Battles and New Technologies

• April 10, 1861, Confederate forces demand the surrender of the Union garrison of Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor. Bomb the fort for 33 hours. Only one accidental death.
• SIGNIFICANCE: War Began!

• The First Battle of Bull Run, also known as the First Battle of Manassas was the first major land battle of the American Civil War, fought on July 21, 1861, near Manassas, Virginia.
• People came with picnic baskets to watch the battle only to run away in horror
• Union looked like a sure victory, but Gen. Stonewall Jackson held against the Union with “rebel yell”
• Significance: South wins and showed North not an easy war; need better troops

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The Confederate General – Robert E. Lee

• The South’s strategy was to make the North come and fight a defensive war on the South’s territory
• Believed Europe would support them due to cotton trade
• As the war began, took a more offensive strategy

• Winfield Scott, the commanding general of the U.S. Army, devised the Anaconda Plan.
• 1) Union blockade of the main ports would weaken the Confederate economy
• 2) Then capture the Mississippi River would split the South.
• Then capture Richmond, VA, the South’s capital
• Plan was TOO SLOW and didn’t work

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• On March 8, 1862, the Confederate Navy waged a fight against the Union Navy when the ironclad CSS Virginia (Merrimac) attacked the blockade; against wooden ships she seemed unstoppable
• The next day she had to fight the new Union warship USS Monitor in the Battle of the Ironclads. The battle ended in a draw, which was a strategic victory for the Union in that the blockade was sustained.
• The Confederacy lost the Virginia when the ship was scuttled to prevent capture, and the Union built many copies of Monitor.

First two years of Civil War

• The South won due to more dedicated soldiers and better generals
• North wins some battles like The Fall of New Orleans to try and get the Mississippi River
• Why would control of the Mississippi determine the War?
• Lee rallied and drove the Union out of Virginia

War Effects Society

• Northern Democrats, called Copperheads protested the war
• Lincoln suspended habeas corpus (right to a trial before imprisonment)
• So many died, both sides started a draft; the wealthy could buy their way out; started draft riots
• Mass inflation
• Civil War Prison Camps – horrible conditions

Women in the War

Clara Barton - nurses

“Albert” Cashiers - soldiers

Dorothea Dix - hospitals

Belle Boyd - spy

Antietam - 1862

• North found Lee’s battle plans wrapped on cigars
• Lee hoped a Southern victory would convince Europe to help them
• Bloodiest battle in U.S. history with 25,000 dead
• No winner, but Lee lost 1/3 of his army and Europe stayed out of the war

Emancipation Proclamation - 1863

• Frederick Douglass advised Lincoln to let African Americans fight and to abolish slavery
• For practical reasons (hurt South’s economy w/out slaves; Europe’s support) and moral reasons Lincoln called for emancipation (freeing) of slaves in Southern states
• Few slaves freed, but made the cause about freedom
• Massachusetts 54^th first black regiment of soldiers

• Three day battle in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
• SIGNIFICANCE: Union/North victory; Lee lost another 1/3 of army – he retreated to the South and would never again wage a battle in the North
• Lincoln came and gave his famous speech, “The Gettysburg Address”

Gettysburg – 1863 TURNING POINT

Focal Point of Pickett’s Charge

• Lincoln makes Grant commander of all Union armies – beginning of 1864
• Battle of Vicksburg – starved the South and gained control of the Mississippi River
• Grant told General William Tecumseh Sherman to make the South “howl” by using Total War
• Sherman’s March went from Atlanta, GA to the Atlantic Ocean burning everything in his path

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Sherman became one of Lincoln’s most trusted Generals as a result of his performance during the war in the West and brought the South to its knees

• Richmond is the Confederate capital
• Lee's army, thinned by desertion and casualties, was now much smaller than Grant's.
• Union forces won a decisive victory at the Battle of Five Forks on April 1, forcing Lee to evacuate Petersburg and Richmond.
• The Confederate capital fell to the Union XXV Corps, composed of black troops. The remaining Confederate units fled west and after a defeat at Sayler's Creek
• It became clear to Robert E. Lee that continued fighting against the United States was both tactically and logistically impossible.
• Lee surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia on April 9, 1865
• As a sign of Grant's respect and anticipation of peacefully folding the Confederacy back into the Union, Lee was permitted to keep his officer's saber and his horse, Traveller.

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Effects of the War

• Deadliest War in U.S. History – 620,000 dead
• 13^th Amendment abolished slavery
• The United States is restored
• South is economically and politically destroyed
• Reconstruction (rebuilding) of the South
• Lincoln is assassinated and his plans unfinished
• Growth of industry and economy in the North
• Federal government more powerful

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• HSTY2056 PowerPoints - Frances Clarke, University of Sydney
• McPherson, James M., Ed. The American Heritage New History of the Civil War. NY: American Heritage Publishing Company, 1996.
• Wikipedia – Maps and Dates