The Civil War

2017-10-04

The 1860 election

Dred Scott

Roger Taney

Dred Scott ruling (1857)

  • Residence in free states doesn't manumit slaves; i.e., southerners can bring enslaved people to the North.
  • Federal government cannot ban slavery anywhere; Missouri Compromise unconstitutional, slavery permitted in all territories.
  • All African Americans outside the "political family" and have "no rights which the white man was bound to respect." No African American citizenship possible.

1860 Candidates:

Competing in the North:

  • Abraham Lincoln of Illinois: A former Whig running as an antislavery Republican.
  • Stephen Douglas of Illinois: A Northern Democrat running to preserve the union

Competing in the South:

  • John Bell of Tennessee: A former southern Whig running as a "Union" southern candidate
  • John Breckinridge of Kentucky: A southerner for expanding slavery after the Democratic party splits in two.

Lincoln

Republican platform

  • Free labor
  • Internal improvements
  • Unwinding Dred Scott, etc.

Southern Democratic platform

  • Annexation of Cuba
  • Enforcement of pro-slavery laws.

Lincoln supporter Karl Marx

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The Secession crisis

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Jefferson Davis


Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III

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Robert E. Lee

Fighting the War

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Northern Strategy

  • Anaconda: blockade and divide the south.
  • Build up military capacity.

Southern Strategy

  • Sap Northern resolve through battlefield defeats
  • Hope for anti-war parties to win Northern elections.
  • Seek international recognition and support from cotton importers, especially the UK.

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George McLellan



Antietam, 1863

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Ulysses S. Grant

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Republican Legislation during the war: spending land, raising money.

  1. Homestead Act (Free land to settlers)
  2. Transcontinental railroad (paid for with federal land)
  3. Morrill Act (Federal land grants to states to fund colleges; 50 square miles per congressman)
  4. Progressive Income Tax (to pay for war)

William Tecumseh Sherman

March to the Sea

The war as anti-slavery crusade

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"Contraband"

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Nathan Bedford Forest

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Emancipation Proclamation

  • Frees slaves only in areas not currently controlled by the Union
  • Consolidates Northern Support for a moral cause
  • Helps force public opinion in England

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"Contraband"