Chapter 20 class notes
“ Girding for War: The North and the South 1861-1865” The American Pageant
A.P. United States History Mrs. Civitella
“A house divided against itself cannot stand.”  I believe this government cannot endure half slave and half free.  I do not expect the house to fall: but I do expect it will cease to be divided.  It will be all one thing or all the other…
-Abraham Lincoln, speech, Springfield, Ill., June 17, 1858

“In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-country-men, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war.  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.  Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection…
-Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1861

Differences in political philosophy between North and South
Southerners believed in the compact theory, whereas Northerners believed in the contract theory of government.  This explains why Southerners believed they had the right to secede from the Union and why Northerners were willing to prevent them from doing so.

The Compact Theory (South)	The Contract Theory (North)
The states, not the people, created the national government. The laws of the states are supreme when in conflict with the laws and actions of the federal government. The states can declare the laws of the federal government null and void if they deem it necessary and appropriate. The logical conclusion of this theory if taken to its extreme is secession	The people, not the states, created the Union. The federal government is supreme. Thus, federal laws and actions take precedence over state laws and actions.
Examples of the compact theory: The Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions (1798) The Hartford Convention (1815) The South Carolina Exposition and Protest (1828) The Ordinance of Nullification (1832)	Examples of the contract theory include: Various decisions made by the Marshall Court John Locke’s Second Treatise on Government Texas v. White (1869)

I. Consequences of Secession
A. If secession states were allowed to leave new controversies existed:

• What share of the national debt should the South be forced to take with it?
• Which portions of the territories should the South be allowed to have?
• How would the fugitive slave law be resolved?

B. In his inaugural address Lincoln stated:

• He would safeguard slavery where it existed
• Must be free soil in the territories
• The union was “perpetual” and the secession of the Confederate states was illegal
• Acts of violence in support of the secessionists was insurrection
• He intended to enforce federal law throughout the union
• He would continue to “hold, occupy, and possess” federal property in the seceded states and collect duties” there.

Like Andrew Jackson in the Nullification Crisis, Lincoln would use force to enforce federal law
The choice was now up to the South: Return to the Union or face war

II. Fort Sumter, call for volunteers and more secession
A. Confederate states immediately began seizing federal arsenals, mints and other federal buildings within their borders
B. At the time of Lincoln’s inaugural only two federal forts remained in Confederate states

• Fort Pickens, off Pensacola, Florida
• Forth Sumter, in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina

C. Major Robert Anderson notified President Lincoln that provisions and ammunition needed to be sent or Anderson would have been forced to surrender to the surrounding Confederate troops
D. reinforcements of any kind would be hit by Confederate fire
E. Lincoln notified the South that provisions, not reinforcements, would be sent to Ft. Sumter

• April 12, 1861 as the US naval force moved into Charleston Bay, the South began firing
• April 14, 1861: 34 hours of fighting resulted in the US surrender of the fort to the Confederacy, but no one died
• To Lincoln, the South had started the war and the honor and sanctity of the union must be preserved
• April 15, 1861- Lincoln issued a call for 75,000 militia men and volunteers to join the Union army
• April 19, 1861- Lincoln ordered a blockade of southern seaports- called the Anaconda Plan the blockade was designed to prevent the South from exporting cotton and importing needed supplies
• Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, North Carolina, seceded and joined the Confederacy
• Confederate capital was moved from Montgomery, AL to Richmond, VA
• The loss of Virginia, a key state because of its location, size, and population, was a particularly heavy blow to the Union.
• Many Virginians had opposed secession, especially in the northwestern part of the state, which had strong economic ties to the Ohio Valley.
• Western delegates walked out of Virginia’s Secession Convention in April, 1861, declaring secession an illegal attempt to overthrow the federal government
• June, 1861, western Virginians organized a separate government loyal to the Union
• Congress approved West Virginia’s entry into the Union on June 20, 1863, on the condition of gradual emancipation of slaves in the region.

III. The Border States- MO,KY, MD, DE, WV were slave states that stayed in the Union
A. If the North had fired first, and appeared as the aggressor, these states most likely would have joined the Confederacy
B. There was a significant amount of manufacturing in MD, KY, and MO
C. The North needed the loyalty of KY and MO to keep control of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers

• Lincoln had to keep KY because of its access to the Ohio River, the Cumberland River, and the Tennessee River which flowed into the Confederacy
• If MD had become unstable, DC could have been cut off from the rest of the Union

D. In order to keep the border states in the Union, Lincoln had to publicly declare that he was not fighting to free blacks

“My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not to either save or to destroy slavery.  If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it, and if I could save the Union by freeing all the slaves, I would o it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that.”- President Lincoln

E. Some border state families had sons which fought on both sides
F. “mountain whites” from the south sent 50,000 men to fight in the Union army
G. Some southerners had settled in the upper Mississippi Valley states of OH, IN, and IL and therefore had southern sympathies as well as strong racial prejudices

IV. Native Americans and the Confederacy
A. The five civilized tribes in Indian Territory (OK) sided with the Confederacy
some tribes owned slaves
B. The Confederacy invited delegates from the five civilized tribes to attend the Confederate Congress
C. The Confederacy agreed to take over federal payments to the tribes
D. The few Cherokee and Plains Native Americans that did side with the North were rounded up and put on reservations after the war

V. Comparison of Union and Confederate strengths and weaknesses
Chart from pg 175 of preparing for the AP
Chart from pg. 372 of USA History with documents
Southerners were bred to fight
North controlled the sea which allowed them to trade with Europe for supplies
Immigrants were recruited by North 1/5 of the Union Army was foreign born (GB, Irish, German)
A. The South was originally winning the war
B. The South hoped that northerners would get tired of waging “Mr. Lincoln’s War”
C. Circumstances that could have led to a southern victory:

• If the Border states had seceded
• If states of the upper Mississippi Valley had turned against the Union (OH, IN, and IL)
• If northerners had demanded an armistice
• If Britain and France had broken the Union’s naval blockade of Southern ports

Northern victory in the war was due in large part to the enormous population and industrial and transportation advantages of the North.

VI. The end of “King Cotton”
A. Southern political leaders relied on European military support for their war for independence

• 75% of British cotton was imported from Confederate states
• Although the ruling classes in Europe were sympathetic to the social and economic order of the south, working class Europeans were vehemently opposed to slavery and pressured GB and France not to intervene. (ie Uncle Tom’s Cabin)

B. “King Cotton” failed for the following reasons

• Huge amounts of cotton had been exported from 1857-1860 which led to surplus cotton in GB
• Even though the exhaustion of the surpluses led to unemployment, public pressure to stop slavery in the US prevented European public opinion from demanding a British break up of the Union blockade
• The industrial revolution absorbed some of the unemployment in textiles as workers were employed in other industries
• Union armies sent some confiscated cotton to Great Britain
• Southern blockade runners were able to get some cotton through to Europe
• As a result of the war and the blockade, cotton growers in Egypt and India increased their exports of cotton to Europe
• “King Wheat” and “King Corn” replaced “King Cotton”
• Using the new McCormick’s mechanical reaper, northern wheat farmers were able to produce large amounts of wheat
• Great Britain experienced a series of bad wheat harvests
• GB increased their wheat and corn imports from the north
• If GB had intervened for cotton, they would have been cut off from wheat and corn
• France and England did not intervene because of
• Economic ties with the north
• Eventual Union military victories

VII.  Diplomatic challenges during the Civil War
A. The Trent Affair

• In late 1861, the Confederate government dispatched a diplomatic mission to London
• Two delegates slipped passed the Union blockade and took passage on the British steamer Trent.
• On November 8, 1861 the Trent was stopped at sea by an American cruiser whose commander ordered a boarding party to seize the two Confederates
• Great Britain took the capture as an act of aggression against GB and began making war preparations to send 8,000 troops to Canada and sent Lincoln an ultimatum demanding the release of the diplomats
• Lincoln instructed the American minister in London, Charles Francis Adams, to assure the British government that the American captain had acted without authorization and that the two prisoners would be “cheerfully liberated”
• Upon their release Lincoln is quoted as having said “One war at a time”
• GB backed down and the two Confederate diplomats were permitted to continue their journey to Europe
• Lincoln then instructed Adams to tell the British foreign secretary that British reaction to the Trentaffair was at last justification for British seizures of American goods and sailors before the War of 1812

B. Confederate ships constructed in Great Britain

• The Confederate government purchased raiding ships from Great Britain which were designed to attack Union vessels around the world
• British law forbade the sale of warships to belligerents
• A Confederate commissioner arranged to have ships built and then, on trial runs, escape to the Azores or elsewhere to be loaded with guns
• 18 ships were activated and attacked Union ships in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans where thy sank hundreds of ships
• The most successful of the Confederate raiders were the Floridaand the Alabama, which captured thirty-eight and sixty-four Union ships, respectively (mostly merchant marine)
• 1864 the Union navy destroyed the Alabama off the coast of France
• Angry northerners pushed for revenge against GB by taking Canada after the Civil War was over
• American foreign minister Adams eventually got GB to agree to stop producing raiders for the Confederacy
• 1863- two warships with iron rams and large guns were being constructed in GB for the Confederacy to break the Union blockade
• Had this happened
• The south would have broken the blockade and been able to fire upon northern cities
• The Union would have invaded Canada
• 1863- Adams was successful in getting GB to purchase the warships for the British Navy instead of selling them to the Confederacy
• Southerners plotted revenge by attempting to invade the north via Canada
• Many bitter northerners demanded British cession of Canadian colonies to the US as fair payment for the wartime losses of the Alabama and other commerce raiders built in GB
• 1867-British North American Act British parliament established the Dominion of Canada to bolster Canadians politically and spiritually against the vengeance of the US
• 1871-  GB agreed to settle the Alabamadispute in court
• 1872- GB paid the U.S. 15.5 million dollars for damaged caused by the raiders

C. France in Mexico

• 1861 French troops, along with GB and Spain occupied Mexico in a joint effort to collect debts
• GB and Spain soon left but the ambitious Napoleon III set up a puppet government in 1864
• Napoleon III persuaded the Austrian Archduke Maximilian to accept the “throne” of Mexico
• This gross violation of the Monroe Doctrine did not escape the attention of the US but with the nation locked in war Sec. of State William H. Seward could do nothing about it
• 1865- after the war, Seward threatened to march US troops from Texas to liberate Mexico
• Napoleon III retreated his troops
• Austrian Archduke Maximilian was captured and killed by a firing squad

VIII. Presidential Power
A. Davis vs. Lincoln

• The Confederate Constitution was based on states’ rights
• It could not prevent states from seceding from the Confederacy
• Some state troops refused to fight outside of their state borders
• President Jefferson Davis wanted states’ rights with a tightly knit central government
• Pres. Davis was often in conflict with debates in the Confederate Congress over states rights
• The Confederate Congress threatened to impeach Davis several times
• States’ rights was an issue for southern states when they were part of the Union and it was still an issue for them within the Confederacy
• In contrast, Lincoln had a stable government based on republican ideals
• Lincoln also enjoyed a healthy economy and international relations, Davis had neither

B. Emergency wartime actions

• Because Congress was not in session when war was declared (April, 1861)
• He exercised executive authority (without the consent of congress) to do all of the following:
• Declare a blockade of the Atlantic coast of the Confederacy
• Increase the size of the army
• Authorized the US Treasury to give $2 million dollars to three private citizens for military purposes
• Suspended habeas corpus to arrest anti-unionists
• Lincoln exercised unusual wartime authority throughout the war
• Conducted “supervised” voting in border states
• Suspended anti-union newspapers
• Arrested the editors of newspapers which Lincoln thought were “obstructing” the war

IX. Union vs. Confederate forces
A. Union Armies

• 1861- When war was declared, all states were to send a quota of volunteers based on population
• At first more volunteers enlisted than were needed, eventually bounties had to be offered as incentives to volunteer
• 1863- the Conscription Act of March 1863
• The first conscription law in American history
• Permitted individuals to escape military service by paying the government $300 or hiring a substitute to enroll for three years
• This provision led to criticism that the act favored the upper-class
• Resentful working-class rioted in some major cities and federal troops were needed to restore order
• 1863- anti-black Irish immigrants rioted in NYC
• The rioting went on for days, many died, including blacks who were lynched
• Federal troops restored order

B. Confederate Armies

• When early enlistments dropped off the Confederacy also used conscription (one yr. sooner than the Union)
• 1862- Confederate Draft Act which eventually required all males between 17-50 to serve
• Excluded from the draft were overseeers of 15 of more slaves
• Substitutes could also be paid to serve in place of a wealthy southerner
• By 1864 these exceptions had to be eliminated
• Conscripts from the Appalachian mountain region, the hill region of TN, and northern Alabama deserted the army in large numbers

X. Economic changes
For the Union:
A. Internal Revenue Act of 1862- imposed taxes on tobacco, alcohol, medicine, and newspaper ads.

• Taxes were eventually levied on practically every state of manufacturing, sales, and professional services
• Nearly all of these taxes were ended when the war was over

B. Income tax was levied for the first time

• 3% tax on those earning $600-10,000 a year
• 5% tax on those earning over $10,000 a year

C. Morrill Tariff Act- increased tax on imports by 5-10%
This amount had to increase because of the internal taxes being paid by American businessmen

D. U.S. Treasury bond sales

• The biggest revenue raiser during the war was the sale of federal Treasury bonds
• The New York Banking House of Jay Cooke served as the government’s agent in selling bonds worth over 2.5 billion dollars
• Cooke’s Banking House earned 3/8 of 1% on every sale

E. Reform of the nation’s banking system

• In 1862, Congress passed an act that created a national currency, called greenbacks because of their color
• This money was not backed by gold, silver, or government bonds: its value fluctuated according to the credit of the U.S. and news from the battlefield
• At its lowest point, greenbacks were worth only 39 cents of a gold dollar

• Since 1832, when President Jackson vetoed the recharter of the Second Bank of the United States, Americans had relied on state banks
• In 1863 congress established the National Banking System which gave charters to a number of National Banks
• Each member bank received a supply of new “national bank notes” equal to 90% of the value of U.S. bonds it deposited in the Treasury
• The new banking system functioned under this system until it was replaced by the Federal Reserve System established in 1913

 

F. Southern economic conditions

• Customs duties stopped as a result of the blockade
• $400 million in Confederate bonds were sold at home and abroad
• Richmond increased internal taxes (including10% tax on farm produce)
• Southern resistance to taxes from a central government resulted in only minimal success by the Richmond government to raise revenue
• The Confederate money was called blue-backed money and suffered from severe inflation
• At the end of the war the Confederate dollar was worth only 1.6 cents

G. Increased prosperity in the North

• New factories were very successful as a result of high protective tariffs
• A new millionaire class emerged “the fortunes of war”
• Graft (corruption as a result of government spending and jobs) became prevalent
• New inventions such as the sewing machines resulted in standard sizes and ended the custom tailoring required before the war (used first for uniforms)
• Mechanical reapers required less farm hands and allowed farm workers to join the army while production still increased
• Prosperity due to grain sales both dethroned “King Cotton” and allowed the north to stockpile supplies and weapons from Europe
• In 1835 petroleum was discovered in PA and sent a rush of oil workers “59ers” to work in the new “petroleum plutocracy”
• Homestead Act of 1862- granted to any citizen or alien who had filed the proper papers as much as 160 acres of land upon payment of a $10 fee and proof that he had lived upon his homestead for five years.
• the Homestead Act was passed to help keep the northern agricultural economy healthy
• over 1.2 million acres were assigned under the act during the war, but after the war the program contributed significantly to the settlement of the Great Plains

The only northern industry to suffer during the war was shipping due to attacks at sea by the Alabama and others

• Contributions of women during the war
• As men went off to war, women entered the workforce (“gov’t girls” 500 hired in D.C.)
• New inventions made factory jobs more available to women
• Over 400 women dressed as men and served in the military
• Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell (first American female physician) organized U.S. Sanitary Commission to provide medical assistance and training for the military
• Clara Barton and Dorthea Dix revolutionized nursing during the war
• Sally Tompkins ran Confederate infirmary in Richmond and earned the rank of Captain

Both north and south women ran fundraisers to support their troops in battle