History 101: Week 14 (Professor Messer-Kruse)

History 101: Week 14 (Professor Messer-Kruse)

[The notes for the lecture of April 1, 1995 are unavailable.]

May 3, 1995: War and the Homefront

I. Mobilization:

A. Initial patriotic fever swept the north and swelled the volunteer army. 1. Organized workers in particular rushed to enlist. Many unions collapsed in 1861 as the bulk of the leadership and membership left work for the army. a. One Philadelpia union's minutes of a meeting in the spring of 1861 read: "it having been resolved to enlist with Uncle Sam for the war, this union stands adjourned until either the union is safe or we are whipped." b. Some iron mills in Pennsylvania had to temporarily close because the bulk of the workforces had left for the army. 2. Foreign-born Americans were especially eager to enlist and in New York state, Germans quickly organized 10 regiments and the Irish of NYC formed the 69th regiment and the Irish Brigade. (3 out of 4 of the men in the 69th would fall at the battle of Fredericksburg). 3. Half of the wartime Union army consisted of midwestern farmers and farm workers - the old backbone of the Free Soil Party. a. some rural districts practically depopulated by the wave of intitial enlistments. One Wisconsin town reported 111 of 250 voters volunteered. One Illinois township had 117 of 147 enlist. 54% of the adult men in Vermont (the most rural state east of the Mississippi) served in the army.

4. At first, before Lincoln made it clear that the war was not going to change the institution of slavery (by sacking Fremont), thousands of free African-Americans flooded the recruiting offices but were turned away.

B. In the summer of 1861, so many northern regiments had organized that the government wrote to the states that its largest logistical problem was an oversupply of recruits. 1. State rivalries swelled regimental rosters - some states even began to complain that their quotas were set lower than their neighboring states. a. OH quota set at 13 regiments - 50 filled out. b. By Dec. of 1861 the states supplied over 640,000 recruits to the federal govts. own mere 4,000. (State pride and community loyalities led most volunteers to want to serve with their state than the federal govt.

C. Why the initial enthusiasm? 1. The decade before the CW had been one of rapidly rising tension and apprehension about the course of American society - especially about industrialization, social inequality, corruption & morals, and the future of the democracy and repubican values. The coming of the war provided a moment when people worried about the decay of their values could publicly demonstrate their fealty to them. Outpourings of public patriotism were cathartic and redemptive for many Americans. a. Wendell Phillips at first worried that his own state would rise up to the challenge of war and he wrote privately his fears that Massachusetts had become "wholly choked with cotton dust and cankered with gold" to fight for the ideals of the republic.

D. The war, on both sides started as truly "A rich man's war and a poor man's fight." 1. In proportion to their percentage of the population more industrial workers served in the Union army than any other group (except for professionals like ministers, professors, lawyers, accountants, and doctors). 2. Farm laborers were most heavily represented enlistees from rural areas. (Farm owners usually stayed on their farms). 3. For every 1000 soldiers in the Union army: a. 487 farmers b. 421 mechanics c. 35 retail, commercial workers d. 16 professionals e. 41 misc.

4. The unequal burden of service was even more apparent when the federal govt. passed a conscription law that exempted anyone who could hire a substitute or pay a $300 bounty. a. Conscription Act of March 1863 selected draftees by lottery, but allowed for a waiver upon payment of $300 or provision of a substitute. b. It was not, however, the first draft in American history. The North was beaten by the South that instituted its own draft a year earlier. It was equally biased to favor the social elite (in the South's case the very men who had led the southern states to secede!). A man was exempted if he provided a substitute or owned more than 20 slaves.

II. War and Industrialization: A. Labor Shortage: Over the course of the war, 500,000 manufacturing workers enlisted or were drafted, and during the first two years of the war immigration fell off by half, creating a severe labor shortage in the North.

a. Women took over farm labor to a great extent. (1) One NY mother reportedly raised her seven daughters in her husbands absence (not unusual for a mother in the 19c) but she also brought in 100 acres of wheat, milked 22 cows, made butter and cheese, and even found time to shingle and lath an addition onto her home.

1. Industry: a. Women were from the beginning of industrialization the backbone of manufacturing and the war only augmented their role. Women perfomed 1/4 of all manufacturing labor in the US during the war. They were paid at only 1/2 the rate of men and some working women not only failed to catch up to rampant inflation, but actually saw their absolute wages decline! Seamstresses were paid less in 1865 than they were in 1861. (1) Cincinatti seamstresses finally wrote to Lincoln in their desperation: "We are unable to sustain life for the prices offered by contractors who fatten on their contracts by grinding immense profits out of the labor of their operatives." b. Women took advantage of wartime shortages to gain entry into professions previously closed to them: nursing, government clerking; retail sales, etc.

c. Children were also employed to a greater extent than ever before the keep the wheels of northern industry turning. Tens of thousands were drawn into the workforce during the war. By 1865, 13% of the New England textile mill workforce consisted of children under 16. (Penn. had 22%) Many of these children were as young as 7 and made to work 14 hour days. Mill owners did not set any minimum age, only the requirement that children were old enough to stand in one place for that long.

d. After the passage of the Emigrant Aid Act of 1864, (allowing industrialists to import workers from abroad directly) industrialists organized "emigrant aid societies" that advertised in Europe and encouraged immigration to the US. By 1863 immigration levels rebounded to those of 1860, and by 1865 had reached a 1/3 more than pre-war levels.

B. Inflation: The tremendous purchasing of goods by the government for wartime use and the shortage of labor combined to fuel steep inflation that eroded all but the most skilled workers wages. Prices on average rose 20% faster than wages. (On average over the course of the war, wages increased by 1/2 and prices of staple goods doubled.) Meanwhile employers reaped record profits in cotton processing, railroads, government provisioning, etc. Lincoln regularly used the military to supress strikes during the war.

C. Economic troubles were even worse in the South by 1863, after Union forces seized Tennessee and central Virginia, the bread-baskets of the South. The south reaped the legacy of its specialization in cotton and tobacco as famine began in southern cities and the Confederate government passed a bill legalizing the seizure of food, animals and other property from farmers. a. April 2, a food riot broke out in Richmond followed latter that spring by riots in Atlanta, Macon, and Mobile.

III. War and Democracy - From the beginning, Lincoln faced the challange of prosecuting a total war without sacrificing the very principles he proposed to fight for.

A. When war began Washington DC was surrounded by potentially hostile territory. Virginia and Maryland both slave states. Virginia went over to the Confederacy in the spring of 1861, and Lincoln felt that the the possible loss of Maryland justified his use of an iron fist to keep Maryland in the Union.

1. Lincoln suspended Writ of Habeas Corpus in ML and arrested and detained suspected southern agitators without trial in Fort Henry.

IV. Lincoln and Civil Liberties A. Army arrested numerous ML citizens, including the Mayor and Police Chief of Baltimore, 31 members of the state legislature and held them for up to a year without trial. 1. Case of John Merryman, caught burning bridges and organizing confederate brigades in Maryland. Thrown into Fort Henry and his lawyer sent a petition for a writ of H.C. to the nearest federal court (which happened to be presided over by Roger Taney). Taney issued the writ and Lincoln and the army ignored him.

B. Over the course of the war some 15,000 Americans were detained by the army (though the vast majority of these arrests occured in conflicted border states in military theaters and only a few hundred were outright repression against internal dissent.)

1. Eventually hundreds (all democrats) were arrested and imprisoned in this way. 2. Case of former Ohio Congressman Vallandigham in May of 1863, even more of a popular outrage of civil liberties. 3. In Re Milligan was the postwar Supreme Court rebuke of Lincoln's wartime civil liberties violations as the Supreme court held that military courts could not try civilians in areas where civilian courts were functioning.

V. Lincoln's suspension of the great Writ and the Union defeat at Bull Run fired the pyres of partisanship that had been extinguished in the patriotic fever of March and April. Back then even Stephen Douglas even rushed to the White Houes and emerged proclaiming to the press that there were only two parties in the country, "the party of patriots and the party of traitors". Fernando wood (Democratic mayor of NY) said after Sumter, "I know no party now."

A. Democrats now railed against Lincoln's "tyranny" and found further cause for dissent when the Republicans passed the First Confiscation Act in Aug. of 1861. (This was the first wartime partisan vote - only 3 Dems voted for it and only 6 Reps against it).

B. But partisanship really heated up the following year when the midterm Congressional elections approached. After Lincoln issued his preliminary Emancipation Proclamation in Sept. 1862, the Democrats had a field day. Their party slogan was "The Constitution as it is; the Union as it was; the Negroes where they are." (Republicans replied by branding Democrats the party of "Dixie, Davis and the Devil")

1. Lincoln clumsily extended the suspension of habeas corpus to the entire country but one month before the election! A move Democrats percieved to be partisan intimidation. (Indeed it was, Lincoln ordered that a few vocal Democratic editors and reporters be arrested, held, and released to intimidate the opposition press.)

C. 1862 Congressional elections proved a defeat for Lincoln's adminstration (in many ways this election was a popular rejection of the Emancipation Proclamation!). The Democrats rolled to victory and gained 32 seats in the House and carried the assembly in Illinois and Indiana. Democratic governors were elected in NY and NJ.

D. But after the Union defeats of 1862 (and the increasing levels of carnage) enlistments declined and by the spring of 1863 the federal government turned to the draft. (160,000 men would eventually dodge the Civil War draft).

1. July draft riots a. July 13-15, 1863 NYC draft riot lynched a dozen black men and burned the Colored Orphan Asylum to the ground. Finally put down by federal troops at a cost of over a hundred lives. NYC bought off future dissent by agreeing to budget 2 million dollars to pay for the bounties of its poor residents.

VI. Crucial test of this strained democracy came with the Presidential election of 1864. No one considered suspending the democratic process for the duration of the war. Lincoln despaired. In the summer of 1864, he confided that "It seems exceedingly probable that the Administration will not be reelected."

A. George McClellan had been the defacto Democratic candidate for two years, but he could not cement the loyalties of the two wings of his party (those that wanted to call for immediate peace, and those that wanted to prosecute the war, but with different means from the adminstration).

B. Lincoln managed to unify his own party and Sherman managed to take Atlanta on Sept. 2 and Lincoln rolled into a second term.

April 5, 1995: War and the West

I. The War and Indians

There were actually two wars that occurred between 1861 and 1865. One between the North and South and another between whites and Indians on the western frontier. These four years saw more Indian tribes destroyed, more Indian people massacred, more Indian land seized, than during any other comparable period in U.S. history. From the Sioux in Minnesota, to the Shastas in California, the Apaches in New Mexico, the Navajo in Arizona, the Piute in Utah and Idaho, and scores of other Indian tribes, were decimated.

II. For Example: The Sioux Uprising of 1862:

A. Lincoln no fan of Indians. His grandfather was killed by Indians in 1784, orphaning his father at age 6. Lincoln volunteered for the Black Hawk war, but saw no action. Later he made political hay out of taking a hard line against Indians, supporting Indian Removal, etc. (Once praised Winfield Scott a "Christian gentleman who...removed the Cherokee Indians from their homes to the west of the Mississippi in such manner as to gain the applause of the great and good of the land.")

B. The Indian system: the Office of Indian Affairs was the most corrupt and inefficient in the entire federal bureacracy. No president had the slightest interest in cleaning it up as the well of patronage and graft there was used by all parties to reward cronies and political supporters.

1. After years of being cheated by traders who had stolen most of the annuities the Sioux were due in exchange for the bulk of Minnesota ceded in 1851, the Sioux rose up in 1862 and killed between 400 and 2000 white settlers. 40,000 white settlers were made refugees and about a 10,000 square mile area was completely emptied of whites. a. This marked the beginning of a long Indian war that would rage in the west for most of the next thirty years.

2. Mankato hangings of Dec. 1862 - 39 Sioux executed. 3. Feb. 1863, Congress annulled all treaties with the Sioux and reappropriated the annuities to white victims of the war. In Mar. Congress abrogated the treaties of the Winnebagos as well (who had not participated in the war) and seized about a million acres of Indian land to put on the public auction block. 4. 1300 Indians were held captive at Fort Snelling (without trial) of whom 300 died of exposure and starvation in the winter of 1863. They were then taken to Crow Creek in the Dakotas, one of the most desolate regions of the NW where another 300 died within a few months. (2000 Winnebagos were transferred there later that summer.) a. Indian agents sent to the reservation provisions that had been rejected for use by the army. It was then boiled in a huge communal vat that was kept continuously boiling night and day. Sioux were allowed to eat on even days. Winnebagos on odd.

ID: NOTES-101.14.

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