system was confined mainly to the North. By canals and railways New York, Boston, and Philadelphia were linked with the wheatfields of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. A steel net wove North and Northwest together. A commercial net supplemented it. Western trade was diverted from New Orleans to the East and Eastern credit sustained Western enterprise. In time, the industrial North and the planting South evolved different ideas of political policy. The former looked with favor on protective tariffs, ship subsidies, a sound national banking system, and internal improvements. The farmers of the West demanded that the public domain be divided up into free homesteads for farmers. The South steadily swung around to the opposite view. Its spokesmen came to regard most of these policies as injurious to the planting interests. The economic questions were all involved in a moral issue. The Northern states, in which slavery was of slight consequence, had early abolished the institution. In the course of a few years there appeared uncompromising advocates of universal emancipation. Far and wide the agitation spread. The South was thoroughly frightened. It demanded protection against the agitators, the enforcement of its rights in the case of runaway slaves, and equal privileges for slavery in the new territories. With the passing years the conflict between the two sections increased in bitterness. It flamed up in 1820 and was allayed by the Missouri compromise. It took on the form of a tariff controversy and nullification in 1832. It appeared again after the Mexican war when the question of slavery in the new territories was raised. Again compromise - the great settlement of 1850-seemed to restore peace, only to prove an illusion. A series of startling events swept the country into war: the repeal of the Missouri compromise in 1854, the rise of the Republican party pledged to the prohibition of slavery in the territories, the Dred Scott decision of 1857, the Lincoln-Douglas debates, John Brown's raid, the election of Lincoln, and secession. The Civil War, lasting for four years, tested the strength of both North and South, in leadership, in finance, in diplomatic skill, in material resources, in industry, and in armed forces. By the blockade of Southern ports, by an overwhelming weight of men and materials, and by relentless hammering on the field of battle, the North was victorious. The results of the war were revolutionary in character. Slavery was abolished and the freedmen given the ballot. The Southern planters who had been the leaders of their section were ruined financially and almost to a man excluded from taking part in political affairs. The union was declared to be perpetual and the right of a state to secede settled by the judgment of battle. Federal control over the affairs of states, counties, and cities was established by the fourteenth amendment. The power and prestige of the federal government were enhanced beyond imagination. The North was now free to pursue its economic policies: a protective tariff, a national banking system, land grants for railways, free lands for farmers. Planting had dominated the country for nearly a generation. Business enterprise was to take its place. References NORTHERN ACCOUNTS J. K. Hosmer, The Appeal to Arms and The Outcome of the Civil War (American Nation Series). J. Ropes, History of the Civil War (best account of military campaigns). SOUTHERN ACCOUNTS W. E. Dodd, Jefferson Davis. Jefferson Davis, Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government. E. Pollard, The Lost Cause. A. H. Stephens, The War between the States. Questions 1. Contrast the reception of secession in 1860 with that given to nullification in 1832. 2. Compare the Northern and Southern views of the union. 3. What were the peculiar features of the Confederate constitution? 4. How was the Confederacy financed? 5. Compare the resources of the two sections. 6. On what foundations did Southern hopes rest? 7. Describe the attempts at a peaceful settlement. 8. Compare the raising of armies for the Civil War with the methods employed in the World War. (See below, chapter xxv.) 9. Compare the financial methods of the government in the two wars. 10. Explain why the blockade was such a deadly weapon. 11. Give the leading diplomatic events of the war. 12. Trace the growth of anti-slavery sentiment. 13. What measures were taken to restrain criticism of the government? 14. What part did Lincoln play in all phases of the war? 15. State the principal results of the war. 16. Compare Lincoln's plan of reconstruction with that adopted by Congress. 17. What rights did Congress attempt to confer upon the former slaves? Research Topics Was Secession Lawful? The Southern view by Jefferson Davis in Harding, Select Orations Illustrating American History, pp. 364–369. Lincoln's view, Harding, pp. 371–381. The Confederate Constitution. - Compare with the federal Constitution in Macdonald, Documentary Source Book, pp. 424-433 and pp. 271–279. Federal Legislative Measures. Prepare a table and brief digest of the important laws relating to the war. Macdonald, pp. 433–482. Economic Aspects of the War. Coman, Industrial History of the United States, pp. 279–301. Dewey, Financial History of the United States, Chaps. XII and XIII. Tabulate the economic measures of Congress in Macdonald. Military Campaigns. The great battles are fully treated in Rhodes, History of the Civil War, and teachers desiring to emphasize military affairs may assign campaigns to members of the class for study and report. A briefer treatment in Elson, History of the United States, pp. 641-785. Biographical Studies. Lincoln, Davis, Lee, Grant, Sherman, and other leaders in civil and military affairs, with reference to local war governors.' English and French Opinion of the War. Rhodes, History of the United States, Vol. IV, pp. 337-394. The South during the War. - Rhodes, Vol. V, pp. 343-382. Rhodes, Vol. V, pp. 189–342. 514-518; 529-530; Elson, pp. 786-799. The Force Bills. -- Macdonald, pp. 547-551; 554-564. PART VI. NATIONAL GROWTH AND WORLD POLITICS CHAPTER XVI THE POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC EVOLUTION OF THE SOUTH THE Outcome of the Civil War in the South was nothing short of a revolution. The ruling class, the law, and the government of the old order had been subverted. To political chaos was added the havoc wrought in agriculture, business, and transportation by military operations. And as if to fill the cup to the brim, the task of reconstruction was committed to political leaders from another section of the country, strangers to the life and traditions of the South. THE SOUTH AT THE CLOSE OF THE WAR A Ruling Class Disfranchised. As the sovereignty of the planters had been the striking feature of the old régime, so their ruin was the outstanding fact of the new. The situation was extraordinary. The American Revolution was carried out by people experienced in the arts of self-government, and at its close they were free to follow the general course to which they had long been accustomed. The French Revolution witnessed the overthrow of the clergy and the nobility; but middle classes who took their places had been steadily rising in intelligence and wealth. The Southern Revolution was unlike either of these cataclysms. It was not brought about by a social upheaval, but by an external crisis. It did not enfranchise a class that sought and understood power, but bondmen who had played no part in the struggle. Moreover it struck down a class equipped to rule. The leading planters were almost to a man excluded from state and federal offices, and the fourteenth amendment was a bar to their return. All civil and military places under the authority of the United States and of the states were closed to every man who had taken an oath to support the Constitution as a member of Congress, as a state legislator, or as a state or federal officer, and afterward engaged in "insurrection or rebellion," or "given aid and comfort to the enemies" of the United States. This sweeping provision, supplemented by the reconstruction acts, laid under the ban most of the talent, energy, and spirit of the South. The Condition of the State Governments. The legislative, executive, and judicial branches of the state governments thus passed into the control of former slaves, led principally by Northern adventurers or Southern novices, known as "Scalawags." The result was a carnival of waste, folly, and corruption. The "reconstruction" assembly of South Carolina bought clocks at $480 apiece and chandeliers at $650. To purchase land for former bondmen the sum of $800,000 was appropriated; and swamps bought at seventy-five cents an acre were sold to the state at five times the cost. In the years between 1868 and 1873, the debt of the state rose from about $5,800,000 to $24,000,000, and millions of the increase could not be accounted for by the authorities responsible for it. Economic Ruin - Urban and Rural. No matter where Southern men turned in 1865 they found devastation — in the towns, in the country, and along the highways. Atlanta, the city to which Sherman applied the torch, lay in ashes; Nashville and Chattanooga had been partially wrecked; Richmond and Augusta had suffered severely from fires. Charleston was described by a visitor as "a city of ruins, of desolation, of vacant houses, of rotten wharves, of deserted warehouses, of weed gardens, of miles of grass-grown streets. How few young men there are, how generally the young women are dressed in black! The flower of their proud aristocracy is buried on scores of battle fields." |