American Civil War and Slavery?

Question

How far North and west of the Mason-Dixon line was slavery practiced? It was not only in the south. Also, how far north and west of the Mason-Dixon line did segregation exist? Which Northern and western states were involved?

Answer 1

The only battle of the Civil War in New Mexico was fought on Raton Pass, which is just across the state line from what would be Colorado. So, not much happened this far out west.

Answer 2

Those slave states that did not secede were Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky and Missouri.

Segregation? There were certainly barriers and prejudices that existed in the Union states. It is difficult to understand the thought process of the people then if you aren't exposed to the same learned behavior as them.

To say that northerners did not care about slaves and ex-slaves is just a broad and ignorant statement. Not all northerners cared to be sure and not all cared to the same extent. However, do not ignore the evidence of the abolition movement, the underground railroad, the many anti-slavery military men, the emancipation proclamation and the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution that were passed by northerners, not southerners because the southern states had for the most part not been readmitted.
The nation had a long education process regarding equality following the Civil War but dont discount the gains made during that time.

Answer 3

Delaware and Maryland were slavery states. Not sure about the west. Alot of people are not aware that slavery existed outside of the south. Northerners didn't care about slaves nor do they care about blacks and minorities today.

Answer 4

The American Civil War (1861–1865) was a separatist conflict between the United States Federal government (the "Union") and eleven Southern slave states that declared their secession and formed the Confederate States of America, led by President Jefferson Davis. The Union, led by President Abraham Lincoln and the Republican Party, opposed the expansion of slavery and rejected any right of secession. Fighting commenced on April 12, 1861, when Confederate forces attacked a Federal military installation at Fort Sumter in South Carolina.[1]

During the first year, the Union asserted control of the border states and established a naval blockade as both sides raised large armies. In 1862 the large, bloody battles began. In September 1862, Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation[2] made the freeing of the slaves a war goal, despite opposition from northern Copperheads who tolerated secession and slavery. Emancipation ensured that Britain and France would not intervene to help the Confederacy. In addition, the goal also allowed the Union to recruit African-Americans for reinforcements, a resource that the Confederacy did not dare exploit until it was too late. War Democrats reluctantly accepted emancipation as part of total war needed to save the Union. In the East, Robert Edward Lee rolled up a series of Confederate victories over the Army of the Potomac, but his best general, Thomas Jonathan "Stonewall" Jackson, was killed at the Battle of Chancellorsville in May 1863.[3] Lee's invasion of the North was repulsed at the Battle of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania in July 1863;[4] he barely managed to escape back to Virginia. In the West, the Union Navy captured the port of New Orleans in 1862, and Ulysses S. Grant seized control of the Mississippi River by capturing Vicksburg, Mississippi in July 1863[5], thus splitting the Confederacy.

By 1864, long-term Union advantages in geography, manpower, industry, finance, political organization and transportation were overwhelming the Confederacy. Grant fought a number of bloody battles with Lee in Virginia in the summer of 1864. Lee won most of the battles in a tactical sense but on the whole lost strategically, as he could not replace his casualties and was forced to retreat into trenches around his capital, Richmond, Virginia. Meanwhile, William Tecumseh Sherman captured Atlanta, Georgia.[6] Sherman's March to the Sea destroyed a hundred-mile-wide swath of Georgia. In 1865, the Confederacy collapsed after Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Court House and the slaves were freed.

The full restoration of the Union was the work of a highly contentious postwar era known as Reconstruction. The war produced about 970,000 casualties (3% of the population), including approximately 620,000 soldier deaths—two-thirds by disease. [7] The causes of the war, the reasons for its outcome, and even the name of the war itself are subjects of lingering controversy even today. The main results of the war were the restoration and strengthening of the Union, and the end of slavery in the United States.

Slavery during the war
Lincoln initially declared his official purpose to be the preservation of the Union, not emancipation. He had no wish to alienate the thousands of slaveholders in the Union border states.

The issue of what to do with Southern slaves, however, would not go away: As early as May 1861, some slaves working on Confederate fortifications escaped to the Union lines, and their owner, a Confederate colonel, demanded their return under the Fugitive Slave Act. The response was to declare them "contraband of war"—effectively freeing them. Congress eventually approved this for slaves used by the Confederate military.

By 1862, when it became clear that this would be a long war, the question became more general. The Southern economy and military effort depended on slave labor; was it reasonable to protect slavery while blockading Southern commerce and destroying Southern production? As one Congressman put it, the slaves "…cannot be neutral. As laborers, if not as soldiers, they will be allies of the rebels, or of the Union."[83]

There was a range of positions on the final settlement of slavery; the same Congressman—and his fellow radicals—felt the victory would be profitless if the Slave Power continued. Conservative Republicans still hoped that the states could end slavery and send the freedmen abroad. Lincoln, and many others, agreed with both the aversion to slavery and to colonization; but all factions came rapidly to agree that the slaves of Confederates must be freed.[84]

At first, Lincoln reversed attempts at emancipation by Secretary of War Cameron and Generals Fremont and Hunter in order to keep the loyalty of the border states and the War Democrats. Lincoln then tried to persuade the border states to accept his plan of gradual, compensated emancipation and voluntary colonization, while warning them that stronger measures would be needed if the moderate approach was rejected. Only the District of Columbia accepted Lincoln's gradual plan, and Lincoln issued his final Emancipation Proclamation on January 1 of 1863. In his letter to Hodges, Lincoln explained his belief that "If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong … And yet I have never understood that the Presidency conferred upon me an unrestricted right to act officially upon this judgment and feeling ... I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me."[85]

The Emancipation Proclamation, announced in September 1862 and put into effect four months later, ended the Confederacy's hope of getting aid from Britain or France. Lincoln's moderate approach succeeded in getting border states, War Democrats and emancipated slaves fighting on the same side for the Union.

The Union-controlled border states (Kentucky, Missouri, Maryland, Delaware and West Virginia) were not covered by the Emancipation Proclamation. All abolished slavery on their own, except Kentucky. The great majority of the 4 million slaves were freed by the Emancipation Proclamation, as Union armies moved South. The 13th amendment, ratified December 6, 1865, finally freed the remaining 40,000 slaves in Kentucky, as well as 1,000 or so in Delaware.

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