Lincoln's POLICIES that WON the Civil War [APUSH Review]

[0:00]Well, all right, before we move on to reconstruction, we have to talk about Abraham Lincoln's boss level leadership during the Civil War and how it impacted the way we think about American ideals. So if you're ready to get them brain cows milked, let's get to it. Okay, let's begin by talking about how Abraham Lincoln successfully shifted the meaning of the war and the effects that it had. So remember that Lincoln was a Republican and as such he had a significant strain of free soil ideology right inside of him. What I mean is during his campaign, Lincoln articulated his clear belief that the president had no power to abolish slavery where it already existed. And so when the Civil War broke out, Lincoln understood the meaning of the conflict as merely constitutional. In other words, if you had asked Lincoln in 1861, what the war was for, he would have said to save the Union. And you can see that plain as day in one of Lincoln's letters from 1862 to a newspaper editor named Horace Greely. Lincoln said that if he could restore the Union without freeing a single enslaved person, he would do it. Or if he could restore the Union by freeing some or all enslaved people, he would do that. The point is emancipation was not Lincoln's motivation to win the war. He aimed to save the Union with or without slavery. Oh, and by the way, if you want note guides to follow along with this video and all my videos, check that link in the description. Anyway, by the end of 1862, Lincoln had flipped entirely on that position and made a significant step to articulate a new reason for fighting the war, namely to eradicate slavery. So, what, my dear Lincoln changed? Well, two big developments really contributed to it. First was the issue of contrabands, and allow me to Heim's plane that one up for you. Now, in 1861, as Union forces were stationed in Virginia, three enslaved black people who had escaped their plantations entered the camp seeking asylum. And so, because of mounting pressure from the abolitionist movement, General Benjamin Butler declared the three black people to be contrabands, which by definition refers to property that can be legally taken from the opposing side during wartime. Now, normally this refers to objects like papers or weapons or valuable items, but certainly not people. Like if people are taken during war, that means they're hostages. But given the South's insistence on classifying the enslaved as chattel or property, Butler decided to use that against the South and hold their property in union possession. I mean, it was kind of brilliant and deeply sassy at the same time and I am here for it. Anyway, it wasn't long before word spread and thousands of escaped blacks were arriving in Union camps as contrabands seeking their freedom. And by the end of the war, something like 400,000 enslaved people had escaped enslavement and crossed union lines for protection. However, the political status of these contrabands eventually became a problem. You see, federal law justified not returning these black refugees precisely because they were property and thus could be legally classified as contraband. And that led to the second and related reason that Lincoln shifted the meaning of the war, namely pressure from radical Republicans in Congress. Now, since Congress was almost entirely devoid of pro-slavery representatives, a staunchly anti-slavery group known as the Radical Republicans took control. And they aimed to destroy slavery as a means to weaken the Confederacy and strengthen the future of free labor in the Union. Therefore, they passed two confiscation acts which formally emancipated the multitude of contrabands that had fled to Union camps. And to be clear, that declaration of freedom only applied to areas occupied by the Union, which would lay the groundwork for the emancipation proclamation, which I'm going to tell you more about in a moment. Anyway, southerners, not surprisingly, got all kinds of cranky when these laws passed. But southern Crankies aside, the legislation for sure had its intended effect. As more and more enslaved people escaped, the chief labor source for southern plantations became thinner and thinner, which put enormous strain on the southern economy. And so, the Radical Republicans proved that emancipation could actually be a good strategy for winning the war. So, therefore, in response to those two developments, Lincoln pondered adopting the same tactics in the executive branch. But Lincoln was far more hesitant to reframe the meaning of the war than were the radical Republicans and Congress. And Lincoln had his reasons, but chief among them was that he could not afford to alienate the slave states that had remained in the Union. Wait, what? Did you just say there were slave states in the Union? That is indeed what I said, my confuzzled pupil, and I can't believe this is the first occasion I've had to mention it, but, you know, here we are. Yes, it's true, there were, in fact, four slave states that did not secede from the Union, and they were known as the border states, namely Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, and Delaware. And then West Virginia came along later, but, you know, whatever. And we don't really need to get into all the reasons that they remained within the Union, but you just need to know that Lincoln thought that if he lost these states to the Confederacy, well, then the Union might as well pack up and go home because the war would be lost. And then adding to the pressure, public sentiment in the Union was not altogether on board with abolition. This was especially true of a faction of Democrats who constantly pushed Lincoln to end the war, even if the peace was premature. And those folks were dubbed Copperhead Democrats by Republicans since they viewed their policies as utterly poisonous to the war effort. So, the point is, Lincoln had to walk a very delicate line when he was considering reframing the war as a battle against slavery. Even so, by 1863, the contraband issue and the confiscation acts, not to mention the Union victory at the Battle of Antietam convinced Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared that all enslaved people located in states currently in rebellion were immediately and forever free. And don't miss the nuance there. Lincoln's proclamation freed all enslaved people in the Confederacy, since those were the states in rebellion, but freed precisely no enslaved people in the border states since they were not in rebellion.

[5:15]But really follow the logic all the way down with me. The Confederates had their own constitution and their own laws, and they had no obligation to comply with the Proclamation. So, legally, the Emancipation Proclamation did almost nothing to change the status of enslaved Americans. So, you know, what's the big deal? Well, the big deal is that Lincoln's proclamation had two very significant effects. First, by reframing the war as a fight to eradicate slavery, all southern hopes of allying with Great Britain and France were dashed. You see, these countries themselves had abolished slavery earlier in the century, and it would just be a bad look if they now allied with the Confederacy in order to preserve slavery there. But also, remember in the last video, I mentioned that the Confederacy believed that they had a massive bargaining chip to rope Britain and France into supporting them, namely cotton. Yes, it was true that Great Britain imported metric buttloads of Southern cotton to feed their textile factories. And southern planters believed that this kind of cotton diplomacy would ultimately score them a very powerful partner in their war against the Union. But, unfortunately for the South, in 1858, Great Britain went ahead and claimed India as a colony and, as it turned out, all the cotton Britain could ever want, they could grow in India. So, sorry, Confederacy, no foreign help for you. But then the second effect of the Emancipation Proclamation was that it encouraged enslaved people in the Confederacy to escape their bondage and enlist to fight with Union troops. However, to be clear, even if Union soldiers now understood that their purpose was to eradicate slavery, that did not mean that they also wanted equal rights for black Americans or even to fight alongside them despite their common purpose. Like, don't be crazy. And so that meant that most black Union soldiers who were formerly enslaved created their own units for battle. And one of the first of these all-black units was the First South Carolina Volunteer Infantry Regiment, which was made up of formerly enslaved escapees from South Carolina, and Georgia, and Florida. But, let's not forget that enslaved women also escaped and served the Union efforts, though, you know, not as soldiers. For example, Susie King Taylor had escaped enslaved in Georgia and fled to Union lines in Savannah. And there she developed skills as a nurse and educator and served the black troops in the First Volunteer Infantry Regiment. So, all that to say, Lincoln made huge steps in reframing the meaning of the war from an effort to save the Union to a battle to eradicate slavery, and that had huge consequences. And in doing that, Lincoln did his best to unify the nation by demonstrating how emancipation was actually the fulfillment of America's founding ideals. And he did this by means of many speeches and public addresses, but none illustrate this effort better than the Gettysburg Address and Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address. So, Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address in 1863 at the dedication of the National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. And although we haven't talked about it, the Battle of Gettysburg had led to enormous casualties and deaths for both sides. In other words, this ground on which Lincoln stood illustrated the bitter division between Americans. But Lincoln thought that it could simultaneously become the ground of their unification and healing. So, he began the speech by saying that the United States was conceived in liberty, whose most fundamental belief was that all men are created equal. And therefore, this civil war was the nation's greatest test to find out if a nation conceived and born on such a principle can long endure. And then Lincoln declares that if the Union is victorious and slavery is abolished, then the nation will have passed the test and fulfilled the principles on which it was founded and that a government of the people, by the people and for the people shall not perish from the Earth. Okay, then the second example of Lincoln's attempt to unify the country was his second inaugural address. So, Lincoln was reelected in 1864 and he used the occasion to deliver a speech as custom dictated. It was a mere 701 words that likely took only a few minutes to deliver, but Lincoln used all the rhetorical power he possessed to explain the cause of the war and his hopes to welcome back the states who had broken the Union. He affirmed that slavery was a powerful interest for the Southern states and that everyone knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. And that war had lasted longer and become far more costly than anyone had ever expected. But even so, he ends with a striking note of hope and unification. He says with malice toward none and with charity for all, let us strive on to finish the work we are in to bind up the nation's wound. And those words foreshadowed Lincoln's plans for reconstruction after the war. And I wish I could tell you that a man who longed for the nation to heal and was capable of binding up its wounds would be able to work toward that end after the war was done. But here's where I tell you not so much and we'll pick that up in the next video. Well, okay, you can click here to watch my other videos from Unit 5 or you can click here to get my video note guides, which are going to help you get all the contents of this course firmly crammed into your brain fold. I'm glad you came around and I'll catch you on the flip flop.