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