James L. Roark ● Michael P. Johnson Patricia Cline Cohen ● Sarah Stage Susan M. Hartmann The American Promise A History of the United States Fifth Edition CHAPTER 15 The Crucible of War, 1861-1865 Copyright © 2012 by Bedford/St. Martin's I. “And the War Came” A. Attack on Fort Sumter 1. Symbolic importance • the spring of 1861, Major Robert Anderson and some eighty U.S. soldiers occupied Fort Sumter at the entrance to Charleston harbor; to Southerners, the fort became a hated symbol, reminding Southerners of the nation they had abandoned; Northerners saw Fort Sumter as a symbol of federal sovereignty in the seceded states. • • 2. The presidents’ responses decided to hold Fort Sumter, so he had to provision it; he avoided sending military reinforcements; he knew he risked war, but his plan honored his promises to defend federal property and to avoid using military force unless first attacked; masterfully shifted the decision of war or peace to Davis; on April 9, 1861, Davis and his cabinet met to consider the situation; according to Davis, the territorial integrity of the Confederacy demanded the end of the federal presence; against the advice of his secretary of state, Robert Toombs, Davis sent Confederate soldiers to bombard the fort, forcing Anderson to surrender. 3. Defending the flag Lincoln called for 75,000 militiamen to serve for ninety days to put down the rebellion; several times that number rushed to defend the flag. B. The Upper South Chooses Sides 1. The difficult choice 2. Border states • throughout the border states, but especially in Kentucky, the Civil War became a “brothers’ war,” dividing families over the issue of slavery; in the end, only eleven of the fifteen slave states joined the Confederate States of America; four of the seceding Upper South states contained significant numbers of people who felt little affection for the Confederacy; dissatisfaction was so rife in the western counties of Virginia that in 1863, citizens voted to create a new state, West Virginia, loyal to the union. II. The Combatants A. How They Expected to Win 1. The Union’s advantages • had enormous advantages: greater population, more wealth, and better-developed industry, manufacturing, agriculture, and infrastructure. 2. The South’s expectations • believed that they would triumph; saw themselves as warriors fighting in the tradition of the American Revolution; confidence rested partly on its estimation of the economic clout of its principal crop, cotton; believed that northern prosperity depended on the South’s cotton and that the crop would also make an ally. 3. The Confederate strategy • Confederacy devised a military strategy that recognized that a Confederate victory required only that the South stay at home, blunt invasions, avoid battles that risked annihilating its army, and outlast the northern will to fight; could win independence by not losing the war. • naval blockade designed to block the Confederacy from shipping cotton; Davis ceased exporting cotton, which devastated the southern economy; Lincoln devised the Anaconda Plan, designed to cut the Confederacy in two by targeting Virginia and the Mississippi Valley; neither side predicted the magnitude and duration of the war. 4. Anaconda Plan B. Lincoln and Davis Mobilize 1. Davis’s potential 2. Lincoln’s experience 3. The realities of leadership • Davis had no gift for military strategy, yet he often intervened in military affairs; he was quarrelsome and proud in the political arena, making enemies the Confederacy could ill afford; Lincoln proved himself a master politician and shrewd leader; appointed the ablest men to his cabinet; eloquence helped galvanize northern people in defense of the nation. 4. Supplying armies • the South building supplies from scratch and the North repurposing already established resources and troops; federal army numbered only 16,000 men on the eve of the war; the Confederacy made prodigious efforts to build new factories to produce war supplies, but the Confederate army nonetheless faced continual supply shortages; supplying huge armies required new revenues, and both sides turned to the sale of war bonds and the collection of taxes. III. Battling It Out, 1861–1862 A. Stalemate in the Eastern Theater 1. The Battle of Bull Run • 35,000 troops for an attack on 20,000 Confederates defending Manassas, a railroad junction in Virginia near Washington; fast-moving Confederate reinforcements blunted the Union attack and then counterattacked; Union troops retreated in a panicky stampede; casualties at Bull Run (known as Manassas to Southerners) were relatively light; the significance of the battle lay in the lessons Northerners and Southerners drew from it: Southerners reaffirmed their belief in the superiority of their fighting forces, and Northerners learned that victory would not be quick or easy. 2. McClellan and the Union offensive • appointed George B. McClellan the commander of the Army of the Potomac; launched offensive in May 1862; when McClellan was within six miles of Richmond, Confederate general Joseph Johnston hit back; Johnston was wounded in the attack and replaced by Robert E. Lee, who would become the South’s most celebrated general. 3. The Seven Days Battle and the Second Battle of Bull Run • Run—Lee initiated the Seven Days Battle, saving Richmond; Lincoln wired McClellan to abandon the peninsula campaign and replaced him with General John Pope; in August 1862, at the second battle of Bull Run, Lee’s smaller army battered Pope’s forces and sent them back to Washington; Lincoln replaced Pope, restoring McClellan again to command. 4. The Battle of Antietam 5. The Battle of Fredericksburg • Fredericksburg, Union general Ambrose Burnside’s 122,000 Union troops faced 78,500 Confederates dug in behind a stone wall; half a mile of open ground separated the armies; one of the Union’s worst defeats; by the end of the year, the North seemed no nearer to ending the rebellion than it had been when the war began; military struggle in the East had reached stalemate. III. Battling It Out, 1861–1862 B. Union Victories in the Western Theater 1. Western goals 2. Confederate defeats 3. Tennessee • General Ulysses S. Grant emerged as the key northern commander; in February 1862, Grant captured Fort Henry on the Tennessee River and Fort Donelson on the Cumberland; forced Confederates to withdraw from all of Kentucky and most of Tennessee; Grant followed; in April, Union forces prevailed at the costly battle of Shiloh in Tennessee; although no one knew it at the time, Shiloh ended the Confederacy’s bid to control the western theater; by the end of 1862, the far West and most—but not all—of the Mississippi valley lay in Union hands. C. The Atlantic Theater 1. The U.S. Navy 2. Confederate innovations 3. The blockade tightens • each month Union fleet tightened its noose; by 1863, the South wanted to ship cotton to pay for imports of the material it needed to fight the war, but the federal blockade sealed off the Confederacy and weakened it dramatically. III. Battling It Out, 1861–1862 D. International Diplomacy 1. King Cotton diplomacy 2. Why Europe remained neutral • Cotton Diplomacy failed in part because of the availability of cotton from other parts of the world; trade between the Union and Britain—British war materiel for American grain and flour—helped offset the decline in textiles and encouraged Britain to remain neutral; Union successes in the West dissuaded Britain and France; in 1862, Lincoln announced a new policy that made an alliance with the Confederacy an alliance with slavery; since the French and English outlawed slavery in their empires, this was an alliance neither country was willing to make. IV. Union and Freedom A. From Slaves to Contraband 1. Lincoln and black freedom 2. Congress and slavery policy • abolitionists argued that by seceding, Southerners had forfeited their right to constitutional protection; Republican-dominated Congress refused to leave slavery policy entirely in Lincoln’s hands, passing the Confiscation Act, which allowed the seizure of any slave who was employed directly by the Confederate military. • 3. Slaves press for freedom 4. Contraband of war 5. Lincoln’s antislavery initiatives to calm Northerners’ racial fears, he offered colonization; blacks opposed these efforts; as Lincoln developed his own initiatives, he snuffed out various federal commanders’ efforts to free rebels’ slaves because he believed it would jeopardize northern unity; would not allow generals to free slaves; events moved so rapidly, however, that Lincoln found it impossible to control federal policy on slavery. B. From Contraband to Free People 1. The Emancipation Proclamation • July 17, 1862, Congress passed a second Confiscation Act; freed all slaves of rebel masters; by July, Lincoln had drafted a preliminary emancipation proclamation that promised to free all slaves in the seceding states on January 1, 1863; he described emancipation as an “act of justice,” but it was the increasing casualty lists that finally brought him around. • 2. Criticisms exempted the loyal border states and the Union-occupied areas of the Confederacy, which caused some to ridicule the act, but Lincoln had no power to free slaves in loyal states; by presenting emancipation as a “military necessity,” Lincoln hoped he had disarmed his conservative critics; Lincoln issued the final Emancipation Proclamation as promised on January 1, 1863. IV. Union and Freedom C. The War of Black Liberation 1. Black soldiers 2. Unequal treatment 3. Black courage V. The South at War A. Revolution from Above 1. Building the army • Davis faced the task of building an army and navy from scratch, supplying them from factories that were scarce and anemic, and paying for it all from a treasury that did not exist; finding eager soldiers proved easiest; hundreds of officers defected from the U.S. Army and hundreds of thousands of rebels volunteered. 2. Economy and finances • • • printed paper money, which caused inflation; manufactured more than most people thought possible, but it never produced what the South needed. 3. Government Intrusion—War-making 3. Government intrusion drafting able-bodied white males, confiscating food and goods for below-market rates, and legally impressing slaves; conflicted with the South’s traditional values of states’ rights and unfettered individualism; but popular commitment to the new nation endured despite the strain. B. Hardship Below 1. The poor • the price of flour increased tenfold; government took 10 percent of harvests as a tax; in the spring of 1863, bread riots broke out in a dozen cities and villages across the South; Confederate efforts at social welfare all failed; when the war ended, one-third of the soldiers had already gone home. 2. Class conflict V. The South at War C. The Disintegration of Slavery 1. The practical destruction of slavery • practical destruction of slavery was the product of war; the war disrupted the routine, organization, and discipline of bondage and in large parts of the South; slaves got to the fields late, worked indifferently, and quit early; balance of power between master and slave gradually shifted. 2. Shift in master-slave balance of power • some slaveholders fled, leaving their slaves behind; many more took their slaves with them, giving slaves new opportunities to resist bondage; throughout the course of the war, slaves undermined white mastery and expanded control over their own lives. VI. The North at War A. The Government and the Economy 1. Republican economic programs • • • When the war began, the United States had no national banking system, no national currency, and no federal income or excise taxes; secession of eleven slave states cut the Democrats’ strength in Congress in half and destroyed their capacity to resist Republican economic programs; led to the Legal Tender Act of 1862, which created a national currency and paper money, the National Banking Act of 1863, and the Internal Revenue Act. 2. Integrating the West the Homestead Act offered 160 acres of public land to settlers who would live and labor on it; the Pacific Railroad Act provided federal assistance for a transcontinental railroad. 3. Agriculture and industry created of the Department of Agriculture; passed the Land-Grant College Act, which set aside public land to support universities that emphasized “agriculture and mechanical arts”; Lincoln administration immeasurably strengthened the North’s effort to win the war, but ideas also permanently changed the nation. B. Women and Work at Home and at War 1. Assuming masculine tasks • women stepped into jobs vacated by men, particularly in manufacturing; also into essentially new occupations such as government secretaries and clerks; the number of women working for wages rose 40 percent during the war. 2. Contributing from home 3. Wartime nurses VI. The North at War C. Politics and Dissent 1. Partisanship 2. Resisting the draft • Draft law of March 1863 gave Democrats another grievance; poor men opposed Union provisions that allowed a draftee to hire a substitute or to pay a $300 fee to get out of his military obligation; linking the draft and emancipation, Democrats argued that Republicans employed unconstitutional means (the draft) to achieve an unconstitutional end (emancipation); racist mobs went on rampages in northern cities. • 3. Stifling dissent Lincoln believed Democratic opposition to the war was more threatening to national survival than Confederate armies; in September 1862, Lincoln placed under military arrest any person who discouraged enlistments, resisted the draft, or engaged in “disloyal” practices; led to the imprisonment of 14,000 people, most in the border states. VII. Grinding Out Victory, 1863–1865 A. Vicksburg and Gettysburg 1. The Siege of Vicksburg • stronghold of Vicksburg, on the eastern bank of the Mississippi River, stood between Union forces and complete control of the river; in May 1863, Union forces under Grant laid siege to the city to starve out the enemy; the siege succeeded, and on July 4, 1863, nearly 30,000 rebels marched out of Vicksburg, stacked their arms, and surrendered unconditionally. • • 2. The Battle of Gettysburg July 4, 1863, the nation received the news that Union forces had defeated General Lee at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. 3. Turning points victories at Vicksburg and Gettysburg proved to be the turning point of the war; Confederacy could not replace the nearly 60,000 soldiers who were captured, wounded, or killed; Lee never launched another major offensive north of the Mason-Dixon line. B. Grant Takes Command 1. General in chief • September 1863, Union troops under Grant routed the Confederate army at Chattanooga; the victory opened the door to Georgia and confirmed Lincoln’s estimation of Grant; in March 1864, Lincoln asked Grant to come east to become the general in chief of all union armies; once in Washington, Grant implemented his grand strategy of a war of annihilation. • • 2. Fighting in Virginia Virginia—Grant and Lee met in early 1864 in northern Virginia at the Wilderness, a dense tangle of scrub oaks and small pines; approximately 18,000 Yankees and 11,00 rebels fell; the battle at Spotsylvania Court House cost Grant another 18,000 and Lee 10,000; Grant kept moving and fought Lee at Cold Harbor, where he suffered 13,000 additional casualties to Lee’s 5,000; twice as many Union soldiers as rebel soldiers died in the four weeks of fighting in Virginia, but, since Lee had only half as many troops as Grant, his losses were equivalent; Grant then began a siege that immobilized both armies and dragged on for nine months. 3. Sherman’s March to the Sea Sherman invaded Georgia; took Atlanta and Savannah and destroyed the will of the southern people during his “March to the Sea.” VII. Grinding Out Victory, 1863–1865 C. The Election of 1864 1. The Democratic challenge 2. Republican triumph • Capture of Atlanta in September turned the political tide in favor of the Republicans; Lincoln took 55 percent of the popular vote and won in the electoral college 212 to 55; had a mandate to continue the war until slavery and the Confederacy were dead. D. The Confederacy Collapses 1. Abandoning the rebellion • more and more Confederates turned their backs on the rebellion because they had been battered into submission; wives begged husbands to stay home; number of deserters grew dramatically; half of the 900,000 Confederate soldiers had been killed or wounded. • February 1, 1865, Sherman’s troops stormed out of Savannah into South Carolina; Lee abandoned Petersburg on April 2, and Richmond fell the next day; Grant pursued Lee for one hundred miles until Lee surrendered on April 9, 1865, at Appomattox Court House, Virginia; after four years, the war was over. • Five days later, President Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s Theater on April 14; Vice President Andrew Johnson became president; the man who had led the nation through the war would not lead it in its postwar search for a just peace. 2. The end of the war 3. Lincoln assassinated