US Hist 6.pdf

Prof. dr hab. Marek Oziewicz History of the United States

Lecture 6

Lecture Six

The Retreat from Union and the Civil War (1850-1865)

Scope: This lecture explores the prelude to the Civil War as it was fought politically in Congress, and

the actual course of the war as it was fought on battlefields. The economies of the North and the South

are compared, pointing out their strengths and weaknesses. The controversy over the expansion of

slavery is traced through the Wilmot Proviso, the Compromise of 1850, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the

Ostend Manifesto, and further milestones up to the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860. The course

of the Civil War is examined in its two phases: from the attack on Fort Sumter to the Emancipation

proclamation (1861-63), and from the Battle of Gettysburg to Lee’s surrender (1864-65). Lastly, the

gains and losses of the war are reviewed.

Outline

I. Between 1840s and 1860s the US experienced tremendous economic growth. A sophisticated

transportation network of railroads and canals, together with the telegraph, helped integrate the

entire US into a single national market. Yet, by the 1850s the differences between North and South

overwhelmed the connections that bound them together.

A. Between 1820s and 1860s the economy in the North changed in three important ways: it was

more productive, more populous, and more urban.

1. Thanks to impressive new inventions, northern farmers’ productivity quadrupled.

2. The US, predominantly the North, accepted five million immigrants. More than two-thirds

of them were Irish or German, usually Roman Catholic. By 1855 a larger proportion of

Americans was foreign born than at any other time in the nation’s history. By 1860

immigrants made up more than one-third of the residents in northern cities.

3. The society in the North was becoming more urban and industry was replacing agriculture

as the driving economic force.

B. Although the 1850s were among the most prosperous years in the South’s history, slavery

could not transform the South the way wage labor was transforming the North.

C. Despite the growing economic differences between the North and the South, both sections

coveted western lands.

1. By 1850 many northerners had come to believe that slavery degraded free labor and

undermined economic opportunity. If slavery were allowed to expand into the West it

would deprive free laborers of an important source of prosperity and independence.

2. At the same time the slaveholders had come to believe that their own prosperity depended

on the diffusion of the slave economy into the West. By 1850 slavery had expanded more

than halfway across the continent of North America and white southerners grew

accustomed to viewing territorial expansion of slavery as a sign of progress.

II. Westward expansion forced the issue of slavery into the political mainstream. The controversy

plagued national politics until the outbreak of the Civil War. It can be traced through the following

milestones: the Wilmot Proviso, the Compromise of 1850, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and the

Ostend Manifesto.

1. The southern social structure was largely unchanged.

2. A prosperous slave economy meant urban stagnation and no incentives for industry. In the

South good times reinforced the wealth of the long-established slave-owning class.

Prof. dr hab. Marek Oziewicz History of the United States

Lecture 6

A. The Wilmot Proviso was an amendment to a bill concerning the future of the land acquired in

the War with Mexico. Proposed in 1846 by David Wilmot, the proviso proposed banning

slavery from all the territories acquired in the war. The bill was opposed by southern

representatives and defeated.

B. To break congressional gridlock senator Henry Clay of Kentucky devised a series of

resolutions paired so as to balance the conflicting interests of North and South. This “Omnibus

Bill” again exposed insurmountable sectional hostilities and was killed by Senate.

C. To rescue the compromise, senator Stephen A. Douglas from Illinois, broke the omnibus

package up into five separate bills. Although proslavery and antislavery forces in Congress

never once compromised on a single issue, the five bills were passed and came to be known as

the “Compromise of 1850.” The Compromise of 1850 worked well in the short run.

1. One problem was that neither side saw it as victory, and to both it had the bitter taste of

defeat.

2. Even worse, one feature of the compromise, the new fugitive slave law, provoked a

widespread opposition in the North.

D. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 provoked an uproar because of four reasons:

1. It took jurisdiction over fugitive slave cases away from northern courts and gave it to a

newly established cadre of US commissioners.

2. It “bribed” the commissioners to send captives into slavery (they were paid $10 if they

ruled that a black captive should be returned to slavery but only $5 if they ruled that the

captive was legitimately free).

3. It allowed commissioners to draft local citizens to assist slave catchers, thereby forcing

northerners against their wills to send their neighbors into slavery.

4. It seemed to be imposing southern laws and institutions onto the North, forcing northerners

into complicity with the slave regime.

F. The next milestone that revived the slavery debate was the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. The

Act explicitly repealed the Missouri Compromise by allowing slavery north of the Missouri

Compromise line. As with other southern victories in the recent past, the Kansas-Nebraska Act

only increased support for anti-slavery politicians in the North.

G. Northern patience was also strained by President Pierce’s political efforts to enable the further

southward expansion of slavery.

1. In 1853 Pierce sent a South Carolinian, James Gadsden, to Mexico with instructions to

spend up to $50 million to acquire a substantial portion of northern Mexico for the US.

After Gadsden returned to Washington with a treaty, for the first time in American history

the Congress rejected land ceded to the US. Northern Senators were unwilling to add any

more potential slave territory to the Union, and the Gadsden Purchase ended up securing

only a small piece of land to even out the southern border of the US.

2. Pierce also tried bullying Spain to sell Cuba to the US. In 1854, following an international

meeting about Cuba, the US representative in Europe issued the Ostend Manifesto: a

shockingly aggressive declaration that Cuba was “naturally” a part of the US and will be

E. One measure of northern anxiety about the Fugitive Slave Act was the phenomenal success of

Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852). The novel quickly established itself as the

most popular American book of the 19 th century.

Prof. dr hab. Marek Oziewicz History of the United States

Lecture 6

wrested from Spain by force, if necessary. When it reached the US, the Ostend Manifesto

was immediately denounced as yet another example of slavery’s insatiable hunger for

expansion. The Pierce administration quickly withdrew support for designs against Cuba.

III. The sectionalism of the political disputes severely weakened American political parties. By 1854 a

new and powerful political force emerged. Called the Republican Party, it was dedicated to halting

slavery’s westward expansion and appealed exclusively to northern voters.

A. In the presidential election of 1856 the choice between the Republican and the Democratic

candidate meant that for the first time in their history, Americans were being asked to decide

whether the Union was worth preserving. The Republicans lost, but President James

Buchanan’s efforts to silence the slavery issue proved a disastrous failure.

1. In 1857 sectional tensions were fueled by the Dred Scott decision. The US Supreme Court

declared that African Americans were not and never had been citizens. It also defined slave

ownership as a constitutional right, thereby threatening the power of states to abolish

slavery within their borders.

2. Hostilities were blown up even further by the publication of Hinton Rowan Helper’s The

Impending Crisis of the South (1857). A modest farmer from North Carolina, Helper

savagely attacked the entire political economy of slavery, arguing that it ruined small

southern farmers and the entire region.

3. 1859 saw John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry, through which this radical Calvinist

attempted to incite a full-scale slave rebellion in Virginia. The attempt failed, Brown was

captured, tried and hanged.

(1) Although the raid was absurd and the north condemned it, Brown’s calm and dignified

behavior in prison, at his trial, and at his own hanging moved northerners to sympathy.

(2) Northern sympathy for John Brown shocked the white South even more than the actual

raid. Brown’s trial and execution galvanized northern public opinion against slavery

and southern opinion against the Union.

B. In the 1860 presidential election no major party presented a candidate who could appeal to

both the North and the South. There were two different presidential elections that year: in the

slave states a southern Democrat ran against a Constitutional Unionist, in the free states a

northern Democrat ran against a Republican.

C. Abraham Lincoln was the Republican candidate. He did not campaign in the South, and he was

able to win a presidential election by appealing exclusively to voters in the North.

IV. Lincoln’s presidential election provoked the secession of some southern states; others followed

after his decision to keep the Union by force of arms.

A. In December 1860 South Carolina withdrew from the Union on the grounds that northerners

had denied to southerners their “rights of property” in slaves. A few weeks later, in January

1861, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas followed suit. The slave

states of the upper South refused to leave the Union simply because Lincoln was elected.

B. In late March Lincoln declared that he was going to resupply Fort Sumter, a federal fort

located on an island in the middle of Charleston harbor. To prevent this, on April 12, 1861,

Confederates began the assault on Fort Sumter. The Civil War began.

C. After Lincoln had maneuvered the South into firing the first shot, he issued a call to the states

for militiamen. The governors of Tennessee, Virginia, North Carolina, Arkansas, Kentucky,

Prof. dr hab. Marek Oziewicz History of the United States

Lecture 6

and Missouri refused to comply with this request. Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North

Carolina joined the secession.

D. The South remained divided.

1. Four slave states—Kentucky, Maryland, Delaware, and Missouri—never joined the

Confederacy.

2. In the mountains of western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee, Unionist sentiment

remained strong throughout the war years.

3. Virginia was torn apart. The western third of the state voted overwhelmingly against

secession and then refused to accept the decision of the eastern slaveholders to leave the

Union. Some fifty western counties formed their own state government, and in 1863 the

state of West Virginia was admitted to the Union.

V. Most Americans expected the war to last only a few months. Yet, the Civil War lasted four years,

and demanded all the resources the North and South could command.

A. Both sides commenced the fighting with relatively limited military and political goals. The

Union’s initial strategy, called the Anaconda strategy, was to blockade the entire South.

Confederate strategists hoped to maintain a defensive posture, holding its ground in the South.

C. The population of the North was nearly 23 million compared to 9 million in the South (of

which over 3,5 million were slaves). By the end of the war approximately 2.1 million men had

served in the Union forces; another 900,000 served the Confederacy. To raise and sustain such

numbers was an immense political, social, technological and economic problem. As the Civil

War progressed, it therefore became a test of the competing political economies of the North

and the South.

D. At the outset of the war the Union’s advantage was superior naval forces. On land, however,

the southern military had an important edge over the northern.

1. The South’s first advantage was larger numbers of trained officers.

2. Their second advantage was that it was defending its own territory. Southern armies fought

on familiar territory, virtually in defense of their own homes, in the midst of a friendly

civilian population, and closer to their sources of supply.

E. By the spring of 1861 the eleven secessionists states had constructed an impressive political

apparatus. They had proclaimed the Confederate States of America, with Richmond, Virginia,

as their nation’s capital, and elected an experienced politician and Mississippi planter,

Jefferson Davis, as their president.

1. Secessionists argued that slavery gave the South clear assets and that the industrial world’s

dependence on cotton would soon cripple northern textile mills and bring diplomatic

recognition from England. They assumed incorrectly.

2. Secessionists failed to see in how many ways slavery inhibited the South’s industrial

strength. Confederate soldiers were not well fed or well clothed. They often fought

barefoot and in rags.

3. Slavery also crippled the South’s ability to finance its war adequately. By 1865 a

Confederate dollar had the purchasing power of one Confederate cent from 1861.

B. After the first few battles in the summer 1861, all lost by the Union, the conflict descended

into a “hard” war, aimed at unconditional surrender rather than a negotiated settlement.

Prof. dr hab. Marek Oziewicz History of the United States

Lecture 6

VI. The course of the war can be broken into two phases: early battles to the Emancipation

Proclamation (1861-63), and from Gettysburg to Lee’s surrender (1863-65).

A. By 1862 Union commanders adopted the principle of unconditional surrender and the

confiscation of supplies from southern civilians. Also the encounters were becoming

exceedingly bloody.

1. The battle of Shiloh, TN, (1862) ended with the Confederates’ defeat and an astounding

23,741 casualties on both sides.

2. 1862 saw the first failed Confederate invasion of the North. At the Battle of Antietam

Creek, MD, the Confederate forces led by General Robert E. Lee suffered staggering

casualties—22,800 on both sides—and were turned back.

B. Lincoln took advantage of the Union victory at Antietam to announce an important shift in

northern war aims. His preliminary Emancipation Proclamation promised to declare free all

slaves held by masters in areas still in rebellion against the Union on January 1, 1863. When

the New Year arrived, Lincoln’s final proclamation added another twist by sanctioning the

enlistment of African Americans in the Union Army.

1. The proclamation transformed Union soldiers into an army of liberation. It was an open

invitation for slaves to run away to Union lines, disrupting the Confederacy still further.

2. African-American Union troops were conclusive evidence that the Civil War had become a

social revolution. By the war’s end 186,000 African Americans had enlisted, two thirds of

them recruited in the South.

C. 1863 saw two greatest Union victories of the war, Gettysburg and Vicksburg, as well as the

articulation, in Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address,” of the northern understanding of the war as a

test of the principle of human equality upon which democracy was based.

1. In the summer Lee launched a second invasion of the North. The most decisive battle of

the war, fought for three days near Gettysburg, PA, ended with the Confederate defeat and

the loss of about 50,000 men on both sides.

2. Another astonishing Union victory in the West was the capture of the invincible town of

Vicksburg, Mississippi. Vicksburg opened the Mississippi River to Union navigation and

split the Confederacy in two.

3. In November, Lincoln spoke at the dedication of a military cemetery at Gettysburg. His

“Gettysburg Address” articulated a profound justification of the Union war effort as the

test of democracy, ensuring “that government of the people, by the people, for the people,

shall not perish from the earth.”

D. Throughout the war Lincoln struggled to find a commander who could stand up to great

southern generals like Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. Every commander Lincoln had

put in charge of Union forces in Virginia proved more disastrous than the last. Finally, in

1864, Lincoln put General Ulysses Grant in charge of the entire Union Army.

1. Having taken control of the Army of the Potomac, Grant confronted Lee’s Army of

Northern Virginia. The immediate result was a month-long series of unspeakably bloody

encounters in the spring of 1864.

(1) The brutal Virginia campaign cost both sides over 100,000 men killed or wounded, yet

Grant had not destroyed Lee’s army nor taken Richmond. The Army of Northern

Virginia and the Army of the Potomac were at a standoff.

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