I. Why is the Civil War so critical?
- Survival of the nation at stake
- Significance extended beyond the US itself: Could a republic endure?
- National trauma that eclipses all others
- Most reliable research conservatively estimates that 750,000 men died
- Consequences were revolutionary
- Freeing of nearly 4 million slaves
- Reckoning with nation’s “original sin”—the glaring contradiction enshrined in the Constitution
II. Emergence of a new sense of nationhood
- Prior to the war, Americans were intensely localistic
- 80% lived in towns of 2,500 people or less
- People’s identification with their towns and states often trumped their identification with the nation
- After the Civil War, a new sensibility is reflected in language
- “The United States” becomes a singular rather than a plural noun
- People began speaking much less about a “union,” and much more about a “nation”
III. Dramatic shift in power from South to North
- Civil War answers the longstanding question of which social and economic system would dominate:
- A political economy based on slavery, overwhelmingly agricultural, with a very limited federal government?
- Or a political economy based on free labor, with a stronger federal government that fostered domestic manufacturing?
- The war left the South devastated economically (region lost 60% of it wealth/capital)
- Whereas Northern industry was spurred (wealth/capital in the region increased by 50%)
- Transfer of political power from South to North
IV. Strengthening of the federal government
- Prior to war
- Federal government was for most a distant entity
- Post Office and Customs House
- Flurry of wartime legislation changed the nature of government by claiming new powers
- To draft citizens into the army
- To collect taxes
- To issue a national currency
- To put down civil unrest
- To end slavery and define the citizenship rights of former slaves
- Federal government was for most a distant entity
V. Scope of course: The war’s coming, course & consequences
- We will focus not just on the war years (1861-65), but on the period from 1850 to 1877
- Why start in 1850?
- Somewhat arbitrary; could start much earlier
- Compromise of 1850
- Why start in 1850?
- Why end in 1877?
- Contested presidential election
- Withdrawal of Union troops from the South
VI. Course structure/logistics
- Course readings all on e-reserves: access code RP112
- Recommend that you print out material and create your own reader
- Class time: Will be a mixture of lecture and discussion
- Can always raise your hand to ask questions
- Requirements
- Low stakes quizzes; document analysis; in-class MT; take-home final OR a research paper
- NO electronics
Closing thought: The war, according to Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner, “uprooted institutions that were centuries old, changed the politics of a people, transformed the social life of half the country, and wrought [change] so profoundly upon the entire national character that the influence cannot be measured short of two or three generations.”