The History Book

246

Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. Since

both Kansas and Nebraska were to

the north of Missouri’s southern

border, what followed, in Kansas

above all, was a sudden inrush of

pro- and anti-slavery settlers, each

desperate to prevail. The two sides

clashed repeatedly and violently.

The South breaks away

This conflict led to the founding

of a new anti-slavery party, the

Republicans, on whose ticket

Abraham Lincoln, with practically

no support from any slave state,

was voted into office in November

1860. Lincoln’s victory prompted
      the almost immediate decision by
      South Carolina to secede, to leave
      the Union. By February, a further
      six Southern states had broken
      away, and the seven declared
      themselves a new nation: the
      Confederate States of America. By
      May, when Richmond in Virginia
      was made the capital of the new
      country, four more states had joined
      them. However, five slave states,
      the so-called Border States, opted
      to remain within the original Union.
      The Confederacy argued that
      the Constitution had been freely
      adopted, and as such any state
      could legitimately break away
      from the Union if it felt oppressed. As free-born men, the citizens of the
      South had an “inalienable” right to
      shape their own destinies, just as
      the founding fathers had when they
      rejected the tyranny of British rule.
      In the minds of many Southerners,
      the US government was guilty of
      precisely the same kind of tyranny
      in seeking to limit these freedoms.
      It was a deeply held position. As
      Alexander Stephens, vice-president
      of the Confederacy, asserted, the
      cornerstone of this new state
      “rest[ed] upon the great truth that
      the negro is not equal to the white
      man; that slavery... is his natural
      and normal condition...”.

THE GETTYSBURG ADDRESS

As a supreme political operator,

Lincoln realized the need to proceed

with caution. Initially at any rate,

his position was that he sought only

to restrict the expansion of slavery

while preserving the Union. On

the second point, Lincoln was

immovable; he felt the authority of

the federal government overrode

that of individual states.

The United States, the only

fully democratic country on Earth,

had been created as what Lincoln

called “a great promise to the

world,” so ensuring its survival was

an absolute moral duty. By the time

of his Emancipation Proclamation

The United States is born as a beacon of liberty

in which slavery is nonetheless permitted.

The industrial Northern

states are opposed to any

extension of slavery into

any new states.

The Gettysburg Address is Lincoln’s most

eloquent attempt to justify the war as the

means to a more just United States.

The Southern states

increasingly see slavery

as a key part of their

agrarian society.

These differences of opinion help spark the Civil War,

bringing destruction on an unforeseen scale, with neither

the North nor the South able to best the other.

The South’s defeat results in political paralysis

and institutionalized discrimination against its

black population that persists well into the next century.

I cannot raise my hand

against my birthplace,

my home, my children.

Robert E. Lee

On his resignation (April 1861)

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247

This Thomas Nast illustration

shows life for black Americans before

and after emancipation. Abraham

Lincoln is also portrayed.

in January 1863, Lincoln felt

politically secure enough to order

the freeing of all Southern slaves.

But in the short term, the Civil War

was fought to keep this “great

promise” intact.

Eventual Northern victory

The outcome of the American Civil

War was dictated ultimately by the

human and material discrepancies

between the North and the South.

There were 21 Union states with

a population of 20 million, and 11

Southern states with a population

of 9 million, 4 million of whom were

slaves, and therefore not allowed

to bear arms. Despite the fact that

by 1864, 44 percent of males in the

North between the ages of 18 and

60 were in military service, versus

90 percent in the Southern states,

the North was still able to enlist

2.2 million men over the whole war,

compared to the South’s 800,000.

The North was three times

richer than the South. It had 2.4

miles (3.8km) of railroad to every

1 mile (1.6km) in the South. Its

factories manufactured 10 times

more goods. It produced 20 times

more iron than the South, 38 times

as much coal, and 32 times as many

firearms. The only area in which the

South exceeded the North was in

cotton production, at 24 to 1.

In the face of this superiority,

the fact that the South was not only

able to resist the Union forces for

four years but also to come close

to victory in 1862 and 1863 was a

reflection of the Southern soldiers’

profound belief in their cause. It was

also the result of its plainly superior

generals—the Virginian Robert E.

Lee above all. By contrast, at least

until the emergence of Ulysses S.

Grant and William Sherman as the

two leading commanders of the

Union forces, the North had been

able to muster only a succession

of timid and inept generals who

frittered away the advantages they

so abundantly possessed.

Reinvigorated by Grant and

Sherman, the North prevailed. The

razing of Atlanta in September 1864

was followed by Sherman’s “march

to the sea” at Savannah, Georgia.

Completed in December, it left a

60-mile- (96.5-km-) wide swathe of

destruction, deliberately targeting

CHANGING SOCIETIES

civilian property. “War is cruelty,”

Sherman asserted. “The crueler it

is, the sooner it will be over.”

A new freedom

The US Civil War was the world’s

first major industrial war, the first to

make widespread use of railroads,

and the first widely reported in a

new kind of popular press. There

was concentrated death on a scale

never seen before: around 670,000

dead, 50,000 of them civilians, in

little more than four years.

For Abraham Lincoln, the war

represented what in the Gettysburg

Address he called “unfinished

business.” The Constitution had

left unresolved the question of

how slavery could exist in a nation

“conceived in liberty.” Despite the

destruction and the huge death

toll, the war brought a chance

at “a new birth of freedom.” The

end of slavery, confirmed by

the Thirteenth Amendment in

1865, represented an opportunity

for the US to be recast as a

genuinely free land for all its

citizens, black and white. ■

Grant stood by me when I

was crazy, and I stood by him

when he was drunk, and now

we stand by each other.

William Sherman

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