America in the 1860s and 1870s 6 Slaves on a cotton plantation talk about escaping to freedom in the 1800s By 1860 slavery had practically disappeared from the North But the slave system still flourished in the South where the economy was dependent upon the cotton rice tobacco and sugar grown on large plantations worked by slaves In contrast the North’s economy was based on small farms and businesses In general white northerners did not support equality for slaves but most believed slavery was wrong And almost all believed the South had no right to break up the Union Most white southerners on the other hand believed not only that slavery was necessary for their economic survival but also that it was morally right and actually good for the slaves themselves The entire southern way of life they believed rested on the continuation of slavery Civil War SIV-uhl WAWR The conflict between the Union and the 11 southern states that made up the Confederacy fought between 1861 and 1865 In 1860 slaves in the South had no power to free themselves or even to discuss their situation with their owners They had no rights at all and the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision in 1857 said in effect that a slave had no consideration as a citizen with the same rights as whites Slaves hoped and waited for Jubilee the day of freedom which they fervently believed would soon come A Decade of War and Peace Despite Lincoln’s pleas in April 1861 southern forces bombarded the Union fortress of Fort Sumter in the harbor of Charleston South Carolina With this act the Civil War began During the next four years more than 600,000 Americans died fighting other Americans the highest American death toll of any war before or since When the war ended in April 1865 the South and its economy lay in ruins The North on the other hand emerged from the war a prosperous and thriving region
America in the 1860s and 1870s 7 The Civil War Soldier The average soldier during the Civil War was usually a temporary volunteer Unlike the armies of Europe where soldiers were professionals millions of ordinary men from many different professions made up the Union and Confederate armies Some were farmers others factory workers and some had their own businesses Slaves and freed slaves served on both sides of the war Later in the war both the North and the South began drafting men into their armies But most of the forces of both sides continued to be men who volunteered to fight Men enlisted for many different reasons Some southerners did so to defend slavery Other southerners enlisted to defend their states and towns from invasion by the Union army In the beginning most volunteers in the North enlisted to defend the Union and were not trying to end slavery But as the war progressed many Union soldiers saw the horrible and ugly conditions of slavery up close as their armies crossed the South Marcus Spiegel a German-born Jew who enlisted in an Ohio regiment witnessed the cruelties of slavery when his unit went into Louisiana Spiegel who at first did not want to fight to end slavery changed his mind writing that Since I am here I have learned and seen more of what the horror of slavery was than I ever knew before The Union army set 18 years as the minimum age for enlistment However many boys under 18 wanted to get away from home and were able to enlist sometimes with the help of the recruiting officer who would pretend not to know that a young man was underage Henry C Matrau for example was only 14 years old when he enlisted in a Wisconsin unit in 1862 The enlistment officers laughed and winked at one another as the boy stuffed papers in his shoes to make himself look taller Even knowing he was under 18 they allowed him to enlist Some 10,000 boys under age 18 enlisted legally as drummer boys and musicians But perhaps as many as 800,000 enlistees were underage some as young as 14 or 15 The Confederate army also had many underage boys who like their counterparts in the North were eager to leave home and find adventure in the army and in combat The average soldier in the Civil War paid the ultimate price of war Some 600,000 soldiers died most of diseases such as pneumonia whooping cough diphtheria and infections from wounds received in battle The casualties during the Civil War exceeded the casualties of all other American wars combined
America in the 1860s and 1870s 8 Citizens of Washington D C celebrate the abolition of slavery The needs of the huge Union army led to the growth of existing industries and the creation of new ones ranging from the manufacture of clothing to the production of heavy weapons All across the North from the coast of New England to the banks of the Mississippi River factories and farms prospered in the wake of the war But the greatest change was the end of slavery More than 4 million slaves gained their freedom However their fate after 1865 and the fate of the South as a whole became the subject of a very intense conflict between the president and the Congress Andrew Johnson succeeded or followed Lincoln as president after the assassination of Lincoln in April of 1865
Johnson was a stubborn southern As president however he turned out America in the 1860s and 1870s 9 born man who had supported the Union He believed that only the president had the authority to decide Reconstruction policy Those are the terms under which the South would return to the Union Many Republicans in Congress disagreed however especially with the president’s lenient and forgiving policies toward former Confederate leaders In addition Johnson saw no need for the government to protect the former slaves from their masters Johnson in fact hated former slaves Members of Congress on the other hand were determined to be tough on the South and they passed laws to protect the newly freed slaves Johnson refused to compromise and tried to block Congress at every turn The conflict between Congress and the president finally led to Johnson’s impeachment and to his trial in the Senate Impeachment is a formal accusation of a crime by the House of Representatives The House found him not guilty by just one vote in the spring of 1868 Johnson left office on March 4 1869 much to the relief of most people in the country The 1870s Forgetting the War In 1868 the country turned to its greatest war hero General Ulysses S Grant and elected him the nation’s eighteenth president As a Union general Grant had been daring and courageous a man willing to fight on despite the odds or the casualties to be a bewildered political leader Unscrupulous political allies often betrayed him Scandal marred his two presidential administrations although personally he was honest and always devoted to public service During the Grant administration the nation began to put the war behind it and concentrated on economic growth More and more railroads were built industries expanded and settlers move farther west into the Great Plains and beyond The government during the Grant years was financially generous to business Economic growth contributed to the building of new railways Words to Know Reconstruction ree-kuhn-STRUHK-shuhn Federal government policies toward the defeated South the conditions for the former Confederate states to return to the Union impeachment im-PEECH-muhnt The formal accusation of a crime against a federal official under procedures outlined in the Constitution
