US Civil War and Reconstruction - Standard 3

UNITED STATES HISTORY Essential to Know – Standard 3 Standard USHC-3: The student will demonstrate an understanding of how regional and ideological differences led to the Civil War and an understanding of the impact of the Civil War and Reconstruction on democracy...

UNITED STATES HISTORY Essential to Know – Standard 3 Standard USHC-3: The student will demonstrate an understanding of how regional and ideological differences led to the Civil War and an understanding of the impact of the Civil War and Reconstruction on democracy in America. USHC-3.1 Evaluate the relative importance of political events and issues that divided the nation and led to civil war, including the compromises reached to maintain the balance of free and slave states, the abolitionist movement, the Dred Scott case, conflicting views on states’ rights and federal authority, the emergence of the Republican Party, and the formation of the Confederate States of America. It is essential for the students to know: Democracy expanded in the United States as new territories were claimed, settled and entered the union as full partners under the terms of the Northwest Ordinance (USHC 1.4). However, expansion also led to the greatest challenge to democracy and the Southern elite became increasingly determined to maintain slavery. As new western states applied for admission to the Union, sectionalism increased as the divisions between the interests of the regions became more and more evident. The struggle to maintain the balance of power between slave and free states in the federal government was rooted in the compromises made at the Constitutional Convention over representation in Congress - equal representation of the states in the Senate and representation proportional to population in the House. (USHC 1.4) Because of the growing population of the northern and western states through immigration and westward movement, the South was losing the ability to protect southern interests in the House of Representatives despite the advantage given to them by being able to count 3/5s of their slaves for the purposes of representation. (USHC 1.4) This led Southerners to fight to maintain an equal number of slave and free states so that they would have an equal numbers of votes in the Senate. Tensions between the regions over the expansion of slavery increased between 1820 and 1860 until compromise was impossible. In 1820, Northern opposition to the application of Missouri to enter the union as a slave state was overcome by a compromise that also admitted Maine as a free state and drew the line on the expansion of slavery in the territories at the 36̊ 30’. The annexation of Texas was delayed for almost a decade because of the divisiveness of admitting another large slave state. Northerners saw the Polk administration’s willingness to give up the 54̊ 40’ in Oregon, while at the same time provoking a war with Mexico over territories in the southwest as the influence of the slave power. During the Mexican War, Representative David Wilmot of Pennsylvania proposed that the United States assert that any territories won from Mexico be “free soil”, not open to competition of slave labor with that of free white labor. This Wilmot Proviso passed the House but was stopped in the Senate, giving further evidence to southerners that they must maintain the balance of slave and free states in order to protect their ‘peculiar institution.’ The gold rush in 1849 sped the population of California and its application for statehood as a free state which would again upset the balance. The Compromise of 1850 was cobbled together and introduced the principle of popular sovereignty to decide the slave question. California was admitted as a free state, the slavery question in other areas taken in the Mexican cession was to be decided based on popular sovereignty, the sale of slaves was prohibited in Washington D.C., and a new fugitive slave law was to be enforced by the federal government. No one was happy with all parts of this compromise. Efforts by southerners to reclaim their fugitive slaves were countered by Northern states trying to circumvent the law and protect personal liberty. The compromise intensified the animosity between the sections. Although the abolitionist movement kept the issue of slavery at the forefront of national conversation, abolitionists did not significantly impact the actions of the national government. The numerous petitions that abolitionists sent to Congress fell victim to the ‘gag rule.’ Abolitionist candidates running under the banner of the Liberty Party did not win office. However, abolitionists did impact the sentiments of the people in both the North and the South. The distribution of Garrison’s The Liberator through the mails was banned in the South and shows the fear that abolitionist sentiment struck in that region. It is important for students to understand most northerners were not abolitionists. Indeed, abolitionists were not popular, and even sometimes attacked, in the North. Abolitionists helped some slaves to escape to the North on the Underground Railroad. However, the numbers of escaped slaves were relatively small, especially in the deep South because of distance to free land. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s book Uncle Tom’s Cabin reached many northern readers and evoked popular sympathy for slaves and anger over the Fugitive Slave Laws. The abolitionist John Brown’s actions at Harpers’ Ferry struck fear in the hearts of slave owners and made them both determined to protect slavery and very fearful of the intentions of northerners. Brown was hailed as a martyr by vocal Northern abolitionists leading Southerners to believe the feeling was generalized in the North and thus further divided the North and the South. The actions of abolitionists were significant but it was the controversy over the spread of slavery to the territories that eventually contributed to secession, war, and ultimately, abolition. The ideas of popular sovereignty and free soil proved most divisive when the Kansas-Nebraska Act opened the area north of the 36̊ 30’ to deciding the question of slavery by popular vote, thus overturning the Missouri Compromise. Competition of pro-slavery and anti-slavery forces turned “Bleeding Kansas” into a battleground and led to the emergence of the Republican Party. The Republicans took the free soil position on the expansion of slavery into the territories. It is important to understand that the idea of free soil is not abolitionism. It means that non slave owning whites did not want to compete with slave labor in the territories. It is essential that students understand that the Republicans and Abraham Lincoln, were NOT abolitionists. This is a common misunderstanding. The Dred Scott decision further called into question the democratic principle of popular sovereignty and made compromise impossible. The Supreme Court ruled that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional (despite the fact that the Kansas Nebraska Act had made the Missouri Compromise null) because slaves were property and the Constitution protected the right of slave owners to their property regardless of where they took their slaves. Therefore, Congress could make no law restricting the expansion of slavery. Although this ruling narrowly applied to the territories, it led Northerners to fear that the Supreme Court, dominated by southern Democrats, might rule state laws against slavery unconstitutional and so the democratic process of popular sovereignty would not be effective in restricting the spread of slavery. The Democratic Party split along sectional lines and the Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln won the election of 1860 running on a platform of “free soil.” Lincoln’s election in 1860 led southern states to meet in convention and pass articles of secession stating that their rights as states were being violated by the federal government. The conflicting views of states’ rights and federal authority had been evolving in the United States since the ratification of the Constitution and the development of the first political parties (USHC 1.6). However, all of these previous disagreements, such as the nullification crisis (USHC 2.1) had been successfully resolved. It was the disagreement over expanding slavery into the territories and the election of Lincoln that led southerners to argue that their rights as states were being violated by the federal government and so they had the right to secede. Secessionists believed that the federal government under the leadership of President Lincoln would not allow slavery to expand into the territories. The balance of power in the Senate would then be upset and the Congress would eventually vote to abolish slavery. To protect slavery, South Carolina secessionists led other southern states in seceding from the Union and forming the Confederate States of America. The Confederacy began to occupy the federal forts that were located in the South. USHC-3.2 Summarize the course of the Civil War and its impact on democracy, including the major turning points; the impact of the Emancipation Proclamation; the unequal treatment afforded to African American military units; the geographic, economic, and political factors in the defeat of the Confederacy; and the ultimate defeat of the idea of secession. It is essential for the students to know: Secession challenged democracy. A minority of Americans determined to leave the Union because they were dissatisfied with the outcome of the 1860 election. Southerners feared that the new administration would force them to grant freedom to their slaves. President Lincoln pledged to preserve the Union and democracy. Confederates fired on federal troops stationed at Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor and the Civil War began. The course and outcome of the Civil War depended upon the economic resources of the North and the South, the geographic factors that influenced strategy and the military and political leadership that influenced public support. The Union had far greater economic resources including industrial capacity, miles of railroad tracks, manpower and a navy. The South depended on the power of King Cotton and their trading relationship with Great Britain to provide the manufactured goods and ships that they lacked. However the Union’s strategy to blockade southern ports disrupted this trade throughout the war. The North’s offensive strategy was based on geography and included splitting the South at the Mississippi River and taking the capital at Richmond [Anaconda Plan]. The South’s strategy was mainly to seek support from Great Britain and defend their region until such aid was obtained or the North tired of the war effort. Confederate forces invaded the North twice in an effort to gain foreign support and hasten the end of the war but were repulsed at Antietam and defeated at Gettysburg. Initially the South enjoyed advantages in both military leadership and geography. They were able to effectively move their men and materiel via railroads between battle fronts in the east and the west under the effective leadership of Robert E. Lee. Southerners were also more familiar with their home terrain. The North, however, had the advantage in political leadership. Jefferson Davis, the Confederate president defending the states’ rights argument, was not able to get the states of the Confederacy to effectively work together to pursue the war effort. Abraham Lincoln was able to articulate the purpose of the war as the preservation of the Union and “government of the people, by the people and for the people” and to retain sufficient public support to continue the fight despite initial military defeats. Lincoln also demonstrated his political skills by his handling of the issue of emancipation of the slaves. Lincoln initially hesitated to free the slaves because he feared this would undermine the unity of the North by antagonizing the border states, those slave states that did not secede from the Union. When emancipation was announced, it was promoted as a ‘military measure’ against the Confederacy. However, the Emancipation Proclamation was also a diplomatic and political document. By making a goal of the war the liberation of slaves, Lincoln made it impossible for the British, whose population was strongly opposed to slavery, to continue to support the Southern war effort. By announcing his intention to issue the Emancipation Proclamation in the fall and not making it effective until the first of the year, Lincoln gave the South a last chance to make peace and keep their slaves. It is important for students to understand that the Emancipation Proclamation did not immediately free the slaves. It did not attempt to free slaves in the regions under Union control or in the border states. Only states in rebellion on January 1, 1863 were commanded to free their slaves and Confederates were not likely to obey the President of the United States. However as the slave population got wind of proposed emancipation, they increasingly ran to Union lines and freedom. Slaves were freed as their homeland was captured by Union forces Finally, freedom for all slaves was formally legalized by the Thirteenth Amendment at the end of the war. The Emancipation Proclamation allowed African Americans to enlist in the United States army as a war measure. With the help of abolitionists, several African American units were formed, most notably the 54th Massachusetts regiment that led a gallant but futile attack on Fort Wagner in Charleston Harbor, disproving myths about capability and race While African American soldiers served with distinction, they served in segregated units under the command of white officers. They were poorly supplied and paid less than white soldiers. The Emancipation Proclamation was an important turning point in the war. Students should also know the significance of battles at Fort Sumter, Bull Run/Manassas, Antietam, Vicksburg, Gettysburg and Atlanta and their influence on the final defeat of the Confederacy and the attempt at secession. President Lincoln effectively exercised his power as commander in chief and eventually found the right general to win the war. Lincoln was frustrated by his generals until he named Ulysses S. Grant, who had been successful at Vicksburg in cutting the South in half at the Mississippi River, as commander of northern forces. Grant changed the strategy to ‘total war’. William Tecumseh Sherman’s ‘March to the Sea’ and Grant’s unrelenting attacks and siege at Petersburg strained the dwindling economic resources and manpower of the South and brought surrender at Appomattox Courthouse. The outcome of the Civil War had a profound impact on the course of democracy, preserving the Union while at the same time liberating an enslaved minority. The idea of secession was based on the principle that a majority in one region (Southern slave owners) could deny rights to a minority (slaves) and at the same time claim their minority rights would be violated by the decision of the national electorate. While the Union defeated the Confederacy on the battlefield and the federal courts ruled secession to be null and void, the idea of states’ right upon which secession was based was never defeated. Indeed the argument of states’ rights emerged in the civil rights era and the Confederacy continues to be revered in some segments of southern society. USHC-3.3 Analyze the effects of Reconstruction on the southern states and on the role of the federal government, including the impact of the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth amendments on opportunities for African Americans. It is essential for the students to know: By the end of the Civil War, the southern states had suffered devastating damage to their factories, farms and transportation systems as well as the heavy loss of their men. However, the purpose of the Reconstruction policies of the federal government was not to rebuild the South. The national government did not see this as their role but as the responsibility of individuals and of state governments. Rather the goal of Reconstruction was the re-establishment of full participation of the southern states in the Union based on the South’s acceptance of the outcome of the war, including the liberation of their slaves. During the first years after the end of the war, the federal government took on an increasingly active role in protecting the rights of the freedman against the dominant white southern society. As a result the Reconstruction policies of the federal government expanded democracy and significantly impacted society in the South. Traditional interpretations of Reconstruction demonize Congress and label all northern Republicans as radicals whose only intention was to punish the South. Historical research has called that traditional view of federal Reconstruction policy into question and so this interpretation should be avoided. The actions of southerners, not the goals of the Congress, “radicalized” Reconstruction policy. Southerners reacted to the end of the war with determination to retain their autonomy and their way of life, despite their military defeat. Southern state governments passed Black Codes to replace their slave codes and elected former Confederate officers and officials to Congress. Southern citizens and vigilante groups engaged in violence against the freedmen. These actions and the South’s opposition to the Freedman’s Bureau and later to the 14th Amendment significantly changed the course of Reconstruction policy and the role of the federal government. In response to Southern actions, Congress refused to admit Southern officials to Congress and sent the 14th Amendment to the states for ratification. In the elections of 1866, the Republicans in Congress got a veto-proof majority from a public that was concerned by stories of violence in the South. Congress took this electoral victory as a mandate for further actions to protect the freedman. A Congressional Reconstruction plan [Military Reconstruction Act of 1867] was passed by these so-called “Radical Republicans.” This plan split the former Confederacy into five military districts to better enforce the Reconstruction Amendments. Congress impeached President Johnson to ensure that as commander in chief he could not undermine its efforts. Although Johnson was not removed from office, his power was curtailed and the Union army was free to try to enforce the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments. By amending the Constitution, Congress and the states expanded democracy to protect the rights of the freedmen. The 13th Amendment freed slaves throughout the United States. Recognition of this amendment was required of southern states before they could form new governments. However, the Black Codes demonstrated that southerners were not willing to recognize the rights of the newly freed slaves. The 14th Amendment overturned the Dred Scott decision by recognizing the citizenship of African Americans; it upheld the right of all citizens to “equal protection” before the laws and “due process” of law. The 15th Amendment was passed to ensure that the right of all male citizens to vote, in the North as well as in the South, would not be denied based on “race, creed or previous condition of servitude”. It was motivated by the desire to ensure the right to vote, a right conferred by citizenship, for African Americans and also by the desire of the Republican Party to establish its political power in the South. Federal troops stationed in the South attempted to ensure that these rights were protected despite the terrorist tactics of the Ku Klux Klan and other vigilante groups. As a result of the 13th and 14th Amendments, African Americans were also able to carve out a semblance of social freedom for themselves. Many freedmen left the plantation seeking a taste of freedom or looking for relatives sold “down the river”. Some black families were reunited. Most soon returned to the area that they knew best, their former plantations. It is a common misconception that former slaves left the plantation and the South as soon as they had the opportunity. After the Civil War, some African Americans moved to the West, such as the Exodusters who went to Kansas, however, most freedmen stayed in the South. The Great Migration to the North did not occur until the late 1800s and early 1900s. (USHC 4.5) African Americans also formed their own churches where they were free to worship as they wished, out from under the watchful eye of the master. The Freedman’s Bureau, a federal agency that provided services to both blacks and whites displaced by the war, established schools for the freedman who had been denied the right to an education under slavery. Black colleges were established by northern philanthropists and religious organizations and Booker T. Washington established the Tuskegee Institute. Many freedmen were hungry for education and this opportunity significantly impacted their lives. Freedom, citizenship and the vote granted through the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments and protected by the army had a temporary but significant impact on political opportunity for African Americans. As a result of the 15th Amendment, freedmen were able to exercise the right to vote and were elected to state legislatures and to Congress. Most southern governments were not dominated by freedmen. However, they were in the hands of a sympathetic Republican Party. Some of these white Republicans came from the North as missionaries and entrepreneurs and were derisively called ‘carpetbaggers’ by southern whites. Others were southern-born ‘scalawags’ who wanted to promote the rebuilding of the South in cooperation with the Republican Reconstruction governments. It is important for students to understand that these terms are those applied by the southerners who resented such cooperation. Like their counterparts in the North during the Gilded Age, Reconstruction governments were sometimes corrupt but were the most democratic governments that the south had had to date. Newly enfranchised African Americans made up a majority of some southern state legislatures, just as they made up a majority of the population of some southern states. State governments established social service programs and public schools which improved conditions for all people. African Americans were also elected to the United States House of Representatives and the Senate as Republicans, representing southern states. African Americans made significant social and political progress during Reconstruction, but they made little economic progress. The Freedman’s Bureau helped to negotiate labor contracts between former slaves and landowners and provided a system of courts to protect the rights of the freedmen. For a very short while the Freedman’s Bureau distributed parcels of confiscated land to former slaves. This land, however, was returned to its previous white owners once southerners received amnesty. Therefore, promises of “forty acres and a mule” went unfulfilled. Without land, freedmen, most of whom only knew farming, had little opportunity to support their families. With the help of the Freedman’s Bureau, white landowners and former slaves entered into sharecropping agreements. Although freedmen gained some measure of social independence when they moved out of the quarters to plots of land far from the big house, sharecropping and the crop lien system left former slaves in a position of economic dependence and destitution, especially as the price of cotton fell. During Reconstruction, African Americans, protected by the federal government, were able to exercise their political, social and economic rights as United States citizens despite the opposition of Southerners. USHC-3.4 Summarize the end of Reconstruction, including the role of anti–African American factions and competing national interests in undermining support for Reconstruction; the impact of the removal of federal protection for freedmen; and the impact of Jim Crow laws and voter restrictions on African American rights in the post-Reconstruction era. It is essential for the students to know: During Reconstruction, democracy was expanded as the federal government protected the rights of the freedmen. However when the federal government abandoned their role of protector, democracy was compromised and the rights of African Americans were limited by southern state governments. During Reconstruction, Anti- African American factions such as the Ku Klux Klan were organized to intimidate black voters in the South. African Americans were able to vote only with the protection of federal troops stationed in the South under military Reconstruction. However there were never enough federal troops to protect the African American voter from both economic and physical intimidation and violence, including lynchings. When white voters were pardoned and returned to lead or, as they termed it, ‘redeem’ southern governments, Republican office holders were gradually replaced. Southern governments would remain under the control of white Democrats and be known as the “Solid South” until the Civil Rights era. Increasingly, the corruption of the Grant administration, economic depression in the North, the growing interest in western settlement and economic growth replaced the nation’s interest in preserving the gains made in the Civil War. At the same time, newspaper reports of continuing violence towards freedmen undermined the belief among the northern public that things would ever be different in the South. The resolve of the public and Congress to protect the freedman waned in the face of continuing resistance of southerners to granting equal citizenship to African Americans. The disputed election of 1876 led to the compromise of 1877. The resulting withdrawal of federal troops and their protection of the freedman brought an end to Reconstruction. Thus, the effect of Reconstruction was temporary and African Americans were left to fend for themselves in an increasingly hostile and unregulated environment. In the two decades after the end of Reconstruction, the rights promised to the African Americans in the 14th and 15th Amendments and protected by the national government during Reconstruction were gradually rescinded by southern state governments. Southern whites used race to drive a political wedge between poor black farmers and poor white farmers when farmers protested for political change in the 1890s (USHC 4.3).Southern states passed laws requiring African American and whites to use separate facilities. Segregation was upheld by the Supreme Court in the ‘separate but equal’ ruling of Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), that negated the equal protection provisions of the 14th Amendment and hastened the enactment of more Jim Crow laws. The federal government which had once championed the rights of African Americans during Reconstruction had not only abandoned them but now, though the Court, legitimized discrimination against them. Segregated by law, African Americans were relegated to second class citizenship in a society that was separate but not equal. Poll taxes and literacy tests all but eliminated the effectiveness of the 15th Amendment for African Americans, while the grandfather clause assured that whites who could not read or pay the tax were able to vote. Without the vote, African Americans could not protect themselves through their state governments. As cotton exhausted the soil and cotton prices fell, sharecroppers and tenant farmers found themselves in increasingly difficult economic conditions. When textile mills opened in the South in the late 1880s, African Americans were discriminated against in hiring. Unable to get other work in the South, many fell farther into poverty and some migrated to the cities of the North. USHC-3.5 Evaluate the varied responses of African Americans to the restrictions imposed on them in the post-Reconstruction period, including the leadership and strategies of Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. DuBois, and Ida B. Wells-Barnett. It is essential for students to know: Determined to claim the full rights of citizenship in a democracy, African Americans responded to the restrictions placed upon them by the Jim Crow laws and their loss of the vote through poll taxes and literacy tests. African American leaders emerged who were united in their determination to attain full citizenship but were divided as to the best strategy to pursue. The strategies each advocated depended in large measure on personal background and the audience that each addressed. Booker T. Washington was born a slave in the South and raised himself to a leadership position through his determination to receive an education and hard work. He founded the Tuskegee Institute in order to provide vocational training to African Americans who knew only how to farm. George Washington Carver worked at Tuskegee developing new crops to aid the povertystricken cotton farmers of the region. Booker T. Washington’s experience in the increasingly segregated South led him to advocate vocational education and opportunities for employment as more important to the well-being of African Americans than social and political equality. Although Washington’s ultimate goal was full equality, African Americans who were too assertive in advocating for their political and social rights might fall victim to a lynching. As Southern businessmen opened textile mills throughout the region, Booker T. Washington pleaded with them to hire the hard-working former slaves in his so-called “Atlanta Compromise” speech. Although Booker T. Washington lobbied behind the scenes for greater social and political rights, his public statements suggested that he was willing to accept the second class citizenship offered by Jim Crow laws, literacy tests and poll taxes in exchange for jobs that would alleviate the poverty of African American sharecroppers. Although Washington’s strategy was acceptable to the white majority of the South, jobs were not forthcoming. Southern African Americans revered Washington but northern African Americans criticized his gradualism and “accommodation”. W.E.B. DuBois was born free in the North, attended prestigious schools on scholarship and earned a PhD from Harvard University. DuBois opposed Washington’s emphasis on vocational education and argued that all African Americans should have the opportunity for any education that fit their talents. DuBois promoted the development of a “Talented Tenth” of well-educated African American leaders. DuBois voiced both his opposition to Washington’s strategy and his own advocacy for full social and political rights for all African Americans through the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which he had helped to found, and its publication The Crisis, which he edited. DuBois’s militant rhetoric energized his readers, the growing African American middle class, but was less acceptable to the white community. Schools, neighborhoods and public facilities continued to be segregated in the North by practice (de facto) and in the South by law (de jure). African Americans were most often the last hired and the first fired. It would be many years before the NAACP would be successful in protecting the rights of African Americans in the courts [Brown v Board of Education, 1954] and launch the modern civil rights movement (USHC 8.1). Ida Wells-Barnett was born a slave in Mississippi shortly before emancipation. She grew up on a plantation where her parents continued to work for their former master. Educated in a Reconstruction-era freedom school, Wells-Barnett took a job as a teacher and later as a newspaper writer. Ida Wells-Barnett experienced Jim Crow first hand when she was forcibly removed from a railroad car and forced to sit in a colored-only car. She sued the railroad company but her initial victory was overturned on appeal. She wrote an editorial critical of the segregated schools in Memphis that cost Wells-Barnett her job as a teacher. Wells-Barnett also experienced violent intimidation when a friend was lynched in Memphis. This experience launched her investigation of lynching as a newspaper editor. She devoted the rest of her life to an anti-lynching crusade. Her outspoken criticisms of lynching met with a violent reaction from whites and she was forced to leave Memphis. Ida Wells-Barnett strenuously objected to Booker T. Washington’s strategy which she labeled as accommodation. She was a founding member of the NAACP, but left that group when it was not militant enough. She worked with Jane Addams to prevent the Chicago public schools from being segregated and supported the cause of women’s suffrage. Although Wells-Barnett’s campaign against lynching was not successful in her lifetime, it raised awareness of the conditions of African Americans.