Us Map 1861 – April 1865 was an important month in American history. On April 9, the Confederate Army under Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant’s Union forces, ending the Civil War. Then, on April 14 – 150 years ago – victorious President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. The Civil War is often referred to as the Second American Revolution. It ended the scourge of slavery while increasing the relative economic power of the North versus the South. Here are 37 maps that explain the origins of the war, why the North won, and how the war changed the United States.
If you don’t want to read a lot about the Civil War, this animation provides a quick and good overview of how the battle unfolded. Confederate forces held up very well in 1861 and 1862, with much territory being shifted back and forth in the politically contested slave-frontier states of Kentucky and Missouri. But by 1863 the Union began to gain substantial territory along the Mississippi River, in Tennessee, and along strategic areas of the Atlantic Seaboard. The Confederacy had essentially no way of recovering militarily, but its landmass was still vast, and continuing the war until the South was completely overrun was a costly and difficult proposition. The great question of the war was whether the Union would pay the price of victory or seek a negotiated settlement. The issue was decided both on the battlefield and at the ballot box, with William Sherman’s capture of Atlanta in September 1864 providing a tremendous boost to Lincoln’s re-election, which in turn essentially sealed the Union victory.
Us Map 1861
The Northern States enjoyed a growing majority in the House of Representatives in the decades leading up to the Civil War. But in the Senate, each state gets two votes, regardless of population. And from 1800 to 1850 there were always at least as many slave states as free states, giving the Southern states an effective veto over anti-slavery legislation. But the westward expansion of the United States threatened to upset the balance, since many of the states aspiring to join the Union were unsuited to the slave plantation economy. The Missouri Compromise of 1820 temporarily preserved this balance by allowing Missouri as a slave state. However, an attempt to document this conflict again in 1850 was less successful. In the 1850s, struggles to legalize slavery in the new states—especially Kansas—began to tear the nation apart.
The American Civil War Map 1861
At the end of the Civil War, abolition of slavery was a fairly popular position in the North. But a few decades earlier it was considered a much more radical position. In 1840, the newly formed Liberty Party approved Kentucky attorney James Barney as president; received fewer than 7,000 votes. This map shows the results ofbirney’s second presidential run in 1844. He received 62,000 votes, or about 2% of the votes cast. Even in abolitionist strongholds like Massachusetts and New Hampshire,birney received only about 8% of the vote. But support for abolitionist ideas would increase in the North over the next two decades.
It is impossible to draw an accurate map of the “Underground Railroad” as it was not a literal railroad. Rather, it was a network of anti-slavery organizations that brought escaped slaves to safety and freedom, either in the Northern States or in Canada. But this map shows some of the most popular ways slaves escaped to freedom: either by traveling up the Mississippi River or along the Northeast Corridor through Washington, DC, Philadelphia and New York. Part of the Compromise of 1850 was a tough new Fugitive Slave Act, which required government officials in the northern states to help capture escaped slaves and return them to their owners. White Northerners in abolitionist cities like Boston sometimes organized mobs to defy the law, creating tensions between the North and the South.
In the 1850s, Kansas was about to be incorporated as a new state, sparking a dispute over whether it would be a slave state like neighboring Missouri or a free state. In the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, Congress ruled that this issue should be determined by (white) voters in the sparsely populated area. Abolitionists began moving to Kansas in hopes of creating an anti-slavery majority there. Pro-slavery Missourians crossed the border to illegally vote for pro-slavery legislation in 1855. They also launched violent attacks on abolitionist settlers, prompting retaliation from abolitionists. This fraud and bloodshed radicalized Northern voters and made them more willing to accept aggressive measures to stop the spread of slavery, even if it angered the South.
Abolitionist radical John Brown, a veteran of Kansas violence, devised a plan in 1859 to attack a federal arsenal in Harper’s Ferry, Virginia. Brown’s goal was to arm slaves on nearby plantations and encourage them to expand and free everywhere. and arm more slaves. This plan was a complete failure. Few nearby slaves knew the raid was taking place, and none of them were willing to risk their lives by taking up arms against their masters. When Brown allowed a train to pass, he sounded the alarm. Brown was soon surrounded by local militias and federal troops. After his capture, Brown relished his role as a martyr and delivered an eloquent anti-slavery speech after being convicted of treason and murder. Some abolitionists saw Brown as a hero. But the partisans of the South were naturally outraged by Brown’s actions, which increased tensions between North and South.
Historic Map Of Civil War
Yes, the Civil War was about slavery. 7) The Industrial Revolution sparked a cotton boom in the South
The early 19th century was a time of rapid advances in weaving technology. And as the textile industries of Britain and New England grew, so did the demand for cotton. This boosted the economy of the American South, whose warm, humid climate and fertile soils were suitable for cotton production. This map shows how the South responded in the four decades leading up to the Civil War. Cotton production expanded and intensified from Texas to North Carolina and from Tennessee to Florida. By 1860, cotton accounted for 60% of America’s exports, and almost all of it came from the South.
It’s no coincidence that this pair of cards looks so similar to the cotton cards above. The vast cotton plantations of the South relied heavily on slaves for the light labor of growing and harvesting cotton—hence the growing demand for cotton meant a growing demand for slaves. Meanwhile, things went in the opposite direction in the North, where small farmers and industrialization limited the value of slave labor. Thus, the United States became increasingly divided between an enslaved South and a free North.
Sometimes you hear arguments that the Civil War wasn’t really about slavery but about other issues like states’ rights or excessive federal power. But when you look at which states — and which parts of states — voted for secession, it becomes hard to deny that slavery was a major factor. In Tennessee, for example, support for secession was strongest in the West, where slave ownership was most widespread. People in mountainous eastern Tennessee, where slave ownership was rare, were less enthusiastic about the idea. Similarly, slavery was relatively rare in northern Alabama, and voters there voted against secession. In Virginia, slavery was rare in the mountain west, which resisted secession and became the separate state of West Virginia.
United States Colored Troops (usct) Civil War Sites
Every president elected before 1860 had enjoyed at least some support in both the North and the South. But by 1860 the gulf between North and South had grown so great that no candidate or party could bridge it. The national parties that had dominated American politics for decades were splitting along dividing lines. The northern half of the Democratic Party nominated one candidate, while the southern Democrats nominated another. In the north, remnants of the disbanded Whig party joined with abolitionists to form the Republican Party, while southern Whigs joined with nativists to form the Constitutional Union Party. The result was effectively two different presidential elections. In the North, Republican Abraham Lincoln (red) defeated Democrat Stephen Douglas (blue). In the South, Southern Democrat John Breckinridge (Green) defeated Constitutional Unionist John Bell (Orange).
Obviously, according to the Constitution, the United States can only have one President. This map illustrates why the victor of the northern states – Lincoln – became president despite receiving almost no votes in the slave states. Today Florida, Texas and California are the three largest states in the union, but in 1860 they were so sparsely populated that they played little political role. Instead, the three largest states were all in the north: New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. Together, they accounted for more than a quarter of the nation’s electoral vote. Adding in the staunchly Republican Northeast and the fast-growing Midwest, Lincoln landed 180 electoral votes, well short of the 152 he needed to win.
Secession was widely discussed during the campaign as a cure for Lincoln’s election, but the actual process of leaving
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