Class Notes #2: The South, Civil War, & Reconstruction

To Do:  Read/Watch all assigned work here and read chapter 9 in Hymowitz and Weissman ( H & W).

 

Antebellum South. 1830-1861

 

Image v. Reality

 

Scarlett O'Hara, Gone with the Wind, 1939

As Abolitionist ideas grew (slowly) in the North, Southern slaveholders had to defend slavery.   They promoted the idea that the culture that slavery supported was so great, that enslaving close to 4 million people was justifiable.  Only about 25% of white Southerners owned any enslaved people, so is it a fair question to ask if slavery was good for most white people?  Obviously it was horrible for enslaved African Americans. 

 

Paternalism and Reality

           ---Slave owners promote the idea that slavery is "good" for the enslaved

             --Reality:  slavery is an economic system based on coercion and violence

 

Resistance by Enslaved People

           --Covert and Overt

                          -Sabotage, running away, outright rebellion

 

Read:  Enslaved Women at a Southern College Links to an external site.

 

Abolitionists started to promote Slave Narratives, to have former enslaved people talk about their experiences while being explained.  Women were heavily involved in this effort

Watch:   American Passages: Slavery and Freedom Links to an external site.

 

By the 1840s and 1850s, the US has gone to war with Mexico, taken much of its land, and bought land from the English to reach the Pacific Ocean.  You can see expansion and the years that it happened in the map below:

As the country expands west, the political elite in the North (the middle class) and the elite in the South (wealthy slave owners) argued over if slavery would be legal in the west.   These tensions escalated and this will lead to the Civil War, which starts in 1861.  11 Southern states leave the US and create a new country called the Confederate States of America (CSA).  The North (US) will fight the the South (CSA) in a 4 year war, killing almost a million people, and the North will ultimately win in 1865.   The fact that the North was more industrialized was a huge factor in their victory in this war.  

 

Watch:   Sectionalism and the Causes of the Civil War Links to an external site.

 

Read:  The US Sanitation Commission Links to an external site.

Read:  Women Soldiers in the Civil War Links to an external site.

 

After the war, slavery is abolished in 1865 and the US (the North---who won the Civil War) is able to control what happens in the South after the war.  This period after the Civil War is know as Reconstruction and lasts from 1865-1877.

Watch my video on Reconstruction Links to an external site.

Read:  Women During Reconstruction Links to an external site.

 

Many (if not most) White Southerners were not happy with the changes that the federal government were making during Reconstruction.   Because of this, we start to see a backlash of terror and violence targeting federal government employees, African Americans, and their White allies.  Groups like the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) are prominent in such activities.   Look at this cartoon below, what is it saying about how African Americans are being treated by 1874.

 

Thomas Nast, 1874