the american civil war. south carolina leaves the union convinced that a republican administration...
TRANSCRIPT
The American Civil War
South Carolina Leaves the Union
• Convinced that a Republican administration would attempt to undermine slavery by appointing antislavery judges, postmasters, military officers, and other officials, a secession convention in South Carolina voted unanimously to secede from the Union on December 20, 1860
• The convention held that the states were sovereign entities that could leave the Union as freely as they joined.
Secession • Between January 9, 1861
and February 1, six states of the Deep South joined South Carolina in leaving the Union: Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas
• Sam Houston predicted: "Our people are going to war to perpetuate slavery, and the first gun fired in the war will be the [death] knell of slavery."
Secession
• States of the lower South established a new government, the Confederate States of America
• The new constitution specifically referred to slavery, state sovereignty, and God.
• It explicitly guaranteed slavery in the states and territories, but prohibited the international slave trade.
• It limited the President to a single six-year term, gave the President a line-item veto, required a two-thirds vote of Congress to admit new states, and prohibited protective tariffs and government funding of internal improvements.
Secession
• Jefferson Davis named President of the Confederate States
• The Confederate states attempted to seize federal property within their boundaries, including forts, customs houses, and arsenals.
Fort Sumter
• Late February, Fort Sumter had become a key symbol of whether the Confederate states exercised sovereignty over their territory.
• South Carolina demanded that President Buchanan surrender Fort Sumter in exchange for monetary compensation.
• To the rebels' surprise, he refused. • As the following letter from Jefferson Davis makes clear,
any decision about forcing the surrender of the fort by force carried profound consequences.
• Eight slave states in the Upper South remained in the Union. But their stance would clearly depend on the steps that South Carolina and the federal government took toward Fort Sumter.
Fort Sumter
• Lincoln becomes President and received a letter from Robert Anderson informing him that Fort Sumter's supplies would be exhausted in four to six weeks and that it would take a 20,000-man force to reinforce the fort
• Lincoln decided to try to peacefully re-supply the fort with provisions and to inform the Confederate government of his decision beforehand
Fort Sumter
• Lincoln hoped to make the Confederacy responsible for starting a war.
• At 4:30 a.m. April 12, Confederate guns began firing on Fort Sumter. Thirty-three hours later, the installation surrendered. Incredibly, there were no fatalities on their side
• The Civil War had begun
Lincoln’s Response
• Lincoln was convinced that the Confederate states had seceded from the Union for the sole purpose of maintaining slavery
• He considered the Union to be permanent, an agreement by the people and not just of the states.
• Calling on the states to provide 75,000 militiamen for 90 days service. Twice that number volunteered.
Southern Response
• The eight slave states still in the Union refused to furnish troops, and four--Arkansas, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia--seceded.
• Robert E. Lee was Winfield Scott's choice to serve as field commander of the Union army, but when the Virginia convention voted to secede, he resigned from the U.S. army, announcing to his sister that he could not "raise my hand against my birthplace, my home, my children. Save in defense of my native state, I hope I may never be called on to draw my sword."
Northern Advantages
• Union States had 22.5 million people, compared to just 9 million in the Confederate states (including 3.7 million slaves).
• It also had a larger navy, a more developed railroad system, and a stronger manufacturing base.
• The North had 1.3 million industrial workers, compared to the South's 110,000.
• Northern factories manufactured nine times as many industrial goods as the South; seventeen times as many cotton and woolen goods; thirty times as many boots and shoes; twenty times as much pig iron; twenty-four times as many railroad locomotives; and 33 times as many firearms.
• A strong president in Abraham Lincoln
Southern Advantages
• Confederacy had only to wage a defensive war and wait for northern morale to erode.
• In contrast, the Union had to conquer and control the Confederacy's 750,000 square miles of territory.
• Further, the Confederate army seemed superior to that of the Union.
• More Southerners had attended West Point or other military academies, had served as army officers, and had experience using firearms and horses
The Art of Killing
• The Civil War was the deadliest war in American history. Altogether, over 600,000 died in the conflict, more than World War I and World War II combined
• Cone-shaped bullets replaced musket balls, and beginning in 1862, smooth-bore muskets were replaced with rifles with grooved barrels, which imparted spin on a bullet and allowed a soldier to hit a target a quarter of a mile away.
The Art of Killing
• Soldiers used repeating rifles (which could fire several shots without reloading), breech loading arms (which were loaded from behind the barrel instead of through the muzzle)
• Automated weapons like the Gatling gun. • The Civil War also marked the first use by
Americans of shrapnel, booby traps, and land mines.
Bull Run
• After the surrender of Fort Sumter, two Union armies moved into northern Virginia.
• At Bull Run in northern Virginia 25 miles southwest of Washington, the armies clashed.
• While residents of Washington ate picnic lunches and looked on, Union troops launched several assaults.
• When Confederates counterattacked, Union forces retreated in panic, but Confederate forces failed to take up pursuit.
The Anaconda Plan
• Union strategy involved blockading Confederate ports to cut off cotton exports and prevent the import of manufactured goods; and using ground and naval forces to divide the Confederacy into three distinct theaters.
• These were the far western theater, west of the Mississippi River; the western theater, between the Mississippi and the Appalachians; and the eastern theater, in Virginia
The War in the West
• Union forces in the West were to seize control of the Mississippi River while Union forces in the East tried to capture the new Confederate capital in Richmond.
• In February 1862, gunboats under Grant's command took Fort Henry and ten days later, Grant's men took Fort Donelson, forcing 13,000 Confederates to surrender.
The War in the West
• Battle of Shiloh.– In two days of heavy fighting during which
there were 13,000 Union casualties and over 10,000 Confederate casualties, Grant successfully pushed back the southern forces.
– By early June, Union forces controlled the Mississippi River as far south as Memphis, Tennessee.
The Capture of New Orleans
• While Grant was driving toward the Mississippi from the north, northern naval forces under Captain David G. Farragut attacked from the south.
• In April 1862, Farragut steamed past weak Confederate defenses and captured New Orleans.
The Peninsular Campaign
• In March 1862, Union General George McClellan's plan was to land northern forces on a peninsula between the York and James Rivers southeast of Richmond and then march on the southern capital.
• By May, McClellan's forces were within six miles of Richmond.
• Robert E. Lee assumed command of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia.
The Peninsular Campaign
• Then in a series of encounters between June 26 and July 2, 1862, known as the Seven Days' Battles, Lee and Jackson forced McClellan, who mistakenly believed he was hopelessly outnumbered, to withdraw back to the James River.
• Ten days later, Lee again repulsed a northern advance. At the Second Battle of Bull Run, Union General John Pope found his army almost surrounded and retreated, giving the Confederacy almost total control of Virginia.
The Antietam Campaign
• In a bold bid to win European support, the Confederacy sought to win a major victory on northern soil.
• In September 1862, Lee launched a daring offensive into Maryland.
• No one could be sure exactly what Lee planned to do. • But in an incredible stroke of luck, a copy of Lee's battle
plan (which had been wrapped around three cigars) fell into the hands of Union General George B. McClellan.
• After only a brief delay, on September 17, 1862, McClellan forces attacked Lee at Antietam Creek in Maryland.
The Antietam Campaign
• The Battle of Antietam (which is sometimes referred to as the Battle of Sharpsburg) produced the bloodiest single day of the Civil War.
• Lee suffered 11,000 casualties; McClellan, 13,000.
• Lee was forced to retreat, allowing the North to declare the battle a Union victory. But Union forces failed to follow up on their surprise success and decisively defeat Lee's army.
The Emancipation Proclamation
• With the victory at Antietam, Lincoln was emboldened to think about emancipation
• The preliminary Emancipation Proclamation that President Lincoln issued on September 22 stated that all slaves in designated parts of the South on January 1, 1863, would be freed.
• The President hoped that slave emancipation would undermine the Confederacy from within
The Emancipation Proclamation
• The Confederacy had assumed, mistakenly, that demand for cotton from textile mills would lead Britain to break the Union naval blockade.
• Nevertheless, there was a real danger of European involvement in the war.
• By redefining the war as a war against slavery, Lincoln hoped to generate support from European liberals.
• He did risk that border states that had stayed in the Union might bolt.
Lincoln Solidifies His Powers
• Lincoln assumes powers not specifically granted by the Constitution.– His unilateral decision to call out the militia to
suppress the "insurrection,“– Impose a blockade of southern ports, – Expand the army beyond the limits set by law, – Spend federal funds without prior congressional
authorization– Suspend the writ of habeas corpus (the right of
persons under arrest to have their case heard in court).
• The Lincoln administration imprisoned about 13,000 people without trial during the war, and shut Democratic newspapers in New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago for varying amounts of time.
COLUMBIA:Mr. Lincoln, give me back my 500,000 sons!!!LINCOLN:Well the fact is — by the way that reminds me of a story!!!(From an 1864 cartoon.)
Changes in America
• The Homestead Act of 1862 provided public land free to pioneers who agreed to farm the land for five years.
• The Morrill Act of 1862 helped states establish agricultural and technical colleges.
• Congress also authorized construction of the nation's first transcontinental railroad (Pacific Railway Act of 1862).
Changes in America
• The Legal Tender Act of 1862 authorized the federal government to issue paper money.
• Because these notes were printed on green paper, they became known as greenbacks.
• The National Bank Act of 1863 created the nation's first truly national banking system.
Hardships in the Confederacy
• Union blockade grew more effective and the South's railroad system deteriorated
• In Richmond, food riots erupted in April 1863. • Rampant inflation• Imposition of a military draft in April 1862
produced protests that this was "a rich man's war and a poor man's fight."
• Twenty Negro Law" in October 1862 which exempted one white man from the draft on every plantation with 20 or more slaves.
African Americans in Service
• 186,000 black soldiers served in the Union Army
• 29,000 served in the Navy
• Accounting for nearly 10 percent of all Union forces and 68,178 of the Union dead or missing
• Three-fifths of all black troops were former slaves.
Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville
• Frustrated by McClellan's lack of aggressiveness, Lincoln replaced him with General Ambrose E. Burnside
• In December 1862, Burnside attacked 73,000 Confederate troops at Fredericksburg, Virginia.
• Six times Burnside launched frontal assaults on Confederate positions.
• The Union army suffered nearly 13,000 casualties, twice the number suffered by Lee's men, severely damaging northern morale.
Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville
• After the defeat at Fredericksburg, Lincoln removed Burnside and replaced him with Joseph Hooker
• In May 1863, Hooker tried to attack Lee's forces from a side or flanking position.
• In just ten minutes, Confederate forces routed the Union army at the Battle of Chancellorsville.
• But the Confederate victory came at a high cost. Lee's ablest lieutenant, Stonewall Jackson, was accidentally shot by a Confederate sentry and died of a blood clot.
Gettysburg
• In a bid to shatter northern morale and win European recognition, Lee's army launched a daring invasion of Pennsylvania.
• Lee assumed, mistakenly, that Union forces were still in Virginia.
• When he suddenly realized that Union forces were in close pursuit, he ordered his forces, which were strung out from Maryland to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, to converge at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, a central location where a number of roads met.
Gettysburg
• July 1, 1863, a Confederate brigade ran into Union cavalry near Gettysburg and the largest battle ever fought in the West Hemisphere broke out before anyone realized what was happening
• On the evening of July 1, most of Lee's army of 75,000 reached Gettysburg. Meanwhile, most of the 90,000-man Union army of General George Meade arrived at Gettysburg that same evening.
• On July 2, Lee tried to attack Union positions from the left and right flanks, but northern troops repelled the attack.
Gettysburg
• The next day, the Union army, which expected Lee to attack again on the flanks, reinforced its flanks. But Lee launched a frontal attack on the center of the Union
• Lee launched a frontal attack on the center of the Union lines, which came as a shock and a surprise. However, a frontal assault against a well-fortified defensive position on a hill was very unlikely to succeed.
Pickett’s Charge
• Some 15,000 Confederate troops, led by General George E. Pickett marched three-quarters of a mile into withering Union rifle and artillery fire.
• Although about a hundred Confederate soldiers succeeded in temporarily breaking through the Union defenses, the northern lines held firm.
• When Lee finally ordered a retreat back into Virginia, it became clear that the Confederacy had suffered a disastrous defeat
The Gettysburg Address
• "Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract.”
The Gettysburg Address
• “The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth."
The Gettysburg Address Background
• Daniel Webster's statement in 1830 that the origin of our government and the source of its power is "the people's constitution, the people's government; made for the people, made by the people, and answerable to the people."
• Supreme Court Justice John Marshall's opinion, which states: "The government of the Union . . . is emphatically and truly a government of the people.
Vicksburg
• Beginning in mid-May, Ulysses S. Grant's troops had begun a siege of Vicksburg, Mississippi.
• Located on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi, Vicksburg allowed the Confederacy to control river traffic between Memphis and New Orleans.
• The day after the defeat of Lee's army at Gettysburg, Vicksburg surrendered.
• Five days later, Union forces captured Port Hudson, Louisiana. These victories gave the North complete control of the Mississippi River
President Lincoln’s PlanPresident Lincoln’s Plan« 10% Plan
Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction (December 8, 1863)
Replace majority rule with “loyal rule” in the South.
He didn’t consult Congress regarding Reconstruction.
Pardon to all but the highest ranking military and civilian Confederate officers.
When 10% of the voting population in the 1860 election had taken an oath of loyalty and established a government, it would be recognized.
President Lincoln’s PlanPresident Lincoln’s Plan
« 1864 “Lincoln Governments” formed in LA, TN, AR
“loyal assemblies”
They were weak and dependent on the Northern army for their survival.
Wade-Davis Bill (1864)Wade-Davis Bill (1864)« Required 50% of the
number of 1860 voters to take an “iron clad” oath of allegiance (swearing they had never voluntarily aided the rebellion ).
« Required a state constitutional convention before the election of state officials.
« Enacted specific safeguards of freedmen’s liberties.
SenatorBenjamin
Wade(R-OH)
Congressman
HenryW. Davis(R-MD)
Wade-Davis Bill (1864)Wade-Davis Bill (1864)« “Iron-Clad” Oath.
« “State Suicide” Theory [MA Senator Charles Sumner]
« “Conquered Provinces” Position[PA Congressman Thaddeus Stevens]
PresidentPresidentLincolnLincoln
PresidentPresidentLincolnLincoln
Wade-DavisWade-DavisBillBill
Wade-DavisWade-DavisBillBill
PocketVeto
PocketVeto
The 1864 Presidential Election
• Republicans and pro-war Democrats formed the National Union Party, which re-nominated Lincoln and selected Andrew Johnson (1808-1875), a former Democratic Senator from Tennessee, for Vice President.
• Democrats chose General George B. McClellan, who opposed the Emancipation Proclamation and who ran on a platform which condemned Lincoln for "four years of failure"
The 1864 Presidential Election
• The capture of Atlanta, a major southern railroad and manufacturing center, in September, electrified northern voters, who gave Lincoln a resounding victory. He received 55 percent of the popular vote to just 45 percent for McClellan.
Grant Takes Command
• In March 1864, Lincoln gave Ulysses S. Grant command of all Union armies.
• Vowing to end the war within a year, Grant launched three major offenses.– General Philip H. Sheridan's task was to lay
waste to farm land in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley, a mission he completed by October.
– Meanwhile, General William Tecumseh Sherman advanced southeastward from Chattanooga and seized Atlanta, a major southern rail center,
– while Grant himself pursued Lee's army and sought to capture Richmond, the Confederate capital.
Grant in Virginia
• Grant started his offensive with 118,000 men• By early June, half of his men were casualties. • But Lee's army had been reduced by a third to 40,000
men. But Confederate losses were heavy--and southern troops could not be replaced.
• At the Battle of the Wilderness, in northern Virginia, Lee's army suffered 11,000 casualties; at Spotsylvania Court House, Lee lost another 10,000 men. After suffering terrible casualties at Cold Harbor--12,000 men killed or wounded--Grant advanced to Petersburg, a rail center south of Richmond, and began a nine-month siege of the city.
Sherman’s March to the Sea• Sherman, with a force of 100,000 men, marched toward
Atlanta from Chattanooga, and captured the rail center on September 2, 1864.
• After leaving Atlanta in flames, Sherman's men marched across Georgia toward Savannah.
• In order to break the South's will to fight, Sherman had his men destroy railroad tracks, loot houses, and burn factories.
• Sherman seized Savannah December 21, and then drove northward, capturing Charleston and Columbia, South Carolina, then heading through North Carolina to Virginia.
• Sherman summed up the goal of his military maneuvers in grim terms: "We cannot change the hearts of those people, but we can make war so terrible...[and] make them so sick of war that generations would pass away before they would again appeal to it."
Surrender at Appomattox
• By April 1865, Grant's army had cut off Lee's supply lines, forcing Confederate forces to evacuate Petersburg and Richmond.
• Lee and his men retreated westward, but Grant's troops overtook him about a hundred miles west of Richmond.
• Recognizing that further resistance would be futile, Lee surrendered at Appomattox Court House, Virginia.
• The aristocratic Lee wore a full-dress uniform, with a ceremonial sash and sword, while Grant wore a private's coat.
Surrender at Appomattox
• Three-quarters of the Confederate white male population of military age had fought in the war, but by 1865, the North had four times as many troops as the Confederacy.
• At the time he surrendered, Lee's entire army had shrunk to just 35,000 men, compared to Grant's total of 113,000.
• Lee's decision to surrender, however, probably helped to prevent large-scale guerrilla warfare.
Assassination of Lincoln
• On Good Friday, April 14, 1865, a few minutes after 10 o'clock, John Wilkes Booth ,a young actor and Confederate sympathizer (who had spied for Richmond and been part of a plot to kidnap Lincoln), entered the presidential box at Ford's Theater in Washington and shot the President in the back of the head.
Assassination of Lincoln
• Simultaneously, a Booth accomplice, Lewis Paine, brutally attacked Secretary of State William Seward at his home with a knife.
• Lincoln was carried unconscious to a neighboring house. He was pronounced dead at 7:22 a.m., April 15. A few minutes later, Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton stepped outside and announced to the assembled crowd, "he belongs to the ages."
Capture of Booth
• John Wilkes Booth and David E. Herold were sleeping in a tobacco barn owned by Richard H. Garrett on the morning of Wednesday, April 26, 1865, when Union cavalry finally caught up with them. In the vicinity of 2:00 A.M. the soldiers surrounded the barn which was located about 60 miles south of Ford's Theatre near Port Royal, Virginia.
Capture of Booth
• Booth yelled, "Well, my brave boys, you can prepare a stretcher for me! I will never surrender!"
• After a short time, David Herold's voice was heard saying he wanted to give up. Herold slowly came out and was slammed to the ground by the soldiers. He was hauled to a nearby tree and tied up with rope.
• Using straw and brush, the cavalry set the barn on fire.
• Booth through the neck. • Booth’s last words “Tell Mother I died for my country."
