CHAPTER 15
Blood and Freedom
1863 - 1867
"Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation,
whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an
invasion, and you allow him to do so, whenever he may
choose to say he deems it necessary for such a purpose
-- and you allow him to make war at pleasure. Study to see
if you can fix any limit to his power in this respect, after you
have given him so much … [power]. If, today, he should
choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada, to
prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him?
You may say to him, 'I see no probability of the British
invading us' but he will say to you, 'Be silent; I see it, if
you don't.'" Congressman Abraham Lincoln during era of
"Polk's War" (Lincoln: Speeches and Writings 1832-1858,
The Library of America)
"Learning is not compulsory. Neither is survival." -- W.
Edwards Deming, business consultant and author
“It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness. .
. . One ever feels his two-ness – an American, a Negro;
two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two
warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength
alone keeps it from being torn asunder.”
“One fact and one alone explains the attitude of most
recent writers toward Reconstruction; they cannot
conceive of Negroes as men.”
W.E.B. DuBois
“I used to think that I should not care to read Uncle
Tom’s Cabin in our camp; it would have seemed tame .
. . .I needed no fiction when I had Fanny Wright. . .daily
passing to and fro before my tent, with her shy little girl
clinging to her skirts. Fanny was a modest little mulatto,
a soldier’s wife, and a company laundress. She had
escaped from the main-land in a boat, with that child
and another. Her baby was shot dead in her arms, and
she reached our lines with one child safe on earth and
the other in heaven. I never found it needful to give any
elementary instructions in courage to Fanny’s husband,
you may be sure.”
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Army Life in a Black
Regiment, 1869
Chapter Review
 Explain the significance of the Union victories at
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Gettysburg and Vicksburg.
Briefly describe the significance of Lincoln’s reelection in
1864, and explain how that outcome was achieved.
Describe the function of the Freedmen’s Bureau.
Describe and evaluate the various plans for
Reconstruction of the South in the post Civil War years.
Was Lincoln our “greatest” US president?
Did the North win the Civil War while the South won
Reconstruction?
Overview
Chapter Concepts
 “The Glory of War”
 African American soldiers, Draft riots
 Gettysburg Address
 Gen. Sherman’s Field Order No. 15, January 1865 – abandoned land
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for Blacks
Confederate invasion of New Mexico + Kit Carson and Navajo “Long
March” [Blood and Thunder by Hampton Sides – 2006]
Appomattox Courthouse
John Wilkes Booth
Radical Republicans
13th Amendment, 14th Amendment, 1868 – “equal protection of the
law”
Andrew Johnson, impeachment [Tenure of Office Act]
Reconstruction Act, Freedmen’s Bureau
Black Codes, Ku Klux Klan
I.
People at War: Spring 1863
 Soldier life is harsh, with disease killing many
 Civilians on both sides begin to question reasons for war
 Lincoln’s critics become more vocal
 North begins to allow blacks to fight
Black Soldiers in the Union Army
©2004 Wadsworth, a division of Thomson Learning, Inc. Thomson Learning™ is a trademark used herein under license.
II.
The Battlefields of Summer: 1863
 Grant moves on Vicksburg
 Lee is defeated at Gettysburg and Vicksburg falls to Grant
 Immigrant battle losses contribute to draft riots in New York City
 Grant takes command of eastern theater
 Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address ties war to liberation of blacks
Vicksburg
©2004 Wadsworth, a division of Thomson Learning, Inc. Thomson Learning™ is a trademark used herein under license.
Battle of
Gettysburg,
July 1-3,
1863
Virginia, 1863
©2004 Wadsworth, a division of Thomson Learning, Inc. Thomson Learning™ is a trademark used herein under license.
III.
The Winter of Discontent: 1863 - 1864
 Political foes oppose both Lincoln and Davis
 Prison camps earn terrible reputations
 Grant takes control of entire Union army
 Southerner Andrew Johnson becomes Lincoln’s running
mate in preparation for 1864 election
 Sherman’s March to Sea breaks will of South and
assures Lincoln’s re-election
Campaign for Atlanta, May-September 1864
Battle of the Wilderness and Spotsylvania
Election of 1864
©2004 Wadsworth, a division of Thomson Learning, Inc. Thomson Learning™ is a trademark used herein under license.
IV.
From War to Reconstruction: 1865 1867
 Thirteenth Amendment is enacted
 War ends on April 9, 1865, at Appomattox Courthouse,
and Lincoln is assassinated soon after
 War wreaks havoc with people, economy, and society
 Emancipation brings less than true freedom to blacks in
South
 Major political goal of blacks in South becomes gaining
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vote
Johnson’s reconstruction plans upset many, as do
implementation of “black codes”
Radicals in Congress override Johnson and pass
Fourteenth Amendment
Reconstruction Act divides and occupies South
Northerners head South to help blacks but maintain
discrimination in own region
Territory of War
©2004 Wadsworth, a division of Thomson Learning, Inc. Thomson Learning™ is a trademark used herein under license.
Grant Against Lee in Virginia
©2004 Wadsworth, a division of Thomson Learning, Inc. Thomson Learning™ is a trademark used herein under license.
The Failed Promise of Reconstruction
 Sharecropping
 Modest Gains and Future Victories
 Slaughterhouse cases [1873]
 Citizenship rights remain under state control
 United States v. Cruikshank [1876]
 The Enforcement Act applied only to violations of
Black rights by states and not individuals
Congressional Reconstruction, 1865–1877
When Congress wrested
control of Reconstruction
policy from President Andrew
Johnson, it divided the South
into the five military districts
depicted here. The
commanding generals for
each district held the
authority both to hold
elections and to decide who
could vote.
Thaddeus Stevens
One of the most outspoken
Radical Republicans after the
Civil War, Thaddeus Stevens
served in the U.S. House of
Representatives until his
death in 1868. He chose to
be buried in an African
American cemetery.
Rep. Thaddeus Stevens 1792-1868 – helped secure Civil Rights Act of 1866,
helped draft 14th Amendment, Military Reconstruction Act of 1867
Lincoln with son Tad on February 9th, 1864
Artist’s portrayal of assassination – “sic semper tyrannis” [Thus always to
tyrants]
Reward poster for the conspirators – Booth trapped two weeks later in a VA
John Wilkes Booth 1838-1865
Lincoln’s funeral procession --Pennsylvania Avenue – a special funeral train took
2 weeks to Springfield, Ill.
[June, 1968 – “Like a Bridge Over Troubled Water”]
Executions of Lewis Paine, George Atzerodt, David Herold, and Mary Surratt on
July 7, 1865 – 8 were found guilt by a military tribunal, some went to prison
Andrew Johnson 1808-1875 – pardoned 13,000 former Confederates,
impeached but found not guilty by one vote
Former slave pens in Alexandra, VA
Freedmen at Richmond, VA April 1865
1872 – African Americans in Congress [l to r] Sen Hiram Revels, Miss; Rep
Benjamin Turner, AL; Rep Robert DeLarge, SC; Josiah Walls, FLA; Joseph
Rainey, SC; Robert Brown Elliott, SC
Sen. Blanche Kelso Bruce, Mississippi elected in 1874, Oberlin graduate
Sen. Hiram Revels, US Senate from Mississippi in 1870
Primary school in Vicksburg – Freedmen’s Bureau established March 3, 1865
Howard University law school, 1900 – Howard was established in Washington,
D.C. in 1867 named after Oliver O. Howard, director of the Freedman’s Bureau
Ku Klux Klan members, 1866 Tennessee
“Reconstruction of the South” -- Fed. generals leading towards peace
Thomas Nast cartoon – Columbia is replacing the seceded states in the Union
“Let us have peace”
Thomas Nast cartoon shows freedmen as victims of Democratic Party
Thomas Nast cartoon “Solid South”
1876 voting cartoon
Edwin M. Stanton 1814-1869 - Lincoln’s Sec. of War, fired by Johnson - 1868
Impeachment Com. of House [l to r] Benjamin Butler, James Wilson, Thaddeus
Stevens, George Boutwell, Thomas Williams, John Logan, John Bingham
1868 Republican Convention in Chicago nominates Grant
Cartoon about carpetbagging
Frederick Douglass 1817-1895
1873 election of Georgia Democrat John Brown Gordon 1832-1904 to Senate
was “Redemption” because he had been officer with Lee
Henry Clay Warmoth, 1842-1932 -- Carpetbagger governor of LA 1868 - 1872
Horace Greeley 1811-1872 – founded NY Tribune in 1841, ran against Grant in
1872 as a Liberal Republican and Democrat
Rutherford B. Hayes 1822-1893 – Ohio governor who became Republican
president in contested election of 1876
Samuel J. Tilden 1814-1886 -- denied presidency when several southern
Democrats in Congress failed to support him in return for an end to
Painting of Electoral Commission of 1877 [Florida case]
Mississippi: Freedman School, 1866
Noon at the primary school for Freedman at Vicksburg, Mississippi.
(colored engraving, 1866).
Graves of rebel soldiers
This engraving shows Southerners decorating the graves of rebel
soldiers at Hollywood Memorial Cemetery in Virginia, in 1867.
Northerners and Southerners alike honored their war dead. But in
the South, the practice of commemorating fallen soldiers became an
important element in maintaining the myth of the Lost Cause that
colored white Southerners’ view of the war. The Granger Collection,
Hampton Institute
Milk sampling at Hampton Institute. Hampton, which opened in
Virginia in 1868, was one of the first of several schools established
with the help of Northern philanthropic and missionary societies to
allow freedmen to pursue a college education. Hampton stressed
agricultural and vocational training. The military uniforms were
typical for male students, black and white, at agricultural and
mechanical schools. Courtesy of Hampton University Archives
First African Baptist Church in Richmond, 1874
The black church was the center of African American life in the
postwar urban South. Most black churches formed after the Civil
War, but some, such as the first African Baptist Church in Richmond,
shown here in an 1874 engraving, traced their origins to before
1861. The Granger Collection, New York
Casting a ballot
Black voters in Richmond
vote on a state constitutional
conventions in 1867. A key
objective of Congressional
Reconstruction was to secure
the voting rights of freedman.
The Granger Collection, New
York
Klan violence
The Klan directed
violence at African
Americans primarily for
political activity. Here, a
black man, John
Campbell, vainly begs
for mercy in Moore
County, North Carolina,
in August 1871. The
Granger Collection,
New York
The Union As it Was
As this Thomas Nast
cartoon makes clear,
the paramilitary
violence against black
Southerners in the
early 1870s threatened,
not only the voting
rights of freedmen, but
their dreams of
education, prosperity,
and family life as well.
In this context, the
slogan, “The Union As
It Was” is highly ironic.
Courtesy of Library of
Congress
Massacre At New Orleans
In the New Orleans riot of 1866, thirty-seven African Americans and
three white sympathizers were killed after a Radical Republican
meeting. Southern whites, having lost the Civil War, had little interest
in cooperating in a bi-racial Reconstruction.
"The Shackle Broken"
This lithograph from 1874 celebrates the various effects of freedom
for the former slaves. In the middle panel is Hon. Robert B. Elliot of
South Carolina who served as a member of the House of
Representatives and is shown orating on the Civil Rights Bill in the
House chamber in 1874.