CWR - The Civil War and Reconstruction Module Overview

The Civil War and Reconstruction

Introduction

In the last module, the conflict over slavery reached the point of no return. After the election of Abraham Lincoln, 7 Southern states seceded from the Union and formed the Confederate States of America (later joined by 4 more states). After the Confederacy fired on a Union held fort, Fort Sumter, in South Carolina Lincoln responded by raising a large military force. The stage was set for the bloodiest war in American History.

The Civil War, which began in April 1861, lasted four long years and had incredibly devastating results. Despite early success, the Confederacy would be defeated. The Civil War ended the scourge of slavery and established the authority of the federal government over the states. The cost was high as the results included the assassination of the President, heavy war losses, struggles over the dilemma of how the former slaves would participate in society, and political, economic, and social issues that would have to be dealt with in the war's aftermath: A period known as Reconstruction.

The largest high relief sculpture in the world, the Confederate Memorial Carving, depicts three Confederate figures of the Civil War, President Jefferson Davis and Generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson. The entire carved surface measures three-acres, larger than a football field and Mount Rushmore. The carving of the three men towers 400 feet above the ground, measures 90 by 190 feet, and is recessed 42 feet into the mountain. The deepest point of the carving is at Lee's elbow, which is 12 feet to the mountain's surface. In 2020 and beyond, more and more Confederate statues have been removed. This carving has often been the subject of discussions revolving around Confederate imagery and the appropriateness of these types of memorials.

 

About this image: The largest high relief sculpture in the world, the Confederate Memorial Carving, depicts three Confederate figures of the Civil War, President Jefferson Davis and Generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson. The entire carved surface measures three-acres, larger than a football field and Mount Rushmore. The carving of the three men towers 400 feet above the ground, measures 90 by 190 feet, and is recessed 42 feet into the mountain. The deepest point of the carving is at Lee's elbow, which is 12 feet to the mountain's surface. In 2020 and beyond, more and more Confederate statues have been removed. This carving has often been the subject of discussions revolving around Confederate imagery and the appropriateness of these types of memorials.




Essential Questions

  • What factors led to the Union's defeat of the Confederacy in the Civil War?
  • What were some of the successes and failures of Reconstruction?
  • How was the nation fundamentally changed by the Civil War and Reconstruction?

 

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Textbook Assignment

 Read the chapter in your textbook that relates to this module. Your instructor will provide you with a specific reading schedule. 

 

Key Terms

Look over your key terms for this module. Then review them with the activity below.

  • Habeas Corpus - is the legal rule that anyone imprisoned must be taken before a judge to determine if the prisoner is being legally held in custody. It was often suspended by Lincoln during the Civil War.
  • Emancipation Proclamation - issued in 1863, ordered slaves freed in the Confederate states. It turned the Civil War into a war to free the slaves.
  • Jefferson Davis - served as president of the Confederacy during the Civil War.
  • Ulysses S. Grant - won victories in the West and thus was eventually promoted to command all Union forces in the Civil War.
  • Robert E. Lee - was commander of the Confederate army. He was known as a well respected and effective general.
  • William T. Sherman - Union general best known for his winning of the Battle of Atlanta and his successful march to the sea through Georgia.
  • Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson - was one of the Confederacy’s best generals who died in battle in 1863.
  • Battle of Antietam - September 1862; Lee marched his troops into Union territory (Maryland). The battle was militarily a draw, but Lee lost so many men he retreated after the battle and this gave the Union an important moral victory
  • Battle of Gettysburg - July 1863; Lee marched north but was defeated in a bloody battle near this Pennsylvania town. This was the turning point in the east as the Confederacy never seriously threatened Union territory again.
  • Battle of Vicksburg - Grant leads the Union to victory here in July 1863, giving the North control of the Mississippi River. The turning point in the west.
  • Battle of Atlanta - July-September 1864; Sherman captures and burns much of Atlanta thus destroying a major manufacturing and transportation hub for the Confederacy. The victory helps assure Lincoln’s re-election by showing the war is going very well for the Union.
  • Gettysburg Address - a short, but great and famous speech given by President Lincoln in dedicating a military cemetery at the battlefield.
  • Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address - with the Civil War nearing an end, Lincoln’s first speech of his second term called for a smooth and non-revenge based reunification of the nation.
  • Presidential Reconstruction - Lincoln and Johnson’s program of Reconstruction. It wanted to quickly readmit the Confederate states without revenge.
  • Radical Republican Reconstruction - Congress took control of the Reconstruction process from President Johnson and militarily occupied the South, placing tougher demands and controls on the former Confederate states.
  • 13th Amendment - abolished slavery.
  • 14th Amendment - defined citizenship as all persons born in the U.S., (effectively made almost all former slaves citizens) guaranteed equal protection and due process.
  • 15th Amendment - voting rights could not be restricted on the basis of race, color, or being a slave (gave black males the right to vote).
  • Morehouse College - a historically black college, founded in 1867 in Atlanta.
  • Freedmen’s Bureau - helped the former slaves make a transition to freedom by providing food, clothing, jobs, medicine, and education.
  • Andrew Johnson’s Impeachment - Johnson was impeached for ignoring a law passed to limit presidential power. The real reason was the Radical Republicans wanted him removed so he could not influence Reconstruction. Johnson survived removal by the Senate by one vote.
  • Black Codes - laws written to control the lives of freed slaves in ways slaveholders had formerly controlled the lives of their slaves.
  • Sharecropping - a system that developed in the post-Civil War South in which farmers would work the land of a wealthy landowner in return for being allowed to keep a portion of the crops. Many poor whites were sharecroppers as well, but it became one of the only options available to African Americans during this time.
  • Ku Klux Klan - secret society that used murder, arson, and other threatening actions to limit voting and other rights of freed African Americans.

RESOURCES IN THIS MODULE ARE OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES (OER) OR CREATED BY GAVS UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED. SOME IMAGES USED UNDER SUBSCRIPTION.