Turning Points - Actual and Alternate Histories: A House Divided during the Civil War Era

T U R N I N G P O I N T S —A C T U A L A N D A L T E R N A T E H I S T O R I E S

A House Divided during the Civil War Era

Other titles in ABC-CLIO’s TURNING POINTS—ACTUAL AND ALTERNATE HISTORIES

series

Native America from Prehistory to First Contact Colonial America from Settlement to the Revolution Manifest Density and the Expansion of America America in Revolt during the 1960s and 1970s The Reagan Era

Books in the Turning Points—Actual and Alternate Histories series ask the question What would have happened if . . . ? In a unique editorial format, each book examines a specific period in American history, presents the real, or actual, history, and then offers an alternate history— speculations from historical experts on what might have happened had the course of history turned. If a particular event had turned out differently, history from that turning point forward could be affected. Important outcomes frequently hinge on an individual decision, an accidental encounter, a turn in the weather, the spread of a disease, or a missed piece of information. Such events stimulate our imagination, accentuating the role of luck, chance, and individual decision or character at particular moments in time. The examination of such key turning points is one of the reasons that the study of history is so fascinating. For the student, examining alternate histories springing from turning points and exploring, What would have happened if . . . ? gives insight into many of the questions at the heart of our civilization today.

TURNING POINTS— ACTUAL AND ALTERNATE HISTORIES

A House Divided during the Civil War Era Rodney P. Carlisle and J. Geoffrey Golson, Editors

Santa Barbara, California Denver, Colorado Oxford, England

Copyright 2007 by ABC-CLIO, Inc. All rights re s e rved. No part of this publication may be re p roduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a re v i e w, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A house divided during the Civil War era / Rodney P. Carlisle and J. Geoffrey Golson, editors. p. cm. — (Turning points-actual and alternate histories series) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-10: 1-85109-881-X (hardcover : alk. paper) ISBN-10:1-85109-882-8 (ebook) ISBN-13: 978-1-85109-881-1 (hardcover : alk. paper) ISBN-13: 978-1-85109-882-8 (ebook) 1. United States—History—Civil War, 1861-1865. 2. Imaginary histories. I. Carlisle, Rodney P. II. Golson, J. Geoffrey. E468.9.H8 2007 973.7—dc22 11 10 09 08 07

2006038652 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

ISBN-13: 978-1-85109-881-1 ISBN-10: 1-85109-881-X

(ebook) 978-1-85109-882-8 (ebook) 1-85109-882-8

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Contents

Contributors xi Introduction xiii

1

John Brown’s Raid 1 TURNING POINT

John Brown’s attack in 1859 was a prelude to the Civil War. What if the raid had been supported by former slave Frederick Douglass and his followers? Introduction 1 Turning Point 3 Actual History 6 Alternate History 12 Discussion Questions 16 Bibliography and Further Reading 16

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Confederate States of America 19 TURNING POINT

During the Civil War the Confederates sought support from European powers, which never came. What if the Europeans had allied themselves with the Southern cause? Introduction 19 Turning Point 21 Actual History 22 Alternate History 27 Discussion Questions 39 Bibliography and Further Reading 39

3

First Battle of Bull Run 41 TURNING POINT

In 1861 the North suffered a major defeat at the First Battle of Bull Run. What if the North had better trained troops and had defeated the South?

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Introduction 41 Turning Point 43 Actual History 45 Alternate History 50 Discussion Questions 55 Bibliography and Further Reading 55

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Battle of Antietam 57 TURNING POINT

In 1862 the South suffered a decisive defeat at the Battle of Antietam. What if Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s forces had won the battle? Introduction 57 Turning Point 60 Actual History 63 Alternate History 66 Discussion Questions 70 Bibliography and Further Reading 70

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Emancipation Proclamation 73 TURNING POINT

The Emancipation Proclamation was signed on January 1, 1863. What if President Abraham Lincoln had taken the advice to delay the proclamation? Introduction 73 Turning Point 77 Actual History 80 Alternate History 85 Discussion Questions 87 Bibliography and Further Reading 88

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Battle of Gettysburg 89 TURNING POINT

In 1863 the North was victorious at the Battle of Gettysburg. What if the Southern forces had defeated Union General George Meade? Introduction 89 Turning Point 92 Actual History 95 Alternate History 101 Discussion Questions 105 Bibliography and Further Reading 106

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Sherman’s March to the Sea 109 TURNING POINT

In 1864 Union General William T. Sherman devastated Georgia in his “march to the sea.” What if Confederate forces had counterattacked and ambushed Sherman’s troops?

CO N T E N T S

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Introduction 109 Turning Point 111 Actual History 112 Alternate History 118 Discussion Questions 123 Bibliography and Further Reading 123

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Lincoln Assassination 125 TURNING POINT

On April 14, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln was shot at Ford’s Theatre. What if assassin John Wilkes Booth had not pulled the trigger and Lincoln served a full second term? Introduction 125 Turning Point 131 Actual History 132 Alternate History 137 Discussion Questions 141 Bibliography and Further Reading 141

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Thirteenth Amendment 143 TURNING POINT

Proposed in 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution abolished slavery. What if the amendment was not ratified and slavery was only partially abolished? Introduction 143 Turning Point 146 Actual History 149 Alternate History 155 Discussion Questions 160 Bibliography and Further Reading 160

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Reconstruction 163 TURNING POINT

Reconstruction after the Civil War was a tumultuous time for the re-emerging United States.What if President Andrew Johnson had been more successful in his Reconstruction plans? Introduction 163 Turning Point 167 Actual History 168 Alternate History 176 Discussion Questions 182 Bibliography and Further Reading 183

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Johnson’s Impeachment 185 TURNING POINT

In 1868 Congress impeached but did not convict President Andrew Johnson. What would have happened to presidential power had Congress not impeached Johnson?

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Introduction 185 Turning Point 190 Actual History 192 Alternate History 199 Discussion Questions 203 Bibliography and Further Reading 203

Appendix I The Confederate Constitution 205 Appendix II The Secession of South Carolina, 1860 219 Chronology of the Civil War Era 225 Resources 235 Index 243

Contributors

Chapter 1 • John Brown’s Raid Marcella Bush Trevino Barry University

Chapter 7 • Sherman’s March to the Sea Margaret Sankey Minnesota State University

Chapter 2 • Confederate States of America Rob Kerby Independent Scholar

Chapter 8 • Lincoln Assassination Moshe Terdiman Independent Scholar

Chapter 3 • First Battle of Bull Run Jeffery Othele Mahan Texas A&M University

Chapter 9 • Thirteenth Amendment Marcella Bush Trevino Barry University

Chapter 4 • Battle of Antietam Dallace W. Unger, Jr. Independent Scholar

Chapter 10 • Reconstruction Bill Kte’pi Independent Scholar

Chapter 5 • Emancipation Proclamation Kevin F. Wozniak Independent Scholar

Chapter 11 • Johnson’s Impeachment Jaime Ramon Olivares Houston Community College, Central

Chapter 6 • Battle of Gettysburg Kathleen Ruppert Independent Scholar

Chronology of the Civil War Era Kathy Warnes Independent Scholar

Introduction

I . . . regard the chief utility of all historical and sociological investigations to be to admonish us of the alternative possibilities of h i s t o ry. —Oscar Jaszi, The Dissolution of the Habsburg Monarchy There is nothing new about counterfactual inference. Historians have been doing it for at least two thousand years. —Philip Tetlock and Aaron Belkin, Counterfactual Thought Experiments in World Politics The question, What would have happened if . . . ? is asked all the time as historians, students, and readers of history examine past events. If some event had turned out differently, the whole course of history from that particular turning point forward could have been affected, we are often reminded. Important outcomes frequently hinge on an individual decision, an accidental encounter, a missed piece of information. Such events stimulate our imagination, accentuating the role of luck, chance, and individual decision or character at particular moments in time. The examination of such key hinge points is one of the reasons that the study of history is so fascinating. “Alternate history” has become a fictional genre, similar to science fiction, in that it proposes other worlds, spun off from the one we live in, derived from some key hinge point in the past. Harry Turtledove, among others, has produced novels along these lines. Turtledove has written a widely sold sequence of books that follow an alternate past from “counterfactual” Confederate victory at the battle of Antietam, resulting in the rise of the Confederate States of America as a separate nation, with consequences well into the twentieth century. Alternate or counterfactual history is more than a form of imaginative speculation or engaging entertainment, however. Historians are able to highlight the significance of an event they examine by pointing to the consequences of the event. When many significant consequences flow from a single event, the alternate history question is implicit—the consequences would have been different, and a strange and different history would have flowed from that time forward if the specific event in question had turned out differently. Those events that would have made the

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most dramatic or drastic alternate set of consequences are clearly among the most important; thus key battles in wars are often studied in great detail, but not only for their own sake. The importance of such battles as Gettysburg and Antietam is not simply military. Instead, those battles and others are significant because such deep consequences flowed from their outcomes. The same could be said of General Erich Ludendorff’s offensive in 1918—had it been successful, the Allies might have been defeated in World War I, and the map of Europe and the rest of the twentieth century would have been very different than the way they actually turned out. Similarly, if for some reason, the nuclear weapons used at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 had failed, the outcome of World War II could have been very different, perhaps with a greater role for the Soviet Union in the dissolution of the Japanese Empire. Others have argued that had the bombs not been used, Japan would have been defeated quite promptly even without them. Every key event raises similar issues. What might the world have been like if Christopher Columbus and his sailors had failed to return from their voyage in 1492? What if Hernán Cortés and Francisco Pizarro had been soundly defeated in their attempts to defeat the Aztecs and the Inca Empire? What if John Wilkes Booth had failed in his assassination attempt against Abraham Lincoln? What sort of world would we live in if any of the other famous victims of assassination had survived, such as John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., or Malcolm X? For the student, examining alternate histories springing from multiple turning points and exploring What would have happened if . . . , gives insight into many of the questions at the heart of history. What was the role of specific individuals, and how did their exercise of free will and choice at a moment in time affect later events? On the other hand, to what extent are the actions of individuals irrelevant to the larger outcomes? That is, in any particular period of history, were certain underlying forces at work that would have led to the same result, no matter what the individual did? Do underlying structures, and deeper causes, such as economic conditions, technological progress, climate, natural resources, and diseases, force events into a mold that individuals have always been powerless to alter? The classic contest of free will and determinism is constantly at work in history, and an examination of pivotal turning points is key to understanding the balance between deep determining forces and the role of individuals. Frequently, it seems, no matter what individuals tried to do to affect the course of events, the events flowed onward in their same course; in other cases, however, a single small mistake or different personal decision seems to have affected events and altered the course of history. Close study of specific events and how they might have otherwise turned out can illuminate this challenging and recurrent issue. Of course, when reviewing What would have happened if . . . , it is important to realize exactly what in fact really did happen. So in every chapter presented in this series, we are careful to explain first what actually happened, before turning to a possible alternative set of events that could have happened, and the consequences through later history that might have flowed from an alternate development at a particular turning point. By looking at a wide variety of such alternatives, we see how much

INTRODUCTION

of history is contingent, and we gain greater insight into its specific events and developments. Alternate histories would have flowed, had there been different outcomes of a great variety of events, many of them far less famous than the outstanding battles, and the lives and deaths of explorers, conquerors, statesmen, and political leaders. Seemingly obscure or little-recognized events in the past, such as legislative decisions, court cases, small military engagements, and even the lives of obscure minor officials, preachers, writers, and private citizens, frequently played a crucial part in shaping the flow of events. It is clear that if any of the great leaders of the world had died as infants, the events in which they participated would have been altered; but we tend to forget that millions of minor players and less famous people take actions in their daily lives in events such as battles, elections, legislative and judicial decisions, sermons, speeches, and published statements that have sometimes altered the course of history. Alternate histories are known as “counterfactuals,” that is, events that did not in fact happen. Some counterfactuals are more plausible than others. A few historians have argued that all counterfactuals are absurd and should not be studied or considered. However, any historical work that goes beyond simply presenting a narrative or chronological list of what happened, and begins to explore causes through the use of such terms as “influenced,” “precipitated,” or “led to,” is in fact implying some counterfactual sequences. A historian, in describing one event as having consequences, is by implication suggesting the counterfactual that if the event had not occurred, the consequences would have been different. If history is to be more than a chronicle or simple listing of what happened and is to present “lessons” about statecraft, society, technology development, diplomacy, the flow of ideas, military affairs, and economic policy, it must explore how causes led to consequences. Only by the study of such relationships can future leaders, military officers, business people and bankers, legislators and judges, and perhaps most import a n t , voters in democratic nations gain any knowledge of how to conduct their a ffairs. To derive the lessons of history, one has to ask what the important causes were, the important hinge events that made a diff e rence. And once that question is asked, counterfactuals are implied. Thus the defenders of the approach suggest that counterfactual reasoning is a prerequisite to learning lessons from history. Even many historians who resolutely avoid talking about “what might have been” are implying that what in fact happened was important because the alternative, counterfactual event did not happen. Two scholars who have studied counterfactuals in depth, Philip E. Tetlock and Aaron Belkin, in an edited collection of articles, Counterfactual Thought Experiments in World Politics (Princeton University Press, 1996), have concluded that counterfactual reasoning can serve several quite diff e rent purposes in the study of history. They define these types of counterfactual work: 1. Case-study counterfactuals that “highlight moments of indeterminacy” in history by showing how things might have turned out differently at such hinge points because of individual free choices. These studies tend to focus on the uniqueness of specific events.

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2. “Nomothetic” counterfactuals that focus on underlying deterministic laws or processes, examining key events to show how likely or unlikely it was for events to have turned out differently. The purpose of this type of study is to test how powerful an underlying law or process is by imagining alternative situations or decisions. 3. A combination of types one and two above, blending the test of theory or underlying law approach with the unique event approach. 4. “Mental stimulation” counterfactuals that highlight underlying assumptions most people have by showing how causes that most people believe are inconsequential could have major effects, and other causes that most people believe are very important might have little or no effect in changing the course of history. The reader will recognize aspects of each of these different models in the accounts that follow. Moreover, the reader can find the contrasts between actual history and alternate history quite puzzling and thought provoking, as they are intended to be. As readers study the cases, they may want to keep asking questions such as these: What was the key hinge point on which the author focused? Is the altered key event a plausible change—something that could easily have happened? Was the change “minimal” in the sense that only one or a few turning point events had to turn out differently than they in fact did? Did the alternate outcome seem to develop in a realistic way; that is, does the alternate sequence of events seem to be one that would be likely once the precipitating change took place? How plausible is the alternate long-term outcome or consequence that the author suggested? Was the changed key event a matter of an individual person’s choice, a matter of accident, or a change in some broader social or technological development? Does the counterfactual story help us make judgments about the actual quality of leadership displayed in fact at the time? That is, did key actors in real history act more or less wisely in fact than they did in the counterfactual account? Does the outcome of the episode suggest that, despite the role of chance and individual choice, certain powerful forces shaped history in similar directions, in both the factual and counterfactual account? Does the account make me think differently about what was important in history? Does the counterfactual story challenge any assumptions I had before I read it? Remember, however, that what really happened is the object of historical study. We examine the counterfactual, alternate histories to get a better understanding of the forces and people that were at work in what really did occur. These counterfactual stories will make you think about history in ways that you have never encountered before; but when you have explored them, you should be able to go back to the real events with fresh questions in mind.

I N T RO D U C T I O N

Introduction to A House Divided Volume In this volume of the series, we see how counterfactual and alternate hist o ry can shed light on what really happened by looking closely at specific events before, during, and after the American Civil War. Perhaps no other period of American history has been subject to so much counterfactual thinking. One of the reasons for thinking about the Civil War in this fashion is that the outcome of so many events, from major political decisions to battles, and to legislation that affected the shape of America’s future, seemed to hinge on the decisions and actions of individuals. Those who have written about the era of the Civil War in depth almost always describe the personalities and character of major players, showing how their choices affected broader events and then had ramifications down through the ages. Another reason that counterfactual or alternate historical thinking is so often used in discussing the Civil War is that, clearly, the whole future of America did in fact hinge on the outcome of many specific events in the era. As you read the chapters here, and as you read other works about the Civil War, it is tempting to speculate on the following questions: What would have happened if John Brown had never decided to attempt his raid in 1859? Would the South have been so ready to secede? What would have happened if John Brown’s raid had succeeded in raising a slave rebellion in part of the South in 1859? What would have happened if the Confederacy had succeeded in winning diplomatic recognition from Britain and France? How would the course of history have been changed if there had been different outcomes to the battles of Bull Run, Antietam, or Gettysburg, or if Sherman had not been able to take Savannah? Would slavery have survived if Lincoln had delayed the Emancipation Proclamation or if the Thirteenth Amendment had never been passed in Congress or ratified by the states? How would Lincoln have faced Reconstruction issues if he had not been assassinated by John Wilkes Booth? Would Lincoln have been able to control the radicals in his own party and in Congress, or would they have sought to wrest control of the Reconstruction process from him as they did with his actual successor, Andrew Johnson? Could Reconstruction have resulted in the official establishment of a system that replaced slavery with peonage? How would conditions under such a system have differed from what happened in actual history? What would have been the nature of the American republic if Congress had succeeded in impeaching Andrew Johnson because of disagreements over Reconstruction policy? Would other, later presidents have been more like prime ministers in the decades that followed, answerable to the political decisions of the legislature and removed by the legislature if they could not command a majority? Through the chapters that follow, we gain deeper insight into each of these questions. In most cases, the turning point in history depended on the action of one or just a few individuals. During this era in American hist o ry, individual generals, political leaders, presidents, and spokesmen had g reat effect on the course of events. If their personalities had been different,

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even if they had been in a different mood on a particular day, they might have made very different decisions, leading to diff e rent consequences for the day and for the future. In almost every historical account of the Civil War, the narrative is haunted by many other “what if” questions beyond those asked here, precisely because the decisions of individuals shaped the outcome of so many crucial events. It is easy to imagine that the war might not have occurred at all if different policies and different courses of action had been chosen in 1861. And it is also easy to imagine that the Confederacy might have succeeded, at several turning points, in establishing a temporary or permanent existence as a separate republic in North America, perhaps in continuing conflict with the United States, or perhaps allied with it in international affairs. In actual history, the United States of America emerged from the Civil War years as a powerful and much more unified nation than it had been before, one that began to influence world affairs in profound ways in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. As you think about such issues, you have to start raising questions and finding out information about broader aspects of U.S. history. So, while this collection of articles starts with and presents issues about the period when the American Republic was divided and fought a terrible internal war, it raises many deeper questions about history and about the long-term consequences of individual actions. WARNING! You are probably used to reading a book of history to find out what happened. We offer this book with a major warning. In this volume, the reader will see what actually happened, and that part of history is always designated ACTUAL HISTORY. However, the last part of each chapter presents a history that never happened, and that is presented as the ALTERNATE HISTORY. To be sure it is clear that the ALTERNATE HISTORY is an account of what would have happened differently if a TURNING POINT had turned out differently than it really did, the ALTERNATE HISTORY is always presented against a gray background, like these lines. The ALTERNATE HISTORY is what might have happened, what could have happened, and perhaps what would have happened, if the TURNING POINT had gone a little differently. Think about this alternate history, and why it would have been different. But don’t think that it represents the way things actually happened! Each chapter is also accompanied by informative sidebars, and a few discussion questions that take off from the ACTUAL HISTORY and the ALTERNATE HISTORY that allow readers to think through and argue the different sides of the issues that are raised here. We also want to warn readers that some may be surprised to discover that history, when viewed in this light, suddenly becomes so fascinating that they may never want to stop learning about it! Rodney Carlisle

John Brown’s Raid

John Brown’s attack in 1859 was a prelude to the Civil War. What if the raid had been supported by former slave Frederick Douglass and his followers?

INTR ODU CT IO N John Brown was born in West Torrington, Connecticut, in 1800 to a religious family. He grew up in Ohio, receiving little formal education. Brown’s father was a lifelong abolitionist and Brown became an abolitionist who objected to slavery on moral, ethical, and religious grounds. As an adult, he undertook numerous business ventures, all of which ended in failure. He was often in debt and declared bankruptcy in 1842. Brown reached adulthood at a time when militant abolitionism was rising in the United States. He would ultimately dedicate his life to this struggle over the existence and expansion of slavery in the United States. Antislavery sentiments had begun among Puritans and Quakers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when the American colonies were a British possession. During the American Revolutionary War, the rhetorical analogies of the American colonies as slaves increased antislavery sentiment. A number of antislavery societies formed, some calling for gradual emancipation with compensation for slave owners and return of the former slaves to Africa. Others felt that slavery would simply die out over time. These hopes ended, however, with the 1793 creation of the cotton gin and the subsequent rise of “King Cotton” in the Deep South. By the 1830s, a new strain of the antislavery movement arose, known as abolitionism. Abolitionists called for the immediate emancipation of slaves without compensation for their owners. Many also wanted an end to racial segregation and discrimination. Abolitionism included a religious and moral component that arose from the religious revivals of the 1820s known as the Second Great Awakening. The American Anti-Slavery Society was founded in the same year. Moral, humanitarian concerns for the slaves were mostly centered among the more militant abolitionists. The related Free Soil movement also sought to exclude slavery from the western territories, although it made no immediate demands for slavery’s abolition in the areas in which it already existed. Free Soilers wanted the new land preserved for the free labor of white men.

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John Brown’s Raid

I N CON TE XT

Abolition

Sl ave ry be came ent renched in the Un i ted St ates as the rest of the wo rld was abolishing the “peculiar institution.” The British would lead the ant i s l ave ry campaign, beginning in the early 1800s. Their parl i ament outlawed the slave trade in 1807 and abo lished slave ry in 1833. Spain and Portugal abolished the slave trade in 1840. Ma ny of the nations in the Americas began outlawing slave ry shortly therea fter. The Mex i can te rri to ry acquired by the United St ates in the Mex i ca n - Am e ri can War of 1846–1848

was alre a dy free of slave ry under Mex i can law. The Am e ri can abolitionist move m e nt gained power in the 1830s and co ntinued gaining strength through to the end of the Civil War. Pre s i d e nt Ab raham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proc l a m ation would make slavery a moral war aim.The 1865 Union victo ry then led to the Th i rte e nth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which officially made slave ry illegal throughout the Un i ted St ate s. In 1888, Brazil would be the last country in the Americas to abolish slavery.

Prominent abolitionist speakers, organizers, and writers included William Lloyd Garrison, Theodore Weld, Arthur and Lewis Tappan, Wendell Phillips, and Lucy Stone. Garrison published the first edition of his well-known abolitionist newspaper The Liberator in 1831. Free African-Americans and fugitive slaves who had escaped to the north or Canada also played a prominent role in the movement, including David Walker and Frederick Douglass. The rise of abolitionism alarmed many S o u t h e rners, who felt that the abolitionists encouraged slave rebellions. This widespread fear was enhanced by several attempted rebellions, including those tried by Gabriel Prosser in 1800 and Denmark Vesey in 1822. Panic spread even further with the 1831 Nat Turner rebellion in Southampton County, Vi rginia, during which fifty-eight white people were killed. In the Haiti Revolution, slaves overthrew that island nation’s government pro v i d i n g another chilling example of the possible outcome of a successful revolt. Some Southerners felt that abolitionists helped inspire and incite such revolts. The growth of more militant and outspoken northern abolitionism also led to more militant and outspoken southern defenses of slavery as not a necessary evil but a positive good. Slavery’s defenders claimed that the institution protected poor white workers from competing with freed slaves for manual labor jobs and elevated their status. Meanwhile, radical s o u t h e rn politicians known as “Fire-Eaters” demanded the protection of slavery as a property and states’ rights issue and spread fear of n o rt h e rn domination of the national John Brown, whose raid on Harper’s Ferry helped government. ignite the Civil War. (Library of Congress)

Brown’s raid supported by former slaves? 3

John Brown aligned himself with the more militant abolitionists, participating in the Underground Railroad that aided escaped slaves and urging African Americans to use violence against those who enforced the newly strengthened Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. He formed an organization of free African Americans, sympathetic white individuals, and runaway slaves known as the League of Gileadites, designed to aid fugitive slaves. Brown became even more involved in the militant abolitionist movement and achieved national renown for his actions during the settlement of the Kansas territory in the mid-1850s. The 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act established the territories of Kansas and Nebraska and repealed the old Missouri Compromise line established in 1820 that had prohibited slavery above a certain latitude in new U.S. terr itories. That line would have made both territories free, but Southerners were demanding equal access. The issue of whether to allow slavery in the Kansas and Nebraska territories would be settled by each terr i t o ry ’s voters under the doctrine of popular sovereignty. Nebraska quickly became a free territory but Nort h e rners and Southerners competed, often violently, over the fate of Kansas. Both sides established competing territorial governments and the resulting violence earned the terr i t o ry the name of “Bleeding Kansas.” Brown and his five sons settled in Osawatomie, Kansas, in 1855 to help abolitionists who came from other northern states to establish Kansas as a free state. These settlers were competing with pro - s l a v e ry settlers and Missourians, called “Border Ruffians,” who illegally crossed the border to vote in Kansas elections. Brown assumed command of the local militia, appointing himself captain. On the night of May 24, 1856, he and his followers hacked to death five pro - s l a v e ry settlers along the Pottawatomie River in revenge for the so-called Sack of Lawrence, an attack on that Free Soil town that had occurred a few days earlier. Pro - s l a v e ry forces took revenge on August 30, 1856, by burning Osawatomie and killing Brown’s son Frederick. Brown left Kansas upon hearing rumors of his impending arrest but he would later return to lead a raid into Missouri, where he killed a slave owner and helped eleven slaves escape to freedom in Canada. The battle over Kansas’s status would continue and it did not enter the Union until 1861, when the secession of the southern states allowed it to enter as a free state. Brown was never indicted for his role in the Kansas violence, but his actions in the struggle made him a national symbol of the militant abolitionist crusade.

In 1857, Brown capitalized on his renown by launching a fund-raising campaign of speaking engagements in the Northeast. He claimed the money was to continue the fight in Kansas, but he was already formulating plans for a raid on the town of Harpers Ferry, Virginia (currently West Virginia). Brown used some of the funds raised to order 1,000 pikes from a forge-master in Connecticut, again claiming that they were meant as

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John Brown’s Raid

K E Y CON CE P T

Slave Uprisings

The histo rian He r be rt Ap t h e ker has ca l c u l ated that there were some 250 slave re bellions in the Un i ted St ate s. He defined a slave re bellion as any disturb a n ce in which ten or more slaves was re co rded in a reliable re po rt, such as a news p a per or other doc ument. The three best kn own we re Ga b ri e l’s Plot of 1800, the Denmark Ve s ey Plot of 1822, and Nat Turner’s Revolt of 1831.In the first two cases, leaks of info rm ation about the plot led to the arrest and execution of the plotters be fore the eve nt got off the g ro u n d. Vi rginia gove rnor James Mo n roe wa s info rmed of Ga b riel’s Pl o t, which was supposed to t a ke place on August 30, 1800, but it was set back by a heavy ra i n s to rm. Ga b riel Prosser and about thirtyf i ve of his fo l l owers we re arre s ted and hanged. Prosser refused to give any te s t i m o ny about his plans. Denmark Ve s ey, in 1822,planned more carefully. A blacksmith, living in Charleston,South Ca rolina, he scheduled his uprising for a Sunday in Ju n e. His

t h i n king was that the day would be ideal, since many planters left the region for cooler re s o rts in the mountains in the summer, and that many blacks came into the city on Sundays for marke t . He planned to arm the slaves with spears and he a rranged for many such we a po n s. Th rough an underg round netwo rk , he co nt a cted nearby slave s, e s t i m ated in the range of 3,000 to 9,000. He gave s pecial assignments to slaves who had access to horses and wagons. Ve s ey had wri t ten to Haiti, a s king for assistance. Even though he swore his assoc iates to secre cy, word leaked out, and he and some t h i rty-six others were arre s ted and exe c u ted, while over ninety others were given lesser punishment s. Nat Tu rner was a chari s m atic leader, kn own to be a preacher at secret meetings of slave s. Inspired by visions, he started his uprising on August 21, 1831, in So u t h a m p ton Co u nty, Vi rginia, leading s l aves from plant ations on a twe nty-mile marc h . Al together his band killed fifty - s even white people

weapons for the Kansas struggle. Brown believed that violence was the only way to rid the country of slavery because of the South’s reliance on and staunch defense of the institution as instrumental to their economy and way of life. Brown felt that God was calling him to lead the violence in a region that deserved such tactics for its grievous wrongs. B rown planned to seize the town’s federal armory and arsenal and take the arms. Then he planned to hide in the nearby Blue Ridge Mountains and arm slaves, who he claimed would rise up against their masters to join his men. From his mountain base, he would raid nearby a reas in order to launch widespread slave insurrections to begin fre eing the 4 million slaves in the United States. In July 1859, under the alias Isaac Smith he rented a farmhouse in Maryland known as the Kennedy Farmhouse, about seven miles from his planned target of Harpers Ferry. Brown then continued to recruit men, money, and support. His sons Oliver, Owen, and Watson joined him. Five African Americans joined his group of raiders; these were Osborne Perry Anderson, Lewis Sheridan Leary, Shields Green, John Anthony Copeland, Jr., and fugitive slave Dangerfield Newby, who hoped to free his wife from a Virginia plantation. The other raiders included Jeremiah G. Anderson, William Thompson, Dauphin Thompson, Stewart Taylor, William H. Leeman, Iowa Quaker Barclay Coppoc, Bostonian Francis Jackson Meriam, Kansas fighters John E. Cook, Albert Hazlett, and Charles P. Tidd, Edwin Coppoc, Aaron

Brown’s raid supported by former slaves? 5

KE Y C ON C E P T

Slave Uprisings (Continued)

be fore the local militia ca u g ht up with the gro u p. Turner esca ped capture briefly but was arre s ted within two months. In pri s o n , he was inte rv i e wed by a news p a per re porte r, and his published “co n fe ssion”further put a sca re into the planter class acro s s the South. In the afte rm ath of the upri s i n g, some 100 Af ri can Am e ri cans who had no kn own co n n e ction with his revolt were slaughte red in the panic. St ate legislat u res passed laws against the teaching of reading and writing to slaves and against their holding meetings without white people pre s e nt. The memory of Turner’s re bellion persisted for d e cades among planters in the South. Si n ce the slaves in Turner’s uprising simply killed all the white s they could capture, the vision of a slave uprising on that model was nightmarish for plante r s. In many regions of the plant ation South, the number of slaves gre atly exceeded the number of planters and, in some count i e s, even exceeded the total numbe r of non-slave-holding white s. While militias we re be t ter org a n i zed than any slave plotters and had

a c cess to tra n s po rt, communication, and weapons, the fear of re bellion among white re s i d e nts seemed reasonable, not simply a fo rm of nervous ove rre a ction to the appare nt injustices of the slave ry sys tem. Although the motives of John Brown were never quite clear, the facts were fri g htening to slave h o l de r s.He had provided thousands of pikes to slaves, as Denmark Vesey had done. He had arranged funding f rom a small group of we a l t hy abolitionists. Wh atever his mistake s, it seemed that he had set out to launch some widespread ope rat i o n , or so it appeared from the number of we a pons he co l l e cted and from his selection of black leaders to wo rk as subordinate office r s.So the swift re a ction of the local militia,the U.S.Ma ri n e s,and the local Vi rginia co u rt in punishing Brown and the other survivors of his ope ration was to be ex pe cted. Th at quick and ruthless suppression of the revolt and the execution of its p a rt i c i p a nts was ve ry similar to the re a ction against the three major re bellions of the ninete e nth ce nt u ry: Pro s s e r’s, Vesey’s, and Turn e r’s.

D. Stevens, and John Henri Kagi, who would serve as one of Brown’s lieutenants. Brown’s fund-raising efforts were crucial to his ability to carry out his plan. Prominent northern abolitionists had provided him with secret financial support, the bulk of the money from a group that came to be known as the “Secret Six.” They were wealthy New York reformer Gerrit Smith, Concord teacher Franklin Sanborn, Boston Unitarian ministers Theodore Parker and Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Boston businessman George Luther Stearns, and physician and reformer Samuel Gridley Howe. Brown repeatedly warned his financers that the plan could fail but that he hoped it would still divide the nation and cement northern hatred of slavery, perhaps resulting in a war to bring its end. One prominent abolitionist whose support Brown actively sought was the well-known African-American speaker and writer Frederick Douglass. Douglass was himself a fugitive slave, having escaped from Maryland in 1838 at the age of twenty-one. He had achieved renown through his eloquent speeches, autobiography, and abolitionist newspaper the North Star. In their first meeting about the planned raid, Douglass had hosted Brown at his home but had expressed skepticism about his plans. Brown once again sought Douglass’s support at a second meeting in 1859. If Brown could convince the well-known and respected Douglass to support his plans during this visit, the chances of the raid’s success would be greatly increased.

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AC TUA L H ISTO RY Frederick Douglass told Brown that although he shared Brown’s goals, he would not provide his support because he felt the plan was suicidal and doomed to failure. A disappointed Brown continued with his plans, although he received little new money, supplies, or recruits after Douglass’s refusal. His raid on the federal armory and arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, began on the night of October 16, 1859. Barclay Coppoc, Francis Jackson Meriam, and Brown’s son Owen remained behind to guard the Maryland farm. The rest of Bro w n ’s men set off in the dark for Harpers Ferry, cutting the town’s telegraph lines upon their arrival. Three raiders led by Brown’s trusted lieutenant John Kagi captured Hall’s Rifle Works, which was located near the arm o ry and produced weapons for the federal government. The main group of raiders captured the federal armory after taking its night watchman by surprise, while a smaller group stood guard on the bridges leading to town. Some of Bro w n ’s men seized three hostages, including Colonel Lewis W. Washington, a descendent of President George Washington. A surprised AfricanAmerican baggage handler named Hayward Shepherd was the raid’s first casualty. Ringing church bells heard throughout the town and its surrounding countryside signaled a slave insurrection. Brown’s next actions were puzzling, leading many future historians to question his true motives. After holding a captured Baltimore and Ohio Railroad train for several hours, he allowed it to leave the engine house near the armory, taking with it news of the raid. Area slaves did not rise up to help the raiders, and Brown’s decision to remain at the armory rather than to seize weapons and quickly flee doomed the short-lived raid to failure. Local militia, townsmen, and farmers rushed to the arm o ry and surrounded the raiders, trapping them in the small engine house where they had moved a group of hostages by the morning. Excitement and dru n k e nness reigned throughout the course of the day. Intermittent shootings continued from both inside and outside the engine house, killing town residents Thomas Boerly and George W. Turner and the town mayor, Fontaine Beckham. The townsmen shot raider William H. Leeman as he attempted an escape. Meanwhile, President James Buchanan dispatched a detachment of U.S. Marines under the command of Colonel Robert E. Lee, which arrived the following afternoon. Brown’s attempts to negotiate a cease-fire with the militia and later with U.S. forces failed, resulting in the mortal wounding of Brown’s son Watson. The troops entered the armory on Tuesday, October 18, at Lee’s command and quickly captured the raiders. Brown’s sons Oliver and Watson lay dead and Brown had been stabbed and beaten. Raiders John H. Kagi, Jeremiah G. Anderson, William Thompson, Dauphin Thompson, Stewart Taylor, Lewis S. Leary, and Dangerfield Newby were killed. Marine Luke Quinn and two slaves belonging to hostages had also died in the struggle. Colonel Lee and his men immediately captured five raiders, including Brown. The others were Aaron D. Stevens, Edwin Coppoc, John A.

Brown’s raid supported by former slaves? 7

Copeland, Jr., and Shields Green. Seven other raiders successfully escaped, but John E. Cook and Albert Hazlett were later captured. Francis Jackson Meriam, Barclay Coppoc, Charles Plummer Tidd, Osborne Perry Anderson, and Brown’s son Owen eluded capture with the help of friends and supporters who provided shelter and supplies. Meanwhile, news of the events at Harpers Ferry quickly spread throughout the nation. A Virginia state court in Charlestown tried the captured raiders on charges of treason. The governor of Virginia enlisted militia units to guard all of the approaches to the city as a precaution, and panic over potential slave uprisings remained high throughout the South. Brown’s trial began on October 26 and he had to be helped into court as he was still recovering from his stab wounds. The federal government did not interfere in the state trials that many Northerners claimed were deliberately rushed through the court system. During Brown’s trial, questions over his President James Buchanan dispatched U.S. Marines to behavior and motives emerged because of the counter Brown’s raiders. (Library of Congress) miscalculations he had made during the course of the raid. He had secured the armory but then failed to leave quickly, allowing himself and most of his men to become trapped. He had earlier separated his raiders and failed to secure avenues of retreat. He had allowed a captured Baltimore and Ohio (B & O) Railroad train to depart, carrying news of the raid to spread beyond the town. He had then refused to surrender when obviously trapped, thus endangering the raiders’ lives. Historians in both Brown’s day and later have used this odd behavior to question whether Brown really believed his plan could succeed. Some argue that he knew the raid was doomed to failure but carried it out in order to provoke a war that could ultimately free the slaves. Historian Bertram Wyatt-Brown in His Soul Goes Marching On: Responses to John Brown and the Harpers Ferry Raid felt that perhaps Brown wanted to fail and make himself “a human sacrifice to the cause of freedom.” Others argue that he was simply deluded over the plan’s ability to succeed although he was sincere in his desire to free the slaves. Many of these arguments emerged during Brown’s trial and the accompanying publicity. During his trial, Brown conducted himself in a calm and deliberate manner. In court he testified that he did not plan or wish for a slave uprising, clearly contradicting his earlier statements of intent. Both sections of the country watched the trials and read Brown’s pronouncements with interest, awaiting the outcome. Initial northern responses to the raid were often confused and divisive. Some Northerners were initially hesitant to praise Brown’s violent methods openly even though they supported his cause. A few of his demoralized financial backers tried to hide their involvement, some even fleeing the c o u n t ry to avoid being called before a Senate investigating committee to

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AN OTH E R VI E W

John Brown’s Sanity

Based on John Brown’s fanat i cal devotion to the a bolitionist cause, his violent actions in Ka n s a s, and his later odd be h avior during the Harpers Ferry raid, some people in Brown’s day and later histo ri a n s have claimed that he was insane rather than acce p ting the Harpers Fe rry ve nt u re as a ca l c u l ated failure. Th ey noted that Brown had a family histo ry of mental illness and was kn own to have suffe red fro m e p i s odes of depression and manic behavior. So m e historians have used the emerg i n g, co ntroversial

field of psychohisto ry to examine Brown’s childh ood and po i nt to episodes in his deve l o p m e nt, p ate rnal relations, and early enco u nters with slave ry t h at may have co nt ri b u ted to mental instability. Some of these theories emerged during his trial, but Gove rnor He n ry Wise of Vi rginia was one among many who refused to accept the arg u m e nt that Brown was insane. Brow n’s co nt ra d i cto ry statem e nts of motive both be fo re and after the raid have l e ft this inte resting question open to debate.

testify. Leading Republicans such as Abraham Lincoln sought to distance themselves from Brown out of fear of alienating potential voters. Many other Northerners, however, treated Brown as a martyr, praising him in speeches, poems, and songs. Many nort h e rn communities held meetings praising Brown while statements of support came from such notable figures as Ralph Waldo Emerson and William Lloyd Garrison. Abolitionists claimed that the executions of Brown and his followers proved that the federal government supported slavery and the South. As events continued to unfold, more and more Northerners came to treat Brown as a martyr. For some, his behavior in prison and willingness to give his life to the cause overcame their initial discomfort with his actions. Supporters made several attempts to rescue the captured raiders but Brown did not wish to be rescued because he felt that his death would be more valuable to the militant abolitionist cause. One of his letters from prison stated, “I am worth now infinitely more to die than to live,” according to Richard O. Boyer in The Legend of John Brown: A Biography and a History. Brown was sentenced to death on November 2 and hanged on December 2, 1859. In one of his final statements, he declared, “I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood,” according to Boyer. Green, Cook, Copeland, and Coppoc were executed on December 16, 1859. Stevens and Hazlett were executed on March 17, 1860. Meetings of sympathy and prayer were held in the North on the day of Brown’s execution and “John Brown’s Body” would later become a Civil War rallying song for northern troops. Southerners were alarmed and outraged at these responses as they continued to live in fear of more slave uprisings. Southerners who initially saw Brown’s raid as the work of a single individual quickly came to believe that the entire North supported his cause. They were especially outraged at the revelation of the financial support provided by the “Secret Six” and by northern praise of Brown. This response exemplified their worst fears about abolitionists and the North and they stepped up their defenses of slavery and possible secession. Many politicians and the press claimed that abolitionists would stop at

Brown’s raid supported by former slaves? 9

nothing to end slavery. As noted by historian Charles Joyner in His Soul Goes Marching On: Responses to John Brown and the Harpers Ferry Raid, “The more extreme northern opinions were the most widely quoted, on the grounds that for every Yankee who voiced such views there were thousands who applauded or gave silent assent.” Military companies and private associations formed across the South. There were widespread calls for boycotts of northern products and many southern students left northern colleges in protest. Northerners in the South faced insults and rough treatment. “Fire-Eaters” utilized southern resentment to unite Southerners and gain their support for states’ rights and secession. Meanwhile, a Senate committee under the leadership of James Murray Mason, a Democrat from Virginia, investigated the raid. The Mason committee accomplished little and no one was arrested for assisting Brown. Northern and southern reactions revealed how divided the nation had become over the issue of slavery and quickly overwhelmed the voices of compromise. Historian and noted Brown biographer Stephen B. Oates in To Purge This Land with Blood: A Biography of John Brown stated that “Harpers Ferry polarized the country as no other event had done; it set in motion a spiral of accusation and counteraccusation between north and south that bore the country irreversibly toward secession and the beginning of a civil war in which slavery itself would perish—the very thing the old man had hoped and prayed would be the ultimate consequences of his Harpers Ferry raid.” The country’s polarization was reflected in the 1860 presidential elections, which really consisted of two separate elections. Nort h e rn Democrats had nominated Stephen Douglas on a platform of popular s o v e reignty after southern delegates abandoned the convention. In the North, Republican Abraham Lincoln won on a platform of excluding s l a v e ry from the territories but allowing each state to control its domestic institutions. They had also added a resolution condemning invasions, an oblique re f e rence to Brown. Southerners, however, continued to associate Republicans with antislavery and there f o re with Brown and his actions. Southern Democrats nominated Vice President John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky on a federal slave code platform assuring that the territories would be open to slavery and that the federal government would protect slavery in the southern states. Remnants of the Whig Party created the Constitutional Union Party and nominated John Bell of Tennessee. Lincoln received no electoral votes and few popular votes in the South. Thus, as stated by historian Charles Joyner in His Soul Goes Marching On: Responses to John Brown and the Harpers Ferry Raid, “After Lincoln’s victory, it was fatally easy for many southerners to believe the entire north had become abolitionist.” Lincoln’s election led to the expected secession of the Deep South states, including South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas. These states then formed the Confederate States of America (Confederacy), choosing Jefferson Davis as their president. The Civil War (1861–1865) began in April 1861 in Charleston, South Carolina. A northern victory in the long and bloody war ensured that John Brown’s ultimate goal would be achieved. During the war, Lincoln

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John Brown’s Raid

Border States and Washington, D.C.

In actual histo ry, three of the four bo rder states came close to joining the Confederacy. Although the legislature of De l aware vo ted against secession and stuck with that decision, the situation in Ma ry l a n d, Kentucky, and Mi s s o u ri was far more unclear on the

eve of Fort Sumte r. After South Ca rolina troo p s under the command of Confederate general Pi e rre Gu s t ave Toutant Beauregard fired on Union-held Fort Sumte r, in Charleston Harbor on the morning of Ap ril 12, 1861, Lincoln called for 75,000 troops from

South Carolina troops fired on Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861. (Loretta Carlisle)

freed the slaves in the rebellious areas through the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863. After the war, the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution permanently abolished U.S. slavery. The period of Reconstruction after the Civil War brought new questions of race relations as the country struggled to establish new relations with the 4 million newly freed slaves. The federal government established the Freedmen’s Bureau to help with immediate needs such as food, clothing, and education. The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments and the Civil Rights Act of 1866 made the freedmen citizens and granted them rights. The military remained temporarily to help protect those rights. A school for African Americans was established on the Harpers Ferry grounds where Brown and his men had been surrounded. In 1881, Frederick Douglass gave a speech honoring Brown on that same site. In the early 1900s, the Second Niagara Movement, which later became the

Brown’s raid supported by former slaves? 11

I N C ON TE X T

Border States and Washington, D.C. (Continued)

loyal states to suppo rt the Union.Vi rginia,Tennessee, and Arkansas joined the Confederacy. The question remained open regarding what would happen in the remaining slave state s. There was no response to Lincoln’s call for help from the slave-holding states of Maryland, Kentucky, or Missouri. Pennsylvania immediately called out its militia and sent units to Washington, as did other states such as Massachusetts. As Union troops marched through Baltimore from one train station to the other on their way to Washington, they we re attacked by angry pro - s e ce s s i o n Marylanders. The mayor of the city and many state legislators favored secession.In Missouri, pro-Union and pro - Co n fe d e rate fo rces fo u g ht seve ral ski rmishes, with the Union forces seizing control of the state government. On May 20, 1861, Kentucky officially voted to remain neutral. On the same day, No rth Ca rolina finally vo ted to join the Co n federacy, despite an earlier vote opposing that move. For a time, the neutral position of Kentucky was fully respected by Lincoln. However, when Confederate forces moved into Kentucky later on, the people of that state tended to view the action as an invasion. Even so, some 30,000 Kentuckians fought on the Confederate side. Du ring the Civil War, L i n coln remained re l u ctant to take dire ct action against slave ry.Th e re we re several reasons for his position. He wa nted to make it clear that he was fighting the war to pre s e rve the Union and its laws, and those laws re cog n i zed that slave ry was a local mat ter, not subject to federal

i nterference. Furthermore, any move by Lincoln to u n d e rmine the power of the Confe d e ra cyby emanc i p ating slaves would be dangerous, as it might tip the uneasy balance in the loyal bo rder states of Mary l a n d, K e nt u c ky, and Misso uri. When he a p p roved the Confiscation Acts of 1861 and 1862, and when he issued the Emancipation Proclamation in January 1863, he made it very clear that none of those laws applied to loyal slaveholders in any of the bo rder state s. In fact, s l avery remained legal in Kentucky for almost two years after the Emancip ation Proclamation, and was not finally outlawed in that state until the rat i f i cation of the Thirte e nt h Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in De ce m be r 1865. If the bo rder states had joined the Co n fe d e ra cy, the Confe d e ra cy might very well have been able to establish its capital in Wa s h i n g ton rather than Richmond, making clear to the inte rn ational co mm u n i ty that the Union fo rces had re t re ated in defeat. Ge n e rally the ca p t u re of the capital of a nation in any war was and is re g a rded as a signal of victo ry for one side and defe at of the other in diplom atic circles. Examples of the fall of capitals to a victorious side in the twe ntieth ce ntury include Ma d ri d, 1939; Pa ri s, 1940; Be rl i n , 1945; and Saigon, 1975. Thus the position and role of the bo rder state s, w h e re public opinion might have been more thoroughly aroused if John Brown had been eve n s l i g htly more successful, was crucial to the outco m e of broader eve nt s.

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), met there. The new freedmen, however, continued to face the same racism and discrimination during Reconstruction that they had earlier, leaving many historians to call it an unfinished revolution. Black Codes, Jim Crow laws, and vigilante groups such as the Ku Klux Klan used a variety of legal and illegal methods to deprive them of their rights. The protection of the military was gradually removed as the process of Reconstruction ran its course. Tenant farming and sharecropping became the South’s dominant labor systems, trapping many former slaves in poverty. The North gradually lost interest in protecting the Freedmen’s rights as economic issues turned their attention elsewhere. Many of the same battles would be fought again during the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s as racism and discrimination remained key issues facing the country.

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“A Visit from the Ku Klux Klan,” an 1872 illustration by Frank Bellew. (Library of Congress)

ALTE R NATE H ISTO RY Frederick Douglass had his doubts about Brown’s plan, but could have agreed to lend his support, knowing that it would attract fellow freedmen and that it would help spread word of the raid to slaves in the area. During the weeks leading up to the raid, more recruits and money would have then arrived at the Maryland farmhouse. Secret meetings and whispered communications would have circulated the plan and word of an arranged signal among the nearby slave communities. The amount of support would have then convinced both Brown and Douglass that the raid could indeed be a success. The raid on the federal armory and arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia), began on the night of October 16, 1859. A larger contingent of men would have been left behind to guard the farmhouse, which had been their base of operations, and to arm slaves who would have come there with the weapons that they had gathered. Another group would have set off into different areas of the surrounding countryside, where individual slaves would have slipped away in the night to wait for the prearranged signal. Those slaves would then have returned to their communities to spread the word, now carrying arms to deal with any resistance they might have encountered on the

Brown’s raid supported by former slaves? 13

way to pre a rranged meeting places in the nearby Blue Ridge Mountains. A final group would have accompanied Brown to Harpers Ferry but would have remained outside the town with horses and a wagon to provide a quick getaway. Meanwhile, Brown and the remaining men, who had reached Harpers Ferry, would then have split into groups and each would have entered the town from a different direction, severing telegraph cables on their approach. Small groups of armed men would have remained behind to guard each entrance into town. Brown and his group then would have entered the Arm o ry and nearby Hall’s Rifle Works, catching the night watchman by surprise and quickly seizing the plant’s weapons, now planning to make a quick departure. The church bell did begin to ring, signaling a slave insurrection, but Brown’s larger body of men would have been able to overcome the rushing townsmen in the resulting confusion and the guards would have prevented nearby farmers from coming to the town’s aid. A few raiders, as well as several townsmen and one farmer, would have been killed in the brief struggle. The raiders would have headed for the nearby and largely inaccessible Blue Ridge Mountains after their quick flight from town; there they would have joined the slaves arriving from nearby plantations. The group from the farmhouse would have come soon thereafter. The few townsmen who would have given chase would have been killed. The raiders would have distributed arms to the hundreds of slaves who had joined them and would have begun to make plans for their next step. The men would have remained secluded throughout the next day, accepting several more stragglers who would have made their way to the hideout. The next night, they would have planned to launch attacks on the nearby plantations, arming the remaining slaves and killing their owners. Word of the raid would have quickly spread as townsmen sounded the alarm and plantation owners realized the large numbers of missing slaves. Remaining slaves would have been questioned and in some cases beaten to obtain information on the raiders’ plans and location. Local militia and armed posses of slave owners would have been joined by a detachment of U.S. Marines under the command of Robert E. Lee, dispatched by President James Buchanan. The raiders would have launched a series of guerrilla-style attacks throughout the surrounding countryside using the cover of darkness. Successful attacks on several plantations would have left a number of white women and children dead and increased the raiders’ numbers, as other slaves rose up to join them. Skirmishes with armed posses and militia would have left many raiders and slaves dead as well. As word of the bloody raids spread throughout neighboring states, other slave insurrections would have occurred throughout the South. Southerners lived in constant fear of attacks and local militias would have quickly gathered to protect area plantations. These armed posses would have killed many captured slaves on the spot, leaving their bodies on display as examples to those slaves who might have had plans to join them.

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After several weeks, U.S. forces would have finally been able to capture or kill most of the raiders, including John Brown. The men would still have been tried on charges of treason, murder, and inciting slave rebellions, but this time in federal courts, since the raiders had crossed into neighboring states and had encouraged slaves in other states to rebel. Most people in both sections of the country would have welcomed the trials as a fitting end to the raiders’ reign of terror, violence, and death. Despite his calm demeanor and eloquent words defending his actions in the name of God and revenge, Brown would have attracted few converts and both sections would have agreed that the execution of this violent fanatic represented justice. The Senate committee investigating the raid, led by James Murray Mason of Virginia, would have met in a national atmosphere of crisis and upheaval. They summoned many of the northern abolitionists who had financially supported the raid, their names revealed by the capture of Brown’s private papers. A few members of what would have now been the “Secret Seven” including Frederick Douglass, would have escaped to Canada with the aid of militant abolitionist supporters. Douglass would then have made his way to Britain, where he would have remained for a number of years, becoming a popular speaker among British abolitionists. The remaining members would have faced trials and prison sentences, but the escapes, especially of Douglass, would have further enraged Southerners. Most Northerners would also have been appalled at the violent deaths of so many southern whites and would have quickly condemned the raiders and Brown’s supporters. Republican politicians such as Abraham Lincoln would have even more vehemently denounced Brown and would have tried to assured Southerners that Brown did not represent the northern majority. To Southerners, however, Brown symbolized their worst fears. He was a militant abolitionist willing to arm slaves and turn them against their masters. Now, over a hundred Southerners would have lain dead and no amount of northern condemnation would have quieted the fears of their countrymen. Northern politicians could never guarantee that another John Brown would not have been inspired by his success, waiting in the wings. B o l s t e red by public opinion, militant southern “Fire-Eaters” in the states of the Deep South would have immediately made plans within their states to hold secession conventions. South Carolina delegates would have voted in favor of immediate secession in December 1859. They would have been quickly followed by the states of Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas. The Upper South states, led by Vi rginia, and the border states would also have seceded, as they were closest to the North and the easiest targets for future John Browns. The first six states would have met in Montgomery, Alabama, in February 1860 to form the Confederate States of America (Confederacy). The 1860 presidential election would have been held in the midst of this political crisis, and newly elected Republican President Abraham Lincoln would have immediately had to formulate a response upon taking office. He would have made overt u res to the new Confederacy, but would he have been willing or able to meet their demands? The seceded

Brown’s raid supported by former slaves? 15

s o u t h e rn states would have demanded a guarantee that the federal gove rnment would allow the expansion of slavery into new territories and would protect slavery where it already existed. Lincoln would have been willing to guarantee slavery where it already existed but would not have agreed to allow its expansion. Such an allowance would have gone against his Republican principles and would not have been supported by most Northerners. With the secession of the Upper South and the border states, the Confederacy and the Union would have been more equally matched in t e rms of men and supplies. Lincoln would have faced the prospect of a long and bloody war that could have resulted in the invasion of vulnerable northern cities, including the capital of Washington, D.C., which would have been surrounded by Confederate terr i t o ry with the secession of Maryland. The federal government would have relocated to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, for protection. The Confederacy would have rejected Lincoln’s offer of federal guarantees for slavery only where it already existed, and the Civil War would have begun. A stronger Confederate Army under the command of General Robert E. Lee would have raided the North on several occasions, decimating Washington, D.C., and other border cities. The Confederacy would also have seized a diplomatic edge by gaining Britain’s aid and f o rmal recognition. Meanwhile, nort h e rn sentiments would have turned increasingly against the war as its casualties mounted. Lincoln was unwilling to sever the Union although he faced gro w i n g n o rt h e rn demands to end the bloody, stalemated war that threatened to drag on for many more years. In the 1864 pre s i d e n t i a l election, the Democratic candidate General G e o rge McClellan would have soundly defeated Lincoln on a platform of negotiating a peaceful settlement to the war. In the Treaty of Appomattox Courthouse, the United States would have formally re c o gnized the independence of the Confederate States of America. The Confederacy would try to expand its territory in the late 1800s through attempted acquisitions of Caribbean and Central American territories. Their first postwar target could easily have been Mexico, where the F rench had installed puppet dictator Maximilian of Austria in 1863. The additions of Mexico and Nicaragua might have kept slavery intact into the twentieth century, where it would gradually end through a government system of compensated emancipation. Many of the freed slaves would have left the Confederacy for other homes, including the United States, In an alternate history, George B. McClellan would the Caribbean, Canada, Europe, and Africa.

have defeated Abraham Lincoln in the 1864 election. (Library of Congress)

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Confederate fears over the United States’ growing industrial might and expansion westward, however, could have led them to ally themselves with the Plains Native Americans to prevent U.S. migration into the Trans-Missouri West. Combined Indian-Confederate attacks on western wagon trains and forts would have strained U.S.-Confederate relations, leading to a second war. An ultimate U.S. victory would have led to the extermination of many western Native Americans. Most of those who survived would have fled to Canada or the Confederacy for safety. The Confederacy would have been forced to surrender Cuba to the United States and to provide monetary compensation for U.S. losses. The remaining lands in the U.S. west would have then been settled in the first decades of the twentieth century. Eventual struggles in Europe during the world wars of the mid-twentieth century would have eventually brought the United States and the Confederacy together as allies. Marcella Bush Trevino

Discussion Questions 1. From the evidence presented in this chapter, does it seem that John Brown was a genuine idealist or a dangerous psychopath? 2. What factors would have had to be present in John Brown’s planning and execution of his attack for it to have led to a successful or widespread slave uprising? 3. If John Brown’s raid had expanded into a true slave uprising with slaveholder casualties, why and how would that have affected the political position of the slave-holding border states (Mary l a n d , Kentucky, Missouri, and Delaware)? 4. In actual history, Frederick Douglass did not support Brown’s plan (but he did not notify authorities about it either). Why do you think that Douglass refused in fact to support the plan? 5. If John Brown’s raid had led to a slave uprising, what would mainstream northern opinion have been toward the “Secret Six” or the “Secret Seven” (including Frederick Douglass)? How might that factor have changed the outcome of the election of 1860? 6. The Upper South, Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina did in fact join the Confederacy after the firing on Fort Sumter. If they had been followed by the slave-holding border states, Abraham Lincoln (or any elected U.S. president) might have had to accept secession in 1861 rather than continue to fight the Civil War. If there had been no Civil War, would it have been more likely that the states would have reunited (with continued slavery in the South) after 1864, or that the Confederacy and Union would have continued as two separate nations?

Brown’s raid supported by former slaves? 17

Bibliography and Further Reading Boyer, Richard O. The Legend of John Brown: A Biography and a History. New York: Knopf, 1973. Finkelman, Paul, ed. His Soul Goes Marching On: Responses to John Brown and the Harpers Ferry Raid. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1995. Gilbert, David T. “Harpers Ferry National Historical Park.” http://www. nps.gov/hafe/home.htm (accessed August 17, 2005). Grant, Susan-Mary. North over South: Northern Nationalism and American Identity in the Antebellum Era. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2000. Huston, James L. Calculating the Value of the Union: Slavery, Property Rights, and the Economic Origins of the Civil War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003. Joyner, Charles. “ ‘Guilty of Holiest Crime’: The Passion of John Brown.” In Paul Finkelman, ed., His Soul Goes Marching On: Responses to John Brown and the Harpers Ferry Raid. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1995. Levine, Bruce C. Half Slave and Half Free: The Roots of the Civil War. New York: Hill and Wang, 1992. Martin, Waldo E., Jr. The Mind of Frederick Douglass. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984. McKivigan, John R. “His Soul Goes Marching On: The Story of John Brown’s Followers after the Harpers Ferry Raid.” In John R. McKivigan and Stanley Harrold, eds., Antislavery Violence: Sectional, Racial, and Cultural Conflict in Antebellum America. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1999. Oates, Stephen B. To Purge This Land with Blood: A Biography of John Brown. New York: Harper and Row, 1984. Potter, David. The Impending Crisis, 1848–1861. Edited by Don E. Fehrenbacher. New York: Harper and Row, 1976. Renehan, Jr., Edward J. The Secret Six: The True Tale of the Men Who Conspired with John Brown. New York: Crown, 1995. Rossbach, Jeffrey. Ambivalent Conspirators: John Brown, the Secret Six, and a Theory of Slave Violence. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982. Scott, Otto J. The Secret Six: John Brown and the Abolitionist Movement. New York: Times Books, 1979. Stewart, James Brewer. Holy Warriors: The Abolitionists and American Slavery. New York: Hill and Wang, 1996. Walters, Ronald G. The Antislavery Appeal: American Abolitionism after 1830. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976. West Virginia Division of Culture and History. “John Brown and the Harpers Ferry Raid.” http://www.wvculture.org/history/jnobrown.html (accessed September 3, 2005). Wyatt-Brown, Bertram. “‘A Volcano beneath a Mountain of Snow,’ John Brown and the Problem of Interpretation.” In Paul Finkelman, ed., His

Confederate States of America

During the Civil War the Confederates sought support from European powers, which never came. What if the Europeans had allied themselves with the Southern cause?

INTR ODU CT IO N Much speculation has been made over the years as to what would have happened had the South defeated the North in the American Civil War. But how could that have ever happened? The North was much stronger militarily as well as industrially and had a significantly larger population base. But what if the southern Confederate States of America had succeeded in bringing Europe into America’s War between the States? At the onset, key southern leaders apparently assumed that European dependence on southern cotton would result in European intervention on behalf of the South. What would Europe have done? The first move mostly likely would have been to break the nort h e rn naval blockade of southern p o rts so as to ensure continuity of the cotton trade. A far less likely move— but not without precedent, given their military adventurism in imperial China during that general time frame—would have been for Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, and even Russia to send troops to help the South. Neither happened. Why not? As late as 1844, the British had attempted to form strong alliances with the Republic of Texas and prevent it from joining the Union—since the British saw a strategic advantage to having two competing republics on the North American continent. However, the much stronger public sentiment felt in Britain concern e d slavery, which had been abolished in the British Empire and was regarded with distaste, even embarrassment. Of course, historically slavery had been practiced since biblical times, often with victors taking the vanquished captive, regardless of race. For example, in 1649 and 1653, conquering English armies enslaved native Catholics in Ireland as punishment. Under the command of Oliver Cromwell, thousands of Irish Catholics had their lands confiscated and were transported to the West Indies as slaves. However in 1772, the Earl of Mansfield, William Murray, ruled that slavery was un-British, writing in what became a basis of law that “the air of England is too pure for a slave to breathe, and so everyone who breathes it becomes free. Everyone who comes to this island is entitled to the protection of English law, whatever oppression he may have suffered and whatever may

2

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be the colour of his skin,” according to H. J. Nieboer in Slavery as an Industrial System: Ethnological Researches. His ruling resulted in the prohibition of the practice in England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales; nevertheless, British slave trade flourished abroad. Between 1782 and 1807, British ships traded in over one million human lives. Parliament banned the slave trade in 1807 partly because of the fiery oratory of William Wilberforce. Even so, slaves were still held, though not sold, in such British outposts as Jamaica and Trinidad until slavery was officially abolished throughout the British Empire in 1833. A deep British revulsion toward slavery remained—and thus, a deep reluctance to assist the South, the last English-speaking vestige of human involuntary servitude in the 1860s. In France, feelings were not so strong. Slavery had been abolished since 1794 during the French Revolution, reinstituted in 1802 by Napoleon B o n a p a rte, then re-abolished in 1848 in France and all its colonies. Slavery was still legal in Spain and had been a foundation of Spain’s power in the Americas where blacks and indigenous natives such as the Inca, Mayas, and Aztecs had been forced into centuries of slavery. However, during the 1860s, public sentiment was growing and legislation was signed in Madrid in 1868 abolishing slavery on Spanish soil. In Russia and Germany, although serfs may not have been actual slaves, they were nonetheless forced to work and barred from leaving the service of their masters. The practice ended in medieval times throughout what is modern Germany. The emancipation of Russian serfs on March 3, 1861, by Czar Alexander II is regarded as the end of slavery in Russia. In this political climate, the South committed the serious faux pas of sending pro-slavery diplomats to Britain and France—the two superpowers of the day; these emissaries, who adamantly defended slavery in public and private oratory, came to be regarded as entertaining but boorish by the gentility. A case can be made that even if the South had sent the best envoys imaginable, diplomats who would have kept their comments politically correct, the effort would have failed. At the time of the American Civil War Germany was fragmented into a variety of small states. Spain was weak and struggling. Russia was vast and powerful but not a contender on the world scene. So France and Britain were the two nations that actually could have helped the South. France did teeter on the brink of aiding the Confederacy. Napoleon III told the southern states’ envoys that he would intervene diplomatically and perhaps militarily in their favor, but only if Britain did so as well. Did he know that the southern diplomats would fail spectacularly in London, largely by holding fast to their defense of slavery? It is worth noting that a key factor in British popular sentiment against the South and slavery was the publication of the American novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe, sister of the fiery American preacher Henry Ward Beecher, both of whom were vehemently opposed to slavery. In 1852, over 300,000 copies of her book were sold, and a stage play adaptation by G. L. Aiken had become a popular melodrama that was performed nationwide. The book was translated into several languages, and when Mrs. Stowe visited Europe in 1853, she was treated like a celebrity by royalty, politicians, the press, and the wealthy. Thus, despite southern diplomatic efforts, the political situation in Britain was too antislavery for that country to recognize the Confederacy.

Confederacy allied with European powers? 21

Although Britain’s textile industries needed southern cotton, they had anticipated the outbreak of hostilities and had stockpiled a two-year reserve; they were also developing sources of cotton in India and Egypt, so there was little economic urgency to intervene. It is said that northern diplomacy almost tipped the scales in favor of British intervention for the South. Union Secre t a ryof State William Seward inflamed British public emotion when he threatened that America would declare war on the British if they interf e red—an empty threat, given the North’s troubles in dealing with the war they were already fighting. However, Seward’s bellicosity was badly received in Britain, prompting consideration of the southern appeals for help. After all, Britain had sought in the Republic of Texas a counterbalance to the growing American re p u blic, to the point that in 1844, U.S. President John Tyler became concern e d that Texas might become a satellite of Great Britain. Feeling a need for haste if British designs were to be thwarted, in 1844 newly elected President James K. Polk suggested that annexation be accomplished by a joint resolution offering Texas statehood on certain conditions, the acceptance of which by Texas would complete the merger. Congress passed such a resolution on February 28, 1845—the first time that a prospective state was approached by the United States instead of the other way around. The British pressured the Texans to decline and negotiated with the government of Mexico to acknowledge Texas independence and drop all claims to Texas on the condition that the republic not join the United States. On July 4, 1845, Texas President Anson Jones placed before Texas Congress the choice of U.S. annexation or the British-brokered independence recognized by Mexico. The vote was for annexation, ratified by a popular election in October 1845. So, only fifteen years later, when South Carolina declared independence from the United States and six other states including Texas followed, why didn’t Britain renew its diplomatic effort at least toward Texas? Slavery was the o v e rwhelming obstacle—Britain’s deep-seated public sentiment against involuntary human s e rvitude, particularly with the growing democratic clout of the voting masses in the United Kingdom. Fading were the days of royal whim and edict.

So, let us imagine what would have happened if something had swayed British sentiment, permitting British military intervention, followed by French assistance as promised by Napoleon III. What might have stirred British emotions to allow such a commitment? Could another round

Could Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin have inflamed passions in Europe to support the South? (Library of Congress)

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K E Y CON CE P T

Right of Secession

South Ca rolina and the other ten states that d e c l a red secession from the Un i ted St ates and joined the Co n fe d e ra cy held the theory that the states we re sovereign, and that the fo rm ation of the Un i ted St ates was a voluntary agre e m e nt or co mp a ct among the state s. Furthermore, t h ey arg u e d that the U.S. Constitution had been wri t ten carefully to pro tect the ri g ht of the states to retain juri s d i ction over inte rnal mat te r s, including slavery. The Co n g ress and the Supreme Court had upheld the view that slavery was a state mat ter, and in the Dred S co t t case of 1857, the Co u rt had ruled that Co n g ress had no power to exclude slavery from any fe d e ral te rritory.Thus, the Confe d e rate arg u m e nt for secession in 1861 noted that Lincoln had been e l e cted on a plat fo rm dedicated to preve nting the extension of slavery into the fe d e ral te rri to ries and that his personal objection to slavery on mora l

g rounds was well kn own; with these conditions, the Confederacy claimed, those states that chose to s e cede by pro pe rly co n s t i t u ted co nve ntion or legislative action had sufficient justification to do so. On his inaugurat i o n , L i n coln took no immediate a ction against the first seven seceding states but chose to send reinforce m e nts to fe d e ral fo rts still under Union co ntrol but located within the sece ding state s, particularly Fort Sumter. When the Confe d e rates fired on Fo rt Sumte r, they engaged in an ove rt act of re bellion in his view. Th e Co n fe d e rates held that when South Ca rolina s e ceded from the Un i o n , it withdrew its agre e m e nt g ra nting to the fe d e ral gove rn m e nt the ri g ht to use South Ca rolina land for fe d e ral purpo s e s, and that Lincoln’s act of fo rtifying Fo rt Sumter was an act of aggression against the sove reign state of South Ca rolina and against the newly fo rmed Confe d e ra cy

of journalistic and literary propagandizing—eclipsing the response to Uncle Tom’s Cabin—have turned the tide of the war? Some of the greatest writers of the day were pro-southern and antiwar. What if their works had gained widespread audiences in Europe and had turned public attention away from the slavery issue and instead to something else? What else could have inflamed public sentiment? What if massive publicity had been given to William Tecumseh Sherman’s brutal assault on Georgia, romanticized in Margaret Mitchell’s 1936 novel, Gone with the Wind, which won the 1937 Pulitzer Prize for fiction and became one of the most popular motion pictures of all time? What if something like Gone with the Wind had inflamed European passions in 1865? Could it have changed the course of history ?

AC TUA L H ISTO RY On December 20, 1860, South Carolina announced that the U.S. Constitution allows states to withdraw whenever they wish. Indeed, when the Republic of Texas joined the Union in 1845, it retained the right to secede. South Carolina’s assertion was that all the states had a similar right. Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana agreed and seceded as well. So did Texas. On Febru a ry 9, 1861, the Confederate States of America was declared with Jefferson Davis, a West Point graduate and former U.S. Army officer,

Confederacy allied with European powers? 23 KE Y C ON C E P T

Right of Secession (Continued)

of which South Ca rolina was then a part.The debate over constitutional principles had suddenly be co m e a shooting war. However, it was clear that the war started not directly over the issue of slavery but over two different interpretations of whether a state retained the right to secede from the Union after it had joined. Some Northerners argued that such a right existed for Texas and for those states that had been signatories to the Declaration of Independence in 1776, but that no such right could be claimed for Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, or Tennessee. All of those states were the creation of the federal government out of lands held by the United States rather than having any prior claim to sovereignty. Secessionists countered by claiming that a state must have had an existence to be recog n i zed and then admitted to the Un i o n , and therefore, as a state with rights equal to those of

the original thirteen and to Texas, each had equal rights to secession. In actual histo ry, the Civil War resulted in the emancipation of the slave s, but another and equally s i g n i f i ca nt consequence was to demonstrate that the Confe d e rate arg u m e nt for voluntary secession f rom the Union was not accepted. Th at arg u m e nt would never again be invo ked in the Un i ted St ate s, l e aving the fe d e ral gove rn m e nt with much gre ate r s t atus as the sole embod i m e nt of sove reign or national power. Howeve r, some have argued that belief in the ri g ht of a state to secede from a larger s ove reign ent i ty took another fo rm in the twentieth cent u ry when Wood row Wilson (a So u t h e rner by birth and inclination) endorsed the principle of selfdeterm i n ation of pe o p l e s, leading to the cre ation a fter Wo rld War I of seve ral nations in Eu ro pe out of the re m n a nts of prior empire s, including Poland, Hungary, Yugoslavia, and Cze c h o s l ova ki a .

elected president. Twenty-three days later on March 4, 1861, Abraham Lincoln succeeded Buchanan in the White House and was sworn in as sixteenth president of the United States. Thirty-eight days later on April 12, 1861, the South Carolina militia ord e red the U.S. Army garrison at Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina, harbor to withdraw. The Army ignored the request. At 4:30 P.M., South Carolina General Pierre Beauregard ord e red his forces to open fire with fifty cannons on Fort Sumter. T h ree days later on April 15, 1861, Lincoln called up 75,000 state militiamen, then summoned a special session of Congress on July 4, 1861. Lincoln off e red command of the Union Army to Vi rginia native Robert E. Lee, son of a Revolutionary War hero, and a twenty-five-year distinguished veteran of the U.S. Army as well as former superintendent of West Point. On April 17, 1861, Virginia seceded from the Union, followed by Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina, thus forming an eleven-state Confederacy with a population of 9 million, including nearly 4 million slaves. Three key slave-holding states refused to take sides: Missouri, Maryland, and Kentucky; Kentucky was the birthplace of both Lincoln and Davis, presidents of the opposing sides. The North had eighteen states and a population of over 20 million. Lee declined Lincoln’s offer and resigned his U.S. Army commission. Lincoln responded by confiscating Lee’s home across the Potomac River in Virginia and turning it into Arlington National Cemetery. Lincoln ordered a blockade against southern ports; he knew that the South had limited arms or munitions and must import what it needed to wage war and to pay for it with cotton exports. According to Horace Greeley in The American Conflict: A History of the Great Rebellion in the United

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States of America, 1860–64, Lincoln told Congress the war was “a People’s contest . . . a s t ruggle for maintaining in the world, that form, and substance of government, whose leading object is, to elevate the condition of men.” Congress authorized a call for 500,000 men. On July 21, 1861, the North suffered a stunning defeat at Bull Run, twenty-five miles southwest of Washington, D.C. Confederate General Thomas J. Jackson earned the nickname “Stonewall,” as his brigade repulsed the northern assault. Union troops fell back to Washington, D.C., in disarray. On November 8, 1861, two Confederate officials sailing toward England were taken prisoner by the U.S. Navy. England, the leading world power, demanded their release, threatening war. Lincoln eventually gave in and ordered their release in December. On March 8, 1862, the Southern iron-clad ship Merrimac sank two wooden nort h e rn ships, then battled the Union iron-clad Monitor to a draw. This battle changed naval warf a re forever, making wooden ships obsolete. On April 6 Robert E. Lee was first offered command of the Union and 7, 1862, southern troops attacked nort h e rn forces before he took up the Southern cause. (Library forces at Shiloh on the Tennessee River with of Congress) 13,000 Union and 10,000 Confederates killed and wounded, more men than in all previous American wars combined. Two weeks later, northern ships under the command of Admiral David F a rragut moved up the Mississippi River and captured New Orleans, the South’s greatest seaport. On August 29 and 30, 1862, General John Pope commanded 75,000 northern troops who were defeated by 55,000 Confederates under Stonewall Jackson and General James Longstreet. Once again the Union A rmy re t reated to Washington, D.C. Five days later, Lee invaded the North with 50,000 southern troops and headed for Harpers Ferry, located fifty miles northwest of Washington, D.C. Strangely enough, he did not attack Washington, D.C., although he had personally designed its defenses. The bloodiest day in U.S. military history took place on September 17, 1862, as Lee and the southern troops were stopped at Antietam, Maryland. By nightfall 26,000 men were dead, wounded, or missing. On December 13, 1862, the North suffered another costly defeat at Fredericksburg, Virginia, losing 12,653 men to 5,309 southern losses. At this time General Ulysses S. Grant was placed in command of the Army of the West. The U.S. Congress enacted a draft, affecting male citizens aged twenty to forty-five but also exempting those who paid $300 or provided a substitute. The northern army was decisively defeated by Lee’s much smaller forces at the Battle of Chancellorsville, Virginia. Stonewall Jackson was mortally wounded. Union losses were 17,000 killed, wounded, and missing out of 130,000. The Confederates lost 13, 000 out of a much smaller force of 60,000.

Confederacy allied with European powers? 25

The Ge t tysburg Ce m e te ry today. The Battle of Ge t tysburg turned the tide of war against the South. (Library of Congress)

Lee led an invasion of the North, once again going around Washington, D.C., and instead heading into Pennsylvania where the tide of war turned against the South at the Battle of Gettysburg. Vicksburg, the last Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi River, surrendered to Grant after a six-week siege. With the North now in control of the Mississippi, the South was split in two. Lincoln delivered the two-minute Gettysburg Address at a ceremony dedicating the battlefield as a national cemetery. On May 4, 1864, the North began a massive, coordinated campaign. In Virginia, Grant with an army of 120,000 began advancing toward the South’s capital, Richmond. General William Tecumseh Sherman with 100,000 men began an advance toward Atlanta, Georgia, with the motive of devastating the b readbasket of the South—nort h e rn Georgia. On September 2, 1864, Atlanta was captured and Sherman began a scorc h e d - e a rth march to the sea, after destroying Atlanta’s warehouses and railroad facilities. Sherm a n reached Savannah on December 21, 1864, on Georgia’s east coast, leaving behind a path of destruction that was 300 miles long and 60 miles wide. Sherman telegraphed Lincoln, offering him Savannah as a Christmas pre s e n t . The weak diplomatic efforts of southern President Jefferson Davis to sway European governments had failed. In retrospect, contemporaries noted that Davis never cared much for diplomacy. He had assumed a “King Cotton” philosophy, believing that the global need for southern cotton would coerce Britain and France to come to the South’s aid.

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K E Y CON CE P T

Emperor Ferdinand Maximilian

During the Am e ri can Civil War, Na poleon III of Fra n ce decided to take adva ntage of the disruption in the Un i ted St ates to extend French influence in Latin America. He chose as his tool the young Austrian archduke Ferdinand Maximilian. Maximilian did not share the rule of the Habsburg Austro-Hungarian E m p i re, headed by his older brother, the Empe ror Francis Joseph. Instead, he was given command of the Au s t rian fleet and served in a provincial post as gove rnor of the te rri tory of Lombardo-Venetia, then under Au s t rian rule. Meanwhile, in Mex i co, Liberal re fo rmers under Be n i to Juárez had established a regime after a bloody Re fo rm War 1857–1860 that diminished the power of the Catholic Ch u rch and the wealthiest landow n e r s. Di s g ru ntled Mex i ca n co n s e rvat i ves sought the aid of Na poleon in Fra n ce to oust Ju á rez and reestablish the power of the Church. Na poleon sent troo p s, on the grounds that Ju á rez had refused pay m e nt on outstanding debts to France and other Eu ro pean creditors. Na poleon agreed to provide a leader to re p l a ce Ju á rez, and he offe red the position of Empe ror of Mex i co to Maximilian. Maximilian refused unless he

During the Civil War, France’s Napoleon III installed Ferdinand Maximilian, above, as emperor of Mexico. (Library of Congress)

On the northern side, Abraham Lincoln had a strangely casual attitude toward foreign affairs. His secretary of state, William H. Seward, had a reputation of open hostility toward England. To some extent, Seward’s dislike was modified by the appointment of Charles Francis Adams as U.S. ambassador to Britain. Even so, Europe’s neutrality in the American Civil War cannot be attributed to the South’s poor diplomacy nor the North’s craft at statesmanship. Both faltered on the diplomatic front. Instead, the key to Europe’s possible intervention would have been to somehow sway public sentiment—to inflame the passions of Queen Victoria, Spain’s Queen Isabella, France’s Napoleon III, and Russia’s Alexander II. That, of course, did not happen. Sherman turned north and began devastating the Carolinas, taking special vengeance on South Carolina, which he deemed the most guilty of the southern states, since in his opinion (shared by many Northerners), it precipitated the war by seceding first and opening fire on Fort Sumter. On March 15, 1865, at the Battle of Bentonville, North Carolina, the South put up the last organized resistance to the northern invaders. On April 9, 1865, Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Court House, Virginia.

Confederacy allied with European powers? 27 KE Y C ON C E P T

Emperor Ferdinand Maximilian (Continued)

could be assured that he was serving by popular demand. French military officers co nvened a spurious assembly of Conservat i ve leaders who issued an inv i t ation to Maximilian. Convinced by this almost fra u d u l e nt appe a l , Maximilian agre e d. He and his wife, Charlotte Amelie (kn own as Carlota), left their p a l a ce at Mo nte f a l cone on the Ad ri atic Sea and sailed for Mex i co in 1864. Although Maximilian hoped to install a libe ral re g i m e, he soon found that his only allies in Mex i co, besides the French troo p s, we re the arc h co n s e rvatives and the Ch u rc h . He alienated bo t h those groups by refusing to reinstate the powers of the Ch u rc h . He lost any chance of winning over libe ral support by ordering the execution of kn own fo l l owers of Ju á rez . When Ju á rez took his army to the north of Mex i co, the Un i ted States was

powe rless to inte rvene be cause at that time the Co n federa cy co nt rolled the Texas bo rd e r. After the Civil War, the Un i ted St ates made it clear that French pre s e n ce in Mex i co was co n s i de red a violation of the Mo n roe Doct rine, and the French withdrew their troops through 1866 and 1867. Ca rlota we nt to Eu ro pe to plead for aid for her husband but was re j e cted by both Na poleon and the Pope. She clearly be came quite insane and was confined to a palace. Meanwhile, Juárez gat h e red his fo rces and they finally surrounded Maximilian and a small fo rce of defenders at Qu e r é t a ro. Maximilian was ca p t u red and exe c u ted by firing squad. The young empe ro r, t h i rty - f i ve years old at his death in 1867, had failed to establish a perm an e nt French pre s e n ce in Mex i co. Ju á rez reclaimed the pre s i d e n cy and served until 1872.

On June 23, 1865, the War between the States ended with the surrender of the sole remaining southern commander, General Stand Watie, a full-blooded Cherokee. To punish the Cherokee people, the North subsequently confiscated more than half of the Cherokee Nation in what is modern-day Oklahoma. The “Cherokee Strip” was opened to white settlers in a series of much-celebrated land-runs.

ALTE RN ATE H IST O RY What would have happened if international emotions had run high because of strident literary portrayals of Sherman’s March to the Sea causing Europe’s royal courts to declare that they had no choice but to step in and save the South? What if Gone with the Wind and similar portrayals of Sherman’s atrocities had impacted Europe with greater popular reaction than even Uncle Tom’s Cabin? What if Europe’s much-delayed military intervention had finally arrived at the last minute on March 15, 1865, in Bentonville, North Carolina? Let us consider that possibility in the following text compiled from what could have been the memoirs of President Jefferson Davis. The victors are the ones who write the history books, so in this “memoir,” the North would have been referred to as “the United States” and portrayed as a belligerent attempting to force upon the rest of the states a powerful and heavily centralized “federal” government. A good portion of what follows is taken from Davis’s actual memoirs (The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government) and reflects his deeply held views that southern secession was legal.

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How the Federals Lost the Second American Revolution (1861–1867) “The object of this work has been from historical data to show that the Southern States had rightfully the power to withdraw from a Union into which they had, as sovereign communities, voluntarily entered; that the denial of that right was a violation of the letter and spirit of the compact between the States; and that the war waged by the Federal Government against the seceding States was in disregard of the limitations of the Constitution, and destructive to the principles of the Declaration of Independence.” Thus famously would have begun the familiar text that for more than a century now might have been required reading for every high school student in America, The Rebirth of the American Confederacy. These political memoirs of President Jefferson Davis would have been published by Appleton Publishers of New York shortly after his retirement as chief justice of the Supreme Court in 1889 during Robert E. Lee’s second term in the White House. “This author,” President Davis would have continued, “from his official position, strives to reveal the motives and acts of his Countrymen immediately before and during the War of 1861–1867. I have sought to furnish material for the future Historian, who, when the passions and prejudices of the day shall have given place to reason and sober thought, may, better than a contemporary, investigate the causes, conduct, and results of the War—particularly our alliances with the former Emperor Maximilian of Mexico as well as Her Royal Majesty Queen Victoria of Great Britain, Czar Alexander II of Russia, Emperor Napoleon III of France, and Queen Isabella II of Spain.” Indeed, as we all would have known, without their timely assistance, the historic 1865 Battle of Bentonville could well have been disastrous. As Davis would have written: “It might have been the end for the Constitutionally based Confederacy and the death of democracy in the Americas. “We have all heard the revisionist historians in their foul reiteration of such inappropriate terms as ‘rebellion’ and ‘treason,’ in the asseveration that the Virginias, the Carolinas, Texas, Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri, Maryland, Kansas, Sequoyah, Lakota, Muscogee, Oregon, Washington, Columbia, Douglas, Saskatchewan, Sonora, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Tamaulipas and the Californias levied a war of rebellion, a ‘Civil War’ against the Federals in Washington City, who purported to represent the United States. “They have also attempted to assert that this historic conflict was precipitated by the African servitude issue—which we all know [was] resolved in 1869 by the Treaty of Brussels. I might note at this juncture that the struggle regarding involuntary human servitude began long before the Founding Fathers of the Confederacy were birthed.” In the Second Volume of these alternate-history memoirs, Davis would have detailed how slavery arose “first in Hittite, Egyptian, Greek and Roman, then Musselman lands and pro g ressed to modern times.” His Third Volume deals with the question of territorial govern m e n t s , p a rticularly dealing with Alaska, the Yukon, Cuba, Chiapas, Guatemala,

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and the Yucatan. And the Fourth Volume demonstrates that the position of the South was justified by the Constitution of the United States and the equal rights given to the people of all the States. However in his First Volume, he would have written: “Let us present the subject with a sufficient degree of force and clearness of how the European Intervention of 1865 [occurred] and the tide turned forever against the Nort h e rn Aggressors at the historic Battle of Bentonville, North Carolina. “There, the arrival of the French Foreign Legion after a grueling 265-mile march from Charleston, South Carolina, undetected by the Federals, is remembered in Song and Legend as one of the divine Miracles that saved the Nation. “It can be asserted without fear of Contradiction [that when] the criminally insane William Tecumseh Sherman made his profane gesture of presenting the wretched and smoldering ruins of Savannah, Georgia, to the Federals’ president, A. Lincoln, as a Christmas gift on December 22, 1864, his personal fate and that of all the Federal belligerents was sealed.” Sherman touted his scorched-earth march across the Confederacy with a favorite boast, ‘War is Hell’ “which served well [to demonstrate],” Davis would have written, “his wanton disregard for human dignity, life, civilization or even the most basic tenets of gentility, aristocracy and decency as [he] did not believe in restraint in drinking, womanizing, nor the shedding of blood.” Sherman would have publicly ridiculed fellow West Pointer Robert E. Lee for refusing to attack Washington, D.C., at two key points in the war. “Historians will forever debate why Lee instead marched the Army of Northern Virginia pointlessly into Pennsylvania,” Davis would have written, “and to near-defeat at Gettysburg. I can assert without reservation that President Lee was affirming a strong point—that various of the United States merely wanted to be released from Lincoln’s notorious, illegal and unconstitutional Federal vision of centralized government and control.” Lee himself would have designed the defenses of Washington, D.C.—and with ease, Davis would have noted “could have marched Virginia’s Army down Pennsylvania Avenue, arrested Lincoln in his lair and declared Washington City to be the capital of the Constitutionallybased Confederacy. But Lee did not, despite strong personal proclivity to do so motivated by such coldly calculated acts as Lincoln’s criminal seizure of the Lee Plantation at Arlington and boasting publicly that he would turn Lee’s home into a village for illegally emancipated slaves. “Whereas A. Lincoln was a ruffian of the most depraved and unsophisticated sort,” Davis would have written, “Lee epitomized American aristocracy of the finest order. His father was a legendary hero of the First Revolution, Henry ‘Lighthorse Harry’ Lee.” Two of President Lee’s grandfather’s own brothers, Richard and Francis Lee, were original signers of the Declaration of Independence and, as Davis would have said, “were gentility of the top form.” “On the other hand,” Davis would have written, “Lincoln, Grant, Seward and certainly Sherman had no such claim nor pedigree. All

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came from broken families, questionable lineage and absentee if not fictional fathers. Sherman was abandoned by his family as a delinquent child, taken in and raised somewhere in Ohio by the Thomas Ewing family, rumored to be outlaws, and there learned a great measure of cruelty and disregard, foreshadowing the vengeance he took upon Atlanta, Savannah, and Columbia and intended to inflict on all of Tennessee had the Battle of Bentonville gone the other way. “Let it never be forgotten,” Davis would have continued, “that Sherman viciously burned Atlanta to the ground and let his Troops rape, pillage and loot like godless Infidels defiling Jerusalem’s Most Holy Shrines. Resounding throughout Europe was the insidious villainy of Sherman’s transgressions, fashioning a public scandal that discredited Lincoln’s Federal assertions that the North’s cause was a ‘Battle Cry of Freedom.’ In the Courts of the great Kings of Europe, the alarm resonated—from Paris to Geneva to London to St. Petersburg and Madrid.” As early as January 1, 1861, the Baron de Brunow, Russia’s ambassador to England might have written in a diplomatic dispatch to the tzar’s Foreign Minister, Prince Gortchakov: “The English Government, at the bottom of its heart, desires the separation of North America into two republics, which will watch each other jealously and counterbalance one the other. Then England, on terms of peace and commerce with both, would have nothing to fear from either; for she would dominate them, restraining them by their rival ambitions.” “It is a mistake,” Davis might have said in our alternate history, “to dismiss the Empire of Great Britain in such terms. Much can be attributed to Her Royal Majesty Queen Victoria’s personal animus toward the uncouth performance of Lincoln, Seward, Grant and Sherman. She had been discomfited by Lincoln in Washington City in 1861, finding him, according to her memoir ‘a most base and superstitious woodsman’ with a ‘demented and hysterical spouse’ who ‘imagined Herself an equal with Our house.’ “For a wholly dissimilar raison d’être, defeat by the South was despised by His Imperial Majesty Emperor Napoleon III and His Royal Majesty King Leopold Louis Philippe Marie Victor II of Belgium, whose mutual economic interests focused on King Cotton.” Russia’s official posture would have been nonintervention. Tzar Alexander II, son and successor of Nicholas I, had ascended the throne during the Crimean War and immediately set about negotiating a peace at the Congress of Paris. In Russia at that time, the nobility owned all serfs within the country. In 1861, the tzar had abolished slavery in Russia. “Such serfs,” Davis would have noted, “were Caucasian and of Russian birth and heritage, but lacked either blood or lineage, and thus were property of Nobles and prohibited from ownership of property or engagement in commerce except on behalf of their Master.” It would have been on Alexander’s insistence that the 1869 Treaty of Brussels included not only emancipation of the Africans in servitude in America, but [also] the 1869 Homestead Act and the resulting massive land grants in the West and the introduction of “Zemstvo” or local

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self-government, of course, on which American municipal and county government would remain based today throughout the western and far southern states. It should be noted Lincoln would have set as a crucial goal keeping the European powers out of the war, and would have written on December 1, 1862: “Our struggle has been, of course, contemplated by foreign nations with reference less to its own merits, than to its supposed, and often exaggerated effects and consequences resulting to those nations themselves”—meaning that Britain, France, Belgium, and Russia would have been concerned about the disruption of their own international commerce as well as their supply of raw cotton for their emerging textile industries. That disruption would have come first with the Federals’ attempts to “blockade the Constitutional Confederacy,” Davis would have written, “and so end the War early by denying Southern Patriots military arms or munitions. The result was our commissioning of privateer fleets—civilian-owned warships which attacked any ship coming out of Federalized ports.” This very tactic would have been employed by the thirteen colonies during the First Revolution. The Colonials, having declared independence, would have had only thirty-one ships making up the Continental Navy. To supplement their capacities, they would have issued Letters of Marque to privately owned, armed merchant ships and commissions for privateers, which would have been outfitted as warships to prey on enemy merchant ships. Merchant seamen who manned these ships would have contributed to the very birth and founding of the republic. However, this time they would have been considered by the North to be nothing more than pirates. When a southern privateer, the Savannah, would have been captured by the Federals in early June 1861, the ship’s crew would have been taken to New York to stand trial for piracy. In the South, thirteen of the highest-ranking Union prisoners would have been selected by lot to face hanging if the any of the Confederate privateers were hanged. The New York jury would have been unable to reach a verdict. Confederate privateers would have been extremely successful off the northeast coast during the summer of 1861. Shipping interests and mayors of coastal towns would have cried to Lincoln to send warships. Of course, that was exactly what the Confederate government would have wanted him to do, since every ship sent chasing over the sea to hunt down southern privateers would weaken the stifling Federal blockade. Privateering would have been extremely lucrative and the temptation it offered gargantuan. “A Federal navy officer,” President Davis would have written, “Raphael Semmes, resigned his commission and came South requesting a ship for privateering. I sent him to Navy Secre t a ry Mallory who gave him the fast packet H a v a n a, a 520-ton vessel.” Semmes would have refurbished her with a stronger main deck, a berth deck, a shell room, and a powder magazine. He would have added coal bunkers, as well as an eight-inch pivot gun and four 32-pound howitzers. Renamed the CSS Sumter, the ship would have been ready to go to sea in June, and

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Semmes would have made his first capture three days later, seizing and b u rning the Golden Rocket, a Federal merchant ship out of Maine. He quickly would have scored other successes. Semmes would have disc o v e red that simply inflicting pain on the North was a very good business. The Federals’ navy would have been focused on the blockade, so Semmes could have gone where he pleased and could have done what he wanted, quickly becoming a millionaire. Getting through to Southern ports would not have been an easy task, however. By December 1861, the Federals would have had 151 blockade vessels and 12,000 sailors stationed along the Atlantic Coast of the Confederacy, and 131 vessels with 11,000 sailors along the Gulf Coast. On August 22, 1861, the steam sloop Tuscarora would have been launched from Philadelphia, to have been followed by twentythree others of its class: 600-ton screw-and-sail gunboats, armed with four to seven guns and shallow draft designed for operation in coastal waters—all would have been completed in less than three months’ time, earning them the name “90-day gunboats.” The Federals would have also built a series of side-wheelers known as “double-enders” because the gunboats had bows with rudders at each end and could reverse direction on narrow rivers and canals without turning around. But as Davis would have remembered in our alternate history, “The Federals failed in sealing off the Nation. Our coastline is so punctuated with inlets, estuaries, islands and shallow harbors that there is no way to quarantine them. The Federals settled for closing ten major ports, believing the Volume of trade with Europe would be sufficiently curtailed as to cause shortages of food in the South and bring the War to a swift conclusion. “Of course, any schoolchild knows that the Federal strategies backfired. The British and French, who desperately needed raw cotton for their textile industries, did not rush to our aid as we had expected in 1861. However, by 1864, when cotton supplies on the Continent began to run low, the Europeans decided they had endured enough. “With public sentiment high against Sherman’s devastation of Georgia, and word of the worst atrocities reaching the Royal Courts, alarm grew at the loss of British, French and Belgian merchantmen being boarded and confiscated by the Federals’ Navy.” European intervention would have become a cause célèbre not only in Victoria’s court but also in that of the tzar, the French emperor, and the Belgian king, and even in the Spanish court that was, as Davis would have written, “in perpetual Emergency and its own internecine Warfares.” Journals would have shown that Spanish Queen Isabella II became determined to send at least symbolic aid to the Americans—and in late 1864 would have sent her mother, the Queen Mother Maria Cristina, to Richmond; there she would have observed the wartime hospitals, visited schools, and slipped away by night past the blockade with stirring accounts confirming the carnage perpetrated by Sherman on those helpless people trapped in Georgia. Her detailed reports would have circulated widely, even in the courts of Germany, Prussia, Austria, and the Scandinavian kingdoms,

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which at the time were embroiled in their own troubles: the Danish crown was attempting to make a province of Prussia part of the Danish state, resulting in the Second Schleswig War. Even so, their sympathies toward the Constitutional Confederacy would have grown. It was in this environment that Lincoln would have taken the risk of allowing Sherman to turn north after his brutal march across Georgia. Lincoln would have received personal emissaries of the royal houses of Europe enjoining him from further disrupting the cotton trade or seizing European merchant ships running the Federals’ blockade. “Privately and with much more sentiment,” Davis would have written in our alternate history, “they expressed concern over the state of European popular emotion driven by vivid accounts of Sherman’s atrocities. Their entreaties were rebuffed in the rudest terms by Lincoln’s Secretary of State, William Seward, who repeated his threats that if the Europeans attempted to intervene, the Federals would declare war on them. “Even Lincoln knew that such boasts were idle, writing in his journals, ‘One war is enough,’ and cautioning Seward to desist.” Seward would not have done so, further heightening passions with a personal accusation against Pope Pius IX. In an interview with Horace Greeley, Seward might have alleged that the Pontiff, “when a young man, had been Initiated, Passed and Raised in a Masonic lodge,” a shocking charge that would have further inflamed Spanish, Belgian, and Italian emotions. In our alternate history, as the Federal government would have spiraled down toward defeat, Grant would have exercised additional pressures on Lincoln, possibly through the enigmatic Mrs. Lincoln, to allow him to unite Grant’s and Sherman’s armies quickly and overwhelm Lee. Grant would have thought this could be done most efficiently by transporting Sherman’s 60,000 men to Virginia by sea. Sherman would have appealed directly to Lincoln, saying “I think the time has come now when we should attempt the boldest moves, and in my experience, they are easier of execution than more timid ones, because the enemy is disconcerted by them.” “Let me succeed here,” Sherman would have pleaded. “I do sincerely believe that the whole United States, North and South, would rejoice to have this army turned loose on South Carolina, to devastate that State in the manner we have done in Georgia.” Word of Sherman’s intentions would have reached the Continent through diplomatic channels, and the idea of European intervention would have begun to be openly championed by such persons as the Spanish Queen Mother, but also by Brooklyn Daily Times editor Walt Whitman, whose third edition of poems, Leaves of Grass, had become a grand favorite in Europe and was rumored to sit on the reading nightstand of Queen Victoria herself. Despairing after the death of his soldier brother George, who was fatally wounded at Fredricksburg, Whitman would have written, “The real war will never get into the books.” Also writing detailed memoirs of the killing fields at Shiloh and Georgia’s bloody Kennesaw Mountain massacre of civilians by Federal

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troops, would have been Ambrose Bierce, a f i e rce-eyed, extraordinarily brave soldier and satirist who fought with the Federals’ own Army of Ohio, yet grew disillusioned with Sherman’s carnage and would have begun to horrify European audiences with his newspaper accounts, and his popular book Phantoms of a Blood-Stained Period, which would have included the harrowing “What I Saw of Shiloh.” He would have written how Southern farmers, with their children fighting beside them to defend their barns, homes, and livestock, became little different from “bewildered animals dying like hogs in Chicago’s stockyards under the treads of Sherman’s war machine.” Bierce would have disdained the North’s sanctimonious notion of the war as a righteous crusade to free Negro slaves. B i e rce would have underscored his In an alternate history, Ambrose Bierce’s sardonic revulsion in accounts that would have been writings could have galvanized European sentiment. widely circulated in the European press, (Library of Congress) depicting wild boars eating the entrails of still-living battlefield casualties outside of Atlanta, the hellish incineration of a company of soldiers in the forest at Savannah, and a young boy coming upon his dead mother at Chickamauga, her brains blown out by a shell. Bierce’s sardonic and grotesque accounts would have been recited before Parliament by no less than Britain’s William Gladstone. It would have been the destruction of Georgia that would have galvanized European opinion and prompted two dramatic actions, the first being the British and Spanish navies’ unprecedented joint exercise in 1864 to end the Federals’ naval blockade of Southern ports—at the personal order of Queens Victoria and Isabella. So total would have been the Anglo-Spanish operation that this common jest might have been heard on London and Madrid streets: “Do you know why Mrs. Lincoln wants Abe to build her a glass-bottom boat?” The punch line: “So she and the children can review his underwater navy.” But however dramatic and historic would have been the breaking of the Federals’ naval death-grip on the Confederacy’s ports and the re-opening of trade, it could not have begun to compare with what might have happened at Bentonville, North Carolina. “It was there,” Davis would have written in our alternate history, “that the French Foreign Legion’s most famous battle unfolded, their surprise flanking attack of Federal forces and the resulting capture and Lynching of General Sherman.” No more inglorious fate would have ever befallen a noted American figure. Sherman would have been apprehended by British marines but mysteriously spirited away in the night by coarse nort hern Georgia mountaineers and taken to Atlanta. There, vengeance

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would have been unleashed on the most infamous of all Federal generals, the most hated man in the South. A public war-crimes trial that would have been held in front of the burned-out Georgia state capitol would have been interrupted time and time again by incriminations, accusations, and indictments from the crowd—tearful and heated testimony of the brutalities and debaucheries perpetrated by Sherman’s soldiers. Sherman would have begun his devastating m a rch into South Carolina in Febru a ry 1865, succeeding in his archetypal fashion. The eff o rtlessness of his triumph against lightly a rmed and starving farmers, children, and women would have appalled even his closest aides. With lightning alacrity Sherman would have threatened both Augusta, Georgia, and Charleston, South Carolina. “Confused and terrified Southern protectors attempted to guard both points, fatally dividing their scant resources,” Davis would have written in our alternate history. “Sherman then bypassed both objectives and captured Columbia, the capital of South Carolina, on Febru a ry 17. Once again a great Southern city was ravaged with murder, looting, wanton destruction, and carnal depravity being the order of the day.” Civil War photographer Matthew Brady would have re c o rded in Harper’s Weekly a pictorial series on the campaign that would have become known as “The Rape of Columbia.” One of his most poignant photos, that of a wailing orphan abandoned on train tracks near the South Carolina State Supreme Court Building today would have remained on permanent display in the Capitol in Washington, D.C., between the “Baptism of Pocahontas” and “Stonewall Jackson Is Ushered into Paradise.” “Disorganized and disillusioned, Confederates fell back before Sherman’s army,” Davis would have written, “allowing the Leading Elements to enter Fayetteville, North Carolina, unopposed, where they destroyed the vast and vital arsenal. Everything was burned—historic Homes, factories, plantations—anything Patriots treasured or might have used in the War effort.” Then, on March 15, 1865, Sherman and 60,000 infantry and vast artillery would have divided into two wings with sixteen field batteries of sixty-eight guns, equally divided between twelve-pounders and three-inch rifled cannon. They would have set their sights on little Bentonville, North Carolina. “Wanton destruction awaited the tiny city,” Davis would have written in our alternate history. “But that morning’s surprise, the French Legion’s role in Sherman’s rout, defeat, and surrender, is the stuff of legend. It has been told and retold so many times that I will not tire the reader here with the glorious and much-heralded details.” The Battle of Bentonville would have begun on March 19. General Johnston would have been able to assemble his entire force against only a portion of Sherman’s army, but he would have achieved the element of surprise. As a result, he would have scored several tactical successes, breaking the Federal line and driving the Union forces back. However, Johnston would have been unable to achieve his goal of destroying the Union divisions opposing him.

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Sherman, quickly recovering from the surprise of the Confederate attack, would have rushed reinforcements to the scene. Soon, 20,000 Confederates might have been facing 60,000 Union soldiers. There was little action on March 20, but on March 21, Sherman would have launched an attack on the Confederate left flank, which would have broken through until repulsed by a counterattack. Outnumbered and knowing he could achieve nothing, Johnston would have realized that he had lost his only chance to achieve a decisive success against Sherman. Johnston would have begun his plans to retreat northward and perhaps join Lee, who was in retreat before Grant near Appomattox, Virginia. “Suddenly over a ridge behind Sherm a n ’s army, Fre n c h Legionnaires, clad in bright red and blue uniforms, would have moved as a solid mass behind the Federal defenses,” Davis would have recalled. “A frothy sea of bayonets marked their advance, and the air was heavy with Gallic war cries. Out in front, the officers, draped in long, dark blue tunics, pointed the way with their sabers. Sherman would have been encircled. “In bright red coats and bear-skin helmets, British Royal Marines a p p e a red seemingly from Heaven, cresting a ridge to the right of S h e rman. Then dramatically on a wooded hilltop to the left of Sherman’s position, Spanish regulars and 40,000 brave Mexican volunteers stepped into view. With them were famed Russian fusiliers. “Three times Sherman attacked, first head-on against Johnston, then reeling to meet the French assault and finally attempting to overrun the Spanish, Mexican and Russian hilltop. Suddenly Sherman’s artillery went strangely silent, then a cheer went up; it had been captured by the British. “Late that evening, it was my esteemed colleague, Mexican General Benito Juarez himself, who formally arrested Sherman after the Monterrey Regiment found him cowering in his tent, disguised as a woman.” When informed of the European Intervention, Lincoln would have gone into a deep and fitful depression before taking flight from Washington, D.C., at the last moment ahead of British, Belgian, and Confederate troops. Grant would have refused to surrender, escaping with a remnant of his command, joining with militias from Ohio and Iowa, then retreating into Tennessee, across Missouri and into the modern-day State of Sequoyah, then known as the Indian Nations, where he would have been cornered at Rascal Flats on the Verdigris River by Confederate General Stand Watie, a former Speaker of the Cherokee National Council and first territorial governor of Sequoyah. Following would have been two full years of mopping up by the Confederacy. Another Yankee remnant led by General George Armstrong Custer would have been defeated in the Battle of Columbus, Ohio, by a Confederate contingent of Lakota and Cheyenne regulars under Generals Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse. “One of my greatest Regrets is that the alliance with Juárez did not Prevail,” Davis would have written in our alternate history. “Under pressure from the French, President Lee did not send in troops to assist

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the Mexicans in the Battle of Puebla. Nonetheless, French General ElieFrédéric Forey surrendered his forces to Mexican General Jesus Gonzalez Ortega.” “Juárez was furious at our stance of neutrality,” Davis would have written. “He and I never met face to face again and never again regarded one another as brothers.” The relationship would have been certainly aggravated when, after years of fighting alongside Americans and Texans, the war-weary people of Mexico’s six northernmost states would have petitioned Congress for statehood “and were Graciously granted it,” writes Davis, “the same year that Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin seceded from the United States and were granted statehood along with Saskatchewan and Gran Columbia.” British dreams of two opposing American republics would have come to pass in 1872 when the British colonies of Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Ontario, and Labrador would have formed the Glorious Northern Dominion with the former United States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. The Dominion would not have lasted; in 1909, its member states would have petitioned to join the Confederacy and would have been admitted along with Arizona, Idaho, Michoacan, Chiapas, Guatemala, Costa Rica, and both Honduras. “The Battle of Bentonville was the last full-scale action of the Second American Revolution in which a Federal army was able to mount a tactical offensive,” Davis would have recalled. “This major battle, the largest ever fought in North Carolina, succeeded in defeating Sherman and halting his murderous March through the Carolinas and across Tennessee. As general-in-chief of all Southern armies, Lee retired shortly after the final Federal surrender in Oregon in 1867. This author served a second term as President, then was succeeded by Vice President Alexander H. Stephens, who unsuccessfully sought to move the Capitol from Richmond to Atlanta.” It would have been Lee in the end who personally would have intervened on behalf of Lincoln in 1866 after Maryland joined the Confederacy and Washington, D.C., found itself isolated and surrounded by southern territory. For a brief time, the Federal capital would have moved to Philadelphia, then New York City, and finally to Portland, Maine. “The Confederate capital was moved from Richmond to Washington City in 1871,” Davis would have noted. “At my personal intervention, A. Lincoln was allowed to emigrate to Prussia where he lived until 1897 in exile after divorcing his wife, but writing numerous memoirs, believing until the end the superiority of a centralized federal government rather than a loosely confederated nation of separate states. “In my final years here in Mississippi, I undertake this Work now offered to the Public and to correct revisionist misapprehensions created by industriously circulated misrepresentations as to the Acts and Purposes of the American people and the general Government of the Confederacy, particularly in bringing about the European Intervention.

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“Only those ignorant of the nature of the Union, and of the reserved powers of the States, have been led to believe that the Confederate States were in the condition of revolted provinces, and that the United States were forced to resort to arms for the pre s e rvation of their Existence against Southern rebellion and European adventurism. “To those who knew that the Union in 1776 was formed for specific enumerated Purposes, and that the United States had never surrendered their Sovereignty, it is a palpable absurdity to apply to them, or to their citizens when obeying their mandates, such negative terms. “Further, so far from making war or seeking to dissolve the united States, the Constitutional Confederacy strove earnestly, by peaceful negotiation, to equitably adjust all questions growing out of the separation from their late associates. “Another great perversion of truth has been the arraignment of those who participated in the formation of the Constitutional Confederacy and who bore arms in its Defense, as the instigators of a controversy leading to disunion. It is historical fact that Sectional issues appeared conspicuously in the debates of the Convention which framed the Federal Constitution of 1787, and its many compromises were designed to secure an equilibrium between the Sections, and to preserve the interests as well as the liberties of the several States. “African servitude at that time was not confined to a Section, but was numerically greater in the South than in the North, with a tendency to its continuance in the former and cessation in the latter. It therefore presents itself as a disturbing element, and the provisions of the Constitution, which were known to be necessary for its adoption, bound all the united States to recognize and protect that species of property. “When at a subsequent period there arose in the Northern States an anti-slavery agitation, it was a harmless and scarcely noticed movement until political demagogues seized upon it as a means to acquire power. Had it been left to pseudo-philanthropists and fanatics, most zealous where least informed, it never could have shaken the foundations of the Union and have incited one Section to carry fire and sword into the other. “That the agitation was political in its character was clearly developed as early as 1803. To preserve a Sectional equilibrium and to maintain the equality of the united States was the effort on one side, to acquire Empire and dominion over the South was the manifest purpose on the other. “The African servitude question, of course, was resolved in 1869 with the Treaty of Brussels, by which traditions and practices introduced by our forefathers were abolished both in Europe and the former colonies and full American citizenship was accorded as well to the indigenous peoples who joined the Constitutional Confederacy in the Second Revolution as well as those formerly in servitude. To the latter, reparations were paid in the Homestead Act of 1869 by which many were settled in 320-acre parcels throughout what today are the States of Sequoyah, Arizona, Sandia, Nebraska, Chihuahua, Colorado, Nevada, and Sonora.

Confederacy allied with European powers? 39

“Many chose not to immigrate to such distant lands despite the richness of the earth and the promise of the West: to wit, my business partner and longtime friend Benjamin Montgomery, who I purchased as a child when he was a Negro slave. Due to laws extant, I was the proprietor of record of his profitable and flourishing General Store and emporium until 1869 upon the ratification of the Treaty of Brussels. Thereupon, I conveyed full title once his Rights of Citizenship were declared and protected. He persists in that enterprise as well as to handle my estate and holdings at Beauvoir and has done so well while s e rving a term as a Mississippi legislator and two terms as a Representative in Washington City.” Rob Kerby

Discussion Questions 1. In the alternate history presented in this chapter, European countries are convinced to come to the aid of the Confederacy. Which factor do you think would have been most likely to cause this effect: the economic distress in Europe caused by a shortage of cotton, or concern over the scorched-earth policy adopted by Sherman that was aroused by the publication of articulate and well-written accounts? 2. As the Confederacy was based on the principle that a state could legally secede from the Union after joining it, how would that principle have affected efforts at future unification with the states of Mexico, the nations of the Caribbean region, and the provinces of Canada as suggested in this alternate history? What would have happened if a Confederate state had attempted to exercise its right to secede after joining the Confederacy? 3. In actual history, Britain and the other European countries not only remained neutral during the Civil War but refused to recognize the independence of the Confederacy. What factors do you think contributed to the stand of Europe? 4. In the alternate history presented in this chapter, slavery in the post–Civil War Confederacy is brought to an end by international agreement. What factors would make such an event likely or unlikely? 5. In the alternate history in this chapter, emancipated African-American slaves become full citizens and successfully run for political office, as do members of Native American tribes that sided with the Confederacy. What factors would make such exercise of civil rights by these ethnic g roups likely in a nation dominated by former slaveholders like Davis and Lee? What factors would tend to prevent such a development?

Bibliography and Further Reading Beard, Charles, and Mary Beard. The Rise of American Civilization. New York: Macmillan, 1927.

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Davis, Jefferson. The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government. New York: D. Appleton, 1881. Davis, William. A Fire-Eater Remembers: The Confederate Memoir of Robert Barnwell Rhett. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2000. Du Bois, W. E. B. Black Reconstruction in America. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1935. Duncan, Russell, and Klooster, David J., eds. Phantoms of a Blood-Stained Period: The Complete Civil War Writings of Ambrose Bierce. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2002. Greeley, Horace. The American Conflict: A History of the Great Rebellion in the United States of America, 1860–64. Hartford, CT: O. D. Case, 1866. Lowenfels, Walter, ed. Walt Whitman’s Civil War Memoirs. New York: Da Capo, 1960. Nieboer, H. J. Slavery as an Industrial System: Ethnological Researches. Philadelphia: Free Library of Philadelphia, 1910. Ransom, Roger. The Confederate States of America: What Might Have Been. New York: W. W. Norton, 2005. Smith, Justin Harvey, The Annexation of Texas. New York: Baker and Taylor, 1911. Sullivan, George. In the Wake of Battle: The Civil War Images of Mathew Brady. Lakewood, NJ: Prestel, 2004.

First Battle of Bull Run

3

In 1861 the North suffered a major defeat at the First Battle of Bull Run. What if the North had better trained troops and had defeated the South?

INTR ODU CT IO N The origins of the American Civil War were apparent from the settlement of the Chesapeake and Massachusetts Bay colonies in the 1600s. The Chesapeake region was settled mainly by young men in search of profits. The environment was harsh. Odds for survival were extremely low. Physical conditions, demographics, and trial and error drove much of the development of the South up until the early 1700s. Originally, the English intended to emulate Spanish settlement in Mexico. They hoped to find large silver mines and a huge native population to coerce as cheap labor. Instead the English found a low population of Native Americans, a wide coastal plain, good soil, and a climate that was ideal for agricultural production. Their early attempts at silver production forced the Chesapeake settlers to rely on the natives for food and shelter. After these early ventures proved unsuccessful, John Rolfe discovered that the region was highly suited for tobacco production in 1617. Growing tobacco was labor intensive so a cheap work force was needed. Several forms of labor were tried such as indentured servitude. This form of labor relied on poor, white, and lower-class residents of England. They came to America willing to serve a period of four to seven years in the service of the person who paid their passage to the New World. This system worked until Bacon’s Rebellion in 1676 (a rebellion of small farmers, indentured servants, and slaves). Another form of labor was needed. The first slaves arrived in Virginia in 1619. In its early stages slavery was too expensive to be widespread. However, after Bacon’s Rebellion indentured servants were scarce and slaves became a better long-term investment after the enactment of new laws that said a child born to slaves also became a slave. Slavery expanded rapidly. Until the American Civil War, slavery was at the center of virtually every political and social consideration of the South—especially after the rise of labor-intensive cotton production in the late 1700s and early 1800s. Farther north, Puritans from England looking for religious freedom settled the Massachusetts Bay colonies. These settlers came over as entire

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families and established communities based on religious principles. Business considerations were important but often took a back seat to creating a model Christian community. As a result, the Massachusetts colonies developed tight, cohesive communities. The physical geography of the region influenced their political and economic systems. The Massachusetts region sits on a narrow coastal plain, which forced settlers to cluster in townships rather than scatter far into the wilderness. Winters were harsh, but disease was less rampant in this colder climate than farther south, and the odds of survival were better. Unlike their Chesapeake counterparts, Massachusetts was set up as a social experiment and not a financial one. The colonists were mainly Puritan religious dissenters from England who wanted to reform the Anglican Church, coming to the New World to form what John Winthrop called a “city upon a hill.” Religion, rather than profit, was the driving factor in northern development. Church membership was critical to societal participation. In order to vote, a resident had to be a white male and a church member; also, he had to have outward signs of grace (for example, praying constantly)—a sure sign that he was predestined to go to heaven. Moreover, an urban environment rather than a rural one emerged in New England. With land not well suited for agriculture, New Englanders turned to shipbuilding, urban service trades, and manufacturing to develop their economy. These ventures were successful, and by 1696 New England was the shipbuilding capital of the English Empire. Labor systems also developed differently. While slavery was present in the North it did not grow to the level that it did in the South. Slaves were used mainly as domestic servants in the North although children were a more viable and reliable source of labor than slaves. Immigrant labor was also widely used. Slavery was seen as taking jobs away from wage laborers, a practice that would retard manufacturing development. These considerations drove northern political thought after the Revolution. After the American Revolution, the infant United States began to develop a stronger central government and expand westward, with the Louisiana Purchase and the acquisition of the American Southwest from Mexico in 1848. With this expansion, several friction points emerged between the North and South, which ultimately resulted in war in 1861. The first major friction point was the Constitutional Convention of 1787. After the Revolution the weak Articles of Confederation governed the new nation. States were a sovereign government presided over by a purely voluntary union. Two political parties formed, the Federalists and AntiFederalists. The Federalists led by James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay wanted a strong central government. The Anti-Federalists organized by Patrick Henry, Richard Henry Lee, George Clinton, and Sam Adams wanted a weaker central government. Eventually the Federalists won out. However, James Madison and Thomas Jefferson issued the Virginia and Kentucky Resolves. Relying on John Locke’s Compact Theory of Government these resolves declared the following: (1) Each state entered the union voluntarily and was ruled by the Constitution. (2) State legislatures could declare any law deemed unconstitutional null and void. These ideological constructs provided the basis for several friction points in the clash of northern and southern cultures—especially with expansion and the spread of slavery into these new lands.

A Northern victory at First Bull Run? 43

The newly acquired territory from the Louisiana Purchase and the Mexican-American War threatened to upset the balance between the free and slave states in the Union. The Missouri Compromise, KansasNebraska Act, and the Compromise of 1850 threatened the balance of power and pushed the nation to the brink of war. With each presidential election, after 1840 sectional politics became more apparent. Ultimately, with the split in the Democratic Party, the election of 1860 was a turning point in the road to civil war.

Abraham Lincoln was elected the sixteenth president of the United States in 1860. Almost immediately seven states in the lower South seceded from the Union: South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, and Texas. The remaining eight slave states desired to remain in the Union as long as no military action was taken against the newly formed Confederate States of America. Once Southern troops fired on Fort Sumter, South Carolina, on April 12, 1861, the nation spiraled toward war. Lincoln immediately called for 75,000 volunteers to crush the rebellion. His action caused four of the remaining slave states to secede from the Union—Virginia, North Carolina, Arkansas, and Tennessee. Four slave states, despite conflicts within them, remained loyal to the Union— M a ryland, Kentucky, Delaware, and Missouri. The first major land battle of the conflict happened at Manassas Junction (First Bull Run) between July 18–21, 1861. (As a matter of record, the South tended to name the battles after nearby towns or railroad junctions.

A Civil War-era photograph of the Bull Run, Virginia, battlefield. (Library of Congress)

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Union Army Chief of Staff Winfield Scott, who ordered the advance on Bull Run. (Library of Congress)

The legend of Stonewall Jackson was born at the First Battle of Bull Run. (Library of Congress)

The N o rth named battles after the closest body of water. Hence, the Nort h e rn name of First Bull Run will be used.) N o rt h e rnleaders faced tremendous pressure to advance on the South and bring the war to a quick end. Most strategists believed that the war would be over in a matter of weeks. However, the fledgling army was not properly trained and was ill-pre p a red for war. Although the Union A rmy was not ready for battle General Winfield Scott, the Army chief of staff, pressured General I rwin McDowell to advance on Bull Run before he was ready. Prior to the Civil War the largest army fielded by the United States consisted of only about 20,000 troops during the Mexican-American War. McDowell’s force numbered about 30,000. No officer in the American Army had ever commanded a force that large. His inexperience, tactical inabilities, and extreme reliance on his subordinate officers severely hampered his ability to lead such force. Fortunately, the Confederate commanders Joseph E. Johnston, Thomas Jonathon Jackson, and P. G. T Beauregard were in the same situation. In early July 1861 the Army of the Potomac was massed just south of Washington, D.C., at Arlington Heights when the order came to move south against the Confederate Arm y moving north from Richmond. Both armies intended to maneuver against their foe’s right flank. However, such movements, if successful, would simply have caused each army to avoid contact and march unopposed to Washington and Richmond. The Nort h e rn Army’s assault was already p roceeding near Blackburn’s Ford. Already behind schedule, these Union troops assaulted the Confederate fortifications. Consequently, Beauregard got word of this attack and believed it to be the main Union army and sent reinforc ements to his right flank. Still, the Confederates were badly overmatched and their lines broke. The retreat by three divisions continued across the Stone Bridge, up a wide flat plain to Henry House Hill where Jackson’s Virginians awaited. This point in the battle is where the legend of Stonewall Jackson was born and many began to realize that the Confederate Army would not be destroyed in a manner of weeks in a lopsided victory. As the Confederate divisions scrambled

A Northern victory at First Bull Run? 45

up Henry House Hill, the Northern advance stalled allowing the rebels to rally behind Jackson’s Corps. Many stories surround this juncture of the fight. Some accounts state that Jackson was a behind a stone wall on Henry House Hill when he made his famous stand. This made Jackson famous, e a rning him the nickname Stonewall. He would prove to be one of the South’s most effective combat generals until his death in 1863. Jackson’s Corps stopped the Northern advance and allowed the Confederate Army time to regroup and counterattack the poorly trained Union troops. As the assault developed an organized retreat by the Army of the Potomac turned into a panicked flight by the soldiers as well as civilians who had come to watch the battle. Despite this sudden collapse of the Northern attack, the South was not able to pursue because their troops were poorly trained. Had the South been able to press the attack they might have captured Washington, D.C., within a matter of days. More important to the Confederate cause, they came away believing psychologically that they could win the war. With the Southern victory, the Confederacy was not forced to fight a defensive war along the Rappahannock. Rather, Robert E. Lee could implement his strategy of the offensive defensive war, meaning that he could fight a defensive war while remaining on the offensive. Like George Washington in the American Revolution, all Lee had to do was prolong the war until the Confederacy could gain international recognition.

AC TUAL HI STO RY The Confederate victory at the First Battle of Bull Run convinced the South that it could win the war. General Robert E. Lee replaced General Joe Johnston after the battle. General Thomas Jonathon “Stonewall” Jackson’s famous stand at a crucial moment of the battle became a rallying cry for his troops during the war. After 1861, the war dragged on for another bloody four years. The Northern generals George McClellan, George Meade, Irwin McDowell, and Joe Hooker in command of the Army of the Potomac failed to catch and destroy Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. Lee outmaneuvered these Union generals at virtually every major turn. Lee was a classmate with many of the Union officers at West Point and had served with them during the Mexican-American War. He knew their tendencies, strengths, and weaknesses. For example, he knew that McClellan was a great organizer but he tended to overestimate the s t rength of his enemy and was slow and cautious when it came to attack. After First Bull Run, Lincoln appointed George B. McClellan as commander of the Army of the Potomac. McClellan was slow and cautious and did not advance rapidly up the James Peninsula. Lincoln was frustrated with McClellan. Lincoln needed a major victory in order to end slavery. Northern abolitionists and popular support grew for emancipation after initial casualty reports came in from the fighting. The Civil War was the first war to be photographed and troubling images appeared in northern newspapers. Lincoln was losing popular support because he

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K E Y CON CE P T

Battle Summary

Battle Na m e : First Bull Ru n Other Names: First Ma n a s s a s Location: Fa i rfax County and Pri n ce William County, Vi rginia Campaign: Manassas Campaign (July 1861) Da te : July 21, 1861 Principal Commanders: Brigadier Ge n e ral Irvin Mc Dowell (US); Brigadier General Joseph E. Johnston and Brigadier General. P. G.T. Beauregard (CS) Forces Engaged: 60,680 total (US 28,450; CS 32,230) Es t i m a ted Casualties: 4,700 total (US 2,950; CS 1,750) Description: This was the first major land battle of the armies in Vi rg i n i a . On July 16, 1861, the unt ri e d Union army under Brigadier Ge n e ral Irvin Mc Dowell m a rched from Wa s h i n g ton against the Confe d e rate a rmy, which was drawn up behind Bull Run beyond

Ce nt rev i l l e. On the July 21, Mc Dowell crossed at S u d l ey Ford and at t a c ked the Confe d e rate left flank on Mat t h e ws Hill. Fi g hting raged throughout the d ay as Co n fe d e rate fo rces we re driven back to He n ry Hill. Late in the afte rn oo n , Confe d e rate reinfo rce m e nts (one brigade arriving by rail from the Shenandoah Valley) extended and bro ke the Un i o n ri g ht flank. The Fe d e ral re t re at rapidly dete ri o rate d i nto a rout. Although victo ri o u s, Confe d e rate fo rces we re too disorg a n i zed to pursue. Co n fe d e rate General Bee and Colonel Bartow we re ki l l e d. Thomas J. Jackson earned the nom de guerre “Sto n e wa l l .” By July 22, the shat tered Union army reached the safe ty of Washington. This battle co nv i n ced the Lincoln administration that the war would be a long and costly affair. Mc Dowell was re l i eved of command of the Union army and re p l a ced by Major General Ge o rge B.McClellan,who set about reorganizing and training the troo p s. Result: Confe d e rate victo ry

The First Battle of Bull Run on a Sunday afternoon, July 21, 1861. (Library of Congress)

A Northern victory at First Bull Run? 47

could not change the pretense for war from preserving the Union to ending slavery. The closest thing Lincoln would get to a major victory was the Battle of Antietam Creek on September 17, 1862—the bloodiest day in American history. This day would cost the Union and Confederate armies some 23,000 casualties, largely because of McClellan’s failure to act swiftly after capturing Lee’s battle plans. However, at the end of the day Union forces held the field and Lee was forced to withdraw. Most military experts considered the battle a draw. Because it was not a major defeat, Lincoln was able to issue the Emancipation Proclamation effective on January 1, 1863—freeing all slaves in areas presently under Confederate control. Technically this edict did not free the slaves. The Thirteenth Amendment did that. Symbolically, though, the proclamation had a profound effect on the northern population who now believed that the war was about slavery and freedom, and it kept England from entering the war on the side of the Confederacy. Still, some Confederate officials believed that Mexico could be a backdoor for international recognition by France. However, two key events and Confederate president Jefferson Davis’s reluctance to end slave ry permanently closed that door. French forces were soundly defeated on May 5, 1861, in Mexico and they were unable to consolidate their position as a ruling power. Less than a year later in March 1862, General Henry Hopkins Sibley’s attempt to capture the American Southwest and establish a transcontinental nation was dashed at Glorieta Pass in New Mexico. Elsewhere, Union naval forces by the start of 1863 captured the major Confederate ports at New Orleans, Mobile, and Galveston. Last, in the Trans-Mississippi Theater, Generals Ulysses S. Grant and William T. Sherman notched major victories at Shiloh and Corinth, and by the end of 1863 they had captured Vicksburg and cut the Confederacy in half at the Mississippi River. However, in 1863 Lincoln feared that he would not be reelected as p resident in 1864. Despite his military misadventures, George B. McClellan was a viable presidential candidate for the northern Democrats in 1864. Union military success in the west was not enough to satisfy the northern public. Lee outwitted a series of ineffective Union commanders in 1863. He had invaded northern territory as far as Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Even though he was defeated, his army still managed to survive intact and continue the war. Early in 1864 General Ulysses S. Grant was brought in from out west and placed in command of the Army of the Potomac. Unlike McClellan, Meade, McDowell, and Hooker, Grant would pursue his enemy. The tendency among these previous commanders was to fight, maneuver, wait, and then fight again. This was not in Grant’s nature; he would pursue Lee immediately after the fight—even if he lost the battle. Using this strategy, Grant was able to catch and encircle Lee at Petersburg, Virginia, in late 1864 and early 1865 virtually reducing Lee’s army to a tattered rabble. Grant’s string of victories and Lincoln’s replacement of Vice-President Hannibal Hamlin with Andrew Johnson ensured his reelection over McClellan in 1864.

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K E Y CONCE P T

Ulysses S. Grant

Late in the administration of An d rew Johnson, Ge n e ral Ulysses S.Gra nt quarreled with the president and aligned himself with the Ra d i cal Republicans. He wa s, as the symbol of Union victory during the Civil War, their logical candidate for president in 1868. When he was electe d, the Am e ri can people h o ped for an end to turmoil. Gra nt provided neither vigor nor re form. Looking to Congress for dire ction, he seemed bewildered. Bo rn in 1822, Gra nt was the son of an Ohio tanner. He we nt to West Point rat h e r against his will and gra d u ated in the middle of his c l a s s. In the Mex i can War he fo u g ht under Ge n e ra l Z a c h a ry Taylor. At the outbreak of the Civil War, Gra nt was working in his fat h e r’s leather sto re in Galena, Il l i n o i s. He

was appointed by the gove rnor to command an u n ruly vo l u nteer regiment. Gra nt whipped it into s h a pe and by Septe m ber 1861 he had risen to the rank of brigadier general of vo l u nte e r s. He sought to win control of the Mississippi Valley. In Fe b ru a ry 1862 he took Fo rt He n ry and attacked Fort Donelson. The Confe d e rates surrendered, and Pre s i d e nt Lincoln pro m o ted Gra nt to major general of vo l u nteers. At Shiloh in April, Gra nt fought one of the bloodiest battles in the west and came out less well. President Lincoln fended off demands for his re m oval by saying he could not spare Grant. For his next major object i ve, Grant maneuvered and fought skillfully to win Vicksburg, the key city on the Mississippi, and thus cut the Confedera cy in two.

By 1864, it was evident to many that the Confederacy was on its deathbed. The next major task was to re c o n s t ruct the torn nation and p revent the rise of any more rebellions by creating loyal state governments in areas already in Union control. Lincoln was more concern e d with protecting his newly formed Reconstruction governments in Louisiana and Arkansas than in ending the war early. Congress tried to dissolve these governments by passing the Wade-Davis Bill, which the p resident promptly vetoed. Lincoln and the Congress were able to re a c h a compromise. The war finally ended on April 9, 1865, with the surrender of Lee to Grant at Appomattox Court House in Virginia. The war resulted in the deaths of about 638,000 Americans and some of the largest and costliest battles—at least in terms of human lives—in American history. Three days after the war ended Abraham Lincoln was assassinated at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C., by Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth. Andrew Johnson became the seventeenth president of the United States. Johnson, a senator from Tennessee, hated the elite, largeplantation slave owners who had dominated the prewar southern political culture. He instituted a Reconstruction plan that required these southern elites to apply for presidential pardons in order for their states to reenter the Union. This angered many members of Congress as politicians like Confederate vice-president Andrew Stephens was elected to Congress as a representative from Virginia in late 1865—in the immediate aftermath of the war. Many Northerners believed the war was fought to settle the question of slavery and end the southern way of life. They resented the deaths of so many of their loved ones, especially when so many southern politicians—whom many Northerners felt were directly responsible for the war—returned to political office without any consequences for their perceived treason against the United States.

A Northern victory at First Bull Run? 49 KE Y C ON C E P T

Ulysses S. Grant (Continued)

Then he bro ke the Confederate hold on Chattanooga. Lincoln appo i nted him general-in-chief in Ma rch 1864. Grant directed Sh e rman to dri ve through the South while he,with the Army of the Potomac,pinned down Ro be rt E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. Finally, on Ap ril 9, 1865, at Ap po m at tox Court Ho u s e, Lee surrendered. Gra nt wro te out magnanimous te rms of surrender that would preve nt tre ason tri a l s. As pre s i d e nt, Gra nt presided over the gove rnm e nt much as he had run the army. Indeed he b ro u g ht part of his army staff to the Wh i te Ho u s e. Although a man of scrupulous honesty, Gra nt as p re s i d e nt acce p ted handsome pre s e nts fro m admire r s.Worse, he allowed himself to be seen with two spe c u l ato r s, Jay Gould and James Fisk. Wh e n

Gra nt re a l i zed their scheme to co rner the market in gold, he authorized the secretary of the treasury to sell enough gold to wreck their plans, but the spe cu l ation had alre a dy wro u g ht havoc with business. Du ring his campaign for reelection in 1872, Gra nt was at t a c ked by Liberal Re p u b l i can reformers. Grant allowed ra d i cal Reconstruction to run its course in the South, bo l s te ring it at times with military force. After retiring from the pre s i d e n cy, Gra nt be came a partner in a financial firm, which we nt bankrupt. About that time he learned that he had t h ro at ca n cer. He started writing his memoirs to pay off his debts and provide for his family, racing against death to prod u ce a wo rk that ultimate l y e a rned nearly $450,000. Soon after completing the last page, in 1885, he died.

Congress believed that it, not the president, had the authority to control the readmission to the Union of the states that had seceded. Many suggested this was an opportunity to destroy the old southern system, end slavery, give blacks and freedmen universal suffrage, and create a new system in the South. Johnson and Congress continued to be at odds over Reconstruction. Johnson’s system was seen as too lenient on the South even though he demanded ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment. The southern passage of the Black Codes circumvented the amendment, however, and virtually reinstated another legalized form of slavery. This frustrated the Radical Republicans in Congress and forced a confrontation with the passage of the Tenure of Office Act—which stated that the president could not fire cabinet-level members without Senate approval. Johnson challenged the act as unconstitutional, and while the Senate was not in session, fired Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, a Radical Republican sympathizer in his cabinet. This action led to Johnson’s impeachment; he survived by a mere one vote in the Senate. But more important, his political power was broken and Congress took charge of Reconstruction. The South was occupied over the next few years by the military and the southern states were forced to rewrite their state constitutions and ratify the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments. In 1877, President Rutherford B. Hayes ended the occupation of the South with the Compromise of 1876. As a result of a close election, Republicans agreed to remove the troops protecting Republican regimes in South Carolina, Louisiana, and Florida in exchange for Democratic consent to the settlement of the electoral college dispute in favor of Hayes. By the time Hayes came in and removed the troops, southern Democrats had already reimplemented the antebellum political and social order in the other eight states of the former Confederacy. Soon, Jim Crow segregation was born in the form of grandfather clauses, eight box laws, poll

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taxes, literacy tests, and all-white primaries that severely limited blacks’ voting rights. Even before 1876, the Ku Klux Klan and other terror groups emerged as paramilitary arms of the Democratic Party to scare blacks into not voting and to “redeem” the South from the control of Radical Republicans. The Civil War and Reconstruction virtually destroyed the southern economy, which did not begin recovering until World War II in the 1940s. During Reconstruction and beyond, the South relied heavily on northern and foreign investment. These investors tried to create new industries in the South but instead they created a new class of poor white workers who competed directly with even poorer black workers; this situation, in combination with racism and the Jim Crow system, kept communities segregated well into the middle of the twentieth century. The Northern victory in the Civil War settled several divisive issues and provided the foundation for the United States to pursue its goal of becoming a world power in the late nineteenth century. Prior to the Civil War, the United States was virtually two competing nations that were different socially, politically, and financially. A stronger more unified nation emerged out of the ashes of the Civil War. There were no longer two disparate nations. The federal government, not the individual states, would now determine the fate of newly acquired territories. A new American identity was born. National interests rather than sectional ones became more apparent as the nation began to expand internationally with the acquisition of Alaska, Hawaii, Guam, Cuba, and the Philippines and assert its political influence over Mexico and Latin America. A Northern victory in the Civil War allowed the United States to emerge as the world’s financial power after World War I and a military superpower after World War II. The racial, social, political, financial, and military aspects of the country would have been quite different had the South managed a victory in the mid-1860s.

ALTE R NATE H ISTO RY According to historian James McPherson in Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era, a Northern victory in the Civil War was contingent upon four major junctures of the conflict. The first came when Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson in Virginia, and Braxton Bragg and Kirby Smith out west arrested Nort h e rn momentum, which both lengthened the duration of the war and intensified it. The second point was the Battle of Antietam Creek in 1862. This battle stopped Lee’s first invasion of the North, prevented the Confederacy from gaining international re c o g n ition, won a victory at the polls for the Republicans in the elections of 1862, and gave Lincoln the victory he needed to emancipate the slaves. The third critical point was the Confederate defeats at Gettysburg, Vi c k s b u rg, and Chattanooga virtually splitting the Confederacy in thirds and seriously retarding the Confederates’ ability to wage war. Ultimately the final possible turning point came in 1864 with the capture of Atlanta and the breadbasket of the Confederacy—the Shenandoah Valley. According to McPherson, only then did the Confederacy “experience an

A Northern victory at First Bull Run? 51

irretrievable loss of the will to fight.” A Confederate defeat at the First Battle of Bull Run would have changed all four of these conditions, thus bringing the war to an end by late 1863 or early 1864. The battle on July 21, 1861, would have turned when Thomas Jonathan Jackson did not advance as his division commander wanted him to do. Moreover, the legend of Stonewall Jackson would have been a b o rted when he was unable to make a stand in the face of the Union advance. The Confederate lines would have broken and the troops would have begun a re t reat in chaos toward the Rappahannock River, twenty-five miles to the rear. However, despite the better-trained troops under Northern command, inexperience by the commanders in handling large armies and the confusion caused by the fog of battle would have prevented them from pursuing the Confederates. As the Confederates fled, they would have dropped most of their provisions— leaving them on the battlefield—allowing them more rapid movement. The average Civil War army at full strength and provisions only managed to move about three miles per day. Generally these columns were stretched out many miles in length. For example, after the fight at Pittsburg Landing in Mississippi, the Northern Army needed several weeks to advance the twenty miles to Corinth, Mississippi. It would have taken the Union troops moving at full strength at least eight or nine days, if not longer, to reach the river, giving the Confederates time to form defensive positions. A Southern defeat at First Bull Run would not immediately have destroyed the Confederate Army. However, it would have considerably shortened the war and changed several components of McPherson’s contingency thesis. Robert E. Lee would still have replaced Johnston as commander in the Eastern Theater of war but Jackson would not have risen to prominence as a leader. Bragg’s and Kirby’s campaigns alone were not enough to stem the Northern tide. Most military planners of that era viewed the eastern region as the most critical area of the war. Scott’s advance from the North and McClellan’s campaign up the James Peninsula would have altered Lee’s strategy of an offensive-defensive war. He could not have invaded Maryland as he desired because he would have had to protect the Confederate capital in Richmond, Virginia—thus preventing the Battle of Antietam. Defeat at First Bull Run would have ended any hopes for international recognition of the Confederacy. Psychologically, it might have weakened southern confidence in the superiority of their troops over Union troops, and it might have strengthened northern morale. A Union victory would have given Lincoln the big military victory he needed to issue his Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1862, a full year earlier and before the critical midterm elections in 1862 that ensured Republican control in the North. With Lee still trapped in Virginia, any invasion of the North would have been virtually impossible. Northern generals Grant and Sherman would have continued their incessant pounding of the Confederacy. If as suggested in this scenario, the Northern armies had been better prepared and better trained and had had higher morale from the beginning, several other crucial battles might have turned in the Union’s favor.

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Sherman’s victories at Chattanooga and the capture of Atlanta would have created a bleak situation for the Confederacy. Nearly split in thirds, with Lee unable to move and Sherman tearing the heart out of Georgia, the Confederacy might have sued for peace and accepted terms for unconditional surrender in early 1864. Although in actual history, Jefferson Davis, the Confederate president, refused to consider surrender without recognition of southern independence, others in his administration advocating peace might have been able to prevail upon him to accept surrender if faced with many early defeats. With war concluding almost a year and a half before it actually ended and without the titanic battles at Antietam Creek, Gettysburg, and Petersburg, almost 300,000 American lives would have been saved—lessening the public resentment in the North and possibly further decreasing Northerners’ interest in southern affairs after the war. After the Confederate surrender in January 1864, Lincoln would have virtually locked up his reelection bid in 1864, after replacing his VicePresident Hannibal Hamlin with the hero of Vicksburg and Shiloh, Ulysses S. Grant. During the war, George B. McClellan had announced his political ambitions after stunning victories at the battles of Williamsburg and Seven Pines. However, Lincoln sharply criticized McClellan for not capitalizing on these wins and immediately marching on Richmond. Lincoln would have chosen Grant over Tennessee republican Andrew Johnson. In actual history Johnson was selected because he would bring Lincoln voter support from the mid-Atlantic states and the Midwest, and as a former Democrat from the South, it was thought that he might help build support for a Republican Party base in the South. Lincoln would have chosen Grant and used his status as a war hero to counteract McClellan’s popularity among the army. However, Lincoln and Grant would have been at odds over southern Reconstru c t i o n . Lincoln favored a less severe occupation and, despite freeing the slaves, hesitated about granting former slaves the right to vote or insisting on land reform. Lincoln believed that confiscating plantations would re q u i re the government to impose punishment on the heirs of those committing the crime of rebellion, a form of punishment he believed was unconstitutional. Grant might have sided with the Radical Republicans favoring a strong military presence in the South and would have urged Lincoln to give freed slaves full rights and freedom and use the southern defeat in the war as leverage to create an entirely new social stru c t u re in the South. Yet Lincoln and Grant both would have desired a speedy re t u rn to the Union by the former Confederate states with no malice. With Lincoln’s tragic assassination in April 1865 at the hands of John Wilkes Booth, Ulysses S. Grant would have become the seventeenth president. However, despite an early Union victory and the early ascension of Grant to the presidency, Reconstruction and southern history would not have been altered a great deal. With the passage of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, slavery was made illegal; blacks were made citizens and given the right to vote. However, in actual history during the Andrew Johnson administration, southern governments instituted a system that was based on the antebellum

A Northern victory at First Bull Run? 53

status quo by enacting Black Codes that were virtually another system of slavery denying freedmen their newfound rights. Additionally, the Knights of the Klu Klux Klan and other groups, such as Red Shirts and various armed thugs working with southern Democrats, intimidated blacks into not voting or murdered them when they tried to do so. Early in Grant’s political career he sided with the Radical Republicans. In actual history, during the impeachment of Andrew Johnson, Grant refused to take the secre t a ry of war’s pro-Radical position, which angered the radicals and made him more favorable to the moderates in Congress. In actual history, Andrew Johnson threatened to confiscate the pro p e rty of many of the former slave owners but then offered them a program of generous pardons, backing down from his threats. Johnson, as a former representative of poor whites in the South, apparently was pleased that wealthy landowners had to come begging him to grant pardons. Grant, without the same kind of personal motivation, might have taken a stronger stand against the planter class. If he had done so early in 1865 and 1866, Grant might have succeeded in implementing some of the goals of radical Reconstruction and might have gained the political support of radicals in Congress for his program. According to historian Brooks D. Simpson in The Reconstruction Presidents, Grant wanted peace between the races and the North and South and he wanted to maintain Republican political control. If he had become president in 1865, rather than in 1869, as in actual history, Grant would have been in a better position to work toward those goals. Even so, from his actual performance as president, we know that Grant was inattentive to administrative details and often appointed very corrupt supporters to positions that they soon exploited for personal gain. Had he acted the same way in this alternate history, he might very well have left the minute details of reconstruction to Congress. Rather than fighting with Congress and trying to maintain control of the process, as did Andrew Johnson, Grant might very well have accepted the radical agenda and appointed officers pledged to carry it out. He needed to promote civil and political rights for blacks while winning support among white Southerners to help build some Republican Party strength in the South. Yet Grant would have encountered much the same resistance to his attempts as did Johnson, and Grant, with his laissez-faire attitude, would probably not have done much to retain Republican control of the southern states. The northern political climate was also changing. Northerners were less concerned with the political affairs in the South. Northerners were not willing to pressure the federal government to intervene in the South. Realizing this, and fearing the loss of northern votes, Grant might very well have begun to back down from a radical agenda as early as 1867, much as he did in actual history; he did not attempt to oppose the “Redeemer” Democratic regimes that came into power in the South in 1870 and later. As he did in actual history, he probably would have decided it was best not to intervene in southern affairs unless it was absolutely necessary. If Grant had been president as early as 1865, the process of takeover of the southern states by Democratic Party conservatives would have begun and probably ended sooner

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than it did in actual history. Thus, Reconstruction would probably have come to an end as early as 1871 or 1872, rather than in 1877, as it did in actual history. Despite an early end to the war, Grant’s presidency, new constitutional amendments, and the Civil Rights Acts of 1866 and 1875, conditions were not right for an early civil rights movement. Nort h e rn and southern blacks were not unified, southern blacks were disenfranchised by Black Codes, Jim Crow laws, and the Ku Klux Klan. Southern whites were not willing to give up their power to end this system. Finally, nort h e rn whites were less concerned with southern a ffairs once slavery was over. Ve ry few whites understood the need to implement a program of economic re f o rm that would strip the planter class of its wealth and give African Americans a financial start toward social equality. Radicals in Congress, even when working with a compliant president like Grant rather than a contentious and difficult one like Andrew Johnson, probably would have been unable to establish p e rmanent social reform in the South during the short Reconstru c t i o n years. By the turn of the twentieth century the first generation of African Americans who were born after the end of slavery came of age. They were not content with second-class citizenship, leading them to form the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Union Leagues, and the United Negro Improvement Association. By the end of World War I these groups were in their infancy and did not have the political strength necessary to effect change. At the same time, because of the poor economy in the South and the need for labor in the North during World War I, the Great Black Migration occurred. As blacks moved into cities like Chicago and New York, they began to gain slightly more political clout within the Democratic Party. It was not until after World War II that black political action groups had the unity, strength, and political ties to effect a modern civil rights movement in the late 1950s and 1960s. Southern defeat in the First Battle of Bull Run would have had several profound effects but mainly on the course of the military history of the war and the political arena in the war’s immediate aftermath. Sadly, an early defeat of the Confederacy would not have altered conditions enough to produce a sweeping civil rights movement in the 1860s or put an end to a segregated society. Despite its bloodiness, the war did not alter views of racial inequality for most Americans at that time. However, the Civil War did settle several divisive issues and did bring an end to slavery itself. While the Civil War might have been shortened, with Grant as president earlier, Reconstruction would also have been shortened. Whether the war ended in three years or four, and whether Reconstruction ended in six or ten years, a new national identity began to emerge. There were no longer two competing regions jousting for control of territory. Last, slavery was ended and three critical amendments were passed that would eventually alter the social landscape of the country. Jeff e ryOthele Mahan

A Northern victory at First Bull Run? 55

Discussion Questions 1. If the North had won an early victory at Bull Run, how would that have affected the troops? What part do you think morale played in the conduct of the Union and Confederate armies? 2. Andrew Johnson fought Congress over whether the executive or legislative branch should control Reconstruction. Do you think Grant would have engaged in the same fight? Was the fight a natural consequence of the office or of the personality of the man holding the office? 3. Southern planters and their political supporters were determined to remain in control of the South after the war. What measures could Grant or Johnson have used to reduce their power? 4. If Reconstruction had ended in 1870 instead of 1876–1877, would that have had an adverse or positive effect on the situation of African Americans in the South? 5. Do you think an early defeat of the Confederacy would have made sweeping political, social, and economic changes more or less likely? 6. What was more important in shaping Reconstruction, the personality of the president or the underlying social conditions?

Bibliography and Further Reading Adams, Ephraim Douglass. Great Britain and the American Civil War. New York: Russell and Russell, 1924. Boritt, Gabor S., ed. Why the Confederacy Lost. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992. Catton, Bruce, Grant Takes Command. Boston: Little Brown, 1969. Connelly, Thomas Lawrence, and Archer Jones. The Politics of Command: Factions and Ideas in Confederate Strategy. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1973. Cooper, William J., Jr. Jefferson Davis, American. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000. Coulter, Merton E. The Confederate States of America, 1861–65. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1950. Cowley, Robert, ed. What If? The World’s Foremost Military Historians Imagine What Might Have Been. New York: Berkley, 1999. Donald, David Herbert. Lincoln. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995. Donald, David Herbert, ed., Why the North Won the Civil War. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1960. DuBois, W .E. B. Black Reconstruction in America, 1860–1880. New York: S. A. Russell, 1935. Fitzgerald, Michael W. The Union League Movement in the Deep South: Politics and Agricultural Change during Reconstruction. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989.

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Freehling, William W. The Road to Disunion: Secessionists at Bay, 1776–1854, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990. Grimsley, Mark. The Hard Hand of War: Union Military Policy toward Southern Civilians, 1861–1865. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Hacker, Louis M. The United States since 1865. New York: AppletonCentury-Crofts, 1949. Holloway, Harry. The Politics of the Southern Negro: From Exclusion to Big City Organization. New York: Random House, 1969. Hyman, Harold M. The Radical Republicans and Reconstruction, 1861–1870. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1967. Jordan, Donaldson, and Edwin J. Pratt. Europe and the American Civil War. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1931. LaFeber, Walter. The New Empire: An Interpretation of American Expansion 1860–1898. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998. McDonald, JoAnna M. “We Shall Meet Again,” the First Battle of Manassas, July 18–21, 1861. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. McElroy, Robert. Jefferson Davis, the Unreal and the Real, Volumes I & II. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1937. McKitrick, Eric L. Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960. McPherson, James M. Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. New York: Ballantine Books, 1988. McPherson, James M., and William J. Cooper, Jr. Writing the Civil War: The Quest to Understand. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1998. Mitchell, Reid. Civil War Soldiers. New York: Penguin Books, 1988. Simpson, Brooks D. The Reconstruction Presidents. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1998. Smith, Jean Edward. Grant. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001. Stampp, Kenneth M. America in 1857: A Nation on the Brink. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990. Thomas, Emory M. Robert E. Lee. New York: W. W. Norton, 1995. Tindall, George Brown, and David E. Shi. America: A Narrative History. New York: W. W. Norton, 2004. Vandiver, Frank E. Mighty Stonewall. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1957. Waugh, John C. On the Brink of Civil War: The Compromise of 1850 and How It Changed the Course of American History. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 2003.

Battle of Antietam

4

In 1862 the South suffered a decisive defeat at the Battle of Antietam. What if Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s forces had won the battle?

INTR ODU CT IO N With a string of victories in the summer of 1862, the Confederate States of America was looking for a chance to end the American Civil War and gain its independence. On August 30, 1862, the Union army had been defeated for a second time on the Bull Run battlefield. With that defeat the Confederacy had a chance to take the war into the northern states. At the same time Confederate armies in Tennessee had started to move north in a campaign aimed at retaking Kentucky and trying to invade Ohio. General Robert E. Lee also wanted to move the war north from Vi rginia into Maryland and then Pennsylvania. One of Lee’s objectives was to relieve some of the pre s s u re on the people of nort h e rn Vi rginia by getting his army as well as the Union army out of the state so soldiers would not be foraging for supplies (food, shoes, and clothing) in Vi rginia; instead they would get their supplies from Maryland and, he hoped, Pennsylvania. Lee needed to be careful since Maryland was a border state (there were parts of the population of Maryland that were proConfederacy and owned slaves) and the wish of the Confederates was that Maryland would eventually join them. In addition, Lee hoped to re c ruit more troops while in Maryland. And the Army of Nort h e rn Vi rginia did pick up a few hundred re c ruits, but the number was far less than he had desired. The most important reason for Lee to invade M a ryland was to bring the Army of the Potomac to battle and defeat it on nort h e rn soil. Lee believed that if he could defeat the Union army in the North, such a victory would secure the South its independence. The prevailing belief was that with such a victory the population of the North would view the war as lost and, more important, that Great Britain would recognize the Confederacy as an independent nation. At this time, the British government was close to doing so and also to trying to force a peace on the North. Much of Britain’s interest in seeing the war end was the effect it was having on the textile industry in Britain and France.

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K E Y CON CE P T

King Cotton

Eu ropean, e s pecially Bri t i s h , textile industries we re d e pe n d e nt on co t ton from the Confe d e rate state s. Initially, the Confe d e rate gove rn m e nt had withheld s h i p m e nts of co t ton to Eu rope with the goal of co nvincing Eu rope to suppo rt the Co n fe d e rate St ate s out of economic nece s s i ty. The problem with this s t rate gy was the timing.The co t ton crops during the two years be fo re the war had been bumper cro p s. Thus, by the end of 1861 British textile manufact u rers still had ext ra bales of co t ton on hand. The s o u t h e rn strate gy changed in the spring of 1862 with the decision to resume shipment of co t ton abroad. The South needed supplies and a way to pay for them; also, it now did not wa nt to appear to

be blackmailing the British into suppo rting the Confe d e rate ca u s e. In order to get the co t ton to Europe, the southern ships now had to get through the No rth’s blockade of southern port s. By July 1862, Britain was starting to feel the lack of co t ton supplies as 80,000 workers we re without jobs in the textile industry and another 370,000 we re wo rking only half-time. By the summer of 1862, the South finally had Europe in a position of possibly supporting the Co n fe d e ra cy because of the extreme need for co t to n . Howeve r, none of the co u nt ries in Eu ro pe wa nted to back the pro - s l avery cause of the South.

At the beginning of the war the Confederates had purposely withheld shipments of cotton to Europe in an attempt to bring pressure on Britain and France to support the South’s cause. The embargo had little effect since there was a surplus of cotton in Europe at the beginning of the war. By the time the South was ready to start shipping cotton to Europe, the Union blockade was stronger and kept most of it from getting through. A point in the South’s favor was that the British textile industry had used up all its surplus and was now having to lay off employees and cut back working hours. The owners of the textile factories had turned to Her Majesty’s government to remedy the situation. With the South racking up victories one after another, Britain and France began to think the time was right to join the war on the side of the Confederacy and help negotiate a settlement that would get the cotton flowing again. Sensing the importance of a bold move that could bring the war to an end, Lee moved his army to Leesburg, Vi rginia, on September 3. The next day would start his invasion of the North. On September 4, 1862, the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia crossed the Potomac River into Maryland. Lee’s objective was the Union Army of the Potomac. As Lee’s army moved into Maryland, it was under orders to treat the civilians well. Lee wanted to make sure that the Confederacy did not alienate the civilians of Maryland. The troops were to pay for all the supplies they took. However, the money the soldiers used to pay for these supplies was Confederate currency. Lee’s first objective was Frederick, Maryland. His troops arrived there on September 6 and would remain until September 10. Lee then divided his army for the next phase of the campaign, which was to capture Harpers Ferry, after which the army would move into Pennsylvania. The majority of the army moved against Harpers Ferry under General Thomas Jackson. The remainder covered the roads through South Mountain and moved north to prepare the way for the movement into Pennsylvania.

A Southern victory at Antietam? 59

K E Y CON CE P T

George B. McClellan

Ge o rge B. Mc Clellan was a man much be l oved by the common soldiers in the Army of the Poto m a c. He took good ca re of them and they appre c i ated it. After the Union disaster at Se cond Bull Run, it wa s Mc Clellan whom Ab raham Lincoln turned to be cause Lincoln appre c i ated the co n n e ct i o n be tween Mc Clellan and the common soldiers in the army. It was Mc Clellan who had built the Army of the Potomac in 1861 after the Union defeat at the First Battle of Bull Run. He was an administrator and org a n i zer without parallel. His failings were as a co m b at leader. His focus was always on the possibility of losing a battle or campaign i n s tead of winning it. Be cause of this, he repe atedly be l i eved ove rex a g g e rated estimates of Confe d e rate strength and was re a dy to accept any inte l l i g e n ce that supported this belief. At the

same time he would disre g a rd any inte l l i g e n ce t h at co nt radicted his firmly held beliefs. McClellan was also hesitant to commit the army to bat t l e kn owing that the chaos and confusion of bat t l e would undo all the wo rk he had done to org a n i ze the army. It would mean the men he ca red for and watched over would be killed or wo u n d e d. Wh i l e all commanders need to value the lives of their s o l d i e r s, being ove rly cautious can actually be worse for them. Some decisions to try to avo i d co m b at can lead to ultimately fighting a bat t l e on terms more favo rable to the enemy. This may actually cause more casualties to the men such a general is trying to pro tect. Un fo rt u n ately fo r McClellan, Lee had an exce l l e nt understanding of ex a ctly how Mc Clellan pre fe rred to ope rate, and he used it to the adva ntage of the Confederate s.

An 1888 lithograph of Union General McClellan’s forces advancing against Confederate troops. (Library of Congress)

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AN OTH E R VI E W

Special Order 191

Obtaining a copy of Special Order 191 was an inte l l igence coup that few commanders ever achieve. The order laid out ex a ctly where each part of Lee’s army was going and what it was to do. At first there was a question of whether the order was real or a fake.That question was answered when a Union officer re cognized the handw riting as belonging to the officer, one of Lee’s aides, who had signed the ord e r. Di s covering these orders was incredibly valuable to the Union forces, but more important, they showed

that Lee had bro ken one of the pri m a ry rules of milit a ry ope rations. He had split his fo rce while the enemy was nearby, thus setting the stage for his po ssible defe at and destruction. Why would Lee have done this? The essential reason that Lee was willing to do something so ri s ky was be cause Mc Clellan was the commander of the Army of the Potomac and Lee was counting on Mc Clellan to be h ave with caution.In the hands of a more aggressive commander, Spe c i a l O rder 191 would certainly have led to Lee’s defeat.

The Army of the Potomac left Washington, D.C., on September 7 trying to determine where the Confederates were and what they were going to do. General George B. McClellan was commanding the army. Knowing that McClellan was in command gave Lee reason to believe his outnumbered army had a chance to win a battle in Maryland. Lee had about 50,000 soldiers to McClellan’s 85,000. However, McClellan believed that the Confederates numbered over 100,000 soldiers. McClellan had always been a cautious commander, and Lee was counting on his circumspect attitude to continue. McClellan did not disappoint Lee and continued to be cautious as the Army of the Potomac slowly advanced from Washington, D.C.

The Army of the Potomac entered Frederick on September 12 where it gathered and regrouped. On September 13, two soldiers found a piece of paper wrapped around some cigars in a field outside of town where their unit was camped. The paper turned out to be a copy of Lee’s orders (Special Order 191) to his commanders for the campaign. The orders laid out where each of the five parts of the army was to go and what they were supposed to do. The paper was quickly verified by an officer who recognized the handwriting and passed it on to McClellan. McClellan now had a chance to destroy the Army of Nort h e rn Virginia while it was divided, but only if he moved quickly. Not only was the Confederate army divided but it had fallen behind schedule. Lee did get one break. There were several civilians in the room when McClellan was given the copy of Lee’s orders. Although McClellan did not reveal what he had received, it was clear that he had received something important. One of the civilians was a Confederate sympathizer. He sent word to the Confederates that McClellan was in possession of some intelligence that he felt gave him a clear advantage. Now all McClellan had to do was move quickly. The next day, September 14, the Union army started to move against Lee. The army’s first objective was to cross through the passes at South Mountain. The passes were a bottleneck that would allow a small Confederate force to

A Southern victory at Antietam? 61

K E Y CON CE P T

The Finding of Lee’s Lost Order 191

Because the loss of Lee’s Order 191 and its discovery by Union troops involved two very unlikely accidents, historians and fiction writers have often speculated about what might have happened if this key turning point in history had been different. Although General McClellan was slow to act on the information, he might have been even slower if the order had never been lost, and General Lee might have had a victory rather than a defeat at Antietam. The circumstances would have been different if Sergeant John M. Bloss and Private B. W. Mitchell had been a little less observant of exactly what was wra p ped around the cigars. Some twe nty-one years after the war was over, General Silas Colgrove of the Union army left a detailed account of the episod e, co l l e cted in Robert U. Johnson and Clarence C. Buell’s Battles and Leaders of the Civil War (Volume II, p. 603). We stacked arms on the same ground that had been occupied by [Confederate] General D. H. Hill’s division the evening before. Within a very few minutes after halting, the order was brought to me by First Sergeant John M. Bloss and Private B. W. Mitchell, of Company F, 27th Indiana Volunteers, who stated that it was found by Private Mitchell where they had stacked arms. When I received the order it was wrapped around three cigars, and Private Mitchell stated that it was in that condition when found by him. General A. S. Williams was in command of our division. I immediately took the o rder to his headquaters, and delive red it to Colonel S. E. Pittman, General Williams’s adjutantgeneral. The order was signed by Colonel Chilton, General Lee’s adjutant-general, and the signature was at once recognized by Colonel Pittman, who had served with Colonel Ch i l ton at De t roit,

Michigan, before the war, and was acquainted with his handwriting. Ge n e ral Co l g rove, the author of the above re co rd of the episod e, be l i eved, h owever, t h at if the lost order had not been found, Mc Clellan would not have moved to the passes at South Mo u ntain and t h at the battle of Antietam might not have be e n fo u g ht at all. Co l g rove be l i eved that it was Lee’s i nte ntion to cross back over the Potomac Ri ver into Vi rginia without at tempting a battle in Maryland, and that if Mc Clellan had hesitate d, Lee would have w i t h d rawn his troo p s. The va rious spe c u l ations about what would have happened if the lost order had never be e n found highlight the impo rt a n ce of contingency or a c c i d e nt in histo ry and the ext remely unpre d i ct a b l e nat u reof human affairs. It is possible that Mc Cl e l l a n would have ca u g ht up with Lee’s fo rces at or near Antietam Creek and the town of Sharp s b u rg, Ma ryland, and that the battle would have turned out much as it did in actual histo ry. It is also possible t h at Lee might have been able to make a much s t ronger stand if there had been time for Jackson’s t roops to come to his aid, and the Union might not have been able to claim a victo ry, as in the alte rn ate h i s to ry pre s e nted in this chapte r. If that had happened and if the battle had been pe rce i ved as a Union defeat, Lincoln probably would not have issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, and it is possible that the Confe d e ra cy would have s e c u reda negotiated peace. Or, as Ge n e ral Co l g rove be l i eved, there might have been no encounter at all, and the episode of troop maneuvers in Ma ryland in Septe m ber 1862 would have simply been viewed as more ineffe ctual skirmishing, not remembe red as a c rucial turning point at all.

hold up the much larger Union army. All McClellan had to do was get the army to the passes quickly. He could use his advantage in numbers to push the defenders out of the passes. The Army of the Potomac could then advance into western Maryland. McClellan wasted time by not issuing orders for the whole army to move immediately on September 13. He was also slow on September 14 to commit his troops to the battle. The battles of South Mountain (Turner’s and Crampton’s Gap) developed slowly. It took the Union all day to make much headway. The Confederates rushed into battle with what troops they

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K E Y CON CE P T

Bloodiest Day in American History

Antietam is the bloodiest single day in Am e ri ca n h i s to ry. On Se p te m ber 16, 1861, a little over 22,700 men be came casualties (ki l l e d, wounded, or missing) out of 108,000 men in the armies at that time. That was approximately 21 percent, or one in every f i ve.The pe rce ntage is higher, 27 perce nt, when one considers that 25,000 Union soldiers did not take part in the bat t l e. Ac co rding to The Ameri ca n He ritage New Histo ry of the Civil Wa r,e d i ted by James M. McPherson, the Confe d e rates lost 10,300 of the

33,000 soldiers at the bat t l e, or almost one in eve ry three (31 perce nt ) . For the Union 12,400 men be came casualties out of the 50,000 co m m i t ted to the bat t l e, or one in four (25 pe rce nt ) .The casualties bro ke down as fo l l ows : 3,700 ki l l e d, 17,300 wounded, and 1,700 missing. The major reason that Antietam was the bloodiest day in Am e ri can histo ry is that unlike the Am e ri can Revolution, World War I, Wo rld War II, or any other war the Un i ted St ates has been invo l ved in, eve ry ca s u a l tywas an Am e ri ca n .

Battlefield casualties: September 16, 1862, is the bloodiest day in American history. (Library of Congress)

could collect and managed to hold the Union army at bay. During the night, the Confederates withdrew from the gaps and Lee considered withdrawing from Maryland altogether. Lee changed his mind when he received a message from Jackson saying that he expected Harpers Ferry to s u rrender on September 15. Lee again relied on McClellan to move slowly and not press his advantage so that Lee could gather the Confederate arm y around Sharpsburg. As Jackson had predicted, Harpers Ferry surrendered on September 15. As soon as the Confederate troops could be readied, they set out for Sharpsburg. In some cases the soldiers marched through the night in order to arrive in Sharpsburg and participate in the Battle of Antietam. Again McClellan did not move quickly and spent September 15 and 16 advancing slowly up to Sharpsburg. Not until late in the afternoon of September 16 did part of the Army of the Potomac cross Antietam Creek to attack the Confederates.

A Southern victory at Antietam? 63

I N CON TE XT

Emancipation Proclamation and British Recognition

At the beginning of the Antietam campaign, it l oo ked to the British as if the Co n fe d e ra cy might be able to hold its ow n . The British, and the French who we re fo l l owing Britain’s lead, we re unwilling to back the Co n fe d e racy if it could not win the wa r. Antietam bro u g ht to an end the s t ring of victo ries the Co n fe d e rates had achieve d in the easte rn theater of the wa r, and this shift caused the British to reconsider their position, and then put off any decision on inte rve nt i o n

until the matter was clearer. Be fo re that clarification ca m e, h oweve r, Ab raham Lincoln released the Emancipation Proc l a m ation. With this action, L i n coln shifted the focus of the war from preserving the Union to battling against slave ry and fo r f re e d o m . After the proc l a m ation it suddenly became ve ry difficult for any fo reign power to support the Co n fe d e ra cy without also suppo rting slave ry, and none of the Eu ropean powe r s we re willing to do this.

AC TUAL HI STO RY At the Battle of Antietam, McClellan had 75,000 soldiers to Lee’s 33,000. This gave McClellan a decided advantage; however, he was still convinced that Lee had 100,000 soldiers and so he committed only 50,000 of his to the battle (four of his six corps). He held the rest in reserve for the dreaded Confederate counterattack. The troops he did put into action were committed piecemeal, allowing Lee to move his soldiers around in response to McClellan’s actions. The Union’s attack started on its right and was, in a sense, four separate attacks. None of McClellan’s troops were really in place to support each other in a timely fashion. Additionally, at the beginning of the day, about a third of the army was on the Confederate side of Antietam Creek, making it difficult for the remainder of the army to support that advanced one-third. The Union attack started around 6:00 A.M. The initial attack was made by soldiers of the Union I Corps. Under the command of General Joseph Hooker, they advanced through Miller’s Cornfield. The attack met with some success until General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson ordered a counterattack. This pushed the Union troops back across the cornfield. Control of the cornfield would change hands several times during the day as each side committed more troops to the battle. Hooker’s troops were eventually supported by soldiers from the XII Corps, under the command of General Joseph Mansfield (who was mortally wounded during the fighting). Mansfield’s troops also charged into the cornfield but were unable to hold it against counterattacks by Jackson’s soldiers, soldiers whom Lee had drawn from those areas of the battlefield not under attack. Around this time, more of the Confederate troops who had been involved in the siege of Harpers Ferry began arriving. This allowed Lee to fill the holes in his line just before the third attack began. This attack was aimed at his center. McClellan had ordered the Union II Corps, under the command of General Edwin Sumner, to cross Antietam Creek. They were to support the attack going on in the cornfield. Only a third of the soldiers, along

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Antietam and Emancipation

In the summer of 1862, Lincoln deve l o ped his plan to make a proc l a m ation to free the slaves in those a reas under Confe d e rate co nt ro l . He first confided his idea on July 13 to two members of his Cabinet: Se c re t a ry of the Navy Sumner Welles and Se c re t a ry of St ate William Se wa rd. Th ey kept the news to themselves and suggested he get the reactions of the rest of the Cabinet. L i n coln explained the proc l am ation to the full Cabinet on July 22. Howeve r, taking their adv i ce, he decided to hold off making the public, preliminary announcement until the Un i o n should have a victo ry, even though it was an election year (for Congress) and such an announce m e nt might have helped rally Re p u b l i can vo te r s. The

Battle of Antietam was fo u g ht Se p te m ber 17, and f i ve days after the news of the Union victo ry, on Septe m ber 22, L i n coln made the proc l a m at i o n . The pre l i m i n a ry proc l a m ation of Septe m ber 22 s t ated that on the first of January, 1863, the pre s id e nt would declare that all slaves still held in are a s in re bellion were fre e. This way of phrasing the emancipation had several co n s e q u e n ce s. First, it made clear that Lincoln would not be taking any a ction against slave ry in the loyal bo rder states or in a reas alre a dy under Union co nt ro l . Se co n d, by announcing this inte ntion in September, Lincoln was making clear to wave ring areas of the South t h at if they could arrange to surrender over the last

with Sumner, actually advanced to the cornfield and into the woods west of it. Unable to find any Union officer in charge, Sumner was unable to determine where the Confederates were and his soldiers were facing the wrong way when they were attacked by Confederate troops. The confusion of an attack from a direction that they did not expect surprised the Union soldiers who fled to the woods and were of no use throughout the rest of the battle. The remaining two-thirds of Sumner’s command had veered off the path taken by Sumner and the lead units toward the cornfield. They ended up marching toward, and attacking, the Confederate position known as the Sunken Road. (The road was a wagon road that had been used for so long that the wheels had dug ruts into the ground and caused the road to be “sunken.”) The Sunken Road worked like a natural trench to protect the Confederate solders defending it. Sumner’s troops launched several attacks on the Sunken Road but were unable to push the Confederates out until, by accident because of some misunderstood orders, the Confederates pulled out. This allowed the Union soldiers to occupy the road. The third Union assault was brought to an end because McClellan would not send any more troops to this part of the battlefield to continue the advance. The final Union attack would be launched on the Union’s left. This involved soldiers from the Union IX Corps, under the command of General Ambrose Burnside. The attack had to take place across a bridge (which would become known as Burnside’s Bridge) over Antietam Creek. The bridge formed a natural bottleneck. This allowed a few Confederates (only 400) to hold back several thousand attackers since only a few hundred could charge across the bridge at one time. Here the Confederates would keep the Union soldiers from crossing the bridge for three hours until they began running out of ammunition and had to abandon their

A Southern victory at Antietam? 65 I N C ON TE X T

Antietam and Emancipation (Continued)

t h ree months in 1862, they would be excluded fro m the effect of his proc l a m at i o n . In effect, it was an offer to states in the Confe d e ra cy to give up the war in exchange for pre s e rving slavery.When the proc l am ation was finally announced on January 1, 1863, s keptics in the Un i ted St ates and abroad cri t i c i zed it on the grounds that it claimed to affe ct slaves only in the very areas in which the Union was powerless to act — t h at is, a reas still in rebellion. For that re ason, some thought it rather fraudulent—a statem e nt of libe ration with no actual libe ration. Nevertheless, because it was so dra m atic and be cause it did shift the focus from a war for the Union to a war of libe ration, it be came a histo ric doc u m e nt and earned Lincoln the immediate title

of “The Gre at Emancipato r.” As the war proceeded and as battle lines adva n ced from January 1, 1863, t h rough Ap ril 1865, the areas that fell to Union co nt rol did in fact see emancipation based on Linco l n’s p roclamation. If the Union had lost at Antietam or if there had been no battle at all there, L i n coln would have hesit ated to issue the preliminary proclamation. If the e l e ction of Nove m ber 1862 had been held against a re co rd of co ntinued Union defe ats, with no linka g e of the war to the cause of emancipat i o n , the course of histo ry would have been quite diffe re nt .The battle was a crucial turning po i nt in histo ry, in the view of almost all histo rians who have dealt with the Civil War.

position. With the bridge finally captured, the Union began the final phase of its last attack, which looked as though it would actually collapse the Confederate position. As the Union troops advanced from the bridge toward the town of Sharpsburg, they saw other troops on their left. They

The bridge over Antietam Creek formed a bottleneck during the battle. (Library of Congress)

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President Lincoln, center, General McClellan, right, and Alan Pinkerton at Antietam, Maryland. (Library of Congress)

assumed these were other Union troops moving to support them. Instead it was the last of the Confederate troops from Harpers Ferry, having marched seventeen miles in under eight hours. Their attack pushed the Union back almost to the bridge and brought the battle to an end. The next day, September 18, there was no fighting. McClellan still expected Lee to attack and was afraid of losing what he had gained. Lee, realizing that McClellan would likely play it safe, held his ground. He withdrew as many of his wounded as possible into Virginia along with his supplies. That night the Confederate army left the battlefield and moved back into Virginia. While the battle was not a major victory for the Union, Lee’s withdrawal allowed McClellan to claim a victory, and a victory was what Lincoln needed to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. Because of the military setback for the Confederacy, Great Britain indefinitely postponed any decision about recognizing the Confederacy as an independent nation.

ALTE R NATE H ISTO RY Had McClellan not found Special Order 191, it is completely re a s o nable to expect that his moves from September 14 on would have been even slower and more cautious than they actually were. Without the c o n c rete knowledge that Lee had split his arm y, McClellan sure l y would have expected the entire Confederate arm y, with the full 100,000-man strength he believed Lee to have, to be facing him at every turn of the campaign. Lee’s original plan called for Jackson to have captured Harpers Ferry on September 12, the time when McClellan and his army were entering Frederick. With Jackson ru nning behind schedule, it would have been very unlikely that Lee could have gotten the army back together and into Pennsylvania to fight the battle he wanted there. He was going to have to fight his battle in Maryland. The diff e rence would have been that he would have had the entire army at Antietam from the beginning, giving him more options during the battle. A delay of even one day would have made a difference. McClellan issued his orders on September 13 to start the army moving because of his knowledge of Special Order 191. Without finding this order he might easily have delayed issuing the command to mobilize the Army of the Potomac again. This would have allowed his men a day to rest, September 14, before the army would begin marching again on September 15. Thus, McClellan would have begun his advance on passes through South Mountain on the same day Harpers

A Southern victory at Antietam? 67

Ferry surrendered and Jackson’s troops started their march to rejoin the army at Sharpsburg. Lee had originally planned to hold the South Mountain passes with only cavalry, who were to delay the passage of the Union arm y, not try to stop it. As the Union army advanced on the passes on September 15, they would have found them lightly defended by Confederate cavalry. Even with only cavalry defending the passes, the Union would have had to slow its advance even more as it deployed from march formation to attack formation. The troops would have found the attack fairly easy and would have pushed the Confederate cavalry off the passes with little loss except in time. By late in the day the Union forces would have started down the west side of South Mountain and found the Confederates on the other side of Antietam Creek. Continuing to be cautious, McClellan would have (as he actually did) taken his time to move up to the Confederate position on September 16. He would then have delayed to consider all his options. This would have given Lee time to get Jackson’s men back with the main army at Antietam Creek. Using the remainder of September 16 and most of the September 17, McClellan would have waited until late on the 17th to move troops across Antietam Creek and begin his attack the next morning, September 18. Lee could then have moved more troops to the area around the cornfield either to counter the Union attacks or, if McClellan delayed again, to launch his own attack. With the extra troops Jackson would have been able not only to repulse the first attack, as he actually did, but to have launched a much stronger counterattack. Jackson’s attack would have thrown the Union back toward Antietam Creek. With Jackson’s success, Lee would have sent more troops to support Jackson and continue his attack. Mansfield would have been in position to try to help stop the Confederate advance. However, without support he also would have been driven back. Eventually, both Hooker’s and Mansfield’s troops would have been pushed back across Antietam Creek. As had happened on the Peninsula, McClellan would have feared that there were even more Confederates than those he could see and would have ordered a retreat before his army was destroyed. Lee would have continued to use the fast marching Confederate infantry to get around the Union army and keep McClellan in a panic about what he was facing. Knowing that he would be safe in the defenses of Washington, D.C., McClellan would have centered his campaign on trying to keep from being drawn into a full-fledged battle where he could be destroyed, and Lee would have tried to bring about just such a battle. While the Union army would have been able to escape destruction, the political consequences for the North of having its primary army chased back to the defenses of Washington, D.C., would have been much harder to escape. Unable to attack the army once it was in Washington, D.C., Lee would have returned to Virginia. This would also have helped the Confederates avoid looking like a conquering army, which they would have by remaining in Maryland. With another Confederate victory, the British, with the French following along, would have worked to force a negotiated peace on the

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Union. Also, with elections in November 1862, Lincoln would have found Congress and the state governors much less willing to continue to support a war they might not be able to win. With diplomatic recognition from Britain and France, and the possibility of military intervention, the Union would have had no recourse but to grant the Confederacy its independence from the Union. Having gained their independence, foreign recognition, and t reaties to protect their independence, the Confederate States would have become a separate nation (made up of the states that had seceded from the Union and the Indian Territory now known as Oklahoma). The North would have retained control of most of the western territories and would have continued the westward migration during the late 1800s, continuing to create states and fight wars with the Native Americans over control of these lands. Of course, the Native Americans would have had a natural ally in the Confederate States because during the Civil War, the Confederacy had support e d the Native Americans and tried to work with them. This alliance most c e rtainly would have caused more friction between the two American powers. The tension from the Civil War would have not gone away just because of the peace enforced on the North by Britain. There would have been an underlying desire by some in the North for a rematch, or a chance to finish the war without outside interference. As long as Britain was there to support the Confederacy, it would be highly unlikely that the North could force a renewal of the Civil War with any chance of winning. The North would have continued on the path of industrialization while the South would have initially remained an agricultural nation. The South’s slaves would eventually have been needed for more than just agricultural jobs. They would have been moved into more industrial jobs as industrial businesses replaced the plantations. While the supply of new slaves from outside the Confederacy might have dried up, slavery would not have been abolished. Certainly African Americans would have continued to be property as there would have been no compulsion for the South to change. The status quo would have been maintained for the remainder of the nineteenth century and into the early twentieth century. What would have changed everything was the rise of imperial Germ a n y. As Germany found itself at odds with the rest of Europe, especially Britain and France, it would have seen a natural ally in the nort h e rn states because of their mutual enemies. Seeing a chance to counter Britain’s support of the Confederacy, the Union would have signed a t reaty with imperial Germ a n y. Then, as Europe was rushing toward the Great War (World War I) in 1914, the North and the South would have found themselves dragged along with Europe. Like Germ a n y, the N o rth would have found itself fighting a two-front war against the South and Canada. While the early years of the war would have gone p retty much as they did, after the withdrawal of Russia from the war because of the Bolshevik Revolution, there would have been no American soldiers in Europe to help save that continent from the renewed German offensives in 1918. Without the Americans to object

A Southern victory at Antietam? 69

to Germany’s unrestricted submarine warf a re, Germany’s submarines would have roamed the Atlantic with no restriction re g a rding what vessels they could and could not attack. With Britain and France fighting imperial Germany, they would have been of little military use to the Confederacy as it fought the Second Civil War with the North. The cost in lives would have been enormous. Instead of being involved in the Great War for only about one year, the North and South would have been in the war the entire time. Using machine guns and poison gas on each other in trench warfare like that seen on the European Western Front, losses would have been huge. Battlefields would have again been in Maryland, Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, and West Virginia. With the rate of losses that the war would have generated, the South, with its smaller population, would have found itself running short of men. The end would have come in 1917 or so. It might have been sooner, but the North would have had to send troops to invade Canada. With the South’s manpower exhausted, the front would have collapsed. With Britain and France in no position to stop the North, it could have easily occupied and disarmed the South. Finally having the chance to crush the Confederate government and bring the southern states back into the Union, the North would not have settled for anything else. A little more than fifty years after it actually happened, Reconstruction would have come to the South. The North would surely have wanted reparation for the cost of the war. With the return of southern states to the control of the federal government, slavery would also have been abolished (as it had been in the North under the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution), citizenship for former slaves established (in the Fourteenth Amendment), and the right to vote extended to include African Americans in the South (the Fifteenth Amendment). All the men (and, once women’s suffrage became law with the Nineteenth Amendment, all the women) in the South would have had to swear allegiance to the federal government in order to again become citizens of the United States and thus regain their right to vote. Each state government would have had to draft a new state constitution and have it ratified by the state. That constitution would have had to recognize the rights of African Americans and women to vote and participate in elections and government. Although the North would have wanted to collect reparation from the South for war expenses, with no southern central government this would have been impossible. While the technical parts of Reconstruction would have been relatively easy to deal with, the social issues would have taken years to resolve, just as they actually did. There would also have been issues that had to be addressed not just in the South but also in the North, and these would have required something similar to the civil rights movement of the 1960s for real pro g ress to occur. Fifty-five years after Lee’s victory at Antietam, the United States would once again be united. The consequences of the Confederacy’s independence would have a profound effect on Europe, where imperial Germany would have come out of the Great War as the victor. This would have removed a big part of the reason Adolf Hitler came to

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power in the 1930s. Europe and the United States still would have to deal with the Great Depression. Europe might have been able to avoid a second major war. All these enormous consequences would have been brought about because a piece of paper was not lost. Dallace W. Unger, Jr.

Discussion Questions 1. What would have happened if Private B. W. Mitchell had thought the Field Order wrapped around the cigars he found was just waste paper? Imagine if he had lit it in a campfire and used it to light the cigars for himself and two friends in the 27th Indiana Volunteers. What do you think prevented him from doing that? 2. If the Union had had no military victories between July and November 1862, how would this have affected the elections to Congress in that year? 3. The Confederate army made several advances into Union territory in Maryland, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Missouri, and Ohio, and the battle of Antietam resulted from an advance into Maryland. What was the larger military and strategic purpose behind the Confederate incursions into Union states? What considerations would apply to invasion of loyal slave states like Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri that would not apply to Ohio and Pennsylvania? 4. Why do you think Lincoln was so hesitant to take steps toward emancipation? 5. General McClellan was noted for being extremely cautious about advancing against Confederate forces. Historians have attributed his caution to his personality, to his concern that troops not suffer casualties, or to his belief in faulty intelligence and espionage information. What factor seems to have been at work in his decisions about moving to South Mountain and Sharpsburg?

Bibliography and Further Reading Baotner, Mark M., III. Civil War Dictionary. New York: David McKay Company, 1987. Catton, Bruce. The American Heritage New History of the Civil War. Edited by James M. McPherson. New York: Viking, 1996. Dupuy, R. Ernest, and Trevor N. Dupuy. The Harper Encyclopedia of Military History: From 3500 B.C. to the Present. New York: HarperCollins, 1993. “German History—All Facts and Event.” www.germanculture.com.ua (accessed August 15, 2005). Hennessy, John J. “‘Dear Union’: A Federal Artilleryman at Antietam.” MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History (Autumn 2001).

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Luvaas, Jay, and Harold W. Nelson, eds. The U.S. Army War College, Guide to the Battle of Antietam: The Maryland Campaign of 1862. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1994. Murfin, James V. The Gleam of Bayonets: The Battle of Antietam and Robert E. Lee’s Maryland Campaign, September 1862. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1965. Priest, John M. Antietam: The Soldiers’ Battle. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989. Sears, Stephen W. Controversies & Commanders: Dispatches from the Army of the Potomac. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999. Sears, Stephen W. Landscape Turned Red: The Battle of Antietam. New York: Ticknor and Fields, 1983. Sears, Stephen W. George B. McClellan: The Young Napoleon. New York: Ticknor and Fields, 1988. Turtledove, Harry. How Few Remain, The Great War Series. New York: Del Dey Books, 1997. Turtledove, Harry. American Front, The Great War Series. New York: Del Dey Books, 1998. Turtledove, Harry. Walk in Hell, The Great War Series. New York: Del Dey Books, 1999. Turtledove, Harry. Breakthroughs, The Great War Series. New York: Del Dey Books, 2000. Turtledove, Harry. Blood & Iron, American Empire Series. New York: Del Dey Books, 2001. Turtledove, Harry. The Center Cannot Hold, American Empire Series. New York: Del Dey Books, 2002. Turtledove, Harry. The Victorious Opposition, American Empire Series. New York: Del Dey Books, 2003. Unger, Irwin. These United States: The Questions of Our Past. Boston: Little, Brown, 1978.

Emancipation Proclamation

5

The Emancipation Proclamation was signed on January 1, 1863. What if President Abraham Lincoln had taken the advice to delay the proclamation?

INTR ODU CT IO N It was during the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858 that candidate Abraham Lincoln first elucidated his concept of the ending of slavery in America. At this time, slavery had been an economic and social institution throughout the South for nearly 300 years. During the earlier part of the nineteenth century, slavery had become a hot-button issue in America, with a strong abolitionist movement opposed to slavery on moral grounds facing off against an equally large group who favored slavery for economic reasons. The 1830s through the 1850s saw the beginning of violent conflict. The period was bracketed by the two most notorious occasions of antislavery activism in American history, those of Nat Turner and John Brown. Turner was a Virginia slave and preacher; given to mystic visions, he believed that God had spoken to him and had told him to kill white people. With some fellow slaves, Turner killed slaveholder Joseph Travis and his family as they slept. Afterward, Turner and his group moved throughout the area, killing nearly sixty white men, women, and children. Turner was arrested and hanged within a few weeks, but the hysteria left in his wake directed tremendous suspicion against African Americans, especially black preachers. A result of Turner’s uprising was an early movement begun by citizens too poor to own slaves and aimed at the abolition of slavery in Virginia; it was quickly put down by wealthy planters. Some historians think that a successful abolitionist movement at this time might have averted the Civil War that followed three decades later. If Nat Turner was easily dismissed as a disgruntled madman who nonetheless forced white America to take notice that black slaves were not simpletons only too happy to be dominated and controlled (as prevailing opinion held), John Brown was a more problematic character. A white farmer and tanner, Brown was fanatically religious (by all accounts he had an amazing knowledge of the Bible; many believed he had actually memorized it) and through his study of scripture, he had developed a strong moral opposition to slavery.

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Where he differed from those who had gone before was in his belief that the time had come for violent uprising. In 1856 he and his four sons, along with some of their followers, were living near Osawatomie River in Kansas. On the night of May 23 they invaded the homes of known proslavery residents along Pottawatomie Creek, dragged their victims into the woods, and hacked them to death with axes and swords. Immediately, “Old Brown of Osawatomie” became a feared and hated target of occupants of slave states; at the same time he was praised in the North as a man of action. But this was not to be his final act. More than three years later, John Brown embarked on the course that would bring him immortality. During the summer of 1859, Brown, using the pseudonym Isaac Smith, rented the Kennedy Farm in Maryland. His aim was to be as close as possible to the federal armory at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. He trained a group of men, including his sons Oliver, Owen, and Watson, in military maneuvers. Their plan was to capture the armory and distribute weapons to the army of escaped slaves who Brown expected would rally to him when news of his success spread. On the night of Sunday, October 16, Brown’s guerillas marched into Harpers Ferry at 4:00 A.M. after walking all night through the rain. They captured the federal armory and a nearby gunnery that supplied weapons to the government. Brown and his men next captured sixty prominent citizens of the town (including one of George Washington’s descendents) and held them as hostages, hoping that their slaves would join his insurrection. At no time during the raid did any slaves take part. Brown’s men needed to capture the weapons and escape before word of their attack reached Washington, D.C. Oddly, they allowed a Baltimore and Ohio train to pass through Harpers Ferry after detaining it for five hours. When the train reached Baltimore the next day at noon, the conductor contacted authorities in Washington, D.C. This action gives some credence to the widespread belief that Brown never actually expected to succeed in the raid on Harpers Ferry but actually wished to be remembered as a martyr to the antislavery cause. In this aim he succeeded brilliantly. In response to the conductor’s alarm, President James Buchanan dispatched marines and soldiers to Harpers Ferry. Ironically, these were under the leadership of then-Colonel Robert E. Lee, who, as a general, would later command the Confederate military. By the time they arrived, eight of Brown’s twenty-two men had already been killed by the local militia. Lee’s men moved in and quickly ended the insurrection on October 18. In the end, ten of Brown’s men were killed, including two of his sons. Brown was seriously wounded and was tried while lying on a cot in the courtroom. In many ways, it was not Brown who was on trial but the South and the institution of slavery itself. Brown was convicted of treason. He was sentenced to be hanged, and on December 2, 1859, he died on the scaffold in the presence of a large contingent of cadets from the Virginia Military Academy. Brown had achieved his quest for martyrdom and had succeeded in bringing his cause to the attention of the nation. Sixteen months later the Civil War began, and some Union soldiers marched to war to the words of “John Brown’s Body” (the tune was later used with the words to “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”).

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A year after John Brown’s action, Abraham Lincoln was elected to the presidency of the United States. Lincoln regarded slavery as a moral wrong that should not be extended to the territories; but at this time he did not publicly advocate the abolition of the institution in the states where it already existed, nor did he believe in the equality of the races. He was elected on the basis that he represented an alternative to the more radical William H. Seward (who would return shortly and play a surprising role regarding the Emancipation Proclamation). Lincoln also spoke of conciliation with the South and, on the whole, was regarded as a moderate Republican candidate. However, Lincoln was not viewed the same everywhere. Seven states had seceded by the time he took office, and eight slave-holding states precariously walked a tightrope between Union and secession. When secessionists “protested in 1861 that they were acting to preserve traditional rights and values, they were correct. They fought to preserve their constitutional liberties against the perceived Northern threat to overthrow them. The ascension to power of the Republican Party, with its ideology of competitive, egalitarian free-labor capitalism, was a signal to the South that the northern majority had turned irrevocably toward [the] frightening, revolutionary future,” according to James McPherson in Battle Cry of Freedom. A month after his inauguration, Lincoln sent supplies to the Union garrison of Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, off South Carolina; this action was regarded as an act of war by the South, who attacked Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861. This was the first shot fired in the Civil War. Lincoln’s stated aim in prosecuting the war was the preservation of the Union; the famed black abolitionist Frederick Douglass believed that if Lincoln had propounded his policy to be that of not only saving the Union but also of freeing the slaves, all would have been lost. Immediately after the war began, Douglass began to call for the use of black troops to fight the Confederacy. He argued for the establishment of AfricanAmerican regiments in the Union army. It would not have been politically appropriate at that time for Lincoln to address any object of war other than preserving the Union, so Douglass’s call was not heeded. Both then and later, Lincoln persisted in downplaying any antislavery motive for the conflict. It was understood that Douglass, who had the ear of the pre s i d e n t , acted as a sort of conscience to Lincoln as well as saying what Lincoln could not. Douglass saw the Civil War as a struggle to end the sin of s l a v e ry, which could only be ended if Americans were forced to shed their blood. John Brown would be vindicated and blacks could take their place in society as citizens and equals. Only through black part i cipation in the war, he believed, could abolition and full citizenship for African Americans be established. It was not until January 1863, following the promulgation of the Emancipation Proclamation, that Governor John Andrew of Massachusetts was given permission to raise the 54th Regiment of Colored Troops. After the fall of Fort Sumter to the Confederacy, Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina seceded from the Union. The Confederacy now consisted of eleven states. Robert E. Lee at that time resigned his commission in the U.S. Army and accepted command of the Confederate

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K E Y CON CE P T

The Emancipation Proclamation (1863)

Wh e re a s, on the twenty - s e cond day of September, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundre d and sixty - two, a proc l a m ation was issued by the Pre s i d e nt of the United St ate s, containing, among other things, the following, to wit: “Th at on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixtythree, all persons held as slaves within any St ate, or d e s i g n ated part of a St ate, the people whereof shall then be in re bellion against the Un i ted St ates, shall be then, thenceforwa rd, and forever fre e ; and the Exe c u t i ve Gove rn m e nt of the Un i ted St ate s,including the military and naval authori ty there o f, will re cog n i ze and maintain the freedom of such pe r s o n s, and will do no act or acts to re p ress such pe r s o n s, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their a ctual fre e d o m .” “That the Executive will, on the first day of January aforesaid, by proclamation, designate the States and parts of States, if any, in which the people thereof respectively shall then be in rebellion against the United States; and the fact that any

State, or the people thereof, shall on that day be in g ood faith re p re s e nted in the Co n g ress of the United States by members chosen thereto at elections wherein a majority of the qualified voters of such St ate shall have part i c i p ated, shall in the a b s e n ce of strong co u nte rvailing te s t i m o ny be deemed conclusive evidence that such State and the people thereof are not then in rebellion against the United States.” Now, therefo re, I, Abraham Lincoln, Pre s i d e nt of the United St ates,by virtue of the power in me vested as commander-in-chief of the army and navy of the Un i ted St ate s, in time of actual armed re bellion against the authori ty and gove rn m e nt of the United St ate s, and as a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion, do, on this first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight h u n d red and sixty - t h re e, and in accordance with my p u rpose so to do, publicly proclaimed for the full pe ri od of 100 days from the day first above mentioned, order and designate as the St ates and parts of St ates wherein the people thereof, respectively, are

troops. On July 21, 1861, the first major land battle of the Civil War was fought in Virginia. The First Battle of Bull Run (Manassas) pitted Union troops under General Irvin McDowell against a slightly outnumbered Confederate army under General P. G. T. Beauregard. Fighting raged throughout the day as Confederate forces were driven back, but with the help of reinforcements commanded by General Thomas Jonathan Jackson (who received his nickname of “Stonewall” at this time) the Union was forced to retreat, a retreat that rapidly deteriorated into a rout. By the time the shattered Union army reached the safety of Washington, D.C., Lincoln was convinced that the war would be a long and costly affair. General George B. McClellan was now given command of the Northern army and set about reorganizing and training Union troops. In an attempt to prevent more slave states from joining the Confederacy in the wake of the defeat, Congress passed the Crittenden-Johnson Act on July 25. This resolution stated that the war was being fought to preserve the Union and not to end slavery. Lincoln urged McClellan to begin offensive operations, and the general invaded Virginia in the spring of 1862. Although McClellan’s army reached the gates of the Confederate capital of Richmond in this Peninsula Campaign, and despite many advantages of manpower, materiel, and luck, he was eventually driven back from Richmond. Had he taken Richmond, the Civil War would have ended. As it was, it continued for another three years.

A delayed proclamation? 77 KE Y C ON C E P T

The Emancipation Proclamation (1863) (Continued)

this day in re bellion against the United St ate s, the following, to wit: Arka n s a s, Tex a s, Louisiana (except the pari s h e s of St. Bern a rd, Plaquemines, Je f fe r s o n , St . Jo h n , St . Charles, St . James, Ascension, Assumption, Te rre Bo n n e, Lafourc h e, St . Ma ry, St . Ma rtin, and Orl e a n s, including the city of New Orl e a n s ) , Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Vi rginia (except the fo rty - e i g ht co u nties designated as West Vi rginia, and also the co u nties of Be rke l ey, Ac co m a c, No rt h a m p to n , El i z a be t h Ci ty, York, Pri n cess An n e, and Norfolk, including the cities of No rfolk and Portsmouth), and which exce p ted parts are for the pre s e nt left precisely as if this proc l a m ation we re not issued. And by virtue of the power and for the purpo s e aforesaid, I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated St ates and parts of St ates are, and henceforwa rd shall be, free; and that the Exe c u t i ve Gove rn m e nt of the Un i ted St ate s, including the military and naval authori t i e s thereof, will re cog n i ze and maintain the freedom of said persons.

And I here by enjoin upon the people so d e c l a red to be free to abstain from all violence, unless in necessary self-defense; and I recommend to them that, in all cases where allowe d, t h ey labo r faithfully for reasonable wages. And I further declare and make known that such persons of suitable condition will be re ceived i nto the armed serv i ce of the Un i ted St ates to garrison fo rt s,positions, stations, and other place s,and to man vessels of all sorts in said serv i ce. And upon this act, sincerely be l i eved to be an a ct of justice, wa rra nted by the Constitution upon military nece s s i ty, I invo ke the considerate judgment of mankind and the gracious favor of Almighty God. In witness where o f, I have here u nto set my hand and caused the seal of the Un i ted States to be affixed. Done at the city of Washington, this first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the indepe n d e n ce of the Un i ted St ates of Am e ri ca the eighty - s eve nt h . —Ab raham Linco l n

Despite Lincoln’s attempts to keep the issue of slavery from being linked with the war’s motives, neither he nor Confederate President Jefferson Davis could remove slavery as the major issue of a long and costly war. Most members of the Republican Party believed that the Constitution protected slavery in the states. However, some Radical Republicans argued that after the outbreak of the open rebellion the president had the power to abolish slavery. In May 1861, General Benjamin F. Butler was placed in command of Fort Monroe in Virginia. When runaway slaves began to appear at the fort seeking protection, their owners demanded their return. Though not particularly opposed to slavery, Butler refused, brilliantly improvising the idea that slaves were spoils of war and so could not be returned, thus depriving the slave owners of the economic benefit of their property. Lincoln believed that Butler’s action was unconstitutional but decided not to reprimand the general. Shortly afterward, General John C. Fremont proclaimed that all slaves owned by Confederates in Missouri were free, and Lincoln promptly fired him. His replacement, Henry Halleck, immediately issued an order forbidding runaway slaves from being protected by the Union Army.

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Lincoln’s action in firing Fremont was viewed as an unnecessary move to appease the border states (four states which, though slave states, had not seceded from the Union). Congressional Republicans pushed for politicization of the issue. In August 1861, the First Confiscation Act was passed, allowing Union army commanders to seize slaves as plunder of war. However, the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law required certain slaves to be returned to their masters. This dilemma was resolved on March 13, 1862, when Congress forbade the army to return any fugitive slave (this directive was to be enforced under threat of court-martial). On April 16, 1862, a law was created to allow for the gradual emancipation of all slaves in Washington, D.C., and on July 17 the Second Confiscation Act declared that confiscated slaves “shall be forever free.” The year 1862 also saw a repeat of the Fremont situation when General David Hunter issued a statement declaring that slaves in Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina were to be declared free. Lincoln quickly ord e re d Hunter to retract his proclamation as he still feared that this action would force slave owners in the border states to join the Confederates. On August 19, 1862, Horace Greeley, the famous editor of the New York Tribune, c r i ticized the president for failing to make slavery the dominant issue of the war and for compromising moral principles for political reasons. The writing was on the wall, and Lincoln could not but read it. At this time, Lincoln was already considering the power of the pre s idency to destroy slavery. He privately admitted that the war’s events had changed his mind on emancipation. Lincoln began writing his “Preliminary Proclamation” during the summer of 1862. He read his initial draft to Secre t a ry of State William H. Seward and Secre t a ry of the Navy Gideon Welles on July 13, 1862. Seward immediately warned of anarchy in the South and possible foreign intervention and Welles’s response (if t h e re was one) is lost to history. On July 22, Lincoln read the pro c l a m ation in a regular Cabinet meeting—to mixed reaction. Secre t a ry of War Edwin M. Stanton correctly interpreted the proclamation as a military measure designed both to deprive the Confederacy of slave labor and to bring in former slaves as additional manpower for the Union Army; he was in favor of its immediate release. Several others were similarly supportive, but Postmaster General Montgomery Blair argued that if Lincoln made the proclamation public the Republican Party would be defeated in the fall elections. Seward agreed with Lincoln’s decision but suggested that the proclamation should not be made until the Union Army had a major mili t a ryvictory because of doubt in the Arm y ’s ability to enforce such an edict. Lincoln did not have to wait long for that victory. On September 17, 1862, Lee attempted to invade the North. He was stopped by McClellan at Antietam in the border state of Maryland. This was the bloodiest day in America’s history as single-day federal losses were numbered at more than 12,000 and Confederate losses at more than 10,000. Although neither side gained a decisive victory, the Battle of Antietam is generally regarded as a Union victory because Lee’s failure to carry the war into the North caused Great Britain to postpone recognition of the Confederate govern m e n t (Lincoln, recognizing that McClellan’s bumbling had forced the battle m o re or less to a draw rather than to a crippling Confederate defeat, finally fired the general). Antietam gave Lincoln the excuse he had been seeking to issue the final version of the Emancipation Proclamation. Since Lincoln doubted that he

A delayed proclamation? 79

had constitutional authority to free the slaves (despite reassurances to the contrary), the proclamation was a military order issued by Lincoln in his capacity as commander-in-chief, rather than a statute passed by Congress, or a constitutional amendment. There was some argument that the proclamation itself was unconstitutional, as the commander-in-chief directs the armed forces; he does not make new laws. The final draft of the Emancipation Proclamation was signed on January 1, 1863. T h e re were two major changes from the document read to the Cabinet on September 22. These included the omission of the passage objected to by conservatives in Lincoln’s Cabinet, suggesting that the government was willing to support slave rebellions in the South. The other change made under pressure fro m Radical Republicans was that the Proclamation now also allowed the admittance of freed slaves into the United States military, an opportunity taken advantage of by 180,000 form e r slaves.

An 1888 lithograph of Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. (Library of Congress)

President Abraham Lincoln reads the Emancipation Proclamation to his cabinet. (Library of Congress)

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Confederate Response to the Emancipation Proclamation

An Ad d ress to the People of the Free States by the Pre s i d e nt of the Southern Confe d e ra cy, Richmond, J a n u a ry5, 1863: “Ci t i zens of the non-slaveholding St ates of Am e ri ca , s wayed by pe a ceable motive s, I have used all my influence, o ften there by endangering my position as the Pre s i d e nt of the Southern Co n fe d e ra cy, to have the unhappy co n f l i ct now existing be tween my people and yo u r s e l ve s, g overned by those well established intern at i o n a l ru l e s, which here to fo re have softened the aspe rities which nece s s a rily are the co n co m i t a nts of a s t ate of belligerency, but all my effo rts in the pre mises have here tofo re been unava i l i n g. Now, t h e refo re, I am co m pelled e necessitati re i to employ a m e a s u re, which most willingly I would have omitted to do, regard i n g, as I always must, St ate Ri g ht s, as the ve ry organism of po l i t i cally assoc i ated soc iety. “For nearly two years my people have been d e fending their inherent ri g hts their political, s ocial and religious ri g hts against the spe c u l ators of New England and their allies in the St ates h e re to fo re re g a rded as conservat i ve. The people of the Southern Co n fe d e ra cy have — m a king sacri f i ces such as the mod e rn world has never witnessed—patiently, but determinedly, stood between their home interests and the we l l paid, well fed and well clad merce n a ries of the

Abolitionists, and I need not say that they have nobly vindicated the good name of Am e ri can citize n s. He re to fo re, the wa rfare has been co n d u cted by white men—pe e r s, scions of the same stoc k ; but the programme has been changed, and yo u r rulers despairing of a triumph by the employm e nt of white men, have degraded you and themselves, by inviting the coo pe ration of the black ra ce. Th u s, while they depre cate the interve nt i o n of white men—the French and the English—in behalf of the Southern Co n fe d e ra cy, they, these Abolitionists, do not hesitate to invo ke the inte rve ntion of the Af ri can ra ce in favor of the North. “The time has, t h e re fo re, come when a becoming re s pe ct for the good opinion of the civilized world i m pels me to set forth the fo l l owing fact s : “First. Ab raham Lincoln, the Pre s i d e nt of the NonSlaveholding States, has issued his proc l a m at i o n , declaring the slaves within the limits of the Southern Co n federacy to be fre e. “Se co n d. Ab raham Lincoln has declared that the slaves so emancipated may be used in the Army and Navy, n ow under his co nt ro l , by which he means to employ, against the Free People of the South, insurre ct i o n a ry measure s, the inevitable tendency of which will be to inaugurate a Servile War, and t h e re by prove destru ct i ve, in a gre at measure, to s l ave pro pe rty.“ Now, there fo re, as a co m pe n s atory

The Emancipation Proclamation actually had limited immediate effect upon slavery; slaves in the border states that remained loyal to the Union were not affected. In short, if a state remained loyal to the Union it could continue to own slaves. If any seceding state had rejoined the Union before the Proclamation took effect, it would have been in the same position as the border states and might have kept slavery, at least until the ratification in 1865 of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which finally outlawed slavery throughout the entire nation.

AC TUA L H ISTO RY The signing of the surrender at Appomattox signaled the true beginning of the collapse of slavery in the Confederate States. However, even after the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 and two more years of war,

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I N C ON TE X T

Confederate Response to the Emancipation (Continued)

m e a s u re, I do here by issue the fo l l owing Ad d re s s to the People of the No n - Sl aveholding St ate s :“On and after February 22, 1863, all free negroes within the limits of the Southern Co n fe d e ra cy shall be p l a ced on the slave stat u s, and be deemed to be c h at te l s, they and their issue fo reve r. “All negroe s who shall be taken in any of the St ates in which s l avery does not now ex i s t, in the prog ress of our arm s, shall be adjudged, immediately after such ca p t u re, to oc c u py the slave stat u s,and in all States which shall be vanquished by our arm s, all fre e n e g roes shall, ipso facto, be re d u ced to the co n d ition of helotism, so that the re s pe ctive normal co nditions of the white and black ra ces may be u l t i m ately placed on a permanent basis, so as to p reve nt the public pe a ce from being there a fte r endangered. “Th e re fo re, while I would not ignore the co n s e rvat i ve po l i cy of the Sl ave St ates, namely, t h at a Federal Govern m e nt cannot, without violating the fundamental principles of a Constitution, i nte rfe re with the inte rnal policy of several States; s i n ce, h oweve r, Ab raham Lincoln has seen fit to i g n o re the Constitution he has solemnly swo rn to support, it ought not be co n s i d e red po l e m i cally or po l i t i cally impro per in me to vindicate the position which has been at an early day of this Southern re p u b l i c, assumed by the Co n federacy, namely, t h at slavery is the co rn e r - s tone of a We s te rn Republic. It is not nece s s a ry for me to elabo rate this pro position. I may merely refer, in passing, to

the pro m i n e nt fact, that the South is emphat i cally a producing section of No rth Am e rica; this is equally true of the West and No rthwest, the people of which have been mainly depe n d e nt on the South for the consumption of their prod u ct s. Th e other States, in which slave ry does not ex i s t, h ave occupied a middle position, as to the South, West and No rthwest. The St ates of New England, f rom which all complicated difficulties have arisen, owe their gre atness and power to the free suff rages of all other sections of No rth Am e ri ca ; and ye t,as is now ev i d e nt, they have, from the adoption of the Federal Constitution, waged a persistent wa rfare against the inte rests of all the other St ates of the old Un i o n . The gre at ce nt re of their opposition has been Sl ave ry, while the annual statistics of their re s pective State Gove rn m e nts abundant l y p rove that they entertain within all their bo u n daries fe wer negroes than any single St ate which d oes not to l e rate slavery. “In view of these fact s, and conscientiously believing that the pro per co ndition of the negro is slave ry, or a co m p l e te subjection to the white man—and entertaining the belief t h at the day is not distant when the old Union will be re s to red with slave ry nationally declared to be the pro per condition of all of Af ri can desce nt, and in view of the future harm o ny and prog ress of all the St ates of Am e ri ca , I have been induced to issue this addre s s, so that there may be no misunderstanding in the future.” —Je f ferson Dav i s

including military service by black troops, the nation was still unprepared to deal with the question of full citizenship for its newly freed black population. The period of Reconstruction was slated to reorganize the southern states after the Civil War while providing the means for readmitting them as full members of the Union. Also recognized at this time was the necessity of determining the methods by which whites and blacks could live together as equals in a free society. However, the South, seeing Reconstruction as a humiliation inflicted by a vengeful North, did not accept it. While federal and state governments needed to plan for the adoption of new state constitutions, new land policies, and new rights of suffrage, the reform of governing institutions proved easier to accomplish than the reform of racial attitudes. On December 6 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution was ratified. This amendment, which officially abolished slavery in all areas of the United States, reads as follows:

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Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. C o n g ress passed two further Reconstruction amendments to the Constitution. The Fourteenth Amendment (ratified July 9, 1868) made AfricanAmericans citizens and protected citizens from discriminatory state laws. S o u t h e rn states were re q u i red to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment before being readmitted to the Union. The Fifteenth Amendment (ratified February 2, 1870) guaranteed African-American men the right to vote. Since Confederate military and political leaders were prohibited from participating in the political process at this time, Republican governments stepped in and were able to retain control by depending upon the support of the newly freed blacks. Native white Southerners who supported the federal reconstruction plan and cooperated with the blacks in order to achieve their own ends were known as scalawags, a term originally applied to worthless livestock. Most scalawags had opposed the Confederacy in earlier times and now wanted a new South to rise from the decimated remains of the Old South. Some, however, worked with the Republican governments only to gain access to money-making opportunities. Nort h e rners who went south were c o n s i d e red the worst kind of pro f i t - h u n g ry opportunist and their label “carpetbaggers” (after the cheap bags made of carpet material that most of them carried) to this day still means what it did in the Reconstruction era. It is true however, that many so-called carpetbaggers were teachers from the North and members of missionary organizations who worked tirelessly to give the emancipated population the opportunity to learn. Indeed, former slaves of every age (even grandfathers) took advantage of the opportunity to become literate. The story of Reconstruction is to a great extent exemplified by the tension between the newly granted rights of freed slaves and the unreconstructed racism of Southerners and Northerners alike. Tension also developed between the so-called Radical Reconstructionists, who sought a complete overhaul of southern society in the image of the North, and the moderates, who urged reconciliation and the handing over of reconstruction responsibility to the southern states. With the abolition of slavery, the “three-fifths clause” in the Constitution became null and void as blacks were now counted as whole citizens. This change actually helped the South gain political power because their pro p o rtionate representation was now based on a larger population. In the period 1867–1868, Congress passed laws designed to address the question of African-American rights as well as how the southern states would be gove rned. These acts—which in reality served as a stopgap until the Reconstruction amendments to the Constitution (the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments) could be proposed and ratified—included the creation of the Freedmen’s Bureau (a type of legal and social services org a nization for freed blacks that also ran its own courts, since it was illegal for blacks to testify in the courts of many southern states), the Civil Rights Act

A delayed proclamation? 83

of 1866 (which granted blacks full citizenship), and several Reconstruction acts. The Reconstruction acts established military rule over southern states until new governments could be formed. They also limited some former Confederate officials’ and military officers’ rights to vote and to run for public office. Meanwhile, the Reconstruction acts gave former male slaves the right to vote. Into this period of African-American progress and black hope rode the Ku Klux Klan. Founded in Pulaski, Tennessee, in 1866 by former Confederate officers, the members of the groups are believed to have taken their name from the Greek word for circle, kuklos. Originally an informal vigilante group, the members dressed in white sheets, covered their faces with white masks, and posed as spirits of the Confederate dead raised from the battlefields, galloping their horses about town after dark. They found appealing their ability to strike fear into their enemies anonymously; factions formed in different towns, and in April 1867 a meeting was called to unify command of the organization. At this meeting, former Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest was elected Grand Wizard, or supreme leader, of all the Klan. The organization was divided into a number of realms, dominions, provinces, and dens, which were in turn led by Grand Dragons, Titans, Giants, and Cyclopes. The policies of Reconstruction had the effect of turning hundreds of resentful and anxious white veterans into Klansmen, who began waging guerilla warfare against what they perceived as a corrupt system depriving them of rights. Former slaves were the primary target of this t e rrorism, but the Klan also intimidated and killed nort h e rnteachers, judges, politicians, and carpetbaggers. Soon the Klan’s reputation for violence caused prominent citizens to leave it and criminals began to fill the ranks. In disgust, Forrest officially disbanded the organization in 1869 but local units continued to operate for years afterward. Republican President Ulysses Grant entered office on March 4, 1869, and declared war against terror. He lost. Through violence and intimidation, the Democratic Party—the “white man’s party”—triumphed in state after state. In 1877 the Republicans, in order to keep the White House, abandoned their black allies in the South and handed power in that region back to the Democrats. The Democrats constructed a system of white supremacy. By the time of World War I, blacks in the South had lost the right to vote. Their separate schools lagged further and further behind the white schools. Racial segregation b a rred blacks from entire sectors of the economy and humiliated them at every turn. Violence, especially lynchings, stalked their lives. Robbed of the vote, and with nort h e rn whites indiff e rent to their plight, blacks searched for a strategy that might bring about economic advance, educational progress, and physical Booker T. Washington said that politics failed the safety. Between 1890 and 1910, black leaders African American. (Library of Congress)

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argued over several alternatives. The most popular, strongly advocated by former slave Booker T. Washington, advanced the idea that politics had failed blacks and the only path to African-American development was through economic progress. Washington urged blacks to improve their schools, acquire land, and start small businesses. And he advised them not to protest and agitate for justice but to destroy racial prejudice by demonstrating an example of hard work, morality, and success. He argued that if blacks could persuade whites to look upon them as economic assets, then whites would treat them as equals rather than peons. Because of Washington’s efforts, men like Andrew Carnegie gave millions of dollars to black schools in the South. Between 1890 and 1940 came the Jim Crow era, which saw the cruelest wave of racial hatred that America had yet experienced. During this time thousands if not millions of African Americans were disenfranchised, beaten, tortured, and killed. According to newspaper records, at least 5,000 men, women, and children were murdered outright, tortured to death in documented public rituals—human sacrifices called “lynchings.” Public murders not reported by the newspapers plus similar executions under the veneer of due process were estimated at about 20,000 killings. Blacks had little reason to believe that their situation would improve during the 1930s. The Great Depression affected them even more severely than it did whites. And President Franklin Roosevelt, dependent on the support of southern white Democrats, showed little interest in the problems of blacks. This vacuum was left to be filled by the Communist Party, which became a major player in the civil rights struggle. However, Roosevelt’s New Deal program, while not attacking racial segregation, did extend benefits to blacks. The New Deal strengthened the power of the federal government, and this indirectly threatened white southern politicians. Most blacks liked Roosevelt, and in 1936 those who could vote switched to the Democratic Party. Democratic presidents now had to balance the interests of black voters in the North, who wanted to end discrimination against their southern brethren, against the desire of white voters in the South to maintain racial segregation. World War II brought many changes in the lives of African Americans, including the promise of increased economic security. As it cut off immigration, the war diminished the labor pool and created a greater demand for black workers. In 1944, there were a million more black laborers in civilian jobs than in 1940. Consequently, blacks were hopeful that the war’s end would bring them greater assimilation and acceptance by mainstream white society. The Harry Truman administration (1945–1952), lent encouragement to all American blacks. President Truman introduced his ten-point omnibus Civil Rights Bill in 1948. Additionally, his directive of 1948 ordering desegregation in all American armed forces paved the way for desegregation in civilian life. There were additional encouraging events in the 1950s. The major breakthrough occurred with the now famous U.S. Supreme Court decision of 1954 (Brown v. Board of Education), which declared that segregation based on race in public school education was in violation of “the equal protection of the law guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment” and therefore unconstitutional.

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The March on Washington brought speakers to the grounds of the Lincoln Memorial to speak out for an end to southern racial violence, for equal opportunity in employment, and for equal access in education and public accommodations. It was at this event that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered his historic “I Have a Dream” speech. This march and the conditions that brought it into being are credited with putting pressure on President John F. Kennedy and then Lyndon B. Johnson that culminated in the passage the Civil Rights Act of 1964 banning discrimination in public accommodations, employment, and labor unions.

ALTE RN ATE H IST O RY Suppose Lincoln had not issued the Emancipation Proclamation when he did? Several scenarios are possible. There have always been those who believed that the proclamation was of little if any practical benefit to slaves at the time it was issued and was primarily meant as a military measure. So what would have been the military result of postponing the proclamation indefinitely? Almost certainly the Civil War would have been prolonged because of the economic benefit the South derived from keeping slaves; it probably would not have lasted long, however, because Confederate forces would have been showing signs of hardship by the time of the Battle of Gettysburg. Although a thorough examination of Union and Confederate diplomatic initiatives in Europe is beyond the scope of this chapter, Great Britain and the southern states would have had close economic links because of their mutual involvement in the trade. Many Britons, particularly of the aristocratic and ruling classes, would have been far more sympathetic to the Confederacy than to the Union, even on questions of slavery. In an attempt to gain support for the Confederate States of America from European nations during the war, the Confederacy would have dispatched two diplomats to Europe to seek diplomatic recognition. While James M. Mason, minister to Britain and John Slidell, minister to France were traveling on board a British vessel, the RMS Trent, they would have been arrested at sea by Union military personnel. In London this news would have been perceived as a flagrant violation of maritime law, and the British government would have issued an ultimatum demanding an apology and the release of the Confederate diplomats. At the same moment France would have declared its willingness to support Britain in a war with the United States. Through sophisticated diplomatic maneuvering, Lincoln and Secre t a ry of State William H. Seward would have been able to avert war with Great Britain. The significance of the Trent Affair is that it would have built confidence between the governments of Britain and the United States. The successful resolution of the crisis by Seward (who would have been known for his belligerence toward England) would have changed British attitudes toward him and produced a sense that continued peace with the United States was likely, and this perception would

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have served to distance the British from the Confederacy. As a result, all of Europe would have followed Britain’s lead in postponing diplomatic recognition of the Confederacy. The issuing of the Emancipation Proclamation would have been Lincoln’s most important diplomatic move of the war. The proclamation, in his own words, would have been a practical measure to prevent the Confederacy from achieving foreign recognition. The proclamation would have found massive support from the British working classes, and this would have influenced the British government against recognition. Had Britain granted diplomatic recognition to the Confederate States of America, the CSA would have been able to negotiate as a sovereign nation and would thus could have gained allies and military supplies for In an alternate history, France’s Napoleon III would further battle, both of which the South deshave been a key ally of the Confederacy. (Library of perately would have needed after Lee’s Congress) defeat at Gettysburg in 1863. A likely ally of the Confederacy would have been France, which already would have had men and materiel in Mexico; also, Napoleon III would have been eager for the overthrow of Lincoln. Very likely a successful French intervention would have begun to turn the tide against the Union forces, and the subsequent entrance of the British military (who already would have had troops in Canada) might have created World War I fifty years early, since Seward would havewarned that any foreign military intervention in the conflict would have worldwide repercussions. Certainly in that case the United States would have ceased to exist, for the Union forces were in no shape to withstand such a concentration of military power (though effective propaganda from Washington, D.C., might have kept the peace by convincing Europe otherwise). It is tempting in this case to speculate on a North American continent divided between British and French forces. Because of the proximity of their respective troops, Britain would have probably moved from Canada and taken the nort h e rn states—half of the American mainland—while France would have held the South. There would have been, inevitably, war between these two powers over King Cotton, still all-powerful in the South, while Britain, possessing the North’s manufacturing capability, would have been in a position to constantly replenish its ordnance and equipment. It is questionable whether the unpredictable Napoleon III would have focused his attention on defeating England in America or would have goaded Otto von Bismarck and King Wilhelm into the FrancoPrussian War. Since the British would have been at their military peak at this time and would have been reinforced by the capture of the

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superior American ironclad ships, it would have appeared inevitable that France would have been defeated by the British at some point in the 1860s. At this point, England’s situation in 1870 might have been likened to Germany’s situation in 1940—the largest Great Power in Europe, with a greatly expanded empire. The difference would have been that the Great Britain of 1870 would have had no obvious opponent except Russia. With no challenger in Europe, Britain’s power would have served to keep the budding German empire neutralized. This would have prevented or at least restricted the rise of German militarism in the twentieth century. In a weakened German empire, Kaiser Wilhelm would have never begun World War I; consequently, Tzarist Russia would not have been destabilized to an extent that allowed for the Bolshevik Revolution, and with Britain as the prime worldwide capitalist power in control of the world’s economy, the crash of 1929 would not have created a widespread European depression. In comfortable economic times, Adolf Hitler would have finished out the 1930s as an unsuccessful Austrian artist. Without World War II, Britain would have been wealthy enough to hold Palestine, and in the absence of the Holocaust, the founding of Israel might have been less of a priority to the world Jewish community, which might have reduced or eliminated much of the present strife in the Middle East. But what of England’s colonies? England’s often racist and brutal attitudes toward those it subjugated (witness India, Ireland, and the Chinese opium trade) suggest that it would have been engaged in constant warfare to suppress uprisings. Recent world history suggests that the cataclysms of the twentieth century demonstrated that a benign attitude toward one’s trading partners is the best avenue for peaceful coexistence and the best path for profit, but one wonders how long it would have taken England to develop this attitude without the suffering it endured through the two world wars. A key to Lincoln’s true motives in creating the Emancipation Proclamation can probably be found in the fact that it was issued as a military order by the commander-in-chief of the Union armed forces rather than as a statute passed by Congress or as a constitutional amendment. There seems to be little argument that the order was originally meant as a military measure instead of the moral imperative later historians have claimed it to be. Nonetheless, Abraham Lincoln understood the groundbreaking nature of the proclamation. Kevin F. Wozniak

Discussion Questions 1. In actual history, what factors tended to prevent both the British and the French from intervening in the American Civil War?

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2. If Abraham Lincoln had not issued the Emancipation Proclamation, how would that have affected the abolition of slavery, considering that it duplicated the effect of the Confiscation Act of 1862? 3. If Britain had intervened on the Union side, what precautions would the Union government have put in place to prevent British domination? How would relations between the nort h e rn states and Britain have developed over subsequent decades? 4. If Britain had intervened on the Confederate side, how long would it have taken Union troops to conquer Canada? 5. What effect would a British intervention or invasion on the Confederate side have had on the position of the Copperheads (Peace Democrats) in the North? 6. If the British had sought to extend their intervention to establishing the Union states as part of the British Empire, how would American people and politicians have reacted? In a clash between American forces and British forces in the 1860s and 1870s, what factors would have favored a British victory? What factors would have favored an American victory? If the British had won, how would the United States be different today?

Bibliography and Further Reading Ahrens, Frank. “The Slave Revolt that Shook Virginia.” Washington Post, December 14, 1994, pp. H-1, H-5. Brooks, Roy L. Atonement and Forgiveness: A New Model for Black Reparations. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004. Commager, Henry Steele. The Great Proclamation. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1960. Guelzo, Allen C. Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004. Holt, Michael F. The Fate of Their Country: Politicians, Slavery Extension, and the Coming of the Civil War. New York: Hill and Wang, 2004. McPherson, James M. Battle Cry of Freedom (Oxford History of the United States Series): The Civil War Era. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. Milhollen, Hirst Dillon, and James Ralph Johnson. Best Photos of the Civil War. New York: Fawcett, 1961. Neely, Mark E. The Last Best Hope of Earth: Abraham Lincoln and the Promise of America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995. Taylor, Alrutheus Ambush. The Negro in the Reconstruction of Virginia. Washington, DC: Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, 1926. Vorenberg, Michael. Final Freedom: The Civil War, the Abolition of Slavery, and the Thirteenth Amendment. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Williamson, Joel. After Slavery: The Negro in South Carolina during Reconstruction, 1861–1877. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina

Battle of Gettysburg

6

In 1863 the North was victorious at the Battle of Gettysburg. What if the Southern forces had defeated Union General George Meade?

INTR ODU CT IO N The Battle of Gettysburg, fought July 1 to 3, 1863, is widely regarded as an important turning point in the American Civil War. Like many military engagements, the battle, once begun, took on a life of its own. Over the course of the three-day battle, the fortunes of each side seemed to rise and fall with every passing hour. At several key points in the battle, different decisions might have brought about very different results. A different outcome in the momentous Battle of Gettysburg might have had considerable repercussions on the course of the Civil War and beyond. The long road to Gettysburg began in December 1860, when South Carolina became the first state to withdraw (secede) from the United States. Six other states—Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas—followed almost immediately. In Febru a ry 1861, the new Confederate States of America established its own government based in Montgomery, Alabama. The capital would later move to Richmond, Vi rginia. Jefferson Davis was named provisional president of the Confederacy. The Confederate Constitution was modeled closely on the U.S. Constitution but it included a provision for a single six-year pre s i d e ntial term, a guarantee of the right to own slaves, and a greater emphasis on states’ rights. Disputes involving the question of states’ rights (the ability of individual states to conduct their own affairs with relatively little interference from the federal government) had been one of the major issues prompting the southern states to secede. Also central to the secessionists’ decision was the “peculiar institution” of slavery, something that many Southerners were determined to maintain despite growing opposition from northern abolitionists. At the heart of the sectional tensions between North and South were two conflicting visions of society that seemed difficult to reconcile by the mid-nineteenth century. The southern vision was of an agrarian society in which slavery played an important role. The

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North, however, was increasingly characterized by a free-market economy based on industrial and commercial capitalism. Especially contentious for North-South relations was the question of whether slavery should be permitted to expand into newly formed western territories. Several attempts at compromise—including the Compromise of 1850 and the Kansas-Nebraska Act—had failed to settle the issue of slavery in the territories, and tensions continued to mount throughout the 1850s. Southerners began to talk more and more of secession, while antislavery sentiment continued to rise in the Nort h . Following the 1860 presidential election, many Southerners feared for their future with Abraham Lincoln in office. Lincoln’s Republican ideology of free-labor capitalism seemed incompatible with the southern way of life, which depended on the expansion of slavery. Additionally, a g rowing demographic imbalance (the population of the North was almost three times the free population of the South by the 1850s) meant that the interests of the slave states carried relatively little weight in national politics. From the perspective of southern secessionists, there seemed little choice but to withdraw from the Union—even if doing so meant risking war. Lincoln hoped that the secession crisis might be resolved peacefully and the Union preserved without bloodshed. As he remarked in his First Inaugural Address: “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection,” according to James M. McPherson, in Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. Lincoln’s overtures for a peaceful resolution came to no avail. Confederate troops fired on Fort Sumter, a Federal garrison on South Carolina soil, on April 12, 1861, thus beginning the American Civil War. The outbreak of hostilities meant that the states of the Upper South would have to decide whose side they were on. Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee all chose secession, bringing the total number of Confederate states to eleven. Four border slave states—Mary l a n d , Delaware, Kentucky, and Missouri—remained with the Union, as did the newly created state of West Virginia. At the outset of the fighting, both sides were confident of a quick victory. Neither side could have predicted that the war would drag on for four years and cost more than 620,000 soldiers their lives. By the spring of 1863, when plans were being laid for what would eventually be the Battle of Gettysburg, both sides longed for an end to the bloodshed. Federal troops had suffered a string of losses to smaller Confederate forces in Virginia in 1862 and 1863, and Union morale was at an all-time low. With frustration mounting over the Union’s apparent inability to win the war, the peace movement in the North continued to gather steam. Federal forces were faring better in the western theater, where Ulysses S. Grant and his army had laid siege to Vicksburg—the last Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi. Nevertheless, the lion’s share of attention was focused on the eastern theater of the war. What was needed in order to boost northern morale was a major victory against General Robert E. Lee’s seemingly invincible Army of Northern Virginia. Despite his army’s recent successes on the battlefield, Lee also re c o gnized that a decisive victory was needed to bring an end to the fighting. Confederate victories at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville in particular,

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while significant morale boosters for the South, had come at a heavy cost to both sides. The Confederacy could not hope to win a war of attrition against the larger and more populous North. As Lee later explained, he had to decide “either to re t i re to Richmond and stand a siege, which must ultimately have ended in surrender, or to invade Pennsylvania,” according to Stephen W. Sears in Gettysburg. Rather than await another Union invasion into Virginia, Lee therefore decided to “take the war to the enemy.” An earlier attempt by Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia to invade Union territory had been unsuccessful, ending in a technical victory for the Union as Lee and his men were forced to retreat to Virginia. As far as the Confederate general was concerned, though, the outcome of the Battle of Antietam (the bloodiest single day of American history) was due to an unfortunate coincidence. After defeating the Army of the Potomac at the Second Battle of Bull Run in late August 1862, Lee’s forces had pursued the enemy into Union territory. On September 17, the two sides collided near Sharpsburg, Maryland. The Army of Northern Virginia might have prevailed if a Federal soldier had not found a copy of Lee’s battle plans lost by a Confederate officer. Such bad luck, Lee felt certain, was unlikely to happen again. He was extremely confident—perhaps too confident— that this time his army would successfully defeat Union forces on their own soil. Lee had several reasons for wanting to invade Pennsylvania. In a pragmatic sense, he welcomed the opportunity for his troops to live off northern crops for a while. Food and provisions were hard to come by in war-ravaged Virginia. Additionally, Lee realized that things were not going well for Confederate forces in the west. He hoped that a quick victory by his army, particularly on northern soil, might force Lincoln to recall some Union forces from Mississippi to help defend the North’s capital. At the very least, Lee reasoned, a major victory in the east would offset any Confederate losses in the west. Moreover, Lee realized that his forces could inflict a serious blow to Union morale by defeating the Army of the Potomac in its own territory. Such a blow, Lee believed, would be enough to convince the Union to seek a negotiated peace. Finally, Lee hoped that a Confederate victory on Union soil would convince Great Britain and France to recognize the Confederacy as an independent nation. After receiving approval for a northern campaign from Confederate president Jefferson Davis and his cabinet in a 5 to 1 vote (the one dissenter was Postmaster-General John Reagan, a Texan who maintained that the war in Mississippi should have top priority), Lee set about making preparations to invade Pennsylvania. He began by reorganizing the Army of Northern Virginia. Lieutenant General James Longstreet remained in command of the First Corps, which was reduced from four divisions to three. The Second Corps, also reduced from four divisions to three, was placed under Lieutenant General Richard S. Ewell. The previous commander of the Second Corps, Stonewall Jackson, had been killed by friendly fire at Chancellorsville. Lee also added a Third Corps, which he placed under the command of a newly promoted lieutenant general named Ambrose Powell Hill. Soldiers from Hill’s division would be the first to encounter enemy fire at Gettysburg. With the re o rganization of his army complete, Lee ordered the first of his units westward from their camps around Fredericksburg, Virginia, on

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The European View

One of Le e’s object i ves in launching the Pe n n s y l vania assault was to win diplomatic re cog n ition for the Confederacy from abro a d. Ea rly in the war, the Co n fe d e rate gove rn m e nt was confident that Britain and Fra n ce would inte rvene to offer mili t a ry assistance or, at the very least, mediation. Even an offer of mediation would have been very be n e f icial to the South, as it would have meant re cog n ition for the sovereignty of the Confe d e ra cy as a s e p a rate nation. Both fo reign powers ce rtainly had a stake in the co n f l i ct. British and French textile industries d e pended heavily on co t ton from the Am e ri ca n South. The war disru p ted the co t ton trade to such an exte nt that Britain in particular co nte m p l ated i nte rve ntion to bring a spe e dy end to the co n f l i ct . In

addition to co n ce rns about southern cotton, Fra n ce had a further inte rest in the outcome of the Am e ri can Civil War. Louis Na po l e o n , e m pe ror of Fra n ce, planned to install Arc h d u ke Maximilian of Au s t ria as empe ror of Mex i co. In June 1863 a French a rmy ca p t u red Mex i co Ci ty and ove rt h rew the re p u b l i cangove rn m e nt of Be n i to Ju á rez.The French ruler realized that a divided Am e ri ca would be less l i kely to thwart his imperial ambitions by enforcing the Mo n roe Doct ri n e. He there fore wished to see the Confe d e ra cy re cog n i zed as a separate nation, but he was reluct a nt to act without British suppo rt . The like l i h ood of Eu ropean inte rvention rose and fell with the prog ress of the war. Fo l l owing a s t ring of Northern naval and military victo ries in the s p ring of 1862, Am e ri can ministers abroad re po rte d

June 3. His plan was to swing west into the Shenandoah Valley and then n o rtheast along the valley. Ewell’s Second Corps would lead the Army of Nort h e rn Virginia, which now numbered 75,000 troops, on the long march into Pennsylvania. Aware of the Confederate troops’ movement but unsure of their ultimate destination, Union commander “Fighting Joe” Hooker proposed taking his own forces south to capture the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia. Lincoln disapproved of the plan, however, believing that as long as Lee’s army remained intact the war would not be won. The president advised Hooker: “I think Lee’s army, and not Richmond, is your sure objective point,” according to Steven E. Woodworth in Beneath a Northern Sky: A Short History of the Gettysburg Campaign. A reluctant Hooker there f o re ordered his forces to pursue Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia into Union terr i t o ry.

On June 28 a Confederate spy informed Lee that the Army of the Potomac had reached Frederick, Maryland. Frederick was only forty miles south of Chambersburg, where Lee had set up his headquarters. The news came as a surprise to the Confederate commander, who had believed his opponents were still in Virginia. Ordinarily Lee’s cavalry commander J. E. B. (“Jeb”) Stuart would have kept the commanding general apprised of Union troop movements. Four days earlier, however, Stuart had set out with half his cavalry corps—including the most experienced troops and commanders—on an attempt to ride completely around the Army of the Potomac. The Union forces were moving north so quickly that Stuart

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The European View (Continued)

that talk of inte rve ntion had all but disappe a red. By late summer, h oweve r, it appeared that Confe d e rate h o pes for Eu ro pean diplomatic re cognition might be re a l i zed after all. Britain was beginning to feel the pinch of “Co t ton diplomacy,” as the supply of raw co t ton in Britain fell to one-third of its pre war leve l . More important, Confe d e rate success in the Shenandoah Va l l ey and the Seven Days’ Bat t l e s m e a nt that the pendulum of military victo ries had swung back towa rd the Co n fe d e ra cy. Visco u nt Palmerston, the British prime ministe r, i n s i s ted that the Confe d e ra cy needed to prove its viability as a nation through military success be fore he would consider offe ring diplomatic re cognition. By the end of the summer, e s pecially fo l l owing the Confe d e rate v i ctory at the Se cond Battle of Bull Ru n , the South appeared to be doing just that .

By September 1862, a British-French offer of mediation and diplomatic recognition was close at hand.The tide of war changed once again, however, with the Co n fe d e rate defe at at Antietam on Se p te m ber 17. When Le e’s army re t re ated to Virginia following that especially bloody battle, any hope of European intervention was at least tempo ra rily dashed. Upon hearing re ports about Antietam, Palmerston concluded: “We must continue merely to be lookers-on until the war shall have taken a more decided turn,” according to Roger L. Ramson in The Co n fe d e ra te States of Ameri ca : What Might Have Been. Lee and the Confederate government hoped that a victory on northern soil, in the summer of 1863, would bring about the sort of “decided turn” that the European powers awaited.

found it impossible to rejoin Lee as planned. The loss of contact with his cavalry commander would seriously hamper Lee’s efforts in the days ahead, as the two opposing forces moved toward a major collision. Upon receiving the news of his enemy’s whereabouts, Lee immediately ordered his army to concentrate around Cashtown, nine miles west of Gettysburg. Earlier that day Lincoln had replaced “Fighting Joe” Hooker with General George G. Meade, the fifth general to lead the Army of the Potomac that year. While Lee respected Meade as a commander, he was confident that it would take some time for the Army of the Potomac to adjust to the change in command. Lee therefore resolved to engage the Army of the Potomac in a battle as soon as possible. First, though, Lee needed to get all of his own units concentrated—a process that he expected would take four or five days. One of Meade’s first actions as commander of the Army of the Potomac was to send Major General John Buford and his cavalry out to find Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. Buford and 4,000 of his mounted soldiers entered Gettysburg at about 11 A.M. on June 30. On the same morning a Confederate brigade under James Pettigrew also entered Gettysburg, reportedly in search of a supply of shoes for Confederate troops. Upon spotting blue-clad soldiers on the outskirts of town, Pettigrew withdrew with his men to Cashtown and reported his findings to his division commander, Major General Henry Heth. Suspecting that Pettigrew had seen only local militia and not veteran troops, Heth decided to return to Gettysburg the following day. Buford anticipated a return by the Confederate forces. He warned one of his subordinates on the evening of June 30: “they will attack you in the morning and they will come booming—skirmishers three deep. You will have to fight like the devil to hold your own until supports arrive,” according to Steven E. Woodworth, Beneath a Northern Sky: A Short

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Union General George G. Meade’s headquarters at Gettysburg. (Loretta Carlisle)

History of the Gettysburg Campaign. Recognizing the strategic importance of Gettysburg, which was located at the hub of ten roads, Buford prepared his men to defend their position if necessary. He sent word to Major General John Reynolds, who was encamped nearby with three Union infantry corps, warning that a clash might be fast approaching. Neither Lee nor Meade planned to fight a major battle at Gettysburg. Lee had issued explicit orders that he did not want to engage the enemy until his entire army was united. Ewell’s Second Corps was still several hours to the north, and Longstreet’s First Corps was almost a full day’s march to the west. For his part, Meade hoped to fight a defensive battle on ground of his own choosing; he and his men had already begun preparing trenches along Pipe Creek near the Maryland-Pennsylvania border. Yet events on July 1, 1863, seemingly took on a logic of their own. What began as a chance encounter between Union and Confederate soldiers soon turned into one of the largest and bloodiest battles ever fought on the North American Continent. Both sides seemed to recognize that the stakes were high. For the Confederacy, a victory on northern soil might have great significance. Union soldiers, for their part, feared the repercussions if Lee’s army should prevail. In the midst of the fighting, one Federal officer at Gettysburg announced: “We’ve got to fight our best today, or have these Rebs for our masters,” according to Richard Wheeler in Gettysburg 1863: Campaign of Endless Echoes.

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Around 8:00 A.M. on July 1, Confederate General Henry Heth and his division approached Gettysburg from the west. Expecting to meet little resistance, Heth ord e red two of his brigades to advance and occupy Gettysburg. About a mile west of Gettysburg, however, the Confederate infantry brigades found themselves under attack by Buford’s Union cavalry. The dismounted cavalry, though greatly outnumbered by Confederate infantry, had the advantages of superior firepower and a higher position on the ridges surrounding Gettysburg. Buford’s Union forces stubbornly held off three times their number for two hours until reinforcements could arrive. At 10:00 A.M., Union infantry from Reynolds’s First Corps finally appeared on the scene to relieve Buford and his men. Throughout the morning and early afterA statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee at noon of July 1, reinforcements from both sides Gettysburg. (Loretta Carlisle) continued to arrive and the tide of the battle ebbed and flowed accordingly. Finally, at about 4:00 P.M., after a day of heavy fighting, the outnumbered Union forces retreated through the town of Gettysburg. In the confused street-by-street battle that followed, several thousand Union soldiers were taken prisoner. The remaining Union soldiers continued their retreat as far as Cemetery Hill, about a half-mile south of the town square. Lee had arrived in Gettysburg by that point. As he surveyed the scene, he realized that his Confederate forces would have to attack Cemetery Hill soon in order to achieve the decisive victory he sought. Although the first day of fighting had ended in triumph for the Confederates, the Union soldiers were working hard to fortify Cemetery Hill and nearby Culp’s Hill. Before long, they would be strong enough to withstand another Confederate attack. It would make sense for the Confederate forces to follow up on the day’s success with a final assault on Cemetery Hill, while the Union forces were still disorganized and unprepared to offer a strong defense. At 4:30 Lee ord e red Lieutenant General Richard Ewell of the Confederate Second Corps to attempt to capture the high ground occupied by Union forces if he found it feasible. The discre t i o n a ry nature of Lee’s order left room for the commander of the Second Corps to refrain from carrying out the attack.

AC TUAL HI STO RY When Lee ordered Ewell to take the hill if he found it feasible, the corps commander decided not to act. A group of Ewell’s subordinates tried to convince him to move against the disorganized Federal troops. Any delay would be costly, since the enemy’s forces would soon be reorganized and reinforced. Nevertheless, Ewell continued to waver. He pointed out that one of his divisions was not yet on the field and that the rest of his men, those who had been involved in the day’s fighting, needed to rest. Ewell

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has been roundly criticized, then and since, for his costly hesitation. Critics have compared Ewell unfavorably to his predecessor as commander of the Second Corps, Stonewall Jackson, whose presence on the field that day might have yielded different results. Ewell’s failure to capture the high ground on the evening of July 1 allowed the remaining Federal troops, together with the considerable reinforcements that arrived during the night, to establish a strong defensive position. By the morning of July 2, Meade’s forces formed a giant “fish hook” that stretched from Cemetery and Culp’s Hills along Cemetery Ridge for about a mile. This defensive position would prove very valuable in the face of repeated Confederate assaults on the second day of fighting. Despite his army’s failure to capture the high ground on the evening of July 1, Lee decided to renew the attack against Union forces the next day. General Longstreet objected vehemently to Lee’s proposed attack and suggested an alternative strategy. Rather than attack the enemy in its present defensive position, Longstreet argued, the Army of Northern Virginia should move south around the left wing of the Union army. This would place the Confederate army between the Army of the Potomac and Washington, D.C., thereby forcing Meade to initiate an attack on ground of the Confederates’ choosing. Unwilling to change his plan, Lee ordered Longstreet to move his men into position and prepare to attack the left wing of the Union army. As Longstreet had feared, Lee’s strategy on July 2 produced heavy casualties (each side lost about 10,000 men) but few tangible results. Confederate forces had broken through the Union line twice, but each time

A view today of the battlefield from Seminary Ridge to Cemetery Ridge. (Loretta Carlisle)

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they were hindered by a lack of reinforcements and forced to retreat in the face of Union counterattacks. At the end of the second day of fighting, the strategic positions of the two armies remained relatively unchanged. At that point Lee once again could have decided to break off the engagement. Intent on achieving a decisive victory, though, the Confederate general decided to take one last gamble. He ordered the division under George E. Pickett to launch an assault against the center of the Union line. Once again, Longstreet protested Lee’s plan of attack. The corps commander did not believe that an assault on Cemetery Ridge (which would require Pickett’s division to charge across an open field) could end in anything but disaster for Pickett and his men. Once again, Lee refused to heed his fellow officer’s warning: he ordered the assault to go forward. The infamous Pickett’s Charge of July 3, 1863, resulted in the loss of twothirds of Pickett’s division. As Pickett struggled to come to terms with the massive losses of his men, Lee instructed him to rally his division in preparation for a possible counterattack. A distraught Pickett responded that he no longer had a division to rally. The third and final day of fighting at Gettysburg thus ended in a catastrophic defeat for Lee’s Army of Nort h e rn Vi rginia. Lee rode among his officers declaring: “All this has been my fault. It is I who have lost this fight,” according to Richard Wheeler in Gettysburg 1863: Campaign of Endless Echoes. Lee would offer his resignation after Gettysburg, citing both ill health and his failure in that crucial battle as reasons. Davis would refuse the resignation, however, calling the Confederate general irreplaceable. After sundown on July 3, Lee informed his senior officers that if Meade did not attack the next day, the Confederate army would begin its

A Currier & Ives lithograph of the Battle of Gettysburg, July 3, 1863. (Library of Congress)

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AN OTH E R VI E W

General Longstreet and the “Sunrise Order”

For generations histo rians have debated the causes of the Confederate defe at at Ge t tysburg. One of the most popular explanations given for the o u tcome of the battle has to do with an alleged “Sunrise Ord e r” that Ge n e ral Lee issued to Lo n g s t reet on the evening of July 1, 1863. Lee purpo rtedly dire cted Lo n g s t reet to initiate a fro nt a l assault on the Union line at dawn on July 2. In m a ny acco u nts of the bat t l e — p a rt i c u l a rly those w ri t ten in the decades immediately after the wa r — Lo n g s t reet is accused of dragging his feet and

d e l i be rately delaying the attack, thus throwing off the timing of Lee’s ca refully coo rd i n ated assault. In recent decades historians have begun to question whether Lee ever issued a “sunrise order” to Longstreet and, if so, whether he then rescinded the order before dawn. Union reinforcements had been arriving throughout the night of July 1–2, and many historians now argue that Lee would not have issued a blind order without first being updated on the enemy’s position. It now appears that Lee did not finalize his orders until 11:00 A.M.

return march to Virginia. Rather than follow up with a counterattack as Lee expected, Meade allowed his men time to regroup before pursuing the retreating Army of Northern Virginia. After giving Lee’s forces a two-day head start, Meade pursued the retreating army slowly and deliberately despite pressure from Washington to attack before the Army of Northern Virginia crossed the Potomac. Three days after leaving Gettysburg, Lee’s forces were temporarily halted near Williamsport, Maryland. Days of heavy rain, coupled with a Union cavalry raid on the pontoon bridge, had made the river impossible to cross. Meade’s reinforced army caught up with the retreating rebels at Williamsport on July 12. Much to Lincoln’s chagrin, Meade allowed his corps commanders to talk him out of attacking the weakened Confederate forces on July 13. Meade decided to postpone the attack an extra day, by which time Lee’s men had built a makeshift bridge and escaped across the Potomac to the relative safety of Virginia. Despite heavy losses, Lee’s army had survived to fight another day. Lincoln had regarded the Confederate invasion as an opportunity for Meade’s forces to annihilate the Army of Northern Virginia and thus force the Confederacy to seek a negotiated peace. The president was therefore bitterly disappointed when he learned that Lee and his army had been allowed to retreat back to Virginia. In a letter that he wrote (but never sent) to Meade, Lincoln rebuked the Union general for allowing Lee to escape: “Your golden opportunity is gone, and I am distressed immeasurably because of it,” according to Stephen W. Sears in Gettysburg. Meade offered his resignation when he learned of the president’s disapproval. Lincoln refused the resignation and Meade continued to command the Army of the Potomac for the remainder of the war. After Gettysburg, however, Ulysses S. Grant, whom Lincoln appointed top commander of all the Union’s forces, would make all the major decisions for Meade’s army. Although Meade’s Army of the Potomac did not deliver a deathblow to Lee’s forces as Lincoln had hoped, Gettysburg was nevertheless an important turning point in the war. Meade’s success in forcing the Army of Northern Virginia to re t reat shattered the myth of Lee’s invincibility and

A Southern victory at Gettysburg? 99 AN OTHE R V I EW

General Longstreet and the “Sunrise Order” (Continued)

on July 2. Further delays were then caused by efforts to keep Longstreet’s forces concealed from their oppo n e nt s’ s i g ht as they approached the enemy line. It is true that Longstreet disagreed with Lee’s battle plan—events would show that Longstreet was right to be concerned—and proposed an alternate strategy to his commanding officer. Once Lee rejected Longstreet’s counterproposal, however, it appears that the corps commander faithfully carried out ord e r s. Any delay was due to facto r s beyond Longstreet’s control.

In blaming Longstreet for the Co n fe d e rate loss at Ge t tys b u rg, early accounts of the battle no doubt s o u g ht to pre s e rve the re p u t ation of Ge n e ral Le e. Supporters of the Confe d e rate commander we nt to g re at lengths to pe rpe t u ate his legendary stat u s, d e s p i temilitary setbacks and an eve ntual surre n d e r. Longstreet, who defected to the Re p u b l i can Party a fter the war and suppo rted both Re co n s t ru ction and Ulysses S. Gra nt’s bid for pre s i d e nt, made a co nve n i e nt sca pe g o at for the failed assault at Ge t tys b u rg.

convinced Union soldiers and civilians alike that the North would now win the war. Especially when viewed in conjunction with Grant’s capture of Vicksburg on July 4, Meade’s victory at Gettysburg spelled the beginning of the end for the Confederacy. Although the war would last for another two years, the tide had clearly turned in favor of the Union. The fact that Lee would never again invade Union territory has led many historians to consider the Battle of Gettysburg the “high tide” of the Confederacy. Union morale was given a tremendous boost by the news of Lee’s defeat and the Peace Democrats (or Copperheads) who opposed the war were at least temporarily marginalized. Republicans recovered from their 1862 electoral losses, as Lincoln’s party made solid congressional gains in several states. Gone as well was any hope for European intervention on behalf of the Confederacy. Henry Adams, the son of (and private secretary to) the American ambassador in London, reported in the wake of Gettysburg: “It is now conceded that all idea of intervention is at an end,” according to James M. McPherson in Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. Meanwhile, elections in the summer and fall of 1863 reflected a significant decline in civilian morale in the Confederacy. Southerners voted nearly 40 percent of Congress out of office, replacing many of the representatives with outspoken peace candidates. Lincoln traveled to Gettysburg in November to dedicate a cemetery honoring Union soldiers killed in the battle. The cemetery was located on a seventeen-acre plot on the north slope of Cemetery Hill, the same hill on which crucial moments of the battle had occurred. It was there that Lincoln delivered his famous two-minute “Gettysburg Address” reminding Americans of the debt owed to those who had fallen and those who continued to fight in pursuit of a “new birth of freedom” for the nation. The speech gave definition to the purpose of the war and laid the foundation for a new sense of American national identity. Despite a precipitous drop in Confederate morale, the South continued to hold out hope that Lincoln might be defeated by a Peace Party candidate in the next presidential election. The prospect kept the Confederacy from surrendering after the crushing defeats at Gettysburg

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K E Y CON CE P T

Copperheads

From the outset of Union-Confederate hostilities, a vocal minority in the Nor th opposed the decision to go to war to force reunification. The strength of the peace movement rose and fell with the fortunes of the Union army, particularly in the eastern theater of the war. The Peace Democ rats—or Copperheads as their opponents called them— gained increased political clout with each setback that the Union armies faced. Disenchanted with the horrific bloodshed and the North’s apparent inability to win the war, many civilians expressed their frustration at the voting booth in 1862 and early

1863. The enactment of an unpopular conscription law in the spring of 1863 gave added impetus to the antiwar faction. Not all De m oc rats opposed the war. The party was split be tween the Pe a ce Democ rats who d e n o u n ced the fighting and called for an immediate end to hostilities, and the Union De m oc rats (or War De m oc rat s ) , who merely objected to the specific war policies of the Lincoln administration and the Re p u b l i can Co n g re s s. The pe a ce wing of the De m oc ratic Pa rty tended to reap the po lit ica l re wa rds when the pendulum of war swung against

and Vicksburg. Contrary to Confederate hopes, however, the change in momentum that Gettysburg initiated contributed to Lincoln’s reelection in 1864. The result of that election was by no means a foregone conclusion. Several of the Lincoln administration’s wartime policies—most notably the Emancipation Proclamation, the draft, and the decision to suspend the writ of habeas corpus—were extremely unpopular, and Lincoln doubted his chances for reelection. The chief issue of the election, however, was the continuation of the war. Lincoln made it clear that he would not accept a negotiated peace that included the recognition of Confederate sovereignty. By electing Lincoln for a second term, northern voters expressed their willingness to continue the war. Lincoln began his second term in office on March 4, 1865. By that time the Confederate Army was suffering from heavy desertions and a chronic shortage of supplies. Both Lee and his men realized that it would only be a matter of time before the Confederacy was forced to admit defeat. The occasion came just a few weeks later when Lee, finding himself surrounded by Grant’s troops and unable to fight his way out, met with the Union general at Appomattox Court House in Virginia. The terms of the surrender were generous: the Confederate soldiers had only to stop fighting and go home. Those who owned horses could take them along, and officers could take their side arms and personal possessions as well. Moreover, Grant promised Lee that the United States would not punish those who had fought for the Confederacy. Neither Lee nor any of his subordinates would be executed for treason. With an end to hostilities came the beginning of Reconstruction, by which the southern states were to be rebuilt and readmitted to the Union. Lincoln had hoped that the process would be governed by charity rather than malice. Following Lincoln’s assassination on April 14, 1865, however, Reconstruction became the source of bitter conflict. Racial hatred and southern resentment over punitive measures ensured that the process of Reconstruction only reintensified North-South sectionalism, especially the anti-Yankee sentiment of Southerners.

A Southern victory at Gettysburg? 101 KE Y C ON C E P T

Copperheads (Continued)

the Union arm i e s. One of Lee’s arg u m e nts for inva ding Pe n n s y l vania was thus the enco u ra g e m e nt that he ex pe cted a Co n fe d e rate victo ry on Union soil would give to the pe a ce movement. Lee hoped that pressure from the Co p pe rheads would fo rce the Union gove rn m e nt to seek a negotiated pe a ce on te rms favo rable to the Co n fe d e ra cy. Contrary to Lee’s plans, Meade’s success on the battlefield in July 1863 translated into political success for the Republican Party when state elections were held in the fall. The Democrats in both Ohio and Pennsylvania had made the Lincoln administration nervous by nominating Copperheads to run

for governor. Republicans had suffered a setback in co n g ressional elections the previous ye a r, and Lincoln feared a similar outcome in the gubernatorial elections as well. The nominations had been made prior to the Union victory at Gettysburg, however. The peace platform was rendered less attractive by that momentous victory: Republicans carried the day in Ohio and Pennsylvania and made significant gains in state and local elections elsewhere as well. In the longer term, the change in momentum initiated at Gettysburg contributed to Lincoln’s reelection in the 1864 presidential election as well.

The preservation of the Union, which Meade’s success at Gettysburg helped to ensure, had a lasting significance that reached well beyond nineteenth-century American history. The existence of a strong and unified United States allowed for the continued implementation of the Monroe Doctrine, which discouraged involvement by European powers in the affairs of the Western Hemisphere. As France’s intrusion into Mexico during the Civil War suggested, a permanent division between the United States and the Confederate States of America would have made the Monroe Doctrine difficult, if not impossible, to uphold. The United States rose to great power status between 1865 and 1914 and would thereafter play a significant (and at times dominant) role in world affairs.

ALTE RN ATE H IST O RY When Winfield Scott Hancock, whom Meade had appointed overall Union commander on the field, reached the top of Cemetery Hill at about 4:15 on the afternoon of July 1, he observed chaos and disaster every w h e re. It was only fifteen minutes later that Lee issued his d i s c re t i o n a ry order to Ewell. If the corps commander had taken action immediately after Lee issued his directive (or if Lee had made the order more definitive), then the Union forces would still have been in disarray and unable to withstand an attack when Ewell’s forces struck. A successful Confederate attack on Cemetery and Culp’s Hills that afternoon might have forced the Union army to re t reat back to Pipe Creek after only one day of fighting. At the very least, the Confederate forces would have occupied a strong defensive position, as re i n f o rcements from both armies continued to arr i v e t h roughout the night. A Confederate victory at Gettysburg would not have been decisive in the short term. Given the North’s plentiful supply of replacement troops

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and materiel, a Union defeat—which would have cost the Confederacy dearly in terms of both men and supplies—would not have crippled the Union war eff o rt. The North had repeatedly shown its ability to recover from setbacks and devastating losses, and there is no reason to believe that Gettysburg would have been any different in terms of the Union’s military resources. Nor would news of a Confederate victory in Gettysburg have reached Vicksburg in time to shape the nearly simultaneous course of events that culminated in the fall of Vicksburg on July 4, 1863. That Confederate bastion on the Mississippi River would still have fallen into Union hands, at least for A photograph of a stricken Confederate soldier near a time, and the Confederacy would have the Devil’s Den section of the battlefield. (Library of been effectively cut in half. Given the proxCongress) imity of Lee’s army to Washington, D.C., however, it is quite possible that Federal troops would have been pulled out of the western theater of the war to defend the Union capital. In that case, the Confederates would have been given an opportunity to retake Vicksburg. If the Confederates had managed successfully to turn the tide in the west, the combination of successes at Gettysburg and Vicksburg might have dealt a deathblow to Union efforts to reincorporate the secessionist states into the Union. Even without a Confederate victory at Vicksburg, however, Lee’s success at Gettysburg could have had major repercussions in the west. Despite the symbolic importance of Vicksburg, its military significance was not as great as that of Chattanooga. As long as Confederates could continue to control eastern Tennessee, the heartland of the Confederacy would still have been secure. If Lee’s forces had defeated Meade’s at Gettysburg, Grant might have been sent east to organize the defense of the Union’s capital. Without Grant’s leadership in the west, the Army of Tennessee might not have been defeated at Chattanooga. In that case, even with the loss of Vi c k s b u rg, the Confederate cause would not have been lost in the west. The real significance of Lee’s triumph at Gettysburg would not have been strategic but rather psychological and political. By following up on a string of victories with a spectacular defeat of Meade’s Army of the Potomac—on northern soil, no less—the seemingly invincible Army of Northern Virginia would have convinced policy makers and civilians in the North that the war effort had failed and that further defeats were inevitable. In other words, Lee would have accomplished his goal of undermining the Union’s will to go on fighting. The consequences of such a blow to Union morale would have been far reaching. The perception that ultimate victory was no longer within reach would have given a tremendous boost to the already burgeoning peace movement in the North. Already in 1863, with half-amillion casualties and no apparent end in sight, the desire for peace

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was strong. Had Lee’s forces defeated Meade’s at Gettysburg, calls for a cease-fire and peace negotiations might very well have resonated beyond the editorial pages of Copperhead newspapers. Frustration over yet another Union defeat—coupled with the strongly held desire for an end to the killing and suffering—would have translated into electoral successes for the Peace Democrats in the upcoming congressional elections. Confirming the earlier predictions of Confederate spies in the Union, Copperheads might also have spearheaded antiwar riots in several northern cities. If these antiwar riots had spread, Federal troops would have been required to assist civil authorities in quelling the disturbances. Lincoln, whose prospects for reelection were already slim prior to Gettysburg, would have been soundly defeated at the polls in the 1864 presidential election. His opponent (and the seventeenth president of the United States) would not have been George B. McClellan, who was widely known as a War Democrat. The Peace Democrats, whose numerical strength would have increased considerably in the wake of Gettysburg, would not have entirely trusted McClellan to uphold a peace platform. McClellan, a War Democrat who had served as a Union general in the early years of the conflict, would have been reluctant to accept any terms short of reunification. Instead of choosing McClellan, the Peace Democrats would have offered the nomination to Thomas Seymour of Connecticut. Seymour had lost the 1863 gubernatorial election in Connecticut by a narrow margin, but that had been prior to Meade’s defeat at Gettysburg. In the a f t e rmath of that momentous battle, the fortunes of the Peace Democrats, and of Seymour in particular, would have improved tremendously. Seymour would have campaigned on the peace platform as drafted by noted Copperhead Clement L. Vallandigham: “After four years of failure to restore the Union by the experiment of war . . . [we] demand that immediate efforts be made for a cessation of hostilities,” according to James M. McPherson in Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. Unlike McClellan, Seymour would have embraced the peace platform unequivocally. As long as Lincoln was in office and the Republicans dominated Congress, the possibility of a negotiated peace would have been extremely remote. Now, with the Lincoln administration ousted, a negotiated peace would have been much more realistic. Even if President Seymour had been opposed to a negotiated peace that did not include reunification, several factors (including civil unrest in the North) would have forced his hand. Most significantly, Britain and France would have intervened once the Confederacy had proven itself on the battlefield and the disheartened North appeared willing to negotiate. By recognizing the Confederacy’s independence, the European powers would have left Seymour no choice but to do the same. Failure to do so would have meant that the fighting would continue, only now foreign powers would have been able to conclude treaties and form alliances with the Confederate States of America (CSA). In fact, the fledgling Confederacy might have immediately signed a treaty with

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France by which the French would promise to come to the aid of the CSA in the event of renewed hostilities with the United States. In return, the CSA would have vowed to support French designs in Mexico. Such an agreement would have had little practical significance, since the events in France would have compelled Napoleon III to withdraw French troops from Mexico regardless of Confederate support. Nevertheless, the symbolic importance of the treaty would have been considerable, as it would have driven home the difficulties that the United States would now have in upholding the Monroe Doctrine. The prospect of a Confederate alliance with Britain, meanwhile, would have ensured that a Northern blockade would have been rendered ineffective in the event that North-South hostilities were resumed. The primary objective of Confederate negotiators during the peace talks with the United States would have been to secure U.S. recognition of the Confederacy as an independent nation. Hoping to ensure amicable relations in the future between the Confederate States and its neighbor to the north, the Confederates would not have pushed for significant territorial demands. The four slave states that had not joined the Confederacy at the outbreak of hostilities (Missouri, Mary l a n d , Kentucky, and Delaware) would have remained part of the United States, as would the newly created state of West Virginia. The Confederacy would, however, have insisted on at least some western territory in order to expand the cotton industry that had been the mainstay of the South’s antebellum economy. The Confederacy would most likely have sought the area that now comprises Arizona and New Mexico, leaving other western territories to the United States. Fears expressed before the war that secession, if successful, might lead to the further fragmentation of the United States would not have been realized. While sectional interests would have continued to play a role in national politics, other regions would have neither the cohesion of opinion nor sufficient motivation to follow the South’s example in withdrawing from the Union. In fact, mutual interests would have held the disparate regions together more than ever once the South had left to establish its on nation. With the Mississippi River now controlled by the Confederate States of America, for example, farmers and p roducers in the western and midwestern regions would have depended on eastern transportation routes for access to outside markets. The interdependence of the remaining regions within the United States following secession would have precluded the fragmentation that many opponents of southern secession had feared. Peace negotiators would not have touched the question of slavery, despite how central the matter had been both to the causes and to the progress of the war. Once the independence of the Confederacy was established, Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation (which had never applied to slaves in areas under Union control) would no longer have applied to slaves in the Confederate states either. The United States would have had no choice but to honor the right of Southerners to own slaves—a right explicitly protected in the Confederate constitution. Ironically, slavery would disappear in the Confederate States of America, although several years would have been needed to bring about

A Southern victory at Gettysburg? 105

the change. The process of eliminating slavery in the Confederacy would have begun under President Robert E. Lee (the popular war hero would have replaced Jefferson Davis when the latter’s six-year term expired). Unfortunately, a heart attack would have claimed President Lee’s life halfway through his term, before he could see his plan to eliminate slavery come to fruition. The decision to end slavery would not have been based on moral grounds, nor would it have been the result of pressure from the United States and Britain (although both certainly would have applauded the decision). Instead, the decision would have been based on economic realities indicating that slavery was no longer as profitable as it had once been. In the years following the Civil War the foreign demand for cotton would not have kept pace with its prewar levels. In response to the Northern blockade and the Confederacy’s wartime cotton embargo, Great Britain had found alternate sources of cotton in Egypt and India. Convinced that the demand for cotton would never reach its prewar levels and eager to complete the Confederacy’s economic recovery from the war, specialists would have considered the most viable options for economic growth. These specialists would have agreed that agricultural and industrial diversification would be necessary to salvage the economy. As the institution of slavery tended to preclude such diversification, the specialists would have recommended that the Confederacy find a way to eliminate the “peculiar institution” that it had once been willing to go to war to defend. Public opinion in Great Britain would have been favorable to news of the decision to eliminate slavery. The British would have sought to establish an even closer relationship with the Confederate States of America, perhaps offering a treaty of mutual defense. Such an offer would have been to Britain’s advantage in 1914, when the Confederacy would have immediately jumped to its ally’s defense in World War I. The United States, on the other hand, with its substantial German and Irish immigrant populations, would have chosen to maintain its neutrality throughout the Great War. Without the decisive intervention of the United States, the war might have been prolonged even beyond 1918. On the positive side, if the war had not ended in such a crushing defeat for Germany, followed by a punitive peace settlement, the circumstances conducive to Adolf Hitler’s rise to power might not have existed. If Hitler had managed to rise to power, however, the United States would have joined its southern neighbor, the Confederate States of America, in resisting the dictator’s designs on the Western Hemisphere. Kathleen Ruppert

Discussion Questions 1. The turning point suggested in this chapter involves the occupation of crucial high ground by Ewell’s corps on July 1. This battle has been so extensively studied that several other crucial turning points have

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been suggested. What other episodes in the battle might have turned out differently to lead to a Union defeat at Gettysburg? 2. Although in retrospect it appears that General Longstreet’s objections to Lee’s decisions at Gettysburg were well founded, Lee’s reputation after the war was far stronger than Longstreet’s. What factors contributed to this outcome? 3. During the Civil War, several states within the Confederacy (part i c ularly Georgia, Texas, and North Carolina) insisted on states’ rights against the centralizing tendencies of the Confederate govern m e n t in Richmond. Since each of the states in the Confederacy jealously g u a rded its own sovere i g n t y, coming to agreement on such a serious step as emancipation of the slaves after the Civil War might have been difficult. If so, which states within the Confederacy would have welcomed emancipation, and which would have been reluctant to adopt the measure? 4. In the alternate history suggested in this chapter, the United States would have remained neutral in World War I, while the Confederate States would have entered the war as an ally of Britain and France. What consequences would have followed if the United States had sided with the Central Powers (the German, Austro-Hungarian, and Ottoman empires) in that war, while the Confederate States allied with Britain and France? 5. In actual history, Republican presidents were regularly elected in the United States between 1868 and 1908, with the exception of two terms by Democrat Grover Cleveland (1885–1889 and 1893–1897). If Democrat Seymour had won the election of 1864 and Republicans had been discredited by defeat in the Civil War, how would these events have affected U.S. politics over the half-century following the Civil War?

Bibliography and Further Reading Clark, Champ. Gettysburg: The Confederate High Tide. New York: TimeLife Books, 1985. Corrick, James A. The Battle of Gettysburg. Farmington Hills, MI: Lucent Books, 1996. Cowden, Joanna D. “The Politics of Dissent: Civil War Democrats in Connecticut.” New England Quarterly (1983). Fellman, Michael, Daniel E. Sutherland, and Lesley J. Gordon, eds. This Terrible War: The Civil War and Its Aftermath. Chicago: Longman, 2004. Gaines, Ann Graham. The Battle of Gettysburg in American History. Berkeley Heights, NJ: Enslow, 2001. Grant, Susan-Mary, and Peter J. Parish. Legacy of Disunion: The Enduring Significance of the American Civil War. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2003. McPherson, James M. Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.

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Ransom, Roger L. The Confederate States of America: What Might Have Been. New York: W. W. Norton, 2005. Sears, Stephen W. Gettysburg. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003. Tucker, Glenn. Lee and Longstreet at Gettysburg. Chicago: Bobbs-Merrill, 1968. Wert, Jeffrey D. “If Lee Had Won at Gettysburg.” Civil War Times (August 2003). Wheeler, Richard. Gettysburg 1863: Campaign of Endless Echoes. New York: Penguin Putnam, 1999. Woodworth, Steven E. Beneath a Northern Sky: A Short History of the Gettysburg Campaign. Farmington Hills, MI: Scholarly Resources, 2003.

Sherman’s March to the Sea

7

In 1864 Union General William T. Sherman devastated Georgia in his “march to the sea.” What if Confederate forces had counterattacked and ambushed Sherman’s troops?

INTR ODU CT IO N Union General William T. Sherman had just taken Atlanta, Georgia, and probably saved Abraham Lincoln’s presidency in the process. With Grant and the Army of the Potomac holding Confederate General Robert E. Lee in a stalemate at Richmond, Virginia, after bloody fighting at Cold Harbor, frustrations ran high in a northern public that had become weary of the demands of the federal war effort and the immense losses suffered. The situation was made far worse by a raid led by Confederate Lieutenant General Jubal Early, which sliced through Maryland and came within sight of the capitol building in Washington, D.C. Lincoln glumly surmised that without a significant success, he stood to lose the November 1864 election. Sherman, though, pulled off a masterstroke. Crossing the rugged terrain of northern Georgia, he used a series of flanking maneuvers and diversionary raids into Mississippi to push General Joe Johnston’s Army of the Tennessee into the defenses around the city of Atlanta. Despite hard fighting at Kennesaw Mountain in June, Sherman was still well supplied and in control of the rail line south to Atlanta. Wanting a commander who would attack aggressively, Confederate President Jefferson Davis replaced Johnston with Lieutenant General John Bell Hood, who did just that, ranging out of Atlanta to be defeated at the cost of some 15,000 men before withdrawing again into Atlanta. Sherman sealed his siege of the town with a southern movement enveloping the last of Atlanta’s rail lines at Jonesboro. Out of options, Hood evacuated Atlanta for a westward trek into Alabama and northwest Georgia on September 2, 1864. The news of Sherman’s success buoyed Lincoln’s election campaign and devastated Confederate logistical links through Atlanta. The subsequent election seemed a referendum for prosecuting the war to a Confederate surrender rather than the negotiated peace whispered about only weeks before the fall of Atlanta. Sherman, however, was not having an easy time in Georgia. Hood’s raiders ranged out of the north to attack

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the railway crucial to the Union Army’s supply line and communication, and Sherman became disgusted with the continuing defiance of the southern population. In his letters, Sherman, who had been stationed in the South long before the Civil War, focused on the stubbornness of the civilian population as a factor in the continuation of hostilities—if the home-front families knew the perils and hardships of war, they would not encourage their soldiers to keep fighting. The result of this thinking was a dramatic solution. On November 15, 1864, Sherman’s t roops torched strategic areas of Atlanta, including rail stations, warehouses, and city offices after forcibly evicting the city’s civilian population. The fire inevitably spread, destroying whole sections of Atlanta’s residential areas and beginning the destruction that was to follow as Sherman marched an army of 60,000 toward the Atlantic coast. Lincoln confessed he was extremely nervous about the tactics General William T. Sherman, who led the brutal Union Sherman proposed—to cut through Georgia’s march across Georgia. (Library of Congress) richest agricultural areas, not just to destroy stockpiles of staple food, kill livestock, and take war material useful to the Confederacy but also to intimidate deliberately the civilian population. Washington, D.C., insiders like Edwin Stanton were horrified by Sherman’s style of command and his raggedy army of slouching “bummers,” who failed to meet public standards of spit-and-polish military style. Nevertheless, Sherman deployed his men in three columns, over a sixty-mile swath, falling on more than $100 million in resources, including rail lines, stands of timber, livestock herds, and plantation houses. Technically, Sherman’s men were to destroy only those things considered valuable for the war effort and to leave the possessions of slaves alone. Sherman did personally oversee destruction in retaliation for local sabotage, burning the houses nearest any wrecked roads, bridges, or ferries and became infamous for winking at the additional, personal looting and wastage carried on by his men as they stripped the countryside like a huge army of locusts. With word traveling along the route of march, southern women quickly learned not to lock doors against the coming army but to meet them on their front porches, demonstrating that they were not hiding valuables. Even so, many of their houses were ransacked, especially when family slaves clued Sherman’s men in to the location of buried or camouflaged food supplies and valuables. One Georgia woman offered her best suggestion for surviving the onslaught—to flag down an officer with promises of a working piano and respectable tea in the hope of appealing to a more civilized pattern of behavior. Georgia’s governor, Joe Brown, failed to raise more than scattered resistance from the local militia of old men and underage boys and lost the state capital, Milledgeville. Virtually unopposed, Sherman swung south to Savannah rather than Charleston, where he and his men found

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themselves in the swamps of the Savannah and Little Ogeechee rivers, against form i d a b l e defenses prepared by General William Hardee and manned by 20,000 Confederate troops. Sherman hoped to make a quick end to Savannah and link up with Union naval forces on the coast in preparation for moving by sea to aid Grant in Virginia. Sherman offered Hardee an opportunity to surrender but met with a coldly formal response, according to Nathaniel Hughes in General William J Hardee: Old Reliable: “I have hitherto conducted the military operations entrusted to my direction in strict accordance with the rules of civilized warfare.” He had no intention of surrender. Sherman, with his troops now living not off the rich provisions of farm country but the meager pickings of flooded rice fields and swampland, prepared his men for a brutal siege and bloody fighting for Savannah.

Union General Sherman offered Confederate General Hardee, above, the opportunity to surrender, but was met with a cold response. (Library of Congress)

Confederate Major General Lafayette McLaws genuinely thought he was doing the right thing. McLaws was diligently destroying assets in Savannah that might give any aid to the advancing enemy, including scrap wood and commandeered rice flatboats from plantations upriver. His over-enthusiastic soldiers burned most of the boats before General Hardee’s aide-de-camp arrived and surveyed the damage with ill-disguised horror. Hardee had received word from General P. T. Beauregard in Charleston that his troops should evacuate the city and fall back to the border of South Carolina, pre s e rving the 20,000 men under his command. A fast re t reat over the Savannah River would have been possible with the freshly charred boats forming a pontoon bridge, but there was now little time to construct replacements. Hardee and Beauregard, in fevered telegraphic conference about the situation, could have received a startling piece of news from General Braxton Bragg in Augusta. Judson Kilpatrick, Sherman’s reckless and flamboyant commander of cavalry could have been in Confederate hands after a disastrous meeting with a patrol in Wa y n e s b o ro, Georgia. Kilpatrick, paying a drunken visit to the home of two mulatto women of local ill repute, had been startled by the approach of the Confederate scouts. Without thinking, Kilpatrick leaped out a second-story window and could have broken his back, landing in the front yard. His escort of officers, reluctant to leave their paralyzed leader, would have surrendered to the scouts and Kilpatrick would have been carefully transported to Augusta. Within days, it would have been clear that Kilpatrick’s cavalry, and only that force, held Bragg’s 10,000 men around Augusta, rather than

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AN OTH E R VI E W

Joe Brown

The gove rnor of Ge o rg i a ,Joe Brown, was a dedicated secessionist as well as a slaveholder. Well befo re the formation of the Confe d e ra cy and even be fo re the state officially declared secession, Brown had state troops take possession of the federal Fort Pulaski on January 7, 1861. L ater in the same mont h , a fter secession, he ord e red troops to seize the Augusta Arsenal. Despite his commitment to the cause of secession, he was such a firm believer in the sovereignty of each state that he became a political enemy of the Confederate president Jefferson Davis. Brown relentlessly at t a c ked the policies of the Confederate government in Richmond, especially when he perceived a Confederate action as infringing on the rights or sovereignty of the state of Georgia. He re s i s ted the Co n fe d e rate po l i cy of fo rming state militia units into re g i m e nts that could appoint their own officers, regarding that as the gove rn o r’s pre rog at i ve. He challenged the Confederate conscription laws and tax laws, arguing that the tax burden was unfairly apportioned among the states of the Confederacy. He opposed the use of Georgia troops out of the state of Ge o rgia and co n s t a ntly bo m b a rded Richmond with requests to return far-flung units to the state for its own defense. Furthermore, he opposed the move by Jefferson Davis to suspend the right of h a beas corpus, under which military authori t i e s

could arrest and imprison citizens without filing charges against them. Along with the policies of other gove rn o r s, such as those of Zebulon Va n ce of No rth Ca ro l i n a , Brown’s po l i cyrevealed a fatal we a kness in the basic p remises of the Confe d e rate view of gove rnment. If the states justified their secession from the Un i ted St ates on an inalienable ri g ht to secession and co ntinued to claim that the states retained sovereignty, they would find it log i cally impossible to submit to a ce nt ra l i zed new gove rn m e nt in the Confe d e ra cy. Yet without employing ce nt ra l i zed methods re g a rdingco n s c ri p t i o n , military org a n i z ation, taxation, d i sposition of troo p s, and other mat ters of wartime g ove rn a n ce,Je f ferson Davis would be seve rely hampe red in the war against the Union fo rce s. When Sh e rm a n’s troops approached the state capital at Mi l l e d g eville in 1864, Brown abandoned the capital. He was ca p t u red and then imprisoned in Washington, D.C., and resigned the gove rn o rship officially in June 1865. On his re t u rn to the s t ate after the wa r, he underwe nt a co m p l e te change of philosophy. He advised Ge o rgians to submit to Re co n s t ru ction rule and even joined the Re p u b l i can Pa rty for a pe ri od. He later was a judge on the state supreme co u rt and a ra i l road pre s id e nt . He served as a De m oc ratic member of the U.S. Se n ate from 1885 to 1891.

a larger force backed with one of Sherman’s three infantry columns. With Hardee’s troops unlikely to be able to evacuate Savannah successfully, the two men could have seized on a desperate plan to trap Sherman between the defenses of Savannah and Bragg’s men.

AC TUA L H ISTO RY Brigadier General Judson Kilpatrick did indeed get caught with his pants down in Waynesboro, but much to the amazement of his officers waiting below, landed on his rump in the grass and was quickly in the saddle and fleeing from the scene. Braxton Bragg continued to believe that he and his men were necessary to defend Augusta from a column of Sherman’s army. One of Hardee’s aides, inspecting the Savannah waterfront, noticed McLaw’s flaming rice boats and stopped the destruction before they were

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K E Y CON CE P T

Hardee’s Tactics

Confederate Brigadier General William Hardee, who opposed Sherman’s forces near Savannah, was an accomplished officer. Born in Georgia, he had graduated from West Point in 1838 and had continued to serve in the U.S. Army through the 1840s and 1850s. When Jefferson Davis served as U.S. secretary of war under President Fra n klin Pierce, 1853–1857, he commissioned Hardee to write a new manual describing military tactics. Davis and Hardee understood that the rifled musket, much more accurate than the traditional smoothbore musket, could lead to new and more flexible tactics than those of the traditional Napoleonic system. In 1853, Hardee began wo rk on the study and a fter eight months prod u ced the manual. Officially entitled Rifle and Light Infantry Tactics, it became universally kn own by its info rmal name, Hard e e’s Tactics. It was widely read and used, and the bible-sized volume was carried by office r s and many enlisted men, Union and Co n fe d e rate, d u ring the Civil War. His manual stressed incre a-

sed mobility of infant ry troops and deploy m e nt in small units, and re commended a co m ra d e s - i n battle philosophy in which units of four troops would train and fight tog e t h e r. Wh at Hardee recog n i zed was that the improved accuracy of the rifled musket gave superior strength to the defe n s e, and like other officers of the pe ri od, he hoped to rely on mobility to move fo rces quickly to the rear or flank of the enemy to achieve surprise and to attack at we a ker point s. With 269 other southern officers serving in the Un i ted St ates Army, Hardee resigned his co mmission (which was quite legal, s i n ce officers held vo l u nt a ry commissions with no obligatory term) and joined the new Co n fe d e rate Army with a similar ra n k . After his re t re at from Savannah, H a rd e e was given command of scat te red remnants of Co n fe d e rate force s, and he fo u g ht his last battle of the Civil War at Be ntonv i l l e,No rthCa ro l i n a . He surre n d e red on Ap ril 26, 1865, s eve nteen days afte r the surrender of Lee at Ap po m at tox .

consumed. Hardee obeyed Beauregard’s original order to preserve his troops and made elaborate preparations, including a three-section pontoon bridge and massed artillery cover, for their withdrawal. Hardee, who had actually written the handbook on tactics used by both armies, was a master planner who organized a thorough and careful evacuation. His excellent interior lines of supply and communication allowed him to shift his twenty-four- and thirty-two-pound cannons, which were superior to those Sherman’s men had brought with them, to cover the new pontoon bridge and sever the Charleston-Savannah rail bridge to hinder pursuit. Civilians were allowed to accompany the army in its retreat, so most of the city’s wealthy white population packed their valuables and prepared to leave. On the night of December 20, 1864, a dense fog rolled in off the Savannah River, shrouding the thirteen-mile peninsula in opaque mist. H a rdee, who could not have asked for better concealment, began his withdrawal under cover of the art i l l e ry batteries. All 9,000 of his soldiers crossed the river successfully with their gear and stockpiles of food, headed for the South Carolina border. The civilians scattere d across the countryside, attempting to guess where Sherman might be headed next. Even though the Union Arm y, supported by a gunboat in the Savannah River, had taken Fort McAlister and commanded the western approach to the city, they were unable to stop the re t reat and were u n a w a re of the abandonment of the city until the next morning. After

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wading across flooded fields, the first scouts reported that the city was empty of Confederate troops and was being enthusiastically looted by its underclass. Sherman, far more interested in the city than Hardee’s 9,000 men and delighted to have taken it undamaged, hurried to survey the scene and reestablish order. He was immediately able to contact the Union Navy, which began supplying him with massive amounts of military materiel and food stores. The remaining civilians were quickly quieted by the presence of armed patrols, and those elite residents unable to flee were pleasantly surprised that Sherman was not burning houses, eating firstborn sons, or sporting horns and a tail, as their two newspapers had trumpeted only days before. In the eerie quiet of December 21, Sherman shaved, put on a relatively clean dress uniform, and called on the Chicago-born sister of one of his army friends, Eleanor Lytle Kinzie Gordon, the wife of Confederate Colonel William Gordon. Eleanor’s five-year-old daughter Juliette, future founder of the Girl Scouts, was completely charmed by “Uncle Billy,” who arrived with Christmas candy. Meanwhile, Sherman played a masterful public relations card, telegraphing Lincoln and offering him Savannah as a Christmas gift. This p resentation, re p o rted across the North, struck a perfect note. Reversing their own flaming rhetoric, newspapers in Boston and Philadelphia called for relief efforts to supply the city of Savannah with clothing, food, and holiday luxuries in a gesture of reconciliation, and within a week, ships laden with donated goods arrived at Savannah’s waterf ro n t . Between these gifts and efficient army distribution of long-craved staples like coffee and white flour, Savannah was fed, kept sanitary, and avoided panic and squalid living conditions. On Christmas Day, some of the t roops on their own initiative ventured out to the devastated area of small farms around Savannah, bearing Christmas gifts and much-needed food. British residents of the city, including cotton merchant Charles G reen and Consul W. Tasker-Smith, wrote glowing accounts of the occupation to British media outlets. The British public, which had become fascinated with Sherm a n ’s march as a parallel to the 1705 Blenheim campaign of the Duke of Marlborough, thoroughly approved the holiday denouement and sent generous donations. White residents of Savannah re m a i n e d slightly dazed at their fate, constantly reassured that they would not be burned out and would be treated as their continuing good behavior warranted. Sherman allowed the town’s two newspapers to continue publishing, so long as they did not knowingly print false material about the occupation, and encouraged Savannah’s ministers to continue praying for Jefferson Davis and the Confederate government, laughing that they needed the people’s prayers considerably more than he did. By An 1865 photograph of houses in ruin in Savannah, January, Sherman installed his handpicked Georgia. (Library of Congress)

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subordinate Major General J. W. Geary as the occupation authority and stood aside to allow Geary’s even-handed policing and generally genial ways to keep order. Approximately 300 die-hard confederates were both encouraged and allowed to leave for Charleston, including Mrs. Gordon, whose husband demanded that she cease any contact with Sherman and the Yankees. Savannah’s black population, though, was electrified. Sherm a n ’s march had picked up more than 10,000 refugee African Americans, who, despite being discouraged from attaching themselves to the foraging army, came along anyway. Sherman was happy to be able to place them in the hands of Savannah’s well-organized free black community, especially the charitable network in place through the African-American Methodist and Baptist churches. For a number of Sherman’s soldiers, many of them Westerners from Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa, this was the first time they had ever seen black professionals, property owners, or free black men and women living in a style they recognized as middle class and respectable. Shocked, many of these soldiers revised their opinions of African Americans, whom they had seen on the march as desperate, ignorant, and resented burdens, targets of contempt and abuse. Unwilling to go to the white churches and pray for Davis and his government, pious Union

Union General Sherman’s troops remove Confederate ammunition near Savannah, Georgia. (Library of Congress)

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K E Y CON CE P T

Sherman Land Reform

On January 16, 1864, Ge n e ral Sh e rman issued Special Field Order, No. 15, making a land distri b ution to fo rmer slaves in the region from Charleston, South Carolina, south along the coast of Ge o rg i a . In part, the Field Order, from Memoirs of Gen. W. T. Sherman, Wri t ten by Himself, read as fo l l ows: The islands from Ch a rl e s ton south, the abandoned ri ce-field along the ri vers for thirty miles back from the sea, and the co u ntry bo rd e ring the St. John’s Ri ver, Florida, a re reserved and set apart for the settlement of the negroes now made free by the a cts of war and the proc l a m ation of the Pre s i d e nt of the Un i ted St ate s. At Be a u fo rt, Hilton Head, Savannah, Fernandina, St . Au g u s t i n e, and Jacksonv i l l e, the blacks may

remain in their chosen or accustomed vocat i o n s ; but on the islands, and in the settlements hereafte r to be established, no white person whatever, unless military officers and soldiers detailed for duty, will be pe rm i t ted to reside; and the sole and exclusive management of affairs will be left to the freed pe ople themselve s, subject only to the Un i ted St ate s military authori ty, and the acts of Congress. . . . Wh e n ever three re s pectable negroe s, heads of families, shall desire to settle on land, and shall have selected for that purpose an island or a loca l i ty clearly defined within the limits above d e s i g n ated, the Inspector of Settlements and Pl a nt ations will himself, or by such subo rd i n ate officer as he may appoint, g i ve them a license to

t roops found themselves in Savannah’s black churches and were impressed by the leadership and preaching of the ministers. Anxious to feel out Sherman’s behavior toward African Americans in the occupied area, Edwin Stanton, the abolitionist secretary of war, arrived in Savannah in January 1865. Stanton had heard rumors of poor treatment of ex-slaves following the army, including the sexual abuse of black women and the abandonment of several hundred elderly people, women, and children to a party of Confederate scouts, who re-enslaved them. While not in favor of slavery, Sherman did not want his army of seasoned veterans, with whom he had cultivated a special relationship based on their autonomy and perceived elite status, diluted with the addition of African-American soldiers. Stanton interviewed leaders in the African-American community, particularly ministers, who reported that they regarded Sherman as Moses and an avenging angel but wanted a more guaranteed place in Savannah and Georgia. Stanton and Sherman’s answer to this was the genesis of “40 acres and a mule”—a plan to confiscate the abandoned plantations of the sea islands and Savannah River frontage and divide them into farms for ex-slaves. Three weeks later, the plan to travel north by sea was revised and Sherman moved out of Savannah by land, deploying one column of the army into North Carolina and the other two into South Carolina. Hardee’s and Bragg’s troops were used to delay Sherman’s march along the route but were so badly outnumbered that the confrontations were skirmishes and did not delay the capture of Columbia. Holding South Carolina responsible for starting the Civil War, Sherman and his men were especially harsh with the residents of the South Carolina capital, which burned to the ground on February 17—although Sherman did not order it burned as policy and the ultimate responsibility for the destruction was never discovered. The British government, anxious to recover damages

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Sherman Land Reform (Continued)

settle such island or district and affo rd them such a s s i s t a n ce as he can to enable them to establish a pe a ceable agricultural settlement . The three parties named will subdivide the land, under the s u pe rvision of the inspector, among themselve s, and such others as may choose to settle near them, so that each family shall have a plot of not m o re than forty acres of tillable gro u n d, a n d, when it borders on some water-channel, with not m o re than eight hundred feet wate r - f ro nt, in the possession of which land the military authorities will affo rd them pro te ction until such time as t h ey can protect themselve s, or until Co n g ress shall re g u l ate their title. The quarte rm a s ter may, on the requisition of the Inspector of Settlements

and Plantations, p l a ce at the disposal of the inspector one or more of the ca p t u red steamers to ply be tween the settlements and one or more of the co m m e rcial points here to fo re named, in order to affo rd the settlers the opportunity to supply their nece s s a ry wa nt s, and to sell the prod u cts of their land and labor. Although thousands of freedmen took up the re s e t t l e m e nt plan, Co n g ress never enacted any provision to regulate the title to the lands. As a co n s e q u e n ce, within three years after the end of the wa r, n e a rly all of the land had been resto re d to the fo rmer ow n e r s, and the Sh e rman Fi e l d O rder did not result in a pe rm a n e nt sys tem of land distribution.

for the property of British subjects destroyed in the fire, submitted the case to an international tribunal, who determined that Sherman could not be directly connected to the destruction. Unlike the situation in Atlanta, civilians remained in Columbia, assured that they were not in danger if they remained civil to the occupying troops. Some lethal combination of bummers, alcohol, stockpiled cotton bales, and local hostility led to a spectacular conflagration unplanned by Sherman. The last battle of Sherman’s march took place on March 20 and 21, 1865, at Bentonville, where General Joe Johnston attempted to exploit the wide geographic separation of Sherman’s columns on the march and attack Major General Henry Slocumb’s men before O. O. Howard could arrive to reinforce him. Despite skillful command by Johnston, the battered Confederate troops retreated toward Raleigh, having fought the last offensive action of the war. On April 26 at Bennett Place, hearing of the s u rrender at Appomattox, Johnston entered surrender talks with Sherman, who agreed to extremely generous terms later rejected by the federal government as too lenient and unsuitable. Sherman was offended by the reversal of his personal negotiation, and Grant had to tactfully convince his friend of the necessity of bowing to the will of Stanton and the political leaders on the issue of peace terms similar to those accepted by Lee at Appomattox. A perennial potential candidate, Sherman spent the rest of his life a national figure, commanding the army during the Ulysses S. Grant administration and overseeing construction of the transcontinental railroad. His men preserved their special morale and status through associations, reunions, and dinners at which Sherman spoke frequently. In the North, the hell of war faded into gratitude toward the unorthodox general and his March to the Sea, which was commemorated in a jaunty marching song as well as a more serious but positive poem by Herman

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Melville. In the South, the March to the Sea grew to the status of an epic, with families centering their bitterness and resistance to Reconstruction on their experience at Sherman’s hands, most famously in Margaret Mitchell’s novel Gone with the Wind. Sherman’s campaign to Savannah and the Carolinas ushered in a new era of Total War, horrific, but acceptable to military planners and the government because it was successful in bringing the bayonet point to the civilian supporters of the Confederacy.

ALTE R NATE H ISTO RY Instead of evacuating from Savannah, in our alternate history the Confederacy launches a desperate ambush using General Braxton Bragg’s troops from Augusta, and history might have happened this way: On December 19, Union foragers would have encountered the scouts accompanying Bragg’s 10,000 men from Augusta. Because of their dug-in positioning around Savannah in the flooded rice fields and swamps, Sherman’s troops would have been unable to re-form and move westward fast enough to meet the oncoming army on advantageous ground. Instead, the fight would have taken place with Union soldiers pinned between Savannah’s fortifications and the advancing Confederates. Expecting a much easier seizure of the city, Sherman would have continued to expect his men to forage from a now stripped area and to operate in clothing and with equipment that had been worn or consumed to point of breakdown. Within Savannah, the trapped civilian population would have pre p a red to defend themselves alongside the soldiers. A pro m inent Episcopalian minister would have roused the civilians with tales of Sherm a n ’s behavior in Atlanta and terrified them by reporting that it was policy to slaughter all male children and turn freed slaves loose on the white population for revenge. The audience might have turned savagely on an elderly woman who suggested that surrender to Sherman might offer a better chance of survival than resistance. With a desperate sense of defiance, Savannah’s white residents would have pre p a red to defend their homes and city with makeshift knives, hunting rifles, shovels, and impro v i s e d explosives. The black population would have faced a terrible situation—so long as the city remained in Confederate hands, In an alternate history, General Bragg, above, would they could show no hope for the occupation have moved his 10,000 men against Union General Sherman. (Library of Congress) that would bring them legal recognition as

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f ree people without suffering retribution from angry whites. On the other hand, the coming battle was likely to damage the pro p e rty of f ree blacks as badly as that of whites. Quiet meetings would have taken place in the African-American churches, but no solution other than encouraging each individual to follow his or her conscience might have been found. The fighting in the western approaches to the city would have been savage. Savannah’s guns, placed to fire into the Union troops, and superior to Sherman’s artillery, would have battered the trapped men and prevented them from effectively forming up against Bragg’s approaching column. Despite their superior numbers, the terrain would have forced Union troops into a small bottleneck where any attack was possible, blunting their ability to hold off the assault. It would have been General O. O. Howard who would have voiced to Sherman the dreadful suggestion: storm into the city itself. Orders would have been relayed to company commanders, instructing the Union forces to probe for a weak point in the town’s western defenses, and once located, open it as a breach through which the rest of the army could pour. It would have taken little from officers to enrage their men to the point that storming the cannon seemed reasonable. Every regiment would have had some deep grievance against the Confederates—many units would have reacted viscerally to a recitation of their time in the swamp, being bitten by snakes, sleeping in trees, shaking from fevers delivered by the endless biting insects. One young captain from Indiana could have stirred his men by reminding them that Savannah epitomized the Southerners who had started the war—rich plantation owners who had spent the war buying contraband from Cuba and enjoying freshly baked apple pies while the army slogged along. Perhaps the most electrifying motivation would have come from men recently liberated from Confederate prison camps, who would have filled their comrades with a burning desire to avenge their treatment by destroying a Confederate city. The breakthrough, which could have occurred at 2 A.M., would have been credited to the soldiers of the 2nd Minnesota who had seen a lantern signal held by an African American, illuminating an artillery position manned by young boys. The Minnesotans would have attacked ferociously, driving the boys away from their position and opening the breach for others to follow. Although the resulting fighting would have been brutal and would have cost the Union several thousand casualties, the soldiers would have found themselves fighting civilians with makeshift weapons. Hardee would have attempted to organize an orderly retreat of his men when it became apparent that the Union breakthrough had been successful, but local citizens, their wagons and animals crowding the streets and waterfront, would have made it difficult to continue communication and control of the defensive line. By dawn, it would have seemed that Armageddon had hit Savannah. Hardee, incapacitated by a chest wound, would have lost control of organized defenses, and neither McLaws nor the civilian mayor would have seemed able to exercise any authority over the

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developing chaos. Sherman’s men would have streamed into the city, engaging Hardee’s defenders in street-to-street fighting of astonishing violence and destruction. Two thousand of Bragg’s troops would have remained on the western approaches to the city, holding the area open for those civilians brave or confused enough to head into the fighting in order to get out of the city, but most would have remained trapped in the chaos. More than 25,000 bales of cotton, hidden around Savannah as a valuable commodity, would have become targets of arson as Union troops discovered caches and set them aflame, often without thought to how the blazes would trap other soldiers. African Americans would have been caught in a particularly difficult situation. Black firemen would have attempted to control the fire as it spread to civilian houses but would have been shot by Union troops for i n t e rfering. In our alternate history, when First African Baptist Church’s roof caught fire, attempts to put it out were nixed by Union commanders, costing the lives of two dozen parishioners who had come to the church seeking refuge after their houses had been destroyed. As Savannah had no segregated property laws, when the city fell, African Americans would have lost everything alongside their white neighbors and would have been treated roughly by the attacking military force. Hardee, Bragg, and Beauregard’s desperate gamble would have turned into a deadly fiasco. All but a handful of structures in the city would have been reduced to smoking ruins, while a third of the civilian population of 20,000 would have been killed or incapacitated. Sherman’s losses would have been proportionate to those suffered during the Atlanta campaign, reducing his army of 62,000 by 11,000 men killed or too injured to be available for active duty. Many of these injuries would be from smoke inhalation and burns as well as the heavy fighting at the fortifications in the opening stages of the ambush. Approximately 3,000 of Bragg’s and 1,000 of Hardee’s men might have escaped from Savannah and made their way into South Carolina to link up with Beauregard in Charleston. The rest of the Confederate soldiers, many injured, would have surrendered the morning of December 20, leaving Sherman with more than 10,000 hungry, ragged, and medically demanding prisoners. Hardee himself would have died during the night while his aides attempted to move him from one building to another. The civilian population would have been devastated. Union officers would have supervised their own men and Confederate prisoners in work details that found and attempted to identify the bodies of dead civilians. Those still alive would have scrambled to acquire shelter and food. Federal ships would have arrived quickly, but sailors would have had to rebuild parts of the damaged waterfront in order to off-load badly needed supplies of food, medicine, and thousands of tents diverted from army warehouses. The attitude of both Union and Confederate survivors would have been extremely hostile, and confrontations with hysterical Savannah refugees would have been commonly met with threats and harassment, despite Sherman’s on-site attempts to turn his soldiers from conquerors and looters to peaceful occupiers.

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News of the high death toll and destruction would have reached northern news outlets within days of the battle. Even the most aggressive of the war’s supporters would have been appalled as reporters stunned their readers with heartrending stories of orphaned children, helpless women, and pathetic African Americans. Photographers, some of them caught posing the bodies, would have captured on film images that seared the conscience of the public. British survivors of Savannah would have been quick to complain to their government, not just with demands for restitution of lost homes and property but also with lurid tales of a nightmarish experience. These tales would have found their way into European newspapers and sermons. In our alternate history, a hastily published sentimental pamphlet would have driven the British to demand both reparations for British subjects and an explanation for the bloodbath. Back in Washington, D.C., Sherman would have become the target of the government’s embarrassed wrath. Charges of instability and even insanity, which had been squelched early in the war, would have resurfaced, with former subordinates willing to speak about the general’s flawed character and vicious temper. Southern belles, survivors of Sherman’s march, would have came forward with stories of “outrage” and abuse that would have deeply offended Mary Todd Lincoln, herself a Kentucky lady. Lincoln, determined to stand by Sherman and his decision to allow the March to the Sea, would have found that he was being tarred as a savage and merciless conqueror alongside his general. Grant, still positioned outside Richmond, would have pointed out that the South had now lost any ability to resist a march northward by Sherman unless Lee moved troops away from the Confederate capital to meet him. This assurance of success, however, would not have been as triumphal now that the public had seen Savannah. It would have been clear that an army of “bummers” who were unshaven, dirty, and casual about their discipline had unleashed animal savagery on the city. Joe Johnston’s Army of Tennessee, although filled with men full of hatred for Sherman and his soldiers, would have been in no position to resist without reinforcements or supplies from the devastated area of Georgia. Relaying this information to Jefferson Davis, Johnston would have suggested that the Confederacy attempt to make the best deal they could without subjecting Charleston or Richmond to the treatment poured onto Savannah. On February 14, 1865, after consulting with Lee, Davis would have telegraphed Lincoln offering to surrender so long as other southern cities were guaranteed safety and civilians taken under the president’s personal protection. Public perception of the war had turned to such revulsion that even the most radical were anxious to end what had become an international humiliation for the United States. Lincoln would have submitted the surrender terms to Congre s s immediately, where they would have been accepted with alacrity. S h o rtly afterward, Sherman would have been relieved of duty and recalled to Washington, D.C., for a court-martial. Military pro s e c utors would have been unable to find evidence that he had intended

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the civilian deaths in Savannah, but he would at least have been found guilty of conduct unbecoming an officer, something most of the remaining military establishment would have heartily endorsed. S h e rman would have resigned and with his wife Ellen left for a remote ranch in Montana, accompanied by several hundred of his soldiers, who would have remained loyal and would have re s e n t e d their commander’s treatment. In our alternate history, in 1889, S h e rman would have received an invitation from Kaiser Wilhelm II to address the German General Staff, but he would have refused by reason of his age and declining health. Grant, too associated with the disaster to ride his war service anywhere, would have re t i red to Ohio, where he would have become president of a bank later implicated in serious financial irregularities associated with railro a d construction. In an attempt to ascertain the extent of damaged feelings, Lincoln would have traveled to Savannah after visiting Richmond in April 1865. Even the unprintable photographs would have not prepared the president for what he would have seen. Despite an attempt to relocate white refugees to outlying houses and to the care of relatives across the South, people would still be living in the ruins of Savannah. The army would have attempted to process thousands of Confederate prisoners, and African Americans, formerly city property owners, would now be living in the ruins, fearful of leaving their claims. Inside his hat, Lincoln would have had another short speech, this one promising a national recovery, a gentle reunion without treason trials or more scorched earth. Unfortunately, in our alternate history, as Lincoln bent down to speak to an elderly African-American man recovering from a broken leg, the man’s sister, whose sanity had been shattered by the loss of her only child in the Savannah massacre, would have stabbed the president through the heart. Lincoln would have bled to death on the ground before his Pinkerton guards could do anything to save him, although his last words might have been to insist that the crazy woman not be punished for her actions. The new administration under Andrew Johnson, would have vowed to bring the South to heel, willing to see the Confederates as victims but not to forgive. The new administration would have brought in General George McClellan, former political adversary of Lincoln, to head the reconstruction of the Union, seeing in him the proper image of a soldier—a Napoleon rather than a Genghis Khan. Outrage over the part played by a black person in the president’s death would have turned many Northerners against insisting on rights for ex-slaves or protections for free blacks, and in the settlement with the rebellious states, white leaders would have been allowed to reassume their positions of leadership under McClellan’s supervision. Those activists still devoted to the cause of abolition and equality would have worked in the South to help African Americans move northward or to Canada, seeing no chance of changing the increasingly entrenched sharecropping system that so resembled slavery. Margaret Sankey

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Discussion Questions 1. Compare the reaction to Sherman’s scorched-earth policy described in this chapter to that in Chapter 2: Confederate States of America. What similarities and differences are there in the alternate histories of these two chapters? 2. In the alternate history suggested in this chapter, Lincoln’s death at the hands of an African American alters the degree of northern support for civil rights for the freedmen. How do you think that factor would have affected race relations during and after Reconstruction? 3. Although Sherman’s destruction of civilian resources was portrayed as vindictive and criminal in Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind and in many older historical texts, what insights are presented in this chapter regarding Sherman’s rationale for the policy that offset that traditional view? 4. In actual history white and black residents of Savannah had very mixed reactions to Sherman’s occupation of the city. For each group, what were the considerations that led to both positive and negative responses to Sherman? 5. Sherman’s policy of destruction of civilian resources set a precedent for such actions in later wars. What similarities or parallels can be drawn to these events: the German policy of “frightfulness” in France and Belgium in 1914–1917; the London Blitz of 1940; the bombing of Dresden, Germany, in 1944; the nuclear attacks by the United States on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945? What lines of argument could be advanced to defend such military actions against civilians?

Bibliography and Further Reading Ash, Stephen. When the Yankees Came. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995. Barrett, John G. Sherman’s March through the Carolinas. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1956. Conway, Alan. The Reconstruction of Georgia. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1966. Davis, Burke. Sherman’s March. New York: Random House, 1980. Fellman, Michael. Citizen Sherman. New York: Random House, 1995. Foote, Shelby. The Civil War: A Narrative, Red River to Appomattox. New York: Random House, 1974. Glatthaar, Joseph. The March to the Sea and Beyond. New York: New York University Press, 1985. Hughes, Nathaniel. General William J Hardee: Old Reliable. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1965. Johnson, Whittington. Black Savannah: 1788–1865. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas, 1996. Kennett, Lee. Marching through Georgia. New York: HarperCollins, 1995.

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McMurray, Richard. “Sherman’s Savannah Campaign,” in Fort Pulaski and the Defense of Savannah. Philadelphia: Eastern Acorn Press, 1985. Miers, Earl. The General Who Marched to Hell. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1951. Nichols, George Ward. The Story of the Great March. Williamstown, MA: Corner House, 1972. Sherman, William Tecumseh. Memoirs of Gen. W. T. Sherman, Written by Himself, Volume II. New York: Charles L. Webster, 1892. Smith, Paige. Trial by Fire. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1982. Stokes, Thomas. The Savannah. New York: Rinehart, 1951.

Lincoln Assassination

8

On April 14, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln was shot at Ford’s Theatre. What if assassin John Wilkes Booth had not pulled the trigger and Lincoln served a full second term?

INTR ODU CT IO N In November 1864, President Abraham Lincoln was reelected to the presidency of the Union states. Pro-Confederate sympathizers in the North viewed Lincoln’s reelection as a disaster, as did most leaders of the Confederacy. Facing certain defeat unless some drastic measures could be taken, Confederates in the end of 1864 began to explore their options. Some looked to further peace negotiations with the North. Others sought foreign intervention. Many Southerners were willing to take the desperate risk of enrolling blacks in the Confederate armies. And inevitably, a few began to think that the only way to avert Confederate defeat was by removing the head of the Union government, that is, Lincoln. The idea of eliminating Lincoln was not a new one in 1864. Even before his first election in 1860, he began to receive threats against his life. Initially these threats caused him some concern, but once he was settled in the White House, he ceased to pay much attention to the danger and directed his secretaries to throw away most threatening letters without showing them to him. Lincoln believed that in a democratic society the chief executive must not be screened from the public. Hostility toward the president sharply increased during the last months of 1864 because the disaffected Northerners and embittered Confederates began to realize that what they considered the abuses and excesses of the Lincoln administration were going to be continued for another four years. Since the ballot did not remove the despot, it was time to find other means. Already in August 1864, the La Crosse Democrat (Wisconsin) observed that “if he is elected . . . for another four years, we trust some bold hand will pierce his heart with dagger point for the public good,” according to Herbert Mitgang in Lincoln as They Saw Him. In the weeks after his reelection Lincoln had more important matters to worry about than fearing for his life. He was busy persuading congressmen to vote for the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which abolished slavery throughout the United States. Congressmen judged that

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it was not politically expedient to attack the policies of a president who had just been triumphantly reelected. Military victories further strengthened Lincoln’s hand. The capture of Atlanta had probably determined the outcome of the 1864 election, and now, while Union General Ulysses S. Grant pinned down Robert E. Lee’s army before Richmond, William T. Sherman continued his “march to the sea,” cutting a swath of devastation through Georgia. In the spirit of conciliation, Lincoln reached out for the support of Democrats as well as Republicans. His annual message to Congress in December 1864 contained an earnest plea to his political opponents to supp o rt the proposed constitutional amendment. In the previous session of C o n g ress the measure had failed to secure the required two-thirds vote in the House of Representatives because all but four of the Democratic members voted against it. At Lincoln’s urging, the National Union Convention had made the amendment a central plank in the platform on which he and a heavy Republican majority in the next Congresses were elected. He now asked the session of the 38th Congress to reconsider the amendment. In the final balloting more than two-thirds of the House members voted for the T h i rteenth Amendment and submitted it to the states for ratification. The president happily signed it in Febru a ry 1, 1865. At the same time, Lincoln planned the reconstruction of the South. On February 5, 1865, he laid a plan before an evening session of the cabinet to appropriate $400 million to be distributed to the southern states in proportion to their slave population. Half would be paid by April 1, if all resistance to the national authority ceased, and the remaining half by July 1, provided that the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified. This plan told much of Lincoln’s generosity of spirit and of his understanding of the problems the South faced in making the transition from a slave society to a free society. But it revealed even more his almost desperate sense of urgency to bring the war to a speedy end. The cabinet members, however, felt strongly “that the only way to effectually end the war was by force of arms, and that until the war was thus ended no proposition to pay money would come from us,” according to William Frank Zornow in Abraham Lincoln: A New Portrait. So Lincoln reluctantly gave up his proposal. All along Lincoln believed that the surest way to undermine the Confederacy was by setting up loyal governments in the southern states as they fell under the control of the Union armies. His terms for Reconstruction were both generous and vague, for he was thinking less of the status of the South after the war than of means to stop the fighting. What he wanted was a series of seemingly viable loyal governments in several southern states that could present a believable alternative to the Confederacy. That focus had led to fierce disputes with radicals in his own party, who were worried about what would happen in the South after the war— the continuing economic and political power of the southern planter class, the protection of the civil rights of the freedmen, and the status of black labor in the postwar South. The president was not indifferent to any of these concerns, but he preferred to postpone discussion of such divisive issues until the defeat of the Confederacy. In July 1864 these differences between the president and Congress had come to a head, when the legislators refused to recognize the Reconstruction governments he had set up in Louisiana and Arkansas.

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Now, during the winter of 1864–1865, the president and the Congress faced precisely the same issues, but the outcome was different. As Congress assembled, Lincoln let it be known that he would veto any Reconstruction bill that did not recognize the free-state government he had been carefully nurturing in Louisiana. Instead of leading to a crisis, his insistence produced a compromise. On December 15, 1864, Representative James Ashley, who was also in charge of pushing through the Thirteenth Amendment, introduced a bill designed to please both conservatives and radicals, one that he hoped Congress would approve and the president sign. It extended congressional recognition to Lincoln’s government in Louisiana but required the other southern states to follow the procedures announced in the Wade-Davis bill—namely, that voters must take the oath that they had never supported the rebellion and that more than 50 percent of the eligible voters must favor any new, reconstructed government. In addition, Ashley’s bill called for black suffrage, a provision that radicals increasingly insisted was the only way to ensure the loyalty of the southern states. Ashley amended his bill again and again in the hope of attracting a majority. But no combination worked and on Febru a ry 21, 1865, he was obliged to give up. The defeat of Ashley’s bill was a major victory for Lincoln. Seven months earlier every Republican in the Senate and all but six Republicans in the House had voted for the Wade-Davis bill, to take the process of Reconstruction from the president’s hands. Only Lincoln’s veto had kept the Reconstruction process under the control of the executive branch. Now, in a remarkable turnabout, Congress failed to adopt any Reconstruction legislation. The approaching end of the congressional session left the Reconstruction process entirely in Lincoln’s hands. While Congress was debating the proposed Thirteenth Amendment and Ashley’s Reconstruction bill, it was also moving, with the president’s blessing, to create the new Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, intended to supervise the transition from slavery to freedom in the South and give the federal authorities guardianship over the recently emancipated slaves in order to protect them from exploitation by their former owners. This made it easier for Republican congressmen to accept even imperfect Reconstruction governments in the South, since they would be shorn of much of their power. The adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment provided another incentive for Republicans to recognize the Reconstruction regimes Lincoln had established. Before that amendment could go into effect, it had to be ratified by twenty-seven of the thirty-six states. Illinois began the process on February 1, 1865, and the other northern states were sure to follow promptly. The border states of Maryland, West Virginia, and Missouri had all now abolished slavery, and they were expected to ratify the amendment. But slavery persisted in Delaware and Kentucky, and the outcome in those states was doubtful. Even if they both approved, the votes of two additional states were needed—and those votes could only come from states that had been in the Confederacy. The most likely possibilities were Louisiana, Arkansas, and Tennessee. By recognizing the regimes that Lincoln had created in those states, congressmen could ensure the speedy death of slavery throughout the nation.

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K E Y CON CE P T

Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address

With the war winding dow n , L i n co l n’s speech at his s e cond inauguration as pre s i d e nt demons t rated the compassion with which he addressed the South, and gave some clues to how his second administration might have co n d u cte d Re co n s t ruction. Fellow-Countrymen: At this second appe a ring to take the oath of the Pre s i d e ntial office, there is less oc casion for an extended address than there was at first.Then, a state m e nt,somewhat in detail, of a course to be pursued, seemed fitting and pro per. Now, at the ex p i ration of four ye a r s, d u ring which public declarations have been co n s t a ntly called fo rth on eve ry po i nt and phase of the gre at co nte s t which still absorbs the at te ntion and engrosses the energies of the nat i o n , little that is new could be presente d. The prog ress of our arms, u pon which all else chiefly depe n d s,is as well kn own to the public as to myself; and it is, I tru s t, reasonably sat i s f a cto ry and enco u raging to all. With high hope for the f u t u re, no pre d i ction in re g a rd to it is ve nt u red.

On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago, all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it—all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without warseeking to dissolve the Union, and divide effects, by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war; but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive; and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. And the war came. One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the Southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union, even by w ar; while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the

This combination of forces was strong enough to enable Lincoln to keep control of the Reconstruction process in his own hands—but it was not quite enough to secure congressional approval of his actions. After the failure of Ashley’s Reconstruction bill in mid-February, administration supporters moved to secure the admission of Louisiana. Lyman Trumbull, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, took the lead. In the past he had often been a severe, even waspish, critic of the president, but his attitude had softened remarkably since Lincoln’s reelection. He conferred with the president about recognizing the reconstructed government of Louisiana and seating its two recently elected senators. A clear majority of the Republicans in the Senate joined Trumbull in following the president’s wishes, but a small group of radicals resolved to block the move. The Republican Radicals, who opposed the Louisiana regime because it did not give African Americans the vote, worked in close cooperation with the Senate Democrats, who wanted to deny suffrage to blacks; they shared only opposition to recognizing Lincoln’s government in Louisiana. Because of pressing business that the Senate had to attend to before adjourning, Trumbull was forced to give way and the admission of Louisiana was defeated. In his inauguration speech, on March 4, 1865, Lincoln concluded his aims for his second term in the White House with the words: “with malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; . . . to do all which may achieve and

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KE Y C ON C E P T

Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address (Continued)

territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces; but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered—that of neither has been answered fully.The Almighty has His own purposes.“Woe unto the world because of offenses! for it must needs be that offenses come; but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.” If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible

war, as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall, we discern therein, any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope—ferve ntly do we pray — t h at this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondman’s tw o hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another, drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said: “The j u d g m e nts of the Lo rd are true and ri g hteous altogether.” With malice towa rd none; with chari ty for all; with firmness in the ri g ht, as God gives us to see the ri g ht, let us stri ve on to finish the wo rk we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to ca re for him who shall have bo rne the bat t l e, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselve s, and with all nat i o n s.

cherish a just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations,” according to Paul M. Angle in The Lincoln Reader. The president was also determined to keep control of any peace negotiations generally thought to be in the offing. He wanted to make sure that any negotiations led not merely to a suspension of fighting but also to a peace that would ensure his war aims of Union, emancipation, and at least limited equality. His worst fear, which he repeatedly expressed, was that once the Confederate armies were defeated southern soldiers would be left with hate in their hearts and anarchy in their plans. Consequently his objective was to secure not merely peace but reconciliation. Bringing Grant, Sherman, and Admiral David D. Porter together for a conference aboard the River Queen on March 28, 1865, Lincoln discussed, according to William Frank Zornow in Abraham Lincoln: A New Portrait, the approaching end of the war and talked of offering the most generous terms in order to “get the deluded of the rebel armies disarmed and back to their homes. . . . Let them once surrender and reach their homes,” Lincoln said, “and they won’t take up arms again. Let them all go, officers and all; I want submission, and no more bloodshed. . . . I want no one punished; treat them liberally all round. We want those people to return to their allegiance to the Union and submit to the laws.” Meanwhile, the U.S. Navy controlled the ocean, and after the capture of Fort Fisher, off Wilmington, North Carolina, in January 1865, was strangling the Confederacy with its blockade. As Sherman’s Western Army cornered Joseph E. Johnston’s weakened forces in North Carolina, Grant

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was moving to the south of Petersburg and Richmond. On April 1, 1865, he launched an attack that crumpled Lee’s right flank in the battle of Five Forks and almost encircled Petersburg. Lee warned Confederate president Jefferson Davis that he must be prepared to flee Richmond. On April 3, 1865, learning that Petersburg had been evacuated, Lincoln closely followed the federal troops as they entered the city. On April 4, 1865, as soon as the navy had removed most of the Confederate torpedoes in the James River, Lincoln set out with a small p a rty to visit Richmond. While there, he met with John A. Campbell, the only high-ranking Confederate to remain in the capital, and with Gustavus A. Myers, a prominent Richmond attorn e y, on the issue of bringing Vi rginia back to the Union. In this meeting, Lincoln told them of his plan for a speedy restoration of Virginia to the Union. If he gave safe-conduct assurances to members of the state’s Confederate legislature, they could meet at Richmond and vote to withdraw the state from the confederacy. On April 9, 1865, Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox and the Civil War finally ended after four years of bloodshed. In his last speech, on April 11, 1865, Lincoln talked about the Reconstruction of the South and much of his speech was dedicated to a review of his relationship to the reconstructed government of Louisiana and to defend that regime. Moreover, he appealed to his fellow Northerners to lay aside their hatreds and concentrate upon the one peace aim that had motivated him since the opening day of the war—to restore the South to its relationship with the North. Afterward, Lincoln continued to plan for a speedy restoration of the Union under lenient terms of Reconstruction. But he found that few were ready to follow his lead. In Virginia, Campbell and his associates in the Virginia legislature seemed to be dragging their feet. Lincoln had also to deal with the radicals in the North, who rejected the compromises he had offered in his April 11 speech. The president’s immediate advisers also objected to the proposed meeting of the Virginia legislators. On April 12, when Lincoln brought the question of Virginia Reconstruction before the cabinet, nobody favored his plan. Meanwhile, John Wilkes Booth fumed with hatred of the president. Born in Maryland in a slave-holding community, the twenty-six-yearold actor thought of himself as a Northerner who understood the South. Erratic attendance at several private schools in the vicinity supplied him with the conviction that he belonged to the southern gentry. He seemed destined for the theater. His father, Junius Brutus Booth, and his brother Edwin were great actors. From his debut at the age of seventeen, Wilkes Booth was almost constantly on the stage. It was in southern theaters, notably in Richmond, that he first “Satan Tempting Booth to the Mu rder of the President.” gained recognition. A lithog raph prod u ced in 1865. (Libra ry of Congress)

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Southerners also liked Booth because he held conventional southern views about slavery, an institution that he considered a blessing. As sectional tensions mounted, he denounced what he called the treasonable activities of the abolitionist Republicans and called for retribution. When the war broke out, Booth made no attempt to conceal his sympathies for the Confederacy. His contempt of Lincoln was open. He did little more than grumble about Lincoln until August or September 1864, when the reelection of the president seemed increasingly probable, but he then decided that something must be done to rid the country of the man. After conferring with southern agents in Maryland, in Boston, and in Canada, he came up with the scheme of kidnapping Lincoln, taking him behind Confederate lines in Virginia, where he would be held hostage for the release of thousands of southern soldiers languishing in northern prisons. Booth’s first plan, to capture Lincoln while he was attending Ford’s Theatre on January 18, 1865, was never tried because the president stayed at home on that stormy night. Another plan for abducting the president, which failed too, due again to a last minute change of plans by the president, was to capture Lincoln while he was riding in his carriage on the outskirts of the city on March 17, 1865. Instead of discouraging Booth, these failures led him to contemplate a new course of action. As early as March 4, he had begun to think of assassination rather than abduction. The failure of the abduction scheme made that wish an obsession. Because the collapse of the Confederacy removed the source of any orders or suggestions for his conspiracy, Booth was now acting entirely on his own. Lincoln’s address on April 11 triggered Booth’s shift from thought to action. He heard the president recommend suffrage for blacks who were educated or had served in the Union armies. The actor then vowed that would be the president’s last speech.

On April 14, 1865, the Lincolns promised to attend a perf o rmance of the comedy Our American Cousin at Ford’s Theatre. Lincoln’s advisers urged him not to go to the theater. Before leaving on a mission to Richmond, one official, who often served as a presidential bodyguard begged him not to go out, particularly to the theater, while he was gone. It was not until midday on April 14, 1865, when Booth learned that Lincoln would be attending Ford’s Theatre, that he decided to implement his plan. At about 8 P.M., he summoned two of his associate conspirators, George A. Atzerodt and Lewis Paine, to meet him. Atzerodt was told to murder Andrew Johnson, the vice-president, and Paine willingly accepted

George A. Atzerodt, one of the conspirators in the Lincoln assassination. (Library of Congress)

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the order to kill William H. Seward, secre t a ryof state. The assassination of the president was left for Booth himself. All three assaults were to take place simultaneously, at 10:15 P.M. The turn i n g point in the history of the United States came as soon as Booth went to the Ford’s Theatre on the evening of April 14, 1865. Would the security people stop him? The indiff e rence that Lincoln felt toward his own security, despite the many threats on his life, together with the absence of his b o d y g u a rd, assisted Booth in his assassination of Lincoln on that fateful day. The turning point could have yielded a very diff e re n t history had Lincoln paid attention to the threats on his life and to his advisers’ re c o mmendations not to go to the theater that night, or, alternatively, to go there with a private guard . Lewis Paine, who attacked Secretary of State William Seward. (Library of Congress)

AC T UA L H ISTO RY The actual historical record shows that by the time the Lincolns arrived at the theater, at about 8:30 P.M., the performance had already begun. But when the president and his party entered, the orchestra interrupted the actors and played Hail to the Chief, and the audience rose and cheered. Lincoln and his wife took their seats in the presidential box. The occupants of the box could not be seen by most of the audience. Meanwhile, Booth, as a celebrated actor familiar to everybody at Ford’s Theatre, had no trouble slipping upstairs during the perf o rmance. Moving quietly down the aisle behind the dress circle, he stood for a few moments near the president’s box. John Parker, the Metropolitan policeman assigned to protect the pre s iThe presidential box at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, dent, had left his post in the passageway and the D.C., where Lincoln was shot. (Library of Congress) box was guarded only by Charles Forbes, a White House footman. When Booth showed Forbes his calling card, he was admitted to the presidential box. Barring the door behind him, so as not to be disturbed, he noiselessly moved behind Lincoln, who sat with his chin in his right hand and his arm on the balustrade. At a distance of about two feet, the actor pointed his derringer at the back of the president’s head on the left side and pulled the trigger. It was just about 10:15 P.M. When Major Henry Rathbone, a guest of the president, tried to seize the intruder, Booth lunged at him with his razor-sharp hunting knife.

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A Currier & Ives lithograph of John Wilkes Booth shooting the president. (Library of Congress)

Shoving his victim aside, Booth placed his hands on the balustrade and vaulted toward the stage. It was an easy leap for the gymnastic actor, but the spur on his heel got caught in the flags decorating the box and he fell heavily on one foot, breaking the bone just above the ankle. According to the official record and Benjamin P. Thomas in Abraham Lincoln: A Biography, Booth, waving his dagger, shouted in a loud, melodramatic voice: “Sic semper tyrannis” (“Thus always to tyrants”—the motto of the state of Virginia). Quickly he limped across the stage and made his escape through the rear of the theater. Secre t a ry of War Edwin Stanton summoned his assistant to help him and began rapidly dictating one order after another designed to keep the government functioning during the crisis. Stanton immediately started an investigation of the assassination, taking testimony from witnesses, ordering all bridges and roads out of the capital closed, and d i recting the military to search for the murd e rers. By dawn he had a massive manhunt under way. He soon learned that there had been not one but two assaults. Though Atzerodt decided not to attack Johnson and spent the night wandering aimlessly about the city, Paine, following Booth’s directions, had burst into Seward’s house; he fiercely attacked the secre t a ry of state, who was still bedridden after a carriage accident, and left him bleeding copiously and barely alive. By morning Paine and Atzerodt were under arrest, and the other conspirators—including those who had only been involved in the kidnapping plot—were p romptly seized. But Booth escaped. Not until April 26 did Stanton’s men trace him to a farm in nort h e rn Vi rginia, where he was shot.

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A photograph of Lincoln’s funeral procession along Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C. (Library of Congress)

Long before that, Lincoln was dead. At 22 minutes past 7:00 A.M., on the morning of April 15, the president died and with him his plans for a just and liberal peace. The mourning of a nation followed his body in its slow progress— stopping at Baltimore, where once his life had been threatened, for the homage of vast crowds; stopping at New York; stopping at the other cities for the tribute of reverent multitudes—to Springfield, Illinois, his hometown, where on May 4, 1865, it was laid to rest. After the burial service the “Second Inaugural Speech” was read over his grave. Immediately after Lincoln’s death, Johnson, was sworn as the seventeenth president of the United States. The war with the South was not over yet. Jefferson Davis was captured on May 10, near the borders of Florida. He was suspected in regard to Lincoln’s assassination, and he suff e re d imprisonment for some time until Johnson

The conspirators in the Lincoln assassination were hooded and hanged shortly after the cri m e. (Libra ry of Congress)

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released him, when the evidence against him had been seen to be wort hless. After several other surrenders of southern towns and small scattered forces, the Confederate General Kirby Smith, in Texas, surrendered to Union forces on May 26 and after four years and forty-four days, armed resistance to the Union was at an end. On December 18, 1865, the war had been over many months, but it was a day of special rejoicing for all those who had worked and fought for emancipation and freedom, for on that day the Thirteenth Amendment was officially proclaimed a part of the Constitution: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as punishment for crime . . . shall exist within the United States.” Lincoln was not present when this event took place. Had he been alive, he, too, would have rejoiced. Lincoln had endorsed a lenient plan for Reconstruction, which neither aided the recently freed slaves nor imposed a northern agenda on the restoration of the southern economy. However, a powerful group of Radical Republicans within Congress resisting readmitting the rebel states without first imposing conditions. A series of laws, passed by the federal government, established the conditions and procedures for reintegrating the southern states. Much of the impetus for Reconstruction involved the social and political status of freed slaves in the southern states. In response to efforts by these states to deny civil rights to the freed slaves, Congress enacted a Civil Rights Act in 1866, and again in 1875. This action led to conflict with Johnson, who vetoed the Civil Rights Act of 1866; however, his veto was overridden. After solid Republican gains in the midterm elections, the first Reconstruction Act was passed on March 2, 1867. It divided ten Confederate states (all except Tennessee, which had been readmitted to the union on July 24, 1866) into five military districts. During the period of Reconstruction there was considerable upheaval in southern society. Northerners, derisively called carpetbaggers, moved south to participate in southern governments. Republicans assumed control of all state governments and began to pass numerous civil rights laws legalizing interracial marriage; funding extensive, integrated public education; and a variety of other ambitious proposals. In many cases former slaves were given very prominent places in the government, usually as state legislators. There were also numerous black judges, mayors, sheriffs, and deputy governors installed. Louisiana even had a black governor briefly (P. B. S. Pinchback). The South Carolina House of Representatives was, for a time, a majority-black legislative body. Mississippi had a majority-black population during the time frame. Indeed, many political firsts for African Americans occurred during the Reconstruction period. This upheaval resulted in new manifestations of racial tension. White Southerners who joined the Republican Party were derisively called scalawags. Disgruntled white Southerners, often led by former Confederate officers, denounced what they called the black mob rule and formed militant organizations like the Ku Klux Klan. Three constitutional amendments were adopted in the wake of the Civil War: the Thirteenth, which abolished slavery; the Fourteenth, which granted civil rights to blacks; and the Fifteenth, which granted the right to vote to all otherwise qualified adult males regardless of race, color, or

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p revious condition of servitude. The Fourteenth Amendment was opposed by the southern states, and as a precondition of readmission to the Union, these states were required to accept it (or the Fifteenth after adoption of the Fourteenth). All southern states had been readmitted by 1870—Georgia was last on July 15 of that year—and all but 500 Confederate sympathizers were pardoned when President Ulysses S. Grant signed the Amnesty Act on May 22, 1872. Reconstruction nevertheless continued until 1877, when the contentious presidential election was decided in favor of Rutherf o rd B. Hayes, supported by nort h e rn states, over his opponent, Samuel J. Tilden. Some historians have speculated that the disputed election was simply handed to Hayes in a political exchange for an end to Recons t ruction; this theory characterizes the settlement of that election as the Compromise of 1877. Not all historians agree with that theory; some see the election as coinciding with a decreased desire for inter-elite conflict, an increased will to integrate the southern social hierarchy with the larger American society, and a drive to re d i rect the military to campaigns against Native Americans. In any case, Reconstruction came to an end with Hayes. Reconstruction officially ended in 1877 when the South agreed to accept Hayes’s victory if the North withdrew federal troops from the South. The end of Reconstruction marked the demise of most civil, political, and economic rights and opportunities for African Americans and ushered in an era some historians refer to as the nadir of American race relations. Blacks would legally and socially remain second-class citizens until the civil rights movement of the mid-twentieth century. The end of Reconstruction also marked the end of the nascent interracial working people’s alliances that had tentatively begun to form in the South. In exchange for its acceptance of reintegration into the Union, the South was allowed to reestablish a segregated, racially discriminating society, and Congress was reorganized to give elite southern legislators extraordinary power, lasting into the mid-twentieth century. By reestablishing a firm racial hierarchy, the one-party southern elites maintained much more effective control of working people and working conditions; and non-elite whites received the satisfaction of knowing that their own lives would at least have more value than those of their dehumanized African-American neighbors. The initial flurry of Reconstruction civil rights measures was eroded and converted into laws that expanded racial dictatorship throughout American institutions and everyday life. The resurrection and expansion of the racist society provided a solid basis for both the pronounced limitations of the American labor movement and the associated paucity and frailty of democratic social entitlements in the United States. In response to Reconstruction, the South also swayed Congress to pass the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibited federal military authorities from exercising localized civilian police powers. This was in direct response to Grant’s successful but short-lived use of the military in the South to suppress white supremacists’ campaign of terror and intimidation against blacks and their Republican supporters. In the demise of Reconstruction, much of the civil rights legislation was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court. Most notably, the court suggested in the “Slaughterhouse Case” 83 US 36 (1873), then held in the

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Civil Rights Cases 109 US 3 (1883), that the Fourteenth Amendment gave Congress the power to outlaw only public rather than private discrimination. Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 US 537 (1896) went even further, announcing that state-mandated segregation was legal as long as the statute or ordinance provided for “separate but equal” facilities. By 1905, in Lochner v. New York, 198 US 45, the Supreme Court had retooled the Fourteenth Amendment into a law protecting the autonomy of corporations rather than protecting the citizenship of African Americans or similarly oppressed people born or naturalized in the United States. The Supreme Court maintained “separate but equal” for almost sixty years until finally admitting that its implementation was almost always highly unequal. The Court abandoned it, reversing Plessy in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 US 483 (1954). It was not until the mid1960s that the civil rights movement, which is called sometimes the Second Resurrection, grew strong enough to win political reforms that weakened the system of private racial discrimination entrenched in the shadow of state “Jim Crow” laws. The government finally passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed discrimination in “public accommodations,” that is, restaurants, hotels, and businesses open to the public, as well as in private schools and workplaces.

ALTE RN ATE H IST O RY Had Lincoln served a full second presidential term, he would have extended the Louisiana policy of “consent and force.” Lincoln was usually adept at persuasion and skillful in using those sanctions available to him. He had demonstrated his ability to wield the power of patronage and of military appointments. He could have been expected to exercise with equal skill the extraordinary power he held by virtue of office and of legislation to grant pardons to those subject to penalty under the Confiscation Act of 1862. In the process of reconstructing state governments, Lincoln could have been counted on to safeguard presidential authority. Although at war’s end he might have remained for some time the Confederates’ chief villain, Lincoln could scarcely have become for white Southerners, as did Radical Republicans, the symbol of the alien, the fanatic, the self-righteous, and the vindictive. Lincoln’s presidential style was not inappropriate to the situation he would have faced. The manner in which he would have unveiled the crucial, controversial element of his Reconstruction policy—some measure of suffrage for blacks—was designed to crystallize support and minimize opposition. At the time only the most minimal suffrage proposal could command an inter-party consensus; this was all that he would have asked, actually less than his supporters had sought in Louisiana. Yet he would have managed to open the door to future enfranchisement for more blacks than the relatively few—Union soldiers and those whose qualifications he commended. To counter criticism that he had set up the re c o n s t ructed state governments, Lincoln would have mini-

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mized his role in Louisiana, but he would not have disavowed his authority as commander-in-chief to shape the Reconstruction process. By virtue of that power he would have sent General Nathaniel Banks back to New Orleans with military authority to perf o rm an essentially civil mission—to promote the kind of Unionist government and racial policy the administration desired. Although his statements could be otherwise interpreted, Lincoln’s purpose, like that of his party, would have gone beyond the readmission of the secession states. In early 1865 he would have been in an excellent position to implement a larger purpose by combining a minimum of direct force and maximum use of other means of asserting the power and influence of the presidency. Lincoln’s election victory the previous November had greatly strengthened his hand with Congress and with the northern public. Final military victory could only have increased the public esteem and congressional respect he had won. In the summer and fall that followed, Lincoln would have found additional support in a mounting sense of indignation in the North, as reports from the South confirmed that the freedom of blacks would be in peril if left in the hands of southern whites. It would have been uncharacteristic of Lincoln not to have recognized the opportunity. In his pragmatic fashion, advancing step by step as events permitted, with caution, but when necessary with great boldness, it is just possible that Lincoln might have succeeded in making a policy of basic citizenship rights for blacks acceptable or at least tolerable. The challenge to presidential leadership was formidable. If any man could have met the challenge, that man was Lincoln. Had Lincoln in the course of a second term succeeded in obtaining a far broader consent from the white South to terms that would have satisfied northern Republican opinion, ultimate victory in the battle over the ex-slave’s status as a free man would not necessarily have followed. There would still have been the need to build institutions that could safeguard and expand what had been won—laws that the courts would uphold, an economy offering escape from poverty and dependency, a Union-Republican party in the South recognized by its opponents as a legitimate contestant for political power. The opportunities open to Lincoln for institutionalizing gains made toward equal citizenship irrespective of color would have been limited. Lincoln, however, was a man of his age. The concepts and perceptions then dominant were inadequate to meet the challenge of transforming the South. Postwar expectations were buoyant. “King Cotton” was expected to regain its throne with beneficent results for all. Freed from the incubus of slavery, the South would be reshaped after the image of the bustling North, with large landholdings disintegrated by natural force, village and schoolhouse replacing plantation quarters, internal improvements, and local industry transforming the economy. The former slave would share the bright future through diligence and thrift, and the forces of the marketplace. Of course, there would have been dissenters, both radicals like George W. Julian and Thaddeus Stevens who would confiscate the great estates, and conservatives, such as those cotton manufacturers, by no means all, who would per-

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petuate the plantation in some form. Neither had sufficient influence at war’s end to shape national policy. Republican leaders who did make postwar policy would have reached beyond prevailing concepts of selfhelp, the law of supply and demand, and the danger of “class legislation” to enact a modest land program. In the interest of the emancipated, Lincoln could have been expected to approve and encourage such deviations from the doctrinaire. And it would have been completely out of character for Lincoln to have exercised his power of pardon with ruthless disregard for the former slave’s interest and justifiable expectations. Indeed, there are intimations that Lincoln considered using that power to obtain from former masters grants of land for former slaves. Whatever support the national government might have given to the freedman’s quest for land would have been a psychological boon, more symbol than substance of equal citizenship and independence, but not without some economic advantage. With Lincoln, a Whiggish heritage, as well as humanity and a sense of responsibility for the emancipated, reinforced a pragmatic approach to the relationship between government and the future of the freedmen. Nor was he inhibited by the anxiety felt by many over the unprecedented debt incurred in fighting the war. In early 1865 he calmly contemplated adding to the war’s cost by indemnifying Southerners for property seized and not restored. Whatever sums Congress might have appropriated to finance land purchase for freedmen could only have helped alleviate the South’s postwar paucity of capital and credit. Its economic recovery would also have benefited from the lesser turbulence of the immediate postwar years had there been no war between the president and Congress. Limited gains would have been possible and probable, but there existed neither the power nor the perception necessary to forestall the poverty that engulfed so many Southerners, black and white, during the last decades of the nineteenth century. Thus, the dismal outcome for southern blacks as the nation entered the twentieth century need not have been as unrelieved as it was in fact. More than a land program, the civil and political rights Republicans established in law, had they been secured by practice, could have mitigated the discrimination that worsened the African Americans’ condition and constricted whatever opportunities might otherwise have existed for them to escape from poverty. The potential for a major second party among southern whites existed in the aftermath of Confederate defeat. The Democratic Party was in disarray, discredited for having led the South out of the Union and having lost the war. Old Whig loyalties subsumed by the slavery issue had nonetheless endured; southern unionism had survived in varying degrees from wartime adherence to the Union to reluctant support of the Confederacy. Opposition to Davis’s leadership and willingness to accept northern peace terms had grown as the hope for s o u t h e rn victory diminished. Such sources of Democratic opposition overlapped with the potential for ready re c ruits to Union-Republicanism from urban dwellers, from men whose origins had been abroad or in the North, from those whose class or intra-sectional interests created

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hostility to the dominant planter leadership of the democracy. A new South of enterprise and industry presented an attractive vision to many a native son. Had party recruitment and organization, with full presidential support, begun at the end of hostilities and escaped the period of confusion and bitterness that thinned the ranks of the willing during the conflict between Johnson and Congress, the result could have been promising. Greater white support and the accession of black voters by increments might have eased racial tension and lessened deadly factionalism within the party. Lincoln’s political skill and Whig background would certainly have served party-building well, as would the perception of presidential policy as one of moderation and reconciliation. The extent to which southern whites did in fact support the Republican party after 1867 despite its image as radical, alien, and black-dominated, an image that stigmatized and often ostracized them, suggests the potency of a common goal, or a common enmity, in bridging the chasm between the races. Politically, in order to achieve his ends, Lincoln might have continued into the postwar years the wartime coalition that joined Republicans and some Democrats under the Union party label, but such a development would have stirred few apprehensions of a Democratic takeover. Lincoln’s identification with the party’s past and his continuing role as party leader would have precluded suspicion of disloyalty. In Washington, D.C., there would have been no war between president and Congress. Stubborn diff e rences as to the process of Reconstruction would, of course, have persisted among Republicans and could not have been resolved easily, for unprecedented constitutional and practical problems were involved. Yet differences cut across congressional leadership and at some point surely would have been amenable to the legislative process. They would not have created a chasm between executive and legislature. With Lincoln as president, whenever a Republican consensus or compromise developed, executive agreement could be expected short of legislation that would force him to repudiate the Louisiana experiment while there was still hope of “hatching the egg.” There is good reason to believe that the president and the congressional majority would have joined in an effort to ensure that freedmen obtain at the very least equal standing before the law, access to education, the right to bear arms, a measure of present and a more general prospective enfranchisement, plus governmental assistance in acquiring access to land. An eloquent passage in Lincoln’s last address pointed to the general direction in which he intended to exert presidential pressure. He would not have the nation say to Louisiana blacks, and by implication to all others who had been slaves, that their hopes for liberty would be dashed. Thus, in the 2000s, we would have experienced a sense of much more equality and much less discrimination between whites and blacks, and Martin Luther King, Jr., would not have needed to say in the 1960s “I have a dream.” Blacks would have enjoyed all the rights

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and opportunities pledged to them by the Thirteenth Amendment, which Lincoln pushed the states so hard to approve. And all this would have developed because one day in April 1865, at Ford’s Theatre, an assassination attempt on the life of Lincoln would have been averted, and he could have put his Reconstruction plan into effect. Moshe Terdiman

Discussion Questions 1. What other aspects of American culture and racial relationships would be different today had Lincoln served a full second term? 2. Do you agree that the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s might not have existed had blacks won their suffrage right and other civil rights in the nineteenth century? 3. What would have happened if Booth and his associate conspirators had assassinated Seward and Johnson? Who would have been the president in this case? 4. What other turning points in the history of the Civil War and Lincoln’s second presidential term might have yielded other alternate histories?

Bibliography and Further Reading Anastaplo, George. Abraham Lincoln: A Constitutional Biography . Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1999. Angle, Paul M. The Lincoln Reader. Camden, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1947. Bernard, Kenneth A. “Lincoln, the Emancipator.” In Henry B. Kranz, ed., Abraham Lincoln: A New Portrait. New York: Van Rees Press, 1959. Cox, LaWanda. Lincoln and Black Freedom: A Study in Presidential Leadership. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1985. Donald, David Herbert. Lincoln. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996. Hesseltine, William B. Lincoln’s Plan of Reconstruction. New York: Peter Smith, 1963. Fehrenbacher, Don E. Abraham Lincoln: A Documentary Portrait through His Speeches and Writings. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1977. Masters, Edgar Lee. Lincoln the Man. New York: Dodd Mead, 1931. Mitgang, Herbert. Lincoln as They Saw Him. New York: Rinehart, 1956. Monaghan, Jay. “Lincoln, the Diplomat and Statesman.” In Henry B. Kranz, ed., Abraham Lincoln: A New Portrait. New York: Van Rees Press, 1959. Sandburg, Carl. Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years and the War Years. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1954. Stern, Philip Van Doren. The Life and Writings of Abraham Lincoln. New York: Modern Library, 1940.

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Thomas, Benjamin P. Abraham Lincoln: A Biography. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1952. Williams, T. Harry. “Lincoln, the Military Strategist.” In Henry B. Kranz, ed., Abraham Lincoln: A New Portrait. New York: Van Rees Press, 1959. Zornow, William Frank. “Lincoln, Man of Peace.” In Henry B. Kranz, ed., Abraham Lincoln: A New Portrait. New York: Van Rees Press, 1959.

Thirteenth Amendment

9

Proposed in 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution abolished slavery. What if the amendment was not ratified and slavery was only partially abolished?

INTR ODU CT IO N The westward expansion of slavery became one of the most controversial issues in antebellum America, with the power to divide the country along sectional lines. African slaves had worked in the British colonies in North America since the first recorded arrival of a ship delivering slaves occurred in Virginia in 1619. Northern agriculture never required a large-scale labor force, however, and slavery remained a small institution there. Consequently, all northern states had provided for either immediate or gradual emancipation by 1804. In the South, on the other hand, slavery became the basis for the region’s agricultural system, as the large tobacco, rice, cotton, sugar, and indigo plantations required numerous workers. This was especially true after the 1793 invention of the cotton gin greatly expanded cotton growth and spurred westward expansion in the search for new lands. The federal government first faced the issue of slavery’s potential expansion in the settlement of the Northwest and Southwest Territories in the late 1700s. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 banned slavery throughout the Northwest Territory, which consisted of that land north of the Ohio River to the Mississippi River. The federal government’s first major sectional crisis over slavery’s expansion came in 1819, when Missouri applied for statehood as a slave state, a move that would upset the balance of power between slave and free states in the U.S. Senate. The move also sparked questions over whether Congress had the authority to legislate slavery’s expansion. The resulting 1820 Missouri Compromise divided the Louisiana Purchase Territory with an invisible line at latitude 36° 30'. Slavery was prohibited above the line but permitted below it. Missouri was allowed to enter the Union as a slave state, balanced by the admission of Maine as a free state. The Compromise also established congressional authority to legislate slavery’s expansion. The Missouri Compromise resolved the issue for the next several decades, although bitter sectional feelings lingered.

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By the 1830s, a militant abolitionist movement had begun to flourish in the North among those who viewed slavery as a moral wrong. This movement was coupled with a rising Free Soil movement dedicated to stopping the expansion of what its proponents viewed as an inefficient, degrading system that would block western opportunities for free white men. These movements gave rise to increasingly strident southern defenses of slavery that began to paint the institution as beneficial to its laborers rather than as a mere economic necessity. Slavery ’s defenders often held up poor conditions of nort h e rn factory workers as a comparison. The battles over slavery ’s expansion resumed in earnest after the U.S. v i c t o ry in the Mexican-American war of 1846–1848. The former Mexican territory of Texas had already declared its independence in 1836 and had been admitted into the Union as a slave state in 1845. The fate of slavery in the large amount of land ceded by Mexico (the Mexican Cession) in the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo quickly proved to be a thorny issue in C o n g ress. The acquired land included all or part of the present-day states of California, Utah, Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, and Wyoming. Congressman David Wilmot introduced the Wilmot Proviso, banning slavery from the Mexican cession, but it was defeated. Meanwhile, gold was discovered in California in 1848, leading to a population surge in the 1849 gold rush that followed. The hard-won Compromise of 1850 temporarily settled the disputes. Its architects, Senator Henry Clay of Kentucky and Senator Daniel Webster of Massachusetts, had earlier played key roles in the Missouri Compromise. They, along with Senator John Calhoun of South Carolina, would die not long after its passage, marking the beginning of the end of the era of compromise between North and South. The Compromise provided for C a l i f o rnia to enter the Union as a free state. The territories of New Mexico and Utah would settle the slavery question through popular sovereignty, meaning that the people of those territories would decide the issue. The legislation also settled a Texas-New Mexico boundary dispute, ended the slave trade in Washington, D.C., and enacted an enhanced Fugitive Slave Act. By 1854, however, the sections would once again be roiled in angry debate, this time over passage of Senator Stephen Douglas’s KansasNebraska Act, which divided the Nebraska Territory into the two separate territories of Nebraska and Kansas. The result was an often-violent battle between pro-slavery and antislavery forces in what became known as “Bleeding Kansas.” The act also furthered the sectional divide in the Democratic Party, aided the demise of the Whig Party, and helped give rise to the new Republican Party, creating the two-party system. In 1857, President James Buchanan would stir further animosity by recognizing the Kansas pro-slavery government under the Lecompton Constitution. The 1857 Dred Scott Supreme Court decision was the next major controversy. Dred Scott was a slave whose former master had taken him to free territory, so Scott later sued the master’s widow for his freedom. The majority opinion, written by Chief Justice Roger Taney, stated that Scott was not a citizen and not free. Taney then stated that neither territorial governments nor the federal government had the authority to prohibit slavery in the territories. The decision upset Republicans because the congressional exclusion of slavery from the territories was a core principle of its party platform. The decision also seemed to challenge Douglas’s doctrine of popular sovereignty.

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Two key events in the last years of this already tumultuous decade furthered the sectional divide. The first were the unusual face-to-face 1858 Lincoln-Douglas debates during the campaign of the two men for a U.S. Senate seat from Illinois. Republican Abraham Lincoln’s nomination acceptance speech included the famous statement that the Union could not permanently endure half slave and half free. When questioned on the Dred Scott ruling, Democrat Stephen Douglas reiterated what became known as the Freeport Doctrine, that the people of a territory could effectively prohibit slavery by not enacting legislation protecting the institution. His views further split the Democratic Party. Then, in October of 1859, militant abolitionist John Brown led a raid on the federal armory and arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (currently West Virginia), in an attempt to start a slave uprising. His execution by the state of Virginia made him a martyr figure in the North; at the same time, he embodied Southerners’ worst fears of abolitionists. These events set the stage for the upcoming 1860 presidential election. The Democratic Party had split into sectional factions, giving Republican Abraham Lincoln the presidency even though he received no southern electoral votes and did not even appear on many southern ballots. Lincoln supported the Republican platform of stopping slavery’s expansion but pledged not to interf e re with the institution where it a l ready existed. He believed that he did not have the constitutional authority to go against the people’s wishes and sought to maintain the s u p p o rt of the border states of Missouri, Maryland, Kentucky, and D e l a w a re, slave states that remained loyal to the Union during the Civil War. He hoped that the approximately 4 million slaves in the United States would be freed through a system of gradual emancipation, with government compensation to slave owners. The country then entered the “secession winter” as a last attempt at compromise failed. Senator John Crittenden’s failed compromise would have extended the old Missouri Compromise line through the remaining federal territory. South Carolina was the first to secede in December 1860. Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas followed shortly thereafter. They would join together to create the Confederate States of America (Confederacy) in early 1861. In April 1861, the Civil War began at Fort Sumter, in Charleston harbor off the coast of South Carolina. Virginia, North Carolina, Arkansas, and Tennessee would later join the Confederacy. The North soon faced the question of what to do with the numerous escaped slaves who made their way to Union lines during the course of the war. Lincoln’s initial concern was the pre s e rvation of the Union. As commander-in-chief of the Union military, he would later claim the authority to confiscate enemy property that had been used in the Confederate war eff o rt, including slaves. Several Union commanders issued s i milar orders, the best-known being General Benjamin Butler’s declaration that runaway slaves were contraband of war. Several congressional confiscation acts forbade Union military personnel from returning fugitives. Other federal government measures included the 1862 District Emancipation Act that legally abolished slavery in the nation’s capital, the only federal law providing compensation to slave owners, and an 1862 law banning slavery in all current and future territories of the United States. Lincoln encouraged the border states to

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AN OTH E R VI E W

Was Sectional Conflict over Slavery the Main Cause of the Civil War?

AN OTH E R VI E W

Was Sectional Conflict over Slavery the Main Cause of the Civil War?

Most histo rians view the coming of the Civil War f rom the pe r s pe ctive of a growing sectional co nf l i ct be tween the No rth and the South over the issue of slave ry and its expansion. The theory

examines the reasons that po l i t i cal compromises like the No rt h west Ord i n a n ce of 1787, the Mi s s o u ri Co m p romise of 1820, and the Co m p romise of 1850 we re no longer possible by 1860. This view note s t h at te rri to rial expansion and the southern co t to n economy after the inve ntion of the co t ton gin e n s u red that slave ry was not a dying institution and that the question of its expansion would co ntinually be thrust to the fo re f ront. Se ctional diffe re n ces are emphasize d.

pass gradual compensated emancipation laws. Congress provided funds for this in 1862, but no border states participated. As the Civil War dragged on, Lincoln faced increasing pressure to make emancipation a war aim. It would boost morale after a series of military defeats and serve to weaken a Confederate military effort aided by slave labor. It would also weaken the Confederacy’s attempt to gain British support. Lincoln drafted an Emancipation Proclamation but did not issue it until after the Union victory at the Battle of Antietam in Maryland on September 17, 1862. The preliminary draft, dated September 22, 1862, declared that all slaves in Confederate-held territory would be freed if the rebellion did not end by January 1. The border states and Union-held Confederate territory were excluded. Lincoln hoped Southerners would be willing to end the rebellion rather than lose their slaves. The rebellion did not end, and on January 1, 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation took effect. Although most Southerners did not recognize the order, the liberation of slaves now joined pre s e rvation of the Union as an official Union war aim. The proclamation also provided for govern m e n t recruitment of African-American Union soldiers. Approximately 200,000 such soldiers and military laborers would serve in segregated units under the command of white officers by war’s end. The proclamation would have questionable authority at the end of the war, however, and proponents of abolition sought a constitutional amendment prohibiting slavery in the United States to place emancipation on a sound legal footing.

As the Civil War continued, northern support for abolition as a war aim began to grow. Added to those who felt abolition was a moral necessity were those who came to believe it would be militarily expedient while at the same time raising morale among a war-weary public. Still others

No Thirteenth Amendment? 147 AN OTHE R V I EW

Was Sectional Conflict over Slavery the Main Cause of the Civil War? (Continued)

These histo rians po i nt to the increasingly sectional nat u re of the main po l i t i cal parties and co ng ressional vo tes in the ante bellum era. Ultimate l y, the Whig Party would founder, the De m oc rat i c Party would split along sectional lines, and the new Republican Party would find support almost solely in the North. H i s to ria ns such as Joel Si l bey h ave used mod e rn po l i t i cal science techniques to q u a nt i t at i vely analyze voting data in an at tempt to offer an alte rn ate po i nt of view that emphasize s l ocal and state - l evel po l i t i cal inte rests over sectional ones (see his The Partisan Impe ra t i ve : The

Dynamics of Ameri can Politics be fo re the Civil War [ Ox fo rd University Pre s s, 1985]). This alte rn ate point of view argues that the ove remphasis on sectional conflict arose out of the tendency to examine the ante bellum pe ri od f rom the Civil War backwa rd. Its propo n e nts claim that state and local inte rests we re of para m o u nt co n ce rn and that other co ntempo ra ry po lit ical i s s u e s, such as tariff rate s, fo reign affairs, national and state banking po l i c i e s, land gra nts to ra i lroads and we s te rn settlers, and nativist pre j u d i ce against immigrants, played a larger role than they

simply sought revenge on the Confederacy, blaming the South and its defense of the “peculiar institution” for causing the war in the first place. What had begun as a mainly Republican movement had broadened to include northern Democrats and even some residents of the border states. Those who wished to prevent any future attempts by a president, Congress, the Supreme Court, or a state government to overturn the Emancipation Proclamation sought a constitutional amendment to guarantee its safety. This was a radical step. There had been few constitutional amendments up to this point, all but two of them constituting the Bill of Rights passed shortly after the adoption of the Constitution. Republican Congressmen James Ashley of Ohio and James Wilson of Iowa introduced the first bills in support of such an amendment in December 1863. It called for the abolition of slavery throughout the entire country. What would become the Thirteenth Amendment would formally abolish slavery in the United States, stating that “neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the p a rty shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” Emancipation would be immediate, with no compensation to slave owners. The Republican-controlled Senate approved the Thirteenth Amendment in April 1864 by a vote of 38–6. All thirty Republican senators voted in favor of passage, as did four Democratic senators, three Union members and one Unconditional Union senator. Five Democratic senators and one Union senator made up the opposition. The amendment would initially fail to clear the House of Representatives due to stiff Democratic Party opposition. The voting was mostly along party lines and Republicans were unable to provide the needed two-thirds majority of votes re q u i red for passage. The few independent congressmen were either Union men, who mostly opposed the amendment, or Unconditional Union men, who mostly supported the amendment. Radical Republican Congressman and leading abolitionist Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania sought passage of other abolition amendment with similar wording, but with an added clause negating

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K E Y CON CE P T

The Radical Republicans

Ra d i cal Re p u b l i cans was the name given to the mili t a nt wing of the Re p u b l i can Party kn own for its fight to punish the South and guara ntee abo l i t i o n and equality be fore the law and civil ri g hts for the freedmen. Th ey were cri t i cal of Pre s i d e nt Ab ra h a m L i n coln for his slowness in making emancipation a fe d e ral war aim and in enlisting Af ri can Am e ri ca n s in the Union Army. Th ey also sought to tre at the Confe d e ra cy harshly, offe ring the Wa d e - Davis Bill in co nt ra d i ction to Lincoln’s lenient Ten Pe rce nt Pl a n . L i n coln would poc ket ve to that legislation. Co n g ressional leaders of the Ra d i cals included Se n ators Thaddeus Stevens of Pe n n s y l vania and Ch a rles Sumner of New Yo rk . Radical Re p u b l i cans demanded that So u t h e rners take an “i ronclad oat h”p ro fessing that they had

not willingly aided the Confederacy. They also demanded that high-ra n king Confe d e rate military and political officials be barred from holding office and that the Confederate war debt be repudiate d. For Af ri can Am e ri ca n s, t h ey demanded abo l i t i o n , po l i t i cal equality, suffrage, re d i s t ribution of co n f i scated Confederate lands, and aid in making the tra nsition from slave ry to freedom. They gained cont ro l d u ring co n g ressional Re co n s t ru ction after sweeping v i cto ries in the 1866 co n g ressional elections and the i m pe a c h m e nt and near co nv i ction of President An d rew Johnson, who had vetoed seve ral pieces of their legislat i o n . Th ey then enforced their views through the passage of a series of Re construction Acts and the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fi fteenth Amendments.

the fugitive slave clause of the Constitution. It also failed to gain a twot h i rds majority. During the 1864 presidential election, the Republican Party (which came to identify itself as the National Union Party in order to attract Democrats sympathetic to its positions) officially adopted the T h i rteenth Amendment into its party platform. This was done in part to silence criticisms of Lincoln, who was running for reelection. Radical elements within the Republican Party (who came to be known as the Radical Republicans) had been criticizing Lincoln’s slowness in adopting emancipation and the use of African-American troops and the leniency of his proposed Reconstruction policies. Lincoln aided in the fight for the amendment’s inclusion in the party platform and would take a strong role in seeking its passage in the House of Representatives in January 1865. The Democratic National Convention nominated Union general George McClellan and endorsed a national party platform calling for a c e a s e - f i re and a negotiated settlement with the Confederacy. The Thirteenth Amendment did not become a major issue in the 1864 presidential campaign, as military issues dominated discussions. Republicans benefited by Union military victories in the months leading up to the election, like those of General William Tecumseh Sherman, including the fall of Atlanta. Lincoln won the 1864 presidential election over McClellan and the Republicans increased their number of congressional seats. Then Lincoln, in his annual message to Congress, asked the House to pass the Thirteenth Amendment, claiming the election results as a popular mandate for its passage. His words were echoed in appeals by various interest groups and state legislatures, which lobbied Congress and submitted petitions in favor of the amendment.

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As Lincoln pushed for the amendment’s passage, the new state constitution of the border state of Maryland in 1864 abolished slavery; at an 1865 state constitutional convention, the border state of Missouri also ended slavery. Meanwhile, a new version of the amendment was i n t roduced in the House. This version was able to broaden support because it did not consider such divisive questions as how the amendment’s measures would be enforced and whether the freed slaves would be provided with guaranteed equal rights under the law, as earlier versions had done. The House of Representatives then took up their debates and discussions on the Thirteenth Amendment, held in front of packed public galleries.

AC TUAL HI STO RY The January 31, 1865, vote secured passage of the Thirt e e n t h Amendment. All eighty-six Republicans, as well as fifteen Democrats, four Unionists, and fourteen Unconditional Unionists, voted for passage. Fifty Democrats and six Unionists were opposed. The final re s u l t , 119 in favor of passage to 56 against, was a slim two-vote margin over the re q u i red two-thirds majority. Lincoln signed the amendment, which then went to the states for the process of ratification. Reconstruction policy played a role in ratification. In order for the Thirteenth Amendment to be officially added to the U.S. Constitution, three-quarters of the states would need to ratify it. Any former Confederate states readmitted to the Union under new state governments and constitutions would be counted in this figure. Lincoln’s home state of Illinois was the first to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment on February 1, 1865. Georgia’s December 6, 1865, ratification represented the constitutionally required a p p roval by thre e - q u a rters of the states. S e c re t a ry of State William Seward officially added the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution on December 18, 1865. Meanwhile, the Civil War ended with Confederate general Robert E. Lee’s unconditional surrender to Union general Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia, in April 1865; Lincoln was assassinated later that same month. The war’s end meant that ratification would occur during the years of presidential Reconstruction, with the president guiding Reconstruction policy and the Republican Party controlling the southern states, with help from S cene in the House of Re p re s e ntatives on the passage the federal military protecting freedmen’s sufof the proposition to amend the Constitution, January frage. The Thirteenth Amendment had removed 31, 1865. (Library of Congress) what historian Roger Ransom, in Conflict and

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Compromise, termed “the last major legal hurdle to the permanent eradication of slavery in the United States,” but the position of the former slaves (freedmen) remained an unclear and controversial question, as did the process for reconstructing new state governments in the South. Before the war’s end, Lincoln’s Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction (Ten Percent Plan) of 1863 emerged as the first comprehensive plan for the reconstruction of the former Confederate states. The plan would pardon all Southerners, except high-ranking Confederate military and political leaders. They would be required to pledge a loyalty oath and support for emancipation. Once 10 percent of a state’s eligible voters had been pardoned, that state could form a new government. The new state constitution had to abolish slavery, but the plan did not mention freedmen’s suffrage. In 1864, Louisiana became the first state to apply for readmission under Lincoln’s plan. Arkansas and Tennessee would follow by war’s end. Many Republicans were quick to criticize the A slave rejoices at his newfound freedom. (Library of Congress) plan for its leniency, countering with the 1864 Wade-Davis Bill requiring a majority of a state’s voters to take a loyalty oath before formation of a new government. The “ironclad oath” re q u i red people to declare that they had never willingly aided the Confederacy. The bill also guaranteed freedmen equality before the law. Lincoln pocket-vetoed the bill, but his assassination in April 1865 left Vice-President Andrew Johnson in control of both the presidency and Reconstruction. While he extended recognition to the governments organized under Lincoln’s plan, he quickly adopted his own plan. Johnson’s Reconstruction proclamations of May 1865 were sim ilar to Lincoln’s in their lenient treatment of the defeated southern states. He appointed provisional governors in the unreconstructed states and off e red pardons to all Southerners who pledged loyalty to the Union and abolition, except those in several special categories who had to apply for individual pardons, most of which were granted. These categories included ex-Confederate military and political officials and wealthy plantation owners. The pardoned voters would then elect delegates to constitutional conventions to establish new state constitutions, which were re q u i red to abolish slavery, repeal secession, and repudiate Confederate war debts. Johnson, however, did not re q u i re ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment or freedmen’s suffrage. He also announced that all confiscated land would be re t u rned to its owners rather than be distributed among the freedmen. Many northern politicians hoped that the newly ratified Thirteenth Amendment would end the need for federal intervention in the South. The Thirteenth Amendment had abolished slavery, but it had not granted the freedmen citizenship nor had it guaranteed their voting rights. The former Confederate states concerned themselves with ways to keep the

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An 1869 wood engraving depicts three African Americans discussing politics. (Library of Congress)

freed slaves in their places socially, politically, and within the labor system. Many former Confederate leaders rose to power again once federal troops were removed from the reconstructed states. Those states’ legislatures then moved quickly to pass a series of harsh and discriminatory laws against freedmen known as Black Codes, with several states refusing to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment. Such actions angered the northern public and alarmed the Radical Republicans, who felt that the newly reconstructed states were denying freedmen their basic civil rights. Johnson soon faced a battle with the Radical Republican–led Congress over Reconstruction. The 1865 Congress refused to seat new southern re p resentatives from the states readmitted to the Union under Johnson’s Reconstruction policies. It also demanded that new southern state governments provide equality before the law and protect the suffrage of all males, including freedmen. Congress had earlier established the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands (Freedmen’s Bureau) in 1865 to guide ex-slaves through the transition to freedom. Major General Oliver Howard served as its commissioner. The bureau provided desperately needed food, clothing, and funds. It also helped establish labor arrangements between the freedmen and their former masters and provided them with legal aid.

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K E Y CON CE P T

Black Codes/Jim Crow Laws

Black Codes were a series of state laws passed within a number of fo rmer Co n fe d e rate states to g ove rn ra ce re l ations in the po s t – Civil War South. The earlier Black Codes gra nted the freedmen some ri g ht s, such as legalized marriages (including ones under slave ry ) , the ri g ht to own and tra n s fer pro pe rty, and the ri g ht to plead and testify in court ca s e s involving Af ri can Am e ri ca n s. Their main goal, h oweve r, was to re l e g ate the freedmen to second-class social, economic, and po l i t i cal stat u s. Examples of

ri g hts curtailed under the Black Codes include the ri g ht to ca rry weapons, the ri g ht to testify against w h i tes in co u rt, and travel restrictions. Black Codes also preve nted freedmen from voting through a va ri e ty of tact i c s, such as poll taxes and lite ra cy and g ra n d f ather clauses, which meant that one had be lite rate or have a gra n d f ather who could vo te to be eligible. The Republicans who came to power in the southern state gove rn m e nts after Co n g ress took

Schemes to place the freedmen on their own land were largely scuttled through the widespread pardoning of ex-Confederates and the return of their confiscated lands. In August 1865 President Johnson had overridden Howard’s Circular 13, which set aside forty-acre tracts for freedmen. A lack of adequate funds and administrators as well as the widespread resentment and antipathy of southern whites hampered the bureau’s mission. Most of the bureau’s functions would cease by the end of the decade. Johnson infuriated Congress with his veto of two 1866 bills, one extending the Freedmen’s Bureau and the other defining and protecting a U.S. citizen’s civil rights. Congress overrode his veto of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and soon passed the Fourteenth Amendment to guarantee those rights against future attacks. This amendment provided the first definition of American citizenship: “all persons born or naturalized in the United States.” It also prohibited state governments from denying citizens equal protection under the law or abridging their rights. Although it threatened to reduce a state’s congressional re p resentation if African Americans were continually prevented from voting, it never specifically prohibited denying suffrage on the basis of race. The needed thre e - f o u rths of the states had ratified the Fourteenth Amendment by 1868. The Radical Republicans firmly ushered in the era of congressional R e c o n s t ruction with the passage of the Reconstruction Acts of 1867. These acts divided the South into five military districts, sent federal troops into many areas, and demanded new southern state governments guaranteeing universal male suffrage. A general, who could use the troops to maintain law and order if necessary, headed each district. Military protection allowed African Americans to vote in large numbers, giving Republicans control. During this period, a handful of African Americans served in the U.S. Congress, and hundreds of others served at the state and local levels. The new state governments established the first state-funded public school system in the South, helped laborers in the struggle for improved working conditions, and outlawed discrimination in public facilities. Meanwhile, southern whites complained about the northern “carpetbaggers” who flooded into the South to take charge of politics, AfricanAmerican education, and voter registration and about those southern

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KE Y C ON C E P T

Black Codes/Jim Crow Laws (Continued)

co nt rol of Reconstruction dismantled many of the earlier Black Cod e s. Th ey would be replaced with s o - called Jim Crow Laws after the nort h e rn military l e ft the region at Re co n s t ru ct i o n’s end in 1877. Their name was adopted from a ste re o ty p i cal character in the blackface minstrel shows popular at the time. Jim Crow Laws instituted a sys tem of segre g ation in public facilities throughout the South, legally safe g u a rded after the Supreme Co u rt decision in Plessy v. Ferguson a l l owed “s e p a rate but e q u a l”facilities in 1896. Black Codes and Jim Crow

L aws were often combined with lynching and viol e n ce in a successful effo rt to int i m i d ate Af ri ca n Am e ri cans and preve nt them from vo t i n g.The Ci v i l Ri g hts Movement of the 1950s and 1960s would wo rk to end segre g ation and re g i s ter Af ri canAm e ri can vo ters among other key goals in the s t ruggle for racial equality. Se g re g ation would be officially outlawed in the 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Bo a rd of Education holding t h at separate but equal facilities were “i n h e re nt l y u n e q u a l .”

Republicans known as “scalawags” who supported the “carpetbaggers’ ” efforts. African Americans and their allies also had to battle the oftenviolent intimidation campaigns of white supremacist groups like the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). These interactions were crucial because, as historian Leon Litwack observed in Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery, “the state legislatures, the courts, and the Federal government offered some direction. But freedom could ultimately be defined only in the day-to-day lives and experiences of the people themselves.” The ongoing battle between Congress and the Johnson administration would come to a head in 1867 over Johnson’s removal of Secretary of War Edwin Stanton in violation of the Tenure of Office Act, with Congress seeking the president’s impeachment. The House of Representatives impeached Johnson, bringing him to trial in the Senate. The Senate vote found him not guilty by a one-vote margin, keeping him in office but greatly reducing his authority and effectiveness. In 1868, Republican and former Union General Ulysses S. Grant won the presidency. During the Grant administration, Congress responded to northern outrage at KKK terrorism by passing a series of three Force Bills declaring the tactics of such armed groups to be illegal. The federal government could use the federal courts to prosecute offenders who prevented citizens from exercising their right of suffrage. Congress also passed the Fifteenth Amendment, explicitly prohibiting states from denying citizens the right to vote on the basis of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” The needed thre e - f o u rths of the states had ratified the Fifteenth Amendment by 1870. The Fifteenth Amendment completed the trio of amendments resulting from the Civil War (Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth) that permanently abolished slavery and granted the freedmen citizenship and civil rights and which continued the expansion of federal government authority over the states. During the 1870s, Reconstruction waned as the northern public increasingly turned their attention elsewhere and the Democrats regained control of southern state governments in a process known as “redemption.” The corruption-riddled Grant administration and an 1873 economic depression replaced the protection of African-American civil rights

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as leading northern concerns. The idealism of the early Reconstruction period faded and the racism and prejudice deep-seated in the North as well as the South once again rose to the surface. By the 1876 presidential contest between Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrat Samuel J. Tilden, all but three former Confederate states had been “redeemed.” The remaining three under federal control, South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana, played a pivotal role in the end of Reconstruction. The three states had disputed returns in the presidential voting, with each side accusing the other of corruption. A House of Representatives investigating committee resulted in the Compromise of 1877. Under this agreement, Congress certified the Republican Rutherford Hayes as the new president and in return, Hayes removed the remaining federal troops from the South, marking the end of Reconstruction. After “redemption” and the Compromise of 1877, the South was left to deal with the meaning of freedom on its own. The freedmen sought autonomy in their lives, which had long been governed by strict slave codes. They sought to reunite families divided under slavery, to register marriages not legally recognized under slavery, to establish their own community churches and schools, to exercise more control over working arrangements, and to guarantee their civil rights. The family unit and the church became the cornerstone institutions of African-American communities. Landownership was the ultimate goal, especially in the early years of hope that the federal government would provide them with the promised “40 acres and a mule.” For most, these ambitions were never fulfilled. Those few who raised enough money to purchase land often found no whites willing to sell to them. White Southerners experienced bitterness at defeat and anxiety over an unclear future. Many looked back on the old way of life with nostalgia for what was termed the “Lost Cause.” Others expressed violent opposition to the social, economic, and political changes that confronted them in their daily lives. Plantation owners fought to maintain as much discipline and control over workers as they had enjoyed before abolition. These conflicts marked the struggle to create a new system of labor to replace slavery. Tenant farming and sharecropping quickly replaced initial attempts at instituting a wage labor system in most areas. Sharecropping, in which a family received a plot of land and a house in exchange for providing the landowner a portion of the crop at year’s end, became the dominant system on tobacco and cotton plantations. Wage labor largely replaced slavery on sugar plantations. Freedmen’s reliance on local merchants through the crop lien system often kept them in a cycle of indebtedness. The freedmen could receive credit for supplies, to be repaid with interest after the crop was harvested and sold. As the capital-scarce and war-torn South struggled to rebuild economically, the northern economy flourished. It had been invigorated through wartime production and federal contracts, and northern businessmen were flush with capital for new enterprises in what would become a second industrial revolution during the Gilded Age of the last half of the nineteenth century. A national system of railroads was completed and the United States was rapidly becoming an industrial, urbanized society. During the booming economy of World War I, many African Americans

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would head to the North and Midwest during the Great Migration in search of better employment opportunities. The federal government had also greatly expanded its powers and northern victory meant that it would remain a strong centralized authority. Republicans dominated the national government through much of the rest of the century. National banking acts in 1863 and 1864 had restructured the banking system. The government had also established new taxes, sold bonds, raised tariff rates, created new government agencies, and passed legislation to set aside federal land to support agricultural and industrial institutions of higher learning (the Morrill Land Grant College Act) and to make free land available in the West (the Homestead Act). Reconstruction had a number of lasting social and political impacts. As historians Eric Foner and Olivia Mahoney have stated in “America’s Reconstruction: People and Politics after the Civil War,” “Reconstruction remains relevant today because the issues central to it—the role of the federal government in protecting citizens’ rights, and the possibility of economic and racial justice—are still unresolved.” The Republican Party was “virtually eliminated” from the South for almost a century as the Democrats regained their stronghold throughout the region. Jim Crow Laws and segregation became the dominant social policy, leaving African Americans with second-class status legally, economically, and politically. The failure to protect the civil rights of the former slaves would lead many historians to refer to Reconstruction as, to borrow Foner’s phrase, “America’s Unfinished Revolution.” The southern system of segregation and of denying suffrage would continue until the Civil Rights Movement (or Second Reconstruction) of the 1950s and 1960s.

ALTE RN ATE H IST O RY Despite newly reelected President Abraham Lincoln’s lobbying of reluctant Democrats in the House of Representatives, it could have been very likely that the needed two-thirds majority of the vote would not have materialized and that the Thirteenth Amendment would have been defeated in the House. The Emancipation Proclamation, ignored or deliberately disobeyed by many Southerners, would not have enjoyed a solid constitutional foundation, laying it open for attack by the unreconstructed southern state governments and slaveholders. Lincoln still would have hoped to reintroduce the Amendment in a few months time. Republicans had gained a considerable number of seats in the 1864 elections. If the political situation had held steady, their power would have helped gain the needed majority of the House vote to pass a new amendment when the new Congress was seated in March 1865. Increasing demands for a negotiated settlement to end the Civil War, however, would have soon scuttled those plans. The Confederacy would have been willing to negotiate a peace with the Union if it were allowed to keep its remaining slaves under any such agreement. Southerners would have made the offer of negotiation more appealing

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by agreeing that those slaves who had already escaped to Union lines would have remained free. With the support of a war-weary northern public, Lincoln would have been willing to negotiate a quick end to the bloody fighting. R e p resentatives from the North and South would have met for discussions in Baltimore, Maryland, in late February 1865. Operating from a position of military power, Lincoln would have demanded that all of the southern states revoke their ordinances of secession and declare such actions unconstitutional. The South would have been willing to concede this position to avoid prolonging a war that was ravaging its c o u n t ryside and leaving many of its people in destitution. Lincoln also would have sought a guarantee that those slaves seized as contraband and freed during the course of the war would maintain their freedom without compensation to their former owners. Federal legislation had already forbidden slavery in the nation’s capital of Washington, D.C., and in all current and future U.S. territories in 1862. Lincoln would have also demanded that this legislation remain in effect. Despite many Northerners’ beliefs that slavery was morally wrong, a strong racism and prejudice in the North would have meant that Lincoln would not have had strong support for a position of complete, immediate, and uncompensated abolition throughout the South if it would have led to a continuation of the fighting. Instead, Lincoln would have endorsed and fought for a plan of gradual and compensated emancipation as he had initially felt was the best course upon taking office in 1860. Lincoln’s skill and diplomacy would have won over the Radical Republicans in Congress, who would have realized that the goals of immediate abolition and full civil rights would not have been feasible in the face of a possible negotiated peace. Southerners would have realized that their only other option besides gradual, compensated emancipation was almost certain milit a ry defeat and probable abolition without compensation. The Confederacy’s attempt to gain British recognition through King Cotton diplomacy had failed during the course of war, meaning that the South would also have realized that it would have faced increasing international pressure to end slavery from European countries such as Britain, which the South relied on to purchase southern cotton and sell Southerners cheap manufactured goods. As a consequence, both sides would have agreed that the new southern state constitutions would have had to include guarantees of gradual emancipation within no more than twenty years, with federal compensation to slaveholders. The peace delegates also would have had to face the issue of how the southern state governments would be reconstructed. Despite the failure of the Thirteenth Amendment, the North would have still been bargaining from a position of strength, as we saw earlier. Northern popular opinion and the Radical Republicans in Congress would not have agreed to southern state governments remaining as they had been under the Confederacy. Lincoln’s lenient Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction (Ten Percent Plan) of 1863 would have remained the guiding policy in this area, minus the provision that new southern state constitutions must abolish slavery.

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Instead, each new state constitution would have had to require a gradual plan for the emancipation of all slaves with compensation provided to owners by the federal government as agreed upon earlier. A revised Thirteenth Amendment calling for the abolition of slavery throughout the United States after the twenty-year period would have easily passed Congress and been ratified by most states in the months after the peace settlement. All Southerners, even high-ranking Confederate military and political officials, would have received pardons after pledging loyalty to the Union. Lincoln still would have pocket-vetoed the Radical Republicans’ attempt in the Wade-Davis Bill to include an “ironclad oath” demanding that the oath-taker vow not to have willingly aided the Confederacy. In exchange, the South would have agreed that those high-ranking officials would be prohibited from holding any public offices. After several weeks of negotiating, the war would have officially ended on Febru a ry 24, 1865, when both sides would have signed the peace agreement in Baltimore. A relieved nation would have been ready to heal the wounds the war had inflicted. The negotiated peace ending the Civil War would have precluded southern actor John Wilkes Booth’s plot to kidnap Lincoln in order to force the North into bargaining for such a settlement. The plans would not have repeatedly failed, thus Booth would not have plotted Lincoln’s assassination at Ford’s Theatre on the night of April 14, 1865. Instead, Lincoln’s reassuring figure would have continued to lead what would have been a much-shortened Reconstruction process. The agreements reached by both sides would have meant that the country would not have been embroiled in a lengthy, controversial, and bitter Reconstruction struggle. Under the terms of this peace, slavery would initially only have been partially abolished. The institution would have remained largely untouched in the border states that had not abolished it on their own (those being Missouri and Maryland), since they had been exempted from the Emancipation Proclamation. These areas would include the border states of Kentucky and Delaware as well as Union-held Confederate territory in Tennessee and parts of Louisiana and Virginia. Those slaves not freed during the course of the war by escaping to Union lines would have largely remained in bondage. Most Southerners had not heeded the Emancipation Proclamation during the war anyway and certainly would have refused to recognize its constitutionality once the war had ended. Southern slaveholders would have lost the fight to expand their “peculiar institution” but some would have continued the fight against antislavery advocates for its preservation. A few antislavery advocates who would have sought to test the Emancipation Proclamation’s viability through the court system would have found that judges were not willing to uphold such a wartime measure in peace. The fact that gradual emancipation would have been guaranteed throughout the South would have taken the passionate and desperate nature out of the northern antislavery movement. Most Northerners, even many abolitionists, would not have been in a hurry to compete with freedmen on the job market or to face questions of political, social, and economic

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equality. The end of the moral evil of slavery would have been triumph enough for most. Conditions for those slaves remaining in bondage would have largely remained unchanged despite the promise of future freedom. Most slaves would have continued to work on the plantations and follow the slave code guidelines as they always had. Most had never stopped, even those who had heard whispered stories during the course of the war about an Emancipation Proclamation giving them their fre edom. Some would have invariably found subtle methods of revolt, such as working at a deliberately slow pace, just as they had done previously. A few might have even secretly plotted uprisings or revolts, but most would have simply quietly gone about their work while the anticipation of freedom grew and they contemplated plans for their futures. Both North and South would have had to confront the issue of what would become of those slaves freed during the course of the war. The U.S. government would not have established the Freedmen’s Bureau and few northern Republicans or schoolteachers would have ventured into the South with their carpetbags in hand to help those freedmen there adjust to their new lives. There would have been no consideration of granting any freedmen land. The federal government instead would have sought to facilitate arrangements between the freedmen who had escaped to Union lines during the war and former owners who now needed laborers in order to relieve some of the potential racial and economic tensions that their presence in the North would have caused. Those freedmen who chose to move to the North upon the conclusion of the fighting would have been met with much the same racism and prejudice as they had escaped from in the South. Their small numbers would not have precluded a few race riots in cities where they competed with immigrants and other northern citizens for jobs in the rapidly growing northern factory system. Those few freedmen willing to leave the country of their birth would have found free passage to the African nation of Liberia or other countries with the help of various colonization societies or programs. Others from both sections would have chosen to head west in search of better opportunities to acquire land and to start a new life. The federal government would have allowed these men to take advantage of the Homestead Act of 1862 offering 160 acres of public land in specially surveyed areas to those willing to farm it. Here too, however, they would have encountered racism, discrimination, restrictive laws, no suffrage, and a bitter competition with whites, this time over choice farmland. Those freedmen living in the South would have found that their rights remained greatly restricted throughout the postwar period without the presence of the northern military, which would have left the region after both sides signed the negotiated peace in early 1865. As gradual emancipation gave more and more slaves the status of freedmen, a system of wage labor instead of sharecropping would have largely replaced slavery, as these freedmen would not have had the bargaining power to gain concessions on freedom of working conditions. They would still have remained largely mired in poverty with low wages, and

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the hope of landownership would have seemed so distant as to be almost impossible. The freedmen would not have exercised suffrage in any of the southern states, even those states that had abolished slavery, and the Democrats would have remained firmly in control of southern politics throughout the remainder of the nineteenth century. As emancipation slowly took effect, the various southern states still would have enacted Black Codes and later Jim Crow Laws to restrict the freedmen and institute the segregation of public facilities. The laws restricting voting rights through various m e a s u res would not have been necessary. Although white supremacy organizations would still have arisen, their campaigns of violence and intimidation would have been smaller since threats like African-American suffrage and a large Republican presence in the South would have been removed. In an alternate history, laws restricting African Meanwhile, the newly elected southern Americans from voting would not have been representatives who would have been seated necessary. (Library of Congress) in the U.S. Congress would have found themselves part of a stronger federal government than their predecessors had left. The northern position of strength in the peace negotiations would have meant that the Civil War still would have determined that the country was not merely a loose confederation of sovereign states. The federal government had already passed a variety of measures during the war, including national banking acts restructuring the banking system; legislation enacting new taxes, bond sales, and higher tariff rates; laws creating new government agencies; and legislation setting aside federal land to support agricultural and industrial institutions of higher learning (the Morrill Land Grant College Act) and making free land available in the West (the Homestead Act). The Republicans would not have dominated the entire remainder of the century, however, as the Democrat Samuel Tilden would have captured the presidency in 1876. The North would still have experienced a second industrial revolution in the Gilded Age of the late nineteenth century. The South would still have remained largely agricultural, but it would have experienced some industrialization, as southern states would have lured northern businessmen flush with capital. Railroads, especially, would have interested Southerners looking for more efficient methods of transporting crops to markets or ports as well as travel to attract tourists and new residents to the region. Southern congressmen would have fought hard for the proposed transcontinental railroad, and it would have been built along a southern, rather than northern, route in order to winter storms. Most Americans would have accepted a lack of African-American civil rights, but as slavery became fully abolished there would have

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been a slowly growing movement among freedmen and their supporters for such rights. A strong racial and ethnic reform component of the Progressive movement of the early twentieth century would have advocated constitutional guarantees for African-American civil rights as they had for women’s suffrage and prohibition. Their battles would have resulted in the passage of a single amendment to the Constitution recognizing African-American citizenship and guaranteeing equal protection under the law, but not the right to vote. Instead, African-American suffrage would have had to wait until the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, after those who had fought valiantly in segregated units in World Wars I and II demanded equality at home after defending democracy abroad. The country would have been finally ready to support such measures and end segregation against the backdrop of potential worldwide embarrassment if they continued to relegate a large segment of their population to second-class status. Marcella Bush Trevino

Discussion Questions 1. What would have happened if Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate States, had refused to accept the condition of peace that the seceding states had to rescind their ordinances of secession? Would the individual states have done so in any case? 2. In actual history, Lincoln had supported gradual, compensated emancipation. Gradual emancipation had been adopted earlier in New York, and later in Spanish colonies such as Cuba and Puerto Rico, as well as in other countries and colonies. How would gradual emancipation have been implemented if it had been adopted in the United States? 3. Do you think that a plan of gradual emancipation would have led to more intense or less intense racism in the United States? 4. If the seceded states had returned to the Union voluntarily, do you think the precedent of secession would lead to another secession by one or more states later in American history? 5. Lincoln and the radicals in Congress disagreed almost as much as Johnson and the radicals, even though Lincoln was far better at dealing with them. Do you think, if Lincoln had lived through his second term, that the radicals would have tried to attack his program as they did Johnson’s?

Bibliography and Further Reading Foner, Eric. Nothing but Freedom: Emancipation and Its Legacy, The Walter Lynwood Fleming Lectures in Southern History series. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1983.

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Foner, Eric. Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution. New York: Harper and Row, 1988. Foner, Eric, and Joshua Brown. Forever Free: The Story of Emancipation and Reconstruction. New York: Knopf, 2005. Foner, Eric, and Olivia Mahoney. “America’s Reconstruction: People and Politics after the Civil War.” http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/ reconstruction/index.html (accessed March 2006). Hahn, Steven. A Nation under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration. Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 2005. Levine, Bruce C. Half Slave and Half Free: The Roots of the Civil War. New York: Hill and Wang, 1992. Litwack, Leon F. Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery. New York: Knopf, 1979. Perman, Michael. Emancipation and Reconstruction, 1862–1879. Arlington Heights, IL: Harlan Davidson, 1987. Ransom, Roger L. Conflict and Compromise: The Political Economy of Slavery, Emancipation, and the American Civil War. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Ransom, Roger L., and Richard Sutch. One Kind of Freedom: The Economic Consequences of Emancipation. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1977. Richardson, Heather Cox. The Death of Reconstruction: Race, Labor, and Politics in the Post–Civil War North, 1865–1901. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004. Stanley, Amy Dru. From Bondage to Contract: Wage Labor, Marriage, and the Market in the Age of Slave Emancipation. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

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Reconstruction after the Civil War was a tumultuous time for the re-emerging United States. What if President Andrew Johnson had been more successful in his Reconstruction plans?

INTR ODU CT IO N Reconstruction refers to the process by which the U.S. federal government “re-Unionized” the southern states of the former Confederacy, overseeing the governance of those states until they were ready to rejoin the Union as full members. In the aftermath of the Civil War, the former Confederate states were occupied by federal military troops, the last of which weren’t removed until 1877. Over the decades, historians have described Reconstruction alternately as a time of tyranny taking hold over the South, a time of idealism and liberation, and part of the natural cultural evolution of the southern states. The Civil War was neither the beginning nor the end of the America’s internal conflicts—those between North and South, between different factions of Southerners, and between political factions with different views on the relationship between state and federal governments—had been brewing at least since the early nineteenth century, if not earlier. The secession of southern states and the war that followed were the most dramatic parts of these conflicts, but just as the seeds had been sown long before the secession of South Carolina, the conflict didn’t end with the Confederacy’s surrender in 1865. The history of this conflict parallels the development of the United States as a nation, the proverbial “one nation” in the Pledge of Allegiance. Even the fact that the Civil War was fought between a Confederacy (a loose assortment) and a Union (a cohesive whole) underscores this and was one of the bases for many southern accusations that President Abraham Lincoln’s motives had nothing to do with slavery—or that the abolition of slavery was only a tool toward his Unionist ends. A fairer description would be that Lincoln was deeply troubled both by the institution of slavery and by the prospect of a southern secession—not least because he viewed his presidency as one following in the footsteps of Thomas Jefferson, whose Louisiana Purchase greatly expanded the country’s boundaries.

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F rom the start of America’s expansion westward, Americans debated whether the newly founded territories would be slave states or free states, with each new star on the flag changing the balance in one dire ction or the other, adding still more political layers to the already complex p rocess of turning a terr i t o ry into a state. Abolitionist movements gre w as the country, particularly the Northeast, became more urbanized in the nineteenth century, with urbanization leading to reform movements, highlighting the dilemmas of the poor and disenfranchised and assisting in the creation of a leisure class, which had the means to react to such dilemmas. While the living conditions of the destitute and the infirm were essentially faultless tragedies—conditions that came about through negligence and misfortune more than malice or intent—slavery was an institution that put an entire class of people, some 4 million Americans and all their future descendents, in chains and did so deliberately, not as a punishment or a means of working off a debt, but purely to serve the slave owners. The defenses of slavery may seem outrageous today, ranging from the mildest protests that the plantation economy could not persist without slavery (casting it as a necessary evil, although this term was not used) to a host of racist claims, which boiled down to one of two assertions: that slavery was better for African Americans than freedom (just as it is better for children to have parents than to raise themselves), or that African Americans were beneath consideration, their comfort and rights no more relevant than those of farm animals. The South had felt threatened for years by the increasing support for abolition, not only among Nort h e rners, but among Southerners as well. When Lincoln—the antislavery candidate, whatever else might be included in his platform—was elected president, it was enough to cause South Carolina to secede preemptively: to leave the Union rather than remain in anticipation of the creation of laws the state had no intention of honoring. Over the next six weeks—from December 21, 1860, to February 1, 1861—six more states seceded (Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas), and after Confederate forces forced the s u rrender of Fort Sumter, four more states (Vi rginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee) joined the Confederacy in the spring. The politics of secession are awkward and complicated, but many secessionists saw themselves in a plight similar to that of the founding fathers: they were seeking independence from a government not because of one single issue but because of the expectation of future problems and the feeling that they did not have sufficient representation to protect themselves. Many historians see it as an issue of nationhood: regardless of political designations like state and country, a large number of Southerners saw themselves as a different nation, a different people, culturally distinct from Northerners and Westerners, just as Americans had become culturally separate from the British and had sought a political independence. This idea would remain critically important throughout Reconstruction, and well into the twentieth century. Not all Southerners supported secession, and not all secessionists w e re slave owners. Slavery was not the only issue: for many, the pro blem was the idea that the federal government claimed the right and the

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power to decide the slavery issue for the states. At this time, the state government was still viewed as the strongest government, with the federal government handling issues of trade, defense, immigration, transit, international relations—issues that could be dealt with only at the federal level. Secessionists favored the rights of states over federal interference, an issue that would remain prominent thro u g h o u t R e c o n s t ruction—and continues to be one today, in debates about issues spanning the gamut from abortion and marriage to speed limits and the drinking age. Even so, not everyone was so eager to secede, and in Virginia the issue was particularly heated: Virginia was the first permanent colony in what became the United States, and a great many of the founding fathers were Virginians, including George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. The state had considerable symbolic power, associated as it was with so much significant American history. When it fell in line with the secessionists—its antebellum aristocracy lending almost its complete support to the cause—a group of prominent Virginians, many of them industrialists whose finances were not so directly tied to the plantation economy, convened at the First and Second Wheeling Conventions to separate themselves from the rest of the state and elect railroad attorney Francis H. Pierpont their new governor. Two years later, in 1863, this new state of West Virginia was admitted to the Union in the middle of the Civil War, on the condition that it outlaw slavery. Here, the symbolic significance of Virginia played a different role: the creation of West Virginia and the Union’s use of it signaled the inner conflicts of the South that would continue through Reconstruction. A year-and-a-half into the war, Lincoln announced his Emancipation Proclamation, which went into effect in January 1863, declaring free all slaves in the Confederate states. Some three million slaves were thus freed, at least in name—slave owners were not, of course, giving up their claims simply because a man they now considered a foreign ruler told them to—but the proclamation excluded nearly half-a-million slaves in the Union slave states, 300,000 in occupied Tennessee, and those slaves in Confederate states that were under control of federal troops. The proclamation was primarily a philosophical gesture, demonstrating both the Union’s intent with regard to slavery and its beliefs about its own power over the South. Significantly, the Emancipation Proclamation also maintained the Union’s support in the international community, making Confederate-European alliances all but untenable. Even so, abolitionist Republicans immediately pressed for a constitutional amendment banning slavery, fearing that the Emancipation Proclamation would be deemed invalid when the war ended. Once reelected in 1864, Lincoln duly pressed for this amendment, the Thirteenth, with the aid of the Thirty-eighth Congress. An important aspect to note about the Emancipation Pro c l a m a t i o n is that it provides uncompensated emancipation: the slave owners receive nothing in re t u rn for what was, however horrible and unethical, a legal purchase. Lincoln did try throughout the war to find some way of compensating emancipation, in essence, buying the South’s slaves in order to free them, and wherever possible, he encouraged

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emancipation rather than forcing it. The border states untouched by the Emancipation Proclamation were encouraged to plan a gradual compensated emancipation, and Lincoln repeatedly spoke to nort h e rn African-American leaders about creating black states (American or independent) by colonizing the Caribbean and Central America with f reedmen. In the end, though, compensated emancipation just wasn’t financially feasible, and this likely would have been the case even without the expense of the war. When the Union eventually won the war—at greater cost than many expected when it began—the hardest questions had yet to be answered. Every war leads to questions about the relations between the parties involved, and in some cases what terms the victor will dictate to the loser even long after the surrender. In this case, not only did both sides need to rebuild those relations and the ordinary issues of war debts, restoration of occupied or disputed territories, and so on, they needed to determine how best to reunite. Should the Confederacy be punished, now that the war was over? That was one question Lincoln and others faced. Should terms of reunion be dictated to them, as they were dictated to the losers in so many other wars? If so, other than the end of slavery, what else should be required of the southern states, and who should decide—the president, the Congress (which lacked southern representation), or some other body? How soon should the former Confederate states be permitted congressional representation? What labor would replace slave labor in the postwar South? What would the role of newly free African Americans be in the new South? How quickly would all these transitions be made? Would former Confederate officials—military or political—be allowed any power in the Union? One unconsidered consequence of the Thirteenth Amendment and the end of slavery was that in determining congressional representation, three-fifths of the slave population were included but not all of the free African-American population. Converting the slaves to fre e African Americans suddenly increased the representation to which slave states were entitled—a hypothetical state with 100,000 slaves would see its population effectively increase by 40,000 overnight— which, iro n i c a l l y, threatened the northern Republican dominance of C o n g ress. In other words, the South could potentially be admitted into the Union only to find itself suddenly in control—or so, at least, many Republicans feare d . The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands—the Freedmen’s Bureau—was established by Congress to handle an assortment of issues arising in the postwar South, such as introducing a new system of labor and schools for freedmen, adjudicating disputes involving African Americans, and intervening on behalf of blacks and white Unionists to ensure their proper treatment by state and local governments. Accusations of corruption and bad behavior began immediately: some bureau agents promised former slaves that they would be given their former masters’ plantation lands if they voted Republican, and there were widespread (and false) rumors of the bureau encouraging black-onwhite violence as a way to keep the conquered Confederates from reestablishing a base of power.

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Radical Republicans

The Ra d i cal Re p u b l i cans were not a distinct po l i t i ca l party but an info rmal group within the Republican Pa rty who be came increasingly powe rful over the course of the Civil War, attaining a congressional m a j o ri tyafter the key 1866 elections during An d rew Johnson’s pre s i d e n cy. Made up of abo l i t i o n i s t s,fe deralists, and those who wanted punitive measure s t a ken against the Confe d e ra cy, they had been critical of Lincoln for being too to l e ra nt of the Confe d e ra cy and delaying so long in freeing the slave s, and they we re fiercely opposed to Johnson’s s o ft stance on the South. O n ce in power,t h ey were responsible for the Civil Ri g hts Act of 1866, which made blacks citizens and forbade racial discrimination; the Fourte e nt h Amendment to the Constitution; Johnson’s impe a c hment; and the election of fo rmer Union general U l ysses S. Gra nt as the eighte e nth president in 1868. Notable Ra d i cal Republicans included He n ry Davis (Representative, MD), Benjamin Wade (Se n ator, OH), and He n ry Wilson (Gra nt’s vice-president). Just as Re co n s t ruction was essentially a re s ponse to the Civil War, the waning of Re co n-

struction bro u g ht the southern counte r - response: Redemption, the at tempt to “redeem” the South f rom the damage done to it by enforced policies, and the Redeemer De m oc rats who led the movement. While we may today think of the South as po l i t i cally more conservat i ve than the West Coast or the Northeast industrial ce nte r s, the De m oc ratic Party held sway for most of the twe ntieth century in the South. Republicans, a fter all, a re the party of Lincoln. Broadly speaking, we can consider the so-ca l l e d Di x i e c rats the Re d e e m e r s’ d e s ce n d e nts—while the word was originally used to descri be the State s’ Ri g hts De m oc ratic Pa rty (ex - Democ rats who s to rmed out of the 1948 co nve ntion and suppo rte d St rom Th u rm o n d’s ca n d i d a cy for pre s i d e nt on a prosegre g ation plat fo rm)—it shifted in usage to re fer to co n s e rvat i ve southern De m oc rat s, f req u e ntly those who vo te De m oc rat in local elect i o n s and Re p u b l i can in presidential ones. Tod ay a Di x i e c rat may include both conservat i ve southern De m oc rats and southern Re p u b l i cans who were o riginally De m oc rat s.

Lincoln hoped for a Reconstruction that would be swift, forgiving, and as painless as possible for all parties. His goal, as it was at the start of the Civil War, was the restoration of the Union. During the war, he had initially proposed the so-called Ten Percent Plan, by which a state could be re a d m i tted if 10 percent or more of its voters in the 1860 presidential election s w o re an oath of allegiance to the Union. The Radical Republicans, who w e re less inclined to forgiveness, proposed the Wade-Davis Bill in protest, requiring at least half of those voters to swear such an oath. Lincoln vetoed the bill, but the exchange pointed up the essential conflict amid the branches of the federal government: forgiveness versus discipline. Ultimately Lincoln died before the complete surrender of Confederate forces and had little opportunity to provide his Reconstruction plan with a public face and charismatic voice. That task was left to Vice-President Andrew Johnson, who did his best to continue Lincoln’s policies in the face of strong Radical Republican opposition and the increasingly complex situation in the South. Overseeing this task required working with Congress at a time when the critical 1866 elections—the first since the

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war, elections that revolved almost entirely around Reconstru c t i o n issues—were on the horizon, determining how to deal with the defeated Confederate leaders (something Lincoln had a particularly graceful knack for, striking a balance that was both conciliatory and forceful), and dealing with a nation so intent on redefining itself that three constitutional amendments would be ratified in the next four years. Johnson lacked Lincoln’s natural savvy and had difficulty dealing with Congress. Although he had himself called for the hanging of Confederate leaders as war criminals, when he inherited Lincoln’s presidency he tried to adopt a more moderate stance in deference to the late president. The Radical Republican Congress saw him as too soft, especially after he pardoned many Confederate leaders and allowed others to resume positions of power and influence in the southern states. In a very real way, Johnson’s ability to work with Congress in a timely fashion determined the course of Reconstruction, and much hinged on his getting a plan into motion swiftly, one that would satisfy those with the power to overrule or work around him.

AC TUA L H ISTO RY As events played out, it became clear that Johnson lacked the acumen and clarity necessary to collaborate with Congress on a functioning plan for Reconstruction that would accomplish what was needed, while satisfying the concerns of those with the power to block it. One of the most unfortunate obstacles was Johnson’s own racism, carried over from a poor, white upbringing. While it would be unfair to suppose that poor whites were more inclined toward racism than elites—the aristocracy was firmly in support of secession and slavery, after all—Johnson’s particular racism was of a sort common to the poor of his time and took the form of resentment at the aid offered to freed African Americans by the Freedmen’s Bureau, aid that had not been available to poor whites. In his 1867 annual message to Congress, Johnson declared that African Americans had less “capacity for government than any other race of people,” and that no government “has ever been successful in their hands. . . . [L]eft to their own devices, they have shown a constant tendency to relapse into barbarism,” according to George F. Milton in The Age of Hate: Andrew Johnson and the Radicals. Further, Johnson opposed the Freedmen’s Bureau as anything other than a temporary stop-gap measure. When Congress passed the bill supporting the bureau’s continued existence, it was conside red uncontroversial legislation, seeking only to pre s e rve a status quo that was perceived as necessary, if not perfect. Johnson’s supporters in Congress voted for the bill as consistently as his Radical Republican opponents did. F u rt h e rm o re, vetoes were uncommon, even more so for routine legislation that introduced no significantly new or radical laws. The president was expected to cooperate with Congress and respect its wishes—ostensibly reflecting the wishes of the people—in cases of a clear majority. But Johnson not only vetoed the Freedmen’s Bureau Bill; in his response he repudiated the bureau as a financial wound on the already depleted postwar economy. He claimed that offering aid to unemployed

A successful Johnson Reconstruction?

An 1867 print depicting Reconstruction in the South. (Library of Congress)

African Americans, whatever the justification, was an insult implying that they couldn’t find a job, and that such aid wasn’t the province of the federal government to begin with. In addition, he said it was inappropriate to even discuss the bureau when eleven states—all of them affected by its jurisdiction—were not as yet readmitted to Congress and so had no voice or representation in the bill’s discussion. His veto won him some support among northern business interests opposed to the bureau’s spending but not enough to offset the ill will he had fostered. Only months after the veto, he gave a speech comparing his political opponents to Confederate leaders—implying that opposing the president’s wishes was tantamount to opposing the Union and its legal governance. This was simply too much, and not only fueled Johnson’s existing opponents—some of whom had been calling for his removal from office since he first assumed it—but created new enemies, men who might agree with Johnson politically but could not abandon their commitment to the right of others to think differently. Johnson was eventually impeached, ostensibly over issues only indirectly related to Reconstruction but undoubtedly in part because of the rifts he had created. He was acquitted, but proved almost entirely ineffectual in overseeing Reconstruction. What followed that period of so-called Presidential Reconstruction was the lengthier period of Congressional Reconstruction (1867–1877), which began with the Radical Republican dominance of Congress after the 1866 elections. The first Reconstruction Act was passed the following March, superseding Johnson’s veto: this divided the South into five

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military districts overseen by Union generals, much as would be done with a conquered and occupied foreign country; forced the election of new delegates and the adoption of new state constitutions; granted the vote to all adult males regardless of race, so long as they had not supported the Confederate government; and required these states to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. The Fourteenth Amendment was thus ratified in July 1868 and is to this day the most significant, nation-defining change to the structure of the federal government since the Bill of Rights. First and most important, the Fourteenth Amendment defined as citizens of the United States anyone born or naturalized (immigrated) in the country, with a few minor exceptions (later defined as the children of diplomats, the children of enemy forces occupying the country, and Native Americans born on tribal land). Pre v i o u s l y, the D red Scott c a s e — o v e rt u rned now by this Constitutional amendment—had declared that African Americans were neither born citizens nor could they become citizens, regardless of whether they were free. Further, the amendment provides no mention of a loss of citizenship, making American citizenship a “deeper,” more integral trait than in most countries. (Or in the individual states, for that matter: no one born in Arizona who moves to Montana would be considered an Arizona citizen for life, and yet that is exactly the case if you move from the United States to Norway.) With citizenship defined, the Fourteenth Amendment then required a guarantee of equal protection under the law, which was intended by many of the amendment’s supporters to mean a guarantee of civil rights, and especially a reversal of the so-called Black Codes some southern states had adopted to limit the rights of African Americans (by forbidding them from participating in civil court cases or owning firearms or non-kitchen knives, for instance). An early Supreme Court case limited this guarantee to cover only those privileges explicitly granted by the federal government, permitting racial discrimination on the part of private individuals and organizations (which is why, for example, racially restricted clubs and colleges may be found legal). Further, toward the end of the nineteenth century, the Supreme Court upheld in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) the legality of segregation provided equivalent facilities were available: the “separate but equal” doctrine. The Fourteenth Amendment also rewrote the rules for apportioning representatives to Congress by removing previous provisions referring to slaves and reducing a state’s apportionment if they should wrongfully deny their citizens the right to vote. It banned from public office anyone who had engaged in insurrection, rebellion, or treason against the United States, except in such cases as a two-thirds majority in Congress ruled otherwise. This was a way to keep ex-Confederates out of office. And finally, it declared that the United States would not be held accountable for paying former slave owners for their freed slaves, nor for paying the debts of the former Confederate States of America (which had borrowed money from several foreign banks). Two years later, in 1870, the Fifteenth Amendment was passed, prohibiting state and local governments from using race, color, or status as a former slave as a voting qualification. Although no African-American g o v e rnor was elected in the next few decades, black voter part i c i p a t i o n

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was considerable, and more African Americans were elected to office in the decade after the Fifteenth Amendment than any time since. In response, southern states began instituting harassment measures which, while never specifying race, were designed to make voting more difficult for African Americans: in addition to the modern-day tactics of making polling places hard to find or get to, many states re q u i red a literacy test that could be waived if the voter had evidence that his grandfather had been eligible to vote—thus preserving the vote for “illiterate” whites, while taking it away from “illiterate” African Americans and immigrants. (It should be noted, too, that these literacy tests were often exceptionally difficult and nearly impossible for anyone to pass: they might ask for whole scenes from Shakespeare or entire documents like the U.S. Constitution to be written down from memory.) In the South, Congressional Reconstruction was the time of “carpetbaggers and scalawags”—Nort h e rners taking advantage of postwar opport u n ities and Unionist Southerners. The majority of southern Republicans were black, and only South Carolina, Mississippi, and Louisiana had majority African-American voting populations: for the party to thrive in the South, it needed white support, and it is that white support that took the brunt of attacks by Democrats. Even so, with southern Republicans encouraging their political allies to move south, new generations of Southerners were b o rn — S o u t h e rners without ties to the antebellum South. The Ku Klux Klan, meanwhile, grew in popularity. The first Klan (both the 1920s incarnation and the modern-day group are separate movements inspired by the original) was formed in 1865 by Confederate veterans in Tennessee. A minor, barely remarkable group at first—less violent than most vigilante groups of the time—it organized itself nationally in 1867, stating as its purpose the protection of the innocent and the execution of all constitutional laws. In actuality, the Klan sought to actively resist Congressional Reconstruction, and the timing of its re o rganization in the wake of Presidential Reconstruction’s failure is no coincidence. While Johnson’s Reconstruction certainly was not welcome in the South (he would be more fairly characterized as a nuisance), many saw the Congressional Reconstruction as a threat. The Klan’s usage of pseudo-chivalric terminology and portrayal of themselves as knights standing up to wrongful oppressors (the occupying Union Army) was an appeal to the South’s long-standing love affair with tales of chivalry, particularly works like Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe—a part of the culture since long before the Revolutionary War, going back to the seventeenth century. While Northerners might scorn southern elites by calling them an aristocracy, the idea of a landed gentry overseeing the land was part of the self-image of those elites, and in calling themselves knights, the Klan attempted to imply a relationship with that aristocracy, a A Thomas Nast 1874 engraving, showing a new union patronage. Just as Johnson was racist in a specif- between two groups opposed to African-American ically poor white way, the Klan was racist in a freedom. (Library of Congress)

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AN OTH E R VI E W

The Historiography of the Reconstruction

Over the more than a century since Reconstruction, historians have construed it in a number of ways, generally reflecting the biases and politics of the time. The earliest historians, those of the Dunning S c h ool (named for Columbia pro fessor Wi l l i a m Dunning), allied themselves with the Redeemers and painted Reconstruction as a time of unrelenting vengeance and a victimized South. The corruption of many Reconstruction institutions, although mild compared to other corruption of the day, was emphasized, and the Ku Klux Klan praised (leading to its portrayal in Birth of a Nation, endorsed by President Woodrow Wilson). The rights given to African Americans, according to historians of the Dunning School, were given at the expense of the freedom of whites. The Dunning School remained the dominant s c h ool of thought until the end of the 1950s, with p ro - Re co n s t ru ction wri ters like W. E. B. Du Bois almost co m p l e tely ignored by the academic estab-

lishment. But as early as the 1940s, w ri ters such as Ch a rles Be a rd (leader of the Progre s s i ve School) and Howa rd Beale began to approach the pe ri od in economic te rm s, d ow n p l aying issues like co rruption and nobility in favor of financial motive s and the difficulties of the So u t h’s agra rian eco no my in inte g rating into the increasingly industrial Un i ted States. In the 1960s, the neo-abolitionists focused on the Radical Re p u b l i cans and Linco l n’s original h o pes for Re co n s t ru ction, and especially on the co m p l ex, w i d e s p read wo rk of the Freedmen’s Bu re a u. For this school, while the war had alre a dy happened, Re co n s t ru ction was the revolution. Over time, scholars have inco rpo rated much of the neoa bolitionist view on Re construction, and many would now descri be it as part of the nat u ral evo l ution of the South—the end of slavery, the a g ra ri a n / i n d u s t rial co n f l i ct, the definition of citize nship, all inevitable parts of histo ry.

specifically southern way: neither “poor white” nor “southern” implies racism; they only affect its shape. With that in mind, the Klan was more complicated than a simple antiblack organization, which contributed to its popularity. Secret societies have an allure to them, and the secrecy had a practicality to it lacking in above-board and legitimate political organizations. The newly nationalized Klan conducted violent raids, attacks, lynchings, cross-burnings, and other acts of intimidation (often to drive away carpetbaggers or AfricanAmerican voters) and theft (most commonly of black-owned firearms), and even those members who did not participate directly could support such violence without the recriminations they would face if they did so in public, without the cloak of anonymity. Nathan Bedford Forrest, a Confederate general and one-time slave trader, was elected the first Grand Wizard, the leader of the Klan at the national level. While it is difficult to know exactly what the Klan was responsible for, what was unrelated violence, and what claims they made out of self-promotion, in 1868 well over 1,000 Republican voters were murdered. Racial violence was not the Klan’s only, or primary, goal. Schoolteachers employed by the Freedmen’s Bureau to teach AfricanAmerican students were frequent targets of Klan violence. It was a commonly professed belief among white Southerners, and especially former Confederates, that African Americans were only supporting the Republican P a rty out of a misplaced sense of gratitude, and that if improper influences were removed, they would re t u rn to their former masters’ ways of thinking.

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The Klan could not stay well organized for long, though. As it became clear that the military occupation of the South could not be simply bullied away and that intimidation tactics and even murder were only arousing the ire of the carpetbaggers and their allies in government, southern elites withdrew their support. Instead of a shield from reprisals, from behind which the war could be fought against the invading North, the Klan now became a target, its violence providing an ongoing justification the federal government could use to demonstrate that the South was not yet ready for self-rule. Forrest distanced himself from the Klan in 1869, going so far as to order it to disband. Over the next few years, more and more articles of anti-Klan legislation were passed, the most significant of which was the Ku Klux Klan Act p roposed in 1871 by former Union general Benjamin Butler, a Massachusetts congressman—and the representative who opened the impeachment case against Johnson—and signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant, another Union general. Responding to the lax attention paid by state and local governments to Klan cases and the frequency with which white juries proved unwilling to deliver guilty verdicts, the Klan Act required that when action needed to be taken against the Klan, federal troops rather than state militias would be used. Further, trials would be conducted in federal courts, where all-white juries were rare and predominantly African-Americans juries were common. By 1874, for all intents and purposes, the Ku Klux Klan was dead; the Klan that arose in 1915 was inspired by the portrayal of the original Klan in D. W. Griffith’s controversial movie Birth of a Nation and had little in common with its predecessor, except for the commonalities of most hate groups and white supremacists. Bit by bit, the obvious apparatus of Reconstruction was dismantled as the federal government either became confident of stability in the s o u t h e rn states or simply wanted to put the conflict behind it. Military occupation in most states ended in 1870. In 1877, only South Carolina, Louisiana, and Florida were still occupied, a condition ended by the Compromise of 1877: the results of the election of 1876 were disputed, and the South agreed to accept the election of Republican Rutherford B. Hayes in return for the withdrawal of troops. Hayes’s presidency thus began, in a sense, with a clean slate: an undivided United States. (The compromise also called for the construction of a transcontinental railroad through the South and legislative assistance in industrializing the region, neither of which conditions were met.) Twelve years of resentment and five years of war had accumulated by the time the South stood on its own feet again. But it did not take long for that anger and frustration to find a target: African Americans were not only a convenient mark for The South agreed to accept the election of Re p u b l i can attack; they had no real power base yet estabRu t h e rford B. Hayes in re t u rn for the withdrawal of lished, and attacking them provided a way to troops. (Library of Congress)

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National Identity

Histo rian Ro bert Wi e be identifies the pe ri od fro m Re co n s t ru ction to the 1920s as an organizational pe ri od in Am e ri can histo ry. Prior to the Civil War, it was far more common for Am e ri cans to identify themselves as New Yo rke r s, Vi rginians, Vermonte r s ; by the end of the 1920s, most people would call themselves Am e ri cans first, Vi rginian seco n d. It was during this pe ri od that national org a n i z ations such as labor unions and pro fessional assoc i ations (the American Me d i cal As s oc i ation, the Am e ri can Legal Association, e tc.) fo rmed, and nationally distributed magazines we re soon joined by national newspaper chains and radio networks (which be came te l ev ision netwo rks in time). The Industrial Revolution enabled much of t h i s — at one end bringing down co n s i d e rably the

cost of paper and paper-based media prod u ct i o n , making typesetting easier and more efficient, and building and powe ring those radio networks; at the other end cre ating the sort of enviro n m e nt,through facto ry, assembly, and machinist wo rk , conducive to the fo rm ation of labor unions. I m m i g ration too played a role, as “native” Am e ri cans (those who had l i ved in the Un i ted St ates for at least a couple of g e n e rations) defined themselves in co nt rast to the waves of Iri s h , Italian, Germ a n s, Polish, and other Eu ro peans arriving on their shores (co nt ra s ted with Asians and blacks who tended to be descri be d racially, not nationally). Further, it was a sign that the age of colonization was truly ove r, as fo rm e rly fo reign colonies like Louisiana and Texas were slowly absorbed into not

snub the Nort h e rners on their way out. In the two decades after the Compromise of 1877, fierce anti-Reconstruction legislation was introduced in every former Confederate state, much of it supported by the Redeemers— an unofficial and loose political group that included Democrats and Confederate veterans and sought to “redeem” the South from the perceived h a rms of Reconstruction. Although they were concerned in large part with the role of blacks, Redeemers tended to absorb smaller political groups seeking an industrialized South and so faced some opposition from agrarian S o u t h e rners, even when they agreed on race relations. Redeemer tactics varied from place to place but involved both establishing voting obstacles (making some officials appointees, limiting the number of polling precincts in predominantly African-American districts, instituting poll taxes, and quite frequently gerrymandering districts to reduce Republican seats) and creating policies of segregation. Segregation was a subtle tool: even many civil rights supporters found it acceptable, even desirable in some conditions or as a necessary evil. Although black leaders all opposed constitutionally mandated segregation, a number believed that separate schools for whites and African Americans were a good thing for the South because they feared that black students might be neglected by white teachers and that no one would hire AfricanAmerican teachers to teach white students. There is a difference, however, in seeing the practicalities of an institution like segregation over the short term and embracing it as a permanent fixture. The so-called Jim Crow laws codified racial segregation across the South, requiring (with these specifics varying by state and city) separate water fountains, lunch counters, train accommodations, schools, hotels, and even libraries for African Americans and whites. The rationale varied. Some southern senators sometimes proudly proclaimed their intolerance of African Americans and the manner their states had of dealing with them;

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I N C ON TE X T

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an English colonial culture but an Am e ri can one. In 1890—by which po i nt the Nat i ve Am e ri can wars had ended—the U.S. Census Bu reau declared that the fro ntier was closed, and in 1893 Fre d e rick Jackson Turner delive red his famous speech analyzing the role of the fro ntier in Am e ri can histo ry and c u l t u re. Th roughout Re co n s t ru ction and the fo l l owing deca d e s, fe d e ral laws be came more and more i m po rt a nt, state laws more similar and unifo rm . Th e re is, for instance, little pra ct i cal difference tod ay be tween living in North Ca rolina and living in Idaho, in te rms of prevailing laws. The Industrial Revolution also awo ke an age of American impe ri a l i s m , further unifying Am e ri ca n s c u l t u rally by emphasizing co n f l i cts and relations be tween the Un i ted St ates and fo reign powe r s. In the pe ri od be tween the Civil War and Wo rld War I,

the Un i ted St ates cultivated spheres of influence in the Pacific and South Am e ri ca ; fo u g ht the SpanishAm e ri can War (1898) and the Philippine-American War (1899–1913); i nvaded Haiti; occupied the Do m i n i can Re p u b l i c, Cu b a , and Nica ragua for long pe ri od s ; came into co n f l i ct with Germ a ny and the Un i ted Kingdom in the Se cond Samoan Civil War (1898); and occupied the Mexican po rt of Veracruz a fter the 1914 Ta m p i co incident. But it was Reconstruction that put all this in motion—or that was the first sign of this shift : at the time of the Civil War, even nonseceding states were surprised at the strength of the opposition of the federal gove rn m e nt to secession and the need a s c ri bed to Un i o n . By the end of Re co n s t ru ction, the preservation of Linco l n’s “more pe rfect union” had be come a significa nt part of domestic po l i cy.

others would claim that laws establishing separate facilities removed blacks from white presence to discourage the opportunity for violence. In the early twentieth century, more and more African Americans began leaving the Southeast in what is now called the Great Migration, which lasted from roughly the teens until the 1960s. Early factors included the natural desire of African Americans to move to more accepting places where the Jim Crow laws did not hold sway, but economic factors also played a part: the cotton economy stagnated in the 1910s and 1920s, while World War I and stricter immigration legislation caused a shortage of factory workers in the Northeast and the industrialized parts of the Midwest, especially Chicago (which became a center of blues and jazz because of the sheer number of southern African Americans resettling there). When America’s entry into World War II increased the need for factory workers, the Migration hit its stride, and those postwar displaced African Americans who had spread across the country would prove key to the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s. And indeed, that civil rights movement was naturally concerned with redeeming the South from “Redemption.” Activists focused on the two most tangible and actionable artifacts of institutionalized racism: segregation and voting. The simple absurdity of segregation—of not letting Rosa Parks sit in whatever available bus seat she liked—provided a vivid illustration of the degree to which racism was accepted. And voting is such an intrinsic, personal, even sacred part of an American’s citizenship that it provided a powerful motivation for the movement and made a clear goal out of legislation like the Voting Rights Act, which outlawed unfair requirements for voters (such as those literacy tests and their grandfather clause), provided federal registration in certain areas, and mandated Department of Justice oversight of voter registration to ensure that everyone eligible was permitted to vote.

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The South, only a few generations removed from war and Reco n st ruction, reacted with indignation to nort h e rn and federal interf e rence, seeing themselves once more as the target of foreign intervention and imperialism. Lynchings both of African Americans and of white activists increased in number, and in some cases federal troops had to guarantee the safety of black students attending newly integrated schools. Politicians as diverse as George Wallace, governor of Alabama, and Jimmy Carter, a Georgia state senator and later governor and president, were elected on platforms appealing to segregationists and, more broadly, states’ rights to s e l f - g o v e rnrather than obeying the dictates of the federal government. This continues to be a recurring issue among conservative groups—both Republicans and, in the South, so-called Dixiecrats (essentially the descendents of the Redeemer Democrats)—during debates about issues as diverse as abortion, gay marriage, the separation of church and state in schools and municipal government buildings, the drinking age, and speed limits. Whatever his policies, every president since the 1960s has at least expressed support of states’ rights in the course of his election campaign. The Voting Rights Act was signed into law on August 6, 1965—100 years after the start of Reconstruction. In the 2000s, the right to vote is taken for granted by all races—and while improper treatment of blacks, other nonwhites, and women continues, it is rarely if ever defended. Only with the 2004 election and the popularization of stereotypes of “red states” (Republican) and “blue states” (Democrat) has the idea of regional conflicts been resurrected, and it remains to be seen how accurate that model is.

ALTE R NATE H ISTO RY What if Johnson had been more successful in his dealings with Congress? What if he had been both better able to sway them and more willing to compromise? Given Johnson’s views and the result of the 1866 elections, the most likely manner by which Johnson could have rapidly brought the southern states back into the Union would have been to do so before the Radical Republicans came to power in Congress (beginning in the 1867 term). Not only was the 1866 C o n g ress, before the elections, somewhat more sympathetic to Johnson—and the South, arguably—but after the elections, many of the members had been defeated; and members of a lame-duck Congress, knowing they have already lost reelection and have little lose, are often willing to take actions members know will alienate some voters. What agreement could have satisfied concerns over unruliness and violence in the South, while bringing both sides together well enough that the sudden restoration of southern re p resentation in Congress would not have overt u rned the Union from within? Radical Republicans would viciously oppose it, but the institution of peonage systems in former slave states—both southern and border—would restore the southern economy and address many of the concerns theoretically answered by the Freedmen’s Bureau, by providing employment

A successful Johnson Reconstruction?

and housing for newly freed African Americans. The nature of the system would also bind blacks to the lands upon which they worked, mollifying the fears of whites at the idea of mobile African Americans spreading across the country. Broadly speaking, peonage—as the word is used in American English—is a form of indentured servitude similar to medieval serfdom. Under serfdom, the workers are legally bound to the land. Under peonage, the workers are bound to the land or to the job, not by slavery or law, but because they are obligated to pay off debts. The worker (debtor, peon) works for his or her employer for an indefinite period of time, until the debt is paid off. From there, the specifics vary, but typically any of the following requirements or conditions may be imposed on the worker: •

•

•

•

•

•

The work usually consists of physical labor involving minimal skill, making workers easily replaceable and providing no opportunity to move into overseer/management positions or to obtain wage increases (this makes providing for a family difficult). The worker may be legally re q u i red to purchase his equipment— and perhaps his household goods, such as groceries, furn i t u re, and hard w a re — f rom the company store. Traditionally the company store inflates prices to such a level that it is nearly impossible for the worker to accrue any savings. Share c roppers are agrarian peons, working on land they do not own in return for a p o rtion of the crop and the equipment to work it (or a wage with which to purchase that equipment). Tenant farmers rent the land and usually own their own livestock and equipment; they postpone the payment of the land rent until they sell their harv e s t . Tenancy can easily become a form of peonage if the charge for rent is approximately equal to the expected revenues from the sale of the crops. The worker may be paid a monetary wage or may instead be paid in goods (and services such as the rental of the land, a place to live, perhaps only a bunk in which to sleep, and two meals a day). Especially with agrarian peons on large farms or plantations, there may be little to no contact with neighboring towns—not by mandate but because the workers have by default formed their own community. This creates a sort of inertia, making it more difficult for workers to try to end or change their condition. There may be little to no oversight of debt accounting, permitting an employer to continue working the debtor long past the time when the debt should have been considered paid off. Sharecroppers often compared their position to that of the biblical Jacob, who worked for Lot for seven years for his daughter’s hand in marriage, only to be given the wrong daughter and told that if he wanted the other he must work another seven years. The wage paid, real or theoretical (as when the labor is assigned a value in order to calculate how much debt remains), is nearly always lower than the amount the labor would be worth to a free laborer, and often significantly lower—pennies on the dollar.

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Justifications such as accrued interest or the expense of equipment may sometimes be offered. In actual history, such peonage systems were eventually put in place throughout the South. In some cases, landowners converted sharecropping and tenant farming into forms of peonage by advancing to the workers sufficient funds for supplies. Thus the worker would be in debt until the crop was harvested, when settling up could easily leave the worker starting the next season already in debt. If local authorities prohibited workers from running away from such debts, the system became one of peonage. In other cases, storekeepers would advance the funds to sharecroppers or farm tenants, and in effect, the storekeepers, rather than the landowners, would become the managers of the peonage system. Variations on this system became widespread throughout the South, persisting well into the twentieth century. The systems went a long way toward preserving the economic status quo of the South by providing a replacement for the slave labor of antebellum days—without even needing new workers. Former slaves could, in many cases, simply be “converted” to peons. While such systems gradually evolved, they were a natural outcome of the failure, for the most part, of Civil War and Reconstruction legislation to provide the former slaves with land or other resources. With economic power retained by landowners and by merchants, the formally freed slaves were in no position to resist the development of the new systems of exploitation. In actual history, the development of peonage systems took decades, but in this alternate history, southern planters immediately would have recognized the value of establishing a new labor system, perhaps because of one or more insightful articles published in the agricultural journals to which most of them subscribed. As a consequence, peonage could have been established rapidly, and the planter class would immediately have seen the value of political submission to the will of the Republican-dominated Congress. The explicit adoption of peonage would have become known as the “Peonage Compromise of 1866.” On the northern side, only a few Radicals, like Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania, would have recognized that the new peonage system was a simple restatement of the master-slave relationship. Most would have accepted the formal abolition of slavery as sufficient change, allowing them to have a clear conscience that the goals of emancipation had been achieved. Few commentators in the 1860s viewed the issue of master-slave relationships in terms of economic power but instead saw the question in legal terms. After all, in the North, forms of debt-peonage for “free” workers were common, especially in company towns where workers in mills and mines remained constantly in debt to the company store. Thus, most northern congressmen would have believed that the willingness of southern planters to immediately accept the “freedom” of slaves represented a true surrender of the peculiar institution and a true willingness to accept a Union view of the status of the freedman. As in actual history, Thaddeus Stevens’s proposal for widespread land reform to provide an economic basis for freedom would never have come to fruition.

A successful Johnson Reconstruction?

Even many secessionist Southerners, while wanting to pre s e rv e the plantation system and attendant slavery upon which the antebellum South depended, had wanted to move toward industrializing the South so that it could be more economically independent and thrive in the increasingly international climate. The peonage system, in response, would need to have been applied purely to agrarian labor: indeed, to curtail the migration of labor to industrial cities like Chicago and Detroit and to provide the South with a boost to its industrial base, factories employing the peonage system would have been be set up in and near southern cities. In this fashion, the peonage system that was made explicit in the South would have come to resemble the exploitative labor systems that dominated nort h e rn industry in the period, in which factory, mill, and mine workers received minimal compensation for their work and were often prohibited from leaving by the constant pre s s u re of debt, either to their employers or to merchants. The construction of such southern factories could have been part of the rebuilding of Atlanta, for instance, and peons could have been put to work across the South as the labor in such rebuilding efforts. Under this form of Reconstruction—or really, Restoration—some changes would have been held in common with the actual historical R e c o n s t ruction. The Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery would already have passed. Some form of legislation would have passed declaring that neither the United States as a nation nor its states individually were responsible for debts incurred by the Confederate States of America, except as those individual states chose to honor them. Whatever the rhetoric surrounding this issue, ignoring such debts was simply a financial necessity. While in actual history, English and French banks essentially forgave these Confederate debts as a goodwill gesture because the Union’s abolition of slavery had brought it up to speed with European values, in this alternate history that might not be the case. If the Peonage Compromise had been made explicit, the new arrangement might have been less likely to inspire respect in foreign nations. The Fourteenth Amendment, though, was not ratified until 1868 and was proposed only a few months before the South in this scenario would return to Congress. Although the Civil Rights Act of 1866 had passed in March and guaranteed that certain rights could not be abridged by reason of race, this would not have prevented legislation limiting the rights of peons, especially if some whites were immediately included in the peon class. Thus, forbidding peons (regardless of their race) to do any of the following would not have been a violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1866: • •

Own property Own firearms

•

Travel more than a certain distance from the land or factory where they worked without their employer’s permission Sue their employer or any of their employer’s business interests

•

Virtually the entire condition of slavery could have been resurrected under a new name, with race removed as an explicit trait.

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To appease the incoming Republican Congress, new governors brought down from the North would have likely been appointed by Johnson as a condition of the South’s readmittance to the Union. But this would have been little more than a token gesture, and southern Democrat governors would have replaced them in the earliest elections. While African-American peons would count as full citizens in determining southern representation in Congress, they as yet would have had no vote nor much in the way of means to inform themselves even if they could vote. But that Republican Congress would arrive eventually and push the issue of the Fourteenth Amendment. The southern opposition would have been strong, and only the election of Grant and his agreement to remove federal troops from the South would prove a significant enough bargaining chip to get the South to ratify the amendment. In addition to other minor conditions—the transcontinental railroad which was part of the 1877 Compromise, and a certain number of Southerners and Democrats appointed to Grant’s cabinet—the southern leaders would have struck an informal agreement with the Republican and federal leadership, perhaps behind closed doors. What we know as the Fifteenth Amendment—the guarantee of voting rights regardless of race—would have been indefinitely postponed. In addition, the peonage system would have remained largely unchanged: laws pertaining to peons would not specify race, and as in actual history, a substantial number of poor white peons, as sharecroppers and white tenant farmers, would have joined the predominantly AfricanAmerican numbers. But just as slavery was a condition that must eventually fail, this compromised situation of race relations and labor in the new South would not have persisted forever. The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were a time of significant self-definition for the United States and a period of great waves of immigration. As the Industrial Revolution—and this new South’s participation in it—changed the state of the economy, the working class, and even foreign policy (as the United States became more technologically sophisticated, it adopted a more imperialist attitude toward less-developed nations), the labor movement began to form as a way to fight for fairness for workers under these conditions. It would have been the labor movement, rather than a civil rights movement, that would have ended the peonage system. Perhaps the most methodical and effective activist movement in American history since the Revolutionary War, the labor movement was able to make its appeals to both conservative factions (churches were often involved in the campaign to end child labor and to maintain Sunday as a day free from work) and to liberal factions that wanted laborers to have more control over their working conditions and even the functions of their employing company. The labor movement was, over time, responsible for the eight-hour workday, the two-day weekend, the establishment of a minimum wage, paid holidays, compensation for workers injured on the job (and safety requirements protecting laborers from being injured by factory equipment), and other basic worker rights. In actual history,

A successful Johnson Reconstruction?

radical elements of the labor movement did take on the sharecropping system in the 1930s, sometimes under the leadership of the Communist P a rty of the United States. However, if the peonage system had been made explicit early on and had become widely recognized as the stru cture that replaced slavery, organized labor might have successfully challenged the system as early as the 1890s during the Populist Movement. In this scenario, the national labor movements in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries would have lent their support to the Republican quest for a Fifteenth Amendment; both labor and Republicans would have allied themselves with the women’s suffrage movement (in actual history, feminists and abolitionists often worked together, leading to great disappointment when neither the Fourteenth nor Fifteenth Amendments brought women more freedom) to push through an amendment giving the vote to all citizens, with nationality and age the only determining factors. The alliance of labor, suffragists, and African-American voters would have run into difficulty in trying to dismantle the now-entrenched peonage system, and a newly industrialized South would have been economically more stable and better able to defend itself—and might well have enlisted northern business allies as it did in actual history. While neither secession nor war would have resulted from this conflict, stalled talks would have led to an escalation of workers’ riots and retaliatory lynchings, an epidemic of violence lasting years and requiring military intervention from both state militias and federal troops on repeated occasions. Such events did in fact emerge during the Populist Era, but in this alternate history, because of the explicit and open nature of the peonage system, and the stronger alliance of opponents, state legislation and federal intervention effectively would have brought the system to a more definitive end through the period 1895–1910. Some might call it the Second Civil War or the Workers’ War, but it would have been more chaotic and less organized than that. There would have been no simple compromise between peonage and no peonage, particularly when the southern peon employers would have viewed the labor movement as already having won many battles, especially the vote for African Americans. Eventually, though, the trifold alliance of labor, Republicans, and feminists would have won enough elections and gained enough power to push their legislation through, and sometime in the first decade of the twentieth century, the peonage system would have been abolished as part of the Progressive movement—and finally, all American laborers would be equal under the law. This would have come about around the same time as Europe’s Great War, what we now call World War I. A more strongly isolationist South and a country tired of violence—and likely tired of Europe, as the labor movement would have enlisted support from its European counterparts—would have swayed the federal government to abstain from the war, as happened in actual history. If the forces insisting on neutrality had been somewhat stronger and had succeeded in preventing Woodrow Wilson from declaring war in 1917, the war would have taken slightly longer to resolve itself, lasting until perhaps 1920, and

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America’s prosperity in the 1920s would not have been quite so great as in actual history. In the meantime, though, a more uniformly industrialized United States would have made faster technological advances, especially relative to war-torn Europe. World War II might have been ended slightly sooner as a result of superior firepower and greater production capacity in American factories. Beginning in the 1920s but not coming to a head until the 1950s and 1960s, as a generation shed the assumptions the previous one had taken for granted, the civil rights movement would have insisted on seeing granted the equal protection mandated by the Constitution, for all races and both sexes. As races had come together in the labor stru ggle, the division between black and white would have begun to seem less important than that between rich and poor, employer and employee. The civil rights movement would thus be both grassroots and well organized, having learned from the labor movement’s methods and infrastru c t u re—civil rights, equal rights, would have been a much stronger issue in the presidential elections of the 1960s and 1970s, even as American troops fought wars against southeast Asian communism. From this point on, America would have responded to most issues as a nation, not a collection of regions: the Cold War, stagflation, rock-androll, the Internet—these are phenomena that do not care so much about local geography. The twenty-first-century explosion in online communities and e-mail would help erode regional identities even furt h e r. By the 2000s, regional divides such as those between the North and South in the nineteenth century would be all but forgotten, but those between rich and poor would have a long history of conflict. Even as civil rights movements began to focus on discrimination against religion and sexual preference, resentments would linger from the long cruel treatment of African Americans and the poor. Bill Kte’pi

Discussion Questions 1. What other ways might Reconstruction have transpired? How might Lincoln have changed things had he survived his assassination attempt? 2. Was there a way to have readmitted the South into the Union following the Civil War without additional friction and conflict? 3. If Radical Republicans had succeeded in land reform so that large plantations had been divided and turned over to former slaves and to white farmers of smaller plots, would such a reform have prevented the emergence of peonage? 4. What else could have replaced the plantation system of labor? Would a system of guaranteed wage contracts (attempted during the war by occupying Union generals) have prevented peonage? 5. What other turning points during Reconstruction could have led to another outcome?

A successful Johnson Reconstruction?

Bibliography and Further Reading Beale, Howard K. The Critical Year: A Study of Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1930. Beard, Charles A., and Mary R. The Rise of American Civilization. New York: Kessinger, 2005. Belz, Herman. Reconstructing the Union: Theory and Practice during the Civil War. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1930. Carter, Dan T. When the War Was Over: The Failure of Self-Reconstruction in the South, 1865–67. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1967. Daniel, Pete. In the Shadow of Slavery: Peonage in the South 1901–1969. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990. Foner, Eric. Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–77. New York: HarperCollins, 1988. Gambill, Edward L. Conservative Ordeal: Northern Democrats and Reconstruction, 1865–68. Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1981. Hyman, Harold M. A More Perfect Union: The Impact of the Civil War and Reconstruction on the Constitution. New York: Knopf, 1973. Jensen, Richard. “Jensen’s Guide to Reconstruction History.” http://tigger.uic. edu/~rjensen/recon.htm (a collection of primary sources; accessed January 2006). Kirkland, Edward C. Industry Comes of Age: Business, Labor, and Public Policy, 1860–97. New York: Knopf, 1961. Maslowski, Peter. Treason Must Be Made Odious: Military Occupation and Wartime Reconstruction in Nashville, Tennessee, 1862–65. Millwood, NY: KTO Press, 1978. McKitrick, Eric L. Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction. London: Oxford University Press, 1989. Milton, George F. The Age of Hate: Andrew Johnson and the Radicals. New York: Coward-McCann, 1930. Montgomery, David. Beyond Equality: Labor and the Radical Republicans 1862–72 Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1967. Olsen, Otto H., ed. Reconstruction and Redemption in the South. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1980. Perman, Michael. Reunion without Compromise: The South and Reconstruction 1865–68. London: Cambridge University Press, 1973. Rabinowitz, Howard N. Race Relations in the Urban South 1865–90. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1978. Rable, George C. But There Was No Peace: The Role of Violence in the Politics of Reconstruction. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1984.

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In 1868 Congress impeached but did not convict President Andrew Johnson. What would have happened to presidential power had Congress not impeached Johnson?

INTR ODU CT IO N Throughout much of the nineteenth century, the United States underwent a profound series of social and political changes involving the issue of slavery and its extension into new states. In the early part of the century, proponents and opponents of slavery engaged in a serious clash over the extension of slavery into new regions. Specifically, in 1819, citizens in the territory of Missouri petitioned Congress to enter the Union as a slave state. Opponents of the spread of slavery immediately criticized the petition as a southern conspiracy to extend the institution. After a muchheated debate on the floor of the House of Representatives, congressional leaders negotiated the Missouri Compromise, which allowed Missouri to enter the Union as a slave state while the state of Maine entered the Union as a free state. The compromise facilitated a momentary peace in the problem of slavery and for the president of the United States, James Monroe, it solved a major crisis. Over the course of the next twenty years slavery was not a prominent issue. This was especially so in the 1820s and 1830s with the rise of a powerful executive in the form of Andrew Jackson. During his presidency, Jackson wielded an incredible amount of power over the different branches of government. Many detractors continually referred to Jackson as “King Andy.” However, throughout the 1840s, the issue of slavery had become a nonissue as Americans became increasingly concerned with land acquisition and western expansion. In the late 1840s, the issue of slavery and presidential power received an impetus. In 1846, President James K. Polk, encouraged the United States into a war with the Republic of Mexico. Ostensibly, the immediate cause of the war was a border skirmish between the two countries’ military forces. A long-term influence, however, in the cause of the war was the drive for land by Americans. Indeed, some scholars have noted that Polk exploited this drive to force a declaration of war. Nevertheless, the outcome of the war was favorable to the United States.

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In the resulting Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the United States acquired a vast amount of terr i t o ry that presently consists of the southwestern region of the nation. In the aftermath of the war, the issue of slavery assumed crisis proportions as Southerners demanded that the recently acquired territories allow slavery. Many Northerners vehemently criticized this idea because they believed that it proved the existence of a grand cabal or conspiracy to spread the institution of slavery. The presidents of the 1850s—specifically, Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, and James Buchanan—proved unable to handle the delicate yet volatile issue of slavery. Indeed, the triumvirate, in each term, saw the weakening of executive power as a result of the slavery issue. In 1850, Fillmore witnessed the possible secession of the South after California wished to enter the Union as a free state. With the aid of H e n ry Clay, who negotiated the Compromise of 1850, the South remained in the Union. A few years later, during the term of Franklin Pierce, the crisis reached fever proportions as the new territory of Kansas became the center of the controversy. According to the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, the territory of Kansas was targeted to enter the Union with the settlers of the territory to determine whether the state would be slave or free. As a result, an influx of free soil and pro-slavery settlers into the region clashed violently over the conditional status. President Pierce could not contend with the issue until it was resolved once again by negotiation and compromise. Finally, in the late 1850s, as the crisis of slavery loomed on the horizon, James Buchanan proved incapable of handling the storm. As it became apparent that Southerners were becoming entrenched in their defense of slavery, via the Dred Scott decision, the Panic of 1857, and the resulting clash over the John Brown raid, Buchanan proved to be an ineffective president. In 1860, when the South seceded from the Union after the election of the Republican Abraham Lincoln, Buchanan once again failed to act, especially when the Confederate States of America fired on Fort Sumter, South Carolina, beginning the Civil War. In March 1861, Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated as the sixteenth p resident of the United States. Throughout his first term, his major crisis was the dissolution of the Union and the ensuing military conflict. Lincoln effectively utilized executive power to successfully complete what he viewed as his mission of unifying the divided country. On n u m e rous occasions, Lincoln dismissed military officials when he felt they were not running the military campaign efficiently. He also suspended the writ of habeas corpus at the outset of war as well as instituting military tribunals. In 1864, Lincoln was in the midst of a tendentious presidential campaign. Peace Democrats, also known as “Copperheads,” criticized Lincoln for extending the war, while on the other side some Republicans criticized his lenient Reconstruction program for the southern states. Many critics believed that Lincoln’s Reconstruction program, known as the Ten Percent Plan, was simply too lenient for the South. Congressional Republicans responded with their own brand of Reconstruction known as the WadeDavis Bill. The Wade-Davis Bill was a harsh law mandating loyalty oaths from former rebel officers. It was evident that Lincoln had become an

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unpopular president by election day in late 1864. To increase his political popularity, Lincoln and the Republicans needed to integrate a Southerner into his political campaign to placate all the disparate political groups within the party. Eventually, Lincoln brought in a Tennessean named Andrew Johnson. The Lincoln-Johnson ticket defeated the Democratic Party ticket of General George McClellan (himself a War Democrat) and his Peace Democrat vice-presidential candidate, George Pendleton, by a sizable margin, in both the electoral college and the popular vote. As a result of his reelection in 1864, Lincoln pursued a more aggressive military policy and by April 1865, Union forces had decidedly beaten the Confederates. Lincoln’s policies were vindicated. On April 2, 1865, Union troops entered the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia. One week later, Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox, thus ending the Civil War. On April 14, 1865, at about 10:15 P.M., at Ford’s Theatre, Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth. The president was pronounced dead a few hours later. Subsequently, pro-Southerner vice-president Johnson assumed his constitutional duties as seventeenth president of the United States. T h roughout his presidency, Johnson was a controversial administrator. As a Southern e r, he believed that the most constructive path for R e c o n s t ruction was leniency. As part of his Reconstruction program, he granted pardons to many former Confederate officials, excluding those with large-scale landholdings. He invited many of them to regain cont rol of many southern states. He cited his belief that a quick reintegration was vital to the overall health of the nation. In addition, he allowed the southern states to establish the Black Codes. These codes were a way for Southerners to maintain their antebellum status in re g a rd to slaves. Most of these codes compelled the former slaves to work on the form e r plantations, along with dictating the number of hours that they needed to work. Indeed, these codes reflected the unwillingness of white Southerners to recognize the political and social equality of the form e r slaves. When Congress reconvened in 1866, the majority party, the Republicans, initiated policies meant to challenge the lenient policies and threatened the livelihood of African Americans. First, Congress passed the Freedmen’s Bureau Bill. The Second Freedmen’s Bureau Bill of 1866 provided many additional rights to former slaves, including the distribution of land, education for children, and even military courts to ensure the enforcement of these rights. Angered by the passage of this bill, Johnson vetoed it, and the Republicans were unable to muster the necessary votes to override the veto. In addition, Congress tried to seek passage of a new Civil Rights Bill. The Civil Rights Bill of March 1866 allowed African Americans to sue in civil court, witness in court, and to own private property. Once again, Johnson was not content with this bill stating that the bill favored blacks over whites, and he attempted to veto it. On April 9, 1866, the Republicans had the votes in the House of Representatives to successfully override the presidential veto. The pace of conflict between the Congress and Johnson was escalating at a tremendous pace.

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The Seventeenth President

An d rew Johnson, the seve nte e nth pre s i d e nt of the Un i ted St ate s, was bo rn in Raleigh, No rth Carolina, on De ce m ber 29, 1808. His fat h e r’s death left the family in poverty. From age ten to seventeen, young Johnson was appre nt i ced to a tailor. He plied that t rade for a number of years during which time he

Andrew Johnson, the seventeenth president of the United States, and the first to be impeached and acquitted. (Library of Congress)

moved with his mother to Gre e nv i l l e, Tennessee. Johnson never at tended school but after his marriage to Eliza Mc Ca rdle acquired a good common e d u cation under her tute l a g e. A gifted po l i t i cal orato r, Johnson ascended the po l i t i cal ladder quickl y. In 1829,he won his first office as an alderman. In rapid succession he be ca m e mayor of Gre e nville, a member of the Tennessee s t ate legislat u re, U.S. congressman, gove rnor of Tennessee, and U.S. s e n ator. In Congress, Johnson was a strong advocate of the annex ation of Tex a s, the Mex i ca n - Am e ri can War, and the Ho m e s tead Bi l l . He was the only So u t h e rner in Co n g ress who firm l y supported the Union throughout both the secession c risis and the Civil War. After federal fo rces captured po rtions of Tennessee, Lincoln appo i nted him military gove rnor of the state, an office he assumed in the face of lynch mobs and bullets. Two years late r, men like Reve rdy Johnson and William Se wa rd wo rked to secure An d re w Johnson, a De m ocrat, as Linco l n’s running mate on the Re p u b l i can Party ticke t . Ac co rding to a May 20, 1865, e d i to rial in Harper’s We e kly, Se wa rd had seen in Johnson “t h at his fe l l ow - Senato r, a landre fo rm e r, a stern Union man, a tru s ted re p re s e nt at i ve of the people of the South as distinguished f rom the planting ari s toc ra cy, was the ve ry kind of leader by whom the po l i t i cal power of the ari s tocracy was ultimately to be ove rt h rown in its ow n section.” After Linco l n’s assassination in Ap ril 1865, Johnson assumed the presidency.His administration

In November 1866, the conflict between Congress and the president became more aggravated. By the midterm election, Congress had not only passed laws protecting the rights of the former slaves, but it had even encouraged constitutional amendments offering constitutional protection to African Americans. In addition, Congress had stipulated a new form of Reconstruction, which was harsher and more punishing. Known as Radical Reconstruction, Congress placed the former rebel states under military control. Tens of thousands of federal troops were stationed in the South to oversee radical Reconstruction. State governments that had been integrated into the Union under Johnson’s plan were abolished. Not only were African Americans protected legally but many of them even decided to vote in the upcoming elections. It was becoming increasingly apparent

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ran more smoothly in the fo reign than the domestic arena: in 1867,Se c re t a ry of St ate William Se ward purchased Al a s ka and helped negotiate France’s withdrawal of troops from Mex i co. Domestically, Johnson faced a crisis with ra d i cal co n g ressional Republicans who dete rmined his Civil War Re co n s t ru ction po l icies far too lenient. Ill will and deep po l i t i cal disagreements culminated in Congress’s voting articles

of impe a c h m e nt against him in February 1868. On May 16, 1868, the U.S. Se n ate acquitted Johnson of the impe a c h m e nt charges and he served the remainder of his pre s i d e ntial te rm. After his pre s i d e n cy, Johnson’s next bid to re e nter politics was unsuccessful, but in 1874,Tennessee again elected him to the U.S. Se n ate. He died just m o nths into his te rm .

President Johnson on his deathbed, July 31, 1875. (Library of Congress)

that relations between the executive and legislative branches were deteriorating at a quick pace. The tension between the two branches finally cracked in 1867. On March 2, 1867, Congress, over Johnson’s veto, passed the Tenure of Office Act. Under this law, a president could not dismiss a federal official without the consent and approval of Congress. The lines of debate over this law were clear and concise. Johnson cited the president’s constitutional mandate to select his closest advisers, claiming that he had the right to dismiss any officer he wished to dismiss. C o n g ress argued that the president needed the advice and consent of Congress when making (or dismissing) any political appointments. Essentially, the initiative of approving (or disapproving) any

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President Johnson’s firing of Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, above, precipitated the impeachment proceedings. (Library of Congress)

appointments depended on congre s s i o n a l privilege rather than executive mandate. It was unclear whether this was a general law or whether it was aimed at Johnson’s specific intention to fire Lincoln’s (and Johnson’s) secre t a ry of war, Edwin Stanton. Stanton had become increasingly supportive of the policies of the Radical Republicans. He believed that their policies exemplified the explicit nature of Lincolnian Reconstruction. In the congre ssional recess, Johnson attempted to dismiss Stanton. Stanton refused, under any circumstances, to resign his position. Johnson re p e ated his order of dismissal to Stanton. At this point, the congressional Republicans, angered by Johnson’s intransigence in accepting Cong ressional Reconstruction, decided to force the issue of impeachment based on Johnson’s violation of the Te n u re of Office Act. On January 3, 1868, the newly convened Cong ress refused to accept the dismissal. Johnson even ord e red the arrest of Stanton if he refused to leave his secretarial home. After a few days of a standoff, Congress ord e red that impeachment proceedings immediately begin against the seventeenth president of the United States, A n d rew Johnson.

The relationship between Andrew Johnson and the Radical Republicans now bordered on chaos. The talk of impeaching a sitting president was, for many Americans, a disturbing foray into the unknown. Since the days of the Constitutional Convention, many local and judicial appointees had been impeached. However, there had never been discussion of a president of the United States possibly being impeached, and even more perilous, removed from office. Nevertheless, the politically hostile environment continued to worsen at an exponential rate. In early 1868, the stage was set for impeachment. The House of Representatives, with the blessing of the Judiciary Committee convened in Febru a ry 1868. In open defiance of the threat of impeachment, Johnson, on Febru a ry 21, 1868, relayed to the House his intentions to permanently dismiss Stanton from office. Three days later, on February 24, 1868 at 5 P.M., the House, by a vote of 126 yeas and 47 nays, adjudged that Johnson had indeed violated the Te n u re of Office Act. As the statement of the indictment read, it was resolved that A n d rew Johnson be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors.

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The impeachment proceedings initiated by the Radical Republicans against President Johnson in 1868 are likened to a dead horse exuding a great stench with no hope for revival. (Library of Congress)

Even though there were eleven specific art icles of impeachment against Johnson, the general tenor of the accusations revolved around the Te n u re of Office Act. Over the course of the next month, the debate centered on the commencement for possible removal proceedings in the Senate. On March 30, 1868, the trial for the removal of President Andrew Johnson began in the U.S. Senate. Representing the House of Repre s e ntatives was Radical Republican Thaddeus Stevens. Johnson introduced his own legal representatives. Stevens and the House managers argued that Johnson, on numerous occasions, had violated the Tenure of Office Act. Over the course of April 1868, the trial continued with the involvement of the press and the media. It was becoming evident to everyone that the trial was a media spectacle. In early May, the Senate was ready for a vote. Sensing that of the eleven articles of impeachment, the sole article capable of succeeding in a vote would be the eleventh article (which contained the alleged violation of the Tenure of Office

George T. Brown, sergeant-at-arms, serving the summons on President Johnson. Sketched by T. R. Davis. (Library of Congress)

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Thaddeus Stevens was one of the leaders of the Radical Republicans arguing against President Johnson staying in office. (Library of Congress)

Act), on May 16, 1868, the Senate agreed to an early vote. On the afternoon of the May 16, the Senators voted. By the slimmest of margins (in reality, the two-thirds vote failed by one vote), the Senate acquitted Johnson of any high crimes and misdemeanors. Despite numerous attempts by antiJohnson groups like the Republican state committees, Union League chapters, and even the General Conference of the Methodist Church to have Johnson removed, the removal ultimately failed. By a 34-to-19 vote, Johnson survived removal. With the acquittal, Johnson remained in office. However, the nature of presidential politics was transformed. The institution of the presidency was weakened tremendously as a result of the impeachment process. Congressional power increased as a result and over the course of the next twenty years, relations between Congress and the president would devolve into one of dependency of the executive on the legislative branch.

AC TUA L H ISTO RY In the aftermath of Johnson’s impeachment and the subsequent failure to remove him from office, relations between Congress and the president deteriorated further. The primary impact of the impeachment on presidential power was immediately felt in the political realm. Presidential power substantially declined in the years after the impeachment. Since the birth of the republic in 1787, the institution of the presidency had been considered by many observers to be incredibly powerful. The majority of the presidents throughout the nineteenth century at times acted with more unitary power than was expected in a republican system of government—a power that led many observers to believe that the nation’s political system was more of a unitary than a parliamentary system. The Radical Republicans’ impeachment and their subsequent attempt at removal of the president stripped away the powers of the executive branch. Essentially, the institutional relationship between Congress and the presidency tilted in favor of the legislative branch. The result was deadlock and ineffectiveness in dealing with Reconstruction, racial issues, and economic conflict. In the next years voters elected a sequence of presidents many historians considered to be weak and ineffective. When one looks at the presidents during the so-called Gilded Age, they were earnestly controlled by the urban political machines and most important, succumbed to the

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whims of Congress. Ulysses Grant, president of the United States from 1867 to 1878, was the first victim of this transformation of political power. The major issue during Grant’s administration was Reconstruction. Specifically, Grant had to contend with issues of race and economic reconstruction. Even though he had on numerous occasions attempted to impose a stronger program for Reconstruction, his political powers of enforcement were at times weak. T h roughout the South during the Reconstruction era, violence escalated against the freedmen as many white Southerners assumed that the federal government was incapable of controlling the situation. As a result of the weakened presidency, Grant had to rely on congressional power to institute some form of federal enforcement measures for Reconstru c t i o n . Grant wanted to implement military policies in the South to enforce civil rights. In two instances, Grant’s power to protect the civil rights of recently freed African Americans was superseded by congressional authority. In other words, the enforcement of the civil rights of African Americans was protected by congressional power rather than presidential fiat. The Civil Rights Act would eventually be deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme C o u rt because, in the opinion of the Court, Congress did not have a constitutional right to regulate the conduct of individuals or citizens. In addition, Grant’s leadership style weakened the presidency in the eyes of the public to a great degree. During his administration, a string of presidential scandals rocked the White House. In late 1869, speculators Jim Fisk and Jay Gould hatched a plan to corner the nation’s gold market. The speculators enlisted the assistance of Grant’s brother-in-law, who had offered to serve as a block to prevent Grant from acting to ruin the scandalous scheme. This scandal was detrimental to Grant’s public image. Then, in 1872, the Credit Mobilier scandal occurred, involving the creation of a dummy corporation to corner the railroad industry. It was uncovered and further weakened the power of President Grant. It was alleged that Vice-President (and Grant’s close associate) Schuyler Colfax had been bribed with stocks. Finally, William W. Belknap, Grant’s secretary of war, was impeached for accepting bribes from companies with licenses to trade on the reservations of certain Native American tribes. The proximity of the participants in all three scandals to the president further weakened the institutional strength of the presidency. In addition, the power of the presidency had become so diminished by Johnson’s impeachment and the subsequent lack of political focus that the weakness of the executive branch had debilitated the entire political system. As the upcoming election approached, the issues revolved around presidential power (or the lack thereof) and corruption. The stage was set for a heated political debate. In 1876, a controversial election witnessed the victory of the Republican Rutherf o rd B. Hayes. A hallmark of his installment as pre sident was his assurance that the executive branch would no longer implement Reconstruction policies. To a certain degree, the power of the presidency to shape social policy and act as a political power bro k e r had withered after 1881. After the ineptness of President Grant, the ensuing executives were incapable of fostering any type of social and economic development. The victor of the 1876 election, Hayes carried out his promises of ending

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William McKinley

At the 1896 Re p u b l i can Co nve ntion, in time of depression, the we a l t hy Cl eveland businessman Ma rcus Al o n zo Hanna ensured the nomination of his friend William McKi n l ey as “the adva n ce agent of prospe ri ty.” The De m oc rat s, advocating the f ree and unlimited coinage of both silver and g o l d, n o m i n ated William Jennings Brya n . Wh i l e Hanna used large cont ributions from eastern Re p u b l i cans fri g htened by Brya n’s views on silve r, Mc Ki n l ey met delegations on his fro nt po rch in Ca nton, Oh i o. He won by the largest majori ty of popular vo tes since 1872. Bo rn in Niles, Oh i o, in 1843, Mc Ki n l ey bri e f l y at tended Allegheny College and was teaching in a co u nt ry school when the Civil War bro ke out. Enlisting as a pri vate in the Union Army, he was mus-

te red out at the end of the war as a brevet major of volunte e r s. He studied law, opened an office in Ca nto n , Oh i o, and married Ida Sa xto n , d a u g hter of a l ocal banker. At thirty - fo u r, Mc Ki n l ey won a seat in Congre s s. His at t ra ct i ve personality, exemplary chara cte r, and quick inte l l i g e n ce enabled him to rise rapidly. He was appointed to the powe rful Ways and Me a n s Committe e. Du ring his fourteen years in the House, he be came the leading Re p u b l i can tariff ex pe rt, g i ving his name to the measure enacted in 1890. The n ext year he was elected gove rnor of Oh i o, serving two te rm s. When Mc Ki n l ey be came pre s i d e nt, t h e d e p ression of 1893 had almost run its course and with it the ext reme agitation over silve r. De fe rring

Reconstruction in the South. In the process, he inextricably removed the president from protecting the social and economic rights of citizens. Subsequent presidents essentially pursued the same policies in terms of social and economic rights. Throughout the remainder of the nineteenth century came presidents who did not actively engage in controversial and unpopular policy decisions. Known as the Gilded Age Presidents—James A. Garfield, Chester Arthur, Grover Cleveland, Benjamin Harrison, and William McKinley—these men lacked the political strength to challenge the political power of the Congress. Indeed, an examination of the period shows that the major political issues revolved around the rather benign issues of tariff and civil service reform. These two issues were not controversial and increasingly concerned the presidents’ ability to appoint his bureaucrats. During the presidency of Grover Cleveland, the tension between Congress and the executive exploded when Cleveland wanted to veto a congressional bill giving veterans of the Civil War a pension. Despite his challenge to the veteran pension and other congressional bills, Cleveland lost the support of many within his own congressional caucus, thus losing the bid for the presidency (reelection). In the short term, debate on these issues of tariffs or reform were beneficial to civil service workers or merchants. However, in terms of any form of social change, it was fundamentally lacking in the twenty years after the Johnson impeachment. It was during the presidency of William McKinley that a subtle shift occurred in presidential power. With the United States becoming increasingly involved in the Cuban War, which eventually led to American involvement in April 1898 (Spanish-American War), the president had to find a way to exhibit presidential power. Unable to restrain Congress or the American people, McKinley delivered his message of neutral inter-

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action on the money question, he called Congress i nto special session to enact the highest tariff in h i s to ry. In the friendly at m o s p h e re of the Mc Ki n l ey administration, industrial combinations developed at an unpre ce d e nted pace. Ne ws p a pers ca ri catured Mc Ki n l ey as a little boy led around by Hanna and the representative of the trusts. However, McKinley was not dominated by Hanna; he condemned the t rusts as dangerous co n s p i ra c i e s. Not prosperity, but foreign po l i cy, d o m i n ated Mc Ki n l ey’s administration. Re po rting the stalemate be tween Spanish fo rces and revo l u t i o n a ries in Cuba, news p a pers screamed that a quarter of the population was dead and the rest suffe ring acute l y. Public indignation bro u g ht pre s s u re upon the pre sident for war. In the 100-day war, the Un i ted St ate s destroyed the Spanish fleet outside Sa ntiago harbo r

in Cuba, s e i zed Manila in the Philippines, and oc c upied Puerto Ri co. “ Uncle Joe” Cannon, later Spe a ker of the House, once said that Mc Ki n l ey kept his ear so close to the ground that it was full of gra s s h o p pe r s. Wh e n Mc Ki n l ey was undecided what to do about Spanish possessions other than Cuba, he to u red the co u ntry and dete cted an impe rialist sentiment. Thus the Un i ted St ates annexed the Philippines, Gu a m , and Puerto Ri co. In 1900, McKinley again campaigned against Brya n . While Bryan inveighed against imperialism, McKinley quietly stood for economic pro s pe ri ty. His second te rm, which had begun auspiciously, came to a tragic end in Se p te m ber 1901. He wa s standing in a receiving line at the Buffalo PanAm e ri can Exposition when a deranged anarc h i s t shot him tw i ce. He died eight days later.

vention in April 1898. Congress thereupon voted three resolutions tantamount to a declaration of war for the liberation and independence of Cuba. McKinley initially pursued a pacifist policy toward the Cuban Revolution. He had a fundamental problem with having to gain congressional approval for American intervention in a foreign conflict. As the Cuban conflict escalated, it became apparent that American intervention was necessary for geostrategic reasons. After the sinking of the USS Maine and the publication of the De Lome letter in February 1898, McKinley was pushed to a declaration of war. Issues of Reconstruction had been eliminated and foreign policy became the major issue. With the conclusion of the formal war, the issue became the Philippines, at which time Congress circumscribed presidential power. Thus, McKinley found it increasingly difficult to obtain the resources and personnel to defeat a Philippine insurrection. In the aftermath of the Spanish-American War, presidential power became increasingly weak. Throughout the early part of the twentieth century, the lingering debate over separation of powers had permeated the American system. In the early years of the century, with the sole exception of Theodore Roosevelt (1901–1908), the men who were elected were weak presidents. Teddy Roosevelt transformed presidential power by attacking the business monopolies as well as imposing a great deal of social legislation. His predecessor, William Taft, was a president whose record was ambivalent at best, though most historians have characterized him as a superior administrator. He was responsible for more than ninety antitrust suits as well as a strong tariff. In general, however, he is not considered to have exhibited executive powers in any extraordinary sense. The first true instance of a strengthened executive occurred in the years from 1914 throughout 1918. Known as the Great War, World War

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Woodrow Wilson

L i ke Roo s evelt be fore him, Wood row Wilson re g a rded himself as the personal representative of the pe o p l e. He deve l o ped a prog ram of prog re s s i ve re form and asserted inte rn ational leadership in building a new wo rld order. In 1917 he proclaimed American ent ra n ce into Wo rld War I a crusade to m a ke the world “s a fe for democ ra cy.” Wilson had seen the fri g htfulness of war. He was bo rn in Vi rginia in 1856, the son of a Presby te rian minister who during the Civil War was a minister in Augusta, Georgia, and during Re co n s t ru ction a professor in the charred city of Co l u m b i a , South Carolina. After gra d u ation from Pri n ce ton (then the College of New Je r s ey) and the Un i ve r s i ty of Virginia Law Schoo l , Wilson earned his docto rate at Johns Ho p kins Un i versity and ente red upon an aca d e m i c career. In 1885 he married Ellen Louise Axs o n . Wilson adva n ced rapidly as a co n s e rvat i ve young pro fessor of po l i t i cal science, teaching at

Bryn Mawr College, We s l eyan Un i ve r s i ty, and at Pri n ce tonUn i ve r s i ty, where he was appo i nted pre si d e nt in 1902. His growing national re p u t ation led some conservat i ve De m oc rats to consider him as possessing pre s i d e ntial ca l i be r. First they persuaded him to run for gove rnor of New Je r s ey in 1910.In the campaign he asserted his independence of the co nservat i ves and of the machine that had nominate d him, endorsing a prog re s s i ve plat fo rm, which he pursued as governor. He was nominated for pre s i d e nt at the 1912 De m oc ratic co nve ntion and campaigned on a prog ram called the New Freedom, which stressed individualism and state s’ ri g ht s. In the three-way e l e ction he re ce i ved only 42 pe rce nt of the popular vo te but an overwhelming electo ral vo te. Wilson maneuve red through Co n g ress three major pieces of legislation. The first was a lower tariff, the Un d e rwood Act ; attached to the measure was

I witnessed the deaths of millions of people. During the war, President Woodrow Wilson utilized executive power to mobilize the national economy. As a result the United States witnessed the proliferation of agencies designed to curtail some freedoms. For example, Wilson promoted the Committee of Public Information, led by George Creel, not to only propagandize the war effort at home but, more important, to censor the press. Wilson also created thousands of agencies within the executive branch to supervise the economic boom that was spawned as a result of the war. In addition to his expansion of the bureaucracy, Wilson also manipulated Congress to censure the American populace. Between 1917 and 1918, Congress passed and Wilson signed four bills known collectively as the Alien and Sedition Laws. These laws were designed to curtail any public opposition to the war by censoring the press as well as censoring public opinion: anyone accused of criticizing the war effort and Wilson’s policies was threatened with imprisonment or even deportation. Even though Wilson was merely riding the wave of an expanding executive, the seeds of congressional dissension that had been planted at the Johnson impeachment were beginning to blossom. At the conclusion of the war, the United States—specifically President Wilson—was able to sign the Treaty of Versailles. This treaty ended the war as well providing a blueprint for the postwar world. One of the most significant points of the treaty involved German reparations, economic sanctions, and the creation of an international body called the League of Nations. The League of Nations was Wilson’s brainchild originating in plans that he had promulgated in his Fourteen Points. As part of the

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a gra d u ated federal income tax. The passage of the Federal Reserve Act provided the nation with the m o re elastic money supply it badly needed. In 1914 a nt i t rust legislation established a Fe d e ral Tra d e Commission to prohibit unfair business practices. Another burst of legislation followed in 1916. One new law pro h i b i ted child labo r; another limite d ra i l road wo rkers to an eight-hour day. By virtue of this legislation and the slogan “he kept us out of war,” Wilson narrowly won reelection. But after the e l e ction Wilson concluded that America could not remain neutral in the wo rld war when Ge rman subm a rines began to sink Am e ri can ships in a declare d po l i cy of unre s t ri cted submarine warf a re. On April 2, 1917, he asked Congress for a declaration of war on Ge rm a ny. De s p i te dissenting vo tes in both houses of Co n g re s s, the resolution passed and he signed it on Ap ril 7. Massive Am e ri can effort slowly tipped the bala n ce in favor of the Al l i e s.Wilson we nt be fo re Co n-

g ress in January 1918 to enunciate Am e ri can wa r aims—the Fourteen Points, the last of which would establish “a general assoc i ation of nations . . . affording mutual guara ntees of po l i t i cal indepe n d e n ce and te rri to rial inte g ri ty to gre at and small state s a l i ke.” After the Germans signed the Arm i s t i ce in Nove m ber 1918,Wilson we nt to Paris to try to build an enduring pe a ce. He later pre s e nted to the Se n ate the Versailles Tre aty, co ntaining the Cove n a ntof the League of Nations. But the election of 1918 had s h i fted the balance in Co n g ress to the Re p u b l i ca n s. By seven votes the Versailles Tre aty failed in the Se n ate. The pre s i d e nt, against the wa rnings of his docto r s, had made a national tour to mobilize public sent i m e nt for the tre aty. E x h a u s te d, he suffe red a stro ke and nearly died. Tenderly nursed by his second wife, Edith Bolling Ga l t, he lived unt i l 1924.

Treaty, the League would force the United States to become involved in international affairs. There were many within the House of Representatives and the Senate who viewed the Treaty, and specifically the League, as a dilemma because inevitably it would drag the United States into practically every international affair. In 1919, Wilson introduced the Treaty of Versailles to the Senate for final confirmation. A group of Senators, led by Henry Cabot Lodge, however, believed that the Treaty of Versailles, and specifically the League of Nations, which was integrated into the treaty, was unconstitutional. Thus, a showdown emerged between the president and Congress. Congressional leaders threatened to defeat the treaty. In the end, the treaty (and executive initiative) was defeated in the Senate and Wilson’s health deteriorated quickly. In the aftermath of the war and the treaty’s defeat, relations between Congress and the president became similar to what they were the years after the Johnson impeachment. Throughout the 1920s, the Republican Party dominated the political arena. The three 1920s presidents, Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover, believed in laissez-faire economics and little government intervention. Thus, there was a fundamental lack of executive initiative. Many viewed these three presidents as weak and ineffective and a product of the times. To a certain degree, there is truth in that statement. But there is also the critical idea that the presidents of the 1920s—isolationist and passive—were products of the stronger executives who were elected in the early twentieth century.

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The weakness of the executive branch changed after the chaotic events of 1929. In October 1929, the U.S. economy crashed in what has historically become known as the Great Stock Market Crash. The crash led to the Great Depression, which caused high levels of unemployment, incredible numbers of business closings, and a general sociological collapse in American society. The weakness of the presidency was immediately evident. President Herbert Hoover’s response to the economic collapse was to urge business and private charities to aid in the relief effort. Hoover essentially acted as a cheerleader rather than instituting any real policy decisions. The result was that by 1932, the unemployment rate hovered around 25 percent and the economy was at a complete standstill. It is apparent that Hoover’s reaction to the Depression did not placate many Americans. Indeed, his defeat at the hands of the Democrat Franklin Roosevelt, who promised social and economic reform, spelled the end of the string of weak presidents (Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson as the exceptions) that dates back to Johnson’s impeachment. With the election of Roosevelt in 1932, the nature of the presidency was forever changed. Americans started to believe in an “imperial presidency.” In other words, the institution of the presidency, rather than being a caretaker as had been the case going back to Johnson, should now function as an initiator of social, political, and economic transformation. From 1932 until 1945, Franklin Roosevelt served as an example of a president who either corroborated with or bypassed Congress to achieve social transformation. He pushed through Congress in the 1930s a broadbased social reform program known as the New Deal to save the country from utter collapse. During the 1940s, Roosevelt was president during the trials and tribulations of World War II, in which he greatly increased governmental power through executive orders and bureaucratic expansion. With his death in 1945, the idea of executive supremacy continued with his successors. Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower, in fighting the Cold War against the Soviet Union, continued to utilize executive privilege. For example, both presidents passed through Congress national security bills and other pieces of legislation, which greatly expanded the powers of the presidency in the realm of foreign policy. On issues of domestic importance, the presidency continued to function along conservative lines, to the point of not acting at all on issues of civil rights and equality. For example, on the issue of civil rights in the 1950s, Eisenhower routinely allowed the states to deal with their own civil rights issues. He allowed Alabama and more specifically, the sheriff of Montgomery, Bull Connor, to openly defy federal law on desegregation. Yet, executive authority was used when Eisenhower federalized the National Guard to integrate Little Rock High School in 1957. Eisenhower feared alienating the southern Democrats in Congress who might impede his more important policies focused on the Cold War. Thus, by the late 1950s, it was evident that social policies assumed a secondary status in relation to foreign policy. The tide began to change in the 1960s. Since 1960, the United States has witnessed one of the greatest expansions of executive power since the days of Roosevelt. When Lyndon Johnson became president after the assassination of John Kennedy, he tackled two issues. The first issue was the escalating violence in Vietnam. The second issue was his social program called the Great Society. In both

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instances, Johnson expanded executive authority that presidents since Johnson have not relinquished to Congress. In the realm of foreign policy, presidents, since Johnson’s implementation of the Gulf of Tonkin re s o l ution, have utilized executive authority to engage American military forces overseas without the direct consent of Congress. In numerous incidents, from the Laos invasion during the Richard Nixon presidency to Ronald Reagan’s Grenada invasion to George H.W. Bush’s invasion of Panama to George W. Bush’s policies in Iraq and Afghanistan, the executive branch has become increasingly more powerful. Over the past twenty years, the executive branch has expanded to include more security directorates, like the Department of Homeland Security. In conclusion, since the impeachment of Johnson, the power of the executive branch has undergone a substantial transformation. In the first twenty years after Johnson’s impeachment and nonremoval, the power of the presidency was weakened to a point of nonaction. Throughout much of the twentieth century, the executive has assumed an increasing level of power. However, the legislative branch always checked the power of the executive branch. This separation of powers between the executive and the legislative is as wide and diffuse as it was when the Radical Republicans initiated the first impeachment of a sitting president in 1867.

ALTE RN ATE H IST O RY In 1868, the Radical Republicans accused President Andrew Johnson of violating the Tenure of Office Act. Sensing the extent of Johnson’s popularity and the need to keep him in office for the sake of unity, after careful deliberations on the future of President Johnson, the House Judiciary Committee might have opted not to impeach the president. The Judiciary Committee, led by the more moderate members of the opposition, could have decided that an impeachment was constitutionally untenable. As a result, the members of the committee could have decided to not impeach the popular president. President Johnson would have been out of political trouble. Indeed, without a trial of impeachment, Johnson’s vision of Reconstruction would have been vindicated in the short run. Ex-Confederate officials would have been given their citizenship rights. Indeed, in many southern states, former Confederate officials re t u rned to political power in the elections of 1868. Throughout much of 1868, Johnson arrogantly believed that he had defied the odds by defeating the powerful Radicals. He assumed that the American people accepted his Reconstruction views as a mandate. In addition, he was able to muster enough support that the institution of the presidency was indeed strengthened in the long run. With the possible support of the voting population, in November 1868, Johnson might have defeated his erstwhile Republican opponent. As a result, Reconstruction, as it was formally known, would have come to an abrupt end. Many of the states that had reluctantly accepted the Reconstruction Amendments would have abrogated

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them. In addition, with a lack of federal guidance in terms of civil rights, many southern states would have failed to protect the lives and liberties of the recently freed slaves. In the short term, Johnson would have strengthened the institution of the presidency by passing a series of laws in his second term that protected the rights of the southern states, such as laws protecting the Black Codes, as well as protecting the rights of white Southerners. It was clear that the nonimpeachment of Johnson would have allowed the president to pursue his own plan for the postwar South—a plan that would have strengthened the economic and political situation of the nation. In the late nineteenth century, specifically from 1876 to 1900, a series of men could have been elected to the presidency who would have reflected a growing trend toward strengthening the institution of the presidency. For example, from 1876 to 1886, the Civil War veteran and hero Ulysses S. Grant could have utilized the powers of the presidency in a number of different ways. First, he might have pressed the South on accepting, at a quicker pace, the integration of African Americans into the American political arena. This would have forced the southern states to accept the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution. By strengthening the presidency, President Grant would have been able to facilitate the rise of labor unions and working-class associations, like the American Federation of Labor and the Knights of Labor, not as hostile re p resentations of working-class unity but as affirmative and peaceful re p resentations of working-class identity. Thus, these major organizations would have surfaced as accommodating org a n izations, accepting the idea of working with the national govern m e n t . In working with the local and state governments, Grant also would have been able to ameliorate the plight of the farmers. Farmers in the late nineteenth century suff e red from a tremendous level of economic and political problems. Grant, viewed as an accommodationist, could have alleviated the plight of the farmer by protecting the domestic market as well as reassuring farmers that he understood their povert y and misery. In proposing a fundamental change in economic policy, Grant would have been able to halt the rise of the agrarian movement known as Populism. Being content with their relative affluence and control, farmers indeed would have supported the presidency. Thus by the end of the 1880s, the political and economic system would have been stabilized in the short term, eliminating the economic re asons for rebellion. With the stabilization of the economy and the political system, Grant’s successor could have been able to focus predominantly on foreign policy issues. It is quite difficult to assume that the line of presidential succession would have remained intact had Johnson not been impeached. However, one may assume that whoever was the president in the late nineteenth century, he would have expressed an aggressive and expansionist foreign policy. In the latter half of the century, American presidents, would have utilized a stronger presence in a unilateral foreign policy, which would have involved foreign policy entanglements in Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East.

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Specifically, in Latin America, the United States, at the behest of the executive branch, would have engaged in a series of major incursions not just against the Spanish and their holdings in Cuba but also in countries like Mexico and those in Central America. With a more assertive presidency in which presidents did not have to await congressional approval, the presidents of the late nineteenth century would have fashioned the United States into a truly global power. With the United States engaged in foreign entanglements, the domestic agenda in the early twentieth century also would have u n d e rgone a transformation. The so-called Pro g ressive presidents— T h e o d o re Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and Wo o d row Wi l s o n — would have exploited the unitarian powers of the presidency to force the pro g ressive agenda on the United States. Roosevelt would have utilized the presidency to pursue anti-monopolistic legislation. Roosevelt, utilizing the power of the presidency, would have broken up Standard Oil as well as U.S. Steel. In addition, it is during the P ro g ressive presidencies that a modern welfare state would have come into existence. These presidents would have not only corrected the issues of child labor, women’s suffrage, and food legislation (Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906) but more importantly would have pursued a policy of weakening the inherent racism of the Jim Crow South. With the help of prominent civil rights leaders like W. E. B. DuBois, both Roosevelt and Taft would have strictly enforced new landmark civil rights legislation. In addition, women would have been given suffrage during the Roosevelt presidency. Roosevelt’s successor to the presidency, Wo o d row Wilson, would have had a more forceful hand in sending America to war at a quicker pace. With the outbreak of the European conflict in 1914, Wilson stru ggled to maintain a sense of strict neutrality. Wilson was an anglophile. He also feared the German-American and Irish American presence in the American political arena. Nevertheless, Wilson would have been forced to intervene in the conflict by 1915, rather than 1917 in actual history. Exploiting Wilsonian moralism, Wilson would have believed that the atrocities at the Battle of Somme and the Battle of the Marne called for the intervention of the United States. The immediate cause of American i n t e rvention in the war would have been the deaths of 115 Americans on board the English luxury liner, the Lusitania, which was sunk on May 7, 1915, by German U-boats. As a result, the United States would have entered the war and suffered a loss of approximately 150,000 lives in the conflict. By the end of the war, it would have been evident that the United States was the major power on the global stage. As in actual history, Wilson would have proposed a series of resolutions known as the Fourteen Points. But they would have been less peaceful: With the loss of 150,000 American soldiers, Wilson would have punished the Germans to a certain extent. Thus, he would have called for German reparations (not to the extent of the other European powers). With the more punishing Treaty of Versailles, Wilson would have been able to persuade the Senate to accept the Treaty. In addition, Wilson would

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have illustrated his profound sense of imperial power by not consulting with the Republicans in the treaty process. In the aftermath of the war, the United States might have entered a period of prosperity. For nine years, the American economy would have been in full bloom as levels of unemployment hit an all-time low. The presidents of the 1920s would have been activist presidents who reengaged the Progressive agenda. Nevertheless, as in actual history, the prosperity would have been shattered by the Great Stock Market Crash of 1929. However, in 1928, Democrat Franklin Roosevelt would have been elected president. Roosevelt would have quickly acted to curtail the economic collapse. He would have instituted an incredible number of social and economic reforms that alleviated the plight of the common American. Roosevelt would have utilized an immense amount of institutional power to persuade Congress to accept his reforms. As such, the Great Depression might never have materialized in the United States. In 1936, Roosevelt would have been reelected president in a major landslide. By the late 1930s, enjoying prosperity, the United States would not have found it necessary to become preoccupied with the global conflict brewing with the rise of Adolph Hitler. Much like World War I, the United States would have entered the war as a result of a single event—the bombing of Pearl Harbor. During the war, Roosevelt would have utilized his wartime powers, what Arthur Schlesinger calls “imperial” powers, to use the war abroad to change some of the social values at home. Specifically, he would have truly integrated the armed forces as well as forcing society to become more integrated. By the end of the war, Roosevelt, through executive order, would have pursued desegregationist policies in the South through the protection of the civil rights of African Americans. In the postwar period, specifically from 1945 through 1980, American presidents could have utilized executive privilege to fight the dual components of foreign policy crisis and domestic insecurity. In regard to foreign policy, each American president in the postwar period, might have pursued an aggressive foreign policy initiative against the ever-expanding Soviet Union. In the 1950s, President Eisenhower might have been instrumental in toppling, using the Central Intelligence Agency, the governments of Guatemala, Iran, and Cuba. He also might have also created a large extra-legal intelligence agency to oversee the foreign policy experts in the state department. In the 1960s, President Richard Nixon would have focused strictly on foreign policy toward the Soviet Union and the communist nation of China. By the mid-1970s, the United States clearly would have gained a military and tactical advantage over the Soviet Union, leading to its demise in 1980. From 1980 to 2001, the presidencies of Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush might have witnessed limited, if any, actions on the domestic agenda and further international expansion by the American military industrial complex. An expansionist agenda not only would have made the United States the sole superpower but more important, would have solidified the idea of a unitarian executive branch. In 2000, George W.

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Bush would have easily been elected to the presidency. A few months into his presidency, a group of terrorists led by Osama bin Laden would have hijacked planes and attacked the United States. Given the unilateral approach to politics that had become prevalent in the last fifty-five years, President Bush would have engaged in a unilateral action to search for bin Laden by invading Afghanistan, Iran, and eventually Iraq. The presidency under George W. Bush would have been the next in a long line of Republican presidents who would have manifested a strong-arm approach to foreign policy, while practically negating any domestic agenda. In the last fifteen years, the policies of the Republican ascendancy would have led to an increase in the power of the executive branch, which many in the opposition would fear might be leading the United States down the path of tyranny. Jaime Ramon Olivares

Discussion Questions 1. Do you think that Congress was justified in impeaching Andrew Johnson? Was he guilty of high crimes or was he guilty of disagreeing with Congress over issues of policy? 2. If the Senate had convicted Andrew Johnson and removed him from office, what would have been the effect of that decision on the presidents who followed him in office? 3. The ineffectiveness of the presidents who served between 1869 and 1901 can be blamed to some extent on the challenge to presidential authority lodged by the impeachment process against Andrew Johnson. What other factors might help explain their relative weakness? Why do you think that Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, and later presidents were able to establish a more powerful executive? 4. If Andrew Johnson had been able to impose his own vision of Reconstruction, what effect would those policies have had on social justice for African Americans? 5. Do you think that the United States is a stronger or a weaker nation when Congress, rather than the president, is in control of policy? What are the dangers inherent in too much power in the hands of the executive office?

Bibliography and Further Reading Beale, Howard K. The Critical Year: A Study of Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction. New York: F. Ungar, 1958. Benedict, Michael Les. A Compromise of Principle; Congressional Republicans and Reconstruction, 1863–1869. New York: W. W. Norton, 1974.

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Benedict, Michael Les. The Impeachment and Trial of Andrew Johnson. New York: W. W. Norton, 1999. Brabson, Faye. Andrew Johnson: A Life in Pursuit of the Right Course, 1808–1875; the Seventeenth President of the United States. Durham, NC: Seeman Printery, 1972. Castel, Albert. The Presidency of Andrew Johnson. Lawrence: Regents Press of Kansas, 1979. Chadsey, Charles. The Struggle between President Johnson and Congress over Reconstruction. New York: Columbia University Press, 1896. DeWitt, David M. The Impeachment and Trial of Andrew Johnson. Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1967. Foner, Eric. Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877. New York: Harper and Row, 1988. Hearn, Chester. The Impeachment of Andrew Johnson. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2000. Horowitz, Robert. The Great Impeacher: A Political Biography of James M. Ashley. New York: Columbia University Press, 1979. Leonard, Elizabeth. Lincoln’s Avengers: Justice, Revenge, and Reunion after the Civil War. New York: W. W. Norton, 2004. Lomask, Milton. Andrew Johnson: President on Trial. New York: Farrar, Straus, 1960. Rayner, Kenneth. Life and Times of Andrew Johnson, Seventeenth President of the United States. New York: D. Appleton, 1866. Sefton, Charles. Andrew Johnson and the Uses of Constitutional Power. Boston: Little, Brown, 1980. Smith, Gene. High Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Impeachment and Trial of Andrew Johnson. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1985, ca.1976. Stryker, Lloyd P. Andrew Johnson: A Study in Courage. New York; Macmillan, 1929. Trefousse, Hans L. Impeachment of a President: Andrew Johnson, the Blacks, and Reconstruction. New York: Fordham University Press, 1999.

Appendix I

The Confederate Constitution

ARTIC LE I SECTION 1. All legislative powers herein delegated shall be vested in Congress of the Confederate States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.

SECTION 2. 1. The House of Representatives shall be composed of members chosen every second year by the people of the several States; and the electors in each State shall be citizens of the Confederate States, and have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the State Legislature; but no person of foreign birth, not a citizen of the Confederate States, shall be allowed to vote for any officer, civil or political, State or Federal. 2. No person shall be a re p resentative, who shall not have attained the age of twenty-five years, and be a citizen of the Confederate States, and who shall not, when elected, be an inhabitant of that State in which he shall be chosen. 3. R e p resentatives and Direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Confederacy, a c c o rding to their respective numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole number of free persons, including those bound to service for a term of years and excluding Indians not taxed, thre e fifths of all slaves. The actual enumeration shall be made within three years after the first meeting of the Congress of the Confederate States, and within every subsequent term of ten years, in such manner as they shall, by law, direct. The number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every fifty thousand, but each State shall have at least

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one Representative; and until such enumeration shall be made, the State of South Carolina shall be entitled to choose six; the State of G e o rgia ten; the State of Alabama nine; the State of Florida two; the State of Mississippi seven; the State of Louisiana six; and the State of Texas six. 4. When vacancies happen in the representation from any State, the Executive authority thereof shall issue writs of election to fill such vacancies. 5. The House of Representatives shall choose their speaker and other officers, and shall have the sole power of impeachment; except that any judicial or other federal officer, resident and acting solely within the limits of any State, may be impeached by a vote of two-thirds of both branches of the Legislature thereof.

SECTION 3. 1. The Senate of the Confederate States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, chosen for six years by the legislature thereof, at the regular session next immediately preceding the commencement of the term of service; and each Senator shall have one vote. 2. Immediately after they shall be assembled, in consequence of the first election, they shall be divided as equally as may be into three classes. The seats of the Senators of the first class shall be vacated at the expiration of the second year; of the second class at the expiration of the fourth year, and of the third class at the expiration of the sixth year; so that one-third may be chosen every second year; and if vacancies happen by resignation, or otherwise, during the recess of the Legislature of any State, the Executive thereof may make temporary appointments until the next meeting of the Legislature, which shall then fill such vacancies. 3. No person shall be a Senator who shall not have attained the age of thirty years, and be a citizen of the Confederate States; and who shall not, when elected, be an inhabitant of the State for which he shall be chosen. 4. The Vice-President of the Confederate States shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no vote, unless they be equally divided. 5. The Senate shall choose their other officers; and also a President pro tempore in the absence of the Vice-President, or when he shall exercise the office of President of the Confederate States. 6. The Senate shall have the sole power to try all impeachments. When sitting for that purpose, they shall be on oath or affirmation. When the President of the Confederate States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside; and no person shall be convicted without the concurrence of two-thirds of the members present. 7. Judgment in cases of impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust or profit, under the Confederate States; but the party

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convicted shall, nevertheless, be liable and subject to indictment, trial, judgment and punishment according to law.

SECTION 4. 1. The times, places and manner of holding elections for Senators and R e p resentatives shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature t h e reof, subject to the provisions of this Constitution; but the Congress may, at any time, by law, make or alter such regulations, except as to the times and places of choosing Senators. 2. The Congress shall assemble at least once in every year; and such meeting shall be on the first Monday in December, unless they shall, by law, appoint a different day.

SECTION 5. 1. Each House shall be the judge of the elections, returns and qualifications of its own members, and a majority of each shall constitute a quorum to do business; but a smaller number may adjourn from day to day, and may be authorized to compel the attendance of absent members, in such manner and under such penalties as each House may provide. 2. Each House may determine the rules of its proceedings, punish its members for disorderly behavior, and, with the concurrence of twothirds of the whole number, expel a member. 3. Each House shall keep a journal of its proceedings, and from time to time publish the same, excepting such parts as may, in their judgment, require secrecy; and the yeas and nays of the members of either House, on any question, shall, at the desire of one-fifth of those present, be entered on the journal. 4. Neither House, during the session of Congress, shall without the consent of the other, adjourn for more than three days, nor to any other place than that in which the two Houses shall be sitting.

SECTION 6. 1. The Senators and Representatives shall receive a compensation for their services to be ascertained by law, and paid out of the treasury of the Confederate States. They shall, in all cases, except treason, felony, and breach of the peace, be privileged from arrest during their attendance at the session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any speech or debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other place. 2. No Senator or Representative shall, during the time for which he was elected, be appointed to any civil office under the authority of the Confederate States, which shall have been created, or the emoluments whereof shall have been increased during such time; and no person holding any office under the Confederate States shall be a member of either House during his continuance in office. But Congress may, by

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law, grant to the principal officers in each of the Executive Departments a seat upon the floor of either House, with the privilege of discussing any measures appertaining to his department.

SECTION 7. 1. All bills for raising revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with amendments as on other bills. 2. Every bill which shall have passed both Houses, shall before it becomes a law, be presented to the President of the Confederate States; if he approve, he shall sign it; but if not, he shall re t u rn it with his objections to that House in which it shall have originated, who shall enter the objections at large on their journal, and proceed to reconsider it. If, after such reconsideration, two-thirds of that House shall agree to pass the bill, it shall be sent, together with the objections, to the other House, by which it shall likewise be reconsidered, and if approved by two-thirds of that House, it shall become a law. But in all such cases, the votes of both Houses shall be determined by yeas and nays, and the names of the persons voting for and against the bill, shall be entered on the journal of each House respectively. If any bill shall not be returned by the President within ten days (Sundays excepted) after it shall have been presented to him, the same shall be a law, in like manner as if he had signed it, unless the Congress, by their adjourn m e n t , p revent its re t u rn; in which case it shall not be a law. The President may approve any appropriation and disapprove any other appro p r i ation in the same bill. In such case he shall, in signing the bill, designate the appropriations disapproved; and shall return a copy of such appropriations, with his objections, to the House in which the bill shall have originated; and the same proceedings shall then be had as in case of other bills disapproved by the President. 3. Every order, resolution or vote, to which the concurrence of both Houses may be necessary (except on a question of adjournment) shall be presented to the President of the Confederate States; and before the same shall take effect, shall be approved by him; or being disapproved by him, shall be re-passed by two-thirds of both Houses according to the rules and limitations prescribed in case of a bill.

SECTION 8. The Congress shall have power: 1. To lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, for revenue necessary to pay the debts, provide for the common defense, and carry on the Government of the Confederate States; but no bounties shall be granted from the treasury, nor shall any duties or taxes on importations from foreign nations be laid to promote or foster any branch of industry; and all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the Confederate States: 2. To borrow money on the credit of the Confederate States;

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3. To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes; but neither this, nor any other clause contained in the constitution, shall ever be construed to delegate the power to Congress to appropriate money for any internal improvement intended to facilitate commerce; except for the purpose of furnishing lights, beacons, and buoys, and other aids to navigation upon the coasts, and the improvement of harbors, all the removing of obstructions in river navigation, in all which cases, such duties shall be laid on the navigation facilitated thereby, as may be necessary to pay the Costs, and expenses thereof; 4. To establish uniform laws of naturalization, and uniform laws on the subject of bankruptcies throughout the Confederate States; but no law of Congress shall discharge any debt contracted before the passage of the same; 5. To coin money, regulate the value thereof and, of foreign coin, and fix the standard of weights and measures; 6. To provide for the punishment of counterfeiting the securities – and current coin of the Confederate States; 7. To establish post offices and post routes; but the expenses of the Post Office Department, after the first day of March, in the year of our Lord eighteen hundred and sixty-three, shall be paid out of its own revenues; 8. To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times, to authors and inventors, the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries; 9. To constitute tribunals inferior to the Supreme Court; 10. To define and punish piracies and felonies committed on the high seas, and offenses against the law of nations; 11. To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water; 12. To raise and support armies; but no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years; 13. To provide and maintain a navy; 14. To make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces; 15. To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the Confederate States, suppress insurrections, and repel invasions; 16. To provide for organizing, arming and disciplining the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the Confederate States; reserving to the States, respectively, the appointment of the officers, and the authority of training the militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress; 17. To exercise exclusive legislation, in all cases whatsoever, over such district (not exceeding ten miles square) as may, by cession of one or more States, and the acceptance of Congress, become the seat of the Government of the Confederate States; and to exercise like authority over all places purchased by the consent of the Legislature of the State

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in which the same shall be, for the erection of forts, magazines, arsenals, dockyards, and other needful buildings; and 18. To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the Confederate States, or in any department or officer thereof.

SECTION 9. 1. The importation of negroes of the African race, from any foreign country, other than the slaveholding States or Territories of the United States of America, is hereby forbidden; and Congress is required to pass such laws as shall effectually prevent the same. 2. Congress shall also have power to prohibit the introduction of slaves from any State not a member of, or Territory not belonging to, this Confederacy. 3. The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion, the public safety may require it. 4. No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves, shall be passed. 5. No capitation or other direct tax shall be laid, unless in proportion to the census or enumeration hereinbefore directed to be taken. 6. No tax or duty shall be laid on articles exported from any State, except by a vote of two-thirds of both Houses. 7. No preference shall be given by any regulation of commerce or revenue to the ports of one State over those of another. 8. No money shall be drawn from the treasury, but in consequence of appropriations made by law; and a regular statement arid account of the receipts arid expenditures of all public money shall be published from time to time. 9. Congress shall appropriate no money from the treasury except by a vote of two-thirds of both Houses, taken by yeas and nays, unless it be asked and estimated for by some one of the heads of Department, and submitted to Congress by the President; or for the purpose of paying its own expenses and contingencies; or for the payment of claims against the Confederate States, the justice of which shall have been judicially declared by a tribunal for the investigation of claims against the government, which it is hereby made the duty of Congress to establish. 10. All bills appropriating money shall specify in federal currency, the exact amount of each appropriation, and the purposes for which it is made; and Congress shall grant no extra compensation to any public contractor, officer, agent or servant, after such contract shall have been made or such service rendered. 11. No title of nobility shall be granted by the Confederate States; and no person holding any office of profit or trust under them, shall, without

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the consent of the Congress, accept of any present, emolument, office or title of any kind whatever from any king, prince or foreign State. 12. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and petition the government for a redress of grievances. 13. A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. 14. No soldier shall, in time of peace, be quartered in any house without the consent of the owner; nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law. 15. The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated; and no warrants shall issue but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. 16. No person shall be held to answer for a capital or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service, in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence, to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor be compelled, in any criminal case, to be a witness against himself; nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property to be taken for public use, without just compensation. 17. In all criminal prosecution the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been p reviously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor; and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense. 18. In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved; and no fact so tried by a jury shall be otherwise re-examined in any court of the Confederacy, than according to the rules of the common law. 19. Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted. 20. Every law, or resolution having the force of law, shall relate to but one subject, and that shall be expressed in the title.

SECTION 10. 1. No State shall enter into any treaty, alliance, or confederation; grant letters of marque and reprisal; coin money; make anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts; pass any bill of attain-

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der, or ex post facto law, or law impairing the obligation of contracts; or grant any title of nobility. 2. No State shall, without the consent of the Congress; lay any imposts or duties on imports or exports, except what may be absolutely necessary for executing its inspection laws; and the net produce of all duties and imposts, laid by any State on imports or exports, shall be for the use of the tre a s u ry of the Confederate States; and all such laws shall be subject to the revision and control of Congress. 3. No State shall, without the consent of Congress, lay any duty on tonnage, except on sea-going vessels, for the improvement of its rivers and harbors navigated by the said vessels, but such duties shall not conflict with any treaties of the Confederate States with foreign nations; and any surplus revenue thus derived, shall, after making such improvement, be paid into the common tre a s u ry. Nor shall any State keep troops or ships of war in time of peace, enter into any agreement or compact with another State, or with a foreign power, or engage in war, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent danger as will not admit of delay. But when any river divides or flows through two or more States, they may enter into compacts with each other to improve the navigation thereof.

A RT IC LE II SECTION 1. 1. The executive power shall be vested in a President of the Confederate States of America. He and the Vice-President shall hold their offices for the term of six years; but the President shall not be re-eligible. The President and Vice-President shall be elected as follows: 2. Each State shall appoint, in such manner as the legislature thereof may d i rect, a number of electors equal to the whole number of Senators and R e p resentatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress; but no Senator or Representative, or person holding an office of trust or profit under the Confederate States, shall be appointed an elector. 3. The electors shall meet in their respective States and vote by ballot for President and Vi c e - P resident, one of whom, at least, shall not be an inhabitant of the same State with themselves; they shall name in their ballots the person voted for as President, and in distinct ballots the person voted for as Vice-President, and they shall make distinct lists of all persons voted for as President, and of all persons voted for as VicePresident, and of the number of votes for each, which lists they shall sign and certify, and transmit, sealed, to the seat of the government of the Confederate States, directed to the President of the Senate; the President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates, and the votes shall then be counted; the person having the greatest number of votes for President shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of electors appointed; and if no person have such majority, then, from the persons having the highest numbers, not exceeding three, on the list of those voted for as President, the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President. But in choosing the

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President, the votes shall be taken by States, the representation from each State having one vote; a quorum for this purpose shall consist of a member or members from two-thirds of the States, and a majority of all the States shall be necessary to a choice. And if the House of R e p resentatives shall not choose a President, whenever the right of choice shall devolve upon them, before the fourth day of March next following, then the Vi c e - P resident shall act as President, as in case of the death, or other constitutional disability of the President. 4. The person having the greatest number of votes as Vice-President shall be the Vice-President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of electors appointed and if no person have a majority, then from the two highest numbers on the list the Senate shall choose the Vice-President; a quorum for the purpose shall consist of two-thirds of the whole number of Senators, and a majority of the whole number shall be necessary to a choice. 5. But no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the Confederate States. 6. The Congress may determine the time of choosing the electors, and the day on which they shall give their votes; which day shall be the same throughout the Confederate States. 7. No person except natural born citizen of the Confederate States, or a citizen thereof at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, or a citizen thereof born in the United States prior to the 20th of December, 1860, shall be eligible to the office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that office who shall not have attained the age of thirty-five years, and been fourteen years a resident within the limits of the Confederate States, as they may exist at the time of his election. 8. In case of the removal of the President from office, or of his death, resignation, or inability to discharge the powers and duties of said office, the same shall devolve on the Vice-President; and the Congress may, by law, provide for the case of removal, death, resignation or inability both of the President and Vice-President, declaring what officer shall then act as President, and such officer shall act accordingly until the disability be removed or a President shall be elected. 9. The President shall, at stated times, receive for his services a compensation, which shall neither be increased nor diminished during the period for which he shall have been elected; and he shall not receive within that period any other emolument from the Confederate States, or any of them. 10. B e f o re he enters on the execution of his office, he shall take the following oath or aff i rmation: “I do solemnly swear (or aff i rm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the Confederate States, and will, to the best of my ability, pre s e rve, protect, and defend the Constitution thereof.”

SECTION 2. 1. The President shall be commander-in-chief of the army and navy of the Confederate States, and of the militia of the several States, when called into the actual service of the Confederate States; he may

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re q u i re the opinion, in writing, of the principal officer in each of the Executive Departments, upon any subject relating to the duties of their respective offices; and he shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offences against the Confederate States, except in cases of impeachment. 2. He shall have power, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to make treaties, provided two-thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, shall appoint ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, Judges of the Supreme Court, and all other officers of the Confederate States, whose appointments are not herein otherw i s e p rovided for, and which shall be established by law; but the Congre s s may, by law, vest the appointment of such inferior officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in courts of law or in the heads of Depart m e n t s . 3. The principal officer in each of the Executive Departments, and all persons connected with the diplomatic service, may be removed from office at the pleasure of the President. All other civil officers of the Executive Department may be removed at any time by the President, or other appointing power, when their services are unnecessary, or for dishonesty, incapacity, inefficiency, misconduct or neglect of duty; and when so removed, the removal shall be reported to the Senate, together with the reasons therefore. 4. The President shall have power to fill vacancies that may happen during the recess of the Senate, by granting commissions which shall expire at the end of their next session; but no person rejected by the Senate shall be reappointed to the same office during their ensuing recess.

SECTION 3. 1. The President shall from time to time, give to the Congress information of the state of the Confederacy, and recommend to their confederation such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient; he may, on extraordinary occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them: and in case of disagreement between them, with respect to the time of adjournment, he may adjourn them to such time as he shall think proper; he shall receive ambassadors and other public ministers; he shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed, and shall commission all the officers of the Confederate States.

SECTION 4. 1. The President, Vice-President, and all civil officers of the Confederate States, shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.

ARTIC LE III

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SECTION 1. 1. The judicial power of the Confederate States shall be vested in one Supreme Court, and in such Inferior Courts as the Congress may f rom time to time ordain and establish. The judges, both of the Supreme and Inferior Courts, shall hold their offices during good behavior, and shall, at stated times receive for their services a compensation which shall not be diminished during their continuance in office.

SECTION 2. 1. The judicial power shall extend to all cases arising under this Constitution, the laws of the Confederate States, and treaties made or which shall be made under their authority; to all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls; to all cases of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction; to controversies to which the Confederate States shall be a party; to controversies between two or more States; between a State and citizens of another State where the State is plaintiff; between citizens claiming lands under grants of different States; and between a State or the citizens thereof, and foreign States, citizens or subjects; but no State shall be sued by a citizen or subject of any foreign State. 2. In all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, and those in which a State shall be a party, the Supreme Court shall have original jurisdiction. In all the other cases before mentioned, the Supreme C o u rt shall have appellate jurisdiction, both as to law and fact, with such exceptions, and under such regulations, as the Congress shall make. 3. The trial of all crimes, except in cases of impeachment, shall be by jury, and such trial shall be held in the State where the said crimes shall have been committed; but when not committed within any State, the trial shall be at such place or places as the Congress may by law have directed.

SECTION 3. 1. Treason against the Confederate States shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comf o rt. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court. 2. The Congress shall have power to declare the punishment of treason, but no attainder of treason shall work corruption of blood, or forfeiture, except during the life of the person attainted.

AR T ICLE IV SECTION 1. 1. Full faith and credit shall be given in each State to the public acts, records and judicial proceedings of every other State. And the Congress

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may, by general laws, prescribe the manner in which such acts, records, and proceedings shall be proved, and the effect thereof.

SECTION 2. 1. The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States, and shall have the right of transit and sojourn in any State of this Confederacy, with their slaves and other property; and the right of property in said slaves shall not be thereby impaired. 2. A person charged in any State with treason, felony, or other crime against the laws of such State, who shall flee from justice, and be found in another State, shall, on demand of the Executive authority of the State from which he fled, be delivered up, to be removed to the State having jurisdiction of the crime. 3. No slave or other person held to service or labor in any State or Territory of the Confederate States, under the laws thereof, escaping or lawfully carried into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor; but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such slave belongs, or to whom such service or labor may be due.

SECTION 3. 1. Other States may be admitted into this Confederacy by a vote of twothirds of the whole House of Representatives, and two-thirds of the Senate, the Senate voting by States; but no new State shall be formed or e rected within the jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the junction of two or more States, or parts of States, without the consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress. 2. The Congress shall have power to dispose of and make all needful rules and regulations concerning the property of the Confederate States, including the lands thereof. 3. The Confederate States may acquire new territory, and Congress shall have power to legislate and provide government for the inhabitants of all territory belonging to the Confederate States, lying without the limits of the several States; and may permit them, at such times, and in such manner as it may by law provide, to form states to be admitted into the Confederacy. In all such territory, the institution of negro slavery as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected by Congress, and by the territorial government; and the inhabitants of the several Confederate States and Territories, shall have the right to take to such territory any slaves, lawfully held by them in any of the States or Territories of the Confederate States. 4. The Confederate States shall guarantee to every State that now is or h e reafter may become a member of this Confederacy, a republican form of government, and shall protect each of them against invasion; and on application of the Legislature (or of the Executive when the l e g i s l a t u re is not in session) against domestic violence.

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A RT IC LE V SECTION 1. 1. Upon the demand of any three States, legally assembled in their several conventions, the Congress shall summon a convention of all the States, to take into consideration such amendments to the Constitution as the said States shall concur in suggesting at the time when the said demand is made; and should any of the proposed amendments to the Constitution be agreed on by the said convention—voting by States—and the same be ratified by the Legislatures of two-thirds of the several States, or by conventions in two-thirds thereof—as the one or the other mode of ratification may be proposed by the general convention—they shall thenceforward form a part of this Constitution. But no State shall, without its consent, be deprived of its equal representation in the Senate.

AR T ICLE VI 1. The government established by this Constitution is successor of the Provisional Government of the Confederate States of America; and all the laws passed by the latter shall continue in force until the same shall be repealed or modified; and all the officers appointed by the same shall remain in office until their successors are appointed and qualified, or the offices abolished. 2. All debts contracted and engagements entered into before the adoption of this Constitution shall be as valid against the Confederate States under this Constitution as under the Provisional Government. 3. This Constitution, and the laws of the Confederate States, made in pursuance thereof, and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the Confederate States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every State shall be bound thereby, anything in the constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding. 4. The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial officers, both of the Confederate States and of the several States, shall be bound by oath or affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the Confederate States. 5. The enumeration, in the Constitution, of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people of the several States. 6. The powers not delegated to the Confederate States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are re s e rved to the States, respectively, or the people thereof.

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ARTIC LE VI I 1. The ratification of the conventions of five States shall be sufficient for the establishment of this Constitution between the States so ratifying the same. 2. When five States shall have ratified this Constitution, in the manner b e f o respecified, the Congress under the Provisional Constitution, shall p rescribe the time for holding the election of President and Vi c e-P resident; and for the meeting of the Electoral College; and for counting the votes, and inaugurating the President. They shall also prescribe the time for holding the first election of members of Congress under this Constitution, and the time for assembling the same. Until the assembling of such Congress, the Congress under the Provisional Constitution shall continue to exercise the legislative powers granted them; not extending beyond the time limited by the Constitution of the Provisional Govern m e n t .

Appendix II

The Secession of South Carolina, 1860

Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union

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The people of the State of South Carolina, in Convention assembled, on the 26th day of April, A.D., 1852, declared that the frequent violations of the Constitution of the United States, by the Federal Government, and its encroachments upon the reserved rights of the States, fully justified this State in then withdrawing from the Federal Union; but in deference to the opinions and wishes of the other slaveholding States, she forbore at that time to exercise this right. Since that time, these encroachments have continued to increase, and further forbearance ceases to be a virtue. And now the State of South Carolina having resumed her separate and equal place among nations, deems it due to herself, to the remaining United States of America, and to the nations of the world, that she should declare the immediate causes which have led to this act. In the year 1765, that portion of the British Empire embracing Great Britain, undertook to make laws for the government of that portion composed of the thirteen American Colonies. A struggle for the right of selfgovernment ensued, which resulted, on the 4th of July, 1776, in a Declaration, by the Colonies, “that they are, and of right ought to be, FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES; and that, as free and independent States, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent States may of right do.” They further solemnly declared that whenever any “form of government becomes destructive of the ends for which it was established, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new government.” Deeming the Government of Great Britain to have become destructive of these ends, they declared that the Colonies “are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.” In pursuance of this Declaration of Independence, each of the thirteen States proceeded to exercise its separate sovereignty; adopted for itself a Constitution, and appointed officers for the administration of government in all its departments—Legislative, Executive and Judicial. For purposes of defense, they united their arms and their counsels; and, in 1778, they entered into a League known as the Articles of Confederation, whereby they agreed to entrust the administration of their external relations to a common agent, known as the Congress of the United States, expressly declaring, in the first Article “that each State retains its sovereignty, freedom and independence, and every power, jurisdiction and right which is not, by this Confederation, expressly delegated to the United States in Congress assembled.” Under this Confederation the war of the Revolution was carried on, and on the 3rd of September, 1783, the contest ended, and a definite Treaty was signed by Great Britain, in which she acknowledged the independence of the Colonies in the following terms: “ARTICLE 1—His Britannic Majesty acknowledges the said United States, viz: New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, to be FREE, SOVEREIGN AND INDEPENDENT STATES; that he treats with them as such; and for himself, his heirs and successors, relinquishes all claims to the

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government, propriety and territorial rights of the same and every part thereof.” Thus were established the two great principles asserted by the Colonies, namely: the right of a State to govern itself; and the right of a people to abolish a Government when it becomes destructive of the ends for which it was instituted. And concurrent with the establishment of these principles, was the fact, that each Colony became and was recognized by the mother Country a FREE, SOVEREIGN AND INDEPENDENT STATE. In 1787, Deputies were appointed by the States to revise the Articles of Confederation, and on 17th September, 1787, these Deputies recommended for the adoption of the States, the Articles of Union, known as the Constitution of the United States. The parties to whom this Constitution was submitted, were the several sovereign States; they were to agree or disagree, and when nine of them agreed the compact was to take effect among those concurring; and the General Government, as the common agent, was then invested with their authority. If only nine of the thirteen States had concurred, the other four would have remained as they then were—separate, sovereign States, independent of any of the provisions of the Constitution. In fact, two of the States did not accede to the Constitution until long after it had gone into operation among the other eleven; and during that interval, they each exercised the functions of an independent nation. By this Constitution, certain duties were imposed upon the several States, and the exercise of certain of their powers was restrained, which necessarily implied their continued existence as sovereign States. But to remove all doubt, an amendment was added, which declared that the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States, respectively, or to the people. On the 23d May, 1788, South Carolina, by a Convention of her People, passed an Ordinance assenting to this Constitution, and afterwards altered her own Constitution, to conform herself to the obligations she had undertaken. Thus was established, by compact between the States, a Government with definite objects and powers, limited to the express words of the grant. This limitation left the whole remaining mass of power subject to the clause reserving it to the States or to the people, and rendered unnecessary any specification of reserved rights. We hold that the Government thus established is subject to the two great principles asserted in the Declaration of Independence; and we hold further, that the mode of its formation subjects it to a third fundamental principle, namely: the law of compact. We maintain that in every compact between two or more parties, the obligation is mutual; that the failure of one of the contracting parties to perform a material part of the agreement, entirely releases the obligation of the other; and that where no arbiter is provided, each party is remitted to his own judgment to determine the fact of failure, with all its consequences. In the present case, that fact is established with certainty. We assert that fourteen of the States have deliberately refused, for years past, to ful-

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fill their constitutional obligations, and we refer to their own Statutes for the proof. The Constitution of the United States, in its fourth Article, provides as follows: “No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due.” This stipulation was so material to the compact, that without it that compact would not have been made. The greater number of the contracting parties held slaves, and they had previously evinced their estimate of the value of such a stipulation by making it a condition in the Ordinance for the government of the territory ceded by Virginia, which now composes the States north of the Ohio River. The same article of the Constitution stipulates also for rendition by the several States of fugitives from justice from the other States. The General Government, as the common agent, passed laws to carry into effect these stipulations of the States. For many years these laws were executed. But an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution. The States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa, have enacted laws which either nullify the Acts of Congress or render useless any attempt to execute them. In many of these States the fugitive is discharged from service or labor claimed, and in none of them has the State Government complied with the stipulation made in the Constitution. The State of New Jersey, at an early day, passed a law in conformity with her constitutional obligation; but the current of anti-slavery feeling has led her more recently to enact laws which render inoperative the remedies provided by her own law and by the laws of Congress. In the State of New York even the right of transit for a slave has been denied by her tribunals; and the States of Ohio and Iowa have refused to surrender to justice fugitives charged with murder, and with inciting servile insurrection in the State of Virginia. Thus the constituted compact has been deliberately broken and disregarded by the non-slaveholding States, and the consequence follows that South Carolina is released from her obligation. The ends for which the Constitution was framed are declared by itself to be “to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.” These ends it endeavored to accomplish by a Federal Government, in which each State was recognized as an equal, and had separate control over its own institutions. The right of property in slaves was recognized by giving to free persons distinct political rights, by giving them the right to represent, and burthening them with direct taxes for three-fifths of their slaves; by authorizing the importation of slaves for twenty years; and by stipulating for the rendition of fugitives from labor. We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States. Those States have

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assume the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection. For twenty-five years this agitation has been steadily increasing, until it has now secured to its aid the power of the common Government. Observing the forms [emphasis in the original] of the Constitution, a sectional party has found within that Article establishing the Executive Department, the means of subverting the Constitution itself. A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that that “Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free,” and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction. This sectional combination for the submersion of the Constitution, has been aided in some of the States by elevating to citizenship, persons who, by the supreme law of the land, are incapable of becoming citizens; and their votes have been used to inaugurate a new policy, hostile to the South, and destructive of its beliefs and safety. On the 4th day of March next, this party will take possession of the Government. It has announced that the South shall be excluded from the common territory, that the judicial tribunals shall be made sectional, and that a war must be waged against slavery until it shall cease throughout the United States. The guaranties of the Constitution will then no longer exist; the equal rights of the States will be lost. The slaveholding States will no longer have the power of self-government, or self-protection, and the Federal Government will have become their enemy. Sectional interest and animosity will deepen the irritation, and all hope of remedy is rendered vain, by the fact that public opinion at the North has invested a great political error with the sanction of more erroneous religious belief. We, therefore, the People of South Carolina, by our delegates in Convention assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, have solemnly declared that the Union heretofore existing between this State and the other States of North America, is dissolved, and that the State of South Carolina has resumed her position among the nations of the world, as a separate and independent State; with full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent States may of right do.

Adopted December 24, 1860

Chronology of the Civil War Era

November 1860

The Democratic Party convened in Charleston, South Carolina, to choose their presidential candidate. Southerners insisted that the nominating convention endorse slavery in the territories. Western delegates opposed slavery in the territories and argued for an endorsement of popular sovereignty. Westerners prevailed and the southern delegates walked out. The southern Democrats reconvened in Richmond, Virginia, and nominated John C. Breckinridge with a platform calling for the protection of slavery in the territories. The Constitutional Union Party, composed mostly of former Whigs, took a moderate position and nominated John Bell. It made some moderate gains in the border states but lacked any widespread support. The northern Democrats later met in Baltimore, Maryland, and nominated Stephen A. Douglas. William H. Seward expected the Republican Party to nominate him for president in 1860, but they hesitated. The party leaders realized they had to have a broader platform than mere antislavery sentiment, so they included calls for a moderately higher tariff, federally sponsored internal improvements, a homestead bill, and federal assistance for a transcontinental railroad to be built over the central route. On slavery, the Republicans proclaimed that each state could decide the issue within its own borders and neither Congress nor the territorial legislatures could legalize slavery in the territories. Abraham Lincoln was a respected state politician in Illinois. The Republican delegates favored him because he was a talented speaker, had a moderate position on slavery, and was a Westerner who could challenge Stephen Douglas. Seward led on the first few ballots, but on the third ballot Lincoln prevailed because his campaign managers had promised patronage and jammed the convention with Lincoln supporters. During the campaign, Lincoln traveled south where he preached the sanctity of the Union. In the same speech he also warned against secession and pledged that if need be he would act with the same conviction that Andrew Jackson had shown during the Nullification Crisis thirty years before. Lincoln won only the populous northern states, polling only about 40 percent of the popular vote, but he won a decisive victory in the electoral college. Douglas won 1,382,713 popular votes, but only twelve electoral votes.

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December 20, 1860

South Carolina was the first state to secede from the Union claiming that Northerners had denied Southerners their “rights of property” in slaves.

January 1861

Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas seceded from the Union.

February 1861

Jefferson Davis was inaugurated president of the Confederate States of America. Davis said that his strategy was to focus on the defense of the Confederacy and not to conquer western territories, but the Confederacy’s firm commitment to slavery would undermine support for its cause from Europe.

March 1861

Abraham Lincoln took office.

April–May, 1861

Most Southerners agreed that they should no longer compromise with the North. Arkansas, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Virginia seceded from the Union. Four slave states—Kentucky, Maryland, Delaware, and Missouri—never joined the Confederacy because Unionist legislative majorities kept them from seceding. Meanwhile the western counties of Virginia seceded from that state when Virginia seceded from the Union and became the new state of West Virginia. Thousands of men from these border states, however, traveled south and joined the Confederate Army.

April 12, 1861

At the invitation of the southern “fire-eaters,” Edmund Ruffin aimed a rifle at Fort Sumter and fired the first shot in the American Civil War. Thirtythree hours later Fort Sumter fell to the Confederates and the Civil War began. Most Americans believed that the war would not last very long and Lincoln’s first call for troops was for a ninety-day enlistment; Confederates had to commit to serving until the end of the war. In the weeks following the Fort Sumter crisis, both Union and Confederate civilians enthusiastically embraced the war. The initial military strategy of both the Union and Confederacy called for a holding pattern. Both sides needed time to build up their armies and neither side precipitated a battle. Union General Winfield Scott focused Northern naval superiority on blocking the South and the South concentrated on holding its ground. In the beginning stages of the war both the Union and Confederate armies had identical lines of command and enlisted men elected their own officers. The North had a free population of about 22 million and the South a population of 9 million, including almost 4 million slaves. The North was a modern industrial power and the South was overwhelmingly rural. The North possessed nine-tenths of the nation’s industrial capacity, four-fifths of its bank capital, and three-fourths of its taxable wealth. The North financed 60 percent of its war effort through the sale of bonds in its prosperous region. Its paper currency inflated by only 80 percent during the whole war. The South, on the other hand, had to finance the war by printing paper money that inflated 9,000 percent in four years. Yet the South had other advantages. It had more men who attended military academies and it was defending its own territory, which gave it a defensive edge. The South had only to prolong the war until the North gave up and went home. As soon as war was declared, southern masters noticed a new attitude in their slaves. Slaves talked about freedom and worked hard to keep up with the war news. Slaves learned what was going on despite being illiterate,

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and every neighborhood had one or two literate slaves who managed to get copies of newspapers and then spread the news along the “grapevine telegraph.” Despite slave disturbances, the Republicans pledged to leave slavery undisturbed, but although they held their tongues, more and more radical republicans were convinced that the war could not be fought without an attack on slavery. April 15, 1861

Lincoln issued a proclamation calling for 75,000 militiamen and summoning a special session of Congress for July 4. Robert E. Lee, son of a Revolutionary War hero, and a twenty-five-year distinguished veteran of the U.S. Army and former superintendent of West Point, was offered command of the Union Army. Lee declined.

July 4, 1861

Lincoln set forth Union goals and strategy in a speech to Congress on July 4, 1861. He said that the issue at stake was whether a constitutional republic or a democracy could defend itself against its domestic foes. Lincoln was convinced that the United States could maintain its republican principles only by crushing the rebellion.

July 21, 1861

The First Battle of Bull Run, also called the First Battle of Manassas, was the first major land battle of the war. Brigadier General Irvin McDowell led inexperienced Union Army troops against the Confederate Army under Brigadier Generals Joseph E. Johnston and P. G. T. Beauregard at Manassas, Virginia. Despite early Union successes, the Confederates routed the Union troops and forced them to retreat back to Washington, D.C. Shortly after the Battle of Bull Run, the Radical Republicans began to speak out, maintaining that emancipation of the slaves was a “military necessity.” The Republican-dominated Congress passed a Confiscation Act, committing the federal government to confiscating any property, including slaves, used to fight against the United States. Lincoln appointed George B. McClellan commander of Army of the Potomac and army chief of staff.

March 8, 1862

The Union Navy used its superior power to enforce a blockade against the Confederacy, but the Confederacy produced a technologically advanced weapon from a renovated Union ship, the Merrimack. The Confederates installed thick iron plates and renamed the ship the Virginia. The Virginia sailed into Union waters at Hampton Roads, Virginia, and on the night of March 8 the Union ironclad, the Monitor, arrived from New York. For most of the following day the two ironclads battled, with neither ship winning. The Virginia steamed up the James River to assist in the defense of Richmond, but in May the Confederates destroyed the Virginia rather than let it fall into Union hands. The outcome of the Monitor and the Merrimack battle, even though it was a draw, dealt a blow to the Confederacy because it left the Union Navy controlling most of the coast and better able to maintain the blockade. As long as the North controlled the coast, European powers did not intervene in the Confederacy.

April 1862

Union troops signed up for three-year enlistments. The war had become a “hard war,” meaning unconditional surrender rather than a negotiated settlement. It meant demolishing the enemy’s army instead of just winning

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victory on the battlefield, destroying the enemy’s fighting capacity, and bringing the war to civilians. It also meant total war and in the end it meant the destruction of slavery. April 6–7, 1862

The two-day battle of Shiloh, the Hebrew word that means “place of peace,” was the costliest in lives in U.S. history up to that time. The Union forces defeated the Confederate army and frustrated Confederate General Albert Sidney Johnston’s plans to prevent the joining of the two Union armies in Tennessee. A total of 23,746 men were killed, wounded, captured, or missing, more than the American casualties of the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, and the Mexican War combined. The dead included Confederate General Albert Sidney Johnston; the highest ranking general on the Union’s side killed was W. H. L. Wallace.

April 24–May 1, 1862

Admiral David G. Farragut led a Union naval squadron of forty-three ships into the lower Mississippi near New Orleans and breached the heavy chain cables that defenders had stretched across the river. Confederate General Mansfield Lovell, realizing the futility of resistance, withdrew his 3,000 troops to the north. The city fell on April 25 and on May 1 General B. F. Butler led 15,000 Union troops to occupy the city. This was one of the worst disasters that the Confederacy sustained in the western theater of the war.

Summer 1862

Both the Union and the Confederacy instituted the draft and both realized that the war would be a long and bloody one.

August 28–30, 1862

The Second Battle of Bull Run or the Second Manassas was fought between August 28 and 30, 1862. Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia fought against Union Major General John Pope’s Army of Virginia. The Confederate Army won an overwhelming victory, but the Union Army remained largely intact compared to General Irvin McDowell’s army after the First Battle of Bull Run.

September 17, 1862

Although the Battle of Antietam was a tactical draw, it is considered a turning point of the war and a victory for the Union because it ended Lee’s strategic campaign—his first invasion of the North—and allowed Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. Known as the Battle of Sharpsburg to Southerners, it was fought near Sharpsburg, Maryland. It was part of the Maryland Campaign and the first major battle in the American Civil War to take place on northern soil as well as the bloodiest single-day battle in American history, with almost 23,000 casualties. The Union victory and Lincoln’s proclamation, which took effect on January 1, 1863, played an important role in preventing the governments of France and Britain from recognizing the Confederacy.

December 13, 1862

Lee’s Confederate Army of Northern Vi rginia and the Union Army of the Potomac commanded by General Ambrose E. Burnside fought in and around Fre d e r i c k s b u rg, Vi rginia. The Union Army suff e red terrible casualties in futile frontal assaults against entrenched Confederate defenders on the heights behind the city, bringing to an early end their campaign against the Confederate capital of Richmond. The Union army suffered over 12,600 casualties, with more than 10,000 of them coming as a result of the repeated attacks on Mary e ’s Heights. Two Union generals, Brigadier General George D. Bayard and General Conrad F. Jackson, were m o rtally wounded. The Confederate army lost about 5,400, most of

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them in the early fighting on Jackson’s front. Longstreet’s corps lost only about 500 men. 1862

Lincoln removed General George B. McClellan as chief-of-staff and later as commander of the Army of the Potomac.

1862

The Homestead Act of 1862 distributed 160-acre parcels of land free to settlers who agreed to occupy, improve, and farm the land for five years. Settlers had to build a house on it, dig a well, break (plow) ten acres, fence a specified amount, and actually live there. A person could also claim a quarter-section of land by staking “timber culture” or a “tree claim.” This required planting and successfully cultivating ten acres of timber. The Land Grant Act of 1862 awarded each Union state a grant of 30,000 acres of public land for each member in its congressional delegation. The land was to be used as sites for colleges of agriculture, mechanical arts, or m i l i t a ry science. Under this Land Grant Act over seventy land grant colleges were established. Both acts had previously passed Congress and been vetoed by President James Buchanan, Lincoln’s Democratic predecessor. The Pacific Railroad Act of 1862 was the result of years of lobbying for a railroad line that would connect the settled eastern part of the United States with the West Coast. The Union Pacific Railroad Company and the Central Pacific Railroad Company began work in 1863, completing the project in 1869.

January 1, 1863

Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. The Homestead Act became law.

March 12, 1863

Lincoln named General Ulysses S. Grant commander of the Union armies.

April 30–May 6, 1863

A highlight of the Battle of Chancellorsville, fought from April 30 to May 6, featured Lee dividing his army in the presence of a much larger enemy force. U.S. Major General Joseph Hooker’s Army of the Potomac faced an army half its size, Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. Lee’s audacity and Hooker’s timid performance in combat combined to produce a significant and embarrassing Union defeat. The mortal wounding of General Stonewall Jackson dampened the Confederate victory.

July 1–3, 1863

The Battle of Gettysburg was fought between July 1 and 3, 1863, in and around the town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, as part of the Gettysburg Campaign. In this battle, frequently cited as the turning point of the Civil War, Union Major General George G. Meade’s Army of the Potomac decisively repelled Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia’s second and final invasion of the North.

July 4, 1863

In a series of brilliant maneuvers, Grant and his Army of the Tennessee c rossed the Mississippi River and drove the Confederate army of Lieutenant General John C. Pemberton into defensive lines surrounding Vicksburg, Mississippi. Grant besieged Vicksburg, which surrendered six weeks later, yielding command of the Mississippi River to the Union.

July 13–16, 1863

Beginning as protests again Lincoln’s conscription of men to fight in the Civil War, the New York City draft riots involved 50,000 people. The riots lasted for four days, claimed hundreds of lives, and destroyed property worth more than $1,500,000. The New York City police force could not

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contain the violent demonstration, so federal troops, who marched from the battlefield of Gettysburg, had to restore civil order. November 19, 1863

At the dedication of the Soldier’s National Cemetery, Lincoln delivered his Gettysburg Address, rededicating the nation to the war effort and affirming the idea that no soldier from either side had died in vain.

November 23–25, 1863 In the Third Battle of Chattanooga, Grant defeated the Confederate forces of General Braxton Bragg. This Union victory destroyed the last Confederate control of Tennessee and paved the way for an invasion of the Deep South that would culminate in the Atlanta Campaign of 1864. 1864

Early in 1864, Lincoln began Reconstruction in the Union-occupied former Confederate state of Louisiana. His plan decreed that a state could be reintegrated into the Union when 10 percent of its voters in the presidential election of 1860 had taken an oath of allegiance to the United States and pledged to abide by emancipation. The next step in the plan would be for the state to formally elect a state government that Lincoln would recognize. Lincoln’s lenient ten percent policy upset Radical Republicans, who expected the South to do more to gain readmission to the Union and who believed Lincoln’s approach did not provide enough protection to ex-slaves. Lincoln vetoed the Wade-Davis Bill and implemented his own plan. By the end of the war it had been tried in Louisiana, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Virginia. Congress refused to seat the senators and representatives elected from those states, and by the time of Lincoln’s assassination, the president and Congress were facing off over seating the congressmen.

March 12, 1864

President Abraham Lincoln named General Ulysses S. Grant commander of the Union armies.

May 5–7, 1864

The Battle of the Wilderness was the first battle of Grant’s 1864 Virginia Overland Campaign against General Lee and the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia. The battle was a tactical Confederate victory but a strategic victory for the Union Army. Although Lee’s Army inflicted heavy casualties on Grant, he continued his campaign and a strategy of a war of attrition on Lee’s army.

June 1864–April 1865

The Siege of Petersburg lasted from June 15, 1864 until April 2, 1865. The ten-month siege foreshadowed the trench warfare of World War I, as did the trenches in the Siege of Vicksburg. At the end of the siege, Lee pulled his forces out of Petersburg and Richmond and marched west, attempting to join General Joseph E. Johnston’s forces in North Carolina.

July 1864

Congress passed its own Reconstruction Plan to counter the Ten Percent Plan that Lincoln had proposed. Congress introduced the Wade-Davis Bill that raised the allegiance requirement from 10 percent to a majority of a state’s voters, limited many former Confederates from political participation in state reconstruction, demanded blacks receive not only their freedom but equality before the law, and imposed a series of other requirements on the states. Lincoln vetoed the Wade-Davis Bill.

September 2, 1864

While Grant and other Union generals advanced against Lee in Virginia and General Nathaniel Banks attempted to capture Mobile, Alabama, General William T. Sherman was instructed to defeat the army of General Joseph E. Johnston and capture Atlanta. He did so in a series of battles

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fought in northwest Georgia and around Atlanta during the summer of 1864, and captured Atlanta on September 2. November 8, 1864

President Abraham Lincoln was reelected, capturing 212 of 233 electoral votes.

November 15, 1864

Sherman’s “March to the Sea” began.

December 22, 1864

Sherman captured the Port of Savannah.

March 4, 1865

April 9, 1865

Lincoln delivered his second inaugural address, containing the immortal mandate: “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.” The Civil War ended. Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Courthouse. Approximately 2,100,000 men had served in the Union Army and 900,000 had served the Confederacy.

April 14, 1865

Lincoln was assassinated at Ford’s Theatre by John Wilkes Booth. VicePresident Andrew Johnson became president of the United States.

April–December, 1865

With Congress in adjournment from April to December, 1865, President Johnson put his Reconstruction plan into action. Under provisional governors Johnson selected, the southern states held conventions that voided or repealed their ordinances of secession and abolished slavery. All of the newly elected legislatures except Mississippi’s ratified the Thirteenth Amendment, guaranteeing freedom for former slaves. By the end of 1865 e v e ryex-Confederate state except Texas had reestablished civil government.

December 1865– Summer 1866

The Thirty-Ninth Congress convened its first session after Lincoln’s death. The first act it perf o rmed was appointing a Joint Committee on Reconstruction with the task of taking testimony to determine the best way to treat the defeated South. All Confederate states except Mississippi had formally accepted presidential requirements for readmission to the Union and representation in Congress, but the Republican-controlled Congress refused to recognize the representatives and senators sent by these states. Johnson readmitted Texas in April 1866. Congress never recognized this presidential action and tied re-admittance to state acceptance of the Fourteenth Amendment, which was not ratified until 1868.

December 18, 1865

The Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which abolished slavery, was proposed to the legislatures of the several states by the Thirty-Eighth Congress. The amendment was declared, in a p roclamation by Secretary of State William Henry Seward, dated December 18, 1865, to have been ratified by the legislatures of twentyseven of the existing thirty-six states.

1865–1867

Johnson’s vision of Reconstruction clashed with that of many Republicans. He vetoed a string of Republican-backed measures, including an extension of the Freedman’s Bureau and the first Civil Rights bill. He ordered African-American families evicted from land on which they had been settled by the U.S. Army. He acquiesced to the Black Codes,

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which southern state governments enacted to reduce former slaves to the status of dependent plantation laborers. 1865

Ex-Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forest formed the Ku Klux Klan in Tennessee, one of the many secret societies set up to terrorize blacks.

1866

Johnson vetoed the Freedmen’s Bureau Bill and the Civil Rights Act of 1866. A modified version of the Freedmen’s Bureau Bill later passed and Congress overrode Johnson’s veto of the Civil Rights Act. Bloody race riots erupted in Memphis and New Orleans.

June 13, 1866

The Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, providing a broad definition of national citizenship, was proposed. It guaranteed basic civil rights to all citizens and it was intended to persuade southern states to grant suffrage to blacks by threatening a reduction of their congressional representation. The amendment was ratified on July 9, 1868.

August 28, 1866

By the summer of 1866, Johnson had lost support within the Republican Party for his Reconstruction policies. After a unity meeting of 7,000 delegates in Philadelphia on August 14 failed to bridge the growing gap between Johnson and the Republicans, the president decided to take the issue to the people. Beginning on August 28, accompanied by such notables as Civil War hero Admiral David Farragut, Johnson launched an unprecedented speaking tour in the hope of regaining public and political s u p p o rt. He traveled from Philadelphia to New York City, then through upstate New York and west to Ohio before heading back to Washington, D.C. This “swing around the circle” proved to be a disaster for Johnson. In the election, the anti-Johnson Republicans won two-thirds of both houses, giving his opponents enough power to override his programs.

March 1867

Radical Republicans in Congress implemented their own plan of Reconstruction, placing southern states under military rule. The Radicals wanted to punish the South for the Civil War and wanted to protect the rights of the newly freed slaves by passing a number of laws, establishing government agencies, and enforcing Reconstruction policies with martial law in the South. They passed laws placing restrictions on Johnson and when he supposedly violated the Tenure of Office Act by dismissing Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, the House voted eleven articles of impeachment against him.

1867

The first Reconstruction Act passed over Johnson’s veto. It temporarily placed the South under military rule, but states would be readmitted if their new state constitutions provided for black suffrage.

May 16, 1868

The U.S. Senate found Johnson not guilty and failed by one vote to remove him from office, but his reputation and influence were damaged for the remainder of his term. Congress passed a number of laws promoting the Radicals’ ideas for reconstruction, sometimes overriding Johnson’s veto. Georgia expelled blacks from its legislature and the U.S. government immediately reinstituted military rule in Georgia, revoking the state’s earlier readmission to representation in Congress. The southern states were then required to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment before they could be represented in Congress.

November, 1868

This first presidential election to take place during Reconstruction pitted Democrat Horatio Seymour against Republican candidate and Civil War

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hero Ulysses S. Grant. Incumbent President Johnson was not a candidate because the Democrats disliked him for running as Abraham Lincoln’s vice-president and Republicans hated him for obstructing their plans for Reconstruction. Freed blacks voted in much of the South with the assistance of Union soldiers; and three former Confederate states, Texas, Mississippi, and Virginia, had not yet been readmitted to the Union and could not vote in the election. Grant was popular in the North as the man who had won the Civil War and he took the election by a landslide. May 10, 1869

In the 1860s the first transcontinental railroad linking the railway network of the eastern United States with California on the Pacific coast was completed. The news was flashed by telegraphy and the nation celebrated from coast to coast. Ceremonies were held on May 10, 1869, at the famous Golden Spike event at Promontory Point, Utah. This railroad network was to be the single most influential factor in the emergence of a new industrial age.

February 3, 1870

A Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution was proposed in February 1869. It stated simply: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” It was ratified on February 3, 1870. C o n g ress passed the KKK (Ku Klux Klan) Acts, which were intended to enforce the Fifteenth Amendment by providing federal protection for black suffrage and authorizing the use of federal troops against the KKK. These acts were declared unconstitutional in C ruikshank v. U.S. in the mid-1880s.

1872

Grant won a second term as president, defeating Horace Greeley. Other Republicans felt that their party was too firmly in the hands of eastern financial and industrial interests. Feelings of disgust escalated as word of scandals in the Grant administration circulated around the country. Two of the most prominent critics were Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, who criticized Grant for his attempted land grab in the Dominican Republic, and Horace Greeley, a New York newspaper editor who was known for his criticism of southern Democrats and his calls for honest government. The dissatisfied faction of the Republican Party that called itself the Liberal Republicans, met in Cincinnati, Ohio, in May 1872 to offer an alternative to Grant. The Liberal Republican convention offered the nomination to Greeley, a man of such strong views that he was bound to alienate many within the movement. The platform called for civil service reform, an idea that had initially been supported by Grant but opposed by his cronies, and an end to punitive Reconstruction. Greeley was supported by the Democratic Party in 1872, the only time in American history that a major party has embraced a third-party candidate. The joining of these two organizations was not effective; Grant was easily returned for a second term. Most Liberal Republicans returned to the Republican Party by the next presidential election in 1876.

1873

The Panic of 1873 brought a national economic depression to America.

1874

Grant used force to subvert the White League’s attempt to overthrow a Republican government accused of stealing an election.

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1875

The “Whiskey Ring” scandal was exposed. The Civil Rights Act of 1875 stated that no citizen can be denied the equal use of public facilities such as inns or restaurants on the basis of color.

1876

The disputed election between Rutherford B. Hayes and Samuel J. Tilden was resolved in favor of Republican Hayes.

1877

The Compromise of 1877 resulted in an end to military intervention in the South and the fall of the last radical government restored “home rule” in the South.

1872–1880

After the disgrace and scandal of Grant’s administration, a group of Republican civil service reformers provoked a revolt in the 1872 election. Some New York Republicans, known as “Mugwumps” kept the issue of the Grant administration scandals alive and continued to advocate reform of the civil service patronage system. Grant’s supporters, who were known as “Stalwarts,” pointed out the accomplishments of his administration. A third group, the “Half-Breeds,” favored moderate reform and the continuation of high tariffs. The parties differed only slightly on the issues in the years after the war. The Republican Party, for the most part, favored industrialists, bankers, and railroad interests. More than one scandal during the era arose from corrupt dealings between politicians and railroad barons. Republicans more strongly favored hard money policies and strict laissez-faire economic policies, until public pressure forced the issue of regulation, especially regarding railroad rates. The second significant era for the Democrats lasted from the Civil War into the 1890s. Partisan loyalties planted early in the century and nurtured during the Civil War kept the party faithful loyal in election after election. Southern whites who had not been Democrats earlier flocked to the party in the aftermath of Reconstruction, making the Solid (Democratic) South a political reality. Kathy Warnes

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Davis, Charles E. Three Years in the Army: The Story of the Thirteenth Massachusetts Volunteers. Boston: Charles E. Davis, 1894.

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Coddington, Edwin B. The Gettysburg Campaign: A Study in Command. Norwalk, CT: Easton Press, 1989.

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Grand Army of the Republic, Department of Pennsylvania. Journal of the Annual Encampment. 6 vols. 1927–1933. Harrisburg. Grand Army of the Republic. Journal of the National Annual Encampment. 15 vols. 1890–1939. Washington, DC. Grand Army of the Republic. Roster of Iowa City Post No. 8 GAR. Iowa City: Grand Army of the Republic, 1888. Illinois. Adjutant General. Roster of Officers and Enlisted Men. Springfield, 1900. Indiana. Adjutant General. Report of the Adjutant General of the State of Indiana 1861–65. Indianapolis. Holloway, 1865–1866. Iowa. Adjutant General. Roster and Record of Iowa Soldiers in the War of Rebellion. Des Moines. English, 1910.

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Kentucky. Adjutant General. Confederate Kentucky Volunteers War 1861–65. Frankfort: State Journal, 1915.

Ohio. The General Assembly; The Roster Commission. Official Roster of the Soldiers of the State of Ohio. Cincinnati: Wilstach, Baldwin, 1886. Pennsylvania. Legislature (Bates). History of Pennsylvania Volunteers, 1861–5. Harrisburg: State Printer, 1870.

Kentucky. Adjutant General. Report of the Adjutant General of the State of Kentucky 1861–65. Frankfort: State Journal, 1866.

Rhode Island. Adjutant General. Register of Rhode Island Volunteers 1861–1865. Providence: Freeman and Son, 1893.

Louisiana. Booth, Andrew B. Records of Louisiana Confederate Soldiers and Louisiana Confederate Commands. New Orleans, Spartanburg, SC: Reprint Company, 1984.

West Point Alumni Foundation. Register of Graduates and Former Cadets of the United States Military Academy 1802–1965. Chicago: R. R. Donnelley, 1965. United Confederate Veterans. List of Organized Camps of the United Confederate Veterans. New Orleans, LA: Rogers Printing, 1921.

Kansas. Adjutant General. Report of the Adjutant General of the State of Kansas 1861–65. Topeka: Hudson, 1896.

Maine. Adjutant General. Annual Report of the Adjutant General of the State of Maine. Augusta: Stevens and Sayward, 1862, 1863, 1866. Maryland. The General Assembly. Maryland Volunteers, War of 1861–5. Baltimore: Guggenheimer, Weil, 1899. Massachusetts. Adjutant General. Massachusetts Soldiers, Sailors, and Marines in the Civil War. Norwood: Norwood, 1931. Michigan. Legislature. Record of Service of Michigan Volunteers in the Civil War 1861–1865. Kalamazoo: Everard, 1903. Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States. Memorials of Companions of the Commandery of the State of Illinois. Chicago: 1923. Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States. Register of the Commandery of the State of Massachusetts. Cambridge: University Press, 1912. Minnesota. Board of Commissioners. Minnesota in the Civil and Indian Wars 1861–1865. St. Paul: Pioneer Press, 1890.

United States House of Representatives 29th Congress. “Murder of Union Soldiers in North Carolina.” Letter from the Secretary of War. Washington: United States House of Representatives, 1866. United States National Archives. Index to Compiled Service Records. Wilmington, NC: Broadfoot, 1997. United States Quartermaster’s Department. Roll of Honor, Names of Soldiers Who Died in Defense of the American Union, Interred in the National Cemeteries, Numbers I-VI. 1868. Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing, 1994. United States War Department. Official Records of the War of Rebellion. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1880–1887. United States. Adjutant General’s Office. Official Army Register of the Volunteer Force of the United States Army 1861–1965 Washington: 1865.

Minnesota. Minnesota Adjutant General’s Report of 1866. Roseville: Park Genealogical Books, 1997.

United States. Congressional Subcommittee on Veterans’ Affairs. Medal of Honor Recipients: 1863–1963. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1964.

New Hampshire. Legislature. Revised Register of the Soldiers and Sailors of New Hampshire in the War of the Rebellion 1861–1866. Concord: Evans, 1895.

United States. War Department. Atlas to Accompany the Official Records of the War of Rebellion. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1891–1895.

New Jersey. Adjutant General. Record of the Officers and Men of New Jersey in the Civil War 1861–65. Trenton: Murphy, 1876.

Vermont. General Assembly. Revised Roster of Vermont Volunteers and Lists of Vermonters Who Served in the Army and Navy of the United States during the War of the Rebellion 1861–66. Montpelier: Watchman, 1892.

New York. Legislature. New York in the War of the Rebellion. Albany: Lyon, 1912. New York. Legislature. Report of the AdjutantGeneral. Albany: Argus, 1895–1906. North Carolina. Division of Archives and History. North Carolina Troops 1861–1865. A Roster. Raleigh: University Graphics, 1993.

Virginia. The Virginia Regimental Histories Series. Lynchburg: Howard, 1987. Wisconsin. Adjutant General. Roster of Wisconsin Volunteers, War of the Rebellion, 1861–1865. Madison: Democrat Printing Company, 1886.

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Periodicals American Historical Review—American Historical Association American Quarterly—Johns Hopkins University Press Journal of American History—Organization of American Historians Reviews in American History—Johns Hopkins University Press

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march to Shreveport, Louisiana, where it would link up with an amphibious expedition led by Major General Nathaniel P. Banks and Rear Admiral David D. Porter, whose force was to advance up the Red River Valley; once joined, the Union force was to strike into Texas. But the two pincers never converged, and Steele’s columns suffered terrible losses in a series of battles with Confederate forces led by Major General Sterling Price and General Edmund Kirby Smith.

Civil War History—Kent State University Press

Champion Hill Battlefield. Bolton, Mississippi.

Journal of Military History—Society for Military History

The Civil War battle at Champion Hill was a crucial Union victory in the 1863 Vicksburg campaign, itself a turning point in the Civil War. Troops led by General Ulysses S. Grant forced the retreat of General John C. Pemberton’s Confederate forces on May 16, 1863. The siege of Vicksburg followed, and on July 4, 1863, the Confederates surrendered the city and its 29,500-man garrison.

Southern Cultures—Center for the Study of the American South

Selected Museums/Landmarks Bentonville Battlefield. North Carolina. The Battle of Bentonville, where two military titans of the Civil War—Generals William T. Sherman and Joseph E. Johnston—faced each other for the final time in a major battle, was the last occasion on which a Confederate army mounted an all-out offensive during the Civil War. The loss here was the Confederacy’s death knell, for it fatally weakened their last mobile field army. Burt-Stark Mansion. Abeville, South Carolina. Here, on the afternoon of May 2, 1865, the final Confederate council of war occurred. Richmond had been evacuated the month before and the Confederate g o v e rnment was in flight; General Robert E. Lee had surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox Court House on April 9; and General Joseph E. Johnston had surrendered Confederate forces in the Southeast on April 26. Still, President Jefferson Davis believed he could rally the troops of Lieutenant General Richard Taylor in the Gulf States, join them with Confederate troops still active across the Mississippi, and continue the struggle for an independent Confederacy. In a meeting in this house, Davis asked his subordinates, among whom were Secre t a ry of War John C. Breckinridge and General Braxton Bragg, for advice on future military plans. His advisers responded that continued resistance was impossible, the war was over. Their unanimous opinion convinced Davis that all had indeed been lost. Camden Expedition Sites. Little Rock, Arkansas. The Camden Expedition (March 23–May 2, 1864) involved Union forces stationed at Little Rock and Fort Smith under the command of Major General Frederick Steele. The plan called for Steele’s force to

Fort Warren, Georges Island. Boston Harbor. This massive pentagonal fortification—its outer walls of Quincy granite are eight feet thick—was begun in 1834 to protect Boston Harbor. One of the nation’s finest nineteenth-century coastal f o rtifications and the chief work of military engineer Sylvanus Thayer, it is strategically located on Georges Island, midway between the nort h e rn and s o u t h e rn arms of the harbor. Fort Wa rren is the most important Civil War site in New England, as it s e rved as a prison for Confederate leaders and off icers, including Vi c e-P resident Alexander Stephens. B a t t e ry Jack Adams, an unusual single gun battery within the Fort, was considered to be a key part of Boston Harbor’s defense system during the S p a n i s h-American War. Grant, U.S. Boyhood Home. Georgetown, Ohio. From 1823, when he was brought here as an infant, until he left to enter the U.S. Military Academy in 1839, this was the home of Ulysses Simpson Grant (1822–1885), one of the great leaders in Western military history and the eighteenth president of the United States. Jackson, Stonewall, Headquarters. Winchester, Virginia. In the months preceding his famous Shenandoah Valley Campaign (March–June 1862), Confederate Major General Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson (1824–1863) used this Gothic Revival house as his headquarters, where he was joined by his wife, Mary Anna. Jackson’s rapid maneuvering in the valley kept valuable Federal forces from joining the wellconceived Peninsular assault on Richmond by the

240

RESOURCES

Army of the Potomac, and contributed to the failure of Union Major General George B. McClellan’s strategy. Vieux Carré Historic District. New Orleans, Louisiana. Known as the French Quarter, this eighty-five-block area almost coincides with the original city plan, laid out in 1721. Within the district is a distinctive variety of architectural styles. They include numerous vernacular structures that provide a unique ambiance and reflect the multinational heritage of New Orleans, as well as a number of individual National Historic Landmarks. Sumner, Charles, House. Boston, Massachusetts. This Federal-style Beacon Hill house was the residence of Charles Sumner, an outspoken opponent of slavery and a pivotal figure in American politics during the Civil War era. He was one of the founders of the Republican Party and represented Massachusetts in the U.S. Senate from 1851 to 1874. Following the Civil War, he played an influential role in foreign affairs. Springfield Armory. Springfield, Massachusetts. Until 1967–1968, this was the U.S. Army’s main research and development center and pilot manufactory for small arms. It was formally established as a federal arsenal in 1794. Siege and Battles of Corinth States. Corinth, Mississippi. The 1862 Union victories in the siege (April 28–May 30) and battle (October 3–4) at Corinth figured importantly in the ebb and flow of Confederate milit a ry fortunes during that year. The Union victory in the latter episode, one of the key events in an overall reversal in the course of the war in favor of the Union, followed a summer during which a string of Confederate victories appeared to presage re c o g n ition for the Confederacy by England. After the renewed Union successes in the early fall, including that at Corinth, this prospect slipped out of the Confederacy’s hands. A number of major Union and Confederate leaders were engaged in the actions at Corinth. Today, among other elements, there re m a i n w e l l - p re s e rved lines of earthworks; batteries; rifle pits; four houses used as military headquart e r s during the engagements; and the Corinth National C e m e t e ry, where more than 5,600 Civil War interments, most of them unknown, were made. Port Hudson. Port Hudson, Louisiana. In the spring of 1863 this Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi was the scene of bitter fighting.

The active participation of the First and Third Regiments of the Louisiana Native Guards—the former of free blacks led by black officers and the latter of ex-slaves led by white officers—showed that blacks would fight. Port Hudson was the last Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi River to fall to Union Forces. This event separated Arkansas, Texas, and much of Louisiana from the rest of the Confederacy. Pemberton’s Headquarters. Vicksburg, Mississippi. During most of the forty-seven-day siege of Vicksburg (May–July 1863), this large two-story, brick house in the center of the city was the headquarters of Lieutenant General John C. Pembert o n , commander of the Department of Mississippi, Alabama, and East Louisiana. It was in this house that General Pemberton made his decision to surre nder the Confederate stronghold to Union forces led by Major General U. S. Grant. Middle Creek Battlefield. Floyd, Kentucky. Control of Kentucky was very important to President Abraham Lincoln, who had been born there and a p p reciated its strategic value. The Eastern Kentucky campaign that resulted in this battle was part of the overall Union strategy to keep Kentucky within the fold. At the Battle of Middle Creek (January 10, 1862), Union forces led by Colonel James A. Garf i e l d met and defeated Rebel forces under the command of Brigadier General Humphrey Marshall, thus securing E a s t e rnTennessee. The battle was an important early v i c t o ry for the Union and brought hope to a disheartened nort h e rn population. Johnson’s Island Civil War Prison. Danbury, Ohio. Johnson’s Island, the site of an important Confederate prisoner-of-war camp during much of the Civil War, is located 2.5 miles northwest of Sandusky, Ohio, in Sandusky Bay. Johnson’s Island was chosen because of its size (large enough to house the facility and yet small enough to be easily manageable), wood resources (mostly for fuel), and its proximity to Sandusky which would make provisioning possible. Because of its mission as the major depot for the confinement of Confederate general, field, and company grade officers, Johnson’s Island assumes particular significance as a critical element in the war of attrition that brought victory to the Union. Although plots and conspiracies by Confederate agents operating from Canadian sanctuaries and nort h e rn Copperheads to foment mass escapes came to naught, they compelled the Lincoln administration to

RESOURCES

divert needed re s o u rces of men and materiel from more important theaters of the war.

241

http://www.civilwarhome.com—The Home of the American Civil War http://www.us-civilwar.com—The U.S. Civil War

Internet http://sunsite.utk.edu/civil-war/warweb.html—The American Civil War Homepage http://americancivilwar.com—The American Civil War http://www.historyplace.com/civilwar—The U.S. Civil War http://www.civilwar.com—The Civil War

http://www.civil-war.net—The Civil War Homepage http://www.civilwardata.com—American Civil War Research Database http://www.afroamcivilwar.org—The African American Civil War http://www.swcivilwar.com—The American Civil War http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/cwphtml/cwphome. html—Selected Civil War Photographs from the Library of Congress

Index

abolitionism, in colonial America, 1 Lincoln’s views on, 8, 9, 14, 22, 75, 145, 164 movements of, 1–3, 144, 164 of Radical Republicans, 147–148, 155, 167, 168, 172, 227 societies of, 1 Abraham Lincoln: A Biography (Thomas), 133 Abraham Lincoln: A New Portrait (Zornow), 126, 129 actual history, defined, xviii Adams, Charles Francis, 26 Adams, Henry, 99 Adams, Sam, 42 Afghanistan, 199, 203 African American populations, citizenship of, 81, 82–84, 152, 170 education of, 83–84 government and political positions held by, 135–136, 148, 152, 170–171 Great Migration of, 54, 155, 175, 179 impact of Emancipation Proclamation on, 80–85 impact of Thirteenth Amendment, 143–155 Jim Crow laws and, 11, 49–50, 54, 84, 153, 155, 159 legal cases of civil rights of, 136–137 literacy of, 171 right to vote, 83–84, 127, 131, 152, 160, 166 role of family and church in, 154

transition to free people, 148 during Union capture of Savannah, 115–116 as Union soldiers, 146 violence/intimidation against, 83–84 voting populations of, 135, 152, 171 The Age of Hate: Andrew Johnson and the Radicals (Milton), 168 Aiken, G. L., 20 Alabama, secession of, 9, 22, 23, 43, 89, 145, 164, 226 Alaska, acquisition of, 50, 189 Alexander II, 20, 26, 28, 30 Alien and Sedition Laws, 196 alternate history, as counterfactuals, xiii–xvi, xv defined, xviii American Anti-Slavery Society, 1 The American Conflict: A History of the Great Rebellion in the United States of America, 1860-64 (Greeley), 23–24 American Federation of Labor, 200 The American Heritage New History of the Civil War (McPherson, ed.), 62 American Legal Association, 174 American Medical Association, 174 “America’s Reconstruction: People and Politics after the Civil War” (Foner and Mahoney), 155 Anderson, Jeremiah G., 4, 6 Anderson, Osborne Perry, 4, 7 Andrew, John, 75 Angle, Paul M., 129

Anglican Church, 42 Anti-Federalist Party, 42 Antietam, Battle of, alternate history of, xvii, 51, 52, 57, 66–70 as bloodiest day, 24, 62, 78–79, 91, 93 as first Confederate invasion of the North, 228 Union victory at, xiii, xiv, 146, 228 Antietam Creek, battle at, 6, 47, 50, 64, 65, 66, 67 Appomattox Court House, Confederate surrender at, 15, 26 treaty of surrender signing at, 48, 49, 80, 100, 117, 130, 149, 187 Aptheker, Herbert, 4 Arizona, 104, 144 Arkansas, in Confederacy, 11 readmission of, 150 Reconstruction government in, 126, 127, 230 secession of, 23, 43, 75, 90, 145, 164, 226 Arlington Heights, 44 Arlington National Cemetery, 23 Army of Northern Virginia, alternate histories of, 102–103 at Battle of Antietam, 24, 29, 62, 78–79, 91, 93, 228 at Battle of Bull Run, 45, 229 invasions into Union territory, 91–101 Lee’s reorganization of, 91 in Maryland, 57, 58, 60–61, 228 recruits for, 57 Army of Ohio, 34

244

INDEX

Army of the Potomac, in alternate Battle of Antietam, 66–67 at Battle of Bull Run, 44, 45 at Battle of Gettysburg, 89–101, 229 McClellan’s command of, 59, 60–62, 227 at Second Battle of Bull Run, 91 Army of the Tennessee, 102, 109, 121, 229 Army of the West, 24 Army of Virginia, at Second Battle of Bull Run, 228 Arthur, Chester, 194 Articles of Confederation, 42 Ashley, James, 127, 147 Ashley’s Reconstruction bill, 127, 128 Atlanta, destructive fire in, 110 evacuation of, 109 Union capture of, 52, 109, 126, 230 Atzerodt, George A., 131, 133 Augusta, arsenal at, 112 Axson, Ellen Louise, 196 Bacon’s Rebellion, 41 Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O), 6, 7, 74 banking, post-Civil War legislation supporting, 155, 159 Banks, Nathaniel, 138, 230 Baptist Church, 115, 120 Bartow, Colonel, 46 Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (McPherson), 50, 75, 90, 99, 103 Battles and Leaders of the Civil War (Johnson and Buell), 61 Bayard, George D., 228 Beale, Howard, 172 Beard, Charles, 172 Beauregard, Pierre Gustave Toutant, Confederate command of, 10, 23, 111, 112, 120, 227 at First Battle of Bull Run, 44, 46, 76 Beckham, Fontaine, 6 Bee, General, 46 Beecher, Henry Ward, 20 Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery (Litwack), 153 Belkin, Aaron, xiii, xv Belknap, William W., 193

Bell, John, 9 Beneath a Northern Sky: A Short History of the Gettysburg Campaign (Woodworth), 92, 93–94 Bennett Place, 117 Bentonville, Battle of, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 35, 37, 113, 117 Bierce, Ambrose, 34 Bill of Rights, 147, 170 Bin Laden, Osama, 202, 203 Birth of a Nation (1915), 172, 173 Bismarck, Otto von, 86 Black Codes, Reconstruction civil rights goals of, 11, 49, 53, 54, 151, 159, 170, 187, 200, 231 as state laws, 152–153, 231 Blackburn’s Ford, 44 “Bleeding Kansas,” 3, 144 Blenheim campaign, 114 Bloss, John M., 61 Blue Ridge Mountains, 12–13 blues, 175 Boerly, Thomas, 6 Bolshevik Revolution, 68, 87 Bonaparte, Napoleon, 20 Booth, Edwin, 130 Booth, John Wilkes, assassination of Abraham Lincoln, xiv, xvii, 130–134, 187, 231 kidnapping and assassination schemes of, 131–132, 157 as popular actor, 130, 132 views on slavery, 48, 52, 130, 131 Booth, Junius Brutus, 130 “Border Ruffians,” 3 Boyer, Richard O., 8 Brady, Matthew, 35 Bragg, Braxton, in alternate history of Savannah, 118, 120 at Battle of Chattanooga, 230 opposing Sherman’s forces at Savannah, 50, 51, 111–112 Brazil, slavery abolished in, 2 Breckinridge, John C., 9, 225 Brooklyn Daily Times, 33 Brown, Frederick, 3 Brown, Joe, as Georgia governor, 110, 112 Brown, John, abolitionist views of, 1, 3, 73–74 alternate history of raid by, xvii, 12–16

anti-slavery rebellion led by, 73, 74, 75 childhood and education of, 1 execution of, 8, 74 Isaac Smith as pseudonym, 4, 74 raid on Harpers Ferry led by, 4–9, 145, 186 trial of, 7–8, 74 Brown, Oliver, 4, 6, 74 Brown, Owen, 4, 6, 7, 74 Brown, Watson, 4, 6, 74 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 137, 153 Brunow, Baron de, 30 Bryan, William Jennings, 194, 195 Buchanan, James, Brown’s raid of Harpers Ferry during administration of, 6, 7, 13, 74, 76, 186 on issue of slavery, 186 recognizing Kansas proslavery government, 144 veto of Land Grant Act, 229 Buell, Clarence C., 61 Buffalo Pan-American Exposition, 195 Buford, John, 93–94, 95 Bull Run, alternate history of First, xvii, 50–54 Confederate victories at, 24, 43, 46, 59, 227 First Battle at, 59, 76, 227 Second Battle at, 57, 59, 91, 93, 228 Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, establishment of, 127, 151, 152, 158, 166 rights and provisions with, 127, 151, 152, 158, 166 Burnside, Ambrose, at battle around Fredericksburg, 228 at Battle of Antietam, 64 Burnside’s Bridge, 64–65 Bush, George H. W., alternate history of, 202 executive authority of, 199 foreign policies of, 199 Bush, George W., executive authority of, 199, 202–203 in war on terror, 202–203 Butler, Benjamin, Ku Klux Klan Act proposed by, 173 occupation of New Orleans, 228

INDEX

on slaves as contraband of war, 145 Union command of, 77 Calhoun, John, 144 California, gold rush in, 144 as new territory, 186 Campbell, John A., 130 Cannon, “Uncle Joe,” 195 Carlota, 27 Carnegie, Andrew, 84 carpetbaggers, 82, 135, 152–153, 158, 171, 172, 173 Carter, Jimmy, 176 case-study counterfactuals, xv Cashtown, Pennsylvania, 93 Cemetery Hill, 95, 96, 99, 101 Cemetery Ridge, 96, 97 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 202 Central Pacific Railroad Company, 229 Chancellorsville, Battles at, 24, 90–91, 229 Charleston, Confederate firing on Fort Sumter, 10, 22, 23, 26, 43, 75, 90, 145, 164, 186, 226 islands south of, 116 Charlotte Amelie, 27 Chattanooga, alternate history of, 102 Union capture of, 49, 50, 52, 230 Cherokee Nation, 27, 36 “Cherokee Strip,” 27 Chesapeake colony, 41 child labor laws, 197 Chilton, Robert H., 61 China, 202 citizenship, of African American populations, 81, 82–84, 152, 170 as defined by Fourteenth Amendment, 170 civil rights, in Black Codes, 11, 49–50, 54, 84, 153, 155, 159, 170, 193 following end of Reconstruction, 136 legal cases of, 136–137, 170 legislation and laws supporting, 135 protected by Reconstruction, 193 Civil Rights Act, of 1866, 10, 54, 82, 135, 152, 167, 179

of 1875, 54, 135, 193, 234 of 1964, 85 Civil Rights Bill, 187, 231 Civil Rights Cases 109 US 3 (1883), 137 Civil Rights Movement, alternate histories of, 182 black suffrage, 160 March on Washington, 84–85 racial equality goals of, 11, 140–141, 153, 160, 182 religious and sexual preference issues in, 182 as Second Reconstruction, 155 Civil War, alternate histories of, xviii amendments resulting from, 153 casualties and injuries during, 48, 62, 90, 96, 102 debt incurred during, 139 duration of, 90 end of, 149, 231 events leading to, 1–16 first shot fired, 9, 75, 90, 186, 226 as “hard war,” 227–228 narrative of, xviii origins of, 41 photographs and images of, 45–46 political support of, 146–147, 156 protests against, 229–230 rebuilding/restoring state relationships after, 166 sectional conflict theory of, 146–147 U.S. national identity following, xviii, 50, 54, 174–175 veterans of, 194 See also Confederate troops; Reconstruction; specific battles; Union troops Clay, Henry, 144 Cleveland, Grover, presidency of, 194 Clinton, George, 42 Cold Harbor, battle at, 109 Cold War, 182, 198 Colfax, Schuyler, 193 Colgrove, Silas, 61 Colorado, 144 Columbia, South Carolina, Union capture of, 116–117 Columbus, Christopher, xiv Committee of Public Information, 196 Communist Party, 84, 181 Compact Theory of Government, 42

245

compensation emancipation, 166 Compromise of 1850, 43, 90, 144, 146, 186 Compromise of 1876, 49 Compromise of 1877, 136, 154, 173, 180, 234 Confederate States of America (CSA), alternate histories of, 14–15, 27–39 British interests in, 15, 57–58, 63, 78, 92–93, 103, 105, 228 conscription laws of, 112 constitution of, 89, 205–218 cotton diplomacy of, 58, 93, 105, 138–139, 155 debts of, 170, 179 formation of, 9, 43 French interests in, 63, 86, 92–93, 103–104, 228 international recognition of, 47, 50, 51, 85, 91, 92, 103, 228 militia units in, 112 pardon and amnesty of, 150, 157 Richmond as capital of, 11, 25, 51, 187 states in, 145, 164 on states’ rights and secession, 75 The Confederate States of America: What Might Have Been (Ramson), 93 Confederate troops, Army of Northern Virginia in, 29 at Battle of Antietam, 60, 61, 62, 63–66 casualties and injuries in, 24, 62, 78, 90, 96, 228–229 desertions in, 100 First Corps in, 91, 94 Second Corps in, 91, 92, 94, 95–96 supplies/provisions for, 57, 91, 100 Third Corps in, 91 Confiscation Act(s), 11, 137, 227 Conflict and Compromise (Ransom), 149–150 Congressional Reconstruction, 169, 171 Connor, Bull, 198 Constitutional Convention, 42, 190 Constitutional Union Party, 9 Cook, John E., 4, 7, 8 Coolidge, Calvin, presidency of, 197

246

INDEX

Copeland, John A., Jr., 4, 6–7, 8 Copperheads, 99, 100–101, 103, 186 Coppoc, Barclay, 4, 6, 7 Coppoc, Edwin, 4, 6, 8 Corinth, battle at, 47 Cortés, Hernán, xiv cotton, cultivation and production of, 1, 143 European dependence on, 19, 21, 25, 30, 32, 58, 86, 93, 105, 155 stagnation of economy of, 175 cotton gin, 1 Counterfactual Thought Experiments in World Politics (Tetlock and Belkin), xv counterfactuals, as alternate history, xiii–xvi, xv mental stimulation, xvi nomothetic, xvi Covenant of the League of Nations, 197 Crampton’s Gap, 61 Crazy Horse, 36 Credit Mobilier scandal, 193 Creel, George, 196 Crimean War, 30 Crittenden, John, 145 Cromwell, Oliver, 19 Cruikshank v. U.S., 233 Cuba, 50, 194, 195, 202 Cuban War, 194, 195 Culp’s Hill, 95, 96, 101 Custer, George Armstrong, alternate histories of, 36 Davis, Henry, 167 Davis, Jefferson, alternate memoirs of, 27–39 capture of, 134–135 diplomatic efforts by, 25 as president of Confederacy, 9, 22–23, 89, 91, 109, 112, 130 response to Emancipation Proclamation, 80–81 as Secretary of War, 113 surrender terms of, 52 views on slavery, 47, 77 De Lome letter, 195 Declaration of Independence, signatories of, 23, 29 Deep South, alternate histories of, 14 boycott of Northern products by, 9

on states’ rights and secession, 9–10, 22–23, 104, 164–165 Delaware, as slave state, 43, 104, 127, 145, 226 as Union state, 43, 90, 104, 145, 226 Democratic Party, African American voters in, 84 as “blue” states, 176 credibility after Confederate surrender, 139, 234 paramilitary groups in, 50, 53 peace wing of, 100–101 split within, 43, 144, 145, 146 strength in Southern states, 167, 234 as “white man’s party,” 83 Denmark Vesey Plot of 1822, 4 determinism, xiv Devil’s Den, 102 Dixiecrats, 167, 176 Douglas, Stephen, as presidential candidate, 9, 144, 145, 225 Douglass, Frederick, abolitionist views of, 2, 5, 6, 10, 12, 14, 75 on black Union soldiers, 75 Dred Scott v. Sandford, 22, 144, 145, 170, 186 DuBois, W. E. B., 172 Dunning, William, 172 Dunning School, 172 Early, Jubal, 109 1862 District Emancipation Act, 145 Eisenhower, Dwight D., alternate history of, 202 executive power of, 198 foreign policies of, 198 Emancipation Proclamation, alternate histories of, xvii, 85–87, 155 compensated emancipation in border states in, 166 Confederate response to, 80–81 constitutionality of, 79–80 diplomatic impact of, 86 drafting and development of, 64–65, 73–85, 146 elements of, 76–77, 146 enforcement of, 157, 158 impact on focus of Civil War, 63, 65, 66 impact on slavery, 64, 65, 80, 104, 166

international impact of, 165 Lincoln’s issue of, 2, 10, 11, 47, 228, 229 as military order, 87 preliminary, 64 slaves excluded from, 165 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 8 England, interests in Republic of Texas, 19 slavery outlawed in, 2 troops in Canada, 86 views on slavery, 19–20 Europe, dependence on cotton, 19, 21, 25, 30, 32, 58, 86, 93, 105 historic empires in, 23 relationship/interests with Confederate States of America, 15, 57–58, 63, 78, 92–93, 103, 105, 228 Ewell, Richard S., at Gettysburg battle, 91, 92, 94, 95–96, 101 Ewing, Thomas, 30 Farragut, David G., 24, 228, 231 Federal Reserve Act, 197 Federal Trade Commission, 197 Federalist Party, 42 Fifteenth Amendment, proposal and ratification of, 10, 49, 52, 69, 82, 135–136, 148, 153, 170–171, 233 54th Regiment of Colored Troops, 75 Fillmore, Millard, on issue of slavery, 186 presidency of, 186 “Fire-Eaters,” defending slavery by, 2, 226 on states’ rights and secession, 9, 14 First African Baptist Church, 120 First Bull Run, alternate history of battle, xvii, 50–54 battle summary of, 46 Confederate victory at, 43–46, 59, 76, 227 First Confiscation Act, 78 First Manassas, 46 First Wheeling Convention, 165 Fisk, James, 49, 193 Five Forks, Battle of, 130 Florida, secession of, 9, 22, 23, 43, 89, 145, 164, 226 Foner, Eric, 155 Forbes, Charles, 132 Force Bills, 153

INDEX

Ford’s Theatre, 131, 132–133, 141, 157, 187, 231 Forey, Elie-Frédéric, 37 Forrest, Nathan Bedford, as Confederate general, 83, 172 disbanding Ku Klux Klan, 173 founding Ku Klux Klan, 83, 172, 173, 231 Fort Donelson, 48 Fort Fisher, 129 Fort Henry, 48 Fort McAlister, 113 Fort Monroe, 77 Fort Pulaski, 112 Fort Sumter, Confederate firing on, 10, 22, 23, 26, 43, 75, 90, 145, 164, 186, 226 “40 acres and a mule,” 116, 154 Fourteen Points, 196–197, 201 Fourteenth Amendment, alternate history of, 179, 180 nation-defining elements of, 170, 231 proposal of, 49, 52, 69, 82, 84 ratification of, 135–136, 137, 148, 152 France, relationship with Confederate States of America, 63, 86, 92–93, 103–104, 228 troops in Mexico, 104, 189 views on slavery, 20 Francis Joseph, as AustroHungarian emperor, 26 Franco-Prussian War, 86 Frederick, Maryland, 92 Fredericksburg, battle around, 24, 228 Confederate victory at, 90–91, 228 Free Soil, movement of, 1, 144 towns as, 3 free will, xiv Freedmen’s Bureau, alternate history of, 176–182 education goals of, 172 establishment of, 10, 82, 127, 151, 152, 158, 166, 231 Johnson’s veto of, 168–169, 187, 231 rights and provisions in, 176–177, 187, 231 Freeport Doctrine, 145 Fremont, John C., on slave ownership, 77, 78 French Foreign Legion, in alternate memoirs of Jefferson Davis, 29, 34–35, 36

French Revolution, 20 Fugitive Slave Act, 144 Fugitive Slave Law, 3, 78 Gabriel’s Plot of 1800, 4 Galveston, Union capture of, 47 Garfield, James A., 194 Garrison, William Lloyd, 2, 8 Geary, J. W., 115 General Conference of the Methodist Church, 192 General William J. Hardee: Old Reliable (Hughes), 111 Georgia, readmission of, 232 secession of, 9, 22, 43, 89, 145, 164 Germany, alternate histories of, 68 historic empire of, 87 views on slavery, 20 in World War I, 105, 195, 197, 201 in World War II, 54, 84, 175 Gettysburg, Battle of, alternate history of, 52, 101–105 Confederate troop strength at, 85 events leading to, 89–90 as turning point in Civil War, xiv, 25, 47, 50, 89–101 Union victory at, 25, 47, 50, 86, 229 Gettysburg (Sears), 91, 98 “Gettysburg Address,” 25, 99, 230 Gettysburg 1863: Campaign of Endless Echoes (Wheeler), 94, 97 Gilded Age, 154, 159, 192, 194 Girl Scouts, 114 Gladstone, William, 34 Glorieta Pass, 47 gold, coinage of, 194 discovery of, 144 Golden Rocket, 32 Golden Spike, 233 Gone with the Wind (Mitchell), 22, 118 Gordon, Eleanor Lytle Kinzie, 114, 115 Gordon, Juliette, 114 Gordon, William, 114 Gortchakov, Prince, 30 Gould, Jay, 49, 193 Grant, Ulysses S., alternate histories of, 51, 122 in alternate memoirs of Jefferson Davis, 33, 36

247

anti-Klan legislation signed by, 173 at Appomattox treaty signing, 100, 149 at Battle of Five Forks, 130 at Battle of the Wilderness, 230 at Battle of Wilderness, 230 command of Union armies, 24, 25, 47, 98, 229, 230 death of, 49 executive power as president, 192–193, 200 military career of, 48 pardon of Confederate sympathizers by, 136 political career of, 53 presidency/administration of, 48, 49, 53, 153–154, 167, 180, 233 Reconstruction during administration of, 53–54, 83, 136, 193 at River Queen conference, 129 siege at Vicksburg, 90, 229 speculation scandals during presidency of, 193, 234 Virginia Overland Campaign of, 230 war strategies of, 126 Great Depression, alternate histories of, 70 impact on African American populations, 84 New Deal program during, 198 Great Migration, 54, 155, 175, 179 Great Society, 198–199 Great Stock Market Crash, 198, 202 Great War, 181, 195 Greeley, Horace, on issue of slavery, 23, 78 as presidential candidate, 233 Green, Charles, 114 Green, Shields, 4, 7, 8 Grenada, 199 Griffith, D. W., 173 Guam, acquisition of, 50 Guatemala, 202 Gulf of Tonkin resolution, 199

habeas corpus, suspended right of, 100, 112, 186 Hail to the Chief, 132 Haiti Revolution, 2 “Half-Breeds,” 234 Halleck, Henry, 77 Hall’s Rifle Works, 6, 13

248

INDEX

Hamilton, Alexander, 42 Hamlin, Hannibal, 47, 52 Hancock, Winfield Scott, 101 Hanna, Marcus Alonzo, 194, 195 Hardee, William, alternate history of, 119–120 military tactics of, 113 opposing Sherman forces at Savannah, 111, 112, 113 Hardee’s Tactics, 113 Harding, Warren, presidency of, 197 Harpers Ferry, alternate history of Brown’s raid on, 12–16 Confederate capture of, 58, 62, 66–67 federal armory and arsenal at, 6, 7, 74 John Brown’s raid on, 3, 4–9, 74, 145, 186 Harper’s Weekly, 188 Harrison, Benjamin, 194 Hawaii, acquisition of, 50 Hayes, Rutherford B., disputed election of, 49, 154, 234 end of Reconstruction during administration of, 193–194 presidency of, 49, 154, 173, 174, 193 Hazlett, Albert, 4, 7, 8 Henry, Patrick, 42 Henry Hill, 46 Henry House Hill, 44–45 Heth, Henry, at Gettysburg battle, 93, 95 Higginson, Thomas Wentworth, 5 Hill, Ambrose Powell, 91 Hill, D. H., 61 His Soul Goes Marching On: Responses to John Brown and Harpers Ferry Raid (Finkelman, ed.), 7, 9 history, lessons of, xv Hitler, Adolf, rise to power, 69–70, 87, 105, 202 Holocaust, 87 Homeland Security, Department of, 199 Homestead Act, 30, 38, 155, 158, 159, 229 Homestead Bill, 188 Hood, John Bell, 109–110 Hooker, Joseph, at Battle of Antietam, 63, 67 command of Army of the Potomac, 45, 47, 92, 93, 229

Hoover, Herbert, presidency of, 197, 198 horses, 100 Howard, O. O., opposing Sherman’s forces, 117, 119 Howard, Oliver, as commissioner of Freedmen’s Bureau, 151 Howard’s Circular 13, 153 Howe, Samuel Gridley, 5 Hughes, Nathaniel, 111 Hunter, David, 78 Industrial Revolution, 174 Internet, impact of, 182 Iran, 202, 203 Iraq, 199, 203 Isabella, Queen, 26 Isabella II, Queen, 28, 32 Jackson, Andrew, in alternate histories, 122 presidency of, 185 Jackson, Conrad, 228, 229 Jackson, Thomas J. “Stonewall,” at Battle of Antietam, 58, 62, 63, 67 at Battle of Bull Run, 24, 44, 46, 51, 76 death of, 91, 229 legend of, 44–45, 46 war strategies of, 50 James Peninsula, 45 James River, 130, 227 Japan, alternate history of, xiv defeat of, xiv Jaszi, Oscar, xiii Jay, John, 42 jazz, 175 Jefferson, Thomas, Louisiana Purchase during administration of, 163 on states’ rights, 42 as Virginia native, 165 Jewish populations, in Middle East, 87 Jim Crow laws, following end of Reconstruction, 11, 49–50, 54, 84, 153, 155, 159, 174–175 segregation policies of, 174–175 “John Brown’s Body,” 8, 74 Johnson, Andrew, acquittal of, 192 alternate history of nonimpeachment of, 52, 199–203 alternate history of relationship with Congress, 176, 180

childhood and education of, 188 conflicts with Congress, 140, 151, 152, 167–168, 187–189, 191–192, 231, 232 death of, 189 impeachment proceedings against, xvii, 53, 148, 153, 167, 169, 189, 190, 191–192, 232 as Lincoln’s running mate, 187 political career of, 188–189 presidency/administration of, 47, 48, 52 racist views of, 168–169, 171 Reconstruction under administration of, 49, 53, 54, 150–153, 167, 187, 231 sworn in after Lincoln’s death, 134–135, 187, 188–189 threats against, 131 veto of Civil Rights Act, 135 veto of Freedmen’s Bureau Bill by, 168–169, 187 Johnson, Lyndon B., civil rights policies of, 85, 198–199 executive authority of, 198–199 foreign policies of, 198–199 Great Society policies of, 198–199 in Vietnam conflict, 198 Johnson, Reverdy, 188 Johnson, Robert U., 61 Johnston, Albert Sidney, 228 Johnston, Joseph E., in alternate histories, 121 in alternate memoirs of Jefferson Davis, 35, 36 at Battle of Bentonville, 117 command of Confederate troops, 44, 45, 109, 129, 230 Confederate forces in North Carolina, 129, 230 at First Bull Run, 46, 227 replacement of, 51 Joint Committee of Reconstruction, 231 Jones, Anson, 21 Joyner, Charles, 9 Juárez, Benito, in alternate memoirs of Jefferson Davis, 36–37 Mexican government of, 26, 27, 92 Julian, George W., 138

INDEX

Kagi, John Henri, 5, 6 Kansas, slavery status of, 3 Kansas-Nebraska Act, 3, 43, 90, 144, 186 Kennedy, John F., assassination of, 198 civil rights policies of, xiv, 85 Kennedy Farm, 74 Kennedy Farmhouse, 4 Kennesaw Mountain, 33, 109 Kentucky, neutral position of, 11 as slave state, 23, 43, 104, 127, 145, 226 as Union state, 43, 90, 104, 145, 226 Kentucky Resolve, 42 Kilpatrick, Judson, 111–112 King, Martin Luther, Jr., in Civil Rights Movement, xiv, 85, 140–141 speech at March on Washington, 85, 140–141 King Cotton, 1, 58, 86, 138–139, 155 Knights of Labor, 200 Ku Klux Klan Act, 173, 233 Ku Klux Klan (KKK), anti-Reconstruction movement of, 171–172 chivalric self-views of, 171–172 Cyclops in, 83 emergence of, 50, 53 federal prosecution of, 173, 233 formation and organization of, 83, 172, 173, 231 Giants in, 83 Grand Dragons in, 83 Grand Wizard in, 172 post-Civil War popularity of, 50, 53, 171–172 violence and intimidation tactics of, 11, 12, 53, 54, 83, 135, 153, 172, 231

La Crosse Democrat, 125 labor, alternate history as Second Civil War/Workers’ War, 181 child labor laws in, 197 children as, 42, 197 impact of Great Migration, 54, 155, 175, 179 movements of, 180–181 peonage system of, 176–182 replacing slavery system, 154, 166

serfdom in, 177 systems of, 42 See also sharecropping; slaves/slavery; tenant farming Land Grant Act, 229 Laos, 199 League of Gileadites, 3 League of Nations, 196, 197 Leary, Lewis Sheridan, 4, 6 Leaves of Grass (Whitman), 33 Lecompton Constitution, 144 Lee, Francis, 29 Lee, Henry, “Lighthorse Harry,” 29 Lee, Richard, 29, 42 Lee, Robert E., alternate histories of, 51, 105 in alternate memoirs of Jefferson Davis, 28, 29, 37 at Battle of Antietam, 63–66, 66–70, 78 at Battle of Chancellorsville, 229 at Battle of Five Forks, 130 at Battle of Gettysburg, 91–93, 94–95, 96–98 capture of John Brown by, 6, 13, 74 command of Confederate troops, 15, 23, 29, 75–76 health of, 97, 105 northern battle strategies of, 57, 58 plantation of, 23, 29 resignation from U.S. Army, 75, 227 at Second Battle of Bull Run, 57, 59, 93, 228 Special Order 191 of, 60–61, 66 “Sunrise Order” by, 98–99 surrender at Appomattox, 26, 48, 49, 100, 130, 149, 187, 231 war strategies of, 45, 47, 50, 57, 90–91, 93 Leeman, William H., 4, 6 Lee’s Order 191, 60–61, 66 The Legend of John Brown: A Biography and a History (Boyer), 8 Leopold Louis Philippe Marie Victor II of Belgium, 30 Liberal Republicans, 233 The Liberator, 2 Lincoln, Abraham, abolitionist views of, xvii, 8, 14, 22, 75, 145, 164 alternate histories of, 52, 121, 122

249

alternate history of full second term of, 137–141 alternate history of Thirteenth Amendment, 155–160 in alternate memoirs of Jefferson Davis, 29–30, 31, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37 assassination of, xiv, xvii, 48, 52, 100, 132–134, 149, 150, 157, 187, 231 conference on River Queen, 129 in debates with Douglas, 73, 145 developing Emancipation Proclamation, 73–85 Emancipation Proclamation issued by, 2, 9–10, 11, 47, 63, 64–65, 66, 73–85 First Inaugural Address by, 90 foreign policies of, 26 gathering support for Thirteenth Amendment, 165–166 “Gettysburg Address” by, 25, 99, 230 platform and election of, 9, 14, 22, 23, 43, 73, 75, 90, 145, 164, 186, 225–226 “Preliminary Proclamation” by, 78 presidential style of, 137–138, 167, 168 Reconstruction terms and plans of, 126–129, 135, 172, 186, 230 reelection of, 125, 231 secession of Confederate states after election of, 75 Second Inaugural Address by, 128–129, 134, 231 suspension of writ of habeas corpus by, 100, 186 Ten Percent Plan of, 148, 150, 155, 167, 186 threats against, 125–126 Lincoln, Mary Todd, 121, 132, 133 Lincoln as They Saw Him (Mitgang), 125 Lincoln-Douglas debates, 73, 145 The Lincoln Reader (Angle), 129 Little Ogeechee River, 111 Litwack, Leon, 153 Lochner v. New York, 137 Locke, John, 42 Lodge, Henry Cabot, 197 Longstreet, James, 24 at battle around Fredericksburg, 229 at Battle of Gettysburg, 24, 91, 94–96, 98–99

250

INDEX

Louisiana, African American voting populations in, 135, 171 black governor of, 135 as historic foreign colony, 174 readmission of, 150 Reconstruction government in, 126, 127, 128, 138, 230 secession of, 9, 22, 23, 43, 89, 145, 164, 226 Louisiana Purchase, 42, 43, 143, 163 Ludendorff, Erich, xiv lynchings, 83, 84, 153, 172, 176 Madison, James, 42 Mahoney, Olivia, 155 Maine, as free state, 185 Malcolm X, xiv Manassas Junction, First Battle of Bull Run at, 43–46, 76, 227 Second Battle of Bull Run at, 57, 59, 93, 228 Mansfield, Earl of, 19 Mansfield, Joseph, at Battle of Antietam, 63, 67 March on Washington, 84–85 Maria Cristina, 32 Marlborough, Duke of, 114 Marne, Battle of, 201 Marye’s Heights, 228 Maryland, as border state, 43, 57–58, 60 as slave state, 23, 43, 90, 104, 145, 226 slavery abolished in, 127, 149, 157 as Union state, 90, 104, 145, 226 Mason, James M., 9, 14, 85 Massachusetts, colonial settlements in, 41–42 Puritan communities in, 42 Massachusetts Bay colony, 41 Matthews Hill, 46 Maximilian, Ferdinand, as emperor of Mexico, 15, 26–27, 28, 92 McCardle, Eliza, 188 McClellan, George B., in alternate Battle of Antietam, 66–67 alternate histories of, 15, 52, 122 at Battle of Antietam, 63–66, 64, 78 battle strategies of, 46, 47, 59, 67

command of Army of the Potomac, 44, 45, 46, 47, 59, 227 James Peninsula campaign by, 51 as presidential candidate, 47, 103, 148, 187 removed from command of Army of the Potomac, 229 McDowell, Irwin, command of Army of the Potomac, 44, 45, 47 at First Battle of Bull Run, 46, 76, 227 McKinley, William, death of, 195 education and political career of, 194–195 foreign policies of, 195 presidency of, 194–195 McLaws, Lafayette, opposing Sherman’s forces at Savannah, 111, 112, 119 McPherson, James M., 50–51, 62, 75, 90, 99, 103 Meade, George G., command of Army of the Potomac, 45, 47, 93 at Gettysburg battle, 93, 94–96, 98–99, 100, 101, 229 Melville, Herman, 117–118 Memoirs of Gen. W. T. Sherman, Written by Himself (Sherman), 116 mental stimulation counterfactuals, xvi Meriam, Francis Jackson, 6, 7 Meriam, Jackson, 4 Merrimac, 24, 227 Methodist Church, 115 Mexican-American War, 2, 43, 44, 144, 186, 188 Mexican Cession, 144 Mexican War, 48 Mexico, alternate histories of, 15 French troops in, 189 Maximilian as emperor of, 26–27, 92 Reform War in, 26 slavery outlawed in, 2 Milledgeville, Georgia, 110, 112 Miller’s Cornfield, 63 Milton, George F., 168 Mississippi, African American voting populations in, 135, 171 secession of, 9, 22, 23, 43, 89, 145, 164, 226

Missouri, as slave state, 23, 43, 104, 143, 145, 185, 226 slavery abolished in, 127, 149, 157 as Union state, 43, 90, 104, 145, 185, 226 Missouri Compromise, 3, 43, 143, 144, 145, 146, 185 Mitchell, B. W., 61 Mitchell, Margaret, 22, 118 Mitgang, Herbert, 125 Mobile, Union capture of, 47 Monitor, 24, 227 Monroe, James, Missouri Compromise during administration of, 185 as Virginia governor, 4 Monroe Doctrine, 27, 92, 101, 104 Montgomery, Benjamin, 39 Morrill Land Grant College Act, 155, 159 “Mugwumps,” 234 Murray, William, 19 muskets, 113 Myers, Gustavus A., 130 Napoleon, Louis, 92 Napoleon III, alternate history as Confederate ally, 86 French interests in Confederacy, 20, 21, 26, 28, 30 troops in Mexico, 104, 189 Nat Turner Revolt of 1831, 4 National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), 11, 54 National Union Convention, 126 Native Americans, alternate histories during Civil War, 15–16, 68 military campaigns against, 136 reservation system for, 193 Nebraska Territory, 3, 144 Nevada, 144 New Deal, 84 New Freedom program, 196 New Mexico, 104, 144 New Orleans, Union capture of, 24, 47 New York Tribune, 78 Newby, Dangerfield, 4, 6 Nicaragua, alternate histories of, 15 Nicholas I, 30 Nieboer, H. J., 20 Nineteenth Amendment, 69

INDEX

Nixon, Richard M., alternate history of, 202 executive authority of, 199 foreign policies of, 199 nomothetic counterfactuals, xvi North Carolina, secession of, 11, 23, 43, 75, 90, 145, 164, 226 North Star, 5 Northwest Ordinance of 1787, 143 Northwest Ordinance of 1820, 146 Oates, Stephen B., 9 Ortega, Jesus Gonzalez, 37 Osawatomie River, 74 Our American Cousin, 131 Pacific Railroad Act, 229 Paine, Lewis, 131–132, 133 Palestine, 87 Palmerston, Viscount, 93 Panic of 1857, 186 Panic of 1873, 233 Parker, John, 132 Parker, Theodore, 5 Parks, Rosa, 175 The Partisan Imperative: The Dynamics of American Politics before the Civil War (Sibley), 147 Peace Democrats, 99, 100–101, 103, 186 Peace Party, 99 Pearl Harbor, bombing of, 202 Pemberton, John C., 229 Pendleton, George, 187 Peninsula Campaign, 51, 76 peonage labor system, 176–182 Petersburg, alternate history of battle at, 52 siege of, 230 Union capture of, 130 Pettigrew, James, 93 Phantoms of a Blood-Stained Period (Bierce), 34 Philippine-American War, 175 Philippines, acquisition of, 50 Phillips, Wendell, 2 Pickett, George E., 97 Pickett’s Charge, 97 Pierce, Franklin, on issue of slavery, 113, 186 presidency of, 186 Pierpont, Francis H., 165 Pinchback, P. B. S., 135 Pinkerton guards, 122 Pipe Creek, 94, 101 Pittman, S. E., 61

Pittsburg Landing, battle at, 51 Pius X, 33 Pizarro, Francisco, xiv planter system/class, in Southern states, 5, 54, 126, 154, 164, 178, 179 Plessy v. Ferguson, 137, 153, 170 Polk, James K., on annexation of Texas, 21 declaration of war against Mexico, 185–186 Pope, John, at Battle of Bull Run, 24, 228 Populist Movement, 181, 200 Porter, David D., at River Queen conference, 129 Portugal, slavery outlawed in, 2 Posse Comitatus Act, 136 Potomac River, 61 Pottawatomie Creek, 74 Pottawatomie River, 3 “Preliminary Proclamation,” 78 Presidential Reconstruction, 169, 171 Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction (Ten Percent Plan), 150, 155, 167, 186, 230 Progressive Movement, 160 Progressive School, 172 Prosser, Gabriel, slave rebellion led by, 2, 4, 5 psychohistory, 8 Puebla, Battle of, 37 Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, 201 Purge This Land with Blood: A Biography of John Brown (Oates), 9 Puritans, colonial settlements in North America, 1, 41 Quakers, colonial settlements in North America, 1 Querétaro, Mexico, 27 Quinn, Luke, 6 Radical Reconstruction, 188–189 Radical Republicans, abolitionist views of, 147–148, 155, 167, 168, 172, 227 congressional majority of, 167, 169, 176, 189, 190, 191 impeachment proceedings against Johnson by, 189, 190, 191 opposing black vote, 128 passage of Reconstruction Acts by, 152, 232

251

on readmitting rebel states, 135, 230, 232 railroads, Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O), 6, 7, 74 Central Pacific Railroad Company, 229 national system of, 154, 159, 233 transcontinental, 232 Union Pacific Railroad Company, 229 Ransom, Roger, 93, 149 Rappahannock River, 45, 51 Rathbone, Henry, 133 Reagan, John, 91 Reagan, Ronald, alternate history of, 202 executive authority of, 199 foreign policies of, 199 Reconstruction, alternate histories of, xvii, 53–54, 69, 176–182 Ashley’s bill of, 127, 128 Black Codes during, 11, 49–50, 54, 84, 153, 155, 159 carpetbaggers and scalawags associated with, 82, 135, 152–153, 158, 171, 172, 173 civil rights measures during, 135, 136 Congressional Reconstruction in, 169, 171 defined, 163 end of, 136, 153, 154, 173, 174 under Grant’s administration, 49 historiography of, 172 impact on Southern economy, 50, 81, 187 Lincoln’s terms and plans for, 126–129, 135, 172, 186, 230 as military occupation and rule, 82–83, 135, 151, 152, 173, 232 Presidential Reconstruction in, 169, 171 process of, 48, 83, 100, 163–176 segregation and racial practices during, 10, 82 social issues in, 69 Southern views of, 81, 187 as transition from slave to free society, 126, 148, 166 violence against freedmen during, 193

252

INDEX

Reconstruction Act(s), 135, 148, 152, 169–170, 232 The Reconstruction Presidents (Simpson), 53 Red Shirts, 53 Redeemer Democrats, 167, 172, 176 Redeemers, 174 “redemption,” defined, 167, 172 process of, 153, 154, 174, 175 Reform War, 26 Republican Party, abolitionist views of, 77, 165 as “red” states, 176 formation of, 144, 146 Liberal Republican faction in, 233 scalawag members of, 135 strength in South during Reconstruction, 53 Thirteenth Amendment in party platform of, 148 See also Radical Republicans Revolutionary War, antislavery movement during, 1 Reynolds, John, at Gettysburg battle, 94, 95 Richmond, as Confederate capital, 11, 25, 51, 187 Union capture of, 187 Rifle and Light Infantry Tactics (Hardee), 113 rifled muskets, 113 The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government (Davis), 27 River Queen, 129 RMS Lusitania, 201 RMS Trent, 85 Rolfe, John, 41 Roosevelt, Franklin D., alternate history of, 202 executive power of, 198, 202 New Deal program of, 84, 198 Roosevelt, Theodore, presidential power of, 195, 201 Ruffin, Edmund, 226 Russia, Bolshevik Revolution in, 68, 87 in Cold War, 198, 202 views on slavery, 20 Sack of Lawrence, 3 St. John’s River, 116 Sanborn, Franklin, 5 Savannah, alternate history of, 118–122 Union capture of, xvii, 25, 29, 110–111, 112–116

Savannah River, 111, 113 Saxton, Ida, 194 scalawags, 82, 135, 153, 171 Schlesinger, Arthur, 202 Scott, Winfield, 44, 51, 226 Sears, Stephen W., 91, 98 secessionism, cause of, 112 states’ rights and, 22–23, 104, 164–165 Second Battle of Bull Run, 91, 93 Second Confiscation Act, 78 Second Great Awakening, 1 Second Niagara Movement, 10 Second Samoan Civil War, 175 Second Schleswig War, 33 Second Wheeling Convention, 165 “Secret Six,” 5, 8 sectional conflict theory, 146–147 segregation, institution of, 174–175 policies of, 174 Seminary Ridge, 96 Semmes, Raphael, 31 “separate” but “equal” doctrine, 137, 153, 170 serfdom, 177 Seven Days’ Battles, 93 Seven Pines, Battle at, 52 Seward, William H., abolitionist views of, 75, 225 advising on Emancipation Proclamation, 78 alternate histories of, 86 in alternate memoirs of Jefferson Davis, 30, 33 assassination attempt against, 132, 133 purchase of Alaska by, 189 as Secretary of State, 21, 26, 64, 85, 149, 231 views on Johnson as Lincoln’s running mate, 188 Seymour, Horatio, 232 Seymour, Thomas, 103 sharecropping, 11, 154, 158, 177, 178, 181 Sharpsburg, battle at, 61, 62, 91, 228 Shenandoah Valley, 46, 50, 92, 93 Shepherd, Hayward, 6 Sherman, Ellen, 122 Sherman, William Tecumseh, alternate history of march across Georgia, 51, 118–122 in alternate memoirs of Jefferson Davis, 29, 30, 33, 34–35, 36 capture of Vicksburg by, 47

loyalty of troops led by, 117–118 march across Georgia led by, 126, 148, 230–231 at River Queen conference, 129 scorched-earth policy of, xvii, 22, 25, 26, 27, 29, 30, 33, 34–35, 109–118, 230–231 at Shiloh, 47 Special Field Order, No. 15 by, 116–117 views on Southern civilian populations, 110 Shiloh, battle at, 24, 33, 47, 48, 52, 228 Sibley, Henry Hopkins, 47 Sibley, Joel, 146, 147 silver, coinage of, 194 Simpson, Brooks D., 53 Sitting Bull, 36 “Slaughterhouse Case” 83 US 36 (1873), 137 slaves/slavery, abolishment of system, 10, 80 alternate histories of, 68, 155–160 in alternate memoirs of Jefferson Davis, 28, 38 anti-slavery movements, 144, 164 cost of, 41, 105 escaped/runaway, 145 grapevine telegraph of, 226–227 historic worldwide practices of, 19–21, 28 impact of Emancipation Proclamation on, 64, 65, 80, 104, 166 impact of Thirteenth Amendment on, 143–155 Lincoln on issue of, xvii, 8, 9, 14, 22, 75, 145, 164 literacy of, 82 in new western territories, 90, 104, 143, 164, 186 as “peculiar institution,” 2, 89, 147, 157 rebellions by, 2, 4–5, 73 sectional conflict of, 146–147 in Southern cotton production, 41 as spoils of war, 77, 145 transition to free status, 126, 148, 166 worldwide abolition of, 2 See also abolitionism; African American populations; labor Slidell, John, 85

INDEX

Slocumb, Henry, 117 Smith, Gerrit, 5 Smith, Isaac, 4, 74 Smith, Kirby, 50, 51, 135 smoothbore muskets, 113 Soldier’s National Cemetery, 230 Somme, Battle of, 201 South Carolina, lands distributed to former slaves in, 116–117 secession of, 9, 21, 22–23, 43, 89, 90, 145, 163, 164, 219–223, 226 South Mountain, battle at, 58, 60, 61, 66, 67 Soviet Union, in Cold War, 198, 202 fall of, 202 Spain, views on slavery, 2, 20 Spanish-American War, 175, 194, 195 Special Field Order, No. 15, 116–117 Special Order 191, 60–61, 66 “Stalwarts,” 234 Standard Oil, 201 Stanton, Edwin M., Johnson’s attempted dismissal of, 190, 232 as Secretary of War, 49, 78, 110, 116, 133, 153, 232 States’ Rights Democratic Party, 167 Stearns, George Luther, 5 Stephens, Andrew, 48 Stevens, Aaron D., 4–5, 6, 8 Stevens, Thaddeus, as Radical Republican, 138, 147, 148, 178, 191, 192 Stone Bridge, 44 Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 20, 21 Stuart, J. E. B., Confederate cavalry command of, 92–93 Sudley Ford, 46 suffrage, movement of, 69 Sumner, Charles, 148, 233 Sumner, Edwin, at Battle of Antietam, 63–64 Sunken Road, 64 “Sunrise Order,” 98–99 Taft, William Howard, executive power of, 195, 201 Tampico incident, 175 Taney, Roger, 144 Tappan, Arthur, 2 Tasker-Smith, Consul W., 114 Taylor, Stewart, 4, 6 Taylor, Zachary, in Mexican War, 48

Ten Percent Plan, 148, 150, 155, 167, 186, 230 tenant farming, 11, 154, 177, 178 Tennessee, in Confederacy, 11 Johnson as military governor of, 188 readmission of, 150, 230 secession of, 23, 43, 75, 90, 145, 164, 226 Tennessee River, 24 Tenure of Office Act, 49, 153, 189, 190, 191–192, 199, 232 Tetlock, Philip E., xiii, xv Texas, annexation of, 188 British interests in, 19, 21 as former Mexican territory, 144, 174 readmission of, 231 Republic of, 19, 21 secession of, 9, 22, 43, 89, 145, 164, 226 statehood of, 21, 22 Thirteenth Amendment, acceptance and adoption of, 126, 127 alternate history of, 155–160, 179 Democratic Party opposition to, 147 Lincoln’s gathering support for, 125–126, 126, 127, 165–166 official proclamation of, 135, 141 passage and ratification of, 149–155, 231 proposal of rights in, xvii, 2, 10, 11, 47, 49, 69, 80, 81–82, 143–155 role in Reconstruction policy in, 149–155 Thomas, Benjamin P., 133 Thompson, Dauphin, 4, 6 Thompson, William, 4, 6 Thurmond, Strom, 167 Tidd, Charles P., 4, 7 Tilden, Samuel J., as presidential candidate, 136, 154, 159, 234 tobacco, cultivation and production of, 41 Trans-Mississippi Theater, 47 Travis, Joseph, 73 Treaty of Appomattox Courthouse, 15 Treaty of Brussels, 28, 30, 38, 39 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, 144, 186

253

Treaty of Versailles, 196, 197, 201 Trent Affair, 85 Truman, Harry, desegregation policies of, 84 executive power of, 198 Trumbull, Lyman, 128 Turner, Frederick Jackson, 175 Turner, George W., 6 Turner, Nat, anti-slavery rebellion led by, 2, 4, 73 Turner’s Gap, 61 Turtledove, Harry, xiii Tuscarora, 32 Tyler, John, 21

Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Stowe), 20, 21, 22 Underground Railroad, 3 Underwood Act, 196 Union, blockade of, 58 readmission of seceded states to, 49 states in, 11 Union League, 54, 192 Union Navy, 114 capture of New Orleans, 228 naval blockade by, 105, 113, 114, 129, 227 Union Pacific Railroad Company, 229 Union troops, at Battle of Antietam, 60, 61, 62, 63–66 black soldiers in, 75, 80, 146 casualties/injuries in, 24, 62, 78, 90, 96, 228 enlistment period of, 227 54th Regiment of Colored Troops in, 75 garrison at Fort Sumter, 22, 23 I Corps in, 63 II Corps in, 63 IX Corps in, 64 naval blockade by, 105, 113, 129, 227 supplies/provisions for, 57, 110 XII Corps in, 63 See also Army of the Potomac; Army of the West United Negro Improvement Association, 54 United States, Department of Homeland Security, 199 domestic policies of, 175 expansionist policies of, 175, 180 foreign policies of, 175, 180, 195, 200–201

254

INDEX

as global power, 200–201 immigration to, 174, 180 national identity after Civil War, 180 terrorist attacks on, 203 United States Census Bureau, 175 United States Constitution, Thirteenth Amendment to, xvii, 2, 10, 11, 47, 49, 52, 69, 80, 81–82, 125–126, 135, 141, 143–155, 165, 230 Fourteenth Amendment to, 10, 49, 52, 69, 82, 84, 135–136, 137, 148, 152, 170, 231 Fifteenth Amendment to, 10, 49, 52, 69, 82, 135–136, 148, 153, 170–171, 233 Nineteenth Amendment to, 69 “three-fifths clause” in, 82 United States Navy, 129 United States Supreme Court, civil rights cases reviewed in, 136–137, 170 USS Maine, 195 Utah, 144 Vallandigham, Clement L., 103 Vance, Zebulon, 112 Vesey, Denmark, slave rebellion led by, 2, 4 Vicksburg, alternate history of, 102 siege at, 22, 25, 90, 229, 230 Union capture of, 47, 48, 50, 52, 99, 100, 102, 229 Victoria, Queen, in alternate memoirs of Jefferson Davis, 34 relationship with United States, 26, 28, 30 Vietnam War, 198 Virginia, in Confederacy, 11 Lincoln’s reconstruction plans for, 130 secession of, 23, 43, 75, 90, 145, 164, 165, 226 slave rebellion in, 2

Virginia, 227 Virginia Military Academy, 74 Virginia Resolve, 42 vote/voting, African American right to, 83–84, 127, 131, 152, 160, 166, 174, 175 Redeemer obstacles to, 174, 175 voter registration for, 175 women’s right to, 181 Voting Rights Act, 175, 176 Wade, Benjamin, 167 Wade-Davis Bill, as Congressional Reconstruction plan, 48, 127, 148, 150, 157, 167, 186 Lincoln’s veto/compromise of, 48, 127, 148, 150, 157, 167, 186, 230 Walker, David, 2 Wallace, George, 176 Wallace, W. H. L., 228 War between the States, 27 War Democrats, 103 Washington, Booker T., 83–84 Washington, George, 6, 74, 165 Washington, Lewis W., 6 Watie, Stand, 27, 36 Waynesboro, Georgia, 111, 112 Webster, Daniel, 144 Weld, Theodore, 2 Welles, Gideon, 78 Welles, Sumner, 64 West Point, 113 West Virginia, slavery abolished in, 127 statehood of, 90, 165, 226 Wheeler, Richard, 94, 97 Whig Party, 9, 144, 146 Whiskey Ring scandal, 234 White League, 233 white supremacy, movement of, 83, 159 Whitman, George, 33 Whitman, Walt, 33 Wiebe, Robert, 174 Wilberforce, William, 20 Wilderness, Battle of, 230

Wilhelm, Kaiser, 86, 87 Wilhelm II, in alternate history, 122 Williams, A. S., 61 Williamsburg, battle at, 52 Williamsport, Maryland, 98 Wilmot, David, 144 Wilmot Proviso, 144 Wilson, Henry, 167 Wilson, James, 147 Wilson, Woodrow, alternate history of, 201 Birth of a Nation endorsed by, 172 death of, 197 education of, 196 executive power of, 196–197, 201 Fourteen Points by, 196–197, 201 New Freedom program of, 197 political career of, 196–197 on self-determination, 23 U.S. entrance in World War I, 181, 196, 197, 201 Winthrop, John, 42 Wise, Henry, 8 women’s suffrage movement, 181 Woodworth, Steven E., 92, 93 World War I, alternate histories of, xiv, 68–69 alternate history of U.S. role in, 181–182 black labor force during, 154–155, 175 casualties/injuries during, 195 labor shortage during, 54 U.S. role in, 105 World War II, black labor force during, 84, 175 black political strength after, 54 Wyatt-Brown, Bertram, 7 Wyoming, 144 Zornow, William Frank, 126, 129