The Old South

Frederick Douglass and the Abolitionist Movement

• Frederick Douglass, born into slavery, became a prominent leader in the abolitionist movement.
• Douglass published an autobiography that condemned slavery and racism.

Cotton is King

• Cotton surpassed sugar as the primary crop produced by slave labor in the 19th century.
• The Southern United States produced three-fourths of the world’s cotton supply.
• Cotton fueled textile mills in the North and Great Britain.
• By 1803, cotton became America’s most significant export.

The Second Middle Passage

• Internal slave trade flourished within the United States despite the prohibition of the African slave trade.
• Southern cities' business districts housed slave traders' offices, and public slave markets held auctions.

Slavery and the Nation

• Slavery influenced all Americans, not just Southerners.
• Northern merchants and manufacturers profited from the slave economy.

The Southern Economy

• Southern economic growth differed from the North, with few large cities.
• Southern cities mainly functioned as centers for gathering and shipping cotton.
• New Orleans was the only major city in the South.
• The South produced less than 10% of the nation’s manufactured goods.

Plain Folk of the Old South

• Three-fourths of white Southerners did not own slaves.
• Most white Southerners lived on self-sufficient farms.
• Most white Southerners supported slavery due to regional loyalty, racism, and kinship ties.
• Some whites, such as Andrew Johnson and Joseph Brown, opposed the "slaveocracy."

The Planter Class

• In 1850, the majority of slaveholding families owned five or fewer slaves.
• Fewer than 2,000 families owned 100 or more slaves.
• Slave ownership provided a path to wealth, status, and influence.
• Slavery operated as a profit-making system.
• Plantation mistresses managed domestic affairs, cared for sick slaves, and oversaw the plantation in the master's absence.
• Southern slave owners spent heavily on material goods.

The Paternalist Ethos

• Southern slave owners adhered to a hierarchical, agrarian society.
• Paternalism justified slave owners' perception of themselves as kind, responsible masters, despite buying and selling human property.

The Proslavery Argument

• By the 1830s, few Southerners considered slavery a necessary evil.
• Proslavery arguments centered around white supremacy, biblical justification, and the historical precedent that slavery was essential for human progress.
• Another argument claimed slavery ensured equality for whites.

Abolition in the Americas

• Abolition in the Americas impacted slavery debates in the United States.
• Proslavery advocates cited post-emancipation decline in sugar and other cash crops as evidence of British abolitionism’s failure.
• Abolitionists cited former slaves’ rising living standards as proof of emancipation's success.
• By mid-century, New World slavery remained only in Cuba, Puerto Rico, Brazil, and the United States.

Slavery and Liberty

• White Southerners considered themselves the true heirs of the American Revolution.
• Proslavery arguments started rejecting the Declaration of Independence's notions of universal equality and freedom.
• John C. Calhoun deemed the Declaration of Independence's language dangerous.
• Virginia writer George Fitzhugh claimed "universal liberty" was an exception, not the rule.
• By 1830, Southerners defended slavery in the context of liberty and freedom, asserting that freedom was impossible without slavery.

Slaves and the Law

• Slaves were legally considered property with few rights.
• Slaves could not testify against a white person, carry a firearm, leave the plantation without permission, learn to read or write, or gather in groups without a white person present.
• These laws were not always strictly enforced.
• Masters controlled slaves' marriages and free time.
• Celia, a slave, was tried and sentenced to die for killing her master while resisting sexual assault; her execution was delayed until after she gave birth.

Conditions of Slave Life

• American slaves had better diets, lower infant mortality, and longer life expectancies compared to slaves in the West Indies and Brazil.
• Reasons for included the paternalistic ethos of the South, the lack of malaria and yellow fever, and the high costs of slaves.

Free Blacks in the Old South

• By 1860, nearly half a million free blacks lived in the United States, mostly in the South.
• Free blacks could own property, marry, and were protected from being bought or sold, but they could not testify in court or serve on a jury.
• Most free blacks in the Lower South lived in cities like New Orleans and Charleston, while those in the Upper South lived in rural areas as farm laborers.

Slave Labor

• Labor dominated a slave’s daily existence, encompassing various jobs.
• Many slaves worked in the fields in large gangs under the supervision of an overseer, often seen as cruel.

Slavery in the Cities

• Most city slaves worked as servants, cooks, and other domestics.
• Some city slaves were skilled artisans and occasionally lived independently.

Maintaining Order

• The system to keep order relied on force.
• Masters used whipping, exploiting divisions among slaves, incentives, and the threat of sale to maintain control.

The Slave Family

• Despite the threat of sale and the illegality of slave marriages , many slaves married and formed families.
• Slaves often named children after relatives to maintain family continuity.
• Female-headed households were more common in the slave community than in the white community.

The Threat of Sale

• Slave traders rarely considered preserving family ties.

Gender Roles among Slaves

• Traditional gender roles were not followed in the fields but were observed during slaves' free time.

Slave Religion

• Black Christianity was distinct and provided comfort to slaves.
• Almost every plantation had a black preacher.
• Slaves worshipped in biracial churches, while free blacks established their own churches.
• Masters saw Christianity as a means of social control and made slaves attend services led by white ministers.
• Biblical stories offered hope and solace to slaves.

The Desire for Liberty

• Slave culture was rooted in the injustice of bondage and the desire for freedom.
• Slave folklore glorified the weak over the strong, and their spirituals emphasized eventual liberation.

Forms of Resistance

• The most common form of resistance was silent sabotage, such as breaking tools, feigning illness, and doing poor work.
• More serious forms included poisoning the master, arson, and armed assaults.
• Runaway slaves posed a significant threat to the slave system's stability; most escapes occurred in the Upper South.
• In the Deep South, fugitive slaves often escaped to Southern cities to blend in with the free black population.
• The Underground Railroad was an organization of abolitionists who aided slaves in escaping.
• Harriet Tubman, an escaped slave, led numerous slaves to freedom on twenty trips to Maryland.

The Amistad

• In 1839, slaves aboard the Amistad gained their freedom through collective seizure of the ship.
• The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the slaves had been illegally seized in Africa, thereby ordering their freedom.

Slave Revolts

• In 1811, an uprising on sugar plantations in Louisiana was suppressed after slaves marched toward New Orleans.
• Denmark Vesey was charged with conspiracy in South Carolina in 1822.
• Vesey, a religious man, saw the Bible as condemning slavery and noted the hypocrisy of the Declaration of Independence.
• His conspiracy was discovered before he could act.

Nat Turner’s Rebellion

• In 1831, Nat Turner and his followers attacked white farm families in Virginia.
• Eighty slaves joined Turner, and sixty whites were killed before the rebellion was put down.
• Turner was captured and executed.
• It was the last large-scale slave rebellion in the South.
• The Virginia legislature debated, but rejected, plans for gradual emancipation, opting instead to tighten its grip on slavery.
• 1831 became a turning point as white Southerners closed ranks and defended slavery more strongly than ever.

Abby Kelley and the Reform Impulse

• Abby Kelley was a notable figure
• About 100 reform communities emerged before the Civil War.
• Most sought to reorganize society on a cooperative basis, aiming to restore social harmony and reduce the gap between rich and poor.
• Socialism and communism entered common parlance.

The Shakers

• The Shakers were the most successful religious community and influenced the outside world.
• The Shakers believed in spiritual equality between men and women.
• They rejected private property and traditional family life.

Oneida

• Oneida's founder, John Noyes, and his followers practiced "complex marriage."
• Oneida operated under an extremely dictatorial environment.

Worldly Communities

• Robert Owen was the most significant secular communitarian.
• Owen founded New Harmony to create a “new moral world.”
• At New Harmony, Owen championed women's rights and education.

Religion and Reform

• Some reform movements were inspired by the Second Great Awakening's religious revivalism.
• The revivals popularized perfectionism, which saw individuals and society as capable of indefinite improvement.
• Older reform efforts took a radical turn, including prohibition, pacifism, and abolition.
• Reform became a symbol of respectability for members of the North’s emerging middle class culture.
• The American Temperance Society aimed its efforts at both drunkards and occasional drinkers.

Critics of Reform

• Many Americans viewed the reform impulse as an attack on their freedom.

Reformers and Freedom

• The vision of freedom expressed by the reform movements was both liberating and controlling.

The Invention of the Asylum

• Americans began to build institutions such as jails, poorhouses, asylums, and orphanages.
• These institutions were inspired by the belief that those who passed through them could become productive, self-disciplined citizens.

The Common School

• A tax-supported state public school system was widely adopted.
• Horace Mann was the era’s leading educational reformer.
• Mann hoped universal public education could restore equality to a fractured society and provide a path for social advancement.
• Common schools provided career opportunities for women but increased the divide between North and South.

Colonization

• The American Colonization Society (ACS), founded in 1816, advocated for gradual abolition and the settlement of black Americans in Africa.
• The ACS founded Liberia as its colony in West Africa.
• Many prominent political leaders supported the ACS.
• Like Indian removal, colonization rested on the idea that America is fundamentally a white society.
• Most African-Americans adamantly opposed the idea of colonization.
• In 1817, free blacks assembled in Philadelphia for the first national black convention and condemned colonization.
• They insisted that blacks were Americans, entitled to the same rights enjoyed by whites.

Militant Abolitionism

• A new generation of reformers demanded immediate abolition.
• David Walker’s An Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World was a passionate indictment of slavery and racial prejudice.
• The 1831 appearance of William Lloyd Garrison’s The Liberator in Boston gave abolitionism a constant voice.
• Some of Garrison's ideas appeared too radical, but his call for immediate abolition was echoed by many.
• Garrison rejected colonization.

Spreading the Abolitionist Message

• Abolitionists recognized the democratic potential in the production of printed material.
• Theodore Weld helped create the abolitionists’ mass constituency by using the methods of religious revivals.
• Weld and a group of trained speakers spread the message of slavery as a sin.

Slavery and Moral Suasion

• Nearly all abolitionists, despite their militant language, rejected violence as a means of ending slavery.
• Many abolitionists were pacifists, and they attempted to convince the slaveholder through "moral suasion" of his sinful ways.

A New Vision of America

• The antislavery movement sought to reinvigorate the idea of freedom as a truly universal entitlement.
• They insisted that blacks were fellow countrymen, not foreigners or a permanently inferior caste.
• Abolitionists disagreed over the usefulness of the Constitution.
• Abolitionists consciously identified their movement with the revolutionary heritage.

Black Abolitionists

• From its inception, blacks played a leading role in the antislavery movement.
• Frederick Douglass was a key figure.
• Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, based on the life of Josiah Henson, gave a powerful human appeal to the abolitionist message.
• By the 1840s, black abolitionists sought an independent role within the movement and regularly held their own conventions.
• At every opportunity, black abolitionists rejected the nation’s pretensions as a land of liberty.
• Black abolitionists articulated the ideal of color-blind citizenship.
• Frederick Douglass famously questioned the meaning of the Fourth of July.

Gentlemen of Property and Standing

• Abolitionism aroused violent hostility from Northerners who feared that the movement threatened to disrupt the Union, interfere with profits wrested from slave labor, and overturn white supremacy.
• Editor Elijah Lovejoy was killed by a mob while defending his press.
• Mob attacks and attempts to limit abolitionists’ freedom of speech convinced many Northerners that slavery was incompatible with the democratic liberties of white Americans.

The Rise of the Public Woman

• Women were instrumental in the abolition movement.
• The public sphere was open to women in ways government and party politics were not.

Women and Free Speech

• Women lectured in public about abolition.
• The Grimké sisters were key figures.
• The Grimké sisters argued against the idea that taking part in assemblies, demonstrations, and lectures was unfeminine.
• Letters on the Equality of the Sexes (1838) advocated for for equal pay for equal work

Women’s Rights

• Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott organized the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848.
• The Seneca Falls convention raised the issue of woman suffrage.
• The Declaration of Sentiments condemned the entire structure of inequality.

Feminism and Freedom

• Early feminists found allies abroad due to a lack of broad backing at home.
• Women deserved the range of individual choices and the possibility of self-realization that constituted the essence of freedom.
• Margaret Fuller sought to apply to women the transcendentalist idea that freedom meant a quest for personal development.

Women and Work

• The participants at Seneca Falls rejected the identification of the home as the women’s “sphere.”
• The “bloomer” costume was part of this sentiment.

The Slavery of Sex

• The concept of the “slavery of sex” empowered the women’s movement to develop an all-encompassing critique of male authority and their own subordination.
• Marriage and slavery became powerful rhetorical tools for feminists.

“Social Freedom”

• The demand that women should enjoy the rights to regulate their own sexual activity and procreation and to be protected by the state against violence at the hands of their husbands challenged the notion that claims for justice, freedom, and individual rights should stop at the household’s door.
• The issue of women’s private freedom revealed underlying differences within the movement for women’s rights.

The Abolitionist Schism

• The schism split into two wings in 1840 due to a dispute over the proper role of women in antislavery work.
• The American Anti-Slavery Society favored women in leadership positions.
• The American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society opposed women in leadership positions.
• The Liberty Party was established in hopes of making abolitionism a political movement.

Fruits of Manifest Destiny and Continental Expansion

• Slavery moved to the center of American politics in the 1840s because of territorial expansion.
• Mexico won its independence from Spain in 1821.
• Its northern frontier included California, New Mexico, and Texas.
• California’s Indian population vastly outnumbered the non-Indian population.

The Texas Revolt

• The first part of Mexico settled by significant numbers of Americans was Texas.
• Moses Austin was a key figure.
• Alarmed that its grip on the area was weakening, the Mexican government in 1830 annulled existing land contracts and barred future emigration from the United States.
• Stephen Austin led the call from American settlers for greater autonomy within Mexico.
• General Antonio López de Santa Anna sent an army in 1835 to impose central authority.
• Rebels formed a provisional government that soon called for Texan independence.
• The Alamo was a key battle.
• Sam Houston was a leader
• Texas desired annexation by the United States, but neither Jackson nor Van Buren took action due to political concerns regarding adding another slave state.

The Election of 1844

• The issue of Texas annexation was linked to slavery and affected the nominations of presidential candidates.
• Clay and Van Buren agreed to keep Texas out of the presidential campaign.
• James Polk, a Tennessee slaveholder and friend of Jackson, received the Democratic nomination instead of Van Buren.
• Polk supported Texas “reannexation” and the “reoccupation” of all of Oregon.

The Road to War

• Polk had four clearly defined goals: reduce the tariff, reestablish the Independent Treasury system, settle the Oregon dispute, and bring California into the Union.
• Polk initiated war with Mexico to get California.

The War and Its Critics

• Although most Americans supported the war, a vocal minority feared that the war's only aim was to acquire new land for the expansion of slavery.
• Henry David Thoreau wrote “On Civil Disobedience.”
• Abraham Lincoln questioned Polk’s right to declare war.

Combat in Mexico

• Combat took place on three fronts: California and the “bear flag republic”, General Stephen Kearney and Santa Fe, and Winfield Scott and central Mexico.
• The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed in 1848.

Race and Manifest Destiny

• A region that for centuries had been united was suddenly split in two, dividing families and severing trade routes.
• “Male citizens” were guaranteed American rights.
• Indians were described as “savage tribes.”
• Territorial expansion gave new stridency to ideas about racial superiority.
• Mexico had abolished slavery and declared persons of Spanish, Indian, and African origin equal before the law.
• The Texas constitution adopted after independence not only included protections for slavery but denied civil rights to Indians and persons of African origin.

Gold-Rush California

• California’s gold-rush population was incredibly diverse.
• The explosive population growth and fierce competition for gold worsened conflicts among California’s many racial and ethnic groups.
• The boundaries of freedom in California were tightly drawn.
• Thousands of Indian children, declared orphans, were bought and sold as slaves.
• A simultaneous gold rush occurred in Australia in 1851.

Opening Japan

• Commodore Matthew Perry of the U.S. Navy sailed warships into Tokyo Harbor and demanded that Japan negotiate a trade treaty with the United States (1853–1854).
• Japan opened two ports to U.S. merchant ships in 1854.
• The United States was interested in Japan primarily as a refueling stop on the way to China.

The Wilmot Proviso

• In 1846, Congressman David Wilmot of Pennsylvania proposed prohibiting slavery from all territory acquired from Mexico.
• In 1848, opponents of slavery’s expansion organized the Free Soil Party.
• The party nominated Martin Van Buren for president.

The Free Soil Appeal

• The Free Soil position had a popular appeal in the North because it would limit southern power in the federal government.
• The Free Soil platform of 1848 called for barring slavery from western territories and for the federal government providing homesteads to settlers without cost.
• To white southerners, the idea of barring slavery from territory acquired from Mexico seemed a violation of their equal rights as members of the Union.
• The admission of new free states would overturn the delicate political balance between the sections and make the South a permanent minority.

Crisis and Compromise

• 1848 was a year of revolution in Europe, only to be suppressed by counterrevolution.
• With the slavery issue appearing more and more ominous, established party leaders moved to resolve differences between the sections.
• The Compromise of 1850 included: -The admission of California as a free state -The abolition of the slave trade (not slavery itself) in the District of Columbia -A stronger Fugitive Slave law -In the Mexican Cession territories, local white inhabitants would determine the status of slavery.

The Great Debate

• Daniel Webster spoke for the Compromise.
• John C. Calhoun spoke against the Compromise.
• William Seward spoke against the Compromise.
• President Zachary Taylor, a Compromise opponent, died in office, and the new president, Millard Fillmore, secured the adoption of the Compromise.

The Fugitive Slave Issue

• The Fugitive Slave Act allowed special federal commissioners to determine the fate of alleged fugitives without benefit of a jury trial or even testimony by the accused individual.
• Fugitives, aided by abolitionist allies, violently resisted capture during dramatic confrontations.
• The fugitive slave law led several thousand northern blacks to flee to safety in Canada.

Douglas and Popular Sovereignty

• Franklin Pierce won the 1852 presidential election.
• Senator Stephen A. Douglas introduced a bill to establish territorial governments for Nebraska and Kansas so that a transcontinental railroad could be constructed.
• Slavery would be settled by popular sovereignty (territorial voters, not Congress, would decide).

The Kansas-Nebraska Act

• Under the Missouri Compromise, slavery had been prohibited in the Kansas-Nebraska area.
• The Appeal of the Independent Democrats was issued by antislavery congressmen opposed to the Kansas-Nebraska bill because it would potentially open the area to slavery.
• The Kansas-Nebraska Act became law. -Democrats were no longer unified as many northern Democrats opposed the bill. -The Whig Party collapsed. -The South became solidly Democratic. -The Republican Party emerged to prevent the further expansion of slavery.

The Northern Economy

• The rise of the Republican Party reflected underlying economic and social changes, including railroad networks
• By 1860, the North had become a complex, integrated economy.
• Two great areas of industrial production had arisen: the Northeastern seaboard and the Great Lakes region

The Rise and Fall of the Know-Nothings

• In 1854 the American, or Know-Nothing, Party emerged as a political party appealing to anti-Catholic and, in the North, antislavery sentiments.

The Free Labor Ideology

• Republicans managed to convince most northerners (antislavery Democrats, Whigs, Free Soilers, and Know-Nothings) that the “slave power” posed a more immediate threat to their liberties.
• This appeal rested on the idea of free labor.
• Free labor could not compete with slave labor, so slavery’s expansion had to be halted to ensure freedom for the white laborer.
• Republicans as a whole were not abolitionists.

“Bleeding Kansas” and the Election of 1856

• “Bleeding Kansas” seemed to discredit Douglas’s policy of leaving the decision of slavery up to the local population, thus aiding the Republicans.
• There was civil war within Kansas and Charles Sumner was a key figure.
• The election of 1856 demonstrated that parties had reoriented themselves along sectional lines.

The Dred Scott Decision

• After having lived in free territories, the slave Dred Scott sued for his freedom.
• The Supreme Court justices addressed three questions:
• Did Congress possess the power to prohibit slavery in a territory? -Speaking for the majority, Chief Justice Roger A. Taney declared that only white persons could be citizens of the United States.
• Taney ruled that Congress possessed no power under the Constitution to bar slavery from a territory, so Scott was still a slave. -The decision in effect declared unconstitutional the Republican platform of restricting slavery’s expansion.
• President Buchanan wanted to admit Kansas as a slave state under the Lecompton Constitution; Senator Stephen A. Douglas attempted to block the attempt.

Lincoln and Slavery

• In seeking reelection, Douglas faced an unexpectedly strong challenge from Abraham Lincoln.
• Lincoln’s speeches combined the moral fervor of the abolitionists with the respect for order and the Constitution of more conservative northerners.

The Lincoln-Douglas Campaign

• Lincoln campaigned against Douglas for Illinois’s senate seat.
• The Lincoln-Douglas debates remain classics of American political oratory. -To Lincoln, freedom meant opposition to slavery. -Douglas argued that the essence of freedom lay in local self-government and individual self-determination. -Douglas asserted at the Freeport debate that popular sovereignty was compatible with the Dred Scott decision.
• Lincoln shared many of the racial prejudices of his day.
• Douglas was reelected by a narrow margin.

John Brown at Harpers Ferry

• An armed assault by the abolitionist John Brown on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, further heightened sectional tensions.
• Placed on trial for treason to the state of Virginia, Brown’s execution turned him into a martyr to much of the North.

The Rise of Southern Nationalism

• More and more southerners were speaking openly of southward expansion.
• The Ostend Manifesto was a key event.
• William Walker was a key figure in filibustering.
• By the late 1850s, southern leaders were bending every effort to strengthen the bonds of slavery.

The Election of 1860

• The Democratic Party was split with its nomination of Douglas in 1860 and the southern Democrats’ nomination of John Breckinridge.
• Republicans nominated Lincoln over William Seward. -Lincoln appealed to many voters.
• The Republican party platform: denied the validity of the Dred Scott decision, opposed slavery’s expansion and added economic initiatives.
• In effect, two presidential campaigns took place in 1860.
• The most striking thing about the election returns was their sectional character.
• Without a single vote in ten southern states, Lincoln was elected the nation’s sixteenth president.

The Secession Movement

• Rather than accept permanent minority status in a nation governed by their opponents, Deep South political leaders boldly struck for their region’s independence.
• In the months that followed Lincoln’s election, seven states, stretching from South Carolina to Texas, seceded from the Union.

The Secession Crisis

• President Buchanan denied that a state could secede, but also insisted that the federal government had no right to use force against it.
• The Crittenden plan for sectional compromise was rejected by Lincoln because it allowed for the expansion of slavery.
• The Confederate States of America was formed before Lincoln’s inauguration by the seven states that had seceded.
• Jefferson Davis was its President

And the War Came

• Lincoln also issued a veiled warning: “In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war.”
• After the Confederates began the Civil War by firing on Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, Lincoln called for 75,000 troops to suppress the insurrection.
• Four Upper South states (Arkansas, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia) seceded and joined the Confederacy rather than aid Lincoln in suppressing the rebellion.

The First Modern War

• The Union had many advantages in manufacturing, railroad mileage, and financial resources.
• The Confederacy's soldiers possessed strong motivation.
• Powerful patriotic sentiments stirred on both sides.

The Technology of War

• Railroads were vital to the war effort.
• The introduction of the rifle transformed combat tactics.
• Modern warfare included formalized POW camps and disease management.

The Public and the War

• Both sides invested in vast propaganda efforts to mobilize public opinion.
• Newspapers and photography brought the war to the population.

Mobilizing Resources

• The war's outbreak found both sides unprepared.
• Feeding and supplying armies presented a challenge for both sides.

Military Strategies

• The Confederacy adopted a defensive strategy.
• Lincoln realized his armies had to defeat the Confederacy’s armies and dismantle slavery.

The War Begins

• Most fighting in the East took place between Washington and Richmond.
• After the First Bull Run, George McClellan assumed command of the Union army of the Potomac.

The War in the East, 1862

• General Lee blunted McClellan’s attacks in Virginia and forced him to withdraw to the vicinity of Washington.
• Successful on the defensive, Lee launched an invasion of the North.
• McClellan’s Army of the Potomac stopped Lee at the Battle of Antietam (Maryland), the bloodiest single day in U.S. history (September 17, 1862).

The War in the West

• Ulysses S. Grant was the architect of early success in the West.
• In February 1862, Grant won the Union’s first significant victory when he captured Fort Henry and Fort Donelson in Tennessee.
• Grant withstood a surprise Confederate attack at the Battle of Shiloh (Tennessee).

Slavery and the War

• American emancipation dwarfed any other country's in numbers, scale, and economic power.
• Lincoln initially insisted slavery was irrelevant to the conflict.
• Congress affirmed no intention of interfering with slavery.
• Military leaders began treating escaped blacks as contraband of war by the end of 1861.
• Blacks saw the outbreak of fighting as heralding the long-awaited end of bondage.

Steps toward Emancipation

• Antislavery northerners insisted that emancipation was necessary to weaken the South’s ability to sustain the war being that slavery underpinned the southern economy.
• Throughout 1861 and 1862, Lincoln struggled to retain control of the emancipation issue.
• Union General John C. Frémont issued a proclamation freeing slaves in Missouri (August 1861), but Lincoln rescinded it.
• Lincoln proposed gradual emancipation and colonization for border-state slaves.

Lincoln’s Decision

• Sometime during the summer of 1862, Lincoln concluded that emancipation had become a political and military necessity.
• Acting on Secretary of State William Seward’s advice, he delayed announcing emancipation until a Union victory.
• On September 22, 1862, five days after Antietam, Lincoln issued the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation.
• The initial northern reaction was not encouraging, with important Democratic wins in the fall elections.

The Emancipation Proclamation

• On January 1, 1863, Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared slaves in Confederate-held territory to be free.
• The proclamation unleashed jubilation among free blacks and abolitionists in the North and “contrabands” and slaves in the South.
• It altered the nature of the Civil War, the course of American history, and Lincoln’s own thinking.

Enlisting Black Troops

• The enrollment of blacks in the military was one of the proclamation's most radical implications.
• By the end of the war, over 180,000 black men had served in the Union army, and 24,000 in the navy.
• Most black soldiers were emancipated slaves who joined the army in the South.

The Black Soldier

• Military service proved to be a liberating experience for black soldiers.
• About 130 former soldiers served in political office after the Civil War.
• Black soldiers did not receive equal treatment to white soldiers within the army.
• Black soldiers played a crucial role not only in winning the Civil War but also in defining the war’s consequences.

Liberty, Union, and Nation

• The Union’s triumph consolidated the northern understanding of freedom as the national norm.
• To Lincoln, the American nation embodied a set of universal ideas, centered on political democracy and human liberty.
• The Gettysburg Address identified the nation’s mission with the principle that “all men are created equal.”
• The war forged a new national self-consciousness, reflected in the increasing use of the word “nation”—a unified political entity—in place of the older “Union” of separate states.

The War and American Religion

• Northern Protestantism combined Christianity and patriotism in a civic religion that saw the war as transforming the United States into a true land of freedom.
• Religion helped Americans to cope with unprecedented mass death. -New government action to deal with death -Systems for recording deaths and other casualties -National military cemeteries

Liberty in Wartime

• Lincoln consolidated executive power and twice suspended the writ of habeas corpus throughout the entire Union for those accused of “disloyal activities.”
• After the war, the Court made it clear that the Constitution was not suspended in wartime (Ex parte Milligan, 1866).

The North’s Transformation

• The North experienced the war as a time of prosperity.

Government and the Economy

• Congress adopted policies that promoted economic growth and permanently altered the nation’s financial system. -The Homestead Act -The Land-Grant College Act
• Congress passed land grants for railroads.
• The transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869.

The War and Native Americans

• The withdrawal of troops from the West increased conflict between Indians and white settlers. -The Sioux attack in Minnesota.
• The Union campaign against Navajo led to the tribe’s Long Walk, or removal to a reservation.
• Some slave-owning tribes, such as the Cherokee, sided with the Confederacy.

A New Financial System

• The need to pay for the war produced dramatic changes in U.S. financial policy: increased tariff, new taxes on goods and the first income tax. War time economic policies greatly benefited northern manufacturers, railroad men, and financiers.
• Taken together, the Union’s economic policies vastly increased the power and size of the federal government.

Women and the War

• Women stepped into the workforce as nurses, factory workers, and government clerks.
• Hundreds of thousands of northern women took part in humanitarian organizations.
• Northern women were brought into the public sphere and the war work offered them a taste of independence.
• Clara Barton, president of the American National Red Cross, became an advocate of woman suffrage and a strong proponent of the humane treatment of battlefield casualties.

The Divided North

• Republicans labeled those opposed to the war “Copperheads.”
• The war heightened existing social tensions and created new ones.

Leadership and Government

• Jefferson Davis proved unable to communicate the war’s meaning effectively to ordinary men and women.
• Under Davis, the Confederate nation became far more centralized than the Old South had been. -The Confederate government controlled railroads -The Confederate government built factories
• King Cotton diplomacy sought to pressure Europeans to side with the Confederacy, but this failed.

The Inner Civil War

• Social change and internal turmoil engulfed much of the Confederacy.
• The draft encouraged class divisions among whites.

Economic Problems

• The South’s economy, unlike the North’s, was in crisis during the war.
• By the war’s end, over 100,000 southern men had deserted.

Women and the Confederacy

• Even more than in the North, the war placed unprecedented burdens on southern white women.
• The growing disaffection of southern white women contributed to the decline in home-front morale and encouraged desertion from the army.

Black Soldiers for the Confederacy

• A shortage of manpower led the Confederate Congress in March 1865 to authorize the arming of slaves, but the war ended before black soldiers were actually recruited.

Gettysburg and Vicksburg

• Lee advanced onto northern soil in Pennsylvania, but Union forces under General George Meade held him back at the Battle of Gettysburg (July 1863). Pickett's Charge was a key event.
• General Grant secured a Union victory at Vicksburg, Mississippi (July 1863)

1864

• In 1864, Grant began a war of attrition against Lee’s army in Virginia.
• At the end of six weeks of fighting, Grant’s casualties stood at 60,000—almost the size of Lee’s entire army—while Lee had lost 30,000 men.
• General William T. Sherman entered Atlanta, seizing Georgia’s main railroad center.
• Some Radical Republicans nominated John C. Frémont on a platform calling for a constitutional amendment to abolish slavery, federal protection of the freedpeople’s rights, and confiscation of the land of leading Confederates.
• The Democratic candidate for president was General George B. McClellan.
• Lincoln won, aided by Frémont’s withdrawal and Sherman’s capture of Atlanta.

The Sea Island Experiment

• The Union occupied the Sea Islands (on the coast of South Carolina) in November 1861.
• Women took the lead as teachers in educating the freed slaves of the islands.
• Key figures were Charlotte Forten and Laura Towne
• By 1865, black families were working for wages, acquiring education, and enjoying more humane conditions than under slavery.

Wartime Reconstruction in the West

• After the capture of Vicksburg, the Union army established regulations for plantation labor.
• Freedpeople signed labor contracts and were paid wages.
• Neither side was satisfied with the new labor system.
• At Davis Bend, the emancipated slaves saw the land divided among themselves.

The Politics of Wartime Reconstruction

• In 1863, Lincoln announced his Ten-Percent Plan of Reconstruction.
• Free blacks in New Orleans complained about the Ten-Percent Plan and found sympathy from Radical Republicans.
• The Wade-Davis Bill was offered as an alternative plan. -It Required a majority of a state’s voters to pledge loyalty
• Lincoln pocket-vetoed the plan.

Victory