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US history
Course: US history > Unit 5
Lesson 2: The Civil War- Slavery and the Missouri Compromise
- Increasing political battles over slavery in the mid-1800s
- Start of the Civil War - secession and Fort Sumter
- Strategy of the Civil War
- Early phases of Civil War and Antietam
- The Emancipation Proclamation
- Significance of the battle of Antietam
- The battle of Gettysburg
- The Gettysburg Address - setting and context
- Photographing the Battle of Gettysburg, O'Sullivan's Harvest of Death
- The Gettysburg Address - full text and analysis
- Later stages of the Civil War - 1863
- Later stages of the Civil War - the election of 1864 and Sherman's March
- Later stages of the Civil War - Appomattox and Lincoln's assassination
- Big takeaways from the Civil War
- The Civil War
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Later stages of the Civil War - Appomattox and Lincoln's assassination
The Civil War ends in 1865 with the North's victory. Key events include Sherman's march, Lincoln's re-election, and the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery. Lee surrenders to Grant at Appomattox, marking the war's symbolic end. Lincoln's assassination shocks the nation, leading to Andrew Johnson's troubled presidency.
Want to join the conversation?
- When Andrew Johnson became president, who became vice president?(26 votes)
- From the author:You stumped me with this one! Great question. It turns out that Andrew Johnson did not have a vice president; that office was vacant during his tenure as president. In situations where the original president has died in office and the vice president has taken over, the office of vice president has frequently remained empty for months or even years. Truman also had no vice president during the term he served which had originally belonged to FDR.(41 votes)
- Why did the plot to assassinate Seward fail?(5 votes)
- Here is a little more detailed explanation:
When Powell entered, he attacked the doorman. As he went up the stairs of Seward's mansion, he knocked Seward's son unconscious with his six-shot revolver (He did not shoot him). When Powell tried to shoot Seward, who was injured in bed due to an earlier carriage accident, Powell found that his gun didn't work, and got into a fight with Seward's body guard. Powell fled after disengaging the guard.
Source: Lincoln's assasin(14 votes)
- Why did actor John Wilkes Booth assassinate Abraham Lincoln?(4 votes)
- John Wilkes Booth was a south supporter and during the war he was actor and a spy for the south. When Lincoln declared that all African-Americans would have citizenship and have the right to vote, Booth decided he want to kill him. Booth was a racist so that probally was a another reason the kill Lincoln.(11 votes)
- Wasn’t Lee punished for waging war against the American government and arguably causing a civil war?
Was Booth backed by Lee? Was it so easy to kill Lincoln; didn’t he have bodyguards?(5 votes)- Andrew Johnson pardoned Lee. That was why he was not punished(1 vote)
- Hey Kim, I don't know if you're still around to answer questions, but at the"Gettysburg Address" video, you mentioned in the comment section that Lincoln's bodyguard was Ward Hill Lamon. What was he doing when Lincoln was assassinated?(4 votes)
- This is from the website of the US Marshal's service.
On Thursday, April 13, 1865, Lincoln sent Marshal Lamon to Union-occupied Richmond. At their final interview before Lamon's departure, the marshal begged the President to take care. The next day, Lincoln accepted an invitation to attend Laura Keene's one thousandth performance in Our American Cousins. John Wilkes Booth, who truly was insane over Lincoln's safety, also made a brief. and wholly tragic, appearance at Ford's Theater that night.
"As God is my judge," Lamon lamented. "I believe if I had been in the city, it would not have happened and had it, I know that the assassin would not have escaped the town." After Lincoln's assassination, Lamon performed one last duty for his murdered friend. He and his deputies arranged the last rites, taking Lincoln's remains home to Springfield for the funeral. Less than two months later, Lamon resigned his commission as United States Marshal for the District of Columbia.(6 votes)
- Did Sherman's march to the sea, an act of total war, serve as an example for later acts of total war such as the intense, massive bombing of German and Japanese cities during the Second World War?(4 votes)
- It is possible yes. But the act of total was has been around since war itself existed. Even back in the time of the Hebrew being freed from bondage. As the Hebrews were engaged in the wars for their promised land they practiced total war. The most notable account is the siege of Jericho. The Hebrews completely destroyed the city and left nothing left. So maybe but it's more likely Sherman was just a scholar of history like most generals.(4 votes)
- Why did Booth think his action would help the south?(3 votes)
- Booth was also drinking at the time, and the confederate defeat left booth despondent, thus, he gave himself the task to assassinate the president.(4 votes)
- Atit says that Johnson got impeached. 10:01
I thought that he wasn't, that during the vote, the pro-impeachment movement was short of 1 vote to be able to impeach. I am confused.(2 votes)- I think the confusing part is that impeachment means both the process of impeachment via Congress and the end result of impeachment, i.e. removal from office. Johnson got impeached in that the impeachment process was enacted, but the Senate verdict of guilty fell short of the two-thirds majority by one vote, so Johnson was never "impeached" (removed from office).(3 votes)
- Kim ends the video saying that "...the era of State's Rights is over..." post-Civil war. What does this mean? I thought that states rights, at least on paper if not in practice, are still supposed to be an important part of American politics and way of life. Is this not the case?(2 votes)
- No, now the U.S. government (and the supreme court) has more power than it did back then.(3 votes)
- At, Kim mentions that Booth jumps from the booth to the stage. I've seen other sources say that he jumped out of a window. Is that just some difference in sources? 6:55(2 votes)
- According to my source, it says Booth jumped from the balcony to the stage and broke his leg in the fall. He later was captured and killed in Virginia.(1 vote)
Video transcript
- [Voiceover] So in the last video, we talked about the year 1864
in the American Civil War, and now we're getting down
to the very end of the war. In 1864, William Tecumseh Sherman had his sort of famous march to the sea, where he captured Atlanta and
then carried on a total war through the state of Georgia to Savannah, and from Savannah he turns north and starts heading to the forces of Grant, so he can back him up in a
final victory against Lee, who has encamped in Richmond. Meanwhile, Abraham Lincoln
wins the election of 1864, and is ready to bring this war to a close. So let's move on to 1865. A lot happens very quickly in 1865, starting with, in January, Congress passed the 13th Amendment. The 13th Amendment outlawed
slavery for all time. It's clear that when the
south is brought back in to the United States, it is
going to be brought back in without slavery, there
is no option for slavery in the United States going forward. Now Grant, after his incredible
victory in Tennessee, in Vicksburg, has been going
after Lee's army in Virginia. Now Lee has holed up in
Richmond and eventually, he realizes his forces
can't stay there anymore, they can't hold the city, so
in the beginning of April, they evacuate Richmond and on April 3rd, the United States forces occupy Richmond. Abraham Lincoln himself actually goes down to visit Richmond, which
he'd never been to before, and he even goes to the
government building in Richmond where Confederate President
Jefferson Davis had governed, and goes into his office. He's there less than 48 hours
after Davis himself had left. And then events, after that,
events take place very quickly. So Lee falls back from
Richmond to Petersburg, and Grant is kind of
marking him the whole time, and they retreat across
Virginia to the west, Lee is probably heading for Lynchburg, and Grant manages to catch
up with him at Appomattox. At first, Lee thinks that he's actually going to fight at Appomattox, and then he realizes he just does not have the men necessary, so
he invites Grant to come and have a parlay for
surrender, and they meet, this is actually a picture
of Lee outside the house in Appomattox courthouse, Virginia, where he surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to Grant. Now that is not the actual
end of the Civil War, but it's kind of the end
for all intents and purposes because Lee is the General-in-Chief of the Confederate Armies. Grant is likewise for the United States. And after this point, it's just gonna be kind of a matter of
time until all the rest of the Confederate armies surrender. So there's great celebration
in Washington, D.C., everyone is very happy, finally
this four year long war, where 620,000 Americans
have died, is over, and Abraham Lincoln
goes and gives a speech, talking about what Reconstruction
is going to be like. And in this speech, he lays
out that African Americans, after the Civil War, are
going to have citizenship, at least some of them,
and the right to vote, which is in keeping with
everything that he's really said since the Emancipation Proclamation. But what he does not
know, is that this man, John Wilkes Booth, is
in the crowd that day, listening to him, and
when he hears Lincoln say that African Americans are
gonna have citizenship, they're gonna have the right to vote, he vows to kill Lincoln. John Wilkes Booth is really
interesting character, we only know so much about him. He himself was a famous actor, in fact, Lincoln had seen him
perform a number of times, and liked him, even invited
him to the White House, cause he thought he was a great actor, but Booth refused to go and see Lincoln. And he was from a family of famous actors, I think kind of a modern-day equivalent might be the Sheen family. Booth had a famous brother
who was also an actor, and a famous father who was also an actor, just like Martin Sheen's
sons are Emilio Estevez and Charlie Sheen today. So this would be like, if
Emilio Estevez or Charlie Sheen suddenly decided to murder the President, which would be a pretty
incredibly big deal, just as it was then. Booth was a Confederate sympathizer, and almost certainly a Confederate spy who had gone up to Canada at some time to plot some movement on
behalf of the Confederacy. He was an outright racist,
I think the part where Lincoln said African Americans
would have citizenship was what pushed him over the edge into assassinating Lincoln. Originally he had actually
planned to kidnap Lincoln, and ransom him for the
end of the Civil War, but after Lee surrenders,
Booth's plan changes. He wants to basically
decapitate the government, so he conspires with a
couple of other people, and they plan that they're going to kill all the highest people
in government at once. So they're going to kill Lincoln, they're going to kill General Grant, they're going to kill William Seward, the secretary of state, and they're going to kill Andrew Johnson, the Vice-President. And Booth thinks that perhaps, in this moment of panic that follows the decapitation of the entire
United States government, that perhaps something positive
for the south with happen. Remember, they had hoped
that getting rid of Lincoln in the election of 1864
might result in putting a government more favorable to the south in office to the north,
which didn't happen, so perhaps Booth wants to
do the same thing this time. So Booth reads in the
newspaper that Abraham Lincoln is going to be attending
a play at Ford's Theater that evening. And Booth is a regular at Ford's Theater, in fact, he even has his
mail delivered there, so it's kind of his home away from home. And when Booth goes to the theater with the intent to kill Lincoln, he pretty much just goes
up to Lincoln's box, and everyone knows who he is, and they say hi John,
and he just walks on by, walks right into Lincoln's box, shuts the door behind him, and shoots Lincoln through
the back of the head. At that point, he jumped on
the stage from the booth, which is maybe 14 feet above the stage. If you've never been to Ford's Theater and you have an opportunity,
I highly recommend you go, it's a really interesting
museum and historical place, and in the process, he
actually breaks his ankle, so in his running away he's dealing with this broken ankle and
eventually he is captured, and refuses to be taken
alive, so he is killed. And later the rest of the
conspirators are hanged for their participation in this plot. There's some confusion
over what Booth said when he jumped out of the box. A lot of people say that he
yelled sic semper tyrannis, which means, thus always to tyrants, and is also the motto of
the state of Virginia. Other people heard him say
things like I've done it, or revenge for the south,
but sic semper tyrannis is kind of the famous phrase
that has come out of this. So Booth is calling Lincoln a tyrant, and tyrants are eventually
always assassinated. The rest of the assassination plot from that evening mostly failed. One of the conspirators, Lewis Powell, did manage to get in to
William Seward's house and stab him, he did not
succeed in killing him, but he did wound Seward very badly. The rest of the assassination plots did not come to fruition whatsoever. One thing you'll notice
is that only a few parts of the Confederate Army
have actually surrendered at the time of Lincoln's assassination. So the war is, in some
cases, still ongoing, particularly in North Carolina,
in Raleigh and Durham, where Sherman's forces have come up through South Carolina and North Carolina to meet the forces of
Confederate General Joe Johnston. And it's on April the
26th that Joe Johnston surrenders to William Tecumseh Sherman. From that point forward, there
are a few dribs and drabs of other armies that
are still surrendering. Interesting fact, the last
Confederate unit to surrender actually surrendered in November of 1865, in Liverpool, England,
this was a Confederate ship that had been sailing around, and when they finally came into port, they officially surrendered. Now after Lincoln's assassination, which was an incredible
shock to the United States, remember that no President had ever been assassinated before, the power is then transferred
to Andrew Johnson, Lincoln's Vice-President. And Johnson's Presidency
is going to end up being very problematic
for a number of reasons, the most important of which being that he's very sympathetic to the south. With Johnson in power as President, he's going to have a
considerable amount of conflict with the American Congress,
which is dominated by radical Republicans who
think that Lincoln himself was not nearly punitive
enough toward the south. There's going to be just an
incredible battle of wills between Congress and
Johnson that's going to end with Johnson being the
first American President to be impeached. And so thus endeth the Civil
War of the United States, with the north victorious. The southern states come
back into the Union. The rebellion in the south is defeated, slavery has ended, and the
era of states rights is over. In the next video I'd like to talk, just for a few moments, about the big takeaways
about the American Civil War. What is is that makes it so important? And what were the lasting effects? I'll get to that in the next video.