Transcript civil war notes

THE UNIVERSE OF BATTLE
Civil War & Reconstruction Notes
American History
Causes & Lead up
• Missouri Compromise (1820)
– Missouri enters as slave state, Maine
enters as free state to keep Senate
balanced
– Line drawn at 36°30 N line to separate
slavery
• Dred Scott (1857)
– Scott sues for freedom because his
master moved him to IL/MN and
then back to MO
– Decision
• Scott still a slave
• Acts to ban slavery violate property
rights which violates 5th amendment
• Bleeding Kansas
– Kansas Nebraska Act (1854) allowed
voters in territories to decide to enter
Union as a slave or free state (eliminating
the MO Compromise)
• 800 Missouri pro slavery militia sack
Lawrence, Kansas
• Abolitionist group hacks 5 men to death with
broadswords at Pottawatomie Creek, KS
• Skirmishes in Kansas last 10 years
• John Brown
– Former Pottawatomie mastermind
assembles 21 men to overtake arsenal at
Harpers Ferry, VA & lead a slave revolt
throughout South 10/16/59
– Federal troops storm arsenal, kill 8 &
arrest John Brown
– Virginia executes Brown 12/2/59
• Election of 1860
– New Republican party realized a candidate could
win w/o the South
– Four candidate race (Lincoln—Republican,
Douglas—Democrat, Breckenridge—Secessionist
Democrat, Bell—Constitutional)
– Lincoln seen as a threat to slavery’s expansion
• Led directly to states seceding for lack of a voice in
federal govt.
– Southern states unite under Confederate States of
America Feb. 1861
– CSA elects Jefferson Davis president
The War
• Ft. Sumter (federal base in
Charleston, SC) shelled 4/12/61
• Lincoln refused to abandon base,
Davis hesitated to attack
• Both sides expected a 100 day war
• Innovations
– Miniball—hollow bullet that explodes & buries in
body
– Ironclads—barges covered in flat iron
– Trench warfare—digging ditches to protect from
enemy fire
– Concentration camps—open areas to house
large prisoners of war
• Andersonville, GA
– All extended the violence & death toll in major
battles
• Emancipation (July 1863)
– Following Gettysburg Lincoln issues
proclamation freeing all slaves in rebel
states not in Union control
– Changed the course of the war from
saving the Union to liberating slaves
• End of Fighting
– Union troops split CSA at Mississippi at
Vicksburg 7/4/63
– Sherman marches Union through Atlanta
to Atlantic 1864
– US Grant lays siege to Richmond 186465
– Robert E. Lee surrenders CSA army at
Appomattox Courthouse
Reconstruction
• Lincoln assassinated 4/14/65…
– Andrew Johnson (Tenn.) President
• Reconstruction lasts for 12 years
altogether 1865-1877
• Confederate states rejoining the Union
and a rebuilding of the South
– Lincoln’s Plan (lenient)
• If 10% of voting population swore allegiance to
US, the state could reenter Union
• Southern President seen as too loose on
punishing South
-opposition
-Thaddeus Stevens and Radical Republicans
-wanted less power to southern slave holders
-wanted African Americans to have full citizenship
with voting rights
-Wade-Davis Bill (Congress responsible for
reconstruction & majority not 10% swear
allegiance
-Lincoln pocket vetoes Wade-Davis Bill
– Johnson’s Plan (Presidential
Reconstruction)
-Let states back in under certain conditions
-withdraw secession
-swear allegiance to Union
-annul Confederate War debts
-ratify 13th Amendment (abolish slavery)
-Didn’t address African American issues of
land, voting and protection
• Standstill
-Johnson thinks reconstruction is over
-Congress says it is not over, and the South is not
any better than before the war
-Freedman’s Bureau (Congress)
-assist former slaves and poor whites with food and
clothing
-40 hospitals, 61 industrial institutes, 74 teachertraining centers, 4,000 schools
-Civil Rights Act 1866
-African American citizenship
-no more black code laws
-Johnson vetoes both Freedman’s and Civil Rights
– Congressional Plan
• Led by Radical Republicans [Thaddeus Stevens]
(severe)
• 1865—Refused to let new southern Congressmen in
• Created federal military districts in fmr. CSA
• Civil Rights Act 1866—1st bill successfully overridden
by Congress
– Gave all blacks citizenship & forbid govts. from
discriminating against minorities
• 14th Amendment—equal protection for all citizens
under the law
• 15th Amendment—all men given right to vote
• Johnson Impeached
-Trail March through May 1868
-Congress says he violated Tenure of
Office Act
-One vote short of conviction
• Ulysses S. Grant
-Presidential Election 1868
-1st time many African Americans get to vote in
Presidential election
-most voted for Grant
-15th Amendment- 1870- all men given right to vote
(affected North and South)
-Enforcement Act 1870
-Federal Government gets more power to
punish states who don’t follow new Amendments
• Lessons
– Led to the rise of sharecropping
• Wealthy landowner charges a fee to sublet
land to grow crops
• Kept blacks poor and cultivating owner’s land
– Led to the development of Ku Klux Klan
• Vigilante group to restore white power to
South
• Led raids on blacks and white supporters
throughout the south
• Consisted of displaced CSA soldiers & men
who prospered in pre Civil War South
– Plunged the south into an economic
depression for 20 years