The war between the two sides reached far beyond the battlefields. To raise armies and pay for them, both governments did things Americans had never seen, and millions of families ran farms, shops and households with the men away.
Key idea
Both sides drafted soldiers: the Confederacy from April 1862, the Union from 1863. In July 1863 anger at the Union draft set off the New York City draft riots. Lincoln suspended habeas corpus in some areas, so people could be held without a court hearing. In 1862 Congress passed the Homestead Act, the Morrill Land-Grant Act and the Pacific Railway Act. Women served as nurses and ran farms and businesses.
Why it works
Why did Congress pass big Western laws in the middle of a war? With Southern members gone, the Republicans had large majorities and could pass plans that Southern votes had blocked for years. The Homestead Act gave 160 acres of public land to settlers who lived on it and farmed it for five years. The Morrill Act gave states land to fund colleges of agriculture and engineering. The Pacific Railway Act backed a railroad to California.
Worked example: Why the draft riots exploded
The Union draft law of March 1863 let a drafted man avoid service by hiring a substitute or paying \$300. In July, rioting in New York City lasted four days. What made it so violent?
- \$300 was close to a year's pay for a laborer, so the draft fell hardest on the poor: "a rich man's war and a poor man's fight," critics said.
- Many of the rioters were Irish immigrant workers who also feared that freed people would compete for their jobs.
- The mob attacked draft offices, then turned on Black New Yorkers, killing a number of them and burning the Colored Orphan Asylum.
- Troops, some sent from Gettysburg, ended it. About 120 people died.
Answer: Class anger at the \$300 exemption mixed with racial hostility in a city of crowded, poor neighborhoods.
Common mistake
It is a mistake to think only soldiers were affected. The war changed government itself: an income tax, national paper money (greenbacks), conscription, and federal support for land, colleges and railroads. It changed daily life in both sections: the Confederacy suffered shortages and prices that rose many times over, and hungry women led a bread riot in Richmond in April 1863. Check: list three ways a family far from any battle felt the war.
Thousands of women nursed the wounded. Dorothea Dix, the reformer, became superintendent of Union army nurses, and Clara Barton carried supplies to the battlefields; she later founded the American Red Cross. In the South, women ran farms and plantations and worked in government offices and munitions plants.