Before 1861, slavery was a small matter that many people couldn't care less about. People owned slaves like how today we own furniture; they could buy them and sell them and do whatever they wanted with them. In their minds, the slaves were lesser beings then the white men.
Slavery was all around the world at the time, including the United States of America. They had been brought to the United States in 1619, so Americans did not remember life without slaves. You may wonder why the Southerners were the ones for slavery and the Northerners against. This is mostly because, due to the hotter weather conditions, there were more plantations in the South, especially as cotton plantations.
Wealthy plantation owners in the South thought that the idea of freeing slaves was absurd. Southern speakers protested that the slaves were happier working in the plantations and that they should be grateful to their owners for giving them housing and food. But this was a poor supplement for the slaves.
The slaves started work when they were only six years old. Their jobs were to lead farm animals into barns, clean up around the house, and later dust and look after their owner’s small children and do other jobs until they were old enough to work in the fields. They were punished if they were ever caught playing or doing their jobs the wrong way. A common punishment was whipping, even to young children.
When the Northern states began to work to put a stop to slavery, the South resisted. They eventually declared that they were going to brake away from the United States and form their own country. The current president, Abraham Lincoln, refused to let them do this. He wanted the US to remain united and in peace. But the South carried out the separation anyway.
Oregon, California, Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, New York, Kansas, Montana, Illinois, Kentucky, Indiana, Montana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Rhode Island, and Vermont were all against the idea of slavery. Virginia remained divided by their beliefs about slavery, and the western half of it seceded from the state to create West Virginia, another Union State.
The Confederate States were Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, North and South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia. The
The South said that Fort Sumter was rightfully theirs, but the Northerners denied this claim and wouldn’t leave the fort for their taking. So the South attacked it with powerful cannons. After this attack, President Abraham Lincoln ordered the Union troops to prepare for the upcoming war.
The war proved to make the lives of everyone harder then ever. People, especially as in the South, had to conserve food and clothing. The threat of loosing their loved ones to the war weighed on their minds every day. During the war, when many people couldn’t read or write (especially as women), a person would read aloud the newspaper, which would include the names of all of the people who had been lost to the war, in a public place where everyone could hear.
Teachers were often called to the war front, and many schools were forced to close. Sometimes the vacant schools would be used as temporary hospitals for wounded soldiers. Others would continue to be used, women teaching the classes. They also worked as nurses for the soldier or brought food to them--sometimes even on the battlefield.
Attacks usually occurred in the South. This was because the Confederate soldiers felt it was their duty to defend their newly formed country, not attack the Union States. Sometimes plantations would be used as battlefields. Sometimes slaves would use all of the commotion going on as an opportunity to escape. Other times they would simply hide until the battle was over, not wanting to take the risk of getting captured.
And indeed the punishments were extremely cruel to any captured runaway slave. Even though they had many kindhearted people in the South that risked their lives to help escaped slaves on their way to the North, concealing them in clever hiding places within their homes, the slaves were still likely to be caught. The owners would send out patrols of people to hunt down the fugitive slaves, often along with tracking dogs. If they were caught, they might be brutally whipped or even have a medal block secured to their feet to prevent them from being able to move quickly and crushing any hope of ever being able to successfully escape.
In 1865 General Robert E. Lee, a well-recognized Confederate war leader, surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant and signed a peace treaty. The exact date was the ninth of April, almost exactly four years of fighting (the war began on April 12). However, the actual fighting didn’t cease until May 9, 1865, due to the inability to immediately contact the troops and notify them about the end of the war. The American Civil War resulted in the deaths of 620, 000 American soldiers.
However, the struggle for black people’s rights still continued. They were forced to sit in the back of the bus, they wet to ‘black only’ schools and could only drink out of ‘black’ fountains. They were still treated like lesser beings. Perhaps it would have been different if President Abraham Lincoln hadn’t been assassinated. He had planned on a quick and peaceful acceptance to the Southern people’s rejoining. He never was able to put his plan into action, and the Southerners were treated with brooding hatred by the Union people. Things did eventually smooth out, but it takes a long time for four year’s worth of wounds to heal.
-KittyLover8
© 2013
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