THE CIVIL WAR Ideas That Written by Robert E. Slavin, Kate Conway, and Alli Hoge Matter THE CIVIL WAR Written by Robert E. Slavin, Kate Conway, and Alli Hoge The Civil War © 2014 Success for All Foundation. All rights reserved. ISBN: 9781941010082 Developers: Robert E. Slavin, Kate Conway, Richard Gifford, Alli Hoge, Wendy Fitchett Editors: Dana Knighten, Marti Gastineau, Janet Wisner Designers: Barbara Colquitt, Susan Perkins Image Credits: © Artwork from A Woman’s Wartime Journal: an Account of the Passage over Georgia’s Plantation of Sherman’s Army on the March to the Sea, as Recorded in the Diary of Dolly Sumner Lunt (Mrs. Thomas Burge), pg. 32. This work is the property of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text. Creative Commons Attribution–Share Alike: Charles Edward (Civil War medicine display, pg. 30), David Shankbone (William Lloyd Garrison, pg.11), Robert Lawson (American Civil War graves, pg. 38) Library of Congress National Archives and Records Administration National Park Service Project Gutenberg Shutterstock.com: Anne Power, Brandon Alms, C. Kurt Holter, Hintau Aliaksei, Jim Parkin, Jose Gil, justasc, kstudija, malamalama, Microstock Man, Mirec, Nagel Photography, Picsfive, StockImage Group, Svetlana Larina, teacept, wanchai © Thinkstock.com: © Ingram Publishing, © iStockphoto, © Zoonar U.S. Army The mission of the Success for All Foundation is to develop and disseminate research-proven educational programs to ensure that all students, from all backgrounds, achieve at the highest academic levels. These programs were originally developed at Johns Hopkins University. 300 E. Joppa Road, Suite 500, Baltimore, MD 21286 PHONE: (800) 548-4998 FAX: (410) 324-4444 E-MAIL: [email protected] WEBSITE: www.successforall.org TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction ..................................................................2 Causes of the American Civil War ...............................5 Slavery Leading up to the Civil War ............................7 A Country Divides and a War Begins ........................14 Early Battles ................................................................18 Marching South ..........................................................28 An Assassination and an Amendment ......................34 A Nation Rebuilds and Remembers ..........................36 Timeline of Events ......................................................40 Glossary .......................................................................42 Index ...........................................................................44 Selected Bibliography ................................................46 1 INTRODUCTION Imagine being a Union soldier at the Confederates charged again and shared a common history. the Battle of Gettysburg. You’re and again but could not break the Brothers fought on different crouching behind a stone wall as Union lines. Finally, they had to sides; President Lincoln’s wife wave upon wave of Confederate admit defeat and return south. had cousins who died fighting for soldiers march across an open the Confederacy. Yet they were field. Your cannons are firing at More than 51,000 men lost their willing to fight one another and them, creating gaps in their lines, lives at Gettysburg, and 620,000 die for their causes. but still they keep coming. Then, people died during the course of they are close enough for rifles, the entire civil war. What was it Four months after Gettysburg, and you and your fellow soldiers all for? President Abraham Lincoln open fire. spoke at the battlefield about The soldiers on both sides of that what the war meant to him. Or imagine being a Confederate stone wall were all Americans. soldier, marching straight into a They spoke the same language, hail of deadly lead. In the battle, went to the same churches, 2 He said: More than 150 years ago, a great war split the Four score and seven years United States of America in two. It was the most ago, our fathers brought forth terrible war in the nation’s history. On one side upon this continent, a new were twenty-five northern states, known as the nation, conceived in liberty, and Union. On the other side were eleven southern states that wanted to secede, or break away. dedicated to the proposition that These states wanted to form their own country “all men are created equal.” called the Confederate States of America. Now we are engaged in a great civil war…testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated…can long endure. — Abraham Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address,” November 19, 1863 3 In his speech, Lincoln said that there were two reasons for the war. One reason was that people in the North, the Union, A civil war is a war fought believed that all men are created equal, while those in the South between groups of people who believed that some men could be belong to the same country. slaves and others could be their masters. The second reason for the war was that the Union believed that the United States should stay united, while the was abolished. But the cost Confederates believed it should was terrible. There was split apart. destruction, hatred, and the loss of many lives. These were the differences that led men to fight and die. This book describes how After a war that lasted from the American Civil War began, 1861 to 1865, the country what happened during the war, remained united, and slavery how it ended, and its impact on our country. Soldiers lower coffins into graves. 4 CAUSES OF THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR The United States declared its Slavery illegal to import slaves into the independence from Great Britain United States. However, slavery Slavery in America began in in 1776. Americans formed new remained legal in the South. the early 1600s. It existed in states and laws in the decades There, the economy remained both the North and the South. that followed. The northern based on cash crops such as By the mid-1800s, many states states focused on industry, and cotton, sugar, rice, and tobacco. north of the Mason-Dixon line the southern states focused on These crops were grown on big outlawed slavery. It became agriculture. States in the North farms, also known as plantations. and the South could not agree on some big issues, and people began to form very different ideas about life in America. Slavery, taxation, and states’ rights were three of the main issues. Slaves on a plantation harvesting potatoes 5 Plantation owners in the South relied on slave labor to plant and harvest the crops. Plantation owners did not pay their slaves because they were considered property. Many people began to speak out Southern plantation house against the wrongs of slavery. They called for an end to slavery, which the northern states wanted the As the North and the South angered slaveholders. They did national government to rule argued, they grew apart. not want people to tell them that over all the states. The people Southern states felt that they they couldn’t have slaves. in the southern states believed weren’t respected by the in states’ rights. They thought northern states. They began States’ Rights the government had too much to consider breaking away power and wanted each state to from the United States The North and the South also have control over its own affairs. of America. argued about how the country Southern states wanted the right should be ruled. The people in to make their own laws and declare any national law illegal. 6 SLAVERY LEADING UP TO Nearly 400,000 Africans were THE CIVIL WAR brought to the United States as slaves. By the start of the civil war, The Start of Slavery had little food and no exercise. the slave population had increased in America Many caught diseases, and nearly to approximately 4 million. half died on the long voyage. In 1619, the first slaves were sold in Virginia. These people had Slaves did every kind of work fields, planting and harvesting been taken from their homes in in the American colonies. Some crops. Slaves usually worked Africa and were sent to be sold slaves worked as cooks, maids, very hard for long hours. Many in the American colonies. They and servants in homes. Other slaves were managed by the were chained inside ships and slaves worked in plantation overseers who had been hired by the plantation owners. Overseers could whip slaves for showing up Louisiana Civil Code, Art. 35 – 1847 late, not working hard enough, or any other reason. “A slave is one who is in the power of a master to whom he belongs; the master may sell him, dispose of his person, his industry, and his labor; he can do nothing, possess nothing, nor acquire any thing, but what must belong to his master.” 7 Slaves had no rights under the Voices From the Past law. They could get married and When I was about seven years old I witnessed, have children, but their families could be broken up by their for the first time, the sale of a human being. masters. Families were often We were living at Prince Edward, in Virginia, separated by masters who sold and master had just purchased his hogs for children, husbands, or wives to the winter, for which he was unable to pay in new owners. Many states had full. To escape from his embarrassment it was slave laws that prohibited slaves necessary to sell one of the slaves. Little Joe, from learning to read or write, the son of the cook, was selected as the victim. owning property, or leaving their master’s land. His mother was ordered to dress him up in his Sunday clothes, and send him to the house. He came in with a bright face, was placed in the scales, and was sold, like the hogs, at so much per pound. — Elizabeth Keckley, former slave Behind the Scenes 8 At first, most states allowed slavery, but slavery was abolished in the northern states $300 REWARD! during and after the American Ran away from the subscriber, an Revolution.