The Civil War, 1861-1865
Although the causes of the Civil War are still debated, it is difficult to imagine the Civil War occurring without recognizing the impact of slavery had on the difficulties between the North and the South. For a time the tariff and other issues divided North and South, but there is practically no mention of any of them in the secession documents or in the great debates of the 1850s. Some argue that it was an issue of states’ rights, but none of the secession documents argue their case on those grounds. Indeed, in the South Carolina Ordinance of Secession, the first to be adopted and to some extent a model for later ones, part of South Carolina's justifications lies in the fact that northern states had attempted to annul the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Those northern states were, in effect, exercising their states’ rights, but South Carolina did not approve.
Many Americans nevertheless believe that the Civil War was only incidentally connected with slavery. That view is difficult to reconcile with the known facts based upon existing documents from the Civil War era. Virtually every major political issue of a controversial nature between 1850 and 1860 deals with the issue of slavery. During the Constitutional Convention of 1787, there was much discussion of slavery that resulted in the so-called 3/5 compromise. The founding fathers—and mothers—were concerned about the impact of the “peculiar institution” on the future of the American Republic.
Since the institution of slavery was dying out in parts of the country during the Revolutionary era, it is understandable that the framers of the Constitution hoped that slavery would die a natural death. Slave owners such as a Washington, Jefferson, and George Mason, all understood the dangers involved in the continuation of slavery in the nation. Indeed, during the Constitutional convention, on August 22, 1787, George Mason made a speech in which he, in effect, predicted the Civil War because of slavery. As James Madison's notes recorded, Mason argued as follows during the debate on the slave trade:
This infernal traffic originated in the avarice of British Merchants. The British Government constantly checked the attempts of Virginia to put a stop to it. The present question concerns not the importing States alone but the whole Union. The evil of having slaves was experienced during the late war. Had slaves been treated as they might have been by the Enemy, they would have proved dangerous instruments in their hands. But their folly dealt by the slaves, as it did by the Tories. He mentioned the dangerous insurrections of the slaves in Greece and Sicily; and the instructions given by Cromwell to the Commissioners sent to Virginia, to arm the servants and slaves, in case other means of obtaining its submission should fail. Maryland and Virginia he said had already prohibited the importation of slaves expressly. North Carolina had done the same in substance. All this would be in vain if South Carolina and Georgia be at liberty to import. The Western people are already calling out for slaves for their new lands, and will fill that Country with slaves if they can be got through South Carolina and Georgia. Slavery discourages arts and manufactures. The poor despise labor when performed by slaves. They prevent the immigration of Whites, who really enrich and strengthen a Country. They produce the most pernicious effect on manners. Every master of slaves is born a petty tyrant. They bring the judgment of heaven on a Country. As nations can not be rewarded or punished in the next world they must be in this. By an inevitable chain of causes and effects providence punishes national sins, by national calamities. He lamented that some of our Eastern brethren had from a lust of gain embarked in this nefarious traffic. As to the States being in possession of the Right to import, this was the case with many other rights, now to be properly given up. He held it essential in every point of view that the General Government should have power to prevent the increase of slavery. [Emphasis added]
The fact that the founding fathers were not prepared to deal with the issue more directly, combined with the invention of the cotton gin and the booming southern cotton industry which followed, reversed what some had seen as a gradual diminution of the institution of slavery in America.
The Constitution permitted Congress to ban the importation of slaves 20 years after adoption of the Constitution and that measure was carried out in 1808. In 1820 the issue arose again over the admission of the state of Missouri to the union. The famous Missouri Compromise of that year allowed Missouri to come in as a slave state, with Maine entering as a free state at the same time, thus keeping the balance between free states and slave states in the Senate, but slavery was prohibited north of the southern boundary of Missouri from that time forward.
During the debate over the Mexican-American War, Congressmen David Wilmot of Pennsylvania offered a resolution that would have barred slavery from any territory gained as a result of the war. The Wilmot proviso never passed, so the conclusion of the war, which added most of the southwestern territory to the United States, meant that the issue of slavery in the territories would have to be revisited. The 1850 Compromise seemed to settle the issue once again, but the abolition movement, which had begun after the Missouri compromise of 1820, had deepened emotions on both sides of the issue. A new, tough fugitive slave act that was part of the 1850 compromise resulted, among other things, in the widespread popularity of Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin. Attempts to capture runaway slaves in various Northern cities and towns raised tensions further.
What some historians have considered the greatest step on the road to the Civil War took place in 1854 with the passage of the controversial Kansas-Nebraska Act under the aegis of Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois. Douglas's motives have been examined elsewhere, but the crucial part of the act that disturbed many in the North was the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. The Nebraska Act and other issues led to the creation in 1854 of the Republican Party which, although it was not an abolitionist party per se, was the party most connected with those opposed to slavery. As it was clear that amending the Constitution to remove slavery from the states wherever it already existed was not feasible, the issue turned on the extension of slavery in the territories. Republican presidential candidate John C. Frémont in 1856 ran on a platform of “free soil free labor, free men, Frémont.” Frémont lost to James Buchanan, but the issue did not die.
In 1857 the Supreme Court case of Dred Scott v. Sanford once again stirred emotions on both sides. Chief Justice Roger Taney’s decision claimed that blacks and no rights which white men were bound to respect, and that the Missouri compromise had been unconstitutional. Meanwhile the situation in Kansas had grown violent and attempts to bring Kansas into the Union as a state failed. In 1858 the famous Lincoln Douglas debates once again took up the issue of slavery, as Lincoln argued that the government had the right to prohibit the extension of slavery into the territories while Douglas tried to paint Lincoln as a man in favor of full social and political equality for blacks.
Douglas won that election, but Lincoln’s stand on slavery enabled him to get the Republican nomination for president in 1860. The last major event before that election was John Brown's raid on the federal arsenal in Harpers Ferry Virginia, which resulted in his trial, conviction and hanging. The celebration of John Brown as a martyr to the in the slavery cause further infuriated the South and set the tone for the divide that erupted upon Abraham Lincoln’s election in 1860.
Ample evidence exists of the centrality of the slavery issue in other documents, such as the speeches and communications made by the secession commissioners from the first seven seceded states to the other slave states which had not yet followed them. One such letter addressed from an Alabama legislator to the North Carolina legislature claims that the federal government “proposes to impair the value of slave property in the States by unfriendly legislation [and] to prevent the further spread of slavery by surrounding us with free States.” In a speech to the Virginia Secession Convention a Georgia representative expressed his fear that soon “the black race will be in a large majority, and then we will have black governors, black legislatures, black juries, black everything.”
Alexander Stephens, Vice President of the Confederate States, said this to the Virginia Convention:
As a race, the African is inferior to the white man. Subordination to the white man is his normal condition. He is not his equal by nature, and cannot be made so by human laws or human institutions. Our system, therefore, so far as regards this inferior race, rests upon this great immutable law of nature. It is founded not upon wrong or injustice, but upon the eternal fitness of things. Hence, its harmonious working for the benefit and advantage of both. … The great truth, I repeat, upon which our system rests, is the inferiority of the African. The enemies of our institutions ignore this truth. They set out with the assumption that the races are equal; that the negro is equal to the white man.
If slavery was not the root cause of the Civil War, a study of documents from the period before 1861 provides little evidence of any other cause. As to claims that secession may have been caused by slavery but the Civil War was not, it is difficult to separate the two. Those who believe otherwise are invited to make their case and present supporting evidence.
The Constitution gave the federal government the right to abolish the international slave trade, but no power to regulate or destroy the institution of slavery where it already existed. Nonetheless, Congress prevented the extension of slavery to certain territories in the Northwest Ordinance (which carried over to the period after the Constitution) and the Missouri Compromise of 1820. So long as both North and South had opportunities for expansion, compromise had been possible. Traditionally, slavery where it existed had been kept out of American politics, with the result that no practical program could be devised for its elimination in the southern states. Until the 1850s, however, Congress was understood to have the power to set conditions under which territories could become states and to forbid slavery in new states.
The abolition movement focused new attention on slavery beginning about 1830. When the moral issue of slavery was raised by men like William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass, compromise became more difficult. Documents began to appear describing the brutal conditions of slavery. Nevertheless, abolitionism never achieved majority political status in the non-slave states, and since most Americans accepted the existence of slavery where it was legal (and constitutionally protected), the chief controversy between North and South became the issue of slavery in the territories. The issue might have been resolved by extending the Missouri Compromise to the Pacific to cover the new territory added in the Mexican Cession, but since the movement to prohibit slavery in the territories was stronger in 1850 than it had been in 1820, the political forces were unable handle it as smoothly as in 1820. Thus another sort of compromise was needed, one that shifted responsibility from the national government to the territories themselves. That novel concept was known as “popular sovereignty”—letting the people in the new territories decide for themselves whether to have slavery.
The idea of popular sovereignty had two things going for it. First, it seemed democratic. Why not let the people decide for themselves whether or not they want slavery? (Of course participation in that decision was never extended to the slave population.) Second, it seemed acceptable to Americans for whom “states’ rights” was the condition on which they continued to tolerate federal government control over local issues. The doctrine contained a major flaw, however, in that it ignored the concerns of Americans who continued to accept slavery only on the assumption, as Lincoln and others put it, that it “was in the course of ultimate extinction.” Allowing slavery to go into the territories was certain, as the abolition and free soil advocates saw it, to postpone that day.
The net result of the popular sovereignty approach was that the federal government, in attempting to evade responsibility by shifting it to the people of the territories themselves, merely heightened the crisis. By 1850 slavery had become a “federal case,” and despite the best efforts of compromisers like Henry Clay and Stephen Douglas, the tactic of popular sovereignty backfired, and the country drifted closer to war.
Here are some points to review as we enter the Civil War:
• The issue of slavery was emotionally charged and thus difficult to resolve.
• Many people in the North did not understand what slavery was really like.
• Slavery was the main issue that had to be resolved during debate over the Compromise of 1850.
• The controversy over slavery was political, economic, moral and religious.
• Once it was recognized and protected by the Constitution, slavery would be hard to eliminate.
1861
By February of 1861 the Confederate States of America had been organized with their capital at Montgomery, Alabama, though it would later be moved to the larger city of Richmond. Jefferson Davis was sworn in as provisional first president, the Confederate Constitution was written, a cabinet was formed and the new government began to function, all within three months of the event that precipitated the action, the election of Abraham Lincoln as president.
All those events occurred before Abraham Lincoln left Illinois. President Buchanan did his best to hold things together, but obviously a crisis was at hand, and the new president would have to deal with it. As Lincoln made his way slowly from Springfield to Washington via New York State, he was met by well-wishers along the way—including a little girl who had urged him to grow beard to hide his ugliness—and he eventually was smuggled into Washington in the middle of the night, since the city found itself in the midst of Confederate sympathizers.
President Lincoln took office facing an unprecedented Constitutional dilemma—and the Constitution offered no guidance on how to confront the crisis. Lincoln put together a balanced cabinet, headed by William Seward, who hoped to conciliate the South, and Salmon Chase, who was a spokesman for abolitionists. The president’s problem was how to enforce the Constitution—the Supreme Law of the Land—without being accused of starting a war. His dilemma lay in the fact that if he ignored southern occupation of Federal territory he would be, in effect, recognizing their right to do so. On the other hand, the Confederacy also faced a dilemma—if it allowed President Lincoln to treat what they considered former Federal property as still belonging to the United States, then they would be acknowledging, in effect, that they were not sovereign over such territory and were therefore not fully independent.
Fort Sumter, April 12, 1861
Since South Carolina was the first state to secede, Lincoln decided to focus his attention on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor. President Lincoln’s decision to re-supply the fort with an unarmed vessel shifted the dilemma to the Confederacy. If the Confederate government, acting through the state of South Carolina, allowed a union vessel to enter the harbor to re-supply the fort, it would be acknowledging that it lacked full sovereignty over its own territory. If, on the other hand, the South were to use force to prevent the fort from being re-supplied by firing on an unarmed ship, then they would be held guilty of firing the shot that started the war. In the end that is what happened.
Lincoln’s decision to send a ship full of provisions but without armament to supply the hungry garrison led the Confederate Government to decide that it could not allow what it deemed a foreign country to enter its territory without permission, and thus General P.G.T. Beauregard was ordered not to allow the resupply to take place, and to fire on Fort Sumter. Lincoln positioned the Confederacy in such a way that they were obliged to fire the first shot on the American flag, which occurred in April 12, 1861.
The Confederates shelled Fort Sumter for several hours, causing much damage but no serious casualties, and the Commander, Major Anderson, surrendered the fort the next day. Lincoln then called for 75,000 3-month volunteers to end the “Insurrection.” This caused four upper South slave states to secede: North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee and Arkansas. Southerners considered Lincoln’s call an act of aggression that denied them their right to self-determination. In Lincoln’s view secession was undemocratic because it challenged the results of a freely held election. In 1861, northerners were committed to saving the Union, not to freeing the slaves. The fact that the South had fired on the United States flag was enough to send thousands of young men to volunteer to fight for the Union.
Both sides expected a short war—neither was prepared for a drawn-out conflict. Both Yankees and Confederates expected it to be over in a matter of weeks. One southerner held up a handkerchief and declared he would be able to soak up all the blood that would be shed with that single piece of cloth.
April 19 Blockade. Lincoln proclaimed a blockade of the Southern coastline but faced a legal dilemma: how to avoid recognizing the South as a belligerent power. Lincoln was concerned over possible British responses and did not want to influence her position away from that of neutrality; Lincoln’s hope was that because Great Britain was the world’s leading naval power and relied on blockades as a war measure, she would recognize the Union blockade. In addition, Lincoln and Seward were concerned about other international responses, but it was likely that most nations would follow Great Britain's lead. Lincoln’s overriding diplomatic challenge was to keep the South isolated. Foreign intervention on behalf of the South would certainly aid the South's quest for independence.
The Blue and the Gray
Historians have argued for years about possible outcomes of the Civil War. A consensus has been reached among many historians that because of the substantial difference in resources available to the North and the South, the North was bound to win. The North’s larger population, its wealth and industrial power, and the fact that the Union government already had relations with other nations all seemed to some to make the outcome a foregone conclusion. It should be remembered, however, that relative to the North, the Confederacy had far more resources available in its situation than the Patriots had in 1775.
In addition it should be noted that the North and South had different objectives: the North had to pursue an aggressive strategy, for it could not force the Confederate states back into the Union without invading the South and winning a decisive victory. The South, on the other hand, did not really need a total victory—a draw would suffice. It just needed to keep the war going until the North ran out of patience and resources. (The outcomes of the American Revolution and the Vietnam War both suggest that victory can be achieved in various ways; the British were not driven out of North America, nor were the Americans driven out of Vietnam.)
The Union strategy initially conceived by General Winfield Scott sought to divide and conquer the South. He envisioned a complete blockade of the South by hemming the Confederate states in on both land and sea and then forcing them to a position where surrender was the only option. The press derided Scott's plan and dubbed it the “Anaconda Plan.” The main points of Scott’s strategy included a blockade of the Confederate coastline, controlling the Mississippi and cutting off Southern use of the waterway, seizing the capital of Richmond, and as the war progressed, dividing the Confederacy along a line through Georgia. The Northern press, however, called for an “On to Richmond!” approach, thinking that a swift attack would bring quick victory.
President Lincoln was also concerned with keeping other nations out of the conflict and keeping the remaining border states, especially Kentucky in Maryland, in the Union. (Lincoln no doubt had in mind the fact that without French assistance, the American Revolution might have ended differently.)
The Confederate strategy as initially mapped out and, to some extent put into practice, though not successfully, was to take Washington and advance into Maryland and Pennsylvania, cutting the Northeast off from the rest of the nation. The South also sought foreign assistance, especially from Great Britain, and believed that cotton was “king,” and that British dependence on Southern cotton would cause her to intervene and assist the South. For a variety of reasons Great Britain did not follow that course, not wanting, among other things, to cut herself off from Northern grain supplies. Alternative sources of cotton (Egypt and India) were also a factor. The South also sought to defend its homeland with aggressive tactics, which eventually proved very costly.
Northern advantages were fairly obvious: a larger population, greater industrial capacity, better railroad system, control of the Navy, an established government with diplomatic ties to other nations, and a mature political organization. Northern disadvantages included the fact that the United States Army was small and mostly confined to the Western theaters. President Lincoln knew little of warfare or foreign affairs, though he was a quick study.
Southern advantages were perhaps less obvious but nonetheless real: The South had interior lines, meaning they could shift forces more rapidly than the Union; northern business interests were tied to the South; the South had outstanding military leaders, including President Jefferson Davis, a West Point graduate and Mexican war veteran who had served as U.S. secretary of war. The South could take advantage of their defensive position, and they had a more homogenous population. Southern disadvantages included the fact that the states’ rights philosophy tended to hamper unity; furthermore, President Davis was politically handicapped by a one-party system which did not provide for a “loyal opposition.”
The Balance: Southern problems included the fact that the Confederate government had to be created—they had plenty of experienced leaders, but basic the machinery had to be established. Post offices and such continued to function, but government offices, clerks, etc., needed to be organized.
The war was fought in two theaters, East and West, but the Washington-Richmond line became the main line of concern. There was also significant action on lesser fronts such as the trans-Mississippi area, the Southern coasts and on the high seas, where the war was fought by cruisers, raiders, and blockade runners. Although Scott’s “Anaconda Plan” was scorned, it eventually won the war.
First battle of Bull Run/Manassas. July 21, 1861.
Although numerous skirmishes broke out in border areas dividing the union and the Confederacy, the first relatively large battle was fought less than 25 miles from Washington. The opening weeks of the war were unsettling for President Lincoln, as significant numbers of troops were slow to arrive in Washington. Part of the difficulty lay in the fact that Maryland was a slave state and several units had to actually fight their way through Baltimore in order to get to the nation's capital. Alternative routes were eventually established, and by June a number of regiments had begun to assemble.
Union commander, General Irvin McDowell, realizing that his troops had had little training, was reluctant to take them into battle. President Lincoln pointed out, however, that the Southern troops and had no more training than the Union men, and he urged McDowell to begin to move. On July 21, McDowell's 30,000 men advanced towards the Confederate positions along Bull Run Creek near Manassas. The march out from Washington revealed that federal troops were poorly trained—they lacked water discipline and otherwise showed that they were not a highly trained military organization. The Confederates, waiting in defensive positions, were perhaps better prepared as they had time to establish their defenses.
As the realities of war had not yet sunk in on either population, spectators from both Washington and Richmond traveled to the battle site in carriages and other conveyances in order to observe the action, as if it were some sort of sporting event. They soon discovered that the confrontation was not a game.
The Confederates waiting for the Yankees were under the command of General P.G.T. Beauregard, who had fired the first shot at Fort Sumter. General McDowell’s battle plan was reasonable, but it depended upon Confederate reinforcements being blocked and other secondary actions that did not turn out as hoped. The fighting started fairly early and for much of the day, the Union troops fought well, but as the day wore on and the heat intensified and casualties mounted, the resolve of the Federal soldiers finally broke, and as individual fighting men began to scurry from the battlefield, they were pursued by officers on horseback and shouting at them to return.
Those actions were misinterpreted by others within a view of those scenes, who thought a general retreat had been ordered. The result was that more soldiers joined the hasty, ill-organized retreat until the entire Union force was heading back for Washington, discarding weapons and equipment along the way. Meanwhile, the spectators who had come out in carriages with spy-glasses and picnic lunches to observe and the day's activities joined the panicky retreat, as wagon master’s and swearing teamsters added to the din and confusion. The scene was later reported in detail by British journalist William Howard Russell, veteran writer of the Crimean War, who was thereafter known as “Bull Run Russell.”
The Confederate rebel yell had supposedly unnerved the Union troops, but when President Jefferson Davis urged his commanders to pursue the fleeing Yankees, it was discovered that they were just as disorganized as the Union troops and did not follow up on their action. The battle was clearly a defeat for the Union, but it was far from being decisive.
In the end, the importance of the Battle of Bull Run is that it generated a considerable amount of confidence in the Confederate soldiers, who came to believe that their fierce rebel yell and their undaunted courage would carry the day in any battle against even a superior sized Union force. That overconfidence was to cost the Confederates dearly over the next few years. On the Union side, those who had been predicting and hoping for a quick, decisive victory had been substantially disillusioned. Union leaders from President Lincoln on down began to realize that they needed to dig in for the long haul and prepare for a lengthy contest. It was not going to be over quickly. Thus the Battle of Bull Run was a wake-up call for the Union which, at the same time, bred a dangerous sense of overconfidence in the Confederates.
General McDowell was relieved of his command and was replaced by perhaps the most controversial Union General of the war, General George B. McClellan. McClellan had had moderate success in western Virginia with a force of 20,000 troops and had won a battle at Philippi on June 3. Much of McClellan's success, however, had been attributable to his subordinates; “Little Mac,” as his own best press secretary, sent glowing reports of his achievements to Washington, and President Lincoln, beginning what would be a long a frustrating search to find a competent general to lead his eastern armies, gave commend of the army in Washington to McClellan, soon known as the “Young Napoleon.”
As McClellan busied himself reorganizing the Union Army, the Union suffered another defeat at the Battle of Ball’s Bluff above Washington. Former U.S. Senator Col. Edward D. Baker made several tactical blunders which led to the decimation of Union forces. Repercussions included the forming of a congressional Committee on the Conduct of the War.
As the two sides continued to organize their armies and train enlistees who flocked to the Union and Confederate colors, little major action occurred on land for the remainder of 1861. In November federal naval forces captured Port Royal, South Carolina, as part of the effort to establish a blockade around the Confederacy. In that regard relations with England were to become the most critical, since the Union blockade during the opening months of the war was mostly a paper blockade. (In order for a naval blockade to be legal under international law, it had to be enforced with naval vessels on the scene.) The Union advantage in this regard was that Great Britain, as a maritime nation, had depended heavily on blockades in the past and would likely continue to do so into the future; thus Great Britain tended to over look the weakness of the Union blockade of the South.
The Trent Affair. Relations between the two nations took a sour turn, however, when information was obtained that two Confederate agents, James Mason and John Slidell, had been embarked in a British ship, H.M.S. Trent, and were on a diplomatic mission to establish relations in Europe for the Confederacy. Captain Charles Wilkes of the U.S.S. San Jacinto stopped the Trent and removed the Confederate agents and their secretaries over the protests of the captain of the Trent. The British government lodged immediate protests, and an embarrassed President Lincoln was obliged to release Mason and Slidell and eventually issue a formal apology. British Canada, feeling threatened by a disturbance with its southern neighbor, doubled the size of its militia from 50,000 to 100,000. Although the Trent affair and Captain Wilkes had been enthusiastically supported throughout the North, Lincoln nevertheless backed down, feeling that one war at a time was more than enough.
One of the unsung heroes of the Civil War for the Union was the U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain, Charles Francis Adams, son of John Quincy Adams. Inheriting the diplomatic skill of his father, Adams performed brilliantly, as he was sometimes obliged to sidestep the heavy-handed diplomatic efforts of Secretary of State Seward. During the Trent affair, as well as during subsequent diplomatic crises, Adams performed an extremely valuable service in helping to keep Great Britain out of the war, a condition that was vital for Union victory.
Raising again the point about the inevitability of the outcome of the war, it seems clear that if Great Britain or France had entered the war on the Confederate side, a Southern victory might well have been assured. Lincoln’s major diplomatic challenge was to fight the war in such a way so as not to irritate Great Britain, whose lead would be followed by the French. Gauging British sympathies was not easy, as some elements in Great Britain were sympathetic to the southern position, while others, correctly perceiving that slavery was an underlying cause of the war, were well disposed toward Lincoln and the Union.
On November 1 General McClellan was appointed General in Chief upon the retirement of General Winfield Scott, whom McClellan rather ungraciously helped usher out the door. McClellan was a superb organizer, and he soon began an excellent regimen of training to bring the growing Union army up to fighting trim. He replaced incompetent officers with more capable men and began to build up the Army of the Potomac, which, when well led, could stand against any army in the world. The problem with General McClellan was that he was reluctant to lead it into battle; a series of parades and reviews thrilled Congress and the Washington community but left Lincoln frustrated and unimpressed. When illness forced McClellan to his bed for what seemed to Lincoln an overlong recuperation, Lincoln sent a note to McClellan suggesting that if the General had no immediate plans for using his army, the president might like to borrow it. McClellan did not respond well to such jibes and accused Lincoln of being a meddler.
In November Major General Henry W. Halleck, known as “Old Brains” for his authoritative writings on warfare, made some replacements in the western commands, but the Union forces in the Mississippi and Ohio valleys were still divided. Gen. Don Carlos Buell commanded forces in central and eastern Kentucky, while Brigadier General Grant and others commanded other western areas. Grant, who had left the Army in 1854 under something of a cloud because of his alleged drinking habits, had had to talk his way into an officer’s commission at the outbreak of the war, but had quickly demonstrated his natural military skills. He won a small battle at Belmont in November, 1861, but in those early days of fighting a small victory was noticed. Grant was gradually given more responsibility.
Summary of 1861: Both sides begin uncertainly. Young men flock to colors for “Union” (North) and “Liberty” (South), each feeling it is upholding the “principles of 1776.” President Lincoln, less experienced in military matters than President Davis, begins to educate himself in the ways of war. Davis, more experienced, has difficulties arising from his political situation of a single party system, exacerbated by his own personality. The Union industrial capacity is greater, but much corruption and inefficiency offset the advantage.
1862: The Military Conflict Expands
On January 15, 1862, President Lincoln replaced the inefficient Secretary of War Simon Cameron with Edwin M. Stanton. Stanton had been attorney general under President Buchanan but was adamantly opposed to secession. At first he was very critical of Lincoln’s abilities, but within a few months of close working with the president, who spent much of his time in the War Department, Stanton began to appreciate Lincoln’s honesty and dedication to the Union cause. He eventually became a Republican and one of Abraham Lincoln’s most trusted and loyal advisers.
In January General George H. Thomas defeated a Confederate force at Mill Springs, Kentucky, then teamed up with General Grant to begin moving into Tennessee. Grant engaged Flag Officer Andrew H. Foote to work with his ground troops in attacking Fort Henry, which lay on the Tennessee River in northwest Tennessee. Foote sent his gunboats up the river to bombard the fort, and Grant placed his troops ashore on either side. The Confederate commander, however, decided to abandon the fort and sent his soldiers to Fort Donelson, which lay 10 miles to the east on the Cumberland River. When the fort surrendered, Union armies had use of the Tennessee River all away to Alabama.
Following the fall of Fort Henry Grant sent Foote's gunboats down the Tennessee, up the Ohio and thence up the Cumberland River toward Fort Donelson. Meanwhile he marched his army overland and surrounded the fort. The Confederate commanders attempted to break out but were unable to penetrate Grant’s lines. Two Confederate generals departed, leaving General Simon Bolivar Buckner in charge. Although Fort Donelson artillery drove off Flag Officer Foote’s gunboats, Grant had a firm hold on the fort. When Buckner asked Grant for terms, Grant responded that no terms except “unconditional surrender” could be accepted. He added, “I propose to move immediately upon your works.” Thereafter Gen. Ulysses S. Grant became known as “unconditional surrender” Grant.
Buckner, an old friend of Grant from prewar days, told the victor, “Sam, if I'd been in charge the whole time, you never would have gotten away with it.” Grant supposedly responded, “Buckner, if you had been in charge, I never would have tried.” Whether true or not, the anecdote illustrates a factor that played itself out numerous times in the Civil War; often the opposing commanders knew each other, since many had served together in the Mexican war and elsewhere, and they often gauged their tactics according to their knowledge of what their opponents would be likely to do.
Shiloh. The victory at Fort Donelson was a major success, and the Union celebrated its first hero. Combined with the Union victories at Middle Creek, Kentucky, under Colonel James Garfield and Thomas’s victory at Mill Springs, the Confederates were out of Kentucky and the Union forces controlled the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers as well all the railroads in western Tennessee. General Grant had established himself as an effective commander and continued moving further into Tennessee. Grant moved his Army up the Tennessee River to a point known as Pittsburg Landing, about 15 miles northwest of the Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee intersection, where he was waiting to combine forces with General Don Carlos Buell. Although the area was lightly settled, a church in the vicinity named Shiloh gave its name to the battle.
General Albert Sidney Johnston, reputed to be the finest officer in the Confederate army, decided to attack before Grant could be reinforced, and he launched an assault early on April 6. Not realizing that the Confederates were so close, Grant had neglected to fortify his position and instead was drilling his troops. Grant was not even on the scene when his troops were caught off guard by Johnston’s Confederates, but although they were hard-pressed, the Union Army managed to hang on during a long day of fierce fighting, taking a stand at a sunken road that became known as the “hornet’s nest.” Johnston was mortally wounded during the first day’s fighting, and command was turned over to General P.G.T. Beauregard. During the night General Buell’s troops arrived and crossed the Tennessee River to join Grant’s men. Early on the morning of April 7, the fighting resumed, and Beauregard, having suffered heavy casualties, retired from the field and took his army backed to Corinth, Mississippi. A pursuit led by General William T. Sherman on April 8 was unsuccessful, but the victory had been substantial.
Casualties at Shiloh numbered over 23,000, with the Union having suffered more losses. The Confederates lost a larger percentage of their troops, however. The total casualties exceeded all of America's previous wars put together, yet it was no means the costliest battle of the Civil War. Despite his successes, rumors about Grant’s former drinking problems and other political machinations brought criticism of him in Washington. President Lincoln said, however, “I can't spare this man: He fights.”
Part of the reason for President Lincoln’s response to the criticism of Grant was that his general in the East, George B. McClellan, was moving so slowly that even his impressive reviews had begun to lose their luster as the administration and Congress grew anxious for more victories. McClellan initially planned a direct assault on Richmond, but when he advanced across the Potomac, he discovered that the Confederates had withdrawn southward, so he conceived a new battle plan. He decided to take the entire Army of the Potomac down the river for which it was named and land it on the peninsula between the York and James Rivers. As a superb organizer and logistician, McClellan moved his army efficiently; the problems began when it was time to fight.
The Monitor and the Merrimack. While McClellan was preparing his campaign during early March, a famous naval battle took place in Hampton Roads, Virginia. The Confederate Navy had captured the former U.S.S. Merrimack and renamed it C.S.S. Virginia. The ironclad Confederate ship had maneuvered out of the harbor and easily destroyed several Union warships, as cannonballs bounced off her heavy metal plates. During the night after the first day of fighting, a strange-looking craft arrived, the U.S.S. Monitor. The Monitor possessed but a single gun, but it was mounted inside a revolving turret, and its iron plating made it also impervious to shells. On March 9 the Monitor and the Virginia fought it out in Hampton Roads, and the small “cheese box on a raft” neutralized the Confederate threat, which might have disrupted the Union blockading fleet. It was the first “battle of ironclads,” and although it was more or less indecisive, it provided a glimpse of future naval warfare.
At the outbreak of the war the Union Navy had been nothing but a motley collection of ships, few of them formidable. But the U.S. government purchased ships of all kinds for use in the blockade, and began a building program in August, 1861. Within a year the number of ships sailing in and out of southern ports had been substantially reduced, and as Union forces captured various ports and islands along the southern coast, the blockade gradually grew tighter. From initial odds of approximately one in ten, the chances of a blockade runner getting through dropped to about one in three.
McClellan’s Peninsular Campaign. After months of preparation, General McClellan began his Peninsula Campaign on March 17, moving the Army of the Potomac by ship to a location east-southeast of the Confederate capital of Richmond. McClellan’s plan was to invade Richmond by advancing up the peninsula formed by the York and James Rivers. McClellan failed to grasp the nature of modern warfare—he thought it uncivilized to consider crushing the South and destroying carefully trained military units. He was an unsurpassed military administrator and planner, but he did not like to fight and risk damage to his well prepared army. Thus McClellan conducted his Peninsula Campaign with too much caution.
On April 5 he began a siege of Yorktown, which led to occupation of the city. If Yorktown had been a strategically significant, fortified city, a siege—which involves intricate engineering maneuvers—might have made sense. But as one Confederate officer said in derision, “Only McClellan would a besiege and undefended city.”
Again illustrating that familiarity with the mindset of one’s opponents was a repeating factor in Civil War engagements, and being aware of McClellan's “over-cautiousness” (as Lincoln put it), Confederate commanders went out of their way to befuddle their plodding opponent. Confederate General John McGruder, known from his West Point days as “Prince John” because of his acting ability, marched troops back and forth behind his lines in order to create the illusion of a larger force than he actually possessed. McClellan engaged the well known detective Allan Pinkerton as his intelligence adviser, and Pinkerton, demonstrating what is sometimes a propensity among intelligence types to overestimate enemy strength, just to be on the safe side, played right into McClellan’s fears.
As McClellan moved closer to Richmond against light Confederate resistance, he constantly overestimated the strength of the southern army and repeatedly called on Washington for additional forces. As he was advancing, General Thomas J. (“Stonewall”) Jackson was operating in the Shenandoah Valley with an army of troops who moved so fast they were known as “foot cavalry.” His campaign lasted from late March until early June and kept some 40,000 Union troops under Union Generals Banks and Frémont constantly occupied. President Lincoln, concerned about the security of the national capital, was held in a state of worry, which made him the McClellan's requests for reinforcements unsettling.
McClellan eventually advanced so close to Richmond that his troops could see the church spires in the city and hear their bells ringing on Sunday morning. With McClellan’s troops stretched on either side of the Chickahominy River, General Joseph Johnston decided to take the battle to his enemy. On May 31 and June 1 the two armies clashed in the battle of Seven Pines (Fair Oaks), with high casualties on both sides. The outcome was a tactical draw, but General Johnston was wounded and was soon replaced by Robert E. Lee. Lee had earned a reputation for cautiousness himself during the early days of the war, but that was soon to change.
As McClellan sat idly by, Lee extended his lines and reorganized his troops, now designated the Army of Northern Virginia. Joined by Jackson’s men who had moved into the Richmond area from their Valley campaign, Lee once again took on the Union Army of the Potomac in what became known as the Seven Days’ battles: Mechanicsville, Gaines Mill, and Malvern Hill. Lee was an excellent tactician, and unlike McClellan, he had a bold and masterful plan for the Seven Days’ battle, which again placed McClellan on the defensive. Unfortunately for Lee, this plan may have been too sophisticated, and the Confederate generals had difficulty carrying it out. Even Jackson’s Corps was not up to the level it had achieved during his Valley campaign; his movements were uncharacteristically slow.
General Jeb Stuart, Lee’s cavalry commander, had made a bold ride completely around the Union Army, attacking supply trains and disrupting communications. As fine a commander as Stuart was, however, his cavalry tactics, while daring, sometimes failed to produce decisive results. McClellan’s forces were assisted by Union gunboats, another measure of the effectiveness of the Union “river navy,” sometimes undervalued by Civil War historians in retrospect.
Once again, the loss of life during the Seven Days was appalling. At the last battle at Malvern Hill Union artillery demonstrated its skill and value on the battlefield by repeatedly breaking up Confederate attacks. Following the battle Confederate General D.H. Hill said, “With Southern infantry and Union artillery I could whip any army on earth.” Despite the impressive performance by McClellan’s troops in combat, the Peninsular Campaign itself was a strategic failure. Total casualties numbered some 36,000 on both sides, and McClellan took his battered army back to Washington while Lee's men licked their wounds and moved northward again on the Richmond-Washington axis.
Second Battle of Bull Run. While McClellan was moving his army back to disembarkation points in Alexandria, General John Pope, who had won a small but notable victory at Island #10 on the Mississippi River north of Memphis, took command of the troops in and around Washington and met Lee on August 29 and 30 at the Second Battle of Manassas, or Bull Run. Pope had been planning for an advance on Richmond, but Lee, Longstreet, and Jackson trapped Pope’s army, which had its left flank exposed. The two days of fighting left the Union Army battered, and as McClellan had done nothing to assist Pope, bitter recriminations followed on the northern side, including charges that Union General Porter had been reluctant in battle. As often happens in times of military disappointment the hunt for scapegoats was on. The stage was now set for the first major battle in the north as Lee prepared to invade into Maryland in order to relieve pressure on Virginia.
Antietam: The First Turning Point
As Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia was moving north toward the Maryland border, Lincoln faced a dilemma. General John Pope had not proved to be the leader Lincoln was looking for; he had alienated the troops and officers by implying that Western soldiers were superior to those in the East. As McClellan’s peninsular campaign had been a strategic failure, and as criticism of “Little Mac” continued to grow in Congress, Lincoln was loath to place him back in command of the Army of the Potomac. But he knew McClellan was a good organizer and that he was well liked by his troops, so he gave him the command, and McClellan set out to block Lee.
Lee hoped to be able to recruit successfully in areas theoretically sympathetic to the South, but slavery in Maryland was mostly located on the peninsula, not in the more western mountainous areas. He also hoped that a dramatic blow on northern soil would unnerve the northern public, who would then demand a negotiated peace. He also wanted to relieve pressure on Virginia and gain support perhaps procure supplies in the Maryland countryside.
Part of Lee’s army moved into Harpers Ferry and captured that important city while the rest of the Army of Northern Virginia moved in the direction of Hagerstown. McClellan, meanwhile, was moving from Rockville up towards Frederick, Maryland, on a more or less parallel path with Lee. While the movement was under way two of McClellan’s pickets found an interesting looking piece of paper wrapped around some cigars in an abandoned Confederate camp. It seemed to be a battle order, and indeed it was. It showed the general disposition of Lee’s army, indicating that it had been separated and was not in a single body. The knowledge gave McClellan an advantage which, however, he failed to exploit, despite his boast the this time he would “lick Bobby Lee.” On September 14 the Battle of South Mountain, between Frederick and Hagerstown in Maryland, delayed the Union advance while Lee concentrated his army at the little village of Sharpsburg along Antietam Creek.
On the morning of September 17 McClellan attacked. Lee’s back was to the Potomac, and his outnumbered army faced possible destruction. But rather than attacking broadly and decisively, McClellan advanced his army in piecemeal fashion, giving Lee time to regroup and reposition his men. The fighting started in a large cornfield which was soon bathed in red. Lee’s men pulled back to a sunken road as the attack continued; by late afternoon the fighting was taking place along Antietam Creek in a position that came to be known as Burnside’s bridge. The intense fighting made the Battle of Antietam the bloodiest single day of combat in all of American history, as over 20,000 casualties on both sides were inflicted. Military historians have concluded that had McClellan attacked aggressively and used all of his forces—one entire Union Corps of 30,00 men never saw action during the entire day—the result might have been a decisive defeat for the Army of Northern Virginia with dire consequences for the Confederacy.
The bloody battle, however, turned out to be a tactical draw, although it was a strategic defeat for Lee, who had to withdraw back into Virginia. McClellan failed to pursue Lee and instead decided to rest and recuperate his army at the scene of the battle; another opportunity had been lost. Frustrated, Lincoln wrote to McClellan, “I have read your dispatch about … fatigued horses. Will you pardon me for asking what the horses of your army have done since the battle of Antietam that fatigues anything?”
The Battle of Antietam, despite Lincoln’s disappointment, did have two important consequences: Lincoln’s release of his preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, and a crucial British cabinet meeting to discuss possible recognition of Confederate independence was canceled.
Emancipation. As President Lincoln himself said, he had thought long and hard about the relationship between slavery and the Civil War from the very beginning of the conflict. When Horace Greeley challenged him in an open letter to state his intentions regarding slavery in the summer of 1862, Lincoln responded by saying that if he thought he could save the Union by freeing all the slaves, he would do so. He added that if he thought he could save the Union by freeing none of the slaves he would do that, and then added that if he felt he could save the Union by freeing some of the slaves and leaving others in bondage, that he would do as well. In the end that is what he did.
Because several Union generals had jumped the gun, declaring slaves contraband, an idea took shape in Lincoln’s mind. He decided to issue an Emancipation Proclamation, but he did not want to do so when Union military fortunes looked bleak, lest it seem like a desperation move. Although Antietam was not a decisive victory, it was close enough for Lincoln to use, since Lee had to retreat into Virginia. Thus President Lincoln issued his preliminary Emancipation Proclamation five days after the battle of Antietam, announcing that as of January 1, 1863, slaves in territory controlled by the Confederacy were to be forever free. He did not free all the slaves because he felt the did not have the constitutional authority to do so. Instead he used the Confederacy’s own position regarding slaves against them: he counted them as property, property that had value in time of war and was therefore subject to being confiscated as contraband.
The Battle of Antietam was a turning point in its own right, first because it demonstrated that Lee could not sustain an offensive on Union soil. Second, the battle was costly, the bloodiest single day of fighting in all of American history, and while the losses were approximately equal, the North could tolerate them far better than the Confederacy because it had a much larger manpower pool on which to draw. In that sense Antietam was militarily significant, if not a turning point in the military sense.
The Emancipation Proclamation, however, fundamentally altered the goals of the conflict for both sides. Lincoln's first concern was to save the Union; and although Lincoln abhorred slavery, ending the “peculiar institution” was secondary to him. (Those who believe that Lincoln cared more about saving the Union than about ending slavery miss the point: If the Confederacy had won the war and become independent, Lincoln could have done nothing about the status of slavery in North America. And it is clear from the Confederate Constitution and the prewar political rhetoric, not to mention feelings and attitudes that had evolved in the South over 200 years, that slavery would have continued for a long time after the end of the conflict, perhaps even into the 20th century.)
If the Union were to prevail, however, after the Emancipation Proclamation it was fairly certain that would be a Union in which slavery would no longer exist. So from merely saving the Union, the goal for the North became to save the Union without the institution of slavery. It is interesting to note that by the end of the war in late 1864-early 1865, the Confederacy had apparently changed its goal in the war as well, which had been to preserve Southern society with slavery intact. Instead their goal became to gain independence, even if they had to give up slavery in order to get it. In December 1864 Confederate Secretary of State Judah P. Benjamin sent a secret delegation to Great Britain to plead one last time for their assistance in becoming independent, in exchange for which they would voluntarily end the institution of slavery. It was too late for Great Britain to intervene, however, but not long after that the Confederacy decided to arm the slaves in order to help them become free, a move which certainly would have tended to undermine status of slavery in the South. But the war ended before that happened, and the Confederacy lost its bid for independence, and slavery ended with passage of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865.
Military historians have concluded that the battle of Antietam was a tactical draw; neither side was driven off the field in disarray, and neither side could claim having dealt the other side a mortal blow. But the meaning of the battle for the course of the war was rooted in two events that occurred off the battlefield. First, in order for the South to have a significantly improved chance of winning the war, it needed foreign assistance. Just as the struggling 13 colonies, after they had declared themselves states, needed the assistance of the French to stave off defeat at the hands of the mighty British Empire, the Confederacy would certainly have benefited from the intrusion of Great Britain into the war. Had Great Britain intervened on the side of the Confederacy, it is quite likely that the Confederate States of America would have become a permanent political entity.
Not long before the Battle of Antietam it began to look as though intervention by the British might truly come to pass. In the opening days of the conflict the Union had suffered a diplomatic humiliation over the Trent affair, when Confederate agents were arrested while aboard a British ship, H.M.S. Trent. President Lincoln eventually apologized to the British, and the affair died, but about the same time Secretary of State William Seward had suggested that the president might want to provoke Great Britain and perhaps France into a conflict in order to reunify the country, an idea which Lincoln wisely ignored. The British were quite dependent upon Southern cotton to supply their mills, and there were other factors that supported friendly relationships between Great Britain and the Confederacy. Thus, recognition and intervention on the part of Great Britain was no far-fetched idea.
Great Britain was not, however, quite ready to anger the United States government for various reasons diplomatic, political and economic. British intervention might even have led to a declaration of war by the United States. Nevertheless, as the early lack of Union success on the battlefields, especially in the East, opened the possibility of an eventual Confederate victory, Great Britain began to move in the direction of recognition of the South and perhaps a further involvement in the war on the Confederate side. But they needed a strong sign.
During the American Revolution, the French, after secretly aiding the colonies, had waited for an indication that the Americans might be able to win on the battlefield, and having seen that occur at Saratoga in 1777, France recognized American independence and formed a military alliance with the new nation. In 1862 the British were looking for a similar sign of encouragement, and when Lee invaded Maryland in September 1862, British leaders began to believe that a victory on Union soil might be what they were looking for. But although Lee’s intrepid Army of Northern Virginia held its own against the larger Union force, largely because General McClellan failed to exploit his advantages, Lee was forced to retreat, and the tactical draw certainly did not equate to a strategic victory. The British hesitated, Lincoln acted, and the moment for recognition quickly passed.
Following the battle President Lincoln visited McClellan at Antietam and listened patiently while the general reviewed the outcome of the fighting. President Lincoln congratulated the Union troops and commiserated with wounded Confederate soldiers, whom he also visited in emotional scenes. In a private conversation the president apparently chastised McClellan for failing to move in pursuit of Lee—he said McClellan had “the slows.” When McClellan did not take Lincoln's suggestion, he was finally relieved of command. He did not again participate in the war, but he ran for President as a Democrat against Lincoln in 1864 and later served as Governor of New Jersey.
Fredericksburg. Lincoln turned command of the army over the Potomac over to General Ambrose Burnside. Lee had retreated to the vicinity of Fredericksburg and had taken a position along some elevated ground known as Marye’s Heights. The Rappahannock River lay between Lee’s troops and the advancing Union Army, and Burnside devised an elaborate plan to cross the river with pontoon bridges and attack Lee on the other side. Construction of the bridges was made difficult by Confederate sharpshooters harassing engineers building the bridges. Union artillery, meanwhile, shelled the city of Fredericksburg, leaving damage the remnants of which are still visible in some buildings.
On December 13 Burnside’s men finally crossed the river and assaulted the Confederate troops, who were protected by a stone wall and a sunken road at the base of Marye’s Heights. Although part of Burnside’s plan worked fairly well, the slaughter in front of Marye’s Heights was one of the worst of the war as Union troops were mowed down and fell on top of dead or wounded comrades. The North was shocked by the magnitude of the defeat, and Lincoln was in the depths of despair; “What will the country think?” he wondered. The battered army moved back north to a position west of Fredericksburg.
On December 31 Union General Gen. William S. Rosecrans and the Army of the Cumberland engaged a Confederate force under General Braxton Bragg, the Army of Tennessee. Rosecrans had pursued Bragg from Kentucky following General Braxton Bragg’s loss at Perryville. Bragg’s men began the attack on the morning of December 31, but after some initial gains the Union established a strong defensive line. After a pause on New Year’s Day, the two armies again clashed on January 2 and 3, and on the next day Bragg took his army from the field and retreated deeper into Tennessee. In three days of fierce fighting Union artillery had again proved decisive. A relieved President Lincoln sent a congratulatory telegram to General Rosecrans, thanking him for the victory that had lifted the president and the country out of the depressing state that had set in following the disaster at Fredericksburg.
Summary of 1862. The Union had made little progress in the East; even with the heavy losses they had suffered, the Federals were no closer to Richmond. Lincoln and much of North remained in despair—one historian has called it the “winter of Northern discontent.” Although the Confederates had fared quite well in the East, they had also suffered heavy losses and did not appear to be exhausting federal resources.
The picture in the West was substantially brighter for the Union. General Grant was fighting well, and southern commanders seemed unable to keep the Union armies from moving deeper into southern territory. Union forces controlled much of the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers as well as the Ohio as far as Memphis. Benjamin Butler had captured New Orleans in early 1862, and the Union armies in the West were ready to converge on the last great stronghold of Vicksburg.
1863
There was little fighting early in 1863 as both sides sought to shore up their forces from the heavy losses of the previous year. Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation went into effect on January 1 but had no immediate impact on the progress of the war. Ironically, the Emancipation Proclamation technically freed no slaves at all—only those under control of the Confederacy. But in fact the proclamation eventually started a flood of runaways that led, among other things, to thousands of former slaves joining the Union armies starting in 1863.
On March 3 the Union put into effect the first national Conscription Act. Men between the ages of 20 and 45 were eligible for the draft, but any male who could hire a substitute or pay a $300 fee could be exempted. That provision angered many in the north, especially working-class people, who now saw the conflict as a “rich man's war and a poor man's fight.” The draft would lead to trouble later in the year.
Following Fredericksburg Lincoln appointed General Joseph Hooker to command the Army of the Potomac. Hooker, like McClellan, had many good qualities, and some of his innovations, such as distinctive unit patches of the kind soldiers still wear on their sleeves were created to increase unit cohesion and morale. But Hooker was something of a blowhard, and officers, including Confederates, who had played poker with him in the old days, suspected that Hooker could be bluffed when all the chips were on the table. An excellent corps commander, Hooker proved inadequate to the demands of top command of the Army of the Potomac.
Chancellorsville. On May 2-4 the Battle of Chancellorsville turned out to be what is known as Lee’s “greatest victory.” Lee had divided his army in the face of a numerically superior opponent, but the speed of Jackson's advance caught Hooker’s army by surprise, and the Confederates rolled up the Federal flank. General Hooker, stunned by a cannonball that struck near him, became confused and pulled his army back, leaving the field to Lee. While the victory was indeed one of Lee’s greatest achievements, it was an extremely costly victory, for his most trusted commander, General Stonewall Jackson, was accidentally shot by his own men and died a few days later. Lee, devastated, said, “I have lost my right arm.” It detracts nothing from Lee’s achievement to point out that historians who have examined the battle place substantial blame for the loss on Hooker while still giving well-deserved credit to Lee. But it may be noted that Chancellorsville was Lee’s last victory. Stonewall Jackson could not be replaced.
With two large and significant victories behind him, Lee decide to again invade the North through Maryland in hope of bringing the war to a conclusion. Before they set off, however, General Jeb Stuart requested a review to show off the skill and flash of his cavalry. For most of the early part of the war Confederate cavalry had been unquestionably superior to the Union horsemen. But at the Battle of Brandy Station on June 9, which began shortly after Stuart's impressive review, and which was the largest cavalry battle of the war, General Stuart was fought to a draw by Union cavalry General Alfred Pleasanton. Stuart was saved from an embarrassing defeat by the arrival of General W.H.F. “Rooney” Lee.
Late in June Lee had crossed into Maryland and was nearing the Pennsylvania border, being tracked by the new commander of the Army of the Potomac, General George Gordon Meade. Part of Lee’s army was heading in the direction of Harrisburg, while the bulk of his forces were west of the little town of Gettysburg. Lee had sent Jeb Stuart out to keep an eye on the Union Army, giving his cavalry commander what might have seemed to be ambiguous orders. Stuart, wishing to redeem himself from his embarrassing performance at Brandy Station, traveled over toward Rockville, Maryland, where he harassed Union supply lines. Union cavalry under the command of General John Buford was, however, keeping a much closer eye on Lee’s movements and reporting information back to Union commanders.
Gettysburg: The Second Turning Point.
The Battle: Day 1, July 1, 1863
The Battle of Gettysburg occurred more or less by accident. Neither General Lee nor General Meade, who took command only a few days before the battle, had planned to fight there. General Ewell, now commanding Jackson’s corps, was headed toward Harrisburg, but some of Lee’s troops commanded by A.P. Hill, always on the lookout for a source of shoes and other provisions, sent a detachment toward Gettysburg, where a dozen roads crisscrossed the landscape and a railroad was under construction. Not knowing exactly where the Federals were—ever since Stuart had departed days earlier, Lee had been without his eyes and ears—Lee did not know that the Union 1st Corps under General John Reynolds was approaching Gettysburg from the southeast direction.
Union cavalry in the capable hands of General Buford was reconnoitering southern Pennsylvania in advance of the Union Army, which was making its way along the Baltimore Turnpike, and on the morning of July 1 was just passing through Gettysburg. Buford discovered a division of Hill’s Corps under the command of Henry Heth just west of the town and sent word back to Reynolds. Meanwhile, Buford decided to take Heth’s men under attack. Heavily outnumbered, Buford sent word back to Reynolds, urging him to hurry.
Reynolds's 1st Corps and Hill’s Corps clashed on the northwestern outskirts of the village, while General Ewell was called from his advance towards Harrisburg to join the action at Gettysburg. The arrival of Union General Oliver O. Howard’s 11th Corps helped to shift the balance toward the Union, which for much of the day was outnumbered. (Confederate Corps were larger than those of the Union.) The Union men were driven back through the town of Gettysburg and onto some high ground to the south and east of the town—Culp’s Hill and Cemetery Ridge. That's where the fighting ended the first day. At least for the time being Lee seemed to have the upper hand.
Day 2: July 2
Neither General Lee nor General Meade had been present when the fighting began on the first day at Gettysburg. Lee was drawn to the action by the sounds of fire from Heth’s division and quickly sent officers forward to determine what was going on. Not having contemplated a full engagement while his army was still divided, Lee nevertheless realized the he was too heavily engaged to break off the action, so he urged his remaining divisions forward. By the end of the day he had established himself on Seminary Ridge, a strip of high ground backed by woods on the southwest side of the town of Gettysburg. General Ewell’s corps, which had joined the action during the first day, was deployed around to the northeast side of Gettysburg facing Culp's Hill, part of the II Corps was arrayed along the northernmost segment of Seminary Ridge, and that component of Longstreet's Corps which was already on the battlefield was south of Hill's men. (See Map)
General Meade had arrived late in the evening of the first day of fighting and called his officers together in to assess the situation. With parts of his army and supplies advancing along the Baltimore Pike from the southeast direction, Meade understood that defending his position on Culp’s Hill was crucial. By the next morning General Slocum’s XII Corps was entrenched on Culp's Hill, with Howard's XI Corps on his left flank and Winfield Scott Hancock’s II Corps extending to the South along Cemetery Ridge. On Hancock’s left Flank was Daniel Sickles’ III Corps.
Having been successful with a double envelopment at Chancellorsville, Lee decided to again attack the flanks of the Union Army. But Gettysburg was a different place, and leadership in the Union army had been shaken up in the month since that last battle, and perhaps more important, Stonewall Jackson was no longer Lee’s top lieutenant. Lee's instructions to General Ewell were to take Culp’s Hill “if practicable,” the sort of command Jackson would have taken as leaving no room for doubt. Ewell threatened the Culp's Hill position, coming within yards of the Union supply train, but he never broke through.
On the south end of the battlefield, General Longstreet was directed to advance on the left flank of the Union line on the southern portion of Cemetery Ridge. A crucial piece of ground, Little Round Top, was unoccupied for most of the day, but Longstreet felt that a move around to the rear of the Union line behind Round Top and Little Round Top would be more effective. The details of the fighting on the second day are readily available from multiple sources. Suffice it to say that neither Ewell nor Longstreet accomplished what General Lee had in mind. Most critically for the outcome of the battle, a union officer had discovered that Little Round Top was uncovered, and quickly dispatched Union troops to that high ground to protect it. The famous 20th Maine regiment under Colonel Joshua Chamberlain held off attacks from three Alabama regiments, and at the end of the day the Union line stretched from Culp's hill to Little Round Top, with its seven corps arrayed the famous fishhook formation. The three Corps of Lee's army were arrayed from the northwest facing Culp’s Hill to the South along Seminary Ridge facing the Union line across a mile or so of open ground.
The Third Day: July 3
The third day of Gettysburg was the turning point of the war in the East. Jeb Stuart had arrived late in the evening of the second day, pleased to report that he had captured a train of union supplies, but General Lee was not impressed: Union supplies were of little use to him at that point. Because the inevitable confrontation between Lee and Stuart took place in private, it is not known exactly what was said. What is known is that Lee, despite the feelings of some of his generals that Stuart should be court-martialed, knew that his bold cavalry commander was too valuable to lose.
Perhaps realizing that so far he had committed much and gained little in this campaign, and that not only his army but the remaining southern forces were beginning to run out of resources, Lee decided to gamble on one great, bold stroke. He would attack directly into the center of the Union line, using George Pickett’s fresh division, which had not been engaged in the second day, supported by additional troops from Ewell’s corps. General Meade, a thoughtful if not in brilliant general, concluded that Lee, having tried the flanks unsuccessfully, would attack the center. With Winfield Scott Hancock’s II Corps in the center of the Union line, Meade was confident.
Shortly after noon on July 3rd General Lee’s artillery opened up a furious barrage designed to weaken the Union defenses along Cemetery Ridge. Thus began the greatest artillery duel ever conducted in the Western Hemisphere. It is reported that as the wind shifted during the afternoon, the rumbling of the cannon could be heard as far away as both Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. Whether that is true or not, the smoke, fire and noise that erupted were never forgotten by the troops present that day. Because of the smoke raised, it was difficult for the gunners to determine the effectiveness of their artillery fire upon the enemy. Thus Lee’s artillerymen were unaware that much of their shot was passing over the Union lines and landing in the rear, where it did considerable damage to supplies and other rear echelon elements, but had little impact on the troops who were preparing to defend against the assault. Union artillery, meanwhile, ceased firing to replace round shot with canister, turning their artillery pieces into what might be called overgrown shotguns in anticipation of the infantry charge.
When the smoke finally cleared General Pickett’s division, some 15,000 strong, marched out of the woods to the music of regimental bands, with bayonets glistening, and arrayed themselves in an impressive line stretching along the front edge of Seminary Ridge. Union troops on Cemetery Hill were awed by the spectacle, but, still smarting from Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, they were not intimidated. Union artillery, stocked with canister, moved their guns into position to fire directly into the advancing troops.
The objective of Pickett’s men was a copse of trees, still very prominent on the Gettysburg battlefield to this day. As his troops began to march, converging on that objective, they passed through a relatively low area, across a road and a wooden fence and then advanced up the slope toward the Union lines. When they were within range, Union riflemen and artillery let loose a furious volley of shot that tore great holes in the Confederate line. Nevertheless, the courageous southern soldiers pressed forward until a small group of them, perhaps a few hundred, reached a stone wall at the front of the Union line. Scrambling over the wall, they engaged the Yankees hand-to-hand, using rifle butts, bayonets, fists—anything that might bring an enemy down—in a few minutes of furious combat. But the damage had been too great, and the Confederate soldiers inside the Union lines who were not killed or wounded were soon captured, and the remnants of Pickett's division stumbled back toward Seminary Ridge. It is reported that General Lee rode out on his horse and confronted General Pickett, feeling that his division commander should try to organize an orderly retreat. “General Pickett,” he is supposed to have said, “you must see to your division.” The shattered General Pickett replied, “General Lee, I have no division.”
Thus ended three days of fighting that produced over 50,000 casualties on both sides. There was no fighting on July 4; both sides needed to recover. Lee began a painful evacuation back to Virginia with wagon trains of wounded soldiers moaning in their pain. President Lincoln, feeling that another opportunity had been lost to crush Lee's army once and for all, wrote an angry note to General Meade deploring the fact that he had let Lee escape. Rather than sending the note, however, the president held it and later concluded, “How can I criticize a man who has done so much for doing too little?”
There was no more major fighting in eastern sector in 1863. The destiny of the South was still being played out in Tennessee.
Vicksburg: The Decisive Turning Point
The City of Vicksburg occupies a steep bluff overlooking the Mississippi River. In 1863 the city was well fortified by state-of-the-art fortifications and heavy cannon. Sometimes known as fortress Vicksburg, the city stood across the Mississippi from the terminus of a railroad line that brought Texas beef and other supplies as well as military equipment smuggled into Texas from Mexico, where the ports were not affected by the American blockade. Another railroad lined left Vicksburg and stretched through Jackson, Mississippi, and back to the Eastern theater. The Vicksburg fortifications kept the Mississippi essentially closed to Union traffic north and south of the city.
The Vicksburg garrison numbered about 35,000 men under the command of General John C. Pemberton, a Pennsylvanian who was married to a woman from Virginia. To the north of the city stand Chickasaw bluffs, a steep, wooded approach that could be accessed only by going through the messy Chickasaw Bayou. To the south are more steep cliffs, also well protected. Approaching the city from the river side would have been well nigh impossible.
Starting in the fall of 1862 Grant began trying various strategies to capture Vicksburg. From his base in Memphis grant set out to approach Vicksburg by an inland route through a supply base which he established at Holly Springs in northern Mississippi. But cavalry raids by Nathan Bedford Forrest and Earl Van Dorn repeatedly disrupted Grant’s supply lines and he was forced to withdraw. Grant then tried sending gunboats and transports through to the swamps and bayous on both sides of the Mississippi, but often found the waterways thick with overhanging branches and channeled through swampy ground. Progress was slow, and Confederate sharpshooters could easily harass attempts to cut a path through the natural barriers. In early 1863 Grant even had General Sherman’s men try to reroute the Mississippi though “Grant’s canal,” a ditch across a neck of land in a bend in the Mississippi opposite Vicksburg. None of those approaches worked, and Grant knew he had to find a way to get at the fortress city from the eastern land side.
The result was what Civil War historians have accurately called the most brilliant campaign of the Civil War. Grant had Flag Officer Foote float his gunboats and transports down the Mississippi without power during the dark night; most of them made it. Then Grant marched his entire army South along the west bank of the Mississippi past Vicksburg, crossed the river at Bruinsburg, and set out for Jackson, about 40 miles to the east of Vicksburg. Grant commandeered all the wagons he could find and took his supplies with him, cutting off communication with the river (and with Washington) as he headed northeast.
Meanwhile Grant directed cavalry officer Colonel Benjamin Grierson to take a cavalry force from Holly Springs through the area around Jackson and down to Baton Rouge. Grierson led three regiments of cavalry, about 1,700 troops, 600 miles in a little over two weeks. They tore up railroad tracks, cut telegraph wires, destroyed bridges, warehouses and railroad equipment and generally raised hell, occasionally making feints to distract Confederate pursuers.
Grant fought his way to Jackson, rolling over outnumbered defenders, as Pemberton could not relieve the entire Vicksburg garrison. Securing his rear at Jackson, Grant then turned toward Vicksburg’s defenders, who had come out to meet him. After winning a battle at Champion’s Hill, he drove the Confederates relentlessly back into the city. His attempts to storm the garrison, however, failed, and Grant settled into a siege which lasted 45 days. When Pemberton found his men, as well as the inhabitants of the city, desperately short of supplies and under constant bombardment from Grant’s artillery, he had no choice but to surrender. Pemberton turned over the city and its garrison on July 4, 1963, one day after Lee’s troops were turned back in Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg.
President Lincoln, who had grown up in the Mississippi Valley and understood the significance of the capture of Vicksburg, sent a telegram of congratulations to Grant. He is said to have remarked, “Once again the father of waters flows unvexed to the sea.” The double blow of Gettysburg and Vicksburg crippled the South and set the stage for the final phase of the war.
The New York City Draft Riots. Despite the victories at Vicksburg and Gettysburg President Lincoln could not rest easy throughout the summer and fall of 1863. The combination of the Emancipation Proclamation and the draft system, which placed the burden of the continued fighting mostly on working-class men who could not afford a substitute, led to discontent, especially among the Irish working-class people in New York City. Fearing that liberated slaves might threaten their economic well-being, and disgruntled over the implications of the draft, workers fomented a riot in New York City to show their discontent with the war and emancipation.
Rampaging through black neighborhoods they set fires and beat or terrorized African-Americans. Eleven men were murdered by lynch mobs, and the riots were only quelled when federal troops were sent from Pennsylvania to the city. Although the naval bombardment depicted in the recent film Gangs of New York did not occur, federal troops used artillery against the rioters, who numbered in the thousands.
The Copperheads. Lincoln’s problems did not end with the suppression of the New York race riot. Political opposition to Lincoln's wartime policies were headed by a group of disgruntled Democrats, called copperheads by their Republican opponents. Although members of the movement did not have a unified agenda, they were opposed to the war, and many of them thought it was being fought to free the slaves and destroy the South. Some of the same motives that propelled the New York rioters were present among the copperheads, who were politically very active.
The most famous copperhead was Clement L. Vallandigham, an Ohio politician who made speeches openly critical of Lincoln and his policies. Accused of disloyalty in time of war, Vallandigham was court-martialed, convicted and eventually given free passage through Confederate lines and made his way to Canada, from where he ran for governor of Ohio. He was defeated in a pro-war landslide, but his Democratic supporters managed to get a copperhead platform accepted during the 1864 presidential election. The Democratic nominee, George B. McClellan, did not accept the copperhead agenda and was pro-war, though Lincoln feared the ultimate result if McClellan were elected.
Chickamauga. In September 1863 the battleground shifted to southeast Tennessee and northwestern Georgia. General Longstreet, whose Corps had been detached from Lee's army, joined forces with General Bragg and attacked Union forces south of Chattanooga along Chickamauga Creek. The Union army was spared a disastrous defeat by the bravery of General George H. Thomas and his brigade, who stood their ground long enough to allow the Union Army to make an orderly retreat into Chattanooga. For his performance Thomas became known as the “Rock of Chickamauga,” and his brave soldiers the Chickamauga brigade. A statue of General Thomas is located on the circle bearing his name in Washington, DC.
As the Federal troops in Chattanooga suffered from supply shortages and poor morale, General Grant was directed to proceed to Chattanooga to take charge. Grant arrived inauspiciously, purchased a horse from a local stable, and rode out to the Union headquarters. Calling the commanders together, he asked each to outline for him the disposition and condition of his troops. He sat listening quietly and when he had heard enough, he began writing out orders for each commander on a notepad. Distributing the written instructions, he told his officers that they had their orders and sent them on their way. Within a few days supply lines had been opened and troop morale began to return.
Chattanooga. In November 1863 the last major battle of that decisive year was fought at Chattanooga. Grant’s corps commanders, Generals Hooker, Sherman and Thomas, engaged Bragg’s troops while Longstreet was carrying out a siege of Knoxville. Once again a corps commander, General Hooker took his men to the heights of Lookout Mountain which overlooks the city of Chattanooga and the Tennessee Valley. In an action that became known as the “battle above the clouds,” Hooker drove the Confederates off the mountain and raised the national flag at the summit, encouraging the troops below.
Although Grant had ordered that there be no frontal assaults against well-defended Confederate positions, troops under Sherman and Thomas approaching Confederate defenses along Missionary Ridge took it upon themselves to assaults the Confederate lines, feeling that they were vulnerable in the position they held at the base of the ridge. The assault was successful, and the battle resulted in Chattanooga, the “gateway to the South,” being fully in Union hands. One of the two major Confederate armies still in operation had been routed.
Summary of 1863. The three great Union victories at Gettysburg, Vicksburg, and Chattanooga shifted the tide dramatically in favor of the Union, but the South was not yet defeated nor ready to surrender; soldiers on both sides prepared for another year of warfare. President Lincoln weathered political storms but was concerned about his reelection if the war had not been settled by then.
1864
As the third full year of fighting dawned, questions abounded. Grant had captured two Confederate armies numbering over 40,000 men, and Lee's Army of Northern Virginia had suffered huge casualties, not only at Antietam and Gettysburg but also in their victorious engagements. If the outcome of the Civil War was inevitable, one might ask, how was the South able to carry on in the face of such losses? At the same time one might ask how the men of the Union, and their women at home, remained willing to accept such sacrifice in the face of an enemy that seem determined to continue the slaughter at all costs.
In his classic history of the Army of the Potomac, historian Bruce Catton, discussing the reasons why thousands of veterans whose three-year enlistments had expired in the early 1864 were willing to sign up for further service wrote that, “the dominant motive, finally, seems to have been a simple desire to see the job through.” The same sort of motivation drove Confederates to continue the struggle in the face of difficult odds: both sides had invested an enormous amount of blood and treasure in the conflict, and it was difficult to cast aside such a costly investment and give up the fight. So the fight went on.
President Lincoln, finally realizing that he had found a general who might be able to finish what others had started, brought Grant east to take command of all the Union armies and awarded him the rank of lieutenant general, the first officer since George Washington to have been given that honor. Although Grant was warmly received in Washington, he did not take well to the political environment of the city and quickly made his way to the Army of the Potomac headquarters where he conferred with General Meade, who officially remained the Army’s commanding general. Grant returned to Washington for conferences, but when he returned two weeks later the Army of the Potomac was for all practical purposes now Grant’s army. Waiting to take the measure of their new opponent were Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia. The war was about to enter its final stage.
As commander of all Union forces, Grant was now able to devise a strategy that would take advantage of the North superior numbers and the South’s dwindling resources. General William T. Sherman had taken over command of the army of the Tennessee and was prepared to move into Georgia. Grant’s strategy was to have his Army of the Potomac capture Richmond while Sherman captured Atlanta, then the two armies would execute a pincer movement on Lee’s army in Virginia. Grant assigned additional missions to other officers, Generals Butler and Sigel, but the focus of the final year of fighting was on Grant and Sherman.
Sherman's Campaign in Georgia and the Carolinas, 1864-1865
On May 7, 1864, Sherman set out from Chattanooga with armies commanded by Generals Thomas, Schofield, and McPherson. Remembered for his famous march through Georgia, Sherman’s reputation suggests that he was cold-blooded and ruthless. In fact Sherman was a very skillful commander who did not spill blood, neither his or the enemy’s, carelessly. In his movement from Chattanooga to Atlanta Sherman avoided direct attacks on heavily defended positions and instead used flanking movements to advance in a less costly manner. Surrounding the city, Sherman accepted its surrender on September 2. He ordered the city evacuated, and in a famous letter to the mayor and city council, he gave his reasons why he would not honor their request to rescind the order. His response is regarded as a clear definition of what modern total warfare had become. (See appendix.)
Sherman spent two months in Atlanta preparing for his “March to the Sea.” Keeping his promise to make Georgia howl, Sherman’s men cut a path across Georgia destroying everything of possible military value and much that was probably not. Although Sherman cautioned his men against unnecessary violence to civilians, the march was nonetheless harsh and brutal. Arriving outside Savannah shortly before Christmas Sherman allowed a weak defending force to escape rather than fight what would surely be a losing battle.
Sherman and his staff moved into the city, but the Army bivouacked outside and Savannah was left for the most part untouched. Several weeks later Sherman’s army crossed the Savannah River into the state which his men knew had been the source of all the rumpus, the first-to-secede state of South Carolina. Sherman’s march through Carolina was more fierce and brutal than his march through Georgia, but by that time Lee was in serious trouble in Virginia. Sherman captured the capital of Columbia in February 1865 and proceeded northward to link up with Grant.
The Election of 1864. President Lincoln may have had reason to worry about being reelected, though his concern was less for his own political future than for the outcome of the war. He feared that if the Democrats won with their candidate, General McClellan,, the Confederacy might be allowed to go its way in peace with the union permanently severed. All the sacrifices made to that point would then have been for naught. Lincoln rejected suggestions that the election ought to be postponed or canceled on the grounds that he was fighting to save a democratic society, and denying people the vote would controvert the purpose for which he was fighting.
Lincoln did, however, decide not to run as a Republican but rather on a National Union Party ticket. (The Republican Party changed its name for the election.) He replaced Vice President Hannibal Hamlin with Andrew Johnson of Tennessee, a Southern Democratic senator who had remained loyal to the Union. Lincoln instructed that all soldiers who could be spared should be allowed to return home to cast their votes. Some states allowed their soldiers to cast their votes in the field. Those who were able to do so voted overwhelmingly for the president over the general who had formerly commanded many of them. The same sentiment that had propelled many soldiers to extend their service also worked for Lincoln—his fighting men wanted it to see the job done.
As late as August, 1864, the election may well have been in doubt, for Grant’s Virginia campaign was proving to be extremely costly. But Sherman's capture of Atlanta, a major southern city, in September gave renewed hope for a successful conclusion to the conflict to the northern people, and they reelected Lincoln by a comfortable margin. He won 55% of the popular vote and captured the electoral college by 212 to 21.
From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House
About the time that Sherman was beginning his march into Georgia Grant attacked Lee west of Fredericksburg in the Battle of the Wilderness. The thick foliage caused confusion, and soldiers had difficulty distinguishing friend from enemy in the smoking undergrowth. After a few days of indecisive but bloody combat, the veteran Union troops expected to return to bivouacked once again and wait for the next assault. But Grant had other plans; he wired back to Washington that he intended “to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer.” Grant’s army engaged Lee in a series of frustrating and costly flanking movements that took the two armies from the Wilderness to Cold Harbor, a position east of Richmond. Grant's army suffered 60,000 casualties in one month, earning him the epithet of “butcher.” But Grant knew that he could eventually win the series of battles by grinding down Lee’s depleted forces with his own superior numbers and resources.
Grant directed to some of his subordinate commanders to advance on Petersburg, hoping to take the city and prevent Lee from using it as a base. The Federals failed to take Petersburg, however, in four days of fighting, and a nine month siege began. Lee’s army was now bottled up in Richmond and Petersburg, and Union attempts to breach the Confederate lines failed. The conclusion would have to wait for the spring of 1865.
Last-Ditch Diplomacy. While there can be little doubt that the initial cause of secession was slavery and that to a certain extent the war was being fought on that account, the three years of bitter fighting had shifted southern sentiments to a certain extent, and the goal of the Confederacy by late 1864 was getting out of the union at any cost. It was conceivable to many that that might even mean abandoning the institution of slavery. Although the idea of emancipating or arming the slaves alarmed many in the South, a number of officers and politicians thought the idea worthy of consideration.
In December 1864 Confederate Secretary of State Judah P. Benjamin and President Jefferson Davis authorized a mission to Great Britain and France with a proposition to offer abolition of slavery in return for recognition of Southern independence and assistance. Although the mission was unsuccessful, the potential value of freeing slaves to fight was powerful, and in February 1865 the Confederate House of Representatives authorized President Davis to enlist black soldiers from the southern states. Although Southern newspapers and politicians acknowledged that slavery had been a cause of the war, many argued that it was time to give it up in order to achieve independence. The movement came too late; by that time the Confederacy was lost.
In November and December 1864 Confederate armies under the command of General Hood moved into Tennessee in one last desperate offensive assault. The first action took place at Franklin, some 15 miles south of Nashville. The federals were forced to retreat, but Hood had suffered large heavy casualties. On December 15 and 16 General Thomas attacked the advancing Confederates and drove Hood’s men out of Tennessee all away to Mississippi. The last Confederate offensive action of the war ended in a crushing defeat.
On March 4 Lincoln was sworn in for his second term as president and gave an inaugural address which is inscribed on one wall of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. Acknowledging that it might perhaps be God’s will that the war, which he said had started over slavery, would continue “until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword,” he ended on a conciliatory note, urging for the entire nation a future built on the ideas of “charity for all and malice toward none.”
The Final Campaign. During the course of the winter, Grant’s Union army had been fighting their way around to the western side of Petersburg in order to cut off the last roads and the last railroad into the city. Although Sherman was rapidly approaching Lee’s rear, Grant was determined to finish the business himself. He sent cavalry under Philip Sheridan and the V Corps of the Army of the Potomac around to the west of Petersburg to attack Lee’s right. Lee's depleted Army could not stave off the Yankee assault as Grant ordered an advance all along the line.
On a Sunday morning in April, President Davis, while at St. Paul's Church for services, received a telegram from General Lee indicating that Richmond must be abandoned. The Confederate government packed records and the treasury’s remaining gold on the last trains and headed out of the city. They set fire to everything of military value in Richmond, and with the departure of the army and the government, frustrated Southerners joined in the destruction of their capital. Union soldiers entered the city the next morning and their first business was to put out the fires and restore order.
As Lee was attempting to escape to the West President Lincoln visited Richmond, where he was surrounded by blacks shouting “Glory to God!” and “God bless Father Abraham!” Lincoln was overcome with emotion as he told one black man kneeling in front of him to get up again, that he did not have to kneel before anybody except God.
Lee’s desperate attempt to escape Grant’s army was doomed to failure. Now outnumbered by the Union army by about four to one, Lee’s famished men tried to reach a supply train near Danville, but they were cut off by Sheridan’s cavalry backed up by an infantry corps. Two more corps were closing in on Lee, and he reluctantly concluded that the only course left of him was to request a meeting with General Grant. On April 9 Lee formally surrendered the Army of the Potomac at Appomattox Courthouse. For all practical purposes, the Civil War was over.
President Lincoln Assassinated
Feeling that his four-year nightmare had come to an end, President Lincoln was able to relax for the first time since his inauguration. On April 14 he and his wife attended a play at Ford’s Theatre in Washington. John Wilkes Booth, an actor who was familiar to the staff of the theater, made his way to the president’s box and shot him in the back of the head. Mortally wounded, Lincoln died the next morning, which was Good Friday. While many in the South were cheered by the death of the man they considered to be a tyrant, the North mourned its fallen leader. Thousands lined the tracks as Lincoln’s funeral train made its way back to Springfield, Illinois. As even some Southerners recognized, Abraham Lincoln would certainly have presided over a generous Reconstruction era, but that was not to be. As Winston Churchill wrote in his History of the English Speaking Peoples, the bullet that killed Lincoln did “more damage than all the Confederate cannonade put together.”
Within a few weeks after Lee’s surrender the remaining Confederate military units surrendered. President Jefferson Davis was captured in Georgia by a Union cavalry force that had traveled at will through the South. There were no settlements or negotiations; the Union had never recognized the independence of the Confederacy, so there was no need for any sort of treaty. The only issue was how to restore the former Confederate States of America to their proper place within the United States.
The impact of the terrible war on both the North and South was barely calculable. The fighting had produced approximately one million casualties, including over 600,000 deaths from all causes. The impact on the Southern economy had been devastating; shortages produced by the blockade and the printing of paper currency had led to drastic inflation in the Confederacy. The South also faced a badly deteriorating railroad network and shortages in labor, capital, and technology. Millions of dollars of value in property, including that of slaves, had simply evaporated, and the economic recovery of the South would be a struggle for both the black and white population for decades to come.
Women in the Civil War. As was true in the American Revolution, women on both sides assumed responsibilities that had once been the province of their departed husbands, fathers, sons and brothers. They managed farms, plantations and businesses, and in the North women took jobs in industry and government. Women were especially valuable in areas such as textiles and shoemaking, helping to provide millions of articles needed by the soldiers. Many northern women enlisted in the Army Medical Corps, and the profession of nursing was advanced markedly through the efforts of women such as Clara Barton and Dorothea Dix. Florence Nightingale had become the British “angel of the battlefield” during the Crimean War, and her example spurred American nurses to carry their skills into areas formerly the sole province of men.
As has been true in other American wars, women were expected to do their part in keeping up the morale of the troops on the front line. Thousands of letters written from soldiers to their families, both north and south, as well as the families’ responses, have been collected and published. Historian James McPherson and others have done extensive research in collections of letters in order to better understand issues surrounding the war. Although difficult to measure, the impact of attitudes of the people at home certainly affected behavior on the battlefield. In the South, especially in the last year of the war, frustrations raised in places where Yankee armies had stormed through the country more or less unopposed were transmitted to soldiers directly; lonely and frightened women sometimes encouraged their husbands to desert and come home and take care of them.
An unknown number of women also fought in the Civil War on both sides. Since they had to disguise themselves and keep their sexual identity secret, records of female participation on the battlefield are virtually nonexistent. What information we have is mostly anecdotal, but it is nevertheless interesting. A woman who served with Grant at Vicksburg has become something of an icon for feminist historians. She fought as Private Albert D.J. Cashier, but had been born Jennie Hodgers in Ireland. She lived out her life as a man, and her true identity was discovered only when she was near death in an old soldiers’ home in Illinois.
Many women kept journals and diaries during the war, and those writing and the letters they wrote to soldiers and to friends tell us much about conditions in the North and South during the war. The last line of John Milton’s poem “On His Blindness,” is often cited to underscore roles of women in wartime: “They also serve who only stand and wait.”
Other Issues During the War
Financial Matters. Generally speaking the North handled wartime finances reasonably well, despite much corruption and waste. The Federal government raised taxes, sold bonds and printed “greenbacks”—paper money not backed by gold or silver that was supported by a “legal tender” act, meaning that the government paper currency had to be accepted for all debts public and private. The new taxes included the first federal income tax, higher tariffs, and taxes on almost every known commodity. The North did suffer a modest inflation during the course of the war, and widespread fraud occurred in the procurement of equipment, supplies and food for Union armies, a phenomenon that seems to recur in wartime with regularity. Yet except for a brief period of financial panic before Congress took action in 1861 in 1862, the federal economy remained remarkably stable.
In the South, because financial resources were depleted more rapidly than in the North, Confederate paper currency soon became devalued, and rampant inflation a hundred fold greater than in the north ruined the Southern economy and hampered the war effort. The South managed to procure much in the way of vital supplies through blockade runners, though owners of those ships often tried to maximize profits by smuggling in luxury items such as perfume along with gunpowder and rifles. At the end of the war, when Confederate money and bonds were invalidated, millions of dollars of paper worth evaporated.
Politics. The Copperhead movement in the North, mentioned above, threatened Lincoln’s management of the war and weakened the armies by encouraging men to desert. But the absence of a strong Democratic Party in Congress gave the Republicans an opportunity to pass legislation that might otherwise have stalled. The result was one of the most prolific periods of legislation in American history as the Republican pro-growth, pro-business Congress paved the way for postwar capitalist expansion.
Two laws passed in 1862 would have an enormous impact when the war ended by encouraging development of the West. The Homestead Act of May 1862 granted any family head over 21 years of age 160 acres of public land, the requirement being that the owner would have to live on the land for five years and develop it. Additional land could be obtained at very low prices. In order to improve transportation in those vast unsettled areas Congress passed a series of Pacific Railway acts beginning in 1862. The acts provided for huge land grants along proposed rights of way and loans for railroads which could be repaid at a comfortable interest rate. In the end railroad companies received over 200 million acres of land from both federal and state land grants, enabling construction of the first transcontinental railroad to continue as soon as the Civil War was over.
Another 1862 act, the Morrill Act, provided thousands of acres of land to the states for construction of colleges and universities for the furtherance of the agricultural and mechanical arts. At the same time Congress created the Department of Agriculture. The result of the Morrill act was the creation of many first-class universities across the nation, including some whose names, such as Texas A&M, reflected the purpose of the act. The impact of this significant legislation would, of course, not be realized until the fighting had ended, but the impact of these laws would carry well into the 20th century and beyond.
Jefferson Davis also faced political strife, but it played out differently for him than for Abraham Lincoln. With a vigorous two-party system still alive in the north, Lincoln was able to take criticism of his government and policies as traditional responses of the “loyal opposition” even when that opposition was not necessarily loyal. With the Southern one-party system, however, Davis tended to take criticism personally, and he was less skillful in absorbing the barbs than Lincoln, whose patience sometimes tried even his most loyal supporters. Davis was further hampered by the states rights philosophy of the South, which occasionally produced a sort of knee-jerk reaction to Confederate federal policies.
Wartime Diplomacy. For some historians it is almost a given that if Great Britain or France had recognized Confederate independence and entered the war, Southern victory would have been virtually assured. Lincoln was well aware of that fact when he apologized to the British over the Trent affair, recognizing that British involvement could only bode ill for the Union. Two factors worked in Lincoln’s favor regarding British involvement. Alternative sources of cotton in Egypt and India made British reliance on Southern cotton for her textiles factories less urgent. And British working class objection to Southern slavery gave pause to the government, especially following the Emancipation Proclamation, when British support for the South would seem to some like support for slavery.
The service of U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain Charles Francis Adams (son of John Quincy) cannot be overlooked. His skillful diplomacy kept his government well informed of possible British actions, and effectively neutralized potential conflicts that might have changed the British position vis-à-vis recognition of the South. The tension between the Lincoln government and the British came to a head in the summer of 1863 over the Laird Rams controversy.
James Bulloch was a Confederate agent and an experienced naval officer who made his way to Great Britain in 1861 and began to contract for the building of warships for use by the Confederacy. Two of those, the C.S.S. Alabama and C.S.S. Florida, became famous commerce raiders and did substantial damage to Union merchant shipping. When Bulloch negotiated with the Laird shipbuilding company for construction of a number of ironclad rams designed to break up the Union blockade fleet, Adams lodged repeated protests with the British foreign office. In one note he suggested to the British foreign secretary Russell, “It would be superfluous in me to point out to your Lordship that this is war.” The British government had already decided to back down, but the successful outcome of the confrontation nevertheless made Adams a hero. (Incidentally, James Bulloch’s sister, Martha (Mittie) Bulloch was Theodore Roosevelt’s mother.)
Despite some initial blundering, as when he suggested to President Lincoln that the United States might restore the Union by starting a foreign war (a suggestion which the wiser president simply ignored), William Seward proved to be an effective Secretary of State. When the government of Napoleon III began an imperial adventure in Mexico, the United States government refused to recognize his authority and sent troops to the Mexican border as a warning. Napoleon’s folly was soon undone as his appointed emperor of Mexico, Archduke Maximilian, was quickly deposed.
In the end, the hope for recognition of Southern Independence which might mirror French recognition of American independence in 1778 never came to be. Just as it can be claimed that had the French not intervened, the outcome of the American Revolution would likely have been very different, so it may be claimed that any such recognition on behalf of the Confederacy certainly might have changed the outcome of the Civil War. In that regard, the value of the service of Ambassador Adams cannot be overstated.
The Legacy of the War. The American Civil War, or war between the states, remains at the center of American history. The loss of over 600,000 lives and the destruction of untold millions of dollars in property was felt for generations. While the end of slavery was the most visible change on the face of America, numerous other transformations made the United States a very different nation in 1865 from what she had been in 1860.
On the negative side, the bitterness and hatred that would last for generations was an unsurprising outcome of the terrible conflict. In the North, smoldering resentment over the concept of the rich man’s war and the poor man’s fight would erupt in what became known as the war between capital and labor in the decades before 1900. Workingmen would prove to be just as willing to shoot a company hired guard or strike-breaker as they had been to shoot a rebel or a Yankee. Labor violence would continue well into the 20th century.
In the South, where the bitterness was understandably far greater than in the north, the former slave population was predictably scapegoated for the war and its outcome. Random violence against Freedmen began almost as soon as the war was over and continued with the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacy organizations. The Civil War and its immediate aftermath, the Reconstruction Era, where huge milestones in the progress toward America's goal of “liberty and justice for all.” Nor was all the bitterness directed against blacks; whites who had openly opposed secession, or who had failed to support the Confederate cause with sufficient enthusiasm, were often targets of ostracism and even violence during the postwar years. In addition, northerners who came South after the war for various reasons, some of them good, were labeled “carpetbaggers” and were often abused.
A measure of the bitterness generated in the South can be seen in the words of a woman of Richmond, who wrote in her diary, “When the Yankees raised the American flag over the capitol, tears ran down my face, for I could remember a time when I loved that flag, and now I hated the very sight of it.” On hearing news of President Lincoln's assassination a woman in Texas exulted over the fact that the most bloodthirsty tyrant who ever walked the face of the earth was gone, and she hoped he would “burn in hell” all his days. A student of this author, a Northerner, once claimed that when she married a Southern man it took her twenty years to figure out that “damn Yankee” was two words. Recent struggles over the displaying of the Confederate flag and other racially motivated disturbances suggest that the legacy of the Civil War, though perhaps fading in the 21st century, is still alive.
Expension and Civil War Home | Updated November 25, 2008