Mobilizing for War
• Military forces largely volunteer on both sides
• New military technology utilized
– Infantry rifle was most lethal weapon of war
– Infantry tactics gradually adjusted to new weapon
• General technology shaped course/outcome of
war
– Railroad and steamship transported supplies and
soldiers
– Telegraph provided for better communication
Navies, the Blockade, and Foreign Relations
• South employed “King Cotton diplomacy”
– Hoped to win British support through lure of
cotton exports
– Exports complicated by Northern blockade of
Southern ports
• Blockade seriously crippled Southern economy
Principal Military Campaigns of the Civil War
NATIVE AMERICANS AND THE
CIVIL WAR
• The southeast
• At one time this region had one of the largest
and diverse groups of Native Americans
• However from Carolina to Mississippi the
colonial period forward had ravaged this area
• War
• Disease
• Removal west
• Had all devastated the original people of this
region
• Those that remained were faced with
• Increased efforts to extended state
jurisdiction over them and their lands
• Increased racist treatment towards
them
• By the time two white armies began
fighting in their lands
• Many had Unionists in a effort to
preserve their lives and their
communities
• One such group were the Pamunkey’s of
Virginia
• Mostly employed as guides and spies for
the northern army
• Their land lay in the route of McClellan’s
delayed peninsula campaign
• The Pamunky Indians are descendents of
the Powhatan empire
• But had gradually been forced into one of
the two main racial identities of the south
– Non-white
• 1802 all free non whites were required to
carry their proof of freedom at all times
• This included Native Americans who had
never been anything but free
• No certificate could mean arrest and sale
into slavery
• 1843 the ‘Gregory petition’ was drawn up
attempt to claim that they were no longer
Indian and therefore land could be taken
• 1859 a result of John Brown’s attack on
Harpers Ferry
• All Pamunkey were disarmed
• By the time Virginia seceded on April 4 1861
• Descendents of the Powhattan empire had
little love for Virginian
• Local officials had circumscribed the their
world
– Economically
– Politically
– Socially
• As “Free persons of color” they were linked
with freed slaves and subject to racist
attitudes
• McClellan, hesitant in warfare, was an
excellent planner
• When he began on the peninsular
campaign he had excellent knowledge of
the complex terrain
• Most of which came from Native American
scouts such as the Pamunkey
• Utilized by the Union army as
– Land guides
– River Pilots
– Spies
• Terrill Bradby
• Most documented
Pamuncky to serve
• Born William Terrill
Bradby in 1803
• No formal education
• Married in 1850
– 4 children
• Reported to be
between 5’ 6” – 5’ 8”
and approx 170lbs
• Enlisted in the Union Army in May
1862
• Illiterate and recruiting officer wrote
name
• Initially her served as a land guide for
the advancing Union army
• Also for Allan Pinkerton’s Secret
Service as a spy
• Gathering intelligence on Confederate
positions and movements
• In 1863 transferred to water duty
• Served initially as a pilot second class on the James
River
• May 1864 became pilot in North Atlantic Blockading
Squadron
– Union attempt to strangle confederate war effort
• Served on the
– USS Schockhon
– USS Onondaga
– USS Huron
• Service ended on May 29, 1865
• Received a war pension
• After war went on to be a “show
Indian”
• Giving information on culture to
anthropologists
• Also was ‘put on display’ at the
Chicago World fair of 1893
• Remained a respected member of the
Pamunkey community until his death
in the early twentieth century
The Cherokee
• The Cherokee had been challenged
and damaged, as much if not more
than other groups, during removal
• During the Trail of Tears and
subsequent relocation in Indian
territory thousands of Cherokee had
died
• Frictions from removal, between the
Ross faction and the Treaty faction,
continued in their new homes
• When the battle of the Americans
arrived on Cherokee lands
• There developed a civil war within a
civil war
• Cherokees served for both sides during
the American Civil War
• Many Cherokee served as Unionists
• Particularly in the Kansas Indian Home
Guard
– Usually union Cherokee were supporters
of Ross
• In addition approximately 3000 Cherokee
served for the Confederate States of
America
– Usually Treaty Party supporters
• During the war
– Military death
– Disease
– Starvation
– Impoverishment
• reduce the Cherokee population from
21,000 to 15,000
•
•
•
•
As early as 1863
1/3 of married women were widows
¼ of children were orphans
The most well known and effective
Cherokee leader with the
confederacy was Stand Waite
• Born December 1806
• Indian Name
– Degadoga “He Stands [on two feet]
• Christian name
• Issac S. Waite
• Became know as Stand Waite
• In October 1861 the Confederacy, led in
negotiations by Albert Pike, signed the PikeCherokee treaty
• This committed the Confederacy and
Cherokee to support each other
• Led to a split between northern and
southern Cherokee
• Waite had been made a Colonel in the CSA
3 months before this
• Shows his strong identification with the
confederacy
• The majority of Waite’s career as a
confederate officer was based in Indian
territory
• He and his supports constantly harried and
attacked both Union soldiers
• And enemy Cherokees
– Not always the same
• Support not constant from CSA
• But Waite remained loyal
– Looking to the future of power structure in the
Cherokee as much as supporting the CSA
• CSA made Waite a Brigadier General in spring
of 1864
• He was an efficient military leader
• Considered to be the best CSA leader in the
west at the end of the war
• Two big victories
• First was the capture of
• The J.R. Williams
• A Union supply ship
• Provided goods for CSA and disrupted Union
supply lines
• The second was his joint raid deep into enemy
territory over 15 days in September 1864
• Waite along with General Richard Gano
• Ventured 400 miles in to Kansas
• Union held
• Once again skillfully attacked and harried Union
troops along with capturing supplies
• At the battle of Cabin Creek, Sept. 19 1864
captured
– 129 wagons full of supplies and 740 mules
– Killed 200 Union soldiers and took 120 prisoners
• June 23, 1865
• A man in a tattered
CSA uniform
• At the head of a
cavalry detachment
• Rode to a meeting
place 12 miles from
Doaksville in the
Choctaw territory
• This was to be the
scene of Waites
Surrender
• 2 months after Lee
surrendered
• Today’s lecture contains some
disturbing historical images
1877 strike
• It began in Baltimore, on July 16th 1877
were a spontaneous action led to a walk
out of employees on the B + O railway.
• Demands for fair wages
and safe working
conditions
• Railroad executives had
issued across-the-board
pay cuts in response to
an economic downturn
• At least 100 people were
killed.
• The troops used to put down the strike
were those government brought back
from the south under the compromise of
1877
• The Railway also became the conduit for
the news of the strike.
• Further strikes in
• Pittsburgh
• Chicago
• St Louis
• San Francisco.
• 80,000 workers out in all
• Many people died in the Strike
• Federal troops, Police, and private
thugs sent in to break up the strikes
• Pitched battles
• Government determined to protect
big business
• In San Francisco, we saw a racial
component within the discussion of
the strike
• Chinese workers became the targets
of blame.
The rise of Jim Crow Laws in the south
• In February 1843 group of four
white men from Virginia, billed
as the "Virgina Minstrels",
applied black cork to their faces
and performed a song-anddance act in a small hall in New
York City
• Thomas Dartmouth
"Daddy" Rice. Rice was a
white actor
• The removal of troops from the south
allowed for a resurgence of white
dominance and control
• Segregation became in many ways
more rigidly enforced
• 1890s Jim Crow Laws
• Legal rights subject to
• Residency requirements
• Literacy requirements
• Poll taxes
• What had been the custom of
segregation and supposed
white superiority (de facto
segregation)
• Became enshrined in many
laws
– know collectively by the term
Jim Crow
• separated humanity into two
races each with their own
position (de jure segregation).
• As the laws were made by
the whites the whites ended
up on top
• Not just a desire to
reinforce a dominant
position
• Also a desire to create a
legal basis for punishment
of those who failed to show
what whites considered the
necessary deference.
Introduction of Jim Crow Laws
• 1890 Mississippi
• 1895 South
Carolina
• Over the next
twelve years all
southern states
bring them in
• Nurses No person or corporation shall require
any white female nurse to nurse in wards or
rooms in hospitals, either public or private, in
which negro men are placed. Alabama
• Railroads The conductor of each passenger train
is authorized and required to assign each
passenger to the car or the division of the car,
when it is divided by a partition, designated for
the race to which such passenger belongs.
Alabama
• Restaurants It shall be unlawful to conduct a
restaurant or other place for the serving of food in
the city, at which white and colored people are
served in the same room, unless such white and
colored persons are effectually separated by a
solid partition extending from the floor upward to
a distance of seven feet or higher, and unless a
separate entrance from the street is provided for
each compartment. Alabama
• Racial segregation was not
limited to the South.
• This 1889 engraving
depicts a man being
expelled from a “white”
railroad car in
Pennsylvania.
1890s Louisiana Separate Car Act
- Plessey Vs Ferguson
Racial Violence
• Along with the rise of legal punishments we
see the rise of illegal actions
• Lynching
• 1882-1890 – at least 1000 African
Americans killed
• 1892 – 162 killed in this year alone
• The racial violence
of lynching
• Graphically
portrayed by
• Billie Holliday
• In the song
• Strange Fruit
SOUTHERN TREES BEAR A STRANGE FRUIT
BLOOD ON THE LEAVES AND BLOOD AT THE ROOT
BLACK BODY SWINGING IN THE SOUTHERN BREEZE
STRANGE FRUIT HANGING FROM THE POPLAR TREES
PASTORAL SCENE OF THE GALLANT SOUTH
THE BULGING EYES AND THE TWISTED MOUTH
SCENT OF MAGNOLIA SWEET AND FRESH
AND THE SUDDEN SMELL OF BURNING FLESH!
HERE IS A FRUIT FOR THE CROWS TO PLUCK
FOR THE RAIN TO GATHER, FOR THE WIND TO SUCK
FOR THE SUN TO ROT, FOR A TREE TO DROP
HERE IS A STRANGE AND BITTER CROP.
• Right: George Meadows,
hanged by a lynch-mob,
Pratt Mines, Alabama,
Jan. 15, 1889
• Left: A lynched man with onlookers,
Arkansas, c1890
Ida B. Wells (1862-1931),
a vigorous campaigner against
lynching in the 1890s and later
among the founders of the
National Association for the
Advancement of Colored
People (NAACP).
Ida B. Wells, A Red Record (1895)
• LYNCHINGS BY STATES - 1893
• Alabama, 25; Arkansas, 7; Florida, 7; Georgia,
24; Indian Territory, 1; Illinois, 3; Kansas, 2;
Kentucky, 8; Louisiana, 18; Mississippi, 17;
Missouri, 3; New York, 1; South Carolina, 15;
Tennessee, 10; Texas, 8; Virginia, 10.