the missouri compromise · the missouri compromise...
TRANSCRIPT
The Missouri Compromise
In the years leading up to the Missouri Compromise of 1820, tensions began to rise between
pro-‐slavery and anti-‐slavery factions within the U.S. Congress and across the country. They
reached a boiling point after Missouri’s 1819 request for admission to the Union as a slave
state, which threatened to upset the delicate balance between slave states and free states.
To keep the peace, Congress orchestrated a two-‐part compromise, granting Missouri’s
request but also admitting Maine as a free state. It also passed an amendment that drew an
imaginary line across the former Louisiana Territory, establishing a boundary between free
and slave regions that remained the law of the land until it was negated by the Kansas-‐
Nebraska Act of 1854.
The Missouri Compromise was an effort by Congress to defuse the sectional and political
rivalries triggered by the request of Missouri late in 1819 for admission as a state in which
slavery would be permitted. At the time, the United States contained twenty-‐two states,
evenly divided between slave and free. Admission of Missouri as a slave state would upset
that balance; it would also set a precedent for congressional acquiescence in the expansion
of slavery. Earlier in 1819, when Missouri was being organized as a territory, Representative
James Tallmadge ofNew York had proposed an amendment that would ultimately have
ended slavery there; this effort was defeated, as was a similar effort by Representative John
Taylor of New York regarding Arkansas Territory.
Did You Know? For his work on the Missouri Compromise, Senator Henry Clay became known as the “Great Pacificator."
The extraordinarily bitter debate over Missouri’s application for admission ran from
December 1819 to March 1820. Northerners, led by Senator Rufus King of New York, argued
that Congress had the power to prohibit slavery in a new state. Southerners like Senator
William Pinkney of Maryland held that new states had the same freedom of action as the
original thirteen and were thus free to choose slavery if they wished. After the Senate and
the House passed different bills and deadlock threatened, a compromise bill was worked out
with the following provisions: (1) Missouri was admitted as a slave state and Maine (formerly
part ofMassachusetts) as free, and (2) except for Missouri, slavery was to be excluded from
the Louisiana Purchase lands north of latitude 36°30′.
The Missouri Compromise was criticized by many southerners because it established the
principle that Congress could make laws regarding slavery; northerners, on the other hand,
condemned it for acquiescing in the expansion of slavery (though only south of the
compromise line). Nevertheless, the act helped hold the Union together for more than thirty
years. It was repealed by theKansas-‐Nebraska Act of 1854, which established popular
sovereignty (local choice) regarding slavery in Kansas and Nebraska, though both were
north of the compromise line. Three years later, the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case
declared the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional, on the ground that Congress was
prohibited by the Fifth Amendment from depriving individuals of private property without
due process of law.
MARCH 06, 1857 : DRED SCOTT DECISION
On this day in 1857, the United States Supreme Court issues a decision in the Dred Scott
case, affirming the right of slave owners to take their slaves into the Western territories,
thereby negating the doctrine of popular sovereignty and severely undermining the
platform of the newly created Republican Party.
At the heart of the case was the most important question of the 1850s: Should slavery be
allowed in the West? As part of the Compromise of 1850, residents of newly created
territories could decide the issue of slavery by vote, a process known as popular sovereignty.
When popular sovereignty was applied in Kansas in 1854, however, violence erupted.
Americans hoped that the Supreme Court could settle the issue that had eluded a
congressional solution.
Dred Scott was a slave whose owner, an army doctor, had spent time in Illinois, a free state,
and Wisconsin, a free territory at the time of Scott’s residence. The Supreme Court was
stacked in favor of the slave states. Five of the nine justices were from the South while
another, Robert Grier of Pennsylvania, was staunchly pro-‐slavery. Chief Justice Roger B.
Taney wrote the majority decision, which was issued on March 6, 1857. The court held that
Scott was not free based on his residence in either Illinois or Wisconsin because he was not
considered a person under the U.S. Constitution–in the opinion of the justices, black people
were not considered citizens when the Constitution was drafted in 1787. According to Taney,
Dred Scott was the property of his owner, and property could not be taken from a person
without due process of law.
In fact, there were free black citizens of the United States in 1787, but Taney and the other
justices were attempting to halt further debate on the issue of slavery in the territories. The
decision inflamed regional tensions, which burned for another four years before exploding
into the Civil War.
AMERICAN CIVIL WAR HISTORY: STATES RIGHTS
In the spring of 1861, decades of simmering tensions between the northern and southern
United States over issues including states’ rights versus federal authority, westward
expansion and slavery exploded into the American Civil War (1861-‐65). The election of the
anti-‐slavery Republican Abraham Lincoln as president in 1860 caused seven southern states
to secede from the Union to form the Confederate States of America; four more joined them
after the first shots of the Civil War were fired. Four years of brutal conflict were marked by
historic battles at Bull Run (Manassas), Antietam, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg and
Vicksburg, among others. The War Between the States, as the Civil War was also known,
pitted neighbor against neighbor and in some cases, brother against brother. By the time it
ended in Confederate surrender in 1865, the Civil War proved to be the costliest war ever
fought on American soil, with some 620,000 of 2.4 million soldiers killed, millions more
injured and the population and territory of the South devastated.
CIVIL WAR BACKGROUND
In the mid-‐19th century, while the United States was experiencing an era of tremendous
growth, a fundamental economic difference existed between the country’s northern and
southern regions. While in the North, manufacturing and industry was well established, and
agriculture was mostly limited to small-‐scale farms, the South’s economy was based on a
system of large-‐scale farming that depended on the labor of black slaves to grow certain
crops, especially cotton and tobacco. Growing abolitionist sentiment in the North after the
1830s and northern opposition to slavery’s extension into the new western territories led
many southerners to fear that the existence of slavery in America–and thus the backbone of
their economy–was in danger.
DID YOU KNOW?
Confederate General Thomas Jonathan Jackson earned his famous nickname, "Stonewall,"
from his steadfast defensive efforts in the First Battle of Bull Run (First Manassas). At
Chancellorsville, Jackson was shot by one of his own men, who mistook him for Union
cavalry. His arm was amputated, and he died from pneumonia eight days later.
In 1854, the U.S. Congress passed the Kansas-‐Nebraska Act, which essentially opened all new
territories to slavery by asserting the rule of popular sovereignty over congressional edict.
Pro-‐ and anti-‐slavery forces struggled violently in “Bleeding Kansas,” while opposition to the
act in the North led to the formation of the Republican Party, a new political entity based on
the principle of opposing slavery’s extension into the western territories. After the Supreme
Court’s ruling in the Dred Scott case (1857) confirmed the legality of slavery in the territories,
the abolitionist John Brown’s raid at Harper’s Ferry in 1859 convinced more and more
southerners that their northern neighbors were bent on the destruction of the “peculiar
institution” that sustained them. Lincoln’s election in November 1860 was the final straw,
and within three months seven southern states–South
Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas–had seceded from the
United States.
OUTBREAK OF THE CIVIL WAR (1861)
Even as Lincoln took office in March 1861, Confederate forces threatened the federal-‐
held Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina. On April 12, after Lincoln ordered a fleet to
resupply Sumter, Confederate artillery fired the first shots of the Civil War. Sumter’s
commander, Major Robert Anderson, surrendered after less than two days of
bombardment, leaving the fort in the hands of Confederate forces under Pierre G.T.
Beauregard. Four more southern states–Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina and Tennessee–joined the Confederacy after Fort Sumter. Border slave states like Missouri, Kentucky and Maryland did not secede, but there was much Confederate sympathy among
their citizens.
Though on the surface the Civil War may have seemed a lopsided conflict, with the 23 states
of the Union enjoying an enormous advantage in population, manufacturing (including arms
production) and railroad construction, the Confederates had a strong military tradition,
along with some of the best soldiers and commanders in the nation. They also had a cause
they believed in: preserving their long-‐held traditions and institutions, chief among these
being slavery. In the First Battle of Bull Run (known in the South as First Manassas) on July
21, 1861, 35,000 Confederate soldiers under the command of Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall”
Jackson forced a greater number of Union forces (or Federals) to retreat
towards Washington, D.C., dashing any hopes of a quick Union victory and leading Lincoln to
call for 500,000 more recruits. In fact, both sides’ initial call for troops had to be widened
after it became clear that the war would not be a limited or short conflict.
ABOLITIONIST MOVEMENT
The goal of the abolitionist movement was the immediate emancipation of all slaves and the
end of racial discrimination and segregation. Advocating for immediate emancipation
distinguished abolitionists from more moderate anti-‐slavery advocates who argued for
gradual emancipation, and from free-‐soil activists who sought to restrict slavery to existing
areas and prevent its spread further west. Radical abolitionism was partly fueled by the
religious fervor of the Second Great Awakening, which prompted many people to advocate
for emancipation on religious grounds. Abolitionist ideas became increasingly prominent in
Northern churches and politics beginning in the 1830s, which contributed to the regional
animosity between North and South leading up to the Civil War.
From the 1830s until 1870, the abolitionist movement attempted to achieve immediate
emancipation of all slaves and the ending of racial segregation and discrimination. Their
propounding of these goals distinguished abolitionists from the broad-‐based political
opposition to slavery’s westward expansion that took form in the North after 1840 and
raised issues leading to the Civil War. Yet these two expressions of hostility to slavery–
abolitionism and Free-‐Soilism–were often closely related not only in their beliefs and their
interaction but also in the minds of southern slaveholders who finally came to regard the
North as united against them in favor of black emancipation.
DID YOU KNOW?
Female abolitionists Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott went on to become
prominent figures in the women's rights movement.
Although abolitionist feelings had been strong during the American Revolution and in the
Upper South during the 1820s, the abolitionist movement did not coalesce into a militant
crusade until the 1830s. In the previous decade, as much of the North underwent the social
disruption associated with the spread of manufacturing and commerce, powerful
evangelical religious movements arose to impart spiritual direction to society. By stressing
the moral imperative to end sinful practices and each person’s responsibility to uphold God’s
will in society, preachers like Lyman Beecher, Nathaniel Taylor, and Charles G. Finney in what
came to be called the Second Great Awakening led massive religious revivals in the 1820s
that gave a major impetus to the later emergence of abolitionism as well as to such other
reforming crusades as temperance, pacifism, and women’s rights. By the early 1830s,
Theodore D. Weld, William Lloyd Garrison, Arthur and Lewis Tappan, and Elizur Wright, Jr.,
all spiritually nourished by revivalism, had taken up the cause of “immediate emancipation.”
In early 1831, Garrison, in Boston, began publishing his famous newspaper,
the Liberator, supported largely by free African-‐Americans, who always played a major role
in the movement. In December 1833, the Tappans, Garrison, and sixty other delegates of
both races and genders met in Philadelphia to found the American Anti-‐Slavery Society,
which denounced slavery as a sin that must be abolished immediately, endorsed
nonviolence, and condemned racial prejudice. By 1835, the society had received substantial
moral and financial support from African-‐American communities in the North and had
established hundreds of branches throughout the free states, flooding the North with
antislavery literature, agents, and petitions demanding that Congress end all federal support
for slavery. The society, which attracted significant participation by women, also denounced
the American Colonization Society’s program of voluntary gradual emancipation and black
emigration.
All these activities provoked widespread hostile responses from North and South, most
notably violent mobs, the burning of mailbags containing abolitionist literature, and the
passage in the U.S. House of Representatives of a “gag rule” that banned consideration of
antislavery petitions. These developments, and especially the 1837 murder of abolitionist
editor Elijah Lovejoy, led many northerners, fearful for their own civil liberties, to vote for
antislavery politicians and brought important converts such as Wendell Phillips, Gerrit Smith,
and Edmund Quincy to the cause.
But as antislavery sentiment began to appear in politics, abolitionists also began disagreeing
among themselves. By 1840 Garrison and his followers were convinced that since slavery’s
influence had corrupted all of society, a revolutionary change in America’s spiritual values
was required to achieve emancipation. To this demand for “moral suasion,” Garrison added
an insistence on equal rights for women within the movement and a studious avoidance of
“corrupt” political parties and churches. To Garrison’s opponents, such ideas seemed wholly
at odds with Christian values and the imperative to influence the political and ecclesiastical
systems by nominating and voting for candidates committed to abolitionism. Disputes over
these matters split the American Anti-‐Slavery Society in 1840, leaving Garrison and his
supporters in command of that body; his opponents, led by the Tappans, founded the
American and Foreign Anti-‐Slavery Society. Meanwhile, still other foes of Garrison launched
the Liberty party with James G. Birney as its presidential candidate in the elections of 1840
and 1844.
Although historians debate the extent of the abolitionists’ influence on the nation’s political
life after 1840, their impact on northern culture and society is undeniable. As
speakers, Frederick Douglass, Wendell Phillips, and Lucy Stone in particular became
extremely well known. In popular literature the poetry of John Greenleaf Whittier and James
Russell Lowell circulated widely, as did the autobiographies of fugitive slaves such as
Douglass, William and Ellen Craft, and Solomon Northrup. Abolitionists exercised a
particularly strong influence on religious life, contributing heavily to schisms that separated
the Methodists (1844) and Baptists (1845), while founding numerous independent
antislavery “free churches.” In higher education abolitionists founded Oberlin College, the
nation’s first experiment in racially integrated coeducation, the Oneida Institute, which
graduated an impressive group of African-‐American leaders, and Illinois’s Knox College, a
western center of abolitionism.
Within the Garrisonian wing of the movement, female abolitionists became leaders of the
nation’s first independent feminist movement, instrumental in organizing the 1848 Seneca
Falls Convention. Although African-‐American activists often complained with reason of the
racist and patronizing behavior of white abolitionists, the whites did support independently
conducted crusades by African-‐Americans to outlaw segregation and improve education
during the 1840s and 1850s. Especially after the passage of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law,
white abolitionists also protected African-‐Americans threatened with capture as escapees
from bondage, although blacks themselves largely managed theUnderground Railroad.
By the later 1850s, organized abolitionism in politics had been subsumed by the larger
sectional crisis over slavery prompted by the Kansas-‐Nebraska Act, the Dred Scott decision,
and John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry. Most abolitionists reluctantly supported the
Republican party, stood by the Union in the secession crisis, and became militant champions
of military emancipation during the Civil War. The movement again split in 1865, when
Garrison and his supporters asserted that the passage of the Thirteenth
Amendment abolishing slavery made continuation of the American Anti-‐Slavery Society
unnecessary. But a larger group led by Wendell Phillips, insisting that only the achievement
of complete political equality for all black males could guarantee the freedom of the former
slaves, successfully prevented Garrison from dissolving the society. It continued until 1870 to
demand land, the ballot, and education for the freedman. Only when the Fifteenth
Amendment extending male suffrage to African-‐Americans was passed did the society
declare its mission completed. Traditions of racial egalitarianism begun by abolitionists lived
on, however, to inspire the subsequent founding of the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People in 1909.
JOHN BROWN’S HARPERS FERRY
In October 1859, the U.S. military arsenal at Harpers Ferry was the target of an assault by an
armed band of abolitionists led by John Brown (1800-‐59). (Originally part of Virginia, Harpers
Ferry is located in the eastern panhandle of West Virginia near the convergence of the
Shenandoah and Potomac rivers.) The raid was intended to be the first stage in an elaborate
plan to establish an independent stronghold of freed slaves in the mountains of Maryland
and Virginia. Brown was captured during the raid and later convicted of treason and hanged,
but the raid inflamed white Southern fears of slave rebellions and increased the mounting
tension between Northern and Southern states before the American Civil War (1861-‐65).
JOHN BROWN: ABOLITIONIST LEADER
Born in Connecticut in 1800 and raised in Ohio, John Brown came from a staunchly Calvinist
and anti-‐slavery family. He spent much of his life failing at a variety of businesses–he
declared bankruptcy in his early 40s and had more than 20 lawsuits filed against him. In 1837,
his life changed irrevocably when he attended an abolition meeting in Cleveland, during
which he was so moved that he publicly announced his dedication to destroying the
institution of slavery. As early as 1848 he was formulating a plan to incite an insurrection. DID YOU KNOW?
Author Henry David Thoreau was among those who spoke out in defense of John Brown
after his arrest following the Harpers Ferry raid. Thoreau penned an essay, “A Plea for
Captain John Brown,” in support of his fellow abolitionist.
In the 1850s, Brown traveled to Kansas with five of his sons to fight against the pro-‐slavery
forces in the contest over that territory. After pro-‐slavery men raided the abolitionist town
of Lawrence on May 21, 1856, Brown personally sought revenge. Several days later, he and
his sons attacked a group of cabins along Pottawatomie Creek. They killed five men with
broad swords and triggered a summer of guerilla warfare in the troubled territory. One of
Brown’s sons was killed in the fighting.
By 1857, Brown returned to the East and began raising money to carry out his vision of a
mass uprising of slaves. He secured the backing of six prominent abolitionists, known as the
“Secret Six,” and assembled an invasion force. His “army” grew to include more than 20
men, including several black men and three of Brown’s sons. The group rented
a Marylandfarm near Harpers Ferry and prepared for the assault. HARPERS FERRY RAID: OCTOBER 16-‐18, 1859
On the night of October 16, 1859, Brown and his band overran the federal arsenal. Some of
his men rounded up a handful of hostages, including a few slaves. Word of the raid spread
and by the following day Brown and his men were surrounded. On October 18, a company of
U.S. Marines, led by Colonel Robert E. Lee (1808-‐70) and Lieutenant J. E. B. Stuart (1833-‐64),
overran Brown and his followers. Brown was wounded and captured, while 10 of his men
were killed, including two of his sons. JOHN BROWN EXECUTED: DECEMBER 2, 1859
Brown was tried by the state of Virginia for treason and murder, and found guilty on
November 2.The 59-‐year-‐old abolitionist went to the gallows on December 2, 1859. Before
his execution, he handed his guard a slip of paper that read, “I, John Brown, am now quite
certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood.” It was a
prophetic statement. Although the raid failed, it inflamed sectional tensions and raised the
stakes for the 1860 presidential election. Brown’s raid helped make any further
accommodation between North and South nearly impossible and thus became an important
impetus of the Civil War.
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE
Born in Litchfield, Connecticut, Harriet Beecher was the seventh child of the Reverend
Lyman Beecher, a Congregational minister and moral reformer, and Roxanna Foote Beecher.
She was schooled at the Pierce Academy and at her sister Catharine Beecher’s Hartford
Female Seminary, where she also taught. She moved with the family to Cincinnati in 1832,
when her father was appointed president of Lane Theological Seminary. The spectacle of
chattel slavery across the Ohio River in Kentucky and its effects on the acquiescent
commercial interests of white Cincinnati moved her deeply.
In 1836, she married Calvin Ellis Stowe, professor of biblical literature at Lane. The death of a
son in 1849 led her away from her father’s Calvinism and gave supremacy in her views to the
redemptive spirit of Christian love. By 1850, the family had moved to Maine, where, in
response to the Fugitive Slave Act of that year, Stowe wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), her
most celebrated work. Sentimental and realistic by turns, the novel explored the cruelties of
chattel slavery in the Upper and Lower South and exposed the moral ironies in the legal,
religious, and social arguments of white apologists.
The immense impact of the novel (it sold 300,000 copies in its first year) was unexpected.
Antislavery fiction had never sold well; Stowe was not an established writer, and few would
have expected a woman to gain a popular hearing on the great political question of the day.
Some female abolitionists had shocked decorum in the 1840s by speaking at public
gatherings, but they were widely resented. The success of Uncle Tom’s Cabin went far
toward legitimizing, if not indeed creating, a role for women in public affairs.
To the dismay of many northern radicals, Uncle Tom’s Cabin casually endorsed colonization
rather than abolition. In fact, Stowe was unconcerned about the tactics that made slavery a
political issue: for her, the problem was religious and emotional, and one that women were
best equipped to confront. Her stated purpose, “to awaken sympathy and feeling for the
African race” and to urge that readers “feel right” about the issue, belongs to a feminist and
utopian agenda that contemporary readers were slow to recognize. In the South, the book
was read as sectional propaganda; in the North, it was read as a compelling moral romance.
Although Stowe blamed the slave system itself as “the essence of all abuse” rather than the
slaveholders and deliberately made its chief villain, Simon Legree, a displaced New
Englander, the novel’s effect was to exacerbate regional antagonisms. Indeed, Uncle Tom’s
Cabin, which called forth anti-‐Tom novels from southern writers, so raised the temperature
of the dialogue that Lincoln would later, half-‐seriously, apportion to Stowe some
responsibility for starting the Civil War.
HARRIET TUBMAN
Harriet Tubman became famous as a “conductor” on the Underground Railroad during the
turbulent 1850s. Born a slave on Maryland’s eastern shore, she endured the harsh existence
of a field hand, including brutal beatings. In 1849 she fled slavery, leaving her husband and
family behind in order to escape. Despite a bounty on her head, she returned to the South at
least 19 times to lead her family and hundreds of other slaves to freedom via the
Underground Railroad. Tubman also served as a scout, spy and nurse during the Civil War.
In 1849 Tubman fled Maryland, leaving behind her free husband of five years, John Tubman,
and her parents, sisters, and brothers. “Mah people mus’ go free,” her constant refrain,
suggests a determination uncommon among even the most militant slaves. She returned to
the South at least nineteen times to lead her family and hundreds of other slaves to freedom
via the Underground Railroad. Utilizing her native intelligence and drawing on her boundless
courage, she eluded bounty hunters seeking a reward for her capture, which eventually
went as high as forty thousand dollars. She never lost a fugitive or allowed one to turn back. DID YOU KNOW?
Harriet Tubman's birth name was Araminta Ross.
Two things sustained her: the pistol at her side and her faith in God. She would not hesitate
to use the pistol in self-‐defense, but it was also a symbol to instruct slaves, making it clear
that “dead Negroes tell no tales.” Timid slaves seemed to find courage in her presence; no
one ever betrayed her. She affirmed her faith in God in her statement, “I always tole God,
I’m gwine to hole stiddy on to you, an’ you’ve got to see me trou [through].”
Tubman collaborated with John Brown in 1858 in planning his raid on Harpers Ferry. The two
met in Canada where she told him all she knew of the Underground Railroad in the East.
Advising him on the area in which he planned to operate, she promised to deliver aid from
fugitives in the region. Brown’s admiration for her was immeasurable, and he wanted her to
accompany him on the raid. Tubman planned to be present but was ill at the time and could
not participate.
Tubman’s resistance to slavery did not end with the outbreak of the Civil War. Her services
as nurse, scout, and spy were solicited by the Union government. For more than three years
she nursed the sick and wounded in Florida and the Carolinas, tending whites and blacks,
soldiers and contrabands. Tubman was a short woman without distinctive features. With a
bandanna on her head and several front teeth missing, she moved unnoticed through rebel
territory. This made her invaluable as a scout and spy under the command of Col. James
Montgomery of the Second Carolina Volunteers. As leader of a corps of local blacks, she
made several forays into rebel territory, collecting information. Armed with knowledge of
the location of cotton warehouses, ammunition depots, and slaves waiting to be liberated,
Colonel Montgomery made several raids in southern coastal areas. Tubman led the way on
his celebrated expedition up the Combahee River in June 1863. For all of her work, Tubman
was paid only two hundred dollars over a three-‐year period and had to support herself by
selling pies, gingerbread, and root beer.
After the war, Tubman returned to Auburn, New York, and continued to help blacks forge
new lives in freedom. She cared for her parents and other needy relatives, turning her
residence into the Home for Indigent and Aged Negroes. Lack of money continued to be a
pressing problem, and she financed the home by selling copies of her biography and giving
speeches. Her most memorable appearance was at the organizing meeting of the National
Association of Colored Women in 1896 in Washington, D.C. Two generations came together
to celebrate the strength of black women and to continue their struggle for a life of dignity
and respect. Harriet Tubman, the oldest member present, was the embodiment of their
strength and their struggle.
CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA
During the American Civil War, the Confederate States of America consisted of the
governments of 11 Southern states that seceded from the Union in 1860-‐61, carrying on all
the affairs of a separate government and conducting a major war until defeated in the
spring of 1865. Convinced that their way of life, based on slavery, was irretrievably
threatened by the election of President Abraham Lincoln (November 1860), the seven states
of the Deep South (Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and
Texas) seceded from the Union during the following months. When the war began with the
firing on Fort Sumter (April 12, 1861), they were joined by four states of the upper South
(Arkansas, North Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia).
Formed in February 1861, the Confederate States of America was a republic composed of
eleven Southern states that seceded from the Union in order to preserve slavery, states’
rights, and political liberty for whites. Its conservative government, with
Mississippian Jefferson Davis as president, sought a peaceful separation, but the United
States refused to acquiesce in the secession. The war that ensued started at Fort
Sumter, South Carolina, on April 12, 1861, and lasted four years. It cost the South nearly
500,000 men killed or wounded out of a population of 9 million (including 3 million slaves)
and $5 billion in treasure.
DID YOU KNOW?
On July 15, 1870, Georgia became the last former Confederate state to be restored to the
Union, more than five years after the Civil War's end.
The Confederacy’s eastern military fortunes went well for the first two years, with major
victories at First Manassas (Bull Run), ‘Stonewall’ Jackson’s Valley Campaign, and the Seven
Days’ Battles, where Gen. Robert E. Lee took command of the main eastern army in June
1862 and cleared Virginia of federal troops by September. His invasion of Maryland was
checked at Sharpsburg (Antietam) in mid-‐September, and he returned to Virginia, where he
badly defeated federal forces at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville. The main western
Confederate forces-‐commanded by Generals Albert Sidney Johnston, P. G. T. Beauregard,
and Braxton Bragg-‐suffered defeats at Forts Henry and Donelson and Shiloh in Tennessee,
and at Corinth, Mississippi, but they held that flank through 1862.
Davis formed his government at the first Confederate capital in Montgomery, Alabama. The
Confederacy’s Permanent Constitution provided for presidential item veto, debating seats
for cabinet members, and six-‐year terms for the president and vice president (the president
was ineligible for successive terms); it prohibited the foreign slave trade and forbade
Congress from levying a protective tariff, giving bounties, or making appropriations for
internal improvements.
After initial problems, Davis’s government grew stronger as he learned to use executive
power to consolidate control of the armed forces and manpower distribution. But some
Southern governors resisted Davis’s centralization and tried to keep their men and
resources at home. Although Davis used authority effectively, the insistence on preserving
states’ rights plagued him constantly. Vice President Alexander H. Stephens, an early
dissident, for example, sulked in his nativeGeorgia and finally urged its secession from the
Confederacy.
But nothing gave the government more trouble than its poverty. There was only $27 million
worth of specie in the Confederacy, and money remained scarce. A federal blockade
gradually shrank Southern foreign trade and drained financial reserves. Christopher G.
Memminger, treasury secretary, followed conservative policies. A campaign to raise funds
through a domestic loan in February 1861 lagged; a $50 million loan drive launched in May did
little better. Finally Congress resorted to a ‘produce loan,’ which allowed planters to pledge
produce as security for bonds. Although initially popular, this expedient also failed.
The next resort, paper money, stimulated inflation, and on April 24, 1863, Congress passed
the toughest tax law ever seen in the South. Rates were increased, an income tax was
authorized, and a profits tax was imposed on farm products; farmers and planters were
subjected to a tax-‐in-‐kind, which required them to contribute one-‐tenth of their annual crop
yield to the government. This unpopular law did not solve the financial problems, however.
In mid-‐1863, Memminger proposed taking one-‐third of the currency out of circulation.
Congress resisted, but finally, in February 1864, it passed a funding act that created a brief
drop in inflation, which soon yielded to a price-‐and-‐money spiral that presaged bankruptcy.
An 1863 foreign loan for $15 million through the Erlanger Bank in France realized only about
$9 million in purchasing power.
Then the government resorted to such desperate measures as impressment of private
produce, livestock, machinery, and transportation equipment, which brought limited relief
to the armies but endless enmity for what was seen as a ‘despotic’ government. The failure
to tax land, cotton, and slaves earned cries of ‘a rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight’ and
sapped morale behind the lines.
The Confederacy never won the loyalty of the black population. Some free blacks
volunteered for Southern ranks but were rejected. Federal invaders liberated slaves, and
fear of insurrections sapped Southern strength in the last two war years.
Keeping the ranks of the armies filled became difficult as casualties mounted and
enthusiasm faded. In April 1862, Congress, on the advice of Davis, passed the first draft law
in American history, which took into Confederate service all white men between eighteen
and thirty-‐five. Liberal exemptions (including one white exemption for every twenty slaves
owned) weakened the law. But the courts upheld it and most people accepted it as
necessary, an attitude that persisted even after February 1864, when the age limits were
extended to seventeen and fifty and substitutes were prohibited. In March 1865 blacks
finally were enrolled in Confederate ranks, but very few served.
Taxation, impressment, and conscription-‐these were the hallmarks of a tough
administration. President Davis pursued centralization much as Abraham Lincoln did-‐laissez-‐
faire policies could not win a modern war. The lessons learned in management, sacrifice,
fortitude, and logistics would change the South permanently.
Supplying and moving the armed forces became the main work of many in the South, and
new methods of procurement, storage, and distribution were developed. Railroads were
essential to the mass movement of men and matériel, of ordnance and medicine, and of
civilian refugees from occupied areas. Congress passed laws nationalizing rail lines,
sequestering space on blockade runners, and controlling commerce. Industrial development
had lagged in the antebellum South, and now Congress encouraged industrialization by
siphoning manpower and money to companies producing war goods. A minor industrial
miracle occurred in the Confederacy: a nation with minuscule manufacturing capacity
acquired foundries, powder works, rolling mills, arsenals enough to sustain nearly a million
troops and ships enough to scare American merchantmen. The chief of ordnance, Gen.
Josiah Gorgas, a Pennsylvanian and genius of logistics, supplied Rebel munitions to the end.
Gorgas, an advocate of blockade running, oversaw the building of small, fast ships capable
of eluding federal coastal patrols. Blockade running was a very successful venture: at least
600,000 rifles were imported, plus large quantities of cannon, saltpeter, lead, clothing,
coffee, and medicines. Highly profitable, blockade running produced heroes, villains, and
million-‐ aires-‐and sustained the Rebels.
Davis’s foreign policy centered on gaining recognition by Great Britain and France. Napoleon
III wanted a Confederate victory but hesitated to act without the British. Many Britons
sympathized with the Confederates, but the working class supported
Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. Judah P. Benjamin, Confederate secretary of state,
hoped that an embargo on ‘King Cotton’ would force help from textile-‐ producing countries.
But each time recognition was almost at hand, military reverses chilled prospects. The issue
remained with the Rebel soldiers: when they won, independence came close; when they
lost, nothing else mattered.
And they lost almost steadily after the first terrible week of July 1863. Defeats at Gettysburg
and Vicksburg cost fifty thousand men and seventy thousand arms. After that week, long
retreats began in the East through the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, Petersburg; in
the West from Chickamauga, Lookout Mountain/Missionary Ridge, Atlanta, to Franklin and
Nashville, Tennessee, which led to Lee’s surrender at Appomattox and Joseph E. Johnston’s
at Durham Station, North Carolina.
Sustained for a while by Davis’s offensive-‐defensive strategy, Confederate armies were
finally defeated by attrition, the country behind them exhausted and drained. The surprise is
not that they lost but that they persisted for four arduous years.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
Abraham Lincoln, a self-‐taught Illinois lawyer and legislator with a reputation as an eloquent
opponent of slavery, shocked many when he overcame several more prominent contenders
to win the Republican Party’s nomination for president in 1860. His election that November
pushed several Southern states to secede by the time of his inauguration in March 1861, and
the Civil War began barely a month later. Contrary to expectations, Lincoln proved to be a
shrewd military strategist and a savvy leader during what became the costliest conflict ever
fought on American soil. His Emancipation Proclamation, issued in 1863, freed all slaves in
the rebellious states and paved the way for slavery’s eventual abolition, while his Gettysburg
Address later that year stands as one of the most famous and influential pieces of oratory in
American history. In April 1865, with the Union on the brink of victory, Abraham Lincoln was
shot and killed by the Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth; his untimely death made
him a martyr to the cause of liberty and Union. Over the years Lincoln’s mythic stature has
only grown, and he is widely regarded as one of the greatest presidents in the nation’s
history.
Lincoln opposed the spread of slavery to the territories, and had a grand vision of the
expanding United States, with a focus on commerce and cities rather than agriculture. DID YOU KNOW?
The war years were difficult for Abraham Lincoln and his family. After his young son Willie
died of typhoid fever in 1862, the emotionally fragile Mary Lincoln, widely unpopular for her
frivolity and spendthrift ways, held séances in the White House in the hopes of
communicating with him, earning her even more derision.
Lincoln taught himself law, passing the bar examination in 1836. The following year, he
moved to the newly named state capital of Springfield. For the next few years, he worked
there as a lawyer, earning a reputation as “Honest Abe” and serving clients ranging from
individual residents of small towns to national railroad lines. He met Mary Todd, a well-‐to-‐do
Kentucky belle with many suitors (including Lincoln’s future political rival, Stephen Douglas),
and they married in 1842.
LINCOLN’S ROAD TO THE WHITE HOUSE
Lincoln won election to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1846 and began serving his
term the following year. As a congressman, Lincoln was unpopular with Illinois voters for his
strong stance against the U.S. war with Mexico. Promising not to seek reelection, he
returned to Springfield in 1849. Events conspired to push him back into national politics,
however: Douglas, a leading Democrat in Congress, had pushed through the passage of
the Kansas-‐Nebraska Act (1854), which declared that the voters of each territory, rather than
the federal government, had the right to decide whether the territory should be slave or
free. On October 16, 1854, Lincoln went before a large crowd in Peoria to debate the merits
of the Kansas-‐Nebraska Act with Douglas, denouncing slavery and its extension and calling
the institution a violation of the most basic tenets of the Declaration of Independence.
With the Whig Party in ruins, Lincoln joined the new Republican Party–formed largely in
opposition to slavery’s extension into the territories–in 1858 and ran for the Senate again
that year (he had campaigned unsuccessfully for the seat in 1855 as well). In June, Lincoln
delivered his now-‐famous “house divided” speech, in which he quoted from the Gospels to
illustrate his belief that “this government cannot endure, permanently, half slave and half
free.” Lincoln then squared off against Douglas in a series of famous debates; though he lost
the election, Lincoln’s performance made his reputation nationally. His profile rose even
higher in early 1860, after he delivered another rousing speech at New York City’s Cooper
Union. That May, Republicans chose Lincoln as their candidate for president, passing over
Senator William H. Seward of New York and other powerful contenders in favor of the rangy
Illinois lawyer with only one undistinguished congressional term under his belt. A WARTIME PRESIDENT
In the general election, Lincoln again faced Douglas, who represented the northern
Democrats; southern Democrats had nominated John C. Breckenridge of Kentucky, while
John Bell ran for the brand new Constitutional Union Party. With Breckenridge and Bell
splitting the vote in the South, Lincoln won most of the North and carried the Electoral
College. After years of sectional tensions, the election of an antislavery northerner as the
16th president of the United States drove many southerners over the brink, and by the time
Lincoln was inaugurated in March 1861 seven southern states had seceded from the Union
and formed the Confederate States of America. After Lincoln ordered a fleet of Union ships
to supply South Carolina’s Fort Sumter in April, the Confederates fired on both the fort and
the Union fleet, beginning the Civil War. Hopes for a quick Union victory were dashed by
defeat in the Battle of Bull Run (Manassas), and Lincoln called for 500,000 more troops as
both sides settled in for a long conflict.
While the Confederate leader Jefferson Davis was a West Point graduate, Mexican War hero
and former secretary of war, Lincoln had only a brief and undistinguished period of service in
the Black Hawk War (1832) to his credit. He surprised many by proving to be a more than
capable wartime leader, learning quickly about strategy and tactics in the early years of the
Civil War, and about choosing the ablest commanders. General George McClellan, though
beloved by his troops, continually frustrated Lincoln with his reluctance to advance, and
when McClellan failed to pursue Robert E. Lee’s retreating Confederate Army in the
aftermath of the Union victory at Antietam in September 1862, Lincoln removed him from
command. During the war, Lincoln drew criticism for suspending some civil liberties,
including the right of habeas corpus, but he considered such measures necessary to win the
war.
FORT SUMTER
Fort Sumter is an island fortification located in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina. Originally
constructed in 1829 as a coastal garrison, Fort Sumter is most famous for being the site of
the first shots of the Civil War (1861-‐65). U.S. Major Robert Anderson occupied the
unfinished fort in December 1860 following South Carolina’s secession from the Union,
initiating a standoff with the state’s militia forces. When President Abraham Lincoln
announced plans to resupply the fort, Confederate General P.G.T. Beauregard bombarded
Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861. After a 34-‐hour exchange of artillery fire, Anderson and 86
soldiers surrendered the fort on April 13. Confederate troops then occupied Fort Sumter for
nearly four years, resisting several bombardments by Union forces before abandoning the
garrison prior to William T. Sherman’s capture of Charleston in February 1865. After the Civil
War, Fort Sumter was restored by the U.S. military and manned during the Spanish-‐American
War (1898), World War I (1914-‐18) and World War II (1939-‐45).
FORT SUMTER: CONSTRUCTION AND DESIGN
Fort Sumter was first built in the wake of the War of 1812 (1812-‐1815), which had highlighted
the United States’ lack of strong coastal defenses. Named for Revolutionary War general
and South Carolina native Thomas Sumter, Fort Sumter was one of nearly 50 forts built as
part of the so-‐called Third System, a coastal defense program implemented by Congress in
1817. The three-‐tiered, five-‐sided fort’s coastal placement was designed to allow it to control
access to the vital Charleston Harbor. While the island itself was only 2.4 acres in size, the
fort was built to accommodate a garrison of 650 soldiers and 135 artillery pieces. DID YOU KNOW?
There were no casualties during the Confederate bombardment of Fort Sumter at the start
of the American Civil War. The only Union deaths came during the evacuation: One soldier
was killed and another mortally wounded in an accidental explosion during a planned 100-‐
gun salute.
Construction of Fort Sumter first began in 1829 in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina, on a
manmade island built from thousands of tons of granite. Building ground to a halt in the
1830s amid a dispute over ownership of the stretch of the harbor, and did not resume until
1841. Like many Third System fortifications, Fort Sumter proved a costly endeavor, and
construction slowed again in 1859 due to lack of funding. By 1860 the island and the outer
fortifications were complete, but the fort’s interior and armaments remained unfinished.
FORT SUMTER: THE FIRST BATTLE OF FORT SUMTER
Construction of Fort Sumter was still underway when South Carolina seceded from the
Union on December 20, 1860. Despite Charleston’s position as a major port, at the time only
two companies of federal troops guarded the harbor. Commanded by Major Robert
Anderson (1805-‐1871), these companies were stationed at Fort Moultrie, a dilapidated
fortification facing the coastline. Recognizing that Fort Moultrie was vulnerable to a land
assault, Anderson elected to abandon it for the more easily defensible Fort Sumter on
December 26, 1860. South Carolina militia forces would seize the city’s other forts shortly
thereafter, leaving Fort Sumter as the lone federal outpost in Charleston.
A standoff ensued until January 9, 1861, when a ship called the Star of the West arrived in
Charleston with over 200 U.S. troops and supplies intended for Fort Sumter. South Carolina
militia batteries fired upon the vessel as it neared Charleston Harbor, forcing it to turn back
to sea. Major Anderson refused repeated calls to abandon Fort Sumter, and by March 1861
there were over 3,000 militia troops besieging his garrison. A number of other U.S. military
facilities in the Deep South had already been seized, and Fort Sumter was viewed by many as
one of the South’s few remaining hurdles to overcome before achieving sovereignty.
With the inauguration of President Abraham Lincoln (1809-‐1865) in March 1861, the situation
soon escalated. Knowing that Anderson and his men were running out of supplies, Lincoln
announced his intention to send three unarmed ships to relieve Fort Sumter. Having already
declared that any attempt to resupply the fort would be seen as an act of aggression, South
Carolina militia forces soon scrambled to respond. On April 11, militia commander P.G.T.
Beauregard (1818-‐1893) demanded that Anderson surrender the fort, but Anderson again
refused. In response Beauregard opened fire on Fort Sumter shortly after 4:30 a.m. on April
12, 1861. U.S. Captain Abner Doubleday (1819-‐1893)—later famous for the myth that he
invented baseball—ordered the first shots in defense of the fort a few hours later.
Beauregard’s 19 coastal batteries unleashed a punishing barrage on Fort Sumter, eventually
firing an estimated 3,000 shots at the citadel in 34 hours. By Saturday, April 13, cannon fire
had broken through the fortress’s five-‐foot-‐thick brick walls, causing fires inside the post.
With his stores of ammunition depleted, Anderson was forced to surrender the fort shortly
after 2 p.m. in the afternoon. No Union troops had been killed during the bombardment, but
two men died the following day in an explosion that occurred during an artillery salute held
before the U.S. evacuation. The bombardment of Fort Sumter would play a major part in
triggering the Civil War. In the days following the assault, Lincoln issued a call for Union
volunteers to quash the rebellion, while more Southern states including Virginia, North
Carolina and Tennessee cast their lot with the Confederacy. FORT SUMTER: LATER CIVIL WAR ENGAGEMENTS
Following Beauregard’s bombardment in 1861, Confederate forces occupied Fort Sumter
and used it to marshal a defense of Charleston Harbor. Once it was completed and better
armed, Fort Sumter allowed the Confederates to create a valuable hole in the Union
blockade of the Atlantic seaboard.
The first Union assault on Fort Sumter came in April 1863, when Rear Admiral Samuel Francis
Du Pont (1803-‐1865) attempted a naval attack on Charleston. Commander of the South
Atlantic Blockading Squadron, Du Pont arrived in Charleston with a fleet of nine ironclad
warships, seven of which were updated versions of the famed USS Monitor.
While Du Pont had hoped to recapture Fort Sumter—by then a symbol of the Confederate
rebellion—his attack was poorly coordinated and met with unfavorable weather conditions.
In collaboration with Fort Sumter, Confederate batteries commanded by P.G.T. Beauregard
hammered the ironclad fleet with artillery fire, and underwater mines posed a constant
threat to the ships’ hulls. Outgunned and unable to properly maneuver in heavy currents, Du
Pont’s fleet eventually withdrew from the harbor after taking over 500 hits by Confederate
guns. Only one Union soldier was killed during the battle, but one of the ironclads, the
Keokuk, sank the next day. Five Confederates were killed during the attack, but the damage
to Fort Sumter was soon repaired and its defenses improved. Confederate soldiers even
managed to salvage one of the Keokuk’s 11-‐inch Dahlgren guns and mount it on the fortress.
In July 1863 Union troops laid siege to Fort Wagner, a valuable post on Morris Island near the
mouth of Charleston Harbor. After being met with heavy fire from Fort Sumter, Union
General Quincy Adams Gillmore (1825-‐1888) turned his guns on the fort and unleashed a
devastating seven-‐day bombardment. On September 8 a force of nearly 400 Union troops
attempted to land at Fort Sumter and capture the post by force. Union Rear Admiral John
Dahlgren (1809-‐1870) mistakenly believed the fort was manned by a skeleton crew, but the
landing party was met by over 300 Confederate infantry, who easily repulsed the assault.
Following the failed infantry attack, Union forces on Morris Island recommenced their
bombing campaign on Fort Sumter. Over the next 15 months, Union artillery effectively
leveled Fort Sumter, eventually firing nearly 50,000 projectiles at the fort between
September 1863 and February 1865. Despite suffering over 300 casualties from the Union
bombardments, the beleaguered Confederate garrison managed to retain control of the fort
until February 1865. Only when Union General William T. Sherman was poised to capture
Charleston did the Confederates finally evacuate. Union forces would reclaim Fort Sumter
on February 22, 1865. Robert A. Anderson and Abner Doubleday, the two commanding
officers from the original siege of Fort Sumter, would both return to the fortress on April 14,
1865, for a flag raising ceremony.
FORT SUMTER: POST-‐CIVIL WAR USE
After the Civil War the derelict Fort Sumter was rebuilt and partially redesigned. It would see
little use during the 1870s and 1880s and was eventually reduced to serving as a lighthouse
station for Charleston Harbor. With the start of the Spanish-‐American War (1898), the
fortress was rearmed and once again used as a coastal defense installation. It would later
see service during both World War I (1914-‐18) and World War II (1939-‐45). In 1948 Fort
Sumter was decommissioned as a military post and turned over to the National Park Service.
It now attracts over 750,000 visitors every year.