The Furnace of Civil War
1861-1865
Bull Run Ends the “Ninety-Day War”
• On July 21, 1861, ill-trained
Yankee recruits marched
out toward Bull Run to
engage a smaller
Confederate unit and hey
expected one big battle and
a quick victory for the war
• However, after initial
success by the Union,
Confederate reinforcements
arrived and, coupled with
Stonewall Jackson’s line
holding, sent the Union
soldiers into disarray
• The Battle of Bull Run
showed the North that this
would not be a short, easy
war
Battle of Bull Run
McClellan and the Peninsula
Campaign
• Later in 1861, command of
the Army of the Potomac
(name of the Union army)
was given to 34 year old
General George B.
McClellan
• At Lincoln’s urging, McClellan
finally decided upon a waterborne approach to Richmond
(the South’s capital), called
the Peninsula Campaign
• Southern General Robert E.
Lee launched a devastating
counterattack—the Seven
Days’ Battle—on June 26 to
July 2 of 1862
Lincoln and McClellan
Peninsula
Campaign,
1862
Main Thrusts, 1861–1865
The Anaconda Plan
Monitor and Merrimack
The Pivotal Point: Antietam
• General McClellan and the
Union forces were able to stop
the Southerners at Antietam
Creek on September 17, 1862
in one of the bloodiest days of
the Civil War
• Antietam was the Union
display of power that Lincoln
needed to discourage
European interference and
announce his Emancipation
Proclamation, which would go
into effect on January 1, 1863
• Now, the war was not just to
save the Union, it was to free
the slaves as well, which gave
the war a moral purpose (end
slavery) to go with its political
purpose (restore the union)
Lincoln with McClellan and staff at
the Grove Farm after the battle.
Blacks Battle Bondage
• By war’s end, Black’s
accounted for about 10% of
the Union army
• Until 1864, Southerners
refused to recognize Black
soldiers as prisoners of war,
and often executed them as
runaways and rebels
• Many Blacks did not cast off
their chains when they
heard the Emancipation
Proclamation, but many
others walked off of their
jobs when Union armies
conquered territories that
included the plantations that
they worked on
The 54th Massachusetts at the
Second Battle of Fort Wagner,
July 18, 1863
Lee’s Last Lunge at Gettysburg
• In the summer of 1863, Lee
prepared to invade the North for
the second and final time, at
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, but he
was met by General George G.
Meade
• In the Battle of Gettysburg (July 13, 1863), General George Pickett
led a hopeless, bloody, and pitiful
charge across a field that ended in
the slaughter of Confederates and
sealed the victory for the Union
• In November 1863, Lincoln
delivered his Gettysburg
Address, which added moral
purpose to the war saying a new
goal was to make sure those who
had been killed had not died in
vain
Photograph of the aftermath
at Gettysburg
The Road to
Gettysburg,
December 1862–
July 1863
Battle of
Gettysburg,
1863
The War in the West
• Lincoln finally found a general who
would act in Ulysses S. Grant, and
he fought under the ideal of
“immediate and unconditional
surrender”
• At Vicksburg, Mississippi, U.S. Grant
besieged the city and captured it on
July 4, 1863, thus securing the
important Mississippi River
• General William Tecumseh
Sherman captured and burned
down Atlanta before completing his
infamous “March to the Sea” at
Savannah
• His men cut a trail of destruction
one-mile wide, waging “total war” by
cutting up railroad tracks, burning
fields and crops, and destroying
everything
Grant
Sherman
The Mississippi
River and
Tennessee,
1862–1863
Sherman's
March,
1864–1865
Union Party,
1864
Presidential Election of 1864
(showing popular vote by county)
Grant Outlasts Lee
• Grant engaged the
Confederates in battles
because he knew that he
could afford to lose twice
as many men as Lee
• In a series of wilderness
encounters, Grant fought
Lee, with Grant losing
about 50,000 men
• Finally, Grant and his men
captured Richmond,
burnt it, and cornered Lee
at Appomattox
Courthouse, Virginia in
April of 1865, where Lee
formally surrendered
Grant and Lee at Appomattox
Courthouse
Grant's Virginia Campaign, 1864–1865
The Martyrdom of Lincoln
• On April 14, 1865,
Abraham Lincoln was shot
by John Wilkes Booth
and died the next day
• The Civil War cost
600,000 men, $15 billion,
and eradicated the
institution of slavery
• The Civil War also gave
America a supreme test of
its existence proving its
strength and further
increasing its growing
power and reputation
Lincoln's assassin, Booth, is
goaded by a hideous
Mephistophelian figure to shoot
the President, who is visible in a
theater box beyond.