Transcript The American Civil War 1861 - 1865

The American
Civil War
1861 - 1865
WHAT MAKES A CIVIL WAR DIFFERENT FROM A FOREIGN WAR?
Beginnings
The year is 1861
◦ 7 Southern states have seceded
◦ They have formed their own
government, The Confederacy, and
raised an army
◦ Confederate soldiers immediately
start taking over federal
installations in their states (court
houses, post offices, and
especially forts)
Ft. Sumter, SC
- Confederacy demands Union surrender Sumter
- Union Commander Anderson’s food, supplies, and
ammo running low
- April 12, 1861 – Confederate batteries thunder
away on Sumter – bombarded with 4,000 rounds
as Charlestonians cheer. Anderson surrenders
- Other states secede – VA, AK, TN, NC
- No casualties in actual battle of Sumter
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Confederate States of America
President Jefferson Davis
Capital: Richmond, VA
Rebs------Rebels---“Johnny Rebs”
Graycoats
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United States of America or Union
President Abraham Lincoln
Capital: Washington, D.C.
Yanks-----Yankees
Bluecoats
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Born in Kentucky
Self-Educated
Congressmen from Illinois
Abolitionist
First Presidential candidate
from the Republican Party
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Born in Kentucky
Served as Secretary of War
Senator from Mississippi
Slave Owner
First and Only President of
the CSA
North and South Compared
100
80
60
North
South
40
20
0
Population Railroads Factories
Farms
Wealth
Iron
Cotton
North
South
22 States
11 States
23 million people
10 million people
(includes 4 million slaves)
Industrial Economy
Agricultural Economy
(exports, not food)
Majority of transportation
Limited manufacturing and
railroad lines.
Lincoln, a military novice.
Asks Robert E. Lee to command
Union troops and declines
Davis, military experience.
(Better military leaders)
Belief war is about preserving
Belief war is about states rights,
the Union and later in the
independence and preserving
war…slavery.
their way of life.
“The North’s major advantage would be its economy
and the South’s main disadvantage was its economy”
Jefferson Davis
Stonewall Jackson
Robert E. Lee
Pierre T. Beauregard
James Longstreet
Jeb Stuart
George Pickett
Abe Lincoln
George McClellan
Ulysses Grant
David Farragaut
William T. Sherman
George Meade
Joseph Hooker
George A. Custer
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Defend and delay until Union gives up.
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Quick victories to demoralize Union
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Alliance with Great Britain
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Capture Washington, D.C.
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Defend Richmond
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Sought decisive battle that would convince the Union it wasn’t
worth it
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Use better military leadership to your advantage and outsmart
Union generals.
UNION STRATEGY –
Scott's Anaconda Plan
- Union has to conquer to win. Winfield
Scott devises 3 part plan
◦ A. Union Navy blockades S. ports
◦ B. Union riverboats and armies capture
Miss R. and split Confederacy in two
◦ C. Capture Confederate Capital of
Richmond, VA
◦ Plan named after the snake – suffocates
its victims
Battles
Bull Run – July 21, 1861 – (Manassas)
◦ 25 miles from DC
◦ South wins – Union troops retreat to capital
◦ Picnickers watched and got in way of retreat
Shiloh – March 1862
- Tennessee
- US Grant – battle a draw
- Demonstrates how bloody the war had become
– nearly ¼ of the battles 100,000 were killed
“Unconditional Surrender” Grant
Lincoln on Grant – “I can’t spare this man, he
fights!”
Battles
- Monitor (N) V. Merrimack (S) – March 1862
◦ Battle of the ironclad ships
◦ Can splinter wooden ships, withstand cannon fire,
and resist burning
◦ Ends in a draw which means the Union blockade
stayed in place
- Antietam – Sept 1862 – Maryland
- McClellan V. Lee
- Bloodiest single day battle in American history
- Battle is a standoff but the S retreats across the
Potomac River and back into VA
- Lincoln fires McClellan – too indecisive, too
cautious – Lincoln says he “has the slows”
Turning Point
– Summer of 1863
GETTYSBURG – July 1863
◦ PA
◦ 3 day battle
◦ Union victory
◦ Professor from Maine – Joshua Chamberlain – holds
Cemetery Ridge and the left flank – orders a
bayonet charge when they run out of ammo
◦ Pickett’s Charge – attack at the center of the Union
line
◦ Cripples South so bad Lee never again goes on
offensive
◦ 50,000 killed or wounded – fly infested corpses lay
in July heat
Turning Point –
Summer 1863
- Vicksburg, Mississippi
◦ - US Grant steady barrage of artillery
◦ Hit the city from both land and river for
several hours a day for over a month
◦ Residents forced to hide in caves
◦ Food runs out – people eat dogs and mules
◦ Vicksburg surrenders July 4, 1863
◦ Confederacy cut in two
◦ Grant moved east to take command of the
Army of the Potomac
Sherman’s March
to the Sea
- When Grant moved east he appoints William Tecumseh
Sherman – commander of Mississippi
◦ Believes in total war – must break civilian morale
◦ Fall 1864 and into early 1865– Marches from
Chattanooga to Atlanta to Savannah, Charleston and
into NC
◦ Path of destruction – burn homes, crops, destroy RR
◦ Sherman says he will make Southerners “so sick of war
that generations would pass away before they would
again appeal to it.”
Medical care on
the battlefield
- Clara Barton - Union nurse – “the
angel of the battlefield”
◦ Often cared for soldiers on the front
lines
◦ Helped improve battlefield care –
sorting wounded, clean bandages,
clean water supply, sterilizing
instruments
◦ Barton helped found the American
Red Cross in 1881
The Politics of War
Lincoln on Slavery
- Lincoln personally disliked slavery but did not
believe the federal gov should abolish it where it
already existed
- He did believe it shouldn’t be allowed to expand
into the territories
- He saw his official duty as preserving the Union
- Jan 1, 1863 – Emancipation Proclamation –
◦ Frees slaves in rebellious slaves (behind
Confederate lines)
◦ Doesn’t immediately free anyone
◦ Important symbolically
AL: “My paramount object in this struggle is to
save the Union, and it is not either to save or
destroy slavery.”
EP: “All persons held as slaves within any
State….the people whereof shall then be in
rebellion against the United States, shall be
then, thenceforward, and forever free…..”
Emancipation
Proclamation
1.) War now being fought to end slavery
2.) Helps keep Great Britain from siding with
the South
3.) Civil War now being fought to
◦ Abolish slavery
◦ Preserve the Union
◦ Compromise no longer an option
◦ Free blacks can now fight
◦ Famous Massachusetts 54th (GLORY)
Political Problems
- Both the N and S had sympathizers with the other’s
cause
- Lincoln dealt forcefully with disloyalty
◦ Suspension of habeas corpus – habeas corpus
requires authorities to bring a person held in jail
before the court to determine why they are being
held. Lincoln suspends this
◦ More than 13,000 suspected Confederate
sympathizers in the Union – arrested and held
without trial
◦ Copperheads often targeted – N. Democrats who
opposed the war, spoke out against it, and advocated
peace with the South.
Conscription
- Heavy casualties led both the N and S to
conscript or draft soldiers
North – drafted all able bodied white men (20-45)
◦ Could hire a substitute
◦ Commutation – pay $300 to avoid conscription
South – drafted all able bodied men 18-35 (later
17-50)
◦ Could hire a substitute
◦ Exempted planters who owned 20+ slaves
◦ “rich man’s war but a poor man’s fight”
DRAFT
RIOTS
NYC Draft Riots – Poor white workers (many
Irish immigrants) riot against draft.
◦ Why should they fight to free blacks?
◦ Free blacks will compete with them for
jobs
◦ Summer 1863 – when officials begin to
draw names for draft – riots break out
◦ Rioters wreck draft offices, homes of antislavery leaders, and Republicans
◦ Riots last 4 days and over 100 killed
Gettysburg
Address
- Nov 1863 – Lincoln dedicates the Gettysburg
National Cemetery
- his 2 minute address “remakes America”
- Before “the united states are” after “The United
States is”
- One nation, unified, worth dying for
- “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.”
LEE SURRENDERS
Spring 1862, Jefferson Davis abandons Richmond
– sets it afire to keep the North from taking it
- Flames destroy 900 buildings
- Lee and Grant meet at a private residence in a
small village called Appomattox Courthouse –
April 9, 1862
- As Lincoln requested – the terms were
generous
◦ Grant paroles Lee’s soldiers
◦ Officers permitted to keep side arms
th
13
Amendment
- Ratified in 1865
- Officially ends slavery
- “Neither slavery nor involuntary
servitude, except as a
punishment for crime whereof
the party the party shall have
been duly convicted, shall exist
within the United States.”
Legacy of the War….
Civil War Devastates
Southern Economy
- Takes away South’s source of cheap labor
(slavery)
- Wrecked most of the region’s industry
- Confederate inflation 7,000% - prices 70
times higher at end of war than at beginning
- Public lost faith in Confederate issued
currency – its value plummeted and prices
soared
- Outcome – economic gap between N and S
widens dramatically
Total US Deaths in all Wars
Lincoln’s
Assassination
- April 14, 1865 (5 days after Lee surrenders) – John
Wilkes Booth kills Abraham Lincoln
-Lincoln and his wife watching a play at Ford’s theater
-- Booth sneaks up behind Lincoln and shoots him in
the head
-Booth jumps down on stage, breaks his leg, but
escapes
-Union troops capture and kill him 12 days later
-Lincoln unconscious through the night – dies the
morning of April 15
-First presidential assassination
Lincoln’s Death
- Lincoln’s body carried on
funeral train from Dc to
Springfield, Ill
- 14 day journey
- 7 million Americans (1/3
population) turned out to
publicly mourn the slain
president
LINCOLN MEMORIAL - DC
Looking Ahead…..
1.) How do we restore the Southern states to
the Union and mend the wounds?
2.) How to integrate 4 million newly freed
African Americans into national life?