The Nation Goes to Civil War

In this post we will discuss the growing divide between the North and South in the decade preceding the Civil War.

• describe the events of the Civil War.

• analyze the successes and failures of Reconstruction.

• understand the impact that the end of Reconstruction had on African Americans.

A Failure to Compromise

From the nation’s founding, the issue of slavery had been a source of debate.

Northerners felt that slavery was the opposite of freedom and democracy.

Southerners felt that the prosperity of the South and the United States depended on the unpaid labor of enslaved Africans. As the national expanded westward, the divisions intensified.

Each time a territory or state was added, there was a question over whether it would allow slavery. For decades, the North and South found ways to reach compromises, but the disagreements were never resolved.

TENSIONS RISE

The Compromise of 1850 allowed California to enter the Union as a free state. Other territories acquired by the United States could decide for themselves whether they would allow slavery.

The Compromise of 1850 included the Fugitive Slave Act, which required each state, including free states, to report and return every enslaved person who had escaped.

Under the Kansas-Nebraska Act, people in each state would be able to vote on whether to allow slavery.

Soon after the Kansas-Nebraska Act became law, armed supporters of slavery crossed the border from Missouri and helped make slavery legal. Slavery opponents did not accept the new law, and two rival governments formed.

A number of forces added to the flaring tensions in the nation during the 1850s:

• Southerners and Northerners were affected by sectionalism, which meant they cared more about regional interests than they did about the interests of the country.

• Southern states used states’ rights as a justification as to why they should be allowed to continue enslaving African Americans.

• Northern Democrats made popular sovereignty their position on the slavery issue, which meant that residents of territories should be able to decide by voting whether slavery would be allowed in the territory.

• Laws, called slave codes , were put into place to prevent African Americans from living freely.

  
  

Underground Railroad

The majority of enslaved people were forced to spend their lives in bondage , but some slaves managed to escape. Many found freedom on the Underground Railroad, a network of African Americans and White people, called conductors , who would lead enslaved people to the Midwest, New England, and Canada. The best-known conductor was Harriet Tubman.

ON THE PATH TO SECESSION

In 1856, Democrat James Buchanan won the presidency. Buchanan endorsed popular sovereignty.

In 1857, the Supreme Court ruled against Dred Scott, an enslaved man arguing for his freedom.

In 1859, John Brown and 21 other men sought to arm enslaved Africans and inspire a revolt against slaveholders.

In 1860, Abraham Lincoln became the first Republican president.

The outcome of the election of 1860 left many in the South fearful that the United States government would not protect slavery. On December 20, 1860, the South Carolina legislature voted to secede from the United States. Soon, more states seceded and formed a new government they called the Confederate States of America.

The Civil War

On April 12, 1861, Confederate President Jefferson Davis ordered an attack on Fort Sumter , which began the Civil War.

MAJOR CIVIL WAR ENGAGEMENTS

The first major battle of the Civil War was the First Battle of Bull Run, which was won by the Confederates. On September 17, 1862, the deadliest single day of fighting occurred at Antietam. At the start of the Civil War, Lincoln believed it was a fight to save the Union rather than about ending slavery. In September 1862, Lincoln reversed his stance and issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which turned the Civil War into a fight to abolish slavery. On July 1, 1863, the Battle of Gettysburg began. The US won the battle, which marked a major turning point in the Civil War. On July 4, 1863, United States forces defeated the Confederates in the Battle of Vicksburg.

In September of 1864, General William Tecumseh Sherman captured Atlanta. Following this, Sherman and Ulysses S. Grant decided to use total war to cripple the Confederacy. On April 9, 1865, Grant accepted Robert E. Lee’s surrender. The United States had won the Civil War.

Reconstruction

Following the United States’ defeat of the Confederacy, Reconstruction began. Leaders worked to bring the North and South back together, give African Americans their rights, and fix the physical damage of the war.

Lincoln’s Reconstruction Plan:

• Under Lincoln’s Ten Percent Plan, 10 percent of the voters in a

Southern state would need to swear loyalty to the United States.

• If the state adopted a new constitution that banned slavery, it could send representatives to Congress.

• Lincoln opposed punishing the South.

Radical Republicans’ Reconstruction Plan

• More than half of a state’s white male adults would need to pledge loyalty.

• Only white males who had not taken up arms against the United States could vote for delegates to serve at a state constitutional convention.

• All new state constitutions needed to ban slavery.

LINCOLN’S ASSASSINATION

On the evening of April 14, 1865, Abraham Lincoln was shot and killed by John Wilkes Booth. Vice President Andrew Johnson, who was sympathetic toward the former Confederate states, was sworn in as the next president.

RECONSTRUCTION AMENDMENTS

Thirteenth Amendment - Outlawed slavery and involuntary servitude in the United States and its territories, except as a punishment for a crime.

Fourteenth Amendment - Guaranteed citizenship to anyone born or naturalized in the United States.

• Said a state cannot take a person’s life, liberty, or property without due process of the law.

• Promised equal protection of the laws to every person.

Fifteenth Amendment - Guaranteed the right to vote to all citizens, regardless of their race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

BLACK PEOPLE IN GOVERNMENT

Hiram Revels: First African American to serve in Congress when he became a US Senator . Fought against school segregation .

Blanche Bruce: In 1875, he became a US Senator. He pushed for protections for Black veterans of the Civil War and tried to integrate the military.

Robert Smalls: While enslaved, he took control of a Confederate ship and sailed it into United States waters. He and the other enslaved men on board escaped slavery. He later served in the US House of Representatives for ten years

Reactions to Reconstruction

White Southerners did a number of things to make life difficult for African Americans:

• passed racist black codes to make it illegal for African Americans to either rent or own farmland

• empowered officials to arrest or fine African Americans simply for not having a job

• spread fear and violence in the Black community

• forced freed people to farmland owned by white people under a system called sharecropping

• required people to pay a poll tax and pass literacy tests in order to vote

• instituted grandfather clauses, which allowed poor, uneducated white people to vote

• passed Jim Crow laws, leading to segregation

Using these methods, white Southerners were able to reclaim what they believed was their rightful place atop the racial hierarchy after Reconstruction ended.