Week 14 · Chapter

Chapter 14 — The Civil War

U.S. History to 1877 Free sample edition

The module's primary reading · ~65–75 minutes · Objectives 1, 7, and 8 · Read it first this week, before the lecture and the slide deck.

In plain language

This week covers the Civil War, from 1861 to 1865. The Union (the United States government and the states loyal to it) fought the Confederacy (the government the seceding slave states formed). The war began as a fight to restore the Union, and over four years it became a war that destroyed slavery. That change came from Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation (his order of 1863 declaring enslaved people free in the areas in rebellion) and from enslaved people who fled to Union lines and freed themselves. You will read two dated documents, the Proclamation and the Gettysburg Address, and you will ask what each one did, and what it did not do.

Why you already care about this

Picture a Union army camp in Virginia in 1862, a year after the attack on Fort Sumter. A soldier sits on an upturned crate and writes a letter home by the light of a fire. He writes about the mud, the food, and a friend who died of fever. He never expects a stranger to read it more than a century later.

Now picture a market in a Confederate city the next spring. A worker's wife holds out her money for a sack of flour. The price is many times what it was when the war began, and her husband's wages have not kept up. She goes home with less than her family needs.

You have probably felt a big event reach into ordinary life: a storm that closed your job for a week, or prices that climbed faster than your pay. The Civil War did that to millions of people at once. It also did something no storm can do. It forced the country to decide, while the shooting went on, what the war was for.

In 1861 Lincoln said he was fighting to save the Union. In 1863 he issued the Emancipation Proclamation. In 1865 the 13th Amendment was ratified. This chapter follows how a war for union became a war for freedom, one dated document at a time.

By the end of this chapter you will be able to:

explain the war's strategy and resources, and state its scale in words;
explain why the war did not begin as a war for emancipation;
describe how enslaved people freed themselves by fleeing to Union lines;
source the Emancipation Proclamation and find the earlier proclamation inside it;
say what the Proclamation did and did not free, and tell it from the 13th Amendment;
describe Black military service in the Union army and navy;
close-read the Gettysburg Address and explain why it has no single fixed text;
explain total war and life on the two home fronts;
order the week's years, match each fragment to its document, and sort three sources.

Hook to keep: for every order and every speech, ask what changed on paper and what changed on the ground.

Carry this: a war measure in 1863 versus an amendment in 1865.

Where we are

Already covered: Week 5 read the Declaration of Independence and its claim "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal". Week 9 read a presidential proclamation, Jackson's on nullification. Week 12 read Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), which said Black Americans were not citizens. Week 13 followed secession, Lincoln's First Inaugural Address (1861), and the attack on Fort Sumter.
This week: the war's strategy, resources, and scale; enslaved people's flight to freedom; the Emancipation Proclamation; Black military service; the Gettysburg Address; total war and the home fronts; and the war's end in 1865.
How they connect: the slavery that the 1850s laws and the Court protected is the slavery this war destroyed. The Gettysburg Address even reaches back to the Declaration's words.
Where we're going next: Week 15, Reconstruction, asks what freedom and citizenship meant after the war, and why Reconstruction ended in 1877.

Two earlier ideas carry this week. From Week 13, the border states: the four slave states that stayed in the Union. Watch for them in Section 4, because the Proclamation left them out. From Week 1, the source-sorting habit: a primary source was made during the period you study, and a secondary source is a later interpretation. You will sort three war sources that way in Section 9. This is a heavy week. It includes war deaths and the drowning of people seeking freedom, and the course is built to be supportive of you as you read it. Take one section at a time.

1. Weigh the two sides: strategy, resources, and scale

Start with a count you could make from a map. The Union had more people than the Confederacy. It had most of the country's factories. It had most of the railroads, so it could move soldiers and supplies faster.

Those are resources: the people, factories, farms, and railroads a side can turn into fighting power. The Union had the larger share of almost every one of them. The Confederacy had a different advantage. It was fighting on the defensive, on its own ground. It could win by holding out until the North gave up, while the Union had to march in and conquer.

That is a strategy question: what each side needed to do to win. The Union had to take territory and break armies. The Confederacy needed the North to tire of the cost.

Worked example — the two sides set side by side. You list what each side had, from the record.

What each side brought to the war, in words, from the course record
Side	What it had more of	What it needed to do
Union	people, factories, railroads	conquer territory and break the Confederate armies
Confederacy	the advantage of fighting on the defensive	hold out until the North gave up

Read across each row and you will see the shape of the war you are studying. One side was stronger. The other side did not need to win every battle. It only needed the Union to stop trying.

Now the scale, said plainly, so you can carry it in words. The Civil War killed more Americans than any other war in the nation's history. Historians count the dead in the hundreds of thousands, and their estimates have been revised upward over time as they find new records. Honesty note: because the count keeps changing, this course teaches the scale in words and asks you to memorize no death figure. A video on this week's Readings & Resources page gives its own figure; treat it as that video's estimate.

The war also had a purpose, and in 1861 that purpose was the Union. In his First Inaugural Address of 1861, Lincoln said he had no purpose to interfere with slavery in the states where it existed. When the fighting began that spring, he fought to bring the seceded states back.

Misconception check. Students often think the Civil War was a war for emancipation from its first day. That is tempting, because we know how the war ended. But in 1861 Lincoln fought to restore the Union, and he had promised not to touch slavery in the states where it existed. The cure is to date the war's aims: ask what the government said it was fighting for in 1861, and then in 1863.

2. Follow the people who freed themselves

Begin at the edge of a Union army camp in 1861. A family arrives at night. They have walked away from a plantation, and they ask the soldiers not to send them back.

That scene happened again and again, from the first months of the war. Union commanders had to decide what to do. Many refused to return the people who reached their lines, and they gave them a legal label: contraband of war, meaning enemy property they would not hand back. The label is ugly, because it still treats people as property. It also opened a door. Congress followed with the Confiscation Acts. The act of 1861 let the Union seize property used to support the rebellion, and it counted enslaved people as property. The act of 1862 went further: it let the government free enslaved people in rebel territory the Union army took, and it barred sending back people who escaped.

Settlements grew up around Union posts. A contraband camp was a settlement near a Union army post where people who had escaped slavery lived and worked. The camp at Corinth, Mississippi, built a school, a church, and a hospital, and its residents grew food in gardens beside their cabins. In 1862 Congress also ended slavery in the federal territories and in Washington, DC.

Historians have a name for what these families did. Self-emancipation is the name historians give to the ways enslaved people freed themselves during the war, above all by fleeing to Union lines. The Smithsonian's museum of African American history says that enslaved people forced the issue by fleeing to Union camps by the tens of thousands.

Worked example — two roads to freedom, read side by side. You list what moved freedom forward in 1861 and 1862.

People: enslaved families fled to Union lines and asked not to be returned.
Commanders: Union officers refused to send them back and called them contraband of war.
Congress: the Confiscation Act of 1861 let the Union seize enslaved people used to support the rebellion, and the act of 1862 let it free enslaved people in rebel territory it took.
Congress again: in 1862 it ended slavery in the federal territories and in Washington, DC.

Read the list from the top. The first step came from enslaved people themselves, and every later step answered it. That is the week's first big idea: emancipation was something enslaved people pursued themselves, as well as a policy made in Washington.

Pause and think, and choose one of these two prompts.

(a) Name one risk a family took by walking toward a Union camp, and say what that risk tells you about how they judged their choices.

(b) Name one way the label contraband of war helped people who escaped and one way it still harmed them.

Misconception check. Students often think freedom was handed down by Lincoln alone. That is tempting, because his name is on the Proclamation. But people fled to Union lines from 1861 on, before any proclamation, and their flight pushed commanders and Congress to act. The cure is to ask, for every step toward freedom, who took it first.

3. Source the Emancipation Proclamation: two proclamations in one document

Hold the document in your mind as a stack of paper in an archive. The National Archives keeps the Emancipation Proclamation, the week's Primary Source Workshop document. Before you read a word of it, you source it.

A presidential proclamation is a formal public announcement issued by a President, the kind of document you met in Week 9. The Emancipation Proclamation (D32) is a presidential proclamation by Abraham Lincoln. Its own text dates it "this first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty three", that is, 1 January 1863. Sourcing asks who made it, when, and why, and this one answers the last question in its own words. Lincoln acted as commander in chief, the President's role as head of the army and navy. He called the order a war measure, an action taken to weaken an enemy in wartime, for putting down the rebellion. That is a paraphrase of the text, not a quotation.

Now a surprise for a careful reader. The document's opening recites an earlier proclamation. On 22 September 1862 Lincoln had issued a preliminary proclamation. It warned the states in rebellion that enslaved people there would be declared free if those states did not return to the Union. The 1863 text quotes that earlier order inside itself.

Worked example — the two pinned phrases, kept apart. You match each phrase to the proclamation it belongs to.

The two pinned phrases inside the Emancipation Proclamation and the proclamation each belongs to
Phrase	Which proclamation	Its date
"thenceforward, and forever free"	the preliminary proclamation, recited inside the 1863 text	22 September 1862
"are, and henceforward shall be free"	the order of 1863	1 January 1863

Both phrases sit inside one document, D32. The first was promised in 1862. The second was declared in 1863. When you quote either one, say which proclamation it comes from.

The 1863 order also did something new. It said that Black men would be received into the armed service of the United States, a paraphrase of its text. Section 5 follows what that meant.

Misconception check. Students often quote "thenceforward, and forever free" as the words of the 1863 order. That is tempting, because the phrase appears in the 1863 document. But it belongs to the preliminary proclamation of 1862, which the 1863 text recites at its opening. The cure is close reading: notice where the recited text begins and ends.

4. Read what the Proclamation did and did not free

Imagine two plantations a few miles apart in 1863, one in a county the Proclamation names and one in a county it leaves out. On the first, the order declares the enslaved people free. On the second, it says nothing at all. The difference is a line drawn on paper by the order itself.

The Proclamation applied only to the areas then in rebellion. It did not apply to the loyal border states. Its own text also left out the forty-eight counties that became West Virginia, named parishes of Louisiana including New Orleans, and named counties of Virginia, a paraphrase. Those were places already under Union control or loyal to it.

Where the order did apply, Confederate officials did not obey it. Freedom became real as Union armies advanced and as enslaved people reached them. Every advance of a Union army carried the order into new ground.

So what ended slavery everywhere? The 13th Amendment, passed by Congress in January 1865 and ratified in December 1865, abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime, throughout the United States. An amendment is part of the Constitution. An order from a commander in chief is a war measure.

Worked example — the Proclamation set beside the amendment. You compare the two from the record.

The Emancipation Proclamation (1863) declared free the enslaved people in the areas then in rebellion.
The 13th Amendment (ratified 1865) abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime, throughout the United States.
The gap is 1865 − 1863 = 2 years.
In words: a war measure in 1863 reached the areas in rebellion; an amendment in 1865 reached the whole country.

Week 15 reads the amendment's own text. This week you need only its row: what it did, and when.

Here is the reading in one plain sentence. The Emancipation Proclamation shows that Lincoln, as commander in chief in 1863, declared free the enslaved people in the areas then in rebellion and opened the armed service to Black men. It does not by itself show that every enslaved person went free, or how enslaved people won freedom for themselves.

Misconception check. Students often think the Emancipation Proclamation freed every enslaved person in the country. That is tempting, because its name sounds complete. But it applied only to areas in rebellion, it left out the border states and named counties and parishes, and the 13th Amendment of 1865 ended slavery everywhere. The cure is to read the order's own list of places.

5. Report Black military service plainly

Start with a recruiting notice pinned to a church door in a Northern city in 1863. It calls on Black men to enlist. Two years earlier, men who answered such a call would have been sent home.

A federal law dating back to 1792 barred Black men from bearing arms in the U.S. Army. When the war began in 1861, Black volunteers came forward and were turned away. The Proclamation of 1863 opened the door. After it, Black soldiers and sailors served in large numbers, and most of them had been enslaved. The soldiers served in the United States Colored Troops, the Union army regiments of Black soldiers raised in large numbers after 1863.

One example ties this section to Section 2. Men from the contraband camp at Corinth, Mississippi, formed the 1st Alabama Infantry of African Descent. Their regiment was later renamed the 55th United States Colored Troops. Frederick Douglass, whom you read in Week 12, worked to recruit Black soldiers.

Worked example — the record of service, in order. You put the steps in the order the record gives them.

1792: a federal law bars Black men from bearing arms in the U.S. Army.
1861: Black volunteers come forward and are turned away.
1863: the Proclamation says Black men will be received into the armed service.
After 1863: Black soldiers and sailors serve in large numbers, most of them formerly enslaved.

Honesty note: the museum page and the video on this week's Readings & Resources page each give a count of Black soldiers. Those counts are theirs. The course states the scale in words, large numbers, and asks you to memorize no count.

Misconception check. Students often think Black Americans watched the war from the sidelines. That is tempting, because older stories of the war center on generals. But Black men volunteered in 1861, served in large numbers after 1863, and many had freed themselves before they enlisted. The cure is to state the service as a fact, with its dates.

6. Close-read the Gettysburg Address

Picture a hillside in Pennsylvania in November 1863. Rows of fresh graves run across it. Thousands of people stand in the cold to hear two speeches.

The graves had a cause. After three days of fighting at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, in July 1863, a Soldiers' National Cemetery was laid out for the Union dead. This course names the battle only as the reason for the cemetery. It teaches no tactics and no tale of glory, because the subject here is the speech.

At the dedication, Edward Everett spoke for two hours. Then Lincoln spoke for about two minutes. That short speech is the Gettysburg Address (D33). Its document type is a speech: words spoken to an audience and later printed or copied. The Library of Congress dates it 19 November 1863. The Avalon Project prints the text with no date and names no manuscript copy, so you take the date from the Library's record.

The speech opens by reaching back to the Declaration of Independence and its claim that all men are created equal. It ends with the pinned fragment, from the text Avalon prints: "government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth". In between, it asks its listeners to finish the work the dead began and to give the nation a new birth of freedom, a paraphrase.

Worked example — the four moves on the Gettysburg Address. You take the moves in order.

Sourcing: a speech by Abraham Lincoln, dated 19 November 1863 by the Library of Congress; the text you quote is the one the Avalon Project prints.
Contextualization: a cemetery for the Union dead after the fighting at Gettysburg in July 1863, in the same year as the Emancipation Proclamation.
Close reading: the speech never names slavery, but it asks for a new birth of freedom, a paraphrase.
Corroboration: the Library of Congress keeps two handwritten copies that you can set beside the Avalon text, as Section 7 does.

Plain sentence: the Gettysburg Address shows how Lincoln, in 1863, described the purpose of the war to a crowd at a soldiers' cemetery; it does not by itself show what every soldier or citizen believed the war was for.

Misconception check. Students often think the speech celebrates the battle. That is tempting, because it was given on a battlefield. But the speech is about the dead and about what the living owe them, and it never describes the fighting. The cure is close reading: list what the speech asks its listeners to do.

7. Compare the copies: a speech without one fixed text

Imagine you are asked to quote the Gettysburg Address exactly. You open two archives and find two versions. One has words the other lacks. Which one is "the" speech?

A manuscript copy is a copy of a text written out by hand. There are five known manuscript copies of the Gettysburg Address. The Library of Congress holds two of them, the copies Lincoln gave his two secretaries, John Nicolay and John Hay. Lincoln wrote the other three later, for charitable causes.

The copies are not identical. The Library says the Nicolay and Hay drafts differ in many words and in punctuation. Its specialist notes that the Nicolay copy lacks the words naming God that appear in the text Avalon prints.

Worked example — counting the copies. You count from the record.

Known manuscript copies: 5.
Copies the Library of Congress holds: 2, the Nicolay and Hay copies.
Copies held elsewhere: 5 − 2 = 3.
In words: three of the five copies sit outside the Library, and all five differ in places.

What do you do as a careful reader? You name the text you quote. This course quotes one printed text, the one the Avalon Project prints, and says so every time. It dates the speech from the Library's record, because Avalon's page gives no date. That habit is corroboration and sourcing working together.

Misconception check. Students often think the Gettysburg Address has one fixed text. That is tempting, because it is often printed as if it did. But five handwritten copies survive, and they differ in wording. The cure is to say which text you are quoting, every time.

8. Feel the war at home: total war and the home fronts

Go back to the market from the start of this chapter. Flour is scarce, and the price has climbed again. Far from any battle, the war is still reaching this family's table.

Life away from the fighting has a name. The home front is life away from the fighting during a war, where civilians grow food, work in factories, pay taxes, and bear shortages and high prices. In the Civil War the two home fronts felt the war very differently.

By late 1864 the Union was waging total war: war waged against an enemy's food supply, railroads, and will to fight, as well as against its armies. Union general William T. Sherman's army marched across Georgia to the sea. It destroyed food stores and railroads to show Confederate civilians that their government could not protect them. The march had a grave cost for the people seeking freedom who followed the army. At Ebenezer Creek, a Union general had the army's bridge taken up before the self-emancipated people following the army could cross, and many drowned.

On the Southern home front, prices ran away from wages. Food prices in 1863 were almost ten times those of 1861. That spring, women workers in Richmond, the Confederate capital, marched to demand food at the prices the army paid. When their leaders were turned away, the march became the Richmond Bread Riot, as women broke into shops and warehouses.

The Northern home front had its own strain. A draft is a law requiring men of fighting age to serve in the army if their names are called. The Union's draft law of 1863 let a man escape service by paying 300 dollars or sending a substitute. To many workers, that made the war look like a rich man's war.

Worked example — a city's food prices, in words. You read what a rise of almost ten times means for one fresh illustrative family.

Suppose a family in a Confederate city spent a week's wages on food in 1861.
If prices rose almost ten times by 1863 and wages did not, the same food would cost almost ten weeks' wages.
The family could not buy it. That is the gap that sent women into Richmond's streets.
Caveat: this family is illustrative, and the rise of almost ten times is the encyclopedia's summary of prices, not a keyed figure.

Misconception check. Students often think the home front was safe and quiet. That is tempting, because the battles happened somewhere else. But Southern families faced runaway prices and hunger, Georgia's civilians faced a marching army, and Northern workers faced a draft that rich men could buy their way out of. The cure is to ask what the war cost people who never held a rifle.

9. End the war and order the record

Picture a small Virginia village called Appomattox Court House in April 1865. Two generals meet in a house. One army stops fighting.

Confederate surrenders began with Robert E. Lee's surrender to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House in April 1865. The surrenders of the remaining Confederate forces followed. That same month, John Wilkes Booth shot Lincoln at Ford's Theatre in Washington, and Lincoln died the next morning. The theatre's own account says Booth decided to kill him after Lincoln spoke in favor of the vote for some Black men.

Now order the week's record, the way the course does every week.

Worked example — ordering the week's years. You order three years from the course chronology and measure the gaps.

Order: 1861 (Lincoln's First Inaugural Address, the year the war began), 1863 (the Emancipation Proclamation, also the year of the Gettysburg Address), and 1865 (the 13th Amendment ratified, the year the war ended). Each year is later than the one before it.
Gaps: 1863 − 1861 = 2 years; 1865 − 1863 = 2 years.
Span: 1865 − 1861 = 4 years, and the two gaps add back to it: 2 + 2 = 4 years.
From Week 12: Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) to the Emancipation Proclamation (1863) is 1863 − 1857 = 6 years. Six years after the Court said Black Americans were not citizens, the commander in chief declared free the enslaved people in the areas in rebellion.

Worked example — fragments to documents. You match each pinned fragment to its document.

"are, and henceforward shall be free" comes from D32, the Emancipation Proclamation (1863), the order of 1863.
"thenceforward, and forever free" comes from D32 too, the preliminary proclamation recited inside the 1863 text.
"government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth" comes from D33, the Gettysburg Address (1863).
The count is 2 + 1 = 3 fragments from 2 documents.

Worked example — sorting three war sources. You sort items 7, 8, and 9 of the source-sorting set.

Item 7, a soldier's 1862 letter home from a camp in Virginia: primary, made during the war by someone in it.
Item 8, a 1903 memoir by a veteran recalling that camp forty years later: primary for its author's own experience. It is the borderline case, so you read it with the gap in time in mind.
Item 9, a documentary film made in 2015 about the war: secondary, a later interpretation.
The count is 2 primary + 1 secondary = 3 items.

The letter from this chapter's opening scene is item 7. A historian treasures it, and still asks what one soldier could see from one camp.

Misconception check. Students often think a veteran's memoir is a secondary source because it was written long after the war. That is tempting, because time has passed. But a memoir is primary for its author's own experience, read with the gap in time in mind; a documentary made in 2015 is secondary. The cure is to ask who made the source and whether they lived what they describe.

Key terms

Union — during the Civil War, the United States government and the states that stayed loyal to it, including the four slave states that did not secede. (first used: 1. Weigh the two sides: strategy, resources, and scale)
Confederacy — the Confederate States of America, the government formed by the slave states that seceded in 1860 and 1861, which fought the Union from 1861 to 1865. (first used: 1. Weigh the two sides: strategy, resources, and scale)
Resources — the people, factories, farms, and railroads a side in a war can turn into fighting power. (first used: 1. Weigh the two sides: strategy, resources, and scale)
Strategy — a side's overall plan for winning a war, such as conquering territory or holding out until the enemy gives up. (first used: 1. Weigh the two sides: strategy, resources, and scale)
Contraband of war — the label Union commanders gave to enslaved people who escaped to Union lines, treating them as enemy property they would not return rather than as fugitives to be sent back. (first used: 2. Follow the people who freed themselves)
Confiscation Acts — the laws Congress passed in 1861 and 1862: the first let the Union seize property used to support the rebellion, including enslaved people, and the second let the government free enslaved people in rebel territory the Union took and barred returning people who escaped. (first used: 2. Follow the people who freed themselves)
Contraband camp — a settlement that grew up near a Union army post where people who had escaped slavery lived, worked, and often built schools and churches during the war. (first used: 2. Follow the people who freed themselves)
Self-emancipation — the name historians give to the ways enslaved people freed themselves during the war, above all by fleeing to Union lines, so that freedom came through their own choices and risks as well as through laws. (first used: 2. Follow the people who freed themselves)
Emancipation Proclamation — the presidential proclamation Abraham Lincoln issued as commander in chief in 1863, which declared free the enslaved people in the areas then in rebellion and opened the armed service to Black men. (first used: 3. Source the Emancipation Proclamation: two proclamations in one document)
Commander in chief — the President's role as head of the army and navy, the wartime power Lincoln named as his authority for the Emancipation Proclamation. (first used: 3. Source the Emancipation Proclamation: two proclamations in one document)
War measure — an action a government takes to weaken an enemy in wartime, the reason Lincoln gave for issuing the Emancipation Proclamation. (first used: 3. Source the Emancipation Proclamation: two proclamations in one document)
Preliminary proclamation — Lincoln's announcement of September 1862, recited inside the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation, which warned the states in rebellion that enslaved people there would be declared free if they did not return to the Union. (first used: 3. Source the Emancipation Proclamation: two proclamations in one document)
United States Colored Troops — the Union army regiments of Black soldiers, most of them formerly enslaved, raised in large numbers after 1863 and led mostly by white officers. (first used: 5. Report Black military service plainly)
Soldiers' National Cemetery — the cemetery laid out at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, for the Union soldiers killed in the battle there in July 1863, dedicated in November 1863. (first used: 6. Close-read the Gettysburg Address)
Gettysburg Address — Abraham Lincoln's short speech at the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, in November 1863, which asked listeners to finish the dead soldiers' work and give the nation a new birth of freedom. (first used: 6. Close-read the Gettysburg Address)
Manuscript copy — a copy of a text written out by hand; five known manuscript copies of the Gettysburg Address survive, and they differ in wording. (first used: 7. Compare the copies: a speech without one fixed text)
Home front — life away from the fighting during a war, where civilians grow food, work in factories, pay taxes, and bear shortages and high prices. (first used: 8. Feel the war at home: total war and the home fronts)
Total war — war waged against an enemy's food supply, railroads, and will to fight as well as against its armies, so that civilians feel the war's cost directly. (first used: 8. Feel the war at home: total war and the home fronts)
Richmond Bread Riot — the protest of 1863 in the Confederate capital, in which women workers who could not afford food marched to demand it at the prices the army paid and then broke into shops and warehouses. (first used: 8. Feel the war at home: total war and the home fronts)
Draft — a law requiring men of fighting age to serve in the army if their names were called; the Union's draft law of 1863 let a man escape service by paying 300 dollars or sending a substitute. (first used: 8. Feel the war at home: total war and the home fronts)
Appomattox Court House — the Virginia village where Robert E. Lee surrendered his army to Ulysses S. Grant in April 1865, the first of the Confederate surrenders that ended the war. (first used: 9. End the war and order the record)
Ford's Theatre — the theater in Washington, DC, where John Wilkes Booth shot Abraham Lincoln in April 1865; Lincoln died the next morning. (first used: 9. End the war and order the record)

Summary

The Union had more people, factories, and railroads; the Confederacy fought on the defensive.
The war killed more Americans than any other; the course states the scale in words.
In 1861 the war was for the Union, not yet for emancipation.
Enslaved people freed themselves by fleeing to Union lines from 1861 on.
The Emancipation Proclamation (1863) is a war measure that recites the preliminary proclamation of 1862.
It freed people only in the areas in rebellion; the 13th Amendment (1865) ended slavery everywhere.
Black soldiers and sailors served in large numbers after 1863, most of them formerly enslaved.
The Gettysburg Address (1863) survives in five handwritten copies that differ; name the text you quote.
Total war and runaway prices brought the war to both home fronts.
Lee surrendered at Appomattox in April 1865, and Lincoln was killed that month.

Check your understanding

Work these before looking at the answers — they are ungraded, and the answers (with reasoning) are at the bottom of the page.

An illustrative river town opens a ferry in its 4th year, a bridge in its 11th year, and a rail depot in its 15th year. How many years passed from the ferry to the bridge, and from the bridge to the depot? Check that the two gaps add back to the span.
An illustrative city council passes an order cancelling overdue water bills "in the east and south wards". A neighbor in the north ward says the order cancelled her bill. Explain in two sentences what the order covers and what it does not.
A club's founding pledge survives in three handwritten copies, and one copy has a sentence the other two lack. You want to quote the pledge in a report. What should you write next to your quotation, and why?
Sort three illustrative sources about a flood as primary or secondary. They are a ferry operator's logbook kept during the flood, a 2019 museum label about the flood, and a letter the operator's daughter wrote thirty years later about what she saw as a child.

Answers (worked reasoning — read after attempting)

Ferry to bridge: 11 − 4 = 7 years. Bridge to depot: 15 − 11 = 4 years. The span is 15 − 4 = 11 years, and 7 + 4 = 11, so the gaps add back. Name the two points you measure between, as you did with the week's three years.
The order covers only the east and south wards, so it did not cancel a bill in the north ward. Its name sounds general, but its list of places is what decides its reach, the same trap as reading the Proclamation's name instead of its list.
Write which copy you are quoting, and where it is kept. The copies differ, so a reader needs to know which text your words come from, as the course does with the text the Avalon Project prints.
The logbook is primary, made during the flood by someone in it. The museum label is secondary, a later interpretation. The daughter's letter is primary for her own childhood memory, the borderline case, read with the thirty-year gap in mind.

Next up in this module: the Readings & Resources page, the lecture tutorial, the practice set, and the quiz. Next week, in Reconstruction, you test the rule from this chapter, a war measure versus an amendment, against the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments.

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