12.2C – Read the Text #3: Practicing Fluency

READING TEXT
Module 12: Civil War and Reconstruction

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During the United States Civil War (1861-1865), the Northern and Southern states fought over keeping slavery legal. Starting in the 1600s, about 12.5 million men, women, and children from different parts of Africa were forcibly taken across the Atlantic Ocean. White landowners in the South grew cotton, tobacco, and sugar cane. They used enslaved labor instead of paying workers to grow these crops. Because enslaved people were not considered human, they did not have any rights. People bought and sold them as property, and used them for forced work and company. Some people in the North also supported slavery or earned money from the slave economy, while other people wanted to pass federal laws against slavery.

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In late 1860, Southern states voted to secede from the United States and start their own country, where slavery would continue to be legal. People in the North wanted to keep the states together. During the war, the Northern states, who wanted to keep the states united, were called the Union, and the Southern states, who wanted to secede, were called the Confederacy.

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The first battle of the U.S. Civil War began about one month after Abraham Lincoln became the president in 1861. Lincoln grew up poor in Illinois but he educated himself and became a successful lawyer. He supported ideas about unity of the states. However, unity was not possible at that time, because people still disagreed on the status of enslaved Black people.

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In 1863, Lincoln sent out the Emancipation Proclamation, ordering Confederate states to free their slaves. However, Confederate states did not free their slaves. Many enslaved people freed themselves by escaping to the Union states, just as they did before the war. Over 200,000 Black people joined the Union army, although they were not always accepted. In April of 1865, the Union won the war and the Confederate states remained a part of the United States. One week later, President Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth, who supported the Confederacy. By the end of the U.S. Civil War, over 620,000 people had died on both sides.

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In the years after the U.S. Civil War, the government wrote some laws called the Reconstruction Acts, to help the states come back together as one country. In early 1865, Congress passed the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, making slavery illegal in all U.S. states. In 1868, Congress passed the 14th Amendment, which gave all people living in the U.S. equal rights under the law, including Black Americans and former enslaved people. In 1870, the 15th Amendment was passed, protecting voting rights for Black men who were U.S. citizens. Women and most non-white people did not have voting rights in the U.S. at that time.

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All of these laws made important changes, but many of the states did not give enough support for equal rights for Black citizens. Some local laws limited where people could live, gather, and work. Many local laws made it difficult for Black people to vote in elections. Famous African-American speaker and writer Frederick Douglass fought against slavery and for voting rights. He said, “Though slavery was abolished, the wrongs of my people were not ended. Though they were not slaves, they were not quite free.”

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During Reconstruction, Black men could vote and were elected to government for the first time in the Southern states. Sixteen Black men were elected to the U.S. Congress and more than 600 were elected to state governments. Hundreds of African Americans also served in local government jobs. For African Americans, working in government when they or their families had been born into slavery was a big move forward for all U.S. citizens.

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