American Civil War

From Appomattox to Reconstruction and Beyond

“If you put a chain around the neck of a slave, the other end fastens

itself around your own.- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Civil WarBegan April 12, 1861 Confederate General

P. G. T. Beauregard

opened fire on

Fort Sumter in

Charleston Harbor, South Carolina

Ended May 26, 1865,

when the last Confederate army surrendered

Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia

Harriet Beecher

Stowe (1811–1896), Stowe was a remarkable woman whose pen helped to change the course of history. When Tom is sold by his owners, the Shelbys, he is taken down the Mississippi River. After he saves the life of Little Eva, the daughter of St. Clair, a wealthy plantation owner, St. Clair buys Tom to save him from a worse fate down the river. Eva and St. Clair die in an accident two years later, however, and Tom is sold to a cruel man named Simon Legree, who eventually kills Tom because he will not reveal the hiding place of two runaway slaves.

Exposing Slavery’s Evils

On the shores of our free states are emerging the poor, shattered, broken remnants of families,--men and women, escaped, by miraculous providences, from the surges of slavery,--feeble in knowledge, and, in many cases, infirm in moral constitution, from a system which confounds and confuses every principle of Christianity and morality. They come to seek a refuge among you; they come to seek education, knowledge, Christianity.

What do you owe to these poor, unfortunates, O Christians? Does not every American Christian owe to the African race some effort at reparation for the wrongs that the American nation has brought upon them? Shall the doors of churches and school-houses be shut down upon them? Shall states arise and shake them out? Shall the Church of Christ hear in silence the taunt that is thrown at them, and shrink away from the helpless hand that they stretch out, and shrink away from the courage the cruelty that would chase them from our borders? If it must be so, it will be a mournful spectacle. If it must be so, the country will have reason to tremble, when it remembers that fate of nations is in the hand of the One who is very pitiful, and of tender compassion.

“The Book That Made This Great War”

Lincoln’s celebrated remark to author Harriet Beecher Stowe reflected the enormous emotional impact of her impassioned novel.

Bleeding Kansas, 1854–1860

“Enter every election district in Kansas . . . and vote at the point of a bowie knife or revolver,” one proslavery agitator exhorted a Missouri crowd. Proslavery Missouri senator David Atchison declared that “there are 1,100 men coming over from Platte County to vote, and if that ain’t enough we can send 5,000—enough to kill every Goddamned abolitionist in the Territory.”

John Brown (1800–1859)

This daguerreotype of the militant abolitionist Brown tells a tale of two men, the sitter and the photographer. It was taken in 1847 when Brown was running a wool-brokerage house in Springfield, Massachusetts, and working closely with other New Eng land abolitionists, including Frederick Douglass. Brown made his way to the Hartford studio of free black photographer Augustus Washington, who was the son of an Asian woman and a former black slave and well known in abolitionist circles. Six years later, Washington would close his successful studio and take his family to Liberia, convinced that American blacks would do better in their own country in Africa than as free men in the United States

Preston Brooks Caning Charles Sumner,

1856

Cartoonist John Magee of Philadelphia depicted Brooks’s beating of Sumner in the Senate as a display of southern ruthlessness in defending slavery, ironically captioned “southern chivalry.”

A Know-Nothing Party Mob, Baltimore, ca. 1856–1860

These armed ruffians were campaigning in Baltimore for their ultranationalistic, anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic candidate.

Dred Scott with His Wife and Daughters, 1857

This slave’s long legal battle for his freedom, culminating in the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision in 1857, helped to ignite the Civil War. Widespread publicity about the fate of Scott and his family strengthened antislavery sentiment in the North. Articles like this one in Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper appealed to the same sentimental regard for the idealized family that Harriet Beecher Stowe so artfully mobilized in Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Abraham Lincoln, a Most Uncommon Common Man

This daguerreotype of Lincoln was done by Mathew B. Brady, a distinguished photographer of the era.

Lincoln and Douglas Debate, 1858

Thousands attended each of the seven Lincoln-Douglas debates. Douglas is shown here sitting to Lincoln’s right in the debate at Charleston, Illinois, in September. On one occasion Lincoln quipped that Douglas’s logic would prove that a horse chestnut was a chestnut horse.

Last Moments of

John Brown,

Sentenced to be hanged, John Brown wrote to his brother, “I am quite cheerful in view of my approaching end, being fully persuaded that I am worth inconceivably more to hang than for any other purpose. . . . I count it all joy. ‘I have fought the good fight,’ and have, as I trust, ‘finished my course.’” This painting of Brown going to his execution may have been inspired by the journalist Horace Greeley, who was not present but wrote that “a black woman with a little child stood by the door. He stopped for a moment, and stooping, kissed the child.” That scene never took place, as Brown was escorted from the jail only by a detachment of soldiers. But this painting has become famous as a kind of allegorical expression of the pathos of Brown’s martyrdom for the abolitionist cause.

Lincoln Hits a Home Run in 1860

Currier & Ives, the producer of popular, inexpensive colored prints, portrayed Lincoln’s victory over (from left to right) John Bell, Stephen Douglas, and John C. Breckinridge as a baseball game. Baseball developed in New York in the 1840s, and by 1860 the National Association of Baseball Players boasted fifty clubs, several playing regular schedules and charging admission. This cartoon is thought to be the first time baseball was used as a metaphor for politics. Note that Lincoln is beardless…

Presidential Election of 1860: Electoral Vote by State (top) and Popular Vote by County (bottom)

It is a surprising fact that Lincoln, often rated among the greatest presidents, ranks near the bottom in percentage of popular votes. In all the eleven states that seceded, he received only a scattering of one state’s votes—about 1.5 percent in Virginia. The vote by county for Lincoln was virtually all cast in the North. The northern Democrat, Douglas, was also nearly shut out in the South, which divided its votes between Breckinridge and Bell…

Southern Opposition to Secession, 1860–1861 (showing vote by county)

This county vote shows the opposition of the antiplanter, antislavery mountain whites in the Appalachian region. There was also considerable resistance to secession in Texas, where Governor Sam Houston, who led the Unionists, was deposed by secessionists.

Jefferson Davis (1808–1889), President of the Confederacy

Faced with grave difficulties, he was probably as able a man for the position as the Confederacy could have chosen. Ironically, Davis and Lincoln had both sprung from the same Kentucky soil. The Davis family had moved south from Kentucky, the Lincoln family north.

The Eagle’s Nest, 1861

The American eagle jealously guards her nest of states and bids defiance to the rebels.

Social Cause New Territory and Slavery

Slaves of the Slave System Cotton depleted the soil forcing slavery west Dependent on “one crop” economy Immigration discouraged due to “free” slave labor

Social Classes Divided

Planter “aristocracy” widened gap between rich and poor.

Only ¼ of southerners owned slaves

Vast majority owned less than 10

¾ were subsistence farmers, raising corn and hogs

Non-slaveholding whites

Known as “hillbillies” “crackers” “poor white trash”

Why did they support slavery? Hoped to own slaves and

reach “American dream” Racial superiority

Free Blacks: Slaves without Masters Freed after American

Revolution Purchased their freedom Escaped Could be kidnapped and

sold back into slavery Disliked in North – took

jobs from immigrants

Life Under the Lash Importation outlawed 1808 Replaced by Natural reproduction Created mulatto population Regarded as investments and

measures of wealth Field hand valued at $1800 Toiled dawn to dusk under

overseer Forbidden to testify in court Marriages not legally recognized Separation on the slave block Whippings used as incentive to

labor

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow“The Slave in the Dismal Swamp” In dark fens of the Dismal

SwampThe hunted Negro lay;He saw the fire of the midnight camp,And heard at times a horse's trampAnd a bloodhound's distant bay.

Where hardly a human foot could pass,Or a human heart would dare,On the quaking turf of the green morassHe crouched in the rank and tangled grass,Like a wild beast in his lair.

A poor old slave, infirm and lame;Great scars deformed his face;On his forehead he bore the brand of shame,And the rags, that hid his mangled frame,Were the livery of disgrace.

On him alone was the doom of pain,From the morning of his birth;On him alone the curse of CainFell, like a flail on the garnered grain,And struck him to the earth!

Burdens of Bondage Denied an education Why? Called the “peculiar

institution” Southerners compared

to abused factory workers

What was the difference?

Abolition Movement Began with Quakers in

Pennsylvania American Colonization

Society founded in 1817 Goal: to transport slaves back

to Africa Began Republic of Liberia for

former slaves Capital Monrovia, named after

Pres. Monroe

Why didn’t this work?

Cause: Economic DifferencesTariffs

North – industrial Relied on immigration Factory system Transportation –

railroads, canals, steamboat

Northern industry demanded high tariffs

To protect American goods from cheap foreign competition (British)

South – agricultural with plantation system

Relied on slavery Did not support public

education Southern plantations

needed low tariffs To keep prices low on

imported goods

By start of Civil War Northern bankers had stake in slavery due to huge loans made to southerner plantation owners.

Cause:Differences in political ideologies

North needed strong central government

to direct improvements strengthen currency

South feared strong government might interfere with slavery

Cause: US Supreme CourtScott v. Sandford

Slave taken into free territory

Sued for his freedom Court ruled slaves were

NOT U.S. citizens Decision: Violated 5th

amendment – right to private property

The Slave Trade

Hundreds of slaves fled bondage each year in the decades between the American Revolution and the Civil War.

Some stayed in the South, seeking family from whom they had been separated or a temporary refuge from slavery.

Other fugitives stayed in southern towns and cities, often with forged "free" papers.

The Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) was prominent in the antislavery societies which sprang up after the Revolution, and, for a while, the Baptists and Methodists were antislavery.

Underground Railroad Network of

antislavery northerners—mostly blacks

Illegally helped fugitive slaves reach safety in the free states or Canada

Also called the Liberty Line.

The Liberator

Most of the fugitive slaves were young adult males who were skilled laborers without family

They were helped along by antislavery Northerners

Chased by slave catchers who roamed the border states searching for escapees

The era of abolitionism is acknowledged to have begun on January 1, 1831, when William Lloyd Garrison first published his abolitionist newspaper, The Liberator.

The actual number of slaves was not overwhelming, but the publicity generated served to fuel mistrust between the North and the South.

Born into SlaveryHarriet

Tubman

One of 11 children born on a plantation in Maryland.

Put to work at the age of five and served as a maid and a children’s nurse before becoming a field hand when she was 12.

A year later, a white man—either her overseer or her master—hit her on the head with a heavy weight.

The blow left her with permanent neurological damage, and she experienced sudden blackouts throughout the rest of her life.

In 1844 she received permission from her master to marry John Tubman, a free black man.

For the next five years she remained legally a slave, but her master allowed her to live with her husband.

When her owner died, she feared her family would be sold to settle the estate, and fled to the North

Her husband remained in Maryland.

Udney Hyde home, a station on the Underground Railroad on

School Street in Mechanicsburg,Champaign County, Ohio. In 1849 Harriet Tubman

moved to Pennsylvania, but returned to Maryland hoping to persuade her husband to come North with her.

By this time John Tubman had remarried.

Harriet Tubman returned to Pennsylvania and in 1850 became a conductor on the Underground Railroad

Over a period of ten years Tubman made an estimated 19 expeditions into the South and personally escorted about 300 slaves to the North.

Journey to Freedom Tubman used disguises - such as a deranged old man or an old woman—to avoid suspicion when traveling in slave states.

She carried a sleeping powder to stop babies from crying and a pistol to prevent her charges from backing out once the journey to freedom had begun.

Tubman constantly changed her route and her method of operation,

The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 Tubman almost always began her

escapes on Saturday night for two reasons.

First, many masters did not make their slaves work on Sundays and would not miss them until Monday, when the runaways had already traveled a full day and a half.

Second, newspapers advertising the escape would not be published until the beginning of the week, so by the time copies reached readers,

MOSES Tubman never lost any of her charges

and came to be known as Moses, after the Biblical hero who led the Hebrews out of enslavement in Egypt.

When the Civil War began in 1861, Tubman served as a nurse, scout, and spy for the Union Army in South Carolina. She helped prepare food for the 54th Massachusetts Regiment—composed entirely of black soldiers and known as the Glory Brigade—before its heroic but futile attack on Fort Wagner in 1863.

She later received an official commendation, but no pay for her efforts.

Follow the Drinking Gourd

I don't take to (slaves) off the plantation. This way they don't know which way is east, which way it is to the west. Once they have figured where someplace else is-next thing you know, they'll know which way is the north." - ROOTS

Nonetheless, slaves knew perfectly well freedom lay to the north, and they knew how to locate north. They used the North Star, or as it is more correctly named, Polaris.

Polaris lies almost directly north in the sky. Slaves fled using the simple direction "walk towards the North Star."

Peg Leg Joe About 1831 the Railroad began to send travelers into the South

to secretly teach slaves specific routes they could navigate using Polaris.

Polaris became a symbol of freedom to slaves as well as a guide star..

Slaves passed the travel instructions from plantation to plantation by song. In America slaves turned song into codes that secretly transmitted information they wished to keep from whites.

"Follow the Drinking Gourd" is a coded song that gives the route for an escape from Alabama and Mississippi. Of all the routes out of the Deep South, this is the only one for which the details survive.

The route instructions were given to slaves by an old man named Peg Leg Joe. Working as an itinerant carpenter, he spent winters in the South, moving from plantation to plantation, teaching slaves this escape route. Unfortunately, we know nothing more about Peg Leg Joe.

When the sun comes back and the first quail calls,Follow the drinking gourd.For the old man is awaiting for to carry you to freedom,If you follow the drinking gourd.

Winter and spring when the altitude of the sun at noon is higher each day.

Quail are migratory bird wintering in the South. The Drinking Gourd is the Big Dipper. The old man is Peg Leg Joe. The verse tells slaves to leave in the winter and

walk towards the Drinking Gourd. They will meet a guide who will escort them for

the remainder of the trip. Most escapees had to cross the Ohio River

which is too wide and too swift to swim. The best crossing time was winter. Then the

river was frozen, and escapees could walk across on the ice.

It took most escapees a year to travel from the South to the Ohio, the Railroad urged slaves to start their trip in winter in order to be at the Ohio the next winter.

The riverbank makes a very good road, the dead trees show you the way,Left foot, peg foot, traveling on, Follow the drinking gourd.

This verse taught slaves to follow the bank of the Tombigbee River north looking for dead trees that were marked with drawings of a left foot and a peg foot. The markings distinguished the Tombigbee from other north-south rivers that flow into it.

Addison White, a fugitive slave whose freedom was purchased in part by the city of Mechanicsburg, Champaign County, Ohio.

The river ends between two hills, Follow the drinking gourd.

There's another river on the other side, Follow the drinking gourd.

These words told the slaves that when they reached the headwaters of the Tombigbee

They were to continue north over the hills until they met another river.

Then they were to travel north along the new river which is the Tennessee River.

A number of the southern escape routes converged on the Tennessee. Photograph of John Milton McCampbell (1809-

1889), an Underground Railroad agent at Troy, Miami County, Ohio.

Where the great big river meets the little river,Follow the Drinking Gourd.For the old man is a-waiting to carry you to freedom If you follow the Drinking Gourd.

This verse told the slaves the Tennessee joined another river. They were to cross that river (which is the Ohio River), and on the north bank, meet a guide from the Underground Railroad.

Picture is of hill on Ohio River where abolitionists watched for escaping slaves to aid.

Across the Ohio

Freedom Stairway at Rankin Home, Ohio

Raising of the lantern on the flagpoleat the John Rankin House in Ripley, Ohio. The lantern was a signal to fugitive slaves to cross the Ohio River.

Pre Civil War ComparisonPre Civil War Comparison

Railroad Lines, 1860Railroad Lines, 1860

Resources: North & the South

Resources: North & the South

The Union and Confederacy in 1861

The Union and Confederacy in 1861

Overviewof

Civil WarStrategy:

“Anaconda”Plan

Overviewof

Civil WarStrategy:

“Anaconda”Plan

Men Present for

Duty in the Civil

War

Men Present for

Duty in the Civil

War

Immigrants

as %of a

State’sPopulation

in1860

Immigrants

as %of a

State’sPopulation

in1860