U.S. Chapter 15

When the Civil War began, most Northerners viewed it as

a struggle to preserve the Union and uphold the Constitution.

Abraham Lincoln wrote the Emancipaton Proclamation

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

The Civil War affected teh United States by

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

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

nurses on the battlefield and behind the lines.

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

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 adn would force draftees to fight to free black slaves.

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

the righteousness of their cause and the character of the southern people. their belief that sourthern men were physically tougher than northern men. their belief that withholding cotton would wreck the northern economy and force England or France to enter the war on the side of the Confederacy. All of the above.

AFter the battle at 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."

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

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

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 pwoers would be forced to enter the conflict by offering diplomatic recognition to the Confederacy and breaking the Union blockade to secure cotton.

When the Civil War broke out, President Lincoln chose nto 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.

General Robert El 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.

Despite thier 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.

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.

In 1862, the Homestead Act

helped to encourged Westerners to be loyal to the Union.

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.

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.

While southern leaders issued somewhat duplicitous statements concernign 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 teh last time Confederates launched a major offensive above the Mason-Dixon line.