Difference between revisions of "American History Lecture Six"

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This is a good time to pause and consider if, and which, college board or college credit exam you may want to take at the end of this course, so that you can begin to focus on what the course covers. Smart preparation can improve your score tremendously, and the key is to begin that preparation early. The basic options are the multiple-choice SAT II U.S. History exam (which is quite biased) to show high school achievement, the multiple-choice CLEP exam (which is the least biased) to earn college credit, and the AP exam (which is given only once at year at your local high school, and is the most expensive).

Let me know which, if any, exam you are considering taking so that I can guide your preparation.

The mid-term exam in this course will be entirely multiple-choice, and will cover the beginning through Reconstruction. The distribution of questions will be similar to the distribution on the SAT II exam, and do not spend too much time on an area that will not have many questions.

Review

In the 1850s, the Whig Party collapsed with the antislavery wing forming the Republican Party in the North, and the wealthy Southern Whigs joining the Democratic Party in the South. There have always been geographic strengths and weaknesses in political parties: in areas of the country where one party is strong, the opposing party is weak. Recall that the Federalist Party in 1800 was strong in Massachusetts, while the Democratic-Republican Party was strong in Virginia. Jackson's Democratic Party was strong in the West (Tennessee) and South, while the Whig Part was strong in the northeast.

In the late 1850s, the Republicans were strong in the North, and Democrats were strong in the South. But the Republican Party was young and had not fully developed, and there were still many northern Democrats, which gave the Democrats the upper hand in elections in the 1850s. The Democratic Party presidential candidate won both in 1852 (Franklin Pierce) and in 1856 (James Buchanan). Both Pierce and Buchanan were Democrats and pro-slavery.

Secession

The South threatened to secede from (leave) the United States if the Republican Abraham Lincoln were elected president. Lincoln and many of his supporters considered that to be election rhetoric or bluffing by the South to try to influence the election. After all, the South had threatened to secede before (as South Carolina did during the Jackson Administration), and never did actually leave. Lincoln did not expect the South to secede now.

But the Republican Party was antislavery with respect to the western territories and many in the Republican Party also wanted slavery abolished even in existing states (though that was not the official position of the Party). Several southern states, particularly South Carolina, considered that opposition to slavery to be an irreconcilable opposition to South Carolina itself, which depended heavily on slavery. Many in the South felt so strongly about slavery that they wanted to break away if and when a Republican became president. Note that the South had fundamental differences with the North on other issues, also, such as the tariff and the significance of state's rights.

Lincoln was elected in November 1860, but presidents were not inaugurated until four months later, in March of the following year. (That has since been moved to the earlier date of January 20 for inaugurations after a presidential election.) That gave the South a long period to act, before Lincoln could do anything about it.

Southerners were well-informed about the issues of states rights and how their heroes of Thomas Jefferson and John Calhoun had championed the rights of states in the past by nullifying federal law.

Merely four days after the election of the new President Lincoln, on November 10, 1860, the South Carolina legislature called for a convention to consider secession from the United States. South Carolina, the state of John Calhoun (who died in 1850), always had one of the slave populations (by percentage) and for decades had been the leader in calling for secession.

South Carolina moved quickly. The first convention met in Charleston, South Carolina on December 20, and unanimously passed the first ordinance of secession:

We, the people of the State of South Carolina in convention assembled, do declare and ordain ... that the Union now subsisting between South Carolina and other States, under the name of 'the United States of America,' is hereby dissolved."

With that, South Carolina declared herself a new and independent country, and her residents celebrated with parties, fireworks, and revelry in the streets.

By the end of January six other southern states imitated South Carolina and declared their independence from the United States, all prior to the inauguration of Lincoln as the new President. They were Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas. A diarist in the South, Mary Boykin Chesnut, summed up the feeling of many southerners: "We are divorced, North and South, because we have hated each other so."^[1]

But things quieted down as the nation awaited Lincoln's Inaugural Address, which is the speech a president gives to the nation after he is sworn it. Fearful for his own life, Lincoln rode the train from Illinois to D.C. wearing a disguise. In his Inaugural Address, Lincoln tried to preserve the Union by appeasing the southern states: "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so." Lincoln was not yet a prayerful man (he would soon become one), and his speech contains only a passing reference to God. He concluded by both begging and warning the South: "The Government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the Government, while I shall have the most solemn one to 'preserve, protect, and defend it.' I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies."

His speech persuaded no one. Some of my prior students have suggested that the real problem in 1861 was a lack of leadership just when the nation needed it most. Where was George Washington, or someone like him, at our nation's crucial moment? Instead, Lincoln was at our helm and he used a lawyer-like approach to a problem that cried out for more. He had the respect and confidence of virtually no one in the South.

One month after his inauguration, in April, Lincoln told South Carolina that he needs to re-supply a federal garrison there called Fort Sumter. South Carolina did not trust Lincoln and felt this was a trick to fool and possibly attack it. South Carolina attacked and quickly captured Fort Sumter on April 12th, and Lincoln calls for troops on April 15th. Within weeks more states secede, bringing the total to 11 of the states that have seceded: Arkansas, North Carolina, Virginia and Tennessee.

There were compromises between the North and South in 1820, 1850 and 1854). One last attempt at compromise occurred in 1861, led by Senator John Crittenden of the border state of Kentucky. Congress passed a constitutional amendment in 1861 to protect slavery in the South, in the hope that would satisfy it. But this amendment was never ratified by the States because war broke out before the States could even consider it. It seems unlikely that the northern states would have agreed anyway.

Civil War

The view in the North was that the southern states had no right to secede, and thus their declarations of secession were null and void. The South was still part of the United States, and the fighting by the South (as at Fort Sumter) constituted an insurrection or a "civil war."^[2] In the South, the view was that Lincoln was the aggressor in trying to fortify a northern position in South Carolina (Fort Sumter), and the resulting conflict was the "War of Northern Aggression" or "War Among the States." For a long time one could tell whether a stranger was from the northern part of the United States, or the southern part, simply by the name the person used for the conflict. In this course, we will use the name "Civil War."

The eleven states that had seceded formed the Confederate States of America, or simply the "Confederacy". It adopted its own constitution, elected its own president (Jefferson Davis), had its own capitol city (Montgomery, Alabama), and printed its own money. Its new national flag, the "Confederate Flag," remains controversial when used today.

The first major battle of the Civil War was at Bull Run, near Manassas, Virginia, on July 21, 1861. By then Virginia, a border state, had also chosen to secede and its local hero, General Robert E. Lee, remained loyal to his state. Lincoln offered him command of the Union forces because Lee was the most respected American military commander at the time, but he chose to represent his home state instead.

In the first battle the emotional South crushed the North, and people fled into nearby D.C. But the South made a mistake of not charging immediately to take D.C., as urged by one of the greatest American (southern) generals, “Stonewall” Jackson (who had been a physics teacher at Virginia Military Institute). After this initial defeat, Lincoln fired his general and replaced him with George McClellan.

McClellan was an important figure throughout the war, and eventually ran against Lincoln for president in 1864 and would have defeated him had the southern states been able to vote. McClellan held a dim view of Lincoln, and often ignored his calls and requests. Early one evening President Lincoln left McClellan an urgent message to respond to him, no matter how late. McClellan, upon receiving the message, simply ignored it and went to sleep. A brilliant student at West Point (second in his class), McClellan was a masterful organizer who was running large railroads just before the Civil War. Upon taking command, McClellan quickly fortified and protected D.C., and built up the Army of the Potomac into powerful force for the North (the Union).

There was little action in the fall of 1861 and soon 1862 had arrived. Time was on the North’s side, as it had over three times the free population and a much more developed manufacturing and transportation system. For the South to win the war, it had to win quickly. But it waited.

McClellan also waited, and waited, and waited. He much preferred defense to offense. He did not like the harm caused by war, such as the loss of life. He did not get along with Lincoln and did not think much of him. Finally, Lincoln wrote this famous letter to McClellan:

“My Dear McClellan:

If you are not using the army, I should like to borrow it for a short while.

Yours respectfully,

Abraham Lincoln”

Ultimately Lincoln fired McClellan in November 1862. McClellan ran against Lincoln for president in 1864 and it looked like McClellan would win until the Union forces won big military victories that summer and fall, and Lincoln picked a Southerner (Andrew Johnson) as his running mate to appease those who were tired of the war. Much later McClellan later became Governor of New Jersey (1878-81).

The Union (North) began winning battles in 1863. The key turning point occurred around July 4, 1863 in two different locations: Vicksburg, Mississippi (July 4) and Gettysburg, Pennsylvania (July 1-3). The losses of the South on those days have been described as “mortal blows.” It was Ulysses S. Grant who led the Union at Vicksburg, which cut the South in half. Lincoln took notice and by spring of May 1864 he elevated Grant to command of the Union forces in Virginia. Grant was no military genius and was only an average student at West Point, although he was a superb horseman. But Grant did not mind shedding blood on both sides and used the superior numbers of the Union to slowly defeat the South in 1864 and early 1865 in Northern Virginia. Eventually General Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox Court House in Virginia on April 9th. Five days later, on Good Friday, April 14th, Lincoln was attending a theatrical performance (that’s odd, one might observe) and was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth, who was himself an actor sympathetic to the South. Some suggest that Lincoln accepted this ending to his life. Our Nation was again left without a leader.

There is much more to the battles of the Civil War, of course. Union General William Tecumseh Sherman brutalized Georgia by destroying everything in a 60-mile-wide path from Atlanta to the ocean, known as his “March to the Sea” in late 1864. To this day some Southerners are bitter about his destruction, which Sherman justified a way to break the back and the will of the South.

Lincoln, for his part, remains a controversial historical figure to this day. His original goals were not moral, and he admitted that he was not trying to abolish slavery. He was trying to save the Union. He even agreed to try to preserve slavery as a way of saving the Union. A cynic might point to young Lincoln’s lack of faith and his career as a railroad lawyer as the prime motivation for his obsession with unity. But that would be an oversimplification.

There are strong signs that Lincoln found faith during the war and grew to appreciate the morality of the situation. He inserted the phrase “under God” after his reference to “one Nation” in his Gettysburg address at the battlefield (cemetery) in November 1863, in commemoration of the fallen there. That address remains the most famous in all of American history, ending with the words “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.” Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address is the opposite of his First; by 1864 he saw the Civil War as a moral struggle over slavery. Lincoln also saw the death of his own beloved child, due to illness, while in the White House.

<explain "under God" further, with reference to how the political cartoon used it and also George Washington before that>

Lincoln had chosen a Democrat, Andrew Johnson, as his Vice President, only the second time in history that a candidate chose as a running mate someone from the opposite party (the other time was when Whig William Henry Harrison picked Democrat John Tyler in 1940; in 2008 there were reports that the Republican John McCain almost picked former Democratic Vice Presidential nominee Joe Lieberman as his running mate). When Johnson succeeded Lincoln as president, only the third succession of presidential power in our history (the first was Tyler becoming president after Harrison's death, and the second was Millard Fillmore becoming president after Zachary Taylor's death). Congress was then controlled by “Radical Republicans” who wanted to impose harsh conditions on the South both to protect African-Americans and to punish the South for the War. Johnson was disliked by Republicans and spent the next three years fighting them, who eventually impeached him (but fell one vote short of removing him from office).

“Reconstruction” is the period from the end of the Civil War to 1877, when the disputed presidential election of Hayes and Tilden forced the Republicans to cut a deal with the Democrats that included an end to Reconstruction and a removal of all Northern troops from the South. Included in Reconstruction were three constitutional Amendments (13, 14 and 15) and many Northerners (given the derogatory name “carpetbaggers”) moved to the South to form quasi-military governments. “Scalawags” were white Southerners who worked with the Republicans in the South during Reconstruction. The term “carpetbaggers” is still used today to describe any politician who moves to a new state to be elected to office (as Hillary Clinton moved to New York to become a U.S. Senator).

Much of the disputes during Reconstruction concerned efforts by southern whites to interfere with suffrage (right to vote) by former slaves. A poll tax was used as a way to keep poor people, particularly former slavers, from voting. This was not completely abolished until 1964 by the 24th Amendment. Other forms of intimidation by whites, including violence instigated by the Ku Klux Klan, continued. One Democratic Senator today, Robert Byrd of West Virginia, once belonged to Ku Klux Klan. So did the Democratic Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black.

Other issues were controversial during the Reconstruction period. Immigration into California from China caused many union laborers to object, because the Chinese would work more industriously and for less pay than union workers. Yet it was the Chinese immigrants who finally conquered the treacherous Sierra-Nevada mountain range and built the railroad over it, finally enabling completion of the first transcontinental railroad in 1869 (the final link was in Utah). Afterwards, factory owners as far away as Massachusetts would transport immigrants from California in order to break a strike by a union.

Conflicts with Indians also continued during the Civil War and afterwards. General George Custer was a highly popular and charismatic cavalry officer who sported long yellow hair and the latest fashions. But he also graduated last in his class at West Point, in contrast to many of the Civil War officers who took their coursework more seriously. In 1876, Custer led his men to Little Big Horn (now in Montana) to address some conflicts with Indians. Custer’s superiors favored an attack on the Indians, but not just yet. Custer was urged to wait before leading the charge. Overly aggressive and perhaps attempting to become a hero, Custer charged ahead anyway. The Sioux and Cheyenne warriors, led by Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, then overwhelmed Custer and his men and slaughtered all of them. The warriors scalped all of Custer’s men, except Custer himself, whose strange clothing may have misled the warriors into thinking he was an innocent civilian.

Offsetting that bad news was some good news from the late 1800s. Baseball developed as a uniquely American sport during the Civil War, as soldiers found a way to pass the time between battles. After the war, informal leagues began to develop. The first professional team was the Cincinnati Red Stockings (now the “Red”), formed in 1869. Then, the same year as the massacre of Custer’s men in Little Big Horn, 1876, the National League was founded. The American League did not arise until 1903.

References

1. ↑ http://civilwar.bluegrass.net/secessioncrisis/601220.html
2. ↑ Cite the Supreme Court decision here.