Fasttrack to America's Past
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Background for the discussion questions  

1. What were the reasons the South...

   By the time of Lincoln's election in 1860, many Southern leaders had come to believe that the needs and interests of the South would be better served by separating from the United States. 
   The development of factories, industry, and large cities made the Northern states very different from what they had been even 50 years earlier.  While the South had prospered and grown, it had not changed in the way the North had.  Southern leaders saw secession as the best way to preserve the ways of life they had known for generations. 
   Southerners also feared that abolitionists might succeed in banning slavery throughout the United States.  While three-fourths of Southern whites did not own slaves, the vast majority considered it a social and economic necessity for the region. 
   The election in 1860 of Abraham Lincoln brought all these issues to the boiling point.  Although he did not call for ending slavery where it already existed, Lincoln had declared slavery a moral wrong.  He pledged to work against any further spread of slavery into new territories.  Lincoln's support came almost entirely from states in the North and West, and he was not even on the ballot in most Southern States. 
   Within weeks of Lincoln's election, Southern leaders were taking steps to form a new country, which became the Confederate States of America.

2.  What advantages and disadvantages...

   As the Civil War began, each side had certain advantages and disadvantages. 
   The North had great advantages in manpower, material, and organization.  It had more than twice the population of the South, and many more factories to produce war supplies.  The U.S. government had been functioning well for many decades, and the national level had sufficient powers under the Constitution to wage war effectively.
   The South had some advantages as well.  Most Southern men were experienced in riding horses, hunting, and shooting.  Its military leaders were experienced and effective, while the Northern armies struggled to find good leadership.  Southerners were fighting to defend their own land, and thus had a strong incentive to fight well.
   The political organization of the Confederacy, however, was a disadvantage to the South from a military point of view.  The CSA constitution created a loose association of the individual states, and it was sometimes difficult to get all of them to work together smoothly. 
   The North used its advantages well as the war moved past the first year.  It blockaded the South with a long line of ships to stop trade with Europe.  It took control of the Mississippi River, thus dividing the South in two.  It attacked deep into the heart of the South, winning control of large areas.  With the victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg in 1863, even many Southerners sensed that the days of the Confederacy were numbered.

3.  Explain how President Lincoln's...

   Lincoln's view of the slavery question evolved before and during the Civil War.  As the war began, his stated view was that slavery was a moral wrong, that it should not be allowed to spread into new territories, and that someday it should disappear.  Lincoln did not, however, call for its immediate abolition in areas where it already existed.  As a practical matter, he probably would not have been elected if he had done so. 
   Many abolitionists wanted the ending of slavery to become a war goal.  Lincoln specifically said it was not.  The purpose of the war, he said, was to preserve the Union, and bring the Confederate states back.  He was well aware that opinion on the slavery issue was divided in the North.  Had he made ending slavery an immediate goal, the slave states that had stayed in the Union probably would have tipped to the Confederacy.
   As the war progressed, however, Lincoln became more receptive to calls for abolition as a strategy of war.  Such a declaration would help keep England from siding with the South.  In addition, freeing the slaves of the South could be justified as a war measure.  That would help it be accepted both politically and from a constitutional powers standpoint.
   The Emancipation Proclamation issued by President Lincoln in 1862 (effective Jan. 1863) reflects these points.  It freed slaves only in the states in rebellion, not in the slave states that sided with the Union. 
   Lincoln and Congress also took steps to help the freed slaves of the South by creating the Freedmen's Bureau.  The final end of slavery in the U.S. came with the 13th Amendment, shortly after the end of the Civil War.

4.  Explain why Lincoln's Emancipation...

   The Emancipation Proclamation is one of the nation's most important, and most misunderstood, documents of freedom.  In spite of its name, it did not free many slaves when it was issued, although it certainly did mark the beginning of the end of slavery in the U.S. 
   The Proclamation was issued by President Lincoln in preliminary form in 1862, to take effect January 1, 1863.  It declared that on that date, slaves in any state still rebelling against the United States would be "then, thenceforward, and forever free." 
   Not all slave states were in rebellion, of course.  Several, including Maryland, had voted to remain in the United States.  Lincoln could not risk tipping these states to the Confederate side.  The Emancipation Proclamation did not free the slaves those states.
   As the Northern armies pushed deeper into the South, the Proclamation did bring freedom to more and more slaves.  Everywhere, slaves understood that they would soon be free men and women.
   As the Civil War ended, Congress passed the 13th Amendment to finally end slavery throughout the nation.  It applied to the Northern states that still allowed slavery, as well as to the defeated Southern states.

5.  Why did the Radical Republicans...

   The Radical Republicans in Congress were determined to reconstruct the South in ways that would break up forever the old social and economic patterns based on slavery.  They were worried that the North, having won the Civil War, would "lose the peace" if some big changes were not made. 
   In the aftermath of the Civil War, Southern states were eager to begin the task of rebuilding farms and cities destroyed by the war.  But they were not eager to accept the idea of social or political equality with the freed slaves.  In fact, Southern states began passing Black Codes that kept African-Americans in a subordinate or second class status.  (In the North, such discrimination was also common, but was enforced more by custom than by specific laws.)
   The Radical Republicans were outraged by the Black Codes.  In Congress, they demanded that the federal government take steps to protect the rights of the freed slaves.  They supported passage of the 14th Amendment, which requires states to give "equal protection of the laws" to all.  This amendment also made the freed slaves citizens.  The 15th Amendment gave black men the right to vote. 
   The Radical Republicans were not entirely successful, however.  They could not win support for a land reform plan to give land and tools to the freed slaves.  This left most blacks in the South dependent in various ways on white land owners.  They were also unable to stop groups like the Ku Klux Klan, which used intimidation and violence to stop blacks from voting or gaining political strength.

6.  How did the end of the Civil War...

   The end of the Civil War meant the end of slavery in the U.S., as required by the 13th Amendment.  But the shift to new social and economic patterns between whites and blacks was not painless. 
   On large farms, slavery was often replaced by a new labor system called sharecropping.  Sharecroppers, whether freed slaves or poor whites, lived and worked on land owned by someone else.  As rent, they paid the landowner a share of the crop, typically one third or one half.  It sounded fair to both sides, but in fact it tended to keep the sharecropper in a dependent position. 
   Blacks who owned land, or who could make a living with a trade or skill, were in a much better position.  Owning land gave a certain independence, and crops could be sold in markets for a profit.  Likewise, a skilled tradesman or business owner could interact with whites to make deals advantageous to both sides.
   Social equality, however, was a far more elusive goal for African-Americans.  Segregation became the pattern in the decades after the Civil War in the South.  Segregation was also common in the North, but in the South, it became more rigid with the passage of Jim Crow laws.  This separation of the races made normal social relations between whites and blacks far more difficult, and tended to keep blacks in the status of second class citizens. 
   In spite of these difficulties, some progress was made by Southern blacks both socially and economically in the decades after the Civil War.  It was not until the modern Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, however,  that most Southern blacks could hope for fully equal economic and social opportunities. 






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   Copyright 2018 by David Burns.  All rights reserved.  Illustrations and reading selections appearing in this work are taken from sources in the public domain and from private collections used by permission.  Sources include: the Dover Pictorial Archive, the Library of Congress, The National Archives, The Hart Publishing Co., Corel Corporation and its licensors, Nova Development Corporation and its licensors, and others.  Maps were created or adapted by the author using reference maps from the United States Geological Survey and Cartesia Software.  Please see the home page for this title for more information.