After carefully going through all of the materials from the Module, post your Historical Analysis Essay (HAE) and reply to at least two of your classmates. You will be evaluated according to the Discu

Mod 14 Intro and Outcomes

Abraham Lincoln, Slavery, and the Civil War

Student Learning Outcomes:

Upon completion of this lesson, students will be able to:

1. explain Abraham Lincol s opinion concerning slavery

2. analyze the Emancipation Proclamation and its impact on the Civil War

3. describe the course of the Civil War

4. analyze the impact of the Civil War on American society

Introductory Essay by Downs

Upon the election of Abraham Lincoln to the office of president of the United States in 1860, several southern states begin the process of seceding from the union. Not surprisingly, South Carolina would be the first slave state to secede in December 1860 before Lincoln was even inaugurated. Lincol s election was the proverbial straw that broke the came s back. Lincoln had no power to abolish slavery in the states where it existed, nor did he have any intention of doing so. Lincoln was no abolitionist. But that is how southerners thought of Lincoln no matter what Lincoln said to the contrary. What was Lincol s attitude towards slavery?

Lincoln and slavery

Abraham Lincoln said that he had always been against slavery however there is little evidence of this until later in his political career. Lincoln had in fact defended a slave owner on occasion as a practicing lawyer in Springfield Illinois. Lincoln viewed black people as most white northerners did and that was as inferior to whites. But many northern whites who held this racist opinion were still opposed to the institution of slavery, so too was Lincoln. Lincoln remarked that every person was entitled to the fruits of their own labor. Slavery robbed African Americans of the fruits of their own labor. Lincoln had been a member of the Whig Party early in his career because the Whigs stood for markets, commerce, opportunity that allowed one to escape the drudgery of farm labor and rise in social standing. This was the very thing that Lincoln himself had done. His father, Thomas Lincoln, had often loaned the young Lincoln out to neighbors for manual labor on nearby farms. The money earned from this labor went, not to Abraham Lincoln, but to his father who had legal claim to his son until his twenty-first birthday. When Lincoln turned 21, he left the farm and his father and never went back to either. Never again would he be denied the fruits of his own labor. Lincoln opposed slavery on principle and morality rather than on ideas of racial equality.

Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation

When the war began in 1861, Lincoln remarked that if he was lucky, he would have God on his side, but that he must have Kentucky. Kentucky, a slave state, had remained loyal to the union and not seceded. This was also true for Missouri, Delaware and Maryland, although Maryland probably would have if Lincoln had allowed them. Since Washington, D.C. was in between Virginia and Maryland, the capital would have been surrounded had Lincoln not prevented Maryland from secession. Lincoln did so by suspending habeas corpus, the right to being charged with a crime rather than suffer arbitrary detention and detained several thousand people suspected of being sympathetic to the Confederacy. Lincoln has received much criticism for violating civil liberties (something that occurs in all wars) however the constitution does give specific authority to suspend habeas corpus in times of open rebellion. I think southern secession qualifies as open rebellion.

Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in January of 1863 and has been known as the Great Emancipator ever since. Is this an accurate characterization of Lincoln? The Emancipation Proclamation freed all of the slaves in states in open rebellion to the union. It did not free slaves in states that were under Union control or who had never left the Union, like Kentucky. The criticism has been that Lincoln freed the slaves he could not reach and did nothing for the slaves he could. Why did Lincoln do this?

The Emancipation Proclamation essentially applied to those slaves in states still at war with the Union. The Proclamation was a wartime declaration. The authority to issue it was based on being at war. If Lincoln had freed slaves in states not at war with the union would be to invalidate the very authority to issue it and thus easily open it up to legal challenge in the courts. More importantly, how do you think Kentucky might have reacted to all of their slaves being freed? It might easily have driven them to join the Confederacy. Lincoln was in a delicate situation and every decision had far reaching consequences and implications for the nation.

Lincoln and African Americans

Lincoln entered the White House weary about African Americans serving in the army. But African Americans proved to be incredibly important in the Union cause. Lincoln would visit with wounded soldiers back in Washington, D.C. There he would talk to many of the wounded African American soldiers and grew quite fond and proud of their dedication and sacrifice. Lincol s opinion about black people changed throughout the course of the war and Lincoln became a champion for political and legal rights for African American soldiers who had fought in the Civil War. Frederick Douglas commented that he was little impressed with the rather cold reception he and other African Americans had received from Lincoln early in his presidency but that Lincoln had demonstrated the ability to change his mind and attitudes about black people as he got to know them more and more. Douglass became a great champion of Abraham Lincoln and his legacy after he was assassinated on April 14, 1865.

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Figur 15. This photograph by John Reekie, entitled, A burial party on the battle-field of Cold Harbor drives home the brutality and devastation wrought by the Civil War. Here, in April 1865, African Americans collect the bones of soldiers killed in Virginia during General Ulysses S. Gran s Wilderness Campaign of Ma June 1864.

Chapter Outline

15. The Origins and Outbreak of the Civil War

15. Early Mobilization and War

15. 1863: The Changing Nature of the War

15. The Union Triumphant

In May 1864, General Ulysses S. Grant ordered the Unio s Army of the Potomac to cross the Rapidan River in Virginia. Grant knew that Confederate general Robert E. Lee would defend the Confederate capital at Richmond at all costs, committing troops that might otherwise be sent to the Shenandoah or the Deep South to stop Union general William Tecumseh Sherman from capturing Atlanta, a key Confederate city. For two days, the Army of the Potomac fought Le s troops in the Wilderness, a wooded area along the Rapidan River. Nearly ten thousand Confederate soldiers were killed or wounded, as were more than seventeen thousand Union troops. A few weeks later, the armies would meet again at the Battle of Cold Harbor, where another fifteen thousand men would be wounded or killed. As in many battles, the bodies of those who died were left on the field where they fell. A year later, African Americans, who were often called upon to perform menial labor for the Union army (Figure 15.1), collected the skeletal remains of the dead for a proper burial. The state of the graves of many Civil War soldiers partly inspired the creation of Memorial Day, a day set aside for visiting and decorating the graves of the dead.

John Brown's address to the court

Address of John Brown to the Virginia Court at Charles Town, Virginia on November 2, 1859

I have, may it please the court, a few words to say.

In the first place, I deny everything but what I have all along admitted, -- the design on my part to free slaves. I intended certainly to have made a clean thing of that matter, as I did last winter, when I went into Missouri and took slaves without the snapping of a gun on either side, moved them through the country, and finally left them in Canada. I designed to do the same thing again, on a larger scale. That was all I intended. I never did intend murder, or treason, or the destruction of property, or to excite or incite slaves to rebellion, or to make insurrection.

I have another objection; and that is, it is unjust that I should suffer such a penalty. Had I interfered in the manner which I admit, and which I admit has been fairly proved (for I admire the truthfulness and candor of the greater portion of the witnesses who have testified in this case), -- had I so interfered in behalf of the rich, the powerful, the intelligent, the so-called great, or in behalf of any of their friends -- either father, mother, sister, wife, or children, or any of that class -- and suffered and sacrificed what I have in this interference, it would have been all right; and every man in this court would have deemed it an act worthy of reward rather than punishment.

The court acknowledges, as I suppose, the validity of the law of God. I see a book kissed here which I suppose to be the Bible, or at least the New Testament. That teaches me that all things whatsoever I would that men should do to me, I should do even so to them. It teaches me further to "remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them." I endeavored to act up to that instruction. I say, I am too young to understand that God is any respecter of persons. I believe that to have interfered as I have done -- as I have always freely admitted I have done -- in behalf of His despied poor, was not wrong, but right. Now if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments. -- I submit; so let it be done!

Let me say one word further.

I feel entirely satisfied with the treatment I have received on my trial. Considering all the circumstances, it has been more generous than I expected. I feel no consciousness of my guilt. I have stated from the first what was my intention, and what was not. I never had any design against the life of any person, nor any disposition to commit treason, or excite slaves to rebel, or make any general insurrection. I never encouraged any man to do so, but always discouraged any idea of any kind.

Let me say also, a word in regard to the statements made by some to those conncected with me. I hear it has been said by some of them that I have induced them to join me. But the contrary is true. I do not say this to injure them, but as regretting their weakness. There is not one of them but joined me of his own accord, and the greater part of them at their own expense. A number of them I never saw, and never had a word of conversation with, till the day they came to me; and that was for the purpose I have stated.

Now I have done.