Transcript The 2nd Half of the Civil War

The Civil War – Life Behind the Lines
Tactics and
Technology
• Tactics
– Based on European ways
of fighting
– Will slowly change with the
new technology
• Technology
– Bullets and Rifles
revolutionize war
• More accurate, longer range
– Shells, canisters
Politics in the South
• Draft
– Southerners were not reenlisting
– General Lee pushes for a draft
• April 1862, Confederate Congress passes
first draft law
• White men from 18 to 35 required three
year service
• Exceptions
– Owners of more than 20 slaves
– Southerners wealthy enough to hire a
substitute
• State’s Rights
– Income Tax
– Seize Slaves
• Seeking help from Europe
– Needed to prove the South could win
Politics in the North
• Tensions with Great Britain
– The Trent Affair almost causes war with British Canada
• Republicans in control
• Financial Measures
– 1861, first federal income tax
– Greenbacks
• Emergency Wartime Actions
– Martial Law
– Draft
• White males from 20 to 45
• Pay $300 to get out
• Opposition to the War
– Riots protesting draft
– Copperheads
– Lincoln suspends the writ of habeas corpus
• 13,000 imprisoned
Emancipation and the War
• Lincoln and slavery
– Originally only wanted to preserve the Union
– Did not think he had the right to abolish slavery
– Ending slavery became a war strategy
• The Emancipation Proclamation
– January 1, 1863, slaves in areas of rebellion against
the government would be free
• Reaction to the Proclamation
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–
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South angry, abolitionists feel not strong enough
Northerners fear slaves would move north
Support from Europe
Allowed African Americans to serve in the military
African-Americans Fight
• Contraband
– Slaves became property
of the Union government
– Government then freed
them
• African American
Soldiers
– Gained ability to fight
after the proclamation
– Originally in all black
regiments under a white
officer
The Hardships of War
• Southern Economy
– Food production declines
– Planters refused to stop
growing cotton
– Industry increased
– Inflation
• Northern Economy
– Most northern industries
were helped by the war
– Women fill jobs
– Profiteering
• Prison Camps
– Andersonville, Georgia
The Hardships of War
• Medical Conditions
– Attempt to curve disease
– Disease killed most of the
people who died in the
war
– Clara Barton
• Creates the Red Cross
– The United States
Sanitary Commission
The Gettysburg Address
• Dedication of cemetery
to honor Union soldiers
• November 19, 1863
• Edward Everett speaks
• Lincoln speaks (2
minutes)
• New definition of the
United States
The Gettysburg Address
– Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on 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. We are met
on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of
that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that
that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do
this.
– But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we
can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who
struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or
detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here,
but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to
be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here
have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated
to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead
we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full
measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall
not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new
birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people,
for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Election of 1864
• Lincoln fears losing
– Andrew Johnson named
Vice-President candidate
• Democrat from Tennessee
• Democrats nominate
George McClellan
• With Sherman taking
Atlanta, Lincoln easily
wins
• Thirteenth Amendment
– Passed in February of
1865 and ratified on
December 6, 1865
– Ended slavery in the U.S.
Election of 1864 Map
Lincoln’s Assassination
• John Wilkes Booth leads
failed kidnapping plot
• Booth leads plan to kill
General Grant, Vice
President Johnson,
Secretary of State Seward,
and President Lincoln
• April 14, 1865
– Ford’s Theater in Washington,
D.C.
– Booth mortally wounds
Lincoln
• Died the next morning
– Booth killed in a tobacco
warehouse in Virginia