Blacks And Their Role In The Civil War

At Jamestown, Va. in 1611 a group of Scottish women and children were sold as slaves. 7 years later in Jamestown the first Africans were sold in slavery. From 1611 until 1865 people from virtually every society on earth were sold into slavery in North America. Citizens in each of the thirteen colonies enslaved people, but slavery was viewed as a southern institution after the early 1800's. Along the coastal areas of the South a majority of the slaves were black. In some inland areas whites and Native Americans outnumbered black slaves. Slavery is still legal in the United States as a criminal punishment, but is not practiced.

In 1789 Georgians, as did much of the rest of the country, saw slavery as a dying institution. Eli Whitney's stolen modification of the cotton gin(1793) created a greater demand for slaves, so rather than "wither on the vine" the institution prospered. The Northwest Ordinance, adopted in 1787 banned the practice in the Northwest Territories. In 1798 Georgia forbid further importation of slaves and the Constitution allowed Congress to outlaw importation of slaves in 1808, which they did. Over the next 40 years lesser skirmishes were fought over slavery including the Compromise of 1820. In North Georgia slavery was not widespread and a majority of the slaves were of Native American, Scottish or Irish descent.

Slaves often spoke of "our cotton" or "our cattle". The only item they would concede was the master's carriage. Trusted slaves were permitted to go to town unescorted. Others suffered horribly. Conditions in northern factories were as bad or worse than those for a majority of the slaves, but it would be 40 years after the war when they were properly addressed.

Beginning in the late 1840's the conflict over slavery began to boil over. The Compromise of 1850 contributed heavily to the split in Georgia's Democratic Party. On a national scale David Wilmot, Lloyd Garrison, and Harriet Beecher Stowe enflamed the abolitionists. James G. Birney and Theodore Weld were more effective against slavery. The Dred Scot decision, Kansas-Nebraska Act, and harsher Fugitive Slave Laws gave the South some redress.

The new Republican Party became a home to the alienated abolitionists. Although they totaled less than 3% of the population at large, they formulated the Republican platform to include the abolition of slavery as a plank. The party then nominated Abraham Lincoln for president. Few gave him any chance of success, but 3 other candidates split the popular vote and Lincoln won. Convinced that Lincoln would ruin the South economically, possibly by freeing the slaves, the heartland of the South withdrew from the Union. Shortly thereafter the upper south joined them. The attack on Fort Sumter launched America's bloodiest conflict.