- [Narrator] It's hard to imagine
anything more transformative in American history
than the Civil War.
Before the Civil War, the United States
was a largely rural, barely unified collection of states
not making much of a blip on the world stage.
After the Civil War the United States was well on its way
toward becoming a modern country
with a strong central government
and a thriving industrial economy
that was soon to make it into a serious world power.
The Civil War is seen as such an enormous turning point
in US history that most colleges split courses
into US history before 1865 and US history after 1865.
But was the United States really that different
before and after the Civil War?
As historians, we could tackle that question
from a lot of different angles.
We could look at the role of the federal government
in American life before and after the war.
We could look at changes in the economy.
I'm curious about changes in American national identity
during this period.
What do I mean by national identity?
National identity encompasses things
like core beliefs about democracy, citizenship,
and America's proper role in the world.
We can identify these beliefs in different time periods
by looking at practices like
who gets to vote,
which groups are defined as a part of the American people
versus which groups are defined as aliens or others,
and whether the American public is expressing
lots of national pride or lots of doubt
about the way things are going.
So now we've got a historical question
that we're curious about.
If we saw that question like this on an exam
it might say something like
compare the relative significance of the effects
of the Civil War on American values.
Okay, well what we're really doing is asking,
how much did the Civil War change the core beliefs
around American national identity?
Did it change some more than others?
To answer this question, first we need to decide
which core beliefs we want to track.
I'm gonna choose ideas around democracy.
So who gets to vote,
whether Americans believe that democracy
is something everyone should participate in
or just a select few?
Second, let's look at ideas around citizenship.
Who is defined as an American
or as part of the American people
and entitled to the privileges and immunities
of citizenship.
Last, let's look at ideas about America's role in the world.
Whether or how the United States should be involved
in world affairs or extending its influence
beyond the boundaries of the United States.
Now you might want to look at different core beliefs
than I've chosen here
like maybe whether people saw their regional identity
as more important than their national identity.
And if you want to do that that's totally okay.
I'm gonna go with these three themes for now.
So let's brainstorm some of the major trends
that occur in each of these themes
before and after the Civil War in between 1844 and 1877.
I've got our timeline here with the big dividing line
at the end of the Civil War.
Now we're looking at this from a bird's eye view
of the whole era so I'm not gonna go into much detail
about the events we're talking about.
If something sounds unfamiliar to you just make a note of it
and you can go back to review that concept
when you have time.
All right, first democracy.
In the years before the Civil War,
what were the prevailing ideas about
who should be able to vote
and who actually could vote in practice?
Well by 1844, most States had extended voting rights
to all white men regardless of property ownership,
women couldn't vote
and neither could enslaved Africans in the South,
and voting rights for free African American men in the North
were pretty limited.
How about after the Civil War?
Now the biggest change there
was the ratification of the 15th Amendment in 1870
which granted all men the right to vote
enfranchising African American men.
It did not, to the disappointment
of the women's suffrage movement, enfranchise women
but by 1877, the end of Reconstruction
when the federal government stopped
enforcing the rights of black citizens in the South,
Jim Crow laws would make voting
all but impossible for black men.
Okay, now let's look at how values around citizenship
changed before and after the Civil War.
Who was a citizen before the Civil War
and who was considered eligible
to be part of the American people?
Well white men definitely and white women,
free people of color in the North
with some limitations depending on their state of residents,
immigrants arriving from Ireland and Germany
were eligible for citizenship
but Native Americans were considered to be members
of separate nations not Americans.
Mexican Americans and the territories
acquired in the Mexican Cession
were technically American citizens
but had few legal protections.
And enslaved people in the South
were still considered property not citizens.
How did that change after the Civil War?
Well the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863
and the 13th Amendment in 1865 ended slavery.
The 14th Amendment in 1868 made all people
born or naturalized in the United States citizens,
granting citizenship to African American men
and women in the South.
But again, the end of Reconstruction
and the rise of Jim Crow made it difficult for them
to access the rights of citizenship after 1877.
White men and women and immigrants were still citizens.
The US government began to stop treating Native Americans
as members of separate nations
but started classifying them as wards of the state
rather than citizens.
In the West, Chinese immigrants were looked upon
as two different to become citizens
and they would soon be forbidden
from entering the United States at all.
Mexican Americans saw little change
in their precarious status.
Finally, how did Americans view the proper role
of the United States in the world
before and after the Civil War?
In 1844, the US was still practicing isolationism
to avoid entangling alliances abroad
but the ideas of manifest destiny led to a general sense
that the United States had a divine mission
to occupy North America from coast to coast
which provided the impetus for the Mexican War
and for Indian Removal.
After the Civil War, both isolationism
as a foreign policy outside North America
and manifest destiny as a foreign policy
within North America continued on as before.
So now let's return to our question,
how much did the Civil War change
American national identity?
In terms of ideas about democracy
there was definitely a big expansion of the franchise
due to the Civil War
with the addition of two million African American men
as new voters in the South
after the ratification of the 15th Amendment.
But that was short-lived.
The Jim Crow system would effectively
prevent black voters in the South from casting ballots
until the 1960s.
In terms of citizenship, that too was altered
by the passage of a constitutional amendment.
In this case, the 14th Amendment.
Those citizenship guarantees were also short-lived
but let's not forget the long-term importance
of the 14th and 15th Amendments
for securing equal rights in the 20th century.
Even though those rights were only on paper
during the Jim Crow era
that paper would eventually be very important
for expanding voting and citizenship rights
after World War II.
As for ideas about America's role in the world,
those didn't change much at all.
The drive to expand the borders of the United States
all the way to the Pacific
only intensified after the Civil War.
So we might answer our question
with the following thesis statement.
The Civil War brought on some immediate short-term changes
in American ideals of democracy and citizenship,
which would fade after the end of Reconstruction,
while the belief in the divine mission of the United States
to spread across North America only intensified
in this time period.
Even though there was little change in the 19th century,
the seeds planted immediately after the Civil War
would sprout into major changes in the 20th century.
What do you think?
How would you weigh these pieces of evidence
to draw conclusions about
how the Civil War changed American values?
You might come up with
a completely different thesis statement than I did
and that's perfectly fine.
The important part of thinking like a historian
is to gather evidence and then craft an argument
supported by that evidence.