Civil War and Reconstruction

Chapter 6

Decisive Battles of the Civil War (1861-1865)

• First Battle of Bull Run (July 2, 1861) – The Union and the Confederates fought this battle 30 miles south of Washington, D.C. It was a humiliating defeat for the North and almost led to a Confederate invasion of Washington, D.C.

• Shiloh (April 6-7, 1862) – This battle in Shiloh, Tennessee was the bloodiest of the Civil War. Total casualties for both sides numbered over 20,000. This battle ended without any clear winner in the West.

• Antietam (September 17, 1862) – Robert E. Lee, brilliant Southern general, planned an invasion of the North, but his battle strategies fell into the hands of a northern soldier. As a result, Lee met a larger force of Union soldiers than he had anticipated. The battle at Antietam Creek, Maryland is considered the bloodiest one day battle in the history of the United States. It was after this Union victory that Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation (1863).

• Vicksburg ( May 15 – July 4, 1863) – After Union forces under General Farragut had taken the port of New Orleans, they began moving north to gain control of the Mississippi River. The town of Vicksburg, Mississippi was very well guarded by the Confederacy and was the last major obstacle to total Union control of the Mississippi River. General Sherman and other leaders advised Union forces to retreat from the Vicksburg area in early 1863. However, Union General Ulysses S. Grant ignored this advice and began a bold siege of General Pemberton’s Confederate forces at Vicksburg for almost two months. On the 4th of July, Grant’s forces conquered the city. Consequently, the Mississippi River came under the control of the Union.

• Gettysburg (July 1-3, 1863) – Union forces repeatedly defeated the Confederates as General Lee tried to take control of the city of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. In November, 1863 at this site, Lincoln gave The Gettysburg Address, which affirmed his belief in democracy and his desire to see the warring nation reunited in peace. This battle was considered the turning point of the war because the Confederacy no longer had the ability to launch an offensive into Union territory.

• Chattanooga (November 23-25) – After their defeat at Chickamauga in Georgia, Union troops retreated into Tennessee. A combined Union force from the Armies of Sherman, Grant, and Hooker defeated the Southern forces occupying Lookout Mountain in Tennessee. Confederate forces fled Tennessee after this battle, placing the entire state in the hands of the Union and cutting off important railway supplies to Atlanta, Georgia.

• Atlanta (September 2, 1864) – Three months after Sherman’s defeat at Kennesaw Mountain, he was able to advance against Atlanta, Georgia, which was a vital railroad terminal for the South. Sherman burned Atlanta to the ground, destroying the ability of the Confederacy to supply the war effort.

• Sherman’s March (May – December, 1864) – For this infamous march, Sherman hand-picked 60,000 soldiers to destroy everything in a 60 mile-wide path from Chattanooga, Tennessee, through Atlanta, to Savannah, Georgia. Sherman wanted to destroy the railroad tracks and farms to disable the civilians from helping the Confederate army. The soldiers looted, raped, and murdered civilians and burned their towns from Chattanooga to the city gates of Savannah. Sherman then turned his forces north towards Virginia to meet with Grant and defeat Lee’s army with their combined forces. Sherman’s army continued its destruction as it moved north through the Carolinas, which included burning Columbia, South Carolina. Sherman’s March and the burning of Atlanta broke the spirit of the Confederates creating bitterness and tension between the North and the South that exist to some degree even today.

• Surrender at Appomattox (April 9, 1865) – Realizing his army was outnumbered by more than two-to-one, General Lee surrendered to General Grant at the courthouse in Appomattox, Virginia. Grant offered generous terms of surrender, and the Civil War ended.

Social and Political Changes During The Civil War

• As the battle lines were being drawn, Maryland was split between North & South. However, if Maryland joined the Confederacy, the Union capital, Washington, D.C. would be surrounded by the Confederate territory. After Confederate sympathizers attacked Union troops in Baltimore, President Lincoln declared martial law in Maryland and suspended the right of habeas corpus.Habeas corpus guaranteed that a person count not be imprisoned without appearing in court. The president then jailed the strongest supporters of the Confederacy. As a result, the Maryland legislature voted to remain in the Union. The suspension was lifted at the end of the Civil War.

• For the first time in the United States history, men were drafted (forced to serve in the military) to fight the opposing side in the Civil War. The Confederacy started the draft first in April 1862. The draft did not produce many more men, and soldiers could hire someone else to take their place on both sides. When Lincoln initiated the draft in 1863, opposition was fierce. Lincoln included a provision allowing men selected to either serve in the military or pay $300. The poverty-stricken immigrant Irish resented this rich man’s provision and held blacks responsible for the Civil War. Whites in New York City killed over 1,000 people over the course of 3 days of rioting. The rioters also made a point of looting the homes of the rich. Property damage from the riot was about $2 million. Federal troops quelled the rioters, and order was restored.

• During the Civil War, free and newly emancipated blacks served the Union in segregated military units. Having fought with great bravery, 23 of these soldiers received the Congressional Medal of Honor. Their contribution persuaded many people that blacks deserved to have full rights as citizens, including the right to vote.

• The Homestead Act (1862) stated that anyone who would agree to cultivate 160 acres of land for 5 years would receive title to land from the federal government. This Act greatly accelerated the settlement of the West until the 1930s.

• The Morrill Land Grant Act (1862) allotted each state thousands of acres of land based on the number of senators and representatives. Each state was required to use this land to fund at least one public university. The money generated from this Act formed the foundation for the public university system that exists today in the United States.

• President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, on January 1, 1863, freeing the slaves in the Confederate States, while maintaining slavery in the border states loyal to the Union. With this executive order, Lincoln hoped to give the war a moral focus beyond saving the Union and undermine the slave labor force supporting the Confederacy. He also wanted to insure the support of England and France which had already abolished slavery. Two years later, Congress passed the 13th Amendment which abolished slavery throughout the United States.

Cost Of War• More U.S. soldiers died in this war than in all the

other wars in the U.S. history combined. Over 600,000 men were killed during their time as soldiers in the Union or Confederate armies. Over half of these soldiers did not die in battle, however. Many soldiers died from common illnesses which were aggravated by the unsanitary conditions of life in the camps or in the war prisons. The major culprits in these soldiers’ deaths were diarrhea, typhoid, measles, malaria, and dysentery. The economic and social cost and gains for the war for each side were strikingly different.

The North• At the start of the war, the Union federal budget was $63

million. By the end of the War, the budget had grown 200 times larger to $1.3 billion. To gain this money, the government began printing more dollars, causing inflation to increase quickly.

• Mostly due to wartime demands, industrial production increased to record high levels. International immigration increased in the urban North, and three new states joined the Union- Kansa, West Virginia, and Nevada.

• The Union was restored.• Over 360,000 Union soldiers lost their lives. • The return of 800,000 soldiers to work plus the slower

demand for manufactured products in the North led to a short-lived recession (economic downturn characterized by higher unemployment.

The South• The South lost its fight for independence, and its

slave-based economy was abolished.• Over 258,000 Confederate soldiers lost their lives.• The South was devastated. With railroads and

factories destroyed, banks closed.• With farms destroyed and slaves emancipated, the

agricultural economy declined.• Some people feared retaliation from the North and

from former slaves.• Over 2/3 of southern wealth was destroyed. The

majority of the wealth disappeared when the slaves, who were highly prized by their owners, received their freedom.

Life For Emancipated Blacks Emancipated slaves were called “freedmen,”and they

experienced many difficulties even in their newly acquired freedom. Among these difficulties were:

• Illiteracy was widespread because teaching slaves to read and write had been illegal in most states.

• Freed slaves were skilled in farming but owned no land and had no money to purchase any land.

• Few people could afford to hire freedmen, and working for former masters was like going back to slavery.

Given these difficulties, many sought a new life in the northern cities or the western frontier. Others became sharecroppers who would farm a piece of land for the land owner and pay him for the see, land, and materials with a portion of the crop.

• In an effort to meet the immediate needs of those displaced by the war, Congress established the Freedmen’s Bureau in March 1862. This Bureau was intended to aid both blacks and whites, but it served mostly blacks. The bureau provided clothing and surplus army food, $5 million and agents to organize schools for black children and adults, medical care for over one million people, and agents to find work for freedmen and prevent exploitation. Some Southerners saw the Bureau as a Republican effort to help blacks at the expense of whites.

Cultural Foundations In The Black Community, The Family

• Family was the most important link for the people of West Africa. Slave traders and their allies captured and sold millions of Africans into slavery. Slaves were either captured individually or as a tribe. Once captured, the traders put the slaves an a forced march for miles across land and crammed them into slave ships. Slave traders placed the slaves side by side with no room for movement. They couldn’t dispose of their body waste throughout this trip. Disease rapidly spread from person to person under these conditions. Usually, one-third of the slaves died on the trip across the Atlantic, severing even more family ties.Once slaves arrived at the slave markets in North America, the wealthy would purchase them, usually as individuals. As a result, slave owners severed most of the slaves’ other remaining family ties from West Africa. Sometimes, the wealthy would sell or trade their slaves. This situation made it difficult for family relationships to develop. In other cases, slave owner and their sons had children by their slave women. Slave owners considered this their right since slaves were their property. Then, slave owners often sold their children as slaves. Despite these challenges, blacks, as slaves and after emancipation, developed strong family relationships. Public records across the South at this time show thousands of marriages of slaves and former slaves on public record and very few instances of divorce. In addition, blacks revived their traditions from West Africa, relying on their extended family and kinship bonds for undergoing the trials ahead.

The Church• From the time of slavery through emancipation, blacks

developed cultural institutions to help them deal with their dislocation from Africa, loss of family, and their condition as slaves. They turned to the Christian church for support; however, they quickly realized they were discriminated in the predominantly white churches they had joined. For free blacks in the North, they had the choice for joining new all-black churches to escape discrimination. One of the largest organizations became known as the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church. For those in the South, blacks had to wait for emancipation to form their churches free of discrimination. Those in slavery held out the hope that God would free them, just as they heard members to different owners, church became the most important social and cultural outlet available to them.

Education• As a general rule, state laws prohibited slaves in the

South from learning how to read and write. However, free blacks in the North were able to receive an education. With the end of the Civil War, the Freedmen’s Bureau built schools to ensure that blacks could learn mathematics and basic literacy. When segregation became established in the South, blacks received a lesser education than their white counterparts. Their schools were usually run-down, and their books were often of poorer quality than those in white schools.

Different Views of Reconstruction• Even before the Civil War ended, politicians in the

North argued over how to readmit the rebellious states, or “reconstruct” the South. One reason the Executive Branch and Congress battle over Reconstruction was due to their differing understandings of the secession of the Southern states. President Lincoln and his successor, Andrew Jackson, believed that no state had a legal right to secede. Therefore, those individuals involved in rebellion were guilty of insurrection. The President was responsible for bringing those persons under the authority of the federal government and restoring the Union as quickly as possible.

• Congress agreed that the President had authority to quell an insurrection, but they believed once the armed rebellion was thwarted, Congress should determine the political future of the “rebellious” states. According to the Republicans in Congress, the Confederate states forfeited their statehood when they seceded. In fact, Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts declared that the states had “committed suicide” by seceding, so they were treated like territories. Senator Sumner was a leader of the Radicals in Congress. Radicals were the Republicans who called for strict readmission standards and vigorous restructuring of the South.

• President Lincoln wanted to restore the Union quickly while allowing for a gradual and peaceful restructuring of the South. Before the war, he believed that if slavery could be contained in the South, and not expanded to the territories, the moral evil of slavery would eventually be overcome. In a similar patient way, he compared the rebirth of the South to the gentle process of hatching an egg saying, “We shall sooner have the fowl by hatching the egg by smashing it.” He considered reunification to be his duty as President.

• The Republicans in Congress, however, feared the return of the Southern Democrats. The Republicans had gained control of Congress when the South seceded. During the war, they were able to push through legislation that the southern representatives had blocked previously, such as a national banking system, higher tariffs, and the Homestead Act. The Republicans did not want the Southerners to reverse these policies. Also, many of the Republicans were abolitionists, and they wanted to make sure blacks were guaranteed equal rights before the southern states were readmitted.

Different Plans for Reconstruction• Lincoln’s plan for Reconstruction called for a generous way to readmit Southern

states into the Union. For each state to be admitted, and for the occupying forces of the North to leave, 10% of the voting populace had to swear allegiance to the Union and the Constitution. Louisiana and Arkansas, both completely in Union control by 1864, were readmitted to the Union that same year in this fashion.

• However, a twist of fate changed the tone of Reconstruction. On April 14, 1864, Lincoln and his wife attended a play at Ford’s Theater. John Wilkes Booth (1838-1865), a Confederate sympathizer, killed Lincoln by shooting him in the back of the head during the performance. Vice President Andrew Johnson (1808-1875) became the new President for the remainder of Lincoln’s second term. Johnson was sympathetic to white Southerners and advocated a mild form of Reconstruction that allowed the whites to maintain their power and keep blacks put of office. Before Congress could convene, the state government in the South passed a series of Black Codes. While securing some basic rights for blacks, these codes, in effect, made blacks second-class citizens. For example, blacks could not own weapon, meet together after sundown, or marry whites.

• Many people in the North felt that the Civil War would be meaningless if blacks were not given citizenship rights in the South. In addition, the public outrage in the North over Lincoln’s assassination was enormous. Politicians began demanding a harsher form of Reconstruction for the southern states. While Congress was not in session, President Johnson allowed all of the southern states to enter the Union under Lincoln’s plan for Reconstruction. The states elected Democrats who supported keeping whites in power and keeping blacks in various conditions of servitude. Furious that the President did not seek Congressional approval, Congress refused to seat the representatives from the South and quickly began its own stricter plan for Reconstruction.

Radical Reconstruction• On June 13, 1866, Congress passed the 14th Amendment which

stated, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States…are citizens.” The amendment prohibited states from repaying the Confederacy’s war debts and from compensating slave owners for the loss of the slaves. It penalized states for denying the voting rights of male citizens and required that government officials who had joined the Confederacy be pardoned by Congress before returning to public office.

• During the summer of 1866, President Johnson offered strong opposition to the 14th Amendment and urged the southern states to reject it. Except for Tennessee, the southern states followed his advice. Riots in Memphis and New Orleans convinced Northerners that Johnson’s leniency toward the South was not working. Northerners responded in the fall elections. Republicans won a majority in every northern state legislature, every northern governor's race, and more than a 2/3 majority in Congress, guaranteeing the ability to override Johnson’s vetoes. In the spring of 1866, the Republican Congress passed its most radical plan for Reconstruction, despite Johnson’s veto.

The main features of this Reconstruction Act (March 1867) were the following:

1) With the exception of Tennessee, which had ratified the 14th Amendment, all former Confederate states would be administered as 5 military districts.

2) Southern states would not be readmitted until they ratified the 14th Amendment.

3) Black citizens must be granted the right to vote.

4) Former Confederate officials could not hold public office.

• Fearing that President Johnson would thwart the enforcement of the Reconstruction Act, Congress passed several laws which limited his power and strengthened the Reconstruction Act itself. While Congress was in recess for the summer, Johnson violated one of these laws by firing the Secretary of War. Upon returning to Washington, the House of Representatives threatened to impeach Johnson, which means removing him from office. On February 24, 1868, after several months of investigation, the House voted to impeach Johnson, even though the evidence against him was quite weak. He escaped a conviction in the Senate by one vote and finished his term as President. His political power had been significantly weakened by the whole process. At the end of his term, Johnson returned to Tennessee and was elected senator.

A New Kind of Politics• Ready to capture the presidency, the Radicals nominated

Ulysses S. Grant to be the Republican candidate in 1868. Grant’s popularity as a hero of the Civil War made him a strong candidate, and the 700,000 blacks voting for the first time ensured his victory. These new voters put a majority of Republicans in office, including many blacks who held office for the first time in the South. During the Reconstruction years (1868-1877), there were 14 black representatives elected to Congress and two black senators. Both senators were from Mississippi, including Hiram R. Revels who filled the seat last held by Jefferson Davis (former President of the Confederacy). On February 26.1869, Congress passed the 15th Amendment which guaranteed voting rights to all citizens regardless of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” The amendment was ratified by the states within a year.

Bitter Feeling In The South• Throughout the South, whites had bitter feelings regarding

the North and Northerners:• The South was bitter about the loss of the war and slaves.• They were angry at Northerners for imposing

Reconstruction on them.• While supremacists called Republicans traitors to their race.• They resented the high taxes which paid for the

Reconstruction programs. These taxes were a double burden because of the economic hardships caused by the war.

• They blamed corruption in government on Reconstruction, Republicans, and black politicians.

• They resented carpetbaggers and scalawags.

• Carpetbaggers were people who came from the North to do business in the South. Many were Union army officers who stayed in the South for the climate or the opportunities they saw. Others were teachers, ministers, or workers for the Freedmen’s Bureau. It is estimated that 2/3 of them were trained as lawyers, doctors, and engineers. White Southerners derided them for supporting blacks and accused them of seeking opportunities for themselves at the expense of others.

• Scalawags were Southerners who supported Reconstruction. Some scalawags had supported the Union during the War and agreed with Reconstruction. Others accepted it as inevitable. Regardless of their reasoning, some newspapers would publish their names and recommend that they be shunned by the community.

• Founded in 1866, the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), used terrorism and violence to intimidate blacks and other minorities. This secretive organization was designed to remove from power the people in Reconstruction governments who were giving rights to blacks. Dressed in hooded white robes, Klansmen would frequently burn crosses in the front yards of people they wished to intimidate or kill by lynching.

• In response to the growing terrorist activities of the KKK, President Grant approved measures in Congress which made it a federal crime to interfere with the civil rights of blacks, especially the right to vote. In addition, the President was authorized to declare martial law (military rule) if the rights of blacks in a particular state were violated. These measures were called the Punitive Force Acts of 1870 and 1871. Union forces in the South were small, so they were unable to stop the Klansmen from terrorizing blacks and preventing them from voting. Only in South Carolina, where Grant declared martial law, was the Klan’s influence broken.

• Southerners blamed Reconstruction and black politicians for the corruption they saw in government, but there seemed to be a general moral lapse affecting the country after the war. Bribery, lying, and stealing infected all levels of government and business in both the North and South. After the war, the government undertook many building projects. Schools, roads, and railroads that had been destroyed of left in disrepair during the war needed attention. This large scale building effort provided many opportunities for corrupt business dealings. In the building of the first transcontinental railroad, a small group of Union Pacific stockholders involved several politicians of both parties, including the Vice President, in swindling money from the government.

• Though President Grant showed strong military leadership in the Civil War, he was a weak political leader who depended exceedingly on his advisers. These advisers proved to be inexperienced and corrupt. On a national level, excessive speculation and widespread corruption led eventually to an economic panic and depression in 1873.

Corruption in Government During Grant’s Presidency

The End of Reconstruction• As political corruption and economic difficulties began to claim

attention, the memories of the Civil War faded and the drive for Radical Reconstruction weakened. The leading Radicals left Congress. Representative Thaddeus Stevens died in 1868, Benjamin Wade lost his seat in the Senate the following year, and Senator Charles Sumner dies in 1874. In 1872, Congress passed a law which allowed almost all former Confederates to vote and hold public office again. That same year, the Freedmen’s Bureau disappeared due to lack of funding from Congress. After years of fighting for civil rights for blacks, the members of the abolitionists movement ran out of steam. Business leaders wanted to invest in new enterprises in the South, but they feared the unsettled Reconstruction governments. They believed ending Reconstruction would stabilize the politics of the South, providing good opportunities for investment.

• Southerners agreed, blaming Reconstruction and blacks for continued problems in the South. Building on the bitter feelings in the South and intimidating black voter, white southern Democrats gradually “redeemed” of regained power in state legislatures. In the presidential election of 1876, the Democrats returned to power.

Presidential Election of 1876• Because of the bad economy and the various scandals that had

surrounded President Grant, the Democrats were hopeful that their candidate, Samuel Tilden (Governor of New York) would win the election. The Republicans put their support behind the Governor of Ohio, Rutherford B. Hayes. Tilden received almost 300,000 more popular votes than Hayes, but he needed one more electoral vote to win the election. Nineteen votes were disputed in South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana. In these states, the Republicans and the Democrats had established rival boards of election officials, and each board was reporting different results. To settle the dispute, Congress appointed an Electoral Commission comprised of seven Republicans, seven Democrats, and one Independent. At the last minute, the Independent left the Commission, and he was replaced by a Republican. The Commission decided the votes belonged to Hayes, and he was elected President. The Democrats were outraged at the apparent dishonesty of this whole process. In order to keep the peace, the Democrats said they would let Hayes win if Republicans would end Reconstruction. This compromise is known as the Compromise of 1877.

The Main Points of the Compromise were:• The Democrats agreed to accept the election results.• The Republicans agreed to 1) appoint a Southerner to the President’s cabinet2) provide federal money for railroads in the South and for flood

control along the Mississippi River3) and most importantly, to withdraw federal troops from the South.• This Compromise essentially ended Reconstruction.• When the South returned to the hands of white Southerners, blacks

lost the support of the federal government and many of the social and political gains of the Reconstruction era. Freed slaves had their freedom, but it was severely limited. States passed laws requiring blacks and whites to use separate facilities in restaurants, hospitals, railroads, school, and street cars. These laws, known as Jim Crow Laws, also imposed literacy tests and poll taxes which prevented blacks from voting, despite the 15th Amendment. The Supreme Court supported these laws, and they remained in effect until the 1950s.