Coming to Grips with the American Civil War
I've been on an American history kick lately and just finished Battle Cry of Freedom, a Pulitzer Prize-winning book on the American Civil War by historian James McPherson. I grew up in Indiana, where the civil war's legacy may not seem apparent at first, unless you spot a war monument or stumble upon a historical marker for a prisoner-of-war camp. So, I was eager to learn more about the stories and people of the war. Here are my main takeaways:
The moral question of slavery had divided the American North and South since the early days of the republic, but both sides had conceded to put it on the political backburner during the constitutional convention in order to reach a workable concensus. Even so, the founding fathers who owned slaves—such as the Virginians Washington, Jefferson, and Madison—considered slavery a moral evil that should eventually be phased out.
Fast forward 60 years, and instead of gradually phasing out slavery like the founders had anticipated, the American South increasingly built its economy upon the institution, becoming dependent on it in a way that made its abolition unthinkable to Southerners. In some parts of the South, enslaved people greatly outnumbered free whites, and slave owners feared retribution at the hands of their slaves, should they be freed. Given these incentives, Southerners adopted beliefs that justified slavery as a moral good, such as the view that slavery benefited slaves because it offered them a better life than they would otherwise have as freed people.
As calls for the abolition of slavery intensified in the North in the decades leading up to the war (especially in the progressive Northeast, like Boston), Southern states did everything in their power to protect the institution of slavery. New states were increasingy admitted to the union as free states, which threatened the voting power of the slave states in congress. In an attempt to maintain their power in congress, Southern states pushed hard for the admission of new slave states. For example, there were significant campaigns by Southern states to overthrow the governments of Cuba and Nicaragua with the goal of admitting them to the US as slave states. More famously, bands of pro-slavery Missourians poured into Kansas territory in an attempt to sway it to vote to become a slave state instead of a free state.
For more than a decade prior to the war, Southern states had already threatened secession as bargaining leverage. However, in the run-up to the 1860 presidential election, they sensed that if the pro-abolition Republican party came to power through the election of Abraham Lincoln, the institution of slavery would be in serious jeopardy. So, a core of Southern states planned to secede if Lincoln won the presidency. When it became apparent at the end of 1860 that Lincoln had indeed won, the Southern states immediately began declaring their secession one-by-one.
No state was wholly for Union or for secession; there was much struggle between both ideals within each state. Famously, pro-Union West Virginia split off from secessionist Virginia. Pro-Union eastern Tennessee also attempted to split off in a similar way. Missouri's governor enacted an ordinance of secession, but was run out of the state by Unionists. The exiled Missourian government continued to operate in Texas as a member of the Confederacy while Missourians elected a new pro-Union government that was recognized by the US. Border slave states like Kentucky and Maryland were heavily divided and intensely sought after by both sides because they were strategically important. Kentucky's official state government was pro-Union, but Confederates formed a shadow government in the state, which the Confederacy recognized and admitted as a member. Even in the Deep South, there was much disagreement. Sam Houston, then governor of Texas and former hero of the Texas Revolution, advocated adamently against secession, but was eventually overruled and forced out of office.
Throughout the beginning of the war, Lincoln declared that his sole objective was to preserve the Union and would do everything in his power to achieve that. He was the target of much criticism from his Democratic opponents, who alledged that he was sending soldiers to their deaths to fight for the abolition of slavery. After all, even some members of Lincoln's own Republican party viewed the war as a means of achieving abolition. However, in 1862, Lincoln sought to make his objective clear through these words published in a public letter:
My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. What I do about slavery and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save thise Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union.
Later in the war, Lincoln's administration recognized that it could be strategically advantageous to emancipate the rebelling states' slaves so that the Union could arm defecting slaves to fight as soldiers. This led to the Emancipation Proclamation. Eventually as the war progressed, an increasing number of Unionists, including Lincoln himself, began to view the war not only as a means to preserve the Union, but also as a battle for the total abolition of slavery. This increasingly popular notion of fighting for the moral cause of abolition may have played an important role in motivating Northern troops during the ups and downs of the long war struggle.
The Battle of Atlanta was one of the war's major turning points. In mid 1864, Northern morale was low, and Lincoln expected that he would lose the coming November election. However, Union General Willam Sherman's capture of Atlanta months before the election was a major strategic and symbolic blow to the Confederacy, which buoyed Northern hopes of victory and ultimately led to Lincoln's re-election. Without the victory at Atlanta, it's likely that the pro-peace Democrat George McClellan would have defeated Lincoln in the 1864 election and that the Confederate States would have achieved independence through peace negotiations.
As Sherman's men continued their destructive campaign through Georgia and then South Carolina, and as the Confederacy continued to incur significant losses, it became clear to Confederate president Jefferson Davis that drastic measures were needed in order to avoid defeat. Despite the South's view that the Union's use of black troops was abhorrent, Davis's administration made a last-ditch effort to advocate for arming some slaves to fight for the Confederacy, including offering them partial or full freedom in return to prevent them from simply defecting to the North. This proposal faced immense backlash in the Confederate congress, partly because offering slaves freedom contradicted the South's core belief that enslaved people benefited from slavery. In the end, this plan was abandoned, and Confederate legislators said they would rather give up slavery at the hands of the North rather than do it themselves.
The Union capture of the Confederate capital of Richmond in 1865 signaled the end of the war and the beginning of reconstruction. The terms of reconstruction were generous: former Confederate soldiers and generals could return to their homes without facing charges of treason as long as they abided by the laws. At this point, Confederate soldiers were starving (as was much of the the South), and Grant authorized to send food rations to them as a token of peace.
Thoughts
While growing up, I rarely payed attention in history class—it just didn't interest me that much. So, prior to reading this book, my knowledge of the civil war was hazy at best. I knew that it was North versus South and that it resulted in the Emancipation Proclamation and the 13th amendment. However, my knowledge was also colored by years of overhearing poorly informed takes on the war. For example, it's not uncommon to hear the argument that the reason the South seceeded was to fight for states' rights. Now having read this book, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the South did fight for states' rights: the right to own slaves. Battle Cry of Freedom was full of intriguing history and facts, but it also provided a very grim reminder that this chapter of American history was not that long ago. Both of my parents were born less than 100 years after the end of the war. Both of them could have met Americans who were born into slavery. Had the events of the war played out a bit differently, how much longer would slavery have continued in the US or the Confederate States? To be clear, we shouldn't hold this history against the South today. They were not alive back then, and they had no part in this war. However, I believe it's important for all Americans to know its history and the context it provides for modern events, like the continued adversity faced by Black Americans today or the legacy of confederate monuments and icons. Speaking of monuments, it's abundantly clear to me now that Indiana's war monuments aren't its most visible legacy of the civil war. It's actually the wonderful cultural diversity of cities like Indianapolis and the ability for all Hoosiers to live freely without the fear of what lies on the other side of the Ohio River.