Transcript 4-Civil_War - IB-History-of-the

"Future years will never know the seething hell and the black infernal background, of
this war; and it is best they should not. The real war will never get in the books."
Walt Whitman
NCSCOS Goal 3
Page 22
Shots Fired
-War begins at Fort Sumter,
S.C., 1861
-Bull Run/ Manassas
-July 1861
-Southern victory
-did not pursue the retreating
Union army
-citizens watched the battle
Approximately 500 from
Washington, DC
South could have captured
capital, but too disorganized
"Our Southern brethren have done grievously,
they have rebelled and have attacked their
father's house and their loyal brothers. They
must be punished and brought back, but this
necessity breaks my heart."
Major Robert Anderson,
Union defender of Fort Sumter in April of
1861
"You are green, it is true; but they are
green also. You are all green alike."
- Abraham Lincoln gave this description of
the Union Army to its commander, Irvin
McDowell, while urging McDowell to attack
the Confederates shortly before First Bull
Run
"There is Jackson standing
like a stone wall. Let us
determine to die here, and
we will conquer. Follow
me."
Brigadier General Bee, First
Bull Run
"They came in all manner of ways," wrote a Union officer,
"some in stylish carriages, others in city hacks, and still
others in buggies, on horseback, or even on foot. Apparently
everything in the shape of vehicles in and around
Washington had been pressed into service for the occasion."
“Shiloh”: Hebrew word for place of peace
Shiloh
-April 1862 (Tennessee)
Some of the most difficult
fighting of the entire war
-Confederate commander
Albert Sidney Johnson killed
in fighting
"The rebels are out there thicker
than fleas on a dog's back!!"
- An excited Union officer used
these words to report the advance
of Confederate forces at Shiloh-
-costly victory for Grant
-demonstrated the cost of
victory would be great
Casualties:
Union: 13, 047
Confederate: 10, 694
“Bloody Pond” of Shiloh
Accounts say that the water of the pond turned red with the blood of soldiers and
animals following the battle
Antietam
-Sept. 1862 (Maryland)
-Bloodiest single day of the war
Union Casualties: 12,410
Confederate Casualties: 10,316
-Union victory for McClellan
Lee’s first move on offensive
into North
McClellan could have crushed
CSA but moved too slowly
Lincoln visits Antietam shortly after the
battle, disappointed with McClellan’s slow
movement of troops. McClellan is
dismissed shortly afterwards.
"I have heard of 'the dead
lying in heaps', but never saw
it till this battle. Whole ranks
fell together."
-Captain Emory Upton,
2nd U.S. Artillery at Antietam-
"Every stalk of corn in the northern
and greater part of the field was cut
as closely as could have been done
with a knife, and the slain lay in
rows precisely as they stood in their
ranks a few minutes before."
- A Union officer ‘s description of the
destruction of a Confederate force at
Antietam.-
Vicksburg
-Nov. 1862 (Mississippi)
Northern
lines were
so tight
“not even a
cat could
get out.”
-Grant surrounds city on the
Mississippi
-try to split the south
Begins long siege of town
(surrounds and tries to starve
out)
Bombards the city, soldiers and
civilians, continuously
The town's food supply grew dangerously low as the siege wore on. Cooks served mule
meat at the dinner table. An anonymous citizen, refusing to surrender a sense of humor,
wrote a fictitious menu advertising such local delicacies as "Mule Head Stuffed a La
Mode" and "Mule Tongue Cold a La Bray." Many were forced to live in caves to escape
bombardments.
“What is to become of all the living things in this place when the
boats commend shelling--God only knows--shut up as in a trap--no
ingress or egress--and thousands of women and children”
Diarist Emma Balfour, civilian of Vicksburg
Confederate Victories
-Confederates greatly outnumbered
but Lee still wins
-Dec. 1862 (Virginia)
Fredericksburg
Casualties
US: 12,653
CS: 5,309
-Fredericksburg
(Union slaughter)
(Confederates use trenches)
-May 1863 (Virginia)
-Chancellorsville
-Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson is
killed
(By his own men)
It is well that war is so terrible--we should
grow too fond of it"
- Robert E. Lee gave this observation while
watching thousands of Union soldiers sent
to the slaughter at Fredericksburg
Then and Now:
The Wall at Marye’s Heights
Prior to the
Battle of
Fredericksburg,
Longstreet lost
three of his
children to a
Scarlet Fever
epidemic in
Richmond within
one week. This
incident made
dedication to his
troops became
top priority.
"General, if you put every [Union soldier]
now on the other side of the Potomac on that
field to approach me over the same line, I
will kill them all before they reach my line."
- General James Longstreet made this vow to
Robert E. Lee as countless Federal assaults
were beaten back by Longstreet's men at the
Battle of Fredericksburg.
"My religious belief teaches me to feel
as safe in battle as in bed. God has
fixed the time for my death. I do not
concern myself about that, but to
always be ready, no matter when it
may overtake me."
- Stonewall Jackson
“Give General Jackson my
affectionate regards, and say to
him: he has lost his left arm but I
my right.“ – Robert E. Lee
Gettysburg
-July 1863 (Pennsylvania)
-Lee invades North
(First time ever – on offensive)
-Little Round Top
-Cemetery Ridge
-Pickett’s Charge
Lt. Col. Joshua
Chamberlain’s
20th Maine
regiment holds
off Confederates,
keeping Union
line from folding
-turning point of the war as Lee is
defeated
-Gettysburg Address given by
Lincoln several months later
Official Union photographer Alexander
Gardner took these photos in the days after
the Battle of Gettysburg. Like other Civil
War photographers, Alexander Gardner
sometimes tried to communicate both pity
and patriotism with his photographs,
reminding his audience of the tragedy of
war without forgetting the superiority of his
side's cause. Sometimes, the most effective
means of elevating one's cause while
demeaning the other was to create a scene - by posing bodies -- and then draft a
dramatic narrative to accompany the
picture. The top photo shows a staged
photograph of the “Home of the Rebel
Sharpshooter”, while the bottom is the true
scene of the aftermath.
The soldier was probably actually an
infantryman, killed while advancing up the
hillside. After taking pictures of the dead
soldier from several angles, the
photographer noticed the picturesque
sharpshooter's den -- forty yards away -and moved the corpse to this rocky niche
and photographed him again. The type of
weapon seen in these photographs was not
used by sharpshooters. This particular
firearm is seen in a number of Gardner's
scenes at Gettysburg and probably was the
photographer's prop.
The Home of a Rebel Sharpshooter.
By Alexander Gardner
On the Fourth of July, 1863, Lee's shattered army withdrew from Gettysburg, and started on its
retreat from Pennsylvania to the Potomac. From Culp's Hill, on our right, to the forests that
stretched away from Round Top, on the left, the fields were thickly strewn with Confederate dead
and wounded, dismounted guns, wrecked caissons, and the debris of a broken army. The artist, in
passing over the scene of the previous days' engagements, found in a lonely place the covert of a
rebel sharpshooter, and photographed the scene presented here. The Confederate soldier had built
up between two huge rocks, a stone wall, from the crevices of which he had directed his shots,
and, in comparative security, picked off our officers. The side of the rock on the left shows, by the
little white spots, how our sharpshooters and infantry had endeavored to dislodge him. The trees in
the vicinity were splintered, and their branches cut off, while the front of the wall looked as if just
recovering from an attack of geological small-pox. The sharpshooter had evidently been wounded
in the head by a fragment of shell which had exploded over him, and had laid down upon his
blanket to await death. There was no means of judging how long he had lived after receiving his
wound, but the disordered clothing shows that his sufferings must have been intense. Was he
delirious with agony, or did death come slowly to his relief, while memories of home grew dearer as
the field of carnage faded before him? What visions, of loved ones far away, may have hovered
above his stony pillow! What familiar voices may he not have heard, like whispers beneath the roar
of battle, as his eyes grew heavy in their long, last sleep!
On the nineteenth of November, the artist attended the consecration of the Gettysburg Cemetery,
and again visited the "Sharpshooter's Home." The musket, rusted by many storms, still leaned
against the rock, and the skeleton of the soldier lay undisturbed within the mouldering uniform, as
did the cold form of the dead four months before. None of those who went up and down the fields
to bury the fallen, had found him. "Missing," was all that could have been known of him at home,
and some mother may yet be patiently watching for the return of her boy, whose bones lie
bleaching, unrecognized and alone, between the rocks at Gettysburg.
"All this has been my fault."
- Robert E. Lee repeatedly spoke this line to the
survivors of Pickett's Charge as they stumbled back to
Confederate lines.-
Pickett’s Charge
Time:50 minutes
Confederate Casualties:
5,600
Casualties from Pickett’s
Division Alone: 3,000
“General Lee, I have no division.”
– Pickett to Lee following the infamous charge.
Following the war and the death of
Robert E. Lee, James Longstreet, Lee’s
second in command, would become the
scapegoat for the South’s loss at
Gettysburg. He argued against a
Confederate frontal attack at
Gettysburg but Lee did not heed his
advice.
“Error lives but a day. Truth is eternal.”
James Longstreet
"I do not want to make this charge. I
do not see how it can succeed. I would
not make it now but that General Lee
has ordered it and expects it."
- James Longstreet on Pickett’s Charge
“Four score and seven years ago our fathers
brought forth, upon this continent, a new
nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to
the proposition that "all men are created
equal." Now we are engaged in a great civil
war, testing whether that nation, or any nation
so conceived, and so dedicated, can long
endure.”
South is Split
-July 1863
-Grant captures Vicksburg after
long siege
-Grant is called to command
Union armies
Nickname: “The Butcher”
Two parts of the Anaconda Plan
are now complete
“Tell me what brand of whiskey that Grant
drinks. I would like to send a barrel of it to
my other generals.”
-Abraham Lincoln-
"War is cruelty. There
is no use trying to
reform it. The crueler
it is, the sooner it will
be over"
- Union General
William T. Sherman-
Sherman’s March
-1864
-”March to the Sea”:
(From Georgia to Atlantic
Ocean)
-Total War
Take the war to civilians
“War is Hell”
-burning of Atlanta
-destroy the will to fight
Citizens suffer most
Atlanta Depot
"Yes, I am one of those whom Sherman's shells
drove from a dismantled city. He has made some
of us women wade through seas of pain and
suffering, I can tell you; but as much as we have
suffered from his cruelty, there isn't one of us
who would exchange places with him in the next
world for all the wealth and stores he has allowed
his men to steal from we poor down-trodden
rebels, as he terms us." -- Henrietta Barnes
"I don’t see any horns. You are
supposed to have horns" A child's
answer to Sherman's question of
why he repeatedly was staring at
his head.
Grant in Pursuit
-1864
-Lee in retreat
-Grant attacks repeatedly at
great loss of life
Examples: Cold Harbor and
Petersburg
-Lincoln wants speedy end to war
Can replace killed men with
immigrants
"The dead covered more than five acres of
ground about as thickly as they could be
laid."
-A Confederate survivor so described the
Union dead at the Battle of Cold Harbor in
1864.
Union Casualties at Cold Harbor: 13,000
Confederate Casualties at Cold Harbor: 2,500
Petersburg: Battle of the Crater
The Union Army dug a mine shaft under the
Confederate lines and planted explosive
charges directly underneath a fort in the
middle of the Confederate line. If
successful, this would not only kill all the
defenders in the area, it would also open a
hole in the Confederate defenses.
Then and Now:
Petersburg Crater
Upon explosion, a crater (still visible today)
was created, 170 feet long, 60 to 80 feet
wide, and 30 feet deep. Between 250 and
350 Confederate soldiers were instantly
killed in the blast
A Union division went across the field to the
crater and, instead of moving around it,
thought it would make an excellent rifle pit
and it would be well to take cover and so
they moved down into the crater itself,
wasting valuable time while the
Confederates, gathered as many troops
together as they could for a counterattack.
In about an hour's time, they had formed up
around the crater and began firing rifles and
artillery down into it, in what was later
described as a "turkey shoot".
Union Casualties: 5,300
Confederate Casualties: 1,032
War’s End
-April 1865
-Grant surrounds Lee outside
Richmond
"General, unless he offers us honorable terms,
come back and let us fight it out!"
- James Longstreet to Robert E. Lee -
-Surrender at Appomattox
Troops Go Home Pardoned
Feed Confederate Army
"What General Lee's feelings were I do not know, as he was a man of much dignity, with
an impassable face, it was impossible to say whether he felt inwardly glad that the end
had finally come, or felt sad over the result," wrote Grant. "But my own feelings, which
had been quite jubilant on the receipt of his letters, were sad and depressed . . . Our
conversation grew so pleasant that I almost forgot the object of our meeting . . . General
Lee called my attention to the object.“ – Ulysses S. Grant’s Memoirs
"Men, we have fought the war together, and I have done the best I could for you. You
will all be paroled and go to your homes until exchanged. My heart is too full to say
more.“ – Robert E. Lee to troops after surrender