Presentation (1) based on morning assembly

Presentation (1) based on morning assembly

1. Causes of the American Civil War Institution of Slavery: By the middle of the nineteenth century, slavery had been abolished throughout the British empire. Attitudes towards slavery began to change in other countries, including the USA. An anti-slavery movement began in the northern states.
The industrialised North felt that the abolition of slavery would free more people to work in their expanding industries. They were against the institution of slavery, declaring it as a sign of the backwardness of the southern states.

2. However, slavery was considered indispensable and an economic necessity to the labour-intensive plantation economy of the southern states.
This dispute over the issue of slavery was the root cause of the American Civil War.

3. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin Harriet Beecher Stowe’s anti-slavery fiction work Uncle Tom’s Cabin, published in 1852, was a powerful book which exposed the wickedness and evils of slavery. It started a wave of anti- slavery reaction from most Americans in the north, which came in conflict with the south.

4. John Brown’s Raid On 16 October 1859, an abolitionist named John Brown, with his 21 accomplices, tried to begin an armed slave rebellion by seizing the United States arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. John Brown’s effort failed as most of his men were killed. He was captured and hanged. Northern abolitionists quickly made him a martyr, and white southerners saw it as an attempt by the North to instigate a slave revolt in the south.

5. Appointment of Lincoln as the President of the USA In 1860, Abraham Lincoln became the sixteenth President of the USA. Lincoln was renowned for his stance on slavery, which he regarded as a morally reprehensible institution.
He vocally criticised slavery Abraham Lincoln and viewed it as a violation of individual rights and freedoms. Additionally, he implemented measures to curtail the expansion of slavery into the western frontier.
The southern states saw Abraham Lincoln’s election as a potential end to slavery. Southern slave states were also losing their representation and control in the new government.

6. Secession of the Southern States Appalled by the victory of Lincoln, the southern states decided to break away from the Union. They formed the Confederate States of America, with Jefferson Davis as President.
Lincoln was, however, determined to maintain the Union. Thus, on 12 April 1861, the first shots of war were fired, marking the beginning of the American Civil War.

7. Abraham Lincoln in the American Civil War Throughout the first year-and-a-half of his presidency, Lincoln made it clear that the North was fighting the war to preserve the Union. However, as the war progressed, freeing the slaves became an important wartime measure for weakening the southern rebellion. Liberation of slaves would also add soldiers to the Union army and destroy the economic base of the South.

8. The Emancipation Proclamation On 1 January 1863, in the third year of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln issued an Emancipation Proclamation, freeing all slaves in the rebellious southern states and inviting them to join the forces of the North.
The Proclamation thus declared abolition of slavery, along with the preservation of the Union, as the primary objective of the war. The Proclamation freed about 3 million slaves.

9. Gettysburg Address On 19 November 1863, Abraham Lincoln was invited to Gettysburg to dedicate the first national cemetery and honour the soldiers who had died in the Battle of Gettysburg, in July 1863. In his three-minute speech, Lincoln stressed on national unity, democracy and equality, and condemned slavery and justified its abolition. He highlighted the principles of human equality, mentioned in the Declaration of Independence, stating that in 1776, when the nation was born, it was ‘conceived in liberty and dedication to the proposition that all men are created equal’.

10. Lincoln went ahead to state that ‘this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the Earth’.
Lincoln’s Gettysburg address is regarded as a masterpiece of political speeches of the world.

11. The American Civil War The American Civil War, fought between the 23 Northern ‘Union’ States and the 11 Southern ‘Confederate’ States, lasted for about four years, from 1861 to 1865. It was a bitter war, which resulted in the destruction of southern infrastructure and claimed thousands of lives.
While the southern states fought with zeal under the leadership of General Robert Lee, the North had a clear advantage in terms of material resources: 23 states with a population of 22 million against 11 states with a population of around 9 million.

12. The North’s superiority in terms of its industry helped in fighting the war with its superior armory in comparison to the South.
The Civil War finally came to an end with the defeat of Confederates in April 1865. General Robert Lee of the Confederate States surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant of the Union on 9 April 1865.
Through the victory of the Union states, it was clearly spelt out that the United States was an indestructible Union and, as Lincoln had claimed, that ‘no state had the right to secede’ from the Union.

13. Lincoln was re-elected for a second term in 1865. With the war behind him, he spoke of reconstruction, especially in the battered southern states. However, being committed to the idea of true equality, he now suggested introducing voting rights for the free, coloured population. This angered many sympathisers of the Confederacy. One such sympathiser, John Wilkes Booth, assassinated Lincoln while he was attending a play at Ford theatre in Washington on 14 April 1865.

14. Impact of the Civil War The American Union was preserved and the southern states were not allowed to secede. The American Union was declared an indestructible Union made of indestructible states.
With the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, slavery was formally abolished in the American Union.
Post the Civil War, a reconstruction plan to rebuild America began.