17-4 The Legacy of War

Ø The Civil War brought great changes and new challenges to the United States.

Ø The most important change was the liberation of 4 million enslaved persons.

ONE AMERICAN’S STORY

· In the spring of 1864, a year before the end of the Civil War, the Union army was running out of cemetery space to bury its war dead. The secretary of war ordered Quartermaster General Montgomery Meigs to find a new site for a cemetery. Without hesitation, Meigs chose Robert E. Lee's plantation in Arlington, Virginia, just across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C. "The grounds about the mansion are admirably adapted to such a use," wrote Meigs in June 1864.

· Meigs was from Georgia and had served under Lee in the U.S. Army before the war. Unlike Lee, however, Meigs remained loyal to the Union and disagreed strongly with Lee's decision to join the Confederacy. His decision to turn Lee's plantation into a Union cemetery was highly symbolic. The Union soldiers who died fighting Lee's army would be buried in Lee's front yard. That site became Arlington National Cemetery.

· Many Northerners shared Montgomery Meigs's bitter feelings toward the South. At the same time, many Southerners felt great resentment toward the North. After the war, President Lincoln hoped to heal the nation and bring North and South together again. The generous terms of surrender offered to Lee were part of that effort. Hard feelings remained, however, in part because the costs of the war were so great.

Costs of the War

· The Civil War was the deadliest war in American history. In four years of fighting, approximately 620,000 soldiers died- 360,000 for the Union and 260,000 for the Confederacy. Another 275,000 Union soldiers and 260,000 Confederate soldiers were wounded. Many suffered from their wounds for the rest of their lives.

· Altogether, some 3,000,000 men served in the armies of the North and South, (around 10 percent of the population.) Along with the soldiers, many other Americans had their lives disrupted by the war. The war also had great economic costs. Together, the North and South spent more than five times the amount spent by the government in the previous eight decades. Many years after the fighting was over, the federal government was still paying interest on loans taken out during the war.

ECONOMIC COSTS

Federal loans and taxes to finance the war totaled $2.6 billion.

Federal debt on June 30,1865 rose to $2.7 billion.

Confederate debt ran over $700 million.

Union inflation reached 182% in 1864 and 179% in 1865.

Confederate inflation rose to 9,000% by the end of the war.

· The Thirteenth Amendment One of the greatest effects of the war was the freeing of millions of enslaved persons. As the Union army moved through the South during and after the war, Union soldiers released African Americans from bondage. One of those released was Booker T. Washington, who later became a famous educator and reformer. He recalled the day a Union officer came to his plantation to read the Emancipation Proclamation.

After the reading we were told that we were all free, and could go when and where we pleased. My mother, who was... standing by my side, leaned over and kissed her children, while tears of joy ran down her cheeks. She explained to us what it all meant, that this was the day for which she had been so long praying, but fearing that she would never live to see.

---Booker T. Washington, quoted in his autobiography,

· The Emancipation Proclamation applied primarily to slaves in the Confederacy, however. Many African Americans in the Border States were still enslaved. In 1864, with the war still under way, President Lincoln had approved of a constitutional amendment to end slavery entirely, but it failed to pass Congress. In January 1865, Lincoln urged Congress to try again to end slavery. This time, the measure-known as the Thirteenth Amendment passed. By year's end, 27 states, including eight in the South, had ratified the amendment. From that point on, slavery was banned in the United States.

Lincoln's Assassination

· Lincoln did not live to see the end of slavery, however. Five days after Lee's surrender at Appomattox, the president and his wife went to see a play at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C. During the play, a Confederate supporter, John Wilkes Booth, crept into the balcony where the president sat and shot him in the back of the head. Booth then jumped over the railing and landed on the stage. Although he broke his leg in the leap, he managed to escape the theater.

· That same evening, an accomplice of Booth stabbed Secretary of State William Seward, who later recovered. Another man was supposed to assassinate Vice-President Johnson, but he failed to carry out the attack. Although Booth had managed to escape after shooting the president, Union troops found and killed him several days later. Soldiers also hunted down Booth's accomplices, whom they either hanged or imprisoned. After Lincoln was shot, he was carried to a house across the street from the theater. The bullet in his brain could not be removed, however. The next morning, April 15, 1865, the president died. He was the first American president to be assassinated.

· Lincoln's murder stunned the nation and caused intense grief. In Washington, D.C., people wept in the streets. One man who mourned the nation's loss was the poet Walt Whitman. In one poem, Whitman considered the president's legacy.

This dust was once the man, Gentle, plain, just and resolute, under whose cautious hand, Against the foulest crime in history known in any land or age, Was saved the Union of these States.

· Walt Whitman, This Dust Was Once the Man

· The loss of Lincoln's vast experience and great political skills was a terrible setback for a people faced by the challenge of rebuilding their nation. In both the North and the South, life would never be the same after the Civil War.

· In the North, the war changed the way people thought about the country. In fighting to defend the Union, people came to see the United States as a single nation rather than a collection of states. After 1865, people no longer said "the United States are" but "the United States is." The war also caused the national government to expand. Before the war, the government was relatively small and had limited powers.

· With the demands of war, however, the government grew larger and more powerful Along with a new paper currency and income tax, the government established a new federal banking system. It also funded railroads, gave western land to settlers, and provided for state colleges. This growth of federal power continued long after the war was over.

· The war also changed the Northern economy. New industries such as steel, petroleum, food processing, and manufacturing grew rapidly. By the late 1800s, industry had begun to replace farming as the basis of the national economy. For the South, however, the war brought economic disaster. Farms and plantations were destroyed. About 40 percent of the South's livestock was killed. Fifty percent of its farm machinery was wrecked. Factories were also demolished, and thousands of miles of railroad tracks were torn up. Also gone was the labor system that the South had used-slavery.

· Before the war, the South accounted for 30 percent of the nation's wealth. After the war it accounted for only 12 percent. These economic differences between the North and the South would last for decades. The country faced difficult challenges after the war. How would the South be brought back into the Union, and how would four million former slaves be integrated into national life?

And that is what we call Reconstruction---