PAN Chapter 15

Hampton Roads Conference

A February 1865 meeting in which Lincoln and Secretary of State Seward met with three Confederate commissioners at Hampton Roads, Virginia. The end of the war was clearly in sight, and southern representatives angled vainly for an armistice that would allow the South to remain a separate nation. But Lincoln was doing some political maneuvering of his own, apparently contemplating the creation of a new national party based on a postwar alliance with southern Whigs and moderate and conservative Republicans. The cement for the coalition would be concessions to planter interests. Pointing out that the Emancipation Proclamation was only a war measure, Lincoln predicted that the courts would decide whether it had granted all, some, or none of the slaves their freedom. Seward observed that the Thirteenth Amendment, which would be definitive, was not yet ratified and that reentry into the Union would allow the southern states to defeat it. Lincoln did not contradict Seward but spoke in favor of "prospective" ratification: approval with the effective date postponed for five years. He also promised to seek $400 million in compensation for slaveholders and to consider their views on related questions such as confiscation. Such financial aid would provide an economic incentive for planters to rejoin the Union and capital to cushion the economic blow of emancipation. These were startling propositions from a president on the verge of military victory. Most northerners opposed them, and only the opposition of Jefferson Davis, who set himself against anything short of independence, prevented discussion of the proposals in the South. Even at the end of the war, Lincoln was keeping his options open and maintaining the distinction he had draw between "official duty" and "personal wish." Lincoln did not attempt to mold public opinion on race, as did advocates of equality in one direction and racist Democrats in the other. Instead, he moved cautiously, constructing complex and ambiguous positions and avoiding the risks inherent in challenging, educating, or inspiring the nation's conscience.

General William Tecumseh Sherman

A Union general who commented that the North had to "keep the war South until they are not only ruined, exhausted, but humbled in pride and spirit."

Robert Gould Shaw

An abolitionist Colonel in the 54th regiment of Massachusetts. A black soldier called out to him, "Colonel, I will stay by you till I die."

Confiscation Acts

1st Confiscation Act (August 1861): Designed to punish the Confederate rebels, the law confiscated all property used for "insurrectionary purposes." Thus if the South used slaves in a hostile action, those slaves were declared seized and liberated. A second confiscation act (July 1862) was much more drastic: it confiscated the property of all those who supported the rebellion, even those who merely resided in the South and paid Confederate taxes. Their slaves were declared "forever free of their servitude, and not again [to be] held as slaves." The logic behind these acts was that the insurrection - as Lincoln had always termed it - was a serious revolution requiring strong measure. Let the government use its full powers, free the slaves, and crush the revolution, urged the Radicals. Lincoln refused to adopt that view. He stood by his proposal of voluntary gradual emancipation by the states and made no effort to enforce the second confiscation act.

Merrimac v. The Monitor

A battle in March of 1862 in which two ironclad ships, the Monitor (a Union warship) and the Merrimack (a Union ship recycled by the Confederacy), fought each other for the first time; their battle, though indecisive, ushered in a new era in naval design. The battle brought even stronger evidence of the war's seriousness.

Richmond

A battle in which General McClellan of the Union army prepared for heavily. McClellan devoted the fall and winter of 1861 to readying a formidable force of a quarter-million men whose mission would be to destroy southern forces guarding Richmond, the new Confederate capital. "The vast preparation of the enemy," wrote one Southern soldier, produced a "feeling of despondency" in the South for the first time. Habitually overestimating the size of enemy forces, McClellan called repeatedly for reinforcements and ignored Lincoln's directions to advance. Finally, McClellan chose to move by a roundabout water route, sailing his troops around the York peninsula and advancing on Richmond from the east. By June the sheer size of the federal armies outside the Confederacy's capital was highly threatening. But southern leaders foiled McClellan's legions. First, Stonewall Jackson moved north into the Shenandoah valley behind Union forces and threatened Washington, D.C., drawing some of the federal troops away from Richmond to protect their own capital. Then, in a series of engagements known as the Seven Days Battles, Confederate general Robert E. Lee struck at McClellan's army. Lee never managed to close his pincers around the retreating Union forces, but on August 3 McClellan withdrew to the Potomac. Richmond remained safe for almost two more years.

Fort Wagner

A battle in which the 54th regiment of Massachusetts launched a costly attack on Fort Wagner, in Charleston harbor.

Massachusetts 54th

A black Union regiment in Massachusetts. Corporal James Henry Gooding explained that his unit intended "to live down all prejudice against its color, by a determination to do well in any position it is put." After an engagement, he was proud that "a regiment of white men gave us three cheers as we were passing them," because "it shows that we did our duty as men should." Through such experience under fire, the blacks and whites of the 54th Massachusetts forged deep bonds. Just before the regiment launched its costly assault on Fort Wagner, in Charleston harbor, a black soldier called out to abolitionist Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, "Colonel, I will stay by you till I die." "And he kept his word," noted a survivor of the attack. "He has never been seen since." Off-duty black soldiers were sometimes attacked by northern mobs; on duty, they did most of the "fatigue duty," or heavy labor. The Union government, moreover, paid white privates $13 per month plus a clothing allowance of $3.50, whereas black privates earned only $10 per month less $3 deducted for clothing. Outraged by this injustice, the men of the 54th and 55th Massachusetts refused to accept any pay whatever, and Congress eventually remedied the inequity. In this instance, at least, a majority of legislators agreed with a white private that black troops had "proved their title to manhood on many a bloody field fighting freedom's battles."

Ex parte Merriman (1861)*

A case in which the president's power (Lincoln) to suspend the writ of habeas corpus during a national emergency was challenged. John Merryman was imprisoned for his alleged pro-Confederate activities, and Supreme Court Chief Justice Taney determined he was unlawfully detained and ordered a writ of habeas corpus. Merryman's prison guard, the commander of Fort Henry, where he was detained, refused to obey the order. He was subsequently cited for contempt of court. Taney then wrote an opinion that only Congress could suspend the Writ of Habeas Corpus, not the president.

Gettysburg

A crushing defeat for the Confederates in a critical battle that effectively circumscribed Confederate hopes for independence. On the same day that the commander at Vicksburg surrendered, a battle that had been raging for three days concluded at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. On July 1 Confederate forces hunting for a supply of shoes had collided with part of the Union Army. Heavy fighting on the second day left federal forces in possession of high ground along Cemetary Ridge. There they enjoyed the protection of a stone wall and a clear view of their foe across almost a mile of an open field. Undaunted, Lee believed his splendid troops could break the Union line, and on July 3 he ordered a direct assault. Full of foreboding, General James Longstreet warned Lee that "no 15,000 men ever arrayed for battle can take that position." But Lee stuck to his plan. Brave troops under General George E. Pickett methodically marched up the slope in a doomed assault known as Pickett's charge. For a moment, a hundred Confederates breached the enemy's lines, but most fell in heavy slaughter. On July 4 Lee had to withdraw, having suffered almost 4,000 dead and about 24,000 missing and wounded. The Confederate general reported to President Davis that "I am alone to blame" and offered to resign. Davis replied that to find a more capable commander was "an impossibility." Southern troops displayed unforgettable courage and dedication at Gettysburg, but the results there and at Vicksburg were disastrous. The Confederacy was split in two; west of the Mississippi General E. Kirby Smith had to operate on his own, virtually independent of Richmond. Moreover, the heartland of the Confederacy lay exposed to invasion, and Lee's defeat spelled the end of major southern offensive actions. Too weak to prevail in attack, the Confederacy henceforth would have to conserve its limited resources and rely on a prolonged defense. By refusing to be beaten, the South might yet win, but its prospects were darker than ever before.

Vicksburg

A crushing defeat for the Confederates in a critical battle that effectively circumscribed Confederate hopes for independence. Vicksburg was a vital western citadel, the last major fortification on the Mississippi River in southern hands. After months of searching through swamps and bayous, General Ulysses S. Grant found an advantageous approach to the city. He laid siege to Vicksburg in May, bottling up the defending army of General John Pemberton. If Vicksburg fell, Union forces would control the river, cutting the Confederacy in half and gaining an open path into its interior. To stave off such a result, Jefferson Davis gave command of all other forces in the area to go to General Joseph E. Johnston and beseeched him to go to Pemberton's aid. Meanwhile, at a council of war in Richmond, General Robert E. Lee proposed a Confederate invasion of the North. Although such an offensive would not relieve Vicksburg directly, it could stun and dismay the North, and if successful, possibly even lead to peace. Lee's troops streamed through western Maryland and into Pennsylvania, threatening both Washington and Baltimore. As his superb army advanced, the possibility of a major victory near the Union capital became more and more likely. Confederate prospects along the Mississippi, however, darkened. Davis repeatedly wired General Johnston, urging him to concentrate his forces and attack Grant's army. Johnston, however, did nothing effective and telegraphed at one point, "I consider saving Vicksburg hopeless." Grant's men, meanwhile were supplying themselves from the abundant crops of the Mississippi River valley and could continue their siege indefinitely. Their rich meat-and-vegetables diet became so tiresome, in fact, that one day, as Grant rode by, a private looked up and muttered, "Hardtack" (dry biscuits). Soon a line of soldiers was shouting "Hardtack! Hardtack!" demanding respite from turkey and sweet potatoes. In such circumstances the fall of Vicksburg was inevitable, and on July 4, 1863, its commander surrendered.

The Alabama

A few English-built ships, notably the Alabama, reached open water to serve in the South. Over a period of twenty-two months, without entering a southern port (because of the Union blockade), the Alabama destroyed or captured more than sixty northern ships. But the British government, as a neutral power, soon barred delivery of warships such as the Laird rams, formidable vessels whose pointed prows were designed to end the blockade by battering the Union ships.

Radical Republicans

A group of Republicans in Congress, known as the Radicals and led by men such as George Julian, Charles Sumner, and Thaddeus Stevens, dedicated themselves to seeing that the war was prosecuted vigorously. They were instrumental in creating a special House-Senate committee on the conduct of the war, which investigated Union reverses, sought to make the war more efficient, and prodded the president to take stronger measures. Early in the war these Radicals, with support from other representatives, turned their attention to slavery. In August 1861, at the Radicals' instigation, Congress passed its first confiscation act.

Ulysses S. Grant

A hard-drinking, hitherto unsuccessful general named Ulysses S. Grant who saw the strategic importance of Fort Henry and Fort Donelson, the Confederate outposts guarding the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers. If federal troops could capture these forts, Grant realized, two prime routes into the heartland of the Confederacy would lie open. In just ten days he seized the forts, using his forces so well that he was in a position to demand unconditional surrender of Fort Donelson's defenders. A path into Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi now lay open before the Union Army. Grant moved on into southern Tennessee and the first of the war's shockingly bloody encounters, the Battle of Shiloh. On April 6, Confederate General Albert Sidney Johnston caught federal troops in an undesirable position on the Tennessee River. With their backs to the water, Grant's men were awaiting reinforcements. The Confederates attacked early in the morning and inflicted heavy damage all day. Close to victory, General Johnston was struck and killed by a ball that severed an artery in his thigh. Southern forces almost achieved a breakthrough, but Union reinforcements arrived that night. The next day the tide of battle turned, and after ten hours of heavy combat, Grant's men forced the Confederates to withdraw. Neither side won a victory, yet the losses were staggering. Northern troops lost 13,000 men (killed, wounded, or captured) out of 63,000l southerners sacrificed 11,000 out of 40,000. Total battles in this single battle exceeded those in all three of America's previous wars combined. Now both sides were beginning to sense the true nature of the war. Shiloh utterly changed Grant's thinking about it. He had hoped that southerners soon would be "heartily tired" of the conflict. After Shiloh, he recalled, "I gave up all idea of saving the Union except by complete conquest."

Clara Barton*

A nurse who healed in the Civil War, she founded the Red Cross. Not only was she a nurse during the Civil War, under the direction of President Lincoln she also set up a bureau to search for missing Union soldiers. She aided the war effort greatly, compounded by the fact that she was a woman and it was more difficult for her to help the war effort.

Mathew Brady*

A photographer famous for photographing the Civil War and widely publishing the photos using the earlier daguerreotype. He also studied under the inventor of the daguerreotype, Samuel Morse.

Walt Whitman

A poet who left a record of his experiences as a volunteer nurse in Washington, D.C. As he dressed wounds and tried to comfort suffering and lonely men, Whitman found "the marrow of the tragedy concentrated in those Army Hospitals." But despite "indescribably horrid wounds," he also found in the hospitals inspiration and a deepening faith in American democracy. Whitman celebrated the "incredible dauntlessness" and sacrifice of the common soldier who fought for the Union. As he had written in the preface to his great work Leaves of Grass (1855), "the genius of the United States is not best or most in its executives or legislatures, but always most in the common people." Whitman worked this idealization of the common man into his poetry, which also explored homoerotic themes and rejected the lofty meter and rhyme of European verse to strive for a "genuineness" that would appeal to the masses.

Anaconda Plan

A strategy which called for a blockade of southern ports and eventual capture of the Mississippi River. Like a constricting snake, this plan would strangle the Confederacy. At first the Union Navy had too few ships to patrol 3,550 miles of coastline and block the Confederacy's avenues of commerce and supply. Gradually, however, the navy increased the blockade's effectiveness, though it never bottled up southern commerce completely.

Andersonville*

Also known as Camp Sumter, this was a notorious Confederate prison where many Union POWs died. 13,000 Union soldiers died there, and it's commander was executed for war crimes after the Civil War ended.

Trent Affair

An acute crisis occurred in 1861 when the overzealous commander of an American frigate stopped the British steamer Trent and removed two Confederate ambassadors sailing to Britain. They were imprisoned after being brought ashore. This action was cheered in the North, but the British protested this violation of freedom of the seas and demanded the prisoners' release. Lincoln and Seward waited until northern public opinion cooled and then released the two southerners. Then the sale to the Confederacy of warships constructed in England sparked vigorous protest from United States ambassador Charles Francis Adams.

Morrill Tariff Act (1861)*

An increased import tariff that was signed by President James Buchanan in March of 1861. It was designed to replace the Tariff of 1857 and was created to protect American industries and goods from foreign influence. That is, it was made to persuade Americans to buy American-made goods. Higher tariffs also pleased many businessmen. Northern businesses did not uniformly favor high import duties; some manufacturers desired cheap imported raw materials more than they feared foreign competition. General information about tariffs: But northeastern congressmen traditionally supported higher tariffs, and after southern lawmakers left Washington, they had their way: the Tariff Act of 1864 raised tariffs generously. According to one scholar manufacturers had only to mention the rate they considered necessary and that rate was declared. Some healthy industries earned artificially high profits by raising their prices to a level just below that of the foreign competition. By the end of the war, tariff increases averaged 47 percent, and rates were more than double those of 1857.

Clement L. Vallandigham

An outspoken peace Democrat of Ohio. He criticized Lincoln as a dictator who has suspended the writ of habeas corpus without congressional authority and had arrested thousands of innocent citizens. Like other Democrats, he condemned both conscription and emancipation and urged voters to use their power at the polling place to depose "King Abraham." Vallandigham stayed carefully within legal bounds, but his attacks seemed so damaging to the war effort that military authorities arrested him for treason after Lincoln suspended habeas corpus. Lincoln wisely decided against punishment - and martyr's status - for the senator and exiled him to the Confederacy, thus ridding himself of a troublesome critic and saddling puzzled Confederates with a man who insisted on talking about "our country." (Eventually Vallandigham returned to the North through Canada.)

"Minnie Ball"

Bullets were fired from a smooth-bore musket and tumbled and wobbled as they flew through the air and thus were not accurate at distances over eighty yards, Cutting spiraled grooves inside the barrel gave the projectile a spin and much greater accuracy, but rifles remained difficult to load and use until the Frenchman Claude Minie and the American James Burton developed a new kind of bullet. Civil War bullets were sizable lead slugs with a cavity at the bottom that expanded upon firing so that the bullet "took" the rifling and flew accurately. With these bullets, rifles were accurate at four hundred yards and useful up to one thousand yards. This meant, of course, that soldiers assaulting a position defended by riflemen were in greater peril than ever before. Even though Civil War rifles were cumbersome to load (relatively few of the new, untried, breech-loading, and repeating rifles were ordered), the defense gained a significant advantage. While artillery now fired from a safe distance, there was no substitute for the infantry assault or the popular turning movements aimed at an enemy's flank. Thus advancing soldiers had to expose themselves repeatedly to accurate rifle fire. Large lead bullets shattered bones and destroyed flesh, and because medical knowledge was rudimentary, even minor wounds often led to death through infection. Thus the toll from Civil War battles was very high.

Homestead Act (1862)*

Created in 1862, this act said that every adult citizen who had not raised arms against the U.S. government could claim 160 acres of surveyed federal land, so long as they agreed to improve the land by building a home and farming/cultivating the land. After five years, the land was free. After six months, the claimant paid 1.25 per acre. Union soldiers could use their time served to deduct from the five years or six months needed.

Habeas Corpus

Habeas Corpus: A way for a person to claim an unlawful imprisonment and to have the prisoner brought in front of the court by a prison custodian in order to have their imprisonment reviewed. Writ of Habeas Corpus: A writ to begin a habeas corpus.

Peace Democrats (Copperheads)

In North Carolina, a peace movement grew under the leadership of William W. Holden, a popular Democratic politician, and editor. Over one hundred public meetings took place in the summer of 1863 in support of peace negotiations, and many seasoned political observers believed that Holden had the majority of the people behind him. In Georgia early in 1864, Governor Brown and Alexander H. Stephens, vice president of the Confederacy, led a similar effort. Ultimately, however, these movements came to naught. The lack of a two-party system threw into question the legitimacy of any criticism of the government; even Holden and Brown could not entirely escape the taint of dishonor and disloyalty. That the movement existed at all demonstrates deep disaffection. The Democratic Party fought to regain power by blaming Lincoln for the war's carnage, the expansion of federal powers, inflation and the high tariff, and the emancipation of blacks. Appealing to tradition, its leaders called for an end to the war and reunion on the basis of "the Constitution as it is and the Union as it was." The Democrats denounced conscription and martial law and defended states' rights and the interests of agriculture. They charged repeatedly that Republican policies were designed to flood the North with blacks, depriving white males of their status, their jobs, and their women. These claims appealed to southerners who had settled north of the Ohio River, to conservatives, too many poor people, and to some eastern merchants who had lost profitable southern trade. In the 1862 congressional elections, the Democrats made a strong comeback, and peace Democrats - who would go much farther than others in their party to end the war - had influence in New York State and majorities in the legislatures of Illinois and Indiana.

Robert E. Lee*

Lee came from a notable family, as his father served in the Revolutionary War and was Governor of Virginia. His uncle and other relatives had signed the Declaration of Independence, served in Congress, and had done other notable things that had made his family prominent. He attended the United States Military Academy. He married the great-granddaughter of Martha Washington. He was anti-abolition and had views which reflected those common of the time, accepting slavery as a "peculiar institution". He fought in the Mexican-American War and in Bleeding Kansas. He then became the general of the Confederate Army in the Civil War.

Election of 1864

Lincoln ran with Tennessee's Andrew Johnson on a "National Union" ticket, and they won. He however thought it was very possible that they would lose, and he made some concessions in policy as mentioned in previous vocab terms.

Andrew Johnson

Lincoln's running mate on the "National Union" ticket.

Horace Greeley*

Lincoln's stance on the second confiscation act provoked a publish protest from him, editor of the powerful New York Tribune. In an open letter to the president entitled "The Prayer of Twenty Millions," Greely pleaded with Lincoln to "execute the laws" and declared, "On the face of this wide earth, Mr. President, there is not one disinterested, determined intelligent champion of the Union cause who does not feel that all attempts to put down the Rebellion and at the same time uphold its inciting cause are preposterous and futile." Lincoln's reply was an explicit statement of his complex and calculated approach to the question. he disagreed, he said, with all those who would make the maintenance or destruction of slavery the paramount issue of the war. "I would save the Union," announced Lincoln. "If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union." Lincoln closed with a personal disclaimer: "I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal with that all men everywhere could be free".

Emancipation Proclamation

On the advice of the cabinet, Lincoln was waiting for a Union victory before announcing the proclamation, so that it would not appear to be an act of desperation. On September 22, 1862, shortly after the battle of Antietam, Lincoln issued the first part of his two-part proclamation. Invoking his powers as commander-in-chief of the armed forces, he announced that on January 1, 1863, he would emancipate the slaves in states whose people "shall then be in rebellion against the United States." Lincoln made plain that he would judge a state to be in rebellion in January if it lacked bona fide representatives in the United States Congress. Thus his September proclamation was less a declaration of the right of slaves to be free than a threat to southerners: unless they stopped fighting and returned to Congress, they would lose their slaves. "Knowing the value that was set on the slaves by the rebels," said Garrison Frazier, a black Georgian, "the President thought that his proclamation would simulate them to lay down their arms... and their not doing so has now made the freedom of the slaves a part of the war." Lincoln may not actually have expected southerners to give up their effort, but he was careful t offer them the option, thus putting the onus of emancipation on them. When Lincoln designated the areas in rebellion on January 1, his proclamation excepted every Confederate county or city that had fallen under Union control. Those areas, he declared, "are, for the present, left precisely as if this proclamation were not issued." Nor did Lincoln liberate slaves in the border slave states that remained in the Union. "The President has purposely made the proclamation inoperative in all places where... the slaves are accessible," charged the anti-administration New York World. "He has proclaimed emancipation only where he has notoriously no power to execute it." Partisanship aside, even Secretary of State Seward, a moderate Republican, said sarcastically, "We show our sympathy with slavery by emancipating slaves where we cannot reach them and holding them in bondage where we can set them free." A British official, Lord Russell, commented on the "very strange nature" of the document, nothing that it did not declared "a principle adverse to slavery".

Antietam/Sharpsburg

Sharpsburg: The bloodiest day of the entire war, September 17, 1862. McClellan turned Lee back from Sharpsburg, Maryland. Antietam: 5,000 men died (3,500 had died at Shiloh) and another 18,000 were wounded. lee was lucky to escape destruction, for McClellan had obtained a copy of Lee's marching orders. But McClellan moved slowly, failed to use his large forces in simultaneous attacks all along the line, and allowed Lee's stricken army to retreat to safety across the Potomac. In Kentucky Generals Smith and Bragg had to withdraw just one day after Bragg attended the inauguration of a provisional Confederate governor.

Sherman's March to the Sea

Sherman marched sixty thousand of his men straight to the sea, planning to live off the land and destroying Confederate resources as he went. Sherman's army was an unusually formidable force, composed almost entirely of battle-tested veterans and officers who had risen through the ranks. Before the march began, army doctors weeded out and men who were weak or sick. Tanned, bearded, tough, and unkempt, the remaining veterans were determined, as one put it, "to Conquer this Rebelien or Die." They believed "the South are to blame for this war" and were ready to make the South pay. As Sherman's men moved across Georgia, they cut a path 50 to 60 miles wide and more than 200 miles long. The totally of the destruction they caused was awesome. A Georgia woman described the "Burnt Country" this war: "The fields were trampled down and the road was lined with the carcasses of horses, hogs, and cattle that the invaders, unable either to consume or to carry with them, had wantonly shot down to starve our people and prevent them from making their crops. The stench in some places was unbearable." Such devastation diminished the South's material resources and sapped its will to resist. After reaching Savannah in December, Sherman marched his armies north into the Carolina. To his soldiers, South Carolina was "the root of secession." Sherman's march drew additional human resources to the Union cause. In Georgia alone as many as nineteen thousand slaves gladly took the opportunity to escape bondage and join the Union troops as they passed through the countryside.

Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson

The Virginian general who won the Battle of Bull Run/Manassas. He got his nickname when one Confederate soldier shouted "There is Jackson standing like a stone wall,". His line held, and with the help of 9,000 additional troops arriving, he won the battle for the South.

13th Amendment

The amendment prohibiting slavery. It passed in 1865 and was sent to the states for ratification or rejection. Lincoln's strong support for the Thirteenth Amendment - an unequivocal prohibition of slavery - constitutes his best claim to the title "Great Emancipator."

Greenbacks

The currency of the Union. The Union Treasury issued $3.2 billion in bonds and paper money (greenbacks), and the War Department spent over $360 million in revenues from new taxes (including a board excise tax and the nation's first income tax). Government contracts soon totaled more than $1 billion.

Appomattox Court House

The final battle of the Civil War in which Confederate forces surrendered. It came after General Lee fled from Richmond after suffering heavy losses there. The Confederate army attempted to engage the Union army a bit, but they ultimately quickly surrendered.

1st Manassas/1st Bull Run

The first battle of the Civil War that took place outside Manassas Junction, Virginia, near a stream called Bull Run on July 21st, 1861. General Irvin McDowell and 30,000 Union troops attacked General P.G.T. Beauregard's 22,000 southerners. As raw recruits struggled amid the confusion of their first battle, federal forces began to gain ground. They then ran into a line of Virginia troops under General Thomas Jackson. Jackson's line held, and the arrival of 9,000 Confederate reinforcements won the day for the South. Union troops fled back to Washington and shocked northern congressmen and spectators, who had watched the battle from a point two miles away, suddenly feared their capital would be taken. The unexpected rout at Bull Run gave northerners their first hint of the nature of the war to come.

George McClellan

The first commander of the Union army in the Civil War. He was an officer who proved to be better at organization and training than at fighting. Only thirty-six, McClellan had already achieved notable success as an army officer and railroad president. Keenly aware of his historic role, he did not want to fail and insisted on having everything in order before he attacked.

Conscription Act (1863)

The first wartime draft. Created to help the Union army, the draft called for all able-bodied male citizens between the ages of 20 and 45 to be enrolled in the Union army.

New York City Draft riots

The most serious outbreak of violence in protest against drafts in July 1863. The war was unpopular in that Democratic stronghold, and racial, ethnic, and class tensions ran high. Shippers had recently broken a longshoreman's strike by hiring black strikebreakers to work under police protection. Working-class New Yorkers feared an inflow of black labor from the South and regarded blacks as the cause of the bloody war. Irish workers, many recently arrived and poor, resented being forced to serve in the place of others who could afford to avoid the draft. Military police officers came under attack first; then mobs crying "Down with the rich" looted wealthy homes and store. But blacks became the special target. Those who happened to be in the rioters' path were beaten; soon the mob rampaged through African-American neighborhoods, destroying an orphans' asylum. At least seventy-four people died in the violence, which raged out of control for three days. Only the dispatch of army units fresh from Gettysburg ended the episode.

"National Union" (Or Union Party)

The ticket in the 1864 election that Lincoln and Tennessee's Andrew Johnson ran on. They concluded that it was "exceedingly probable that this Administration will not be reelected." During a publicized interchange with Confederate official sent to Canada, Lincoln insisted that the terms for peace include reunion and "the abandonment of slavery". Lincoln backtracked and gave only freedom to those slaves who had joined the Union army. This came from northern voters who just wanted the war to be over. Lincoln's action showed his political weakness, but the fortunes of war soon changed the electoral situation.

Ex parte Milligan (1866)*

This case ruled that the federal government could not create military courts to try citizens so long as there were civilian courts and the area was not an active theater of war. This case started when Lambdin P. Milligan, a pro-confederate, was tried in a military court and sentenced to hang. His lawyers petitioned for a Writ of Habeas Corpus, and the Supreme Court found his imprisonment unconstitutional.

Total War*

This term referred to the United State's first national war. The war consumed all economies and all sections of the nation, and was thus considered a "total war".

Confederate Conscription Act (1862)

To keep southern armies in the field, the War Department encouraged reenlistment and called for new volunteers. However, as one official admitted, "the spirit of volunteering had died out." Three states threatened or instituted a draft. Finally, face with a critical shortage of troops, in April 1862 the Confederate government enacted the first national conscription (draft) law in American history. Thus the war forced unprecedented change on states that had seceded out of fear of change.

Morrill Land Grant Act (1862)

To promote public education in agriculture, engineering, and military science, Congress granted each state 30,000 acres of federal land for each of its congressional districts. The states could sell the land, as long as they used the income for the purposes Congress has intended. The law eventually fostered sixty-nine colleges and universities, but one of its immediate effects was to enrich a few prominent speculators. hard-pressed to meet wartime expenses, some states sold their land cheaply to wealthy entrepreneurs. For example, Ezra Cornell, a leader in the telegraph industry, invested in 500,000 acres in the Midwest. Many other businessmen benefitted handsomely from the Act.