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Feb 18, 2022 7 tweets 5 min read Read on X
#OTD in 1865 Charleston, South Carolina Mayor Charles Macbeth surrendered the city to Lieutenant Colonel A.G. Bennett of the 21st United States Colored Troops. The city had been under siege since the summer of 1863 and its harbor contained Ft. Sumter, where the war began.
Confederate General Beauregard ordered the evacuation three days earlier, nearly four years after he commanded the initial assault of Ft. Sumter in April, 1861. By the afternoon a company of the 54th Mass. (USCT) was helping to extinguish the flames set by the retreating rebels.
Many of the first Union soldiers to enter Charleston were from the USCT and they left a wake of liberation for Black Charlestonians who were legally enslaved the day prior. Days later the 55th Mass. (USCT) walked the streets of downtown singing "John Brown's Body."
A Northern war correspondent described the scene:

"A City of ruins, —silent, mournful, in deepest humiliation…The band was playing ‘Hail, Columbia,’ and the strains floated through the desolate city, awakening wild enthusiasm in the hearts of the colored people…"
The same American flag that previously flew over Ft. Sumter was raised back again during a ceremony there on April 14, 1865. President Lincoln was assassinated the next day in Washington D.C. Robert E. Lee surrendered to U.S. Grant at Appomattox only days prior on April, 9. Flag raising ceremony, Ft. Sumter, April 14, 1865.
Those in attendance at the flag raising ceremony were Henry Ward Beecher, William Lloyd Garrison, Denmark Vesey's son, Robert Vesey, and Major Martin R. Delany.
The bombardment of Ft. Sumter had occurred almost exactly 4 years earlier on April 12, 1861.

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More from @TheCivilWarDoc1

Mar 21, 2023
Are you an educator, researcher, or scholar that is trying to create and promote #history content through social media? If so, join us April 11, at 8pm (est) to learn tips and tricks on how to increase your reach from historian @PhdRachel! This will be hosted by @KeriLeighMerrit
Dr. Gunter has grown a significant social media following (especially on #TikTok) by posting #historical #content. Despite its faults, #socialmedia can be a fantastic medium to help reach students and the public.

#historyteacher #historycontent #historyeducation #educator
If you want to check out her TikTok channel before the event, you can do so at this link on your desktop or on the mobile ap:

tiktok.com/@phdrachel
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Mar 21, 2023
Join us Thursday, March 23 at 8pm eastern for our next happy hour with @jbrentmorris where he will discuss his new book Dismal Freedom: A History of the Maroons of the Great Dismal Swamp (@UNC_Press).

#thecivilwardoc #slavery #historybook #booktalk #bookevent #history #historian
Dismal Freedom is the first book-length study that fully examines the lives of maroons (fugitive slaves) and their communities in the liminal world between slavery and freedom in the swamp along the North Carolina/Virginia border.
To sign up head over to our Patreon page and subscribe! You will also be eligible to attend all future happy hours. Patreon.com/thecivilwardoc

or

If you are a graduate student or contingent faculty member and would like to join, please DM us and we will provide the link for you!
Read 6 tweets
Mar 21, 2023
#OTD in 1861 Confederate Vice President Alexander Stevens delivered what became known as the Cornerstone Speech. Stevens stated plainly that the sole purpose of the Confederacy was to create a slave republic and that any threat the institution of slavery justified secession. Image
He professed, "Our new government['s]...foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery—subordination to the superior race—is his natural and normal condition."

#thecivilwardoc #thecivilwar #civilwar
Stevens continued, "This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth."

Confederates fired on Ft. Sumter approximately three weeks later.

#OnThisDay #onthisdayinhistory #todayinhistory
Read 5 tweets
Mar 20, 2023
Join us March 23 at 8pm eastern for our next happy hour with @jbrentmorris where he will discuss his new book Dismal Freedom: A History of the Maroons of the Great Dismal Swamp (@UNC_Press).

#thecivilwardoc #slavery #historybook #booktalk #bookevent #history #historian
Dismal Freedom is the first book-length study that fully examines the lives of maroons (fugitive slaves) and their communities in the liminal world between slavery and freedom in the swamp along the North Carolina/Virginia border.
To sign up head over to our Patreon page and subscribe! You will also be eligible to attend all future happy hours. Patreon.com/thecivilwardoc

or

If you are a graduate student or contingent faculty member and would like to join, please DM us and we will provide the link for you!
Read 5 tweets
Mar 20, 2023
What is widely considered the founding meeting of the Republican Party occurred #OTD in 1854. Made up of mostly anti-slavery Whigs and Free Soilers, the Republican Party's main platform was not to abolish slavery, but to prevent its expansion.
Republican membership rose dramatically and quickly. It took them only 6 years to take the White House with Abraham Lincoln's election in 1860. After Lincoln's election the political system broke down over the issue of slavery.
After the war the Republican Party shaped Reconstruction policy, especially when they obtained a supermajority in the 1866 elections.
Read 4 tweets
Mar 20, 2023
Harriet Beecher Stowe's influential book Uncle Tom's Cabin was published #OTD in 1852. Stowe's anti-slavery novel was a huge success and pushed many Americans to reassess their attitudes toward slavery. Only the Bible sold more copies than Uncle Tom's Cabin during the 19 century.
Although Uncle Tom's Cabin had a profound effect on the anti-slavery movement, it did have flaws. For instance, Stowe developed the characters around negative Black stereotypes that eventually became standard talking points for proslavery supporters and white supremacists.
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