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Millburn New Jersey Consortium, Syllabus
The Secession Crisis: The Civil War and its Aftermath
Texts:
- Belz, Abraham Lincoln, Constitutionalism, and Equal Rights in the Civil War Era
- Grier, Culture and Comfort: Parlor Making and Middle-Class Identity, 1850-1930
- Kolchin, American Slavery: 1619-1877
- McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom
- Perman, Emancipation and Reconstruction 1862-1879
- Potter, The Impending Crisis 1848-1861
- Ransom and Sutch, One Kind of Freedom: The Economic Consequences of Emancipation
- *Ratner et al., The Evolution of the American Economy: Growth, Welfare, and Decision Making (2nd ed., 1993): Selections in binder
Day One: The Constitution, Slavery, and the Nature of the Union
The framers of the Constitution attempted to realize the principles of the Declaration of Independence. Thus they established a federal union, with a government strong enough to preserve liberty but limited so as not to endanger liberty. This effort was complicated by the existence of African slavery in America, and other sectional differences.
This discussion will address the following questions: What was the nature of American slavery? What kind of government did the Constitution establish? What did the Constitution say about slavery? How did the development of the party system and antislavery movements affect the system?
*Documents: U.S. Constitution; Frederick Douglass; George Fitzhugh; Corfield v. Coryell; Massachusetts personal liberty law; Fugitive Slave Act.
Day Two: The Crisis of the Union
The issue of slavery in the territories sharpened sectional divisions, led to the breakdown of the party system and the creation of the Republican party, and finally produced the secession of eleven states in 1861.
This session will explore the southern attempt to expand slavery into the territories and abroad, the formation of the Republican Party, the Supreme Court's Dred Scott decision, the Lincoln-Douglas debates, Lincoln's election, secession and the Republicans' response to it.
Questions to consider will be: What was the basis of the Republicans' antislavery strategy? How did Lincoln interpret the founders' view of slavery, racial equality, and the nature of the union? What was the Confederate view of secession as a constitutional option?
Background Reading Potter; McPherson, chs. 3-9.
*Documents: South Carolina Declaration of Causes; Dred Scott v. Sanford; Lincoln-Douglas debates; Lincoln's First Inaugural; Belz, "Lincoln, Secession and Revolution: The Civil War Challenge to the Founding"
Day Three: The Civil War
Victory in the Civil War required Lincoln to maintain the unity and dominance of the Republican party. In addition, the war facilitated monumental changes in national policy, reintroducing the Federalist-Whig agenda of economic promotion. President Lincoln also needed to prevent European powers from exploiting the rebellion to discredit republican government and expand their power in the Western Hemisphere. The war caused Republican policy to embrace emancipation and abolition.
How did the Lincoln and the Republicans maintain public support for their policies? What opposition forces challenged them? How did the American state and economy develop during the war? How did the Lincoln administration keep the great powers at bay? What were the conflicting views among and within the great powers (especially Great Britain) about the American Civil War? What problems of international law did the unclear "nature of the war" present?
Background Reading: McPherson, chs. 10-28; Belz, chs. 1, 4-5.
*Documents: Emancipation Proclamation; Lincoln's Second Inaugural.
Day Four: Reconstruction
After the end of the rebellion, the Republicans faced the twin tasks of restoring the Confederate states to the Union and protecting the rights of the freedmen.
How did they go about these tasks? How successful were they? What were the alternatives to policies that were adopted? What political and constitutional developments and problems resulted?
Background ReadingPerman; Belz, chs. 7-9.
*Documents: Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction; Wade-Davis bill, veto, and manifesto; Black Codes; Civil Rights Acts; Ex parte Milligan; Slaughterhouse Cases; Civil Rights Cases.
Day Five:
A.M. - Abraham Lincoln's Invention of Presidential War Powers
P.M. - Individual Particularity, Literary Form, and Public Life
Day Six: Residential Space and Material Culture in 19th Century America
The rise of individualism in 19th Century America accompanied a corresponding "bourgeois interior" in residential accommodations. Furthered by expanding manufacture of consumption goods, families created places of intergenerational particularistic relations in their homes. Among these places was the "parlor," the family's most private preserve
Day Seven: Trip to Newark
A trip to one of the nation's earliest centers of commerce and manufacturing includes visits to the Newark Museum's collection of Civil War era painting, its Ballantine House, an imposing and well-appointed Victorian age residence, the Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart, an example of a style of ecclesiastical architecture whose diffusion assisted in the "refinement of America," and the New Jersey Historical Society's collection of period furniture and other domestic artifacts.
Day Eight: Financial and Industrial Changes Resulting from the Civil War and Emancipation
Part A. Economics of Emancipation
Emancipation undermined organizational and other bases of the southern agricultural economy. Alternative organizational bases emerged, and oneÑsharecroppingÑcame to dominate. Rather than prospering, the southern economy slipped far behind the rest of the US economy, and it remained that way for decades.
Questions: What organizational options were available to the post-emancipation southern economy? Why did sharecropping win out? Why, despite more freedom for African Americans, was the post-emancipation southern economy so much poorer relative to the rest of the country than it had been prior to the Civil War?
Readings: Ransom and Sutch, chs. 1, 3, 5, 7-9.
Part B. Finacnial and Industrial Changes Resulting from the War
In the decades after the Civil War, the US economyÑdespite the lag of the SouthÑbecame the largest and richest in the world. The frontier disappeared as the continent became settled, and the amount of land cultivated doubled in three decades. Mass production and distribution technologies gave rise to giant enterprises; it is sometimes said that the US, unlike other nations, had big business before it had big government. These developments posed challenges for labor in the new industrial society. Railway and communication networks covered the country. And the financial system, changed substantially in the Civil War, fostered a high rate of capital formation while at the same time exhibiting an increased propensity toward deflation, periodic financial crises, and other forms of financial instability.
Questions: Why was there such rapid economic expansion on all fronts after the Civil War? In what ways was this expansion a result of the war? Why was the US the first nation to develop "big business"? Did the so-called "robber barons" owe their wealth to monopoly or efficiency? What were the effects of big business on small business, labor, education, and government? What were the sources of financial instability?
Readings: *Ratner et al., chs. 11-15.