Topic 10 Civil War

As the Civil War began, what did President Lincoln do about the issue of slavery, and how did federal policy concerning blacks develop and change before emancipation?

Lincoln’s inauguration

Many in the northern states had their own racist attitudes and did not like the idea of fighting for black rights, but rather fought to preserve the union

Initially the Lincoln administration did little to please abolitionists. Blacks were initially rejected from the Union army

There was no federal policy about slaves who escaped to union lines There was no federal policy about slaves who escaped to union lines. Shown here is a Union camp in Virginia in 1862

List of property. The Confiscation Act of 1861 provided that the US had the right to confiscate any property of those rebelling if the property was used to aid in the rebellion.

As for slaves, they were set free.

Thousands of African-Americans poured into northern lines, but the policy for taking care of them was as convoluted as for setting them free

Finally, in 1862, the Department of the South, a wartime department, came up with a uniform policy. Shown here is a slave family

Blacks would be allotted two acres from land abandoned by Southern troops. The government would provide the tools they needed, and, in exchange, the blacks were to pay the government a percentage of the crops (cotton) they grew.

Late in the war, Lincoln ordered the various federal offices that dealt with African-Americans to be organized into a new Freedman’s Bureau

The whole system for relief developed so slowly that private parties in the North began to supplement it.

Post-Civil War leaders of the American Freedmen’s Aid Commission

Federal policy toward enlisting black soldiers began to change in late 1862

The famous 1863 draft riots in New York City involved tensions between whites and blacks

How did the policy of emancipation of blacks develop during the Civil War?

Lincoln came to the emancipation of all slaves very slowly and gradually

In the spring of 1862 Lincoln issued a proclamation urging Congress to pass a resolution stating that the US would cooperate with any state adopting a plan for gradual emancipation along with compensation for slave owners

Lincoln’s attitudes began to shift after the Battle of Antietam, September, 1862

Emancipation Proclamation

Lincoln proclaimed as “Great Emancipator”

Abolitionists were certainly happy about the Emancipation Proclamation, but they were not completely satisfied.

Why did Lincoln switch policy and issue the Emancipation Proclamation? Lincoln saw after Antietam both that the Union would definitely win the war and that the war had become so costly and deadly, it was best to settle the issue once and for all Lincoln wanted to encourage a slave uprising in the South Lincoln definitely recognized that he needed to assure the support of the abolitionists in the coming 1864 election Lincoln recognized that recent waves of English and European immigration would more strongly support his administration

With emancipation, the North began to more readily allow enlistment of blacks

54th Massachusetts, led by Col. Robert Gould Shaw

Battle for Fort Wagner

How did the South deal with the issue of blacks during the Civil War?

At the very end of the war, the Confederacy provided for the enlistment of blacks, but, so late, few blacks actually served in the Confederate army