What Price Freedom: Emancipation and Reunification: Challenges to Peacemaking
There are two primary goals at the end of the Civil War, reuniting the country and emancipation, but no one knows exactly what freedom for blacks means. Freed people know what they want--literacy and land--but taking land from the planter class and ...
Voices of Reform: Women's Role in the Abolitionist Movement
Violating conventional mores, women in the North take the abolitionists' cause to their neighborhoods, asking people to join them in signing anti-slavery petitions. Because of slavery's impact on family life and personal dignity, a few women begin s...
House Divided: Capture of Ft. Sumter Signals Beginning of Civil War
A small garrison of federal troops at Fort Sumter, a new fort under construction in Charleston Harbor, is running out of food and supplies in March, 1861. In response to Commander Anderson's appeal for help President Lincoln sends a ship to re-suppl...
House Divided: Emancipation Question, The
As a practical matter Lincoln believes in gradual emancipation. His army officers ask for specific guidance on what to do with the slaves they find in captured territories. Although Southerners contend that blacks understand it is in their "best int...
House Divided: Early Months of the Civil War
Citizens of North and South rush to volunteer their services, wanting to get into the action before the skirmish is over. Neither side has guns, uniforms, or any kind of organization. Winfield Scott, commanding general for the United States, launche...
House Divided: Political Debate Over Secession
In a message sent to Congress on July 4, 1861, Lincoln disputes any state's right to secede. The Southern states say they would never have signed the Constitution if they had not believed they could withdraw if faced with a grave injustice. In the m...
House Divided: Confederates Attack Southern Forts
Southern states begin attacking federal forts, Fort Pickering in Florida and Fort Sumter in the Charleston harbor. President Buchanan takes a firm stand against this action, but there is little he actually does to intercede. People of both the North...
Voices of Reform: Abolitionist Movement, The
The first major abolitionist voice in the United States is William Lloyd Garrison who begins publishing The Liberator in 1831. He gathers around him a society of men and women, white and black, who advocate the immediate abolition of slavery in the ...
What Price Freedom: President Johnson Fast Tracks Re-entry of Southern States
At this very difficult time, Lincoln's Vice President Andrew Johnson becomes President. Johnson is a former slaveholder and wartime governor of Tennessee, a loyal unionist Democrat who was put on the ticket to broaden the appeal of the Republican Pa...
Voices of Reform: Temperance Movement, The
One of the most influential reform movements of the era is the crusade against drunkenness. Among the working class, people sign pledges not to drink alcohol. Some social elites push temperance as a kind of social control, a way to cut down on socia...