African American History: The American Civil War

At the start of the American Civil War (1861-1865), most white Americans in the North were not willing to fight to end Southern slavery. They fought instead to preserve the Union and prevent slavery from spreading into the Western territories. Many opposed expanding slave territory because they believed that slaves were unfair competition to free labor.

Many Southerners fought to protect and expand slavery because they believed that limiting slavery would lead to its destruction. Even most Southerners who did not own slaves considered slavery the essential foundation of ‘the Southern way of life.’ ‘This country without slave labor would be completely worthless,’ one soldier from Mississippi argued. Even though most owned no slaves, they would ‘fight forever,’ an Alabama soldier vowed, ‘rather than submit to freeing Negroes among us.’

African Americans hoped the Civil War would bring about the abolition of slavery. In anticipation, they formed military units in many Northern cities in the 1850s.

War finally came in the spring of 1861, and eleven Southern states seceded from the Union and formed their own nation, the Confederate States of America (or Confederacy). The black military units offered their service to the United States, but the federal government initially refused to accept African American troops. Lincoln feared that doing so would encourage the slaveholding border states to join the Confederacy. As casualties mounted during 1862, however, U.S. military commanders sometimes recruited black soldiers without explicit authority. Finally in July 1862 Congress gave the president authority to use black troops.

In the South slave labor on farms and in factories freed more whites to fight in the war. The slaves, however, demonstrated their desire for freedom by escaping from Confederate plantations by the tens of thousands. In the beginning of the war, some Northern commanders returned slaves to their masters, and others forced escapees to work for the U.S. Army. Then, on January 1, 1863, Lincoln turned U.S. war aims toward slavery’s destruction by issuing his Emancipation Proclamation freeing slaves held by those Southerners still in rebellion.

During the war, African American soldiers who served in the Union Army were paid less than white soldiers and suffered racist treatment. Confederates declared they would not treat captured black soldiers and their white officers as legitimate prisoners of war. Instead they threatened to treat captured black soldiers as runaway slaves and to execute their white officers. At Fort Pillow, Tennessee, Confederate forces commanded by Nathan Bedford Forrest later an organizer of the Ku Klux Klan, murdered hundreds of captured black soldiers in 1864. ‘Remember Fort Pillow’ became a rallying cry for black soldiers who became more determined to defeat the Confederacy.

By the end of the war, the United States had depended on the services of over 200,000 black soldiers and sailors, 24 of whom received the Medal of Honor.

In April 1865 the Union defeated the Confederacy, and slavery came to an end. President Lincoln acknowledged the critical role black troops had played in winning the war. A few days later, on April 15, Lincoln was assassinated, and Vice-President Andrew Johnson of Tennessee became president. In December of that year the states ratified the 13th amendment that formally abolished slavery. However, the U.S. victory and the end of slavery did not bring complete freedom to Southern blacks. Instead, the process of rebuilding the Union, known as Reconstruction, began.

 

Related articles

• African American History: American Revolution (The Concentration of Slavery in the South) (egrejeen.wordpress.com)
• African American History: American Revolution (The Ideals of the Revolution) (egrejeen.wordpress.com)
• African American History: Early Abolitionist Efforts (egrejeen.wordpress.com)
• African American History: Black Culture in the Early 20th Century (egrejeen.wordpress.com)

Presidential Nominations during Abraham Lincoln’s Presidency

Presidential Nominations during Abraham Lincoln’s Presidency took a dramatic turn when he finally got elected by the Republicans despite initial disagreements. Democrats and radical Republicans were dissatisfied with Lincoln’s policies. The radicals first favored Chase and then Fremont for the 1864 presidential election. A splinter group did, in fact, nominate Fremont for president. But the moderate Republicans remained faithful to their leader, and, because the radicals could not get support for their candidate, Lincoln was unanimously nominated for president by the official Republican convention. Senator Andrew Johnson, a Democrat from Tennessee and the only congressman from a secessionist state to remain loyal to the Union, was nominated for vice president. The platform called for a constitutional amendment abolishing slavery.

The Democrats nominated General McClellan as their presidential candidate. He was immensely popular with the soldiers of the Army of the Potomac, and many people believed that Lincoln had been unjustified in relieving him of his command after Antietam. The Democratic platform called for an immediate end to the war, which was characterized as “four years of failure.” However, McClellan, who favored continuing the war, disavowed his party’s platform. Presidential Nominations during Abraham Lincoln’s Presidency was also an opportunity for Lincoln to show case his programs for Americans even though opinions differed on the matter with some believing he was a complete failure while others saw him as a hero.

 

 

Assassination of Abraham Lincoln

The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln came at a time when most Americans were dissatisfied with his liberal views concerning the freedom of blacks. Standing in that crowd listening to Lincoln speak was an angry, half-crazed actor with pro-Southern sympathies, John Wilkes Booth. Booth had planned for some time to kidnap Lincoln and take him to Richmond. However, when Richmond fell, Booth decided on murder. He planned to assassinate Lincoln on Good Friday, April 14, 1865.

On that day, Lincoln and his wife, along with General and Mrs. Grant, were to attend a performance of a comic melodrama, Our American Cousin, at Ford’s Theatre in Washington. Early that day, Lincoln held a Cabinet meeting at which Secretary of the Treasury McCulloch noted that he had never seen the president “so cheerful and happy.” Lincoln told his Cabinet about a dream he had had the previous night, which he interpreted to mean that a final victory for Sherman was near. In this happy mood he did not mention another recent dream in which he had followed a crowd of people into the East Room of the White House. There he saw his corpse lay out, and he heard people say, “Lincoln is dead.”

That night the Lincolns went to the theater as scheduled. General and Mrs. Grant had been called away, and Miss Clara Harris and her fiancé, Major Henry R. Rathbone, occupied their places in the president’s box. At about 10:30 pm, Booth made his way into the box. Choosing a moment when all attention was fixed on the stage, he put a pistol to Lincoln’s head and fired once. The President slumped in his seat, unconscious. Booth leaped to the stage, shouting “Sic semper tyrannis,” the Virginia state motto, meaning “Thus ever to tyrants.” He made his escape, but was killed while resisting arrest 12 days later. The same day Lincoln was shot, an accomplice of Booth made an attack on Seward, but the secretary lived.

The stricken president was taken to a lodging house across the street from the theater. Mrs. Lincoln, friends, and Cabinet members waited through the night while doctors worked to save Lincoln’s life. At 7:20 am on Saturday, April 15, 1865, Lincoln died. As they covered his face with a sheet, Secretary Stanton said, “Now he belongs to the ages.” A few hours later, Vice President Andrew Johnson was sworn in as president.

Lincoln’s body lay in state in the East Room of the White House. On April 19, Lincoln was given a military funeral in Washington. Two days later his coffin was placed on a special train that carried his body back to Springfield. On May 4 the train reached the end of its journey, and Lincoln was buried in Oak Ridge Cemetery, near his home in Springfield.

Of all the American presidents, Lincoln is probably the one about whom the most has been written. Many critical evaluations of his life have been published, but they have not diminished his stature, and he remains one of the foremost products of American democracy and an eloquent spokesman for its ideals. Most school of taught saw the assassination of Abraham Lincoln as an attempt by some white supremacist to continue with the slave trade while others simply believe that it was merely an isolated incidence with no political undertone.