Module 5: The Civil War Assignment
3/5/2019 Module 5: The Civil War Assignment
https:
miamioh.instructure.com/courses/95031/assignments/906370?module_item_id= XXXXXXXXXX/2
Module 5: The Civil War Assignment
Due Tuesday by 11:59pm Points 20 Submitting a file upload
Available until Mar 5 at 11:59pm
Submit Assignment
The goal of this paper is for you to demonstrate your understanding of the relationship between slavery and
the civil war. This is an expository essay (https:
owl.english.purdue.edu/owl
esource/685/02/) and it
should do four things:
1. Explain slavery's role in the run up to the civil war.
2. Explain the slave and freedman's roles in the civil wa
3. Explain the goals of reconstruction
4. Explain whether or not reconstruction was successful
Guidelines
The purpose of this essay is to demonstrate your understanding of the course material through exposition
and description. This paper should have a thesis statement, an introduction, and a conclusion. It should
e well thought out and structured. It is also very important that you proofread your paper to ensure that it is
free of any e
ors. It is often helpful to read your paper out loud to yourself. It helps you to catch sentences
that runon or don't make sense. Further, the assignment isn't complete until you conduct your peer
eview. I assign peerreviews the morning after journal entries are due. You will then have 48 hours to
complete your peer review. You must complete the ru
ic as well as comment on the students writing in
order to get full points for peerreview. If you need help finding your peer review watch this tutorial video on
peer reviews. (https:
vimeo.com/ XXXXXXXXXX)
Formatting
Each essay must follow the below formatting guidelines:
1. Double spaced
2. Times New Roman/Arial
3. 12pt Font
4. 1 inch margins
5. Every paper must have a works cited page must be cited in MLA or Chicago Style
6. Entries must be at least 750 words.
Writing Support
At the Regionals, you can find oneonone help at the Tutoring and Learning Cente
(http:
miamioh.edu
egionals/academics/tutoringlearningcente
index.html) (MUM 2 JHN) (MUH 102 REN).
The Regionals Tutoring and Learning Center also offers online writing help. If you have a draft ready two
days in advance you can submit it to this form
3/5/2019 Module 5: The Civil War Assignment
https:
miamioh.instructure.com/courses/95031/assignments/906370?module_item_id= XXXXXXXXXX/2
Total Points: 20.0
Expository Essay Ru
ic
Criteria Ratings Pts
5.0 pts
5.0 pts
5.0 pts
5.0 pts
(https:
miamioh.formstack.com/forms/online_writing_tutoring) . And a tutor will give you some feedback.
They will get it back to you within 48 hours. You can submit your paper up to three times! This is a great
service and I wish more students would take advantage of it.
At Oxford, the Howe Writing Center (HWC) (http:
miamioh.edu/hcwe/hwc/index.html) recognizes that all
writers have more to learn and supports Miami students including students on the regional campuses. Thus,
I encourage you to schedule an appointment for academic, personal, and professional writing at any stage in
your writing process—whether you are
ainstorming ideas, revising first drafts, or polishing final drafts. The
HWC offers live online appointments (http:
miamioh.edu/hcwe/hwc/appointments
ealtime/index.html)
(via video or chat) and written online appointments (http:
miamioh.edu/hcwe/hwc/appointments/written
esponse/index.html) (via Google Docs or email). For more information, please visit the HWC website
(http:
miamioh.edu/hcwe/hwc/index.html) .
____________________________________________
LATE WORK IS NOT ACCEPTED!
Ideas and Content
Must have a strong thesis and demonstrate an understanding of material
5.0 pts
Full
Marks
0.0 pts
No
Marks
Connections
Make connections to other material and/or ideas within or outside of the course
material.
5.0 pts
Full
Marks
0.0 pts
No
Marks
Grammar, Mechanics and Formatting 5.0 pts
Full
Marks
0.0 pts
No
Marks
PeerReview 5.0 pts
Full
Marks
0.0 pts
No
Marks
CIVIL WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION.docx
CIVIL WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION
The road to Civil War was most definitively laid in the
stormy 1850's (Franklin, 1974:208ff). In this decade, a series of
events made war almost inevitable. First was the passage of the
1850 Fugitive Slave Law which made the fugitive guilty until proven
innocent, denied his/her testimony and was retroactive. It gave the
abolitionists another opportunity to expose the viciousness and
ecalcitrance of slaveholders and slavery advocates. Secondly, in
1854 Congress passed the Kansas-Ne
aska Act which repealed the
Missouri Com promise of 1850 which prohibited slavery in the
Kansas- Ne
aska Te
itory. This increased the bloody struggle in
the te
itory and foreshadowed larger battles. Thirdly, the U.S.
Supreme Court ruled in the Dred Scott case XXXXXXXXXXthat neither free
nor enslaved Africans were citizens and had no right whites were
ound to respect. Fourthly, John Brown, a white radical abolitionist
attacked Harper's Fe
y in 1859 to gain arms for at least 500 slaves
and wage a war in the South. Although Black abolitionists like
Frederick Douglass and Ha
iet Tubman thought co
ectly that his
move was premature and unwise, he became a martyr of the
abolitionist movement and foreshadowed the coming war. The final
straw came with the election of Lincoln whom the South hated and
whose election they saw as an abolitionist vote.
CIVIL WAR. The Civil War began with the Confederate attack on Fort
Sumner, S.C. in April 1861.Although many factors can be cited as
causes of the Civil War, the question of slavery and by extension the
question of the future of Africans in America stand at the core of its
causes. The Civil War is important in Afro-American history not only
ecause it led to their emancipation, but even more important,
ecause they fought heroically and in great numbers in the war and
played other significant roles in i t. As Quarles (1969:296) states,
African Americans ''took stock in the adage that they who would be
free must themselves strike the blow." Thus, they took up arms and
ecame self-conscious agents of their own liberation.
At first the whites resisted, feeling that: 1) to call and
depend on Blacks implied their inadequacies; 2) arming Blacks
meant arming potential rebels; 3) serving in the armed forces would
change the social attitude and status of Blacks and thus pose a
problem for white rule and power. They also pretended to doubt
the fighting qualities of Blacks, but this was i
ational and based
more on racist ego-needs than evidence as the war would prove. By
the summer of 1862, after a series of military defeats by Union
forces, Congress passed the Confiscation Act and the Militia Act
which opened the way for Afro-Americans - free and freed - to aid
the war effort. Moreover, Lincoln, seeing the indispensability of
Afro-American participation in the war, if it were to be won, issued
in the same year The Emancipation Proclamation.
The Proclamation was not a blanket declaration of freedom
for all enslaved Africans, only for enslaved Africans i n states and
parts of states in rebellion against the U.S. government. Loyal slave
states like Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland and Delaware were
exempt. Moreover, it did not grant freedom, only "declared" it, a
declaration totally unenforceable. For the Proclamation was
declaring freedom for enslaved Africans in the Confederacy, a land
which had already rejected U.S. jurisdiction and was at war with it
to defend its decision. Its value was as a propaganda document to
appease abolitionists and Radical Republicans, give the war the
moral character it lacked and contribute further to the rebellion and
flight among enslaved Africans which had already reached a high
level (Quarles, 1953:117).
Africans, anxious to fight for freedom, respect and better
status and role in society, enlisted in large numbers and served in
various capacities. In addition to serving as regular soldiers and
sailors, they served as guides, scouts, intelligence agents, engineers,
nurses, surgeons, chaplains, construction workers, teamsters, cooks,
carpenters, miners, farmers, commandos and recruiters. An
estimated 186,000 Africans participated as soldiers and 29,000 as
sailors accounting for 25% of U.S. sailors. The real number of
participants is probably much higher but was disguised by many
mulattos being registered as whites. Moreover, Blacks served in
every theatre of operations, fought in 449 engagements, thirty-nine
of which were major battles and won seventeen Congressional
Medals of Honor on land and four on sea. These achievements were
made inspite of vicious racism exhibited in treatment, pay and time
differentials, poor equipment, bad medical core, excess fatigue
details, wreckless and hasty assignments and the no- quarter pol icy
of the South against Block soldiers.
The Civil War ended April 9, 1865 with the su
ender of
Gen. Robert E. Lee to Gen. Ulysses S. Grant. The end of the war and
the Union victory was important to both Afro-Americans and the
nation as a whole. For Afro-Americans, it was an end to slavery
which had lasted almost 250 years. Secondly, it represented a
victory won only as a result of their entry and heroic participation in
the struggle which was not only to free them but win respect and a
new status in society. Thirdly, it meant the beginning of a new
struggle to secure economic and political rights which did not
automatically come with emancipation. For the nation, the victory
meant the federal government had clearly established its
sovereignty over the states, freed the South from a morally
indefensible and politically and economically backward system
and thus opened for the South and the nation a new era of
economic growth and political change - as well as the problems
which accompanied this process.
RECONSTRUCTION. The period of Reconstruction XXXXXXXXXX)
epresented for Afro-America ns "the best of times and the worst of
times." I t was a time of great leaps forward and hope and great
disappointment and betrayal (Log an, XXXXXXXXXXFor the U.S., it
epresented a time of great possibility to realize its ideals of
freedom justice and equality for all. Bu t after a strong start it
etrayed its own ideals and failed in solving the problems the post-
war period posed, i.e., the problems of Reconstruction. These
problems were essentially: l) rebuilding the South's economy on the
asis of free labor and its industrialization and reintegration in the
national economy; 2) politically subduing and transforming the
South; and 3) integration of the freed Africans into the social fa
ic,
especially in the South and protecting them from reenslavement,
exploitation and abuse. Out of these problems, only the
eintegration of the South economically and politically was really
achieved. This took place on the South's own terms and included
the betrayal and sacrifice of the Afro-American (Harding, 1981).
However, early events seemed to suggest an alternative
out- come. The Freed man's Bureau was established by Congress in
1865 to guide and protect the freed Africa ns. I t was to: l) set up
schools for them; 2) provide medical services, 3) write, supervise
and enforce their contracts; 4) manage, lease and sell them
confiscated an abandoned land; 5) resettle them; and 6) provide
them legal assistance and protection. Moreover, Congress passed
three cornerstone Amendments directed toward integration of
Blacks in the social fa
ic on the basis of equality. i.e., the
Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. Essentially, the
Thirteenth freed them: The Fourteenth made them citizens, and the
Fifteenth gave them the right to vote. Also, Congress passed the
1866 Civil Rights Act (CRA) declaring Black s citizens again; the 1870
Civil Right Act to expand and strengthen the 1866 CRA: and the
1871 CRA which sought to establish equal rights in public facilities
and also passed the 1871 Enforcement Act which outlawed white
te
orist societies like the Ku Klux Klan.
However, economically, Congress did not give Blacks the
sup- port they needed and they were essentially reintegrated back
into the southern economy under semi-slave conditions as share-
croppers. Whites, never accepting the freedom and equality of Afro-
Americans, passed Black Codes, patterned after the antebellum
slaves codes which made "the control of Blacks by white
employers...about as great as that which slaveholders exercised"
(Franklin, 1974:241). lnspite of the general assumption among
Blacks that the federal government would give them lots of forty
acres, and the tacit encouragement given this assumption by the bill
which created the Freedman's Bureau, the government never did,
thus posing one of the main problems of Black economic
adjustment. For with no land of their own, the majority of freed
Africans slowly but inevitably returned to the plantation more or
less at the mercy of the employers.
Moreover, those who did go to u
an areas were met with
crippling discrimination and severe exploitation. Black carpenters,
icklayers, painters, blacksmiths and other skilled workers were
strongly opposed by white artisans in their employment efforts.