What up, A-Push people? Today we're going to take a look at Period 5, Key Concept 5.3, and this is really the Civil War and Reconstruction. And an important thing to keep in mind is the reasons the Union wins the war. Because in the beginning, the Confederacy has some early success. They win the Battle of Bull Run, which proves the war is not going to be over in 90 days.
The Peninsula Campaign is a defeat for the Union, and there's some advantages the South has going into this war. They're fighting a defensive war. All they have to do is not lose.
They're fighting amongst a friendly population. They have a sense of purpose. They're fighting for their southern way of life as they see it, defending slavery, defending state rights against what they feel is an abusive federal government.
They also have many of the veteran military officials, many of the big-time military leaders like Robert E. Lee, join the Confederacy when the war begins. But the North slowly gets out of control. it together.
And largely it's going to be their greater industrial resources. They have the manufacturing capacity that the South does not. They have more manpower which means more soldiers to fight in the battles as the war drags on.
They're going to use the Navy to implement military strategies such as the Anaconda Plan with a blockade and eventually trying to strangle the South into submission. And as the war goes on, Military leaders are going to emerge in the Union like William Tecumseh Sherman and Ulysses S. Grant. And you're going to have some key victories as the war drags on. 1862, you have Antietam, and it's really a military draw, but it prevents foreign intervention on the side of the Confederacy.
England and France, because the South doesn't win that battle, kind of rethink this idea of giving them recognition or help. And it also leads to Lincoln announcing the Emancipation Proclamation. Gettysburg is another one you should keep in mind. It stops the Confederate attack on Union soil in Pennsylvania. And right at the same time is the Battle of Vicksburg, where Ulysses S. Grant wins control of the Mississippi River for the Union.
And Sherman's March to the Sea and the Fall of Atlanta in 1864. William Tecumseh Sherman leads a march of deliberate destruction throughout the South, and this is part of the Union's strategy of total war. You destroy the Southern environment and its infrastructure, and eventually they will surrender. And a big thing to keep in mind is, after Antietam, the war is changed to one not just about stopping secession, but also stopping slavery, and that gives the Union an advantage, military as well as ideologically.
Both sides, both the Union and the Confederacy, are going to mobilize their economies and societies for war. Both the Union and the Confederacy are going to adopt conscription laws, draft laws, as men are needed for the fighting. And these, in both the North and the South, were unfair to the poor. In the North, there was these $300 men where you could hire substitutes to do the fighting for you. And in the South, you have these so-called 20 Negro Law, where if you own...
More than 20 slaves you were exempt from having to fight. As a result of this unfairness, a rich man's war but a poor man's fight was the same. You have draft riots, the most famous ones being in July of 1863 in New York.
Mobs of mostly Irish Americans attacked the wealthy and African Americans. Another way that the North is mobilizing their economy and the society for war is by a series of laws. You get a tariff law passed, National Bank Act, the Homestead Act, and of course the Emancipation Proclamation.
All of these are intended to raise money and to address the needs of Northern society to fight the war. Opposition doesn't just stop at the draft riots. Both Jefferson Davis and Abraham Lincoln faced opposition on the home front.
Jefferson Davis had a very difficult time. lack of resources throughout the Confederacy, but also the state rights tradition in the South hindered the Confederacy's ability to fight the war. You have soldiers from different states refusing to leave their state to fight for the Confederacy.
Lincoln has a number of things, challenges on the home front. He does suspend the writ of habeas corpus in Maryland and other executive actions, stopping newspapers that were critical of the Union. And this was something he did, largely in order to keep the border states in the Union.
And in the North, Lincoln once again is having to run for re-election in 1864. You should be aware of politics in the North. You have radical Republicans, war Democrats, peace Democrats, and copperheads all trying to put pressure on Lincoln to do things as they see they should be done. A big thing you need to keep in mind for 5.3 is the Emancipation Proclamation. As we said, it is announced following the Battle of Antietam. Lincoln decides to move forward with announcing the Emancipation.
This is going to change the purpose of the war and the impact. There's a huge number of things you should keep in mind. One, it strengthens the moral cause of the North. It's not just a war against secession. It's also against slavery.
It helps. keep Europe from giving full diplomatic support for the Confederacy. It gives the Union new African American soldiers for the Union Army.
In fact, people like Frederick Douglass saw enlistment in the Union Army as an opportunity for African Americans to prove their citizenship. Remember the Dred Scott case had said no black people are citizens of the United States. For Douglass and others, this was a way for African Americans to fight not only for their freedom, but their citizenship. There are some limits to the Emancipation Proclamation.
Keep in mind the North had no authority in the Confederacy and it does not apply to the border states. Another kind of big idea in Key Concept 5.3 is this division between Congressional Reconstruction and Presidential Reconstruction under Johnson. Both radical and moderate Republicans take over Reconstruction policy from President Johnson. There's this anger.
when he begins to veto laws from Congress such as the extension of the Freedmen's Bureau and the Civil Rights Bill of 1866. And as a result there is going to be a change in the balance of power between Congress and the presidency. Congress is going to override President Johnson's vetoes and pass both of those laws. And as a result they're also going to begin their own phase of reconstruction best symbolized by the Reconstruction Act of 1867. This divides the South into five military districts controlled by Union generals.
This is radical reconstruction. You can see the five different districts on the map above. And Congress will determine readmission requirements. And the Johnson Plan and the Lincoln governments are invalidated and the new criteria for admission is you need to create a new state constitution.
You need to include black suffrage in that constitution and the states must ratify the 13th and 14th amendment. And President Johnson finds himself during this kind of shift in the balance of power facing the first instance of a president being impeached. The Tenure of Office Act was passed and it basically said the Senate must approve any presidential dismissal of a cabinet official or general. President Johnson. famously removes the Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, who was left over from the days of Lincoln, and the House of Representatives immediately votes to impeach President Johnson.
He is put on trial, but he is not convicted because Congress is one vote short of the two-thirds required. Nonetheless, radical reconstruction is in full form. And you do have some successes under radical reconstruction. The Union is reunited slowly.
under these new requirements of admission. And there are some short-term successes. It opens up political opportunities to former slaves, and there's a temporary rearrangement of the relationship between white and black people in the South. Most famously, for instance, Hiram Revels is elected Senator of Mississippi in 1870 to the seat that Jefferson Davis used to hold.
And in that image, you see other African American congressmen voted. into office during this radical reconstruction phase. A key idea though you need to keep in mind is the 13th Amendment did abolish slavery bringing about the war's most dramatic social and economic change but the exploitative and soil intensive sharecropping system endured for several generations. Translation black codes were put in place which had the purpose was to guarantee a stable labor supply now that blacks were emancipated.
And southerners were really hoping, in spite of the 13th Amendment, to restore pre-emancipation system of race relations. And some examples of the way they were able to do this is black codes made it illegal for African Americans to rent or borrow money to buy land. African Americans were forced to sign labor contracts. If you did not have one, you could be arrested for vagrancy. and there was a penalty for leaving before your contract expired.
Some of the other things that were a part of these black codes is African Americans could not serve on a jury or vote. And as a result, many African Americans were forced to become sharecroppers, which allowed them to use the land in exchange for giving a percent of the crop to the owner of the land. So they were bound to the land, working it once again. Reconstruction does have some short-term success, but it is going to fall apart. If you look at these maps of the elections.
There was some Reconstruction governments. The Republican Party was having some success. However, it falls apart for a couple of reasons. One, determine Southern resistance.
The Ku Klux Klan is going to be established to secure white supremacy and to resist the Reconstruction government. You have the so-called Redeemer governments, which sought to remove Republican Reconstruction governments that were... made up of a coalition of freedmen, carpetbaggers, and scallywags in the South. The Redeemers were trying to get those individuals out of the South.
And very often they used violence, as you can see in the image right there. There's also the North's waning resolve, meaning Northerners were becoming less and less interested in using the power of the government to maintain Reconstruction. In fact, the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which guaranteed equal access to public places, was rarely enforced and eventually overturned by the Supreme Court in 1883. And in the 1870s, both Congress and President Grant would be unwilling to use the federal government's power to monitor Southern society. Some events to keep in mind is the Panic of 1873. The nation increasingly became more worried about economic issues. issues and the election of 1876 which was disputed leads to the compromise of 1877 which ultimately marks the end of Reconstruction.
So those short-term successes do fade away. We do have the Reconstruction amendments you should be aware of, the 13th abolished slavery, we saw there were limits to that, the 14th guaranteed citizenship and protection of rights of citizens with equal protection of the laws and due process. And then finally, of course, the 15th, which guaranteed black male suffrage. Important to keep in mind, though, although citizenship, equal protection of the laws, and voting rights were granted to African Americans in the 14th and 15th Amendments, rights were restricted. You're going to see segregation, Jim Crow laws, take place in the 1870s and 1880s.
Local political tactics were used, such as literacy tests, poll taxes, and grandfather clauses. to disenfranchise African American voters. Violence was used if that didn't work. Violence was used to scare and to suppress voters and rights amongst African Americans in the South.
And Supreme Court decisions started to overturn Reconstruction laws. Plessy versus Ferguson in 1896, segregation was ruled constitutional as long as it was separate but equal. And as already mentioned, the civil rights cases of 1883. Discrimination was allowed if done by individuals or private businesses the court declared, and these cases ruled the Civil Rights Act of 1875 to be unconstitutional.
It is important, though, to keep in mind the Reconstruction Amendments established judicial principles that were stalled for many decades, but eventually would become the basis for court decisions. upholding rights. And the most famous example of this is the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause would serve as the basis for the Brown versus Board of Education decision in 1954, a decision that would overturn racial segregation, particularly the Plessy versus Ferguson case. And it's really important you keep in mind how these reconstruction amendments would be used in the 1950s and 1960s by the civil rights movement to broaden rights. to new groups of people.
And one last thing, there also was a division amongst the women's rights movement. Leaders such as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton opposed black male suffrage and the 15th Amendment when it became clear that it was only going to be for males. So there's a split within the women's rights movement about whether or not to support the 15th Amendment you should be aware about. I highly suggest that you check out these two videos for way more details about the Civil War and Reconstruction, but that gives you a broad overview of the key things you need to know for Key Concept 5.3. Hope you learned some stuff.
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