Transcript The Furnace of Civil War

• Seven southern states seceded as
Lincoln took office.
• Lincoln refused to recognize
secession and tried desperately to
save the nation.
• Confederate officials began seizing
federal-mint branches, arsenals,
and military posts.
• Confederates fired on federal Fort
Sumter in S.C. on April 12, 1861.
• The fort fell & the Civil War began.
Western Virginia supported the Union
and set up its own state government as
West Virginia in 1863.
• General over 100,000 called the
Army of the Potomac
• Good:
– Brilliant 34 year old West Point
graduate
– Great organizer and drill master – high
troop morale
– Troops called him “Little Mac”
• Bad:
– Overly cautious and hated to see his
troops lost in battle
– He drilled and trained for 6 months –
then Lincoln forced him to attack
– Was arrogant with Lincoln (privately
called the president a “baboon”)
Blockade the South
(loose at first but
increasingly
effective)
Send troops through
Georgia & Carolinas
(Sherman’s March to
the Sea)
Liberate the slaves –
(Emancipation
Proclamation)
Seize Mississippi to
cut Confederacy in
half
Capture Richmond
Grind the South into
submission (Grant’s
idea)
• August 29-30, 1862
• McClellan was replaced
by John Pope
• Pope was as overconfident as McClellan
was cautious
• Union forces were
defeated
• Win Maryland to:
(His victory at Bull Run allows him to
do this)
–
–
–
–
Attack North
Win-over Border States
Gain support from Europe
Divert Union forces to relieve
pressure on Vicksburg
• (Under siege from Grant)
• Confederate leaders
wanted victory on
Northern soil
• Lee’s Confederate troops
and McClellan’s Union
army met along Antietam
Creek on September 17,
1862
– A copy of Lee’s battle
plans were dropped &
discovered by the North
Fondly do we hope--fervently do we pray--that
this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass
away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all
the wealth piled by the bond-man's two
hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall
be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn
with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn
with the sword, as was said three thousand
years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments
of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether“
--1865, Second Inaugural Address
• September, 1862:
preliminary
announcement
• Took effect Jan. 1,
1863
• Declared “forever free”
slaves in those states
still in rebellion
• Slaves in the Border
States are not free
• Already captured
slaves were not free
• Who did Lincoln free?
• Nobody: BUT
• The intent was there
and recognized by
European commoners
• All slaves were
ultimately freed by the
13th Amendment in
1865
• Strengthened the
moral cause on the
Union side
• Northern opposition to
Emancipation Proclamation was
fierce
– Conflict over it becoming an
“Abolition War,” not war for union
– Increased Union desertions
– Complaints from Abolitionists that he
had not gone far enough
– Complaints from “Butternut” (Peace
Democrats) regions that he had gone
too far
– Heavy congressional defeats at midterm elections for Lincoln’s
administration (Democrats won
several elections)
• Ironclads:
– Ships heavily armored with iron
– Confederacy started using to
help break the blockade
• USS Merrimack
– Captured by Confederacy
– Turned into an ironclad
– Renamed the Virginia
• USS Monitor
– Met the Virginia in battle in
March of 1862
– Forced the Confederates to
withdraw
– The success saved the Union
fleet and continued the
blockade
• Some Blacks had fought
in Revolution and War
of 1812
• Early in war, Blacks were
turned down, except in
the Navy
• Frederick Douglass and
others asked to fight
• As manpower ran low
and after the
Emancipation
Proclamation, Blacks
were allowed to enlist
• 180,000 fought – if
captured-were put to
death by Confederacy
• Fort Pillow – massacre
• Many Blacks in the
South served as Union
spies, guides and scouts
• South unwilling to use
slaves until the final
month before the end
of the war – but had
used them as labor
battalions
The mainly
African
American
54th
Massachus
etts
Infantry
was
celebrated
for its
bravery.
•
William Carney—the 1st
African American to
receive the
Congressional Medal of
Honor
• Ulysses S. Grant was
commander of Union forces in
West
– Mediocre student at West Point
– Fought in Mexican-American
War
• Isolated frontier posts after the war
drove him to drink
• Left army to avoid a court marshal
for drunkenness
• Working at father’s store at Civil
War’s start
– Started as a colonel of volunteers
– Boldness, resourcefulness, and
tenacity led to “meteoric rise” in
the war
• Western campaign focused on
taking control of Mississippi
River.
– Would cut off eastern part of
Confederacy from food
sources in West
– Union could use bases along
the Mississippi to attack
communication and
transportation networks.
• Fort Henry and Fort
Donelson
– February 1862
– U.S. “Unconditional
Surrender” Grant wins
• Battle of Shiloh
– April 6-7, 1862
– More than 20,000
causalities, but Grant wins
– Shows there will be no
quick end to war in West
– Grant is temporally
removed of his command
• Too many casualties
• U.S. Navy moved upriver to meet
Grant, who was moving down the
Mississippi.
• First obstacle was the port of New
Orleans—largest Confederate city and
gateway to the Mississippi.
• Fleet under Admiral David Farragut
captured New Orleans in April 1862.
– “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead”
• Farragut then took Baton Rouge,
Louisiana, and Natchez, Mississippi.
• Farragut ordered
surrender of strategic
Vicksburg, Mississippi,
in May 1863.
– Location on 200-foothigh cliffs above the
Mississippi made invasion
nearly impossible.
– Grant decided to starve
the city into surrender;
began Siege of Vicksburg
in mid-May.
– Residents & Confederate
troops forced to eat rats,
etc.
• Legacy of bitterness
• Facing starvation, city
surrendered on July 4,
1863.
• Subdued Northern
peace agitators
• Cut off supplies and
cattle from Texas and
Louisiana
• Reopened Mississippi
River
• Discourages foreign
help for the South
• Grant also wins at
Missionary Ridge &
Lookout Mountain
• Union halted attempts by Confederate
armies to control lands west of the
Mississippi in Colorado and Arizona in
1861.
• Confederates failed to take border state of
Missouri, losing Battle of Pea Ridge in
1862.
• Cherokee Native Americans aided the
Confederates, hoping that they would give
them greater freedom.
• Pro-Confederate forces remained active in
region throughout the war, forcing Union
commanders to keep troops in area.
• The Union army tried to divide the Confederate Army
at Fredericksburg but failed in the attempt
– General Ambrose E. Burnside replaced McClellan as
leader of Army of the Potomac
• Delays cause heavy Union casualties and they lose the battle
– General Burnside is then replaced by General Joseph
“Fighting Joe” Hooker
• Hooker then loses at Chancellorsville, VA in May, 1863, BUT…
• “Stonewall” Jackson is accidentally killed by his own men
• Jackson was Lee’s “right arm”
• Lee now believes he can invade the North again
– Goes into Pennsylvania
– Troops slip into Gettysburg to obtain shoes
• General George Mead replaced General
Hooker
• July 1-3, 1863
• Largest and bloodiest battle of Civil War
• More than 51,000 soldiers were killed,
wounded, captured, or went missing in
three days.
• It was an important victory for the Union
because it stopped Lee’s plan of invading
the North.
First Day
Lee’s forces were gathered at Gettysburg,
Pennsylvania, on July 1, 1863.
Ran into Union forces under General George
G. Meade, beginning the Battle of Gettysburg
Union took up defensive positions
Second Day
Lee ordered attack on Union troops on Little
Round Top.
Both sides fought viciously for control.
Union forces held off Confederates.
Third Day
Lee planned attack on center of Union line.
General George Pickett led 15,000 men in Pickett’s
Charge, a failed attack on Cemetery Ridge.
Lee began planning retreat to Virginia.
• Lee can never
launch an
offensive attack
again
• The Southern
cause in now
doomed
• Mead, like
McClellan, fails
to pursue Lee
• Fall of 1863
• Graveyard: 7,500 dead buried
• Edward Everett
– Former congressman and
President of Harvard
– Spoke 1st and gave a two hour
speech
• Lincoln speaks for 2 minutes
• Ridiculed at first, the Gettysburg
Address is considered the best
speech ever made in America
• 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.
• Film clip link
• Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman
– Captured Atlanta Sept.1864
– To help insure Lincoln’s election
• Total War:
– Sherman: “All war is hell”
– 60 mile swath of destruction
through Georgia
• Weakened the morale & fighting
spirit of South
• Extensive damage to plantations
in South Carolina “the hell-hole o
sedition”
• Lincoln’s cabinet
– Sometimes almost civil war
between them
– Sec. of State – William
Seward
– Sec. of Treasury – Salmon P.
Chase (critic of Lincoln)
– Sec. of War – Edwin Stanton
(often belligerent)
– All thought they were
superior to Lincoln
• Lincoln had expanded presidential powers
during war:
– Suspended Habeas Corpus
– Used military courts
– Began war w/out Congressional approval
– Used arbitrary power when thought it necessary
– “Radical Republicans” resented this (so did
Democrats)
• Lincoln was impressed with Grant’s victories; gave
him command of Union army.
• Grant forced Lee to fight series of battles in
Virginia that stretched Confederate soldiers and
supplies to limit.
• Wilderness Campaign: series of battles designed
to capture Confederate capital of Richmond,
Virginia, in 1864.
– Grant kept moving toward Richmond.
• Grant has heavy losses: 50,000
– Cold Harbor – 7,000 causalities in 20 minutes
• Lee has similar losses, but does not have reinforcements like
the Union
– Failure to capture Richmond by election of 1864
distressed Lincoln.
• Republicans:
– Joined with “War Democrats”
and became the Union Party
– Andrew Johnson was Lincoln’s
running mate (War Democrat)
– “vote as you shoot”
– “Don’t swap horses in the middle
of the stream”
– Farragut captures Mobile
– Sherman – captures Atlanta
– Union soldiers vote for
companies and absentee
– Lincoln wins 212 Electoral vote
• Democrats:
– George McClellan (former
leader of the Army of the
Potomac)
– Platform: The war is a failure
– get out and let the South go
in peace
– “Old Abe removed McClellan.
We’ll now remove Old Abe.”
– “Mac will win the Union
Back”
– 21 electoral votes –(popular
vote much closer)
• Grant broke through
Confederate defenses at
Petersburg, Virginia, and Lee
retreated to Richmond on
April 2, 1865.
• Grant surrounded Lee’s
army.
• Lee surrendered to Grant at
the small town of
Appomattox Courthouse,
Virginia, on April 9, 1865.
• Peace terms – unconditional,
but generous
1. 600,000 dead,
almost more than all
other wars combined
2. South lost future
leaders
3. Extreme state’s rights
view crushed
4. Legacy of hate in the
South: “Damn
Yankees”
5. “Solid South:” White
southerners will vote
Democrat for the next
100 years
6. Cost $20 Billion
7. Helped spread the idea
of democracy abroad:
British Reform Act of
1867 – working class
Brits gain suffrage