EMANCIPATION AND RECONSTRUCTION

The Period of Emancipation and Reconstruction



The Period of Emancipation and Reconstruction

Americans demanded the world's attention during their Civil War and Reconstruction. Newspapers around the globe reported the latest news from the United States as one vast battle followed another? as the largest system of slavery in the world crashed into pieces? as American democracy expanded to include people who had been enslaved only a few years before. Both the North and the South appealed to the global audience. Abraham Lincoln argued that his nation's Civil War "embraces more than the fate of these United States (August? 1981? 87). It presents to the whole family of man? the question? whether a constitutional republic? or a democracy . . . can? or cannot? maintain its territorial integrity." The struggle? Lincoln said? was for "a vast future?" a struggle to give all men "a fair chance in the race of life" (August? 1981? 87). Confederates claimed that they were also fighting for a cause of world-wide significance: self-determination. Playing down the centrality of slavery to their new nation? white Southerners built their case for independence on the right of free citizens to determine their political future (August? 1981? 87).

People in other nations could see that the massive struggle in the United States embodied conflicts that had been appearing in different forms throughout the world (Kenneth? 2003? 9). Defining nationhood? deciding the future of slavery? reinventing warfare for an industrial age? reconstructing a former slave society -- all these played out in the American Civil War. By no means was a major power? the United States nevertheless woven into the life of the world (August? 1981? 87). The young nation touched? directly and indirectly? India and Egypt? Hawaii and Japan? Russia and Canada? Mexico and Cuba? the Caribbean and Brazil? Britain and France. The country was still very much an experiment in 1860? a representative government stretched over an enormous space? held together by law rather than by memory? religion? or monarch (Kenneth? 2003? 9). The American Civil War? played out on the brightly lit stage of a new country? would be a drama of world history. How that experiment fared in its great crisis -- regardless of what happened -- would eventually matter to people everywhere.

Prior to the death of Abraham Lincoln? the policy of the Union toward the treatment and eventual emancipation of the black slaves evolved out of the military exigencies of the Civil War rather than any coherent plan. Benjamin Butler skirted the issue by treating fugitive slaves as contraband. In other occupied areas? the military and some northern liberals experimented with various contract labor schemes. The Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 was adopted as a war measure after other alternatives such as compensation to slaveowners and foreign colonization plans failed and "was a risky move because of its adverse effect on northern morale and the likelihood that it would stiffen southern resistance" (p. 13).

The Union Army was faced with a major refugee problem as 4 million uneducated former ...