RCWR - The Road to Civil War and Reconstruction Review (Lesson)

Abolished slavery and involuntary servitude except for punishment of crimes; was passed by the Senate April 8, 1864, passed by the House of Representatives January 31, 1865. (Remember there were no Southern senators and representatives in the U.S. Congress at the time which explains why this amendment was passed.) Ratified by the required 27 (of 36) states on December 6, 1865. It was the first of 3 “Reconstruction Amendments”--the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments.

The very rapid settlement of western territories in the 1850s convinced most members of Congress of the need for efficient transportation to the west coast. Before the war, Congress had commissioned topographical surveys to decide which route was the best one. The Northern and Southern Congressmen were in competition for the transcontinental railroad because of the advantages for their own regions. On July 1, 1862, Congress offered incentives to assist men in developing the transcontinental railroad system.

This Congressional Act was meant to develop the American West and to increase economic growth there. It provided 160 acres of federal land to anyone who agreed to farm the land. Millions of acres were distributed to individual settlers.

*Until the Civil War and secession, Southern members of Congress were reluctant to pass a bill such as this because they worried that it would work against slavery in the western territories. Some Northern legislators worried that cheap land would decrease property values in the East and the industries in the Northeast would lose workers to the West. So they prevented the passage of the law.

However, when the Southern legislators resigned, in 1861, the Homestead Act was finally passed in 1862.

There was a Southern Homestead Act of 1866 which offered the same option to loyal Southerners and freedmen who could settle public lands. By 1890 the federal government had granted 373,000 homesteaders land in the west and had distributed 48,000,000 acres of federal land for farming.

This import tariff was passed on March 2, 1861, during James Buchanan’s presidency. It appealed to industrialists and factory workers as a way to encourage quick industrial expansion. It replaced the lower Tariff of 1857 and ushered in a period of ongoing American protectionism until the Revenue Act of 1913.

This act was initiated by Senator Justin S. Morrill (VT) and was one of the most important pieces of wartime legislation. Morrill introduced it first when he was in the House of Representatives.

It was named the Morrill Land Grant College Act of 1862 and it stipulated that federal lands would be used to establish colleges to “benefit the agricultural and mechanical arts.” The president signed it into law July 2, 1862. The act granted each state 30,000 acres of western land to be distributed to each U.S. senator and representative for local distribution and it funded the construction of agricultural and mechanical schools. (These colleges were intended to help educate men in farming and mechanics.)

These acts established multiple federal banking regulations that lasted until the establishment of the Federal Reserve System in 1914.

The immediate purposes of the acts included: 1. to help finance the war by increasing the demand for federal government debt and 2. to promote a uniform, stable currency.

This was the beginning of the national banking era and it established a general framework for a system that lasted until 1914 and the founding of the Federal Reserve System.