History Minute (059): Why Lee suddenly surrendered

As relayed by Zinn:

Simply by stopping work, the 4 million enslaved people had tremendous power because they could threaten the Confederacy with starvation at a time when hundreds of thousands of soldiers had been killed and war fatigue was high. Lee had two options: Either the South must free its slaves and use them to fight the North — and thereby make it impossible to benefit from slave labor in the future — or the South must surrender to the North on the assumption that after the war, they could resume enslavement practices.

Quoting Zinn:

George Rawick, a sociologist and anthropologist, describes the development of blacks up to and into the Civil War:

"The slaves went from being frightened human beings, thrown among strange men, including fellow slaves who were not their kinsmen and who did not speak their language or understand their customs and habits, to what W. E. B. DuBois once described as the general strike whereby hundreds of thousands of slaves deserted the plantations, destroying the South's ability to supply its army."

Excerpt From

A People's History of the United States

Howard Zinn

History Minute (058): White resentment and the Draft Riots of 1863

Quoting Zinn:

With the [Emancipation] Proclamation, the Union army was open to blacks. And the more blacks entered the war, the more it appeared a war for their liberation. The more whites had to sacrifice, the more resentment there was, particularly among poor whites in the North, who were drafted by a law that allowed the rich to buy their way out of the draft for $300. And so the draft riots of 1863 took place, uprisings of angry whites in northern cities, their targets not the rich, far away, but the blacks, near at hand. It was an orgy of death and violence. A black man in Detroit described what he saw: a mob, with kegs of beer on wagons, armed with clubs and bricks, marching through the city, attacking black men, women, children. He heard one man say: "If we are got to be killed up for Negroes then we will kill every one in this town."

Excerpts From

A People's History of the United States

Howard Zinn

History Minute (057): The Thirteenth Amendment

Per Zinn, although Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation itself did not free all slaves, but only those in the rebel states, it did inspire abolitionist activities.  Abolitionists gathered 400,000 signatures by 1864 asking Congress for legislation to end all slavery.  Congress responded by passing the Thirteenth Amendment, declaring an end to all slavery. 

Read more:

A People's History of the United States

Howard Zinn

 

History Minute (056): The Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863

According to Zinn, the Emancipation Proclamation declared free only those slaves in states that fought against the Union (i.e., the United Sates).  It said nothing about the slaves residing in the Union — i.e., in the north.  The London Spectator wrote: "The principle is not that a human being cannot justly own another, but that he cannot own him unless he is loyal to the United States."

Read more:

A People's History of the United States

Howard Zinn