Download Unit 9 ~ The Civil War

Civil War
VUS.7 ~ What were the multiple causes of the Civil War and the role of the institution of slavery
as a principal cause of the conflict?
~ What were major events and the roles of key leaders of the Civil War Era, with emphasis
on Abraham Lincoln, Jefferson Davis, Ulysses S. Grant, Robert E. Lee, and Frederick
Douglass?
~ What were the significance of the Emancipation Proclamation and the principles outlined in
Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address?
~ What was the social impact of the war on African-Americans, the common soldier, and the
home front with emphasis on Virginia?
In the 1860 presidential election, Abraham Lincoln (Illinois) ran as the Republican candidate. The
Democratic Party split over the issue of slavery. Northern Democrats nominated Stephen Douglas (Illinois)
as their candidate, while Southern Democrats chose John C. Breckinridge (Kentucky) to run for president.
A fourth political party, the Constitutional Unionists, nominated John Bell (Tennessee). Because of the
split in the Democratic Party, Abraham Lincoln easily won a majority of electoral votes and became the
sixteenth president of the United States.
Several Southern states refused to accept Lincoln’s election as president, because they feared he
would try to abolish or at least further restrict slavery. In late 1860 and early 1861 South Carolina,
Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas voted to secede or withdraw from the Union.
In February 1861, these states established a new nation called the Confederate States of America. They
chose as president of the Confederacy Jefferson Davis, who was serving as one of Mississippi’s two United
States senators at the time of the state’s secession.
In April 1861, President Lincoln refused to evacuate (remove) federal troops from Fort Sumter, an
American fort located in the harbor at Charleston, South Carolina. When Confederate forces fired on Fort
Sumter, the Civil War (1861-1865) began. A civil war is a war between people of the same country.
Following the Confederates’ attack on Fort Sumter, President Lincoln called on the states to provide
75,000 soldiers to put down the rebellion in the South. While the Northern states immediately responded
to Lincoln’s call for troops, the slave states of Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas refused to
take up arms against their sister Southern states and instead voted to secede and join the Confederacy.
Mounting sectional tensions and a failure of political will led to the Civil War. The Virginia
Standards of Learning for United States History have identified seven factors as the Civil War’s causes.
These causes are: 1) Sectional debate over tariffs, the extension of slavery in the territories, and the
nature of the Union (states’ rights),
2) Northern abolitionists v. southern defenders of slavery, 3) The United States Supreme Court decision in
the Dred Scott case, 4) Publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe, 5) Ineffective
presidential leadership in the 1850s, 6) A history of failed compromises over the expansion of slavery in
the territories, 7) President Lincoln’s call for federal troops in 1861.
The secession of southern states triggered a long and costly war that concluded with Northern
victory, a restoration of the Union, and emancipation (the freeing) of the slaves. The Civil War put
constitutional government to its most important test as the debate over the power of the federal
government versus states’ rights reached a climax. The survival of the United States as one nation was at
risk, and the nation’s ability to bring to reality the ideals of liberty, equality, and justice depended on the
outcome of the war. More Americans died in the American Civil War than in any other war in the nation’s
history. Approximately 620,000 Americans died during the four years of fighting, including 360,000 men
who died fighting for the Union and 260,000 Confederates.
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The Civil War produced several key leaders. Abraham Lincoln served as President of the United
States during the Civil War. Lincoln opposed secession and insisted that the Union be held together, by
force if necessary. Jefferson Davis served as the Confederate States of America’s only president.
Ulysses S. Grant was a Union military commander, who won victories over the South after several other
Union commanders had failed. Robert E. Lee was a Confederate general and commander of the Army of
Northern Virginia. Although Lee opposed secession, he did not believe the Union should be held together
by force. At the end of the war, Robert E. Lee urged Southerners to accept defeat and unite as Americans
again, even though some Southerners wanted to continue the fight. A fourth leader of the Civil War era
was Frederick Douglass. Douglass was a former enslaved African-American who became a prominent or
important black abolitionist. During the Civil War, Douglass urged President Lincoln to recruit former
enslaved African-Americans to fight in the Union army.
Three important battles of the Civil War were Antietam, Gettysburg, and Appomattox. General
Robert E. Lee invaded Maryland in 1862, where he fought the Union army at the Battle of Antietam.
Although Antietam was a military stalemate, the Northern press interpreted this battle as a major Union
victory, because General Lee and his Confederate army retreated into Virginia. Union military success at
the Battle of Antietam allowed President Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. Because of this
relationship to the Emancipation Proclamation, historians consider Antietam one of the war’s most
important battles. The Union victory at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, in July 1863 proved to be the military
turning point of the Civil War. Once again, the Union army repulsed an attempt by General Lee to invade
the North. After Lee withdrew his defeated Confederate army from Gettysburg and marched back into
Virginia, it was only a matter of time before the Union crushed the Confederacy. The end for the
Confederate States came in April 1865, when Confederate forces under the command of General Robert E.
Lee surrendered to Union General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia. Lee’s surrender to
Grant at Appomattox ended the Civil War.
The Union victory at the Battle of Antietam in September 1862 marked a new stage in President
Lincoln’s conduct of the war. On New Year’s Day, 1863 Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation
Proclamation. This document freed all slaves in the “rebelling” states (seceded Southern states) as of
January 1, 1863. This call for emancipation of African-American slaves changed the character of the war.
Previously, preservation of the Union had served as the North’s primary goal. By issuing the Emancipation
Proclamation, Lincoln made the destruction of slavery a Northern war aim. This proclamation also
discouraged any interference of foreign governments in the war, since neither Great Britain nor France
wanted to give the appearance of supporting slavery. Finally, the Emancipation Proclamation allowed for the
enlistment of African-American soldiers in the Union Army.
In November 1863, four months after the North’s great victory at the Battle of Gettysburg,
President Lincoln traveled to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania to dedicate a military cemetery. In the Gettysburg
Address Lincoln eloquently set forth the North’s now dual war aims of preserving the Union and abolishing
slavery. In this speech, he said the United States was “one nation,” rather than a collection of sovereign,
independent states. In contrast, Southerners believed that states had freely joined the Union and could
freely leave (secede). In Lincoln’s view, the North was fighting the war to preserve the Union as a nation
of the people, by the people, and for the people. He also believed the Civil War was fought to fulfill the
promise of the Declaration of Independence and was a “Second American Revolution.” The president
described a different vision for the United States from the one that had prevailed from the beginning of
the Republic up to the Civil War. Lincoln described the Civil War as a struggle to preserve a nation that
was dedicated to the proposition that “all men are created equal” and that was ruled by a government “of
the people, by the people, and for the people.” According to this vision, the institution of AfricanAmerican slavery must not exist in the United States.
The Civil War had a big impact on African-Americans, the common soldier, and the home front in
Virginia. First, the Emancipation Proclamation allowed for the enlistment of African-American soldiers. In
addition, during the war enslaved African-Americans seized the opportunity presented by the approach of
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Union troops to achieve freedom. Second, for the common soldier, warfare often involved hand-to-hand
combat. Warfare was brutal and camp life was lonely and boring. War time diaries and letters home
record this harsh reality. After the war, especially in the south, soldiers returned home to find homes
destroyed and poverty. Many soldiers returned home wounded or crippled, and soldiers on both sides lived
with permanent disabilities. Third, on the home front during the Civil War, women were required to assume
nontraditional roles. They managed homes and families with scarce resources and often faced poverty and
hunger. Many women also assumed new roles in agriculture, nursing, and in war industries.
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