1. Chapter 11 Liberation: African Americans and the Civil War

2. I. Lincoln’s Aims Preserve the Union Everything else secondary
Especially concerned about the border states
Call for 75,000 volunteers
Black volunteers rejected

3. II. Black Men Volunteer and Are Rejected
Fate of Union tied to issue of slavery
Fate of slavery tied to the outcome of war
Black people understood before northerners
Anglo-African newspaper
New York, Philadelphia, Boston
Black men offered their services

4. III. Union Policies toward Confederate Slaves
No coherent policy to deal with slaves
Union military commanders showed more concern for slave owner’s interests

5. “Contraband” General Benjamin Butler Fortress Monroe, May 1861
Refused to return three runaway slaves, calling them “Contraband”
Contraband=Enemy property, or slaves
First Confiscation Act, August 1861 allowed Union soldiers to take confederate slaves

6. Lincoln’s Initial Position
Reluctant to move against slavery, 1861
Border state loyalty
Supported compensated emancipation-colonization
Wanted to end slavery in border states, April 1862
Warned border states to accept compensation or risk getting nothing, July 1862

8. Lincoln Moves toward Emancipation
Victory and Union tied to slavery issue
“Strike at the heart of the rebellion”
Tells his cabinet, summer 1862
William Seward warns Lincoln to wait
Montgomery Blair feared fall elections

9. Effects of the Emancipation Proclamation
Map 11–1. Effects of the Emancipation Proclamation
When Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, it applied only to slaves in those portions of the Confederacy not under Union authority. No southern slave owners freed their slaves at Lincoln’s command. But many black people already had freed themselves, and many more would liberate themselves as well as family and friends in the aftermath of Lincoln’s order. The Emancipation Proclamation was of extreme importance. It helped the Union win the war. It meant that at long last the U.S. government had joined the abolitionist movement.

10. Lincoln Delays Emancipation
Waited for a victory on the battlefield
Northern defeats, spring and summer 1862
Antietam
Justification for announcing emancipation
Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation gave confederacy 100 days to return to union

11. Black People Reject Colonization
Would not retreat from colonization
Liberia
Haiti
Black people not interested

13. IV. Preliminary Emancipation
White southerners ridiculed it
Many white northerners had little enthusiasm
Antiblack riots
Northern Democrats almost all opposed
Denounced Lincoln and Republicans
Most black people gratified

14. V. Emancipation Proclamation
Limited to areas still in rebellion
Did not include border states
Changes war goals
1. Preserve the Union
2. Make people free

16. How would the Emancipation Proclamation affect the war:
Socially?
Politically?
Economically?
Militarily?

18. Effects of Proclamation on the South
Ended chance of foreign recognition
Encouraged
Slaves to flee
Slaves to resist

19. VI. Black Men Fight for the Union
Emancipation Proclamation
Authorized black men to enlist
Union defeats and the need for manpower
Thomas Wentworth Higginson
Robert Gould Shaw

20. Black Men Fight for the Union (cont.)
Discrimination and hostility
Segregated units
White officers
Often held racist beliefs
Lower pay scale
White privates $13/month
Black privates $10/month

21. Black Men Fought for the Union
185,000 black men fought for the Union during the Civil War.

24. Black Men Fight for the Union (cont.)
Combat
Suffered disproportionately more casualties
Battery Wagner
William H. Carney
Olustee
The Crater

25. Battery Wagner on Morris Island
On the evening of July 18, 1863, more than six hundred black men led by their white commander, Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, attacked heavily fortified Battery Wagner on Morris Island near the southern approach to Charleston harbor. They made a frontal assault through withering fire and managed to breach the battery before Confederate forces threw them back. Shaw was killed and the 54th suffered heavy losses. It was a defining moment of the Civil War, demonstrating to skeptical white people the valor and determination of black troops.

27. VII. Confederate Reaction to Black Soldiers
Enraged
Refused to recognize black men as soldiers
Treat as rebellious slaves
General Order Number 11
Fort Pillow Massacre
Union response
Union commanders angry
It ordered the expulsion of all Jews in his military district, comprising areas of Tennessee, Mississippi, and Kentucky. The order was issued as part of a Union campaign against a black market in Southern cotton, which Grant thought was being run "mostly by Jews and other unprincipled traders.

28. Fort Pillow
In April 1864 fifteen hundred Confederate forces under General Nathan Bedford Forrest attacked and captured Fort Pillow, a Union installation on the Mississippi River forty miles north of Memphis, Tennessee, that was defended by 550 black and white troops. After the Union forces surrendered, Confederate troops executed some of the black soldiers. Forrest and his men denied the atrocity, but there is little doubt it occurred.

29. VIII. Black Men in the Union Navy
Tradition of serving in the U.S. Navy, 1790s
Integrated
Early 19th century many black sailors
Attempts to ban them from the navy

30. IX. Liberators, Spies, and Guides
Black men and women
Robert Smalls
Harriet Tubman—helped free over 800 slaves, destroyed plantations
Mary Elizabeth Bowser
John Henry Woodson

31. Robert Smalls
Robert Smalls was born a slave in Beaufort, South Carolina in In May 1862 while still a slave and working as a pilot in Charleston on a 150-foot Confederate vessel, The Planter, Smalls devised an audacious plan to seize the ship. With the ship’s white officers enjoying a night on the town. Smalls sailed The Planter with family and friends aboard to the Union Navy outside the harbor. Smalls’ exploits created a sensation in the North. He went on to become a successful Republican politician in South Carolina in the decades following the Civil War.

32. X. Violent Opposition to Black People
New York City Draft Riot, July 1863
Draft
Irish men angry that black men “took their jobs,”
Also angry about rich whites purchasing exemption from war

33. Draft Riot in New York City
During the draft riot in New York City in July 1863, black people were attacked, beaten, and killed. A mob lynched this black man near Clarkson Street.
SOURCE: Illustrated London News, August 8, 1863.

34. Violent Opposition to Black People (cont.)
Union troops and slaves
Often treated slaves horribly
Rapes and assaults were not uncommon
Others found compassion for enslaved people
“I have no heart in this war if the slaves cannot be made free,” a Union soldier wrote.

35. XI. Refugees Thousands of black people escaped bondage
Some followed Union armies
Others struck out on their own
Faced re-enslavement or execution if caught

36. Black People and the Confederacy (cont.)
Impressment of black people
Military demands for manpower
Slave owners contributed slave labor
Built fortifications
Government first asked then compelled
Registration and enrollment of free black people military labor
Confederate conscription law of 1862—Exempted men who owned twenty slaves from draft

37. Black People and the Confederacy (cont.)
Confederates enslave free black people after Emancipation Proclamation
Davis counter proclamation
“All free negroes shall be placed on the slave status and be deemed to be chattels. . . forever.”
Ordered Confederate armies to capture free black people in the North and enslave them.
Robert E. Lee, Pennsylvania 1863

38. Black Confederates
Free black people volunteered services to show loyalty and gain white acceptance
Southern leaders generally ignored offers unless for menial labor

40. Black Confederates (cont.)
Small number of black men fight for CSA
Some black civilians profit if South wins
John Wilson Buckner
William Ellison

41. Black Enlistments
March 1865 Confederate Congress voted to enlist 300,000
Too little, too late—In April 1865 confederate troops surrendered at Appomattox Court House
Receive same pay as white soldiers
Slaves freed only with consent of owners and state agreed

42. XIII. Conclusion
185,000 black soldiers and sailors served in the Union military
Most had been former slaves
Almost 40,000 died in combat or of disease during the war
Abraham Lincoln and the shift in public attitudes
1. White man’s war
2. Colonization
3. Enlistment
4. Appreciation

43. Charleston, South Carolina
Black troops were among the first Union military forces to “liberate” the devastated city of Charleston, South Carolina, in the waning weeks of the Civil War. On February 21, 1865, the 55th Massachusetts Regiment occupied Charleston. Black residents—many of them former slaves—eagerly welcomed the soldiers. Defeated and discouraged white residents remained secluded indoors.
SOURCE: Harper’s Weekly, March 18, 1865.