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Chapter 21
The Furnace of the Civil War
1861-1864
“Ninety-Day War ?”
April 15, 1861 - Lincoln called for 75,000
militiamen
Believed a quick suppression of the South to prove
the North’s superiority and end this foolishness
July 21, 1861 – First Battle of Manassas (Bull Run)
– ill-trained Yankee recruits swaggered out toward Bull
Run to engage a smaller Confederate unit
– They had run advertisements in local newspapers to
come see the battle
– Congressmen gathered in picnics to watch
– Stonewall Jackson & confederates pushed the Union
army into retreat
– Proved it was going to be longer than a 90-day war
“Tardy George” McClellan and the
Peninsula Campaign
command of the Army of the Potomac
(Union) was given to 34 year old
General George B. McClellan
– constantly believed that he was
outnumbered
– never took risks
– held the army without moving for months
– finally ordered by Lincoln to advance
decided upon a water-borne approach to
Richmond, called the Peninsula
Campaign, taking about a month to
capture Yorktown before coming to the
Richmond
– Lincoln then sent him after Stonewall
Jackson
– Jeb Stuart marched around him
– June 26 to July 2, 1862 - Lee then
launched a devastating counterattack (the
Seven Days’ Battles)
Union strategy (total war)
Suffocate the South through
an oceanic blockade
Free the slaves to undermine
the South’s very economic
foundations
Cut the Confederacy in half by
seizing control of the
Mississippi River (The
Anaconda Plan)
Chop the Confederacy to
pieces by marching through
Georgia and the Carolinas
(Sherman’s March to the Sea)
Capture its capital, Richmond,
VA
Try everywhere to engage the
enemy’s main strength and
grind it to submission
The War at Sea
Union blockade was leaky at
first, but it clamped down later
Blockade-running (smuggling)
was a risky but profitable
business
– Union navy also seized British
freighters on the high seas,
citing “ultimate destination” to
the South
biggest Confederate threat - an
old U.S. warship reconditioned
& plated with iron railroad rails:
the Virginia (formerly called the
Merrimack)
Monitor arrived just in time to
fight the Merrimack to a
standstill, and the Confederate
ship was destroyed later by the
South to save it from the North
Pivotal Point: Antietam
Sept 17, 1862 - McClellan’s men
found a copy of Lee’s plans and
were able to stop the Southerners
at Antietam
– single bloodiest day of the Civil War
– Federal losses were 12,410,
Confederate losses 10,700
European powers very close to
helping the South, but after
Antietam, that help faded
Antietam was also the Union
display of power that Lincoln
needed to announce his
Emancipation Proclamation.
Now, the war wasn’t just to save
the Union, it was to save the
slaves a well
Proclamation without Emancipation
Jan. 1, 1863 - announced the emancipation of slaves in the
confederate territories, when the Union was rejoined
– but slaves in the Border States (KY, MD, DE, MO) and the
conquered territories were not liberated
Lincoln freed the slaves where he couldn’t and wouldn’t free
the slaves where he could
many soldiers refused to fight for abolition and deserted
many slaves, upon hearing the proclamation, left their
plantations,
– the Emancipation Proclamation did succeed in one of its purposes:
the undermine the labor of the South
Angry Southerners cried that Lincoln was stirring up trouble
and trying to have a slave insurrection
– Unfair of President Lincoln?
Blacks Battle Bondage
At first, Blacks weren’t enlisted in the army
as men ran low, these men were eventually allowed
in
by war’s end, Black’s accounted for about 10% of
the Union army
Southerners refused to recognize Black soldiers as
prisoners of war
– executed them as runaways and rebels
– Fort Pillow, Tennessee, Blacks who had surrendered
were massacred
many others walked off of their jobs when Union
armies conquered territory that included the
plantations
Lee’s Last Lunge at Gettysburg
After Antietam, A. E. Burnside (known for
sideburns) took over the Union army--lost badly-at Fredericksburg, Virginia, on Dec. 13, 1862
“Fighting Joe” Hooker (known for his girls)
was badly beaten at Chancellorsville, Virginia
Lee now prepared to invade the North for the
second and final time, at Gettysburg,
Pennsylvania
General George G. Meade, who by accident
took a stand atop a low ridge flanking a shallow
valley and the Union and Confederate armies
fought a bloody and brutal battle in which the
North “won.”
War in the West
Lincoln finally found a good general in Ulysses S. Grant
fought under the ideal of “immediate and unconditional
surrender.”
– Fort Henry, Fort Donelson, Shiloh
Vicksburg, Mississippi, U.S. Grant besieged the city and
captured it on July 4, 1863, thus securing the important
Mississippi River
Sherman Scorches Georgia
General William Tecumseh Sherman was given command
to march through Georgia
he delivered, capturing and burning down Atlanta before
completing his famous “march to the sea” at Savannah
waging “total war” by cutting up railroad tracks, burning
fields, and destroying everything
Grant Outlasts Lee
Grant was a man who could send thousands of men out to
die just so that the Confederates would lose
he knew that he could afford to lose many men while Lee
could not
– Example: Cold Harbor, Union soldiers with papers pinned on their
backs showing their names and addresses rushed the fort, and over
7000 died in a few minutes
Grant and his men captured Richmond, burning it, and
cornered Lee at Appomattox Courthouse at Virginia in April
9th of 1865
Aftermath of the Nightmare
Civil War cost 600,000 men, $15 billion, and wasted the cream
of the American crop
slavery was destroyed
Reconstruction was about to begin but the course was unsure
Martyrdom of Lincoln
April 14, 1865 - Abraham
Lincoln was shot in the
head by John Wilkes
Booth and died shortly
thereafter
– his sudden & dramatic
death erased his
shortcomings and made
people remember him for
his good things
he would have almost
certainly treated the South
much better than they were
actually treated during
Reconstruction