History 11

October 5 and 7, 2015

The Civil War (or the Unresolved Civil War)

The past is never dead. It's not even past.

-- William Faulkner
Immediate Prelude to the War
The Historiography of Civil War Causation
Aspects of the War
Abraham Lincoln and the Shifting Purposes of the War
John C. Fremont: A Counterfactual
Reconstruction and Redefining the War: A Shifting and
Contested Terrain

Immediate Prelude to the War

November 6, 1860: Abraham Lincoln elected President in a fourway race, receiving just 39 percent of the popular vote, but all the
electoral college votes of the eighteen northern states that had
abolished slavery.
November 10, 1860: South Carolina legislature votes to convene a
convention set for December 17 to consider seceding from the U.S.
December 20, 1860: South Carolina secedes.
December 18, 1860-January 15, 1860: The Crittenden
Compromise considered by a lame-duck Congress, a Constitutional
Amendment to re-establish the Missouri Compromise line; Lincoln
spreads word that he would veto the measure; the bill is defeated.
Mid-December 1860-end of January, 1861: Twelve southern
state legislatures vote to convene conventions to consider following
South Carolinas lead; these conventions lead to the secession of
Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas.
February 8, 1861: Provisional Constitution of the Confederate
States of America ratified in convention in Montgomery, Alabama.
February 18, 1861: Jefferson Davis is elected President of the
Confederacy

February 4-February 28, 1861: The course of secession is formally

rejected in Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas, Missouri, and North Carolina
(and not considered in Kentucky, Maryland, and Delaware)
March 4, 1861: Abraham Lincoln inaugurated as President and offers
to sponsor a Constitutional Amendment guaranteeing slavery in
perpetuity in states where it exists when the seceding states annul
their decisions.
By End of March, 1861: All federal arsenals have been seized in
Confederate States, but for Fort Pickens in Pensacola Harbor, Florida
and Fort Sumter in Charleston Bay, South Carolina. Fort Pickens falls.
April 6, 1861: Lincoln informs the governor of South Carolina that
food was being sent to soldiers at the blockaded Fort Sumter.
April 12, 1861: Confederate forces bombard Fort Sumter and seize it.
April 15, 1861: Lincoln issues a proclamation calling for 75,000
militia of the several states of the Union to serve ninety days for the
purpose of suppressing combinations in seven states too powerful to
be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings.
Late April, 1861: Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas
join the Confederacy; Delaware and Maryland remain with the Union;
Kentucky and Missouri torn apart by internal civil wars.

Civil War Causation: Historiographical

Debates
An Irrepressible Conflict
-- A Moral Divide
-- An Economic Divide
- Problematics of cotton slave plantation agriculture
and the need for expansion
- Political economic control

A Needless War
Intraregional Tensions

- The Morrill Tariff of 1861

- The Morrill Land Grant College Act of
1862
- The Homestead Act of 1862
- The National Banking Act of 1863
- Transcontinental railroad acts
- Federal Income Tax Act (declared
unconstitutional)
- Legislation establishing the
Department of
Agriculture, National Academy of
Science, Office of Comptroller, Bureau
of Printing and Engraving, and Office of

hig
s

Aspects: Political Realignments and

Regionalism Whigs Northern
Whigs

(latter-day Federalists, anti-Jackson Party, oddly)

So
u

th
er
n

- central superintendency of the economy

(tariffs, internal improvements, chartering
of corporations, national banking system,
pro-manufacture, avoiding issue of slavery)
- superintendency of morality (temperance)

Democrats
Southern wing:
states rights
pro-slavery
Northern wing:
anti-monopoly
for the common man
haven for immigrants

Republicans
Abolitionists
Free Soilers
Nativists (American Party)
(anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant)

Aspects: The
Military Course of
the War

Aspects:
The
Glory/The
Bloodbath

Photographer Matthew
Brady

Aspects: The First

Modern War
Mechanical Rifling of the Barrel

Samuel Colts Arsenal,

Hartford, CT.

Aspects:
Utilizing, not
Generating,
Economic
Modernization

Aspects: Utilizing, not

Generating, Economic
Modernization

Iron Clad Ship Used to

Blockade Southern Ports

The Monitor and the Merrimac,

1862

Aspects: Utilizing, not

Generating, Economic
Modernization

Philadelphia Financier,
Jay Cooke

Aspects: Civil
Disorder

New York City Draft Riots, July

Richmond Foot Riot, April 1863

Aspects: The Key

Role of African

The 54th Massachusetts Brigade Storming

Slaves Digging Trenches,

1862

Octavius Catto,
Leader of the
Equal
Rights League of
Philadelphia and
Martyr

U.S. Sanitary Commis

Clara
Barton

Aspects: The
Home Front
and the Role of
Women
Union Cavalry Woman,

Aspects: Why the North Won

The Question of Leadership
-- Jefferson Davis never forged an effective
fiscal policy; never effectively used cotton
as an effective diplomatic weapon and
miscalculations in foreign affairs; never
properly delegated tasks.
The Irony of States Rights
The Souths Necessary Defensive Strategy
The Souths Weaker Economic and Manpower
Resources
-- The problem of resupply.

1846

1860

1864

April 9.
1864

The Pathfinder
General Benjamin
Butler

Pushing
Lincoln:
Considering
John C.
Fremont

Campaign Poster, 1856:

Fremont, First Republican
Party Candidate for
President

General David

Reconstruction (Presidential, Congressional, Military),

Redemption and Reconciliation

Fifteenth Anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg,1913: Memorial as Act

of Reconciliation Among Whites, Slavery as Issue Submerged