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Unit XV: The Civil War
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It is interesting to note that the only
way that slavery could have been
abolished legally was through a
constitutional amendment passed by
a 3/4th majority, which would have
been impossible to obtain until the
20th century.
The Civil War allowed the
government to abolish slavery, yet
Lincoln was essentially unprepared
for war because of this.
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Once Lincoln took office he began to
remove troops from many federal
forts located in the South. By April of
1861 only Fort Pickens in Florida and
Fort Sumter in Charleston, S.C
remained stocked with Union
soldiers. Major. Robert Anderson
reported to Lincoln that Fort Sumter
was running out of provisions.
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Lincoln planned to stock the fort
but the Confederates refused to
allow it. General P.G.T.
Beauregard was ordered to seize
the fort. On April 12, 1861 the
Confederates began shelling the
fort thus starting the Civil War.
Lincoln from the outset had
stated that the Constitution was
a contract and states could not
secede. He further stated that
the war would be fought to
preserve the Union.
 With support from the northern
states on April 15, Lincoln called
for 75,000 volunteers to serve
for three months.
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At the same time, calls for troops
were sent to the governors of all
states that had remained in the
Union.
On April 19 a second proclamation
announced that Southern ports
would be blockaded. A third
proclamation, dated May 3, called for
42,000 three-year volunteers for the
regular army and for 18,000
volunteers to serve one to three
years in the navy.
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Lincoln's call for troops though
caused the secession of
Arkansas, Tennessee, Virginia
and North Carolina. Yet war is
never actually declared by the
Senate because doing so would
have meant recognizing the
Confederacy as a nation
increasing the likelihood of
foreign support for the South.
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Both the North and South raised
troops as quickly as possible and
struggled with the problem of
equipping and training them. The
states recruited volunteers and
organized them into regiments.
Officers were elected by the men
and commissioned by the
governors.
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In the beginning the length of
service was usually short, but as
soon as it became clear that the war
would not end with one decisive
battle, three-year-enlistments
became the rule, although there
were many exceptions. The
Confederacy passed the first draft
act in April 1862.
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The Union followed almost a
year later. Opposition to the
draft was general throughout
the country. In New York City
the publication of the first draft
lists caused four days of violent
rioting in which many were
killed and $1.5 million worth of
property was destroyed.
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In both North and South, men of
certain classes, occupations, and
professions were exempted from the
draft. Furthermore, a man who was
drafted in the North could avoid
military service by making a money
payment to the government and in
both the North and South, a draftee
could hire a substitute to go to war
for him.
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Although the draft itself did not
produce a sufficient number of
soldiers, the threat of being
drafted led many to volunteer
and collect a bounty, which was
paid to volunteers. Some soldiers
were unscrupulous enough to
enlist, desert, and reenlist to
collect the bounty more than
once.
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The most difficult aspect of the
war for the South was its
inability to finance the war. At
the outset of the war the
Confederacy depended on loans,
but this source of finance soon
disappeared as Southerners
began to be affected financially
by the cost of the war and were
unable to buy bonds.
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The South never really tried heavy
taxation because the government
had no means to collect taxes and
people in the South were reluctant
and often unable to pay them.
Instead it relied on paper money,
freely printed.
Backed only by the possibility of
Southern victory, the money dropped
in value as the war went on and as
its outcome became more uncertain.
The Confederacy suffered greatly
from severe inflation and debt
throughout the war.
 The Confederate rate of inflation
was about 9000 percent,
meaning that an item that cost
$1 in the Confederacy at the
beginning of the war would have
cost $92 at the end of the war.
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The South also suffered from the
fact that they had oversupplied the
English by about 40%, which meant
the English did not have to rely on
the South for cotton.
In contrast, the North’s rate of
inflation was only about 80 percent.
As the value of money declined,
prices rose accordingly.
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In 1861 Congress passed the Morrill
Tariff Act, which doubled former
tariffs. An income tax was levied for
the first time in 1861, and a
national currency was established.
A national banking system was
established by Congress in 1863 to
stimulate sales of U.S. bonds.
Northerners had savings with which
they could buy the bonds. Investors
in the bank had to buy a certain
percentage of bonds.
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The North also resorted to printing
large amounts of paper money,
called greenbacks, which were not
backed by gold in the U.S. Treasury.
As in the South, though to a much
lesser degree, the paper money
dropped in value in relation to gold,
and prices rose. However, the North
and South continued to fight as if
their treasuries were full.
As men poured into the armies,
Northern and Southern leaders
discussed strategies that would
achieve victory. These strategies
contrasted significantly because
the two sides had very different
war aims.
 The North sought to restore the
Union, which meant it had to
compel the seceded states to
give up their hopes to found a
new nation.
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Northern armies would have to
invade the Confederacy, destroy its
capacity to wage war, and crush the
will of the Southern people to resist.
The most prominent American
military figure in the spring of 1861
was Winfield Scott, the general-inchief of the United States Army.
Physically frail but with a brilliant
mind, Scott conceived a long-range
strategy to bring a northern victory.
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Subsequently named the
“Anaconda Plan.” Scott’s plan
sought to apply pressure on the
Confederacy from all sides. A
combined force of naval and
army units would sweep down
the Mississippi River, dividing the
Confederacy’s eastern and
western states.
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At the same time, the Union navy
would institute a blockade to deny
the Confederacy access to
European manufactured goods.
Should the South continue to resist
even after the loss of the
Mississippi and the closing of its
ports, Scott envisioned a major
invasion into the heart of the
Confederacy.
He estimated it would take two to
three years and 300,000 men to
carry out this strategy.
 The Union had several advantages
which the south would find they
could not compete with.
1. They had a large industrialized
economy that allowed them to
produce tremendous amounts of
military supplies.
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3.
4.
They had a population base of
twenty-two million people and
large amounts of wealth.
They had a large established
navy and superior
transportation.
The Union had by 1860
thousands of miles of railroads
and roads to quickly move
troops and supplies.
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Northern railroads ran from the
east to the west allowing them to
move troops across the front and
attack in several different areas.
The southern rail-lines ran from
the south to the north allowing
Union troops to simply transport
troops deep into the south.
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The Confederacy sought
independence and only had to
defend itself. The Confederacy
could win by prolonging the war to
a point where the northern people
would consider the effort too costly
in lives and money to persist.
Simply put, Confederate armies
generally adopted a defensive
strategy, protecting as much of
their territory as possible against
northern incursions.
However, when circumstances
seemed to offer an opportunity to
gain a decided advantage over
Northern forces, the Confederacy
launched offensives into the North.
 This strategy was dictated by the
advantages they held in the war.
1. The war would be fought on land
they had lived.
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3.
They would be defending their
homes giving them a reason to
fight.
They were also led by some of the
greatest generals in U.S. Southern
generals had formally been in the
U.S military, many had graduated
from West Point and understood
war.
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Geography played a major role in
how effectively the two sides
were able to carry out their
strategies. The sheer size of the
Confederacy posed a daunting
obstacle to northern military
forces. Totaling more than
750,000 sq. miles and without a
well-developed network of roads.
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The Southern landscape challenged
the North’s ability to supply armies
that maneuvered at increasing
distances from Union bases.
It was also almost impossible to
make the North’s blockade of
Southern ports completely effective
because the South’s coastline
stretched 3500 miles and contained
nearly 200 harbors and mouths of
navigable rivers.
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The Appalachian Mountains also
hindered rapid movement of
Northern forces between the
eastern and western areas of the
Confederacy while the Shenandoah
Valley of Virginia offered a
protected route through which
Confederate armies could invade
the North.
The placement of Southern rivers,
however, favored the North.
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The Mississippi, Tennessee and
Cumberland rivers provided excellent
north-south avenues of advance for
Union armies west of the
Appalachians.
In Virginia, Confederates defended
from behind the state’s principal
rivers, but the James River also
served as a secure line of
communications and supply for
Union offensives against Richmond in
1862 and again in 1864.
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Technological advances helped both
sides deal with the great distances
over which the armies fought. The
Civil War was the first large conflict
that featured railroads and the
telegraph. Railroads rapidly moved
hundreds of thousands of soldiers
and vast quantities of supplies; the
North contained almost twice as
many miles of railroad lines as the
South.
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Telegraphic communication
permitted both governments to
coordinate military movements on
sprawling geographical fronts. The
combatants also took advantage of
numerous other recent advances in
military technology.
The most important was the rifle
musket carried by most of the
infantrymen on both sides.
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Prior to the Civil War, infantry
generally had been armed with
smoothbore muskets, weapons
without rifling in the barrels.
Combined with field fortifications,
which were widely used during the
war, the rifle musket changed
military tactics by making charges
against defensive positions more
difficult. It also gave a significant
advantage to the defending force.
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Other new technologies included
ironclad warships, which were used
by both sides; the deployment of
manned balloons for aerial
reconnaissance on battlefields, used
mainly by the North; the first sinking
of a warship by the South’s
submarine, known as the CSS
Hunley; and the arming of significant
numbers of soldiers with repeating
weapons, carried mainly by the
northern cavalry.
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Under pressure from the public and
press Lincoln ordered the Union
army under Irvin McDowell to move
toward Confederate troops under
General Beauregard at Manassas
Junction, 25 miles southwest of
Washington, DC. The two armies did
not meet until July 21. The battle,
known as First Bull Run or First
Manassas, started well for the North.
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However, with the arrival of
Confederate reinforcements and the
heroic stand of General Thomas J.
Jackson, who earned the nickname
“Stonewall,” the battle ended in an
overwhelming victory for the South.
Most of the Union troops straggled
back to Washington in near panic.
The defeat shocked the North.
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The people suddenly realized
that the war could be a grim
struggle that might last for
years. Governors offered more
troops and hurried forward
regiments with full ranks.
The Union War Department
pushed the organization of longterm volunteers.
General George B. McClellan was
ordered to Washington from
western Virginia, where he had
made a name for himself in a
series of small battles.
 McClellan took charge of the
troops in and around the capital,
enforcing discipline and
instituting intensive training.
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McClellan spent months marching
his troops around Washington while
Lincoln became impatient. Finally in
the spring of 1862 Lincoln ordered
McClellan to attack.
McClellan decided on a naval
approach towards Richmond. Along
a small peninsula created by the
James and York Rivers. McClellan
took historic Yorktown by April; he
then began to march towards
Richmond.
He stalled short of Richmond and
then was attacked by Gen.
Robert E. Lee in the Seven Days'
Battles from June 26 through
July 2, 1862.
 McClellan was forced to retreat
and the campaign was a failure
even though the Confederates
lost 20,000 troops.
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Lee moved northward after
defeating McClellan into Maryland
hoping a major victory would bring
foreign intervention.
McClellan with 75,000 men faced
Gen. Lee across Antietam Creek.
Confederate forces numbered about
35,000 soldiers. The fighting began
on September 17, and despite the
superior number of Union forces,
the Confederate Army was able to
hold them off.
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Both sides lost heavily and
fighting was so fierce and the
casualties so high that Antietam
was the bloodiest one-day battle
of the Civil War.
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Antietam was a significant battle for
what it allowed President Lincoln to
do. From the beginning of the war,
President Lincoln had insisted that
his primary aim was the restoration
of the Union, not the abolition of
slavery.
As the war continued, however,
Lincoln saw that the preservation of
the Union depended, in part, on the
destruction of slavery.
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The Lincoln Administration believed
that if they made the abolition of
slavery a war aim, they could stop
Great Britain or France from
recognizing the Confederacy.
Both Great Britain and France had
long since abolished slavery and
would not support a country fighting
a war to defend it.
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Emancipation might allow the
North to undercut the South’s
war effort, which was supported
by slave labor. Emancipation
would also clarify the status of
slaves who were running away to
the Union lines. These black
people were refugees and later
soldiers in the Union Army.
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This activity, called selfemancipation, presented a problem
to the Union Army. Were these black
people free, or enslaved? Should
they be returned to their Southern
masters under the fugitive slave
laws?
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The Lincoln Administration
believed since slaves were
property they could be seized by
the North. In addition, public
opinion in the North had begun
to favor abolition, and Congress,
no longer needing to be
concerned about the Southern
states, had started passing
legislation to end slavery.
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In 1862 Congress abolished slavery
in the District of Columbia and
prohibited slavery in the territories.
On July 22, 1862, Lincoln informed
his Cabinet that he intended to free
the slaves in states that were in
active rebellion. However, they had
persuaded him to wait until a
northern victory because it would
seem less like a desperate measure.
Antietam served that purpose.
"that all persons held as slaves" within the
rebellious states "are, and henceforward shall
be free."
It applied only to states that had seceded from
the Union, leaving slavery untouched in the
loyal border states. It also expressly exempted
parts of the Confederacy that had already
come under Northern control. Most important,
the freedom it promised depended upon Union
military victory.
Although the Emancipation Proclamation did
not immediately free a single slave, it
fundamentally transformed the character of the
war. After January 1, 1863, every advance of
federal troops expanded the domain of
freedom. Moreover, the Proclamation
announced the acceptance of black men into
the Union Army and Navy, enabling the
liberated to become liberators. By the end of
the war, almost 200,000 black soldiers and
sailors had fought for the Union and freedom.
In May of 1863 Lee's army
defeated the Union army at
Chancellorsville. Because of his
success Lee decided to march his
troops north into Pennsylvania.
There were several reasons for
this bold move.
 The Confederate government
hoped that a decisive victory on
northern soil would win foreign
recognition of the Confederacy.
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In addition, Lee argued that an
invasion of the wealthiest urban
area of the North would probably
lessen the pressure on
Confederate forces in Tennessee
and at Vicksburg.
 Perhaps most important, the lush
Cumberland Valley would yield
food and clothing for Lee’s
ragged and hungry army.
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On July 1st advanced units of the
two armies stumbled into each
other near the little town of
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, 10 miles
north of the Maryland border. Both
Lee and Meade realized that a
battle was unavoidable. The battle
was a decisive Union victory, but
both armies suffered very heavy
losses. Meade’s casualties
numbered 23,000 and Lee’s about
25,000.
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In November 1863 President Lincoln
dedicated a national cemetery to
those who had died in the Battle of
Gettysburg. His speech, known as
the Gettysburg Address, became
famous as an expression of the
democratic spirit and reconfirmed
Lincoln’s intention to reunite the
country.
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The defeat of Lee at Gettysburg
coincided with a Union victory at
Vicksburg, Mississippi under
General Ulysses S. Grant. This
victory reopened trade for
northern states and ended all
hopes of foreign intervention for
the south.
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Gen. Grant was then transferred
east to Chattanooga where he
defeated the Confederate army and
opened an invasion route into
Georgia. Grant became head of the
Union army and appointed Gen.
William Sherman to invade Georgia.
In his famous march to the sea he
burned Atlanta in September 1864
and then marched southward
burning everything on his way to
Savannah 250 miles away.
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Sherman was hated and feared in
the south but took Savannah easily.
He the turned north towards South
Carolina, which was viciously
attacked.
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By taking his army out of Richmond
and Petersburg, which were now
controlled by the Union, Lee hoped
to join Johnston who had been in
North Carolina, to prolong the
struggle. Grant’s goal was clear: to
prevent the two armies from uniting.
From April 3 to April 7 1865, Union
and Confederate forces engaged in a
series of running fights.
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On April 7 Sheridan managed to
place his brigades across the line of
Lee’s retreat at Appomattox Court
House, Virginia, 60 miles west of
Petersburg. Mindful of Lincoln’s wish
to avoid needless bloodshed, Grant
sent Lee a note pointing out his
hopeless condition and inviting
surrender. Lee, who was keenly
aware of his desperate situation,
asked for terms.
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On the morning of April 9 the two
commanders met at a private home
in Appomattox Court House. Grant
asked only that the officers and
men of the Army of Northern
Virginia surrender and give their
word not to take up arms against
the United States until properly
exchanged. Lee accepted the
terms. The war was over in Virginia.
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During the war opposition to the war
was led by a faction of the
Democratic Party called the
Copperheads. They feared that
agricultural interests in the
Northwest were losing influence in
the government to industrialization
and the Eastern cities and that
state’s rights were danger due to
Republican actions during the war.
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In response the Lincoln
administration attempted to
suppress opposition. He suspended
the Writ of Habeas Corpus certain
areas allowing for military arrests
and trials.
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The Republican Party suffered
politically during the war as well.
They lost control of Congress in
1862 leading them to change the
party name to the Union Party
hoping to widen their constituency.
In the 1864 election Lincoln
appealed to Southern sympathizers
by nominating Tennessee Dem.
Andrew Johnson for Vice President.
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The Democrats countered by
nominating former General George
McClellan.
In the summer of 1864 several
Union victories ensured Lincoln
would be re-elected.
The Republicans though were far
from unified and had split over post
war issues.
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Moderate Republicans favored
gradual abolition and a return to
status quo whenever possible.
Radical Republicans wanted
immediate abolition and the
punishment of the South.
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During the war the government
played an important role in the
economy. In 1862 the Morrill Land
Grant Act was passed giving land to
states to sell with the revenue
going to education. This would
cause the creation of agricultural
and engineering schools.
The Homestead Act was passed as
well opening the way for
settlement.
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It gave 160 acres of free land to any
American citizen, who was the head
of a family and over 21.
Settlers owned the land after they
worked it for five years. Some
people felt 160 acres was not
enough land to prosper on in the
West. After 50 years all territories
had gained enough settlers to
become a state. 60,000 people.
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Free land was to be found in all
areas except: 13 original colonies,
Texas, Tenn., Ky., W. Va., Maine and
Vermont.
The war touched the lives of almost
every person in the United States.
Women assumed larger
responsibilities in the workplace
because so many men were absent
in the armies. In the North, they
labored as nurses, government
clerks, and factory workers and
contributed to the war effort in other
ways.
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Southern white women also
worked as clerks and nurses and
in factories, and thousands took
responsibility for running family
farms. Several hundred women
disguised themselves as men
and served in the military, a few
of whom were wounded in battle.
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No group was more directly
affected by the outcome of the war
than the almost 4 million black
people who were slaves in 1861.
They emerged from the conflict
with their freedom, which was
confirmed by the 13th Amendment
to the Constitution in December
1865. However, blacks did not have
equal rights until long after the war.
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The war also caused wide-scale
economic destruction to the
South. The Confederate states
lost two-thirds of their wealth
during the war. The loss of slave
property through emancipation
accounted for much of this, but
the economic infrastructure in
the South was also severely
damaged in other ways.
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Railroads and industries in the
South were in shambles, more than
one-half of all farm machinery was
destroyed, and 40 percent of all
livestock had been killed. In
contrast, the northern economy
thrived during the war.
Two numbers convey a sense of the
economic cost to the respective
sections: between 1860 and 1870,
Northern wealth increased by 50
percent; during that same
decade, Southern wealth
decreased by 60 percent.
 Lincoln though would not live to
see a post war America. He was
assassinated on April 14, 1865
by John Wilkes Booth in Ford's
Theater.
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