CH.15

The conflict between the Merrimack and the Monitor

marked the birth of the ironclad warship but had little impact on the Union's conventional naval dominance.

When the Civil War began, most Northerners viewed it as

a struggle to preserve the Union and uphold the Constitution

Abraham Lincoln wrote the Emancipation Proclamation

because he considered emancipation to be "a military necessity, absolutely essential to the preservation of the Union."

Aside from leading to the legal destruction of slavery, the Civil War itself helped destroy slavery in practice

by disrupting the routine, organization, and discipline necessary to keep slavery intact.

The Civil War affected the United States by

establishing the sovereignty of the federal government and the dominance of industrial capitalism

During the Civil War, the "twenty-Negro law" enraged many white Southerners because it

exempted from military service one white man on every plantation with twenty or more slaves

Among free black men of fighting age in the North,

most fought in the Union army.

Dorothea Dix and Clara Barton are both known for their Civil War efforts as

nurses on the battlefield and behind the lines

Strikes by workers in northern industries, calculated to improve wages during the Civil War,

rarely succeeded.

In the early 1860's, the Republicans generated the economic power they needed to fight a successful war by

revolutionizing U.S. banking, monetary, and tax structures

The title of Chapter 15, "The Crucible of War, 1861-1865," is meant to suggest that the American Civil War was a

severe tests for Americans and the Union

On March 4, 1861, President Abraham Lincoln delivered an inaugural address in which he revealed his strategy to avoid disunion; that strategy was to

take measures to stop the contagion of secession and buy time in order for emotions to cool.

When it came to supplying the Confederate armies,

the South had enthusiasm and a resourceful Ordinance Bureau but lacked the resources available to the North

As President Lincoln wavered in his policy of noninterference with slavery, he considered the biggest obstacle to the acceptance of emancipation in the Union

the fears of Northerners that freed slaves, whon they considered "semi-savages," would flood the North, compete for jobs, and try to mix socially with them

In New York City in the summer of 1863 , an Irish-led riot that took the lives of at least 105 people erupted in protest of

the newly enacted draft law, which was inequitable and would force draftees to fight to free black slaves

By the waning months of the war Confederate soldiers were demoralized because

the toll of years of fighting, lack of supplies, and concern for their families had become too much

Thousands of northern and southern women offered their services as nurses during the Civil War, however,

they bucked tradition by doing so, because women were thought too delicate to deal with sickness and disease on such a large scale.

When considering the wartime leadership of Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis, a central irony emerges in that

Abraham Lincoln brought little political experience to hid presidency yet rose to the occasion to become a masterful leader, whereas Jefferson Davis, a seasoned politician, proved to be a relatively ineffectual chief executive

Southerners believed they had a real chance of winning the Civil War based on

All of the ab';ove

In 1861, armed hostilities between the North and South began officially with

Confederates firing on Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor in April 1861.

The border states of Missouri and Kentucky did not formally secede from the Union, but in these areas

a prosouthern minority remained sympathetic to the southern cause and sometimes resisted Union control.

In 1864, when General William T. Sherman stated that he intended to "make Georgia howl," he was gearing up for

a scorched-earth military campaign aimed at destroying the will of the southern people

From the beginning, the Confederacy faced formidable odds in pursuing its bid for independence; it had to succeed in

all of the above

Typically, Northerners viewed secession as

an attack on the best government on earth and a severe challenge to the rule of law.

Under Grant's leadership, the war shifted in favor of the North and the Union armies

became a sophisticated and powerful war machine that continued to fight in the same bloody and ferocious manner.

Despite their ideological commitment to states' rights and limited government, Confederate leaders

expanded their power by drafting soldiers into the Confederate army and confiscating large amounts of property for the war effort.

Throughout the Civil War, the Richmond government tried to promote southern unity and nationalism; politicians were aided in this attempt by

clergymen, who stated that God had blessed slavery and the new nation

Initially the Confederacy sought King Cotton diplomacy, a strategy based on the belief that

cotton-starved western European powers would be forced to enter the conflict by offering diplomatic recognition to the Confederacy and breaking the Union blockade to secure cotton

On July 17, 1862, Congress adopted a second Confiscation Act, legislation that

declared all slaves of rebel masters "forever free of their servitude."

The first battle of Manassas (or Bull Run) in July 1861 is significant because it

demonstrated that Americans were in for a real war, one that would be neither quick nor easy.

President Lincoln's efforts to stifle opposition to the war

did suppress free speech

When the Civil War broke out, President Lincoln chose not to make the conflict a struggle over slavery because he

doubted his right under the Constitution to tamper with the "domestic institutions" of any state, even those in rebellion.

Slaves increasingly used the chaos and turmoil of the Civil War to whittle away at their bondage by

employing various means to undermine white mastery and expand control over their own lives

General Robert E. Lee's surrender to General Ulysses S. Grant near Appomattox Court House in Virginia on April 9, 1865,

ended the Confederate war effort, not because the South was out of troops, but because Lee's surrender demoralized the armies remaining in the field

White Southerners' greatest fear regarding their slaves during the Civil War was that they would

engage in violent revolt

William Gould, a runaway slave who was taken aboard the U.S.S. Cambridge, found himself

enlisting as a union soldier

In March 1862, Congress titled toward emancipating slaves when it

forbade the practice of returning fugitive slaves to their masters

When President Lincoln remarked early in the Civil War, "If General McClellan does not want to use the army I would like to borrow it," he was expressing his

frustration that MClellan had amassed and trained a huge military force but refused to use it to attack the Confederates

After the battle of Shiloh Church, Tennessee, in April 1862, General Ulysses S. Grant stated that he

gave up all idea of saving the union except by complete conquest

At the end of 1862, the eastern theater of the Civil War

had reached a stalemate

In 1862, the Homestead Act

helped to encourage Westerners to be loyal to the Union.

When the Civil War ended, President Lincoln was confident that

his postwar burdens would weigh almost as heavily as those of wartime

While the North's industrial production boomed during the Civil War, the working class there found that

inflation and taxes cut so deeply into their wages that their standard of living actually fell

What poor northern men found especially galling about the new draft law of 1863 was that

it allowed a draftee to hire a substitute or pay a $300 fee to avoid conscription

After his victory at Chattanooga, Tennessee, in 1864, General Ulysses S. Grant

launched a massive military campaign that would take his troops on a sweep through Virginia and get thousands of them killed in the process

States in the Upper South that opted for secession from the Union did so because

they couldn't see themselves fighting fellow Southerners and felt betrayed when Lincoln chose to use military means against the South

While Southern leaders issued somewhat duplicitous statements concerning why they thought it necessary to battle the government of the United States, white Southerners from all classes enlisted to fight Yankees

to preserve a southern civilization based on slavery and to ensure that African Americans subordinate to whites in the region

In strict military terms, the Battle of Gettysburg in the summer of 1863

was a crucial turning point for Confederate armies because it proved to be the last time Confederates launched a major offensive above the Mason-Dixon line

The Battle of Vicksburg in July 1863

was an important Union victory that opened up a large portion of the Mississippi River

President Lincoln's determination to hold elections in 1864 is particularly noteworthy because

with the Union war effort stalled and many Northerners basically wearied by the burdens of the war, the Democrats had an excellent chance of ousting the Lincoln administration