The Civil War

V - The Black Experience of the American Civil War

This webpage deals with three issues:

1. In what ways were the lives of Americans affected by slavery before 1861?

2. The experience of Black Americans during the war

3. The experience of Black Americans under reconstruction

Source A

An illustration by Thomas Nast for Harper's Weekly, 1865, showing what he hoped Emanicipation would achieve.
Nast was a pro-Lincoln Republican who used his cartoons to promote the Union and Republican case.  Illustrated magazines like Harper's Weekly were the TikTok of their day.

Going Deeper

The following links will help you widen your knowledge:

Basic accounts in Prof.  Gallagher's Great Courses book (pdf) on:
•  African Americans (Chs 27-28)

  The Story of Frederick Douglass - with thanks to Mr Bassett & Pete Jackson

Teachit SWOT analysis on the Consequences of Abolition with accompanying exercises (pdf)

Historian Eric Foner on The Unresolved Legacy Of Reconstruction

YouTube

Crash Course Black American History on: Black Americans in the Civil War and Reconstruction

Mary Bowser, Union spy - remarkable story

IN WHAT WAYS WERE THE LIVES OF AMERICANS AFFECTED BY SLAVERY BEFORE 1861?

1.  3.5 million people in the USA in 1860 were enslaved Black people.  They were the property of their owner, kept in place by repressive laws (‘Slave Codes’ which prevented them). 
   This affected their lives in a number of ways:
   • In the 25% of Southern homes which held enslaved people, they did most (sometimes ALL) the work.  Enslaved men planted and harvested, dug ditches, cut and hauled wood, slaughtered livestock, and made repairs.  They worked as mechanics, blacksmiths, drivers, carpenters, and skilled jobs.  Enslaved women cooked, cleaned, acted as maid to the lady and nanny to the children, as well as spinning, weaving, and sewing.  Enslaved children would be expected to play with the white children of the house. 
   • Not all slave-holders were cruel, but enslaved people could at their ‘owner’s’ whim find themselves subject without redress to punishment, violence, sexual exploitation or sale. 
   • They could not strike a white person; give evidence against a white person; make contracts, buy or sell goods; own a gun; possess any anti-slavery literature; leave the plantation without permission; or visit the home of a white person or free Black. 
   • The health of enslaved people was poor, due to lack of sanitation, poor food and unrelenting hard labour even when sick.  On rice plantations, malaria was rampant and child mortality was generally around 66%
   • White paranoia about slave rebellion resulted in vigilante militias which would patrol the area, raiding Black gatherings.  A Black person on their own off the plantation – even if a freedman or carrying a pass – was in great danger.  The killing of a slave was not murder, and the rape of an enslaved women was treated as trespass.
2.  Not all Black people in the South were enslaved.  Some 400,000 were ‘free Blacks’.  When the war broke out in 1861, the free Blacks offered to fight for the South. 
3.  Three quarters of Southerners did not hold any enslaved people.  Only 3% of southerners owned more than 20; these were the ‘slavocracy’ – the powerful, plantation-owning Southern elite.  Enslaved labour in the antebellum South generated great wealth and influence for these plantation owners. 
4.  The cash crops produced by enslaved labour (especially cotton) formed not only THE major element of the Southern economy (and an even greater proportion of the South’s exports, but a significant part of the national economy; in 1860 enslaved labour produced perhaps an eighth of the USA’s wealth. 
5.  Slavery was the cornerstone of white society and supremacy in the South and, intersecting with racism and class, it became an essential element of the South’s antebellum identity. 
6.  With the growth of the abolition movement in the North, slavery became a political controversy.  As time went on, attitudes in the South became defensive and hardened.  In 1861, the election of Abraham Lincoln, known as an abolitionist (even though he was a very lukewarm one) led the southern states to secede from the Union, resulting in a four-year civil war. 

BLACK AMERICANS DURING THE WAR

1. ‘Contrabands’ (ie enslaved people who had run away from, or been abandoned by, their owners)
   • One-in-seven enslaved people ran away to the protection of the Union Army.  They were not welcome, and were put into camps; mortality in the camps ran at 25%.  Food and clothing was provided, and Freedmen and Missionary Societies brought some relief. 
   • Black men were commandeered to do non-fighting tasks such as looking after the horses, digging fortifications.  Black women were employed as cooks and nurses.  They were not always paid. 
   • On one occasion, contrabands following a Union Army which entered Kentucky – a state which still allowed slavery – were seized and sold as slaves.
2.  Emancipated formerly-enslaved people:
   • In some areas conquered by the Union, emancipated Black people were forced to sign up for a one-year contract working for the Union Army or employer.  They were poorly paid, and most was deducted for clothing and medical care. 
   • In 1865, Congress created the Freedmen’s Bureau, which gave freed enslaved people the right to lease 40 acres of confiscated land, with an option to buy it after 3 years.  In 1865, General Sherman issued Special Field Order Number 15, which set aside more than 400,000 acres of coastal plantations for settlement by formerly-enslaved people.  But, in areas where land was confiscated from Confederate plantation-owners, most went to Union speculators, and Reconstruction gave most former Confederates’ land back to them.
3.  USCT (United States Colored Troops)
   • The first regiment of soldiers comprised of former enslaved men was the South Carolina Volunteer Infantry Regiment, formed in 1862.
   • In 1863, Lincoln gave the go-ahead to enlist Black men into the Army (180,000 eventually served in the Army). 
   • The Union Army was segregated.  Black units were less well-supplied, generally had white officers (only 100 Black officers were appointed in the whole of the war), and were paid two-thirds the wages of white soldiers. 
   • Most Black units were given only labouring and garrison duties.  Where they were allowed into combat, they fought well (e.g.  at Fort Wagner, the topic of the film Glory). 
   • Captured Black Union soldiers were not taken prisoner, but were shot as runaways (and their officers executed as criminals who had incited insurrection)
4.  The Confederate Army
   • also used Black people for non-fighting tasks such as looking after the horses, digging fortifications, cooks and nurses.  Towards the end, there was a discussion about enlisting Black soldier to fight for the Confederacy, but there was so much opposition to the idea that the decision was taken only a fortnight before the surrender.
5.  There was some progress towards civil rights:
   • In April 1864 the Senate passed an Act to abolish slavery; it was defeated in the House of Representatives, and the 13th Amendment was not passed until January 1865. 
   • The 14th Amendment gave Black Americans citizenship and “equal protection of the laws”. 
   • The 15th Amendment granted African American men the right to vote. 
   • Segregation on public transport was abolished in most of the North. 
   • Many Northern States abolished their ‘Black laws’. 
   • Black people were allowed to be witnesses in federal courts and in 1865, Boston lawyer John Rock acted before the Supreme Court.
6.  HOWEVER, Northern attitudes remained racist:
   • In 1863, the New York Draft Riots escalated into attacks on Black Americans – mobs destroyed the Colored Orphan Asylum, lynched Black residents, burned homes, and drove them out of the city. 
   • Massive discrimination remained – Black Americans were not allowed to live in ‘white’ areas, and Black Americans generally did the worst jobs and received lower pay for the same job.

BLACK AMERICANS AFTER RECONSTRUCTION [HER LEFT]

1.  Historiography
   • Until the 1960s, the 'Dunningite' school of historians portrayed Reconstruction as a dreadful atrocity of brutality and corruption perpetrated upon the South by the North. 
   • After the 1960s, revisionist historians instead saw the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments as extraordinary political and social achievements which fundamentally altered the role of the federal government in protecting the rights of American citizens, black and white. 
   • Modern historians tend to represent Reconstruction as a well-intentioned experiment, which failed because of Northern irresolution in the face of Southern intransigence.
   • Nevertheless, historian Eric Foner wrote in 2000: “The institutions created or consolidated after the Civil War – the black family, school, and church – provided the base from which the modern civil rights revolution sprang.  And for its legal strategy, the movement returned to the laws and amendments of Reconstruction”.
2.  Equality?
   • Reconstruction did not give Black formerly enslaved people social equality, and State Legislatures enacted Jim Crow laws to maintain white supremacy (eg Black Americans were not allowed to marry a white person, serve on a jury, or testify in court against a white person); enforce segregation; and even restrict movement (eg anyone who wasn’t under a labour contract who could be arrested as a ‘vagrant’ and have their labour sold) .
3.  Rights?
   • The Supreme Court consistently undermined Black Civil Rights - United States v.  Cruikshank (1876) negated the 14th Amendment and Plessy v Ferguson (1896) declared segregation legal.
   • However, one civil right that came with emancipation was the formation of autonomous Black Churches, fully-controlled by Black Americans; these Churches would foster Black consciousness and activism for the future.
4.  Land?
   • Reconstruction did not give Black formerly enslaved people land, so that they became sharecroppers or labourers, and economically subservient to their former ‘owners’.
   • Federal soldiers actually went round the south displacing freed Black people to whom plantation land had been given, so that it could be given back to the former white owners.
   • This restored the former slaveocracy to position, restored the supremacist/racist Democrats to political power, and relegated the freed Black Americans to a landless, debt-obliged underclass.
   • However, formerly-enslaved people were free to apply for land under the Homestead Act, and perhaps as many as 70,000 'Exodusters' moved west, mostly to Kansas.  Another 5,000-or-so went west to work as cowboys (it is estimated that Black freedmen formed a quarter of the workforce of the ranching industry).
5.  Education?
   • Withdrawing funding to the Freedmen’s Bureau in 1870 ended the government’s attempts to give freed formerly-enslaved people help to set themselves up, and ended financial support of the freedmen’s schools. 
   • However, the Southern States, in meeting the requirements to rejoin the Union, all added to their Constitution a requirement to set up public schools; although they were in every way inferior to white schools, illiteracy gradually declined, and aspiration grew.
6.  Freedom?
   • Politically, Reconstruction gave Black Americans freedom, but the right to devolve political power was handed back (after the Compromise of 1877) to State Legislatures which enacted measures such as poll taxes, property requirements and literacy tests to deprive Black Americans of the vote.
   • It is arguable that it is in the interests of an 'owner' of enslaved workers to keep them healthy and onside, and that changing the status of Black Americans in the South from 'slave' to 'sharecropper' simply freed the former-slavocracy to exploit them for everything they could get for as little as they could give.  You can't eat freedom.
   • However, one freedom that came with emancipation that did 'stick' was the right to get married and have a family; the family became the foundation of Black identity and confidence .
7.  Terror!
   • Although the Reconstruction Acts (1867) aimed to protect and ensure rights for freedmen, troops were withdrawn in 1877, allowing white supremacist groups such as the KKK to terrorize communities until the 1980s, with members throughout the police and the justice system to protect them.

Source B

An illustration by Thomas Nast for Harper's Weekly, 1874, entitled: “The Union As It Was; The Lost Cause, Worse than Slavery”.