Midterm Summary: The American Civil War

Abdulltaef Alenazi
HIST 2030
Professor Pamela Bobo
March 5th, 2015
Midterm 1

The American Civil War had produced immense results and one of those results includes the emancipation. The emancipation of more than four million enslaved African Americans in the States made a history for the entire world. It has achieved special position among the pages of encyclopedia. This remarkable period was quite good for the new free persons who had to take great steps. They had to build a family peace, to send them to schools and churches and ultimately they had to participate in the normal life like all others used to do for having a better living. In the modern era, these things seem quite plain and simple but at that time this was a hard decision to

take.
Before the civil far, Africans were enforced to live a life under the pressure of slavery. They had no specific rights. They faced cruelty and brutality. Life before the civil war was like a hell for them. They used to get dehumanized and humiliated. “Africans forced into slavery were brutalized, humiliated, and dehumanized.” In such a scenario the law of Tennessee became as a source of protection for them. “Tennessee law required slave-owners to feed, clothe, house, and provide medical attention to their slaves.” It is quite evident that laws were taken seriously. As the decisions taken by Tennessee Supreme Court were quite seriously followed. So the slaves who were living a horrendous life and had been facing an upset life started thinking about revival.
The law of Tennessee in United States was one of those laws that made a history for people. It is one of those laws that were approved and perpetuated with quite a legal authority. The civil war was considered to be the one that was fought because of the slavery issue. There is a conflict between different reasons that were presented later on. But Civil war was one of the main reasons that let the African Americans to relive a life of their own. Initially they had to face a bundle of problems, plethora of major issues and numerous difficulties. But the freedom is really a blessing and it was realized by those people who live a life under the flag of slavery.
The state of Tennessee was a perfect source of feeling relief while facing the transition from slavery to freedom during the Civil War.

It is a fact that Tennessee was at the heart of the conflict between North and South.1 The anarchy and chaos that was being created by the Civil War created a path way for the enslaved people to meet the Tennessee communities and break down the bond that was signed earlier. Basically the bond was signed in order to keep the 275,000 African Americans as slaves. There is another point regarding Civil war, which is about the freedom of enslaved people. It is considered that most of the people got their freedom during the Civil War. They did not wait for the ending of war rather they got their freedom during the war and the feelings of a free man was quite pleasant for them. The feeling covered all of the hardships that they faced during the large time period of a number of years. According to a leading scholarly work on emancipation, “By the spring of 1865, few Tennessee blacks were

still
living as slaves.”2
The civil war was a source of freedom for the enslaved Blacks, it was a condition that seemed appropriate to them to fight for their rights after a large time of begging and asking for liberty. Right after the beginning of Civil War, the enslave Tennessee started thinking about the conflict and the reaction of their owners. The outbreak of war was the best time for them to fulfill their dreams, to get what they were trying to achieve since long. Most of the slaveholders took a step by responding to the situation and sending them to the south. While others had no other option and their slaves kept on transmitting information from one to another. As the Union army pushed into the state early in 1862, slaves could hear the battles and skirmishes, the rumble of the troops’ wagon trains.3The story did not get completed here, at the end of the year 1862, the Union army got hold on most of the areas including the areas of Middle and West Tennessee, that even include Nashville and Memphis. In addition to that at the start of 1863, Federals occupied Chattanooga and Knoxville in East Tennessee. Union occupation would contribute significantly to the demise of slavery, even though that was not the army’s intention.
Early on, most officers steadfastly refused to accept escaping slaves into Union lines, and some returned escaped slaves to their Unionist owners.4
After the time period of Civil War, the situations were tough for some people but some of them tried to have a nice opportunity.

Many of the former slave men who joined the Union army in Tennessee had wives, children, and other family members who also sought their freedom behind Union lines.5 The women begin to find work for their children and to get rid of poverty. The week and fragile camps were the only source of protection for them and they accepted it with great happiness.
While discussing about the education for the African Americans, it is clear that there were no schooling system for most of the kids of enslaved people. A few of them who got education including the Fredrick Douglass, learned and got education through informal means. A single college education was available to them with a few or limited number of students. But after the civil war things begin to change. It was emphasized that higher education should be provided to everyone so the opportunities begin to enhance and the situation got better in terms of every field. Not only in the education rather in every field of life, had African Americans got chances to prove

themselves.

References
1 Center for Historic Preservation, Middle Tennessee State University, The National Heritage Area on the Civil War in Tennessee: Compact and Master Plan (2001), 65.

2. Ira Berlin, et al., eds., Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861-1867; Series I, Volume I: The Destructionof Slavery (NY: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1985), 268.

3. Mark M. Smith, “Of Bells, Booms, Sounds, and Silences: Listening to the Civil War South,” in Joan E. Cashin, ed., The War Was You and Me: Civilians in the American Civil War (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 2002): 26.

4. General U.S. Grant established the first contraband camp in Tennessee at Grand Junction. The former slaves received shelter, food, and medical care in return for working for the government picking cotton in abandoned fields. John Cimprich, Slavery’s End in Tennessee, 1861-1865 (University, AL: Univ. of Alabama Press, 1985), 48; Berlin, et al., eds., The Destruction of Slavery, 251-252, 256-258.

5. The 110th and 111th Regiments, USCT, formed at Pulaski, for example, included many men who had left the plantations of northern Alabama and Mississippi with their families. Michael Thomas Gavin, “Giles County’s African American Soldiers During the Civil War: The 110th and 111th Regiments, USCT,” Research Report (October 2004)

6.http://www.tn4me.org/pdf/TransitionfromSlaverytoFreedom.pdf
7. http://www.collegeview.com/articles/article/the-history-of-historically-black-colleges-and-universities