4-6.6

It Is Essential For Students To Know:

• The Civil War had a profound impact on the United States.
• As a result of the war, the Union was preserved and slaves were freed.
• The right of states to secede was decided by force of arms to be null and void. The validity of elections was upheld.
• The physical environment of the north was effected very little by the war, since only a few battles were fought there.
• However, the south was devastated. Entire cities were burned and plantations were destroyed. Thousands of acres of farmland were ruined and the fields were left unplanted and useless in the absence of slave labor to plant and harvest the cash crops.
• The impact of the war on the people depended upon who you were and where you came from. Young men from both sides enlisted or were drafted into service.
• The wealthy were often able to pay for someone else to take their place.
• In the South, planters were exempt from service if they owned over 20 slaves.
• For all soldiers the war was at first an adventure but soon became a challenge of endurance and survival. Soldiers endured a long, difficult, and bloody war, often with little food or clean water. Over 600,000 men on both sides died. Over 1,100,000 were injured; many lost limbs.
• In both regions, women were left in charge of their homes and farms or businesses while the men were away fighting.
• In the north, women served as nurses or workers in factories during the war. Others rolled bandages or knitted socks at home to send to the soldiers.
• In the south, women were left to manage their families and continue operating the farms and plantations. They also served as nurses. Because so many men died in the war, many women had to continue managing their families during the difficult period of rebuilding.
• During the war, some African American slaves ran away from the plantations; others continued to work the fields and waited.
• After the Emancipation Proclamation, African Americans were allowed to join the Union Army.
• Immediately after the war, many former slaves left the plantations looking for loved ones sold away or simply leaving because freedom meant the ability to leave.
• Few freedmen went to the North. Most soon returned to the areas they knew; some even returned to their old plantations where many found work as sharecroppers.
• African Americans reconstructed their families, created their own communities, participated in politics and sought an education that had been denied them as slaves.
• The civilian population of the North and the South had very different experiences of the war, although opposition occurred on both sides.
• The civilian population of the North did not suffer from lack of food and supplies. The war prompted the growth of business as the government granted contracts for military supplies and issued paper money that retained most of its value after the war.
• Although immigration slowed as a result of the war, factories continued to be able to produce.
• In the South, the civilian population suffered from lack of food and supplies because of the blockade and the disruption of agriculture which led to bread riots in some places. The paper money issued by the Confederacy was worthless after the war ended with that government’s surrender.
• The slaves were freed and planters lost a large portion of their wealth as well as their labor force.
• In the postwar period both sides tried to recover from the devastating impact of the war but the divisions of war would continue into the Reconstruction period.
• Lincoln’s plan for Reconstruction, issued before the surrender at Appomattox, was a lenient one because he wanted the South to surrender. However, Lincoln may have changed his plan if he had not been assassinated.
• The insistence of Southern governments in continuing to keep their African American populations in a state of subservience through the Black Codes led to a Military Reconstruction plan. This plan protected the rights of the freedmen through the 14th and 15th amendments but continued the divisions of the war. The war was over but the battle was not won.

It Is Not Essential For Students To Know:

• It is not essential for students to know specific people other than those already stated in 4-6.5 who impacted the Civil War.
• Students do not need to know what bills were passed by Congress that helped to promote business and westward expansion in the postwar period such as the reorganization of the banking system, the Pacific Railway Act or the Homestead Act.
• Students do not need to know that parts of the North experienced violent opposition to the war.
• For instance, in New York, poor, unskilled Irish workers and other white northerners rioted against the draft and attacked African Americans, abolitionists and Republicans in 1863.
• The violence and destruction did not end until the United States army put down the riots.
• Political opposition to the war effort was led by the Peace democrats also-called Copperheads.