WARTIME NORTHERN ECONOMY AND SOCIETY

"But if you could see the multitudes of wounded and sick soldiers who are now fallen defending the northern homes you would feel that you were willing to give up your mother a while little longer to comfort them. Poor soldiers many who were wounded and brought to this hospital have suffered and died here while many have been raised up and have gone home on furlough and all the wounded who are able will be allowed that privilege. And I do hope in a few weeks more to be with you."

"On, on I go, (open doors of time! open hospital doors!)

The crush'd head I dress, (poor crazed hand tear not the bandage away,)

The neck of the cavalry-man with the bullet through and through I examine,

Hard the breathing rattles, quite glazed already the eye, yet life struggles hard, (Come sweet death! be persuaded O beautiful death!

In mercy come quickly.)

The Quartermaster and Military Government Mobilization

Northern Business, Industry,

and Agriculture

Economic Nationalism

and Government-Business Partnership

• Gov't-business marriage emerged from largest employer in the U.S.: Quartermaster Dpt.
• Secretary of War Stanton's list of weapons supplies showed the demand for gov't-business cooperation
• 2/3 of all US $$ --> supply forces in field & Pres. Lincoln app. Meigs, spent $1.8 billion to wage war.
• Jay Cooke threw himself into the mkt of gov't bonds to finance war effort.

Class Activity

• Legitimate enterprises such as wool mills, cotton mills and Brokerage Farms made healthy profits.
• The Union Pacific Railroad and Central Pacific Railroad
• Morrill Land Grant Act (1862)
• National Banking System

Excerpt from "The Wound Dresser" (Walt Whitman)

• N. firms lost their S. businesses; farm families struggled w/ shortage of labor caused by army enlistments.
• Wool producers benefited from the shortage.
• 1863, MA economy thrived due to war-related spending
• Agricultural tools faced a boom: reapers spending tripled, and allowed northern farms to thrive during wartime.

Primary Source

Mary Ann Bickerdyke (1817–1901) to James Bickerdyke, August 23, 1864. Mary Ann Bickerdyke Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress

Northern Workers' Militancy

Wartime Northern Economy and Society

• 1860-1864 consumer prices ^ by 76%
• Lost job security as production increased, employers were replaced by machines.
• Employers hated this growing wave of labor independence and blacklisted unions.
• Labor militancy prevented employers from making profits and profiteering gov't contracts.

Factories and citizens' associations worked together to support the war, while the federal gov't and executive branch gained new powers. As a result, idealism and greed combined and the northern economy proved its impressive productivity.

Walt Whitman's War

• The poet Walt Whitman was an volunteer nurse in Washington D.C., he left records of his experiences
• He wrote famous poems such as Leaves of Grass, Oh Captain! My Captain! and The Wound Dresser
• His writing caused Americans to understand the greater picture of the war

Ibrahim Balde, Tiffany Dinh, Jeremy Gerona

Period 5 // AP USH

Ms. Pabarcus

The Union Cause

Northern Women on Home Front

and Battlefront

• Many Northerners believed in the national unity, secession of the South threatened to destroy their system.
• Abolitionists in the north campaigned to turn the war into the "crusade against slavery"
• Northern blacks gave wholehearted support to the war and volunteered by the thousands

• Women took on new roles in society
• Women formed first trained ambulance corps in the union army
• Over three thousand women served as nurses in front line hospitals
• Women also contributed in writing vasts amounts of literature on the war

WARTIME NORTHERN ECONOMY AND SOCIETY