The American Civil War 1861 1865 American Lit

The American Civil War 1861 -1865 American Lit. I Cecilia H. C. Liu 03/01/2005

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.

The Civil War Time Line • • • 1861 1862 1863 1864 1865

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.

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.

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 was a moderate Republican. As such he was a compromise candidate, everybody’s 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.

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.

Frederick Douglass

The Meaning of 4 th 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.

The Meaning of 4 th 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.

The Meaning of 4 th 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.

The Meaning of 4 th 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.

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/part 4/4 h 2927 t. html