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THE CIVIL WAR ERA
Unit Overview (1844-1877)
Big Picture

As Abraham Lincoln slipped into the District of
Colombia to take the presidential oath of office,
seven states had already slipped out of the union
that his newly elected office presided over.
Abraham Lincoln arguably would face the tallest
order of all presidents: to preserve the union and
ultimately resolve the slavery issue.
The Menace of Secession

Lincoln’s actions
Wait and see
 Southern provocations?


Physical geography


Topographical barriers?
National controversies
Debt?
 Domain?
 Underground RR


European designs

Imperialist interests
Fort Sumter Forces Lincoln’s Hand

South seizures
 Public

property—arsenals, mints, etc…
Fort Sumter
 Charleston, SC
 Lincoln's


Reinforce?
Surrender?
 Middle


ground—resupply Sumter
Southern bombardment
 Sumter

dilemma
surrendered
Lincoln calls for militia
VA, AR, TN and NC secede
The Border Strategy

The Border States
 MO,
KY, MD, DE
 White
population=50% of the entire Confederacy
 Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers

Supply lines into Dixie
 CSA: grain, gunpowder, and iron
 Lincoln’s

 War
law
Partial Martial (this rhymes)
 MD and MO
aims
 “Preserve

the Union”
Doesn’t want to rile slave owners in Border States
The Balance of Forces
Southern Advantages
Defensive position
Home field
Determination—self preservation
Most talented officers
Bred to be soldiers
Northern Advantages
Economy (farm and factory)
Wealth
Railroads
Control of the seas
Manpower
Dethroning King Cotton

Foreign sympathies
 The
South needed intervention
 Britain needed cotton
 British
aristocrats favored the South

 British
commoners favored the North


Semi-feudal, aristocratic social order
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Cotton supply


British warehouses were overstocked with fiber (1857-1860)
Emancipation proclamation—Civil War is over slavery
 Cotton
“famine”


Northern aid
Egyptian and Indian cotton
The Decisiveness of Diplomacy

The Trent Affair
Union warship stops British mail steamer north of Cuba
 Forcibly removes two Confederate diplomats


Britain riled


Lincoln releases men
Confederate commerce-raiders
C.S.S. Alabama (most famous)*
 Built in Britain—crewed by Britons



Officered by Confederates
Captured 250 U.S. merchant ships
Neutral?
 Precedent?

Foreign Flare-Ups

The Laird Rams

British built warships designed to sink wooden ships


Confederate plots


CSA agents plundered three banks in Vermont
Canada

Irish-Americans invade Canada



U.S. threatens war—possible invasion of Canada
1866 & 1870
Dominion of Canada created in 1867
France

Napoleon III installs puppet regime in Mexico (1863)

Cinco de Mayo
President Davis v. President Lincoln

States’ Rights Curse
 Jefferson

Davis and centralized gov’t.
Skilled strategist and administrator
 Obsessed over leadership




Secession?
Governors worked against Davis
Defied rather than harnessed popular opinion
Plague of war
 “Old
Abe”




Flexible
Led fickle public opinion
Charity and forbearance
Delegator
Limitations of Wartime Liberties

Upholding the Constitution?

Lincoln &“necessity of war”
 Blockade
of southern ports
 Increased the size of the Federal Army
 Advanced $2 million to private citizens (military purposes)
 Suspends the writ of habeas corpus

Arrests dissenters
 “supervised”
elections in Border States
 Censorship of press
 Jefferson
 Local
Davis and states’ rights
control>national needs
Volunteers and Draftees

North

 Volunteers

& state quotas
90% of troops volunteered
 Social and patriotic
pressures
 Bounty jumpers
 Conscription

 Mostly
volunteers
 Smaller population


law passed
(1863)

South
Substitutes—$300
NYC Draft Riots
 Irish mobs
 Deserters—200,000
Draft (Apr. 1862)
Exemptions
 $$$$
 20+ slaves rule
 Conscription

agents
Avoided “Mountain Whites”
Paying for the War: the North

Revenue
 Excise
taxes on alcohol and tobacco
 Income tax
 Customs receipts


Morrill Tariff Act (1861)
Inflating the currency
 Greenbacks—value

Debt
 $2.6

determined by nation’s credit
billion in war bonds sold
National Banking System (1863)
 Standard
bank note currency
 Stimulate sale of gov’t. bonds
Paying for the War: the South

Customs receipts
 Thwarted

Debt
 $400

by the Union blockade
million in war bonds
Revenue
 Increased
taxes
 10% levy on farm produce
The North’s Economic Boom

Business boomed
 Protective
tariffs
 Technological advancements
 Inflation
 “Shoddy Millionaires”
 Greed and graft
 War profiteers
 Oil!

Farms
 Cyrus
McCormick & the mechanical reaper
 U.S. grain helped fight the war
Women in the Civil War

U.S. Government
 Clerical

Industry
 1:4

capacities
to 1:3
Military
 400
known cases of women fighting
 Espionage

U.S. Sanitary Commission
 Soldier

relief
Nursing
 Clara
Barton, Dorothea Dix and Sally Tompkins
A Crushed Cotton Kingdom

Plantation economy destroyed
 Wealth lost
 Cotton
and slaves
 Blockade
 Invading

armies
Southerners demonstrated tremendous sacrifice