Northern Homefront: Transformation and Dissent

I. How did the war transform the North?

  • Modernization thesis: With southerners out of the US Congress, the war enabled the North to enact the Republican agenda, which became the basis for the modern political and economic order
    • Morrill Tarriff Act of 1861
      • Higher tariffs; desired by factory workers and industrialists
    • Homestead Act of 1862
    • Land Grant College Act of 1862
    • Legal Tender Act o 1862
      • Authorized government to issue $150 million in notes (“greenbacks”)
    • National Banking Acts of 1863 and 1864

II. Economic impact: rural areas

  • Hardship/negative effects not as pronounced as in cities
  • Wages for rural farm workers actually rose
    • Strong demand for crops—not just from Army, but from Europe
  • People who suffered most: rural women left to try to get manage

III. Impact on workers

  • Civil War’s economic effects felt most strongly in cities
    • New jobs; wages go up
      • Increase by 50-60%
  • BUT: Inflation—prices rising by almost 100%
    • Living standards of many workers thus actually decline
      • Rise in child labor; pauperism; prostitution; delinquency
  • Growth of class conflict/class consciousness
    • Reflected in significantly increased rates of labor unionism and strikes
  • Growing resentment of federal government
    • Sense that it is on the side of the rich

III. Draft

  • Enrollment Act of 1863: First national system of conscription
    • Establishes new government bureau: Provost Marshals Bureau
    • Divided North into 185 districts; provost marshals sent out to identify men eligible for draft
    • Exemptions: Resident aliens; those with physical disabilities; only sons of dependent parents; sole supporters of motherless children
    • Could also pay a commutation fee of $300 or hire a substitute
      • $300 was roughly a year’s wages for an unskilled worker
    • Commutation fees repealed in 1864
  • In the end, few men actually draft: The draft was really a way to make people “volunteer”
    • Stigma to being drafted
    • Men paid high bounties for volunteering
      • Jan. 1863: $300; 1864: $1,000
  • Poor no more likely to serve as a result of the draft
    • BUT: the perception that the government was persecuting the poor persisted
    • And many poor, working-class men deeply resented the idea that the govt. is making them fight for slaves
      • Feared black migration to North; job competition
      • Pervasive racism

IV. New York City Draft Riot

  • 5 days of mayhem and bloodshed, starting July 13
    • First draft lottery had been held July 11
  • Around 120 killed total
    • 11 blacks lynched in the streets
    • Black longshoremen viciously attacked
  • Well-dressed, “$300 men” also targeted
  • Colored Orphan Asylum burned to ground
    • Recently built; imposing symbol of Northern benevolence (children themselves survive)
  • Regiments returning from Gettysburg had to put down the uprising

V. Widespread desertion

  • Provost Marshal estimates there were 200,000 deserters from years (1863-65)
    • Joan Cashin suggests there were even more
    • Majority of these men were not fleeing to Canada; hiding right in the US
      • Could only do this with cooperation of families & communities
        • Even though it was a crime to aid or abet deserters
    • Cashin argues that this shows the predominance of prewar loyalties—to one’s family, community, white race, own self interest

VI. Democratic Opposition

  • Democratic strongholds throughout the US
    • IL, IN, OH, parts of PA and NY
  • “War Democrats” (loyal opposition)
    • Opposed Emancipation and confiscation of southerners’ property, but believed war was necessary to restore the Union
  • “Peace Democrats”
    • Believed the war should end immediately; thought the North lacked constitutional right to force the South to remain in the Union
    • Blamed the war on abolitionists
    • Some engaged in small-scale guerrilla activity; parts of IL put under martial law
  • Unionists referred to both as “Copperheads”

VII. 1864 Election

  • Recall that Abraham Lincoln had received only 50% of the Northern vote in 1860
  • Support for the Democrats grew in 1862-63
    • 1862: Democrats made big gains in Congress and gained several governorships
  • 1864 Election: Really key election
    • Lincoln himself thinks he’s going to lose
    • Republicans so desperate they rename their party the “National Union Party”
  • Aug. 1864: Lincoln invites Douglass to WH
    • Douglass had met Lincoln before, when he’d gone to the White House to complain about unequal black military pay, but this time he was summoned
      • Lincoln essentially asks Douglass to organize an operation to funnel slaves out of the upper South/border; to get as many North as possible before McClellan was elected
        • Douglass is stunned

VIII. 1864 Presidential election

  • Democratic candidate: George McClellan
    • Ostensibly a War Democrat, but wants war to end soon
  • How does Lincoln pull off a victory?
    • Gets 55% of the popular vote in the end
    • Key: Success on the battlefield
      • Admiral Farragut takes Mobile Bay—last major southern port in Aug. 64
      • Sherman’s taking of Atlanta in Sept. 64
    • Soldier vote: Union soldiers vote overwhelmingly for Lincoln (78%)
  • Upshot: Despite significant dissent, support for continuing the war remains relatively strong, especially when compared to the Confederacy