Unit 5 - Period Review (Part B)
Part B - The Civil War and Reconstruction
Violence and political upheaval marred the second half of the 1850s. When Kansas organized in 1856, “Bleeding Kansas” resulted, as antislavery and pro-slavery paramilitary forces fought to gain political ascendancy. The violence culminated with the burning of Lawrence, Kansas, and John Brown’s murder of five pro-slavery settlers. Out of the lawlessness emerged the Lecompton Constitution and Kansas’s pro-slavery effort to join the Union. President James Buchanan supported the proposed state constitution, but western Democrats, led by Stephen Douglas, believed it did not have the support of most Kansans, and they defeated it in Congress. This intraparty battle postponed Kansas statehood and further damaged the Democratic Party.
Dred Scott and John Brown
In the midst of the Kansas dispute, the Supreme Court weighed into the slavery debate with the Dred Scott decision. The Court’s decision effectively denied citizenship to all blacks, protected slavery’s expansion into the territories, and voided the Missouri Compromise. The ruling inflamed the Republican Party, which had narrowly lost the presidency in 1856 but was now unified and energized for future political battles.
In 1859 John Brown again roiled the nation with violence. With eighteen antislavery zealots, he planned to incite a slave rebellion by seizing weapons at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. Although the plan failed and Brown was executed, his association with prominent abolitionists convinced the South it could only remain safely in the Union by controlling the White House. That control vanished in 1860 when Abraham Lincoln defeated Democrat Stephen Douglas, John Breckinridge, and third-party candidate John Bell for the presidency. Although Lincoln was not an abolitionist, his stand on slavery and its spread convinced the South that he threatened its way of life, and in December 1860 South Carolina seceded from the Union.
The Civil War
President Buchanan watched as six other states joined South Carolina and formed the Confederate States of America. Selecting Jefferson Davis as its president, the new nation seized U.S. government property throughout the South. Taking office in March 1861, President Lincoln hoped his policy of nonaggressive firmness would end the crisis, but it failed in April when the Confederates attacked Fort Sumter. After Lincoln declared a rebellion and called for 75,000 troops to crush it, four more states joined the southern cause.
The North had overwhelming supremacy in men, materiel, and money. It also had an established government, good relations with other nations, and control of the coastline. However, to end secession, the North would have to conquer the South. Southerners had only to wage a defensive war, fighting on familiar soil, defending their homes and their way of life. They also hoped “Cotton Diplomacy” would bring them foreign help.
The North’s strategy was to divide the South, isolate it diplomatically, and use overwhelming might to crush the rebellion. The South, believing in its martial spirit, expected a quick victory—that northerners would soon tire of the fight. When the war dragged on, however, Robert E. Lee twice invaded the North to apply political pressure, add Maryland to the Confederacy, and secure foreign recognition. Stopped at Antietam in 1862 and Gettysburg in 1863, Lee was forced each time to return to the South, short of his goals. By 1864, Lincoln had put his armies in the hands of Ulysses S. Grant, who relentlessly pressured Lee’s army until its surrender on April 9, 1865.
The Home Front
The war transformed the governments and societies of both the Union and Confederacy. The North mobilized by instituting a draft, levying an income tax, and issuing $450 million in “greenback” currency. In addition, Lincoln expanded his powers enormously. He sent troops into battle without congressional approval, suspended habeas corpus, and arrested and held without charges over 13,000 people during the conflict.
Jefferson Davis, whose autocratic methods also met with opposition, presided over widespread governmental changes as well. Confederate government officials centralized authority and trampled on states’ rights, the cornerstone of the Confederacy. By war’s end, the government instituted a draft, enacted an income tax, regulated economic activities, and requisitioned millions of dollars of supplies. In a final act of desperation, the Confederates even proposed recruiting slaves as soldiers in return for their freedom.
Both sides faced internal dissension over the growth of governmental powers. In the North, Lincoln dealt with a deadly draft riot in 1863 and a strong Copperhead movement throughout the war. Davis encountered resistance to his wartime policies and faced riots over food shortages in 1863. After its defeat at Gettysburg, the South also experienced widespread desertions from its army.
Lincoln and Slavery
Lincoln’s greatest challenge was what to do about slavery. He acted slowly because of his own racial beliefs and uncertainty about the constitutionality of any action against it. Most importantly, he feared the impact of emancipation on the Border States. These four slave-holding states remained loyal to the North and were fundamental to Lincoln’s strategy for restoring the union. As pressure mounted from abolitionists and radicals in Congress, however, Lincoln decided to strike against slavery. In September 1862, he issued a preliminary emancipation order and on January 1, 1863 he signed the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed slaves in the rebellious areas and offered black men an opportunity to fight in the Union army.
Presidential and Congressional Plans
Reconstructing the South created enormous problems for the nation after the war. Without Lincoln’s political acumen behind it, his lenient ten-percent plan was quickly rejected by Congress. Andrew Johnson also could not convince Congress to seat the southerners elected under the plan and a three-year struggle between Johnson and Congress over postwar policy ensued. Rejecting the Lincoln-Johnson plan, the Radical Republicans, led by Thaddeus Stevens, called for creation of a Freedmen’s Bureau, military occupation of the South, suffrage for black men, disenfranchisement of many white men, and acceptance of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments by the southern states.
Johnson fought the Radicals by vetoing 20 bills (but suffered 19 overrides), campaigning for congressional support in 1866, and replacing military commanders friendly to the Radicals. This obstructionism resulted in Johnson’s impeachment in 1868. Impeached for violating the Tenure of Office Act, Johnson avoided conviction in the Senate by a single vote.
Results of Reconstruction
Reconstruction provided short-term gains for African Americans in the South. Black men gained the right to vote and held some offices, but these political gains were jeopardized by the Ku Klux Klan. These terrorists attacked blacks and their allies (scalawags, carpetbaggers), who attempted to set up southern governments that were free of control by former slaveholders. Most importantly, blacks failed to secure land ownership, and by the early 1870s, most were sharecropping or tenant-farming throughout the South.
Johnson’s successor, Ulysses Grant, went along with the Radicals. Although Grant took military action against the KKK, he also presided over the removal of most of the occupying troops. Grant sought sectional reconciliation as the nation lost interest in the freedmen’s future. Economic depression, currency problems, and political corruption crowded into the national agenda. With the Compromise of 1877, which settled the disputed presidential election of 1876, the nation closed the door on Reconstruction.