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CHAPTER 14
A NEW BIRTH OF FREEDOM: THE CIVIL
WAR, 1861–1865
Election of 1860
Abraham Lincoln (Republican)
 Stephen Douglas (Northern Democrats)
 John C. Breckenridge
(Southern Democrats: didn’t like Douglas
because even though he was a slave
owner, he supported popular sovereignty)
 John Bell (Constitutional Union Party –
avoid issues)

South Secedes from the Union
Confederate States of America: February 8, 1861
 Confederacy formed into 11 states total, 7 which seceded
from the Union within 3 months of Lincoln’s Election
 South Carolina seceded first – Dec. 1860
 Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas
 President Jefferson Davis
Lincoln’s Inauguration
March 4, 1861
Inaugural Address:

Preserve the Union against secession –
 Cabinet
members a mix of 4 Democrats and 3
former Whigs (Republicans who formed in 1854 in
response to the Kansas-Nebraska Act)

Compromise between North and South –
won’t interfere in slavery where it already exists
Fort Sumter – April 12, 1861
Who owns Fort Sumter ?:
Both the Union and Confederacy claimed it
Supplies to Fort Sumter:
Lincoln ordered supplies to aid federal troops
 Lincoln promised that no federal forts would be evacuated in
the Confederate States
 Located in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina where 68
federal troops occupied after leaving Charleston, SC when is
seceded
War Begins:
 April 12, 1861 – Confederates fired upon the fort at 4:30am
under General Pierre G.T. Beauregard
 Major Robert Anderson surrendered
CIVIL WAR
1861 - 1865

Lincoln’s Naval Blockade of Southern Ports - April 19, 1861
 Federal
ships closed the Mississippi River and ports along the
Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico to trade
 Limited Confederacy’s commercial access, causing inflation of
food prices



Volunteers flocked to recruitment stations on both sides
Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, North Carolina seceded
following Fort Sumter – (April – May, 1861)
WEST VIRGINIA: June 20, 1863 (35th State)
only state to form by seceding from a Confederate state
http://www.aaregistry.org/historic_events/view/west-virginia-created-secession-southern-confederate-state
Civil War: 1861 - 1865

First modern war
 Mass
armies fought
 Weapons forged by the Industrial Revolution
 Scale of Casualties was unprecedented in
American history
Success
and Failures were influenced by:
Leadership:
Resources:
Effectiveness of political leaders
Capacity to mobilize economic resources
Motivation: Society’s determination to continue the
war, despite failures
Civil War - The Two Combatants
•
UNION ADVANTAGES:
• Population (22 million)
• Manufacturing
• Railroad Mileage
• Financial Resources
• Goal to Restore Union an immense feat
•
CONFEDERATE ADVANTAGES:
• Population 9 million (3.5 million being slaves)
• Large size makes it difficult to conquer
• Motivated to defend family and home
Image of Master and Slave in Confederate Army raises questions:
Washington Post: Iconic Picture of the Civil War
PBS http://www.pbs.org/opb/historydetectives/investigation/chandler-tintype/
Civil War - The Two Combatants
•
Patriotism defined the beginning of the war:
(last war was 15years ago, MX War)
•
Pride in protecting Northern or Southern values
•
Romantic notions of war
•
Glory of Winning
Draft – as war waged on, the short and glorious war became a long, bloody reality
•
•
•
1862 Confederate Draft http://civilwardailygazette.com/2012/09/27/the-confederates-second-conscrition-act/
1863 Union Draft http://www.history.com/topics/american-civil-war/draft-riots
Union Army
* 2 Million
* farm boys, artisans,
urban workers,
shopkeepers
Confederate Army
* 900,000
* mostly non-slaveholding small farmers
* Officers: Slaveowners
The Union & Confederacy in 1861
Civil War - Technology of War
Techonology:
http://www.pbs.org/opb/historydetectives/feature/civil-war-innovations/
http://www.history.com/topics/american-civil-war/civil-war-technology
Soldiers and officers did not anticipate how technological advances changed warfare.
1.
Railroads: moved troops and supplies
2.
Ironclads: 1862 battle between the Union vessel Monitor and Confederate Merrimac in 1862,
 showed the advantage of ironclads over wooden ships and transformed naval warfare
3. Telegraph: assist with military communication
4. Observation balloons
5. Hand grenades
6. Submarines
7. Rifle: revolution in arms manufacturing, which replaced the musket, accurate only at a short
range, with the rifle, deadly at 600 or more yards because of its grooved barrel.
Warfare: The Price of Freedom: Americans at War http://amhistory.si.edu/militaryhistory/exhibition/flash.html
Weapons changed the nature of combat. This development produced the awful casualties of the
war’s battles.
1. Heavy Fortifications
2. Trenches and giving defensive forces (usually Confederates) a significant advantage.
Railroad Lines, 1860
Civil War - The Two Combatants
Medical Care = Primitive
 Disease killed more men than combat (measles, dysentery, malaria, typhus)
War Camps or Military Prisons:
 Large numbers of Americans for the first time were captured and held as
prisoners of war in camps
 50,000 died

Andersonville, GA Prison:
http://www.nps.gov/ande/index.htm
http://www.civilwar.org/education/history/warfare-and-logistics/warfare/andersonville.html
Death Toll:
 620,000
 The equivalent of more than 6 million in today’s population
 More than the entire number of Americans killed in all other wars in U.S.
history, from the Revolution to the Iraq war.
War Casualties:
http://www.civilwar.org/education/civil-war-casualties.html
A surgeon’s kit used in the Civil War
Give Me Liberty!: An American history, 3rd Edition
Copyright © 2011 W.W. Norton & Company
The First Modern War - The Public and the War
Propaganda:


•
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/propaganda
Use of propaganda by both sides to mobilize public opinion.
North - patriotic organizations and the War Department reaffirmed northern values
 portrayed the Democratic Party as treasonous, and accused the South of crimes
against Union soldiers and loyal civilians.
South - engaged in similar campaigns.
War Correspondents & Photography:
• Communicated the war to the public (casualties) and images reinforced grueling war
• Modern media, with newspapers, telegraphs, and especially photographs, for the first
time captured the often shocking reality of war and communicated it to the public.
• Mathew Brady – photojournalism https://www.flickr.com/photos/usnationalarchives/collections/72157622495226723/
The First Modern War
Unprepared for War:
Both sides were unprepared for war. There was no
national banking system, no tax system to raise
revenue for the war, and few accurate maps of the
South.
Anaconda Plan: http://history1800s.about.com/od/1800sglossary/g/Anaconda-Plan-def.htm
After Fort Sumter, Lincoln enacted a blockade of the
South, intended to destroy its commerce, but the navy
at first had too few ships to enforce it. (naval
blockade of the South)
The “Anaconda” Plan
The First Modern War
Mobilizing Resources
 The problems of purchasing and distributing food,
weapons, and other supplies for the armies were huge.
Union Army:
 best-fed and best-supplied force in history
Confederate Army:
 lacked food, uniforms, and shoes
 Lacking sufficient industrial capacity
 Government imported many items for the military from
abroad and established its own arsenals.
Figure 14.1 Resources For War: Union Versus Confederacy
Give Me Liberty!: An American history, 3rd Edition
Copyright © 2011 W.W. Norton & Company
Lincoln – Leader of the Union
Image Gallery of Lincoln:
http://mentalfloss.com/article/31357/24-vintage-photographs-abe-lincoln
The Leaders of the Confederacy
Pres. Jefferson Davis
VP Alexander Stevens
Irwin McDowell
Ulysses S. Grant
Lincoln’s Generals
Ambrose Burnside
George Meade
Joseph Hooker
Winfield Scott
George McClellan
Confederate Generals
“Stonewall” Jackson
Robert E. Lee
James Longstreet
George Pickett
Nathan Bedford
Forrest
Jeb Stuart
The First Modern War – Military Strategies
Each side tried to exploit its advantages—the South, by
adopting a defensive strategy to wear down the North, led
by the brilliant Robert E. Lee, and the North, by using its
superiority in manpower and technology. But the northern
army was at first small, its officers and leadership were
poor, and it was focused on capturing Richmond, the
Confederacy’s capital, a difficult task. Lincoln soon realized
that capturing and occupying territory would not win the
war; defeating the South’s armies would. Lincoln’s eventual
embrace of emancipation acknowledged that slavery was
the basis of the Confederacy, and that to win the conflict, the
Union had to make this institution, the economic and social
foundation of the South, a military target.
The First Modern War - The War Begins
Most of the war in the East occurred in a narrow corridor
between Washington and Richmond, as a series of Union
generals led the North’s Army of the Potomac toward the
Confederate capital, only to be repeatedly repulsed by the
main Confederate army. The first significant clash at Bull Run
ended in the defeat and chaotic retreat of Union forces. This
battle ended the widespread belief that the war would end
quickly. George B. McClellan soon took command of the
Union’s main army, but after thoroughly training this army’s
tens of thousands of volunteer soldiers, he proved reluctant
to commit them to battle. McClellan was a Democrat, and he
hoped that compromise might end the conflict without many
casualties or weakening slavery.
Give Me Liberty!: An American history, 3rd Edition
Copyright © 2011 W.W. Norton & Company
Map 14.2 The Civil War in the East, 1861 - 1862
The First Modern War – The War in the East 1862
Pressured by public opinion, President Lincoln, and Congress, McClellan, in the
spring of 1862, led his army of more than 100,000 men into Virginia.
Approaching the Confederate capital on the peninsula southwest of
Richmond, McClellan’s advance was ably deflected by Lee in a series of
battles, forcing McClellan back to Washington, D.C. After Lee won the second
Battle of Bull Run in August, 1862, he invaded the North, hoping to bring
border slave states into the Confederacy, gain French and British recognition
of southern independence, influence the North’s elections in the fall, and
perhaps capture Washington, D.C. At the Battle of Antietam, McClellan and
the Army of the Potomac repelled Lee’s invasion. In one day at Antietam,
nearly 4,000 men were killed and 18,000 wounded. More Americans died in
this battle on September 17, 1862, than on any other day in American
history, including Pearl Harbor and D-Day in World War II and the terrorist
attacks of September 11, 2001. Northern triumph was short-lived. General
Ambrose E. Burnside, who replaced McClellan, was repulsed by Lee’s army at
Fredricksburg, Virginia, in December 1862, with heavy losses.
The First Modern War –
The War in the West 1862
The North had better luck in the West. There Ulysses
S. Grant, a West Point graduate whose army career
had been ruined by his excessive drinking, captured
several important forts in Tennessee in early 1862. In
April 1862, naval forces under Admiral David G.
Farragut steamed into New Orleans and captured
that city for the Union, which now controlled the
South’s largest city and its lucrative nearby sugar
plantations. After Grant repelled a surprise
Confederate attack at Shiloh, Tennessee, Union
success in the West stalled.
Map 14.3 The Civil War in the East, 1861 - 1862
The Coming of Emancipation –
Slavery and the War
The Civil War had revolutionary effects on American society,
the most important of which was the destruction of slavery,
the fundamental institution of southern society. The
emancipation of America’s 4 million slaves, in numbers, scale,
and economic value, was far greater than any other
emancipation of slaves or serfs (in Russia) in the world. At the
war’s beginning, Lincoln identified the North’s cause with the
cause of free labor. But Lincoln also initially stated that the
conflict was not being fought to end or limit slavery, but to
preserve the Union. He wanted to keep the border slave
states of Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri in the
Union and build the broadest possible base of support for
the war in the North.
The Coming of Emancipation –
Slavery and the War
Lincoln’s Message to Congress – 1861
 He insisted that slavery was irrelevant
to the war
 Fear that the border states (DE, MD,
KY, MO) would join the Confederacy
if he threatened emancipation
The Coming of Emancipation –
The Unraveling of Slavery
Lincoln and Congress initially claimed the war’s goal was to restore the Union and not end slavery.
Slaves and a lack of victory transformed the cause to freedom and the end of slavery.
Crittenden Resolution:
 Early in the war, Congress adopted a resolution that affirmed the Union had no intention
of interfering in slavery
 Proposed by Senator John Crittenden, KY
Fugitive Slaves:
 Union military returned runaways to their owners early in the war
Contraband Camps:
 Contraband of war—property of military value subject to confiscation
http://www.nps.gov/cwdw/historyculture/living-contraband-former-slaves-in-the-capital-during-and-after-the-civil-war.htm
Camps of southern slaves that had escaped and crossed Union lines
“Freedom War”: Well before Lincoln’s Emancipation Act, slaves saw the war as an
opportunity to gain their freedom
 Southern blacks took actions that propelled the Union toward ending slavery.
 Thousands escaped to the safety of Union lines, crippling many plantations.
 In areas occupied by northern soldiers, slaves refused to work unless paid.

The Coming of Emancipation –
Steps toward Emancipation
Emancipation = Kryptonite to South







Abolitionists and Radical Republicans demanded that abolition become a war
aim
(Fredrick Douglas, Thaddeus Stevens a Radical Republican from PA)
Anti-slavery northerners argued that slavery was the foundation of the
South’s economy and emancipation would be weaken and defeat the south,
unable to sustain war
Lack of a Union victory made Congress more open to the ideas of abolition
March 1862 - Congress prohibited the army from returning fugitive slaves
April 16, 1862 - Washington DC bans slavery
July 1862 - 2nd Confiscation Act: liberated slaves of disloyal owners in
Union occuped territory and escaped slaves
LINCOLN 1861 – 1862: hesitant to support outright emancipation to avoid
border states from seceding, proposed colonization outside the US for freed
slaves
The Coming of Emancipation –
The Emancipation Proclamation
On January 1, 1863, Lincoln signed and issued the
Emancipation Proclamation. The document did not free all
the slaves and at first applied to very few. Based on Lincoln’s
authority as military commander-in-chief, the proclamation
exempted areas under Union control. Thus, it did not apply
to loyal border slave states that had not seceded or to parts
of the Confederacy occupied by Union forces, such as
Tennessee and parts of Virginia and Louisiana. But it
declared free the vast majority of the South’s slaves, more
than 3 million men, women, and children. Still behind
Confederate lines, these slaves would be free only when
Union military success made them so.
Give Me Liberty!: An American history, 3rd Edition
Map 14.4 The Emancipation Proclamation
Copyright © 2011 W.W. Norton & Company
The Coming of Emancipation
Enlisting Black Troops

The proclamation’s provision allowing blacks to enlist in the army had far-reaching effects. Although the navy allowed
blacks to serve as sailors, they had been excluded from the army. Lincoln’s administration first refused to allow blacks to
enlist, fearing that it would alienate white soldiers and border slave states that stayed in the Union. But a few union
commanders enlisted soldiers who were contraband, as happened in South Carolina. Only with the Emancipation
Proclamation did significant black enlistment begin. By the end of the war, 180,000 black men had served in the Union
Army, and 24,000 in the Union Navy. One-third died in battle, from wounds, or disease. Black soldiers and units received
considerable notoriety after showing great heroism in battle, such as the 54th Massachusetts and its assault on Fort
Wagner, South Carolina, in 1863 (popularized in the film Glory). Most black soldiers were emancipated slaves who joined
the army in the South. Many were slaves from loyal border states excluded from the Emancipation Proclamation, where
enlistment was, for most of the war, the only road to freedom.
The Black Soldier

Military service was liberating for many black soldiers, who earned a new sense of dignity and rights. As veterans, many
of these troops became community and political leaders, including many of the Reconstruction era. Within the army,
however, black troops received discriminatory treatment, including being led only by white officers, being more often
assigned to work rather than combat duty, and at first receiving unequal pay. They were targeted by Confederates, who
executed some black prisoners. But black soldiers’ service ensured that they could make claims on the government for
equal rights and citizenship in the war’s aftermath.
The Second American Revolution
Liberty and Union

Because it radically transformed American government and society, some historians call the American Civil War
the Second American Revolution. Notions of freedom were contested and transformed by the war. Union victory
secured the North’s understanding of freedom as self-ownership and owning one’s own labor, as opposed to the
South’s vision of freedom as mastership over others. The war advanced abolitionists’ definitions of freedom, and
Lincoln’s emancipation of the slaves reinforced Americans’ sense that their nation was a progressive force in world
history.
Lincoln’s Vision

Lincoln did the most to link the war with northern values. The American Civil War was part of a worldwide
phenomenon of nation building. Throughout the world, powerful, centralized nation-states developed in old
countries and new nations emerged where none had ever existed. Modern states consolidated their power and
reduced local autonomy. Japan and Argentina are two examples where this occurred, and where rapid economic
development quickly followed national unification. Lincoln has even been called the American Mazzini or Bismarck,
figures who respectively created nation-states in Italy and Germany. But Lincoln’s America, unlike these nations,
was based on universal ideas of political democracy, human liberty, and self-government; other nations were
based on particular identities of ethnicity, culture, and language. In his November 1863 Gettysburg Address
commemorating that battle’s dead, Lincoln reaffirmed that “all men are created equal” and stated the war
heralded a “new birth of freedom.” Union soldiers’ sacrifices would ensure that “government of the people, by the
people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
The Second American Revolution
From Union to Nation

The Union war effort created a new American nation-state with greatly expanded powers and responsibilities. The United
States remained a federal republic, with sovereignty divided between state and national governments. Yet the war
inaugurated a new national self-consciousness, as indicated by a greater use of the word “nation,” a unified political
entity, rather than the older “Union” of individual states. More and more, Americans thought freedom required a nation
and coherent national identity.
The War and American Religion

The war changed religion, as well. Northern Protestant clergy tried to give the war a religious justification and sanctify the
sacrifices of Northern soldiers. In their sermons, they joined Christianity and patriotism into a civic religion, marking the
war as God’s means of eradicating slavery and truly making America a land of liberty. Religion also enabled Americans
to cope with the horrors of the battlefield and the enormous loss of life caused by the conflict.
Liberty in Wartime

Intensified northern nationalism made criticism of the war or Lincoln’s administration seem treasonous to Republicans.
Thousands of opposition newspaper editors, Democratic politicians, opponents of enlistment and the draft, and ordinary
civilians were arrested, often arbitrarily. As the Constitution did not clarify who had the authority to suspend habeas
corpus, Lincoln claimed this right under his presidential war powers, and he suspended it twice for those charged with
“disloyal activities.” Courts generally gave the administration a free hand, and Lincoln even ignored Supreme Court
decisions in individual cases. Only in 1866 did the Supreme Court declare it unconstitutional to bring accused persons
before military tribunals where civil courts were in operation. While Lincoln was no dictator, the conflict showed that civil
liberties were fragile in wartime.
The Second American Revolution
The North’s Transformation

The northern war effort empowered both the federal government and a rising class of capitalist
businessmen. Unlike the South, which was economically devastated, the northern economy flourished.
Industrial profits soared from wartime inflation and government contracts to produce supplies, coal, and
iron. Mechanization was spurred onward by war demands in boot and shoe production and meatpacking.
Agricultural production also expanded during the war.
Government and the Economy

The northern government was committed to rapid economic growth and development, and Congress adopted
policies that promoted this and transformed America’s financial system. With no South represented in Congress to
block changes, lawmakers adopted policies advocated by many in the North. The Homestead Act spurred
agricultural development by offering 160 acres of free public land to settlers in the West. The Land Grant
College Act helped states establish agricultural and mechanical schools, many of which became the state
universities of today.
Building the Transcontinental Railroad

Congress also made huge grants of money and land for internal improvements, including up to 100 million acres
to the Union Pacific and Central Pacific to build the transcontinental railroad. This monumental project required
20,000 men to lay track, an enterprise that involved many Chinese contract laborers, called “coolies” by
Americans. The transcontinental railroad, finished in 1869, expanded the national market, facilitated western
settlement and investment, and sealed the fate of Indians in the West.
The Second American Revolution
The War and Native Americans

Because Lincoln removed soldiers from the West to fight in the East, soldiers could not keep white settlers
from intruding on Indian territories. Conflict between whites and federal troops and the Indians increased.
Sioux attacks on white farmers in Minnesota led to the sentencing and mass hanging of 38 Indians, the
largest official execution in American history. In 1864, Colorado soldiers killed around 400 Arapaho and
Cheyenne men, women, and children at Sand Creek. The Union Army also launched a campaign against
the Navajo in the Southwest, and forced them onto a reservation. The Confederacy ironically treated
Indians more fairly than the Union, allowing tribes to elect representatives to its Congress, and allowing
Indian tribes on reservations complete self-government.
Women and the War

For many northern women, the war created economic opportunity. Women took manufacturing jobs and
jobs in male professions, like nursing. Women found jobs as clerks in the expanding federal government.
Women maintained a presence after the war in white-collar government jobs, retail sales, and nursing.
Women worked as nurses in the armies, and hundreds of thousands of women indirectly supported the
armies by raising money and supplies for soldiers and freed slaves. The U.S. Sanitary Commission became
a centralized national relief agency to coordinate efforts on the home front. These activities brought
women into the public sphere in new ways. The suffrage movement suspended its work during the conflict,
but women’s contribution to the war effort heightened the sense of many women that they deserved the
vote in its aftermath.
The Second American Revolution
A New Financial System


The need to generate revenue to pay for the war transformed America’s financial system. To
raise funds, the government increased the tariff to record levels, imposed new taxes on
production and consumption, and passed the first income tax in American history. The Union
government also borrowed more than $2 billion by selling interest-bearing bonds, creating a
huge national debt. It also printed more than $400 million of paper money, called
“greenbacks,” as legal tender. Congress rationalized banking by creating a system of
nationally chartered banks required to buy government bonds, and allowed to issue bank
notes as currency. A heavy tax drove money issued by state banks out of circulation. The
United States, with a money supply before the war an anarchic mix of paper notes issue by
state and local banks, during the war had two kinds of national paper money – greenbacks
printed by the federal government—and notes issued by new national banks.
Wartime economic policies handsomely benefited northern manufacturers, railroad
businessmen, and financiers. Many “captains of industry” of the Gilded Age made their
fortunes in the war, including iron and steel man Andrew Carnegie, oil magnate John D.
Rockefeller, financiers Jay Gould and J. P. Morgan, and Philip D. Armour, beef slaughterer. As
a whole, Union economic policies vastly expanded the power and size of the federal
government. The federal budget in 1865 was more than $1 billion, twenty times larger than
1860, and the federal government became the nation’s largest employer.
The Second American Revolution
The Divided North


The war and Lincoln’s policies divided the North. Republicans called those opposing the war
Copperheads, after a poisonous snake that strikes without warning. Increasing casualties and
rapid social change caused internal conflict. States with a large southern-born population, like
Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, and cities with large working-class Catholic immigrant populations,
were at the center of disquiet. The growing power of the federal government challenged local
autonomy, most notably in the draft law, which allowed individuals to provide a substitute or
pay a fee to escape service. Wage-earners resented the huge profits of manufacturers and
financiers while inflation eroded their pay. The war saw the rebirth of the northern labor
movement, which called many strikes.
Prospective changes in the status of blacks sparked a racist backlash in much of the North.
Although divided between anti-war and pro-war wings, the Democratic Party criticized Lincoln’s
policies and the draft. Occasionally dissent became violence, most notably the July 1863 riots
against the draft in New York City, in which a mostly Irish immigrant mob attacked draft
offices, the mansions of wealthy Republicans, industrial establishments, and city blacks. More
than 100 people were killed before federal troops ended the tumult.
The Confederate Nation
Leadership and Government

Confederate President Jefferson Davis proved unable to rally the southern public behind the war. Although
eloquent, Davis, a West Point graduate, senator, and Mississippi plantation owner, lacked charisma and an
ability to connect with ordinary citizens. The Confederacy’s lack of a party system also was a liability, as
southern leaders saw parties as a danger to national unity. Davis thus lacked a counterpart to the wellorganized Republican Party, which organized support for Lincoln’s administration.
The Inner Civil War


Under Davis, the South’s government became very centralized, raising armies, taking control of
railroads, and building factories. But the Confederate government never effectively utilized the
South’s main economic resource, cotton. A strategy to focus on food production as a means to
compel Great Britain, whose mills used southern cotton, to side with the Confederacy, failed.
Other nations increased their cotton production, such as Egypt and India, which helped produce
a crisis of overproduction after the war when southern cotton production resumed.
Social change and internal strife consumed the South as the war dragged on. Initially, white
southerners widely supported the Confederate cause and war effort, claiming the war was
being fought to protect liberty against northern tyranny. Yet public disaffection grew,
especially over the draft, which allowed substitutes and exempted one white male for every
twenty slaves on a plantation, thus releasing from service many overseers and planters’ sons
and greatly increasing opposition to the war among poor whites.
The Confederate Nation
Economic Problems


Economic crisis also caused inner turmoil in the South. As the blockade became more
effective, more of the South became occupied by Union forces and slave productivity
declined, shortages of essential goods became widespread. Confederate policies that
seemed to favor the wealthy and large slaveowners exacerbated the effects of economic
troubles, as poor whites felt they faced unequal burdens.
While the Confederacy like the North borrowed heavily to finance the war, the planterdominated Congress would not levy heavy taxes that planters would have to pay.
Instead, it printed an enormous amount of paper money. Congress authorized military
officers to seize goods and pay citizens with this money, which became increasingly
worthless. Many southerners resented this practice. In some cities, food riots broke out. By
the end of the war, nearly 100,000 men, mostly poor non-slaveholders, had deserted
from the Confederate Army.
Southern Unionists

By 1864, organized movements calling for peace surfaced in several southern states, and
secret societies were actively promoting disloyalty. Confederate military tribunals
imprisoned Unionists, drove them from their homes, and executed a few. By the end of the
war, about 50,000 white southerners fought for the Union.
The Confederate Nation
Women and the Confederacy

More than in the North, the war imposed many costs on women in the South. Often left alone
on farms and plantations, women had to take over men’s responsibilities to conduct business
and discipline slaves. Southern women organized to support soldiers and engaged in
previously male occupations. “Government girls” worked as clerks in the Confederate
government. While southern women’s contribution to the war was legendary, more women
came to believe that the war was not worth the sacrifices they were making. Women’s
disaffection helped decrease civilian morale and fostered desertion from the army.
Black Soldiers for the Confederacy

Increasing shortages of white manpower led the Confederate government to authorize the
arming of slaves to fight on the South’s behalf, an event no one anticipated in 1861. Many
slaveholders resisted it, and the Confederate Senate rejected it. The Confederate Congress
approved it only in March 1865, when Robert E. Lee endorsed it. The war ended before
enlistment began, but Confederate forces did employ blacks, mostly slaves, as laborers. The
decision to recruit blacks for combat had undermined slavery and the pro-slavery ideology
on which it rested.
Turning Points
Gettysburg and Vicksburg

Despite the apparent disintegration of slavery and eroding southern morale, the
war’s outcome was uncertain in 1863 and 1864. In April 1863, “Fighting Joe”
Hooker, a new union commander in the East, invaded central Virginia. Outnumbered
two to one, Lee repulsed Hooker at Chancellorsville, though his most talented
commander, Stonewall Jackson, was mortally wounded in the fight. Lee soon decided
on another invasion of the North, although the rationale for it today remains unknown.
His army met and fought Union forces under General George G. Meade at
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, the first three days of July. 165,000 troops fought there, in
the largest battle ever in North America. A desperate frontal assault led by Major
General George E. Pickett failed to break Union lines on July 3, and Lee, having
regretted ordering Pickett’s charge and lost the battle, retreated. The “high tide of
the Confederacy” had been reached, and Lee’s soldiers never again traded on
northern ground. Simultaneously, Union forces led by Ulysses S. Grant had laid siege
to the last Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi River at Vicksburg, Mississippi.
On July 4, Confederate forces surrendered, and the entire Mississippi River fell to
Union forces. Gettysburg and Vicksburg greatly diminished southern hopes for victory.
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Map 14.5 The Civil War, 1863
Turning Points - 1864



Given the command of Union forces in the East, Grant in 1864 initiated a war of attrition against Lee’s
army in Virginia. Grant was willing to incur high numbers of casualties with the knowledge that the North
could replenish its armies, while the South could not. In May 1864, Grant’s Army of the Potomac began a
month of fierce fighting and campaigning. In the Battle of the Wilderness, both sides suffered great
casualties, but instead of retreating, as had previous Union commanders, Grant pushed on, fighting Lee
again at Spotsylvania and Cold Harbor. After six weeks Grant lost 60,000 men, an enormous number, but
he inflicted 30,000 casualties on Lee’s army. This sustained fighting was a turning point in modern warfare
and more resembled the modern trench warfare of World War I than the methods of 1861.
Although Grant maintained the initiative, his strategy led to criticisms that he was a butcher. Victory was
elusive. When Grant failed to capture Petersburg, a city that controlled the railways into Richmond, he laid
siege to the city. At the same time, General William T. Sherman marched through Georgia, and took
Atlanta in September 1864.
With casualties skyrocketing in the spring and summer of 1864, northern morale sank to its lowest point in
the war. Lincoln believed he would lose the presidential election in the fall. Radical Republicans nominated
an alternative candidate on a radical plank, and General George B. McClellan, the Democratic
candidate, called for a peace conference with the Confederacy. Ultimately Lincoln secured the Republican
nomination, and with Sherman’s capture of Atlanta, won a sweeping victory. Lincoln’s re-election
guaranteed the war would continue until the Confederacy had been crushed.
Rehearsals for Reconstruction and
the End of the War
The Sea Island Experiment

Federal authorities came to supervise the transition from freedom to slavery as the war
came to an end and more southern territory came under Union control. Conflict over
access to land, control over labor, and new structures of political power took place in
South Carolina, Louisiana, and other parts of the South.
Wartime Reconstruction in the West


The most well-known of these “rehearsals for Reconstruction” was the experiment on the Sea Islands off the South
Carolina coast. In late 1861, the Union Navy occupied the islands and whites fled, leaving 10,000 slaves.
Northern army officers, cotton plantation investors, and black and white reformers came to reconstruct the island
and lift up the islands’ blacks. Northern-born teachers believed education would make the former slaves selfdependent and productive citizens, and started schools. Although the slaves’ most basic demand was for land to
farm themselves, some northerners believed free labor for slaves should take the form of wage work which was
more humane than slave labor. When the land was sold by the federal government, it went to northern investors
who wanted to show the advantages of free labor and make a profit. By 1865, Sea Island black families were
working for wages, gaining an education, and enjoying a better material life than under slavery.
A very different experiment took place in Louisiana and the Mississippi River Valley. After Vicksburg, Union
authorities tried to resurrect the cotton plantations with wage labor, but they forced the former slaves to sign
labor contracts. At Davis Bend, however, freed blacks were given the plantation lands of Jefferson Davis and allowed
to divide it among themselves and farm it as they saw fit.
Rehearsals for Reconstruction and
the End of the War
The Politics of Wartime Reconstruction


The future political status of African-Americans became a central point of debate as the
war continued, and events in Union-occupied Louisiana focused the nation on the question.
Lincoln, hoping to establish a civilian government in that state, announced a Ten-Percent
Plan of Reconstruction. This offered an amnesty and full restoration of rights, including
property except for slaves, to almost all white southerners who swore loyalty to the Union
and support for emancipation. When 10 percent of the voters of 1860 took the oath,
they could elect a new state government, which would have to abolish slavery. Lincoln’s
plan offered no role for freed blacks, but he hoped that his plan would appeal to white
southerners and hasten the war’s end.
Free blacks in New Orleans, however, used the Union occupation to push for civil, legal,
and political equality, and they found sympathy among Radical Republicans in Congress,
who in 1864 passed the Wade-Davis Bill. This bill required a majority, not just one-tenth,
of white male southerners to pledge loyalty to the Union before Reconstruction could
begin in any state, and it gave blacks legal equality, although not the suffrage. Lincoln
vetoed the bill, and as the war came to a close, no plan for Reconstruction existed to
follow its end.
Rehearsals for Reconstruction and
the End of the War
Victory at Last


In November 1864, Sherman started a “March to the Sea” from Atlanta to the
Georgia coast. His forces destroyed railroads, buildings, and food and supplies to
deny their use by Confederate troops. Sherman’s vision of destroying civilian
property and resources as a way to win the war was controversial but very modern.
Sherman continued his path of destruction into South Carolina, freeing slaves and
ruining plantations.
On January 31, 1865, Congress approved the Thirteenth Amendment, which
abolished slavery throughout the entire Union. In his March 1865 inaugural address,
Lincoln called for national reconciliation. On April 2, Grant finally pierced Lee’s lines
at Petersburg, causing Lee to retreat and abandon Richmond, which was occupied by
northern troops the next day. On April 4, Lincoln, ignoring his own safety, walked
Richmond’s streets, accompanied by only a dozen troops. Slaves celebrated and
praised him everywhere he went. Lee and his army headed west but were soon
surrounded by Grant’s army. Lee surrendered at Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia, on
April 9, bringing the Civil War to an end. Only five days later, before Lincoln could
announce plans to reconstruct the south, he was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth, a
celebrated actor, at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C.
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Map 14.6 The Civil War, Late 1864-1865
Copyright © 2011 W.W. Norton & Company
Rehearsals for Reconstruction and
the End of the War
The War and the World

The
war reverberated in the rest of the world, particularly in Europe. When Grant
toured Europe in 1877 after retiring from the presidency, he was greeted as a hero.
In England, nobles hailed him as a military genius. Workers there welcomed him as a
the general who saved the world’s leading experiment in democracy on behalf of a
president, Abraham Lincoln, who had vindicated free labor by emancipating the
slaves. Otto von Bismarck, Germany’s powerful chancellor, welcomed Grant as a
nation builder.
The War in American History


The Civil War truly did build the modern American nation, preserving the Union,
destroying slavery, and shifting power in the nation from the South to the North and from
slaveowning planters to northern capitalists. It greatly expanded the power of the
federal government and quickened the northern economy’s modernization. The war also
made central the task of defining and protecting freedom for African-Americans.
But both sides had lost something they had fought the war to protect. The South had
fought to protect slavery, which had been destroyed. And the North, which had fought for
the world of free labor, the small shop, and the independent farmer, had been
transformed into an industrialized nation. A vision of freedom founded in free labor
would soon become impossible to realize amid the changes wrought by this great conflict.
Additional Art for Chapter 14
A New Birth of Freedom: The Civil War, 1861–1865
Departure of the 7th Regiment
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Map 14.1 The Secession of Southern States, 1860-1861
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Sergeant James W. Travis, Thirty-eighth
Illinois Infantry
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Battle of the Iron-clads Monitor and Merrimac
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Confederate dead at Spotsylvania
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Confederate prisoners of war at Camp Douglas,
Chicago, in 1864.
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Union army wagons crossing the Rapidan
River in Virginia in May 1864.
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The Battle of Antietam
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An 1863 advertisement for a runaway domestic
slave circulated by Louis Manigault
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Abe Lincoln’s Last Card
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Freed Negroes Celebrating President
Lincoln’s Decree of Emancipation
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Freedom to the Slave.
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This widely reprinted recruiting poster urged
African-American men
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Photographs of four anonymous black
Civil War soldiers, including a sergeant
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The illustration accompanying The American Flag
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Lincoln and the Female Slave
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The Eagle’s Nest
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This image adorned a printed version of
a popular Civil War song
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Sheet music for two of the best-known patriotic songs
written during the Civil War.
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A Union soldier stands guard over a group of Indians
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Filling Cartridges at the U. S. Arsenal of Watertown
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A female nurse photographed between two
wounded Union soldiers
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Whimsical potholders expressing hope for a better life for
emancipated slaves were sold at the Chicago Sanitary
Fair of 1865
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Camp of Thirty-first Pennsylvania Infantry,
Near Washington, D.C.
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The Riots in New York:
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The centrality of slavery to the Confederacy
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A drawing by Langdon Cheves III
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An engraving in the New York
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Generals Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant
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Long Abraham Lincoln a Little Longer
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Diagram of plots selected by former slaves
on Port Royal Island
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Teachers in the Freedmen’s Schools in Norfolk, 1863
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General William T. Sherman photographed in 1864.
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The Evacuation of Richmond
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The ruins of Richmond, in an 1865 photograph by
Alexander Gardner.
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A redesign of the American flag proposed in 1863
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Norton Lecture Slides
Independent and Employee-Owned
This concludes the Norton Lecture Slides
Slide Set for Chapter 14
Give Me Liberty!
AN AMERICAN HISTORY
THIRD EDITION
by
Eric Foner