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Michigan State University
College of Social Sciences
Department of History
HST 304 - Civil War Era
Mr Summerhill, Mr Knupfer
Study Guide, Week 5
Reading Assignment: Read Michael Fellman, Lesley J. Gordon, and Daniel E. Sutherland, This
Terrible War: The Civil War and Its Aftermath (New York: Longman, 2008), Chap. 9, chap. 10
through p. 305; view and study Summerhill lecture, “Winning the War”; 1864 platforms of the
Democratic and Union parties; Sherman’s remarks on the meaning of war; Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address. The recommended readings for this week include collections of correspondence, images, and maps on Sherman’s march and the assassination of Lincoln, plus the exchanges between Lincoln and Congress on Reconstruction.
Writing Assignment: Online quiz. See separate instructions.
The fifth week of your study covers the end of formal combat with the series of Confederate defeats in Georgia, the Carolinas, the fall of the Mississippi, and the climactic campaigning in the
Eastern theater from Wilderness (Overland) to Appomattox. It also delves into the thorny problem of reconstruction, an issue that arose the moment South Carolina left the Union and that became more complex in response to emancipation and the gradual reincorporation of captured
territory into the Union. Don’t forget that as we’ve emphasized throughout the course, battlefield events were inextricably linked to the home front, domestic politics, and popular attitudes.
Recent research on women and the war has discovered the vital and in some ways determinative
role they played in the war.
I. First, make sure that you have a good grasp of basic events, people, and issues. You should be
able to discuss comfortably (when, where, why, how, what) the following items:
“war of exhaustion”
Nathaniel Banks; Benjamin Butler; Philip Sheridan
Joseph E. Johnston, John Bell Hood
Overland, Atlanta Campaigns
Election of 1864: issues, candidates, the stakes
Hampton Roads Conference
“The lost cause”
Proclamation of Amnesty & Reconstruction (Ten-percent Plan)
Wade-Davis Bill and Manifesto
II. The following general questions should help direct your study of lectures and text for this
week.
1.
What do the authors mean by a “war of exhaustion,” and how did this way of fighting
emerge from previous strategies? What’s the primary method in a war of exhaustion, and
what were the strengths and weaknesses of such an approach? How did Grant intend to
carry out this strategy? Did the Overland Campaign prove the correctness or failure of
this strategy?
HST 304 Online, Week Five Study Guide, Page 2
2.
What was the significance of the fall of Atlanta? How did Sherman use that victory to
pursue the larger strategy of exhausting the Confederacy? Do you agree with the authors’
assessment that Sherman’s occupation of Atlanta “amounted to a measured campaign of
mass terror”? Be sure to read the Sherman documents on waging war, at the back of
Fellman’s book. Do these documents describe a “measured campaign of mass terror”?
How did the Confederates respond, both militarily and politically?
3.
The authors describe different attitudes in the Confederate army and among civilians at
home: the soldiers’ morale remained fairly strong through 1864, while civilian morale
plummeted. What explains this? Why did the Confederacy experiment with black troops
and what effect did this have on civilian morale?
4.
Carefully read Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address and the authors’ interpretation of it
on pp. 290-291. What questions about American society did Lincoln leave unanswered
in an address that the authors describe as a “sermon about collective white sin”?
5.
Where did the “lost cause” ideology come from? What did it mean and how would it
comfort Southerners in sorrow and embitter Southerners in resistance to Reconstruction?
6.
One historian has argued that the presidential election of 1864 was the most important
such election ever in the history of the United States, then or since. What do you think of
such an argument? Look at the platforms of the two major parties: what were the primary points of disagreement between them? What kind of society did each party try to
promote? Why did the Republicans call themselves the Union party that year? What
were the stakes in this election, and which voters determined the outcome?
7.
Note how Fellman et al. open chapter ten; did the war promote far-reaching political and
social change? They then plunge into a narrative of Reconstruction policy. Why did Lincoln’s plan for amnesty and reconstruction prove so unpopular with radicals of his own
party? What did they want him to do, and how did the Wade-Davis bill reflect their
wishes? (Lincoln’s veto message and the Wade-Davis Manifesto [in the back of Fellman’s
book] are among the recommended readings for this week). What was the central point
of disagreement here?
III.
Additional study and exploration.
The recommended reading list includes a collection of maps, letters, and documents
from Sherman’s march through Georgia; a collection of transcripts, images, sketches,
and newspaper reports on the trial of the Lincoln assassination conspirators; and the exchange of views about reconstruction between Lincoln and congressional supporters of
the Wade-Davis bill.
1.
Sherman’s March Documents: Review the documents, maps and materials at the University of Georgia site on Sherman’s march linked from the syllabus. Be sure to read
Sherman’s field orders to his men at the top of the top-level page of this collection. What
kind of campaign did Sherman want to wage, and what kind of campaign did he wage?
2.
Lincoln assassin trial: This site links to a large number of documents, including excerpts
from the trial transcripts, newspaper reports, and photographs and sketches. Why did
HST 304 Online, Week Five Study Guide, Page 3
Booth and his colleagues commit this crime? Scan the transcripts and the Attorney General’s opinion about using a military commission to try civilians. Setting aside the conspirators’ guilt or innocence, was a military tribunal the right forum for such a trial?
What was the government’s explanation for a military trial of civilians in time of peace,
when the civilian courts were functioning?
3.
Wade-Davis documents: Compare and contrast Lincoln’s and the Wade-Davis supporters’ perspectives on reconstruction policy. What kind of South did they want to create or
foster? Were both sides thinking in the long-term?