The Civil War

Stonewall Jackson

The battle Bull Run was a see saw affair. In the morning the Union army gained the upper hand, but the Confederates held firm, inspired by General Thomas J. Jackson. "There is Jackson standing like a stone wall!" another general shouted, originating this nickname. In the afternoon Confederate reinforcements arrived and turned the tide of battle into the first victory for the South. The routed Union troops began a panicky retreat to the capital. Fortunately for the Union, the Confederates were too exhausted and disorganized to attack Washington. Still, Confederate morale soured. Bull Run "has soldiers, confident that the war was over, left the army and went home.

Bull Run

The first major bloodshed occurred on July 21, about three months after Fort Sumter fell. An army of 30,000 inexperienced Union soldiers on its way toward the Confederate capital at Richmond, only 100 miles from Washington, D.D., came upon an equally inexperienced Confederate army encamped near the little creek of this, just 25 miles from the Union capital. Lincoln commanded General Irvin McDowell to attack, noting, "You are green, it is true, but they are green also."

Sherman's March

After Sherman's army occupied the transportation center of Atlanta on Spetember 2, 1864, a Confederate army tried to circle around him and cut his railroad supply lines. Sherman decided to fight a different battle. He would abandon his supply lines and march southeast through Georgia, creating a wide path of destruction and living off the land as he went. He would make Southerners "so sick of war that generations would pass away before they would again appeal to it." In mid-November he burned most of Atlanta and set out toward the coast. A Georgia girl described the result. After taking Savannah just before Christmas, Sherman's troops turned north to help Grant "wipe out Lee." Following behind them now were about 25,000 former slaves eager for freedom. As the army marched through South Carolina in 1865, it inflicted even more destruction than it had in Georgia. As one Union private exclaimed, "Here is where treason began and, by God, here is where it shall end!" The army burned almost every house in its path. In contrast, when Sherman's forces entered North Carolina, which had been the last state to secede, they stopped destroying private homes and- anticipating the end of the war- began handing out food and other supples.

Robert E. Lee

After dawdling all winter, McClellan finally got under way in the spring of 1862. He transported the Army of the Potomac slowly toward the Confederate capital. On the way he encountered a Confederate army commanded by General Joseph E. Johnston. After a series of battles, Johnston was wounded, and command of the army passed to him. he was very different from McClellan- modest rather than vain, and willing to go beyond military textbooks in his tactics. He had opposed secession. However, he declined an offer to head the Union army and cast his lot with his beloved state of Virginia. Determined to save Richmond, Lee moved against McClellan in a series of battles known collectively as the Seven Days' Battles, fought from June 25 to July 1, 1862. Although the Confederates had fewer soldiers and suffered higher casualties, Lee's determination and unorthodox tactics so unnerved McClellan that he backed away from Richmond and headed down the peninsula to the sea.

Conscription

Although both armies originally relied on volunteers, it didn't take long before heavy casualties and widespread desertions led to this, a draft that would force certain members of the population to serve in the army. The Confederacy passed a draft law in 1862, and the Union followed suit in 1863. Both laws ran into trouble. The Confederate law drafted all able-bodied white men between the ages of 18 and 35. (In 1864, as the Confederacy suffered more losses, the limits changed to 17 and 50.) However, those who could afford to were allowed to hire substitutes to serve in their places. The law also exempted planters who owned 20 or more slaves. Poor Confederates howled that it was a "rich man's war but a poor man's fight." In spite of these protests, almost 90 percent of eligible Southern men served in the Confederate army. The Union law drafted white men between 20 and 45 for three years, although it, too, allowed draftees to hire substitutes. It also provided for commutation, or paying a $300 fee to avoid conscription altogether. In the end, only 46,000 draftees actually went into the army. Ninety-two percent of the approximately 2 million soldiers who served in the Union army were volunteers- 180,000 of them African-American.

Appomattox

BY late March 1865, it was clear that the end of the Confederacy was near. Grant and Sheridan were approaching Richmond from the west, while Sherman was approaching form the south. On April 2- in response to news that Lee and his troops had been overcome by Grant's forces at Petersburg- President Davis and his government abandoned their capital, setting it afire to keep the Northerners form taking it. Despite the fire-fighting efforts of Union troops, flames destroyed some 900 buildings and damaged hundreds more. Lee and Grant met to arrange a Confederate surrender on April 9, 1865, in a Virginia village called this Court House. At Lincoln's request, the terms were generous. Grant paroled Lee's soldiers and sent them home with their personal possessions, horses, and three days' rations. Officers were permitted to keep their side arms. Within two months all remaining Confederate resistance collapsed. After four long years, at tremendous human and economic costs, the Civil War was over.

Ft. Sumter

By the time of Abraham Lincoln's inauguration on March 4, only two Southern forts remained in Union hands. The more important was South Carolina's this fort, on an island in Charleston harbor. The day after his inauguration, the new president received and urgent dispatch from the fort's commander, Major Anderson. The Confederacy was demanding that he surrender or face an attack, and his supplies of food and ammunition would last six weeks at the most. The news presented Lincoln with a dilemma. If he ordered the navy to shoot its way into Charleston harbor and reinforce Fort Sumter, he would be responsible for starting hostilities, which might prompt the slave states still in the Union to secede. If he ordered the fort evacuated, he would be treating the Confederacy as a legitimate nation. Such an action would anger the Republican Party, weaken his administration, and endanger the Union. Lincoln executed a clever political maneuver. He would not abandon Fort Sumter, but neither would he reinforce it. He would merely send in "food for hungry men.: Now it was Jefferson Davis who faced a dilemma. If he did nothing, he would damage the image of the Confederacy as a sovereign, independent nation. On the other hand, if he ordered an attack on Fort sumter, he would turn peaceful secession into war. Davis chose war.. Confederate batteries began thundering away. Charleston's citizens watched and cheered as though it were a fireworks display. The South Carolinians bombarded the fort with more than 4,--- rounds before Anderson surrendered. News of Fort Sumter's fall united the North. When Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers to serve for three months, the response was overwhelming. In Iowa, 20 times the state's quota rushed to enlist. Lincoln's call for troops provided a very different reaction in the states of the upper South Virginia unwilling to fight against other Southern states, seceded- a terrible loss to the Union. Virginia was the most heavily populated state in the South and the most industrialized (with a crucial ironworks and navy yard). In May, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina followed Virginia, bringing the number of Confederate states to 11. However, the western counties of Virginia were antislavery, so they seceded from Virginia and were admitted into the Union as West Virginia in 1863. The four remaining slave states- Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky, and Missouri- remained in the Union, although many of the citizens in those states fought for the Confederacy.

Andersonville

Improvements in hygiene and nursing did not reach the war prisons, where conditions were even worse than in army camps. The worse Confederate prison, at this place, Georgia jammed 33,000 men into 26 acres, or about 34 square feet per man. The prisoners had no shelter from the broiling sun or chilling rain except what they made themselves by rigging primitive tents of blankets and sticks. They drank from the same stream that served as their sewer. About a third of Andersonville's prisoners died. Part of the blame rested with the camp's commander, Henry Wirz (whom the North eventually executed as a war criminal). The South's lack of food and tent canvas also contributed to the appalling conditions. In addition, the prisons were overcrowded because the North had halted prisoners exchanges when the South refused to return African-American soldiers who had been captured in battle. Prison camps in the North- such as those at Elmira, New York, and at Camp Douglas, Illinois- were only slightly better. Northern prisons provided about five times as much space per man, barracks for sleeping, and adequate food. However, pneumonia and died. Hundreds of others suffered from dysentery and malnutrition, from which some did not recover. Historians estimate that 15 percent of Union prisoners in Southern prisons died, while12 percent of Confederate prisoners died in Northern prisons. A series of battles in the Mississippi Valley and in the East soon sent a fresh wave of prisoners of war flooding into prison camps.

Ulysses S. Grant

In February 1862 a Union army invaded western Tennessee. At its head was this General, a rumpled West Point graduate who had failed at everything he had tried in civilian life- whether as farmer, bill collector, real estate agent, or store clerk. He was however, a brave, tough, and decisive military commander. In just 11 days, Grant's forces captured two Confederate forts that held strategic positions on important rivers, Fort Henry on the Tennessee River and Fort Donelson on the Cumberland River. In the latter victory, Grant informed the Southern commander that "no terms except unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted." The Confederates surrendered and, from then on, people said that Grant's initials stood for "Unconditional Surrender" Grant.

William Tecumseh Sherman

In March 1864, President Lincoln appointed Ulysses S. Grant the hero of the battle at Vicksburg, commander of all Union armies. Grant in turn appointed him as commander of the military division of the Mississippi. These two appointments would change the course of the war. Old friends and comrades in arms, both men believed in total war. They believed that it was essential to fight not only the South's armies and government but its civilian population as well. They reasoned, first, that civilians produced the weapons, grew the food, and transported the goods on which the armies relied, and, second, that the strength of the people's will kept the war going. If the Union destroyed that will to fight, the Confederacy would collapse.

Gettysburg Address

In November 1863, a ceremony was held to dedicate a cemetery in Gettysburg. The first speaker was Edward Everett, a noted orator, who gave a flowery two-hour oration. Then Abraham Lincoln spoke for a little more than two minutes. According to the historian Garry Wills, Lincoln's this "remade America." Before the war, people said, "The United States are." After Lincoln's speech, they said, "The United States is."

Anaconda plan

In reality the two sides were unevenly matched. The Union enjoyed enormous advantages in resources over the South- more fighting power, more factories, greater food production, and a more extensive railroad system. In addition, Lincoln proved to be a decisive yet patient leader, skillful at balancing political factions. The Confederacy likewise enjoyed some advantages, notably "King Cotton" (and the profits it earned on the world market), first-rate generals, a strong military tradition, and soldiers who were highly motivated because they were defending their homeland. However, the South had a tradition of local and limited government, and there was resistance to the centralization of government necessary to run a war. Several Southern governors were so obstinate in there assertion of states' rights that they refused to cooperate with the Confederate government. The two sides pursued different military strategies. The Union, which had to conquer the South to win, devised a three-part plan: (1) the Union navy would blockade Southern ports, so they could neither export cotton nor import much-needed manufactured goods, (2) Union riverboats and armies would move down the Mississippi River and split the Confederacy in two, and *(3) Union armies would capture the Confederate capital at Richmond, Virginia. Northern news papers dubbed the strategy the this, after a snake that suffocates its victims in its coils. Because the Confederacy's goal was its own survival as a nation, its strategy was mostly defensive. However, Southern leaders encouraged their generals to attack- and even to invade the North- if the opportunity arose.

Habeas corpus

Lincoln dealt forcefully with disloyalty. For example, when a Baltimore crowd attacked a Union regiment a week after Fort Sumter, Lincoln sent federal troops to Maryland. He also suspended in that state the writ of this, a court order that requires authorities to bring a person held in jail before the court to determine why he or she is being jailed. Lincoln used this same strategy later in the war to deal with dissent in other states. As a result, more than 13,000 suspected Confederate sympathizers in the Union were arrested and held without trial, although most were quickly released. The president also seized telegraph offices to make sure no one used the wires for subversion. When Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney declared the Lincoln had gone beyond his constitutional powers, the president ignored his ruling. Those arrested included Copperheads, or Northern Democrats who advocated peace with the South. Ohio congressman Clement Vallandigham was the most famous Copperhead. Vallandigham was tried and convicted by a military court for urging Union soldiers to desert and for advocating an armistice Jefferson Davis at first denounced Lincoln'd suspension of civil liberties. Later, however, Davis found it necessary to follow the Union president's example. In 1862, he suspended habeas corpus in the Confederacy. Lincoln's action in dramatically expanding presidential powers to meet the crises of wartime set a precedent in U.S. history. Since then, some presidents have cited war or "national security" as a reason to expand the powers of the executive branch of government.

George McClellan

Lincoln responded to the defeat at Bull Run by calling for the enlistment of 500,000 men to served for three years instead of three months. Three days later, he called for an additional 500,000 men. He also appointed this General to lead this new Union army, encamped near Washington. While he drilled his men- soon to be known as the Army of the Potomac- the Union forces in the West began the fight for control of the Mississippi.

Antietam

Now Lee moved against the enemy's capital. On August 29 and 30, his troops won a resounding victory at the Second Battle of Bull Run. A few days later, they crossed the Potomac into the Union state of Maryland. A resident of one Potomac River town described the starving Confederate troops. At this point McClellan had a tremendous stroke of luck. A Union corporal, exploring a meadow where the Confederates had camped, found a copy of Lee's army orders wrapped around a bunch of cigars! The plan revealed that Lee's and Stonewall Jackson's armies were separated for the moment. For once McClellan acted aggressively and ordered his men forward after Lee. The two armies fought on September 17 beside a sluggish creek called this. The clash proved to be the bloodiest single day battle in American history. Casualties totaled more than 26,000, as many as in the War of 1812 and the war with Mexico combined. Instead of pursuing the battered Confederate army and possible ending the Civil War, however, McClellan, cautious as always, did nothing. Though the battle itself was a standoff, the South, which had lost a quarter of its men, retreated the next day across the Potomac into Virginia. Lincoln fired McClellan. This solved one problem by getting rid of the general whom Lincoln characterized as having "the slows." However, the president would soon face a diplomatic conflict with Britain and increased pressure from abolitionists.

Emancipation Proclamation

On January 1, 1863, Lincoln issued this. The following portion captured national attention. The Proclamation did not free any slaves immediately because it applied only to areas behind Confederate lines, outside Union control. Since the Proclamation was a military action aimed at the states in rebellion, it did not apply to Southern territory already occupied by Union troops nor to the slave states that had not seceded. REACTIONS: Although the Proclamation did not have much practical effect, it had immense symbolic importance. For many, the Proclamation gave the war a high moral purpose by turning the struggle into a fight to free the slaves. In Washington, D.C., the Reverend Henry M. Turner, a free-born African American, watched the capital's inhabitants receive the news of emancipation. Free blacks also welcomed the section of the Proclamation that allowed them to enlist in the Union army. Even though many had volunteered at the beginning of the war, the regular army had refused to take them. Now they could fight and help put an end to slavery. Not everyone in the North approved of the Emancipation Proclamation, however. The Democrats claimed that it would only prolong the war by antagonizing the South. Many Union soldiers accepted it grudgingly, saying they had no love for abolitionists or African Americans, but they would support emancipation if that was what it took to reunify the nation. Confederates reacted to the Proclamation with outrage. Jefferson Davis called it the "most execrable [hateful] measure recorded in the history of guilty man." As Northern Democrats had predicted, the Proclamation had made the Confederacy more determined than ever to fight to preserved its way of life. After the Emancipation Proclamation, compromise was no longer an option.The Confederacy knew that if it lost, its slave-holding society would perish, and the Union knew that it could win only by completely defeating the Confederacy From January 1863 on, it was a fight to the death.

Shiloh

One month after the victories at Fort Henry and Fort Donelson, in late March of 1862, Grant gathered his troops near a small Tennessee church named this, which was close to the Mississippi border. On April 6 thousands of yelling Confederate soldiers surprised the Union forces. Many Union troops were shot while making coffee; some died while they were still lying in their blankets. With Union forces on the edge of disaster, Grant reorganized his troops, ordered up reinforcements, and counterattacked at dawn the following day. By mid afternoon the Confederate forces were in retreat. The Battle of Shiloh taught both sides a strategic lesson. Generals now realized that they had to send out scouts, dig trenches, and build fortifications. Shiloh also demonstrated how bloody the war might become, as nearly one-fourth of the battle's 100,000 troops were killed, wounded, or captured. Although the battle seemed to be a draw, it had a long-range impact on the war. The Confederate failure to hold on to its Ohio-Kentucky frontier showed that at least part of the Union's three-way strategy, the drive to take the Mississippi and split the Confederacy, might succeed.

Income tax

Overall, the war's effect on the economy of the North was much more positive. Although a few industries, such as cotton textiles, declined, most boomed. The army's need for uniforms, shoes, guns, and other supplies supported woolen mills, steel foundries, coal mines, and many other industries. Because the draft reduced the available work force, western wheat farmers bought reapers and other labor-saving machines, which benefited the companies that manufactured those machines. The economic boom had a dark side, though. Wages did not keep up with prices, and many people's standard of living declined. When white male workers went out on strike, employers hired free blacks, immigrants, women, and boys to replace them for lower pay. Northern women- who like many Southern women replaced men on farms and in city jobs- also obtained government jobs for the first time. They worked mostly as clerks, copying ledgers and letters by hand. Although they earned less than men, they remained a regular part of the Washington work force after the war. Because of the booming economy and rising prices, many businesses in the contracts, mostly because such contractors often cheated. They supplied uniforms and blankets made of "shoddy"e- fibers reclaimed from rags- that came apart in the rain. They passed off spoiled meat as fresh and demanded twice the usual price for guns. This corruption spilled over into the general society. The New York Herald commented on the changes in the American character: "The individual who makes the most money- no matter how- and spends the mos- no matter for what- is considered the greatest man . . . . the world has seen its iron age, its silver age, its golden age, and its brazen age. This is the age of shoddy." Congress decided to help pay for the war by tapping its citizens' wealth. In 1863 Congress enacted the tax law that authorized the nation's first this, a tax that takes a specified percentage of an individual's income.

Clara Barton

Soon after Fort Sumter fell, the federal government set up the United States Sanitary Commission. Its task was twofold: to improve the hygienic conditions of army camps and to recruit and train nurses. The "Sanitary" proved a great success. It sent out agents to teach soldiers such things as how to avoid polluting their water supply. It developed hospital trains and hospital ships to transport wounded men from the battlefield. At the age of 60, Dorothea Dix became the nation's first superintendent of women nurses. To discourage women looking for romance, Dix insisted applicants be at least 30 and "very plain-looking." Impressed by the work of women nurses he observed, the surgeon general required that at least one-third of Union hospital nurses be women; some 3,000 served. Union nurse, often cared for the sick and wounded at the front lines. After her courage under fire at Antietam, a surgeon described her as the "angel of the battlefield." As a result of the Sanitary Commission's work, the death rate among Union wounded, although terrible by 20th-century standards, showed considerable improvement over that of previous wars. The Confederacy did not have a Sanitary Commission, but thousands of Southern women volunteered as nurses. Sally Tompkins, for example, performed so heroically in her hospital duties that she eventually was commissioned as a captain.

Gettysburg

The July 3 infantry charge was part of a three-day battle at this place, which many historians consider the turning point of the Civil War. The battle of Gettysburg crippled the South so badly that General Lee would never again possess sufficient forces to invade a Northern state.

Monitor v. Merrimack

The ironclad ship could splinter wooden ships, withstand cannon fire, and resist burning. Grant used four ironclad ships when he captured Forts Henry and Donelson. On March 9, 1862, every navy in the world took notice after the North's ironclad Monitor traded fire with the South's ironclad Merrimack. A Union steam frigate, the Merrimack, had sunk off the coast of Virginia in 1861. The Confederates recovered the ship, and Confederate secretary of the navy Stephen R. Mallory put engineers to work plating it with iron. When Union secretary of the navy Gideon Welles heard of this development, he was determined to respond in kind. Naval engineer John Ericsson designed a ship, the Monitor, that resembled a "gigantic cheese box" on an "immense shingle," with two guns mounted on a revolving turret. On March 8, 1862, the Merrimack attacked three wooden Union warships, sinking the first, burning the second, and driving the third around. The Monitor arrived and, the following day, engaged the Confederate vessel. Although the battle was a draw, the era of wooden fighting ships was over. Even more deadly, new weapons came.

Chancellorsville

The year 1863 actually had gone well for the South. During the first four days of May, the South defeated the North here, Virginia. Lee outmaneuvered Union general Joseph Hooker and forced the Union army to retreat. The North's only consolation after here came as the result of an accident. As General Stonewall Jackson returned from a patrol on May 2, Confederate guards mistook him for a Yankee and shot him in the left arm. A surgeon amputated his arm the following day. When Lee heard the news, he exclaimed,"He has lost his left arm the following day. When Lee heard the news, he exclaimed, "He has lost his left arm, but i have lost my right." But the true loss was still to come; Jackson caught pneumonia and died May 10. Despite Jackson's tragic death, Lee decided to press his military advantage and invade the North. He needed supplies, he hoped that an invasion would force Lincoln to pull troops away from Vicksburg, and the thought that a major Confederate victory on Northern soil might tip the political balance of power in the Union to pro-Southern Democrats. Accordingly, he crossed the Potomac into the Union to pro-Southern Democrats. Accordingly, he crossed the Potomac into Maryland and then pushed on into Pennsylvania.

Fort Pillow

When the Civil War started, it was a white man's war. Neither the Union or the Confederacy officially accepted African Americans as soldiers. In 1862, Congress passed a law allowing African Americans to serve in the military. It was only after the Emancipation Proclamation was decreed, however, that large-scale enlistment occurred. Although African Americans made up only 1 percent of the North's population, by war's end nearly 10 percent of the Union army was African American. The majority were former slaves from Virginia and other slave states, both Confederate and Union. Although accepted as soldiers, African Americans suffered discrimination. They served in separate regiments commanded by white officers. Usually African Americans could not rise above the rank of captain- although Alexander. T. Augustana, a surgeon, did attain the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. White privates earned 13 a month, plus a 3.50 clothing allowance. Black privates earned only 10 a month, with no clothing allowance. Blacks protested, and several regiments served without pay for moths rather than accept the lesser amount. Congress finally equalized the pay of white and African-American soldiers in 1864. Their mortality rate for Africa-American soldiers was higher than that for white soldiers, primarily because many African Americans were assigned to labor duty in the garrisons, where they were likely to catch typhoid, pneumonia, malaria, or some other deadly disease. Then, too, the Confederacy would not treat captured African American soldiers as prisoners of war. Many were executed on the spot, and those who were not killed were returned to slavery. A particularly gruesome massacre occurred at this fort, Tennessee, in 1864. Confederate troops killed over 200 African American prisoners and some whites as they begged for their lives. Even thought most Southerners opposed the ideal of African american soldiers, the Confederacy did consider drafting slaves and free black in 1864 and again in 1864. One Louisiana planter argued that since slaves "caused the fight," they should share in the burden of battle. Georgia general Howell Cobb responded, "If slaves will make good soldiers our whole theory of slavery is wrong."

Vicksburg

While the Army of the Potomac was turning back the Confederates in central Pennsylvania, Union general Ulysses S. Grant continued his campaign in the west. Here, Mississippi, was one of only two Confederate holdouts preventing the Union from taking complete control of the Mississippie River, and important waterway for transporting goods. In the spring of 1863, Grant sent a cavalry bridage to destroy rail lines in central Mississippi and draw attention away from the prot city. While the Confederate forces were distracted, Grant was able to land infantry south of Vicksburg late on April 30. In 18 days, Union forces whipped several rebel units and sacked Jackson, the capital of the state. Their confidence growing with every victory, Grant and his troops rushed to Vicksburg. Two frontal assaults on the city failed; so, in the last week of May 1863, Grant settled in for a siege. He set up a steady barrage of artillery, shelling the city from both the river and the land for several hours a day and forcing its residents to take shelter in caves that they dug out of the yellow clay hillsides. Food supplies ran so low that people ate dogs and mules. At last some of the starving Confederate soldiers defending Vicksburg sent their commander a petition saying, "If you can't feed us, you'd better surrender." On July 3, 1863, the same day as Pickett's charge, the Confederate commander of Vicksburg asked Grant for terms of surrender. The city fell on July 4. Five days later Port Hudson, Louisiana, the last Confederate holdout on the Mississippi, also fell- and the Confederacy was cut in two.