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Civil War Part 2:
Antietam to Appatomatox
By Neil Hammond
Millbrook High School
Review
• The Confederates seemed to be winning the
war in the East in 1861
– 1st Battle of Bull Run
– Battle of the Seven Days
– 2nd Battle of Bull Run
• Lee decided to invade the North
– Battle of Antietam
– A draw, but Lincoln was able to issue the
Emancipation Proclamation
The War in the West
• The Union was much
more successful in the
West. Led by U. S. Grant,
the Union’s goal was to
control the Ohio, Missouri
and Mississippi Rivers
• From February through
April 1862, Union armies
moved south through
western Tennessee (1–3
and 5)
The War in the West
• By the end of June,
Union naval forces
controlled the Mississippi
River north of Memphis
(4, 10, and 11) and from
the Gulf of Mexico to
Vicksburg (6, 7, 9, and
12). These military and
naval victories gave the
Union control of crucial
transportation routes,
kept Missouri in the
Union, and carried the
war to the borders of the
states of the Deep South.
The War in the West: Two Key Battles
• Shiloh
– bloody battle
– Grant a butcher?
– Lincoln refused to
remove him
• Farragut and New
Orleans
– Niall Ferguson – CSA
war bonds used cotton as
collateral. This defeat
doomed the CSA’s
financial situation
Total War
• The military carnage in 1862 made it clear that
the war would be long and costly. After Shiloh,
Grant later remarked, he “gave up all idea of
saving the Union except by complete conquest.”
The conflict became a total war, arraying the
entire resources of the two societies against each
other. Aided by the Republican Party and a
talented cabinet, Lincoln skillfully organized an
effective central government. Jefferson Davis had
less success harnessing the resources of the
South, a difficult task because the eleven states of
the Confederacy remained deeply suspicious of
centralized rule.
NYC Riot
• Primary Source Reading
The Transformative Effect of the War
• Healthcare
– Thousands of women volunteered as nurses
– Union better organized (US Sanitary Commission)
– But still 250,000 union soldiers died of disease (twice
the number who died in battle)
• War-time relief measures significantly impacted
women’s lives.
– More than 200,000 volunteered for the Sanitary
Commission and Freedman’s Aid Soc.
– Dorathea Dix (Superintendent of Female Nurses) was the
first woman to get a federal appointment
• Thousands of women worked for the
government…took on new tasks on family farms…filled
jobs in schools, offices and also in textile and shoe
factories.
The Transformative Effect of the War
• The war revolutionized the USA’s government
and society
– women (pages 435-436)
– Mobilizing resources…CSA relied on “King Cotton”
• But 1) Great Britain had stockpiled cotton
• 2) New Sources (Egypt and India)
– New economic policies
• tariffs
• banking
• Homestead Act
• Transcontinental railroad (government’s role in
aiding the building)
• The South resorted to printing money, which led
to inflation
• The war led to the emergence of a powerful,
modern nation state
The Changing Nature of the War
• Lincoln at the start of the war
– “I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest
way under the Constitution. The sooner the national
authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be
"the Union as it was". ... My paramount object in this
struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or
to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without
freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by
freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it
by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do
that”
• 1861 – Captured slaves labeled “contrabands”
– August 1861 Confiscation Act
– April 1862 Slavery ended in DC
– June 1862 Slavery outlawed in territories
The Emancipation Proclamation
• L used his powers as Commander-in-Chief to
confiscate enemy property during a rebellion
• Preliminary Proclamation, Sept 22, 1862
– Actual Emancipation Proclamation, Jan 1, 1863
– It applied ONLY to states in rebellion
• It was carefully worded, leaving slavery intact in
the border states.
– Controversial – Jefferson Davis attacked it
– Democratic racist backlash in the North
• “black flood would take northern jobs”
The Emancipation Proclamation
• The Proclamation depended on two things:
– 1. Military success
– 2. Continued Republican political success
• Neither looked certain in 1863
– Union lost heavily at Fredericksburg (Dec 1862) and
Chancellorsville (May, 1863)
– Democrats made major political gains in 1862, pushing
for peace
• Grant had made some advances in the West
– Confederates were divided
– Attack or defend
– Lee persuaded Confederate leaders to attack
1863: A Turning Point
• Lee launched a
second invasion of
the North. His goal
was Harrisburg, but –
while looking for
boots and supplies in
Gettysburg – the two
armies clashed
further South at
Gettysburg.
• When the three-day battle ended, Lee had suffered
28,000 casualties, one-third of the Army of Northern
Virginia, while 23,000 of Meade's soldiers lay killed or
wounded. Shocked by the bloodletting, Meade allowed the
remaining Confederate units to escape. Lincoln was
furious: “As it is,” the president brooded, “the war will be
prolonged indefinitely.”
The Fall of Vicksburg
• When Vicksburg fell a day later, the union controlled
the Mississippi River. The Confederacy was split:
– 1. Confederate elections turned against J. Davis
– 2. Republicans made gains in 1863 elections
– 3. Diplomatic gains: Britain stopped supplying the South
with ships
The Tide Turns
• Impact of black troops 444-5
• Capable Union generals
– March, 1864, Grant was placed in command of all
northern armies
• May 1864 Grant ordered two new offensives
– He would lead the Army of the Potomac against lee’s
army in Virginia
– William Tecumseh Sherman was ordered to invade
Georgia
Continued Stalemate in VA
• Beginning in May
1864, General Ulysses
Grant launched an allout campaign against
Richmond. By
threatening General
Robert E. Lee's lines
of supply from
Richmond, Grant tried
to lure him into open
battle. Lee avoided a
major test of strength.
• Instead, he retreated to defensive positions and
inflicted heavy casualties on Union attackers at the
Wilderness, Spotsylvania Court House, North Anna, and
Cold Harbor (1–4).
Continued Stalemate in VA
• In June 1864 both
sides dug trenches at
Petersburg. Losses on
both sides were
staggering
• The enormous
casualties threatened
Lincoln in the election
of 1864.
•
The situation became worse for the North when a cavalry raid into DC by
Jubal Early forced Grant to divert troops. As a punishment to the
Shenandoah Valley farmers, who had fed Early’s armies and provided him
with a base, Grant ordered Philip Sheridan to to turn the region into “a
barren waste.” Sheridan's troops conducted a scorched-earth campaign,
destroying grain supplies, barns, farming implements, and gristmills. These
terrorist tactics went beyond the military norms of the day.
Sherman and the Election of 1864
• Lincoln’s hopes of reelection increasingly relied
on Sherman’s success in Georgia
• June 1864 Republican Convention
– National Union Party
– Andrew Johnson VP…implications for after the war
• Democrats chose former union general George
McClellan
– rejected freedom for blacks as a war aim
– condemned Lincoln’s method of dealing with domestic
dissent
– a ray of light for the Confederacy…if Atlanta could
hold out, Lincoln might lose
Atlanta Falls
• But on September 2, 1864, Atlanta fell
• McClellan abandoned the policy of peace
–Lincoln easily beat him in the election of 1864
• Slavery was dying
– In the edge of the South slaves were emancipated (Md,
Missouri, TN, AR, LA)
– January 1865 – Congress passed the 13th amendment
Sherman’s march to the Sea
•
The Union victory in November 1863 at Chattanooga, Tennessee (2), was
almost as critical as the victories in July at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, because
it opened up a route of attack into the heart of the Confederacy. In mid-1864,
General Sherman advanced on the railway hub of Atlanta (3 and 4). After finally
taking the city in September 1864, Sherman relied on other Union armies to
stem General Hood's invasion of Tennessee (5 and 6) while he began a
devastating “March to the Sea.” By December, he had reached Savannah (7);
from there, he cut a swath through the Carolinas (8–10).
Sherman’s march to the Sea
• Sherman’s March primary source
Sherman’s march to the Sea: The Future?
• As Sherman blew through Georgia, slaves
flocked to his army
• Special Field Order 15
– Set aside 400,000 acres of land
– By June 1865, some 40,000 former slaves were
farming that land
– Is that how the South would be after the war?
The War Ends
•
From June 1864 to April
1865, the two armies faced each
other across defensive
fortifications outside Richmond
and Petersburg (5), a protracted
siege finally broken by Grant's
flanking maneuver at Five Forks
(6). Lee's surrender followed
shortly.
• Lee surrendered at Appomattox
in April 1865
•
The hard and bitter war was finally over. Union armies had destroyed the
Confederate government; and the South's factories, warehouses, and railroads
were in ruins, as were many of its farms and some of its most important cities.
Almost 260,000 Confederate soldiers had paid for secession with their lives.
The cost to the North was equally great in money, resources, and lives. More
than 360,000 Union soldiers had died, and hundreds of thousands had been
maimed