Civil War History

[Travlyr]

Yale University - HIST 119: THE CIVIL WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION ERA, 1845-1877

I thoroughly enjoyed this free online class. Professor David Blight takes the class through the period leading up to the war, the war itself, and early Reconstruction. I especially liked Dr. Blight's discovery of The First Memorial Day. Newly freed black slaves honoring the dead Union soldiers buried in Charleston, S.C..

The First Decoration Day - David W. Blight, Yale University

Thousands of black Charlestonians, most former slaves, remained in the city and conducted a series of commemorations to declare their sense of the meaning of the war. The largest of these events, and unknown until some extraordinary luck in my recent research, took place on May 1, 1865. During the final year of the war, the Confederates had converted the planters' horse track, the Washington Race Course and Jockey Club, into an outdoor prison. Union soldiers were kept in horrible conditions in the interior of the track; at least 257 died of exposure and disease and were hastily buried in a mass grave behind the grandstand. Some twenty-eight black workmen went to the site, re-buried the Union dead properly, and built a high fence around the cemetery. They whitewashed the fence and built an archway over an entrance on which they inscribed the words, "Martyrs of the Race Course."

Then, black Charlestonians in cooperation with white missionaries and teachers, staged an unforgettable parade of 10,000 people on the slaveholders' race course. The symbolic power of the low-country planter aristocracy's horse track (where they had displayed their wealth, leisure, and influence) was not lost on the freedpeople. A New York Tribune correspondent witnessed the event, describing "a procession of friends and mourners as South Carolina and the United States never saw before."

At 9 am on May 1, the procession stepped off led by three thousand black schoolchildren carrying arm loads of roses and singing "John Brown's Body." The children were followed by several hundred black women with baskets of flowers, wreaths and crosses. Then came black men marching in cadence, followed by contingents of Union infantry and other black and white citizens. As many as possible gathering in the cemetery enclosure; a childrens' choir sang "We'll Rally around the Flag," the "Star-Spangled Banner," and several spirituals before several black ministers read from scripture. No record survives of which biblical passages rung out in the warm spring air, but the spirit of Leviticus 25 was surely present at those burial rites: "for it is the jubilee; it shall be holy unto you… in the year of this jubilee he shall return every man unto his own possession."

Following the solemn dedication the crowd dispersed into the infield and did what many of us do on Memorial Day: they enjoyed picnics, listened to speeches, and watched soldiers drill. Among the full brigade of Union infantry participating was the famous 54th Massachusetts and the 34th and 104th U.S. Colored Troops, who performed a special double-columned march around the gravesite. The war was over, and Decoration Day had been founded by African Americans in a ritual of remembrance and consecration. The war, they had boldly announced, had been all about the triumph of their emancipation over a slaveholders' republic, and not about state rights, defense of home, nor merely soldiers' valor and sacrifice.

[Travlyr]

I watched the first two hours of lecture again today. Dr. Blight does a good job of explaining the similarities and the differences between the North and the South prior to the war.

Lecture Chapters

1. Introduction: The Southern Memory of the Civil War [00:00:00]
2. Similarities and Differences between the Antebellum North and South [00:14:22]
3. Reputation and Honor – Characteristics of Old South Society [00:24:44]
4. The "Burden" of Southern History [00:31:27]
5. The South's Cotton Economy [00:38:15]
6. Conclusion [00:49:57]

Assignment
William Gienapp, Civil War and Reconstruction: A Documentary Collection, part 1, pp. 9-26
Bruce Levine, Half Slave and Half Free: The Roots of the Civil War, Introduction, chapters 1 and 4

[Travlyr]

Lecture 3 - A Southern World View: The Old South and Proslavery Ideology

Overview

Professor Blight lectures on southern slavery. He makes a case for viewing the U.S. South as one of the five true "slave societies" in world history. He discusses the internal slave trade that moved thousands of slaves from the eastern seaboard to the cotton states of the Southwest between 1820 and 1860. Professor Blight then sketches the contents of the pro-slavery argument, including its biblical, historical, economic, cynical, and utopian aspects.

Slave trader Hector Davis from Richmond, VA in his best week made around $120,000 profit from the slave trade. Hector became very wealthy in the slave trade business.

One day Hector bought a 14 year old slave and the boy worked for Hector in the slave auction house for about 6 months. Then one day Hector said today you are in the auction, boy. He was sold for $1000. Later he was sold again for $2000.

[Ronin Truth]

Looks interesting.

Thanks!

[Travlyr]

Looks interesting.

Thanks!

You are welcome. I find Civil War history to be fascinating and Professor Blight to be highly knowledgeable about it. I like his teaching style as well.

Another really good book to understand the Southern culture is: The Fall of the House of Dixie: The Civil War and the Social Revolution That Transformed the South

[Travlyr]

Letter dated 1854 from one slave trader to another.

"I bought a boy named Isaac for $1100. I think him very prime. He is a house servant, first rate cook, and splendid carriage driver. He is also a fine painter and varnisher. He says he can make a fine panel door. Also, he performs well on the violin. He is a genius. And strange to say I think he is smarter than I am."

[Travlyr]

From another thread.

Brother, I think I'd be disinclined to believe anything a Yalie course had to say about US history.

But, that's me.

Normally I would agree with you about Yale University. However, this class is very good.

[Travlyr]

Lecture 4 - A Northern World View: Yankee Society, Antislavery Ideology and the Abolition Movement

Overview

Having finished with slavery and the pro-slavery argument, Professor Blight heads North today. The majority of the lecture deals with the rise of the Market Revolution in the North, in the 1820s, 1830s, and 1840s. Blight first describes the causes of the Market Revolution--the rise of capital, a transportation revolution--and then moves to its effects on the culture and consciousness of antebellum northerners. Among these effects were a riotous optimism mixed with a deep-rooted fear of change, an embrace of the notions of progress and Manifest Destiny, and the intensification of the divides between North and South.

Abolitionist Uriah Parmelee, the Yalie dropped out of Yale University his Junior year to go fight the war. Dr. Blight reads from Parmelee's diary. He wanted the war to be about slavery and was disappointed that it wasn't. He was reinvigorated when Lincoln gave the Emancipation Proclamation. Uriah Parmelee was killed in April 1, 1865 the last major Civil War battle.

[Travlyr]

Something people in the liberty movement need to understand. Lincoln did not start the war. That lie needs to die if you ever want to be taken seriously. Lincoln was attacked by the Slave Powers with their intent to overthrow the government, nationalize, and expand slavery.

[Danke]

Something people in the liberty movement need to understand. Lincoln did not start the war. That lie needs to die if you ever want to be taken seriously. Lincoln was attacked by the Slave Powers with their intent to overthrow the government, nationalize, and expand slavery.

So why didn't he allow the southern states the right to secede?

Lee privately ridiculed the Confederacy in letters in early 1861, denouncing secession as "revolution" and a betrayal of the efforts of the founders. Writing to his son William Fitzhugh, Lee stated, "I can anticipate no greater calamity for the country than a dissolution of the Union." While he was not opposed in principle to secession, Lee wanted all peaceful ways of resolving the differences between North and South—such as the Crittenden Compromise—to be tried first, and was one of the few to foresee a long and difficult war.

The commanding general of the Union Army, Winfield Scott, told Lincoln he wanted Lee for a top command. Lee accepted a promotion to colonel on March 28. He had earlier been asked by one of his lieutenants if he intended to fight for the Confederacy or the Union, to which Lee replied, "I shall never bear arms against the Union, but it may be necessary for me to carry a musket in the defense of my native state, Virginia, in which case I shall not prove recreant to my duty."Meanwhile, Lee ignored an offer of command from the CSA. After Lincoln's call for troops to put down the rebellion, it was obvious that Virginia would quickly secede. Lee turned down an April 18 offer by presidential aide Francis P. Blair to command the defense of Washington D.C. as a major general, as he feared that the job might require him to invade the South. When Lee asked Scott, who was also a Virginian, if he could stay home and not participate in the war, the general replied "I have no place in my army for equivocal men."

Lee resigned from the Army on April 20 and took up command of the Virginia state forces on April 23. While historians have usually called his decision inevitable ("the answer he was born to make", wrote one; another called it a "no-brainer") given the ties to family and state, recent research shows that the choice was a difficult one that Lee made alone, without pressure from friends or family. His daughter Mary Custis was the only one among those close to Lee who favored secession, and wife Mary Anna especially favored the Union, so his decision astounded them. While Lee's immediate family followed him to the Confederacy, others, such as cousins and fellow officers Samuel Phillips and John Fitzgerald, remained loyal to the Union, as did 40% of all Virginian officers.

[Danke]

Something people in the liberty movement need to understand. Lincoln did not start the war. That lie needs to die if you ever want to be taken seriously. Lincoln was attacked by the Slave Powers with their intent to overthrow the government, nationalize, and expand slavery.

So why didn't he allow the southern states the right to secede?

Lee privately ridiculed the Confederacy in letters in early 1861, denouncing secession as "revolution" and a betrayal of the efforts of the founders. Writing to his son William Fitzhugh, Lee stated, "I can anticipate no greater calamity for the country than a dissolution of the Union." While he was not opposed in principle to secession, Lee wanted all peaceful ways of resolving the differences between North and South—such as the Crittenden Compromise—to be tried first, and was one of the few to foresee a long and difficult war.

The commanding general of the Union Army, Winfield Scott, told Lincoln he wanted Lee for a top command. Lee accepted a promotion to colonel on March 28. He had earlier been asked by one of his lieutenants if he intended to fight for the Confederacy or the Union, to which Lee replied, "I shall never bear arms against the Union, but it may be necessary for me to carry a musket in the defense of my native state, Virginia, in which case I shall not prove recreant to my duty."Meanwhile, Lee ignored an offer of command from the CSA. After Lincoln's call for troops to put down the rebellion, it was obvious that Virginia would quickly secede. Lee turned down an April 18 offer by presidential aide Francis P. Blair to command the defense of Washington D.C. as a major general, as he feared that the job might require him to invade the South. When Lee asked Scott, who was also a Virginian, if he could stay home and not participate in the war, the general replied "I have no place in my army for equivocal men."

Lee resigned from the Army on April 20 and took up command of the Virginia state forces on April 23. While historians have usually called his decision inevitable ("the answer he was born to make", wrote one; another called it a "no-brainer") given the ties to family and state, recent research shows that the choice was a difficult one that Lee made alone, without pressure from friends or family. His daughter Mary Custis was the only one among those close to Lee who favored secession, and wife Mary Anna especially favored the Union, so his decision astounded them. While Lee's immediate family followed him to the Confederacy, others, such as cousins and fellow officers Samuel Phillips and John Fitzgerald, remained loyal to the Union, as did 40% of all Virginian officers.

[Travlyr]

So why didn't he allow the southern states the right to secede?

The Knights of the Golden Circle planned on a slave empire throughout North and Central America. Lincoln stood firm against the expansion and nationalization of slavery because he firmly believed that slavery would eventually die out as long as it was not allowed to expand.

[Travlyr]

Abraham Lincoln - 1858

The Republican party, on the contrary, hold that this government was instituted to secure the blessings of freedom, and that slavery is an unqualified evil to the negro, to the white man, to the soil, and to the State. Regarding it an evil, they will not molest it in the States where it exists; they will not overlook the constitutional guards which our forefathers have placed around it; they will do nothing which can give proper offence to those who hold slaves by legal sanction; but they will use every constitutional method to prevent the evil from becoming larger and involving more negroes, more white men, more soil, and more States in its deplorable consequences. They will, if possible, place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in course of ultimate peaceable extinction, in God's own good time. And to this end they will, if possible, restore the government to the policy of the fathers---the policy of preserving the new territories from the baneful influence of human bondage, as the Northwestern territories were sought to be preserved by the ordinance of 1787 and the compromise act of 1820. They will oppose, in all its length and breadth, the modern Democratic idea that slavery is as good as freedom, and ought to have room for expansion all over the continent, if people can be found to carry it.

[Travlyr]

The Siege of Washington

"Jefferson Davis planned to be living in the White House by May 1, according to the plans of his wife, Varina. On April 17th, New York insurance executive William Holdredge wrote Secretary of State William H. Seward in exasperation, informing him that the "wife of the Rebel President Davis has had the imprudence to send cards to her lady acquaintances at the Saint Nicholas" - a favorite New York hotel for visiting Southerners - "inviting them to attend her reception in the White House at Washington on the first of May."

"On April 12, 1861 only hours after Confederate guns opened fire on Fort Sumter in the Charleston harbor, Confederate Secretary of War Leroy P. Walker appeared before a jubilant crowd in Montgomery, Alabama. "No man can tell when the war this day commenced will end," Walker thundered from the balcony of the Exchange Hotel, at the heart of the Confederate capital, "but I will prophesy that the flag which now floats the breeze here will float over the dome of the old capitol at Washington before the first of May."

Jefferson Davis and the Knights of the Golden Circle planned on a slave empire. In early 1860, South Carolina started arms build-up. John B. Floyd was Secretary of War under Buchanan. During the spring, summer, and fall of 1860 John B. Floyd raided the treasury, sent arms to the South, sent Union soldiers out West, sent the Navy to foreign waters, retired in disgrace just after South Carolina seceded and then he became a Confederate General.

Nine States kept Lincoln off the ballot but Lincoln won anyway. The South began to secede just a little over a month after Lincoln won the election and two months before Lincoln would take the oath of office. The 15,000 member strong KGC hated Lincoln and plotted to assassinate him. By the time Lincoln took the oath of office March 4th, the Confederacy was already established and they ratified the Confederate Constitution, which would nationalize, expand, and perpetuate African slavery, on March 11th.

When Lincoln took the oath of office Washington was broke, nearly defenseless, and extremely divided over the issue of slavery. Congress was not in session and Jefferson Davis thought that Lincoln did not have constitutional authority to call-up the militia because the authority to call-up the militia is written in Article I. What Davis had planned to do after he bombed Fort Sumter was just march to Washington and throw Lincoln out. Lincoln shocked the entire nation when he called-up the militias to defend Washington.

There became a race to Washington. The Union militia beat the Confederate army. April 25, 1861 - the Seventh New York arrives in Washington and stages a spontaneous parade down Pennsylvania Avenue amid cheering residents and ringing church bells. Washingtonians exclaim their joy that the “Capitol of the Nation is Safe!”

The Confederate Army marched to Manassas Junction just 30 miles outside of Washington and camped there holding Washington in siege until the First Battle of Bull Run on July 21.