The Civil War, 1861-1865
The conflict transformed the country in a number of important ways.
(1)
It cemented the Union of the states into a nation indivisible; before the war, the
durability of the states united under the Constitution of 1789 had been a major
question debated by leading political figures.
(2)
The war also set the stage for furious industrial growth, as the absence of the Southern
states from national government during the fighting enabled Northerners to chart a
course of expansion promoting industrial capitalism as the nation's future. The federal
government's seizure of the nation's economic affairs during the war augured a shift
toward nationalization and centralization. The South ended the conflict with a
wrecked economic infrastructure that lagged behind the North for over a century.
(3)
Finally, and most importantly, the war ended slavery, placing four million freed
slaves on the road to full citizenship, however haltingly. The federal government's
reconstruction of the devastated South to bring full equality to freedmen (i.e., former
slaves was abandoned by the Compromise of 1877. Reconstruction was replaced with
Jim Crow segregation, a system that persisted until the Civil Rights movement of the
mid-twentieth century
Northern Attitude Toward Slavery
Northern free labor ideology celebrated the dignity of work, and the North's open, dynamic, capitalist
society offered opportunities for upward mobility. Though most Northerners held racist views, as free labor
advocates they considered slavery a threat to progress, not to mention their jobs. They also tended to
believe that individuals' responsibility for self-improvement translated into social responsibility-to reform
industrialization's ills, including slavery.
Southern Attitude on Slavery
Southern whites, on the other hand, embraced slavery even though three-quarters owned no slaves. Small
farmers and poor whites may have resented wealthy planters, who formed the South's leadership, but
slavery transformed rich and poor whites alike into equals, as a permanent underclass of African Americans
lifted all Southern whites to superior social status. Moreover, all Southern whites feared slave revolts and
shared responsibility for maintaining racial order.
Southern Apologists and scholars alike-have attempted to downplay the significance of slavery as a
causative factor in the Civil War, attributing the conflict instead to a variety of differences between North
and South. Their arguments have tended to emphasize the
(1) constitutional right of states to secede from the federal government,
(2) average white non-slaveholding Southerners had no stake in slavery and fought to defend
their homes and the Southern ‘way of life.’
COSTS
In every important category necessary for waging war, from population to industrial might, the North
clearly possessed the advantage. Yet despite overwhelmingly disparate odds, it took four years, scorchedearth warfare, and an American treasure of material and human resources to bring the Confederacy to
unconditional surrender.
(1) Nearly 633,000 Americans fell. Until the Vietnam War, more Americans died in the Civil
War than in all other wars fought by the United States. In proportion to today's population, the
North's loss of 360,000 would translate into 4 million deaths, while the South's death count of
258,000 would tally a staggering 11 million (Roland 263).
(2) In other ways, the South paid a high price for secession. Gone was the influence of the planter
class that brought on the war and the archaic labor system that enriched them. The states of
the Confederacy ended the war with a shattered economy, losing two-thirds of their assessed
1860 wealth.
(3) While during the 1860s Northern wealth increased by 50 per cent, Southern
wealth decreased by 60 per cent ($3 billion in slave property was lost to the planter
economy), making the decade the nation's worst for economic growth until the 1930s.
Key People/Places
Abolitionists: Chiefly Northern advocates for the abolishment of slavery. In 1833, abolitionists organized
the American Anti-Slavery Society, which rejected gradual emancipation and demanded slavery's
immediate end. Within five years, the society counted over 1,300 state and local auxiliaries agitating with
anti-slavery lectures, pamphlets, and newspapers.
Southerners reacted to the abolitionist message by banning the distribution of abolitionist literature and
even offering a reward for the heads of key abolitionists such as William Lloyd Garrison. The movement
widened the gulf between North and South and helped precipitate the Civil War.
Jefferson Davis (1808-89): First and only president of the Confederate States of America. A West Point
graduate, Davis had been a Mississippi planter, congressman, and officer in the Mexican War, senator, and
secretary of war before the Civil War.
Frederick Douglass (1817-95): Arguably the most influential African American of the nineteenth century,
Douglass became an anti-slavery agitator after escaping from slavery in Maryland in 1838. A lecturer for
the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, Douglass later founded the North Star, an abolitionist newspaper
that advocated legal paths to ending slavery. During the war, he recruited black troops and advised Lincoln.
Gettysburg: Generally viewed as a turning point in the war, the three-day battle fought in Gettysburg,
Pennsylvania, from July 1, 1863, claimed more lives than any other Civil War battle. It was the culmination
of an offensive by Lee into the North in which the Southern commander, confident after a string of decisive
victories, hoped to destroy the Union and to continue the war while moving the pressure of war out of
Virginia. But the Union army under General George G. Meade stubbornly resisted Lee's costly attacks and
forced his retreat. While Union victory boosted Northern morale and ended thoughts of British
intervention, Lee no longer had strength for another major campaign.
Ulysses Simpson Grant (1822-85): Emerged as the greatest Union commander. Grant captured national
attention as a brigadier general with his operations at Forts Henry and Donelson, Shiloh, and Vicksburg and
assumed strategic command of the war after his appointment as general in chief of the armies of the United
States in March 1864, following his victories around Chattanooga, Tennessee. Subsequently, Grant's
‘relentless pounding’ of the Army of Northern Virginia led to Lee's surrender at Appomattox Court
House in April 1865.
Thomas Jonathan (‘Stonewall’) Jackson (1824-63): The Confederate general nicknamed ‘Stonewall’ for
his stubborn stand at the 1861 Battle of Bull Run. As Robert E. Lee's chief lieutenant he performed
brilliantly at the Shenandoah Valley Campaign (May 1862), Second Bull Run (August 1862), and
particularly Chancellorsville (May 1863), during which he was accidentally killed by his own troops.
Clara Barton (1821-1912): A teacher who during the Civil War co-ordinated relief efforts for wounded
soldiers of both the North and South, Barton played a crucial role during some of the conflict's bloodiest
battles. In 1881, she would go on to found the Red Cross.
Robert E. Lee (1807-70): He served as superintendent of West Point and suppressed John Brown's raid on
Harpers Ferry, Virginia. Offered command of the federal (i.e., Union) forces by Lincoln in April 1861, Lee
declined because his native Virginia had joined the secession movement. In June 1862, having served as
Jefferson Davis's military advisor, Lee took command of the Army of Northern Virginia and for almost
three years, with inferior numbers and material, prevented Union forces from capturing the Confederate
capital, while also invading the North twice. His daring, pugnacity, and tactical skill earned him a place
among history's legendary commanders.
Abraham Lincoln (1809-65): Arguably the most significant figure of the Civil War, Lincoln served as
wartime president (1861-65) of the United States. His election to the presidency as a Republican prompted
the secession crisis, but Lincoln's determination to hold the Union together proved pivotal in eventual
federal victory.
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-96): Author of Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), a book that brought her
international fame, Stowe was a Northern woman with close ties to the intellectual community of
antebellum Connecticut. Though Uncle Tom's Cabin is sometimes criticized by modern audiences, in its
own time, the novel helped to spur the abolitionist cause by making distant audiences aware of the plight of
American slaves.
George B. McClellan (1826-85): A brilliant administrator and organizer, McClellan lacked a fighting
spirit and consistently demanded more troops and supplies before attacking. Egotistical and difficult,
McClellan was relieved by a disappointed Lincoln in the fall of 1862. ‘Little Mac,’ as McClellan was
known to his admiring troops, opposed Lincoln as Democratic candidate for president in 1864.
Harriet Tubman (c. 1820-1913): A former slave from Maryland, Tubman was the architect of the
Underground Railroad, a vital clandestine system of safe houses and pathways that, in the years leading up
to the Civil War, enabled many slaves to escape to the North and freedom. Tubman was also a leading
abolitionist and, during the war, a Union spy and nurse.
William Henry Seward (1801-72): The Union secretary of state who served as governor of New York
(1839-43) and later as a senator known for his anti-slavery views. Joining the Republican Party in 1856,
Seward twice received the party's nomination for president. As secretary of state, he displayed diplomatic
skill and continued serving in the same post during the 1865-69 Johnson administration. He negotiated the
purchase of Alaska, aka “Seward’s Folly”.
William Tecumseh Sherman (1820-91): Volunteered his services to the Union and literally fought the
first to the last battles. He began the war as a colonel at Bull Run and rapidly gained rank in the western
theatre, attaining major general in May 1862. Sherman commanded either a division or corps in the West's
major battles including Shiloh, Chickasaw Bluffs, Vicksburg, and Chattanooga. A good friend of Grant's,
he directed military operations in the West after Grant's promotion to general in chief in 1864. For his
Atlanta Campaign and subsequent ‘scorched-earth’ warfare, Sherman has been ranked by some scholars as
among the top Civil War generals.
Timeline
1619-1783: The Colonial Period
The first African American slaves arrive in Virginia in 1619, and while slavery spreads to tobacco and rice
farming in the South, the institution never gains a foothold in the North's diversified small farming.
By the time of the Revolution, the paradox of slavery in a republic born of Enlightenment ideals is apparent
to some of those involved in establishing the new nation. In the interest of unity between Northerners and
Southerners, however, the nation's founders compromise on the slavery issue. Remember the musical
1776—Molasses, Rum and Slaves?
1783-1820: Early National Period
The 1793 invention of the cotton gin-an ‘engine’ that efficiently removed seeds from cotton bolls-breathes
new life into slavery. Now the South can profitably produce cotton just in time for the Industrial Revolution
that brings mass production of textiles to Great Britain and New England. Slavery makes cotton farming
pay, and with the potential for great returns, cotton farming and slavery proliferate among new agricultural
areas opening in the lower Mississippi River Valley. As a result, slave and free states develop different
economic systems, and by 1820 there are clear tensions over power in the national government.
1820-40
The 1820 Missouri Compromise resolves the power dispute in the national government by stipulating that
slavery will be prohibited north of 36º 30' in the Louisiana Purchase territory. While Southerners are on
their way to producing most of the world's cotton supply, Northerners experience the jolt of modernisation
through a combination of transport improvements, commercial development, and manufacturing. Rather
than investing in manufacturing or transport improvements, Southerners invest in more land and slaves,
turning the region into a kind of backward colony for the industrializing North and Europe. Nat Turner's
slave revolt in Virginia (1831), combined with agitation by abolitionists, generates fear among
Southerners, who draw inward to protect their slave system.
1840-50
Territory acquired during the Mexican War reopens the question of power in the national government with
the Wilmot Proviso. Introduced by a Pennsylvania congressman in 1846, this legislation proposes to ban
slavery from the territories acquired during the war--meaning that these territories will come into the Union
as free states, upsetting the balance of power.
Arguments in Congress grow so intractable by 1850 that a convention of Southerners meets in Nashville
(Nashville Convention) that summer to discuss the option of Southern secession from the Union.
Congress defuses the meeting with the Compromise of 1850, a package of laws that momentarily averts
crisis but in reality pleases neither Southerners nor Northerners.
1850-59
This tumultuous decade begins with Northern resentment for the Compromise of 1850's provision
compelling the return of runaway slaves (Fugitive Slave Act). In 1854, the problem of slavery's extension
appears again with the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which opens the Louisiana Purchase to slavery if settlers
vote to accept it (‘popular sovereignty’), a violation of the Missouri Compromise.
Alarmed Northerners rally around the new Republican Party, which pledges to support ‘free labour’ and
to stop slavery's expansion.
In 1857, the Supreme Court rules in Dred Scott v. Sandford that Congress cannot exclude slavery from the
territories, essentially nullifying the Republican position. Meanwhile, violence increasingly accompanies
disputes over slavery.
The Brooks-Sumner affair (1856) involving the brutal beating of an anti-slavery Northern senator on the
floor of Congress, violent skirmishes in Kansas between pro- and anti-slavery forces competing to claim
the territory.
In 1859, abolitionist, John Brown to incite slave insurrection in Virginia also exacerbate tensions.
1860
11/1860 - Abraham Lincoln, a Republican opposed to slavery's expansion, won the presidency without year
with a single Southern electoral vote.
1861
2/1861 - Seven Southern states (including South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia,
Louisiana, and Texas) left the Union and formed the Confederate States of America within three months of
the election. Jefferson Davis is elected president of CSA.
4/12/1861 –
Lincoln vows to uphold the law and maintains that secession is an illegal act. On April 12, the Confederates
fire on Fort Sumter, a federal fort that Lincoln tries to resupply in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina.
When Lincoln subsequently calls for 75,000 volunteers to put down what he terms the ‘insurrection,’ four
states of the upper South with half as many slaves as those already gone-Virginia, North Carolina,
Tennessee, and Arkansas-secede and join the Confederacy. Lincoln hopes for a quick victory, but in the
first major battle of the war (July 21) the Union forces are routed near Manassas, Virginia, and flee back to
Washington. Many now realize that the Confederacy will not be easily suppressed.
1862
The Confederacy fares well in the eastern theatre of the war:
(1) Confederate General Thomas J. ‘Stonewall’ Jackson beats three Union armies in the Shenandoah
Valley,
(2) Army of Northern Virginia's new commander, Robert E. Lee severely compromises General George B.
McClellan's large army at Richmond,
(3) McClellan is victorious at Antietam
(4) Lee slaughters thousands of Burnsides Union soldiers in a suicidal frontal assault at Fredericksburg,
(5) Union Army occupying New Orleans.
(6) 1862 -Antietam provides Lincoln the opening he needs to issue the Emancipation Proclamation which
discourages European powers from recognizing the Confederacy.
1863
(1) Union forces suffer defeat in May at the Battle of Chancellorsville,
(2) Lee invades the North and is defeated in three days of fighting at Gettysburg,
(3) Grant is victorious at Vicksburg and by July 4th the Union controls the length of Mississippi River
splitting off Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas from the rest of the Confederacy.
(4) Grant brings victory by relieving the siege at the battles of Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge
opening Georgia to a Union advance.
1864
Grant is general in chief of all Union armies and adopts a strategy of annihilation, planning simultaneous
Union offensives against the Confederacy.
(1) General William T. Sherman begins his March to the Sea.
(2) Grant, personally commanding the Army of the Potomac, lays siege to Petersburg, a rail centre
supplying Richmond. Grant's stalemate and the appalling carnage further erode Northern support
for the war, which threaten Lincoln's chances for re-election in November and hence the Union
cause.
(3) Lincoln's Democratic opponent, former General George B. McClellan, promises a peace
convention if he is elected (Peace Democrats).
(4) Sherman captures Atlanta and moves on to Savannah.
(5) The good news cheers Northerners, and Lincoln is re-elected, thanks in part to overwhelming
support from Union soldiers.
(6) General Philip H. Sheridan wages ‘scorched-earth’ warfare in the Shenandoah Valley, burning
crops and farms to break Southern morale.
(7) Sherman tears a sixty-mile-wide swathe through Georgia, devastating economic resources and the
Southern will to fight. By November, Union forces hold the entire interior of the Confederacy.
1865
(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
Confederacy passes a law authorizing the enlistment of 300,000 slaves in March.
Grant breaks Lee's lines at Petersburg,
Lee surrenders on April 9 at Appomattox Court House,
Six days later, Lincoln is assassinated.
Foreign Intervention
By 1861, the maturing United States wielded power that influential Europeans wanted to prune. Leaders of
both Britain and France saw opportunity in a fragmented United States too weak to halt European
ambitions in the Americas-for example, in 1863 France took advantage of the North's preoccupation with
the war by overthrowing the Mexican government and establishing its own puppet regime. Furthermore,
many European aristocrats disdained the success of the United States' democratic experiment and delighted
in what they saw as its impending dissolution.
Southern envoys tried to coerce Great Britain and France to support the Confederacy in a number of ways.
(1) Providing outright aid to the Confederacy (much like French support to the struggling colonies
during the Revolutionary War).
(2) Because Southern cotton accounted for three-quarters of all the cotton employed inBritain's textile
mills, Confederate leaders imagined that withholding cotton shipments would trump all else in
encouraging European intervention. Yet a Southern embargo on cotton, combined with an
increasingly effective Northern blockade of Southern shipping, failed to move European powers.
Britain had socked away some surpluses, and moreover did not want to jeopardize its brisk trade
with the North, upon which it relied for grain. Furthermore, the British had abolished slavery, and
most opposed the institution no matter their class.
(3) Though the cotton shortage did bring unemployment and work stoppages, British textile workers
largely supported the Union's symbolic fight for democracy and the dignity of labor.
(4) Once Lincoln issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation in the fall of 1862, popular
opinion in Europe swayed decisively in the North's favor.
(5) Seward and United States Minister to Britain Charles Francis Adams displayed toughness as well
as tact, as indicated by their response to the Trent affair. Consistent with Lincoln's assertion that
the war was an insurrection against civil government, Seward repeatedly warned Europeans
against meddling in the United States' internal affairs. In the face of Seward's diplomatic firmness,
the British realized that tinkering with the struggling nation could lead to needless conflict,
endangerment to Canada, and disruption of commerce.
Other Terms, Events, Acts
John Brown's Raid (1859): Brown, a radical abolitionist who believed God empowered him to end
slavery, intended to incite a slave uprising in Virginia. Without informing any slaves and lacking in
adequate planning, Brown and a group of twenty-one others seized Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West
Virginia), site of a government armoury, in October 1859. A company of U.S. Marines led by Colonel
Robert E. Lee quickly snuffed out the insurrection, and Brown was hanged. Yet the incident increased
tensions between North and South and contributed to pro-secession sentiment. Southerners were enraged
when they learned Brown had influential Northern supporters. Continually fearful of slave revolts,
Southerners imagined they now could expect more of the same. In the North, Brown became a martyr, and
hero of a Civil War marching song (‘John Brown's Body’); essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote that
Brown had made the gallows ‘glorious as the cross’ (McPherson, Battle Cry 209).
Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854): Provided for the organisation of Kansas and Nebraska territories on the
basis of ‘popular sovereignty,’ which repealed the 1820 Missouri Compromise's containment of slavery and
led to pro- and anti-slavery forces clashing for control of the Kansas territory.
Minie ball: A projectile fired by most Civil War soldiers, it was responsible for the majority of Civil War
deaths. The term is a double misnomer, as the bullet was not a ball but conical in shape, and its original
design by French officer Claude Minie had been improved significantly by an American named James
Burton.
Missouri Compromise (1820): The first of several national compromises between free and slave states
during the years leading up to the Civil War, the Missouri Compromise maintained the Senate's power
balance between slave and free states by adding Missouri to the Union as a slave state and Maine as a free
state. The bill not only established a precedent for admitting states in pairs, but also banned slavery in the
Louisiana Purchase north of the Southern boundary of Missouri.
popular sovereignty: Rather than leave the question of slavery's expansion in the hands of national
lawmakers, this doctrine, named by Illinois Senator Stephen A. Douglas, allowed settlers to decide whether
to permit slavery within a territory.
Republican Party: Emerging out of the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act that repealed the Missouri
Compromise and opened these territories to slavery, the Republican Party gathered a variety of anti-slavery
Thirteenth Amendment: Approved by Congress on January 31, 1865, and added to the Constitution in
December after ratification by former Confederate states, the Amendment guaranteed African American
freedom by prohibiting slavery anywhere in the United States or in territories under its jurisdiction.
Thirty-Seventh Congress (1861-62): One of the most productive in American history, the second session
passed progressive measures (previously blocked by now-absent Southern legislators) that restructured
the nation's tax and monetary systems, granted public lands to settlers, constructed a
transcontinental railway, established public higher education, and generally set the stage for post-war
industrial America.
Trent Affair (November 1861): The greatest diplomatic crisis of the war occurred when famous
American explorer Charles Wilkes, commander of the USS San Jacinto, boarded and removed two
Confederate emissaries from the British steamer Trent and threw them in prison. While the Northern public
hailed Wilkes as a hero, British officials fumed with talk of war against the United States. Secretary of
State William Seward defused the situation by assuring the British that Wilkes acted without authorisation;
Seward subsequently ordered the emissaries' release.
Uncle Tom's Cabin: A novel about slavery authored by Harriet Beecher Stowe (a Northerner who had
never seen a plantation), Uncle Tom's Cabin sold three hundred thousand copies within a year of its 1852
publication, and three million copies in the United States and overseas by the end of the decade. Translated
into a stage play, as well as toys, games, plates, and wallpaper, the story humanized slaves for many readers
by showing how slavery wrecked families. At the same time, because of the book's idealisation of its
characters, the term ‘Uncle Tom’ also became a symbol for blacks who had ‘sold out’ by catering to or
entering middle-class white society. Still, the book convinced many Northerners of slavery's moral evils
and prompted Lincoln to remark when he met Stowe in 1862: ‘So you're the little woman who wrote the
book that started this great war’ (McPherson, Battle Cry 91).
United States Sanitary Commission: A Northern charitable organisation that aided the health of Union
soldiers through improved diet, hygiene, and medicine. Termed the forerunner of the Red Cross, the
commission funded its vast network of agents, medical personnel, and warehouses through public fairs and
lotteries.