1. A New Trajectory for America: Assessing the End of the Civil War
“Let Us Have Peace,” by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris (1865)

2. The American Civil War
Most destructive war that the US has ever fought
1861: Long-simmering debate over expansion of slavery into the territories resulted in secession by 11 southern states after election of Lincoln
April 1861: War began
Sept. 1862: Emancipation Proclamation: freed slaves in states in rebellion
July 1863: Gettysburg and Vicksburg
April 1865: Lee surrenders to Grant at Appomattox

4. Emancipation Proclamation (Sept. 1862)
Lincoln’s executive order: freed slaves in the Confederacy (i.e. lands that the US didn’t actually control)
Four million enslaved people of color in the CSA and USA in 1862; Proclamation directly freed about 50,000
Still, the Proclamation was used as legal justification for Union armies who liberated slaves as they took over areas of the south

7. Results of the American Civil War
Union victory
End of the Confederacy
Huge destruction, especially in South
New kind of warfare
Economic success of the South – broken
Growth in power of Presidency
Ended slavery in the US

8. Death and destruction

11. Ending of Slavery
Freedmen in Union Army camp. Photo: Hirst D. Milhollen and Donald H. Mugridge (loc.gov)

12. Alice Williamson’s Diary Gallatin, Tennessee, 1864

14. How to read a primary source
What does the source say and what is the genre?
Who wrote the source?
Where does the source come from?
When was the source created, and when was it written down? (they can be different!)
Why was the source created and why was it written down?
How can the source be used to say something meaningful about the past?

15. Next Class Reconstructions: Promises Made and Broken Readings:
Shi and Tindall, Ch. 16, pp
Mississippi Black Code
Amendments 13, 14, 15 of the US Constitution