes for Rockefeller, meat packers of Chicago

Lincoln’s Aims

• Preserve the Union

• Everything else secondary

• Especially concerned about the border states

• Call for 75,000 volunteers

• Black volunteers rejected

Lincoln’s Initial Position

• Reluctant to move against slavery, 1861 • Border state loyalty

• Supported compensated emancipation-colonization

• Wanted to end slavery in border states, April 1862

• Warned border states to accept compensation or risk getting nothing, July 1862

Lincoln Moves toward

Emancipation

• Victory and Union tied to slavery issue

• “Strike at the heart of the rebellion”

• Tells his cabinet, summer 1862

• William Seward warns Lincoln to wait

• Montgomery Blair feared fall elections

Black People Reject Colonization

• Lincoln would not retreat from colonization (American Colonization Society)

• Liberia

• Haiti

• Black people not interested

Emancipation Proclamation

• Limited to areas still in rebellion

• Did not include border states

• Changes war goals

• Preserve the Union

• Make people free

Effects of Proclamation

on the South

• Ended chance of foreign recognition

• France and England removed from attempt to support Confederacy

• Encouraged • Slaves to flee

• Slaves to resist

Black Men

Fight for the Union

• Emancipation Proclamation

• Authorized black men to enlist

• Union defeats and the need for manpower

Black Men

Fight for the Union

• Discrimination and hostility

• Segregated units

• White officers – Often held racist beliefs

• Lower pay scale

• White privates $13/month

• Black privates $10/month

Violent Opposition to Black

People

• New York City Draft Riot, July 1863

• Draft

• Irish men angry

• Black men had replaced Irish stevedores, June 1863

• Rich white northerners could purchase an exemption

• Riot lasted four days

– Colored Orphan Asylum

– Churches

– Republican and abolitionists houses destroyed

Violent Opposition to Black

People

• Union troops and slaves

• Often treated slaves horribly

• Rapes and assaults were not uncommon

• Others found compassion for enslaved people

• “I have no heart in this war if the slaves cannot be made free,” a Union soldier wrote.

Refugees

• Thousands of black people escaped bondage

• Some followed Union armies

• Others struck out on their own

• Faced re-enslavement or execution if caught

Black People and

the Confederacy

• Confederacy based on defense of slavery

• Benefited from the labors of bonds people

• Toiled in fields

• Worked in factories

• Permitted more white men to serve in military

Black People and

the Confederacy

• Impressment of black people • Military demands for manpower

• Slave owners contributed slave labor

– Built fortifications

• Government first asked then compelled

– Registration and enrollment of free black people military labor

• “Twenty nigger law” • Exempted men who owned twenty slaves from draft

Black People and

the Confederacy

• Confederates enslave free black people

• Davis counter proclamation

• “All free negroes . . . shall be placed on the slave status and be deemed to be chattels. . . forever.”

• Ordered Confederate armies to capture free black people in the North and enslave them.

– Robert E. Lee, Pennsylvania 1863

Black Confederates

• Free black people volunteered services

• Show loyalty and gain white acceptance

• Re-enslavement concerns

• Southern leaders generally ignored offers unless for menial labor

Black Enlistments

• General Patrick Cleburne recommends, early 1864 • President Davis cease and desist order

• Most southerners considered arming slaves appalling

• Defied southern assumptions • “If slaves will make good soldiers our whole theory of slavery is

wrong.”--Howell Cobb

• March 1865 Confederate Congress voted to enlist 300,000 • Receive same pay as white soldiers

• Slaves freed only with consent of owners and state agreed

Emancipation Proclamation

• Second Confiscation Act of 1862 (abolished slavery) declared property of all persons supporting rebellion forfeit

• Mo, Kty, Md, W VA and Del all had slaves fearful they might leave union if issue is slavery

• 22 Sept 1862 Lincoln makes emancipation a war aim (blacks could join army)

Total War

• William Tecumseh Sherman begins march to sea in 1864

• General Grant marches another army from Washington to Richmond (one in eight of Grant’s army blacks)

• Both live off land, scorched earth

• Lee surrenders ( 9 April ‘65)

Forty Acres and a Mule

• 13th amendment Jan 1865 passes both houses and abolishes slavery

• Jan 1865 Sherman took land from Charleston to Florida to give black heads of households forty acres and lent them an

army mule

• Slaves abandoned cash crop and began to plant subsistence crops for the family

The Death of Abraham Lincoln

• Re-elected President 1864

• April 15, 1865 killed at Ford’s Theater by John Wilkes Booth

End of Civil War Issues

• South devastated, cotton knocked flat

• Constitutional crisis with states

• 4 million new citizens whose status completely undetermined