Civil War & Reconstruction

• Nullification theory: Part of the longstanding struggle of balancing the power state government and federal government; supporters believed that states had the right to nullify any law, and to secede from the Union if the federal government tried to force it to accept the law
• Missouri Compromise: 1820, divided the US into concrete halves of north, free states, and south, slave states
• California, which had expanded rapidly due to the discovery of gold, produced its state constitution in 1850, outlawing slavery; Southerners argued that this was in violation of the Missouri Compromise, as California extended both north and south of the Compromise's line
• Compromise of 1850: Calmed the opposing sides of the dispute over California, agreeing that it would be admitted as a free state, and that popular sovereignty would decided the legality of slavery in new territories
• Fugitive Slave Act: Contained with the Compromise of 1850; ruled that escaped slaves must be returned to their owners, even if they had escaped to a free state
• Ostend Manifesto: Document created by American diplomats which claimed that the US held the right to buy or seize Cuba; Northerners disputed the manifesto, and it was quickly resolved, Cuba remaining in Spanish control
• Kansas-Nebraska Act: 1854, officially repealed the Missouri Compromise, deciding that popular sovereignty should settle the slavery issue in Kansas and Nebraska
• Bleeding Kansas: Nickname for the Kansas territory, as pro-slavery and anti-slavery groups rushed to influence the vote, resulting in bloodshed
• Dred Scott Decision: 1854, case of Dred Scott, who argued that because he had lived in a free state, he should have his freedom; the court ruled that he was not a citizen and therefore could not sue, and, moreover, that to deprive a slaveowner of a slave was in violation of property laws
• The court ruling in the Dred Scott Decision established a precedent that the government could not interfere with slave ownership, effectively establishing that slavery was protected under the Constitution.
• Republican Party: Formed in 1854; opposed the Kansas-Nebraska Act and sought to keep slavery out of new territories
• John Brown: Attempted to start a slave uprising in 1859
• The Northern economy was based in industry: railroads, telegraphs, &c. Immigrants flocked to the cities to work in factories. They feared losing their jobs to slave labor, and for this reason resisted the expansion of slavery.

  The Southern economy was based in ruralism and agriculture, using rivers to transport their goods. Such an economy relied heavily on slave labor.
• To protect developing industries in the North, the government created tariffs, taxing imported goods. These forced people in the South to buy Northern goods, thereby becoming economically dependent. It was resentment over this issue that led to the Nullification Theory.
• The pre-Civil War South's economy relied namely on goods imported from the North and on slave labor.
• Frederick Douglass: Escaped from slavery to the North, started the newspaper the North Star
• Underground Railroad: Network of safe houses and routes used by slaves to escape to the North; one key state was Ohio, across the river from Kentucky
• Abraham Lincoln became the first presidential candidate of the Republican Party in 1860. The Democratic party was divided between two candidates, allowing him to win with only 40% of the popular vote. Lincoln vowed to prevent the spread of slavery, but not to end it in the South.
• Political causes of the Civil War:

  • Repealing of the Missouri Compromise by the Compromise of 1850
  • Bleeding Kansas, caused by the Kansas-Nebraska Act
  • Dred Scott Decision
  • The creation of the Republican Party in 1854; Lincoln-Douglas debates
  • John Brown's failed insurrection
  • Lincoln's election, the death knell of the issue
• Economic causes of the Civil War:

  • Tariffs which forced the agricultural South to purchase domestic products from the industrial North
  • The South's complete economic reliance on the North and on slave labor
• Social causes of the Civil War:

  • Abolitionist Movement
  • Writers such as Frederick Douglass and Harriet Beecher Stowe, who published Uncle Tom's Cabin in 1852
  • Movements to aid slaves in escaping to the North, such as the Underground Railroad
• The Civil War lasted from 1861 to 1865
• Civil War timeline:

  1850: Compromise of 1850

  1854: Kansas-Nebraska Act

  1860: Lincoln's election

  1861: First battle of the war, at Fort Sumter

  1865: Final battle of the war, General Lee's surrender
• General Winfield Scott's Anaconda Plain was to suffocate Confederate land, effectively cutting it in half and blocking ports
• Total War: Ulysses S. Grant's and William Tecumseh Sherman's stratagem which involved waging war at all costs: against civilian population, property, and infrastructure, and blocking supply lines
• Emancipation Proclamation: 1863, officially outlawed slavery
• Political consequences of the Civil War:

  • Emancipation Proclamation
  • Lincoln's assassination in 1865
• Economic consequences of the Civil War:

  • Due to the Anaconda Plan and four years of war, the Southern economy and supply were in ruins
  • Sherman's Total War had completely destroyed certain regions
  • Cotton, the South's main export, plunged in price
  • Many young men returned home with injuries which prevented them from working
  • Buildings, railroad lines, and other infrastructure had been destroyed
• Social consequences of the Civil War:

  • Black soldiers received less pay (until 1864)
  • Congress established the Buffalo Soldiers, the first peacetime all-black regiment in the US Army, which saw action during the Indian Wars
• Republicans believed in a swift reunification of Confederate states. Radical Republicans believed the South needed to be punished.
• Abraham Lincoln pocket vetoed the Wade-Davis Bill (1864) in favor of his Ten Percent Plan (1863)
• Wade-Davis Bill: 1864, radical policy which required a majority of voters, over 50 percent, to take an ironclad oath in order for a state to rejoin the Union
• Ten Percent Plan: 1863, President Lincoln's plan for a state to rejoin the union of ten percent of the state's voters took an oath of loyalty
• Andrew Johnson: Lincoln's Vice President who assumed the role of President following Lincoln's assassination in 1865; a Southern Democrat who agreed with Lincoln's clemency, and carried out the Presidential Reconstruction
• Presidential Reconstruction: 1865 to 1867, President Johnson's plan for reconstruction, which included amnesty for all who swore loyalty; the ten percent plan; and the requirement for a state to repudiate its debts, outlaw succession, and ratify the 13th Amendment in order to reenter the Union
• Black Codes: Southern states' way of circumventing the 13th Amendment to limit the rights of freedmen
• Radical Reconstruction: 1867-1877, Republicans gained a sweeping majority in the 1866 midterms; invalidated state governments formed under Presidential Reconstruction; divided the South into five military districts, each governed by a Union general; forced the ratification of the 14th and later the 15th Amendments; disqualified former Confederate officials from holding office
• Edwin Stanton: Secretary of War and member of Johnson's Cabinet
• Reconstruction Amendments:

  13th Amendment: 1865, outlawed slavery

  14th Amendment: 1868, provided citizenship and equal protection under the law to African Americans

  15th Amendment: 1870, gave African Americans the right to vote
• Sharecropping: A system in which a landowner provides land for a farmer in exchange for a share of their harvest; essentially debt peonage, which kept African Americans trapped in servitude