The Civil War Events leading up to and during the Civil War.
The civil war
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Unit 4 The Civil War And Reconstruction
Transcript of The civil war
Unit 4
The Civil War
And Reconstruction
Key Terms of Unit 4: Civil War and Reconstruction• "War is all hell..." William Tecumseh Sherman
1. Robert E. Lee 51. Wilmer McLean
2. John Brown 52. Frederick Douglass
3. Jefferson Davis 53. secession
4. Ulysses S. Grant 54. Anaconda Plan
5. Abraham Lincoln 55. forty acres and a mule
6. John Wilkes Booth 56. Fort Sumter
7. Mary Elizabeth Bowser 57. Andrew Butler
8. Compromise of 1850 58. Preston Brooks
9. Dred Scott v. Sanford 59. Kansas-Nebraska Act
10. Fugitive Slave Act 60. Chief Justice Roger B. Taney
11. Pottawatomie Creek 61. Harpers Ferry
12. Uncle Tom's Cabin 62. William Harvey Carney
13. Confederate States of America 63. Union
14. Mathew Brady 64. debt peonage (sharecropping)
15. Battle of Shiloh 65. siege of Vicksburg
16. Gettysburg Address 66. Battles of Manassas (Bull Run)
17. Monitor and the Merrimack 67. Lincoln-Douglas Debates
18. Ku Klux Klan 68. General Winfield Scott
19. Radical Republicans 69. Stephen A. Douglas
20. Reconstruction 70. Dixie
21. Emancipation Proclamation 71. artillery/cavalry/infantry
22. Thirteenth Amendment 72. Fourteenth Amendment
23. Fifteenth Amendment 73. Johnny Reb
24. Freedman's Bureau 74. Billy Yank
25. James Buchanan 75. Appomattox Courthouse
• 26. border states 76. Millard Fillmore• 27. draft/conscription/proxy 77. carpetbaggers• 28. Franklin Pierce 78. scalawags • 29. David Farragut 79. ironclads/gunboats• 30. Battle of Gettysburg 80. Ford's Theater• 31. Battle of Antietam 81. Battle of Fort Wagner• 32. King of Siam 82. 54th Massachusetts Volunteers• 33. Ambrose E. Burnside 83. Robert Gould Shaw• 34. J. E. B. Stuart 84. Andersonville• 35. Philip Sheridan 85. Julia Ward Howe• 36. P. G. T. Beauregard 86. “The Battle Hymn of the
Republic”• 37. Pickett's Charge 87. Know-Nothings/American Party• 38. amnesty/pardon 88. Free Soilers• 39. Stars and Bars 89. Old Glory with 35 stars• 40. Thaddeus Stevens 90. Jim Crow• 41. segregation 91. popular sovereignty• 42. impeachment 92. attrition• 43. total war 93. canister/grapeshot• 44. Nathan Bedford Forrest 94. “Dixie”• 45. Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson 95. Edwin Stanton• 46. Andrew Johnson 96. U. S. Sanitary Commission• 47. Charles Sumner 97. Seward’s Folly• 48. William Tecumseh Sherman 98. Gen. Joseph Hooker• 49. Rutherford B. Hayes 99. Gen. Lew Wallace• 50. Clara Barton 100. George Armstrong Custer
Before the start of the Civil War in 1861, the United States consisted of 19 free states, 15 slave states, and several territories. Eleven slave states withdrew from the Union and made up the Confederate States of America. The remaining 23
states and the territories fought for the Union.
Flags of the Confederacy• There were several different
Confederate flags flown during the Civil War in the United States. The Stars and Bars, upper left, adopted in 1861, had stars for 7 seceding states. It looked too much like the U.S. flag, so troops carried a battle flag, upper right. It had stars for 11 states and for secession governments in Kentucky and Missouri. The Confederate national flag of 1863, bottom left, also had stars for 11 states and for the secession governments in Kentucky and Missouri. The flag resembled a flag of truce, so a red bar was added in 1865, bottom right. World Book illustrations
At the start of the Civil War, the militia units that largely made up the Union and Confederate armies wore a variety of uniforms. Both sides soon
established regulation uniforms, such as the Union blue and Confederate gray examples shown here. But certain regiments called zouaves wore
distinctive Oriental-style uniforms throughout the war.Yankee soldiers were called Billy Yank.
Johnny Reb
Civil War "Firsts"• As the breeding ground for modern warfare, the Civil War has long been
known for its "firsts." It has been credited with dozens like these: • A workable machine gun A steel ship
A successful submarine A "snorkel" breathing deviceA wide-ranging corps of press correspondents in battle areas Antiaircraft fire American conscription American bread linesAmerican President assassinated Aerial reconnaissance The periscope, for trench warfare Army ambulance corpsBlackouts and camouflage under aerial observation Cigarette tax
• Commissioned American Army chaplains Fixed ammunitionDepartment of justice (Confederate) Wire entanglementsWide-scale use of anesthetics for wounded Tobacco tax
• Electrically exploded bombs and torpedoes U.S. Secret ServiceField trenches on a grand scale Flame throwersHospital ships Ironclad navies Land-mine fields Legal voting for servicemenLong-range rifles for general use Medal of Honor Military telegraph Military railroadsNaval torpedoes U.S. Navy AdmiralNegro U.S. Army Officer (Major M.R. Delany) Withholding taxOrganized medical and nursing corps Telescopic sights for riflesPhotography of battle Railroad artilleryRepeating rifles Revolving gun turretsThe bugle call, "Taps" The Income tax Female nurses The wigwag signal code in battle
• Source: "The Civil War, Strange and Fascinating Facts" by Burke Davis
Names For The Civil WarThe conflict known to most of us as the Civil War has a long and checkered nomenclature. To this
day some patriotic Southerners wince at the term, Civil War. These partisans usually favor The War Between the States-and some organizations of descendants of Confederate warriors use this term under their by-laws, and none other. The tide seems to stem from the two-volume work by Alexander Stephens, the Confederate Vice-President, published after the war. Most of the names listed are of Southern origin, since the defeated and their heirs grasped for some expression of unquenched ardor and defiance which would do justice to the Old South. These names have been seriously, not to say apoplectically, offered to the world. In more jocular vein the war has been known as The Late Unpleasantness, The Late Friction, The Late Ruction, The Schism, or The Uncivil War. But in the South in particular it is known simply as The War, as if the planet had not heard a shot fired in anger since '65.
• The War for Constitutional Liberty The Confederate WarThe War for Southern Independence The War of the SouthronsThe Second American Revolution The War for Southern FreedomThe War for States' Rights The War of the North and SouthThe War of the Southern Planters Mr. Lincoln's War The Second War for Independence The Lost CauseThe Southern Rebellion The War for the UnionThe War for Southern Rights The War for AbolitionThe War of the Rebellion The War for SeparationThe War to Suppress Yankee Arrogance The Brothers' War The War of Secession The Great RebellionThe War for Nationality The War of the SixtiesThe War for Southern Nationality The Yankee InvasionThe War Against Slavery The Civil War Between the States The War Against Northern Aggression
1861
April 12
Confederate troops attacked Fort Sumter.
April 15
Lincoln issued a call for troops.
April 19
Lincoln proclaimed a blockade of the South. The Anaconda Plan drawn up by Gen. Winfield Scott.
May 21
Richmond, VA, was chosen as the Confederate capital, although Montgomery, AL was the first.
July 21
Northern troops retreated in disorder after the First Battle of Bull Run (Manassas). Stonewall Jackson gets his nom de guerre there.
Important events during the Civil War
Many Civil War battles have two names because the Confederates named them after the nearest settlement, and Northerners
named them after the nearest body of water. In such battles described in this article, the Northern name is given first,
followed by the Confederate name in parentheses.• First Battle of
Bull Run (or First Battle of Manassas). In July 1861, McDowell approached Manassas, which lay on a creek called Bull Run. McDowell thought his troops could destroy Beauregard's forces.
Clara Barton
• Clara Barton (1821-1912) The "Angel of the Battlefield, " Barton distributed supplies and organized care of wounded soldiers during the Civil War. Establishing the American Red Cross in 1881, Barton served as the organization's first president and coordinated and supervised activities during the 1880s and 1890s. With Barton's perseverance, the role of the Red Cross internationally expanded from strictly war time efforts to include distribution of relief during natural disasters.
• Feb. 6 Fort Henry fell to Union forces.• Feb. 16 Grant's troops captured Fort Donelson.• March 9 The ironclad ships Monitor and Merrimack (Virginia) battled
to a draw.• April 6-7 Both sides suffered heavy losses in the Battle of Shiloh,
won by the Union.• April 16 The Confederacy began to draft soldiers.• April 18-25 Farragut attacked and captured New Orleans.• May 4 McClellan's Union troops occupied Yorktown, VA, and
advanced on Richmond.• May 30 Northern forces occupied Corinth, MS.• June 6 Memphis fell to Union armies.• June 25-July 1 Confederate forces under Lee saved Richmond in
the Battles of the Seven Days.• Aug. 27-30 Lee and Jackson led Southern troops to victory in the
Second Battle of Bull Run.• Sept. 17 Confederate forces retreated in defeat after the bloody
Battle of Antietam (Sharpsburg).• Sept. 22 Lincoln issued a preliminary Emancipation Proclamation.• Dec. 13 Burnside's Union forces received a crushing blow in the Battle
of Fredericksburg.
1862
The Monitor & the Merrimack
The Monitor & the Merrimack
• March 1862 -- Battle of the "Monitor" and the "Merrimack"
• In an attempt to reduce the North's great naval advantage, Confederate engineers converted a scuttled Union frigate, the U.S.S. Merrimack, into an iron-sided vessel rechristened the C.S.S. Virginia. On March 9, in the first naval engagement between ironclad ships, the Monitor fought the Virginia to a draw, but not before the Virginia had sunk two wooden Union warships off Norfolk, Virginia.
Notice the dents from cannon shells
"Here is a paper with which if I cannot whip Bobbie Lee, I will be willing to go home..."
-- Major General George B. McClellan, USA
On the morning of 17 September there were 30,000 of Lee's Confederate soldiers facing McClellan's 60,000 Union troops. Artillery shells broke the silence of the morning as daybreak signaled the start of the day and the start of the bloodiest single day in American history and the Civil War. Luck was with McClellan a few days before when a Union private found a copy of Lee's Special Orders No. 191 wrapped around three cigars at an abandoned Confederate campsite. In essence, the orders directed Stonewall Jackson to march some of the 45,000 Rebel men to capture Harper's Ferry. McClellan kept to his usual pattern of cautious fighting and didn't capitalize on the situation. This gave Jackson time to take Harper's Ferry and bring most of his men back to Antietam as reinforcements. McClellan failed to realize the decisive victory his senior government leaders expected and wanted. As a consequence, he was recalled to Washington on 7 November to hand over his command to Major General Ambrose Burnside.
Three Cigars for Antietam
Barbara Frietsche
Barbara Frietschie (1766-1862) Already known locally for her patriotism, Frietschie captured the country's imagination in September of 1862 when, at age 95, she boldly displayed the Union flag to Confederate soldiers marching past her Frederick, Maryland, home. In deference to her age and bravery, she was not harmed. John Greenleaf Whittier's poem, Barbara Frietsche, and the memorable passage, "Shoot, if you must this old gray head but spare your country's flag," granted her a permanent position in the pantheon of Civil War heroes.
John Greenleaf Whittier: "Barbara Frietchie"
"This poem was written in strict conformity to the account of the incident as I had it from respectable
and trustworthy sources," wrote Whittier of this very famous, very sentimental, and yet very
successful ballad. "It has since been the subject of a good deal of conflicting testimony, and the story
was probably incorrect in some of its details.It is admitted by all that BARBARA FRIETCHIE
was no myth, but a worthy and highly esteemed gentlewoman, intensely loyal and a hater of the
Slavery Rebellion, holding her Union flag sacred and keeping it with her Bible; that when the
Confederates halted before her house, and entered her dooryard, she denounced them in vigorous
language, shook her cane in their faces, and drove them out; and when General Burnside's troops
followed close upon Jackson's, she waved her flag and cheered them." Whether or not the story is true,
Whittier's ballad (first published in 1863) should not be lost.
The source for this poem is Complete Poetical Works, Cambridge Edition, Boston, 1894.
BARBARA FRIETCHIE
Up from the meadows rich with corn,Clear in the cool September morn,
The clustered spires of Frederick standGreen-walled by the hills of Maryland.
Round about them orchards sweep,Apple and peach tree fruited deep,
Fair as the garden of the LordTo the eyes of the famished rebel horde,
On that pleasant morn of the early fallWhen Lee marched over the mountain wall;
Over the mountains winding down,Horse and foot, into Frederick town.
Forty flags with their silver stars,Forty flags with their crimson bars,
Flapped in the morning wind: the sunOf noon looked down, and saw not one.
Up rose old Barbara Frietchie then,Bowed with her fourscore years and ten;
Barbara Frietschie, continued
Bravest of all in Frederick town,She took up the flag the men hauled down;
In her attic window the staff she set,To show that one heart was loyal yet.
Up the street came the rebel tread,Stonewall Jackson riding ahead.
Under his slouched hat left and rightHe glanced; the old flag met his sight.
"Halt!"--the dust-brown ranks stood fast."Fire!"--out blazed the rifle blast.
It shivered the window, pane and sash;It rent the banner with seam and gash.
Quick, as it fell, from the broken staffDame Barbara snatched the silken scarf.
She leaned far out on the window sill,And shook it forth with a royal will.
"Shoot, if you must, this old gray head,But spare your country's flag," she said.
A shade of sadness, a blush of shame,Over the face of the leader came;
The nobler nature within him stirredTo life at that woman's deed and word;
"Who touches a hair of yon gray headDies like a dog! March on!" he said.
All day long through Frederick streetSounded the tread of marching feet:
All day long that free flag tossedOver the heads of the rebel host.
Ever its torn folds rose and fellOn the loyal winds that loved it well;
And through the hill-gaps sunset lightShone over it with a warm good-night.
Barbara Frietchie's work is o'er,And the Rebel rides on his raids no more.
Honor to her! and let a tearFall, for her sake, on Stonewall's bier.
Over Barbara Frietchie's grave,Flag of Freedom and Union, wave!
Peace and order and beauty drawRound thy symbol of light and law;
And ever the stars above look downOn thy stars below in Frederick town!
Copyright © 1999 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
The war in the West—1862-1864
The Battles for Fort Henry and Fort Donelson were important for the control of the Mississippi, but Vicksburg was the key.
ShilohThe two-day battle of Shiloh between Grant and several Confederate generals. Confederate General Albert Johnston met Grant’s Union troops at Pittsburgh Landing, Tennessee near Shiloh Meeting House on April 6-7, 1862. The Confederates attacked on the morning of April 6.
It was completely unexpected by Grant, who had sent out no sentries, not “dug in”, and who had a great number of new recruits. The Union troops retreated near the river, and all could have easily been lost if not for William Tecumseh Sherman who made the men reform and regroup. Grant said that Sherman inspired confidence that day, so much so that the tide of the battle was not lost.
There was fierce fighting around a peach orchard. Confederate general Johnston was wounded leading a blazing charge. He had not realized that his leg had been nicked by a minie ball. He had sent his surgeon off to tend to the Union wounded before he noticed that he had been hit. It was a severed femoral artery and Johnston saw that his boot had filled with blood. By the time his men realized that their leader had paled and had assisted him from his horse, it was too late. He bled to death within a few minutes.
Shiloh, continued
The Hornet’s Nest was called that because the fighting there was so frenzied. The Sunken Road was filled with blood. The battlefield was “so covered with dead” that a person could walk across the field in any direction, stepping on bodies “without touching the ground.” Union forces had gained additional time to bring in artillery and heavy weapons aboard two gunboats.
Buell’s Union reinforcements joined in later that evening, and also General Lew Wallace (future novelist of Ben-Hur) who had gotten lost in nearby woods.
Grant will force the Confederate army under PGT Beauregard to withdraw. More than 13,000 Union men had been killed, wounded, or captured. The Confederate losses were nearly 11,000.
More Americans were killed in that two-day battle than in all three previous American wars combined. Casualty lists were incredible. There were calls for Grant’s removal, but Lincoln said:”I can’t spare this man. He fights.” Illusions for a bloodless quick end to the Civil War were shattered.
1863
• Jan. 1 Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation.
• March 3 The North passed a draft law.
• May 1-4 Northern troops under Hooker were defeated in the Battle of Chancellorsville. Stonewall Jackson killed.
• May 1-19 Grant's army defeated the Confederates in Mississippi and began to besiege Vicksburg.
• July 1-3 The Battle of Gettysburg ended in a Southern defeat and marked a turning point in the war.
• July 4 Vicksburg fell to Northern troops.
• Sept. 19-20 Southern troops under Bragg won the Battle of Chickamauga.
• Nov. 19 Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address.
• Nov. 23-25 Grant and Thomas led Union armies to victory in the Battle of Chattanooga.
In June 1863, Lee's army swung up the Shenandoah Valley into Pennsylvania. The Army of the Potomac followed it northward.
Both armies moved toward the little town of Gettysburg.
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.
Abraham Lincoln, “Address Delivered At The Dedication Of The Cemetery At Gettysburg," November 19, 1863.
On November 19, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln delivered a short speech at the close of ceremonies dedicating the battlefield cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Requested to offer a few remarks, Lincoln memorialized the Union dead and highlighted the redemptive power of their sacrifice. Placing the common soldier at the center of the struggle for equality, Lincoln reminded his listeners of the higher purpose for which blood was shed.
Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain(1828-1914)
• A Bowdoin College professor, Joshua L. Chamberlain went to the Maine state capital to offer his services in 1862. Offered the colonelcy of a regiment, he declined, according to John J. Pullen in The 20th Maine, preferring to "start a little lower and learn the business first. " He was made lieutenant colonel of the regiment on August 8. His later assignments were: colonel, 20th Maine (May 20, 1863); commanding 3rd Brigade, 1st Division, 5th Corps (August 26-November 19, 1863); 1st Brigade (June 6-18, 1864); brigadier general, USV (June 18, 1864); 1st Brigade (November 19, 1864-January 5, 1865); 1st Brigade (February 27-April 11, 1865); and brevetted major general, USV (March 29, 1865); 3rd Brigade (April 10-25, 1865). With the regiment Chamberlain took part in the battles of Antietam, Shepherdstown Ford, Fredericksburg (wounded), and Chancellorsville. At the battle of Gettysburg the regiment, now commanded by Chamberlain, held the extreme left flank on Little Round Top, a service for which he was later awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.
•He also received a second wound. In November 1863 he was relieved from field service and sent to Washington suffering from malaria. He was given lighter duties. Resuming command of the regiment in May 1864, he led it in the battle of Cold Harbor. Assigned to brigade command in June, only to fall wounded 12 days later in the assault on Petersburg, he was promoted to brigadier general on the spot by General Grant, then carried to the rear, where a surgeon declared that he would certainly die from the wound. (The doctor was right. Fifty years later Chamberlain succumbed to its effects.) Rejoining the army in November, he was forced by his wound to return to Maine, but he came back again during the Petersburg siege during which he was wounded for the fourth time. •He then took part in the Appomattox Campaign, about which he wrote The Passing of the Armies. He was given the honor of commanding the troops that formally accepted the surrender of the Confederate army. •He later served as governor of Maine and president of Bowdoin.
(Wallace, Willard M., Soul of the Lion: A Biography of General Joshua L. Chamberlain) Source: "Who Was Who In The Civil War" by Stewart Sifakis
The Emancipation Proclamation
• Black leaders, such as the former slave Frederick Douglass of New York, saw the Civil War as a road to emancipation (freedom) for the slaves. However, the idea of emancipation presented problems in the North. For one thing, the Constitution recognized slavery. In addition, most Northerners—even though they may have opposed slavery—were convinced of black inferiority. Many of them feared that emancipation would cause a mass movement of Southern blacks into the North. Northerners also worried about losing the border states loyal to the Union because those states were strongly committed to slavery. Skillful leadership was needed as the country moved toward black freedom. Lincoln supplied that leadership by combining a clear sense of purpose with a sensitivity to the concerns of various groups.
• On Sept. 22, 1862, Lincoln issued a preliminary order to free the slaves. It declared that all slaves in states in rebellion against the Union on Jan. 1, 1863, would be forever free. It did not include slave states loyal to the Union. On Jan. 1, 1863, Lincoln issued the final order as the Emancipation Proclamation. The Emancipation Proclamation, though legally binding, was a war measure that could be reversed later. Therefore, in 1865, Lincoln helped push through Congress the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, which abolished slavery throughout the nation. For his effort in freeing the slaves, Lincoln is known as the "Great Emancipator."
"Who would be free themselves must strike the blow....I urge you to fly to arms and smite to death the power that would bury the Government and your liberty in
the same hopeless grave. This is your golden opportunity." • African American volunteers were
in readiness to serve in the Civil War when the Union called them. President Lincoln and Union leaders vacillated greatly on the question of the abolition of slavery and the employment of black troops. The Emancipation Proclamation put an end to these questions. Effective January 1, 1863, the Proclamation emancipated Confederate slaves and authorized the use of black soldiers by Union troops. By the end of the war about 186,000 African American men had enlisted.
Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass said: "Once let the black man get upon his person the brass letter, U.S., let him get an eagle on his button, and a musket on his shoulder and bullets in his pocket, there is no power on earth that can deny that he has earned the right to citizenship."
The Emancipation Proclamation opened the door full-fledged for Blacks to participate in the Civil War. Among the newly freed slaves out of the Confederate states came
thousands of volunteers. On May 1, 1863, the War Department created the Bureau of Colored Troops in order to handle the recruitment and organization of all black regiments.
These units were known as the United States Colored Troops, and doubts about their competency, loyalty, and bravery were under close scrutiny. White officers were their
commanders, and acceptance of ex-slaves by these commanders was not always willing
• It was with the valor displayed by the 54th All Black Infantry Regiment out of Boston, Massachusetts who charged Fort Wagner did some notable recognition come to these troops. The widespread knowledge about these all black units of the Civil War came about with the popularity of the movie, Glory, starring Denzel Washington. Based upon the triumphs and defeats of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, a historical moment was captured in the lives of some unknown American freedom fighters. The first African-American medal of Honor was awarded to William Harvey Carney of this 54th Infantry Regiment. More than 300 African-Americans died at the Fort Wagner Assault.
• Among those Frederick Douglass recruited were his own sons, Charles and Lewis. Both enlisted in the 54th Massachusetts regiment.
Veterans of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry at the dedication of the memorial to
Robert Gould Shaw and the men of the 54th, May 31, 1897
Courtesy of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston
"Sergeant Carney's Flag"
• Sergeant William H. Carney was one of 600 men who enlisted in the 54th MA Colored Infantry, the first African-American regiment raised in a free
northern state east of the Mississippi River during the Civil War. On July 18, 1863, the 54th MA
spearheaded the Union assault on Ft. Wagner, S.C.When the color bearer was killed, Sergeant Carney threw down his rifle, picked up the colors, and led the attack on the fort. Although wounded multiple times, Sergeant Carney maintained the colors atop a parapet and later returned the colors safely to the
regiment.For these feats he became the first African-
American to perform in a combat action that resulted in the awarding of the Medal of Honor!
1864
• March 9 Grant became general in chief of the North.
• May 5-6 Union and Confederate troops clashed in the Battle of the Wilderness.
• May 8-19 Grant and Lee held their positions in the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House.
• June 3 The Union suffered heavy losses on the final day of the Battle of Cold Harbor. 7,000 killed/about 15 min.
• June 20 Grant's troops laid siege to Petersburg, VA
• July 11-12 Jubal Early's Confederate forces almost reached Washington but retreated after brief fighting.
• Aug. 5 Farragut won the Battle of Mobile Bay.
• Sept. 2 Northern troops under Sherman captured Atlanta.
• Sept. 19-Oct. 19 Philip Sheridan led his troops on a rampage of destruction in the Shenandoah Valley.
• Nov. 8 Lincoln was reelected President.
1864 continued
• Nov. 15• Sherman began his march through Georgia.• Nov. 23• Hood invaded Tennessee.• Nov. 30• Schofield's Union forces inflicted heavy losses on Hood in the
Battle of Franklin.• Dec. 15-16• The Battle of Nashville smashed Hood's army.• Dec. 21• Sherman's troops occupied Savannah, GA
This map locates the final important battles and campaigns of the Civil War. Most of the fighting in the East occurred in Virginia. Fighting in the West centered in Tennessee and along the Mississippi River. Union strategy succeeded in dividing the Confederacy and blockading its harbors.
Sherman's March through Georgia
Sherman's march through Georgia began on Nov. 15, 1864, when he left Atlanta in flames. His army, numbering about 62,000 men, swept almost unopposed on a 50-mile (80-kilometer) front across the state. Advance troops scouted an area. The men who followed stripped houses, barns, and fields and destroyed everything they could not use. Sherman hoped the horrible destruction would break the South's will to continue the war.
Sherman's march through Georgia
Sherman's March through Georgia
• Sherman occupied Savannah on December 21 and sent a message to Lincoln: "I beg to present to you as a Christmas gift the city of Savannah with 150 heavy guns and plenty of ammunition and also about 25,000 bales of cotton." From Savannah, Sherman swung north into South Carolina. There, on the breeding ground of the Southern independence movement, his army seemed bent on revenge. They burned and looted on a scale even worse than in Georgia. When Charleston surrendered, it was spared. Although Sherman tried to prevent it, most of Columbia, the state capital, was burned.
• Sherman and his troops then moved on into North Carolina. Johnston tried to oppose them, but he had only one-third as many men. The Northerners drove on toward Virginia to link up with Grant.
1865
• Feb. 6 Lee became general in chief of the South.• April 2 Confederate troops gave up Petersburg and
Richmond.• April 9 Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox.• April 14 Lincoln was assassinated.• April 26 Johnston surrendered to Sherman.• May 4 Confederate forces in Alabama and Mississippi
surrendered.• May 11 Jefferson Davis was captured.• May 26 The last Confederate troops surrendered.
Lee surrendered to Grant, left, at a house in Appomattox Court House, Va., on April 9, 1865. With Lee's surrender of the main Confederate army, the Civil War soon ended. Culver Pictures
In Wilmer McLean’s front parlor
The South surrenders.
• In Virginia, Grant at last achieved his goal. In April 1865, he seized the railroads supplying Richmond. The Confederate troops had to evacuate Petersburg and Richmond. Lee retreated westward with nearly 50,000 men. He hoped to join forces with Johnston in North Carolina. But Grant overtook him and barred his way with an army of almost 113,000 troops. Lee realized that continued fighting would mean useless loss of lives. He wrote Grant and asked for an interview to arrange surrender terms.
• • On April 9, 1865, the two great generals met in a house owned by a
Southern farmer named Wilmer McLean in the little country settlement of Appomattox Court House, Virginia. The meeting was one of the most dramatic scenes in American history. Grant wore a mud-spattered private's coat, with only his shoulder straps indicating his rank. Lee had put on a spotless uniform, complete with sword. Grant offered generous terms, and Lee accepted them with deep appreciation. The Confederate soldiers received a day's rations and were released on parole. They were allowed to keep their horses and mules to take home "to put in a crop." Officers could keep their side arms.
Lincoln's assassination
• Shortly after 10 P.M. on April 14, 1865, actor John Wilkes Booth entered the presidential box at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C. and fatally shot President Abraham Lincoln. As Lincoln slumped forward in his seat, Booth leapt onto the stage and escaped out the back door. The paralyzed president was immediately examined by a doctor in the audience and then carried across the street to Petersen's Boarding House where he died early the next morning.
•Lincoln's assassination was the first presidential assassination in U.S. history. Booth carried out the attack thinking it would aid the South which had just surrendered to Federal forces. The suspicion that Booth had acted as part of a conspiracy of Southern sympathizers increased Northern rancor. Whether Lincoln would have been able to temper the Reconstruction policies enacted by the Radical Republicans in Congress is left to historical speculation because of his untimely death as the United States transitioned from civil war to reunification and peace.
Within days of the assassination, the War Department issued wanted posters for the arrest of Booth and his accomplices John Surratt and David Herold. Booth and Herold eluded
capture until April 26, when federal troops discovered them hiding in a tobacco barn near Bowling Green, Virginia. Herold surrendered, but Booth stayed under cover and was shot by
Boston Corbett and then the barn burned to the ground. He died later that day. Booth's co-conspirators Lewis Paine—who had attempted to murder Secretary of State
William Henry Seward—George Atzerodt, David Herold, and Mary Surratt, were all executed for their part in the assassination conspiracy. Several other conspirators were sentenced to
imprisonment.
• The death of President Lincoln resulted in an outpouring of grief nationwide. After lying in state at both the White House and the Capitol, Lincoln's body was transported to the railway station where it began a 1,700-mile journey back to the president's native Springfield, Illinois. The nine-car funeral train stopped at cities along the way so citizens could pay their respects to the fallen leader. On May 4, Lincoln was finally laid to rest.
• Many monuments raised to Lincoln over the years, across the nation and around the world. On April 14, 1876, a monument to Abraham Lincoln was unveiled in Washington, D.C.'s Lincoln Park
Dr. SAMUEL MUDD
• Dr. Samuel Alexander Mudd was born on December 20, 1833, on a large plantation in Charles County, Maryland.
• He then attended Georgetown College in Washington, D.C.
• In 1854, Mudd transferred to the University of Maryland in Baltimore and studied medicine and surgery. He graduated from that institution in 1856.
Dr. Samuel Mudd• After he shot Lincoln, Booth broke his left leg in his leap
to the stage at Ford's Theatre. Needing a doctor's assistance, he and David Herold arrived at Dr. Mudd's (about 30 miles from Washington) at approximately 4:00 A.M. on April 15, 1865. Dr. Mudd set, splinted, and bandaged the broken leg. Although he had met Booth on at least three prior occasions, Dr. Mudd said he did not recognize his patient. He said the two used the names "Tyson" and "Henston." Booth and Herold stayed at the Mudd residence until the next afternoon (roughly a 12 hour stay).
• Mudd asked his handyman, John Best, to make a pair of rough crutches for Booth. Mudd was paid $25 for his services. Booth and Herold left in the direction of Zekiah Swamp.
• Within days Dr. Mudd was under arrest by the United States Government. He was charged with conspiracy and with harboring Booth and Herold during their escape. He went on trial along with Lewis Powell (Paine), George Atzerodt, Mary Surratt, David Herold, Ned Spangler, Samuel Arnold, and Michael O'Laughlen.
"The good doctor had his day in court, both military and civil, and despite the concerted efforts and good intentions of his defenders--his name is still Mudd."
…his name is still Mudd
• Testimony against the doctor at the trial included his harsh treatment of some of his slaves. He shot one male slave (who survived). Dr. Mudd was found guilty. His sentence: life imprisonment. He missed the death penalty by one vote.
• Mudd was imprisoned at Ft. Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas about 70 miles from Key West.
• Mrs. Mudd also wrote letters to President Andrew Johnson seeking her husband's release.
• In the summer of 1867, yellow fever broke out on the island. After the fort's physician died on September 7, Mudd took a leadership role in aiding the sick.
• Because of his outstanding efforts, a petition to the government in support of Dr. Mudd was signed by all noncommissioned officers and soldiers on the island.
• Early in 1869 a courier from the United States Government knocked on the front door of the Mudd farm. When Mrs. Mudd answered, the man handed her an envelope and said, "From the President of the United States.
• It read:
• Dear Mrs. Mudd: As promised, I have drawn up a pardon for your husband, Dr. Samuel A. Mudd. Please come to my office at your earliest convenience. I wish to sign it in your presence and give it to you personally. Sincerely, ANDREW JOHNSON President of the United States of America
• Mrs. Mudd went to the White House the next morning. There the President signed and delivered to her the pardon for the release of her husband. The date of the pardon was February 8, 1869.
• Dr. Mudd was released on March 8.
Forty acres and a mule
As Union soldiers advanced through the South, tens of thousands of freed slaves left their plantations to follow Union general William Tecumseh Sherman’s army.
To solve problems caused by the mass of refugees, Sherman issued Special Field Orders, No. 15, a temporary plan granting each freed family forty acres of tillable land on islands and the coast of Georgia. The army had a number of unneeded mules which were also granted to settlers.
News of "forty acres and a mule" spread quickly; freed slaves welcomed it as proof that emancipation would finally give them a stake in the land they had worked as slaves for so long.
The orders were in effect for only one year.
In the Field, Savannah, Georgia, January 16th, 1865.
Special Field Orders, No. 15.
I. The islands from Charleston, south, the abandoned rice fields along the rivers for thirty miles back from the sea, and the country bordering the St. Johns river, Florida, are reserved and set apart for the settlement of the Negroes now made free by the acts of war and the proclamation of the President of the United States.
II. At Beaufort, Hilton Head, Savannah, Fernandina, St. Augustine and Jacksonville, the blacks may remain in their chosen or accustomed vocations -- but on the islands, and in the settlements hereafter to be established, no white person whatever, unless military officers and soldiers detailed for duty, will be permitted to reside; and the sole and exclusive management of affairs will be left to the freed people themselves, subject only to the United States military authority and the acts of Congress.
Results of the war
• Terrible bitterness between the people of the North and South followed the Civil War and continued for generations. The South was given almost no voice in the social, political, and cultural affairs of the nation. With the loss of Southern control of the national government, the more traditional Southern ideals no longer had an important influence over government policy. The Yankee Protestant ideals of the North became the standard for the United States. However, those ideals, which stressed hard work, education, and economic freedom, helped encourage the development of the United States as a modern, industrial power.
• Jim Crow laws and the terror of Night Riders sought to “re-enslave the newly freed African-Americans through violence, fear, and intimidation
•The tragic costs. About 620,000 soldiers died during the Civil War, almost as many as the combined American dead of all other wars from the Revolutionary War (1775-1783) through the Vietnam War (1957-1975). The Union lost about 360,000 troops, and the Confederacy about 260,000. More than half the deaths were caused by disease. About a third of all Southern soldiers died in the war, compared with about a sixth of all Northern soldiers.
•Both the North and the South paid an enormous economic price as well. But the direct damages caused by the war were especially severe in the South. The destruction in the South extended from the beautiful Shenandoah Valley in the north to Georgia in the south and from South Carolina in the east to Tennessee in the west. Towns and farms, industry and trade, and the lives of men, women, and children were ruined throughout the South. The whole Southern way of life was lost.
Ku Klux Klan
• Late 1800's The Ku Klux Klan was formed as a social club by a group of Confederate Army veterans in Pulaski, Tennessee around 1865. A Confederate General, Nathan Bedford Forrest, was the Klan's first leader, whose title was the Grand Wizard. The group adopted the name Ku Klux Klan from the Greek word kuklos, meaning circle, and the English word clan.White superiority was the philosophy of the Klan, and they would often use violence and terrorization of blacks as a means of exercising this philosophized superiority. The Klan detested the idea of blacks gaining any rights following the Civil War into the Reconstruction, and terrorized blacks to prevent them from voting in elections or practicing any other right. Blacks and white sympathizers were often threatened, beaten, or even murdered by Klan members in the South; the Klan used the now familiar white robes and hoods to mask their identity. The Ku Klux Klan became known as the Invisible Empire as it grew and spread rapidly.In 1871, the Force Bill was passed by Congress. This act gave the President the authority to use federal troops against the Ku Klux Klan if he deemed the action necessary. Soon after this bill was passed, the Klan all but disappeared.
BOOTH AND LINCOLN
One brother kills the president; the other saves the president's son.
One of the great actors of his day stands on a station platform in Jersey City waiting to board a train.
The coach he is about to get into… starts with a jolt; he sees a young man lose his balance, falling between the platform and the moving
train.Quickly, the actor reaches down, grabs the young man by the collar and
pulls him to safety. It is only years later that they recognize the haunting irony.
The actor is Edwin Booth… brother of John Wilkes Booth.And the young man he saved?
Robert Todd Lincoln—Abraham Lincoln's son.
Isn’t It Ironic?
Spies During the Civil War
•Throughout the Civil War, many of the spies were slaves who were desperate for the North to win, and thus secure their freedom. These slaves, both men and women, risked their lives passing information on to the Union army. In addition to the slaves, there was also a great deal of spying being done by well-to-do white women. Women spying for either the North or the South used their large hoop skirts to hide weapons, secret documents and other contraband, as well as other means.
Pauline Cushman
• Major Pauline Cushman (1870's) was an actress turned Civil War spy who was ultimately captured and sentenced to be executed by the South. Rescued three days prior to her scheduled hanging, she was given the honorary commission of Major by President Abraham Lincoln. She toured the country for a number of years, telling of her exploits.
• Her many adventures were capitalized upon by P.T. Barnum who advised her tours.
• She died amid rumors of suicide and was buried at the Presidio by the Grand Army of the Republic.
Rose O'Neal Greenhow
Rose O'Neal Greenhow was a leader in Washington society and one of the most renowned spies in the Civil War. She is credited with helping General Pierre G.T. Beauregard win the battle of Bull Run. She spied so well for the Confederacy that Jefferson Davis credited her with winning the battle of Manassas. Rose O'Neal Greenhow was imprisoned for her efforts first on "house arrest" in her own home and then in Washington, D.C.s Old Capital Prison for five months. After her second prison term, she was exiled to the Confederate states where she received a heroine’s welcome by Confederate President Jefferson Davis.
Dr. Mary Edwards Walker - Surgeon, Spy, Suffragette
Prisoner of War, Proponent of Style and Congressional
Medal of Honor Winner
Dr. Mary E. Walker, M.D., a Civil War physician, was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor in 1865. Dr. Walker's Medal of
Honor was rescinded in 1917, along with some 900 others. Some believed her medal was rescinded because of her involvement as a
suffragette. Others discredit that opinion as 909 other medals rescinded were awarded to men. The stated reason was to ". . .
increase the prestige of the grant."
For whatever reason she refused to return the Medal of Honor and wore it until her death in 1919. Fifty-eight years later, the U.S.
Congress posthumously reinstated her medal, and it was restored by President Carter on June 10, 1977.
She is the only woman of the Civil War, or any war, to have been awarded the Medal of Honor.
AMAZING MS. TUBMAN
Discover the amazing military career of Harriet Tubman.
Most people know the legacy of Harriet Tubman, a former slave who helped hundreds of other slaves to
freedom on the underground railroad. What many people don't know is that in 1863 the
Union enlisted her for a military mission. Tubman and Colonel James Montgomery led a force of 150 black soldiers into enemy territory, where they
destroyed railroads and bridges and cut off Confederate supply lines.
They also rescued nearly 800 slaves. Tubman's team caused millions of dollars worth of damage to the
Confederate Army all without losing a soldier.Harriet Tubman, a heroine whose life was spent at
war -- with slavery.
One of the most famous of Confederate spies, Belle Boyd served the Confederate forces in the Shenandoah Valley. Born in Martinsburg-now part of West Virginia-she operated her spying operations from her fathers hotel in Front Royal, providing valuable information to Generals Turner Ashby and "Stonewall" Jackson during the spring 1862 campaign in the Valley. The latter general then made her a captain and honorary aide-de-camp on his staff. As such she was able to witness troops reviews. Betrayed by her lover, she was arrested on July 29, 1862, and held for a month in the Old Capitol Prison in Washington. Exchanged a month later, she was in exile with relatives for a time, but was again arrested in June 1863 while on a visit to Martinsburg. On December 1, 1863, she was released, suffering from typhoid, and was then sent to Europe to regain her health. The blockade runner she attempted to return on was captured and she fell in love with the prize master, Samuel Hardinge, who later married her in England after being dropped from the navy's rolls for neglect of duty in allowing her to proceed to Canada and then England. Hardinge attempted to reach Richmond, was detained in Union hands, but died soon after his release. While in England Belle Boyd Hardinge had a stage career and published Belle Boyd in Camp and Prison. She died while touring the western United States. (Sigaud, Louis, A., Belle Boyd, Confederate Spy, and Scarborough, Ruth, Belle Boyd.- Siren of the South) Source: "Who Was Who in the Civil War" by Stewart Sifakas
Belle Boyd
(1843-1900)
Elizabeth Van Lew & Mary Elizabeth Bowser
by John T. Marck
• Both Elizabeth and Mary were spies for the Union, and so helpful was Van Lew, she received praise from General Ulysses S. Grant.
• Elizabeth Van Lew and her friend Mary Elizabeth Bowser, were prominent Union spies. Elizabeth was born in 1818, the daughter of wealthy Northern-born parents, who lived in Richmond. Siding with the North, she used her eccentric manner as a cover for her many espionage activities, which included assisting Union prisoners in escaping from Libby Prison, as well as providing clothes, medicine and food for them.
• As the war continued, Elizabeth brought Mary Bowser, her mother and family servants into her spy ring. Mary Bowser, was a black slave, who was born in 1822 and worked in the Van Lew house until she was freed by her owners, and sent to Philadelphia for an education, paid for by the Van Lews. Returning to Richmond, she worked closely with Elizabeth in their espionage activities. At one time, Mary worked as a maid for President and Mrs. Jefferson Davis, enabling her to obtain Confederate secrets firsthand.
• Jefferson Davis and his military leaders thought she was dull-witted, but Mary Elizabeth Bowser, a freed slave who was placed as a servant in the Confederate White House in Richmond, was as cunning as a fox.
• While she cleaned the house and waited on Confederate President, she read war dispatches and overheard conversations about Confederate troop strategy and movement. She memorized details and passed them along to Union spies, who coded the information and sent it to Generals. Ulysses S. Grant and Benjamin Butler, "greatly enhancing the Union's conduct of the war," according to the account assembled by the U.S. Army Military Intelligence Corps Hall of Fame.
•“Jefferson Davis never discovered the leak in his household staff," reads the account, "although he knew the Union somehow kept discovering Confederate plans."
•With the fall of Richmond, Elizabeth was visited by General Ulysses S. Grant, and speaking with her over a cup of tea on her porch replied, "You are the one person who has sent me the most useful information I have received from Richmond during the war.“
•After the war Elizabeth lived in her family's mansion in Richmond. Ostracized by society for her loyalty to the Union, she died in miserable poverty in 1900. Mary Elizabeth Bowser returned to the North, but no further details of her life are available.
Mustered Out.
• Mustered Out.Little Rock, Arkansas, April 20, 1865.
• Alfred Waud's drawing captures the exuberance of the Little Rock, Arkansas, African American community as the U. S. Colored Troops returned home at the end of the Civil War. The victorious soldiers are joyously greeted by women and children.
Reconstruction and Its Aftermath
Even after the Emancipation Proclamation, two more years of war, service by African American troops, and the defeat of the Confederacy, the nation was still unprepared to deal with the question of full citizenship for its newly freed black population. The Reconstruction implemented by Congress, which lasted from 1866 to 1877, was aimed at reorganizing the Southern states after the Civil War, providing the means for readmitting them into the Union, and defining the means by which whites and blacks could live together in a nonslave society. The South, however, saw Reconstruction as a humiliating, even vengeful imposition and did not welcome it.
During the years after the war, black and white teachers from the North and South, missionary organizations, churches and schools worked tirelessly to give the emancipated population the opportunity to learn. Former slaves of every age took advantage of the opportunity to become literate. Grandfathers and their grandchildren sat together in classrooms seeking to obtain the tools of freedom.
After the Civil War, with the protection of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution and the Civil Rights Act of 1866, African Americans enjoyed a period when they were allowed to vote, actively participate in the political process, acquire the land of former owners, seek their own employment, and use public accommodations. Opponents of this progress, however, soon rallied against the former slaves' freedom and began to find means for eroding the gains for which many had shed their blood.
CARPETBAGGERS
• Northerners who moved south after the Civil War were called "carpetbaggers" by critics who claimed they carried all of their possessions in one bag (luggage made of carpeting). Actually, most were educated people, ranging from business and political leaders to former soldiers. Some northern blacks, whose greater experience with freedom sometimes put them at odds with the goals of the newly freed people, also went south after the war.
• Many carpetbaggers sought to invest in abandoned or repossessed lands and in partnerships with planters. Although at times they met with violence, ostracism, or derision because of their racial views, most capital-starved southerners seeking to rebuild their economy accepted them eagerly. At the height of Radical Reconstruction in 1867, some were also active in political and social reform. Because few southerners joined the Republican party, carpetbaggers won the lion's share of southern political offices.
• The carpetbaggers sought to modernize the southern economy through railroad building and other internal improvements. After the Compromise of 1877, many of them, who had relied upon federal patronage, returned to the North or moved quietly into southern society.
Scalawags
• During the period of Congressional Reconstruction after the Civil War (1867-1876), southern white Republicans were called "scalawags" by their political opponents. The scalawags were considered traitors by many white southerners for supporting the party that had led the fight against the Confederacy and had now placed the defeated South under military rule. The fact that the majority of southern Republicans were former slaves and free blacks and that others in the party were newcomers from the North (whom the southern conservatives called "carpetbaggers") made the scalawags' behavior seem even more disloyal.
• For many years, historians accepted the conservatives' view that most scalawags were corrupt opportunists, the dregs of southern society. More recent analysis, however, has shown that they represented a much broader variety of backgrounds and motivations. Some undoubtedly were careerists; some were up-country yeoman farmers who had contested the domination of the planter aristocracy for decades; others were planters themselves, often former Whigs who had opposed secession but fought for the South once war was declared. And though many scalawag officials were guilty of corruption, their political practices do not appear to have differed significantly from those of their opponents or of their contemporaries in other sections of the country.
• Beset by factionalism, economic crises, and white hostility, the southern Republicans were further weakened by the fact that they received hardly any support from the federal government. Within a few years, many of the scalawags had withdrawn from politics or returned to the Democratic party. By 1876 the Democrats had regained control of every southern state.
3 Plans for Reconstruction
L in co ln 'sP lan
A n d rewJo h nso n 's
P lan
R a d ica lR e p u b lica n s'
P lan
R e con s truc tion
Lincoln’s Ten Percent Plan
• In December of that year, President Abraham Lincoln announced the first comprehensive program for Reconstruction, the Ten Percent Plan. This offered a pardon to all southerners, except Confederate leaders, who took an oath affirming loyalty to the Union and support for emancipation. When 10 percent of a state's voters had taken such an oath, they could establish a new state government. To Lincoln, the plan was more an attempt to weaken the Confederacy than a blueprint for the postwar South. Although it was put into operation in Union-occupied Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee, and Virginia, none of the new governments achieved broad local support or was recognized by Congress. Many Republicans deemed Lincoln's plan too lenient. In 1864, Congress enacted (and Lincoln pocket vetoed) the Wade-Davis bill, which proposed to delay the formation of new southern governments until a majority of voters had taken a loyalty oath. Some Republicans, moreover, were already convinced that equal rights for the former slaves must accompany the South's readmission to the Union. In his last speech, in April 1865, Lincoln himself expressed the view that some southern blacks ought to enjoy the right to vote.
Johnson’s Plan for Reconstruction
• It fell to Lincoln's successor, Andrew Johnson, to outline plans for the South's readmission. In May, he issued a series of proclamations that inaugurated the period of Presidential Reconstruction (1865-1867). Johnson offered a pardon to all southern whites except Confederate leaders and wealthy planters (although most of these subsequently received individual pardons), appointed provisional governors, and outlined steps whereby new state governments would be created. Apart from the requirements that they abolish slavery, repudiate secession, and abrogate the Confederate debt—all inescapable corollaries of southern defeat—these governments were granted a free hand in managing their affairs. Johnson offered blacks no role whatever in the politics of Reconstruction. Having long identified himself as a tribune of the South's (white) common people, Johnson assumed that ordinary yeomen would replace in office the planters who had led the South into secession. But when southern elections restored members of the old elite to power, he did not modify his Reconstruction program.
Radical Reconstruction• When Congress assembled in December 1865, Radical Republicans like Thaddeus
Stevens and Charles Sumner called for the abrogation of the Johnson governments and the establishment of new ones based on equality before the law and manhood suffrage. But the more numerous moderate Republicans hoped to work with Johnson while modifying his program. Congress refused to seat the congressmen and senators elected from the southern states and in early 1866 passed and sent to Johnson the Freedmen's Bureau and civil rights bills. The first extended the life of an agency Congress had created in 1865 to oversee the transition from slavery to freedom. The second defined all persons born in the United States as national citizens and spelled out rights they were to enjoy equally without regard to race—making contracts, bringing lawsuits, and enjoying "full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of person and property."
• As the first statutory definition of the rights of American citizenship, the civil rights bill embodied a profound change in federal-state relations. Traditionally, citizens' rights had been delineated and protected by the states. Less than a decade earlier, Chief Justice Roger A. Taney, in the Dred Scott decision, had announced that a black person could not be a citizen of the United States. Now Congress proposed that the federal government guarantee the principle of equality before the law, regardless of race, against state violation.
• A combination of personal stubbornness, fervent belief in states' rights, and deeply held racist convictions led Johnson to reject the bills. His vetoes caused a permanent rupture between the president and Congress. The Civil Rights Act was the first major piece of legislation in American history to become law over a president's veto. Shortly thereafter, Congress approved the Fourteenth Amendment, which forbade states from depriving any citizen of the "equal protection of the laws," barred many Confederates from holding state or national office, and threatened to reduce the South's representation in Congress if black men continued to be kept from voting.
THADDEUS STEVENS • 1792-1868), political leader. In the traditional view of
Reconstruction, Thaddeus Stevens was the evil genius who wrecked President Andrew Johnson's lenient policy and turned the South over to the depredations of "black rule." Today, he is seen more sympathetically, as an outspoken foe of slavery who sought to accord blacks the rights of American citizenship and to provide an economic underpinning for their freedom.
• He opposed as too lenient President Abraham Lincoln's Ten Percent Plan for readmitting Confederate states to the Union during Reconstruction, and by the end of the war he was advocating black suffrage in the South and the disfranchisement of former Confederates.
• "The whole fabric of southern society," he declared, ""must" be changed, and never can it be done if this opportunity is lost." But Stevens's plan was too radical for most Republicans, and after the passage of the Reconstruction Act, his influence waned.
Thaddeus Stevens: Scourge of the South
• To Stevens, Reconstruction offered an opportunity to create a "perfect republic," shorn of racial inequality. As Republican floor leader, he shepherded to passage key measures of Congressional Reconstruction—the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the Fourteenth Amendment, and the Reconstruction Act of 1867—even though none of these was as radical as he desired. He was one of President Johnson's fiercest congressional critics and an early advocate of his impeachment.
• When he died in 1868, Stevens one last time challenged Americans to rise above their prejudices, for he was buried in an integrated Pennsylvania cemetery, with an epitaph written by himself: "I have chosen this that I might illustrate in my death the principles which I advocated through a long life, Equality of Man before his Creator."
• By 1869, the Republican party was firmly in control of all three branches of the federal government. After attempting to remove Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, in apparent violation of the new Tenure of Office Act, Johnson had been impeached by the House of Representatives in 1868. Thad Stevens wrote the articles of impeachment and prosecuted the beleaguered President. Although the Senate, by a single vote, failed to convict him, his power to obstruct the course of Reconstruction was gone.
The Impeachment of Andrew Johnson
Johnson kicking out the Freedmen’s Bureau
April 14, 1866illustrator, Thomas Nast
Edmund Ross• Andrew Johnson: Saved by a Scoundrel
Edmund Ross cast the deciding vote to acquit, but his was no "profile in courage."
• Every impeachment junkie has by now heard the tale of the valiant Edmund Ross, the Republican senator who in 1868 broke party ranks to acquit the impeached President Andrew Johnson. In the expert judgment of John F. Kennedy, who wrote in Profiles in Courage (1956) that Ross' "heroic" vote "may well have preserved ... constitutional government in the United States." And that for his "selfless act," Ross was "shunned, physically assaulted and ruined both politically and financially." Turley proposes erecting a statue in the Capitol of the otherwise obscure Kansan.
• Most historians agree that in voting to acquit Johnson, Ross did the right thing--but, they would add, for the wrong reasons. Those who have researched the issue conclude that, contrary to legend, Ross acted for motives anything but high-minded. That popular wisdom holds otherwise testifies not to Ross' integrity but to his talent for self-promotion.
When judgment day came on May 16, Johnson survived by a vote of 35-19, one shy of the two-thirds needed to convict. Since the other six pro-Johnson Republicans had declared their intentions before voting, the ensuing attention focused on the apostasy of Ross, whose vote came as the biggest surprise. But Ross' vote wasn't the lone act of bravery it was later made out to be. At least four other senators were prepared to oppose conviction had their votes been needed.
Reconstruction Under Grant
• Republican Ulysses S. Grant was elected president that fall. Soon afterward, Congress approved the Fifteenth Amendment, prohibiting states from restricting the franchise because of race. Then it enacted a series of Enforcement Acts authorizing national action to suppress political violence. In 1871, the administration launched a legal and military offensive that destroyed the Klan. Grant was reelected in 1872 in the most peaceful election of the period.
• Nonetheless, Reconstruction soon began to wane. Democrats had never accepted its legitimacy, and during the 1870s, many Republicans retreated from both the racial egalitarianism and the broad definition of federal power spawned by the Civil War. Southern corruption and instability, Reconstruction's critics argued, stemmed from the exclusion of the region's "best men"—the old planters—from power. As the northern Republican party became more conservative, Reconstruction came to symbolize both misgovernment and a misguided attempt to use state power to uplift the lower classes of society.
The End of Reconstruction• By 1876, only South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana remained under
Republican control—the remaining southern states had been "redeemed" by white Democrats. The outcome of the presidential election of 1876 between Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrat Samuel J. Tilden hinged on the disputed returns from these states. After negotiations between southern political leaders and representatives of Hayes, a compromise was reached: Hayes would recognize Democratic control of the remaining southern states, and Democrats would not block the certification of his election by Congress. Hayes was inaugurated, federal troops returned to their barracks, and Reconstruction came to an irrevocable end.
• The collapse of Reconstruction deeply affected the future course of American development. Except in a few areas, the southern Republican party all but disappeared, and the South long remained a one-party region under the control of a reactionary ruling elite who used the same violence and fraud that had helped defeat Reconstruction to stifle internal dissent. Despite its expanded authority over citizens' rights, the federal government stood by indifferently as the South effectively nullified the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments and stripped blacks of the right to vote.
Economic Non-Reconstruction• To blacks, economic autonomy rested on ownership of land. Many freedmen in 1865 and
1866 refused to sign labor contracts, expecting the federal government to provide them with farms of their own, to which their past labor, they believed, entitled them. In some localities, as an Alabama overseer reported, they "set up claims to the plantation and all on it." But President Andrew Johnson in the summer of 1865 ordered land in federal hands to be returned to its former owners. Most rural blacks remained property less and poor, as did those who flocked to southern towns and cities after the Civil War in an unsuccessful search for better employment opportunities. But President Andrew Johnson in the summer of 1865 ordered land in federal hands to be returned to its former owners. Most rural blacks remained property less and poor.
• Most blacks were thus compelled to go to work as laborers on white-owned farms and plantations, although they continued to resist white supervision of their work routines and daily lives. Nearly all former slaves refused to work in gangs under an overseer's direction, and most preferred to rent land for a fixed payment rather than work for wages. Out of the conflict on the plantations, new systems of labor emerged in the different regions of the South. Sharecropping came to dominate the cotton South. A compromise between blacks' desire for land and planters' for labor discipline, sharecropping allowed each black family to work its own plot, with the crop divided with the landowner at year's end. In the rice kingdom of coastal South Carolina and Georgia, planters were unable to acquire the large amounts of capital necessary to repair irrigation systems and threshing machinery destroyed by the war, and blacks clung tenaciously to land they had occupied in 1865. In the end, the great plantations fell to pieces, and blacks were able to acquire small parcels of land and take up self-sufficient farming. In the Louisiana sugar region, gang labor survived the end of slavery, with blacks paid wages and allowed access to garden plots to grow their own food.
Julia Dent Grant • Quite naturally, shy young Lieutenant Grant lost his
heart to friendly Julia; and made his love known, as he said himself years later, "in the most awkward manner imaginable." She told her side of the story--her father opposed the match, saying, "the boy is too poor," and she answered angrily that she was poor herself. The "poverty" on her part came from a slave-owner's lack of ready cash.
• Julia had grown up on a plantation near St. Louis in a typically Southern atmosphere. In memoirs prepared late in life--unpublished until 1975--she pictured her girlhood as an idyll: "one long summer of sunshine, flowers, and smiles. . . . A social favorite in that circle, she met "Ulys" at her home, where her family welcomed him as a West Point classmate of her brother Frederick; soon she felt lonely without him, dreamed of him, and agreed to wear his West Point ring.
Julia and her handsome lieutenant became engaged in 1844, but the Mexican War deferred the wedding for four long years. Their marriage, often tried by adversity, met every test; they gave each other a life-long loyalty. Like other army wives,"dearest Julia" accompanied her husband to military posts, to pass uneventful days at distant garrisons. Then she returned to his parents' home in 1852 when he was ordered to the West.
Ending that separation, Grant resigned his commission two years later. Farming and business ventures at St. Louis failed, and in 1860 he took his family--four children now--back to his home in Galena, Illinois. He was working in his father's leather goods store when the Civil War called him to a soldier's duty with his state's volunteers. Throughout the war, Julia joined her husband near the scene of action whenever she could.
After so many years of hardship and stress, she rejoiced in his fame as a victorious general, and she entered the White House in 1869 to begin, in her words, "the happiest period" of her life. With Cabinet wives as her allies, she entertained extensively and lavishly. Contemporaries noted her finery, jewels and silks and laces. Upon leaving the White House in 1877, the Grants made a trip around the world that became a journey of triumphs. Julia proudly recalled details of hospitality and magnificent gifts they received.
But in 1884 Grant suffered yet another business failure and they lost all they had. To provide for his wife, Grant wrote his famous personal memoirs, racing with time and death from cancer. The means thus afforded and her widow's pension enabled her to live in comfort, surrounded by children and grandchildren, till her own death in 1902. She had attended in 1897 the dedication of Grant's monumental tomb in New York City where she was laid to rest. She had ended her own chronicle of their years together with a firm declaration: "the light of his glorious fame still reaches out to me, falls upon me, and warms me."
The Stolen Election of 1876• In the election of 1876, Samuel J. Tilden, the Democratic candidate, received a popular majority, but lacked one undisputed electoral vote to carry a clear
majority of the electoral college. The crux of the problem was in the 22 electoral votes which were in dispute because Florida, Louisiana, South Carolina, and Oregon each sent in two sets of election returns.
• In the three southern states, Republican election boards threw out enough Democratic votes to certify the Republican candidate, Rutherford B. Hayes.
• Since the Senate was Republican and the House of Representatives Democratic, it seemed useless to refer the disputed returns to the two houses for solution. Instead Congress appointed an Electoral Commission with five representatives each from the Senate, the House, and the Supreme Court. All but one Justice was named, giving the Commission seven Republican and seven Democratic members. The naming of the fifth Justice was left to the other four. He was a Republican who first favored Tilden, but under pressure from his party, switched to Hayes, ensuring his election by the Commission voting 8 to 7 on party lines. The Democrats in Congress were outraged and threatened to block the decision until Republicans privately agreed to a number of concessions, including the removal of federal troops from the South, which effectively ended Reconstruction.
• As a result, Hayes was elected president in what became known as the Compromise of 1877.
Rutherford B. Hayes
• If all the disputed electoral votes went to Hayes, he would win; a single one would elect Tilden.
• Months of uncertainty followed. In January 1877 Congress established an Electoral Commission to decide the dispute. The commission, made up of eight Republicans and seven Democrats, determined all the contests in favor of Hayes by eight to seven. The final electoral vote: 185 to 184.
• Northern Republicans had been promising southern Democrats at least one Cabinet post, Federal patronage, subsidies for internal improvements, and withdrawal of troops from Louisiana and South Carolina.
Rutherford B. Hayes: Fast Facts• Hayes was the first president to take the oath of office in the White House. • Hayes was the only president whose election was decided by a congressional
commission. • Hayes was the first president to travel to the West Coast during his term as
president. • Hayes was the first president to have a telephone in the White House. • Hayes was the first president to have a typewriter in the White House. • Though other presidents served in the Civil War, Hayes was the only one to
have been wounded - four times! • Hayes began the "Easter Egg Roll" for children on the White House Lawn
(1878) - a tradition which still continues on the Monday after Easter. • Lucy Webb Hayes was the first wife of a president to graduate from college, • Lucy Webb Hayes was the first wife of a president to be called "First Lady". • Hayes' best known quotation - "he serves his party best who serves his country
best." Inaugural Address, 1877. • Lucy Webb Hayes was known as “Lemonade Lucy” and allowed no alcohol to
be served in the White House.
