How Did The Civil War Affected Life Today?
There is no question in my mind that the ideology of slavery, the fight for abolition, and the ensuing Civil War had the most profound effect on the America we know today. In order to answer how these areas affected life today, some background is important.
The Civil War came about due to ideological differences regarding slavery between the north and the south that had been brewing since the founding of America. White southerners believed that slaves were property and their existence was necessary in order for whites to have freedom. They used slaves for every labor job that was needed but in particular, the grueling hard labor of working the plantation fields.
Slavery was far less of an economic influence in the north. There were fewer slaves in the north and the whites felt no threat to their existence. Slaves were provided more rights in the north than in the south. Unlike the south, Slaves were allowed to own property, had certain rights in the legal system, and severe punishment of slaves was prohibited.
The contrast between the north and the south was extreme. In the years preceding the Civil War, abolitionist movements started in the north while the south fought for western territorial expansion of slaves. A quiet uprising of sorts was brewing. In 1829, David Walker a free black, appealed to all blacks to stand up and fight for …show more content…
their divine right of freedom. He warned the whites that the nation would face severe punishment unless they changed their ways. Although Walker’s words were harsh, the anti-slavery movement was beginning to move quickly. More and more, freedom was being regarded as a universal entitlement and a core right that belonged to all Americans. The core concept of slavery versus freedom was at issue and leaders and citizens from the north and the south however could not find compromise.
It was hoped that the Dred Scott decision in 1857 would help settle the issue of slavery. Dred Scott sued for his freedom after his owner moved him from Missouri to Illinois and back to Missouri claiming that since Illinois was a free state he was due his freedom. Put before the Supreme Court was the ruling of whether a black person could be a citizen and sue in federal court. Since Scott was in a free state, was he free? Did Congress have the authority to prohibit slavery? Although the Court was divided, majority declared that only white people could be citizens. They declared that blacks had no rights and could not be part of the legal justice system. The Court, led by Chief Justice Taney, also declared that any interference of southerners bringing blacks into western territories was unconstitutional. The south had initially won but this really set the dividing lines. Abolitionists such as John Brown became even more outspoken and turned antislavery protest into violence. Brown and his followers murdered five proslavery supporters and raided the Harper’s Ferry arsenal in hopes to arm abolitionists and blacks. Though Brown and his cohorts were unsuccessful in the raid and found guilty and hanged, he was revered by the north and by black leaders for taking action in his fight for racial justice.
The divide was great and there was no solution.
Slavery was unlawful in half of the states and lawful in the other half. Abraham Lincoln knew the country could not survive half free and half slave and that a “house divided against itself cannot stand." He knew the country would become either all slave, or all free. The election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860 was viewed as a “fundamental shift of power” (Forner 504). His election caused fear in the south that slavery and their entire way of southern life was at risk. Seven southern states, from South Carolina to Texas, seceded from the Union. The Civil War began at Fort Sumter in
1961.
The Civil War pitted the north against the south and is America’s bloodiest conflict with nearly three quarters of a million American lives lost. To put it in perspective, that is more than the combined American losses in World War 1, World War 11, Korean War, and the Vietnam War. But America was a divided nation and it took the Civil War to make America whole. The Civil War brought out a new and united America.
The overwhelming loss of life in the battle at Gettysburg spurred government officials into action and marked a monumental shift in government policy by accepting responsibility for the loss of life. Five Federal Cemeteries were created. As graves were being built, Lincoln delivered his Gettysburg Address. He eloquently spoke to the people of finding purpose in the bloodshed and the men who gave their lives in order for the nation to have a new birth of freedom. Lincoln in the Gettysburg Address created a national identity and spoke of burying the old republic and building a new America where all men are created equal.
I am not certain I will ever fully understand pre-Civil War thinking. How could people who professed the American core values of freedom, justice, and equality also fight to the core to own slaves and strip them of all human dignity? The contradiction is profound. But I have learned that it was because of this thinking and the abolitionists who opposed it, that America was changed. Federal cemeteries were established, an ambulance system was created; the 13th amendment abolished slavery; the 14th amendment provided citizenship to all Americans; and most importantly, America became a land of freedom.
The New Deal
Civil Rights Movement Nearly one hundred years after the Civil War blacks were still treated as second class citizens and racial prejudice still existed, especially in the south. Although slavery had been abolished, equality had not been established. After the Civil War and the passing of the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments which abolished slavery, granted citizenships regardless of color, and granted blacks the right to vote, southern states enacted state legislation that discriminated on the basis of color. These Jim Crowe laws segregated whites from blacks.
The Civil Rights Movement that began in the 1950’s and ran to the end of the 1960’s was a fight for blacks to be regarded as equals with whites and without discrimination. It was a movement for equal opportunity in the workplace and equality in education for their children. It was also a fight to secure housing without discrimination, right to vote without prejudice, treated equality in the legal justice system, and equal access in public facilities. It was a fight for total equality.
Segregation
At the heart of the Civil Rights Movement was the fight for education equality and to have classrooms with both black and white children side by side. In the 1950’s, school segregation was a way of life. Blacks had their schools and whites had their schools. The spark that perhaps ignited the whole Civil Rights Movement was the Supreme Court decision in Brown vs. The Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas on May 17, 1954 outlawing segregation in public education. This overturned and rejected the previous separate-but-equal 1896 opinion of Plessy v. Ferguson. Chief Justice Earl Warren announced that such segregation did not provide black students equal rights and desegregation was to be implemented with speed. It took years to implement the changes and in certain areas there was massive resistance to the integration ruling. For example, Arkansas Governor Faubus ordered that admission of nine black students to Little Rock's Central High School in 1957 be stopped by the state’s National Guard. President Eisenhower intervened and ordered U.S. troops to protect the students. The effects of desegregation are evident. According to the U.S. Department of Education, the dropout rate among black students declined from 21% in 1976 to 13% in 1996 to 7% in 2012. Desegregation has seen an increase in black student performance on placement tests, in the number of blacks in AP classes, and in college acceptances.
Voting
Although the 15th amendment that was passed 95 years earlier provided all citizens the right to vote regardless of race or color, many southern states continued to thwart black voters. The voters were told the polls were closed, or they had to take literacy tests, or they were even sometimes required to recite the Constitution. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act in 1965 prohibiting such actions. While voter turnout still remained low, it increased after the Civil Rights Movement. Most evident was the increase in Mississippi where the voter turnout among blacks increased from 6 percent in 1964 to 59 percent in 1969.
Public Access
Rosa Parks is a name many American’s associate as standing up for equality. Blacks at the time were required to sit in the back of the bus. If the blacks filled up the bus they were required to give up their seat when white people boarded. Rosa Parks was arrested in December 1955 in Mississippi when she refused to give up her seat. As an important civil rights move, Martin Luther King organized the Montgomery Bus Boycott where blacks refused to ride the Montgomery busses. In June 1956, the Supreme Court ruled that bus segregation violated the United States constitution.
Equality
Numerous other events happened during the movement that ignited blacks to have equal protection under the law. Sit-ins began to take place in 1960 where four young blacks took a seat at a Woolworth’s lunch counter that was reserved only for whites and wait to be served. They weren’t served and were harassed for sitting there. They boys were quiet and peaceful and returned each day refusing to get up from the counter. As the story spread, black and white students around the country began their own sit-ins.
Freedom rides in 1961 were nationwide campaigns to stop segregation in bus terminals. Black and white students travelled by bus sitting anywhere they chose. Despite violent attacks, they refused to give up their seats.
Civil Rights Act of 1963
In April 1963, nearly 250,000 people gathered in Washington D.C. for the momentous public support for civil rights, the March on Washington. Black and whites, entertainers and song-writers, clergymen and leaders all gathered in a peaceful and powerful movement expressing support for equality. The event coincided with the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation and was covered on live television. Martin Luther King, who was an eloquent speaker, was the last to speak. His riveting speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial and the phrase “I Have a Dream” has since become the most memorable moment of that march.
Shortly after the march bills were passed in Congress and awaited President Kennedy ’s signature. In November, 1963 John F. Kennedy was assassinated and the civil rights bill was now before Lyndon Johnson. Some of the provisions of the bill included protection against voter qualification testing, outlawing discrimination in all public accommodation, legal use to enforce desegregation in public schools, withdrawal of federal support in any programs that practices discrimination, and the creation of an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The Civil Rights Act passed on July 2, 1964, finally declared that the United States of America was a nation of equality and legally outlawed discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.
America was founded on the concept of freedom, equality, and justice for all. Over the years, America has been put to the test in continually defining, defending, and protecting those founding concepts. All three of my topics relate in some way to the role of government in protecting the rights of others and continually forming a nation who accepts and defends equality and freedom.
The Civil War came about due to ideological differences regarding slavery between the north and the south that had been brewing since the founding of America. White southerners believed that slaves were property and their existence was necessary in order for whites to have freedom. They used slaves for every labor job that was needed but in particular, the grueling hard labor of working the plantation fields.
Slavery was far less of an economic influence in the north. There were fewer slaves in the north and the whites felt no threat to their existence. Slaves were provided more rights in the north than in the south. Unlike the south, Slaves were allowed to own property, had certain rights in the legal system, and severe punishment of slaves was prohibited.
The contrast between the north and the south was extreme. In the years preceding the Civil War, abolitionist movements started in the north while the south fought for western territorial expansion of slaves. A quiet uprising of sorts was brewing. In 1829, David Walker a free black, appealed to all blacks to stand up and fight for …show more content…
their divine right of freedom. He warned the whites that the nation would face severe punishment unless they changed their ways. Although Walker’s words were harsh, the anti-slavery movement was beginning to move quickly. More and more, freedom was being regarded as a universal entitlement and a core right that belonged to all Americans. The core concept of slavery versus freedom was at issue and leaders and citizens from the north and the south however could not find compromise.
It was hoped that the Dred Scott decision in 1857 would help settle the issue of slavery. Dred Scott sued for his freedom after his owner moved him from Missouri to Illinois and back to Missouri claiming that since Illinois was a free state he was due his freedom. Put before the Supreme Court was the ruling of whether a black person could be a citizen and sue in federal court. Since Scott was in a free state, was he free? Did Congress have the authority to prohibit slavery? Although the Court was divided, majority declared that only white people could be citizens. They declared that blacks had no rights and could not be part of the legal justice system. The Court, led by Chief Justice Taney, also declared that any interference of southerners bringing blacks into western territories was unconstitutional. The south had initially won but this really set the dividing lines. Abolitionists such as John Brown became even more outspoken and turned antislavery protest into violence. Brown and his followers murdered five proslavery supporters and raided the Harper’s Ferry arsenal in hopes to arm abolitionists and blacks. Though Brown and his cohorts were unsuccessful in the raid and found guilty and hanged, he was revered by the north and by black leaders for taking action in his fight for racial justice.
The divide was great and there was no solution.
Slavery was unlawful in half of the states and lawful in the other half. Abraham Lincoln knew the country could not survive half free and half slave and that a “house divided against itself cannot stand." He knew the country would become either all slave, or all free. The election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860 was viewed as a “fundamental shift of power” (Forner 504). His election caused fear in the south that slavery and their entire way of southern life was at risk. Seven southern states, from South Carolina to Texas, seceded from the Union. The Civil War began at Fort Sumter in
1961.
The Civil War pitted the north against the south and is America’s bloodiest conflict with nearly three quarters of a million American lives lost. To put it in perspective, that is more than the combined American losses in World War 1, World War 11, Korean War, and the Vietnam War. But America was a divided nation and it took the Civil War to make America whole. The Civil War brought out a new and united America.
The overwhelming loss of life in the battle at Gettysburg spurred government officials into action and marked a monumental shift in government policy by accepting responsibility for the loss of life. Five Federal Cemeteries were created. As graves were being built, Lincoln delivered his Gettysburg Address. He eloquently spoke to the people of finding purpose in the bloodshed and the men who gave their lives in order for the nation to have a new birth of freedom. Lincoln in the Gettysburg Address created a national identity and spoke of burying the old republic and building a new America where all men are created equal.
I am not certain I will ever fully understand pre-Civil War thinking. How could people who professed the American core values of freedom, justice, and equality also fight to the core to own slaves and strip them of all human dignity? The contradiction is profound. But I have learned that it was because of this thinking and the abolitionists who opposed it, that America was changed. Federal cemeteries were established, an ambulance system was created; the 13th amendment abolished slavery; the 14th amendment provided citizenship to all Americans; and most importantly, America became a land of freedom.
The New Deal
Civil Rights Movement Nearly one hundred years after the Civil War blacks were still treated as second class citizens and racial prejudice still existed, especially in the south. Although slavery had been abolished, equality had not been established. After the Civil War and the passing of the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments which abolished slavery, granted citizenships regardless of color, and granted blacks the right to vote, southern states enacted state legislation that discriminated on the basis of color. These Jim Crowe laws segregated whites from blacks.
The Civil Rights Movement that began in the 1950’s and ran to the end of the 1960’s was a fight for blacks to be regarded as equals with whites and without discrimination. It was a movement for equal opportunity in the workplace and equality in education for their children. It was also a fight to secure housing without discrimination, right to vote without prejudice, treated equality in the legal justice system, and equal access in public facilities. It was a fight for total equality.
Segregation
At the heart of the Civil Rights Movement was the fight for education equality and to have classrooms with both black and white children side by side. In the 1950’s, school segregation was a way of life. Blacks had their schools and whites had their schools. The spark that perhaps ignited the whole Civil Rights Movement was the Supreme Court decision in Brown vs. The Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas on May 17, 1954 outlawing segregation in public education. This overturned and rejected the previous separate-but-equal 1896 opinion of Plessy v. Ferguson. Chief Justice Earl Warren announced that such segregation did not provide black students equal rights and desegregation was to be implemented with speed. It took years to implement the changes and in certain areas there was massive resistance to the integration ruling. For example, Arkansas Governor Faubus ordered that admission of nine black students to Little Rock's Central High School in 1957 be stopped by the state’s National Guard. President Eisenhower intervened and ordered U.S. troops to protect the students. The effects of desegregation are evident. According to the U.S. Department of Education, the dropout rate among black students declined from 21% in 1976 to 13% in 1996 to 7% in 2012. Desegregation has seen an increase in black student performance on placement tests, in the number of blacks in AP classes, and in college acceptances.
Voting
Although the 15th amendment that was passed 95 years earlier provided all citizens the right to vote regardless of race or color, many southern states continued to thwart black voters. The voters were told the polls were closed, or they had to take literacy tests, or they were even sometimes required to recite the Constitution. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act in 1965 prohibiting such actions. While voter turnout still remained low, it increased after the Civil Rights Movement. Most evident was the increase in Mississippi where the voter turnout among blacks increased from 6 percent in 1964 to 59 percent in 1969.
Public Access
Rosa Parks is a name many American’s associate as standing up for equality. Blacks at the time were required to sit in the back of the bus. If the blacks filled up the bus they were required to give up their seat when white people boarded. Rosa Parks was arrested in December 1955 in Mississippi when she refused to give up her seat. As an important civil rights move, Martin Luther King organized the Montgomery Bus Boycott where blacks refused to ride the Montgomery busses. In June 1956, the Supreme Court ruled that bus segregation violated the United States constitution.
Equality
Numerous other events happened during the movement that ignited blacks to have equal protection under the law. Sit-ins began to take place in 1960 where four young blacks took a seat at a Woolworth’s lunch counter that was reserved only for whites and wait to be served. They weren’t served and were harassed for sitting there. They boys were quiet and peaceful and returned each day refusing to get up from the counter. As the story spread, black and white students around the country began their own sit-ins.
Freedom rides in 1961 were nationwide campaigns to stop segregation in bus terminals. Black and white students travelled by bus sitting anywhere they chose. Despite violent attacks, they refused to give up their seats.
Civil Rights Act of 1963
In April 1963, nearly 250,000 people gathered in Washington D.C. for the momentous public support for civil rights, the March on Washington. Black and whites, entertainers and song-writers, clergymen and leaders all gathered in a peaceful and powerful movement expressing support for equality. The event coincided with the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation and was covered on live television. Martin Luther King, who was an eloquent speaker, was the last to speak. His riveting speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial and the phrase “I Have a Dream” has since become the most memorable moment of that march.
Shortly after the march bills were passed in Congress and awaited President Kennedy ’s signature. In November, 1963 John F. Kennedy was assassinated and the civil rights bill was now before Lyndon Johnson. Some of the provisions of the bill included protection against voter qualification testing, outlawing discrimination in all public accommodation, legal use to enforce desegregation in public schools, withdrawal of federal support in any programs that practices discrimination, and the creation of an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The Civil Rights Act passed on July 2, 1964, finally declared that the United States of America was a nation of equality and legally outlawed discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.
America was founded on the concept of freedom, equality, and justice for all. Over the years, America has been put to the test in continually defining, defending, and protecting those founding concepts. All three of my topics relate in some way to the role of government in protecting the rights of others and continually forming a nation who accepts and defends equality and freedom.