Access to History. The American Civil War: Causes, Courses and Consequences 1803-1877 4th ed

257 Pages·2011·4.051 MB·English

by  Alan Farmer

access to history
The American Civil War:
Causes, Course and
Consequences 1803–77
FOURTH EDITION
Alan Farmer
AN HACHETTE UK COMPANY
Study guides revised and updated, 2008, by Angela Leonard (Edexcel) and
Geoff Woodward (OCR)
The publishers would like to thank the following individuals, institutions and
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180, 204; © CORBIS, pages 44, 66, 105, 130, 137, 159 (top & bottom), 178, 197,
212, 221, 237; Getty Images, page 225; Mary Evans Picture Library, page 67;
© Medford Historical Society Collection/CORBIS, page 118; Private Collection/
Bridgeman Art Library, page 181; © Stapleton Collection/CORBIS, page 43.
The publishers would also like to thank the following for permission to
reproduce material in this book:Edexcel Limited for extracts used on
pages 194, 240.
The publishers would like to acknowledge use of the following extracts:
Addison Wesley Publishing Company for an extract from The Origins of the Civil War
by B.H. Reid, 1996; W.W. Norton for extracts from The Political Crisis of the 1850sby
M.F. Holt, 1979; Penguin for an extract from The Growth of the U.S.A.by R.B. Nye
and J.E. Morpurgo, 1965.
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© Alan Farmer 2006
Third edition published in 2006 by
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This fourth edition published in 2008.
Impression number 5 4
Year 2012 2011
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Cover photo shows Emancipation Proclamationby A.A. Lamb,
© Francis G. Mayer/Corbis.
Typeset in Baskerville 10/12pt and produced by Gray Publishing, Tunbridge Wells
Printed in India
A catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978 0340 965870
Contents
Dedication v
Introduction 1
Chapter 1 The USA in the Mid-nineteenth Century 4
1 The US Political System 4
2 US Social and Economic Development 8
3 Sectionalism 12
4 Slavery 14
5 Key Debate 23
6 Conclusion 26
Study Guide 27
Chapter 2 The Problem of Western Expansion 1846–54 31
1 Missouri, Texas and Mexico 31
2 The Impact of the Mexican War 1846–50 38
3 The 1850 Compromise 43
4 North–South Problems 1850–3 47
5 The Problem of Kansas–Nebraska 50
Study Guide 54
Chapter 3 The Rise of the Republican Party 58
1 The Collapse of the Second Party System 58
2 The Situation in Kansas 1854–6 61
3 The Emergence of the Republicans 63
4 The 1856 Presidential Election 66
5 The Presidency of James Buchanan 1857–8 70
6 The 1858 Congressional Elections 74
7 John Brown’s Raid 77
Study Guide 80
Chapter 4 The 1860 Election, Secession and Civil War 85
1 The 1860 Presidential Election 85
2 Secession 90
3 The Creation of the Confederacy 95
4 The Search for Compromise 98
5 The Problem of Fort Sumter 101
6 Key Debate 106
Study Guide 110
iv | Contents
Chapter 5 War on the Home and Foreign Fronts 116
1 The Confederate War Effort 116
2 The Economic and Social Impact of the War on the Confederacy 122
3 Confederate Opposition to the War 126
4 The Union War Effort 127
5 The Economic and Social Impact of the War on the Union 133
6 Union Opposition to the War 136
7 Britain and the Civil War 138
Study Guide 143
Chapter 6 The War 1861–5 145
1 Union and Confederate Strengths 146
2 The Nature of the War 149
3 The Soldiers’ Experience 156
4 The War in 1861–2 161
5 The War in 1863 171
6 Union Victory 1864–5 176
7 Key Debate 185
Study Guide 193
Chapter 7 Reconstruction 196
1 The Emancipation of the Slaves 197
2 The African American War Effort 203
3 The Problem of Reconstruction 208
4 Reconstruction in the South 1867–77 219
5 The Impact of the Civil War 232
6 Key Debate 235
Study Guide 239
Glossary 241
Index 247
Dedication
Keith Randell (1943–2002)
TheAccess to Historyseries was conceived and developed by Keith, who created a series to
‘cater for students as they are, not as we might wish them to be’. He leaves a living legacy
of a series that for over 20 years has provided a trusted, stimulating and well-loved
accompaniment to post-16 study. Our aim with these new editions is to continue to offer
students the best possible support for their studies.
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Introduction
s In April 1861 Confederateguns opened fire on Fort Sumter,
m Confederate
er Supporter of the situated on an island in Charleston harbour. These were the first
t shots of the American Civil War. Americans have tended to
Southern states that
y
e seceded from the regard the Civil War as the great topic in American history – an
K
event that helped to define modern America. Writer Shelby Foote
Union in 1861.
saw the war as a watershed: before the war, he thought the
Republican collection of ‘United’ States were an ‘are’; after the war the USA
A form of became an ‘is’. (Foote might have added that had the
government without Confederates won, the USA would have become a ‘was’.) No
a monarch (or other topic in American history has had so much written about it.
someone who
supports such a
The Success of the ‘Great Experiment’
government).
Before 1861 the history of the United States had been in many
Federal
ways a remarkable success story. The small, predominantly
A government in
English settlements of the early seventeenth century had
which several states,
expanded rapidly, so much so that by the end of the eighteenth
while largely
century they had been able to win independence from Britain.
independent in
The United States, which in 1776 had controlled only a narrow
home affairs,
strip of land along the Atlantic seaboard, expanded westwards. In
combine for
1802–3 the United States doubled in size when it purchased the
national purposes.
Louisiana territory from France (see Figure 1.2, page 10). By
Democratic 1860 the original 13 states had increased to 33 and the nation
A form of extended from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
government in By 1860 white Americans enjoyed a better standard of living
which ultimate than any other people on earth. Prosperity and the rapidly
power is vested in expanding economy attracted large-scale immigration. In 1860
the people and the USA had a population of 31 million people (slightly more
their elected than Britain): four million were foreign-born.
representatives. The USA’s political system – republican, federaland
democratic – was the pride of most Americans and the envy of
most British and European radicals. By the mid-nineteenth
century, many Americans considered themselves to be the world’s
most civilised and fortunate people.
2 | The American Civil War: Causes, Course and Consequences 1803–77
American Failure
K
Not everyone benefited from the ‘great experiment’. Great experiment e
Americans saw y
• During the 250 years that had elapsed since the coming of the t
themselves as doing e
first English settlers, Native Americans had lost a huge amount rm
things differently
of land. s
to, and more
• The other major ethnic group that might have questioned the
successfully than,
notion of a ‘great experiment’ were African Americans, whose
the rest of the
ancestors had been transported to America as slaves. The fact
world. The USA was
that slavery continued in the American South was a great
thus an example for
anomaly in a country based on the Declaration of
other countries to
Independence’s assertion ‘that all men are created equal’.
follow.
In the opinion of many Northerners, the fact that slavery still
Native Americans
existed was the major failing of the ‘great experiment’.
American Indians;
If slavery was the USA’s main failing pre-1861, the Civil War
the people who first
(1861–5) remains the greatest failure in US history. Some 620,000
inhabited North
Americans were to die in the conflict, as many as in almost all
America.
America’s subsequent wars put together.
Declaration of
Independence
Should the War be Called a ‘Civil War’?
Thirteen American
Since 1861 scholars have argued over a name for the conflict. colonies declared
Most called it a civil war at the time. And it was a civil war in independence from
states like Missouri and Kentucky where brother sometimes did Britain on 4 July
fight brother. However, this was not the norm. In general, the war 1776.
was waged by two separate regions: most Northerners were on the
Union (or Federal) side and most Southerners on the
Confederate (or rebel) side. Moreover, the term civil war implies
that two different groups were fighting for control of a single
government. In reality the Confederacy was seeking to exist
independently.
After 1865 Southerners frequently called the conflict ‘The War
Between the States’. This title was not quite correct: the contest
was waged not by states but by two organised governments: the
Union and the Confederacy.
Northerners sometimes referred to the conflict as ‘The War of
the Rebellion’. However, the struggle, fought by two governments
respecting the rules of war, was more than a rebellion.
Other names occasionally used to describe the conflict include
‘The War for Southern Independence’, ‘The Confederate War’
and ‘The War for Secession’.
It should be said that virtually everyone now calls the conflict
the Civil War. This book will be no exception.
North Versus South
By withdrawing from the Union in 1860–1, the Southern states
were embarking on a course of nation-making. Southerners came
to believe that the South possessed a character quite distinct from
that of the North, distinct enough to qualify their region (or
section) for separate nationhood. However, it may be that the
Introduction | 3
Civil War had more to do with developing Southern nationalism
than Southern nationalism had to do with bringing about the
Civil War. Arguably there was more uniting than dividing North
and South in 1861. White Northerners and Southerners spoke
the same language, had the same religion and shared the same
legal system, political culture and pride in their common
heritage. Most also held similar, racist, views, accepting without
question that blacks were inferior to whites. Common economic
interest seemed to bind the two together. ‘In brief and in short’,
said Senator Thomas Hart Benson of Missouri, ‘the two halves of
the Union were made for each other, as much as Adam and Eve’.
In the mid-twentieth century some historians were convinced
that, given these similarities, civil war was far from ‘irrepressible’
or inevitable. Historians, like James Randall and Avery Craven,
s
m Abolitionist blamed a small minority of extremists – Northern abolitionists
er Someone who and Southern ‘fire-eaters’ – for raising tensions in the years
t
wanted to end before 1861, and blamed blundering politicians for failing to find
y
Ke slavery in the USA. a solution to the ‘impending crisis’.
Most historians today tend to absolve the politicians. They
Fire-eaters
stress that Northerners and Southerners were deeply divided. In
Southerners who
particular, they held irreconcilable views about slavery – especially
wanted to leave the
the desirability of its expansion. Thus, the Civil War was – to a
Union.
large extent – ‘irrepressible’.
Secede
To leave or quit. Southern Guilt?
With hindsight, it was Southern, rather than Northern, politicians
who blundered into war in 1861. After Lincoln’s election success
in 1860 many Southerners determined to secede from the Union,
embarking on a course of action that was always likely to lead to
war – and a war that they were always likely to lose. This was
apparent to some Southerners and most Northerners in 1861. It
is thus fair to point the finger of blame at Southern leaders and
the Southern electorate.
There are many similarities between Southern actions in 1861
and Japanese actions in 1941. Both Southerners and Japanese
felt that they had been pushed into a corner from which there was
no honourable escape. Ignoring the likely outcome of their
actions, both fired the first shots: Southerners at Fort Sumter in
1861, the Japanese at Pearl Harbor in 1941. By so doing they
succeeded in provoking conflict and uniting against them the
whole of the United States in 1941 and what remained of the
United States in 1861.
Winston Churchill commented that the Japanese, by attacking
Britain and the USA, had embarked on ‘a very considerable
undertaking’. The same could be said of the South’s decision to
risk war in 1861. As a result, one in four white male Southerners
of military age died, and slavery – the institution that Southerners
had gone to war to defend – ended.
Why the South acted as impulsively as it did is a central issue of
this book. Why it was defeated is another. And how the Union was
reconstructed is a third.