The War ofNorthern Aggression

Lincoln’s name didn’t appear on the ballot in many southern states

December 20, 1860: South Carolina unanimously voted for secession followed by Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas (deep South)

Confederacy established on February 4, 1861, inaugurated reluctant Jeff Davis

Fort Sumter: Charleston Harbor, SC

Lincoln’s Pledge: “hold, occupy, and possess” federal property

April 12, 1861: Confederate Shore batteries bombarded the fort to prevent provisional resupply

Lincoln calls for 75,000 militia to put down the insurrection

April 1861: Virginia, North Carolina, Arkansas, Tennessee (upper South) joined the CSA

War Mobilization• Raising armies: 2 million Union;

800,000 Confederate

• Equipping the Troops: arming, clothing, feeding

• Confederacy impressed provisions and slave laborSoutherners, according to a Georgia congressman, would "give up their sons, husbands, brothers…, and often without murmuring, to the army; but let one of their negroes be taken, and what a howl you will hear"

Ohio Volunteers

• Union ConscriptionSubstitution or Commutation ($300)

• Financing the WarUnion: 21% wartime revenue from taxes; bond sales; printed paper money (legal tender)Confederacy: printed paper money (not legal tender); 5% revenue from taxesInflation: 80% price increase in the North; 9000% increase in CSA

Securing Union Borders

DC bordered by slave states Virginia and Maryland

Lincoln sent troops to MD and suspended habeas corpus

Armed Union sympathizers in KY

Border States:MD, DE, KY, MO, WVA

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Opposing Advantages

UNION• 22 million people to the

South’s 9 million (including 3 million slaves)

• 90% of the US industrial capacity

• 2/3 of the nation’s railroad track

CONFEDERACY• Fighting for independence,

home field advantage• Vast land mass in which Union had to maintain supply lines and occupy territory

• Slaves freed whites to fight• Defensive, short supply transport

At the start of the war, the value of all manufactured goods produced in all the Confederate states added up to less than one-fourth of those

produced in New York State alone.

Weapons Developments

Submarine

Repeating rifle replaced smoothbore musket

Gatling Gun (predecessor to machine gun)

Strategic Changes:TrenchesCavalry relegated to reconnaissance

Anaconda Plan

Grand Union Strategy

Union blockade of southern coast and occupation of Mississippi River

Lacked adequate ships and men to ever be implemented

“Forward to Richmond!”(100 miles south of DC)

Bull Run (Manassas Junction)

Confederates encamped 25 mi from DCAmateur ArmiesUnion General McDowell defeatedPicnicking DC socialitesMcDowell out;McClellan in

Antietam(Sharpsburg)

McClellan’s peninsula plan: attack Richmond from the rear

Lee given command of Army of Northern VA; goes on the offensive

McClellan called back to DC; Union routed again at Bull Run

September 17, 1862: single bloodiest day of the war (24,000)

Lincoln issued Emancipation Proclamation

Fredericksburg

McClellan had “the shows;” Burnside replaced him

122,000 Union against 78,500 Rebs; Union lost 12,600 and CSA lost 5,300

Lee: “It is well that war is so terrible – we should grow fond of it.”

By December 1862 the war in the East was a stalemate

Stonewall Jackson“He sits there like a stone wall!”

Ambrose Burnside(What is named after him?)

Robert E. Leeopponent of secession, courteous, genteel, fierce

George B. McClellan"You may find those who will go faster than I, Mr. President; but it is very doubtful if you will find

many who will go further."

William T. Sherman“I beg to present you as a Christmas gift the city of Savannah.”

Shiloh (Pittsburg Landing)

Ulysses S. GrantWest Point grad, heavy drinker, failed farmer and businessman and one of the Union’s best leaders

1861-62: Grant stabilized MO & KY, moved south to TNAttacked by Rebels at Shiloh Church77,000 fought; 23,000 killed or wounded

New Orleans taken by naval attackUnion controlled most of the Mississippi River

In two days at Shiloh on the banks of the Tennessee River, more Americans fell than in all previous American wars combined.

TheNaval War

CSS Manassas, 1861

North: began with 40 warships; by 1865 had largest navy in the world

Southern coastline: 3,500 milesCruisers: blockade runners

Ironclads: Merrimac became the Virginia, battled with Union Monitor

Confiscation to Emancipation

I hear old John Brown knocking on the lid of his coffin and shouting ‘Let me out! :et me out!’ The Doom of Slavery is at hand.”Henry Stanton, 1861

“I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery

in the states where it exists.”Lincoln, 1861

Confiscation to Emancipation

African Americans constituted less than one percent of the northern population, yet by the war’s end made up ten percent of the Union Army. A total of 180,000 black men, more than 85% of those eligible, enlisted.

Secession meets protection of property rights

Contraband: enemy property liable to seizure

August 1861: Confiscation Act authorized seizure of property used to aid rebellion (only applied to slaves working for the Confederate army)

July 1862: 2nd Confiscation Act, authorized seizure of all rebel property, slaves joining Union “forever free,” blacks can be enlisted

“free every slave – slay every traitor – burn every Rebel

mansion, is these things be necessary to preserve this temple

of freedom” – Thaddeus Stevens

“to fight against slaveholders without fighting against slavery, is

but a half-hearted business” – Frederick Douglass

“My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union

without freeing any slave, I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would

do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving other alone, I would also do that.”

– Abraham Lincoln

1863: a Turning Point

Spring:Hooker crushed at Chancellorsville even though outnumbered rebs 2:1; South lost Stonewall Jackson to friendly fire

Grant unable to take Vicksburg

Summer 1863:Lee, under criticism, pursued Union army north to PA

In Gettysburg, rebs foraging for shoes meet Union cavalry

July 1-3, 90,000 Union against Lee’s 75,000; 50,000 total casualties

Grant took Vicksburg

Union secured Chattanooga

Gettysburg

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 battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live.

It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we 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 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 War’s Economic Impact

North South• Clothing manufacturing

plummeted• War industry benefitted• Railroads boomed (Pacific RR

Act)• Raised protective tariffs• National banking system;

greenbacks• Homestead Act: 160- acre land

grants• Morrill Land Grant Act: public

land sale proceeds funded universities

• Contractor corruption and graftInflation; wages lagged behind prices

• Shattered economy• Destroyed railroads• Cotton production plunged• Food shortages• Food impressed by CSA gov’t• Half of the soldiers left units

by 1864 to help families• Trading food for cotton with

northerners

During the Battle of Antietam, Clara Barton tended the wounded so close to the fighting that a bullet went through her sleeve and killed a man she was treating.

United States Sanitary Commission

Nursing Corps: 3,200 women served both sides

Barton founded American Red Cross in 1881

Brazen departure from “proper sphere”

For every soldier killed, 2 died of disease (gangrene, tetanus, typhoid, malaria, dysentery)

Andersonville, GA CSA prison camp 3, 000/month (32,000 total) died by August 1864

The war did not bring progress on political or economic equality;men saw compelling reasons to abolish slavery, not to grant women’s suffrage

The UnionMarch toVictory

September 1864Sherman took Atlanta

March across GA into SC, “that hell hole of secession”

62,000 men, cavalry, and thousands of former slaves; 60 mi wide front moved 10 mi/day and forced the Confederacy’s collapse

Ruins of the Gallego Flour Mills, Richmond, Virginia, 1865Alexander Gardner

Sherman: “make war so terrible… that generations would pass before they could appeal to it again”

400 miles of ruin, $100 million of property damage

“War is cruelty and you cannot refine it. Those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out.” – William Tecumseh Sherman

Charleston RR Station after Sherman

Matthew Brady: The Ruins of Richmond

Appomattox Courthouse, east of Lynchburg

More than three million men fought in the war.Two percent of the population—more than 620,000—died in it.

April 3, 1865Union troops raised stars and stripes over the Confederate capital, Richmond

April 13Lee surrendered; Grant paroled his men; no one cheered

April 14Grant declined attending the theater with the Lincolns

Lincoln’s box at Ford’s Theater

Assassinated on April 14, Died on April 15

John Wilkes Booth fled; captured within two weeks by Union troops

Execution of conspiratorsMary Surratt, Lewis Paine, David Herold, and George Atzerodton July 7, 1865

John Wilkes Boothunemployed,pro-Confederateactor

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BEFORE and AFTER