The Civil War was a dangerous, yet extremely influential war. It was a war that magnified the problem that was slavery. Slavery was a big thing back then, and it separated the states considerably. The whole of the Confederate states, which were the original thirteen colonies, were divided into the North and the South. The North was against slavery, while the South was composed of many slave owners. The Civil War could be compared to America’s bloodiest clash, and it resulted in the death of more than 620,000, with millions more injured. The Civil War lasted for four treacherous years, from 1861- 1865. This long time period filled with blood, sweat and tears shaped the world. Without it, the large area that is America would not have as much …show more content…
Soon, every southern state passed Black Codes, which were laws that greatly limited the freedom of the blacks. They mandated African Americans to sign work contracts, creating working conditions like those when they were enslaved. In many southern states, any African Americans who could not prove they were employed could be arrested. The consequences could be one year of work without pay. African Americans weren’t even allowed to own a firearm. They were also not allowed to rent property, unless it was in a …show more content…
“If you call this freedom, what do you call slavery?” one Civil War veteran asked. The codes were so harsh, it wasn’t much different from slavery for the African AmericansThe Black Codes angered many Republicans, who thought that the South was returning to its old policy of states’ rights. Most Republicans were moderates who wanted the South to have loyal state governments. Radical Republicans, on the other hand, took a harsher perspective. They wanted the federal government to force change in the South. Like the moderates, they disliked the Black Codes. However, the Radical Republicans wanted the federal government to be much more involved in Reconstruction. They were frightened that too many southern leaders remained loyal to the former Confederacy and would not enforce the new laws. Thaddeus Stevens, a harsh critic of President Johnson, was man of honesty, and he had a sharp tongue. He argued tirelessly for African Americans’ rights, including the crucial right to vote and the right to fair laws. Urged on by the Radicals in 1866, Congress proposed a new bill, one that would give the Freedmen’s Bureau more
They believed that anyone associated with the confederacy should not have the right to vote. They believed that Lincoln was too lenient on the South; they were also more accepting of freed black men. The party was also very wary of the South, Radical Republicans, although fighting for a good cause were unable to see past the mask of revenge that had formed over their eyes. Lincoln was trying to end the conflict as quickly as possible bringing normality back to the nation. The party wanted to enfranchise all freed men and ensure their
The Civil war was a short intense and destructive four-year war that lasted from 1861-1865, between the northern and Southern states. The uncompromising differences and the incompatibility of their economies between the Northern free states and Southern slave-dependent states during the territorial expansion of the nation all lead to the civil war. There's many potent events and incidents that lead to the war but it wasn’t until Abraham Lincoln won the presidency, that the 11 southern states seceded from the union to form The Confederate States of America. The secession of the states shortly after triggered the Civil War, which lead to 850,000 deaths. The succession lead to event that would determine that The United States of America will have
This is exemplified by the fact that emancipated slaves were required to be under labor contracts to work as “servants,” because “vagrancy” was considered as a misdemeanor. The Black Codes were designed to limit the options of the emancipated slaves, and thereby forcing the “Negro” in “slave” circumstances, without it technically being considered as the term “slavery.” The codes went around the emancipation decree, by using the term “servant,” in order to avoid the word “slave,” for the sake of getting away with slavery. The Black Codes maintained the situation of slavery, but manipulated it, in order to coin it as a different concept.
Radical Republicans wanted the society of the South to change imminently, no slow progression, and that included giving rights to former slaves. According to the series, the Republicans created the Freedmen’s Bureau, who is responsible for the general welfare of the freed slaves. They built schools, and also with 800,000 acres of confiscated land, with the intention of giving that land to freed slaves, but this land never makes it to freed slaves. While under President Andrew Johnson he approved of freeing slaves and taking down big plantation elite, he did not believe in making blacks somewhat equal in society. During elections, many former Confederate states have been won by former rebel legislators, and many of those legislators enact the
The Civil War is a central event in America's historical background. Though the Revolution of 1776-1783 created the United States, the Civil War of 1861-1865 determined how the nation would pursue its future. The war resolved two questions left unresolved by the Revolution: whether the United States was to be a confederation of sovereign states or an indivisible nation with a sovereign national government, and whether this nation would have the agreement that all men were created with an equal right to liberty, or would the nation continue to exist as the largest slaveholding country in the world. The Civil War consisted of many different battles that impacted both the north and south, such as the Battle of Gettysburg, Battle of Antietam,
The Congress Republicans tended to fall into two categories; moderate and radical. The moderates-who made up the majority- wanted the south to return to the Union as quickly as possible, but on the terms of Congress. The radical Republicans, however, wanted to break the recalcitrant states down and rebuild them from the ground up, forcing them to uproot their sociopolitical structure before they could return to the US. While both groups approached the issues quite differently, what they both could agree on was that the rights of the emancipated slaves needed to be protected, and that former Confederates did not belong with them in Congress. When the Republicans had realized they would eventually have to include delegates from southern states (which would have a significant amount of clout, now that former slaves were being properly counted as part of the population, meaning the South would have more representatives), they tried to pass as much legislature as they could to limit Southern power.
In that span, blacks paid their debt to Abraham Lincoln, their Great Emancipator, by loyally voting for his party in local, state, and national elections. During Reconstruction, Republicans rewarded that loyalty by pressing for civil rights legislation and other protections for black citizens. They secured passage of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, as well as the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which sought to protect blacks’ access to public accommodations; and it was President Grant who successfully – although only temporarily – destroyed the Ku Klux Klan and its efforts to intimidate and disfranchise black voters. However, in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, Republican enthusiasm for black causes appeared to wane.
the slaves played a big part in the civil war. The civil war was for four years, from 1861 to 1865. In this battle it was the union against the confederate states of america. the death count in the civil war was more that 620,000, with millions more injured. The north the union army wanted the slaves to be free and to have their own equal rights as a human being.
The Civil War marked a defining moment in United States history. Long simmering sectional tensions reached a critical stage in 1860-1861 when eleven slaveholding states seceded and formed the Confederate States of America. Political disagreement gave way to war in April 1861, as Confederates insisted on their right to leave the Union and the loyal states refused to allow them to go. Four years of fighting claimed almost 1.5 million casualties directly affected untold civilians, and freed four million enslaved African Americans. The social and economic system based on chattel slavery that the seceding states had sought to protect lay in ruins.
The Radical Republicans were a faction within the United States’ political Republican Party that maintained extremely controversial ideas opposed by a number of people (Tulloch, 1999). These ideas included the view that the emancipation of slaves should be fully implemented and civil rights for this group should be legally established (Tulloch, 1999). The group was also largely against allowing former officers of the Confederacy holding political power in Southern States. Opposition to the efforts of Radical Republicans was strongly administered by Moderate and conservative Republications who were largely against the Reconstruction movement and equality for freed slaves (Tulloch, 1999). Perhaps most notably, Radical Republicans were in strong opposition to the choice of then President Abraham Lincoln to allow General George B. McClellan to be a military leader in efforts to return states in the South that had succeeded to the Union (Richardson, 2004).
The few Republicans in the south were marginalized from society and were beaten up by the Democratic southerners. The majority opinion in the south was to still keep they’re old traditions and southern culture. The Southern Republicans represented the men who wanted change from this point of view. These men were tortured daily and the government didn’t do much about it. The South really kept building on to that fire by striking fear in anyone that might not agree with the southern
The victory of the Union in the Civil War had given the freedom for most of the slaves. But the freed slaves’ now face a new injustice during the Reconstruction Period. The question of freed blacks’ status after the war in South still maintained unresolved even they passed the Thirteenth Amendment, the abolition of slavery. Later on, in the control of president Andrew Johnson, white southerners reestablished the civil authority in the former Confederate states. They then enacted “Black Codes”-a series of restrictive laws.
But, when these officials were elected to Congress, they passed the “black codes” and thus the relations between the president and legislators became worst (Schriefer, Sivell and Arch R1). These so called “Black Codes” were “a series of laws to deprive blacks of their constitutional rights” that they were enacted mainly by Deep South legislatures. Black Codes differ from a state to another but they were stricter in the Deep South as they were sometimes irrationally austere. (Hazen 30) Furthermore, with the emergence of organizations such as the Red Shirts and the White League with the rise of the Conservative White Democrats’ power, efforts to prevent Black Americans from voting were escalating (Watts 247), even if the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S constitution that gave the Blacks the right to vote had been ratified in 1870.
Black Codes restricted what they were able to do such as freedom of movement, right to own land, and lastly they were not able to testify in court.
The Civil War was a monumental bloodshed, which was fought between the United States of America and the Confederate States, from 1861 to 1865. The primary cause of the war was the Southern states' desire to preserve the institution of slavery, which did not please the beliefs of the North. At the beginning of the Civil War, twenty-two million people lived in the North and 9 million people, which included four million of whom were slaves, lived in the South. The North, led by President Abraham Lincoln and his trusted generals, had more money, more factories, more horses, more railroads, and more food than the south. These advantages made the United States much more powerful than the Confederate States, which ultimately led to Northern victory.