Confederate Soldiers Were Highly Motivated Fighters

The Civil War:

The Two Combatants:
The Union had many advantages (e.g., manufacturing, railroad mileage, and financial resources), but it would need to conquer an area larger than western Europe to win.
Confederate soldiers were highly motivated fighters.
On both sides, the outbreak of war stirred powerful feelings of patriotism.
The Public and the War:
Both sides were assisted by a vast propaganda effort to mobilize public opinion.
The war was brought to the people via newspapers and photographs.

The First Modern War:
The Civil War was one of the first wars in history to fully utilize the new technologies that had been created from the Industrial Revolution. Furthermore, both sides (but particularly the north given its extensive industrialization) utilized industry to create the resources necessary to fight.
The Technology of War:
Railroads were vital to the war effort.
Introduction of the rifle changed the nature of combat.
Modern warfare included POW camps and disease.
Mobilizing Resources:
The outbreak of the war found both sides unprepared.
Feeding and supplying armies was a challenge for both sides.
Despite the North’s advantages, victory on the battlefield was elusive. Why?
Military Strategies:

The Confederacy adopted a defensive strategy.
Lincoln realized that his armies had to defeat the Confederacy’s armies and dismantle slavery.

The War Begins:
In the East, most of the war’s fighting took place in a narrow corridor between Washington and Richmond.
The first Battle of Bull Run, a Confederate victory, shattered any illusions that war was romantic.
Disaster for the Union-showed unpreparedness. Many elected officials had actually come to watch the battle unfold. Once the defeat was eminent, Union troops retreated, many running past the elected officials in an attempt to escape.
After the First Bull Run, George McClellan assumed command of the Union army of the Potomac.
The War in the East:
General Lee blunted McClellan’s attacks in Virginia and forced him to withdraw back to the vicinity of Washington.
Successful on the defensive, Lee now launched an invasion of the North.
McClellan’s Army of the Potomac stopped Lee at the Battle of Antietam (Maryland), the single bloodiest day in U.S. history (September 17, 1862).
23,000 casualties
Ambrose Burnside replaced McClellan after Antietam.
Burnside’s assault on Lee at Fredericksburg, Virginia, resulted in a disastrous Union defeat (December 1862).
The War in the West:
The War in the West, though often ignored in more popular renditions of the Civil War, was of vital importance to the Union victory. This theater of the war is where the strategy that ultimately won the war was perfected.
Ulysses S. Grant was the architect of early success in the West.
Though prior to the Civil War Grant was considered somewhat of a military failure (he had little experience and had, in fact, been out of the military when war broke out), he was prescient in realizing early on how to exploit the North’s advantages of industrial power and sheer population size.
In February 1862, Grant won the Union’s first significant victory when he captured Fort Henry and Fort Donelson in Tennessee.
Grant withstood a surprise Confederate attack at the Battle of Shiloh (Tennessee).
Emancipation:
Slavery and the War:
In numbers, scale, and the economic power of the institution of slavery, American emancipation dwarfed that of any other country.
At the outset of the war, Lincoln invoked time-honored northern values to mobilize public support.
Lincoln initially insisted that slavery was irrelevant to the conflict.
The Unraveling of Slavery:
Early in the war, Congress adopted a resolution proposed by Senator John J. Crittenden of Kentucky, which affirmed that the Union had no intention of interfering with slavery.
The policy of ignoring slavery unraveled and, by the end of 1861, the military began treating escaped blacks as contraband of war (property of military value subject to confiscation).
Blacks saw the outbreak of fighting as heralding the long awaited end of bondage.
Steps toward Emancipation:
Since slavery stood at the foundation of the Southern economy, antislavery northerners insisted that emancipation was necessary to weaken the South’s ability to sustain the war.
Throughout 1861 and 1862, Lincoln struggled to retain control of the emancipation issue.
Union General John C. Frémont issued a proclamation freeing slaves in Missouri (August 1861).
Fearing the negative impact on loyal border states, Lincoln rescinded Frémont’s order.
Lincoln proposed gradual emancipation and colonization for border-state slaves.
Lincoln’s Decision:
Sometime during the summer of 1862, Lincoln concluded that emancipation had become a political and military necessity.
Upon Secretary of State William Seward’s advice, he delayed announcing emancipation until a Union victory.
On September 22, 1862, five days after Antietam, Lincoln issued the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation.
The initial Northern reaction was not encouraging, with important Democratic wins in the fall elections.
The Emancipation Proclamation
Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, which declared slaves in Confederate-held territory to be free.
Despite its limitations, the proclamation set off scenes of jubilation among free blacks and abolitionists in the North and “contrabands” and slaves in the South.
The Emancipation Proclamation not only altered the nature of the Civil War and the course of American history, but represented a turning point in Lincoln’s own thinking.
Did not mention anything about compensation for slave owners nor anything about colonization, signaling that Lincoln began to believe that those of African descent were part of America.
Enlisting Black Troops:
Of the proclamation’s provisions, few were more radical in their implications than the enrollment of blacks into military service.
By the end of the war, over 180,000 black men had served in the Union army, and 24,000 in the navy.
Most black soldiers were emancipated slaves who joined the army in the South.
For black soldiers, military service proved to be a liberating experience.
At least 130 former soldiers served in political office after the Civil War.
The Union navy treated black sailors pretty much the same as white sailors.
Within the army, black soldiers did not receive equal treatment to white soldiers.
Black soldiers played a crucial role not only in winning the Civil War but also in defining the war’s consequences.
The Second American Revolution:
Liberty and Union:
The Union’s triumph consolidated the northern understanding of freedom as the national norm.
Emancipation offered proof of the progressive nature and global significance of the country’s history.
Lincoln’s Vision:
To Lincoln, the American nation embodied a set of universal ideas, centered on political democracy and human liberty.
The Gettysburg Address identified the nation’s mission with the principle that “all men are created equal.”
From Union to Nation:
The war forged a new national self-consciousness, reflected in the increasing use of the word “nation”—a unified political entity—in place of the older “Union” of separate states.
Liberty in Wartime:
Neither side was completely unified
There were Confederate sympathizers in the North and Union sympathizers in the South
Republicans labeled those opposed to the war “Copperheads.”
Created 2 problems:
How should they handle the critics?
How do they ensure a steady supply of men?
The war heightened existing social tensions and created new ones.
Draft riots
Labor movement
Lincoln consolidated executive power and twice suspended the writ of habeas corpus throughout the entire Union for those accused of “disloyal activities.”
After the war, the Court made it clear that the Constitution was not suspended in wartime (Ex parte Milligan, 1866).
The North’s Transformation:
The North experienced the war as a time of prosperity.
Government and the Economy:
Congress adopted policies that promoted economic growth and permanently altered the nation’s financial system.
The Homestead Act
The Land-Grant College Act
Building the Transcontinental Railroad:
Congress passed land grants for railroads.
The transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869.
A New Financial System:
The need to pay for the war produced dramatic changes in U.S. financial policy:
Increased tariff
New taxes on goods
First income tax
Bonds
Wartime economic policies greatly benefited northern manufacturers, railroad men, and financiers.
Taken together, the Union’s economic policies vastly increased the power and size of the federal government.
The War and Native Americans:
Withdrawal of troops from the West increased conflict between Indians and white settlers.
Sioux attack in Minnesota.
Chivington’s massacre of Cheyenne and Arapaho at Sand Creek, Colorado
Union campaign against Navajo led to the tribe’s Long Walk, or removal to a reservation.
Confederates treated Indians better than did the United States.
Confederate Constitution allowed Indian tribes to elect congressional representatives.
Slave-owning tribes, such as Cherokee, sided with the Confederacy.
Women and the War:
Women stepped into the workforce as nurses, factory workers, and government clerks.
Hundreds of thousands of Northern women took part in humanitarian organizations.
Northern women were brought into the public sphere and the work they performed during the war offered them a taste of independence.
Clara Barton, president of the American National Red Cross, lobbied for the United States to endorse the First Geneva Convention of 1864.
The Confederate Nation:
Leadership and Government:
Jefferson Davis proved unable to communicate the war’s meaning effectively to ordinary men and women.
Under Davis, the Confederate nation became far more centralized than the Old South had been.
Confederate government controlled railroads
Confederate government built factories
King Cotton diplomacy sought to pressure Europeans to side with the Confederacy, but this failed.
The Inner Civil War:
Social change and internal turmoil engulfed much of the Confederacy.
The draft encouraged class divisions among whites.
Southern Unionists:
Southerners loyal to the Union made a significant contribution to Union victory.
At least 50,000 southern white men fought for the Union.
Elizabeth Van Lew provided vital information to Union forces.
Economic Problems:
The South’s economy, unlike the North’s, was in crisis during the war.
Numerous yeoman families, many of whom had gone to war to preserve their economic independence, sank into poverty and debt.
By the war’s end, over 100,000 Southern men had deserted.
Black Soldiers for the Confederacy:
A shortage of manpower led the Confederate Congress in March 1865 to authorize the arming of slaves, but the war ended before black soldiers were actually recruited.
Women and the Confederacy:
Even more than in the North, the war placed unprecedented burdens on Southern white women.
In particular, the economic struggles faced by the Confederacy hit women hard. There were bread riots throughout the South as a result of food shortages.
Many were left in charge of the plantations while the men were off fighting.
Rose Greenhow served as a Confederate spy.
The growing disaffection of Southern white women contributed to the decline in home-front morale and encouraged desertion from the army.
Turning Points on the battlefield:
Gettysburg and Vicksburg:
Lee advanced onto Northern soil in Pennsylvania, but was held back by Union forces under the command of General George Meade at the Battle of Gettysburg (July 1863).
Pickett’s Charge
General Grant secured a Union victory at Vicksburg, Mississippi (July 1863)
1864:
Grant, in 1864, began a war of attrition against Lee’s army in Virginia.
At the end of six weeks of fighting, Grant’s casualties stood at 60,000—almost the size of Lee’s entire army—while Lee had lost 30,000 men.
General William T. Sherman entered Atlanta, seizing Georgia’s main railroad center.
At the time, there was a realistic possibility that Lincoln would not be reelected. Many people in the North had grown tired of the war and there was a large contingency who pushed for peace deals with the Confederacy.
Some included recognition of the Confederacy.
More wished to bring the rebelling states back into the Union by providing new guarantees that the federal government would not abolish slavery.
Some Radical Republicans nominated John C. Frémont on a platform calling for a constitutional amendment to abolish slavery, federal protection of the freed people’s rights, and confiscation of the land of leading Confederates.
The Democratic candidate for president was General George B. McClellan.
Lincoln won, aided by Frémont’s withdrawal and Sherman’s capture of Atlanta.
Rehearsals for Reconstruction and the End of the War:
The Sea Island Experiment:
The Union occupied the Sea Islands (off South Carolina’s coast) in November 1861.
Women took the lead as teachers in educating the freed slaves of the islands.
Charlotte Forten and Laura Towne
By 1865, black families were working for wages, acquiring education, and enjoying better shelter and clothing and a more varied diet than under slavery.
Wartime Reconstruction in the West:
Different from what occurred at Sea Island.
After the capture of Vicksburg, the Union army established regulations for plantation labor.
Freed people signed labor contracts and were paid wages.
Neither side was satisfied with the new labor system.
At Davis Bend, Grant established a “negro paradise.”
The Politics of Wartime Reconstruction:
In 1863, Lincoln announced his Ten-Percent Plan of Reconstruction.
When 10% of VOTERS pledged allegiance to the U.S.- states could be readmitted to the union
No role for blacks
Leniency toward the South
In his 2nd inaugural address (after winning reelection in 1864) he said “with malice towards none, with charity for all…to bind up the nation’s wounds”
Free blacks in New Orleans complained about the Ten-Percent Plan and found sympathy from Radical Republicans.
Wade-Davis Bill offered as an alternative plan.
Required a majority of a state’s voters to pledge loyalty
Lincoln pocket-vetoed the plan.
Victory at Last:
Sherman marched from Atlanta to the sea in November– December 1864.
The Thirteenth Amendment was approved on January 31, 1865.
On April 3, 1865, Grant took Richmond.
Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, on April 9.
Lincoln was fatally shot on April 14 and died the next morning.
The War in American History:
The Civil War laid the foundation for modern America.
Both sides lost something they had gone to war to defend.
Confederacy lost slavery.
The war hastened the transformation of Lincoln’s America of free labor, small shops, and independent farmers into an industrial giant.
The work of achieving equality for African Americans remained to be done.
This goal was for many in the North, particularly radical Republicans and abolitionists, one of the primary objectives of Reconstruction.
However, as we will see, equality for African Americans, despite initial gains, was very much limited, and in many ways, the plight of African Americans was similar to that of the pre-Civil War era despite the abolition of slavery