International Solidarity and Abolition

When Americans watched John Brown die, the world took notice. The abolitionist’s raid on Harper’s Ferry in 1859 sparked a global outcry: French writer Victor Hugo proclaimed Brown “the liberator, the champion of Christ” and warned that hanging him would “shake… the entire fabric of American Democracy”. British working people also joined the struggle. Soon after Brown’s execution, textile workers in Manchester, England – who depended on Southern cotton – refused to touch a bale picked by slaves in solidarity with the Union blockade. President Lincoln praised this act as “an instance of sublime Christian heroism”. Abroad, Karl Marx similarly linked Brown’s death to world change, writing in 1860 that “the biggest things happening in the world today” were “the movement of the slaves in America, started by the death of John Brown”. By 1865 Marx was congratulating Americans on Lincoln’s victory, hailing “Death to Slavery” as the triumphant war-cry. In short, anti-slavery activists and workers on three continents saw the U.S. conflict as part of a global struggle against race-based oppression.

These transatlantic connections helped shape politics at home. The new Republican Party (GOP) was founded on anti-slavery principles, drawing on abolitionist zeal that in turn inspired observers abroad. European radicals and British labor sympathized with the Republicans’ cause, just as American leaders recognized international support. In an open letter to Manchester workers Lincoln thanked them and sent food relief, cementing this “special relationship” born of anti-slavery solidarity. Thus the Civil War broke through mere regional politics, forging new racial solidarities that linked Brown’s martyrdom, Lincoln’s emancipation policy, and global antislavery movements into one historic cause.

Economics and Emancipation

Slavery had been the engine of a vast, interlocked economy. In the South, plantation cotton was king: by 1860 cotton exports made up about half of all U.S. trade. Northern industry and European textile mills likewise depended on this cheap slave-grown cotton. Yet these economic ties created contradictions. For decades the federal government had considered peaceful solutions (even proposals to buy out all Southern slaves), but economists found the price prohibitive. One estimate put the cost of purchasing and freeing every slave at about $2.7 billion (in 1860 dollars) – roughly triplingannual federal spending. No one could fund that, so the question became how to end slavery without bankrupting the nation.

By mid-war, economic pressures on both sides made emancipation seem more practical. The Union had a vast industrial base, a huge domestic market, and the revenue systems to finance war. It could raise tariffs, taxes, and even issue “greenbacks” – in 1861–1865 the U.S. government debt jumped from $65 million to $2.7 billion, financed by Northern capital and unprecedented banking reforms. In contrast, the Confederacy had almost no factories and depended on foreign loans to buy war supplies. Its tax system was weak and it counterfeited money: by 1863 Confederate prices were up thirteen-fold. In this contest, the Southern slave economy could not sustain modern warfare. As one historian notes, the North’s ability to reallocate vast resources “ensured that the ‘market revolution’ would not be stymied by the South’s attempt to break up the Union”.

Meanwhile, the global cotton trade unraveled under war. Britain’s textile workers suffered a “cotton famine” when Union blockades cut off Southern supplies, pushing many in Britain to openly favor the Union cause. In effect, the world’s reliance on Southern slavery turned the Civil War into a world economic event. Southern planters who once boasted “Cotton is King!” found themselves with currency worth almost nothing and no foreign markets. The economic logic of slavery collapsed: with so many slaves running away or refusing to work, Confederate agriculture was threatened with starvation. In sum, Northern industrial strength and the war’s disruption of world trade made the old slave system economically untenable and paved the way for emancipation.

Racial Tensions in the North: Riots and Resistance

The North’s victory did not end racism at home. In cities like New York, many white laborers resented Black people and feared free competition. When Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation came in 1863, it inflamed fears that freed slaves would flood Northern cities. In March 1863 white longshoremen in Manhattan refused to work alongside Black dockworkers and attacked them. By July the economic grievance exploded into open violence: the New York City Draft Riots of July 1863 were in part a race riot. Irish-American mobs rampaged through Black neighborhoods, torturing and lynching African Americans and burning the Colored Orphan Asylum. Hundreds of black men were beaten or killed and homes and schools were destroyed as the mob searched “for all the negro porters, cartmen and laborers”. This anti-Black terror in Northern cities underscored a bitter contradiction: while the Union fought to free the slaves, many of its own citizens violently resisted Black equality.

Yet even amidst hatred, there was African American agency and defiance. In rural South and urban North alike, Black communities organized to protect each other. Tens of thousands of slaves fled plantations when federal armies appeared, denying the Confederacy their labor. Many escaped slaves guided Union troops, acted as scouts, or simply refused to work. In the words of historian W. E. B. Du Bois, enslaved people “entered upon a general strike against slavery” by fleeing to “the first place of safety” and offering their services to Union forces. By withdrawing their labor, they could starve the Confederate war effort; by joining Union camps they became workers, guides, and eventually soldiers. In Du Bois’s analysis, this slave “general strike” was decisive: “the withdrawal and bestowal of [the slave’s] labor decided the war”. In short, while mobs in New York burned orphanages, elsewhere ex-slaves were marching, building railroads, and bearing arms to destroy the very system that oppressed them.

Native Americans in the Civil War

Amidst the Union-Confederate struggle, Native Americans suffered new betrayals. In Indian Territory (modern Oklahoma) and on the plains, tribes were pulled into the war or attacked by both armies. At the war’s outbreak, some tribes in the Southeast (Cherokee, Creek, etc.) were already on lands won by forced removals decades earlier. These tribes fractured: many Cherokee split between supporting the Confederacy (some owned slaves) and supporting the Union to end slavery in their communities. By war’s end, such divisions had turned former nations against one another and created “a new wave of impoverished refugees” among Native peoples. An estimated 20,000 Native Americans fought on both sides, but their participation won them no peace. Instead, the conflict let both governments encroach further.

To white Americans of the era, expansion across Native lands remained a national goal. “Northerners and Southerners agreed on little at the time except that the Army should pacify Western tribes,” wrote historians of the period. As the Civil War wound down, the U.S. government turned its attention westward. The same General Sherman who led the March to the Sea was soon dispatched to the Plains: his orders were to protect transcontinental railroads and mining interests by forcing tribes onto reservations and seizing their lands. Sherman’s campaign and others like it devastated Native economies (for example, by exterminating the buffalo herds) and confined survivors to reservations after the war. Meanwhile, tribes in the defeated Confederacy saw their wartime treaties nullified: American Indian lands that had been promised to tribes in exchange for alliance were often taken back by the U.S. government in the Reconstruction era. In both North and South, the Civil War served as cover to violate old treaties and “steal” Native lands. The result was that while African Americans gained nominal freedom, Native Americans in war-torn regions only faced further dispossession and violence.

Sherman’s Dual Legacy

General William T. Sherman exemplifies these contradictions. In early 1865, Sherman issued Special Field Orders No. 15 – the famous “forty acres and a mule” order – confiscating about 400,000 acres of Southern coastal land for distribution to freed Black families. Thousands of freedmen flocked to the Sea Islands and coastal Georgia expecting permanent land ownership. However, after Lincoln’s assassination Sherman’s orders were largely overturned: President Andrew Johnson restored most confiscated land to white planters. This brief promise of land hinted at Reconstruction’s potential for economic justice, yet it was quickly revoked.

Sherman’s other “march” came after Appomattox. In 1866–67, as the U.S. Army resumed fighting Plains tribes, Sherman deployed the tactics he had honed against Southerners. He waged a scorched-earth campaign that targeted Native villages and herds: within a few years, virtually all the wild buffalo on the Great Plains were gone. In Sherman’s view, destroying the tribe’s food supply was just as decisive as destroying the Confederacy’s railroads. Thus the same general who had liberated enslaved people and briefly redistributed land to them became an instrument of continental conquest against Native peoples. Historians note the irony: Sherman’s “trail of destruction” against Indians continued the war on Native sovereignty even after peace with the Confederacy, leaving them “exiled to reservations” in his wake. In short, Sherman’s legacy includes both a momentary advance for Black freedom and a brutal campaign of conquest against Native nations.

Lincoln and Emancipation

By 1862 Lincoln had come to see slavery’s end as a war necessity, not just a moral imperative. He first declared slaves in rebelling states “forever free” in his Emancipation Proclamation (January 1, 1863) – a military measure issued just after Antietam. The National Archives notes that Lincoln used the proclamation to “inspire all Black people… to support the Union cause and to keep England and France from… aiding the Confederacy”. In effect, emancipation became a weapon to weaken the Southern war effort and deter foreign intervention. Every advance of Union troops thereafter “expanded the domain of freedom”; freed people flocked to Union lines or volunteered for service. By the end of the war almost 200,000 Black soldiers and sailors had fought for the Union, turning slaves into “liberators of their own people.”

Lincoln recognized that proclamation alone was not enough. He pushed for a constitutional guarantee, insisting that the 13th Amendment be part of his 1864 re-election platform. In January 1865 Congress approved the amendment, which “abolished slavery in the United States”. Lincoln’s leadership thus transformed the Union cause: from fighting “to preserve the Union” it became a crusade to end slavery entirely. In his words, he acted because slavery was “an irresistible force” confronting his beloved Republic; with an army in the field and millions of slaves in revolt, emancipation was “fit and necessary” for winning the war.

Aftermath: Hope and Continued Struggle

The Civil War’s close in 1865 was both liberating and unsettling. For the first time in two centuries, American slavery was ended by law – the 13th Amendment provided a “final constitutional solution” to the slave system. Millions of Black Americans emerged from bondage with unprecedented optimism: freedmen’s schools were founded, Black churches flourished, and by 1868 a remarkable 80% of eligible Black men in the South had registered to vote. As one account observes, emancipation “offered great promise” to radically reshape American life. New rights – including citizenship and, soon, the 14th and 15th Amendments – began to break the old racial order.

Yet by war’s end the social order of white supremacy had not vanished. Almost immediately Southern legislatures passed Black Codes to restrict freedmen’s labor and movement – effectively another form of bondage. White vigilantes and groups like the Ku Klux Klan soon embarked on terror campaigns. As Bryan Stevenson of the Equal Justice Initiative notes, the “hope of Reconstruction quickly became a nightmare of unparalleled violence and oppression” for Black people. Thousands were lynched or driven out of the political process. Even in the North and West, many refused to support racial equality. By 1877, federal troops were withdrawn from the South and much of the promise of emancipation was rolled back.

In sum, the Civil War closed one dark chapter – slavery’s legality – but opened another. It united a nation and abolished slavery, thanks to the confluence of economic change, international pressure, courageous resistance, and political will. At the same time it shattered millions of lives and left deep scars: families torn apart, Southern lands devastated, and racial hatreds unresolved. The war’s end brought a fragile moment of hope – free people voting and rebuilding lives – shadowed by a continued sadness of discrimination and loss. The triumphs of emancipation sat side by side with the betrayals in the Native West, the riots in Northern cities, and the violent suppression that would follow in Reconstruction. These contradictions – between promise and reality, liberation and exclusion – would shape America’s next century as surely as the war had shaped its immediate present.

Sources: Contemporary letters, archival documents, and histories document these themes (see citations above). The new Union and the freed people owe a debt to the international labor movementpeoplesworld.org, to the slaves who fought for freedomblogs.law.columbia.eduen.wikipedia.org, and to leaders who transformed war into emancipationarchives.govarchives.gov – even as the lingering injustices remind us that the work of justice continued long after the war’s last shot.