civil war report

During the Civil War, the main cause of Southern secession was slavery, despite arguments about states' rights. The Crittenden Constitution, which protected slavery, was rejected by Lincoln and the Republicans. The Confederacy claimed Missouri and Kentucky due to cultural similarities. Lincoln argued that secession was illegal. Total war emerged as a strategy, targeting civilian targets. The South struggled with mobilization and economic issues, while the North had advantages like the Homestead Act and Land Grant College Act. Both sides overstepped their central government powers. African American soldiers played a significant role, with over 190,000 serving in the Union army. However, they faced discrimination and were often mistreated. Heroes like Robert Smalls and the first black physician emerged. The Emancipation Proclamation didn't immediately free slaves, but it shifted the perception of the war. The 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments eventually freed and protected black Americans. Hello, my name is Jack Hanes-Hahn, and today I'm going to be talking about some of the most important consequences of American ideas that have come out of the Civil War, from major events, basically. So, the first event I chose is really just the base of Southern Secession, the reasons, the leaders, and the legality of it. So, although you may hear some people say things like, this whole war started about states' rights, it was the state right that was in question was slavery. It was about slavery, and not just about the legality of slavery in the Southern states, but also about its expansion into the West as we were expanding quickly. War was looming. Lots of people were afraid, and one of the attempts to try to avoid this war was the Crittenden Constitution, which was an alternate constitution that basically protected slavery in the slave states, and protected its expansion as long as it was south of the Missouri Compromise Line, extending all the way out West. This was rejected as Lincoln and most of the Republicans had decided that they were not okay with any sort of expansion of slavery, although early on they were okay with slavery being maintained in the Southern states. There was no chance of it expanding out West, at least not with the leadership that was in control. So, some of the early Confederate leaders and their decisions that really dammed things up. When the Confederacy broke off the seven states that originally broke off, they held a convention that convinced and elected Jefferson Davis to serve as president, and Alexander Stevens to serve as vice. Shortly after, four more states seceded, Maine, Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee. And then the Confederacy also, one of these early actions that kind of showed that aggression and also the cultural significance of the unity of some of these southern states is when the Confederacy claimed Missouri and Kentucky, although being north of that line because they saw, especially in most of Kentucky and the southern third of Missouri, a cultural identity that was similar to theirs in the South that they then identified. And Lincoln wasn't in Washington, so before he got back, all of these things had happened. However, Lincoln argued right away that no state had the right to break apart the Union, therefore there was no legal standing for secession. So the recognition of their secession was never actually recognized at a legal level. I mean, obviously they seceded and there was war, but in terms of how it was perceived, especially by the Union leadership, is that they never had legal right to actually secede in the first place. Which is important to understand as we look at the viewpoints and the mindsets of a lot of these people, especially after the war. So some of the early things that we see in, like I said, the aggression in Missouri and Kentucky, we also see Confederate encroachment onto federal forts and lands, and as they take those, they're able to get in better position for the start of the war. We see this really with Fort Sumter right away, only about 100 men defending it, Union soldiers, it was surrounded and cut off. Lincoln basically wouldn't send help, he was going to make the Confederacy make the first move of aggression to really start the war, which is also an important thing to understand and a brilliant strategic thing for him, as the South did end up pushing in, taking this fort and really starting the war from there on. So the second issue I wanted to bring up was this idea of total war that was growing and becoming a part of the Civil War as it moved on, which was this idea that you had to attack supply lines, you had to go after anything that could be beneficial for the other side, which means that civilian targets were a part of it. And that type of warfare, especially with the seeds of hate and slavery racism already so deep, that type of warfare is something that created an even greater, especially social divide between the North and the South that we see even today. But this idea, as I said, was already so steeped in the racism and hatred that came for black people that it was easier to redirect it into other ways or to connect a side with that type of hatred. So as we see this, we start to see both sides trying to mobilize and the strategies that they do to do so. And we see early struggles by the Confederate mobilization as they don't have the population numbers that the North had, as they didn't have a lot of the infrastructure and things like that that created big booms as in railroads and things like that in the North, they did not have in the South, at least not to that degree. Also a large portion of their population were black slaves and very few of them ended up fighting on the Southern side. Also they just had huge economic struggles. They really were relying on a lot of help from England and France, which never came. England didn't want to get on the Union's bad side. France really wasn't in a position to do much help anyways. They thought cotton would just keep booming, booming, booming. But as Europe pulled off from that, they were having trouble capitalizing on their free labor. And this is also, it's a product of, at this point in the world, even back then, most of the world, especially Europe had moved away from the ideas of slavery and didn't want to be associated with powers that be that would still be on that side. However, the Union mobilization had many more advantages. I mean, right away, they turned every part of their society into helping the war machine from utilizing women to mobilizing supply lines to using black people, just everything really pointed towards them getting people to help in the war effort. Some of the acts that they passed that really helped them claim Western land faster than the South and then capitalize on that economic development were things like the Homestead Act and the Land Grant College Act, which Homestead Act encouraged, gave hundreds of acres to people moving out West. And the Land Grant College Act encouraged farmlands to be made and farm education, which the North was able to take advantage of and then move past the South on a lot of these things, helping their economies and helping them recruit and pay for the war effort. We do see a troubling trend on both sides during the war, and we see this in most wars. But really, the central government's overstepping their bounds to try to protect their war efforts. So basically, the main thing that both sides do is we see them getting rid of habeas corpus so that the president or whoever can arrest people without due process, hold them, and then even possibly force them to fight on their side or things like that. The North didn't have as much of a problem, the South, though, left, I mean, they seceded to avoid this type of central government power hand, and this really went against that for them, which caused a lot of dissent. Next, my big thing, this is one of the biggest, and it's African American soldiers. They were a huge advantage after 62, when the Emancipation Proclamation was announced and before that, the Union was really using very little black people, and they were using them for minuscule tasks. After this, they were able to join battalions, they were able to really help in the war effort, and although a lot of times, even minuscule tasks still, including the battlefield and stuff, there were many large heroes, and by the end of the war, over 190,000 black soldiers were part of the war effort for the Union. With that being said, even in the North, they were paid less, they were given bad jobs, they weren't protected the way that white soldiers were. They also weren't given many leadership roles, and the only ones they really were given were over other black soldiers. Then, of course, in the South, this type of behavior infuriated Southern, and any time they did end up capturing Union soldiers, although they would take most white soldiers prisoner, they would usually torture and execute any black soldiers that they would take from the Union. Although blacks helped in the war and were a huge part of it, it did not transfer in many places for blacks, as they didn't get the credit they should have. However, we do have some heroes that I only listed two, but there are many. One of my favorites is Robert Smalls. Great story of him in South Carolina, commandeering a ship, a Southern warship, blockading a port, causing a bunch of trouble, then escaping with the warship, getting into the Union, and then taking control of it. After this, he became a political leader, was able to win elections as a black man, and have representation in state government, which was incredible at that time. His story was incredible, and there are many more like him. Another hero that I wanted to place, and this is just another champion of not just military service for blacks, but also what they're able to do afterwards and their importance. He was the first black American black physician. He was also the first black American professor of medicine. He was an incredible surgeon, and in that, he created not just being a hero of the Civil War who protected the Union, but also a black man who was just as smart as any white man and could do anything in those fields. Getting to our next point, which is emancipation, how important this was, and the Emancipation Proclamation being passed, and how it really shifted how the war was being fought and looked at by both sides. The main problem with the Emancipation Proclamation is that it didn't actually free any slaves as much as it stated the intentions of what the Union wanted to do, as the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments really freed and protected and enfranchised blacks. This is important as Abraham Lincoln had a changing and evolving view on slavery and its place in America when he was first elected. In his early years, wouldn't call him an abolitionist as much as he didn't believe in the expansion of slavery or the morality of it per se, but he believed that the states had the right to decide that and that he didn't have the legal right to take that away as president even when he was. Due to the war, his changing experience, seeing the inability for the South to do any sort of compromise, he eventually became an avid abolitionist and you'll hear his tone change from his inaugural address to speeches like Gettysburg and stuff where he changes his tone in terms of his audacity to fight and abolish slavery, which ends up being incredibly important for us as a country for our rhetoric and our mindsets when attacking such a thing. With that being said, it just absolutely infuriated the South. It led to huge, you know, the South had such societal dependency on slavery and the hatred of blacks just in their society and their culture that, you know, poking at them and you know, we see it, we've seen it today, whether, you know, it's still just blatant racism or big events where, you know, Barack Obama gets elected in 2008 and we see a political shift among a huge part of the country of people who, you know, were purple or voted blue that stopped because a black man became president. These are the long-term effects of some of these things. And then, of course, I picked this one, although it's just after the war, only a week, the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and, you know, that Southern rage that led to someone like Wilkes Booth who was able to kill Lincoln on April 15th in 1865. Very well-known story in America, obviously, but the extreme behaviors and the just attempt to try to hold on to the culture of slavery in the South led to people, extremes like John Wilkes Booth that, you know, assassinated Abraham Lincoln and sent reverbs through the entire country. You know, and this was all due, I mean, 1864, Lincoln had just won another election. He was planning radical reconstruction. These things really pushed into more and more crazy and extreme views, which led to, you know, people like John Wilkes Booth who believed that killing Lincoln would, you know, reestablish the Confederacy, which, of course, did not. Andrew Jackson, his vice president, takes over. He was a Southern, slave-owning white man, self-made, I suppose. But he was always loyal to the Union, even during the war, and so it was important when Lincoln ran that Jackson, that they show that they still had loyalty, that they had support for people who were loyalty, even if they were Southerners. However, he wasn't as radical on reconstruction, but nonetheless, 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments all get passed. These, of course, have huge ripple effects, and honestly, they weren't wired out very well, and we, even until the 1960s, through the civil rights movements, we still have problems with equal rights for blacks to vote in all parts of the country. Just an important point to hit through all this is the difference between, you know, patriotism and being proud of your country and wanting to fight for it, and nationalism and white nationalism, believing that you are better or that your race is better inside of a country, and we still have people who fight for the culture that is the Confederacy or Southern, and really it's just about racism and hatred, and that's why we have to be careful not to forget that our history of our country is steeped in it, and we have to do better about recognizing and doing better. Thank you very much.