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Chapter Overview

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adapted from Lauren Vereen, WCJH SS IC

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Primary Source and Worksheet

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Study with Quizlet and memorise flashcards containing terms like Kansas-Nebraska Act, Sectionalism, Dredd Scott decision and others.

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Famed Civil War historian's view on the flag

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From Don't Know Much About History

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Uncle Tom's Cabin from Don't Know Much About History

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Printable Version In April 1860, the Democratic Party assembled in Charleston, South Carolina to select a presidential nominee. Southern delegates insisted that the party endorse a federal code to guarantee the rights of slaveholders in the territories. When the convention rejected the proposal, delegates from the deep South walked out. The remaining delegates reassembled six weeks later in Baltimore and selected Stephen Douglas as their candidate. Southern Democrats proceeded to choose John C. Breckinridge as their presidential nominee.

In May, the Constitutional Union Party, which consisted of conservative former Whigs, Know Nothings, and pro-Union Democrats nominated John Bell of Tennessee for President. This short-lived party denounced sectionalism and tried to rally support around a platform that supported the Constitution and the Union. Meanwhile, the Republican Party nominated Abraham Lincoln on the third ballot.

The 1860 election revealed how divided the country had become. There were actually two separate sectional campaigns: one in the North, pitting Lincoln against Douglas, and one in the South between Breckinridge and Bell. Only Stephen Douglas mounted a truly national campaign. The Republicans did not campaign in the South and Lincoln's name did not appear on the ballot in 10 states.

In the final balloting, Lincoln won only 39.9 percent of the popular vote, but received 180 Electoral College votes, 57 more than the combined total of his opponents.

Copyright 2019 Digital History

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Printable Version In April 1860, the Democratic Party assembled in Charleston, South Carolina to select a presidential nominee. Southern delegates insisted that the party endorse a federal code to guarantee the rights of slaveholders in the territories. When the convention rejected the proposal, delegates from the deep South walked out.

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Civil War, Reconstruction, and Westward Expansion Content Focus

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Railroads made shipping cheaper and more efficient, and allowed people to move around the country quickly, and they had a huge backer, and also a tiny backer, in the form of Illinois Congressman Stephen Douglas, who wanted a transcontinental railroad because: 1) He felt it would bind the Union together (at a time when it could use some binding), and 2) He figured it would go through Illinois, which would be good for his home state. But there was a problem.

To build a railroad, the territory through which it ran need to be organized, ideally as states, and if the railroad was gonna run through Illinois, then the Kansas and Nebraska territories would need to become state-like, so Douglas pushed forward the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854.

The Kansas-Nebraska Act formalized the idea of popular sovereignty, which basically meant that white residents of states could decide for themselves whether the state should allow slavery. Douglas felt this was a nice way of avoiding saying whether he favored slavery. Instead, he could just be in favor of letting other people be in favor of it.

Now, you'll remember that the previously bartered Missouri Compromise banned slavery in new states north of this here line, ( 3:28) and since in theory, Kansas or Nebraska could have slavery if people there decided they wanted it under the Kansas-Nebraska Act, despite being north of that there line, this in practice repealed the Missouri Compromise. As a result, there was quite a lot of violence in Kansas, so much so that some people say the Civil War really started there in 1857. Also, the Kansas-Nebraska Act led to the creation of a new political party: The Republicans. Yes, those Republicans. Thanks, Thought Bubble.

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Nerdfighteria Wiki - The Election of 1860 & the Road to Disunion: Crash Course US History #18

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Railroads made shipping cheaper and more efficient, and allowed people to move around the country quickly, and they had a huge backer, and also a tiny backer, in the form of Illinois Congressman Stephen Douglas, who wanted a transcontinental railroad because: 1) He felt it would bind the Union together (at a time when it could use some binding), and 2) He figured it would go through Illinois, which would be good for his home state.

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Debunking the myth of the Lost Cause: A lie embedded in American history - Karen L. Cox

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Antebellum America

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Primary Source

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From Don't Know Much About History

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Why Was Kansas Bloody from Don't Know Much About History

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Printable Version In just three weeks, between January 9, 1861 and February 1, six states of the Deep South joined South Carolina in leaving the Union: Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas. Unlike South Carolina, where secessionist sentiment was almost universal, there was significant opposition in the other states. Although an average of 80 percent of the delegates at secession conventions favored immediate secession, the elections at which these delegates were chosen were very close, particularly in Georgia, Alabama, and Louisiana. To be sure, many voters who opposed immediate secession were not unconditional Unionists. But the resistance to immediate secession did suggest that some kind of compromise was still possible.

In the Upper South, opposition to secession was even greater. In Virginia, on February 4, opponents of immediate secession received twice as many votes as proponents, while Tennessee voters rejected a call for a secession convention.

On February 1, a secession convention in Texas voted to leave the Union. Three weeks later, a popular vote ratified the decision by a three-to-one margin. Texas Governor Sam Houston (1793-1863), who owned a dozen slaves, repudiated secession and refused to take an oath of allegiance to the Confederacy. As a result, he was forced from office. Houston predicted: "Our people are going to war to perpetuate slavery, and the first gun fired in the war will be the [death] knell of slavery."

Copyright 2019 Digital History

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Printable Version In just three weeks, between January 9, 1861 and February 1, six states of the Deep South joined South Carolina in leaving the Union: Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas. Unlike South Carolina, where secessionist sentiment was almost universal, there was significant opposition in the other states.

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American Yawp Link

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Slavery's western expansion created problems for the United States from the very start. Battles emerged over the westward expansion of slavery and over the role of the federal government in protecting the interests of slaveholders. Northern workers felt that slavery suppressed wages and stole land that could have been used by poor white Americans to achieve economic independence. Southerners feared that without slavery's expansion, the abolitionist faction would come to dominate national politics and an increasingly dense population of slaves would lead to bloody insurrection and race war. Constant resistance from enslaved men and women required a strong pro-slavery government to maintain order. As the North gradually abolished human bondage, enslaved men and women headed north on an underground railroad of hideaways and safe houses. Northerners and southerners came to disagree sharply on the role of the federal government in capturing and returning these freedom seekers. While northerners appealed to their states' rights to refuse capturing runaway slaves, white southerners demanded a national commitment to slavery. Enslaved laborers meanwhile remained vitally important to the nation's economy, fueling not only the southern plantation economy but also providing raw materials for the industrial North. Differences over the fate of slavery remained at the heart of American politics, especially as the United States expanded. After decades of conflict, Americans north and south began to fear that the opposite section of the country had seized control of the government. By November 1860, an opponent of slavery's expansion arose from within the Republican Party. During the secession crisis that followed, fears nearly a century in the making at last devolved into bloody war.

Revolutionaries seized onto these ideas to stunning effect in the late eighteenth century. In the United States, France, and Haiti, revolutionaries began the work of splintering the old order. Each revolution seemed to radicalize the next. Bolder and more expansive declarations of equality and freedom followed one after the other. Revolutionaries in the United States declared, "All men are created equal," in the 1770s. French visionaries issued the "Declaration of Rights and Man and Citizen" by 1789. But the most startling development came in 1803. A revolution led by the island's rebellious slaves turned France's most valuable sugar colony into an independent country administered by the formerly enslaved.

The Haitian Revolution marked an early origin of the sectional crisis. It helped splinter the Atlantic basin into clear zones of freedom and unfreedom, shattering the long-standing assumption that African-descended slaves could not also be rulers. Despite the clear limitations of the American Revolution in attacking slavery, the era marked a powerful break in slavery's history. Military service on behalf of both the English and the American army freed thousands of slaves. Many others simply used the turmoil of war to make their escape. As a result, free black communities emerged-communities that would continually reignite the antislavery struggle. For nearly a century, most white Americans were content to compromise over the issue of slavery, but the constant agitation of black Americans, both enslaved and free, kept the issue alive.

The national breakdown over slavery occurred over a long timeline and across a broad geography. Debates over slavery in the American West proved especially important. As the United States pressed westward, new questions arose as to whether those lands ought to be slave or free. The framers of the Constitution did a little, but not much, to help resolve these early questions. Article VI of the 1787 Northwest Ordinance banned slavery north and west of the Ohio River. Many took it to mean that the founders intended for slavery to die out, as why else would they prohibit its spread across such a huge swath of territory?

Debates over the framers' intentions often led to confusion and bitter debate, but the actions of the new government left better clues as to what the new nation intended for slavery. Congress authorized the admission of Vermont (1791) and Kentucky (1792), with Vermont coming into the Union as a free state and Kentucky coming in as a slave state. Though Americans at the time made relatively little of the balancing act suggested by the admission of a slave state and a free state, the pattern became increasingly important. By 1820, preserving the balance of free states and slave states would be seen as an issue of national security.

New pressures challenging the delicate balance again arose in the West. The Louisiana Purchase of 1803 more than doubled the size of the United States. Questions immediately arose as to whether these lands would be made slave or free. Complicating matters further was the rapid expansion of plantation slavery fueled by the invention of the cotton gin in 1793. Yet even with the booming cotton economy, many Americans, including Thomas Jefferson, believed that slavery was a temporary institution and would soon die out. Tensions rose with the Louisiana Purchase, but a truly sectional national debate remained mostly dormant.

That debate, however, came quickly. Sectional differences tied to the expansion of plantation slavery in the West were especially important after 1803. The Ohio River Valley became an early fault line in the coming sectional struggle. Kentucky and Tennessee emerged as slave states, while free states Ohio, Indiana (1816), and Illinois (1818) gained admission along the river's northern banks. Borderland negotiations and accommodations along the Ohio River fostered a distinctive kind of white supremacy, as laws tried to keep blacks out of the West entirely. Ohio's so-called Black Laws of 1803 foreshadowed the exclusionary cultures of Indiana, Illinois, and several subsequent states of the Old Northwest and later, the Far West. These laws often banned African American voting, denied black Americans access to public schools, and made it impossible for nonwhites to serve on juries and in local militias, among a host of other restrictions and obstacles.

The Missouri Territory, by far the largest section of the Louisiana Territory, marked a turning point in the sectional crisis. St. Louis, a bustling Mississippi River town filled with powerful slave owners, loomed large as an important trade headquarters for networks in the northern Mississippi Valley and the Greater West. In 1817, eager to put questions of whether this territory would be slave or free to rest, Congress opened its debate over Missouri's admission to the Union. Congressman James Tallmadge of New York proposed laws that would gradually abolish slavery in the new state. Southern states responded with unanimous outrage, and the nation shuddered at an undeniable sectional controversy.

Congress reached a "compromise" on Missouri's admission, largely through the work of Kentuckian Henry Clay. Maine would be admitted to the Union as a free state. In exchange, Missouri would come into the Union as a slave state. Legislators sought to prevent future conflicts by making Missouri's southern border at 36°30′ the new dividing line between slavery and freedom in the Louisiana Purchase lands. South of that line, running east from Missouri to the western edge of the Louisiana Purchase lands (near the present-day Texas panhandle), slavery could expand. North of it, encompassing what in 1820 was still "unorganized territory," there would be no slavery.

The Missouri Compromise marked a major turning point in America's sectional crisis because it exposed to the public just how divisive the slavery issue had grown. The debate filled newspapers, speeches, and congressional records. Antislavery and pro-slavery positions from that point forward repeatedly returned to points made during the Missouri debates. Legislators battled for weeks over whether the Constitutional framers intended slavery's expansion, and these contests left deep scars. Even seemingly simple and straightforward phrases like "all men are created equal" were hotly contested all over again. Questions over the expansion of slavery remained open, but nearly all Americans concluded that the Constitution protected slavery where it already existed.

Southerners were not yet advancing arguments that said slavery was a positive good, but they did insist during the Missouri Debate that the framers supported slavery and wanted to see it expand. In Article I, Section 2, for example, the Constitution enabled representation in the South to be based on rules defining an enslaved person as three fifths of a voter, meaning southern white men would be overrepresented in Congress. The Constitution also stipulated that Congress could not interfere with the slave trade before 1808 and enabled Congress to draft fugitive slave laws.

Antislavery participants in the Missouri debate argued that the framers never intended slavery to survive the Revolution and in fact hoped it would disappear through peaceful means. The framers of the Constitution never used the word slave. Slaves were referred to as "persons held in service," perhaps referring to English common law precedents that questioned the legitimacy of "property in man." Antislavery activists also pointed out that while Congress could not pass a law limiting the slave trade before 1808, the framers had also recognized the flip side of the debate and had thus opened the door to legislating the slave trade's end once the deadline arrived. Language in the Tenth Amendment, they claimed, also said slavery could be banned in the territories. Finally, they pointed to the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment, which said that property could be seized through appropriate legislation. The bruising Missouri debates ultimately transcended arguments about the Constitution. They became an all-encompassing referendum on the American past, present, and future.

Despite the furor, the Missouri crisis did not yet inspire hardened defenses of either slave or free labor as positive good. Those would come in the coming decades. In the meantime, the uneasy consensus forged by the Missouri debate managed to bring a measure of calm.

The Missouri debate had also deeply troubled the nation's African Americans and Native Americans. By the time of the Missouri Compromise debate, both groups saw that whites never intended them to be citizens of the United States. In fact, the debates over Missouri's admission had offered the first sustained debate on the question of black citizenship, as Missouri's state constitution wanted to impose a hard ban on any future black migrants. Legislators ultimately agreed that this hard ban violated the U.S. Constitution but reaffirmed Missouri's ability to deny citizenship to African Americans. Americans by 1820 had endured a broad challenge, not only to their cherished ideals but also more fundamentally to their conceptions of self.

Missouri's admission to the Union in 1821 exposed deep fault lines in American society. But the compromise created a new sectional consensus that most white Americans, at least, hoped would ensure a lasting peace. Through sustained debates and arguments, white Americans agreed that the Constitution could do little about slavery where it already existed and that slavery, with the State of Missouri as the key exception, would never expand north of the 36°30′ line.

Once again westward expansion challenged this consensus, and this time the results proved even more damaging. Tellingly, enslaved southerners were among the first to signal their discontent. A rebellion led by Denmark Vesey in 1822 threatened lives and property throughout the Carolinas. The nation's religious leaders also expressed a rising discontent with the new status quo. The Second Great Awakening further sharpened political differences by promoting schisms within the major Protestant churches, schisms that also became increasingly sectional in nature. Between 1820 and 1846, sectionalism drew on new political parties, new religious organizations, and new reform movements.

As politics grew more democratic, leaders attacked old inequalities of wealth and power, but in doing so many pandered to a unity under white supremacy. Slavery briefly receded from the nation's attention in the early 1820s, but that would change quickly. By the last half of the decade, slavery was back, and this time it appeared even more threatening.

Inspired by the social change of Jacksonian democracy, white men regardless of status would gain not only land and jobs but also the right to vote, the right to serve on juries, the right to attend public schools, and the right to serve in the militia and armed forces. In this post-Missouri context, leaders arose to push the country's new expansionist desires in aggressive new directions. As they did so, however, the sectional crisis again deepened.

The Democratic Party initially seemed to offer a compelling answer to the problems of sectionalism by promising benefits to white working men of the North, South, and West, while also uniting rural, small-town, and urban residents. Indeed, huge numbers of western, southern, and northern workingmen rallied behind Andrew Jackson during the 1828 presidential election. The Democratic Party tried to avoid the issue of slavery and instead sought to unite Americans around shared commitments to white supremacy and desires to expand the nation.

Democrats were not without their critics. Northerners seen as especially friendly to the South had become known as "Doughfaces" during the Missouri debates, and as the 1830s wore on, more and more Doughfaced Democrats became vulnerable to the charge that they served the southern slave oligarchs better than they served their own northern communities. Whites discontented with the direction of the country used the slur and other critiques to help chip away at Democratic Party majorities. The accusation that northern Democrats were lapdogs for southern slaveholders had real power.

The Whigs offered an organized major-party challenge to the Democrats. Whig strongholds often mirrored the patterns of westward migrations out of New England. Whigs drew from an odd coalition of wealthy merchants, middle- and upper-class farmers, planters in the Upland South, and settlers in the Great Lakes. Because of this motley coalition, the party struggled to bring a cohesive message to voters in the 1830s. Their strongest support came from places like Ohio's Western Reserve, the rural and Protestant-dominated areas of Michigan, and similar parts of Protestant and small-town Illinois, particularly the fast-growing towns and cities of the state's northern half.

Whig leaders stressed Protestant culture and federal-sponsored internal improvements and courted the support of a variety of reform movements, including temperance, nativism, and even antislavery, though few Whigs believed in racial equality. These positions attracted a wide range of figures, including a young convert to politics named Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln admired Whig leader Henry Clay of Kentucky, and by the early 1830s, Lincoln certainly fit the image of a developing Whig. A veteran of the Black Hawk War, Lincoln had relocated to New Salem, Illinois, where he worked a variety of odd jobs, living a life of thrift, self-discipline, and sobriety as he educated himself in preparation for a professional life in law and politics.

The Whig Party blamed Democrats for defending slavery at the expense of the American people, but antislavery was never a core component of the Whig platform. Several abolitionists grew so disgusted with the Whigs that they formed their own party, a true antislavery party. Activists in Warsaw, New York, organized the antislavery Liberty Party in 1839. Liberty leaders demanded the end of slavery in the District of Columbia, the end of the interstate slave trade, and the prohibition of slavery's expansion into the West. But the Liberty Party also shunned women's participation in the movement and distanced themselves from visions of true racial egalitarianism. Few Americans voted for the party. The Democrats and Whigs continued to dominate American politics.

Democrats and Whigs fostered a moment of relative calm on the slavery debate, partially aided by gag rules prohibiting discussion of antislavery petitions. Arkansas (1836) and Michigan (1837) became the newest states admitted to the Union, with Arkansas coming in as a slave state, and Michigan coming in as a free state. Michigan gained admission through provisions established in the Northwest Ordinance, while Arkansas came in under the Missouri Compromise. Since its lands were below the line at 36°30′, the admission of Arkansas did not threaten the Missouri consensus. The balancing act between slavery and freedom continued.

Events in Texas would shatter the balance. Independent Texas soon gained recognition from a supportive Andrew Jackson administration in 1837. But Jackson's successor, President Martin Van Buren, also a Democrat, soon had reasons to worry about the Republic of Texas. Texas struggled with ongoing conflicts with Mexico and Indian raids from the powerful Comanche. The 1844 democratic presidential candidate James K. Polk sought to bridge the sectional divide by promising new lands to whites north and south. Polk cited the annexation of Texas and the Oregon Territory as campaign cornerstones. Yet as Polk championed the acquisition of these vast new lands, northern Democrats grew annoyed by their southern colleagues, especially when it came to Texas.

For many observers, the debates over Texas statehood illustrated that the federal government was clearly pro-slavery. Texas president Sam Houston managed to secure a deal with Polk and gained admission to the Union for Texas in 1845. Antislavery northerners also worried about the admission of Florida, which entered the Union as a slave state in 1845. The year 1845 became a pivotal year in the memory of antislavery leaders. As Americans embraced calls to pursue their manifest destiny, antislavery voices looked at developments in Florida and Texas as signs that the sectional crisis had taken an ominous and perhaps irredeemable turn.

The 1840s opened with a number of disturbing developments for antislavery leaders. The 1842 Supreme Court case Prigg v. Pennsylvania ruled that the federal government's Fugitive Slave Act trumped Pennsylvania's personal liberty law. Antislavery activists believed that the federal government only served southern slaveholders and were trouncing the states' rights of the North. A number of northern states reacted by passing new personal liberty laws in protest in 1843.

The rising controversy over the status of fugitive slaves swelled partly through the influence of escaped former slaves, including Frederick Douglass. Douglass's entrance into northern politics marked an important new development in the nation's coming sectional crisis. Born into slavery in 1818 at Talbot County, Maryland, Douglass grew up, like many enslaved people, barely having known his own mother or date of birth. And yet because of a range of unique privileges afforded him by the circumstances of his upbringing, as well as his own genius and determination, Douglass managed to learn how to read and write. He used these skills to escape from slavery in 1837, when he was just nineteen. By 1845, Douglass put the finishing touches on his autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. The book launched his lifelong career as an advocate for the enslaved and helped further raise the visibility of black politics. Other former slaves, including Sojourner Truth, joined Douglass in rousing support for antislavery, as did free black Americans like Maria Stewart, James McCune Smith, Martin Delaney, and numerous others. But black activists did more than deliver speeches. They also attacked fugitive slave laws by helping thousands to escape. The incredible career of Harriet Tubman is one of the more dramatic examples. But the forces of slavery had powerful allies at every level of government.

The year 1846 signaled new reversals to the antislavery cause and the beginnings of a dark new era in American politics. President Polk and his Democratic allies were eager to see western lands brought into the Union and were especially anxious to see the borders of the nation extended to the shores of the Pacific Ocean. Critics of the administration blasted these efforts as little more than land grabs on behalf of slaveholders. Events in early 1846 seemed to justify antislavery complaints. Since Mexico had never recognized independent Texas, it continued to lay claim to its lands, even after the United States admitted it to the Union. In January 1846, Polk ordered troops to Texas to enforce claims stemming from its border dispute along the Rio Grande. Polk asked for war on May 11, 1846, and by September 1847, the United States had invaded Mexico City. Whigs, like Abraham Lincoln, found their protests sidelined, but antislavery voices were becoming more vocal and more powerful.

After 1846, the sectional crisis raged throughout North America. Debates swirled over whether the new lands would be slave or free. The South began defending slavery as a positive good. At the same time, Congressman David Wilmot submitted his Wilmot Proviso late in 1846, banning the expansion of slavery into the territories won from Mexico. The proviso gained widespread northern support and even passed the House with bipartisan support, but it failed in the Senate.

The conclusion of the Mexican War led to the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. The treaty infuriated antislavery leaders in the United States. The spoils of war were impressive, but it was clear they would help expand slavery. Antislavery activists, who already judged the Mexican War a slaveholders' plot, vowed that no new territories would be opened to slavery. But knowing that the Liberty Party was also not likely to provide a home to many moderate voters, leaders fostered a new and more competitive party, which they called the Free Soil Party. Antislavery leaders had thought that their vision of a federal government divorced from slavery might be represented by the major parties in that year's presidential election, but both the Whigs and the Democrats nominated candidates hostile to the antislavery cause. Left unrepresented, antislavery Free Soil leaders swung into action.

The upheavals of 1848 came to a quick end. Taylor remained in office only a brief time until his unexpected death from a stomach ailment in 1850. During Taylor's brief time in office, the fruits of the Mexican War began to spoil. While Taylor was alive, his administration struggled to find a good remedy. Increased clamoring for the admission of California, New Mexico, and Utah pushed the country closer to the edge. Gold had been discovered in California, and as thousands continued to pour onto the West Coast and through the trans-Mississippi West, the admission of new states loomed. In Utah, Mormons were also making claims to an independent state they called Deseret. By 1850, California wanted admission as a free state. With so many competing dynamics under way, and with the president dead and replaced by Whig Millard Fillmore, the 1850s were off to a troubling start.

Congressional leaders like Henry Clay and newer legislators like Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois were asked to broker a compromise, but this time it was clear no compromise could bridge all the diverging interests at play in the country. Clay eventually left Washington disheartened by affairs. It fell to young Stephen Douglas, then, to shepherd the bills through Congress, which he in fact did. Legislators rallied behind the Compromise of 1850, an assemblage of bills passed late in 1850, which managed to keep the promises of the Missouri Compromise alive.

The Compromise of 1850 tried to offer something to everyone, but in the end it only worsened the sectional crisis. For southerners, the package offered a tough new fugitive slave law that empowered the federal government to deputize regular citizens in arresting runaways. The New Mexico Territory and the Utah Territory would be allowed to determine their own fates as slave or free states based on popular sovereignty. The compromise also allowed territories to submit suits directly to the Supreme Court over the status of fugitive slaves within their bounds.

The admission of California as the newest free state in the Union cheered many northerners, but even the admission of a vast new state full of resources and rich agricultural lands was not enough. In addition to California, northerners also gained a ban on the slave trade in Washington, D.C., but not the full emancipation abolitionists had long advocated. Texas, which had already come into the Union as a slave state, was asked to give some of its land to New Mexico in return for the federal government absorbing some of the former republic's debt. But the compromise debates soon grew ugly.

After the Compromise of 1850, antislavery critics became increasingly certain that slaveholders had co-opted the federal government, and that a southern Slave Power secretly held sway in Washington, where it hoped to make slavery a national institution. These northern complaints pointed back to how the three-fifths compromise of the Constitution gave southerners proportionally more representatives in Congress. In the 1850s, antislavery leaders increasingly argued that Washington worked on behalf of slaveholders while ignoring the interests of white working men.

None of the individual measures in the Compromise of 1850 proved more troubling to antislavery Americans than the Fugitive Slave Act. In a clear bid to extend slavery's influence throughout the country, the act created special federal commissioners to determine the fate of alleged fugitives without benefit of a jury trial or even court testimony. Under its provisions, local authorities in the North could not interfere with the capture of fugitives. Northern citizens, moreover, had to assist in the arrest of fugitive slaves when called upon by federal agents. The Fugitive Slave Act created the foundation for a massive expansion of federal power, including an alarming increase in the nation's policing powers. Many northerners were also troubled by the way the bill undermined local and state laws. The law itself fostered corruption and the enslavement of free black northerners. The federal commissioners who heard these cases were paid $10 if they determined that the defendant was a slave and only $5 if they determined he or she was free. Many black northerners responded to the new law by heading farther north to Canada.

The 1852 presidential election gave the Whigs their most stunning defeat and effectively ended their existence as a national political party. Whigs captured just 42 of the 254 electoral votes needed to win. With the Compromise of 1850 and plenty of new lands, peaceful consensus seemed to be on the horizon. Antislavery feelings continued to run deep, however, and their depth revealed that with a Democratic Party misstep, a coalition united against the Democrats might yet emerge and bring them to defeat. One measure of the popularity of antislavery ideas came in 1852 when Harriet Beecher Stowe published her best-selling antislavery novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin. Sales for Uncle Tom's Cabin were astronomical, eclipsed only by sales of the Bible. The book became a sensation and helped move antislavery into everyday conversation for many northerners. Despite the powerful antislavery message, Stowe's book also reinforced many racist stereotypes. Even abolitionists struggled with the deeply ingrained racism that plagued American society. While the major success of Uncle Tom's Cabin bolstered the abolitionist cause, the terms outlined by the Compromise of 1850 appeared strong enough to keep the peace.

Democrats by 1853 were badly splintered along sectional lines over slavery, but they also had reasons to act with confidence. Voters had returned them to office in 1852 following the bitter fights over the Compromise of 1850. Emboldened, Illinois senator Stephen A. Douglas introduced a set of additional amendments to a bill drafted in late 1853 to help organize the Nebraska Territory, the last of the Louisiana Purchase lands. In 1853, the Nebraska Territory was huge, extending from the northern end of Texas to the Canadian border. Altogether, it encompassed present-day Nebraska, Wyoming, South Dakota, North Dakota, Colorado, and Montana. Douglas's efforts to amend and introduce the bill in 1854 opened dynamics that would break the Democratic Party in two and, in the process, rip the country apart.

Douglas proposed a bold plan in 1854 to cut off a large southern chunk of Nebraska and create it separately as the Kansas Territory. Douglas had a number of goals in mind. The expansionist Democrat from Illinois wanted to organize the territory to facilitate the completion of a national railroad that would flow through Chicago. But before he had even finished introducing the bill, opposition had already mobilized. Salmon P. Chase drafted a response in northern newspapers that exposed the Kansas-Nebraska Bill as a measure to overturn the Missouri Compromise and open western lands for slavery. Kansas-Nebraska protests emerged in 1854 throughout the North, with key meetings in Wisconsin and Michigan. Kansas would become slave or free depending on the result of local elections, elections that would be greatly influenced by migrants flooding to the state to either protect or stop the spread of slavery.

As northerners radicalized, organizations like the New England Emigrant Aid Company provided guns and other goods for pioneers willing to go to Kansas and establish the territory as antislavery through popular sovereignty. On all sides of the slavery issue, politics became increasingly militarized.

The year 1855 nearly derailed the northern antislavery coalition. A resurgent anti-immigrant movement briefly took advantage of the Whig collapse and nearly stole the energy of the anti-administration forces by channeling its frustrations into fights against the large number of mostly Catholic German and Irish immigrants in American cities. Calling themselves Know-Nothings, on account of their tendency to pretend ignorance when asked about their activities, the Know-Nothing or American Party made impressive gains in 1854 and 1855, particularly in New England and the Middle Atlantic. But the anti-immigrant movement simply could not capture the nation's attention in ways the antislavery movement already had.

The antislavery political movements that started in 1854 coalesced with the formation of a new political party. Harking back to the founding fathers, its organizers named it the Republican Party. Republicans moved forward into a highly charged summer.

Following an explosive speech before Congress on May 19-20, Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts was violently beaten with a cane by Representative Preston Brooks of South Carolina on the floor of the Senate chamber. Among other accusations, Sumner accused Senator Andrew Butler of South Carolina, Brooks's cousin, of defending slavery so he could have sexual access to black women. Brooks felt that he had to defend his relative's honor and nearly killed Sumner as a result.

With sectional tensions at a breaking point, both parties readied for the coming presidential election. In June 1856, the newly named Republican Party held its nominating convention at Philadelphia and selected Californian John Charles Frémont. Frémont's antislavery credentials may not have pleased many abolitionists, but his dynamic and talented wife, Jessie Benton Frémont, appealed to more radical members of the coalition. The Kansas-Nebraska debate, the organization of the Republican Party, and the 1856 presidential campaign all energized a new generation of political leaders, including Abraham Lincoln. Beginning with his speech at Peoria, Illinois, in 1854, Lincoln carved out a message that encapsulated better than anyone else the main ideas and visions of the Republican Party. Lincoln himself was slow to join the coalition, yet by the summer of 1856, Lincoln had fully committed to the Frémont campaign.

Frémont lost, but Republicans celebrated that he won eleven of the sixteen free states. This showing, they urged, was truly impressive for any party making its first run at the presidency. Yet northern Democrats in crucial swing states remained unmoved by the Republican Party's appeals. Ulysses S. Grant of Missouri, for example, worried that Frémont and Republicans signaled trouble for the Union itself. Grant voted for the Democratic candidate, James Buchanan, believing a Republican victory might bring about disunion. In abolitionist and especially black American circles, Frémont's defeat was more than a disappointment. Believing their fate had been sealed as permanent noncitizens, some African Americans would consider foreign emigration and colonization. Others began to explore the option of more radical and direct action against the Slave Power.

White antislavery leaders hailed Frémont's defeat as a "glorious" one and looked ahead to the party's future successes. For those still in slavery or hoping to see loved ones freed, the news was of course much harder to take. The Republican Party had promised the rise of an antislavery coalition, but voters rebuked it. The lessons seemed clear enough.

Kansas loomed large over the 1856 election, darkening the national mood. The story of voter fraud in Kansas had begun years before in 1854, when nearby Missourians first started crossing the border to tamper with the Kansas elections. Noting this, critics at the time attacked the Pierce administration for not living up to the ideals of popular sovereignty by ensuring fair elections. From there, the crisis only deepened. Kansas voted to come into the Union as a free state, but the federal government refused to recognize their votes and instead recognized a sham pro-slavery legislature.

The sectional crisis had at last become a national crisis. "Bleeding Kansas" was the first place to demonstrate that the sectional crisis could easily be, and in fact already was, exploding into a full-blown national crisis. As the national mood grew increasingly grim, Kansas attracted militants representing the extreme sides of the slavery debate.

In the days after the 1856 presidential election, Buchanan made his plans for his time in office clear. He talked with Chief Justice Roger Taney on inauguration day about a court decision he hoped to see handled during his time in office. Indeed, not long after the inauguration, the Supreme Court handed down a decision that would come to define Buchanan's presidency. The Dred Scott decision, Scott v. Sandford, ruled that black Americans could not be citizens of the United States. This gave the Buchanan administration and its southern allies a direct repudiation of the Missouri Compromise. The court ruled that Scott, a Missouri slave, had no right to sue in United States courts. The Dred Scott decision signaled that the federal government was now fully committed to extending slavery as far and as wide as it might want.

The Dred Scott decision seemed to settle the sectional crisis by making slavery fully national, but in reality it just exacerbated sectional tensions further. In 1857, Buchanan sent U.S. military forces to Utah, hoping to subdue Utah's Mormon communities. This action, however, led to renewed charges, many of them leveled from within his own party, that the administration was abusing its powers. Far more important than the Utah invasion, however, were the ongoing events in Kansas. It was Kansas that at last proved to many northerners that the sectional crisis would not go away unless slavery also went away.

The Illinois Senate race in 1858 put the scope of the sectional crisis on full display. Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln challenged the greatly influential Democrat Stephen Douglas. Pandering to appeals to white supremacy, Douglas hammered the Republican opposition as a "Black Republican" party bent on racial equality. The Republicans, including Lincoln, were thrown on the defensive. Democrats hung on as best they could, but the Republicans won the House of Representatives and picked up seats in the Senate. Lincoln actually lost his contest with Stephen Douglas but in the process firmly established himself as a leading national Republican. After the 1858 elections, all eyes turned to 1860. Given the Republican Party's successes since 1854, it was expected that the 1860 presidential election might produce the nation's first antislavery president.

In the troubled decades since the Missouri Compromise, the nation slowly tore itself apart. Congressmen clubbed each other nearly to death on the floor of Congress, and by the middle of the 1850s Americans were already at war on the Kansas and Missouri plains. Across the country, cities and towns were in various stages of revolt against federal authority. Fighting spread even farther against Indians in the Far West and against Mormons in Utah. The nation's militants anticipated a coming breakdown and worked to exploit it. John Brown, fresh from his actions in Kansas, moved east and planned more violence. Assembling a team from across the West, including black radicals from Oberlin, Ohio, and throughout communities in western Canada, Brown hatched a plan to attack Harper's Ferry, a federal weapons arsenal in Virginia (now West Virginia). He would use the weapons to lead a slave revolt. Brown approached Frederick Douglass, though Douglass refused to join.

Brown's raid embarked on October 16. By October 18, a command under Robert E. Lee had crushed the revolt. Many of Brown's men, including his own sons, were killed, but Brown himself lived and was imprisoned. Brown prophesied while in prison that the nation's crimes would only be purged with blood. He went to the gallows in December 1859. Northerners made a stunning display of sympathy on the day of his execution. Southerners took their reactions to mean that the coming 1860 election would be, in many ways, a referendum on secession and disunion.

Republicans wanted little to do with Brown and instead tried to portray themselves as moderates opposed to both abolitionists and pro-slavery expansionists. In this climate, the parties opened their contest for the 1860 presidential election. The Democratic Party fared poorly as its southern delegates bolted its national convention at Charleston and ran their own candidate, Vice President John C. Breckenridge of Kentucky. Hoping to field a candidate who might nonetheless manage to bridge the broken party's factions, the Democrats decided to meet again at Baltimore and nominated Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois.

The Republicans, meanwhile, held their boisterous convention in Chicago. The Republican platform made the party's antislavery commitments clear, also making wide promises to its white constituents, particularly westerners, with the promise of new land, transcontinental railroads, and broad support of public schools. Abraham Lincoln, a candidate few outside Illinois truly expected to win, nonetheless proved far less polarizing than the other names on the ballot. Lincoln won the nomination, and with the Democrats in disarray, Republicans knew their candidate Lincoln had a good chance of winning.

The year 1861, then, saw the culmination of the secession crisis. Before he left for Washington, Lincoln told those who had gathered in Springfield to wish him well and that he faced a "task greater than Washington's" in the years to come. Southerners were also learning the challenges of forming a new nation. The seceded states grappled with internal divisions right away, as states with slaveholders sometimes did not support the newly seceded states. In January, for example, Delaware rejected secession. But states in the Lower South adopted a different course. The state of Mississippi seceded. Later in the month, the states of Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana also all left the Union. By early February, Texas had also joined the newly seceded states. In February, southerners drafted a constitution protecting slavery and named Jefferson Davis of Mississippi their president. Weeks after Abraham Lincoln's inauguration, rebels in the newly formed Confederate States of America opened fire on Fort Sumter in South Carolina. Within days, Abraham Lincoln would demand seventy-five thousand volunteers from the North to crush the rebellion. The American Civil War had begun.

Slavery had long divided the politics of the United States. In time, these divisions became both sectional and irreconcilable. The first and most ominous sign of a coming sectional storm occurred over debates surrounding the admission of the state of Missouri in 1821. As westward expansion continued, these fault lines grew even more ominous, particularly as the United States managed to seize even more lands from its war with Mexico. The country seemed to teeter ever closer to a full-throated endorsement of slavery. But an antislavery coalition arose in the middle 1850s calling itself the Republican Party. Eager to cordon off slavery and confine it to where it already existed, the Republicans won the presidential election of 1860 and threw the nation on the path to war.

Throughout this period, the mainstream of the antislavery movement remained committed to a peaceful resolution of the slavery issue through efforts understood to foster the "ultimate extinction" of slavery in due time. But as the secession crisis revealed, the South could not tolerate a federal government working against the interests of slavery's expansion and decided to take a gamble on war with the United States. Secession, in the end, raised the possibility of emancipation through war, a possibility most Republicans knew, of course, had always been an option, but one they nonetheless hoped would never be necessary. By 1861 all bets were off, and the fate of slavery, and of the nation, depended on war.
1. Prigg v. Pennsylvania, 1842 Conflicts between the power of the federal government and states' rights strained American politics throughout the antebellum era. During the 1840s and 1850s, the most consistent source of tension on the issue stemmed from northerners refusing to comply with fugitive slave laws. As early as the 1780s, Pennsylvania passed laws that made it illegal to take a black person from the state for the purpose of enslaving them. In the majority opinion, excerpted here, Supreme Court justice Joseph Story decided that the national fugitive slave act overruled Pennsylvania's law. 2. Stories from the Underground Railroad, 1855-56 William Still was an African-American abolitionist who frequently risked his life to help freedom-seekers escape slavery. In these excerpts, Still offers the readers some of the letters sent to him from abolitionists and formerly enslaved persons. The passages shed light on family separation, the financial costs of the journey to freedom, and the logistics of the Underground Railroad. 3. Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin, 1852
In 1852 Harriet Beecher Stowe published her bestselling antislavery novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin. Sales for Uncle Tom's Cabin were astronomical, eclipsed only by sales of the Bible. The book became a sensation and helped move antislavery into everyday conversation for many northerners. In this passage, a senator and his wife debate the Fugitive Slave Law.
4. Charlotte Forten complains of racism in the North, 1855 Writer, activist, and teacher Charlotte Forten was born in Philadelphia in 1837 to a well-to-do African American family. Forten's diary entries from 1854 illuminate sectional tensions, especially in her discussion of the trial of Anthony Burns, a fugitive from slavery. She also expressed frequent frustration over the racism she encountered in Boston. 5. Margaraetta Mason and Lydia Maria Child discuss John Brown, 1860 After John Brown was arrested for his raid on Harpers Ferry, Lydia Maria Child wrote to the governor of Virginia requesting to visit Brown. Margaretta Mason of Virginia wrote a searing letter to Child attacking her for supporting a murder. Child responded, and the exchange of letters was published by the American Antislavery Society. 6. 1860 Republican Party platform The 1860 Republican Party convention in Chicago created a platform that clearly opposed the expansion of slavery in the West and the reopening of the slave trade. However, nothing in the document claimed that the government had the power to eliminate slavery where it already existed. Controversies over slavery suffuse the platform, but maybe even more noticeable is the importance of the West to the Republican Party. 7. South Carolina declaration of secession, 1860 Abraham Lincoln won the 1860 contest on November 6 with just 40% of the popular vote and not a single southern vote in the Electoral College. Within days, southern states were organizing secession conventions. On December 20, South Carolina voted to secede, and issued its "Declaration of the Immediate Causes." 8. Effects of the Fugitive Slave Law lithograph, 1850 This lithograph imagines the consequences of the Fugitive Slave Act, part of the Compromise of 1850. Four well-dressed black men are being hunted by a party of white men, seen in the background. There are a number of ambiguities in the image - are the black men slaves or free? Are they trying to escape or not? Where exactly are they? These ambiguities speak to the concerns many abolitionists had about the law, which required free citizens to return escaped slaves to their masters. 9. Sectional crisis map, 1856 This piece of Republican propaganda from the 1856 election makes clear distinctions between free states, slave states, and territories. Featured at the top of the page are engravings of John C. Fremont and his running mate, William C. Dayton. A vibrant red sets off the free states. The chart, "Freedom vs. Slavery," demonstrates the North's economic and cultural superiority over slave states in terms of everything from population per square mile, capital in manufactures, miles of railroad, the number of newspapers and public libraries, and value of churches. This chapter was edited by Jesse Gant, with content contributions by Jeffrey Bain-Conkin, Matthew A. Byron, Christopher Childers, Jesse Gant, Christopher Null, Ryan Poe, Michael Robinson, Nicholas Wood, Michael Woods, and Ben Wright.
Recommended citation: Jeffrey Bain-Conkin et al., "The Sectional Crisis," Jesse Gant, ed., in The American Yawp, eds. Joseph Locke and Ben Wright (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2018).

Recommended Reading

Bacon, Margaret Hope. But One Race: The Life of Robert Purvis. Albany: SUNY Press, 2012.

Baker, Jean H. Affairs of Party: The Political Culture of Northern Democrats in the Mid-Nineteenth Century. New York: Fordham University Press, 1983.

Berlin, Ira. Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2003.

Boydston, Jeanne. Home and Work: Housework, Wages, and the Ideology of Labor in the Early Republic. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.

Bracey, Christopher Alan, Paul Finkelman, and David Thomas Konig, eds. The Dred Scott Case: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on Race and Law. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2010.

Cutter, Barbara. Domestic Devils, Battlefield Angels: The Radicalization of American Womanhood, 1830-1865. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2003.

Engs, Robert F., and Randall M. Miller, eds. The Birth of the Grand Old Party: The Republicans' First Generation. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002.

Etcheson, Nicole. Bleeding Kansas: Contested Liberty in the Civil War Era. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004.

Flexnor, Eleanor. Century of Struggle: The Women's Rights Movement in the United States. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975.

Foner, Eric. Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press, 1970.

Grant, Susan-Mary. North over South: Northern Nationalism and American Identity in the Antebellum Era. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2000.

Holt, Michael F. The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party: Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Howe, Daniel Walker. The Political Culture of the American Whigs. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979.

Jeffrey, Julie Roy. The Great Silent Army of Abolitionism: Ordinary Women in the Antislavery Movement. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998.

Jones, Martha S. All Bound Up Together: The Woman Question in African American Public Culture, 1830-1900. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007.

Kantrowitz, Stephen. More Than Freedom: Fighting for Black Citizenship in a White Republic, 1829-1889. New York: Penguin, 2012.

McDaniel, W. Caleb. The Problem of Democracy in the Age of Slavery: Garrisonian Abolitionists and Transatlantic Reform. Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 2013.

Oakes, James. The Scorpion's Sting: Antislavery and the Coming of the Civil War. New York: Norton, 2014.

Potter, David M. The Impending Crisis, 1848-1861. New York: HarperCollins, 1976.

Quarles, Benjamin. Allies for Freedom: Blacks and John Brown. New York: Oxford University Press, 1974.

Robertson, Stacey. Hearts Beating for Liberty: Women Abolitionists in the Old Northwest. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010.

Sinha, Manisha. The Counterrevolution of Slavery: Politics and Ideology in Antebellum South Carolina. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000.

Smith, Kimberly K. The Dominion of Voice: Riot, Reason and Romance in Antebellum American Political Thought. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1999.

Varon, Elizabeth. Disunion! The Coming of the American Civil War, 1789-1859. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008.

Zaeske, Susan. Signatures of Citizenship: Petitioning, Antislavery, and Women's Political Identity. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003

Notes

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Slavery's western expansion created problems for the United States from the very start. Battles emerged over the westward expansion of slavery and over the role of the federal government in protecting the interests of slaveholders. Northern workers felt that slavery suppressed wages and stole land that could have been used by poor white Americans to achieve economic independence.

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The Sectional Crisis

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What was the difference between a man named Dred Scott and a mule?

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What was the difference between a man named Dred Scott and a mule?

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What was the difference between a man named Dred Scott and a mule from Don't Know Much About History

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Abe Lincoln vs Madison Ave

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Printable Version In his inaugural address, Lincoln attempted to be both firm and conciliatory. He declared secession to be wrong; but he also promised that he would "not interfere with the institution of slavery where it exists." He announced that he would use "the power confided to me...to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the Government." But he assured Southerners that "there would be no invasion, no using of force against or among the people anywhere."

When he delivered his inaugural address, the new President assumed that there was time for southern pro-union sentiment, which he greatly overestimated, to reassert itself, making a peaceful resolution to the crisis possible. The next morning, however, he received a letter from Robert Anderson informing him that Fort Sumter's supplies would be exhausted in four to six weeks and that it would take a 20,000-man force to reinforce the fort.

Lincoln received conflicting advice about what to do. Winfield Scott, his commanding general, saw "no alternative to surrender," convinced that it would take eight months to prepare naval and ground forces to relieve Fort Sumter. Secretary of State William H. Seward also favored abandoning the fort to avoid provoking a civil war, but also considered the possibility of inciting a foreign war (probably with France or Spain) as a way to reunite the country. Lincoln's Postmaster General Montgomery Blair and Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase favored dispatching a force of warships and transports to relieve the fort and assert federal authority, since "every hour of acquiescence ... strengthens [the rebels'] hands at home and their claims to recognition as an independent people abroad."

In the end, Lincoln decided to try to peacefully re-supply the fort with provisions and to inform the Confederate government of his decision beforehand. Unarmed ships with supplies would try to relieve the fort. Only if the South Carolinians used force to stop the mission would warships, positioned outside Charleston Harbor, go into action. In this way, Lincoln hoped to make the Confederacy responsible for starting a war.

Upon learning of Lincoln's plan, Jefferson Davis ordered General Pierre G.T. Beauregard (1818-1893) to force Fort Sumter's surrender before the supply mission could arrive. At 4:30 a.m. April 12, Confederate guns began firing on Fort Sumter. Thirty-three hours later, the installation surrendered. Incredibly, there were no fatalities on their side.

Ironically, the only fatalities at Fort Sumter occurred just after the battle ended. During the surrender ceremony, a pile of cartridges ignited, killing one soldier, fatally wounding another, and injuring four.

Copyright 2019 Digital History

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Printable Version In his inaugural address, Lincoln attempted to be both firm and conciliatory. He declared secession to be wrong; but he also promised that he would "not interfere with the institution of slavery where it exists." He announced that he would use "the power confided to me...to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the Government."

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American Yawp Link

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The American Civil War, the bloodiest in the nation's history, resulted in approximately 750,000 deaths. The war touched the life of nearly every American as military mobilization reached levels never seen before or since. Most northern soldiers went to war to preserve the Union, but the war ultimately transformed into a struggle to eradicate slavery.

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Hi, I'm John Green. This is Crash Course U.S. History, and today we come at last to the Civil War: the conflict that, in many ways, created a nation. So here's what you won't be getting today: we will not be describing battles and tactics. If that's your bag, might I suggest Ken Burns or if you prefer books, like a thousand authors. My favorites being James McPherson and Shelby Foote.

And number two, we won't be bashing and/or praising Abraham Lincoln very much, although we do have multiple Lincolns here because we've heard that's good for ratings. I mean, to watch or read certain accounts, you would think the Civil War was a lengthy chess game played by Abraham Lincoln against his cunning opponent, Abraham Lincoln, but of course there were other people involved. We are gonna quote a fair bit of Lincoln though because, you know, that won Tony Kushner an Academy Award nomination.

Three, we won't be claiming that the Civil War was somehow secretly about something other than slavery because that is just so early twentieth century. And, number four, there will not be a lot of jokes today because: ha ha ha ha, 700 thousand people died.

John-from-the-Past: Mr. Green! Mr. Green! Actually, only 680 thousand people died.

Yeah, it depends on how you count, you snivelling little ghoul, but recent estimates are between 680 thousand and 8 hundred thousand total casualties, deadlier for Americans than the American Revolution, World War I, World War II, and Vietnam. Combined.

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Nerdfighteria Wiki - The Civil War, Part I: Crash Course US History #20

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Hi, I'm John Green. This is Crash Course U.S. History, and today we come at last to the Civil War: the conflict that, in many ways, created a nation. So here's what you won't be getting today: we will not be describing battles and tactics.

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Sectionalism & Causes of the Civil War Explained in 10 Minutes

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Sectionalism & Causes of the Civil War Explained in 10 Minutes

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Hip Hughes History Video

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The Civil War and Reconstruction

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Ch 1 Lesson 5 The Civil War and Reconstruction

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Emancipation Proclamation, January 1, 1863

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Emancipation Proclamation, January 1, 1863

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Primary Source

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The Emancipation Proclamation was shaped by both pragmatic considerations and Lincoln's deeply held, lifelong hatred of slavery. It was timed, after the Union victory at Antietam, to strike a military blow against the South's economic and social infrastructure, and was taken in the full understanding (given the experience of "contrabands") that the advance of the Union armies would free more and more fugitive slaves. The Proclamation transformed the war to preserve the Union into a war to save the Union and end slavery.

This elaborately decorated copy of the Emancipation Proclamation was designed by a fourteen-year-old boy and signed by Lincoln himself. In the proclamation, which went into effect on January 1, 1863, Lincoln used no uncertain terms in declaring that "all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State . . . in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free."

Excerpt

[O]n the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free; and the Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom.

Questions for Discussion

Read the document introduction and the transcript, and apply your knowledge of American history in order to answer the questions that follow.

1. How does President Lincoln very specifically justify and explain his proclamation?

2. Lincoln exempts a city and parishes in Louisiana as well as certain counties from the proclamation. How can you explain why they are "left precisely as if this proclamation were not issued"?

3. Review the final four paragraphs. List and explain the significance of the changes in the lives of former slaves that Lincoln hopes will take place as a result of the Emancipation Proclamation.

4. Why do you think Lincoln chose to sign the Butler copy?

A printer-friendly version is available here.

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1863 | the emancipation proclamation was shaped by both pragmatic considerations and lincoln’s deeply held

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lifelong hatred of slavery. | the emancipation proclamation was shaped by both pragmatic considerations and lincoln’s deeply held

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lifelong hatred of slavery. it was timed

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to strike a military blow against the south’s economic and social infrastructure

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and was taken in the full understanding (given the experience of "contrabands") that the advance of the union armies would free more and more fugitive slaves. the proclamation transformed the war to preserve the union into a war to save the union and end slavery.
this elaborately decorated copy of the emancipation proclamation was designed by a fourteen-year-old boy and signed by lincoln himself. in the proclamation

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lincoln used no uncertain terms in declaring that "all persons held as slaves within any state or designated part of a state . . . in rebellion against the united states

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and forever free."
a full transcript is available.
excerpt
[o]n the first day of january

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in the year of our lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three

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all persons held as slaves within any state or designated part of a state

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the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the united states

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and forever free; and the executive government of the united states

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including the military and naval authority thereof

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will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons

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and will do no act or acts to repress such persons

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in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom.

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The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History

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The Emancipation Proclamation, January 1, 1863 | The Emancipation Proclamation was shaped by both pragmatic considerations and Lincoln's deeply held, lifelong hatred of slavery. | The Emancipation Proclamation was shaped by both pragmatic considerations and Lincoln's deeply held, lifelong hatred of slavery.

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Why Did John Brown Attack a Federal Arsenal?

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Why Did John Brown Attack a Federal Arsenal?

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Why Did John Brown Attack a Federal Arsenal from Don't Know Much About History

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Printable Version The initial Union strategy involved blockading Confederate ports to cut off cotton exports and prevent the import of manufactured goods; and using ground and naval forces to divide the Confederacy into three distinct theaters. These were the far western theater, west of the Mississippi River; the western theater, between the Mississippi and the Appalachians; and the eastern theater, in Virginia. Ridiculed in the press as the "Anaconda Plan," after the South American snake that crushes its prey to death, this strategy ultimately proved successful. Although about 90 percent of Confederate ships were able to break through the blockade in 1861, this figure was cut to less than 15 percent a year later. Although the Union army suffered repeated defeats and stalemates in the East, victories in the western theater undermined the hopes for Confederate independence.

Copyright 2019 Digital History

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Printable Version The initial Union strategy involved blockading Confederate ports to cut off cotton exports and prevent the import of manufactured goods; and using ground and naval forces to divide the Confederacy into three distinct theaters. These were the far western theater, west of the Mississippi River; the western theater, between the Mississippi and the Appalachians; and the eastern theater, in Virginia.

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Hip Hughes History Video

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The Dred Scott Decision Explained: US History Review

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Visual Summary Graphic Organizer

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Why Did the Southern States Secede from the United States

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Why Did the Southern States Secede from the United States

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Why Did the Southern States Secede from the United States from Don't Know Much About History

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Printable Version In August 1862, Lincoln stated: "If I could save the Union without freeing any slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that." In fact, by that time, immense pressure was building to end slavery and Lincoln had privately concluded that he could save the Union only by issuing an emancipation proclamation, which he had already drafted.

The pressure came from a handful of field commanders, Republicans in Congress, abolitionists, and slaves themselves. In May 1861, General Benjamin Butler (1818-1893), who had been a lawyer and a politician before the war, had declared slaves who escaped to Union lines "contraband of war," not returnable to their masters. In August, Major General John C. Freemont, commander of Union forces in Missouri, had issued an order freeing the slaves of Confederate sympathizers in Missouri. Lincoln, incensed by Freemont assumption of authority and fearful that the measure would "alarm our Southern Union friends, and turn them against us," revoked the order, but allowed Union generals discretion in providing refuge to fugitive slaves.

Congress, too, adopted a series of antislavery measures. In August 1861, it passed a Confiscation Act, authorizing the seizure of all property, including slaves, used for Confederate military purposes. Then in the spring and summer of 1862, Congress abolished slavery in the District of Columbia and the territories; prohibited Union officers from returning fugitive slaves; allowed the President to enlist African Americans in the army; and called for the seizure of Confederate property.

The border states' intransigence on the issue of slave emancipation also pushed the President in a more active direction. In the spring of 1862, Lincoln persuaded Congress to pass a resolution offering financial compensation to states that abolished slavery voluntarily. Three times, Lincoln met with border state members of Congress to discuss the offer, and even discussed the possibility of emancipation over a 30-year period. In July, however, the Congressmen rejected Lincoln's offer.

Copyright 2019 Digital History

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Printable Version In August 1862, Lincoln stated: "If I could save the Union without freeing any slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that."

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John Green: Hi, I'm John Green, this is CrashCourse US History, and today, we return to, wait, what are we talking about today, Stan? Oh, the Civil War, I can tell, 'cause Lincoln's here. But, this week, we're not going to talk about casualty counts or battles or generals with their heroic and probably fictional dying declarations.

Young John: Mr. Green! Mr. Green! Wait, did that one guy not really say, "Honey bun, how do I look in the face"? Because that was the best part of this whole class.

John: Jeb Stuart did say that, Me-from-the-Past, but it probably wasn't his last words. But anyway, today we're going to try to focus on what's really important. In the end, the really vital stuff isn't like, Pickett's charge or Lee saying "It is well that war is so terrible--otherwise, we would grow too fond of it" or the surrender at the Appomattox Courthouse. That stuff matters, and I don't want to deny it, but the Civil War and way we remember it is still shaping the world today, and that's what I wanna focus on, because it's the stuff that might actually change the way that you think about your own life in your own country, whether it's United States or the green parts of Not-America.

(Intro)

So let's start with one of the big questions historians still ask about the Civil War, did Lincoln free the slaves? The answer, as with so much here on CrashCourse, is yes, and also no. Let's go straight to the Thought Bubble today.

So Lincoln's reputation as the great emancipator rests largely on his emancipation proclamation, an executive order which went into effect on January 1st, 1863. This order ostensibly freed all the slaves in territory currently rebelling against the United States, i.e. in areas where the US government had no authority to free slaves. This is rather like the United States announcing that, from here on out, North Korea would be ruled by Lady Gaga. Sure, it's a great idea, but it's not really your jurisdiction. In areas where the US did have the authority to free slaves--the border states and some of the areas of the Confederacy that had been effectively conquered and occupied by federal troops, those slaves were not freed. So Lincoln didn't free the slaves that he actually had the power to free. Many historians argue that, in fact, slaves freed themselves. How? By running away to Union lines and becoming, quote, contrabands. Because this was a time of war, and slaves were seen as a valuable resource to the enemy, when they escaped and sought refuge with Union troops, Union commanders wouldn't give them back despite fugitive slave laws still being on the books. So many slaves escaped, the argument goes, that Lincoln was basically forced to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, because until he did so, those contraband slaves were still technically property of their southern masters, and the Union generals were breaking American laws by not returning them. The Emancipation Proclamation then had the added bonus of encouraging more slaves to come over to the Union lines, many of whom joined the army, which eventually included about 180,000 former slaves and free black men. Thanks, Thought Bubble.

So Lincoln may also have issued the Proclamation in order to shift the focus of the war from Union to slavery to prevent the British from recognizing the Confederacy. Arguably, the Confederacy's best chance to win the Civil War was to get some kind of foreign patron, and Britain was the likeliest choice as it was very dependent on Confederate textiles. But as you'll remember from all those people going to Canada, Britain had already abolished slavery and it was the historic source of abolitionist sentiment, and so it was very shrewd of Lincoln to make the war about slavery. Off-topic, but if I may put on my world historian hat for a moment, thank you, Stan, the fact that the British did not recognize the South had profound effects on the whole world, because it meant that the British shifted their focus to Egypt and India as sources of cotton for their textile mills. All that noted, I think Lincoln does deserve some credit for freeing the slaves, for two reasons.

First, he pushed for the Thirteenth Amendment, which actually ended slavery in the United States, and perhaps more importantly, he continued the war to its conclusion and demanded that the end of slavery and the return of the southern states to the Union be conditions for peace. This may seem obvious today, but in 1864, it wasn't. In fact, there were numerous calls in the North for an end to the war that would allow the South to exist as a separate country and leave slavery intact. Now, of course, the rest of world history indicates that, at some point, slavery would have ended, but by prosecuting the war to its end, Lincoln brought about slavery's end sooner.

But the Civil War didn't just end slavery, if it had gone differently, Me-from-the-Past might have been annoying teachers in a different country from the one in which I now live. I might have needed a passport to visit my parents in North Carolina and slavery might have survived for decades. Brazil didn't fully abolish slavery until 1888. And the South would be covered in green, as part of Non-America, or the North, depending on where you're watching this video, I guess. And the people who lived through the Civil War knew it was momentous. In his famous Gettysburg Address, Abraham Lincoln fostered the idea that the Civil War was a kind of second American revolution, or at least a culmination in reaffirmation of the first one. "From these honored dead, we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion, that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." We tried to hire Daniel Day Lewis for that, but he was unavailable. That phrase "new birth of freedom" had religious significance as well, because it was like the 19th century equivalent to "born again".

So the Civil War was the first modern war in terms of its scale and its destruction, like, others have waged war on civilians to break the spirit of their enemies, Stan, Mongoltage opportunity!

(Mongoltage plays)

But new technologies made this one of the most destructive wars yet recorded, and yes, I know the Tai-Ping rebellion took more lives and that in terms of percentage of population killed the contemporaneous war in Paraguay was worse but bear with me.

Rifles, and towards the end of the Civil war machine guns shifted the way that people fight. It became easier to defend a line, so cavalry charges and huge waves of attacks started to be just... slaughtery, although we take World War I for the rest of the world to figure that out. And the incredible numbers of dead and wounded really changed America's relationship with death itself. Like, Gettysberg's address was given to dedicate a new national cemetery and the Civil War helped to create a culture of meditation on mortality itself that led to cemeteries replacing churchyards as the final resting places for most Americans. And the sight of slaughter and the sheer weight of it had profound existential effects on a generation of American intellectuals from Walt Whitman to Oliver Wendell Holmes.

( 06:04) Oh, it's time for the mystery document? The rules here are simple: I guess the mystery document and then usually I am shocked. Oh my gosh, today's mystery document is on an iPad! This appears to be a photograph of wounded soldiers in hospital I'm gonna go ahead and call it as being by Matthew Brady- what?! I already got it? But I didn't get to say the na- oh it's called "Wounded Soldiers in Hospital". Thank you for an easy one, Stan.

( 06:25) So Matthew Brady was a prolific photographer during the Civil War, though like a lot of prolific people he often took credit for work done by his employees, and Brady really changed the way that people thought about war. He and his staff created some 10.000 images during the Civil War and it was the first time that an event had been photographically documented so thoroughly. By the way, lest you think the unreliability of images begin with Photoshop; many of Brady's photo's were staged. He would move bodies, sometimes soldiers were apparently told to act dead. But of course at the time photographs felt inherently authentic and written accounts of battle could now be accompanied by actual images of fighting and its aftermath.

( 07:01) But perhaps the most important impact of the Civil war was the new nation that it created, like the American Civil War fits right in with the global phenomenon of nation-building that was happening. Soon we would have places on the map like Italy and Germany and older places like Greece would be reborn as nation-states and then all of these places would be known to Americans as 'Not America'. But by the way, congratulations to Italy on their recent election of their 732nd Prime Minister in just 180 years of existing. By far the most successful of these new nation states were the ones that embraced industrialization and modern ideas of organization and centralized government. Northern victory in the Civil War meant that the United States would follow the path that the North had laid down: it would become an industrial rather than agrarian nation with a national government, pre-eminent over those with individual states. It would become a nation. And it's not a coincidence that over the course of the 19th century people stopped pluralizing "the United States". They stopped saying "The United States are a great place to live," and began saying "The United States is a great place to live." The Civil War helped singularize what had been until then had been a plural nation. And Abraham Lincoln was the first president to truly expand the power of the executive. He ordered blockades and suspended Habeas Corpus, in addition to emancipating the slaves. But the Republican-dominated congress played a role in this federalization too. Congress passed the Homestead Act in 1862, that encouraged settlement of the West by basically giving away land to anyone who had 18 dollars and was willing to live on it and farm it for five years.

( 08:27) Meanwhile the Morrill Land Grand Act financed colleges to offer training in new scientific agricultural techniques, the Department of Agriculture was created to generate statistics and share best practices in farming. Congress also helped unify the country with massive land grants in the Pacific Railway Act of 1862. And during the was the Lincoln Administration gave away 158 million acres to railroads to tie the nation together. Get it? Tie? Railroad ties? The nation tog... I'll get my coat and go.

( 08:54) Plus, as you may have noticed: wars are expensive, and in order to finance the Civil War the congress passed the first Progressive Income Tax in American history, as well as floating huge bond issues to the public. And when that wasn't enough the administration began printing federal money on green paper called 'Green Bags'. These, along with notes issued by banks under the National Bank Act of 1863 became the first national currency of the United States.

( 09:16) All together the total cost of the war for the Union was 6.7 billion dollars. Interestingly, if in 1860 the Federal Government had purchased every slave and had granted a 40 acre farm to each family the total cost would have been 3.1 billion dollars. But a. it would have been hard to get that bill through congress and b. at the time the federal government had no way to raise that kind of money. The Federal Government also actively promoted the industrial economy that was to become dominant in the United States after the war. In fact industrialization was so healthy that visitors to cities in the north during the Civil War would have been hard-pressed to know that they were even in a war.

( 09:51) So ultimately the Civil War was a victory for Alexander Hamilton's vision of what America should be. I mean, Thomas Jefferson could never have imagined the United States that emerged from the Civil War: a government that supported an army of a million men, carried a 2.5 billion dollar national debt, distributed public lands, printed a national currency and collected an array of internal taxes. It sounds like Britain!

So the Civil War wasn't just a victory of North over South or of freedom over slavery. It created the nation that the United States of America has become. Thanks for watching. I'll see you next week.

( 10:22) Crash Course is produced and directed by Stan Muller, our script supervisor is Meredith Danko- too far! Our associate producer is Danica Johnson and the show is written by my high school history teacher Raoul Meyer and myself, and our graphics team is Thought Café. Every week there's a new caption for the libertage, you can suggest some in the comments, or you can also ask questions about today's video that will be answered by our team of historians. Thank you for watching and as we say in my home town: don't forget to be awesome.

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Nerdfighteria Wiki - The Civil War Part 2: Crash Course US History #21

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John Green: Hi, I'm John Green, this is CrashCourse US History, and today, we return to, wait, what are we talking about today, Stan? Oh, the Civil War, I can tell, 'cause Lincoln's here. But, this week, we're not going to talk about casualty counts or battles or generals with their heroic and probably fictional dying declarations.

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Benchmark Note Cards

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Turning Points- compromise 1820, 1850, & election of Lincoln

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President Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address 1865

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President Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address 1865

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Primary Source

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Just 701 words long, Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address took only six or seven minutes to deliver, yet contains many of the most memorable phrases in American political oratory. The speech contained neither gloating nor rejoicing. Rather, it offered Lincoln's most profound reflections on the causes and meaning of the war. The "scourge of war," he explained, was best understood as divine punishment for the sin of slavery, a sin in which all Americans, North as well as South, were complicit. It describes a national moral debt that had been created by the "bondsmen's 250 years of unrequited toil," and ends with a call for compassion and reconciliation.

With its biblical allusions, alliteration, repetition, and parallel structure, and its reliance on one-syllable words, the address has the power of a sermon. It incorporates many of the themes of the religious revivals: sin, sacrifice, and redemption. At a White House reception, President Lincoln encountered Frederick Douglass. "I saw you in the crowd today, listening to my inaugural address," the president remarked. "How did you like it?" "Mr. Lincoln," Douglass answered, "that was a sacred effort."

In this printing of the Second Inaugural, the blue ink is a significant design detail. After Lincoln's death on April 15, 1865, all copies were printed in black ink appropriate to a national mood of mourning. In the days before Lincoln's assassination, readers were focused primarily on the tone of reconciliation that on March 4 had moved his audience to tears.

A full transcript is available.

Excerpt

On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war-seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came.

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president lincoln’s second inaugural address

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lincoln’s second inaugural address took only six or seven minutes to deliver

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yet contains many of the most memorable phrases in american political oratory. the speech contained neither gloating nor rejoicing. rather

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
it offered lincoln’s most profound reflections on the causes and meaning of the war. the "scourge of war

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was best understood as divine punishment for the sin of slavery

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were complicit. it describes a national moral debt that had been created by the "bondsmen’s 250 years of unrequited toil

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" and ends with a call for compassion and reconciliation.
with its biblical allusions

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
the address has the power of a sermon. it incorporates many of the themes of the religious revivals: sin

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and redemption. at a white house reception

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president lincoln encountered frederick douglass. "i saw you in the crowd today

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" the president remarked. "how did you like it?" "mr. lincoln

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"that was a sacred effort."
in this printing of the second inaugural

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the blue ink is a significant design detail. after lincoln’s death on april 15

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
all copies were printed in black ink appropriate to a national mood of mourning. in the days before lincoln’s assassination

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
readers were focused primarily on the tone of reconciliation that on march 4 had moved his audience to tears.
a full transcript is available.
excerpt
on the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. all dreaded it

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all sought to avert it. while the inaugural address was being delivered from this place

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devoted altogether to saving the union without war

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war—seeking to dissolve the union and divide effects by negotiation. both parties deprecated war

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but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
and the other would accept war rather than let it perish

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President Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address, 1865

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President Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address, 1865 | | Just 701 words long, Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address took only six or seven minutes to deliver, yet contains many of the most memorable phrases in American political oratory. The speech contained neither gloating nor rejoicing.

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Printable Version In July 1862, about two months before President Lincoln issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, Congress adopted a second Confiscation Act calling for the seizure of the property of slaveholders who were actively engaged in the rebellion. It seems unlikely that this act would have freed any slaves, since the federal government would have to prove that individual slaveholders were traitors. (In fact, one of the largest slaveholders in South Carolina was a Baltimore Unionist). Lincoln felt that Congress lacked the legal authority to emancipate slaves; he believed that only the President acting as commander-in-chief had the authority to abolish slavery.

On September 22, 1862, less than a week after the Battle of Antietam, President Lincoln met with his cabinet. As one cabinet member, Samuel P. Chase, recorded in his diary, the President told them that he had "thought a great deal about the relation of this war to Slavery":

You all remember that, several weeks ago, I read to you an Order I had prepared on this subject, which, since then, my mind has been much occupied with this subject, and I have thought all along that the time for acting on it might very probably come. I think the time has come now. I wish it were a better time. I wish that we were in a better condition. The action of the army against the rebels has not been quite what I should have best liked. But they have been driven out of Maryland, and Pennsylvania is no longer in danger of invasion. When the rebel army was at Frederick, I determined, as soon as it should be driven out of Maryland, to issue a Proclamation of Emancipation such as I thought most likely to be useful. I said nothing to any one; but I made the promise to myself, and (hesitating a little)--to my Maker. The rebel army is now driven out, and I am going to fulfill that promise.

The preliminary Emancipation Proclamation that President Lincoln issued on September 22 stated that all slaves in designated parts of the South on January 1, 1863, would be freed. The President hoped that slave emancipation would undermine the Confederacy from within. Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles reported that the President told him that freeing the slaves was "a military necessity, absolutely essential to the preservation of the Union....The slaves [are] undeniably an element of strength to those who [have] their service, and we must decide whether that element should be with us or against us."

Fear of foreign intervention in the war also influenced Lincoln to consider emancipation. The Confederacy had assumed, mistakenly, that demand for cotton from textile mills would lead Britain to break the Union naval blockade. Nevertheless, there was a real danger of European involvement in the war. By redefining the war as a war against slavery, Lincoln hoped to generate support from European liberals.

Even before Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, Postmaster General Montgomery Blair (1813-1883), a former Democrat from Maryland, had warned the President that this decision might stimulate antiwar protests among northern Democrats and cost the administration the fall 1862 elections. In fact, Peace Democrats did protest against the proclamation and Lincoln's assumption of powers not specifically granted by the Constitution. Among the "abuses" they denounced were his unilateral decision to call out the militia to suppress the "insurrection," impose a blockade of southern ports, expand the army beyond the limits set by law, spend federal funds without prior congressional authorization, and suspend the writ of habeas corpus (the right of persons under arrest to have their case heard in court). The Lincoln administration imprisoned about 13,000 people without trial during the war, and shut Democratic newspapers in New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago for varying amounts of time.

The Democrats failed to gain control of the House of Representatives in the Fall 1862 election, in part because the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation gave a higher moral purpose to the northern cause.

Copyright 2019 Digital History

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Printable Version In July 1862, about two months before President Lincoln issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, Congress adopted a second Confiscation Act calling for the seizure of the property of slaveholders who were actively engaged in the rebellion. It seems unlikely that this act would have freed any slaves, since the federal government would have to prove that individual slaveholders were traitors.

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Worksheet

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Benchmark Skill Activities

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The Meaning of the Emancipation Proclamation

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The Meaning of the Emancipation Proclamation

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Printable Version In October 1862, the London Times dismissed the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation as an empty gesture. "Where he has no power Mr. Lincoln will set the Negroes free," the newspaper commented; "where he retains power he will consider them as slaves. This is more like a Chinaman beating his two swords together to frighten his enemy than like an earnest man pressing forward his cause."

In recent years, it has sometimes been charged that the Emancipation Proclamation did not free any slaves, since it applied only to areas that were in a state of rebellion, and explicitly exempted the border states, Tennessee, and portions of Louisiana and Virginia. This view is incorrect. The proclamation did officially and immediately free slaves in South Carolina's sea islands, Florida, and some other locations occupied by Union troops. Certainly, the Emancipation Proclamation was only a crucial first step toward complete emancipation, but in effect it transformed the Union forces into an army of liberation.

At the time he issued the preliminary proclamation, Lincoln defended it as a war measure necessary to defeat the Confederacy and preserve the Union. But it seems clear that Lincoln regarded this argument as necessary on tactical grounds. When he issued the final proclamation on January 1, 1863, he described it not only as "a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion," but an "act of justice."

In July 1863, Hannah Johnson, the daughter of a fugitive slave, heard an erroneous report that Lincoln was going to reverse the Emancipation Proclamation. She wrote the President: "Don't do it. When you are dead and in Heaven, in a thousand years that action of yours will make the Angels sing your praises...."

Copyright 2019 Digital History

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Printable Version In October 1862, the London Times dismissed the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation as an empty gesture. "Where he has no power Mr. Lincoln will set the Negroes free," the newspaper commented; "where he retains power he will consider them as slaves.

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The Rise of Cotton: Crash Course Black American History #13

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Using Primary Sources

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The Underground Railroad: Crash Course Black American History #15

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The Dred Scott Decision: Crash Course Black American History #16