homework

If it is necessary that I should

fall on the battle-field

for my Country I am ready.

—Sullivan Ballou

Awaiting combat, 1861: Union Soldiers from New York relax at camp awaiting orders to move to the front. The young men show great confidence and determination for their coming engagements, though one fellow to the left of the tent, perhaps a teenager far from home, seems to long for something as he stares beyond the camera. Note also the young African American with a broom sitting apart from the soldiers.

THE CIVIL WAR 1861-1865

WHAT ADVANTAGES did the North possess at the outset of the Civil War?

HOW DID the power of the federal government expand

as the war progressed?

WHAT SUCCESSES did the South enjoy in the early years of the war and how were

they achieved?

HOW, DID the end of slavery affect the war efforts of the North and South?

- 14 1111 1,

WHAT IMPACT did the war have on northern political, economic, and social life? and on

the same aspects of southern life?

•

HOW DID Grant and Sherman turn the tide of the war?

406

CHAPTER 16 THE CIVIL WAR, 1861-1865

11

AMERICAN COMMUNITIES Mother Bickerdyke Connects Northern Communities

to Their Boys at War

IN MAY 1861, THE REVEREND EDWARD BEECHER INTERRUPTED HIS customary Sunday service at Brick Congregational Church in Galesburg, Illinois, to read a disturbing letter to the congrega- tion. Two months earlier, Galesburg had proudly sent 500 of its young men off to join the Union army. They had not yet been in battle. Yet, the letter reported, an alarming number were dying of diseases caused by inadequate food, medical care, and sanita- tion at the crowded military camp in Cairo, Illinois. Most army doctors were surgeons trained to operate and amputate on the battlefield. The letter writer, appalled by the squalor and misery he saw around him, complained of abuses by the army. The Union army, however, was overwhelmed with the task of ready- ing recruits for battle and had made few provisions for their health when they were not in combat.

The shocked and grieving members of Beecher's congre- gation quickly decided to send not only supplies but also one of their number to inspect the conditions at the Cairo camp and to take action. In spite of warnings that army regulations excluded women from encampments, the congregation voted to send their most qualified member, Mary Ann Bickerdyke, a middle- aged widow who made her living as a "botanic physician."

"Mother" Bickerdyke, as she was called, let nothing stand in the way of helping her "boys." When she arrived in Cairo, she immediately set to work cleaning the hospital tents and the soldiers themselves, and finding and cooking nourishing food for them. The hos- pital director, who resented her interfer- ence, ordered her to leave, but she blandly continued her work. When he reported her to the commanding officer, General Benjamin Prentiss, she quickly convinced the general to let her stay.

A plain spoken, hardworking woman, totally unfazed by rank or tender masculine egos, Mother Bickerdyke single- mindedly devoted herself to what she called "the Lord's work." Once, when an indignant officer's wife complained about Bick- erdyke's rudeness, General William Tecumseh Sherman joked, "You've picked the one person around here who outranks me. If you want to lodge a complaint against her, you'll have to take it to President Lincoln."

Other communities all over the North rallied to make up for the Army's shortcomings with supplies and assistance. By their actions, Mother Bickerdyke and others like her exposed the War Department's inability to meet the needs of the nation's first mass army. The efforts of women on the local level quickly took on national dimensions. The Women's Central Association of Relief (WCAR) eventually had 7,000 chapters throughout the North. Its volunteers raised funds, made and collected food, clothes, medicine, bandages, and more than 250,000 quilts and comforters, and sent them to army camps and hospitals. All told, association chapters supplied an estimated $15 million worth of goods to the Union troops.

In June 1861, responding to requests by officials of the WCAR for formal recognition of the organization, President Abraham Lincoln created the United States Sanitary Commis- sion and gave it the power to investigate and advise the Medical Bureau.

Although at first she worked independently and remained suspicious of all organizations (and even of many other relief

workers), in 1862 Mother Bickerdyke was persuaded to become an official agent of "the Sanitary," as it was

known. The advantage to her was access to the commission's warehouses and the ability to order from them precisely what she needed. The advantage to the Sanitary was that Mother Bickerdyke was an unequaled

fundraiser. With the help of Bickerdyke's blunt appeals, the Sanitary raised $50 million

for the Union war effort. The Civil War was a national tragedy, ripping

apart the political fabric of the country and causing more casualties than any other war in the nation's history. The death toll of approximately 620,000 exceeded the number of dead in all the other wars from the Revolution through the Vietnam War. Yet in another sense, it was a community triumph. Local communities directly supported and sustained their soldiers on a massive scale in unprecedented ways. As national unity failed, the strength of local communities, symbolized by Mother Bick- erdyke, endured.

H

THE CIVIL WAR, 1861-1865 CHAPTER 16 ipa 407

COMMUNITIES MOBILIZE FOR WAR

A neutral observer in March 1861 might have seen ominous similarities. Two nations—the United States of America (shorn of seven states in the Deep South) and the Confederate States of America—each blamed the other

for the breakup of the Union. Two new presidents—Abraham Lincoln and Jeffer- son Davis—each faced the challenging task of building and maintaining national unity. Two regions—North and South—scorned each other and boasted of their own superiority. But the most important similarity was not yet apparent: both sides were unprepared for the ordeal that lay ahead.

FORT SUMTER: THE WAR BEGINS Fort Sumter, a federal military installation, sat on a granite island at the entrance to Charleston harbor. So long as it remained in Union hands, Charleston, the cen- ter of secessionist sentiment, would be immobilized. Thus, it was hardly surprising that Fort Sumter would provide President Lincoln with his first crisis.

With the fort dangerously low on supplies, Lincoln had to decide whether to abandon it or risk the fight that might ensue if he ordered it resupplied. On April 6, 1861, Lincoln took cautious and careful action, notifying the governor of South Carolina that he was sending a relief force to the fort carrying only food and no military supplies. Now the decision rested with Jefferson Davis. On April 10, he ordered General P. G. T. Beauregard to demand the surrender of Fort Sumter and to attack it if the garrison did not comply. On April 12, Beauregard opened fire. Two days later, the defenders surrendered.

Even before the attack on Fort Sumter, the Confederate Congress had autho- rized a volunteer army of 100,000 men to serve for twelve months. Men flocked to enlist, and their communities sent them off in ceremonies featuring bands,

bonfires, and belligerent oratory. The "thunderclap of Sumter" startled the North into an angry response. The

apathy and uncertainty that had prevailed since Lincoln's election disappeared, to be replaced by strong feelings of patriotism. On April 15, Lincoln issued a procla- mation calling for 75,000 state militiamen to serve in the federal army for ninety days. Enlistment offices were swamped with so many enthusiastic volunteers that men were sent home. Free African Americans, among the most eager to serve, were turned away: this was not yet a war for or by black people.

illa=:=2111111=„

WHAT ADVANTAGES did the

North possess at the outset of the

Civil War?

myhistelylab Review Summary

15-1 Jefferson Davis, Address to the Provisional Congress of the Confederate States of America (1861)

15-2 Alexander Hamilton Stephens,

The "Cornerstone Speech" (1861)

15-4 Why They Fought (1861)

This Currier and Ives lithograph shows the opening moment of the Civil War.

On April 12, 1861, Confederate General P.G.T. Beauregard ordered the shelling

of Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor. Two

days later, Union Major Robert Anderson

surrendered, and mobilization began for

what turned out to be the most devastat-

ing war in American history.

IMAGE KEY for pages 404-405

a. A federal flag that flew over Fort

Sumter.

b. A photo of engineers of the 8 th New

York State Militia, 1861.

c. The battle flag of the Second Battalion

Hilliard's Alabama Legion. This flag was pierced 83 times during the charge up Snod Grass Hill at

Chickamauga, Georgia.

d. The gray cap of a Confederate soldier

from the American Civil War.

e. A blue Union soldier's hat with a bugle emblem embroidered on the front.

f. The opening moment of the Civil War,

April 12, 1861, at Fort Sumter in

Charleston harbor.

g. A painting by William C. Washington,

Jackson Entering the City of Winchester, shows General "Stonewall" Jackson saving the Virginia town from Union capture in

1862.

h. Robert E. Lee (1807-1870),

commander-in-chief of the Confederate

armies during the Civil War.

i. American President Abraham Lincoln presents the Emancipation Proclamation to grateful black slaves

and white peasants in a political

cartoon about education, freedom,

and equality.

11. A black family runs through a vacant lot while being chased by white hooligans during the 1863 race riots

in New York City.

408 efi CHAPTER 16 THE CIVIL WAR, 1861-1865

The mobilization in Chester, Pennsylvania, was typical of the northern response to the outbreak of war. As volunteers marched off to Washington (the gathering place for the Union army), companies of home guards were organized by the men who remained behind. Within a month, the women of Chester had organized a countywide system of war relief. Such relief organizations, some for- mally organized, some informal, emerged in every community, North and South, that sent soldiers off to the Civil War. These organizations not only played a vital role in supplying the troops, but they also maintained the human, local link on which so many soldiers depended. In this sense, every American community accom- panied its young men to war.

THE BORDER STATES

The first secession, between December 20, 1860, and February 1, 1861, had taken seven Deep South states out of the Union. Now, in April, the firing on Fort Sumter and Lincoln's call for state militias forced the other southern states to take sides. Courted—and pressured—by both North and South, four states of the Upper South (Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina) joined the original seven in April and May 1861. Virginia's secession tipped the other three toward the Confederacy. The capital of the Confederacy was now moved to Richmond.

Still undecided was the loyalty of the northernmost tier of slave-owning states: Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, and Delaware. Each controlled vital strate- gic assets. Missouri not only bordered the Mississippi River but also controlled the routes to the west. Kentucky controlled the Ohio River. The main railroad link with the West ran through Maryland and the hill region of western Virginia. Delaware controlled access to Philadelphia. Finally, were Maryland to secede, the nation's capital would be completely surrounded by Confederate territory.

Delaware was loyal to the Union (less than 2 percent of its population were slaves), but Maryland's loyalty was divided, as an ugly incident on April 19 showed. When the Sixth Massachusetts Regiment marched through Baltimore, a hostile crowd of 10,000 southern sympathizers, carrying Confederate flags, pelted the troops with bricks, paving stones, and bullets. Finally, in desperation, the troops fired on the crowd, killing twelve people and wounding others. In retaliation, southern sympathizers burned the railroad bridges to the North and destroyed the telegraph line to Washington, cutting off communication between the cap- ital and the rest of the Union for six days.

Lincoln's response was swift and stern. He stationed Union troops along Maryland's crucial railroads, declared martial law in Baltimore, and arrested the suspected ringleaders of the pro-Confederate mob and held them without trial. The arrests in Maryland were the first of a number of violations of basic civil rights during the war, all of which the president justified on the basis of national security.

An even bloodier division occurred in Missouri, where old foes from "Bleed- ing Kansas" faced off. The proslavery governor and most of the legislature fled to Arkansas, where they declared a Confederate state government in exile, while Unionists remained in control in St. Louis. Consequently, Missouri was plagued by guerrilla battles throughout the war. In Kentucky, division took the form of a huge illegal trade with the Confederacy through neighboring Tennessee.

That Delaware, Maryland, Missouri, and Kentucky chose to stay in the Union was a severe blow to the Confederacy. Among them, the four states could have added 45 percent to the white population and military manpower of the Confederacy and 80 percent to its manufacturing capacity.

15-3 Mary Boykin Chesnut,

A Confederate Lady's Diary (1861)

ti 15-5 A Confederate General Assesses First Bull Run (1861)

roe

QUICK REVIEW

The First Battle of Bull Run

♦ July 1861: Beauregard (Confederacy) and McDowell (Union) meet at Manassas.

• Confederate troops repulse a strong Union attack.

• Battle foreshadowed war to come.

THE CIVIL WAR, 1861-1865 CHAPTER 16

40 9

THE BATTLE OF BULL RUN Once sides had been chosen and the initial flush of enthusiasm had passed, the nature of the war, and the mistaken notions about it, soon became clear. The event that shattered the illusions was the First Battle of Bull Run, at Bull Run Creek near Manassas in Virginia in July 1861. Confident of a quick victory, a Union army of 35,000 men marched south. The troops were accompanied not only by journalists but also by a crowd of politicians and sightseers. At first the Union troops held their ground against the 25,000 Confederate troops. But when 2,300 fresh Confederate troops arrived as reinforcements, the untrained northern troops broke ranks in an uncontrolled retreat that swept up the frightened sightseers as well.

THE RELATIVE STRENGTHS OF NORTH AND SOUTH

Bull Run was sobering—and prophetic. The Civil War was the most lethal military conflict in American history, leaving a legacy of devastation on the battlefield and desolation at home. It claimed the lives of nearly 620,000 soldiers, more than the First and Second World Wars combined. One out of every four soldiers who fought in the war never returned home.

Overall, in terms of both population and productive capacity, the Union seemed to have a commanding edge over the Confederacy. The North had two and a half times the South's population and enjoyed an even greater advantage in industrial capacity (nine times that of the South). These advantages were ulti- mately to prove decisive: by the end of the war, the Union had managed to field and equip more than 2 million soldiers as compared to the Confederacy's 800,000. The Confederacy's problems of supply, however, were due mostly to a poor rail- road system. But in the short term, the South had important assets to counter the advantage of the North (see Figure 16.1).

The first was the nature of the struggle. For the South, this was a defensive war, in which the basic principle of the defense of home and community united almost all white citizens, regardless of their views about slavery. The North would have to invade the South and then control it against guerrilla opposition in order to win.

Second, the military disparity was less extreme than it appeared. Although the North had manpower, its troops were mostly untrained. Moreover, the South appeared to have an advantage in military leaders, the most notable of which was Robert E. Lee.

Finally, it was widely believed that slavery would work to the South's advan- tage, for slaves could continue to do the vital plantation work while their masters

QUICK REVIEW

Northern Advantages

• Two and a half times the South's population.

• North controlled much of

nation's industrial capacity.

• Could field a much larger army.

29% lJ

1 9%

e 29%

6%

25%

.-- 1 9 % 96%

___...

25%

90%

Total populatio

Factory productio

Railroad mileag

Iron production

Farm acreag

Wheat

Cotton

Wealth produced

Percentage of eligible men in military service

(1864)

Figure 16.1

As this chart shows, the North far sur-

passed the South in the resources neces-

sary to support a large, long war. Initially, however, these strengths made little dif-

ference in a struggle that began as a tradi- tional war of maneuver in which the South held the difensive advantage. Only slowly did the Civil War become a modern war in

which all the resources of society, includ- ing the property and lives of civilians, were mobilized for battle.

The Times Atlas of World History (Maplewood, New Jersey: Hammond, 1978).

Union

Confederacy

This photograph, taken a month before his inauguration, shows Lincoln looking presidential. It was clearly intended

to reassure a public still doubtful about his abilities.

410 CHAPTER 16 THE CIVIL WAR, 1861-1865

went off to war. But above all, the South had the weapon of cotton. Because of the crucial role of cotton in industrialization, Southerners were confident that the British and French need for southern cotton would soon bring those countries to recognize the Confederacy as a separate nation.

THE GOVERNMENTS ORGANIZE FOR WAR

rr he Civil War forced the federal government to assume powers unimagin- able just a few years before. Abraham Lincoln took as his primary task leading and unifying the nation in his role as commander in chief. He

found the challenge almost insurmountable. Jefferson Davis's challenge was even greater. He had to create a Confederate nation out of a loose grouping of eleven states, each believing strongly in states' rights. Yet in the Confederacy, as in the Union, the conduct of the war required central direction.

LINCOLN TAKES CHARGE

Lincoln's first task as president was to assert control over his own cabinet. Because he had few national contacts outside the Republican Party, Lincoln chose to staff his cabinet with other Republicans, including, most unusually, several who had been his rivals for the presidential nomination. That the Republican Party was a not-quite-jelled mix of former Whigs, abolitionists, moderate Free-Soilers, and even some prowar Democrats made Lincoln's task as party leader much more difficult than it might otherwise have been.

After the fall of Fort Sumter, military necessity prompted Lincoln to call up the state militias, order a naval blockade of the South, and vastly expand the mil- itary budget. Breaking with precedent, he took these actions without congres- sional sanction because Congress was not in session. Military necessity—the need

to hold the border states—likewise prompted other early actions, such as the suspension of habeas corpus and the acceptance of Kentucky's ambiguous neutrality. The president also repudiated an unauthorized declaration issued by General John C. Fremont, military commander in Missouri, in August 1861 that would have freed Missouri's slaves. Lincoln feared that such an action would lead to the secession of Kentucky and Maryland.

Lincoln was the first president to act as commander in chief in both a practical and a symbolic way. He actively directed mili- tary policy, because he realized that a civil war presented problems different from those of a foreign war of conquest. Lincoln wanted above all to persuade the South to rejoin the Union, and his every military order was dictated by the hope of eventual reconcilia- tion—hence, his caution and his acute sense of the role of pub- lic opinion. At the same time, he presided over a vast expansion of the powers of the federal government.

EXPANDING THE POWER OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT

The greatest expansion in government power during the war was in the War Department, which by early 1862 was faced with the unprecedented challenge of feeding, clothing, and arming 700,000 Union soldiers. Initially, the government relied on the individual states to equip and supply their vastly expanded mili- tias. But the size of the Union army and the complexity of fully

HOW DID the power of the federal

government expand as the war

progressed?

myhistdiy1 b Review Summary

THE CIVIL WAR, 1861-1865 CHAPTER 16 41164 411

supplying it demanded constant efforts at all levels—government, state, and com- munity—throughout the war. Thus, in the matter of procurement and supply, as in mobilization, the battlefront was related to the home front on a scale that Americans had not previously experienced.

The need for money for the vast war effort was pressing. Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase worked closely with Congress to develop ways to finance the war. With the help of Philadelphia financier Jay Cooke, the Treasury used patriotic appeals to sell war bonds to ordinary people in amounts as small as $50. By the war's end, the United States had borrowed $2.6 billion for the war effort, the first example in American history of the mass financing of war.

Most radical of all was Chase's decision to print and distribute Treasury notes (paper money). Until then, the money in circulation had been a mixture of coins and state bank notes issued by 1,500 different state banks. The Legal Tender Act of February 1862 created a national currency. In 1863, Congress passed the National Bank Act, which prohibited state banks from issuing their own notes and forced them to apply for federal charters. The switch to a national currency was widely recognized as a major step toward centralization of economic power in the hands of the federal government.

Although the outbreak of war overshadowed everything else, the Republican Party in Congress was determined to fulfill its campaign pledge of a comprehensive program of economic development. Republicans quickly passed the Morrill Tariff Act (1861). In 1862 and 1864, Congress created two federally chartered corporations to build a transcontinental railroad thus fulfilling the dreams of the many expansion- ists who believed America's economic future lay in trade with Asia across the Pacific

Ocean. The Homestead Act (1862) gave 160 acres of public land to any citizen who

agreed to live on the land for five years, improve it by building a house and cultivat- ing some of the land, and pay a small fee. The Morrill Land GrantAct (1862) gave states public land that would allow them to finance land-grant colleges offering education to ordinary citizens in practical skills such as agriculture, engineering, and military sci- ence. Coupled with this act, the establishment of a federal Department of Agricul- ture in 1862 gave American farmers a big push toward modern commercial agriculture.

The enactment of the Republican program increased the role of the fed- eral government in national life. Although many of the executive war powers lapsed when the battles ended, the accumulation of strength by the federal

government was never reversed.

DIPLOMATIC OBJECTIVES

To Secretary of State William Seward fell the job of making sure that Britain and France did not extend diplomatic recognition to the Confederacy. Although South- erners had been certain that King Cotton would gain them European support, they were wrong. British public opinion would not countenance the recognition of a new nation based on slavery. British cotton manufacturers found economic alternatives to southern cotton. In spite of Union protests, however, both Britain and France did allow Confederate vessels to use their ports, and British shipyards sold six ships to the Confederacy. But in 1863, when the Confederacy commissioned Britain's Laird shipyard to build two ironclad ships, the Union threatened war, and the British government made sure that the Laird ironclads were never delivered.

JEFFERSON DAVIS TRIES TO UNIFY THE CONFEDERACY

Although Jefferson Davis had held national cabinet rank (as secretary of war under President Franklin Pierce), had experience as an administrator, and was a former

military man, he was unable to hold the Confederacy together.

Legal Tender Act Act creating a national currency in February 1862.

National Bank Act Act prohibiting state banks from issuing their own notes and forcing them to apply for federal charters.

Morrill Tariff Act Act that raised tariffs to more than double their prewar rate.

Homestead Act Law passed by Congress in May 1862 providing homesteads with 160 acres of free land in exchange for improving the land within five years of the grant.

Morrill Land Grant Act Law passed by Congress in July 1862 awarding proceeds from the sale of public lands to the states for the establishment of agricultural and mechanical colleges.

QUICK REVIEW

Jefferson Davis and the

Southern Cause

♦ Davis had experience as an administrator and former military man.

♦ Davis not a leader by personality.

♦ Failed to unify Confederacy.

15-6 Charles Harvey Brewster, Three Letters from the Civil War Front (1862)

This painting by William C. Washington, Jackson Entering the City of Winchester, shows the dashing Confederate General "Stonewall" Jackson saving the Virginia town

from Union capture in 1862. Jackson and other Confederate generals evoked fierce

loyalty to the Confederacy. Unfortunately, by the time this victory was commemorated,

Jackson himself was dead from wounds caused by friendly fire at the Battle of

Chancellorsville in May of 1863.

William Washington, "Stonewall Jackson Entering the City of Winchester, Virginia." Oil painting. Valentine Museum

Library, Richmond, Virginia.

412 ail CHAPTER 16 THE CIVIL WAR, 1861-1865 Davis's first cabinet of six men, appointed in February 1861, included a rep-

resentative from each of the states of the first secession except Mississippi, which was represented by Davis himself. This careful attention to the equality of the states pointed to the fundamental problem Davis was unable to overcome. A shared belief in states' rights—that is, in their own autonomy—was a poor basis on which to build a unified nation. Although Davis saw the need for unity, he was unable to impose it. Soon his style of leadership—micromanagement—angered his gen- erals, alienated cabinet members, and gave southern governors reason to resist his orders. After the first flush of patriotism had passed, the Confederacy never lived up to its hope of becoming a unified nation.

CONTRADICTIONS OF SOUTHERN NATIONALISM

The failure of "cotton diplomacy" was a crushing blow. White Southerners were stunned that Britain and France would not recognize their claim to independence. Well into 1863, the South hoped that a decisive battlefield victory would change the minds of cautious Europeans.

Perhaps the greatest southern failure was in the area of finances. At first, the Confederate government tried to raise money from the states, but governors refused to impose new taxes. By the time uniform taxes were levied in 1863, it was too late. Heavy borrowing and the printing of great sums of paper money pro- duced runaway inflation (a ruinous rate of 9,000 percent by 1865, compared with 80 percent in the North). Inflation, in turn, caused incalculable damage to morale and prospects for unity.

After the initial surge of volunteers, enlistment in the military fell off, as it did in the North also. In April 1862, the Confederate Congress passed the first draft law in American history, and the Union Congress followed suit in March 1863. The southern law declared that all able-bodied men between eighteen and thirty-five were eligible for three years of military service. Purchase of substitutes was allowed, as in the North. The most disliked part of the draft law was a provi-

sion exempting one white man on each planta- tion with twenty or more slaves. This provision not only seemed to disprove the earlier claim that slavery freed white men to fight, but also it aroused class resentments.

In the early days of the war, Jefferson Davis successfully mobilized feelings of regional iden- tity and patriotism. Many Southerners felt part of a beleaguered region that had been forced to resist northern tyranny. But most felt loyalty to their own state and local communities, not to a Confederate nation. The strong belief in states' rights and aristocratic privilege undermined the Confederate cause. Some southern governors resisted potentially unifying actions such as mov- ing militias outside their home states. Broader measures, such as general taxation, were widely evaded by rich and poor alike.

The inequitable draft was only one of many things that convinced the ordinary peo- ple of the South that this was a war for privileged slave owners, not for them. With its leaders and

SUBSTITUTE NOT ICES.

W ANTED– •A SUBSTITUTE for a conscript, to serve during the war. Any good man o ■ er the age of 35 years, not a resident of Virgi- nia, or a foreigner, may hear of a good situation by calling at Mr. GEORGt BAGDY'S office, Shockoe Slip, to-day, between the hours of 9 and 11 A. M. Liy 9-1t*J A COUNTRYMAN.

W ANTED—Two SUBSTITUTES—ono for artillery, the other for infantry or cavalry service. Also, to sell, a trained, thoroughbred cav- alry HORSE. Apply to DR. BROOCKS,

Corner Main and 12th streets, or to T. T. BROOCRS,

jy 9-3t * Petersburg,'Va.

WANTED—Immediately, a SUBSTITUTE. A man over 3.5 years old, or under 18, can get a good Price by making immediate application to Room No. 50, Monument Hotel, or by addressing "J. W.," through Richmond P. 0. jy 9-1t -

ANTED—A SUBSTITUTE, to go into the 24th North Carolina State troops, for which

a Worn! price will be paid. Apply to me at Dis- patch office this evening at 4 o'clock P. M.

jy 9---lt• R. R. MOORE.

W ANTED—A SUBSTITUTE, to go in a first-rate Georgia company of infantry, under the heroic Jackson. A gentleman whose health hi Impaired, will give a fair price for a substitute. Ap- ply Immediately at ROOM, No. 13, Post-Office De- partment, third story, between the hours of 10 and 3 o'clock. jy 9-6t*

W ANTED—Two SUBSTITUTES for the war. A good bonus will be given. None need apply except those exempt from Conscript. Apply to-day at GEORGE I. HERRING'S,

jy 9-1t* Grocery store, No. 56 Main st.

THE CIVIL WAR, 1861-1865 CHAPTER 16 413

The contrast between the hope and valor of these young southern volunteer soldiers, photographed shortly before the First Battle of Bull Run, and the later advertisements for substitutes (at right), is marked. Southern exemptions for slave owners and lavish payment for substitutes increasingly bred resentment among the ordinary people of the South.

(above) Cook Collection. Valentine Museum Library/Richmond History Center.

citizens fearing (perhaps correctly) that centralization would destroy what was distinctively southern, the Con- federacy was unable to mobilize the resources—finan- cial, human, and otherwise—that might have prevented its destruction by northern armies.

THE FIGHTING THROUGH 1862

j - ust as political decisions were often driven by military necessity, the basic

northern and southern military strategies were affected by political consid- erations as much as by military ones. The initial policy of limited war,

thought to be the best route to ultimate reconciliation, ran into difficulties because of the public's impatience for victories. But victories, as the mounting slaughter made clear, were not easy to achieve.

THE WAR IN NORTHERN VIRGINIA

The initial northern strategy, dubbed by critics the Anaconda Plan (after the con- strictor snake), envisaged slowly squeezing the South with a blockade at sea and on the Mississippi River. The plan avoided invasion and conquest in the hope that a strained South would recognize the inevitability of defeat and thus surrender. Lincoln accepted the basics of the plan, but public clamor for a fight pushed him to agree to the disastrous Battle of Bull Run and then to a major buildup of Union troops in northern Virginia under General George B. McClellan (see Map 16.1).

WHAT SUCCESSES did the

South enjoy in the early years of the

war and how were they achieved?

myhisttOylab Review Summary

IOWA

INDIANA OHIO ILLINOIS

LOUISIANA

-*New Orleans

Gulf of Mexico

PENNSYLVANIA

1114`, DELAWARE

Richmond MARYLAND VIRGINIA

PENNSYLVANIA IOWA Gettysburg*,

INDIANA OHIO ILLINOIS WEST "DELAWARE

VIRGINIA MARYLAND

VIRGINIA KENT",

GEORGIA

I

Gulf of Mexico

NEBRASKA:

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ARKANSAS

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Vicksburg

LOUISIANA,

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NORTH

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KANSAS

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Ps -7 z

MISSOURI

ARKANSAS

NORTH CAROLINA :

SOUTH CAROLINA

GEORGIA

ATLANTIC OCEAN

Area controlled by Union -4— Union advance

1. Area gained by Union Union victory 1111 Area controlled by Confederacy ilk Confederate victory

I I

F TEXAS

LOUISIANA

ARKANSAS OKLAHOMA

Atlanta SOUTH CAROLINA

46 Sherman's March ""-.......SLpt-Dec 1864

Savannah GEORGIA"-

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O

1861-62

Gulf of Mexico

1863

IOWA PENNSYLVANIA N

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VIRGINIA VIRGINIA MARYLAND

*Appomattox

ILLINOIS

MISSOURI KENTUCKY

NORTH

TENNESSEE CAROLINA

1864-65

414 it CHAPTER 16 THE CIVIL WAR, 1861-1865

MAP EXPLORATION To explore an interactive version of this map, go to http://www.prenhall.com/faraghertIcimap16.1

In March 1862, after almost a year spent drilling the raw

Union recruits and after repeated exhortations by an impatient

Lincoln, McClellan committed 120,000 troops to what became

known as the Peninsular campaign. The objective was to capture Richmond, the Confederate capital. Inching up the James Penin-

sula, he tried to avoid battle, hoping his overwhelming numbers

would convince the South to surrender. In a series of battles

known as the Seven Days, Robert E. Lee boldly counterattacked,

repeatedly catching McClellan off guard. Taking heavy losses as

well as inflicting them, Lee drove McClellan back. In August,

Lee routed another Union army, commanded by General

John Pope, at the Second Battle of Bull Rull (Second Manassas).

MAP 16.1 Overall Strategy of the Civil War The initial northern strategy for sub- duing the South, the so-called Anaconda Plan (see cartoon above),

entailed strangling it by a blockade at sea and obtaining control of

the Mississippi River. But at the end of 1862, it was clear that the

South's defensive strategy could only be broken by the invasion of

southern territory. In 1864, Sherman's "March to the Sea" and

Grant's hammering tactics in northern Virginia brought the war home

to the South. Lee's surrender to Grant at Appomattox Courthouse on

April 9, 1865, ended the bloodiest war in the nation's history.

HOW DID the military strategies of the North and the South reflect each side's larger goals?

I I Area controlled by Union MI Area controlled by Confederacy -4— Union advance

Union retreat

-4— Confederate advance

-4-- Confederate retreat

AIL Union victory Confederate victory

PENNSYLVANIA

Hagerstown Antietam *,

Sept 17, 1862

1L—o

• Harpers

Winchester of Ferry

er

Bull Run (Manassas)

Jul 21, 1861 Aug 29-30, 1862 31••

Lee A

* Washington DC

McDowell

???.."

Ce d ar <"**. rBurnside Mountain

Fredericksburg Aug 9, 1862

Dec 13, 1862

VIRGINIA

Seven Days Battles

Richmond **Jun 25-Jul 1,7862

%.* 'kr/ Yorktown besieged Apr 6-May4, 1862

1 it Fortress Monroe'--''"

° Norfolk

MAP 16.2

Major Battles in the East, 1861-62 Northern Virginia was the most crucial and the most constant theater of battle. The prizes were the two opposing capitals, Washington and Richmond, only 70 miles apart. By the summer of 1862, George B. McClellan, famously cau- tious, had achieved only stalemate in the Peninsular campaign. He did, however, turn back Robert E. Lee at Antietam in September.

WHAT WAS the Anaconda Plan? Why did it fail?

MARYLAND Frederick

• Baltimore

THE CIVIL WAR, 1861-1865 CHAPTER 16 41 5

Lincoln, alarmed at the threat to Washington and disap- pointed by McClellan's inaction, ordered him to abandon the Peninsular campaign and return to the capital.

Jefferson Davis, like Abraham Lincoln, was an active commander in chief. And like Lincoln, he responded to a public that clamored for more action than a strictly defen- sive war entailed. After the Seven Days victories, Davis sup- ported a Confederate march into Maryland. At the same time, he issued a proclamation urging the people of Mary- land to make a separate peace. But in the brutal battle of Antietam on September 17, 1862, which claimed more than 5,000 dead and 19,000 wounded, McClellan's army checked Lee's advance. Lee retreated to Virginia, inflicting terrible losses on northern troops at Fredricksburg when they again made a thrust toward Richmond in December 1862. The war in northern Virginia was stalemated: neither side was strong enough to win, but each was too strong to be defeated (see Map 16.2).

SHILOH AND THE WAR FOR THE MISSISSIPPI

Although most public attention was focused on the fight- ing in Virginia, battles in Tennessee and along the Mississippi River proved to be the key to eventual Union vic- tory. In February 1862, General Ulysses S. Grant captured Fort Henry and Fort Donelson, on the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers, establishing Union control of much of Tennessee and forcing Confederate troops to retreat into northern Mississippi.

Moving south with 28,000 men, Grant met a 40,000- man Confederate force at Shiloh Church in April 1862. Seriously outnumbered on the first day, Grant's forces were reinforced by the arrival of 35,000 troops. After two days of bitter and bloody fighting in the rain, the Confederates withdrew. The losses on both sides were enormous: the North lost 3,000 men, the South 11,000. Nevertheless, Union forces kept moving, capturing Memphis in June and beginning a campaign to eventually capture Vicksburg. Grant and other Union generals faced strong Confederate resistance, and progress was slow. Earlier that year, naval forces under Admiral David Farragut had captured New Orleans and then continued up the Mississippi River. By the end of 1862, it was clearly only a matter of time before the entire river would be in Union hands. Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas would then be cut off from the rest of the Confederacy (see Map 16.3).

THE WAR IN THE TRANS—MISSISSIPPI WEST

Although only one western state, Texas, seceded from the Union, the Civil War was fought in small ways in many parts of the West. A Confederate force led by General Henry H. Sibley occupied Santa Fe and Albuquerque early in 1862 without resistance, thus posing a serious threat to the entire Southwest. Confederate hopes were dashed,

Peninsular campaign Union offensive led by McClellan with the objective of capturing Richmond.

Area controlled by Union

-0— Confederate advance

Area gained by Union

Confederate retreat

I I Area controlled by Confederacy -* Union victory

-4— Union advance

Confederate victory

INDIANA ILLINOIS

oho KENTUCKY

MISSOURI

Cairo

*Battle of Pea Ridge Mar 1863 Shiloh

Jun 6, 1862W1,4,Erart - ,„4" ilk Memphis \

Nov 23-25, 1863

Feb 6, 1862 HenryFort

Apr 6-Z 1862 Chattanooga

Corinth --410 ..)1, Chickamauga

to tP..

o); Sept 1863

Feb 16, 1862 Fort Donelson

o(s -.

) TENNESSEE

1J GEORGIA

ARKANSAS .

ALABAMA

MISSISSIPPI R", ,Vicksburg

LOUISIANA Jul 4, 1863

Port Hudson

Baton RougeRouge • Occupied May 12, 1862

Mobile • FLORIDA

New Orleans .1...Occupied Apr 25, 1862

Fort Jackson 111* Apr 24, 1862

Farragut

MAP 16.3 Major Battles in the Interior, 1862-63 Ulysses S. Grant waged a mo- bile war, winning at Fort Henry and Fort Donelson in Tennessee in

February 1862, at Shiloh in April, and capturing Memphis in June.

He then laid siege to Vicksburg, as Admiral David Farragut captured New Orleans and began to advance up the Mississippi River.

WHAT ROLE did Indians Play in the Fighting in the West?

4 16 Aps. CHAPTER 16 THE CIVIL WAR, 1861-1865 however, by a ragtag group of 950 miners and adventurers organized into the first Colorado Volunteer Infantry Regi- ment. After an epic march of 400 miles from Denver, which was completed in thirteen days despite snow and high winds, the Colorado militia stopped the unsuspecting Confederate troops in the Battle of Glorieta Pass on March 26-28, 1862. This dash- ing action, coupled with the efforts of California militias to safeguard Arizona and Utah from seizure by Confederate sym- pathizers, secured the Far West for the Union.

Another civil war took place in Indian Territory, south of Kansas. The southern Indian tribes who had been removed there from the Old Southwest in the 1830s included many who were still bitter over the horrors of their removal by fed- eral troops, and they sympathized with the Confederacy. The Confederacy actively sought Indian support by offering Indian people representation in the Confederate Congress. Conse- quently, many Indians fought for the South. Union victories at Pea Ridge (in northwestern Arkansas) in 1862 and near Fort Gibson (in Indian Territory) in 1863 secured the area for the Union but did little to stop dissension among the Indian groups themselves. After the Civil War, the victorious federal government used the tribes' wartime support for the Confed- eracy as a justification for demanding further land cessions.

Elsewhere in the West, other groups of Indians found themselves caught up in the wider war. An uprising by the

Santee Sioux in Minnesota occurred in August 1862, just as McClellan conceded defeat in the Peninsular campaign in Virginia. Alarmed whites, certain that the uprising was a Confederate plot, ignored legitimate Sioux grievances and responded in kind to Sioux ferocity. In little more than a month, 500 to 800 white settlers and an even greater num- ber of Sioux were killed. Thirty-eight Indians were hanged in a mass execution in Mankato on December 26, 1862, and subsequently all Sioux were expelled from Minnesota. In 1863, U.S. Army Colonel Kit Carson invaded Navajo country in Arizona in retaliation for Indian raids on U.S. troops. Eight thousand Navajos were forced on the brutal "Long Walk" to Bosque Redondo on the Pecos River in New

Mexico, where they were held prisoner until a treaty between the United States and the Navajos was signed in 1868.

THE NAVAL WAR The Union's naval blockade of the South, intended to cut off commerce between the Confederacy and the rest of the world, was initially unsuccessful. The U.S. Navy had only thirty-three ships with which to blockade 189 ports along 3,500 miles of coastline. Beginning in 1863, however, as the Union navy became larger, the block- ade began to take effect. As a result, fewer and fewer supplies reached the South.

North and South also engaged in a brief duel featuring the revolutionary new technology of ironcladding. The Confederacy refitted a scuttled Union vessel, the Merrimac, with iron plating and renamed it the Virginia. On March 8, 1862, the Virginia steamed out of Norfolk harbor to challenge the Union blockade. The iron plating protected the Virginia from the fire of the Union ships, which found them-

THE CIVIL WAR, 1861-1865 CHAPTER 16 417

selves defenseless against its ram and its powerful guns. Two Union ships went down,

and the blockade seemed about to be broken. But the North had an experimental

ironclad of its own, the Monitor, which was waiting for the Virginia when it emerged

from port on March 9. The historic duel between these first two ironclads was incon-

clusive. But this brief duel prefigured the naval and land battles of the world wars

of the twentieth century as much as did the massing of huge armies on the battlefield.

For the Union, the most successful naval operation in the first two years of

the war was not the blockade but the seizing of exposed coastal areas. The Sea

Islands of South Carolina were taken, as were some of the North Carolina islands

and Fort Pulaski, which commanded the harbor of Savannah, Georgia. Most dam-

aging to the South was the capture of New Orleans.

THE BLACK RESPONSE

The capture of Port Royal in the South Carolina Sea Islands in 1861 was impor-

tant for another reason. Whites fled at the Union advance, but 10,000 slaves greeted

the troops with jubilation and shouts of gratitude. Union troops had unwittingly

freed these slaves in advance of any official Union policy on the status of slaves in

captured territory. Early in the war, an irate Southerner who saw three of his slaves disappear

behind Union lines at Fortress Monroe, Virginia, demanded the return of his

property, citing the Fugitive Slave Law. The Union commander, Benjamin Butler,

replied that the Fugitive Slave Law no longer applied and that the escaped slaves

were "contraband of war." Two days later, eight runaway slaves appeared; the next

day, fifty-nine black men and women arrived at the fort. Union commanders had

found an effective way to rob the South of its basic workforce. The "contrabands,"

as they were known, were put to work building fortifications and doing other use-

ful work in northern camps.

THE DEATH OF SLAVERY

A s Union troops drove deeper into the South, the black response grew. When Union General William Tecumseh Sherman marched his army

through Georgia in 1864, 18,000 slaves—entire families, people of all

ages—flocked to the Union lines. By the war's end, nearly a million black people,

fully a quarter of all the slaves in the South, had "voted with their feet" for the

Union. The overwhelming response of black slaves to the Union advance changed

the nature of the war. As increasing numbers of slaves flocked to Union lines, the

conclusion that the South refused to face was unmistakable: the southern war to

defend the slave system did not have the support of the slaves themselves. Any

northern policy that ignored the issue of slavery and the wishes of the slaves them-

selves was unrealistic.

THE POLITICS OF EMANCIPATION

In 1862, as the issue of slavery loomed ever larger, Abraham Lincoln, acutely aware

of divided northern opinion, inched his way toward a declaration of emancipa-

tion. Lincoln was correct to be worried about opinion in the North. Before the

war, within the Republican Party, only a small group of abolitionists had favored free-

ing the slaves. There was also the question of what would become of slaves who

were freed. Northern Democrats effectively played on racial fears in the 1862 con-

gressional elections, warning that freed slaves would pour into northern cities and

take jobs from white laborers.

QUICK REVIEW

The War at Sea

♦ Union naval blockade strength- ened over time.

• Confederate ships had limited success running the blockade.

♦ Restriction of trade hurt the Southern cause.

=11111111111.MMISI=

HOW DID the end of slavery affect

the war efforts of the North and South?

myhisteiciylab Review Summary

QUICK REVIEW

The Emancipation Proclamation

♦ Freed slaves in the areas of rebel- lion, but not in areas under Union control.

♦ An attempt to satisfy both aboli- tionists and conservatives.

♦ Proclamation met with mixed response in the North.

418 Oft CHAPTER 16 THE CIVIL WAR, 1861-1865 Nevertheless, the necessities of war demanded that Lincoln adopt a policy

to end slavery. Even as Radical Republicans chafed at Lincoln's slow pace, he was edging toward a new position. Following the Union victory at Antietam in Septem- ber 1862, Lincoln issued a preliminary decree: unless the rebellious states returned to the Union by January 1, 1863, he would declare their slaves "forever free." Although Lincoln did not expect the Confederate States to surrender because of his proclamation, the decree increased the pressure on the South by directly link-

ing the slave system to the war effort. On January 1, 1863, Lincoln duly issued the final Emancipation Proclamation,

which turned out to be less than sweeping. The proclamation freed the slaves in the areas of rebellion—the areas the Union did not control—but specifically exempted slaves in the border states and in former Confederate areas conquered by the Union. Lincoln's purpose was to meet the abolitionist demand for a war against slavery while not losing the support of conservatives, especially in the border states.

One group greeted the Emancipation Proclamation with open celebration. On New Year's Day, hundreds of African Americans gathered outside the White House and cheered the president. Free African Americans predicted that the news would encourage southern slaves either to flee to Union lines or refuse to work for their masters. Both of these things were already happening as African Ameri- cans seized on wartime changes to reshape white–black relations in the South. In one sense, then, the Emancipation Proclamation simply gave a name to a process already in motion.

Abolitionists set about moving Lincoln beyond his careful stance in the Emancipation Proclamation. Reformers such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony lobbied and petitioned for a constitutional amendment outlawing slavery. Congress, at Lincoln's urging, approved and sent to the states a statement banning slavery throughout the United States. Quickly ratified by the Union states in 1865, the statement became the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution. (The southern states, being in a state of rebellion, could not vote.) Lincoln's firm support for this amendment is a good indicator of his true feelings about slavery when he was freed of the kinds of military and political considerations necessar- ily taken into account in the Emancipation Proclamation.

BLACK FIGHTING MEN

As part of the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln gave his support for the first time to the recruitment of black soldiers. Early in the war, eager black volunteers had been bitterly disappointed at being turned away. Many, like Robert Fitzgerald, a free African American from Pennsylvania, found other ways to serve the Union cause. Fitzgerald first drove a wagon and mule for the Quartermaster Corps, and later, in spite of persistent seasickness, he served in the Union navy. After the Emancipation Proclamation, however, Fitzgerald was able to do what he had wanted to do all along: be a soldier. He enlisted in the Fifth Massachusetts Cavalry, a regiment that, like all the units in which black soldiers served, was 100 percent African American but commanded by white officers (see Seeing History).

In Fitzgerald's company of eighty-three men, half came from slave states and had run away to enlist. Other regiments had volunteers from Africa. The propor- tion of volunteers from the loyal border states (where slavery was still legal) was upwards of 25 percent—a lethal blow to the slave system in those states.

Black volunteers, eager and willing to fight, made up 10 percent of the Union army. Nearly 200,000 African Americans (one out of every five black males in the nation) served in the Union army or navy. A fifth of them-37,000—died defend-

ing their own freedom and the Union.

Emancipation Proclamation Decree announced by President Abraham Lincoln in September 1862 and formally issued on January 1, 1863, freeing slaves in all Confederate states still in rebellion.

Thirteenth Amendment Constitutional amendment ratified in 1865 that freed all slaves throughout the United States.

.13 r111iJ J DJ P.1 1111.11

PUBLISHED BY THE SUPERVISORY COMMITTEE FOR RECRUITING COLORED REGIMENTS

1210 CHESTNUTST: PHILADEUMUL

I

Come and Join Us Brothers

v---r

his is a recruitment poster for the Massachusetts 54th Infantry regiment, one of the

first official black regiments in the U.S. Army. Organized in March 1863, the 600-man

unit led the charge against Fort Wagner, South Carolina, in July, resulting in 116

deaths, including that of the white commanding officer, Colonel Robert Gould Shaw,

and many casualties. The bravery of the recruits at Fort Wagner and in other battles

changed the minds of many Union officers, who had previously disparaged the fighting

abilities of African Americans.

COMPARE THE portraits of the men in this recruiting poster with the caricatures of

African Americans shown in Chapter 13. What has

changed? Frederick Douglass said, "Once let the

black man get upon his person the brass letters,

U.S., let him get an eagle on his button and a

musket on his shoulder and bullets in his pocket,"

Douglass continued, and "there is no power on

earth that can deny that he has earned the right

to citizenship." Was Douglass right?

A general belief in African American infe-

riority was rampant in the North, but the army

service of black men made a dent in white

racism. Massachusetts enacted the first law forbid-

ding discrimination against African Americans in

public facilities. Some major cities, among them

San Francisco, Cincinnati, Cleveland, and New

York, desegregated their streetcars. Some

states—Ohio, California, Illinois—repealed

statutes that had barred black people from

testifying in court or serving on juries. ■

E. Sachse and Company, "The Shackle Broken by the Genius of Freedom", Baltimore, Md.; 1874, Chicago Historical Society.

41 9

QUICK REVIEW

African American Soldiers

♦ Lincoln supported recruitment of black soldiers as part of the Emancipation Proclamation.

• Nearly 200,000 African Americans served in the Union army.

♦ 37,000 African Americans died defending their freedom and the Union.

420

CHAPTER 16 THE CIVIL WAR, 1861-1865

====== WHAT IMPACT did the war have

on northern political, economic, and

social life? and on the same aspects of

southern life?

Vs 15-12 Susie King Taylor,

Reminiscences of an Army Laundress (1902)

Military service was something no black man could take lightly. African Amer- ican soldiers faced prejudice within the army and had to prove themselves in battle. Moreover, the Confederates hated and feared African American troops and threat- ened to treat any captured black soldier as an escaped slave subject to execution. In 1864, Confederate soldiers massacred 262 black soldiers at Fort Pillow, Tennessee, after they had surrendered. Although large-scale episodes such as this were rare (especially after President Lincoln threatened retaliation), smaller ones were not.

Another extraordinary part of the story of the African American soldiers was their reception by black people in the South, who were overjoyed at the sight of armed black men, many of them former slaves themselves, wearing the uniform of the Union army. As his regiment entered Wilmington, North Carolina, one sol- dier wrote, "Men and women, old and young, were running throughout the streets, shouting and praising God. We could then truly see what we have been fighting for."

African American soldiers were not treated equally by the Union army. They were segregated in camp, given the worst jobs, and paid less than white soldiers ($10 a month rather than $13). Although they might not be able to do much about the other kinds of discrimination, the men of the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts found an unusual way to protest their unequal pay. they refused to accept it, preferring to serve the army for free until it decided to treat them as free men. The protest was effective; in June 1864, the War Department equalized the wages of black and white soldiers.

THE FRONT LINES AND THE HOME FRONT

C ivil War soldiers wrote millions of letters home, more proportionately than in any American war. Their letters and the ones they received in return were links between the front lines and the home front, between

the soldiers and their home communities. They are a testament to the patriotism of both Union and Confederate troops, for the story they tell is frequently one of slaughter and horror.

THE TOLL OF WAR

In spite of early hopes for what one might call a "brotherly" war, one that avoided excessive brutality, Civil War battles were appallingly deadly (see Figure 16.2). One reason was technology: improved weapons, particularly modern rifles, had much greater range and accuracy than the muskets they replaced.

Civil War generals, however, were slow to adjust to this new reality. Almost all Union and Confederate generals remained committed to the conventional military doctrine of massed infantry offensives. Part of this strategy had been to "soften up" a defensive line with artillery before an infantry assault, but now the range of the new rifles made artillery itself vulnerable to attack. As a result, generals relied less on "softening up" than on immense numbers of infantrymen, hoping that enough of them would survive the withering rifle fire to overwhelm the enemy line.

Medical ignorance was another factor in the casualty rate. Because the use of antiseptic procedures was in its infancy, men often died because minor wounds became infected. Disease was an even more frequent killer, taking twice as many men as were lost in battle.

Both North and South were completely unprepared to handle the supply and health needs of their large armies. Nor were the combatants prepared to deal with masses of war prisoners, as the shocking example of the Confederate prison camp at Andersonville in northern Georgia demonstrated. Andersonville was an open stockade with no shade or shelter, erected early in 1864 to hold 10,000 north- ern prisoners. But by midsummer, it held 33,000.

myhistdrylab Exploring America: Fort Pillow

CO 15-8 James Henry Gooding, Letter to President Lincoln (1863)

myhistcrylab Review Summary

12,821 I 28,063

Battles, by date

Fort Donelson 2/13-16/1862 Tennessee

Shiloh 4/6-7/1862 Tennessee

2nd Manassas 8/29-30/1862 Virginia

Antietam 9/17/1862 Maryland

Stone's River 12/31/1862 Tennessee

Chancellorsville 5/1-4/1863 Virginia

Gettysburg 7/1-3/1863 Maryland

Chickamagua 9/19-20/1863 Georgia

Wilderness 5/5-7/1864 Virginia

Spotsylvania 5/8-19/1864 Virginia

Union Confederacy Total

19,455

23,741

25,251

26,134

24,645

30,099

51,112

34,624

24,624

27,399

16,623

10,694

9,197 111

13,723

11,739

18,454

r 7,750 r 9,000

THE CIVIL WAR, 1861-1865 CHAPTER 16 ell 421

Casualities in 1 I I I I 1 I I I I I I I I

thousands 0 4,000 8,000 12,000 16,000 20,000 24,000 28,000 32,000 36,000 40,000 44,000 48,000 52,000 56,000 60,000

Figure 16.2 The Casualties Mount Up This chart of the ten costliest battles of

the Civil War shows the relentless toll of

casualties (killed, wounded, missing,

captured) on both the Union and Confed-

erate sides.

ARMY NURSES

There was an urgent need for skilled nurses to care for wounded and convalescent soldiers. Under the pressure of wartime necessity, and over the objections of most army doctors, women became army nurses. Hospital nursing, previously consid- ered a job only disreputable women would undertake, now became a suitable vocation for middle-class women. By the war's end more than 3,000 northern women had worked as paid army nurses and many more as volunteers.

Southern women were also active in nursing and otherwise aiding soldiers, though the South never boasted a single large-scale organization like the Sanitary Commission. As in the North, middle-class women at first faced strong resistance from army doctors and even their own families, who believed that a field hospital was "no place for a refined lady." Kate Cumming of Mobile, who nursed in Corinth, Mississippi, after the Battle of Shiloh, faced down such reproofs, though she confided to her diary that nursing wounded men was very difficult: "Nothing that I had ever heard or read had given me the faintest idea of the hor- rors witnessed here." She and her companion nurses persisted and became an impor- tant part of the Confederate medical services. For southern women, who had been much less active in the public life of their communities than their northern reform- ing sisters, this Civil War activity marked an important break with prewar tradition.

15-7 Clara Barton, Medical Life at the Battlefield (1862)

Nurse Ann Bell shown preparing medicine for a wounded soldier. Prompted by the

medical crisis of the war, women such as

Bell and "Mother" Bickerdyke actively

participated in the war effort as nurses.

422 441011 CHAPTER 16 THE CIVIL WAR, 1861-1865

04 15-10

John Dooley, Passages from a 7. Journal (1863)

Copperheads A term Republicans applied to Northern war dissenters and those suspected of aiding the Confederate cause during the Civil War.

THE LIFE OF THE COMMON SOLDIER

The conditions experienced by the eager young volunteers of the Union and Con- federate armies included massive, terrifying, and bloody battles, apparently unend- ing, with no sign of victory in sight. Soldiers suffered from the uncertainty of supply, which left troops, especially in the South, without uniforms, tents, and sometimes even food. They endured long marches over muddy, rutted roads while carrying packs weighing fifty or sixty pounds. Disease was rampant in their dirty, verminous, and unsanitary camps, and hospitals were so dreadful that more men left them dead than alive. As a result, desertion was common: an estimated one of every nine Confederate soldiers and one of every seven Union soldiers deserted. Unauthorized absence was another problem. At Antietam, Robert E. Lee esti- mated that unauthorized absence reduced his strength by a third to a half.

WARTIME POLITICS

In the earliest days of the war, Northerners had joined together in support of the war effort. Democrat Stephen A. Douglas, Lincoln's defeated rival, paid a visit to the White House to offer Lincoln his support, then traveled home to Illinois, where he addressed a huge rally of Democrats in Chicago: "There can be no neutrals in this war, only patriots—or traitors!" Within a month, Douglas was dead at age forty- eight. By 1862, Democrats had split into two factions: the War Democrats and the Peace Democrats, derogatorily called "Copperheads" (from the poisonous snake).

Despite the split in the party in 1860 and the secession of the South, the Democratic Party remained a powerful force in northern politics. It had received 44 percent of the popular vote in the North in the 1860 election, and its united opposition to the emancipation of slaves explains much of Lincoln's equivocal action on this issue.

The leader of the Copperheads, Clement Vallandigham, a former Ohio con- gressman, advocated an armistice and a negotiated peace that would "look only to the welfare, peace and safety of the white race, without reference to the effect that settlement may have on the African." Western Democrats, he threatened, might form their own union with the South, excluding New England with its rad- ical abolitionists and high-tariff industrialists. Indeed, in the fall and winter of 1862-63 rumors swirled that the Northwest was ready to secede. Lincoln could not afford to take these threats and rumors lightly. In 1862, Lincoln proclaimed that all people who discouraged enlistments in the army or otherwise engaged in disloyal practices would be subject to martial law. More than 13,000 people, most of them deserters and war profiteers, were arrested, tried in military courts, and imprisoned. Some, however, were convicted in military courts on charges of "declar- ing sympathy for the enemy." Lincoln rejected all protests, claiming that his arbi- trary actions were necessary for national security.

Lincoln also faced challenges from the radical faction of his own party. As the war continued, the Radicals gained strength: it was they who pushed for eman- cipation in the early days of the war and for harsh treatment of the defeated South after it ended. The most troublesome Radical was Salmon P. Chase, who in Decem- ber 1862 caused a cabinet crisis when he encouraged Senate Republicans to com- plain that Secretary of State William Seward was "lukewarm" in his support for emancipation. This Radical challenge was a portent of the party's difficulties after the war, which Lincoln did not live to see—or prevent.

ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL STRAINS ON THE NORTH

Wartime needs caused a surge in northern economic growth, but the gains were unequally distributed. Early in the war, some industries suffered: textile manufac- turers could not get cotton, and shoe factories that had made cheap shoes for

QUICK REVIEW

Sources of Social and Economic

Tension in the North

*Uneven economic growth.

• Runaway inflation.

Conscription.

15-11 A Firsthand Account of the New York Draft Riots (1863)

THE CIVIL WAR, 1861-1865 CHAPTER 16 eat 423 slaves were without a market. But other industries boomed—boot making, ship-

building, and the manufacture of woolen goods such as blankets and uniforms, to give just three examples. Coal mining expanded, as did ironmaking, especially the manufacture of iron rails for railroads. Agricultural goods were in great demand, promoting further mechanization of farming. Women, left to tend the family farm while the men went to war, found that with mechanized equipment, they could manage the demanding task of harvesting.

Meeting wartime needs enriched some people honestly, but speculators and profiteers also flourished, as they have in every war. By the end of the war, govern- ment contracts had exceeded $1 billion. Not all of this business was free from cor- ruption. New wealth was evident in every northern city.

For most people, however, the war brought the day-to-day hardship of infla- tion. During the four years of the war, the North suffered an inflation rate of 80

percent, or nearly 15 percent a year. Wages rose only half as much as prices, and workers responded by joining unions and striking. Manufacturers, bitterly opposed to unions, freely hired strikebreakers (many of whom were African Americans,

women, or immigrants) and formed organizations of their own to prevent fur- ther unionization and to blacklist union organizers. Thus, both capital and labor

moved far beyond the small, localized confrontations of the early industrial period.

The formation of large-scale organizations, fostered by wartime demand, laid the groundwork for the national battle between workers and manufacturers that would dominate the last part of the nineteenth century.

Another major source of social tension was conscription. The Union intro- duced a draft in March 1863. Especially unpopular was a provision in the draft law

that allowed the hiring of substitutes or the payment of a commutation fee of $300. Substitutes were mostly recent immigrants who had not yet filed for citizen- ship and were thus not yet eligible to be drafted. It is estimated that immigrants

(some of whom were citizens) made up 20 percent of the Union army. As practiced in the local communities, conscription was indeed often marred

by favoritism and prejudice. Local officials called up many more poor than rich men and selected a higher proportion of immigrants than nonimmigrants. In real- ity, however, only 7 percent of all men called to serve actually did so. About 25 per- cent hired a substitute, another 45 percent were exempted for "cause" (usually health reasons), and another 20 to 25 percent simply failed to report to the com- munity draft office. Nevertheless, by 1863, many northern urban workers believed that the slogan "a rich man's war but a poor man's fight," though coined in the

South, applied to them as well.

THE NEW YORK CITY DRAFT RIOTS In the spring of 1863, there were protests against the draft throughout the North. Riots and disturbances broke out in many cities, and several federal enrollment officers were killed. The greatest trouble occurred in New York City between July 13 and July 16, 1863, where a wave of working-class looting, fighting, and lynch- ing claimed the lives of 105 people, many of them African American. The riot- ing, the worst up to that time in American history, was quelled only when five units of the U.S. Army were rushed from the battlefield at Gettysburg, where they

had been fighting Confederates the week before. The riots had several causes. Anger at the draft and racial prejudice were

what most contemporaries saw. From a historical perspective, however, the riots

were at least as much about the urban growth and tensions described in Chapter 13. The Civil War made urban problems worse and heightened the visible contrast

between the lives of the rich and those of the poor. These tensions exploded, but

were not solved, during those hot days in the summer of 1863.

4 2 4 CHAPTER 16 THE CIVIL WAR, 1861-1865

Ironically, African American men, a favorite target of the rioters' anger, were

a major force in easing the national crisis over the draft. Though they had been

barred from service until 1863, in the later stages of the war African American

volunteers filled much of the manpower gap that the controversial draft was meant

to address.

THE FAILURE OF SOUTHERN NATIONALISM

The war brought even greater changes to the South. As in the North, war needs

led to expansion and centralization of government control over the economy.

The expansion of government brought sudden urbanization, a new experience for

the predominantly rural South. The population of Richmond, the Confederate cap-

ital, almost tripled, in large part because the Confederate bureaucracy grew to

70,000 people. Because of the need for military manpower, a good part of the

Confederate bureaucracy consisted of women, who were referred to as "govern-

ment girls." All of this—government control, urban growth, women in the paid

workforce—was new to Southerners, and not all of it was welcomed.

Even more than in the North, the voracious need for soldiers fostered class

antagonisms. When small yeoman farmers went off to war, their wives and families

struggled to farm on their own, without the help of mechanization, which they

could not afford, and without the help of slaves, which they had never owned. But

wealthy men could be exempted from the draft if they had more than twenty slaves.

Furthermore, many upper-class Southerners—at least 50,000—avoided military

service by paying liberally ($5,000 and more) for substitutes. Worst of all was the

starvation. The North's blockade and the breakdown of the South's transporta-

tion system restricted the availability of food in the South, and these problems were

vastly magnified by runaway inflation. Prices in the South rose by an unbelievable

9,000 percent from 1861 to 1865. Speculation and hoarding by the rich made mat-

ters even worse. In the spring of 1863, food riots broke out in four Georgia cities

(Atlanta among them) and in North Carolina. In Richmond, more than a thousand

people, mostly women, broke into bakeries and snatched loaves of bread, crying

"Bread! Bread! Our children are starving while the rich roll in wealth!"

Increasingly, the ordinary people of the South, preoccupied with staying alive,

refused to pay taxes, to provide food, or to serve in the army. Soldiers were drawn

home by the desperation of their families as well as by the discouraging course of

the war. By January 1865, the desertion rate had climbed to 8 percent a month.

At the same time, the life of the southern ruling class was irrevocably altered

by the changing nature of slavery. By the end of the war, one-quarter of all slaves

had fled to the Union lines, and those who remained often stood in a different

relationship to their owners. As white masters and overseers left to join the army,

white women were left behind on the plantation to cope with shortages, grow crops,

and manage the labor of slaves. Lacking the patriarchal authority of their hus-

bands, white women found that white–black relationships shifted, sometimes dras-

tically (as when slaves fled) and sometimes more subtly. Slaves increasingly made

their own decisions about when and how they would work. One black woman,

implored by her mistress not to reveal the location of a trunk of money and silver

plate when the invading Yankees arrived, looked her in the eye and said, "Mistress,

I can't lie over that; you bought that silver plate when you sold my three children."

Peace movements in the South were motivated by a confused mixture of real-

ism, war weariness, and the animosity of those who supported states' rights and

opposed Jefferson Davis. The anti-Davis faction was led by his own vice president,

Alexander Stephens, who early in 1864 suggested a negotiated peace. Peace senti-

ment was especially strong in North Carolina, where more than a hundred public

QUICK REVIEW

The Draft Riots

• 1863: Congress passed national

conscription law.

• New York, July 1863: looting, fighting, and lynching claim lives of 105 people.

• Racial and class antagonisms fueled riot.

F-7 Area controlled by Union -4-- Confederate retreat I I Area controlled by Confederacy ilk Union victory -4— Union advance

ilk Confederate victory

-4— Confederate advance

PENNSYLVANIA

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almouth Chancellorsville illikir .. Fredericksburg

May 1 -4 Po/0,a,

Martinsburg • WEST

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• Hagerstown .Westminster

Shrsburg

Frederick

x

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MARYLAND

*Washington DC

VIRGINIA

THE CIVIL WAR, 1861-1865 CHAPTER 16 ipat 42 5

meetings in support of negotiations were held in the summer of 1863. Davis would

=111111111101111= have none of it, and he commanded enough votes in the Confederate Congress to HOW DID Grant and Sherman turn enforce his will and to suggest that peace sentiment was traitorous.

the tide of the war?

THE TIDE TURNS

A s Lincoln's timing of the Emancipation Proclama- tion showed, by 1863 the nature of the war was changing. The proclamation freeing the slaves

struck directly at the southern home front and the civilian workforce. That same year, the nature of the battlefield war changed as well. The Civil War became the first total war.

THE TURNING POINT OF 1863 In the summer of 1863, the moment finally arrived when the North could begin to hope for victory. But for the Union army, the year opened with stalemate in the East and slow and costly progress in the West. For the South, 1863 represented its highest hopes for military success and for diplomatic recognition by Britain or France.

Attempting to break the stalemate in northern Vir- ginia, General Joseph "Fighting Joe" Hooker and a Union army of 130,000 men attacked a Confederate army half that size at Chancellorsville in May. In response, Robert E. Lee daringly divided his forces, sending General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson and 30,000 men on a day-long flanking movement that caught the Union troops by surprise. Chan- cellorsville was a great Confederate victory; there were 17,000 Union losses. However, Confederate losses were also great: 13,000 men, representing more than 20 percent of Lee's army.

Though weakened, Lee moved to the attack. In June, in his second and most dangerous single thrust into Union territory, he moved north into Maryland and Pennsylvania. His purpose was as much political as military: he hoped that a great Confederate victory would lead Britain and France to intervene in the war and demand a negotiated peace. The ensuing Battle of Gettysburg, July 1-3, 1863, was another horrible slaughter.

Lee retreated from the field, leaving more than one- third of his army behind-28,000 men killed, wounded, or missing. Union general George Meade elected not to pursue with his battered Union army (see Map 16.4).

The next day, July 4, 1863, Ulysses S. Grant took Vicks- burg, Mississippi, after a costly siege. The combined news of Gettysburg and Vicksburg dissuaded Britain and France from recognizing the Confederacy and checked the northern peace movement. It also tightened the North's grip on the South, for the Union now controlled the entire Mississippi River. In November, Generals Grant and Sherman broke the Confederate hold on Chattanooga, Tennessee, thereby open- ing the way to Atlanta.

myhisteic ylab Review Summary

MAP EXPLORATION To explore an interactive version of this map, go to hffp://www.prenha II.com/fa raghertic/map 16.4

MAP 16.4

The Turning Point, 1863 In June, Lee boldly struck north into Maryland and Pennsylvania, hoping for a victory that would cause Britain and France to demand a negotiated peace on Confederate terms. Instead, he lost the hard-fought battle of Gettysburg, July 1-3. The very next day, Grant's long siege of Vicksburg succeeded. These two great Fourth of July victories turned the tide in favor of the Union. The Confederates never again mounted a major offensive. Total Union control of the Mis- sissippi now exposed the Lower South to attack.

WHAT WAS Lee hoping to achieve with his cam- paign northward and why was his defeat at Gettysburg the war's turning point?

A black man is lynched during the New York City Draft Riots in July 1863. Free

black people and their institutions were major victims of the worst rioting in American history until then. The riots

were more than a protest against the

draft; they were also an outburst of frus-

tration over urban problems that had

been festering for decades.

• 15-9 Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address (1863) 15-13 General William Tecumseh Sherman on War (1864)

4 26 as CHAPTER 16 THE CIVIL WAR, 1861-1865

QUICK REVIEW

Grant's Strategy

• Better coordination of Union effort and the application of steady pressure.

• The waging of nonstop warfare.

• Grant's plan worked in the long run, but at a high cost.

GRANT AND SHERMAN

In March 1864, President Lincoln called Grant east and appointed him general-in-chief of all the Union forces. Grant devised a plan of strangulation and annihilation. While he took on Lee in northern Virginia, he sent General William Tecum- seh Sherman to defeat Confederate general Joe Johnston's Army of Tennessee, which was defending the approach to Atlanta. Both Grant and Sherman exemplified the new kind of warfare. They aimed to inflict maximum damage on the fabric of southern life, hoping that the South would choose to sur- render rather than face total destruction. This decision to broaden the war so that it directly affected civilians was new in American military history and prefigured the total wars of the twentieth century.

In northern Virginia, Grant pursued a policy of destroying civilian supplies. He said he "regarded it as humane to both sides to protect the persons of those found at their homes, but to consume everything that could be used to support or supply armies." One of those supports was slaves. Grant wel- comed fleeing slaves to Union lines and encouraged army efforts to put them to work or enlist them as soldiers.

The most famous example of the new strategy of total war was General Sher- man's 1864 march through Georgia. Sherman captured Atlanta on September 2, 1864, and the rest of Georgia now lay open to him. In November, Sherman set out to march the 285 miles to the coastal city of Savannah, living off the land and destroying everything in his path. His military purpose was to tighten the noose around Robert E. Lee's army in northern Virginia by cutting off Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia from the rest of the Confederacy. But his second purpose, openly stated, was to "make war so terrible" to the people of the South, to "make them so sick of war that generations would pass away before they would again appeal to it." Accordingly, he told his men to seize, burn, or destroy everything in their path (but, significantly, not to harm civilians).

It was estimated that Sherman's army did $100 million worth of damage. `They say no living thing is found in Sherman's track," Mary Boykin Chesnut wrote, "only chimneys, like telegraph poles, to carry the news of [his] attack backwards."

Terrifying to white southern civilians, Sherman was initially hostile to black Southerners as well. In the interests of speed and efficiency, his army turned away many of the 18,000 slaves who flocked to it in Georgia, causing a number to be recaptured and reenslaved. This callous action caused such a scandal in Washing- ton that Secretary of War Edwin Stanton arranged a special meeting in Georgia with Sherman and twenty African American ministers who spoke for the freed slaves. This meeting in itself was extraordinary: no one had ever before asked slaves what they wanted. Equally extraordinary was Sherman's response in Special Field Order 15, issued in January 1865: he set aside more than 400,000 acres of Confederate land to be given to the freed slaves in forty-acre parcels. This was war of a kind that white Southerners had never imagined.

THE 1864 ELECTION

The war complicated the 1864 presidential election. Lincoln was renominated during a period when the war was going badly. Opposed by the Radicals, who thought he was too conciliatory toward the South, and by Republican conserva- tives, who disapproved of the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln had little sup- port within his own party.

Culpeper. MARYLAND

ilk Union victory

ilk Confederate victory

Fortifications

-4— Union advance

-0— Confederate advance

- Confederate retreat

Spotsylvania Court House May 8-12, 1864

Cold Harbor Jun 3, 1864

VIRGINIA

North Anna May 23-27, 1864

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• \;4::_iik. Fredericksburg

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Appomattox Court House Lee Surrenders Apr 9, 1865 Sayler's Creek

Apr 6, 1865

Richmond

Five Forks Apr 1, 1865

Petersburg Siege, Jun 1864- Apr 1865

Ate ----------------

-----

This striking photograph by Thomas C. Roche shows a dead

Confederate soldier, killed at Petersburg on April 3, 1865, only six

days before the surrender at Appomattox. The new medium of pho-

tography conveyed the horror of the war with a gruesome reality to

the American public.

MAP 16.5 The Final Battles in Virginia, 1864-65 In the war's final phase early in 1865, Sherman closed one arm of a pincers by marching north

from Savannah, while Grant attacked Lee's last defensive positions

in Petersburg and Richmond. Lee retreated from them on April 2

and surrendered at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865.

WHAT DESPERATE measures did the South resort to as the war came to an end?

THE CIVIL WAR, 1861-1865 CHAPTER 16 as 427 In contrast, the Democrats had an appealing candi-

date: General George McClellan, a war hero (always a favorite with American voters) who was known to be sympathetic to the South. Democrats played shamelessly on the racist fears of the urban working class, accusing Republicans of being "negro-lovers" and warning that racial mixing lay ahead.

A deeply depressed Lincoln fully expected to lose the election. "I am going to be beaten," he told an army officer in

August 1864, "and unless some great change takes place badly beaten." A great change did take place: Sherman captured

Atlanta on September 2. Lincoln won the election with 55 per- cent of the popular vote. The vote probably saved the Repub-

lican Party from extinction. Ordinary people and war-weary soldiers had voted to continue a difficult and divisive conflict. The election was important evidence of northern support for Lincoln's policy of unconditional surrender for the South. There would be no negotiated peace; the war would continue.

NEARING THE END

As Sherman devastated the lower South, Grant was locked in struggle with Lee in northern Virginia. Grant did not favor subtle strategies. He bluntly said, "The art of war is simple enough. Find out where your enemy is. Get at him as soon as you can. Strike at him as hard as you can, and keep mov-

ing on." Following this plan, Grant eventually hammered Lee into submission but at enormous cost. Lee inflicted heavy losses on the Union army in a succession of bloody encoun- ters in the spring and summer of 1864: almost 18,000 at the battle of the Wilderness, more than 8,000 at Spotsylvania, and 12,000 at Cold Harbor. At Cold Harbor, Union troops wrote their names and addresses on scraps of paper and pinned them to their backs, so certain were they of being

killed or wounded in battle. Grim and terrible as Grant's strategy was, it proved

effective. Rather than pulling back after his failed assaults, he kept moving South, finally settling in for a prolonged siege of Lee's forces at Petersburg. The North's great advantage in population finally began to tell. There were more Union sol- diers to replace those lost in battle, but there were no more white Confederates (see Map 16.5).

In desperation, the South turned to what had hitherto been unthinkable: arming slaves to serve as soldiers in the Confederate army. But—and this was the bitter irony—the African American soldiers and their families would have to be promised freedom or they would desert to the Union at the first chance they had. The Confederate Congress balked at first. As one member said, the idea was "revolting to South- ern sentiment, Southern pride, and Southern honor." Another candidly admitted, "If slaves make good soldiers our whole theory of slavery is wrong." Finally, on March 13, the Confederate Congress authorized a draft of black soldiers—

without mentioning freedom.

428 410111 CHAPTER 16 THE CIVIL WAR, 1861-1865

By the spring of 1865, public support for the war simply disintegrated in the South. Starvation, inflation, dissension, and the prospect of military defeat were too much. In February, Jefferson Davis sent his vice president, Alexander Stephens, to negotiate terms at a peace conference at Hampton Roads. Lincoln would not coun- tenance anything less than full surrender, although he did offer gradual emancipa- tion with compensation for slave owners. Davis, however, insisted on southern independence at all costs. Consequently, the Hampton Roads conference failed and southern resistance faded away. In March 1865, Mary Boykin Chesnut recorded in her diary: "I am sure our army is silently dispersing. Men are going the wrong way all the time. They slip by now with no songs nor shouts. They have given the thing up."

APPOMATTOX

In the spring of 1865, Lee and his remaining troops, outnumbered two to one, still held Petersburg and Richmond. Starving, short of ammunition, and losing men in battle or to desertion every day, Lee retreated from Petersburg on April 2. The Con- federate government fled Richmond, stripping and burning the city. Seven days later, Lee and his 25,000 troops surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Court House. Grant treated Lee with great respect and set a historic precedent by giving the Con- federate troops parole. This meant they could not subsequently be prosecuted for treason. Grant then sent the starving army on its way with three days' rations for every man. Jefferson Davis, who had hoped to set up a new government in Texas, was cap- tured in Georgia on May 10. The war was finally over.

Sensing that the war was near its end, Abraham Lincoln visited Grant's troops when Lee withdrew from Petersburg on April 2. Thus it was that Lincoln came to

visit Richmond, and to sit briefly in Jefferson Davis's presidential office, soon after Davis had left it. As Lincoln walked the streets of the burned and pillaged city, black people poured out to see him and surround him, shouting "Glory to God! Glory! Glory! Glory!"

DEATH OF A PRESIDENT

Lincoln had only the briefest time to savor the victory. On the night of April 14, President and Mrs. Lincoln went to Ford's Theater in Washington. There Lincoln was shot at point-blank range by John Wilkes Booth, a Confederate sympathizer.

The 55th Massachusetts Colored Regiment is shown entering Charleston, February

21, 1865, greeted by happy crowds of

African Americans. For white

Charlestonians, the sight of victorious

black troops in the cockpit of the Confederacy must have been devastating.

Harper's Weekly, March 18, 1865. Courtesy of William

C. Hine.

THE CIVIL WAR, 1861-1865 CHAPTER 16 ea 429

CHRONOLOGY

1861 March: Morrill Tariff Act

April: Fort Sumter falls; war begins

April: Mobilization begins

April—May: Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina secede

June: United States Sanitary Commission established

July: First Battle of Bull Run

December: French troops arrive in Mexico, followed by British and Spanish forces in January

1862 February: Legal Tender Act

February: Battles of Fort Henry and Fort Donelson

March: Battle of Pea Ridge

March: Battle of the Monitor and the Merrimack (renamed the Virginia)

March—August: George B. McClellan's Peninsular campaign

March: Battle of Glorieta Pass

April: Battle of Shiloh

April: Confederate Conscription Act

April: David Farragut captures New Orleans

May: El Cinqo de Mayo: Mexican troops repel French invaders

May: Homestead Act

June—July: Seven Days Battles

July: Pacific Railway Act

July: Morrill Land Grant Act

August: Santee Sioux Uprising, Minnesota

September: Battle of Antietam

December: Battle of Fredericksburg

1863 January: Emancipation Proclamation

February: National Bank Act

March: Draft introduced in the North

March: Colonel Kit Carson sends 8,000 Navajos on the "Long Walk" to Bosque Redondo, New Mexico Territory

April: Richmond bread riot

May: Battle of Chancellorsville

June: French occupy Mexico City

July: Battle of Gettysburg

July: Surrender of Vicksburg

July: New York City Draft Riots

November: Battle of Chattanooga

November: Union troops capture Brownsville, Texas

1864 March: Ulysses S. Grant becomes general- in-chief of Union forces

April: Fort Pillow massacre

May: Battle of the Wilderness

May: Battle of Spotsylvania

June: Battle of Cold Harbor

June: Maximilian becomes Emperor of Mexico

September: Atlanta falls

October: St. Albans incident

November: Abraham Lincoln reelected president

November—December: William Tecumseh Sherman's march to the sea

1865 April: Richmond falls

April: Robert E. Lee surrenders at Appomattox

April: Lincoln assassinated

December: Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution becomes law

He died the next day. After a week of observances in Washington, Lincoln's coffin was loaded on a funeral train that slowly carried him back to Springfield. All along the railroad route, day and night, in small towns and large, people gathered to see the train pass and to pay their last respects. At that moment, the Washington com- munity and the larger Union community were one and the same.

The nation as a whole was left with Lincoln's vision for the coming peace, expressed in the unforgettable words of his Second Inaugural Address:

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the

right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the

work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among

ourselves and with all nations.

43 0 eiri CHAPTER 16 THE CIVIL WAR, 1861-1865

as CONCLUSION

n 1865, a divided people were forcibly reunited by battle. Their nation, the Unit ed States of America, had been permanently changed by civil war. Devastating losses among the young men of the country—the greatest such losses the nation

was ever to suffer—would affect not only their families but also all of postwar society. Politically, the deepest irony of the Civil War was that only by fighting it had Ameri- ca become completely a nation. For it was the war that broke down local isolation. Ordinary citizens in local communities, North and South, developed a national per- spective as they sent their sons and brothers to be soldiers, their daughters to be nurses and teachers. Then, too, the federal government, vastly strengthened by wartime necessity, reached the lives of ordinary citizens more than ever before. The question now was whether this strengthened but divided national community, forged in battle, could create a just peace.

ve"

REVIEW QUESTIONS 1. At the outset of the Civil War, what were the relative advantages of the

North and the South, and how did they affect the final outcome?

2. In the absence of the southern Democrats, in the early 1860s, the new Republican Congress was able to pass a number of party measures with lit- tle opposition. What do these measures tell you about the historical roots of the Republican Party? More generally, how do you think we should view legislation passed in the absence of the customary opposition, debate, and compromise?

3. The greatest problem facing Jefferson Davis and the Confederacy was the need to develop a true feeling of nationalism. Can the failure of this effort be blamed on Davis's weakness as a leader alone, or are there other causes?

4. In what ways can it be said that the actions of African Americans, both slave and free, came to determine the course of the Civil War?

5. Wars always have unexpected consequences. List some of those conse- quences both for soldiers and for civilians in the North and in the South.

6. Today Abraham Lincoln is considered one of our greatest presidents, but he did not enjoy such approval at the time. List and evaluate some of the contemporary criticisms of Lincoln.

KEY ERMS

myhistOrylab Flashcard Review

Copperheads (p. 422) Emancipation Proclamation (p. 418) Homestead Act (p. 411) Legal Tender Act (p. 411) Morrill Land Grant Act (p. 411)

Morrill Tariff Act (p. 411) National Bank Act (p. 411) Peninsular campaign (p. 415) Thirteenth Amendment (p. 418)

THE CIVIL WAR, 1861-1865 CHAPTER 16 40/11 431

RECOMMENDED READING

Edward Ayers, In the Presence of Mine Enemies: War in the Heart of America, 1859-1863 (2003). A study of two counties, one Confederate, one Union, in the war.

Paul A. Cimbala and Randall M. Miller, Union Soldiers and the Northern Home Front: Wartime Experiences, Postwar Adjustments (2002). The effects of the Civil War on ordinary people.

Paul Escott, After Secession: Jefferson Davis and the Failure of Confederate Nationalism (1978). A thoughtful study of Davis's record as president of the Confederacy.

Drew Gilpin Faust, Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War (1996). A major study that considers the importance of gender at the white South's "moment of truth."

James M. Mc Pherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (1988). An acclaimed, highly readable synthesis of much scholarship on the war.

—, The Atlas of the Civil War (1994). Detailed battle diagrams with clear descriptions.

Pauli Murray, Proud Shoes: The Story of an American Family (1956). Murray tells the proud story of her African American family and her grandfather, Robert

Fitzgerald.

Nina Silbar, Daughters of the Union: Northern Women Fight the Civil War (2005). Argues that women found a new sense of self and citizenship in wartime.

Keith P. Wilson, Campfires of Freedom: The Camp Life of Black Soliders During the Civil War (2002). Camp life examined to show the soldiers' personal transition from slavery

to freedom.

mybiacieY.103 For study resources for this chapter, go to www.myhistorylab.com and choose Out of Many, Teaching and Learning Classroom Edition. You will find a wealth of study and review material for this chapter, including pretests and posttests, customized study plan, key-term review

flash cards, interactive map and document activities, and documents for analysis.