Soldiers and officers did not anticipate how technological advances changed warfare. The Civil War was the first major conflict in which the railroad

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2 Soldiers and officers did not anticipate how technological advances changed warfare. The Civil War was the first major conflict in which the railroad moved troops and supplies. The telegraph, observation balloons, and even hand grenades and submarines were used for the first time. Most important was the revolution in arms manufacturing, which replaced the musket, accurate only at a short range, with the rifle, deadly at 600 or more yards because of its grooved barrel. This changed the nature of combat, making far more important heavy fortifications and trenches and giving defensive forces (usually Confederates) a significant advantage. This development produced the awful casualties of the war s battles. Medical care was primitive, and large numbers of Americans for the first time were captured and held as prisoners of war in camps, leading to high death rates. At least 620,000 died in the war, the equivalent of more than 6 million in today s population, and more than the entire number of Americans killed in all other wars in U.S. history, from the Revolution to the Iraq war. 2

3 Both sides were unprepared for war. There was no national banking system, no tax system to raise revenue for the war, and few accurate maps of the South. After Fort Sumter, Lincoln enacted a blockade of the South, intended to destroy its commerce, but the navy at first had too few ships to enforce it. The problems of purchasing and distributing food, weapons, and other supplies for the armies were huge. While the Union Army eventually became the best-fed and best-supplied force in history, southern soldiers lacked food, uniforms, and shoes. Lacking sufficient industrial capacity, the Confederate government imported many items for the military from abroad and established its own arsenals. The need to generate revenue to pay for the war transformed America s financial system. To raise funds, the government increased the tariff to record levels, imposed new taxes on production and consumption, and passed the first income tax in American history. It also printed more than $400 million of paper money, called greenbacks, as legal tender. Wartime economic policies handsomely benefited northern manufacturers, railroad businessmen, and financiers. Many captains of industry of the Gilded Age made their fortunes in the war, including iron and steel man Andrew Carnegie, oil magnate John D. Rockefeller, financiers Jay Gould and J. P. Morgan, and Philip D. Armour, beef slaughterer. As a whole, Union economic policies vastly expanded the power and size of the federal government. The federal budget in 1865 was more than $1 billion, twenty times larger than 1860, and the federal government became the nation s largest employer. 3

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10 Each side tried to exploit its advantages the South, by adopting a defensive strategy to wear down the North, led by the brilliant Robert E. Lee, and the North, by using its superiority in manpower and technology. But the northern army was at first small, its officers and leadership were poor, and it was focused on capturing Richmond, the Confederacy s capital, a difficult task. Lincoln soon realized that capturing and occupying territory would not win the war; defeating the South s armies would. Most of the war in the East occurred in a narrow corridor between Washington and Richmond, as a series of Union generals led the North s Army of the Potomac toward the Confederate capital, only to be repeatedly repulsed by the main Confederate army. The first significant clash at Bull Run ended in the defeat and chaotic retreat of Union forces. This battle ended the widespread belief that the war would end quickly. George B. McClellan soon took command of the Union s main army, but after thoroughly training this army s tens of thousands of volunteer soldiers, he proved reluctant to commit them to battle. McClellan was a Democrat, and he hoped that compromise might end the conflict without many casualties or weakening slavery. Pressured by public opinion, President Lincoln, and Congress, McClellan, in the spring of 1862, led his army of more than 100,000 men into Virginia. Approaching the Confederate capital on the peninsula southwest of Richmond, McClellan s advance was ably deflected by Lee in a series of battles, forcing McClellan back to Washington, D.C. After Lee won the second Battle of Bull Run in August, 1862, he invaded the North, hoping to bring border slave states into the Confederacy, gain French and British recognition of southern independence, influence the North s elections in the fall, and perhaps capture Washington, D.C. 10

11 The war saw the famous battle between the Union vessel Monitor and Confederate Merrimac in 1862, which showed the advantage of ironclads over wooden ships and transformed naval warfare. 11

12 At the Battle of Antietam, McClellan and the Army of the Potomac repelled Lee s invasion. In one day at Antietam, nearly 4,000 men were killed and 18,000 wounded. More Americans died in this battle on September 17, 1862, than on any other day in American history, including Pearl Harbor and D-Day in World War II and the terrorist attacks of September 11, Northern triumph was short-lived. General Ambrose E. Burnside, who replaced McClellan, was repulsed by Lee s army at Fredricksburg, Virginia, in December 1862, with heavy losses. The North had better luck in the West. There Ulysses S. Grant, a West Point graduate whose army career had been ruined by his excessive drinking, captured several important forts in Tennessee in early In April 1862, naval forces under Admiral David G. Farragut steamed into New Orleans and captured that city for the Union, which now controlled the South s largest city and its lucrative nearby sugar plantations. After Grant repelled a surprise Confederate attack at Shiloh, Tennessee, Union success in the West stalled. 12

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14 The Civil War had revolutionary effects on American society, the most important of which was the destruction of slavery, the fundamental institution of southern society. The emancipation of America s 4 million slaves (which happened after the war), in numbers, scale, and economic value, was far greater than any other emancipation of slaves or serfs (in Russia) in the world. At the war s beginning, Lincoln identified the North s cause with the cause of free labor. But Lincoln also initially stated that the conflict was not being fought to end or limit slavery, but to preserve the Union. He wanted to keep the border slave states of Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri in the Union and build the broadest possible base of support for the war in the North. As Confederates used slave labor for military purposes and blacks began to escape to Union lines, this initial policy of ignoring slavery became untenable. By the end of 1861, Union commanders had begun treating escaped slaves as contraband of war property of military value subject to confiscation. Southern blacks themselves took actions that propelled the Union toward ending slavery. Well before Lincoln s Emancipation Act, slaves saw the war as an opportunity to gain their freedom. Thousands escaped to the safety of Union lines, crippling many plantations. In areas occupied by northern soldiers, slaves refused to work unless paid. Anti-slavery northerners pressed the federal government to realize that slavery was the basis of the southern economy and its military capacities, and they insisted emancipation was required in order to weaken the South. Abolitionists and Radical Republicans demanded, none more adamantly than Fredrick Douglas, that abolition become a war aim. Congress, frustrated by military failures, prohibited the army from returning fugitive slaves, abolished slavery in Washington, D.C., and the territories, and passed the Second Confiscation Act, which freed slaves of disloyal owners in Union-occupied territory and slaves who escaped to Union lines. But Lincoln had reversed the policies of Union generals who declared emancipation in 14

15 their districts, and he still endorsed colonization as a solution to slavery. In summer 1862, Lincoln decided that emancipation had become a military and political necessity. He delayed his intention to free the slaves until after a Union victory, and after the battle of Antietam, he issued a preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. On January 1, 1863, Lincoln signed and issued the Emancipation Proclamation. The document did not free all the slaves and at first applied to very few. Based on Lincoln s authority as military commander-in-chief, the proclamation exempted areas under Union control. Thus, it did not apply to loyal border slave states that had not seceded or to parts of the Confederacy occupied by Union forces, such as Tennessee and parts of Virginia and Louisiana. But it declared free the vast majority of the South s slaves, more than 3 million men, women, and children. Still behind Confederate lines, these slaves would be free only when Union military success made them so. The Emancipation Proclamation (1863) made the Union Army an agent of freedom and promised the death of slavery by combining the goals of abolition and the Union. It altered the nature of the Civil War and the course of American history. It also represented a change in Lincoln s thinking. Lincoln did not mention compensating slaveholders for the loss of their slaves, nor did he mention colonization. The order committed the North to enlisting blacks soldiers in the Union Army. Now the Civil War, begun to preserve the nation, now promised a revolutionary transformation of southern life and a redefinition of American freedom. Without colonization, emancipation meant incorporating freed slaves into American life. A new system of labor, politics, and race relations would have to replace slavery. 14

16 The proclamation s provision allowing blacks to enlist in the army had far-reaching effects of which we will study later in the unit. Lincoln s administration first refused to allow blacks to enlist, fearing that it would alienate white soldiers and border slave states that stayed in the Union. But a few union commanders enlisted soldiers who were contraband, as happened in South Carolina. Only with the Emancipation Proclamation did significant black enlistment begin. By the end of the war, 180,000 black men had served in the Union Army, and 24,000 in the Union Navy. Onethird died in battle, from wounds, or disease. Black soldiers and units received considerable notoriety after showing great heroism in battle, such as the 54th Massachusetts and its assault on Fort Wagner, South Carolina, in 1863 (popularized in the film Glory). Most black soldiers were emancipated slaves who joined the army in the South. Many were slaves from loyal border states excluded from the Emancipation Proclamation, where enlistment was, for most of the war, the only road to freedom. Military service was liberating for many black soldiers, who earned a new sense of dignity and rights. As veterans, many of these troops became community and political leaders, including many of the Reconstruction era. Within the army, however, black troops received discriminatory treatment, including being led only by white officers, being more often assigned to work rather than combat duty, and at first receiving unequal pay. They were targeted by Confederates, who executed some black prisoners. But black soldiers service ensured that they could make claims on the government for equal rights and citizenship in the war s aftermath. 15

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21 Lee soon decided on another invasion of the North, although the rationale for it today remains unknown. His army met and fought Union forces under General George G. Meade at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, the first three days of July. 165,000 troops fought there, in the largest battle ever in North America. A desperate frontal assault led by Major General George E. Pickett failed to break Union lines on July 3, and Lee, having regretted ordering Pickett s charge and lost the battle, retreated. The high tide of the Confederacy had been reached, and Lee s soldiers never again traded on northern ground. Simultaneously, Union forces led by Ulysses S. Grant had laid siege to the last Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi River at Vicksburg, Mississippi. On July 4, Confederate forces surrendered, and the entire Mississippi River fell to Union forces. Gettysburg and Vicksburg greatly diminished southern hopes for victory. 20

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23 Economic crisis also caused inner turmoil in the South. As the northern blockade became more effective, more of the South became occupied by Union forces and slave productivity declined, shortages of essential goods became widespread. Confederate policies that seemed to favor the wealthy and large slaveowners exacerbated the effects of economic troubles, as poor whites felt they faced unequal burdens. While the Confederacy like the North borrowed heavily to finance the war, the planterdominated Congress would not levy heavy taxes that planters would have to pay. Instead, it printed an enormous amount of paper money. Congress authorized military officers to seize goods and pay citizens with this money, which became increasingly worthless. Many southerners resented this practice. In some cities, food riots broke out. By the end of the war, nearly 100,000 men, mostly poor non-slaveholders, had deserted from the Confederate Army. By 1864, organized movements calling for peace surfaced in several southern states, and secret societies were actively promoting disloyalty. Confederate military tribunals imprisoned Unionists, drove them from their homes, and executed a few. By the end of the war, about 50,000 white southerners fought for the Union. More than in the North, the war imposed many costs on women in the South. Often left alone on farms and plantations, women had to take over men s responsibilities to conduct business and discipline slaves. Southern women organized to support soldiers and engaged in previously male occupations. 22

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26 In November 1864, Sherman started a March to the Sea from Atlanta to the Georgia coast. His forces destroyed railroads, buildings, and food and supplies to deny their use by Confederate troops. Sherman s vision of destroying civilian property and resources as a way to win the war was controversial but very modern. Sherman continued his path of destruction into South Carolina, freeing slaves and ruining plantations. 25

27 With casualties skyrocketing in the spring and summer of 1864, northern morale sank to its lowest point in the war. Lincoln believed he would lose the presidential election in the fall. Radical Republicans nominated an alternative candidate on a radical plank, and General George B. McClellan, the Democratic candidate, called for a peace conference with the Confederacy. Ultimately Lincoln secured the Republican nomination, and with Sherman s capture of Atlanta, won a sweeping victory. Lincoln s re-election guaranteed the war would continue until the Confederacy had been crushed. 26

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29 On January 31, 1865, Congress approved the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery throughout the entire Union. In his March 1865 inaugural address, Lincoln called for national reconciliation. On April 2, Grant finally pierced Lee s lines at Petersburg, causing Lee to retreat and abandon Richmond, which was occupied by northern troops the next day. On April 4, Lincoln, ignoring his own safety, walked Richmond s streets, accompanied by only a dozen troops. Slaves celebrated and praised him everywhere he went. Lee and his army headed west but were soon surrounded by Grant s army. Lee surrendered at Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia, on April 9, bringing the Civil War to an end. Only five days later, before Lincoln could announce plans to reconstruct the south, he was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth, a celebrated actor, at Ford s Theatre in Washington, D.C. 28

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