The American Civil War 1861-1865

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The American Civil War1861-1865

• American Lit. I
• Cecilia H.C. Liu
• 03/01/2005

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Civil War Overview

•  With the election of the anti-slavery Republican
  candidate for President, Abraham Lincoln, the
  Southern states decided to take drastic action to
  protect their own interests.
• On December 20, 1860, a secession convention met
  in South Carolina and adopted an Ordinance of
  Secession from the Union, and Jefferson Davis was
  chosen as President for a six-year term of
  office. All States ratified it and conformed
  themselves to its requirements without delay. The
  Constitution varied in very few particulars from
  the Constitution of the United carefully the
  fundamental principles of popular States,
  preserving representative democracy and
  confederation of co-equal States.

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The Civil War Time Line

• 1861
• 1862
• 1863
• 1864
• 1865

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Cause of the War (1)

• The root of all of problems was the institution
  of slavery, which was introduced in North America
  in colonial period. The American Revolution had
  been fought to validate the idea that all men
  were created equal, slavery was legal in all of
  the thirteen colonies throughout the
  revolutionary period.
• Although it was mostly gone from northern states
  by 1787, it still enshrined in the new
  Constitution of the United States, not only the
  Southern ones, but also with approval of many
  Northern delegates who saw that there was still
  much money to be made in the slave trade by the
  Yankee shipping industry.

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Cause of the War (2)

• There was agitation in the North for abolition of
  the slavery on purely moral grounds. Abolitionist
  leader William Lloyd Garrison, claimed that
  slavery was a covenant with death, and an
  agreement with hell.
• Abolitionists believed not only slavery was
  wrong, but that the Federal government should
  move to abolish it, and have then projected into
  the minds of southerners as a threat out of all
  their actual power and influence.
• This threat was greatly magnified in 1859 by John
  Brown's seizure of the Harper's Ferry arsenal and
  his call for a general insurrection of the
  slaves. This caused many of the Southern states
  to implement plans for more effective militias
  for internal defense.

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Cause of the War (3)

• The mess went up in smoke in the presidential
  election year of 1860. Into this confusion the
  new Republican party injected its nominee,
  Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln was a moderate
  Republican. As such he was a compromise
  candidate, everybodys second choice.
• He was convinced that the Constitution forbade
  the Federal government from taking action against
  slavery where it already existed, but was
  determined to keep it from spreading further.
  South Carolina, in a fit of stubborn pride,
  unilaterally announced that it would secede from
  the Union if Lincoln were elected.

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Photographs of the War

• Outmoded, close order formations, rifled muskets,
  breach loaders, repeating rifles, and explosive
  shells, along with rudimentary medical
  procedures, all combined to make the Civil War
  battlefield among the most horrific in the long
  and gruesome history of warfare.

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Frederick Douglass
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The Meaning of 4th of July for the Negro

• Fellow-citizens, above your national, tumultuous
  joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions! whose
  chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are,
  to-day, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee
  shouts that reach them. If I do forget, if I do
  not faithfully remember those bleeding children
  of sorrow this day, "may my right hand forget her
  cunning, and may my tongue cleave to the roof of
  my mouth!" To forget them, to pass lightly over
  their wrongs, and to chime in with the popular
  theme, would be treason most scandalous and
  shocking, and would make me a reproach before God
  and the world. My subject, then, fellow-citizens,
  is American slavery. I shall see this day and its
  popular characteristics from the slave's point of
  view.

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The Meaning of 4th of July for the Negro

• Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding
  slave on this occasion, I will, in the name of
  humanity which is outraged, in the name of
  liberty which is fettered, in the name of the
  constitution and the Bible which are disregarded
  and trampled upon, dare to call in question and
  to denounce, with all the emphasis I can command,
  everything that serves to perpetuate slavery ?the
  great sin and shame of America! "I will not
  equivocate I will not excuse" I will use the
  severest language I can command and yet not one
  word shall escape me that any man, whose judgment
  is not blinded by prejudice, or who is not at
  heart a slaveholder, shall not confess to be
  right and just.

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The Meaning of 4th of July for the Negro

• ...Allow me to say, in conclusion,
  notwithstanding the dark picture I have this day
  presented, of the state of the nation, I do not
  despair of this country. There are forces in
  operation which must inevitably work the downfall
  of slavery. "The arm of the Lord is not
  shortened," and the doom of slavery is certain.
  I, therefore, leave off where I began, with hope.
  While drawing encouragement from "the Declaration
  of Independence," the great principles it
  contains, and the genius of American
  Institutions, my spirit is also cheered by the
  obvious tendencies of the age. Nations do not now
  stand in the same relation to each other that
  they did ages ago. No nation can now shut itself
  up from the surrounding world and trot round in
  the same old path of its fathers without
  interference. The time was when such could be
  done. Long established customs of hurtful
  character could formerly fence themselves in, and
  do their evil work with social impunity.

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The Meaning of 4th of July for the Negro

• Knowledge was then confined and enjoyed by the
  privileged few, and the multitude walked on in
  mental darkness. But a change has now come over
  the affairs of mankind. Walled cities and empires
  have become unfashionable. The arm of commerce
  has borne away the gates of the strong city.
  Intelligence is penetrating the darkest corners
  of the globe. It makes its pathway over and under
  the sea, as well as on the earth. Wind, steam,
  and lightning are its chartered agents. Oceans no
  longer divide, but link nations together. From
  Boston to London is now a holiday excursion.
  Space is comparatively annihilated. -- Thoughts
  expressed on one side of the Atlantic are
  distinctly heard on the other.
• The far off and almost fabulous Pacific rolls in
  grandeur at our feet. The Celestial Empire, the
  mystery of ages, is being solved. The fiat of the
  Almighty, "Let there be Light," has not yet spent
  its force. No abuse, no outrage whether in taste,
  sport or avarice, can now hide itself from the
  all-pervading light.

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References

• The Civil War Overview http//www.civilwarhome.com
  /overview.htm
• The American Civil War The Struggle to Preserve
  the Union http//www.swcivilwar.com/
• Douglass, Frederick. "The Meaning of July Fourth
  for the Negro" http//www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4
  h2927t.html