The Civil War and Reconstruction, 1848 to 1877 Chapter 3b, Pages 120 to 153 The American Vision: Modern Times Glencoe / McGraw-Hill, 2008

General Robert E. Lee led the Confederacy to important victories in the East. In August 1862 his forces won a second battle at Bull Run. Then Lee invaded the North. Union troops stopped the Confederates at Antietam Creek, Maryland, in September. But in December Lee’s troops defeated a Union army at Fredericksburg, Virginia.

At the start of the war President Lincoln had two main goals: to keep the United States together, and to end slavery. After the Unions’s victory at the Battle of Antietam, Lincoln issued a statement called the ‘Emancipation Proclamation.’ The proclamation freed all slaves in Confederate states. This was a decisive victory for the Republican Party. As a result of the proclamation, many Blacks joined the Union army.

Lee suffered his first big defeat in July 1863 at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. The Battle of Gettysburg turned the war in favor of the Union. A day later Grant captured the city of Vicksburg, Mississippi, for the Union. Then the Union controlled the entire Mississippi River.

In March 1864 Lincoln rewarded Grant by giving him command of all the Union armies. Grant was in command of what was then the world’s largest, most powerful, and most technologically advanced army.

While Grant fought in Virginia, Sherman went to Georgia. He captured Atlanta in September. Then he led his troops on a march to Savannah, a port on the Atlantic Ocean. Along the way they destroyed railroads and supplies. Sherman captured Savannah in December.

By March 1865 Lee was very short of men and supplies. In April, Grant captured Richmond, the Confederate capital. He accepted Lee’s surrender in Appomattox, Virginia, on April 9. By the end of May all Confederate armies had surrendered.

After the war the defeated states were gradually allowed back into the United States. The South rebuilt damaged property and changed its economy so it no

Page 1 longer depended on slaves. This period was known as ‘Reconstruction.’ It lasted until the last U.S. troops left the South in April 1877.

During Reconstruction, African-Americans voted in large numbers. Blacks were elected to state legislatures, to governorships, to the U.S. House of Representatives, and to the U.S. Senate. Former slaves owned their own farmland, and operated businesses: markets, shops, and stores. The Republicans were effective in guaranteeing political rights to blacks during the first decade or two after the war’s end in 1865, but by the 1890s, Republican influence receded to the North, and the local organizations of the Democratic Party took over again.

After the end of the Reconstruction Era, conditions for African-Americans became worse in the southern states. The Democratic Party, which controlled those states, enacted “Jim Crow Laws,” regulations which endangered the civil rights which the former slaves had received during the Reconstruction Era.

Outside of the South, the rest of the nation experienced significant economic growth during the latter half of the 1800s. Railroads, telegraph and telephone systems, and large manufacturing operations created a “boom” economy and rising standards of living for ordinary working-class families. A factory-based industrial economy created opportunity and prosperity for millions of Americans.

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