The Civil War And Reconstruction
"The irrepressible conflict is about to be visited upon us through the
Black Republican nominee and his fanatical, diabolical Republican
party," ran an appeal to the voters of South Carolina during the
campaign of 1860. If that calamity comes to pass, responded the governor
of the state, the answer should be a declaration of independence. In a
few days the suspense was over. The news of Lincoln's election came
speeding
along the wires. Prepared for the event, the editor of the
Charleston Mercury unfurled the flag of his state amid wild cheers
from an excited throng in the streets. Then he seized his pen and wrote:
"The tea has been thrown overboard; the revolution of 1860 has been
initiated." The issue was submitted to the voters in the choice of
delegates to a state convention called to cast off the yoke of the
Constitution.
THE SOUTHERN CONFEDERACY
Secession
As arranged, the convention of South Carolina assembled in
December and without a dissenting voice passed the ordinance of
secession withdrawing from the union. Bells were rung exultantly, the
roar of cannon carried the news to outlying counties, fireworks lighted
up the heavens, and champagne flowed. The crisis so long expected had
come at last; even the conservatives who had prayed that they might
escape the dreadful crash greeted it with a sigh of relief.
South Carolina now sent forth an appeal to her sister states--states
that had in Jackson's day repudiated nullification as leading to "the
dissolution of the union." The answer that came this time was in a
different vein. A month had hardly elapsed before five other
states--Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana--had
withdrawn from the union. In February, Texas followed. Virginia,
hesitating until the bombardment of Fort Sumter forced a conclusion,
seceded in April; but fifty-five of the one hundred and forty-three
delegates dissented, foreshadowing the creation of the new state of West
Virginia which Congress admitted to the union in 1863. In May, North
Carolina, Arkansas, and Tennessee announced their independence.
Secession and the Theories of the Union
In severing their relations
with the union, the seceding states denied every point in the Northern
theory of the Constitution. That theory, as every one knows, was
carefully formulated by Webster and elaborated by Lincoln. According to
it, the union was older than the states; it was created before the
Declaration of Independence for the purpose of common defense. The
Articles of Confederation did but strengthen this national bond and the
Constitution sealed it forever. The federal government was not a
creature of state governments. It was erected by the people and derived
its powers directly from them. "It is," said Webster, "the people's
Constitution, the people's government; made for the people; made by the
people; and answerable to the people. The people of the United States
have declared that this Constitution shall be the supreme law." When a
state questions the lawfulness of any act of the federal government, it
cannot nullify that act or withdraw from the union; it must abide by the
decision of the Supreme Court of the United States. The union of these
states is perpetual, ran Lincoln's simple argument in the first
inaugural; the federal Constitution has no provision for its own
termination; it can be destroyed only by some action not provided for in
the instrument itself; even if it is a compact among all the states the
consent of all must be necessary to its dissolution; therefore no state
can lawfully get out of the union and acts of violence against the
United States are insurrectionary or revolutionary. This was the system
which he believed himself bound to defend by his oath of office
"registered in heaven."
All this reasoning Southern statesmen utterly rejected. In their opinion
the thirteen original states won their independence as separate and
sovereign powers. The treaty of peace with Great Britain named them all
and acknowledged them "to be free, sovereign, and independent states."
The Articles of Confederation very explicitly declared that "each state
retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence." The Constitution
was a "league of nations" formed by an alliance of thirteen separate
powers, each one of which ratified the instrument before it was put into
effect. They voluntarily entered the union under the Constitution and
voluntarily they could leave it. Such was the constitutional doctrine of
Hayne, Calhoun, and Jefferson Davis. In seceding, the Southern states
had only to follow legal methods, and the transaction would be correct
in every particular. So conventions were summoned, elections were held,
and "sovereign assemblies of the people" set aside the Constitution in
the same manner as it had been ratified nearly four score years before.
Thus, said the Southern people, the moral judgment was fulfilled and the
letter of the law carried into effect.
The Formation of the Confederacy
Acting on the call of Mississippi,
a congress of delegates from the seceded states met at Montgomery,
Alabama, and on February 8, 1861, adopted a temporary plan of union. It
selected, as provisional president, Jefferson Davis of Mississippi, a
man well fitted by experience and moderation for leadership, a graduate
of West Point, who had rendered distinguished service on the field of
battle in the Mexican War, in public office, and as a member of
Congress.
In March, a permanent constitution of the Confederate states was
drafted. It was quickly ratified by the states; elections were held in
November; and the government under it went into effect the next year.
This new constitution, in form, was very much like the famous instrument
drafted at Philadelphia in 1787. It provided for a President, a Senate,
and a House of Representatives along almost identical lines. In the
powers conferred upon them, however, there were striking differences.
The right to appropriate money for internal improvements was expressly
withheld; bounties were not to be granted from the treasury nor import
duties so laid as to promote or foster any branch of industry. The
dignity of the state, if any might be bold enough to question it, was
safeguarded in the opening line by the declaration that each acted "in
its sovereign and independent character" in forming the Southern union.
Financing the Confederacy
No government ever set out upon its career
with more perplexing tasks in front of it. The North had a monetary
system; the South had to create one. The North had a scheme of taxation
that produced large revenues from numerous sources; the South had to
formulate and carry out a financial plan. Like the North, the
Confederacy expected to secure a large revenue from customs duties,
easily collected and little felt among the masses. To this expectation
the blockade of Southern ports inaugurated by Lincoln in April, 1861,
soon put an end. Following the precedent set by Congress under the
Articles of Confederation, the Southern Congress resorted to a direct
property tax apportioned among the states, only to meet the failure that
might have been foretold.
The Confederacy also sold bonds, the first issue bringing into the
treasury nearly all the specie available in the Southern banks. This
specie by unhappy management was early sent abroad to pay for supplies,
sapping the foundations of a sound currency system. Large amounts of
bonds were sold overseas, commanding at first better terms than those
of the North in the markets of London, Paris, and Amsterdam, many an
English lord and statesman buying with enthusiasm and confidence to
lament within a few years the proofs of his folly. The difficulties of
bringing through the blockade any supplies purchased by foreign bond
issues, however, nullified the effect of foreign credit and forced the
Confederacy back upon the device of paper money. In all approximately
one billion dollars streamed from the printing presses, to fall in value
at an alarming rate, reaching in January, 1863, the astounding figure of
fifty dollars in paper money for one in gold. Every known device was
used to prevent its depreciation, without result. To the issues of the
Confederate Congress were added untold millions poured out by the states
and by private banks.
Human and Material Resources
When we measure strength for strength
in those signs of power--men, money, and supplies--it is difficult to
see how the South was able to embark on secession and war with such
confidence in the outcome. In the Confederacy at the final reckoning
there were eleven states in all, to be pitted against twenty-two; a
population of nine millions, nearly one-half servile, to be pitted
against twenty-two millions; a land without great industries to produce
war supplies and without vast capital to furnish war finances, joined in
battle with a nation already industrial and fortified by property worth
eleven billion dollars. Even after the Confederate Congress authorized
conscription in 1862, Southern man power, measured in numbers, was
wholly inadequate to uphold the independence which had been declared.
How, therefore, could the Confederacy hope to sustain itself against
such a combination of men, money, and materials as the North could
marshal?
Southern Expectations
The answer to this question is to be found in
the ideas that prevailed among Southern leaders. First of all, they
hoped, in vain, to carry the Confederacy up to the Ohio River; and, with
the aid of Missouri, to gain possession of the Mississippi Valley, the
granary of the nation. In the second place, they reckoned upon a large
and continuous trade with Great Britain--the exchange of cotton for war
materials. They likewise expected to receive recognition and open aid
from European powers that looked with satisfaction upon the breakup of
the great American republic. In the third place, they believed that
their control over several staples so essential to Northern industry
would enable them to bring on an industrial crisis in the manufacturing
states. "I firmly believe," wrote Senator Hammond, of South Carolina, in
1860, "that the slave-holding South is now the controlling power of the
world; that no other power would face us in hostility. Cotton, rice,
tobacco, and naval stores command the world; and we have the sense to
know it and are sufficiently Teutonic to carry it out successfully. The
North without us would be a motherless calf, bleating about, and die of
mange and starvation."
There were other grounds for confidence. Having seized all of the
federal military and naval supplies in the South, and having left the
national government weak in armed power during their possession of the
presidency, Southern leaders looked to a swift war, if it came at all,
to put the finishing stroke to independence. "The greasy mechanics of
the North," it was repeatedly said, "will not fight." As to disparity in
numbers they drew historic parallels. "Our fathers, a mere handful,
overcame the enormous power of Great Britain," a saying of ex-President
Tyler, ran current to reassure the doubtful. Finally, and this point
cannot be too strongly emphasized, the South expected to see a weakened
and divided North. It knew that the abolitionists and the Southern
sympathizers were ready to let the Confederate states go in peace; that
Lincoln represented only a little more than one-third the voters of the
country; and that the vote for Douglas, Bell, and Breckinridge meant a
decided opposition to the Republicans and their policies.
Efforts at Compromise
Republican leaders, on reviewing the same
facts, were themselves uncertain as to the outcome of a civil war and
made many efforts to avoid a crisis. Thurlow Weed, an Albany journalist
and politician who had done much to carry New York for Lincoln, proposed
a plan for extending the Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific.
Jefferson Davis, warning his followers that a war if it came would be
terrible, was prepared to accept the offer; but Lincoln, remembering his
campaign pledges, stood firm as a rock against it. His followers in
Congress took the same position with regard to a similar settlement
suggested by Senator Crittenden of Kentucky.
Though unwilling to surrender his solemn promises respecting slavery in
the territories, Lincoln was prepared to give to Southern leaders a
strong guarantee that his administration would not interfere directly or
indirectly with slavery in the states. Anxious to reassure the South on
this point, the Republicans in Congress proposed to write into the
Constitution a declaration that no amendment should ever be made
authorizing the abolition of or interference with slavery in any state.
The resolution, duly passed, was sent forth on March 4, 1861, with the
approval of Lincoln; it was actually ratified by three states before the
storm of war destroyed it. By the irony of fate the thirteenth amendment
was to abolish, not guarantee, slavery.
THE WAR MEASURES OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT
Raising the Armies
The crisis at Fort Sumter, on April 12-14, 1861,
forced the President and Congress to turn from negotiations to problems
of warfare. Little did they realize the magnitude of the task before
them. Lincoln's first call for volunteers, issued on April 15, 1861,
limited the number to 75,000, put their term of service at three months,
and prescribed their duty as the enforcement of the law against
combinations too powerful to be overcome by ordinary judicial process.
Disillusionment swiftly followed. The terrible defeat of the Federals at
Bull Run on July 21 revealed the serious character of the task before
them; and by a series of measures Congress put the entire man power of
the country at the President's command. Under these acts, he issued new
calls for volunteers. Early in August, 1862, he ordered a draft of
militiamen numbering 300,000 for nine months' service. The results were
disappointing--ominous--for only about 87,000 soldiers were added to the
army. Something more drastic was clearly necessary.
In March, 1863, Lincoln signed the inevitable draft law; it enrolled in
the national forces liable to military duty all able-bodied male
citizens and persons of foreign birth who had declared their intention
to become citizens, between the ages of twenty and forty-five
years--with exemptions on grounds of physical weakness and dependency.
From the men enrolled were drawn by lot those destined to active
service. Unhappily the measure struck a mortal blow at the principle of
universal liability by excusing any person who found a substitute for
himself or paid into the war office a sum, not exceeding three hundred
dollars, to be fixed by general order. This provision, so crass and so
obviously favoring the well-to-do, sowed seeds of bitterness which
sprang up a hundredfold in the North.
The beginning of the drawings under the draft act in New York City, on
Monday, July 13, 1863, was the signal for four days of rioting. In the
course of this uprising, draft headquarters were destroyed; the office
of the Tribune was gutted; negroes were seized, hanged, and shot; the
homes of obnoxious Unionists were burned down; the residence of the
mayor of the city was attacked; and regular battles were fought in the
streets between the rioters and the police. Business stopped and a large
part of the city passed absolutely into the control of the mob. Not
until late the following Wednesday did enough troops arrive to restore
order and enable the residents of the city to resume their daily
activities. At least a thousand people had been killed or wounded and
more than a million dollars' worth of damage done to property. The draft
temporarily interrupted by this outbreak was then resumed and carried
out without further trouble.
The results of the draft were in the end distinctly disappointing to the
government. The exemptions were numerous and the number who preferred
and were able to pay $300 rather than serve exceeded all expectations.
Volunteering, it is true, was stimulated, but even that resource could
hardly keep the thinning ranks of the army filled. With reluctance
Congress struck out the $300 exemption clause, but still favored the
well-to-do by allowing them to hire substitutes if they could find them.
With all this power in its hands the administration was able by January,
1865, to construct a union army that outnumbered the Confederates two to
one.
War Finance
In the financial sphere the North faced immense
difficulties. The surplus in the treasury had been dissipated by 1861
and the tariff of 1857 had failed to produce an income sufficient to
meet the ordinary expenses of the government. Confronted by military and
naval expenditures of appalling magnitude, rising from $35,000,000 in
the first year of the war to $1,153,000,000 in the last year, the
administration had to tap every available source of income. The duties
on imports were increased, not once but many times, producing huge
revenues and also meeting the most extravagant demands of the
manufacturers for protection. Direct taxes were imposed on the states
according to their respective populations, but the returns were
meager--all out of proportion to the irritation involved. Stamp taxes
and taxes on luxuries, occupations, and the earnings of corporations
were laid with a weight that, in ordinary times, would have drawn forth
opposition of ominous strength. The whole gamut of taxation was run.
Even a tax on incomes and gains by the year, the first in the history of
the federal government, was included in the long list.
Revenues were supplemented by bond issues, mounting in size and interest
rate, until in October, at the end of the war, the debt stood at
$2,208,000,000. The total cost of the war was many times the money value
of all the slaves in the Southern states. To the debt must be added
nearly half a billion dollars in "greenbacks"--paper money issued by
Congress in desperation as bond sales and revenues from taxes failed to
meet the rising expenditures. This currency issued at par on
questionable warrant from the Constitution, like all such paper, quickly
began to decline until in the worst fortunes of 1864 one dollar in gold
was worth nearly three in greenbacks.
The Blockade of Southern Ports
Four days after his call for
volunteers, April 19, 1861, President Lincoln issued a proclamation
blockading the ports of the Southern Confederacy. Later the blockade was
extended to Virginia and North Carolina, as they withdrew from the
union. Vessels attempting to enter or leave these ports, if they
disregarded the warnings of a blockading ship, were to be captured and
brought as prizes to the nearest convenient port. To make the order
effective, immediate steps were taken to increase the naval forces,
depleted by neglect, until the entire coast line was patrolled with such
a number of ships that it was a rare captain who ventured to run the
gantlet. The collision between the Merrimac and the Monitor in
March, 1862, sealed the fate of the Confederacy. The exploits of the
union navy are recorded in the falling export of cotton: $202,000,000 in
1860; $42,000,000 in 1861; and $4,000,000 in 1862.
The deadly effect of this paralysis of trade upon Southern war power may
be readily imagined. Foreign loans, payable in cotton, could be
negotiated but not paid off. Supplies could be purchased on credit but
not brought through the drag net. With extreme difficulty could the
Confederate government secure even paper for the issue of money and
bonds. Publishers, in despair at the loss of supplies, were finally
driven to the use of brown wrapping paper and wall paper. As the
railways and rolling stock wore out, it became impossible to renew them
from England or France. Unable to export their cotton, planters on the
seaboard burned it in what were called "fires of patriotism." In their
lurid light the fatal weakness of Southern economy stood revealed.
Diplomacy
The war had not advanced far before the federal government
became involved in many perplexing problems of diplomacy in Europe. The
Confederacy early turned to England and France for financial aid and for
recognition as an independent power. Davis believed that the industrial
crisis created by the cotton blockade would in time literally compel
Europe to intervene in order to get this essential staple. The crisis
came as he expected but not the result. Thousands of English textile
workers were thrown out of employment; and yet, while on the point of
starvation, they adopted resolutions favoring the North instead of
petitioning their government to aid the South by breaking the blockade.
With the ruling classes it was far otherwise. Napoleon III, the Emperor
of the French, was eager to help in disrupting the American republic; if
he could have won England's support, he would have carried out his
designs. As it turned out he found plenty of sympathy across the Channel
but not open and official cooeperation. According to the eminent
historian, Rhodes, "four-fifths of the British House of Lords and most
members of the House of Commons were favorable to the Confederacy and
anxious for its triumph." Late in 1862 the British ministers, thus
sustained, were on the point of recognizing the independence of the
Confederacy. Had it not been for their extreme caution, for the constant
and harassing criticism by English friends of the United States--like
John Bright--and for the victories of Vicksburg and Gettysburg, both
England and France would have doubtless declared the Confederacy to be
one of the independent powers of the earth.
While stopping short of recognizing its independence, England and France
took several steps that were in favor of the South. In proclaiming
neutrality, they early accepted the Confederates as "belligerents" and
accorded them the rights of people at war--a measure which aroused anger
in the North at first but was later admitted to be sound. Otherwise
Confederates taken in battle would have been regarded as "rebels" or
"traitors" to be hanged or shot. Napoleon III proposed to Russia in 1861
a coalition of powers against the North, only to meet a firm refusal.
The next year he suggested intervention to Great Britain, encountering
this time a conditional rejection of his plans. In 1863, not daunted by
rebuffs, he offered his services to Lincoln as a mediator, receiving in
reply a polite letter declining his proposal and a sharp resolution from
Congress suggesting that he attend to his own affairs.
In both England and France the governments pursued a policy of
friendliness to the Confederate agents. The British ministry, with
indifference if not connivance, permitted rams and ships to be built in
British docks and allowed them to escape to play havoc under the
Confederate flag with American commerce. One of them, the Alabama,
built in Liverpool by a British firm and paid for by bonds sold in
England, ran an extraordinary career and threatened to break the
blockade. The course followed by the British government, against the
protests of the American minister in London, was later regretted. By an
award of a tribunal of arbitration at Geneva in 1872, Great Britain was
required to pay the huge sum of $15,500,000 to cover the damages wrought
by Confederate cruisers fitted out in England.
In all fairness it should be said that the conduct of the North
contributed to the irritation between the two countries. Seward, the
Secretary of State, was vindictive in dealing with Great Britain; had it
not been for the moderation of Lincoln, he would have pursued a course
verging in the direction of open war. The New York and Boston papers
were severe in their attacks on England. Words were, on one occasion at
least, accompanied by an act savoring of open hostility. In November,
1861, Captain Wilkes, commanding a union vessel, overhauled the British
steamer Trent, and carried off by force two Confederate agents, Mason
and Slidell, sent by President Davis to represent the Confederacy at
London and Paris respectively. This was a clear violation of the right
of merchant vessels to be immune from search and impressment; and, in
answer to the demand of Great Britain for the release of the two men,
the United States conceded that it was in the wrong. It surrendered the
two Confederate agents to a British vessel for safe conduct abroad, and
made appropriate apologies.
Emancipation
Among the extreme war measures adopted by the Northern
government must be counted the emancipation of the slaves in the states
in arms against the union. This step was early and repeatedly suggested
to Lincoln by the abolitionists; but was steadily put aside. He knew
that the abolitionists were a mere handful, that emancipation might
drive the border states into secession, and that the Northern soldiers
had enlisted to save the union. Moreover, he had before him a solemn
resolution passed by Congress on July 22, 1861, declaring the sole
purpose of the war to be the salvation of the union and disavowing any
intention of interfering with slavery.
The federal government, though pledged to the preservation of slavery,
soon found itself beaten back upon its course and out upon a new tack.
Before a year had elapsed, namely on April 10, 1862, Congress resolved
that financial aid should be given to any state that might adopt gradual
emancipation. Six days later it abolished slavery in the District of
Columbia. Two short months elapsed. On June 19, 1862, it swept slavery
forever from the territories of the United States. Chief Justice Taney
still lived, the Dred Scott decision stood as written in the book, but
the Constitution had been re-read in the light of the Civil War. The
drift of public sentiment in the North was being revealed.
While these measures were pending in Congress, Lincoln was slowly making
up his mind. By July of that year he had come to his great decision.
Near the end of that month he read to his cabinet the draft of a
proclamation of emancipation; but he laid it aside until a military
achievement would make it something more than an idle gesture. In
September, the severe check administered to Lee at Antietam seemed to
offer the golden opportunity. On the 22d, the immortal document was
given to the world announcing that, unless the states in arms returned
to the union by January 1, 1863, the fatal blow at their "peculiar
institution" would be delivered. Southern leaders treated it with slight
regard, and so on the date set the promise was fulfilled. The
proclamation was issued as a war measure, adopted by the President as
commander-in-chief of the armed forces, on grounds of military
necessity. It did not abolish slavery. It simply emancipated slaves in
places then in arms against federal authority. Everywhere else slavery,
as far as the Proclamation was concerned, remained lawful.
To seal forever the proclamation of emancipation, and to extend freedom
to the whole country, Congress, in January, 1865, on the urgent
recommendation of Lincoln, transmitted to the states the thirteenth
amendment, abolishing slavery throughout the United States. By the end
of 1865 the amendment was ratified. The house was not divided against
itself; it did not fall; it was all free.
The Restraint of Civil Liberty
As in all great wars, particularly
those in the nature of a civil strife, it was found necessary to use
strong measures to sustain opinion favorable to the administration's
military policies and to frustrate the designs of those who sought to
hamper its action. Within two weeks of his first call for volunteers,
Lincoln empowered General Scott to suspend the writ of habeas corpus
along the line of march between Philadelphia and Washington and thus to
arrest and hold without interference from civil courts any one whom he
deemed a menace to the union. At a later date the area thus ruled by
military officers was extended by executive proclamation. By an act of
March 3, 1863, Congress, desiring to lay all doubts about the
President's power, authorized him to suspend the writ throughout the
United States or in any part thereof. It also freed military officers
from the necessity of surrendering to civil courts persons arrested
under their orders, or even making answers to writs issued from such
courts. In the autumn of that year the President, acting under the terms
of this law, declared this ancient and honorable instrument for the
protection of civil liberties, the habeas corpus, suspended throughout
the length and breadth of the land. The power of the government was also
strengthened by an act defining and punishing certain conspiracies,
passed on July 31, 1861--a measure which imposed heavy penalties on
those who by force, intimidation, or threat interfered with the
execution of the law.
Thus doubly armed, the military authorities spared no one suspected of
active sympathy with the Southern cause. Editors were arrested and
imprisoned, their papers suspended, and their newsboys locked up. Those
who organized "peace meetings" soon found themselves in the toils of the
law. Members of the Maryland legislature, the mayor of Baltimore, and
local editors suspected of entertaining secessionist opinions, were
imprisoned on military orders although charged with no offense, and were
denied the privilege of examination before a civil magistrate. A Vermont
farmer, too outspoken in his criticism of the government, found himself
behind the bars until the government, in its good pleasure, saw fit to
release him. These measures were not confined to the theater of war nor
to the border states where the spirit of secession was strong enough to
endanger the cause of union. They were applied all through the Northern
states up to the very boundaries of Canada. Zeal for the national cause,
too often supplemented by a zeal for persecution, spread terror among
those who wavered in the singleness of their devotion to the union.
These drastic operations on the part of military authorities, so foreign
to the normal course of civilized life, naturally aroused intense and
bitter hostility. Meetings of protest were held throughout the country.
Thirty-six members of the House of Representatives sought to put on
record their condemnation of the suspension of the habeas corpus act,
only to meet a firm denial by the supporters of the act. Chief Justice
Taney, before whom the case of a man arrested under the President's
military authority was brought, emphatically declared, in a long and
learned opinion bristling with historical examples, that the President
had no power to suspend the writ of habeas corpus. In Congress and
out, Democrats, abolitionists, and champions of civil liberty denounced
Lincoln and his Cabinet in unsparing terms. Vallandigham, a Democratic
leader of Ohio, afterward banished to the South for his opposition to
the war, constantly applied to Lincoln the epithet of "Caesar." Wendell
Phillips saw in him "a more unlimited despot than the world knows this
side of China."
Sensitive to such stinging thrusts and no friend of wanton persecution,
Lincoln attempted to mitigate the rigors of the law by paroling many
political prisoners. The general policy, however, he defended in homely
language, very different in tone and meaning from the involved reasoning
of the lawyers. "Must I shoot a simple-minded soldier boy who deserts,
while I must not touch a hair of the wily agitator who induces him to
desert?" he asked in a quiet way of some spokesmen for those who
protested against arresting people for "talking against the war." This
summed up his philosophy. He was engaged in a war to save the union, and
all measures necessary and proper to accomplish that purpose were
warranted by the Constitution which he had sworn to uphold.
Military Strategy--North and South
The broad outlines of military
strategy followed by the commanders of the opposing forces are clear
even to the layman who cannot be expected to master the details of a
campaign or, for that matter, the maneuvers of a single great battle.
The problem for the South was one of defense mainly, though even for
defense swift and paralyzing strokes at the North were later deemed
imperative measures. The problem of the North was, to put it baldly, one
of invasion and conquest. Southern territory had to be invaded and
Southern armies beaten on their own ground or worn down to exhaustion
there.
In the execution of this undertaking, geography, as usual, played a
significant part in the disposition of forces. The Appalachian ranges,
stretching through the Confederacy to Northern Alabama, divided the
campaigns into Eastern and Western enterprises. Both were of signal
importance. Victory in the East promised the capture of the Confederate
capital of Richmond, a stroke of moral worth, hardly to be
overestimated. Victory in the West meant severing the Confederacy and
opening the Mississippi Valley down to the Gulf.
As it turned out, the Western forces accomplished their task first,
vindicating the military powers of union soldiers and shaking the
confidence of opposing commanders. In February, 1862, Grant captured
Fort Donelson on the Tennessee River, rallied wavering unionists in
Kentucky, forced the evacuation of Nashville, and opened the way for two
hundred miles into the Confederacy. At Shiloh, Murfreesboro, Vicksburg,
Chickamauga, Chattanooga, desperate fighting followed and, in spite of
varying fortunes, it resulted in the discomfiture and retirement of
Confederate forces to the Southeast into Georgia. By the middle of 1863,
the Mississippi Valley was open to the Gulf, the initiative taken out of
the hands of Southern commanders in the West, and the way prepared for
Sherman's final stroke--the march from Atlanta to the sea--a maneuver
executed with needless severity in the autumn of 1864.
For the almost unbroken succession of achievements in the West by
Generals Grant, Sherman, Thomas, and Hooker against Albert Sidney
Johnston, Bragg, Pemberton, and Hood, the union forces in the East
offered at first an almost equally unbroken series of misfortunes and
disasters. Far from capturing Richmond, they had been thrown on the
defensive. General after general--McClellan, Pope, Burnside, Hooker, and
Meade--was tried and found wanting. None of them could administer a
crushing defeat to the Confederate troops and more than once the union
soldiers were beaten in a fair battle. They did succeed, however, in
delivering a severe check to advancing Confederates under General Robert
E. Lee, first at Antietam in September, 1862, and then at Gettysburg in
July, 1863--checks reckoned as victories though in each instance the
Confederates escaped without demoralization. Not until the beginning of
the next year, when General Grant, supplied with almost unlimited men
and munitions, began his irresistible hammering at Lee's army, did the
final phase of the war commence. The pitiless drive told at last.
General Lee, on April 9, 1865, seeing the futility of further conflict,
surrendered an army still capable of hard fighting, at Appomattox, not
far from the capital of the Confederacy.
Abraham Lincoln
The services of Lincoln to the cause of union defy
description. A judicial scrutiny of the war reveals his thought and
planning in every part of the varied activity that finally crowned
Northern arms with victory. Is it in the field of diplomacy? Does
Seward, the Secretary of State, propose harsh and caustic measures
likely to draw England's sword into the scale? Lincoln counsels
moderation. He takes the irritating message and with his own hand
strikes out, erases, tones down, and interlines, exchanging for words
that sting and burn the language of prudence and caution. Is it a matter
of compromise with the South, so often proposed by men on both sides
sick of carnage? Lincoln is always ready to listen and turns away only
when he is invited to surrender principles essential to the safety of
the union. Is it high strategy of war, a question of the general best
fitted to win Gettysburg--Hooker, Sedgwick, or Meade? Lincoln goes in
person to the War Department in the dead of night to take counsel with
his Secretary and to make the fateful choice.
Is it a complaint from a citizen, deprived, as he believes, of his civil
liberties unjustly or in violation of the Constitution? Lincoln is ready
to hear it and anxious to afford relief, if warrant can be found for it.
Is a mother begging for the life of a son sentenced to be shot as a
deserter? Lincoln hears her petition, and grants it even against the
protests made by his generals in the name of military discipline. Do
politicians sow dissensions in the army and among civilians? Lincoln
grandly waves aside their petty personalities and invites them to think
of the greater cause. Is it a question of securing votes to ratify the
thirteenth amendment abolishing slavery? Lincoln thinks it not beneath
his dignity to traffic and huckster with politicians over the trifling
jobs asked in return by the members who hold out against him. Does a New
York newspaper call him an ignorant Western boor? Lincoln's reply is a
letter to a mother who has given her all--her sons on the field of
battle--and an address at Gettysburg, both of which will live as long as
the tongue in which they were written. These are tributes not only to
his mastery of the English language but also to his mastery of all those
sentiments of sweetness and strength which are the finest flowers of
culture.
Throughout the entire span of service, however, Lincoln was beset by
merciless critics. The fiery apostles of abolition accused him of
cowardice when he delayed the bold stroke at slavery. Anti-war Democrats
lashed out at every step he took. Even in his own party he found no
peace. Charles Sumner complained: "Our President is now dictator,
imperator--whichever you like; but how vain to have the power of a
god and not to use it godlike." Leaders among the Republicans sought to
put him aside in 1864 and place Chase in his chair. "I hope we may never
have a worse man," was Lincoln's quiet answer.
Wide were the dissensions in the North during that year and the
Republicans, while selecting Lincoln as their candidate again, cast off
their old name and chose the simple title of the "Union party."
Moreover, they selected a Southern man, Andrew Johnson, of Tennessee, to
be associated with him as candidate for Vice President. This combination
the Northern Democrats boldly confronted with a platform declaring that
"after four years of failure to restore the union by the experiment of
war, during which, under the pretence of military necessity or war power
higher than the Constitution, the Constitution itself has been
disregarded in every part and public liberty and private right alike
trodden down ... justice, humanity, liberty, and public welfare demand
that immediate efforts be made for a cessation of hostilities, to the
end that peace may be restored on the basis of the federal union of the
states." It is true that the Democratic candidate, General McClellan,
sought to break the yoke imposed upon him by the platform, saying that
he could not look his old comrades in the face and pronounce their
efforts vain; but the party call to the nation to repudiate Lincoln and
his works had gone forth. The response came, giving Lincoln 2,200,000
votes against 1,800,000 for his opponent. The bitter things said about
him during the campaign, he forgot and forgave. When in April, 1865, he
was struck down by the assassin's hand, he above all others in
Washington was planning measures of moderation and healing.
THE RESULTS OF THE CIVIL WAR
There is a strong and natural tendency on the part of writers to stress
the dramatic and heroic aspects of war; but the long judgment of history
requires us to include all other significant phases as well. Like every
great armed conflict, the Civil War outran the purposes of those who
took part in it. Waged over the nature of the union, it made a
revolution in the union, changing public policies and constitutional
principles and giving a new direction to agriculture and industry.
The Supremacy of the Union
First and foremost, the war settled for
all time the long dispute as to the nature of the federal system. The
doctrine of state sovereignty was laid to rest. Men might still speak of
the rights of states and think of their commonwealths with affection,
but nullification and secession were destroyed. The nation was supreme.
The Destruction of the Slave Power
Next to the vindication of
national supremacy was the destruction of the planting aristocracy of
the South--that great power which had furnished leadership of undoubted
ability and had so long contested with the industrial and commercial
interests of the North. The first paralyzing blow at the planters was
struck by the abolition of slavery. The second and third came with the
fourteenth (1868) and fifteenth (1870) amendments, giving the ballot to
freedmen and excluding from public office the Confederate
leaders--driving from the work of reconstruction the finest talents of
the South. As if to add bitterness to gall and wormwood, the fourteenth
amendment forbade the United States or any state to pay any debts
incurred in aid of the Confederacy or in the emancipation of the
slaves--plunging into utter bankruptcy the Southern financiers who had
stripped their section of capital to support their cause. So the
Southern planters found themselves excluded from public office and ruled
over by their former bondmen under the tutelage of Republican leaders.
Their labor system was wrecked and their money and bonds were as
worthless as waste paper. The South was subject to the North. That which
neither the Federalists nor the Whigs had been able to accomplish in the
realm of statecraft was accomplished on the field of battle.
The Triumph of Industry
The wreck of the planting system was
accompanied by a mighty upswing of Northern industry which made the old
Whigs of Massachusetts and Pennsylvania stare in wonderment. The demands
of the federal government for manufactured goods at unrestricted prices
gave a stimulus to business which more than replaced the lost markets of
the South. Between 1860 and 1870 the number of manufacturing
establishments increased 79.6 per cent as against 14.2 for the previous
decade; while the number of persons employed almost doubled. There was
no doubt about the future of American industry.
The Victory for the Protective Tariff
Moreover, it was henceforth to
be well protected. For many years before the war the friends of
protection had been on the defensive. The tariff act of 1857 imposed
duties so low as to presage a tariff for revenue only. The war changed
all that. The extraordinary military expenditures, requiring heavy taxes
on all sources, justified tariffs so high that a follower of Clay or
Webster might well have gasped with astonishment. After the war was over
the debt remained and both interest and principal had to be paid.
Protective arguments based on economic reasoning were supported by a
plain necessity for revenue which admitted no dispute.
A Liberal Immigration Policy
Linked with industry was the labor
supply. The problem of manning industries became a pressing matter, and
Republican leaders grappled with it. In the platform of the Union party
adopted in 1864 it was declared "that foreign immigration, which in the
past has added so much to the wealth, the development of resources, and
the increase of power to this nation--the asylum of the oppressed of all
nations--should be fostered and encouraged by a liberal and just
policy." In that very year Congress, recognizing the importance of the
problem, passed a measure of high significance, creating a bureau of
immigration, and authorizing a modified form of indentured labor, by
making it legal for immigrants to pledge their wages in advance to pay
their passage over. Though the bill was soon repealed, the practice
authorized by it was long continued. The cheapness of the passage
shortened the term of service; but the principle was older than the
days of William Penn.
The Homestead Act of 1862
In the immigration measure guaranteeing a
continuous and adequate labor supply, the manufacturers saw an offset to
the Homestead Act of 1862 granting free lands to settlers. The Homestead
law they had resisted in a long and bitter congressional battle.
Naturally, they had not taken kindly to a scheme which lured men away
from the factories or enabled them to make unlimited demands for higher
wages as the price of remaining. Southern planters likewise had feared
free homesteads for the very good reason that they only promised to add
to the overbalancing power of the North.
In spite of the opposition, supporters of a liberal land policy made
steady gains. Free-soil Democrats,--Jacksonian farmers and
mechanics,--labor reformers, and political leaders, like Stephen A.
Douglas of Illinois and Andrew Johnson of Tennessee, kept up the
agitation in season and out. More than once were they able to force a
homestead bill through the House of Representatives only to have it
blocked in the Senate where Southern interests were intrenched. Then,
after the Senate was won over, a Democratic President, James Buchanan,
vetoed the bill. Still the issue lived. The Republicans, strong among
the farmers of the Northwest, favored it from the beginning and pressed
it upon the attention of the country. Finally the manufacturers yielded;
they received their compensation in the contract labor law. In 1862
Congress provided for the free distribution of land in 160-acre lots
among men and women of strong arms and willing hearts ready to build
their serried lines of homesteads to the Rockies and beyond.
Internal Improvements
If farmers and manufacturers were early
divided on the matter of free homesteads, the same could hardly be said
of internal improvements. The Western tiller of the soil was as eager
for some easy way of sending his produce to market as the manufacturer
was for the same means to transport his goods to the consumer on the
farm. While the Confederate leaders were writing into their
constitution a clause forbidding all appropriations for internal
improvements, the Republican leaders at Washington were planning such
expenditures from the treasury in the form of public land grants to
railways as would have dazed the authors of the national road bill half
a century earlier.
Sound Finance--National Banking
From Hamilton's day to Lincoln's,
business men in the East had contended for a sound system of national
currency. The experience of the states with paper money, painfully
impressive in the years before the framing of the Constitution, had been
convincing to those who understood the economy of business. The
Constitution, as we have seen, bore the signs of this experience. States
were forbidden to emit bills of credit: paper money, in short. This
provision stood clear in the document; but judicial ingenuity had
circumvented it in the age of Jacksonian Democracy. The states had
enacted and the Supreme Court, after the death of John Marshall, had
sustained laws chartering banking companies and authorizing them to
issue paper money. So the country was beset by the old curse, the banks
of Western and Southern states issuing reams of paper notes to help
borrowers pay their debts.
In dealing with war finances, the Republicans attacked this ancient
evil. By act of Congress in 1864, they authorized a series of national
banks founded on the credit of government bonds and empowered to issue
notes. The next year they stopped all bank paper sent forth under the
authority of the states by means of a prohibitive tax. In this way, by
two measures Congress restored federal control over the monetary system
although it did not reestablish the United States Bank so hated by
Jacksonian Democracy.
Destruction of States' Rights by Fourteenth Amendment
These acts and
others not cited here were measures of centralization and consolidation
at the expense of the powers and dignity of the states. They were all of
high import, but the crowning act of nationalism was the fourteenth
amendment which, among other things, forbade states to "deprive any
person of life, liberty or property without due process of law." The
immediate occasion, though not the actual cause of this provision, was
the need for protecting the rights of freedmen against hostile
legislatures in the South. The result of the amendment, as was
prophesied in protests loud and long from every quarter of the
Democratic party, was the subjection of every act of state, municipal,
and county authorities to possible annulment by the Supreme Court at
Washington. The expected happened.
Few negroes ever brought cases under the fourteenth amendment to the
attention of the courts; but thousands of state laws, municipal
ordinances, and acts of local authorities were set aside as null and
void under it. Laws of states regulating railway rates, fixing hours of
labor in bakeshops, and taxing corporations were in due time to be
annulled as conflicting with an amendment erroneously supposed to be
designed solely for the protection of negroes. As centralized power over
tariffs, railways, public lands, and other national concerns went to
Congress, so centralized power over the acts of state and local
authorities involving an infringement of personal and property rights
was conferred on the federal judiciary, the apex of which was the
Supreme Court at Washington. Thus the old federation of "independent
states," all equal in rights and dignity, each wearing the "jewel of
sovereignty" so celebrated in Southern oratory, had gone the way of all
flesh under the withering blasts of Civil War.
RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH
Theories about the Position of the Seceded States
On the morning of
April 9, 1865, when General Lee surrendered his army to General Grant,
eleven states stood in a peculiar relation to the union now declared
perpetual. Lawyers and political philosophers were much perturbed and
had been for some time as to what should be done with the members of the
former Confederacy. Radical Republicans held that they were "conquered
provinces" at the mercy of Congress, to be governed under such laws as
it saw fit to enact and until in its wisdom it decided to readmit any or
all of them to the union. Men of more conservative views held that, as
the war had been waged by the North on the theory that no state could
secede from the union, the Confederate states had merely attempted to
withdraw and had failed. The corollary of this latter line of argument
was simple: "The Southern states are still in the union and it is the
duty of the President, as commander-in-chief, to remove the federal
troops as soon as order is restored and the state governments ready to
function once more as usual."
Lincoln's Proposal
Some such simple and conservative form of
reconstruction had been suggested by Lincoln in a proclamation of
December 8, 1863. He proposed pardon and a restoration of property,
except in slaves, to nearly all who had "directly or by implication
participated in the existing rebellion," on condition that they take an
oath of loyalty to the union. He then announced that when, in any of the
states named, a body of voters, qualified under the law as it stood
before secession and equal in number to one-tenth the votes cast in
1860, took the oath of allegiance, they should be permitted to
reestablish a state government. Such a government, he added, should be
recognized as a lawful authority and entitled to protection under the
federal Constitution. With reference to the status of the former slaves
Lincoln made it clear that, while their freedom must be recognized, he
would not object to any legislation "which may yet be consistent as a
temporary arrangement with their present condition as a laboring,
landless, and homeless class."
Andrew Johnson's Plan--His Impeachment
Lincoln's successor, Andrew
Johnson, the Vice President, soon after taking office, proposed to
pursue a somewhat similar course. In a number of states he appointed
military governors, instructing them at the earliest possible moment to
assemble conventions, chosen "by that portion of the people of the said
states who are loyal to the United States," and proceed to the
organization of regular civil government. Johnson, a Southern man and a
Democrat, was immediately charged by the Republicans with being too
ready to restore the Southern states. As the months went by, the
opposition to his measures and policies in Congress grew in size and
bitterness. The contest resulted in the impeachment of Johnson by the
House of Representatives in March, 1868, and his acquittal by the Senate
merely because his opponents lacked one vote of the two-thirds required
for conviction.
Congress Enacts "Reconstruction Laws."--In fact, Congress was in a
strategic position. It was the law-making body, and it could, moreover,
determine the conditions under which Senators and Representatives from
the South were to be readmitted. It therefore proceeded to pass a series
of reconstruction acts--carrying all of them over Johnson's veto. These
measures, the first of which became a law on March 2, 1867, betrayed an
animus not found anywhere in Lincoln's plans or Johnson's proclamations.
They laid off the ten states--the whole Confederacy with the exception
of Tennessee--still outside the pale, into five military districts, each
commanded by a military officer appointed by the President. They ordered
the commanding general to prepare a register of voters for the election
of delegates to conventions chosen for the purpose of drafting new
constitutions. Such voters, however, were not to be, as Lincoln had
suggested, loyal persons duly qualified under the law existing before
secession but "the male citizens of said state, twenty-one years old and
upward, of whatever race, color, or previous condition, ... except such
as may be disfranchised for participation in the rebellion or for felony
at common law." This was the death knell to the idea that the leaders of
the Confederacy and their white supporters might be permitted to share
in the establishment of the new order. Power was thus arbitrarily thrust
into the hands of the newly emancipated male negroes and the handful of
whites who could show a record of loyalty. That was not all. Each state
was, under the reconstruction acts, compelled to ratify the fourteenth
amendment to the federal Constitution as a price of restoration to the
union.
The composition of the conventions thus authorized may be imagined.
Bondmen without the asking and without preparation found themselves the
governing power. An army of adventurers from the North, "carpet baggers"
as they were called, poured in upon the scene to aid in
"reconstruction." Undoubtedly many men of honor and fine intentions gave
unstinted service, but the results of their deliberations only
aggravated the open wound left by the war. Any number of political
doctors offered their prescriptions; but no effective remedy could be
found. Under measures admittedly open to grave objections, the Southern
states were one after another restored to the union by the grace of
Congress, the last one in 1870. Even this grudging concession of the
formalities of statehood did not mean a full restoration of honors and
privileges. The last soldier was not withdrawn from the last Southern
capital until 1877, and federal control over elections long remained as
a sign of congressional supremacy.
The Status of the Freedmen
Even more intricate than the issues
involved in restoring the seceded states to the union was the question
of what to do with the newly emancipated slaves. That problem, often put
to abolitionists before the war, had become at last a real concern. The
thirteenth amendment abolishing slavery had not touched it at all. It
declared bondmen free, but did nothing to provide them with work or
homes and did not mention the subject of political rights. All these
matters were left to the states, and the legislatures of some of them,
by their famous "black codes," restored a form of servitude under the
guise of vagrancy and apprentice laws. Such methods were in fact partly
responsible for the reaction that led Congress to abandon Lincoln's
policies and undertake its own program of reconstruction.
Still no extensive effort was made to solve by law the economic problems
of the bondmen. Radical abolitionists had advocated that the slaves when
emancipated should be given outright the fields of their former
masters; but Congress steadily rejected the very idea of confiscation.
The necessity of immediate assistance it recognized by creating in 1865
the Freedmen's Bureau to take care of refugees. It authorized the issue
of food and clothing to the destitute and the renting of abandoned and
certain other lands under federal control to former slaves at reasonable
rates. But the larger problem of the relation of the freedmen to the
land, it left to the slow working of time.
Against sharp protests from conservative men, particularly among the
Democrats, Congress did insist, however, on conferring upon the freedmen
certain rights by national law. These rights fell into broad divisions,
civil and political. By an act passed in 1866, Congress gave to former
slaves the rights of white citizens in the matter of making contracts,
giving testimony in courts, and purchasing, selling, and leasing
property. As it was doubtful whether Congress had the power to enact
this law, there was passed and submitted to the states the fourteenth
amendment which gave citizenship to the freedmen, assured them of the
privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States, and declared
that no state should deprive any person of his life, liberty, or
property without due process of law. Not yet satisfied, Congress
attempted to give social equality to negroes by the second civil rights
bill of 1875 which promised to them, among other things, the full and
equal enjoyment of inns, theaters, public conveyances, and places of
amusement--a law later declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.
The matter of political rights was even more hotly contested; but the
radical Republicans, like Charles Sumner, asserted that civil rights
were not secure unless supported by the suffrage. In this same
fourteenth amendment they attempted to guarantee the ballot to all negro
men, leaving the women to take care of themselves. The amendment
declared in effect that when any state deprived adult male citizens of
the right to vote, its representation in Congress should be reduced in
the proportion such persons bore to the voting population.
This provision having failed to accomplish its purpose, the fifteenth
amendment was passed and ratified, expressly declaring that no citizen
should be deprived of the right to vote "on account of race, color, or
previous condition of servitude." To make assurance doubly secure,
Congress enacted in 1870, 1872, and 1873 three drastic laws, sometimes
known as "force bills," providing for the use of federal authorities,
civil and military, in supervising elections in all parts of the Union.
So the federal government, having destroyed chattel slavery, sought by
legal decree to sweep away all its signs and badges, civil, social, and
political. Never, save perhaps in some of the civil conflicts of Greece
or Rome, had there occurred in the affairs of a nation a social
revolution so complete, so drastic, and far-reaching in its results.
SUMMARY OF THE SECTIONAL CONFLICT
Just as the United States, under the impetus of Western enterprise,
rounded out the continental domain, its very existence as a nation was
challenged by a fratricidal conflict between two sections. This storm
had been long gathering upon the horizon. From the very beginning in
colonial times there had been a marked difference between the South and
the North. The former by climate and soil was dedicated to a planting
system--the cultivation of tobacco, rice, cotton, and sugar cane--and in
the course of time slave labor became the foundation of the system. The
North, on the other hand, supplemented agriculture by commerce, trade,
and manufacturing. Slavery, though lawful, did not flourish there. An
abundant supply of free labor kept the Northern wheels turning.
This difference between the two sections, early noted by close
observers, was increased with the advent of the steam engine and the
factory system. Between 1815 and 1860 an industrial revolution took
place in the North. Its signs were gigantic factories, huge aggregations
of industrial workers, immense cities, a flourishing commerce, and
prosperous banks. Finding an unfavorable reception in the South, the new
industrial system was confined mainly to the North. By canals and
railways New York, Boston, and Philadelphia were linked with the
wheatfields of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. A steel net wove North and
Northwest together. A commercial net supplemented it. Western trade was
diverted from New Orleans to the East and Eastern credit sustained
Western enterprise.
In time, the industrial North and the planting South evolved different
ideas of political policy. The former looked with favor on protective
tariffs, ship subsidies, a sound national banking system, and internal
improvements. The farmers of the West demanded that the public domain be
divided up into free homesteads for farmers. The South steadily swung
around to the opposite view. Its spokesmen came to regard most of these
policies as injurious to the planting interests.
The economic questions were all involved in a moral issue. The Northern
states, in which slavery was of slight consequence, had early abolished
the institution. In the course of a few years there appeared
uncompromising advocates of universal emancipation. Far and wide the
agitation spread. The South was thoroughly frightened. It demanded
protection against the agitators, the enforcement of its rights in the
case of runaway slaves, and equal privileges for slavery in the new
territories.
With the passing years the conflict between the two sections increased
in bitterness. It flamed up in 1820 and was allayed by the Missouri
compromise. It took on the form of a tariff controversy and
nullification in 1832. It appeared again after the Mexican war when the
question of slavery in the new territories was raised. Again
compromise--the great settlement of 1850--seemed to restore peace, only
to prove an illusion. A series of startling events swept the country
into war: the repeal of the Missouri compromise in 1854, the rise of the
Republican party pledged to the prohibition of slavery in the
territories, the Dred Scott decision of 1857, the Lincoln-Douglas
debates, John Brown's raid, the election of Lincoln, and secession.
The Civil War, lasting for four years, tested the strength of both North
and South, in leadership, in finance, in diplomatic skill, in material
resources, in industry, and in armed forces. By the blockade of Southern
ports, by an overwhelming weight of men and materials, and by relentless
hammering on the field of battle, the North was victorious.
The results of the war were revolutionary in character. Slavery was
abolished and the freedmen given the ballot. The Southern planters who
had been the leaders of their section were ruined financially and almost
to a man excluded from taking part in political affairs. The union was
declared to be perpetual and the right of a state to secede settled by
the judgment of battle. Federal control over the affairs of states,
counties, and cities was established by the fourteenth amendment. The
power and prestige of the federal government were enhanced beyond
imagination. The North was now free to pursue its economic policies: a
protective tariff, a national banking system, land grants for railways,
free lands for farmers. Planting had dominated the country for nearly a
generation. Business enterprise was to take its place.