Resources
All Men are Created Equal (1823-1865)
Tensions grew taut in the 1850s between the Northern and Southern regions of America over the institution of slavery. Though inciting incidents dated back decades, including the Missouri Compromise of 1820 when Missouri was admitted to the Union as a “slave” state and Maine as a “free” state, the issue came to a head halfway into the century. The Compromise of 1850 attempted to appease strife between the North and the South through a series of five bills including banning the slave trade in Washington D.C. and reaffirming fugitive slave laws from 1793 by making it mandatory for even “free” states to comply that all escaped enslaved people should be returned to their enslavers. In 1857, a decision was reached in Dred Scott v. Sandford, a case in which an enslaved couple, Dred and Harriet Scott, sued for their freedom in 1846 in St. Louis on the basis that they lived in a territory where slavery was illegal. The controversial decision, coming over a decade later, stated that enslaved people weren’t American citizens and, as such, did not receive protection from the federal government.
Fig 7. The Battle of Gettysburg
Source: Kelly, Thomas. Battle of Gettysburg, c. 1871-1874, print, Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2006681070/.
The pressure building for the past several decades would officially break when, on December 20, 1860, South Caroline seceded from the Union of the United States, followed swiftly by ten other states within the following year, and forming the Confederate States of America on February 4, 1861, led by Robert E. Lee. Two months later, the Battle of Fort Sumter, occurred in South Carolina which ended with the surrender of the American army at the fort and officially beginning the Civil War. It is important to note that alongside the abolition of slavery, preserving the United States for the economic benefits of the South’s dependence on the North, were the Union’s primary goals. On January 1, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation which stated that “all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.” [1]Lincoln’s proclamation was strategic in that it highlighted the Union as a preserver of freedom as it also announced its military to accept Black men who were now considered by the Emancipation Proclamation, to be free. This decision strongly aided the Union’s war effort as African American soldiers joined their efforts to win the war.
Later that year, on November 19, 1863, Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address after the Union’s win at the Battle of Gettysburg. The battle, contrary to popular opinion, was not the bloodiest battle of the Civil War (that title belonging to Antietam) but was the turning point of the war for the Union. Pickett’s Charge, a Confederate attack, resulted in thousands of casualties for the army and their withdrawal from the battle. In his speech, Lincoln honored the fallen soldiers of both Gettysburg and the Civil War at large. He also reaffirmed the values of the Declaration of Independence, stating “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”[2] With the Union’s nearly assured victory, in the winter of 1865, Congress passed the thirteenth amendment to the Constitution which stated that “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States.”[3] Excepting those who committed crimes, enslavement was officially abolished in America.
Fig 8. General Lee’s surrender at Appomattox
Source: Chappel, Alonzo, Lee Surrendering to Grant at Appomattox, ca. 1870, oil on paperboard, Smithsonian American Art Museum, https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/lee-surrendering-grant-appomattox-4607.
A month before the conclusion of the Civil War, President Lincoln gave his second inaugural address on March 4, 1865. He spoke, saying “let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nation.”[1] With the end in sight, Lincoln focused on the peace and healing he wished for the nation. On April 9, 1865, surrounded with hardly any reserves left, General Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox, Virginia. The Civil War was over, enslaved people trapped in the Confederate States were finally free, and the Union was preserved. No longer president of the nonexistent Confederate States of America, Lee accepted another form of presidency in August 1865: President of Washington College in Lexington, Virginia.[5] The end of the Civil War ushered in a new era for the United States that navigated the freedom of formerly enslaved people, the rights of women, and the country’s foreign policy.
The Alabama Angle:
In 1825, Alabama’s state capital relocated from Cahaba to Tuscaloosa where it resided from 1826-1846, and the Greek Revival style capital building was completed in 1829 utilizing enslaved manual labor. This twenty-year period includes the creation of the University of Alabama in 1831, Alabama’s public, government funded university. In 1827, the US Congress passed an act that allowed for the creation of a “seminary of learning” in the state of Alabama and the University of Alabama opened its doors to male students in April 1831.[6] Largely, Tuscaloosa as the state’s capital garnered prosperity for the city with the establishment of a variety of businesses that government figures frequented. In 1846, the capital moved again to Montgomery to have a more centralized location within the state. The capitol building was later leased to the Baptist Convention in 1857 and housed the Alabama Central Female College. The building burned down in August 1923. Its ruins remain in Tuscaloosa at Capitol Park.
Fig. 9. Tuscaloosa Capitol Building
Source: Historic American Buildings Survey, Creator. Old Alabama State Capitol, Broad Street, Tuscaloosa, Tuscaloosa County, AL. Documentation Compiled After. Photograph. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <www.loc.gov/item/al0771/>.
On January 11th, 1861, Alabama ceded from the Union and joined the Confederate States of America. The University of Alabama, like many colleges in the antebellum United States, utilized enslaved labor. Though students were banned from bringing enslaved people for personal service, they often still served in faculty member’s homes. Students often physically harmed enslaved people.[1] Four years later, Union soldiers stormed the campus, due to its unofficial title as “the West Point of the South,” and burned the majority of UA buildings a mere five days before Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox. Four buildings survived the burning including the President’s Mansion, the Round House, and the Gorgas House. The university had to close its doors for nearly seven years, reopening in 1871. The remnants of the UA storming are still visible on the campus, most significantly in the Mound, the ruins of Franklin Hall, on the Quad. Some of the enslaved people who served at the university are buried next to the Math and Science Building. Hallowed Grounds tours that delve into this complicated history are given at UA.
[1] “The Emancipation Proclamation (January 1st, 1863).” The Exchange Club Freedom Shrine Historic American Document Collection, Freedom Shrine, https://freedomshrine.com/the-emancipation-proclamation-1863/.
[2] “Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.” The Exchange Club Freedom Shrine Historic American Document Collection, Freedom Shrine, https://freedomshrine.com/the-gettysburg-address-1863/.
[3] “The U.S. Constitution’s Thirteenth Amendment (1865).” The Exchange Club Freedom Shrine Historic American Document Collection, Freedom Shrine, https://freedomshrine.com/u-s-constitutions-thirteenth-amendment-1865/.
[4] “Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address (March 4th, 1865).” The Exchange Club Freedom Shrine Historic American Document Collection, Freedom Shrine, https://freedomshrine.com/lincolns-second-inaugural-address-1865/.
[5] “Robert E. Lee’s Letter Accepting the Presidency of Washington College (1865).” The Exchange Club Freedom Shrine Historic American Document Collection, Freedom Shrine, https://freedomshrine.com/robert-e-lees-letter-1865/.
[6] “S.27 – A Bill To authorize the selection of Lands for the benefit of a Seminary of Learning in the State of Alabama.” Congress.gov, https://www.congress.gov/bill/20th-congress/senate-bill/27/1827/12/18/text.
[7] For more information, please turn to “The History of Enslaved People at UA, 1828-1865.” Studying Slavery, https://studyingslavery.ua.edu/s/uastudyingslavery/page/overview.