The Civil War and Reconstruction
Photo: Confederate soldiers taken as prisoners at the battle of Gettysburg, July 1863
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The U.S. Population in 1860
Total Population 31,183,582
 Free Colored Persons 476,748
 Total Free Population 27,233,198
 Total Number of Slaves 3,950,528
 Slaves as % of Population 13%
 Total Number of Families 5,155,608
 Total Number of Slaveholders 393,975
 % of Families Owning Slaves 8%
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Party: What is it?
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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.
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The Party System prior to 1850
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Dominant parties prior to the 1850s:
Whigs: conservatives
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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
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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
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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 Party
 Sectional (regional) differentiation
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Presidential Elections 1844-1860
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Increasing Tensions
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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)
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(Images: Chief Justice Roger Taney; Dred Scott)
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The Election of 1860
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Secession 1860/61
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From Peace to War
(Photo: Fort Sumter, Charleston, SC, occupied by Confederate Forces, April 1861)
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The Civil War
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War: 1861-1863
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Aims
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Potentials
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South: defend independence
North: crush rebellion
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
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South: aspires to early victory, trust on Northern divisiveness, wants
diplomatic recognition
North: blockade, war of attrition, keep Europeans out, control of
social divisiveness
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The Emancipation Proclamation of Jan. 1, 1863: From
Preserving the Union to Ending Slavery
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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."
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Meaning and Effects
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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
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Turning Points:
Gettysburg and Vicksburg, July 1863
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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.
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Towards ‘Total War’
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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
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The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln
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Death Toll
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Of more than 1,5 million Northern soldiers, 320.000
die
Of more than 900.000 Southern soldiers, 260.000 die
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Results and Meaning
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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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21
Reconstruction (1865-1877)
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Phases
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Issues
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Presidential Reconstruction (1865-67)
Radical Reconstruction (1867-72)
End of Reconstruction (1872-77)
Reintegration of the secession states
Status of freed African-Americans
Problems
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Relation between federal and state authority
Definition of American citizenship
Practical meaning of equality and freedom for African
Americans
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Lincoln’s Views on Reconstruction
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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
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Presidential Reconstruction
(Andrew Johnson 1865-1868)
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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
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The Federal Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and
Abandoned Lands (‘Freedmen’s Bureau’)
practical
assistance
 education,
information
 judicial support
 (some)
distribution of
land
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13th and 14th Amendment to the Constitution
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13th Amendment (ratification completed December 1865)
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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)
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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 26
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
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Radical Reconstruction
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Problems of
enforcement and
Presidential
policies lead to
radicalization
Reconstruction
Act (1867)
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Military
occupation of the
South
African Americans
are registered in
voting registers
States are forced
to ratify 14th
Amendment
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A Temporary Political Revolution
(Photo: Senator Hiram R. Revels from Mississippi)
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Emergence of reconstruction
governments composed of:
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Moderate white southerners
Republicans from the North
African Americans
Policies of the reconstruction
governments:
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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)
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Presidential Election 1868 and Republican Majority
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Republican war hero Ulysses S.
Grant becomes President
Republicans pass 15th
Amendment
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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.
30
Backlash
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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)
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Terror, Intimidation, Murder
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Ku Klux Klan (founded by former Southern
General Nathan Bedford Forrest in 1866)
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Socio-Economic Dimension
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The End of Reconstruction
Northerners lose interest in Southern affairs
 Southerners demand “home rule”
 Democrats gain majority in House of
Representatives in 1874
 Congress passes Civil Rights Act in 1875
(annulled by Supreme Court)
 Collapse of remaining reconstruction
governments until 1877
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The Meaning of Reconstruction
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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
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and Southern culture