Topic 14

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1.Describe the Election of 1860. Who were the candidates? Who won? Significance?

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Candidates: Northern Democrats- Stephen Douglas, 12

Southern Democrats- John Breckenridge, 72

Constitutional Union (former Whigs, etc)-- John Bell, 39

Republicans-- Abraham Lincoln, 180 EV

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2.Which were the first seven states to secede? When did they secede and why?

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3.When and why was the CSA created?

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4.What additional states seceded after Lincoln's inauguration? Why?

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Lincoln's inaugural address:

“Apprehension seems to exist among the people of the Southern States that by the accession of a Republican administration, their property and their peace and personal security are to be endangered.  There has never been any reasonable cause for such apprehension . . .   I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists.  I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.”

“. . . in your hands, my dissatisfied fellow country men, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war.  The government will not assail you.”

 

 

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5.What slave states did not secede?

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6.What did the Mississippi Secession Resolution state? What did it mean?

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7.Who was Alexander Stephens? What did he say?

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He was the Vice President of the Confederacy.

He goes to Savannah Georgia, and tries to explain the political philosophy of the seceded south. This is what he says:

 

“The Confederate Constitution has put at rest forever all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institutions –  African slavery as it exists among us – the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization.  This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution . . .

 

“The prevailing ideas entertained by Jefferson and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old Constitution were, that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. . .

 

“These ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong.  They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. . .

 

“Our new Government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man, that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and moral condition.  This, our new Government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.”

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8.What was the core philosophy of the CSA?

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9.Why did the South secede?

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Southern nationalism: "Fire Eaters" (like  Edmund Ruffin) triumphed over moderates (like Sam Houston). Purpose: to preserve and protect slavery from northern attacks.

 

 

South Carolina's Declaration of Causes of Secession:

“[The 14 northern free states] have denounced as sinful the institution of Slavery; they have permitted the open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace of and eloin the property of the citizens of other States.  They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books, and pictures, to servile insurrection.

“. . . A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States whose opinions and purposes are hostile to Slavery. . . . He has declared that ‘Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free.’ . . .

“[The Republican] party . . . has announced that the South shall be excluded from the common territory, that the Judicial tribunal shall be made sectional, and that a war must be waged against Slavery until it shall cease throughout the United States. . . .”

 

  If Southern secessionists meant what they wrote and meant what they said, they left the Union to PROTECT AND PERPETUATE THE INSTITUTION OF SLAVERY, which was based on racism, against Northern abolitionist assaults.

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10.What was the southern justification for secession?

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NOT on right of revolution.

But on principle of extreme state sovereignty
Each state retained complete sovereignty
US Constitution was compact between states, not people
Federal government a mere league from which any state might withdraw

Principle written into CSA Constitution.

But principle was NOT valid.

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11.What was the reaction to secession in the North? In Congress?

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Public:
At first, disbelief.
Then, relief.

President Buchanan:
No state has a right to secede, but federal
government can do nothing to stop it.

U.S. Congress:
Crittenden Compromise
Amend Constitution to preserve and protect slavery in South
For Southern fire-eaters: too little, too late.
For Republicans: way too much.

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12.What was Buchanan's reaction?

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13.What was the Crittenden Compromise? (details necessary)

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Front 14

14.What did Lincoln have to say about slavery? About secession?

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Secession: “The Union of these States is perpetual . . . No state upon its own mere action, can lawfully get out of the Union . . . I shall take care, as the Constitution itself expressly enjoins upon me, that the laws of the Union be faithfully executed in all the States. . . The power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the Government...”

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15.What happened at Fort Sumter? Why was it significant?

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No strategic value.
Great symbolic value.
to South: symbol of Northern threat to Southern independence
to North: symbol of Federal authority in South

 

Southern reaction to Lincoln's decision to resupply of Fort Sumter:

Attacking Fort Sumter might lead to war.

But war might be good for South.
Solidify and enlarge CSA
Win official recognition from Europe

And, if war came, South would easily win against “nation of shopkeepers”

 

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16.How did the Northern public respond to Fort Sumter?

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Front 17

17.Why did the North go to war? Why did the North refuse to allow the South to secede peacefully?

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Had to respond to Southern aggression.

NOT to free the slaves.

But to save the Union.

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18.Who was Horace Greeley? How did Lincoln respond to him? What does that tell you about the meaning of the war and nationalism?

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Lincoln's letter to Greeley (Aug 1862):

Attacking Fort Sumter might lead to war.

But war might be good for South.
Solidify and enlarge CSA
Win official recognition from Europe

And, if war came, South would easily win against “nation of shopkeepers”

 

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19.Who would you expect to win the conflict and why?

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20.What advantages did the North have? South? Disadvantages?

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21.What was the Emancipation Proclamation? Whom did it free? Why was it issued?

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It freed no one.

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22.What happened at Andersonville and why? What does it communicate about the nature of war?

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23.Where did Lee surrender? What was the final battle of the Civil War?What were the consequences of the Civil War? (lengthy answer here)

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On May 13, 1865, a month after Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, Private John J. Williams of the 34th Indiana became the last man killed in the Civil War, in a battle at Palmito Ranch, Texas. The final skirmish was a Confederate victory.

Hiram Revels of Mississippi became the
first black man ever elected to the
U.S. Senate. He filled the seat last held
by Jefferson Davis.

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•The Election of 1860

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•Crittenden Compromise

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•Fort Sumter

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•Horace Greeley

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Front 28

•Gettysburg Address

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Nov 1863:

“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
“Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure . . .
“. . . that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

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•The Civil War

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Was ABOUT slavery:

Only slavery threatened Union.

South willing to destroy Union to preserve slavery.

Lincoln willing to risk war to preserve Union.

“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.” – A. Lincoln

 

More than three million men fought in the war.

Two percent of the population—
more than 620,000—died in it.

In two days at Shiloh on the banks of the Tennessee River, more Americans fell than in all previous American wars combined.

 

During the Battle of Antietam, 12,401 Union men were killed, missing or wounded; double the casualties of D-Day, 82 years later. With a total of 23,000 casualties on both sides, it was the bloodiest single day of the Civil War.

At Cold Harbor, Va., 7,000 Americans fell in 20 minutes.

 

Disease was the chief killer during the war, taking two men for every one who died of battle wounds.

During the Battle of Antietam, Clara Barton tended the wounded so close to the fighting that a bullet went through her sleeve and killed a man she was treating.

 

Senator John J. Crittenden of Kentucky had two sons who became major generals during the Civil War: one for the North, one for the South.

Missouri sent 39 regiments to fight in the siege of Vicksburg: 17 to the Confederacy and 22 to the Union.

 

At the start of the war, the value of all manufactured goods produced in all the Confederate states added up to less than one-fourth of those produced in New York State alone.

On July 4, 1863, after 48 days of siege, Confederate General John C. Pemberton surrendered the city of Vicksburg to the Union’s General, Ulysses S. Grant. The Fourth of July was not be celebrated in Vicksburg for another 81 years. (1944)

 

African Americans constituted less than one percent of the northern population, yet by the war’s end made up ten percent of the Union Army. A total of 180,000 black men, more than 85% of those eligible, enlisted.

 

Andersonville Prison in southwest Georgia held 33,000 prisoners in 1864. It was the fifth largest city in the Confederacy.

 

 

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•The Emancipation Proclamation

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A Compromise Document to win support of:
Abolitionists
European public opinion
Avoid alienation of border states

Significance:
challenged the institution of slavery in the South where it had long been assumed that the federal government had no power to mess around with the South’s “peculiar institution.”
Set the stage for the 13th Amendment

 

Front 31

•Andersonville Prison

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Andersonville Prison in southwest Georgia held 33,000 prisoners in 1864. It was the fifth largest city in the Confederacy.

 

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•"A Boys War"

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It could have been called The Boys’ War.
More than 2,000,000 Federal soldiers were twenty-one or under (of a total of some 2,700,000)
More than 1,000,000 were eighteen or under.
About 800,000 were seventeen or under.
About 200,000 were sixteen or under.
About 100,000 were fifteen or under.
Three hundred were thirteen or under-most of these fifers or drummers, but regularly enrolled, and sometimes fighters.
Twenty-five were ten or under.

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•Gettysburg

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Front 34

•Vicksburg

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•Ulysses S Grant

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Front 36

•Robert E. Lee

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Front 37

•John Wilkes Booth

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On November 9, 1863, President Lincoln attended a theater in
Washington, D.C., to see “The Marble Heart.” An accomplished actor, John Wilkes Booth, was in the cast.

 

On March 4, 1865, Lincoln was inaugurated for a second term. Yards away in the crowd was John Wilkes Booth with a pistol in his pocket. His vantage point on the balcony, he said later, offered him "an excellent chance to kill the President, if I had wished.“

 

On April 14, 1865, shortly after 10:00pm, John Wilkes Booth entered the President’s box at Ford’s Theatre.  With derringer in hand, Wilkes assassinated the President.

 

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1.Why did the South secede and how did they justify it?

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Front 39

2.What significant changers were brought about by the American Civil War? Was it worth it? Explain.

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Although the question of slavery was settled by the Civil War and the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, white racism did not disappear, white racism still existed after the war was over.

 

The North’s victory in the Civil War was a triumph of American nationalism and a defeat of Southern nationalism.

 

One significant change brought on by the war was an increase in patriotism, certainly in the victorious North, if not in the vanquished South.

 

Another important consequence: the War sped up the process of partial assimilation by immigrant groups into Northern society and, in general, heightened the spirit of American nationalism in the North.

 

Certain political and legal theories were affected by the war, especially the political theory of secession.

Political Theory of Secession Killed Forever

 

The Civil War broadened and strengthened the powers of the central government.

 

Not only did the central government in general grow stronger during the War, but also the presidency in particular grew stronger, thanks in large measure to the actions taken by President Lincoln.

 

One of the most important effects of the Civil War on American culture was that the war “settled” the issue of slavery.
Even though the war had begun as a war to save the Union, it also dramatically affected the institution of slavery.

 

 

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Three reasons the south should've accepted Lincoln.

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Democrats still controlled House

Southern Democrats still controlled Supreme Court

Lincoln willing to compromise