The Civil War

By: Zak Burton

The Election Of Lincoln (1860)• Abraham Lincoln was running for president against

Stephen Douglas, and John Breckenridge in the election of 1860.

• Stephen Douglas was a northern Democrat, John Breckenridge was a southern Democrat, and Lincoln was a Republican.

• Abe believed that the new states should be free from slavery, and many thought he would abolish slavery everywhere.

• The issue of secession was being talked about even before the 1860 election, and Lincoln's election intensified the move in the South to split with the Union.

• When Lincoln was inaugurated on March 4, 1861, it seemed obvious that the nation was on an inescapable path toward war.

Ft. Sumter

• Ft. Sumter was built after the War of 1812 as one of a series of fortifications on the southern U.S. coast.

• Ft. Sumter is located in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina.

• The fort was running low on food, Lincoln called in for a fleet of ships to force entry into Charleston Harbor to reinforce Ft. Sumter.

• On April 12, 1861, at 4:30 a.m. the confederates open fired on Ft. Sumter.

• On April 13, Anderson and his Union forces surrendered.

Emancipation Proclamation (Battle Of Antietam)

• Fought on September 17, 1862, near Sharpsburg, Maryland, was the first major battle in the American Civil War to take place on Northern soil.

• It was the bloodiest single day battle in U.S. military history, with about 23,000 casualties.

• After pursuing Confederate General Robert E. Lee into Maryland, Union Army Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan launched attacks against Lee's army, in defensive positions behind Antietam Creek.

• Attacks and counterattacks swept across Miller's cornfield and fighting swirled around the Dunker Church. Union assaults against the Sunken Road eventually pierced the Confederate center, but the Federal advantage was not followed up.

• Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside's corps entered the action, capturing a stone bridge over Antietam Creek and advancing against the Confederate right.

• At a crucial moment, Maj. Gen. A.P. Hill's division arrived from Harpers Ferry and launched a surprise counterattack, driving back Burnside and ending the battle.

Emancipation Proclamation

• Two executive orders issued by United States President Abraham Lincoln during the American Civil War.

• The first one, issued September 22, 1862, declared the freedom of all slaves in any state of the Confederate States of America that did not return to Union control by January 1, 1863.

• The second order, issued January 1, 1863, named the specific states where it applied.

• In practice, it committed the Union to ending slavery, which was a controversial decision in the North.

• Lincoln issued the Executive Order by his authority as "Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy" under Article II, section 2 of the United States Constitution.

• The proclamation did not free any slaves of the border states (Kentucky, Missouri, Maryland, Delaware, and West Virginia), or any southern state (or part of a state) already under Union control.

Gettysburg

• Fought in and around the town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, as part of the Gettysburg Campaign, was the battle with the largest number of casualties in the American Civil War and is frequently cited as the war's turning point.

• Union Maj. Gen. George Gordon Meade's Army of the Potomac defeated attacks by Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, ending Lee's invasion of the North.

• Following his success at Chancellorsville in May 1863, Lee led his army through the Shenandoah Valley for his second invasion of the North.

• On the second day of battle, most of both armies had assembled. The Union line was laid out in a defensive formation resembling a fishhook.

• On the third day of battle, July 3, fighting resumed on Culp's Hill, and cavalry battles raged to the east and south, but the main event was a dramatic infantry assault by 12,500 Confederates against the center of the Union line on Cemetery Ridge.

• Lee led his army on a torturous retreat back to Virginia.• Between 46,000 and 51,000 Americans were casualties in the three-day battle.

Gettysburg Address• A speech by U.S. President Abraham Lincoln

and one of the most quoted speeches in United States history.

• It was delivered at the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, on the afternoon of Thursday, November 19, 1863, during the American Civil War, four and a half months after the Union armies defeated those of the Confederacy at the decisive Battle of Gettysburg.

• Abraham Lincoln's carefully crafted address, secondary to other presentations that day, came to be regarded as one of the greatest speeches in American history.

• In just over two minutes, Lincoln invoked the principles of human equality espoused by the Declaration of Independence and redefined the Civil War as a struggle not merely for the Union, but as "a new birth of freedom" that would bring true equality to all of its citizens, and that would also create a unified nation in which states' rights were no longer dominant.

Appomattox• The final engagement of Confederate General Robert E.

Lee's Army of Northern Virginia before it surrendered to the Union Army under Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant near the end of the American Civil War.

• Maj. Gen. Philip Sheridan's cavalry turned Lee's flank at the Battle of Five Forks.

• Grant's army achieved a decisive breakthrough, effectively ending the Siege of Petersburg.

• Lee abandoned Petersburg and Richmond and headed west to Appomattox Station, where a supply train awaited him.

• Union cavalry under Gen. George Armstrong Custer captured and burned three supply trains waiting for Lee's army at the Battle of Appomattox Station.

• The Confederate Second Corps under Maj. Gen. John B. Gordon attacked Sheridan's cavalry and quickly forced back the first line.

• In 1865 Gen. Lee Surrendered to Gen. Grant.

Lincoln’s View On Reconstruction

• Reconstruction began during the war as Lincoln and his associates pondered questions of how to reintegrate the Southern states and what to do with Confederate leaders and the freed slaves.

• Lincoln led the "moderates" regarding Reconstructionist policy, and was usually opposed by the Radical Republicans.

• Determined to find a course that would reunite the nation and not alienate the South, Lincoln urged that speedy elections under generous terms be held throughout the war in areas behind Union lines.

• Near the end of the war, Lincoln made an extended visit to Grant's headquarters at City Point, Virginia.

• He was greeted at the city as a conquering hero by freed slaves.

• When a general asked Lincoln how the defeated Confederates should be treated, Lincoln replied, "Let 'em up easy.“

• Lincoln arrived back in Washington on the evening of April 9, 1865, the day Lee surrendered at Appomattox Court House in Virginia.

• The war was effectively over.

Johnson’s View On Reconstruction

• Northern anger over the assassination of Lincoln and the immense human cost of the war led to demands for harsh policies.

• Vice President Andrew Johnson had taken a hard line and spoke of hanging rebel Confederates.

• In practice, Johnson was not at all harsh toward the Confederate leaders.

• He allowed the Southern states to hold elections in 1865, resulting in prominent ex-Confederates being elected to the U.S. Congress; however, Congress did not seat them.

• Congress and Johnson argued in an increasingly public way about Reconstruction and the manner in which the Southern secessionist states would be readmitted to the Union.

• Johnson favored a very quick restoration, similar to the plan of leniency that Lincoln advocated before his death.

Radical Republican's View On Reconstruction

• After the 1860 elections the Radical Republicans became a powerful force in Congress.

• Several were elected as chairman of important committees.

• Radical Republicans were critical of Lincoln's Reconstruction Plan. In 1862 Benjamin Wade and Henry Winter Davis, sponsored a bill that provided for the administration of the affairs of southern states by provisional governors until the end of the war.

• They argued that civil government should only be re-established when half of the male white citizens took an oath of loyalty to the Union.

• The Wade-Davis Bill was passed on 2nd July, 1864, but Abraham Lincoln refused to sign it.

Civil War Amendments

• 13th- Officially abolished and continues to prohibit slavery, and with limited exceptions, such as those convicted of a crime, prohibits

involuntary servitude.• 14th- Requires states to provide equal protection and due process

of the laws, while also defining citizenship and addressing post-Civil War slave-based property disputes.

• 15th- Prohibits each government in the United States to prevent a citizen from voting based on that citizen's race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

The South After The War

• Slavery effectively ended in the U.S. in the spring of 1865 when the Confederate armies surrendered.

• All slaves in the Confederacy were freed by the Emancipation Proclamation, which stipulated that slaves in Confederate-held areas were free.

• Slaves in the border states and Union-controlled parts of the South were freed by state action or by the Thirteenth Amendment.

• About 4 million black slaves were freed in 1861-65.• Based on 1860 census figures, 8% of all white males aged 13 to 43

died in the war, including 6% in the North and an extraordinary 18% in the South.

The North And Midwest After The War

• The Union had more than double the population of the Confederacy (including slaves), and almost four times the number of men of combat age.

• Even with only 50% of eligible men enlisted, relative to the Confederacy's 75%, the Union still had more than twice the number of people in the armed forces.

• In addition to being more industrialized than the South, the North had better infrastructure.

• The North had 20,000 miles of railroad compared to the South's 9,000 miles.

• The long-standing shipbuilding industry in New England ensured that the North would have a large merchant marine, as well as easy access to naval resources.

Election Of 1876

• The Democrats nominated New York Governor Samuel J. Tilden, who had gained national attention by opposing the powerful Tammany Hall organization, and prosecuting the powerful Boss Tweed.

• The Republicans, after a long convention, nominated Governor Rutherford B. Hayes of Ohio, a war hero also well known as a reformer.

• The American election of 1876 was the closest in their history, with Rutherford Birchard Hayes winning over Samuel J. Tilden by a single vote.

• The vote created a constitutional crisis and threatened to start another civil war.

• More people voted for Tilden than for Hayes, but Hayes came out the winner in the Electoral College by one vote, 185-184.

• It is generally agreed by historians that two of the three disputed states were really won by Tilden, but the Electoral Commission gave all the disputed states to Hayes.

Compromise Of 1877• The Compromise came about as Democrats in the Senate threatened to

prevent the commission from reporting with a filibuster.• Republicans negotiated with the Democrats to abandon the filibuster by

offering the following: the withdrawal of federal troops from the South, appointment of at least one Southerner to Hayes's cabinet, and economic benefits to industrialize the South.

• Unfortunately, withdrawal of troops meant the Republicans essentially abandoning the enforcement of racial equality in the South.

• The Compromise came about as Democrats in the Senate threatened to prevent the commission from reporting with a filibuster.

• Republicans negotiated with the Democrats to abandon the filibuster by offering the following: the withdrawal of federal troops from the South, appointment of at least one Southerner to Hayes's cabinet, and economic benefits to industrialize the South.

• Unfortunately, withdrawal of troops meant the Republicans essentially abandoning the enforcement of racial equality in the South.

Jim Crow Era

• The Jim Crow Era was the time between 1876-1954.

• The Jim Crow era was one of struggle - not only for the victims of violence, discrimination, and poverty, but by those who worked to challenge (or promote) segregation in the South.

• After the American Civil War most states in the South passed anti-African American legislation.

• These became known as Jim Crow laws, this included laws that discriminated against African Americans with concern to attendance in public schools and the use of facilities such as restaurants, theaters, hotels, cinemas and public baths.

• Trains and buses were also segregated and in many states marriage between whites and African American people.

Plessy V. Ferguson• Is a landmark United States Supreme Court decision in the

jurisprudence of the United States, upholding the constitutionality of racial segregation even in public accommodations, under the doctrine of "separate but equal".

• Homer Plessy boarded a car of the East Louisiana Railroad that was designated by whites for use by white patrons only.

• Although Plessy was one-eighth black and seven-eighths white, under Louisiana state law he was classified as an African-American, and thus required to sit in the "colored" car.

• When Plessy refused to leave the white car and move to the colored car, he was arrested and jailed.

• Homer Adolph Plessy v. The State of Louisiana, Plessy argued that the East Louisiana Railroad had denied him his constitutional rights under the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States.

• However, the judge presiding over his case, John Howard Ferguson, ruled that Louisiana had the right to regulate railroad companies as long as they operated within state boundaries.