OVER VIEW-Pre CIVIL WAR, MOVING TOWARD SECESSION AND WAR

  • American System-interchangeable parts made it possible to produce and endless number of products under one building. Also known as the Factory System.
  • Railroads by 1850- 30,000 miles of tracks in the U. S. More than the rest of the world combined. It went from taking 3 weeks to get from Chicago to New York to 2 days because of the rail system. Of the 470 locomotives built in the U.S. during 1860, only 19 were made in the South.
  • Telegraph now took hours instead of days to deliver the news.
  • About 80,000 people reach California the first year of the Gold Rush-49ers
  • Underground Railroad was not a real railroad as we know it today.
  • Underground Railroad was a secret route in which free Americans developed a system of intricate paths to assist slaves in escaping slavery. The runaway slaves were hidden in carts, wagons and disguised as they made their way along the Underground Railroad to freedom. Famous promoters of the Railroad were Harriet Beecher Stowe, Frederick Douglass, and Harriet Tubman.

Moving towards Secession and War

  • Compromise of 1850 postponed the trauma of war.
  • Southerners wanted States Rights and a weak federal government.
  • Fugitive Slave Act: Commissioner returned the slave to his owner of $10

Or if a commissioner let the slave go free, he would be fined $5. The first year of the Fugitive Slave Act 84 slaves were returned to their masters and 5 fugitives were set free.

  • Federal law banned slavery in 1807 but the smuggling continued.
  • Caning of Sumner by Preston Brooks-Southerners sent Brooks more canes.
  • John Brown heard of the caning of Sumner and went crazy in Kansas killing 5 pro-slavery men. He attained notoriety by lawlessness.
  • Kansas came in as a slave state in 1858 and then changes and became a free state in 1861. The North now had a 4 state edge over the South.

War

  • Southerners were to call the Civil War the “War of Northern (Yankee) Aggression”
  • Lincoln wins in 1860 with a 40% majority because 4 candidates were running. Lincoln did not appear on the ballot in 10 Southern states.
  • By 1860 the Northern States had manufactured 97% of the country’s firearms, 94% of its cloth, and more than 90% of its boots and shoes.
  • Earliest regiments on both sides were clad in various colors of uniforms which caused regiments to mistake friends for enemies and enemies for friends.
  • Shoddy was a recycled woolen fabric-the noun soon became an adjective that described uniforms that fell apart after a few weeks of wear, shoes that disintegrated when wet, and poor workmanship in general.
  • Antietam Battle-An 1862 battle in which 23,000 troops were killed in one day. Worst one day battle.
  • Emancipation Proclamation- January 1863- had given the North a moral cause. The South was losing because it lacked man-power. Many Southerners preferred to lose the war rather than to win it with the help of Black soldiers.
  • Gettysburg Battle- July 1863 in which Confederate troops headed to Gettysburg looking for boots and converged upon Northern troops in a battle which resulted in more than 50,000 casualties. A turning point battle of the Civil War.
  • Vicksburg Siege-Confederates lost their stronghold on the Mississippi River which became a Union victory.
  • More than 620,000 lost their lives in the 4 year conflict-360,000 Yankees and 260,000 Rebels.
  • Richmond, Virginia was set on fire by the Confederates so the Union could not use the supplies.