The Civil War

1861 - 1865

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Unit 2

Advantages, Strategies, and Early Battles

EQ: How did each side’s resources and strategies affect the early battles of the war?

“A house divided cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently, half slave and half free.”

• Abraham Lincoln

Advantages, Strategies, and Early Battles

Confederate States of America

• Southern states (11) form their own country
• Jefferson Davis is elected president

Advantages, Strategies, and Early Battles

Seceding states seized all federal property in their states

Including:

- Military bases

- Post offices

- Federal buildings

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Do these belong to the states or the Union?

• Lincoln plans to occupy and hold all federal property in seceded states

Advantages, Strategies, and Early Battles

Fort Sumter, April 1861

• located in Charleston SC
• problem: Union troops running out of supplies
• Lincoln promises not to attack just wants to send them food
• S.C. suspicious, no trust
• Confederate troops fire on the fort

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• Start of the civil war
• Lasted 34 hours, no casualties
• Confederates win and take over a union fort

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Advantages, Strategies, and Early Battles

Lincoln reacts…

• called for volunteers to serve in Union Army
• created Border States: controlled by the union, but had slaves
• Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky, Missouri, W. VA
• allowed slavery in these states to keep control of them

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Advantages, Strategies, and Early Battles

To make sure Lincoln kept the border states, he replaced gov’t officials and put some in jail

• Lincoln suspended writ of habeas corpus in the border states
• must have a reason to be kept in jail

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Advantages, Strategies, and Early Battles

North

Pop: 22 million

Fighting men: 4 million

States: 23

South

pop: 9 million (3.5 slaves)

Fighting men: 1.5 million

States: 11

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Advantages, Strategies, and Early Battles

Railroad Lines - North vs. South

Advantages, Strategies, and Early Battles

Southern Advantages

• Defensive war (fighting on own territory)
• Better military leaders
• Robert E Lee
• Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson
• A cause to fight for

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North disadvantage: Lincoln’s “Revolving Door” Generals aka bad military leadership

Winfield Scott

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Irwin McDowell

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George McClellan

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Ambrose Burnside

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Joseph Hooker

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George Meade

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George McClellan…

AGAIN

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Advantages, Strategies, and Early Battles

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Ulysses S. Grant - Union General

Advantages, Strategies, and Early Battles

Another advantage for the North…

• political leadership
• Abraham Lincoln

Advantages, Strategies, and Early Battles

On the flipside, political leadership was a disadvantage for the South…

• Jefferson Davis
• new gov’t
• confederation of states, hard to unify

Advantages, Strategies, and Early Battles

Union Strategy

• Anaconda Plan (3 Parts)
• Blockade the South
• Divide the Confederacy
• Take the Capital

Advantages, Strategies, and Early Battles

Southern Strategy

• War of Attrition
• outlast the North
• Gain recognition and help from Great Britain and France

Advantages, Strategies, and Early Battles

Capitals of the Countries

Confederate capital:

• Richmond, VA

What was the capital of the north?

• Washington D.C.
• 100 miles away from each other

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Advantages, Strategies, and Early Battles

Battle of Bull Run (Manassas)

• July 1861
• Manassas, Virginia
• first major battle
• showed how unprepared both sides were
• war would be longer than expected
• Confederate victory, built confidence in the South
• rebel yell

Advantages, Strategies, and Early Battles

Battle of Shiloh

• April 1862
• Tennessee
• 25,000 casualties in just 2 days of fighting
• deadliest battle so far
• shocked public, showed the war would be much deadlier than people thought
• Union victory

Advantages, Strategies, and Early Battles

Battle of the Ironclads

• March 1862
• Monitor vs. Merrimack (Virginia)
• no victory for either side
• new technology, end of wooden warships

The Shift Toward Emancipation

EQ: How did the Emancipation Proclamation and the efforts of African American soldiers affect the course of the war?

The Shift Toward Emancipation

Why did Lincoln shift the focus toward slavery?

• pressure from abolitionists
• slavery unpopular in Europe, help ensure Great Britain and France do not help the Confederacy
• opportunity to end slavery in the U.S.

The Shift Toward Emancipation

Battle of Antietam

• Sept. 1862
• Sharpsburg, Maryland
• South on offensive to invade the North
• Union victory
• Single bloodiest day of the war (26,000 casualties)
• led to Emancipation Proclamation

The Shift Toward Emancipation

• After the battle of Antietam, G.B. and France postpone recognition of the South

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Battle of Antietam

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Emancipation Proclamation

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The Shift Toward Emancipation

Emancipation Proclamation

• issued by Lincoln on Jan. 1, 1863
• said that the slaves were free

**BUT it only applied to lands in rebellion**

• did not have the power to free them in the Union (war time measure)
• Border state slaves not freed

Why?

• shifted the focus of the war toward slavery
• symbolic power, if the South lost, they knew slavery would be done away with

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The Shift Toward Emancipation

Militia Act (1862)

• mandated that black soldiers be accepted into the military

54th Massachusetts Regiment - first all-black regiment

• not treated equally
• less pay ($10/$13)
• used for labor
• Southern blacks that escaped often joined the fight for the North
• 180,000 black troops served during war (10% of Union forces)

Home Life

EQ: What impact did the war have on everyday Americans?

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Home Life - North

Northern Home Life

• the north prospered industrially
• immigrants provided labor
• income tax created
• tariffs raised

Homestead Act 1862:

• free land if you moved out west; 160 acres
• expand the Union

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Home Life - North

Greenbacks

• created during the Civil War to finance the war
• paper money with green ink

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Home Life - North

In 1863 the Union instituted Conscription (the draft)

• when the horrors of war had been seen, many stopped volunteering and the govt. had to conscript
• like past wars, you could pay someone to take your place
• a rich man’s war being fought by the poor
• led to riots in NYC

NYC Riots

Home Life - South

Southern Home Life

Union blockade 80% effective

• South almost entirely on their own
• hard to transport goods (Union had majority railroads and rivers blocked)

Little $ to finance war

• based everything on cotton and slaves
• created own $
• caused inflation (increase in prices)
• shortages led to riots

Inflation in the South

Home Life - South

Life of a soldier

• 4 out 5 men in south served in military
• 1^st taste of travel
• most regiments from same town

Camps were gross

• poor drinking water, lacked sanitation
• when not fighting they played cards, games, wrote letters home, etc…

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Home Life - South

Home Life - South

Andersonville

• Southern POW (prisoner of war) camp
• you would rather die than go here
• over 12,000 soldiers died
• South could barely feed soldiers, did not take care of POWs

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Home Life - South

30% of prisoners died in Andersonville

14-month existence

Home Life

Women had to take the place of the men on the farms and in business

• Clara Barton worked as a nurse during the Civil War
• helped found the American Red Cross

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Turning Points and the End of War

EQs: How did the battles of Vicksburg and Gettysburg change the course of the war?

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Turning Points and the End of War

North’s tactic:

• blockade = successful
• need control of Mississippi (MS) River
• Lincoln: “Vicksburg is key! The war can never be brought to close until that key is in our pocket.”
• 1863 will be the beginning of the end for the Confederacy

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Turning Points and the End of War

Battle of Vicksburg

• May 18 - July 7 1863
• Vicksburg, MI
• Union victory
• Union led by U.S. Grant
• Union has control of the Mississippi River and splits the Confederacy in two
• TURNING POINT OF WAR

Turning Points and the End of the War

Lee has a plan: once again, try to invade the North… Why?

• take the fighting out of South, esp VA
• strengthen arguments of Peace Democrats in the N
• undermine Lincoln’s reelection
• convince GB and France to support the South
• maybe even win the war

Turning Points and the End of War

Battle of Gettysburg

• July 1-3 1863
• Pennsylvania
• Union led by Meade
• Confederacy led by Lee
• Lee’s 2nd attempt to invade the North
• Union victory
• 50,000 casualties
• TURNING POINT OF WAR

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Turning Points and the End of War

Battle of Gettysburg

• Lee’s worst defeat (lost ⅓ of his army)
• would never again invade the North
• Meade did not pursue Lee’s army
• fired by Lincoln and replaced

Turning Points and the End of War

Ulysses S. Grant

• Lincoln finally found a general who would fight
• becomes commander of entire Union Army
• he used attrition (wearing down/outlasting the enemy)
• Grant would lose 60,000 men in one month using this tactic (“The Butcher”)
• the South would run out of men before the North

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Turning Points and the End of War

Gettysburg Address

• most famous Speech given by Lincoln
• honored the Union soldiers who died in the battle

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Turning Points and the End of War

Gettysburg Address

"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great 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 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."

Turning Points and the End of War

Copperheads: Democrats who wanted to negotiate peace with the South

Turning Points and the End of War

Election of 1864

• Big election - would determine outcome of war
• Lincoln - Republican
• McClellan - Democrat
• Lincoln wins

Turning Points and the End of War

Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address

“With malice toward none; with charity for all”

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• the Union would treat the South benevolently

Turning Points and the End of War

William Tecumseh Sherman

• Union general
• “War is cruelty; the crueler it is, the sooner it will be over”
• Total War: destroy everything, attacking civilian targets (not just military targets)
• destroy morale and force the enemy to give up

Burning of Atlanta

Turning Points and the End of War

Sherman’s “March to the Sea”

• 1864-1865
• Through GA - from Atlanta to Savannah
• TOTAL WAR
• Destroyed the South, crushed morale

Turning Points and the End of War

The end is near…

• April 3 1865: Richmond (the capital) falls to the Union
• Appomattox Court House (April 9 1865): Lee surrenders to Grant; ends the war

Turning Points and the End of War

The assassination of Lincoln

• shot by John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s Theatre in D.C.
• Sic Semper Tyrannis
• shot on April 14, 1865
• Lincoln died the next morning

Turning Points and the End of War

Conclusions…

• North won due to attrition
• enabled by advantages at beginning of war
• Takes the South decades to recover
• generations wiped out
• economy destroyed, general destruction (total war)
• Positive effects in the North
• Industry
• First modern war
• technology (weapons, railroad, industry, telegraph)
• Over 600,000 Americans killed

Civil War Casualties