The Civil War and ReconstructionPhoto: Confederate soldiers taken as prisoners at the battle of Gettysburg, July 1863

The U.S. Population in 1860 Total Population 31,183,582 Free Colored Persons 476,748Total Free Population 27,233,198Total Number of Slaves 3,950,528Slaves as % of Population 13%Total Number of Families 5,155,608Total Number of Slaveholders 393,975% of Families Owning Slaves 8%

Party: What is it?

an organization to promote economic, social, political and ideological interests of a group or groups of people on a durable basis. The eventual aim of a party is to promote its interests in government.

The Party System prior to 1850 Dominant parties prior to the 1850s: Whigs: conservatives

Mixture between traditional and progressive-reformist ideas Emphasised community and responsibilities of citizens in the interest of all. In favour of modern technologies and industrial progress federal government has duty and responsibility to improve the living

conditions of the voters Voters: economic elites of the North East, business-oriented Southerners,

members of protestant reform movements, parts of the working class and the free blacks

Democrats: more populist Emphasised the autonomy, freedom and equality of the individual Believed that territorial expansion would be solution to the problems of the

time: the evolution of a market economy, migration, industrialization Voters: farmers and plantation owners, urban labor, catholics

Changes in the 1850s

Emergence of the “American Party”Emergence of the “Free Soil Movement”Founding of the Republican Party 1854 and

disappearance of the Whig PartySectional (regional) differentiation

Presidential Elections 1844-1860

Increasing Tensions Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854): introduction of principle of

“popular sovereignty”, renunciation of Missouri Compromise. Northerners suspect conspiracy of “slave power”

“Bleeding Kansas”: violent clashes (1856/57) Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857)

(Images: Chief Justice Roger Taney; Dred Scott)

The Election of 1860

Secession 1860/61

From Peace to War(Photo: Fort Sumter, Charleston, SC, occupied by Confederate Forces, April 1861)

The Civil War

War: 1861-1863 Aims

South: defend independence North: crush rebellion

Potentials South: 11 states with 9 million whites and 3 million blacks. Hardly

industrialized, dependent on cotton production and exports North: 23 states with 22 million whites and blacks. Industrializing,

better infrastructure, holder of sovereignty Strategies

South: aspires to early victory, trust on Northern divisiveness, wants diplomatic recognition

North: blockade, war of attrition, keep Europeans out, control of social divisiveness

The Emancipation Proclamation of Jan. 1, 1863: From Preserving the Union to Ending Slavery

By the President of the United States of America: A Proclamation. "That on 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.

"That the Executive will, on the first day of January aforesaid, by proclamation, designate the States and parts of States, if any, in which the people thereof, respectively, shall then be in rebellion against the United States; and the fact that any State, or the people thereof, shall on that day be, in good faith, represented in the Congress of the United States by members chosen thereto at elections wherein a majority of the qualified voters of such State shall have participated, shall, in the absence of strong countervailing testimony, be deemed conclusive evidence that such State, and the people thereof, are not then in rebellion against the United States."

Meaning and Effects Moral aversion and official policy are now one Signal to northerners that only complete victory over

Confederates means victory Aim of emancipation now official war aim Recruitment of former slaves (until the end of the war, around

200.000 former slaves and free blacks serve in Union forces) Emancipation proclamation makes it impossible for European

powers to intervene on behalf of the South Prospect of slave rebellions in the South and the need to

police slave territories

Turning Points: Gettysburg and Vicksburg, July 1863

The Gettysburg Address (November 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. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here

gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above

our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated

here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that 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.

Towards ‘Total War’ Scorched earth-strategy of W.T. Sherman in the South Terror against civilian population Disintegration of Southern armies, defeat at Richmond,

Virginia Unconditional surrender, April 9, 1865

The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln

Death Toll

Of more than 1,5 million Northern soldiers, 320.000 die

Of more than 900.000 Southern soldiers, 260.000 die

Results and Meaning End of slavery: freedom and economic and social

changes in Southern society Protection of the Union: increased power to the

federal government in Washington, establishment of ‘modern’ principles and ways of life of the North as the cultural norm – the mainstream – for all.

Nationalism: For many Northerners, and eventually for Southerners as well, the Union of the pre-war period became the Nation. “America” assumes a moral-religious, not only a political dimension: salvation for mankind.

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Reconstruction (1865-1877) Phases

Presidential Reconstruction (1865-67) Radical Reconstruction (1867-72) End of Reconstruction (1872-77)

Issues Reintegration of the secession states Status of freed African-Americans

Problems Relation between federal and state authority Definition of American citizenship Practical meaning of equality and freedom for African

Americans

Lincoln’s Views on Reconstruction

moderate approach ban on political

participation of leading Southern politicians

assumption of government by loyal politicians

ban on slavery by state constitutions

secessionist states were still members of the Union

Presidential Reconstruction(Andrew Johnson 1865-1868)

President Andrew Johnson went even further than Lincoln in accommodating the secessionist states

Suggested that Southern States revoke their secession decision and ratify the 13th amendment (end to slavery)

Pardoned numerous officials and wanted amnesty

resembled the wishes not of his own party, the Republicans, but of the Democrats

The Federal Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands (‘Freedmen’s Bureau’)

practical assistance

education, information

judicial support (some)

distribution of land

13th and 14th Amendment to the Constitution

13th Amendment (ratification completed December 1865) Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the

party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. 14th Amendment (ratification completed July 1868)

Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Section 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age,(See Note 15) and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

Section 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

Meaning of the Amendments

all people born or naturalized in the U.S. are American citizens regardless of color

all have the right to due process of the law all enjoy equal protection of the law All have the right to vote

Radical Reconstruction Problems of

enforcement and Presidential policies lead to radicalization

Reconstruction Act (1867) Military

occupation of the South

African Americans are registered in voting registers

States are forced to ratify 14th Amendment

A Temporary Political Revolution(Photo: Senator Hiram R. Revels from Mississippi)

Emergence of reconstruction governments composed of: Moderate white southerners Republicans from the North African Americans

Policies of the reconstruction governments: Abolition of the black codes social and humanitarian reforms Improvement of infrastructure and

creation of industries (to offer landless former slaves work)

Improvement in education. Establishment of schools (segregated)

Presidential Election 1868 and Republican Majority

Republican war hero Ulysses S. Grant becomes President

Republicans pass 15th Amendment Section 1. The right of citizens

of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Backlash Discrepancy between

constitutional provisions and reality

States conventions are taken over by Southern Democrats

Widespread protest against scalawags (worthless livestock) and carpetbaggers (profit hungry northern migrants willing to fill their saddlebags)

Terror, Intimidation, Murder

Ku Klux Klan (founded by former Southern General Nathan Bedford Forrest in 1866)

Socio-Economic Dimension

The End of ReconstructionNortherners lose interest in Southern affairsSoutherners demand “home rule” Democrats gain majority in House of

Representatives in 1874Congress passes Civil Rights Act in 1875

(annulled by Supreme Court)Collapse of remaining reconstruction

governments until 1877

The Meaning of Reconstruction Until well into the 20th century: by most Southerners

perceived as a “rape” of the South by greedy, revengeful Yankees

Not, as is often argued until today, a hopeless and meaningless endeavour which changed nothing

Political changes were not accompanied by socio-economic changes

Difficult to measure but important: new self-esteem and rising self-confidence among African Americans

Republican party in the South without chances for decades (changes only during the 1960s and 1960s)

Civil war had prevented the dissolution of the Union, but contributed to a particular consciousness of regional identity and Southern culture