Notes

President Lincoln's road to the Emancipation Proclamation and the effects of that proclamation. But to start, we're going to look at the contributions of African Americans to the Union war effort both at home and in combat, and how they fought enslavement in the South.
Section 2
When the Civil War begins, African Americans in both the North and the South take action. In the North, many African Americans tried to join the Union army, but they were barred by law from doing so. Now, President Lincoln doesn't change this law, because he fears that more states would leave the Union if he did. In the South, many enslaved people fled to the North, where they encountered Union soldiers.

Now, Congress said that Union commanders were allowed to take these formerly-enslaved people as contraband of war and free them. So many enslaved people found themselves fleeing north that they had to set up refugee camps for them. Now, by the middle of 1862, the Union army needed more recruits. We still saw a number of African Americans attempting
00:00:50
to enlist, and so Congress decides to pass a law in July of that year to allow African American enlistment. Enlistment officially begins that September. Now, at that point, 180,000 African Americans join the Union army. This makes them about 10% of the total soldiers fighting on the Union side. Most of these African American units were led by white
00:01:16
officers and, at first, African American soldiers were paid less than white soldiers. Now perhaps one of the most famous African American units during the Civil War was that 54th Massachusetts regiment. They were formed in March of 1863 and are well known for their heroic effort at Fort Wagner, near Charleston, in July of 1863, where half of the unit was either wounded or killed.
00:01:45
Now this battle proved that African Americans could fight, which up until this point was something that many white soldiers were unsure of. Now what we see in the image is a photograph of a memorial in Boston honoring the "Fighting 54th."
Section 4
00:00:02
TEACHER: So we'll take a moment to pause and look at the overall impact of African Americans in the armed forces historically. We learned a little bit about the Massachusetts 54th that was the first of many African American units. Fast forward a few decades to World War II when the Tuskegee Airmen became the first all African American flying squadron in that conflict.
00:00:29
And today, African Americans make up more than 30% of the armed forces. Now, it's not just in combat that African American had an impact on the Civil War. They also heavily impacted the home front. And we find that men and women kind of took on very different roles. Men found themselves having the opportunity to enlist in
00:00:54
combat positions, but they also could work as cooks, as surgeons and as carpenters. Whereas women, who could not formally join the army, found themselves working as nurses, spies and scouts. And two very vocal African American advocates for freedom, Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman, proved to be vital to this home front effort as well. Frederick Douglas argued that African Americans should be
00:01:22
able to enlist, whereas Harriet Tubman worked as a Union spy and was notorious for the work that she did leading enslaved people to freedom through the Underground Railroad. The work of these men and women ultimately served to inspire African Americans over the course of the war.
Section 6
00:00:02
TEACHER: What was the African American experience during the Civil War? As we've learned, African Americans had a major impact on the war effort, from rushing to join the Union army to working diligently on the home front. But the road to emancipation was not easy. It was winding and treacherous. President Lincoln was doing the best he could to keep the
00:00:24
nation together. And he did not issue the proclamation until the war was well under way.
Section 7
00:00:02
TEACHER: So we start off by examining Lincoln's early beliefs about slavery. Long before he issues the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln was kind of in the middle on the issue of slavery. While he did not support abolition, he also did not support allowing slavery to grow. He believed that slavery should not expand into new
00:00:23
territories. And he argued against the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act, which allowed a vote on slavery in those two states.
Section 9
00:00:02
TEACHER: So long before the Civil War even began, the issue of slavery was very divisive in the country. And looking at this map here you can see the geography of how slave states versus free states were outlined. I'll start off by circling the free states here. We see that those are mostly the Northern states and then a couple in the Midwest and in the Western part of the country.
00:00:32
And then, the slave states make up most of the Southern states here. Now the green is territory that's open to slavery depending on how those states decide to vote. Now politically, anyone who was trying to win a national election needed votes from these slave holding states that we see down here. And so, as a result, many of these national candidates
00:01:04
promised southern voters that slavery would not change. That they would do everything in their power to keep the status quo, keep things the way that they were. And so, all of the tensions between the slave states, the free states, and the states in the middle culminates with Lincoln's election in 1860. In his inaugural address, in March 1861, Lincoln's doing his best to try to reassure the South that he would not
00:01:33
abolish slavery. And that he would leave slavery alone, where it already existed. He's quoted here in his inaugural address as saying, "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no
00:01:52
inclination to do so." So let's just underline lawful right and inclination. He's saying he has no power, nor no interest, to abolish slavery. Ultimately, what he was trying to do was keep the South from leaving the Union over this hot button issue of slavery.
Section 11
00:00:02
TEACHER: So President Lincoln fails at his ultimate goal of keeping the South from leaving the Union. Almost immediately after his 1860 election, South Carolina seceded. Other states soon followed. Now what you're looking at in this image here is a newspaper headline describing what's happening when this conflict begins.
00:00:23
And we see that the headline is very simple. It says the Union is dissolved. Dissolved means to end. To break up. And so shortly after Lincoln's election, part of the Union dissolve as many of these Southern states secede. Nonetheless, Lincoln still tried to convince the South to rejoin the Union.
00:00:47
But his efforts were not enough. Pretty soon after his election, by 1861, the North and the South were at war with one another. Now the South found early victories, like the first Battle of Bull Run. But the September 1862 battle at Antietam proved to be a stalemate or a tie. And because the South had retreated in that battle, the
00:01:18
Union saw that as a strategic victory. And so after this battle, President Lincoln issues the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. Now when we look at this word here, preliminary, we want to acknowledge that means this is the first round or something that's coming before something more important later on. And so in this case, the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation was the very first one.
00:01:46
And this proclamation promised to end slavery in the South unless Southern states surrendered and rejoined the Union. None of the Southern states opted to rejoin. And so this takes the conflict a little bit further. Let's see how this leads to the final Emancipation Proclamation. Now this preliminary approximation is just the
00:02:11
first step towards the final one. So we'll outline kind of step by step how we go from preliminary to final here. First, Lincoln writes the proclamation. He, however, has to wait for a Union victory in order to issue it. Now when he sees this window of opportunity when the Union wins the battle--
00:02:33
strategically wins anyway-- he decides at that point to issue the preliminary proclamation. And this proclamation would, again, free enslaved people in the Confederate States that did not rejoin the Union. And this would take place on January 1, 1863. Because none of the Southern states rejoined, the proclamation immediately took affect.
00:02:57
Or takes affect by January of 1863.
Section 13
00:00:02
TEACHER: What was the African American experience during the Civil War? What we've learned so far is that African Americans had an enormous impact on the Civil War, both at home and on the front lines. We know that they looked to President Lincoln, either from the North to free their enslaved brothers and sisters, or from the South to free themselves.
00:00:24
But we also know that Lincoln's priority was keeping the Union together, not free enslaved people. But once the Confederacy succeeds, and the Union has a strategic win at Antietam, Lincoln decides that it's time to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. Now we're going to look at the effects of this proclamation, and how it changes the war into a struggle against slavery, and how it affected African Americans everywhere
00:00:53
in the country.
Section 14
00:00:02
TEACHER: After nearly two years of fighting, President Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. in this proclamation, freedom is given to enslaved people in the Confederate States. And the Union is allowed to start recruiting African American soldiers. However, not everyone was free.
00:00:25
Enslaved people in the border states were left out of the Emancipation Proclamation. These border states, highlighted here, include Missouri, Kentucky, West Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware. As well, the Union controlled area near New Orleans, Louisiana was left out of the Emancipation Proclamation. This is probably because Lincoln wants to keep the
00:00:48
border states loyal. He doesn't want any more states to secede from the Union and join the confederacy. However, Maryland, Missouri, and West Virginia ultimately abolish slavery over the course of the war.
Section 16
00:00:02
TEACHER: The Emancipation Proclamation had strong effects in both the North and the South. In the North, it allowed for about 180,000 African American men to join the Union military, thus making African Americans about 10% of the Union's total armed forces. It also, and perhaps more importantly, changes the purpose of the war. We see the war going from being a war about saving the
00:00:31
Union to being a war about freedom and about freeing enslaved people of the Confederacy. In the South, the effects were a bit different. First off, the proclamation enraged the slavers of the South. It also served to inspire enslaved people to resist their owners. They did this by staging work slowdowns, by escaping to the
00:00:57
North if they had the opportunity, and by joining Union army units. And the image here to the right shows us some postcards that kind of detail this journey from enslavement to escape to giving his life as a Union soldier. So we see a man going through this process, from start to finish here. Finally, there were international effects of the
00:01:23
Emancipation Proclamation, namely, the South losing its support from France and Britain. Now, initially, France and Britain sought to recognize the Confederacy because they needed cotton. And what you're looking at in this image here is a ship leaving South Carolina with 1,000 bales of cotton. So this is something that's really necessary to the European market.
00:01:50
However, if France and Britain supported the South, they would indeed be supporting slavery. And since they had already ended slavery in their own countries, they did not want to support it in other countries.
Section 18
00:00:02
TEACHER: So as we've already discussed the Emancipation Proclamation alone does not end slavery. However, it does serve to be the beginning of the end of slavery. What officially ends slavery is actually an amendment to the Constitution. The 13th Amendment formally abolishes slavery in 1865, after the war has ended.