UNIT 5 TOPIC 9
Government Policies During the Civil War H E I M L E R S H I S T O R Y. C O M
THEME : American and National Identity
LEARNING OBJECTIVE : Explain how Lincoln’s leadership during the Civil War impacted American ideals over the course of
the war.
Before we move on to Reconstruction, we have to talk about Abraham Lincoln’s leadership during the Civil War
and how it impacted the way we think about American ideals.
A NEW MEANING FOR THE WAR
Let’s begin by talking about how Abraham Lincoln successfully shifted the meaning of the war and the
effects it had. Remember that Lincoln was a Republican and as such he had a significant strain
of Free Soil ideology in him. In his campaign, Lincoln articulated his clear belief that the president
had no power to abolish slavery where it already existed. When the Civil War broke out, Lincoln
understood the meaning of the conflict as merely constitutional . In other words, if you had asked
Lincoln in 1861 what the war was for, he would have said, “to save the Union.” You can see that in
one of Lincoln’s letters from 1862 to a newspaper editor Horace Greeley . Lincoln said that if he could
restore the Union without freeing a single enslaved person , he would do it. Or if he could restore
the Union by freeing some or all enslaved people, he would do that. Emancipation was not Lincoln’s
motivation to win the war—he aimed to save the Union with or without slavery.
By the end of 1862, Lincoln flipped entirely on that position and made significant steps to articulate a
new reason for fighting the war, namely, to eradicate slavery. What changed? Two big developments
contributed. First, was the issue of contrabands . In 1861, as Union forces were stationed in Virginia ,
three enslaved black people who had escaped their plantations entered the camp seeking asylum .
Because of mounting pressure from the abolitionist movement, General Benjamin Butler declared the
three black people to be contrabands, which, by definition, refers to property that can be legally taken
from the opposing side during war time. Normally this refers to objects like papers or weapons or valuable
items, but certainly not people . If people are taken during war, they’re hostages . But given the South’s
insistence on classifying the enslaved as chattel , or property, Butler decided to use that against the South and
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UNIT 5 TOPIC 9
Government Policies During the Civil War H E I M L E R S H I S T O R Y. C O M
THEME : American and National Identity
LEARNING OBJECTIVE : Explain how Lincoln’s leadership during the Civil War impacted American ideals over the course of
the war.
A NEW MEANING FOR THE WAR cont’d
hold their property in Union possession . It was brilliant and sassy all at the same time. It wasn’t
long before word spread and thousands of escaped blacks were arriving in Union camps as contrabands
seeking their freedom . By the end of the war, something like 400,000 enslaved people had escaped
enslavement and crossed Union lines for protection . However, the political status of these
contrabands eventually became a problem . Federal law justified not returning these black refugees
precisely because they were property and thus could legally be classified as contraband.
That led to the second and related reason Lincoln shifted the meaning of the war, namely, pressure
from Radical Republicans in Congress. Since Congress was almost entirely devoid of pro -slavery
representatives, a staunchly anti-slavery group known as the Radical Republicans took control. They aimed
to destroy slavery as a means to weaken the Confederacy and strengthen the future of free labor in
the Union. They passed two Confiscation Acts which formally emancipated the multitude of
contrabands that had fled to Union camps. To be clear, that declaration of freedom only applied to
areas occupied by the Union, which would lay the groundwork for the Emancipation Proclamation.
Southerners , not surprisingly, got angry when these laws were passed . But Southern upset aside, the
legislation had its intended effect. As more and more enslaved people escaped, the chief labor source
for southern plantations became thinner and thinner, which put enormous strain on the Southern economy.
The Radical Republicans proved that emancipation could actually be a good strategy for winning
the war.
In response to those two developments, Lincoln pondered adopting the same tactics in the executive
branch . But Lincoln was far more hesitant to reframe the meaning of the war than were the
Republicans in Congress . Lincoln had his reasons, but chief among them was that he could not
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UNIT 5 TOPIC 9
Government Policies During the Civil War H E I M L E R S H I S T O R Y. C O M
THEME : American and National Identity
LEARNING OBJECTIVE : Explain how Lincoln’s leadership during the Civil War impacted American ideals over the course of
the war.
A NEW MEANING FOR THE WAR cont’d
afford to alienate the slave states that had remained in the Union. There were in fact four slave
states that did not secede from the Union—known as the Border States —namely: Kentucky,
Maryland, Missouri , and Delaware. We don’t need to get into all the reasons they remained within the
Union, but you need to know that Lincoln thought that if he lost these states to the Confederacy, then the
Union armies might as well pack up and go home because the war would be lost. Adding to the pressure,
public sentiment in the Union was not altogether on board with abolition . This was especially
true of a faction of Democrats who constantly pushed Lincoln to end the war, even if the peace was
premature. They were dubbed Copperhead Democrats by Republicans since they viewed their policies
as utterly poisonous to the war effort. Lincoln had to walk a very delicate line when he was considering
reframing the war as a battle against slavery.
Even so, by 1863, the contraband issue and the Confiscation Acts —not to mention the Union victory at the
Battle of Antietam —convinced Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation , which declared
that all enslaved people located in states currently in rebellion were immediately and forever free. Don’t
miss the nuance there. Lincoln’s proclamation freed all enslaved people in the Confederacy , since those
were the states in rebellion, but freed precisely no enslaved people in the Border States since they were not
in rebellion. Follow this logic with me. The Confederates had their own constitution and their own laws
and they had no obligation to comply with the proclamation. So, Lincoln freed all the enslaved people
in places where he had no legal authority. And he freed no enslaved people in the places where he
had legitimate authority. Legally, the Emancipation Proclamation did almost nothing to change the
status of enslaved Americans . So what’s the big deal?
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UNIT 5 TOPIC 9
Government Policies During the Civil War H E I M L E R S H I S T O R Y. C O M
THEME : American and National Identity
LEARNING OBJECTIVE : Explain how Lincoln’s leadership during the Civil War impacted American ideals over the course of
the war.
A NEW MEANING FOR THE WAR cont’d
The big deal is that Lincoln’s proclamation had two very significant effects . First, by reframing the
war as a fight to eradicate slavery, all Southern hopes of allying with Great Britain and France were
dashed. These countries themselves had abolished slavery earlier in the century and it would not look good
if they now allied with the Confederacy in order to preserve slavery there. Also, the Confederacy believed
they had a massive bargaining chip to rope Britain and France into supporting them—namely
cotton. Great Britain imported metric tons of Southern cotton to feed to their textile factories.
And southern planters believed that this kind of cotton diplomacy would ultimately score them a powerful
partner in their war against the Union. Unfortunately for the South, in 1858, Great Britain went ahead and
claimed India as a colony, and all the cotton Britain could ever want they could grow in India. Sorry
Confederacy: no foreign help for you.
The second effect of the Emancipation Proclamation was that it encouraged enslaved people in the
Confederacy to escape their bondage and enlist to fight with Union troops. But even if Union soldiers now
understood that their purpose was to eradicate slavery, that didn’t mean they also wanted equal rights
for black Americans or even to fight alongside them despite their common purpose. That meant that most
black Union soldiers who were formally enslaved created their own units for battle. One of the first of
these all black units was the First South Carolina Volunteer Infantry Regiment which was made up of
formerly enslaved escapees from South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. Don’t forget that enslaved women
also escaped and served the Union efforts, though not as soldiers. For example, Susie King Taylor had
escaped enslavement in Georgia and fled to Union lines in Savannah . There she developed skills as a nurse
and educator and served the black troops in the First Volunteer Infantry Regiment. All this means
that Lincoln made huge steps in reframing the meaning of the war from an effort to save the Union to
a battle for the eradication of slavery.
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UNIT 5 TOPIC 9
Government Policies During the Civil War H E I M L E R S H I S T O R Y. C O M
THEME : American and National Identity
LEARNING OBJECTIVE : Explain how Lincoln’s leadership during the Civil War impacted American ideals over the course of
the war.
SUMMARIZE the notes from the previous page in your own words. (2-4 sentences)
UNIFYING THE COUNTRY
In doing so, Lincoln did his best to unify the nation by demonstrating how emancipation was actually
the fulfillment of America’s founding ideals. He did this by means of many speeches and public
addresses, but none illustrate this effort better than the Gettysburg Address and Lincoln’s Second
Inaugural Address.
Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address in 1863 at the dedication of the National Cemetery in
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Though we haven’t talked about it, the Battle of Gettysburg led to enormous
casualties and deaths for both sides. In other words, this ground on which Lincoln stood illustrated
the bitter division between Americans. But Lincoln thought it could simultaneously become
the ground of their unification and healing . He began the speech by saying that the United States was
“ conceived in Liberty” whose most fundamental belief was that “all men are created equal.”
Therefore, this Civil War was the nation’s greatest test to find out if a nation conceived and born on such
a principle “can long endure.” Then Lincoln declares that if the Union is victorious and slavery is
abolished, then the nation will pass the test and fulfill the principles on which it was founded, “and that a
government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
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UNIT 5 TOPIC 9
Government Policies During the Civil War H E I M L E R S H I S T O R Y. C O M
THEME : American and National Identity
LEARNING OBJECTIVE : Explain how Lincoln’s leadership during the Civil War impacted American ideals over the course of
the war.
UNIFYING THE COUNTRY cont’d
The second example of Lincoln’s attempt to unify the country was his Second Inaugural Address .
Lincoln was reelected in 1864, and used the occasion to deliver a speech, as custom dictated. It was a mere
701 words that likely took only a few minutes to deliver, but Lincoln used all the rhetorical power he
possessed to explain the cause of the war and his hopes to welcome back the states who had broken the
Union. He affirmed that slavery was a powerful interest for the Southern states, and that everyone knew
that this “interest was somehow the cause of the war.” And also that war had lasted longer and
become far more costly than anyone had expected . Even so, he ends by striking a note of hope and
unification : “With malice toward none, with charity for all… let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to
bind up the nation’s wound…” And those words foreshadowed Lincoln’s plans for Reconstruction after
the war.
I wish I could tell you that the man who longed for the nation to heal and was capable of binding up its
wounds would be able to work toward that end after the war was done. But, it would not be.
SUMMARIZE the notes from the previous page in your own words. (2-4 sentences)
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UNIT 5 TOPIC 9
Government Policies During the Civil War H E I M L E R S H I S T O R Y. C O M
THEME : American and National Identity
LEARNING OBJECTIVE : Explain how Lincoln’s leadership during the Civil War impacted American ideals over the course of
the war.
RESPOND to the learning objective with an evidence-based, argumentative thesis.
LEARNING OBJECTIVE : Explain how Lincoln’s leadership during the Civil War impacted American ideals over the
course of the war.
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