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What is Juneteenth, and why is it celebrated? A historian explains the significance of the holiday today
Each year on 19 June, millions across the US gather to commemorate the day in 1865 when the last enslaved African Americans finally learned of their freedom. Professor Adriane Lentz-Smith explores how the celebrations have evolved over the past 160 years – and the long campaign to have Juneteenth formally recognised as a federal holiday
Every summer, the Juneteenth holiday offers Americans an opportunity to celebrate visions of black freedom in the United States. ‘Juneteenth’ refers to 19 June 1865 – the day that victorious federal troops read out a General Order to the inhabitants of Texas’s Galveston Island declaring that “all slaves are free” – but enslaved people knew the date was a bit arbitrary. President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation had ended slavery in the Confederate states more than two years prior, and the ratification of the 13th amendment six months later would end it throughout the US. Emancipation came to the South not as a dramatic, singular event but, instead, agonisingly slowly over space and time. Yet, for all the news that black Texans had passed to each other about slavery and the Confederacy being on the ropes in the years between the Emancipation Proclamation and the Union victory, slaveholders in the Confederacy’s western frontier held fast to their regime until the Union Army’s arrival made emancipation enforceable. Within weeks, the more than 250,000 black people enslaved across Texas began seizing their freedom. Within a year, they had begun commemorating it. And by 1900, historian Quintard Taylor notes, Juneteenth had become more widely celebrated among black Texans than the Fourth of July. Read more | Abraham Lincoln: the greatest US president? Resistance through celebration The holiday served as part of freedpeople’s self-fashioning. Juneteenth is now a national American holiday, but it began as a Texas Emancipation Day, conceived and institutionalised by the formerly enslaved and their descendants. Black women’s clubs, churches and civic organisations marshalled resources to secure spaces for public celebration. In Houston in 1872, for example, they purchased 10 acres that they named ‘Emancipation Park’ and began holding annual celebrations. Black residents in Austin did the same in the early 1900s. In these cities and elsewhere, African Americans celebrated with picnics, parades, balls, rodeos and reunions. They honoured their elders who had lived through slavery and recorded their memories so that the experience would not be forgotten – or, more likely, erased. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/06/PA0MJN-b2f1b9e-e1750347645459.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="A black and white photograph depicting a band of African American musicians standing in a wooded area. They are holding various musical instruments, including guitars, a violin and a double bass. There is a Stars and Stripes flag behind them." title="617 Emancipation Day Celebration band, June 19, 1900" /> In celebrating, they were also resisting. The establishment of Juneteenth as a holiday coincided with white southern elites’ violent resistance to the democratic experiment of postwar Reconstruction and their revanchist rollback of Reconstruction-era democracy. Colloquially known as Jim Crow, the system of economic and political exploitation was secured in part by sadistic violence and in part by narrative claim. To make Jim Crow palatable, even desirable, to white Americans across the regional divides, its defenders argued that US slavery was largely benign, enslaved people mostly content, and the antebellum South a white man’s romantic tragedy. Thus, every time black communities gathered in triumph and jubilation, they gave the lie to the claims of Jim Crow defenders. And in preserving freedpeople’s memories and knitting together family histories out of lives oft-defined by family separation, they built archives that preserved harder, but fuller, histories. A national phenomenon Through the 20th century, Juneteenth travelled with black mobility. Neighbouring states had already taken up the holiday, but the world wars and accompanying Great Migration of African Americans out of the US South and into the north and west meant that Juneteenth celebrations spread to cities like Milwaukee, Seattle and Los Angeles. Civil rights work in the 1960s kept the holiday expanding at the grassroots; the organisers of the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign made 19 June a day of national solidarity for their march, spurring participants to carry the holiday from Washington DC back to their hometowns. It took hold because of what it offered. Joy – invaluable in social movements as well as in daily life – but also a way to remember, to honour, and to gird themselves for future struggles. WATCH | Inside a Jim Crow asylum View Green Video on the source website Juneteenth’s journey from a local holiday to a national phenomenon tracks the black freedom struggle in the post-civil rights era and underscores its connection to earlier times. By 1980, Juneteenth had become a legislative issue as well as a local celebration. In Texas, a veteran of the civil rights movement, Al Edwards, had successfully shepherded a bill to make Juneteenth a state holiday. No small feat, as prizewinning historian and Texas native Annette Gordon-Reed has noted, for a state seemingly more interested in its cowboy mythos than its actual history of fighting two wars (the Texas Revolution and the Civil War) to stay a slave regime. The pressure intensifies Amid a growing call over the course of the 1990s and 2000s to have it declared a federal holiday, other states began recognising Juneteenth. The emergence of the Movement for Black Lives as a response to police violence in the 2010s intensified pressure on both state and the federal governments, but the pressure did not come from younger activists alone. In 2016, educator-activist and local historian Opal Lee launched a walking campaign in cities from Fort Worth, Texas to Washington, DC to lobby Congress for the federal holiday she and other civic leaders had been pursuing for decades. As the 89-year-old Lee told a reporter for National Public Radio, the holiday was an offering to her “ancestors” as well as to her “great -great-grandchildren”, her “grandchildren” and her “children”. When President Joe Biden signed the bill finally making Juneteenth a federal holiday in June 2021, Opal Lee was at his side. Read more | Are black histories still being overlooked? George Floyd’s death made the Juneteenth federal holiday possible. Floyd, a Texas-raised athlete who moved to Minnesota and was suffocated by a Minneapolis policeman, died so public and needless a death that it made the American epidemic of anti-black police violence hard to deny. In the short-lived racial reckoning that followed, activists laid out what they believed the nation needed: a return to robust voting rights; reform of militarised policing; a retreat from mass incarceration; and a vision for economic justice. Instead, Congress offered up Juneteenth. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/06/GettyImages-2150767015-7035ced-e1750347673444.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="President Joe Biden embraces Opal Lee after presenting the civil rights activist with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2024. Biden is wearing a black suit and white tie; Lee is wearing a a white suit and black suit. In the background, we can see attendees of the ceremony and two US flags." title="President Biden Hosts Presidential Medal Of Freedom Ceremony At The White House" /> “A heap of Juneteenths” There was to be no structural change, but perhaps we can look to Juneteenth’s founders as a reminder that countering white supremacist narratives is part of challenging state violence. Many everyday Americans have a hard time contending with slavery, and they shy away even more from thinking through the systems of racialised power and exploitation that developed in slavery’s wake. Juneteenth celebrations offer an opportunity to engage slavery’s histories and legacies, to sit with other people’s memories, to learn, and to find pleasure even in knowing hard things. This will be true and necessary whether the federal government continues to acknowledge the holiday or whether it returns to its vibrant home in the grassroots. Like most celebrations of liberation, Juneteenth marks something powerful and partial. “There’s been a heap of Juneteenths,” one of Ralph Ellison’s characters notes in his follow-up to Invisible Man, an unfinished novel named Juneteenth. “[And] I’ll tell you there’ll be a heap more before we’re truly free.” When freedpeople rejoiced at slavery’s end, they did not celebrate America’s triumph so much as they did their own survival. America was a promise yet fulfilled whereas black life was fact. The way they took the fact and beauty of their living and used it to seed a better future, therein lies the story and its inspiration.
Who was the greatest President of the United States in history?
Seven historians put forward their nominations for the most accomplished leader to have sat in the White House
George Washington In office: 1789–97 Party affiliation: none Nominated by: Thomas Kidd, historian and author of Thomas Jefferson: A Biography of Spirit and Flesh (Yale, 2022) George Washington was the first president in US history – and I’m nominating him as the best, too. I am basing this on his success as a leader, his ability to negotiate conflict in his administration, and most importantly the example he set for future presidents. Americans at the time of the Revolutionary War were enamoured with the ideal of the virtuous republican leader, in the model of the ancient Roman general Cincinnatus. Washington was no perfect man, of course, and like many elite southern Americans he was a slaveholder. But in politics he came the closest to manifesting the republican ideal of any American president. Washington became president after serving as the commander of the Continental Army during the fight for independence from the British. His leadership of the army was not uniformly positive, but his tenacity ultimately led to a successful outcome. Many suspected he might simply remain in the position as a kind of benevolent autocrat, but he resigned from the army in late 1783, returning to his Mount Vernon home in Virginia. Befitting the respect that he commanded, Washington was chosen to preside over the Constitutional Convention of 1787, where the US Constitution was drafted. Then he became the first president to be elected under that Constitution in 1789, in a unanimous vote of the electoral college. Washington dealt with major political conflicts in his administration, especially between the treasury secretary, Alexander Hamilton, and secretary of state, Thomas Jefferson, who bitterly disagreed over economic policy and the direction of the new republic. Washington was largely (if not completely) able to rise above the partisan bickering, and always believed that the republic and its leaders needed to manifest consensus for the public good. He assiduously reached out to minority religious groups, such as Jews, to assure them of their place in the republic. Washington was not constitutionally required to step down after his second term, but he did so once again to manifest the ideal of the public servant who did not want or need to hold onto power indefinitely. Read more | Did George Washington have wooden teeth? Abraham Lincoln In office: 1861–65 Party affiliation: Republican Nominated by: Richard Carwardine, historian specialising in politics at the time of the American Civil War. His latest book is Righteous Strife: How Warring Religious Nationalists Forged Lincoln’s Union (Alfred A Knopf, 2025) In his own era, Abraham Lincoln acquired a mythic status as the ‘Saviour of the United States’ and ‘Great Emancipator’. His death, from a shot fired on Good Friday, saw him canonised as the martyr of the glorious Union. Yet even stripping away the myth, most scholars still rank him the best American president. When Lincoln took office, seven slaveholding states had already launched a separate Confederacy. The American Civil War followed. Inexperienced in executive and military leadership, the wartime president faced sustained criticism but drew on formidable self-reliance and indomitable physical strength. He grew in office. Essential to his power were his tenacious nationalism, strategic wisdom, political shrewdness and skill in communication. The American republic’s unique mission, Lincoln insisted, lay in its ideological freight of liberty and equal opportunity. During the war, his nationalism fused with a deepening religious faith. He came to see that preserving the Union’s cargo demanded emancipating the enslaved, a constitutional amendment ending human bondage, and giving the vote to black soldiers. Read more | The Emancipation Proclamation: Abraham Lincoln's declaration that helped bring about the end of slavery Lincoln shrewdly calculated the Union’s strategic priorities: controlling the rich resources of the upper South; securing international support; pursuing a military plan that played to the Union’s strengths while exploiting the enemy’s limitations; and mobilising the human and natural resources of the country. Leadership demanded the deft handling of the levers of power. He controlled his party and broadened the coalition of Union loyalists. He mastered his cabinet and congress, though he was initially less confident with the military. A strong sense of self-worth meant he rarely stood on his dignity. Equally, his mental fortitude – forged through dark passages of depression – gave him resilience in extreme adversity. Sensitive to public opinion, Lincoln recognised that growing war-weariness threatened the Union cause. In the wiry prose of his memorable public addresses (he used no speechwriter), and in the skilful use of a natural sense of humour, he touched the nerve of ordinary people, believing in their educability through reason. Lincoln is the only president to have wrestled with civil war. Could any other have done it so well? Read more | Alternate history: what if Abraham Lincoln hadn't been assassinated? Teddy Roosevelt In office: 1901–09 Party affiliation: Republican Nominated by: Jennifer Wright, popular historian and author of Glitz, Glam and Damn Good Time: Mamie Fish and the Gilded Age (Hachette, 2025) There were dull presidents… and then there was Teddy Roosevelt. If he had not been the president, he would merely have been one of the most interesting men to ever live. The 26th president was a cattle rancher, a taxidermist, a Brazilian explorer, an amateur boxer, a historian who wrote The Naval War of 1812, and a Nobel Peace Prize winner for his help in bringing an end to the Russo-Japanese War. Admittedly, he did not end the American Civil War, like Lincoln. But Lincoln did not take a bullet to the chest and still finish a campaign speech, as Roosevelt did. Prior to being president, he was a war hero known for his prominent role with the Rough Riders during the Spanish-American War. This group of volunteer cavalrymen were comprised of anyone who could ride a horse well. That meant that polo-playing scions of New York families served alongside coal miners and Native Americans. The notion of a country in which all people could thrive, work together and have great open spaces in which to ride would go on to become defining aspects of Roosevelt’s presidency. After succeeding to office in 1901, he increasingly promoted the idea of “a square deal for every man, big or small, rich or poor”. That meant breaking up some of the big business monopolies that had dominated the gilded age and mediating a coal worker strike to ensure the public’s interest was protected (Roosevelt was on the side of the workers). A square deal also meant protecting consumers. In 1906, Teddy Roosevelt lobbied for congress to pass the Pure Food and Drug and Meat Inspection acts — the meat portion of that perhaps a nod to the fact that Upton Sinclair’s novel The Jungle [which depicted unsanitary standards in the US meat-packing industry] had been serialised the previous year before being published as a book in February 1906. Read more | 8 facts you might not know about the White House, home of the president of the United States It was also at Roosevelt’s behest that the Forest Service was created. Roosevelt, who is known as ‘the Conservation President’, was passionate about nature. He used his presidential powers to establish 230 million acres of public land that could not be exploited. His presidency was defined by the notion of creating an America wherein the common man might find prosperity, safety and pleasure. It’s not essential that a president’s personality matches his accomplishments. Plenty of dull presidents have accomplished great things. But Teddy Roosevelt was a rare case where the magnetism of the man matched the grandeur of the office. And look, your kid doesn’t go to bed hugging a James K Polk bear. Franklin D Roosevelt In office: 1933–45 Party affiliation: Democrat Nominated by: Iwan Morgan, emeritus professor of United States studies at University College London, and author of FDR: Transforming the Presidency and Renewing America (Bloomsbury, 2022) In guiding the US through the Great Depression and Second World War, Franklin D Roosevelt, or FDR as he was known, transformed the presidency, hitherto a relatively small institution, into the modern office that is the fount of national leadership. Having to overcome physical disability after polio left him paralysed from the waist down at age 39 made his achievements all the more remarkable. Assuming office in 1933 amid the US’s worst slump, FDR failed to effect full recovery until war spending renewed prosperity, but otherwise enjoyed unmatched domestic success. His New Deal programme rescued the banking system from meltdown, enabled industrial workers to form unions that bargained for better pay and conditions, and created a new welfare state. It forged a working-class coalition of urban, multi-ethnic voters that helped FDR to win an unprecedented four terms in office (a two-term constitutional limit was ratified in 1951) and transformed the Democrats into the majority party for the next half-century. Roosevelt’s judicial appointments precipitated a constitutional revolution whereby the Supreme Court eventually accepted federal regulation of private enterprise as valid. An outstanding communicator, he uplifted national spirits through his speeches and broadcasts. Finally, he formed a memorable political partnership with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, whose idealism offset his pragmatism. As wartime commander-in-chief, FDR set spectacularly high production goals for America’s defence industries that ensured the Allies were far better equipped than their Axis enemies. He overruled his generals’ plans for a 1943 invasion of France as premature, then prodded a reluctant Winston Churchill into agreeing the D-Day invasion in 1944. HistoryExtra Academy | Take our four-week course, where you’ll discover everything you need to know about the Normandy landings The driving force behind the creation of the United Nations Organisation in 1945, he nevertheless regarded great power collaboration as essential for sustainable peace. Accordingly, he accommodated Josef Stalin’s demands for Soviet control of eastern Europe to maintain good relations. For critics, this encouraged Stalin’s insatiable expansionism, but FDR saw no alternative with the region already under Red Army occupation. Roosevelt’s sudden death while still in office in 1945 meant that history would never know if he could have pre-empted the wartime alliance’s rapid disintegration and descent into Cold War. FDR’s record has some significant shortcomings, notably his limited advancement of African-American civil rights and his complicity in the worst federal abuse of citizen rights in history in signing an executive order in 1942 authorising relocation of approximately 120,000 Japanese-Americans in internment camps. Nevertheless, his positive accomplishments were arguably far more significant. They justify his remembrance as America’s greatest president. Lyndon Baines Johnson In office: 1963–69 Party affiliation: Democrat Nominated by: Clifford Williamson, a lecturer in modern British and American history at Bath Spa University “Power is where power goes,” was the mantra of Lyndon Baines Johnson from his early days as a New Deal bureaucrat and teacher through to his time as president of the US. LBJ, as he was often known, was a commanding and intimidating figure who handed out the ‘Johnson treatment’ in his pursuit of power and change in America. A tall man, he loomed over whoever he was seeking to impress, frighten or cajole into supporting him or his policies. He was a member of Congress from 1937 until 1961; he graduated from the House to the Senate in 1948 and became a majority leader in 1955. His time in Congress would be key to his effectiveness as a president who used procedure, patronage and his powers of persuasion to break the entrenched opposition of, in particular, the southern Democrats. LBJ was selected as the running mate to John F Kennedy in 1960, and was raised to the presidency following the assassination of JFK in November 1963. Almost immediately he proved his effectiveness by breaking the Congressional logjam over tax cuts – and, importantly, a Civil Rights Act which was passed in 1964. Read more | US civil rights movement: 5 landmark events In May he launched his ‘Great Society’, a wide-ranging legislative programme where he claimed, “no child will go unfed, and no youngster will go unschooled”. There then followed a slew of initiatives that rivalled in scope the New Deal of his hero, Franklin D Roosevelt, and in many cases surpassed it. Following the violent attacks on the peaceful Selma to Montgomery civil rights march, he would propose the 1965 Voting Rights Act that finally ended the poll taxes, literacy tests and Grandfather clauses that had hindered African-American political participation and enfranchisement. However, following a series of riots across the US (starting in Watts, Los Angeles in 1965), a growing white backlash would soon be palpable. It was something that not even the formidable political talents of LBJ could stem. The crisis was exacerbated by the deteriorating situation in South Vietnam, where it was becoming increasingly evident that the US had become embroiled in an unwinnable war, despite sending hundreds of thousands of US troops. Then, in 1968, the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese shocked the US by launching the Tet offensive, a major escalation in the conflict. In the face of spiralling opposition to the war among the American people, Johnson decided not to seek re-election in that year’s presidential election. It was a muted end to what had been a brilliant political career. Ronald Reagan In office: 1981–89 Party affiliation: Republican Nominated by: Jeremy Black, author of books including The Cold War: A Military History (Bloomsbury Academic, 2015) and A Brief History of America (Robinson, 2024) Ability and achievement come in many forms. The innovators and the explorers of the possibilities of politics and government win the most praise. But it is also necessary to honour the stabilisers, and Ronald Reagan, the much-mocked elderly ex-Hollywood actor from California, was one of the greatest. America and the West were in grave difficulties at the end of the 1970s. The Vietnam War and Watergate had hollowed out confidence in American power and politics, and the two oil shocks of the 1970s had destabilised the economy and public finances, contributing to a sense of decline. At the end of the decade, the Iranian Revolution and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan took this malaise further. What might have come next was a matter of hazard – and, indeed, in 1983, war between the Soviets and the west came very close. Detente had fallen and the Cold War reheated. Read more | Opinion: the conservative legacy of Ronald Reagan Reagan proved an adept responder. Though castigated as a warmonger for his reference to a Soviet ‘evil empire’, and for the deployment of cruise and Pershing missiles, he believed in negotiations from strength – a stance that eventually bore fruit in the move towards a reduction of tension from 1985. Just as Richard Nixon had reached out to Chairman Mao, so Reagan responded to Gorbachev. Earlier crises over Poland and Afghanistan were handled through measures short of war – so, for instance, the US supplied armaments to the Afghan resistance but didn’t commit ground troops. The same policy of subversion rather than invasion was employed in Central American countries such as Nicaragua. The fall of the Soviet system suggested that the pressure of trying to match American military expenditure and economic development was potent, more so than the repeated moves into war and use of troops frequently employed by presidents from 1991 onwards. In light of this, Reagan appears more viable as a model than contemporary criticism often allowed for. In domestic policy, Reagan pushed growth and deregulation. The American economy provided a clear contrast with the Soviet one, and was thus a more attractive partner for China. In social terms, Reagan was a libertarian, which would have jarred with the intolerance of many members of the modern Republican party. Charismatic, a great communicator, able to take the pulse of the nation, a good delegator, and a man with a heart… Reagan was an attractive head of state and an accomplished leader. Barack Obama In office: 2009–17 Party affiliation: Democrat Nominated by: Rebecca Brückmann, associate professor of history at Carleton College and author of Massive Resistance and Southern Womanhood (University of Georgia Press, 2021) Barack Obama became the nation’s first African American president, 390 years after the first documented slave ship arrived in the continental British colonies. Obama’s identity should not eclipse his effectiveness: he oversaw the passage of urgent economic reforms and the first comprehensive healthcare law since Lyndon B Johnson signed the 1965 Medicare and Medicaid Act. Obama expanded civil rights, reconfigured US foreign policy, and emphasised the fight against climate change. Read more | American presidents: 9 things you (probably) didn’t know Obama’s 2008 ‘Yes We Can’ campaign centred his charisma and rhetorical skill. He tapped into widespread dissatisfaction with George W Bush’s administration amid the Iraq War and a worldwide economic recession, promoting a hopeful and inclusive vision of the country. Once elected, he confronted the longest economic downturn since the 1930s. One month after Obama took office, in addition to offering financial ‘bailouts’ for banks and the automotive industry, Congress passed an $800bn stimulus package, investing in infrastructure, education and renewable energy. By the time Obama left office, unemployment had been cut in half. The Affordable Care Act (‘Obamacare’), his landmark achievement, outlawed health insurance discrimination based on pre-existing conditions and halved the number of uninsured Americans. The Obama administration strengthened civil rights by bolstering equal pay provisions, repealing the anti-LGBTQ ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ military policy, supporting marriage equality, and offering a path to work authorisations for undocumented minors. Confronted by an obstructionist Republican Congress that rebuffed attempts at bipartisan coalition building, the Obama administration increasingly relied on executive orders to effect political change. Obama raised the federal minimum wage, designated national monuments under an Indigenous commission, and cut federal greenhouse gas emissions. Obama’s foreign policy saw the continuation of his predecessors’ military interventionism in the Middle East, which made critics question the Nobel Peace Prize he was awarded in 2009. However, he re-established diplomatic relations with Cuba after 54 years, and he brokered a new agreement on nuclear weapons development in Iran. Most constructive of all was his spotlight on the climate crisis, which enabled the breakthrough 2016 Paris Agreement. In the face of racist threats, birtherist conspiracies and a conservative countermovement, Barack Obama was a remarkably effective president during socio-politically challenging times in the 21st century. Read more | Life after the White House: what the US presidents did next This article was first published in the January 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
13 famous cowboys and gunslingers from the history of the American Wild West
Saddle up and discover the most famous cowboys who shaped the American Frontier, exploring how their stories intertwined with the broader history of the Wild West
Through the lens of idealised romanticism, the Old West continues to capture the imagination as a wild and untamed frontier ready to be harnessed by those with the determination, courage and grit required to endure it. And despite the dangers – from an unforgiving terrain to the pervading lawlessness – there were great opportunities for a handful of big personalities to make a name for themselves. They robbed banks and stagecoaches, proved their speed and skill with a pistol in a gunfight, and embraced the chaos and change of an era marked by clashes between incoming settlers and Native Americans, farmers and businessman, the past and the future. They are some of the most famous figures in American history: cowboys. What was a cowboy? Symbols of the Wild West, cowboys could be all things, from frontiersmen, ranchers, farmers, wranglers, marshals and, of course, outlaws. It was an identity as much as it was an outright occupation. Beyond the bluster of the ubiquitous anti-heroes of Hollywood movies, their real-life stories provide insight into the broader forces underlying the expansion of the American frontier. Through their deeds, we can see the land disputes, the end of indigenous sovereignty, the rise of the railroad, and the slow march of federal law into a space once thought to be uncontrollable. 13 famous cowboys from the American Wild West Billy the Kid Jesse James Wyatt Earp Butch Cassidy Calamity Jane Wild Bill Hickok Doc Holliday Bass Reeves Belle Starr Black Bart John Wesley Hardin Bill Doolin Charles Goodnight Billy the Kid c1859–1881 Is there any name that evokes the outlaws of the Wild West more than Billy the Kid? Born Henry McCarty, the gunslinger was an orphan by his early teens and quickly turned to crime to survive. He went by a number of aliases, including William H Bonney and Kid Antrim (the latter a reference to his slight build and youthful features), before making his first recorded killing in 1877 at the age of 17. But it would be his involvement in the Lincoln County War in New Mexico Territory that earned him his reputation. This wasn’t just a feud between ranchers, which was common enough across the frontier: it was emblematic of the power struggles in the Old West as cattle barons, merchants and corrupt officials wrestled for control. Billy the Kid’s part in this violent conflict made him something of a folk hero, presented as a young man standing up against wealthy ranch owners and corrupt lawmen. He evaded capture and, even when he was caught and sentenced to death, pulled off daring escapes from jail. His outlaw career would be brief, however. By 1881, Billy the Kid was ambushed and shot by Sheriff Pat Garrett. Dead at just 21 – and having claimed that he had killed 21 men – his premature death arguably bolstered his legacy as a daring outlaw in a land where laws were still being written. Jesse James 1847–1882 Jesse James became a legend as the leader of the James-Younger Gang, along with his brother Frank, which committed audacious bank and train robberies. Born in 1847 in Missouri, James was still a teenager at the outbreak of the American Civil War, but he hastened to join a band of pro-Confederate guerillas. It was after the war his headline-grabbing career as an outlaw began in earnest. The two James boys led their notorious gang on a series of bank, train and stagecoach robberies across the Midwest, and despite their inclination towards violence and bloodshed they were hailed in the papers. James was regarded as a Robin Hood figure. Far from giving to the poor, though, his motivations were more self-serving. Read more | How historically accurate are film portrayals of Jesse James? Still, he could always rely on people hiding him and his gang from authorities. The post-Civil War era left many communities embittered and impoverished, and James capitalised on that sentiment by portraying himself as a Southern hero resisting the oppression of the North. Even when James was killed in 1882 – shot in the back of the head by one of his own men, Robert Ford – he was mourned, while his assassin was condemned as a coward. Wyatt Earp 1848–1929 Wyatt Earp may be one of the most recognisable lawmen of the Old West, but his record was far from clean. Over the years, he was a pimp, a thief and a con artist; he owned saloons and gambled; and he found himself on the other side of prison bars numerous times. From his first law enforcement job in 1870, Earp’s career as a sheriff and deputy took him on many adventures across dangerous frontier towns. But it was undoubtedly his time in Tombstone, Arizona, where his brother Virgil was town marshal, that cemented his place in history. Specifically, it was his role in the Gunfight at the OK Corral in 1881. The Earps, joined by their other brother Morgan and friend Doc Holliday, had been feuding with a gang of cattle rustlers and thieves calling themselves the Cowboys. The resulting gunfight allegedly lasted only 30 seconds, leaving three men dead. In the 20th century, it became the stuff of legend. Read more | Was the gunfight at the OK Corral a major gun battle? The motivation behind the gunfight is still a matter of debate. Was Earp a righteous defender of law and justice or using his position as a means to further his own interests? There is no question that he could be bloodthirsty: after his brothers were attacked afterwards, Earp embarked on what has been called the ‘vendetta ride’, during which his posse killed at least two Cowboys. Either way, the famous shootout is a microcosm of the tensions between law and disorder that dominated the frontier at a time when the line between lawman and vigilante was far from distinct. Butch Cassidy 1866–1908 Butch Cassidy was a leader of the train and bank robbers calling themselves the Wild Bunch alongside his partner Harry Longabaugh, the so-called Sundance Kid. Unlike many outlaws of the time, he had a reputation for being relatively non-violent, preferring to use smarts instead of shootouts. Still, Cassidy (whose real name was Robert LeRoy Parker) found himself pursued by Pinkerton detectives across a landscape rapidly shifting and modernising. By the late 1800s, railroads, telegraphs and federal law enforcement were concluding the lawlessness that had defined the Old West. Read more | Allan Pinkerton: The eye that never slept Seeking refuge, Cassidy and the Sundance Kid fled the United States altogether and headed for South America. There, they operated a ranch in Argentina, but also slipped back into their outlaw ways. What happened to them remains something of a mystery. The most common story is that they got cornered by Bolivian soldiers in 1908 and were gunned down. Some less likely claims suggest they escaped and lived out their lives under assumed identities. Calamity Jane c1852–1903 Born Martha Jane Canary around 1852, the legendary Calamity Jane became a frontier icon. Not only was she highly skilled as a shooter and rider – in later life, she appeared in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show – but she bucked the traditional role of women in the Old West. She wore men’s clothing and could take care of herself. Both her parents had died when she was still a teenager, leaving her to look after her fiver younger siblings as they travelled cross country. In adult life, Jane allegedly worked as a scout for the US Army, got involved in long-running conflicts with Native American tribes, and potentially shacked up with one of the frontier’s most revered gunslingers, Wild Bill Hickok. Their relationship would not last long: Wild Bill was shot and killed in 1876, while playing poker. Read more | From the real Calamity Jane to 'Madam Moustache': pioneer women of the Wild West Beyond that, separating fact from fiction when it comes to the life of Calamity Jane is a difficult task. Illiterate, she left behind no written records, but as a result of her fame she did dictate a small autobiographical account in the late-19th century. The stories within were often exaggerated, distorted or completely fabricated. One thing is known: for most of her life, Jane suffered from alcoholism. She spent her last months in Terry, in South Dakota, and died in poverty. Read more | “The motors of the wagon train”: meet the forgotten women who upended gender norms to win the Wild West Wild Bill Hickok 1837-1876 A gunslinger, scout, lawman, and showman, Will Bill Hickok was an emblem of the Old West. Born James Butler Hickok in Illinois, Hickok served in the Civil War working as a scout and spy for the Union Army, earning renown for his sharpshooting and bravery. Post-war, Hickok turned his talents to the wild frontier, where his exploits as a lawman and gambler in Kansas and Nebraska towns cemented his legendary status. As a marshal in Abilene, Kansas, Hickok was known for his steely nerves and deadly aim, but also for his preference to avoid violence when possible. Nevertheless, his career was punctuated by famous shootouts, including a deadly encounter in Springfield, Missouri, in 1865 where he killed David Tutt in what is often called the first “quick-draw” duel. Read more | How wild was the Wild West? Hickok’s fame spread through dime novels and newspaper stories, which painted him as the archetype of the Old West hero. But his personal life was tumultuous. His friendship and rumoured romance with Calamity Jane added to his mystique, as did his reputation as a gambler. Hickok met his untimely (but perhaps unsurprising) end in Deadwood, South Dakota, in 1876. While playing poker in a saloon, he was shot in the back of the head by Jack McCall, a drifter with a grudge. Hickok’s hand at the time (two black aces and two back eights) has since become known as the Dead Man’s Hand. Doc Holliday 1851–1887 John Henry ‘Doc’ Holliday was not a typical outlaw. He initially trained as a dentist in Pennsylvania, but moved to the Southwest after contracting tuberculosis. The hope was that the warm and dry climate would ease his symptoms. It was while drifting through the frontier towns that he met Wyatt Earp. He forged a friendship with the lawman after saving his life, and followed Earp to Tombstone, Arizona, where he was a major player in the legendary Gunfight at OK Corral in 1881. He would then join Earp on his vendetta ride against the Cowboys. While he maintained a deadly reputation as a gunslinger and canny gambler, much of Holliday’s life was ultimately shaped by his illness. His last years were spent receiving treatment in Colorado, before he succumbed in 1887 at the age of 36. Bass Reeves 1838–1910 The runaway slave who became one of the first black deputy US marshals in the Old West, Bass Reeves was no ordinary lawman. Born into slavery in 1838, Reeves managed to flee from his owners during the American Civil War and went to live among Native American tribes. There, he learned multiple languages and the customs of indigenous peoples, as well as the survival and tracking skills that would be so important in his career. Read more | From slave to real Lone Ranger? The incredible life of black Wild West lawman Bass Reeves In his 32 years as a federal officer, Reeves reportedly killed 14 outlaws and arrested more than 3,000 people all across Oklahoma and Arkansas. Perhaps most impressively, given how ruthless and violent many of the men were that he chased down over the years, he lived to see his retirement and ended his illustrious law enforcement career as a police officer in Muskogee. Belle Starr 1848–1889 Belle Starr, born Myra Maybelle Shirley, became infamous not for large-scale robberies or shootouts, but rather for her association with outlaws. Raised in a relatively prosperous family and educated in a classical manner, Starr’s path into criminality seems to have stemmed from choice rather than necessity. After the American Civil War, during which her brother had died fighting as a bushwhacker, she became involved with the outlaws who would form the James-Younger Gang. Belle, who was a skilled shooter, would wear black velvet and a plumed hat, giving her a strong image. Yet it was after her death that her reputation truly flourished, thanks to the sensationalised nature of her apparent murder in 1889 – shot while riding home on her horse, seemingly with her own gun. The circumstances of her death remain unclear. Was she ambushed and shot by a hidden rival while riding home? Or did her own shotgun misfire? Black Bart c1830–1917 Charles E Boles, better known as Black Bart, was a rather unconventional outlaw. His choice of weapon was not a revolver, shotgun or rifle, but poetry. He would leave behind little verses at the scenes of his crimes. Although he robbed dozens of stagecoaches across California and Oregon in the 1870s and 1880s, Bart earned a reputation as a ‘gentleman bandit’. He would be polite to his victims and never resorted to violence, which distinguished him from other more bloodthirsty outlaws. Read more | From murderous motivations to chivalrous reputations: the fascinating history of highwaymen That said, his prose proves that he could sometimes stray from gentlemanly behaviour. Perhaps the most iconic of his poems reads: “I’ve labored long and hard for bread / For honor and for riches / But on my corns too long you’ve tred / You fine haired Sons of Bitches.” Bart’s criminal career ended in 1883 when he was captured and imprisoned, following a botched robbery in which he dropped his handkerchief. This allowed Pinkerton detectives to track him down. The distinctive combination of his refined manners and poetic flair places him firmly as one of the Old West’s more eccentric figures. John Wesley Hardin 1853–1895 For John Wesley Hardin, violence seems to have been an inescapable part of life. He had been born into a turbulent post-Civil War Texas and killed his first man at just 15, setting the stage for a life defined by bloodshed. Hardin claimed to have killed over 40 men – the real figure is thought to be closer to 20 – often in situations that began as minor disputes, but quickly escalated. His volatile nature and talent for the quick draw made him both feared and hunted. His eventual capture in 1877 led to a 25-year prison sentence, of which he served 17. After his early release, Hardin, now 41, studied law and passed the oral Texas bar examination. His would-be career as a reformed lawyer never took off, however. In 1895, while in a saloon in El Paso, Hardin was shot in the back of the head, and then shot several more times after falling to the floor. His killer, John Selman Sr, had feuded with Hardin; he escaped punishment for the blatant killing. Bill Doolin 1858–1896 Bill Doolin was a founder of a gang of outlaws called the Wild Bunch (not to be confused by the gang led by Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid). Also known as the Doolin-Dalton Gang, they terrorised the Old West in the 1890s with a series of daring bank and train robberies. Unlike the more publicity conscious outlaws like Cassidy, Doolin was known for his proclivity for violence. He took part in numerous shootouts with lawmen and narrowly escaped capture multiple times. Read more | The fight for the American west: how myth obscures reality Eventually, he was caught and imprisoned while in a bathhouse, but managed to escape. Not long afterwards, however, he was confronted by a deputy US marshal and killed with a shotgun. The morbid photograph of his body shows him riddled with holes. Doolin’s story demonstrates how the misdeeds of cowboys evolved as the 19th century developed. Starting with skirmishes over land and horse theft, lawlessness became more organised and ambitious as the expansion of railroads promised bigger rewards. It was a brief period, though, before federal authority gradually imposed order. Charles Goodnight 1836–1929 Decidedly not an outlaw, Charles Goodnight was a legendary cowboy in the truest sense. He was inducted into the Hall of Great Westerners for his shaping of the Old West. Most notably, he helped establish the Goodnight-Loving Trail, a major route for driving cattle from Texas to markets in New Mexico Territory. And his innovations, such as the chuck wagon (a mobile kitchen for cowboys on the trail) would transform the way that these drives operated. But not all of Goodnight’s life was peaceful. In his earlier years, he frequently fought against the Commanche both with local militia and as a member of the Texas Rangers, before serving in the Frontier Regiment during the American Civil War. Surviving into his 90s, dying in the late-1920s, Goodnight’s reputation stretched far beyond the era of the Wild West and into the modernity of the 20th century. 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How Abraham Lincoln's 1860 election victory set America on the path to Civil War
Richard Carwardine explains why Lincoln's election victory in 1860 was so important and how he managed to trounce his rivals in the polls...
Q: What was the political prelude to the 1860 election? A: Ever since the drafting of America’s federal constitution of 1787, the question of slavery had given rise to political contention and compromise. In the early years of the new American nation, several northern states adopted statutes of emancipation, while new technology and the international demand for cotton gave slave labour deep roots in the south. Plantation agriculture spread from the Atlantic states into the Gulf region. As a result, slave numbers would grow to four million by 1860. Most Americans deemed that the constitution gave individual slave states alone the right to determine the future of their ‘peculiar institution’. However, the westward movement of settlers and the extension of the nation’s boundaries – through the purchase of Louisiana, the annexation of Texas, and the wresting of California and other parts of Mexico by force – prompted periodic crises over the status of slaveholding in the territories and the new states carved out of them. In 1820 and again in 1850 threats of civil war between North and South prompted compromise, while the Democrats and Whigs – the dominant national parties during the 1830s and 1840s – worked in the main to keep the issue at bay. But in the 1850s it arose again. By then growing intransigence, and each faction’s sense of its moral and social superiority, put political compromise beyond easy reach. Read more | The story of the American Civil War: 32 key moments in the landmark conflict Q: Why does the presidential election of 1860 matter? A: Abraham Lincoln’s victory in November 1860 as the Republican candidate for the White House forever changed the relationship between the American government and the institution of slavery. It wasn’t that Lincoln was the first nominee for the presidency to run on an antislavery platform. Minority parties, alarmed by the increasing entrenchment of plantation slavery, had fielded emancipationists in every presidential election since 1840, and in 1856 the newly formed Republican Party had celebrated a powerful showing on a manifesto committed to containing slavery – a “relic of barbarism” – within existing limits. But the real turning-point came four years later when, for the first time in the history of the American republic, an antislavery candidate committed to putting slavery in the way of ultimate extinction triumphed in the electoral college. Read more | Lincoln and slavery: "If I could save the union without freeing any slave, I would" Lincoln’s success prompted South Carolina’s withdrawal from the Union. At a special secession convention on 20 December the state declared she had taken her place “once again amongst the nations of the world”. Within two months, six other states of the lower South had joined her in forming an independent confederacy. The US constitution dictated that the outgoing president, the Democrat James Buchanan, remain in office between the election and Lincoln’s inauguration as the 16th president on 4 March 1861. ‘Old Buck’ lacked both the authority and will to defuse the greatest crisis in the nation’s history. Its resolution would depend on the wisdom and courage of his successor. Read more about the transatlantic slave trade: Freedom fighters: the enslaved people who fought for the abolition of slavery 8 podcasts about slavery and the slave trade to listen to right now 7 key questions about the transatlantic slave trade – answered Q: Who were the Republicans? A: Like all political parties, the new Republican organisation was a coalition. Its constituent elements emerged from the fractured politics of the mid-1850s that created a political vacuum by destroying the Whig party and weakening their rivals, the Democrats. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, the work of US senator Stephen A Douglas, an Illinois Democrat, opened up to slave-holding settlers a vast trans-Mississippi region previously deemed the preserve of free labour. The immediate explosion of anger in the North prompted state-level ‘anti-Nebraska’ coalitions of disaffected Democrats, antislavery Whigs, independent ‘free-soilers’, and out-and-out abolitionists. At the same time an influx of immigrants, many of them Catholic, prompted a native-born backlash that further strained political loyalties. The emergent Republican Party’s opposition to the extension of slavery provided the policy glue that bound its elements together: radical emancipationists driven by moral purpose, racists determined to found lily-white western settlements, social progressives who deemed the South archaic and stagnant, and opponents of the political influence of southern planters – the so-called ‘Slave Power’ that had allegedly hijacked the federal government. Read more | From Lincoln to Trump: a brief history of the US Republican Party By 1860 the party of ‘Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men’ had broadened its platform to embrace homesteads for western settlers, a protective tariff and a Pacific railroad. The Massachusetts Springfield Republican located its strength in “the great middling-interest class”, men “who work with their own hands, who live and act independently, who hold the stakes of home and family, of farm and workshop, of education and freedom”. Republicans made much of their role as the party of conscience, and as such appealed successfully to ‘nativist’ anti-Catholics, while also winning support within influential communities of Protestant and radical immigrants, above all the Germans. Q: Why did the Republican Party choose Lincoln as its candidate? A: Republican leaders met in Chicago in May 1860 to choose a presidential nominee. Attention focused above all on Senator William H Seward, the former governor of New York, who was widely expected to carry the day. But his reputation for radicalism, recently heightened by a speech depicting the struggle between slave and free societies as an “irrepressible conflict”, put doubts in the minds of Republican managers. Could he win the support of essential conservative voters in those states of the lower North (Pennsylvania, Indiana and Illinois) who had previously blocked the party’s route to power? Seward’s supporters took comfort from the handicaps under which most of his rivals laboured. Edward Bates of Missouri was too conservative, Simon Cameron of Pennsylvania too corrupt, Supreme Court justice John McLean too old, Salmon P Chase of Ohio too radical. But Seward had not reckoned on the dark horse, Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln’s seven open-air debates with Stephen Douglas across Illinois in 1858, in pursuit of election to the United States senate, had won him national attention and, by holding his own against the Democratic ‘Little Giant’, the respect of antislavery voters. More recently, his well-crafted Cooper Union speech in New York City alerted easterners to the intellectual sophistication and moral backbone of a westerner they had not before encountered in the flesh. “He’s the greatest man since St Paul,” a newspaperman declared. “No man ever before made such an impression on his first appeal to a New York audience.” Adamant that to restrict slavery was to sustain the purposes of the nation’s founders and the principles of the Declaration of Independence, but insistent on the constitutional rights of the southern states to the protection of their “domestic institutions”, and personally untainted by nativism, Lincoln offered a blend of moral radicalism and legal conservatism that allowed his managers at Chicago to present him as the party’s most reliable hope in the doubtful states. Rational political logic, not luck, secured his nomination. Q: Why did the Democratic Party split? A: Enthusiastic expansionists, the Democrats as a national party had to fashion a policy for the western territories that would minister to the incompatible ambitions of free-soil and pro-slavery settlers. For a time Stephen Douglas’s formula of ‘popular sovereignty’ – leaving the settlers themselves to resolve the issue by a local vote – kept northern and southern Democrats happy. But the doctrine was inherently ambiguous: as a unifying principle it could not survive the civil war between pro-slavery and free-soil settlers in ‘bleeding’ Kansas or President Buchanan’s feeble yielding to supporters of a pro-slavery constitution there. Douglas’s political survival in Illinois and the wider North forced him to turn against the national administration. Even so, as the country’s leading Democrat he expected to win his party’s presidential nomination in 1860. By then, however, influential southerners had jettisoned popular sovereignty and, emboldened by the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in the Dred Scott case (which declared slave-owners’ property rights sacrosanct), had begun to call for federal legal protection of slavery in the territories. The party’s fraught national conventions saw it split over the issue of a federal slave code, leaving Douglas to fight the election as the candidate of the regular Democrats, and the Kentucky slave-owner, John C Breckinridge, to stand as the representative of southern radicals who stood ready to countenance quitting the Union if they did not get their way. Q: Why didn’t Lincoln run in the South? A: Southern nervousness over the rise of an antislavery party boiled over in the fall of 1859 following the misbegotten attempt of the abolitionist John Brown to spur a slave uprising by seizing the federal armoury at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. Horrified southern leaders denounced the ‘Black Republicans’ as fomenters of racial revolution. But the Republicans cast themselves as the genuinely national party, loyal to the intentions of the nation’s founders and true to the interests of the non-slaveholding whites of the South. This was a self-perception reinforced by the polemical writings of a North Carolinian, Hinton Rowan Helper, whose Impending Crisis of the South attributed the condition of impoverished southern whites and the backwardness of their economy to slavery’s corrosive effect on enterprise and opportunity. Read more | When the Ku Klux Klan was a mass movement The book became a mainstay of Republican propagandists in 1860. Southern authorities banned it, while vigilantes murdered or drove out those who preached its doctrines. Lincoln’s party put up candidates in some of the states of the slave border region, and Lincoln himself earned several thousand votes in border slave states such as Missouri and Delaware, but did not risk life and limb in the lower South, where no Republicans appeared on the ballot. Q: Did the Democrats’ schism hand the election to the Republicans? A: Lincoln won the presidency with a mere 40 per cent of the popular vote, seven per cent less than the combined ballots of his two Democrat rivals. But the split in the Democratic Party did not itself deliver the Republican victory, for Lincoln secured clear majorities in almost every free state, including New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Massachusetts and the other populous states where the presidential electors were concentrated. Even as a combined force, the opposition parties would not have won. Lincoln easily dominated the electoral college, with 180 votes to Breckinridge’s 72 and Douglas’s 12. A fourth candidate for the presidency, John Bell, appealing to conservative voters who had lost their political home with the death of the old Whig party, won just 39. More significant than the Democrats’ schism in opening the door to Lincoln’s victory was the Republicans’ success in putting a squeeze on Bell’s Constitutional Union party in the lower North. View Riddle on the source website Q: Did Lincoln’s election warrant the secession of southern states? A: Southern nationalist ‘fire-eaters’ moved quickly to mobilise support for secession from a Union that had elected a ‘Black Republican’ on a purely sectional vote. Jumpy southern whites believed that an abolitionist in the White House would use the levers of government to bring about the revolution that had eluded John Brown. For their part, southern conservatives cautioned against hasty action that smacked of both panic and hubris. As South Carolina led the charge towards separation, a dyspeptic realist, James Pettigru, remarked that the state was too small for a republic, yet too large for a lunatic asylum. Prudent slave-owners pointed out that the Republicans were no immediate menace to the South: the party controlled neither Congress nor the Supreme Court, and Lincoln was anyway no radical abolitionist. They were correct in judging immediate secession a far riskier course than waiting for an overt act of aggression from the new administration in Washington. Southern radicals, however, confident in the Cotton Kingdom’s capacity to sustain itself at home and abroad, exploited the fevered times and carried the day. Above all, they played on fears that the new president would stock the slave-states with federal post-holders – a nucleus of antislavery fifth-columnists dedicated to effecting a political and racial revolution throughout the region. Q: What part did the election outcome play in the coming of civil war? A: War followed upon southern secession because Lincoln, supported by a majority of northerners, refused to concede that any of his fellow countrymen had a constitutional right of withdrawal from a ‘perpetual’ Union, and certainly not in response to a democratic election fairly contested and legitimately won. When in early April 1861 Lincoln sent an unarmed vessel to resupply a federal fort in Charleston harbour, the Confederate batteries opened fire. As Lincoln later put it: “Both parties deprecated war; but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive; and the other would accept war rather than let it perish.” The war, then, was about the survival of the nation and, in its early stages at least, not about the survival or death of slavery. But the election of 1860 revealed the huge fissure between North and South over their incompatible understandings of the peculiar institution’s future in the republic. That fissure had grown more profound since the annexation of Texas (1845) and the Mexican cession (1848) had raised fundamental questions about the status of slavery in the new acquisitions. The political contention reached its climax in the election of 1860. Whatever the later claims of Confederates and their modern successors, the crisis of the Union of 1861–65 was not about ‘state’s rights’ in the abstract. It was about the apparent threat to the power of the slave states to regulate their ‘domestic institutions’. Read more | What if Abraham Lincoln hadn't been assassinated? No one explained this better than Lincoln himself, a month before his assassination. The slaves, he said, “constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union, even by war; while the government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it.” The election of 1860 was at the heart of this story. Richard Carwardine is emeritus Rhodes professor of American history at St Catherine’s College, Oxford. His books include Lincoln: Profiles in Power (Longman, 2003) This article first appeared in the November 2010 issue of BBC History Magazine
What was a scalawag, and what does it have to do with the American Civil War?
Today, we use the term ‘scallywag’ to describe a distrustful rascal, but it stems from a different word, ‘scalawag’, which has its roots in the aftermath of the American Civil War
Immediately following the American Civil War (1861–1865), during the period known as the Reconstruction era, a new pejorative term came into use. A ‘scalawag’ described a white Southerner who supported the US government’s plan to reorganise the 11 states that had seceded from the Union (the Confederacy). The origin of the word dates back further, to at least the 1840s or possibly the 1850s, when it initially referred to a worthless farm animal. Southern supporters of the Democratic Party and journalists later popularised its association with Southern-born white supporters of the Republican Party during Reconstruction, viewing them as traitors to the South. Reconstruction refers to the period following the civil war that aimed to rebuild the South, integrate freed African Americans into US society and reform Southern states’ governments. It involved federal efforts to enforce civil rights and reshape the political landscape and was opposed by Southern Democrats who resisted changes to their traditional social order. What kind of people were accused of being scalawags? Scalawags came from diverse backgrounds and included Unionists (those who had supported the North during the Civil War), secessionists (advocates of the breakaway Confederacy), former slaveholders and Confederate veterans. Small landholding farmers who had long resented the hegemony of the slave-owning planter class over Southern society, accounted for many scalawags. These farmers had also mostly opposed the region’s secession from the Union. Read more | A battle of wills: why the South lost the American Civil War Reconstruction was welcomed as conducive to their interests and an obstacle to the restoration of the antebellum system of slavery. They were driven by a desire to modernise the South – that is, to remake it in the image of the Northern states. Others were simply opportunistic, seizing the chance to gain power and influence in the new political landscape. How did scalawags differ from carpetbaggers? Carpetbaggers were Northerners who migrated to the South after the Civil War. The term was coined via the popular perception of these newly arrived individuals as carrying their belongings in a simple carpetbag. Despite their negative reputation, carpetbaggers were often professionals and included teachers, merchants, journalists and Union veterans. Many were eager to help rebuild the South and uphold the new freedoms extended to formerly enslaved African Americans by the Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution. What impact did scalawags have? Scalawags were a complex group and though many forged alliances with newly enfranchised African Americans, others held fast to racist views. Nevertheless, they were united in their determination to prevent the resurgence of the Confederate cause. To this end, they built up a formidable voting bloc alongside African Americans and carpetbaggers to ensure the successful implementation of Reconstruction. It’s been estimated that scalawags made up about 20 per cent of the South’s white electorate alone during this period. Read more | Jim Crow in the United States: a brief guide to the racial segregation laws Who were some notable scalawags? Confederate general, James Longstreet, is perhaps the best-known scalawag. Subordinate only to General Robert E Lee, Longstreet fully endorsed Reconstruction. His volte-face provoked the ire of his erstwhile secessionists in the South. Another prominent scalawag was Joseph E Brown, the Confederate Governor of Georgia, who embraced the post-war reality imposed on the South.
The real history of Mary Surratt's controversial role in the Lincoln conspiracy
Mary Surratt’s involvement in the conspiracy to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln, as seen in the new Apple TV+ series Manhunt, is fraught with controversy and ambiguity. What is the complicated truth about her role in the plot, how much did she know, and was she really guilty?
Mary Surratt is known for her contentious role in the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, in 1865. Prior to Lincoln’s murder, Surratt would have been regarded as an ordinary woman living a typical middle-class existence. However, her implication in John Wilkes Booth’s conspiracy to attack several members of the Union government – as well as Abraham Lincoln – led to Surratt becoming the first woman to be executed by the federal government in the United States. Now, with the release of Apple TV+ historical drama Manhunt, a seven-part series focussing on the immediate aftermath of Lincoln’s assassination at the effective end of the American Civil War and the pursuit of the conspirators by officials including Edwin Stanton, we explore the true story of Mary Surratt’s role in the conspiracy, including the ambiguity as to her guilt. The true story of Mary Surratt’s involvement in the conspiracy to assassinate Lincoln Mary Surratt, born in the early 1820s, was a widow who owned a boarding house in Washington DC. She had moved there in 1864, after encountering substantial financial difficulties following the death of her husband in 1862. Her boarding house was used by John Wilkes Booth and his fellow conspirators to plot the abduction and assassination of President Lincoln, and by Confederate agents more broadly. However, it wasn’t the conspirators’ use of Surratt’s boarding house as a place to organise themselves that condemned Surratt. Rather, it was her close personal connections to the conspirators, quotes attributed to her, along with her suspicious activity, that established her involvement in the plot. Mary Surratt’s son, John Surrat Jr, was a confidant of John Wilkes Booth, and he introduced Booth to his mother. She saw Booth regularly coming in and out of her boarding house, which became a hive of Confederate activity. Additional evidence against Mary Surratt, in the trial that led to her conviction and eventual death, further cemented her as a figure who was involved with the conspiracy. Read more | Could modern medicine have saved Abraham Lincoln? Professor Rosalind Crone writes that, “In March 1865, on the eve of Lincoln’s inauguration as president for a second term, Mary made a fateful comment that one of her boarders remembered: ‘Something is going to happen to Old Abe, which will prevent him from taking his seat.’” Adding to the evidence against Surratt, a government clerk named Louis J Weichmann, who had been staying at her boarding house, explained that Surratt tried to enlist him in a mission to transport a package to Booth on the day of the assassination, fuelling suspicions against her. Also, during the trial, fellow tavern manager John Lloyd testified that Surratt had asked him to hide prepared firearms on his property shortly before the event. In light of this evidence, the 1865 military tribunal ruled that Mary Surratt wasn’t only tangentially aware of some secretive plot being planned, but was actively involved in aiding the conspirators while being entirely cognisant of their plans. Historians have since agreed. As American historian Kate Clifford Larson argued in a 2009 lecture, “there is no question that Mary Surratt was guilty of aiding and abetting John Wilkes Booth… that cannot be denied and the evidence is so strong against her it’s remarkable.” After being found guilty, Mary Surratt was hanged on 7 July 1865 along with three other conspirators. Her final words are recorded as being: “Please don’t let me fall.” How guilty was Mary Surratt, and was she really a conspirator? While Mary Surratt was convicted and hanged for her association with the conspirators and her proximity to their plot, some modern historians have questioned the true nature of her role in the conspiracy, suggesting that Surratt may not have either been entirely innocent or entirely guilty – but somewhere in between. Ambiguity about her guilt and position as a conspirator primarily stems from the lack of direct evidence linking her to the crime, and the circumstantial nature of the evidence presented at trial. Some historians have it that the quotes attributed to Surratt are vague and open to interpretation, and the contents of the mysterious parcel that she involved Weichmann in transporting are still unknown and could have been entirely unrelated to the plot. Equally, asking Lloyd to be prepared for violence by having firearms hidden could have multiple explanations, such as the fact that she lived in an unstable and chaotic environment. Read more | The real Edwin Stanton: the true story of Lincoln’s secretary of war Additionally, historians have pointed to a lack of motive for Surratt to become involved in such a high-stakes crime. While she was a Confederate sympathiser, the same was true of a significant portion of the country, and her views may have been a reflection of the context in which she lived, rather than a deeply held conviction. Ultimately though, the idea that Surratt had at least some knowledge of the plans, however vague or detailed, formed the basis of the claims against her. As many have noted, regardless of how involved Surratt was, the feverish political and public desire to bring those who were culpable to justice was a substantial factor behind the severity of her sentence. And, with all considered, it seems likely that Mary Surratt occupied a place somewhere between guilt and innocence, meaning that speculation about her role continues to thrive. 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The slave who stole a ship and sailed to freedom
Robert Smalls pulled off one of the most courageous escapes from slavery in history, and followed that by becoming a war hero and trailblazing politician
The steamship slowly drifted across the harbour, as quietly as the paddlewheels slapping against the water and the chugging and grinding of the engine allowed. A fog helped to hide them, and those on board knew it was imperative to stay inconspicuous. They were on a secret and dangerous journey that dark May night, one that could change their lives – or end them. While there were no officers, a man in the captain’s coat and hat stood on the deck. His name was Robert Smalls, and on this stolen ship he intended to sail himself and everyone below decks to freedom from slavery. Smalls had been born into slavery 23 years earlier, on 5 April 1839, to a domestic named Lydia Polite in Beaufort, South Carolina. He actually had it easier, relatively, than the other enslaved children – possibly since his master, Henry McKee, may have been his father – but his mother wanted him to understand the horrors faced by black people in the United States. Her harsh lessons included putting him to work in the fields and forcing him to witness a whipping. Download your essential guide to black British history, from BBC History Revealed Available to HistoryExtra subscribers, join us here The man planning to commandeer a 150-feet sidewheel steamship, the CSS Planter, was shaped by these experiences. He was also one of the best pilots in the harbour, who knew the waters so well that he could navigate the sandbars and shallows even in the dark. This would be handy as his escape would be in the early hours. While his white officers had refused to call him a pilot, instead using the term ‘wheelman’ for a slave, Smalls was plotting to be the captain on his own voyage. He would be escaping Charleston. Family commitments Smalls had been 12 when his master first sent him to the town. Over the years, he worked a number of jobs, from waiter at a fancy hotel to a rigger and stevedore, before being enlisted on the crew of the Planter. Smalls enjoyed being near the water and, what’s more, he was allowed to keep around $1 a week. Showing some entrepreneurial spirit, he also sold fruit, candy and tobacco on the docks, and managed to save $100. He had hoped to use it to buy his freedom. Instead, all hopes laid in escaping on the Planter on the night of 12/13 May 1862. It began when the three officers went ashore – despite going against regulations, they did this often – leaving the slave crew alone. Smalls had been waiting for this moment and told the others to be ready. Only two didn’t stay with him. They got the boiler started, but before steaming for open water the ship had to make a pre-arranged rendezvous, which required heading as slowly and quietly as possible in the other direction. There, they would pick up their families, including Smalls’ wife and children. Read more | The black abolitionists who shocked Victorian Britain It was in Charleston that he had married another enslaved person named Hannah and had a daughter, Elizabeth. While permitted to live together, there was a constant fear that any one of them could be sold at any moment and they would be separated. Smalls approached Hannah’s master Samuel Kingman to buy his wife and child himself. The price was $800, and the birth of their second child, Robert Jr, would only make it more expensive. Hannah agreed with Smalls that their best chance of staying together was to escape, declaring, “I will go, for where you die, I will die.” Close encounters With a total of 16 enslaved men, women and children on board, the Planter turned around and started the most dangerous leg of its journey. If captured, everyone faced severe punishment, if not death, as runaways. The noise and smoke of the engine negated any chance of getting through Charleston Harbor without being spotted, so Smalls knew the ship had to appear as if on a routine patrol. That meant passing four military checkpoints, plus armed gun batteries on the shore, all capable of blowing the Planter out of the water. The reason for this weaponry was that the American Civil War had been raging for 13 months, with Charleston a crucial port for the South. The North had imposed a naval blockade of the whole Confederate coastline, however, so Union ships were anchored just a few miles away. Smalls knew this, since the Planter had become an armed dispatch vessel to carry munitions for the army. At the time of his escape, it had four cannons and 200 pounds of ammunition in its stores. Smalls therefore aimed to escape from slavery, taking others with him, in the middle of a war and in a ship that he could hand over to the enemy. He had spent the last year learning all he could of how the Planter functioned and what signals he needed for the checkpoints. On the night, he dressed in the captain’s coat and straw hat and even mimicked his walk so that he could stand on deck and, from a distance, look the part. The Planter passed three checkpoints – Castle Pinckney, Fort Ripley and Fort Johnson – without incident, but the last checkpoint was Fort Sumter: an intimidating fortress on an artificial island with high walls and plenty of firepower. The rest of the crew wanted to take a wide arc around; Smalls argued this would be more suspicious and sailed right towards it. At around 4.15am, he gave the signal and, a few moments later, received the all-clear. As they sailed on by, he gave a burst of the ship’s whistle as a “farewell to the Confederacy”. There was one last danger. The Union blockade could fire on the Planter, an enemy ship, especially if flying the Confederate flag. Smalls had overlooked this. It was hastily lowered and replaced by a white flag made of bedsheets. The Planter then approached the USS Onward and, after a few tense minutes, Smalls was able to explain what was happening to the amazement of the Union sailors. As the other slaves appeared on deck and started celebrating, he turned over the ship with the words, “I am delivering this war material including these cannons and I think Uncle Abraham Lincoln can put them to good use.” Liberation at last Smalls had delivered more than a ship: he had brought himself, his family and a dozen others from slavery. Newspapers and magazines spread the news of his escape in the North, where he was hailed as a war hero. For capturing the Planter, Smalls received a reward of $1,500. Such was his fame that he met with President Lincoln and may well have inspired the decision to let black soldiers join the Union Army. In the South, a bounty was put on his head. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2022/10/GettyImages-517392232-049562a.jpg" width="3174" height="2330" alt="Smalls’ efforts to escape the Confederate South on board the CSS Planter attracted widespread press coverage across the North (Picture by Getty)" title="Smalls’ efforts to escape the Confederate South on board the CSS Planter attracted widespread press coverage across the North (Picture by Getty)" /> This was not the end of Smalls’ story, but the beginning of his life as a freeman. And the first thing he did was to join the Union fight. He served in numerous naval engagements, including when he piloted an ironclad (an armourplated warship) and helped remove the mines that he had been made to lay for the Confederates. Ultimately, Smalls distinguished himself enough to be given, fittingly enough, command of the now-USS Planter, making him the first black captain of a ship in US service. Read more | Black British history: a timeline At the end of the Civil War, he chose not to build his new life in the North. Instead, he returned to South Carolina, where he had been enslaved. Learning to read and write, he became a prominent businessman, set up a store for freed people, established a school for black children, and started a newspaper. He also ended his military career with the rank of major-general in the state militia. Black soldiers of the American Civil War Freemen and runaway slaves not only fought for the Union – they fought prejudice within the Union, too When President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on 1 January 1863, it not only freed more than 3 million slaves in the Confederate South, but it also allowed black men to fight for the North by enlisting in the Union Army. By the end of the war, around 180,000 had joined the army and another 20,000 had joined the navy, forming around one-tenth of Union forces. Those in the army served in segregated regiments, the United States Colored Troops, and while there were certainly tales of extraordinary bravery in battle – such as the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry at Fort Wagner – they tended not to be trusted by white officers to be fighting men. There was also the greater risk they faced if captured by the Confederates, as they could be put into slavery or at least treated far worse than their white comrades. Until an act of Congress in June 1864, black soldiers did not receive equal pay for their service to the Union: they got $10 a month (minus $3 for their uniform) compared to the $13 for white troops. This was a hardship familiar to Robert Smalls, as he was denied a military pension of $30 per month until 1897. Continuing the fight The Reconstruction period after the war opened the door to the political arena to black men for the first time, and Smalls was among the first to walk through it. From 1868, he served in the South Carolina House of Representatives, before becoming a member of the Senate in 1870. By then, he had already shown his willingness to fight for black rights: when removed from an all-white streetcar in Philadelphia in 1864, he organised a mass boycott that led to integration on public transport within three years. As a politician, he helped draft a new state constitution, founded the Republican Party of South Carolina, and campaigned for social services and education. In 1874, Smalls was elected to the US House of Representatives, and served a number of non-consecutive terms. But the promise of Reconstruction that black people could find a place in the US as citizens able to vote – encapsulated in the 14th and 15th Amendments – was shortlived. White southerners stripped away black rights, introduced restrictive laws, and launched attacks on black politicians. Smalls faced trumped-up charges of corruption and bribery for which he was sentenced to three years in prison, although ultimately pardoned. Read more | Britain's black trailblazers: 7 pioneers who changed British history Disenfranchisement was all but complete by the end of the 19th century, so it was in one of his last acts before losing his political position that Smalls spoke at the South Carolina constitutional convention of 1895. His words: “My race needs no special defence, for the past history of them in this country proves them to be the equal of any people anywhere. All they need is an equal chance in the battle of life.” That optimism never deserted him, nor his kindness. What better proof of that than the house in Beaufort where Smalls lived out his days until his death in 1915, aged 75. He had bought it shortly after the Civil War, and he would occasionally have an elderly woman suffering from dementia come to the door believing that she lived there. That house had formerly belonged to Henry McKee, his former master, and that woman, who Smalls welcomed in and cared for, was McKee’s wife. The legacy of slavery in the US is deeply painful and traumatic, but, in more ways than one, Smalls managed to escape. This article first appeared in the September 2022 issue of BBC History Revealed
Gone with the Wind: how a 1936 novel explains modern America
Sarah Churchwell discusses the controversial legacy of Gone With The Wind and what it can reveal about American history and culture today
Professor Sarah Churchwell discusses her new book The Wrath to Come, which re-examines the controversial legacy of Margaret Mitchell’s immensely popular 1936 novel Gone With The Wind. Speaking with Rachel Dinning, she considers what it can tell us about American history and culture today, from the mythmaking that sprung up following the Civil War to the origins of modern debates over racism and the far right in the United States. Sarah Churchwell is the author of The Wrath to Come: Gone with the Wind and the Lies America Tells (Apollo, 2022) Buy now on Bookshop.org Buy now on Amazon Buy now on Waterstones
The story of the American Civil War: 32 key moments in the landmark conflict
Adam IP Smith charts the events of the American Civil War in 32 key moments, beginning with the rising tensions between the North and South and ending with the assassination of Abraham Lincoln...
What caused the American Civil War? With the Declaration of Independence in 1776, 13 former British colonies became the United States of America, but by the 1830s it was clear the new nation was divided. Adam IP Smith explains how the issue of slavery, above all, created discord between north and south, and forced political tension to rise... The cause of the trouble: slavery At the time of the American revolution, it was legal to hold human beings as ‘property’ in all the British colonies that rebelled. But in the wake of the revolution, slavery was abolished in New England and, gradually, in the mid-Atlantic states as well. In the south though, where most enslaved people were held, abolitionism stalled and slavery expanded rapidly. Between the revolution and 1860, the slave population increased from 700,000 to nearly 4 million, geographically concentrated in the south. The increase was driven by the profits to be made from the sale of raw cotton – and to a lesser extent sugar, rice and tobacco – on world markets. As Abraham Lincoln was later to say, “all knew” that “somehow” slavery was the cause of the war. This is not the same as claiming that northerners and southerners went to war in 1861 with the desire to attack or defend slavery as a prime motivation: most did not. However, it became increasingly difficult to sustain a nation divided, “half slave and half free” in Lincoln’s phrase. Read more | Lincoln and slavery: "If I could save the union without freeing any slave, I would" Americans in 1861 had much in common with one another: a reverence for the Founding Fathers and a shared belief in freedom, opportunity and providential God. Most people, both north and south, worked on the land; almost all white folk assumed racial superiority, whatever their views on slavery. However, slavery shaped the south in ways that made the north see it as a threatening and alien society, just as northern attacks on slavery pushed southerners to see Yankees as their enemies. Abolitionism versus proslavery Slavery was a capitalist institution: it depended on ‘owners’ being able to buy, sell and invest in human beings. That in turn required confidence on the part of buyers that their ‘property’ would be protected and recognised. This was why the rising antislavery movement, with campaigners’ core claim that human beings could never be turned into mere property, was so threatening to slaveholders. Unlike other moral issues that enter politics, abolitionism threatened billions of dollars of investments. Most Americans in both sections shared the common aspiration of property ownership and believed they lived in an open, free society where hard work was rewarded. The difference was that most southerners were comfortable with the idea that black people were just another type of property. In the 1830s, the abolitionist movement grew into a loud, if minority, force in the north. It was a transatlantic movement inspired by abolition in the British Empire, powered by evangelical fervour and horror at the human cost of slavery, not least in terms of the destruction of family life and the violation of women. From the 1830s onwards, the open discussion of emancipation in the south became impossible. Slaveholders needed the free states to recognise the legitimacy of their slave property. They tried, and briefly succeeded, to ban antislavery material from the US mail and to prevent the discussion of antislavery petitions in congress. They were caught in a cycle whereby, as more and more people denounced slavery, they needed ever-greater reassurances. When was the American Civil War? Between April 1861 and April 1865 – still the bloodiest four years in the country’s history – the states of the North (known as the Union) and South (re-named as the Confederate States of America) fought bitterly for their separate ways of life. The Mexican War breaks out In 1846, President James K Polk, a Democrat and a slaveholder, used a border dispute as a pretext to invade Mexico. Southerners were excited by the prospect of acquiring new slave territory but many northerners supported the war as well, assuming that it was the destiny of whites to settle the entire continent. The Mexican War was probably the most successful war of imperial expansion in modern history: a decisive and relatively low-cost victory for the USA that led, in 1848, to the annexation of the present-day states of California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico as well as parts of Texas and Colorado. However, the war also set the nation on a collision course over slavery. Very few northerners were out-and-out abolitionists but most, it turned out, were against the expansion of slavery into these new territories in the west. Increasing numbers of northerners believed that if the new territories were allowed to become a ‘vast slave empire’ then the character of the nation would be changed forever, and the ‘right to rise’ for the honest white working man would be sacrificed in the interest of a slaveholding class. Free white men did not want to have to compete for land with privileged slaveholders. Nor did they want to end up competing as labourers against black slaves. In the end, a compromise was struck: California was admitted as a free state (just as the Gold Rush made it a magnet) but most of the rest of the former Mexican land was opened to the possibility of slavery, should the local settlers so desire it. The Fugitive Slave Act 1850 Among the reassurances demanded by southerners was a new Fugitive Slave Act, passed by Congress in 1850 against northern opposition, which aimed to make it easier for slaveholders to reclaim runaway ‘property’ in the free states. Ironically in view of southerners’ later protestations about states’ rights, the act led to a massive expansion of the federal government, giving it the right to override northern states’ law-enforcement procedures. Southerners saw the law as a test of how far the north was prepared to accommodate what they called their ‘peculiar institution’. “Respect and enforce the Fugitive Slave Law as it stands,” one proslavery editor warned the north. “If not, WE WILL LEAVE YOU!” By demanding that freemen be shackled and returned to slavery against the wishes of the local community, the Fugitive Slave Act made a formerly abstract issue frighteningly real. Read more | American history myths: 7 things people get wrong A number of high-profile cases of allegedly runaway slaves being returned to bondage electrified the north. In 1854, thousands of Bostonians shouting “shame!” and “kidnappers!” watched in horror as Anthony Burns, a black man who had been living as a freeman in the city, was marched in chains by federal troops to the wharfside to be taken back south into slavery. This was the backdrop to the phenomenal popularity of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s famous novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a grim depiction of the harshness of plantation life that further raised northerners’ awareness of slavery. Kansas-Nebraska Act 1854 Did railroads help cause the civil war? It was the desire to build a railroad to California that led Congress in 1854 to organise land to the west of Illinois, creating the territories of Kansas and Nebraska. This was land that had been part of the United States for half a century but had been barely settled by European Americans, and from which slavery had been banned under the terms of the Missouri Compromise in 1820. Southerners in Congress only supported the bill once the prohibition on slavery was lifted. To millions of northerners, including many who had never previously considered themselves antislavery, this was a betrayal of a sacred promise that the lands of Kansas and Nebraska would be open to the free settlement of poor white men. More than that, it seemed to be evidence that the government was in the hands of sinister and ‘aristocratic’ proslavery interests. The Kansas-Nebraska Act was the single most important catalyst for the rise of a new political party, the Republican Party, which presented itself as the only true defender of northern interests against the aggressions of the south. ‘The North is discovered!’ was one of many Republican campaign songs. If the party could unite the northern states, it could capture enough Electoral College votes to win the presidency even without having any support at all in the south. It didn’t manage this in 1856. Hapless Pennsylvania Democrat James Buchanan won instead. But in the coming few years, the new party built support further as the south demanded even greater protection for its slave ‘property’. The rise of Abraham Lincoln Abraham Lincoln was born in 1809 in a log cabin in what was then the frontier state of Kentucky. Despite having virtually no formal education, Lincoln made his own way in life, shrugging off his subsistence-farming background and the whiskey-soaked roughness that went with it. He became a leading lawyer in Springfield, Illinois, and with a keen interest in politics, he also became a prominent state politician, arguing for transportation improvements and secure banks. After one term in Congress in the late 1840s, his political career appeared to be over. But like many others, he thought the Kansas-Nebraska Act was a challenge that had to be faced. In a speech given at Peoria, Illinois, in 1854, Lincoln expressed the shame and anger so many northerners felt at the potential expansion of slavery. “Our republican robe is soiled and trailed in the dust,” he declared. “Let us repurify it. Let us turn and wash it white, in the spirit, if not the blood of the revolution.” Although Lincoln repeatedly said that he disapproved of slavery as a violation of the rights of men to the fruits of their labour, he was not an abolitionist and he revered the American Constitution, even though it protected slavery within states that allowed it. But while he did not advocate the immediate overthrow of slavery, he said again and again that it should be placed “on the path to ultimate extinction”. In Lincoln’s view, the United States would become either a slave nation or a modern free-labour nation. For the future president, the time had come to be clear about the final destination. John Brown’s raid of 1859 In October 1859, the messianic abolitionist John Brown launched an amateurish raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. His aim was to distribute the arms among local slaves and spark a general insurrection. Brown was quickly apprehended by US troops under the command of Colonel Robert E Lee. Brown’s raid struck southern society at its weakest point, but shocking as it was for white southerners that violence had been used on their home soil, the most frightening aspect of the affair was the northern response. While most mainstream politicians, including Republican leaders, condemned Brown’s acts, there was also admiration for his bravery. In antislavery strongholds, including Massachusetts, supporters raised funds for Brown’s legal defence and to help his family. Brown played the part of martyr to perfection. Republican newspapers reported his well-aimed final words as he was led to the gallows: “I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away – but with blood.” Brown’s raid reinforced southerners’ conception of themselves as victims. One Virginia newspaper concluded: “Thousands of men who, a month ago, scoffed at the idea of a dissolution of the Union… now hold the opinion that its days are numbered.” The 1860 election The trigger for secession was the election of the Republican presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln in November 1860. It was, in effect, two parallel elections, one in each section. The Democratic Party split, with one Democrat, Stephen A Douglas, fighting Lincoln in the free states, while another, John C Breckinridge, fought for the votes of slave states against a more moderate third-party opponent. Lincoln won only 40 per cent of the national popular vote, but by winning almost all of the free states, he comfortably carried the Electoral College. Read more | How Abraham Lincoln's 1860 election victory set America on the path to Civil War Antislavery men welcomed Lincoln’s election as a decisive break with the past. The patrician Bostonian Charles Francis Adams was elated that “the great revolution has actually taken place” and that “the country has once and for all thrown off the domination of the slaveholders”. In southern states, the so-called ‘fire eaters’, who had been campaigning for secession for years, appeared to have been prescient. Lincoln, like the rest of his party, believed slavery was wrong. To the leaders of southern society, this was enough for them to believe that the federal government had fallen into the hands of people who were their enemies. Irrevocably so, since the rising population of the free states meant their Electoral College advantage would only increase and leave the south politically impotent. “The election of Lincoln,” wrote one southern politician, “has placed our necks under their heels.” Read more | The American Civil War: 7 facts and fiction Southern states secede from the Union To no-one’s surprise, South Carolina, long the most radical proslavery region of the southern states, was the first to announce it was leaving the Federal Union, on 20 December 1860. The resolutions adopted that day made it explicit that the motive was the protection of slavery. South Carolina secessionists condemned the free states for denouncing “as sinful the institution of Slavery”. Elsewhere, ‘fire eaters’ gained political momentum, capturing popular indignation at Lincoln’s election. By 1 February 1861, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas had passed secession resolutions. By 9 February, commissioners from the seven seceded states, meeting in Montgomery, Alabama, had adopted a provisional constitution and Jefferson Davis of Mississippi became the provisional president of the Confederate States of America. Even so, the tide of secession was held back by Unionists in the upper south states of North Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas. In Virginia, still the state with the largest number of slaves, secession was opposed by those counties with fewer slaves. Although not pro-emancipation, they argued that the Union, notwithstanding the election of a president who was a ‘Black Republican’, still provided more security for slavery than an untested southern Confederacy. Conscious that Lincoln’s election had been entirely legitimate, some urged the southern states to wait for an ‘overt act’ of aggression. That overt act soon came. By June 1861, 11 slave states formed the Confederacy and prepared to defend their independence. Sumter and the outbreak of war, 1861 The first shots of the American Civil War were fired at 4.30am on 12 April 1861 by South Carolina forces. Their target was Fort Sumter, an island in Charleston’s harbour garrisoned by Union troops. Perhaps deliberately, the new president, Abraham Lincoln, had precipitated this aggression by making public his plan to re-supply (though not reinforce) the fort. By opening fire on Fort Sumter, the Confederates played into Lincoln’s hands by making the issue a test of whether a free government could and would defend itself. The shocking image of the stars and stripes under fire stirred the north in defence of the Union, overshadowing the slavery issue. Newspapers, which the day before had called for compromise and a cooling of passions, now called for vengeance and urged their readers to rally behind the flag. On 15 April, Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers under the 1795 Militia Act to serve for 90 days, the maximum amount prescribed by the law. This was the ‘overt act’ of aggression that prompted the states of Virginia, North Carolina, Arkansas and Tennessee to join their fellow southern slave states in seceding. With the seceded states making clear they were fighting for nothing less than independence, the Lincoln administration mobilised for a war to bring the rebels forcibly back into the Union. Abraham Lincoln never recognised the Confederacy: to him these states were simply rebels and the war a giant police action to restore the authority of the national government. “Secession”, Lincoln insisted, was “the essence of anarchy”. Key battles of the American Civil War By 1861, the United States had been launched into a vicious civil war that would last four years – the next stage would be characterised by ferocious battles, with heavy defeats and hard-won victories for both sides... Battle of Bull Run, 1861 One of the main reasons a political conflict turned to war was that, in 1861, the vast majority of Americans were not trying to seek an accommodation; they wanted a fight. A few wise heads on both sides knew that once war came it would be long and costly. For many, though, resorting to violence was not a sign of failure but a manly, healthy, possibly even purifying way of resolving an intractable conflict. The Confederate government was established in Richmond, Virginia, less than 100 miles due south of Washington. Northern newspapers emblazoned, “Forward to Richmond!” atop their editorial pages. Volunteer troops gathered in Washington in their makeshift uniforms. On all sides the expectation was that one quick and decisive battle would probably decide the fate of the rebellion. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2013/08/GettyImages-163553496-3d105a5.jpg" width="7400" height="5466" alt="A scene from the first battle of Bull Run, between Union and Confederate forces, during the American Civil War, c1861. (PhotoQuest/Getty Images)" title="A scene from the first battle of Bull Run, between Union and Confederate forces, during the American Civil War, c1861. (PhotoQuest/Getty Images)" /> Instead, the first big confrontation between North and South was a chaotic battle outside Washington, near Bull Run creek, on 21 July 1861. The cavalry on both sides seemingly operatedat random, certainly without any proper co-ordination with infantry attacks. Troops mistook units on their own side for the enemy. After an inconclusive few hours of fighting, the Union army was sent into a panic-stricken retreat by a Confederate attack. The losses in this first great conflict were tiny compared to the carnage of later battles, yet at the time casualty figures of 1,982 Confederate troops and 2,896 Union soldiers shocked both sides profoundly. While southerners rejoiced at victory, northerners were forced to confront for the first time the scale of the undertaking they had so blithely embraced. Strategy and tactics In grand strategic terms, the Union needed to be on the offensive in order to conquer the South. Yet the South took the offensive whenever it could. General Lee invaded Maryland and Pennsylvania in the summers of 1862 and 1863, taking the war onto northern soil, in part because there was huge popular pressure on both sides to be seen to be on the attack. However, technological innovations gave defending forces much greater tactical strength. Whereas in the Mexican War the army was still using smooth-bore muskets, by 1861 the use of rifled muskets and new conical-shaped bullets called Minié balls greatly increased the accuracy of firepower from a longer range. Towards the end of the war, entrenchments and barbed wire – notably in the long siege of Petersburg – made the conflict resemble the Western Front in the First World War. Nevertheless, offensives against well-defended positions could still succeed when commanders not only had a numerical advantage but were also prepared to be persistent and flexible – as Grant and Sherman proved in 1864, and as British generals on the Western Front learned after 1916. The Union army and slavery From the moment war began, abolitionists argued that a conflict caused by slaveholders could only be ended by ending slavery, the “taproot of the rebellion”. But other northerners vowed they wouldn’t support an ‘abolition war’. The official line from Lincoln was clear: this was a war to restore the Union, with no other aim. Yet the reality on the ground in the south meant the Union army had to make de facto decisions about whether to encourage the dismantling of slavery. Wherever there was a Union military presence in a slave state, enslaved people sought sanctuary. Some Union generals sent them back to their ‘owners’. Others allowed them to stay, and refugee camps grew up around military camps. It was General Benjamin F Butler, in command of a Union-held enclave in Virginia, who found a way of protecting runaway slaves without publicly challenging the official line that the Union did not seek emancipation. In the summer of 1861, he announced that any fugitive slave who sought refuge with his forces would be held as “contraband of war”. This phrase deftly turned the argument that slaves were property against southerners. Just as horses or guns, if captured, could legitimately be impounded since they were likely to be of military value to the enemy then so too ‘human property’, likely to be used to dig fortifications or supply the Confederate army, could be seized – and effectively freed. Contraband became the normal term to describe runaway slaves for the rest of the war. As the debate about emancipation raged in the north, the reality was always that, intentionally or otherwise, the Union army was an instrument of emancipation. Battle of Shiloh, 1862 Most of the press attention was on the eastern theatre of the war in Virginia. But in the first phase of the war, during the winter and spring of 1861–2, there was little action in the east as General-in-Chief George B McClellan, a man of enormous self-confidence who rejoiced in the moniker “the Little Napoleon”, painstakingly drilled and built up his troops. Meanwhile in the west, Union commanders made big gains in a plan to force Confederate forces out of Kentucky and Tennessee, and then take control of the Mississippi River. In particular, General Ulysses S Grant was stunningly successful at putting this strategy into practice. He captured Fort Henry and Fort Donelson, opening up the southward-flowing Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers to the Union. These brilliant successes were followed, on 6–7 April 1862, by a major battle at Shiloh in south-western Tennessee. Grant’s forces were surprised by a Confederate force under Albert Sidney Johnston and PGT Beauregard but, in the bloodiest battle of the war to that point, the Union army held its ground, helped by the timely arrival of reinforcements. The outcome of Shiloh was that a Confederate counter-offensive had been thwarted, albeit at heavy cost. Grant was initially criticised for his part in the battle, but when Lincoln was urged to remove him from command, he replied, “I can’t spare this man, he fights.” The Trent affair The greatest danger of war between Britain and the USA came from a conflict over the rights of British shipping. The US Navy tried to seize British merchant vessels bound for neutral ports near the Confederate coast, such as the Bahamas or Cuba, on the grounds that cargo was then to be transferred to southern blockade-runners. On occasion, the US succeeded. Britain had done much the same to American shipping during the Napoleonic Wars, and at the time the US had protested fiercely (the issue was one of the triggers of the war of 1812). Now the roles were reversed. The conflict came to a head on 8 November 1861, when sailors from the USS San Jacinto boarded a British ship, RMS Trent, 300 miles east of Havana, and removed two Confederate envoys, James Mason and John Slidell, en route to Europe to press Britain and France for support. The British government was furious at the violation of its flag and there was talk of war. The diplomatic row was defused after US secretary of state William Seward apologised and released the envoys, insisting as he did so that the case proved that the British had finally accepted the United States’ conception of neutral shipping rights. The larger issue was what role Britain might play in the war. Northerners were frustrated by British recognition of the South as a belligerent power (although Britain never gave the Confederacy diplomatic recognition) and angry about blockade-running ships and a couple of naval vessels that were built in British ports. The Confederacy for its part hoped the cotton embargo would precipitate European intervention of the kind that had tipped the balance for the rebels in the War of Independence. It never came. The American Civil War: key generals Union generals in the field ULYSSES S GRANT The Union’s most successful commander. Following his successes in the western theatre, Grant was made General-in-Chief in 1864. In him, Lincoln had found the man who shared his drive, even if he was prepared to endure heavy casualties to achieve victory. After the war, he served two terms as President. WILLIAM T SHERMAN Sherman declared total war on the South with his effective but devastating March to the Sea in 1864, which broke the enemy’s spirit once and for all. When criticised for targeting civilians, Sherman replied: “War is cruelty and you cannot refine it”. GEORGE B MCCLELLAN Trained and equipped the Army of the Potomac in the first year of the war, but McClellan was arguably overly cautious in battle. He was replaced by a string of ineffectual generals, before Grant was appointed. GEORGE G MEADE A key figure in the Union’s victory at the Battle of Gettysburg, 1863 – a pivotal moment in the war. He was Commander of the Army of the Potomac for two years, but was overshadowed by the influence and success of Grant. AMBROSE BURNSIDE One of the Army’s short-serving commanders. He resigned from duty after the catastrophic defeat at the 1864 Battle of the Crater. His biggest claim to fame is giving his name to a distinctive kind of facial hair – sideburns. Confederate generals in the field ROBERT E LEE When war broke out, Lee resigned his commission in the US Army and became the Confederate’s top general – despite opposing secession. He achieved stunning victories with limited resources and men, but he was too willing to sacrifice huge numbers to go on the o ensive. Lee surrendered to Grant on 9 April 1865. THOMAS JACKSON Lee’s right-hand man and one of the South’s best tacticians, Jackson earned his nickname ‘Stonewall’ for his defensive stand at the First Battle of Bull Run (1861). He was so highly thought of that Union prisoners once saluted as he rode past. Stonewall died in a friendly-fire incident in 1863. BRAXTON BRAGG As a chief Confederate general in the western theatre, Bragg was given command of the Army of Tennessee in 1862. He was a keen military organiser but poor in the field – his nervous actions made enemies among his subordinates. JAMES LONGSTREET Longstreet was a vital leader at the First and Second Battles of Bull Run (1861 and 1862), the Peninsular Campaign, Antietam, Fredericksburg (all 1862), Gettysburg and Chickamauga (both 1863) before being injured in the 1864 Wilderness Campaign. NATHAN BEDFORD FORREST The South’s most gifted cavalryman, with the mantra, “Get there first with the most men”. He personally killed 30 enemy soldiers, it is claimed. After the war, he served as the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. The Peninsula Campaign In the Peninsula Campaign of the spring of 1862, Union commander George B McClellan launched the Army of the Potomac in what he hoped would be the decisive move against the Confederacy. Rather than taking the direct approach due south, troops were sent by sea to the mouth of the James River from where they approached the Confederate capital Richmond from the east in a bid to evade Confederate defences. McClellan, who was fiercely opposed to emancipation, hoped to fight a limited war according to the “highest principles known to Christian civilisation”. At first the plan seemed to go well as Confederate forces fell back. But then General Robert E Lee took field command of the Army of Northern Virginia for the first time. An undemonstrative taciturn man, Lee was to about to prove himself one of the wiliest, most courageous and most effective commanders of the war. He believed the Confederacy could counter the manpower advantage of the Union army only by seizing and keeping the initiative. In a stunning series of victories known as the Seven Days Battles (25 June–1 July), Lee’s leadership transformed the Confederacy’s position in one week, forcing McClellan’s army back. Thereafter officers and men in the Army of the Potomac developed what almost amounted to an inferiority complex in the face of Lee’s army, a spell that was only partially broken a year later at Gettysburg. McClellan’s star waned after the Peninsula Campaign and with him the idea the war could be fought in a ‘limited’ way. Battle of Antietam, 1862 In September 1862, Lee launched the first of his two grand raids into the north. In optimistic moments, Confederate leaders hoped Lee’s invasion might persuade Maryland slaveholders to support the South and foreign powers to recognise it, but at the very least they wanted to prove the North could never subdue the South militarily. The ‘invasion’ culminated in a battle at Antietam Creek near Sharpsburg, Maryland, on 17 September. The conflict was a fluid, confused and messy affair, with friendly fire compounding the difficulties of communication on a large battle area where no one had more than a partial view of the fighting. Particular spots on the battlefield acquired an especially gruesome reputation, including Miller’s cornfield, which changed hands six times in just a few hours, and ‘Bloody Lane’, a sunken road from which the rebel South held the attacking forces of the North at bay for over three hours in late morning. By nightfall, at the cost of around 23,000 casualties, the Confederate line had been pushed back a few hundred yards. Still, it was a victory for the Union, although to Lincoln’s frustration McClellan failed to pursue Lee’s forces after the battle. The Emancipation Proclamation The limited Union victory at Antietam was to be the final battle of the first phase of the war. Just a few days later, on 22 September 1862, Lincoln issued a proclamation stating that if, by 1 January 1863, the rebel states of the Confederacy had not returned to the Union, the United States would, from that date onwards, regard slaves held in rebel areas as free. This Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation had an incendiary effect. It was an ultimatum to the South: return to the Union within 100 days with slavery intact, or face total destruction. Confederate leader Jefferson Davis called it “the most execrable measure in the history of guilty man”. The three-month delay was intended to send a clear message that emancipation was a tool of war rather than an end in itself. Like a riot policeman giving notice that a mob was about to fired upon if it did not disperse, Lincoln wanted to give the appearance of due process. But no one had any illusions: the President had tied the Union’s fate to emancipation. On 1 January 1863, the president duly issued the Emancipation Proclamation. It applied only to those areas of the United States that were still in arms against the government and much of the document was taken up with a list of counties in rebel states that, because they were no longer under rebel control, were exempted from the proclamation. Lincoln took a political and strategic risk in coupling together the fate ofthe Union with the fate of slavery. In some Union regiments there were near-mutinies at the news. But abolitionists rejoiced that at last the day of jubilee was at hand. Emancipation and racial attitudes in the Union Army Union soldiers commonly used terms such as ‘darkie’ and ‘nigger’ in their letters. Even proudly antislavery soldiers exhibited an unquestioning racism. There was no contradiction in holding racist views while also thinking that a war against secession was inherently a war against slavery, and that the Confederacy was a repressive society that challenged American values of freedom and opportunity. Encounters with runaway slaves had a dramatic impact on some Union soldiers. Black people were exotic and fascinating to rural farm boys from the north. In addition, many soldiers interpreted their encounters with freed slaves in the light of what they had heard and read of the cruelties of slavery. Private Chauncey Cooke wrote to his mother in Wisconsin about “a toothless old slave with one blind eye” who told him horrific stories of his wife and children having been sold, of whippings and being hunted by bloodhounds when he tried to escape. The stories, Cooke wrote, were “just like the ones in Uncle Tom’s Cabin and I believe them”. Some Union troops were convinced by evangelical preachers and antislavery propaganda that expunging the sin of slavery would redeem their country in God’s eyes. Some simply wanted black troops to be placed in the front line instead of them. Most were probably convinced by the much more pragmatic case that if the rebels hated emancipation, then it must be a good thing, a weapon to strike at the heart of southern society. Battle of Fredericksburg, 1862 After Antietam, General Ambrose E Burnside replaced George B McClellan as the commander of the Army of the Potomac. He assumed command of the army’s 120,000 men on 7 November 1862, and President Lincoln urged him to launch a fresh assault on Richmond immediately. Burnside’s immense army was well supplied and even had hot-air balloons for surveillance, so he should have been able to outgun the Confederates. However it seemed that his troops could not out-manoeuvre the enemy. General Burnside’s plan was to cross the Rappahannock river above the town of Fredericksburg, which lay on the direct route from Washington to Richmond. A delay in the arrival of pontoon bridges meant that before the Union army had even crossed the river, General Lee had time to concentrate his troops on the heights behind Fredericksburg. The Army of the Potomac eventually made it across the river on 13 December 1862, but could get no further. In repeated assaults up the gentle rise of Marye’s Heights, line after line of the North’s soldiers were cut down. The Union suffered more than 12,500 casualties in the day-long battle, and gained almost no ground. Once the news of Burnside’s defeat at Fredericksburg broke, it seemed to inaugurate the bleakest period of the entire civil war for the North. President Lincoln summed up the Union’s perspective in one succinct line: “If there is a worse place than Hell, I am in it,” he told a visitor when the reports of the debacle came through. Battle of Chancellorsville, 1863 On 30 April 1863, yet another Union commander, Joseph Hooker, crossed the Rappahannock River and tried to fight his way to Richmond. Hooker’s thinking was more subtle than Burnside’s – he crossed the river to the west of Fredericksburg with the aim of attacking the Confederates from the side – but the plan failed in its execution. Audaciously, Lee, ably supported by General ‘Stonewall’ Jackson, divided his army in the face of superior numbers and outflanked Union troops. In a three-day battle, Hooker made error after error, mistaking Jackson’s flanking movement for a retreat and finally abandoning the one piece of high ground from which artillery could be used effectively in wooded, undulating country. The relief of victory for the South was tempered by the death of Jackson, who was accidentally fired on by his own men, prompting an outpouring of grief that transformed the dead general into a martyred hero. In retrospect, the battle of Chancellorsville was the high-tide mark of Confederate military success. It was certainly the apogee of Lee’s military career. Once again, his army had out-smarted and out-fought a larger, better-equipped Union force. But Hooker’s inept leadership had been a major factor in the southern victory, and such incompetence could not be relied upon indefinitely. The Confederates suffered huge losses and the difference in the size of the armies could be disguised by smart tactics only for so long. Union victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, 1863 In the first days of July 1863, two simultaneous military victories for the Union seemed to turn the tide in the war. The Confederates had launched another raid into the north, this time up the Shenandoah Valley and into the state of Pennsylvania. General George Meade, the latest commander of the Army of the Potomac, led the forces that finally defeated Lee in a fight at Gettysburg during 1–3 July. Lee’s army retreated back into Virginia but a spell of invincibility had been broken. Lee’s army never fully recovered from Gettysburg, in spirit or in numbers. His officer corps and command structure were hit especially hard. Never again in the war would Lee be able to rely on his officers as he had done in 1862. In 1864, he had to appear in person on the front lines to rally troops, which was something that he hadn’t done in previous years. Meanwhile in the west, General Grant scored a major breakthrough. On 4 July, after more than six weeks, of failed assaults, Grant accepted the surrender of Confederate forces in the fortified river town of Vicksburg, the last Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi. With New Orleans having fallen the previous year after an assault from the sea, the South was now split into two halves. The final phase of the American Civil War: all out war With fighting concentrated in the southern states, the Union army waged all-out war, aimed at destroying the Confederacy's morale and crushing its capacity to wage war. As the conflict entered its final phase and the South put up determined opposition, both sides suffered huge losses... New York City draft riots, 1863 Northerners on the home front may have been far from the sound of gunfire, but they still felt the impact of conflict. Few northerners opposed the war at the outset but, by 1862, two issues – emancipation and conscription – aroused fierce opposition. To many Democrats Lincoln was a tyrant, crushing the freedoms of Americans by pressing them into an abolitionist crusade. The most dramatic incident of violent discontent took place in New York City on 13–16 July 1863. In some of the worst rioting in American history, thousands of workers, most of them poor Irish immigrants, rampaged through the city in a howl of rage against attempts to implement the draft. They targeted the visible property of the rich and the offices of Lincoln-supporting newspapers. They also launched indiscriminate attacks on the black population of the city, lynching them and burning an orphan asylum. The rioters’ targets reflected their perception of the Republicans destroying the white man’s republic as they had known it. The total death toll is unknown but was probably over a hundred. Order was restored by troops who marched north after the battle of Gettysburg. In retrospect, the riots were a watershed. In mainstream magazines such as Harper’s, images of white men rioting to avoid fighting for the North in New York were deliberately contrasted with black Union soldiers launching a heroic failed assault on Fort Wagner near Charleston. The old race-based conception of citizenship, to which many northerners still clung, had never faced such a severe challenge. Gettysburg address The most famous of Lincoln’s speeches was a two-minute address to dedicate the military cemetery at Gettysburg on 19 November 1863. Lincoln was not even the main speaker – he wound up proceedings after a two-hour oration from Edward Everett. But it’s Lincoln’s words that endure: “Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” The effect of this was to date the origins of the republic to the Declaration of Independence of 1776, with its grand preamble authored by Jefferson and appealing to the universal ideal of equality, rather than the more prosaic Federal Constitution of 1787. Lincoln was implying that the Constitution merely gave form to the nation, and that the nation mattered not as an end in itself, but as an embodiment of the ideals of equality and liberty. Echoing in secular language the Christian idea of a trial of faith, Lincoln went on to claim the civil war was a test of “whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure”. In little under 300 words, he went on to explain why the struggle and the sacrifice had a dignity and a purpose of universal and transcendent significance: “That this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.” Read more | The American Civil War in three films Lincoln’s eloquence was noted at the time, but the reputation of his Gettysburg address has grown over the years, as Americans have sought to find an uplifting meaning in the slaughter of the war. General Grant’s spring campaign, 1864 General Ulysses S Grant took command of all Union armies in early 1864 and adopted a harsh strategy designed to destroy the Confederacy’s capacity to wage war. The spring campaign of 1864 differed from those of the previous three years in two ways. Firstly, Union forces now had an even greater advantage of numbers in most confrontations. In addition, rather than retreating after a setback, Grant ordered his men forward. Experienced soldiers used to long periods in camp followed by occasional terrifying battles now faced what seemed like continuous marching and fighting. In the battle of the Wilderness, which took place from 5 to 7 May near the site of Lee’s victory at Chancellorsville in Virginia, Union forces failed to dislodge Lee from his position. Sparks from the muzzles of thousands of rifles set the woods on fire and thousands of wounded men burned to death. In two days of fighting, the Union army suffered more than 17,000 casualties and the Confederates around 11,000. At the battle of the Wilderness and in the bloody engagements of the following three months, the losses on the Union side were horrendous, but proportionally less than the South suffered. Grant, dubbed Butcher Grant by some in the north, had made the grim calculation that his Union army could withstand its losses more easily than the Confederacy. The battles of Spotsylvania and Cold Harbor, 1864 Time and again as Grant attacked through rural Virginia, Lee moved his army quickly before establishing powerful defensive lines. The action moved in an arc east and south as Grant tried to get through Lee’s defences and Lee manoeuvred to keep his heavily outnumbered and outgunned army between Richmond and Union forces. At Spotsylvania Court House on 12 May 1864, the South repulsed the North in a particularly vicious battle. Both sides fought intensely, especially around the ‘bloody angle’, a U-shaped line of Confederate trenches that, by the end of the day, were filled with a mixture of blood, mud and corpses. Spotsylvania was essentially yet another defeat for the North. Grant had attempted to seize an important crossroads; Lee had beaten him to it and had then successfully, albeit bloodily, held off the Union’s assault. But Grant refused to treat it as a defeat. Instead, he attempted another large-scale flanking movement to try to get between Lee and Richmond. Again, Lee anticipated the move. On 3 June, the Army of the Potomac was hurled against well-entrenched Confederate fortifications at Cold Harbor. More than any other civil war conflict, Cold Harbor was a harbinger of the horrific first day of the battle of the Somme. Most of the 7,000 Union soldiers who fell that day did so in less than an hour, as wave after wave of attacking troops were cut down. The siege of Petersburg, 1864–85 The Army of the Potomac moved south from Cold Harbor and crossed the James River in another attempt to force Lee out from his trenches by flanking his army and seizing the key railroad junction at Petersburg, Virginia, just south of Richmond. Once again, before an assault took place, Lee realised what was happening and marched his army to thinly defended Petersburg with astonishing speed. Thousands of Union soldiers fell in futile efforts to dislodge the rebels from their earthwork entrenchments. For the third year in a row, a Union army that set out in the spring with high hopes of crushing Confederate resistance in Virginia appeared by mid-summer to have stalled. Lee still had fewer troops, but Grant had lost more men – 64,000 casualties in two months – and morale sank. After numerous failed assaults in June, July and August 1864, the Union army bedded in for a siege of Petersburg, extending a line of trenches south and west around the city. Romantic notions of valour were tested against the ever-present danger of being shot by snipers and constant artillery bombardment. Reflecting that reality, troops built ‘bomb-proof’ shelters and zigzag trenches. As one Ohio soldier put it, “The spade is more powerful than the cannon.” But battlefield defences could aid attackers, too, since they enabled forces to be pushed close to the enemy lines, from where an overwhelming raid could be launched. Nevertheless, it wasn’t until 2 April 1865 that Petersburg surrendered, on the same day the Confederates evacuated Richmond. The fall of Atlanta and Sherman’s March While Grant was entrenching outside Petersburg, Union forces under the command of General William T Sherman made a momentous breakthrough at Atlanta, which fell to Union forces on 2 September 1864. Under Grant’s command, Sherman had helped to rout the Confederate Army of Tennessee under General Braxton Bragg in the Chattanooga campaign which took place the previous October and November. Since then, Sherman had been pushing further into the Confederate heartland. After Atlanta fell, Sherman’s army embarked on a march to Savannah on the Georgia coast and from there, in the new year of 1865, turned north into South Carolina. This march was in line with Grant’s strategic plan to move on all fronts simultaneously, thus stretching the South’s limited resources. Its purpose was to destroy not only the crops, factories and railroads that sustained the Confederate war effort, but also to break the will of the southern people to keep on fighting with a demonstration of the military supremacy of the North. Sherman was blunt: “We cannot change the hearts of those people of the South,” he wrote, “but we can make war so terrible… [and] make them so sick of war that generations would pass away before they would again appeal to it.” Sherman proposed to cut loose from his supply lines and “move through Georgia smashing things to the sea”. A holy war? The American Civil War took place in a highly religious society – one in which both sides interpreted victory and defeat in terms of God’s pleasure or displeasure. This religiosity was an essential component in the capacity of both sides to endure horrendous losses. Clergymen told their congregations that war was a test of faith. And if it was a chastisement for sin, it was also an opportunity for national redemption and purification. Secular nationalist ideas about the sacrifice of war marking a coming of age for the American republic – or the creation of the Confederate nation – were reinforced by the religious notion of soil made sacred by a baptism of fraternal blood. For many Confederates, faith was the basis of their nationalism. The Yankees were imagined to be infidels. Confederate suffering was evidence that God had singled them out as a specially chosen people. On the other side, many northerners came to believe that God’s purpose in creating such suffering must be as a punishment for slavery. In the great abolitionist anthem ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic’, Christ is seen in the “watch-fires of a hundred circling camps” and in the “burnished rows of steel” of the soldiers’ bayonets. The Union army was the army of the Lord. In his second inaugural address, Lincoln abjured any triumphalism and instead spoke of “this terrible war” as judgment on both sides for the offence of “American slavery”. Perhaps, he speculated, only when “every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword” would the war end. The 1864 election No one of prominence ever suggested suspending elections during the war: after all, northerners claimed to be fighting for free government. But at the same time, organised opposition to the administration was seen by Lincoln’s supporters as tantamount to treason. In 1864, Lincoln ran for re-election against former general George B McClellan, whose Democratic supporters were united in opposition to emancipation but divided over whether to continue the war. For Republicans, the election was a test of loyalty to the national cause. “For four summers the loyal North has been firing bullets at the rebellion,” ran a typical editorial. “The time has now come to fire ballots.” Lincoln gained 55 per cent of the popular vote in the November election. This was a convincing if hardly overwhelming endorsement. The strength of the Democratic vote, even in the face of a campaign branding support for McClellan as a vote for the rebels, was a measure of northerners’ discontent over the transformations the conflict had brought about. But the victory was enough. It was a ratification of the policy of war until the South surrendered and a rejection of any alternative path of negotiations. What’s more, Lincoln had been elected on a platform that committed him to support the proposed Thirteenth Amendment ending slavery. It was the first time that a major party had run with what amounted to an abolitionist platform. Lincoln used the political capital from his victory to push Congress to pass the amendment before the war came to an end, thus clarifying the legal status of freed slaves and avoiding what would have been the legal challenges to the validity of the Emancipation Proclamation. When did the American Civil War end? Southern surrender at Appomattox, Virginia, 1865 After one final fling at the Union trenches outside Petersburg, Lee’s men retreated from one line of trenches to the next and escaped west across the Appomattox river. On 2 April, in anticipation of the fall of Petersburg, the Confederate government abandoned Richmond, setting its offices on fire, loading its treasury and archives into railroad cars and fleeing west. The following day the Confederate capital was in Union hands. The half-starved remnants of the Army of Northern Virginia, now grossly outnumbered by the Army of the Potomac, were chased into the remote south-west corner of Virginia. On 8 April, Union cavalry overtook Lee’s army and captured three trainloads of desperately needed rations at Appomattox station. Lee and his men had finally come to the end of the road. Grant and Lee met in the drawing room of a private home in the village of Appomattox Court House on the afternoon of 9 April. For a few minutes the two generals exchanged pleasantries. Then Lee brought them to the business at hand. Grant wrote out the surrender terms and Lee signed them. The two generals shook hands. Most Americans shared the assumption that the surrender of Lee’s army signalled the effective end of the war, even though Jefferson Davis remained at large, as did several other Confederate forces. Not until 2 June in Texas did General Edmund Kirby-Smith formally surrender the last of the major Confederate forces, but in reality Appomattox was the end. It marked not just the defeat of the South’s four-year experiment in independence, but of freedom and republican government as they had understood it. Why did the South lose the American Civil War? In the end, the Confederate army was simply overwhelmed by larger forces, claimed General Lee. But that’s not the whole story, as Adam IP Smith argues. Read more here Lincoln’s assassination, 1865 On the evening of Good Friday, 14 April 1865, President Lincoln and his wife Mary went to Ford’s Theatre a few blocks from the White House to attend a benefit performance of a popular British comedy, Our American Cousin, raising money for the play’s producer, who also performed in the show. Well-known actor John Wilkes Booth, scion of a famous family of Shakespearean actors, entered the theatre by the stage door and made his way to the corridor outside the presidential box. A man of strong Confederate sympathies, Booth had cast himself in the role of avenging angel. Together with a coterie of peculiar friends, several of whom appear to have been mentally ill, Booth had hatched a vainglorious plot. The plan was originally to kidnap Lincoln, bind and gag him, but after the fall of Richmond it was decided to assassinate the president instead. Read more | Alternate history: what if Abraham Lincoln hadn't been assassinated? Booth made his move at a quiet moment in the play. He fired a bullet into Lincoln’s head at close range, then leapt from the box onto the stage. Before the audience grasped what they had witnessed, Booth fled, only to die when Federal troops caught up with him. Lincoln did not die instantly. He was carried across the road to a room in a boarding house where he lay until the early hours of the next morning, never regaining consciousness. With Mary convulsed with grief and news of the assassination spreading rapidly by telegraph, Lincoln’s cabinet colleagues gathered. They were present at his bedside when the president drew his last breath, at 7.22am on 15 April. Edwin Stanton broke the silence with the words, “Now he belongs to the ages.” Lincoln’s death allowed northerners to weep for all their dead. The slogans sewn on flags and black banners, “The memory of the just is blessed,” ensured that Lincoln stood in for many other private losses. Read more | Could modern medicine have saved Abraham Lincoln? Adam IP Smith is professor of US history at University College London (UCL). This article first appeared in BBC History Magazine's 'American Civil War' special edition
Opinion: Joyce Lee Malcolm on the history of gun ownership in America
In the aftermath of a school shooting in Uvalde, Texas that claimed the lives of 19 children and two teachers, historian Joyce Lee Malcolm examines the history of gun ownership in America and asks: why is the right to be armed such an emotional one for Americans?
On 13 March 1996, Thomas Hamilton walked into a primary school in Dunblane, Scotland and opened fire on the children and their teachers. In the aftermath of that awful tragedy, the British government prohibited the right to own a handgun in the UK, confiscating those in private hands. Last month, another mass shooting shocked us, this time in a Texas school taking the lives of more innocent victims. And while there have been calls for more control of firearms, there will be no such prohibition. Indeed, the numbers of guns and gun owners in the past three years has hit new heights. The question arises, why do Americans continue to have so many personal guns despite instances of mindless violence? The short answer is: self-defence. The right to be armed The American right to be armed is a legacy of the article in the English Bill of Rights of 1689, which was passed to assure English subjects their rights would be protected when William and Mary ascended the throne. That document included the right of Protestants subjects to “have Armes for their defence Suitable to their condition and as allowed by Law.” While the English right was broadened by the 19th century to include all subjects regardless of their religion or class, it was not entrenched, and in the years after the First World War it was whittled away despite little gun crime. Now, carrying any item for self-defence is illegal in Britain on the theory that society will protect you. But of course, it can’t, and the trade-off is the belief that public safety demands that sacrifice. The American right to be armed is entrenched in the American Constitution’s Bill of Rights of 1791. Its guarantee has also been whittled down, but not abolished. There were restrictions on ownership of firearms by black people in the south before and even after the Civil War, and restrictions in the north in the early 20th century, from fears of the immigrants pouring in from southern and eastern Europe. But Americans believed, as the Second Amendment stated, that it was the right of the people to be armed. In the 1970s there was a vigorous debate over whether the Second Amendment protected an individual right to be armed or merely a collective right for members of a state militia to have firearms. The Supreme Court finally took up the issue in two landmark cases, District of Columbia v Heller in 2008 and McDonald v City of Chicago in 2010. Both Washington DC and Chicago had banned residents from having a handgun in their homes. The Supreme Court ruled that the amendment protected the right of individuals to keep and bear those arms in common use for self-defence and other lawful purposes, a right “fundamental to our scheme of ordered liberty and system of justice.” This understanding binds all the cities and states of the nation. Nevertheless, there were, and remain, thousands of state and federal gun regulations. Before anyone can purchase a gun, they must pass an FBI instant background check. There are numerous laws and yet there is violence. Gun control debate: “Any attack on the principles established by the revolution is perceived as an attack on the US itself” While the federal government and some states have attempted to limit gun ownership, most states have regarded armed citizens as a help by protecting themselves and keeping the peace. Beginning in 1994 with three states, as additional state legislatures took up the issue of permitting all law-abiding citizens who owned guns to carry them, there were fears that more guns in public hands would result in more shootings. That did not happen. There are now 44 states that must permit law-abiding residents who have a gun and complete certain basic requirements to carry it concealed for their defence. You can drive from Florida diagonally across the United States to Washington State without crossing any of the few states that demand you can only carry a gun if the police agree you have a special need that day. Living in a dangerous area won’t do. A case now before the Supreme Court deals with whether that test of a good reason to carry a gun is constitutional. Violence and lawlessness Why is the right to be armed such an emotional one for Americans? No police force can protect everyone, or even any one, all of the time. Furthermore, the past three years have seen a perfect storm of violence and lawlessness. First the Covid-19 pandemic resulted in the release of many convicted offenders so they would not catch the disease. Then protests against police over the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May 2020 morphed into rioting in cities across the country. Few rioters were apprehended. In 2021, some 73 police officers were intentionally killed – the highest number since the 9/11 terrorist attack of 2001. There were demands to defund the police. As a result, the numbers of police have declined, with many retiring and fewer recruits joining. Read more | Why does the United States of America celebrate Independence Day on 4 July? Not surprisingly, violent crime rates in major cities soared. From 2019 to 2020, rates were up 29.4 per cent nationwide, the largest annual increase since the FBI began tracking in the 1960s. There were 44 per cent more murders in some 22 cities in 2020 than in 2019. Gun purchases often increased in the past when new firearms restrictions were threatened. The ban on so-called “assault weapons” – a vague label applied to a wide range of common guns – and “red-flag laws” preventing someone highlighted as dangerous from owning a weapon, passed in many states and cities in 2019. This drove the highest volume of would-be purchasers in the background check’s 20-year history. The record number of gun applications was surpassed within the first five months of 2020 and again in the first six months of 2021, as Americans concluded they had to protect themselves and their families. In 2021, an estimated 18.5 million guns were sold – some 5 million to first-time gun buyers. Listen | Historian Adam IP Smith answers key questions about the conflict between the Union and the Confederacy that devastated America in the 1860s Do more guns produce more crimes, or do guns in the hands of lawful citizens reduce crime? Numbers of gun owners have increased after the high point of homicides in 1991, but the US murder rate dropped over the decades by more than half. In 1991, for example, there were 9.8 murders per 100,000 population. In 2009, there were five murders per 100,000. That has been the trend until the past three years. In the estimated over one million instances of self-defence annually, a gun merely needs to be brandished to deter an attacker. Read more | “The American Dream and free-market capitalism are not one and the same” The great 18th-century British jurist William Blackstone, in his classic work, Commentaries on the Laws of England, a best-seller on both sides of the Atlantic, put the issue succinctly: “The right of English subjects to have arms was for ‘self-preservation and defence when the sanctions of society and laws are found insufficient to restrain the violence of oppression’”. Blackstone added that Common law: Considers that the future process of law is by no means an adequate remedy for injuries accompanied with force; since it is impossible to say, to what wanton lengths of rapine or cruelty outrages of this sort might be carried, unless it were permitted a man immediately to oppose one violence with another. Self-defence, therefore, as it is justly called the primary law of nature, so it is not, neither can it be in fact, taken away by the law of society. Americans still hold to that understanding. Professor Emerita Joyce Lee Malcolm is a historian and constitutional scholar who specialises in constitutional history, with a particular focus on the development of individual rights in Great Britain and America. She has written many books and articles on gun control, the Second Amendment, and individual rights. Professor Malcolm has been published in The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, USA Today, The Boston Globe and other newspapers