The Changing views of race in the Civil War

Changing views of Race during the Civil War era.

It was with the discovery of the new world by Columbus in 1492 that severe slavery in the Americas began. It wouldn’t end for almost four hundred more years. From enslaving the Native American population, who were considered poor slaves, Europeans went directly to enslaving the African population. In due time these populations in southern and central America began to fade and slavery began to die a natural death. In the North American south, however, slavery was revived on its last leg when Cotton became King.

At the start of the American Civil War, 1861, enslaved peoples were considered politically, morally and mentally inferior.  Very few people considered them equals; even Abraham Lincoln, hailed as a hero and a great abolitionist, believed blacks to be inferior. Even the publication of Abolitionist works, such as Uncle Tom’s Cabin, published some ten years earlier, did not change this mindset. It did, however, make people more sympathetic, facilitated the war and laid the ground work for many future abolitionists.

Around 1863 this attitude began to change, people became more politically active and the idea that black people were inferior was undergoing a rapid change in the North. With the implementation of Lincoln’s emancipation proclamation, which was mainly for the manpower the slaves would provide and to give the north a moral reason to fight, and a growing dissenting public opinion, people were beginning to see that slaves were equal. This attitude lasted until the end of the war.

At the end of the war, opinion on race was deeply divided. The South blamed blacks for many of the problems incurred by the war, which, coupled with the already present racism led to a hostile environment for freed slaves that is still present in some areas. In the North there were a growing number of people sympathetic to the plight of black people.

In the end racism was still prevalent but numerous political acts and the military presence in the south made sure it wasn’t acted on for years. The idea of racial superiority changed rapidly over the Civil War, in the process of five years slavery was abolished and the ground work was laid of the civil rights movement that would occur nearly a century later.