American Civil War - Wikipedia

American Civil War - Wikipedia
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1861–1865 conflict in the United States
American Civil War
Battle of Gettysburg
Battle of Franklin
US Horse Artillery Brigade
officers
Battle of Antietam
A Harvest of Death
Ironclad
USS
Atlanta
Date
April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865
(4 years, 1 month and 2 weeks)
Location
United States
Atlantic Ocean
Result
Union
victory
Territorial
changes
Dissolution of the
Confederate States of America
Belligerents
United States
Confederate States
Commanders and leaders
Abraham Lincoln
Ulysses S. Grant
and others...
Jefferson Davis
POW
Robert E. Lee
and others...
Strength
698,000 at peak
2,200,000 total
360,000 at peak
750,000–1,000,000 total
Casualties and losses
110,000+
KIA
or
DOW
230,000+ died from accidents or disease
25,000–30,000 died in Confederate prisons
365,000+ total dead
282,000+ wounded
181,193 captured
828,000+ total casualties
94,000+
KIA
or
DOW
164,000+ died from accidents or disease
26,000–31,000 died in Union prisons
290,000+ total dead
137,000+ wounded
436,658 captured
864,000+ total casualties
50,000 free civilians died
60,000 documented slaves, "tens of thousands" of undocumented slaves died from disease
10
616,222
11
–1,000,000+ total dead
12
13
Theaters of the
American Civil War
Union blockade
Eastern
Western
Lower seaboard
Trans-Mississippi
Pacific coast
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The
American Civil War
(April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by
other names
) was a
civil war
in the
United States
between the
Union
("the North") and the
Confederacy
("the South"), which was formed in 1861 by
states
that had
seceded
from the Union to preserve
slavery in the United States
, which they saw as threatened because of the election of
Abraham Lincoln
and the growing
abolitionist
movement in the North.
14
The war lasted a little over four years, ending with Union victory, the dissolution of the Confederacy and the abolition of slavery, freeing four million
African Americans
Decades of controversy
over slavery came to a head when
Abraham Lincoln
, a
Republican
who opposed slavery's expansion, won the
1860 presidential election
. Seven Southern slave states responded to Lincoln's victory by seceding from the United States and forming the Confederacy. The Confederacy seized US forts and other federal assets in the South. The war began on April 12, 1861, when the Confederacy bombarded
Fort Sumter
in
South Carolina
. A wave of enthusiasm for war swept over the North and South, as military recruitment soared. Four more Southern states seceded after the war began and, led by its president,
Jefferson Davis
, the Confederacy comprised eleven states, containing a third of the US population. Four years of intense combat, mostly in the South, ensued.
During 1861–1862 in the
western theater
, the Union made permanent gains—though in the
eastern theater
the conflict was inconclusive. The
abolition of slavery
became a Union war goal on January 1, 1863, when Lincoln issued the
Emancipation Proclamation
, which declared all slaves in rebel states to be free, applying to more than 3.5 million of the 4 million enslaved people in the country. To the west, the Union first destroyed the Confederacy's river navy by the summer of 1862, then much of its western armies, and
seized New Orleans
. The successful 1863 Union
siege of Vicksburg
split the Confederacy in two at the
Mississippi River
, while Confederate general
Robert E. Lee
's incursion north failed at the
Battle of Gettysburg
. General
Ulysses S. Grant
's western successes led Lincoln to promote him to command of all Union armies in 1864.
Inflicting an ever-tightening
naval blockade
of Confederate ports, the Union marshaled resources and manpower to attack the Confederacy from all directions. This led to the
fall of Atlanta
in 1864 to Union general
William Tecumseh Sherman
, followed by his
March to the Sea
, which culminated in his taking
Savannah
. The last significant battles raged around the ten-month
Siege of Petersburg
, gateway to the Confederate capital of
Richmond
. The Confederates abandoned Richmond, and on April 9, 1865, Lee surrendered to Grant following the
Battle of Appomattox Court House
, setting in motion the
end of the war
Lincoln lived to see this victory but
was shot by an assassin
on April 14, dying the next day.
By the end of the war, much of the South's infrastructure had been destroyed. The Confederacy collapsed, slavery was abolished, and four million enslaved black people were freed. The war-torn nation then entered the
Reconstruction era
in an attempt to rebuild the country, bring the former Confederate states back into the United States, and grant
civil rights
to freed slaves. The war is one of the most extensively studied and
written about
episodes in the
history of the United States
. It remains the subject of cultural and
historiographical debate
. Of continuing interest is the myth of the
Lost Cause of the Confederacy
. The war was among the first to use
industrial warfare
. Railroads, the
electrical telegraph
, steamships, the
ironclad warship
, and mass-produced weapons were widely used. The war left an estimated 700,000 soldiers dead, along with an undetermined number of civilian deaths, making it the deadliest in American history.
The technology and brutality of the Civil War foreshadowed the coming
world wars
Origins
Main article:
Origins of the American Civil War
Further information:
Timeline of events leading to the American Civil War
Slave states and free states
Slavery in the United States
, and
Abolitionism in the United States
The origins of the war were rooted in the desire of the
Southern states
to preserve the
institution of slavery
15
Historians in the 21st century overwhelmingly agree on the centrality of slavery in the conflict—at least for the Southern states. They disagree on the
North
's reasons for refusing to allow the Southern states to secede.
16
The pseudo-historical
Lost Cause
ideology denies that slavery was the principal cause of the secession, a view disproven by historical evidence, notably some of the seceding states' own
secession documents
17
After leaving the Union, Mississippi issued a declaration stating, "Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery—the greatest material interest of the world."
18
19
The principal political battle leading to Southern secession was over whether slavery would expand into the Western territories destined to become states. Initially
Congress
had admitted new states into the Union in pairs,
one slave and one free
. This had kept a sectional balance in the
Senate
but not in the
House of Representatives
, as free states outstripped slave states in numbers of eligible voters.
20
Thus, at mid-19th century, the free-versus-slave status of the new territories was a critical issue, both for the North, where anti-slavery sentiment had grown, and for the South, where the fear of slavery's abolition had grown. Another factor leading to secession and the formation of the Confederacy was the development of
white Southern
nationalism in the preceding decades.
21
The primary reason for the North to reject secession was to preserve the Union, a cause based on
American nationalism
22
Background factors in the run up to the Civil War were
partisan politics
, abolitionism,
nullification
versus
secession
, Southern and Northern nationalism,
expansionism
economics
, and modernization in the
antebellum period
. As a panel of historians said in 2011, "while slavery and its various and multifaceted discontents were the primary cause of disunion, it was disunion itself that sparked the war."
23
Lincoln's election
Main article:
1860 United States presidential election
Portrait of Abraham Lincoln
, an 1860 photograph portrait of Abraham Lincoln by
Mathew Brady
Abraham Lincoln won the 1860 presidential election.
24
Southern leaders feared Lincoln would stop slavery's expansion and put it on a course toward extinction.
25
His victory triggered declarations of
secession
by seven slave states of the
Deep South
, all of whose riverfront or coastal economies were based on cotton that was cultivated by slave labor.
Lincoln was not inaugurated until March 4, 1861, four months after his 1860 election, which afforded the South time to prepare for war.
26
Nationalists in the North and "Unionists" in the South refused to accept the declarations of secession, and no foreign government ever recognized the Confederacy. The
US government
, under President
James Buchanan
, refused to relinquish the nation's forts, which the Confederacy claimed were located in their territory.
According to Lincoln, the American people had demonstrated, beginning with their victory in the
American Revolution
and
Revolutionary War
and subsequent establishment of a sovereign nation, that they could successfully establish and administer a republic. Yet, Lincoln believed, a question remained unanswered: Could the nation be maintained as a republic, with its government selected by vote of the people, in the face of internal attempts to destroy it or separate from it?
27
Outbreak of the war
Secession crisis
Main article:
Ordinance of Secession
Status of the states, 1861
Slave states that seceded before April 15, 1861
Slave states that seceded after April 15, 1861
Border Southern states that permitted slavery but did not secede (both KY and MO had dual competing Confederate and Unionist governments)
Union states that banned slavery
Territories
Lincoln's election provoked
South Carolina
's legislature to call a state convention to consider secession. South Carolina had done more than any other state to advance the notion that a state had the right to
nullify
federal laws and even secede. On December 20, 1860, the convention unanimously voted to secede and adopted
a secession declaration
. It argued for states' rights for slave owners but complained about states' rights in the North in the form of resistance to the federal Fugitive Slave Act, claiming that Northern states were not fulfilling their obligations to assist in the return of fugitive slaves. The "cotton states" of
Mississippi
Florida
Alabama
Georgia
Louisiana
, and
Texas
followed suit, seceding in January and February 1861.
26
Division of the states during the American Civil War:
Union
Confederacy
Border states
Territories
Among the ordinances of secession, those of Texas, Alabama, and Virginia mentioned the plight of the "slaveholding states" at the hands of Northern abolitionists. The rest made no mention of slavery but were brief announcements by the legislatures of the dissolution of ties to the Union.
28
However, at least four—South Carolina,
29
Mississippi,
30
Georgia,
31
and Texas
32
—provided detailed reasons for their secession, all blaming the movement to abolish slavery and its influence over the North. Southern states believed that the
Fugitive Slave Clause
made slaveholding a constitutional right. These states agreed to form a new federal government, the
Confederate States of America
, on February 4, 1861.
33
They took control of federal forts and other properties within their boundaries, with little resistance from outgoing president
James Buchanan
, whose term ended on March 4. Buchanan said the
Dred Scott decision
was proof the Southern states had no reason to secede and that the Union "was intended to be perpetual". He added, however, that "The power by force of arms to compel a State to remain in the Union" was not among the "enumerated powers granted to Congress".
34
A quarter of the US army—the Texas garrison—was surrendered in February to state forces by its general,
David E. Twiggs
, who joined the Confederacy.
35
Referring to the seven Southern states that initially seceded, James McPherson wrote, "Slaves constituted 47 percent of the population of the Confederate states but only 24 percent in the upper South."
36
He added, "In the four border states the proportion of slaves and slaveowners was less than half what it was in the eleven states that seceded."
37
Eastern Tennessee and western Virginia also had less slavery and showed more support for the Union than the rest of the Confederacy. West Virginia left the rest of Virginia and joined the Union as West Virginia because of the slavery issue. Even within Virginia and Tennessee, which had seceded, McPherson wrote, "The voters in 35 Virginia counties with a slave population of only 2.5 percent opposed secession by a margin of three to one, while voters in the remainder of the state, where slaves constituted 36 percent of the population, supported secession by more than ten to one. The thirty counties of east Tennessee that rejected secession by more than two to one contained a slave population of only 8 percent, while the rest of the state, with a slave population of 30 percent, voted for secession by a margin of seven to one."
38
As Southerners resigned their Senate and House seats, Republicans could pass projects that had been blocked. These included the
Morrill Tariff
land grant colleges
, a
Homestead Act
, a transcontinental railroad,
39
the
National Bank Act
, authorization of
United States Notes
by the
Legal Tender Act of 1862
, the end of
slavery in the District of Columbia
, and a ban on slavery in the territories.
40
The
Revenue Act of 1861
introduced an
income tax
to help finance the war.
41
Jefferson Davis
President of the Confederate States of America
(1861–1865)
In December 1860, the
Crittenden Compromise
was proposed to re-establish the
Missouri Compromise
line, by constitutionally banning slavery in territories to the north of it, while permitting it to the south. The Compromise would likely have prevented secession, but Lincoln and the Republicans rejected it.
42
Lincoln stated that any compromise that would extend slavery would bring down the Union.
43
February peace conference
met in Washington, proposing a solution similar to the Compromise; it was rejected by Congress. The Republicans proposed the
Corwin Amendment
, an alternative, not to interfere with slavery where it existed, but the South regarded it as insufficient. The remaining eight slave states rejected pleas to join the Confederacy, following a no-vote in Virginia's First Secessionist Convention on April 4.
44
On March 4, Lincoln was sworn in as president. In his
first inaugural address
, he argued that the Constitution was a
more perfect union
than the earlier
Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union
, was a binding contract, and that secession was "legally void".
45
He did not intend to invade Southern states, nor to end slavery where it existed, but he said he would use force to maintain possession of federal property,
45
including forts, arsenals, mints, and customhouses that had been seized.
46
"The mails, unless repelled, will continue to be furnished in all parts of the Union." Where conditions did not allow peaceful enforcement of federal law, US marshals and judges would be withdrawn. No mention was made of bullion lost from mints. He stated that it would be US policy "to collect the duties and imposts"; "there will be no invasion, no using of force against or among the people anywhere" that would justify an armed revolution. His speech closed with a plea for restoration of the bonds of union, famously calling on "the mystic chords of memory" binding the two regions.
45
The Confederacy sent delegates to Washington to negotiate a peace treaty. Lincoln rejected negotiations, because he claimed that the Confederacy was not a legitimate government and to make a treaty with it would recognize it as such.
47
Lincoln instead attempted to negotiate directly with the governors of seceded states, whose administrations he continued to recognize.
48
Complicating Lincoln's attempts to defuse the crisis was Secretary of State
William H. Seward
, who had been Lincoln's rival for the Republican
nomination
. Embittered by his defeat, Seward agreed to support Lincoln's candidacy only after he was guaranteed the executive office then considered the second most powerful. In the early stages of Lincoln's presidency Seward held little regard for him, due to his perceived inexperience. Seward viewed himself as the de facto head of government, the "
prime minister
" behind the throne. Seward attempted to engage in unauthorized and indirect negotiations that failed.
47
Lincoln was determined to hold all remaining Union-occupied forts in the seceded states:
Fort Pickens
Fort Jefferson
, and
Fort Taylor
in Florida, and Fort Sumter in South Carolina.
49
Battle of Fort Sumter
Main article:
Battle of Fort Sumter
See also:
Proclamation 80
The Battle of Fort Sumter, as depicted by
Currier and Ives
The American Civil War began on April 12, 1861, when Confederate forces opened fire on the Union-held Fort Sumter. Fort Sumter is located in the harbor of
Charleston
, South Carolina.
50
Its status had been contentious for months. Outgoing president Buchanan had dithered in reinforcing its garrison, commanded by Major
Robert Anderson
. Anderson took matters into his own hands and on December 26, 1860, under the cover of darkness, sailed the garrison from the poorly placed
Fort Moultrie
to the stalwart island Fort Sumter.
51
Anderson's actions catapulted him to hero status in the North. An attempt to resupply the fort on January 9, 1861, failed and nearly started the war then, but an informal truce held.
52
On March 5, Lincoln was informed the fort was low on supplies.
53
Fort Sumter proved a key challenge to Lincoln's administration.
53
Back-channel dealing by Seward with the Confederates undermined Lincoln's decision-making; Seward wanted to pull out.
54
But a firm hand by Lincoln tamed Seward, who was a staunch Lincoln ally thereafter. Lincoln decided holding the fort, which would require reinforcing it, was the only workable option. On April 6, Lincoln informed the Governor of South Carolina that a ship with food but no ammunition would attempt to supply the fort.
Richard N. Current
wrote:
In short, it appears that Lincoln, when he decided to send the Sumter expedition, considered hostilities to be
probable
. It also appears, however, that he believed an unopposed and peaceable provisioning to be at least barely
possible
.... He thought hostilities would be the likely result, and he was determined that, if they should be, they must clearly be initiated by the Confederates. "To say that Lincoln meant that the first shot would be fired by the other side
if a first shot was fired
, ... is not to say that he maneuvered to have the first shot fired."
55
James McPherson describes this win-win approach as "the first sign of the mastery that would mark Lincoln's presidency"; the Union would win if it could resupply and hold the fort, and the South would be the aggressor if it opened fire on an unarmed ship supplying starving men.
56
An April 9 Confederate cabinet meeting resulted in Davis ordering General
P. G. T. Beauregard
to take the fort before supplies reached it.
57
At 4:30 a.m. on April 12, Confederate forces fired the first of 4,000 shells at the fort; it fell the next day. The loss of Fort Sumter lit a patriotic fire under the North.
58
On April 15,
Lincoln called on the states to field 75,000 militiamen
for 90 days; impassioned Union states met the quotas quickly.
59
On May 3, 1861, Lincoln called for an additional 42,000 volunteers for three years.
60
61
Shortly after this,
Virginia
Tennessee
Arkansas
, and
North Carolina
seceded and joined the Confederacy. To reward Virginia, the Confederate capital was moved to
Richmond
62
Attitude of the border states
Main article:
Border states (American Civil War)
US secession map, showing the Union and the Confederacy
Union states
Union territories not permitting slavery
Southern
Border Union states, permitting slavery
(One of these states,
West Virginia
, was created in 1863, while KY, WV and MO had dual competing Confederate and Unionist governments)
Confederate states
Union territories that permitted slavery (claimed by Confederacy) at the start of the war, but where slavery was outlawed by the US in 1862
Maryland
Delaware
Missouri
, and
Kentucky
, known as the
border states
, were slave states that had not seceded and whose people had divided loyalties to the North and South, with some men enlisting in the
Union Army
and others in the Confederate Army.
63
West Virginia
may be compared to the border states because it had slavery after it separated from
Virginia
and was admitted to the Union on June 20, 1863,
64
but it was admitted under a
plan of gradual emancipation
known as the
Willey
Amendment.
Maryland's territory surrounded
Washington, D.C.
, and could cut it off from the North.
65
It had anti-Lincoln officials who tolerated anti-army
rioting in Baltimore
and the burning of bridges, both aimed at hindering the passage of troops to Washington, D.C., and the South. Maryland's legislature voted overwhelmingly to stay in the Union, but rejected hostilities with its southern neighbors, voting to close Maryland's rail lines to prevent their use for war.
66
Lincoln responded by establishing
martial law
and suspending
habeas corpus
in Maryland, along with sending in militia units.
67
In
Ex parte Merryman
, Chief Justice
Roger Taney
found that only Congress could suspend habeas corpus, but Lincoln ignored his ruling. Lincoln took control of Maryland and the District of Columbia by seizing prominent figures, including
arresting one-third of the members
of the
Maryland General Assembly
, who were pro-Confederate, on September 17, 1861, the day it intended to reconvene.
66
All were held without trial at
Fort McHenry
in Baltimore.
68
In September 1861, federal troops imprisoned a Baltimore newspaper editor,
Frank Key Howard
, after he criticized Lincoln in an editorial for ignoring Chief Justice Taney's ruling in
Ex parte Merryman
69
Howard wrote a book about his prison experiences, which was published early in 1863. It "stressed the crowded conditions and spartan hardships of prison life ... [and] likened the conditions in Fort Lafayette to those on 'a slave-ship, on the middle passage
".
70
In Missouri, an
elected convention
on secession voted to remain in the Union. When pro-Confederate Governor
Claiborne Fox Jackson
called out the state militia, it was attacked by federal forces under General
Nathaniel Lyon
, who chased the governor and rest of the State Guard to the southwestern corner of Missouri (see
Missouri secession
). Early in the war the Confederacy controlled southern Missouri through the
Confederate government of Missouri
but was driven out after 1862. In the resulting vacuum, the convention on secession reconvened and took power as the Unionist provisional government of Missouri.
71
Kentucky did not secede but declared itself neutral. When Confederate forces entered in September 1861, its neutrality ended and the state reaffirmed its Union status while maintaining slavery. During an invasion by Confederate forces in 1861, Confederate sympathizers and delegates from 68 Kentucky counties organized the secession Russellville Convention, formed the shadow
Confederate Government of Kentucky
, inaugurated a governor, and Kentucky was admitted into the Confederacy on December 10, 1861. Its jurisdiction extended only as far as Confederate battle lines in the Commonwealth, which at its greatest extent was over half the state, and it went into exile after October 1862.
72
After Virginia's secession, a
Unionist government
in
Wheeling
asked 48 counties to vote on an ordinance to create a new state in October 1861. A voter turnout of 34 percent approved the statehood bill (96 percent approving).
73
Twenty-four secessionist counties were included in the new state,
74
and the ensuing guerrilla war engaged about 40,000 federal troops for much of the war.
75
76
Congress admitted West Virginia to the Union on June 20, 1863. West Virginians provided about 20,000 soldiers to each side in the war.
77
A Unionist secession attempt occurred in
East Tennessee
but was suppressed by the Confederacy, which arrested over 3,000 men suspected of loyalty to the Union; they were held without trial.
78
War
See also:
List of American Civil War battles
and
Military leadership in the American Civil War
The Civil War was marked by intense and frequent battles. Over four years, 237 named battles were fought, along with many smaller actions, often characterized by their bitter intensity and high casualties. Historian
John Keegan
described it as "one of the most ferocious wars ever fought", where in many cases the only target was the enemy's soldiers.
79
80
Mobilization
See also:
Economic history of the American Civil War
Rioters attacking a building during the
New York anti-draft riots
of 1863
As the Confederate states organized, the US Army numbered 16,000, while Northern governors began mobilizing their militias.
81
The Confederate Congress authorized up to 100,000 troops in February. By May, Jefferson Davis was pushing for another 100,000 soldiers for one year or the duration, and the US Congress responded in kind.
82
83
In the first year of the war, both sides had more volunteers than they could effectively train and equip. After the initial enthusiasm faded, relying on young men who came of age each year was not enough. Both sides enacted draft laws (conscription) to encourage or force volunteering, though relatively few were drafted. The Confederacy passed a draft law in April 1862 for men aged 18 to 35, with exemptions for overseers, government officials, and clergymen. The US Congress followed in July, authorizing a militia draft within states that could not meet their quota with volunteers. European
immigrants
joined the Union Army in large numbers, including 177,000 born in Germany and 144,000 in Ireland.
84
About 50,000 Canadians served, around 2,500 of whom were black.
85
When the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect in January 1863, ex-slaves were energetically recruited to meet state quotas. States and local communities offered higher cash bonuses for white volunteers. Congress tightened the draft law in March 1863. Men selected in the draft could provide substitutes or, until mid-1864, pay commutation money. Many eligibles pooled their money to cover the cost of anyone drafted. Families used the substitute provision to select which man should go into the army and which should stay home. There was much evasion and resistance to the draft, especially in Catholic areas. The
New York City draft riots
in July 1863 involved Irish immigrants who had been signed up as citizens to swell the vote of the
city's Democratic political machine
, not realizing it made them liable for the draft.
86
Of the 168,649 men procured for the Union through the draft, 117,986 were substitutes, leaving only 50,663 who were conscripted.
87
In the North and South, draft laws were highly unpopular. In the North, some 120,000 men evaded conscription, many fleeing to Canada, and another 280,000 soldiers deserted during the war.
88
At least 100,000 Southerners deserted, about 10 percent of the total. Southern desertion was high because many soldiers were more concerned about the fate of their local area than the Southern cause.
89
In the North, "
bounty jumpers
" enlisted to collect the generous bonus, deserted, then re-enlisted under a different name for a second bonus; 141 were caught and executed.
90
From a tiny frontier force in 1860, the Union and Confederate armies grew into the "largest and most efficient armies in the world" within a few years. Some European observers at the time dismissed them as amateur and unprofessional,
91
but historian John Keegan concluded that each outmatched the French, Prussian, and Russian armies, and without the Atlantic, could have threatened any of them with defeat.
92
Southern Unionists
Main article:
Southern Unionist
Newton Knight
, one of the founders of the
Free State of Jones
Unionism was strong in certain areas within the Confederacy. As many as 100,000 men living in states under Confederate control served in the Union Army or pro-Union guerrilla groups. Although they came from all classes, most Southern Unionists differed socially, culturally, and economically from their region's dominant prewar, slave-owning planter class.
93
Prisoners
Main article:
American Civil War prison camps
Union soldier held as a POW
At the beginning of the Civil War, a parole system operated, under which captives agreed not to fight until exchanged. They were held in camps run by their army, paid, but not allowed to perform any military duties.
94
The system of exchanges collapsed in 1863 when the Confederacy refused to exchange black prisoners. After that, approximately 56,000 of the 409,000 POWs died in prisons, accounting for 10 percent of the conflict's fatalities.
95
Women
See also:
Women in the military § United States
, and
Gender issues in the American Civil War
Historian
Elizabeth D. Leonard
writes that between 500 and 1,000 women enlisted as soldiers on both sides, disguised as men.
96
Women also served as spies, resistance activists, nurses, and hospital personnel.
97
Women served on the Union hospital ship
Red Rover
and nursed Union and Confederate troops at field hospitals.
98
Mary Edwards Walker
, the only woman ever to receive the
Medal of Honor
, served in the Union Army and was given the medal for treating the wounded during the war.
99
100
One woman, Jennie Hodgers, fought for the Union under the name Albert D. J. Cashier. After she returned to civilian life, she continued to live as a man until she died in 1915 at the age of 71.
101
Union
During the war, women in the North advocated for social reforms and created
ladies' aid societies
, also called soldiers' aid societies, which provided supplies to soldiers on the battlefield and cared for sick and wounded soldiers. Women in the North also held military rallies, village parades, and charity bazaars.
102
Susan B. Anthony
was a women's rights activist and abolitionist.
Women like
Susan B. Anthony
saw that supporting the war effort was a way to pave the future for women's suffrage movements. In her appeal to Northern women's loyalty, Anthony challenged the inconsistencies of the nation's founding ideal and its actual practices concerning equality among women.
103
Northern women during the Civil War also made great strides in the workforce, as they helped contribute to the war effort by stepping into roles that were traditionally held by men. While women rarely worked in factories before the war, many filled men's places as they felt they could erase some of the boundaries that separated them from male preserves of power.
102
Women were important in the workforce as they prepared and packed provisions, sewed uniforms and havelocks, and knitted socks and mittens.
104
By entering these new environments, women made significant progress in the fight for women's equality in the workforce.
Northern women were also essential in the wartime support, as they were active participants in the war narrative. While women were not allowed to fight on the battlefield in the Civil War, they exhibited a patriotism that gave them the strength to maintain courage for themselves as well as their households.
102
While their men were off at war, Northern women created a landscape that emphasized love, sacrifice, and the nurturing of men's courage. This is demonstrated in feminized war literature that encouraged, expressed, and valorized men's patriotism.
104
Women's unwavering encouragement and affection towards fighting men became a cornerstone of the war effort as it helped sustain the spirits of the men on the frontlines.
Confederate
Confederate women during the Civil War focused on preserving the central economic institution of the Old South: the plantation. With so many men away at war, women were left with the land and the slaves. While some women hired male overseers to assist them in directing and maintaining newly female-headed plantations,
105
other women decided to stay at the plantations and run the plantations themselves. Southern women became focused on keeping the economic structure of the South as they dealt with increasingly rebellious slaves.
105
The South relied on enslaved labor because it was an agrarian economy. A good number of enslaved men labored for the Confederate army during the war, which meant that enslaved women and children were increasingly at the center of the work force on the plantations.
106
White Southern women struggled to maintain morale on the home front as they dealt with problems without men. Although Southern women were devoted to the Confederacy, many requested that their sons and husbands be discharged from the military to help them at home.
107
Eliza Adams wrote to the Confederate government to appeal for exemptions for her sons' military service, as she had sent five sons and also sons-in-laws to fight for the Confederacy.
108
Southern women were torn between their patriotic ideals and their daily realities of life on the home front.
Union Navy
Main article:
Union Navy
Battle between the
USS
Monitor
and
Merrimack
The
Union Navy
in 1861 was relatively small but, by 1865, expanded rapidly to 6,000 officers, 45,000 sailors, and 671 vessels totaling 510,396 tons.
109
110
Its mission was to blockade Confederate ports, control the river system, defend against Confederate raiders on the high seas, and be ready for a possible war with the British
Royal Navy
111
The main riverine war was fought in the West, where major rivers gave access to the Confederate heartland. The US Navy eventually controlled the Red, Tennessee, Cumberland, Mississippi, and Ohio rivers. In the East, the Navy shelled Confederate forts and supported coastal army operations.
112
The Civil War occurred during the early stages of the
industrial revolution
, leading to naval innovations, including the
ironclad warship
. The Confederacy, recognizing the need to counter the Union's naval superiority, built or converted over 130 vessels, including 26 ironclads.
113
Despite these efforts, Confederate ships were largely unsuccessful against Union ironclads.
114
The Union Navy used timberclads, tinclads, and armored gunboats. Shipyards in
Cairo, Illinois
, and
St. Louis
built or modified
steamboats
115
The Confederacy experimented with the submarine
CSS
Hunley
, which proved unsuccessful, and with the ironclad
CSS
Virginia
, rebuilt from the sunken Union ship
Merrimack
116
On March 8, 1862,
Virginia
inflicted significant damage on the Union's wooden fleet, but the next day, the first Union ironclad,
USS
Monitor
, arrived to challenge it in the
Chesapeake Bay
. The resulting three-hour
Battle of Hampton Roads
was a draw, proving ironclads were effective warships.
117
The Confederacy scuttled the
Virginia
to prevent its capture, while the Union built many copies of the
Monitor
. The Confederacy's efforts to obtain warships from
Great Britain
failed, as Britain had no interest in selling warships to a nation at war with a stronger enemy and feared souring relations with the US.
118
Union blockade
Main article:
Union blockade
General Scott's
Anaconda Plan
, featuring a tightening naval blockade, forcing rebels out of Missouri along the Mississippi River, Kentucky Unionists sit on the fence, idled cotton industry illustrated in Georgia.
By early 1861, General
Winfield Scott
had devised the
Anaconda Plan
to win the war with minimal bloodshed, calling for a blockade of the Confederacy to suffocate the South into surrender.
119
Lincoln adopted parts of the plan but opted for a more active war strategy.
120
In April 1861, Lincoln announced a blockade of all Southern ports; commercial ships could not get insurance, ending regular traffic. The South blundered by embargoing cotton exports before the blockade was fully effective; by the time they reversed this decision, it was too late. "
King Cotton
" was dead, as the South could export less than 10% of its cotton. The blockade shut down the ten Confederate seaports with railheads that moved almost all the cotton. By June 1861, warships were stationed off the principal Southern ports, and a year later nearly 300 ships were in service.
121
Blockade runners
Main article:
Blockade runners of the American Civil War
Gunline of nine Union ironclads.
South Atlantic Blockading Squadron
off Charleston. Continuous blockade of all major ports was sustained by North's overwhelming war production.
The Confederates began the war short on military supplies, which the agrarian South could not produce. Northern arms manufacturers were restricted by an embargo, ending existing and future contracts with the South. The Confederacy turned to foreign sources, connecting with financiers and companies like
S. Isaac, Campbell & Company
and the
London Armoury Company
in Britain, becoming the Confederacy's main source of arms.
122
123
To transport arms safely to the Confederacy, British investors built small, fast, steam-driven
blockade runners
that traded arms and supplies from Britain, through Bermuda, Cuba, and the Bahamas in exchange for high-priced cotton. Many were lightweight and designed for speed, only carrying small amounts of cotton back to England.
124
When the Union Navy seized a blockade runner, the ship and cargo were condemned as a
prize of war
and sold, with proceeds given to the Navy sailors; the captured crewmen, mostly British, were released.
125
Economic impact
The Southern economy nearly collapsed during the war due to multiple factors, the most notable being severe food shortages, failing railroads, loss of control over key rivers, foraging by Northern armies, and the seizure of animals and crops by Confederate forces.
126
Historians agree the blockade was a major factor in ruining the
Confederate
economy; however, Wise argues blockade runners provided enough of a lifeline to allow Robert E. Lee, a Confederate general, to continue fighting for additional months, as a result of supplies that included 400,000 rifles, lead, blankets, and boots that Confederate economy could no longer supply.
126
The Confederate cotton crop became nearly useless, which cut off the Confederacy's primary income source. Critical imports were scarce, and coastal trade also largely ended.
127
The blockade's success was not measured by the few ships, which slipped through, but by the thousands that never tried. European merchant ships could not obtain insurance for their ships and transport, and were too slow to evade the blockade, leading them to cease docking in Confederate ports.
128
To fight an offensive war, the Confederacy purchased arms in Britain and converted British-built ships into
commerce raiders
, which targeted
United States Merchant Marine
ships in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. The Confederacy smuggled 600,000 arms, enabling it to continue fighting for two more years.
129
130
As insurance rates soared, American-flagged ships largely ceased traveling in international waters, though some were reflagged with European flags, which allowed them to continue operating.
114
After the conclusion of the Civil War, the US government demanded Britain reimburse it for the damage caused by blockade runners and raiders outfitted in British ports. Britain paid the US$15 million in 1871, which covered costs associated with commerce raiding but nothing more.
131
Diplomacy
Main article:
Diplomacy of the American Civil War
Further information:
United Kingdom and the American Civil War
and
France and the American Civil War
A December 1861 cartoon in
Punch
magazine in London ridicules American aggressiveness in the
Trent Affair
John Bull
, at right, warns
Uncle Sam
, "You do what's right, my son, or I'll blow you out of the water."
Although the Confederacy hoped Britain and France would join them against the Union, this was never likely, so they sought to bring them in as mediators.
132
133
The Union worked to block this and threatened war against any country that recognized the Confederacy. In 1861, Southerners voluntarily embargoed cotton shipments, hoping to start an economic depression in Europe that would force Britain to enter the war, but this failed. Worse, Europe turned to Egypt and India for cotton, which they found superior, hindering the South's postwar recovery.
134
135
Cotton diplomacy
proved a failure, because Europe had a surplus of cotton, while the 1860–62 crop failures in Europe made the North's grain exports critically important. It also helped turn European opinion against the Confederacy. It was said that "King Corn was more powerful than King Cotton", as US grain increased from a quarter to almost half of British imports.
134
Meanwhile, the war created jobs for arms makers, ironworkers, and ships to transport weapons.
135
Lincoln's administration initially struggled to appeal to European public opinion. At first, diplomats explained that the US was not committed to ending slavery and emphasized legal arguments about the unconstitutionality of secession. Confederate representatives, however, focused on their struggle for liberty, commitment to free trade, and the essential role of cotton in the European economy.
136
The European aristocracy was "absolutely gleeful in pronouncing the American debacle as proof that the entire experiment in popular government had failed. European government leaders welcomed the fragmentation of the ascendant American Republic."
137
However, a European public with liberal sensibilities remained, which the US sought to appeal to by building connections with the international press. By 1861, Union diplomats like
Carl Schurz
realized emphasizing the war against slavery was the Union's most effective moral asset in swaying European public opinion. Seward was concerned an overly radical case for reunification would distress European merchants with cotton interests; even so, he supported a widespread campaign of public diplomacy.
138
US
minister
to Britain
Charles Francis Adams
proved adept and convinced Britain not to challenge the Union blockade. The Confederacy purchased warships from commercial shipbuilders in Britain, with the most famous being the
CSS
Alabama
, which caused considerable damage and led to serious
postwar disputes
. However, public opinion against slavery in Britain created a political liability for politicians, where the
anti-slavery movement
was powerful.
139
War loomed in late 1861 between the US and Britain over the
Trent
Affair
, which began when US Navy personnel boarded the British ship
Trent
and seized two Confederate diplomats. However, London and Washington smoothed this over after Lincoln released the two men.
140
Prince Albert
left his deathbed to
issue diplomatic instructions
to
Lord Lyons
during the
Trent
Affair. His request was honored, and, as a result, the British response to the US was toned down, helping avert war.
141
In 1862, the British government considered mediating between the Union and Confederacy, though such an offer would have risked war with the US. British prime minister
Lord Palmerston
reportedly read
Uncle Tom's Cabin
three times when deciding what his decision would be.
140
The Union victory at the
Battle of Antietam
caused the British to delay this decision. The Emancipation Proclamation increased the political liability of supporting the Confederacy. Realizing that Washington could not intervene in
Mexico
as long as the Confederacy controlled Texas,
France invaded Mexico
in 1861 and installed the
Habsburg
Austrian archduke
Maximilian I
as emperor.
142
Washington repeatedly protested France's violation of the
Monroe Doctrine
. Despite sympathy for the Confederacy, France's seizure of Mexico deterred it from war with the Union. Confederate offers late in the war to end slavery in return for diplomatic recognition were not seriously considered by London or Paris. After 1863, the
Polish revolt against Russia
further distracted the European powers and ensured they remained neutral.
143
Russia
supported the Union, largely because it believed the US counterbalanced its geopolitical rival, the UK. In 1863, the
Imperial Russian Navy
's Baltic and Pacific fleets wintered in the American ports of New York and San Francisco, respectively.
144
Eastern theater
Main article:
Eastern theater of the American Civil War
County
map of Civil War battles by theater and year
The Eastern theater refers to the military operations east of the
Appalachian Mountains
, including Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, and
Pennsylvania
, the
District of Columbia
, and the coastal fortifications and seaports of
North Carolina
145
Background
Army of the Potomac
Maj. Gen.
George B. McClellan
took command of the Union
Army of the Potomac
on July 26, 1861, and the war began in earnest in 1862. The 1862 Union strategy called for simultaneous advances along four axes:
146
McClellan would lead the main thrust in Virginia towards Richmond.
Ohio forces would advance through Kentucky into Tennessee.
The Missouri Department would drive south along the Mississippi River.
The westernmost attack would originate from Kansas.
Army of Northern Virginia
Robert E. Lee
, the
overall commander
of the
Confederate States Army
The primary Confederate force in the Eastern theater was the
Army of Northern Virginia
. The Army originated as the
(Confederate) Army of the Potomac
, which was organized on June 20, 1861, from all operational forces in Northern Virginia. On July 20 and 21, the
Army of the Shenandoah
and forces from the District of Harpers Ferry were added. Units from the
Army of the Northwest
were merged into the Army of the Potomac between March 14 and May 17, 1862. The Army of the Potomac was renamed
Army of Northern Virginia
on March 14. The
Army of the Peninsula
was merged into it on April 12, 1862.
When Virginia declared its secession in April 1861, Robert E. Lee chose to follow his home state, despite his desire for the country to remain intact and an offer of a senior Union command. In his four-volume biography of Lee published in 1934 and 1935, historian
Douglas S. Freeman
wrote that the army received its final name from Lee when he issued orders assuming command on June 1, 1862.
147
However, Freeman wrote, Lee corresponded with Brigadier General
Joseph E. Johnston
, his predecessor in army command, before that date and referred to Johnston's command as the Army of Northern Virginia. Part of the confusion results from the fact that Johnston commanded the Department of Northern Virginia as of October 22, 1861, and the name Army of Northern Virginia was seen as an informal consequence of its parent department's name. Jefferson Davis and Johnston did not adopt the name, but the organization of units as of March 14 was clearly the same organization that Lee received on June 1, and is generally referred to as the Army of Northern Virginia, even if that is correct only in retrospect.
On July 4 at Harper's Ferry, Colonel
Thomas J. Jackson
assigned
Jeb Stuart
command of all cavalry companies of the Army of the Shenandoah, and Jackson eventually commanded the Army of Northern Virginia's cavalry.
Battles
A portrait depicting the Battle of Antietam, which resulted in over 22,000 casualties, the Civil War's deadliest one-day battle
Called the
"Philippi Races"
because of its brevity, Philippi, Virginia (now
Philippi, WV
) was the scene of the first organized land action of the American Civil War, on June 3, 1861. In July 1861, in the first in a series of prominent battles in the war, Union Army troops commanded by Maj. Gen.
Irvin McDowell
attacked Confederate forces, which were under the command of Beauregard near the national capital in
Washington
. The Confederacy repelled the attack in the
First Battle of Bull Run
. At the beginning of the battle, the Union appeared to hold the upper hand. The Union Army routed Confederate forces, then holding defensive positions, but Confederate reinforcements under Joseph E. Johnston arrived from the
Shenandoah Valley
by railroad, and the battle's course quickly changed. A
brigade of Virginians
, commanded by
Thomas J. Jackson
, then a relatively unknown brigadier general from
Virginia Military Institute
, stood its ground, leading to Jackson earning the nickname "Stonewall". Lincoln urged the Union Army to commence offensive operations against
Confederate forces
, which led General
George B. McClellan
, in the spring of 1862, to attack
Virginia
by way of the
peninsula
between the
York River
and
James River
southeast of
Richmond
. McClellan's army reached the gates of Richmond in the
Peninsula campaign
148
149
150
Also in the spring of 1862, in
Shenandoah Valley
, Jackson led his
Valley Campaign
, during which he employed rapid and unpredictable movements on interior lines. Jackson's 17,000 troops marched 646 miles (1,040 km) in 48 days, during which they won minor battles as they engaged three Union armies, comprising 52,000 men, including those of
Nathaniel P. Banks
and
John C. Frémont
, preventing them from reinforcing the Union offensive against Richmond. The swiftness of Jackson's troops earned them the nickname
foot cavalry
. Johnston halted McClellan's advance at the
Battle of Seven Pines
, but he was wounded in the battle, and Robert E. Lee assumed his position of command. Lee and his senior subordinates,
James Longstreet
and Stonewall Jackson, defeated McClellan in the
Seven Days Battles
, forcing McClellan's retreat.
151
Union soldiers in the trenches, just prior to the
Second Battle of Fredericksburg
in May 1863
During the
Northern Virginia Campaign
, which included the
Second Battle of Bull Run
, Confederate forces registered another important military victory.
152
McClellan resisted General-in-Chief Halleck's orders to send reinforcements to
John Pope's
Union
Army of Virginia
, which enabled Lee's Confederate forces to defeat twice the number of combined enemy troops.
153
Emboldened by Second Bull Run, Confederate forces launched their first invasion of the North in the
Maryland Campaign
during which Lee led 45,000 Army of Northern Virginia troops across the
Potomac River
into
Maryland
on September 5. Lincoln then restored Pope's troops to McClellan, and McClellan and Lee clashed in the
Battle of Antietam
near
Sharpsburg, Maryland
, on September 17, 1862, which proved the bloodiest single day in both the Civil War and US military history.
151
154
Lee's army retreated to Virginia before McClellan could destroy it, leading the Battle of Antietam to be widely viewed as a Union victory since it halted Lee's invasion of the North and provided an opportunity for Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, which he issued as an
executive order
on January 1, 1863.
155
McClellan failed to respond in any measurable way to Lee's attempt to invade the North at Antietam, leading to his replacement by Maj. Gen.
Ambrose Burnside
. Burnside led Union Army troops in the
Battle of Fredericksburg
156
where they were defeated on December 13, 1862. Over 12,000 Union soldiers were killed or wounded during futile attempts by Union troops to launch frontal assaults against Marye's Heights.
157
After the battle, Burnside was replaced by Maj. Gen.
Joseph Hooker
158
A portrait depicting
Pickett's Charge
on July 3, 1863, the final day of the Battle of Gettysburg, which proved the Civil War's deadliest battle but also one of its most significant, altering the course of the war in the Union's favor
Hooker, too, proved unable to defeat Lee's army; despite having more than twice as many troops as Lee, Hooker's Chancellorsville Campaign proved ineffective, and he was soundly defeated in the
Battle of Chancellorsville
, which was fought between April 30 and May 6, 1863.
159
Chancellorsville is known as Lee's "perfect battle" because his risky decision to divide his army paid off. During the Battle of Chancellorsville, Stonewall Jackson was shot in his left arm and right hand by friendly fire, leading to the amputation of his arm, and he died of
pneumonia
160
Lee famously said: "He has lost his left arm, but I have lost my right arm."
161
The fiercest fighting of the battle—and the second bloodiest day of the Civil War—occurred on May 3 as Lee launched multiple attacks against the Union position at Chancellorsville. That same day,
John Sedgwick
advanced across the
Rappahannock River
, defeated the small Confederate force at Marye's Heights in the
Second Battle of Fredericksburg
, and then moved westward, but Confederate forces succeeded in delaying Union forces in the
Battle of Salem Church
162
Hooker was replaced by Maj. Gen.
George Meade
during Lee's
second invasion of the North
, in June. In the Battle of Gettysburg, which proved the war's bloodiest and one of its most strategically significant, Meade defeated Lee in a three-day battle between July 1 and 3, 1863.
163
The Battle of Gettysburg caused over 50,000 Union and Confederate casualties, but also proved the war's
turning point
, altering the course of the war in the Union's favor.
Pickett's Charge
, launched July 3, on the final day of the Battle of Gettysburg, is considered the
high-water mark of the Confederacy
, representing the collapse of any credible prospect that the Confederacy could prevail in the war. At Gettysburg, Lee's
Army of Northern Virginia
suffered 28,000 casualties versus Meade's 23,000, and Lee was repelled in a failed attempt to invade and occupy Union territory.
164
165
Western theater
Main article:
Western theater of the American Civil War
The Western theater refers to military operations between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River, including
Alabama
Georgia
Florida
Mississippi
, North Carolina, Kentucky, South Carolina,
Tennessee
, and parts of
Louisiana
166
Background
Army of the Cumberland and Army of the Tennessee
Main articles:
Army of the Cumberland
and
Army of the Tennessee
Ulysses S. Grant, a Union army general who was later elected the nation's 18th
president
The primary Union forces in this theater were the
Army of the Tennessee
and
Army of the Cumberland
, named for the two rivers,
Tennessee River
and
Cumberland River
. After Meade's inconclusive fall campaign, Lincoln turned to the Western theater for new leadership. At the same time, the Confederate stronghold of Vicksburg surrendered, giving the Union control of the Mississippi River, permanently isolating the western Confederacy, and producing the new leader Lincoln needed, Ulysses S. Grant.
167
The Army of Tennessee, which served as the primary Confederate force in the Western theater, was formed on November 20, 1862, when General
Braxton Bragg
renamed the former
Army of Mississippi
. While Confederate forces had successes in the Eastern theater, they were defeated many times in the West.
166
Battles
The Union's key strategist and tactician in the West was Ulysses S. Grant, who led the Union to victories in battles at
Fort Henry
(February 6, 1862) and
Fort Donelson
(February 11 to 16, 1862), earning him the nickname of "Unconditional Surrender" Grant. With these victories, the Union gained control of the
Tennessee
and
Cumberland Rivers
168
Nathan Bedford Forrest
rallied nearly 4,000 Confederate troops and led them to escape across the
Cumberland River
Nashville
and central Tennessee fell to the Union, leading to attrition of local food supplies and livestock and a breakdown in social organization.
169
170
171
Confederate general
Leonidas Polk
subsequently invaded
Columbus, Kentucky
, which ended Kentucky's policy of neutrality and turned it against the Confederacy. Grant used river transport and
Andrew Hull Foote
's gunboats of the Western Flotilla, threatening the Confederacy's "Gibraltar of the West" in Columbus, Kentucky. Although rebuffed at Belmont, Grant cut off Columbus. Confederate forces, lacking their gunboats, were forced to retreat and the Union took control of west Kentucky and opened Tennessee in March 1862.
172
At the
Battle of Shiloh
, in
Shiloh, Tennessee
, in April 1862, Confederate forces launched a surprise attack on Union forces, pushing them back to the Tennessee River as night fell. Over that night, however, the
Navy
landed reinforcements, and Grant counterattacked. Grant and the Union ultimately won a decisive victory in the first battle with a high number of casualties in what proved to be the first in a series of such battles.
173
Confederate forces lost
Albert Sidney Johnston
, considered their finest general, before Lee emerged to assume command.
174
The
Battle of Chickamauga
, the war's highest two-day loss battle
One of the early Union objectives was to capture the
Mississippi River
, which would permit it to cut the Confederacy in half. The Mississippi was opened to Union traffic to the southern border of Tennessee after it took
Island No. 10
New Madrid, Missouri
, and then
Memphis, Tennessee
175
In April 1862, the Union Navy
captured New Orleans
175
"The key to the river was New Orleans, the South's largest port [and] greatest industrial center."
176
US naval forces under
Farragut
ran past Confederate defenses south of
New Orleans
. Confederate forces abandoned the city, giving the Union a critical anchor in the deep South,
177
which allowed Union forces to move up the Mississippi.
Memphis fell to Union forces
on June 6, 1862, allowing it to serve as a key base for further Union advances south along the Mississippi. On the Mississippi River, the Union took every fortress city with the exception of
Vicksburg, Mississippi
. But Confederate control of Vicksburg was sufficient in preventing the Union from controlling the entire river.
178
Bragg's second invasion of Kentucky in the
Confederate Heartland Offensive
included initial successes, including
Kirby Smith
's triumph in the
Battle of Richmond
and the capture of the Kentucky capital of
Frankfort, Kentucky
, on September 3, 1862.
179
The campaign ended with a meaningless victory over Maj. Gen.
Don Carlos Buell
at the
Battle of Perryville
, and Bragg was forced to end his attempt to invade and control Kentucky. Lacking logistical support and infantry recruits, Bragg was instead forced to retreat,
180
and ended up being narrowly defeated by Maj. Gen.
William Rosecrans
in the
Battle of Stones River
in Tennessee in what proved to be the culmination of the
Stones River Campaign
181
US naval forces assisted Grant in the long, complex
Vicksburg Campaign
, which resulted in Confederate forces surrendering in the
Battle of Vicksburg
in July 1863, which cemented Union control of the Mississippi River in one of the war's turning points.
182
183
The one clear Confederate victory in the West was the
Battle of Chickamauga
. After Rosecrans' successful
Tullahoma Campaign
, Bragg, reinforced by Lt. Gen.
James Longstreet's Corps
, defeated Rosecrans, despite the defensive stand of Maj. Gen.
George Henry Thomas
citation needed
Rosecrans retreated to
Chattanooga, Tennessee
, where Bragg was then besieged in the
Chattanooga campaign
. Grant marched to the relief of Rosecrans, where he led the defeat of Bragg in the Third Battle of Chattanooga,
184
eventually causing Longstreet to abandon his
Knoxville Campaign
and driving Confederate forces out of Tennessee and opening a route to
Atlanta
and the heart of the Confederacy.
185
Trans-Mississippi theater
Main article:
Trans-Mississippi theater of the American Civil War
Background
The
Trans-Mississippi theater
refers to military operations west of the Mississippi, encompassing most of Missouri,
Arkansas
, most of Louisiana, and the
Indian Territory
in present-day
Oklahoma
. The
Trans-Mississippi District
was formed by the
Confederate States Army
to better coordinate
Ben McCulloch
's command of troops in Arkansas and Louisiana,
Sterling Price
's
Missouri State Guard
, as well as the portion of
Earl Van Dorn
's command that included the Indian Territory and excluded the Army of the West. The Union's command was the Trans-Mississippi Division, or the
Military Division of West Mississippi
186
Battles
Nathaniel Lyon
secured docks and arsenal in
St. Louis
, leading Union Army forces to expel the Missouri Confederate forces and government.
187
The first major battle of the Trans-Mississippi theater was the
Battle of Wilson's Creek
(August 1861). The Confederates were driven from Missouri early in the war as a result of the
Battle of Pea Ridge
188
Extensive
guerrilla warfare
characterized the trans-Mississippi region, as the Confederacy lacked the troops and logistics to support regular armies that could challenge Union control.
189
190
Roving Confederate bands such as
Quantrill's Raiders
terrorized the countryside, striking military installations and civilian settlements.
191
The "Sons of Liberty" and "Order of the American Knights" attacked pro-Union people, elected officeholders, and unarmed uniformed soldiers. These partisans could not be driven out of Missouri, until an entire regular Union infantry division was engaged. By 1864, these violent activities harmed the nationwide antiwar movement organizing against the re-election of Lincoln. Missouri not only stayed in the Union, but Lincoln took 70 percent of the vote to win re-election.
192
Small-scale military actions south and west of Missouri sought to control
Indian Territory
and
New Mexico Territory
for the Union. The
Battle of Glorieta Pass
was the decisive battle of the
New Mexico Campaign
. The Union repulsed Confederate incursions into New Mexico in 1862, and the exiled Arizona government withdrew into Texas. In the Indian Territory, civil war broke out within tribes. About 12,000 Indian warriors fought for the Confederacy but fewer for the Union.
193
The most prominent Cherokee was Brigadier General
Stand Watie
, the last Confederate general to surrender.
194
After the fall of Vicksburg in July 1863, Jefferson Davis informed General Kirby Smith in Texas that he could expect no further help from east of the Mississippi. Although he lacked resources to beat Union armies, he built up a formidable arsenal at Tyler, along with his own Kirby Smithdom economy, a virtual "independent fiefdom" in Texas, including railroad construction and international smuggling. The Union, in turn, did not directly engage him.
195
The Union's 1864
Red River Campaign
to take Shreveport, Louisiana, failed and Texas remained in Confederate hands throughout the war.
196
Lower seaboard theater
Main article:
Lower seaboard theater of the American Civil War
Background
The lower seaboard theater refers to military and naval operations that occurred near the coastal areas of the Southeast as well as the southern part of the Mississippi. Union naval activities were dictated by the Anaconda Plan.
197
Battles
New Orleans captured
One of the earliest battles was fought in November 1861 at
Port Royal Sound
, south of Charleston. Much of the war along the South Carolina coast concentrated on capturing Charleston. In attempting to capture Charleston, the Union military tried two approaches: by land over James or Morris Islands or through the harbor. However, the Confederates were able to drive back each attack. A famous land attack was the
Second Battle of Fort Wagner
, in which the
54th Massachusetts Infantry
took part. The Union suffered a serious defeat, losing 1,515 soldiers while the Confederates lost only 174. However, the 54th was hailed for its valor, which encouraged the general acceptance of the recruitment of African American soldiers into the Union Army, which reinforced the Union's numerical advantage.
198
Fort Pulaski on the Georgia coast was an early target for the Union navy. Following the capture of Port Royal, an expedition was organized with engineer troops under the command of Captain
Quincy Adams Gillmore
, forcing a Confederate surrender. The Union army occupied the fort for the rest of the war after repairing it.
199
In April 1862, a Union naval task force commanded by Commander
David Dixon Porter
attacked
Forts Jackson and St. Philip
, which guarded the river approach to
New Orleans
from the south. While part of the fleet bombarded the forts, other vessels forced a break in the obstructions in the river and enabled the rest of the fleet to steam upriver to the city. A Union army force commanded by Maj. Gen.
Benjamin Butler
landed near the forts and forced their surrender. Butler's controversial command of New Orleans earned him the nickname "Beast".
200
The following year, the Union
Army of the Gulf
commanded by Maj. Gen. Nathaniel P. Banks laid
siege to Port Hudson
for nearly eight weeks, the longest siege in US military history. The Confederates attempted to defend with the
Bayou Teche Campaign
but surrendered after Vicksburg. These surrenders gave the Union control over the Mississippi.
167
Several skirmishes but no major battles were fought in Florida. The biggest was the
Battle of Olustee
in early 1864.
201
Pacific coast theater
Main article:
Pacific coast theater of the American Civil War
The Pacific coast theater refers to military operations on the Pacific Ocean and in the states and territories west of the
Continental Divide
202
Conquest of Virginia
William Tecumseh Sherman
At the beginning of 1864, Lincoln made Grant commander of all Union armies. Grant made his headquarters with the Army of the Potomac and put Maj. Gen.
William Tecumseh Sherman
in command of most of the western armies. Grant understood the concept of
total war
and believed, along with Lincoln and Sherman, that only the utter defeat of Confederate forces and their economic base would end the war.
203
This was total war not in killing civilians, but in injuring the Confederacy's capacity to produce and transport the supplies needed to continue the war. Sherman, at Grant's direction, seized provisions and destroyed homes, farms, and railroads, which Grant said "would otherwise have gone to the support of secession and rebellion. This policy I believe exercised a material influence in hastening the end."
204
Grant devised a coordinated strategy that would strike at the entire Confederacy from multiple directions. Generals Meade and
Benjamin Butler
were ordered to move against Lee near Richmond, General
Franz Sigel
was to
attack the Shenandoah Valley
, General Sherman was to capture Atlanta and march to the Atlantic Ocean, Generals
George Crook
and
William W. Averell
were to operate against railroad supply lines in West Virginia, and Maj. Gen. Nathaniel P. Banks was to capture
Mobile
, Alabama.
205
Grant's Overland Campaign
Grant's army set out on the
Overland Campaign
intending to draw Lee into a defense of Richmond, where they would attempt to pin down and destroy the Confederate army. The Union army first attempted to maneuver past Lee and fought several battles, notably at the
Wilderness
Spotsylvania
, and
Cold Harbor
. These resulted in heavy losses on both sides and forced Lee's Confederates to fall back repeatedly.
206
At the
Battle of Yellow Tavern
, the Confederates lost Jeb Stuart.
207
An attempt to outflank Lee from the south failed under Butler, who was trapped inside the
Bermuda Hundred
river bend. Each battle resulted in setbacks for the Union that mirrored those they had suffered under prior generals, though unlike them, Grant chose to fight on rather than retreat. Grant was tenacious and kept pressing Lee's Army of Northern Virginia back to Richmond. While Lee was preparing for an attack on Richmond, Grant unexpectedly turned south to cross the James River and began the protracted
Siege of Petersburg
, where the two armies engaged in
trench warfare
for over nine months.
208
Sheridan's Valley Campaign
Philip Sheridan
To deny the Confederacy continued use of the
Shenandoah Valley
as a base from which to launch invasions of Maryland and the Washington area, and to threaten Lee's supply lines for his forces, Grant launched the
Valley campaigns
in May 1864. Initial efforts led by Gen. Sigel were repelled at the
Battle of New Market
by Confederate Gen.
John C. Breckinridge
. The Battle of New Market was the Confederacy's last major victory, and included a charge by teenage
VMI
cadets. After relieving Sigel, and following mixed performances by his successor, Grant finally found a commander, General
Philip Sheridan
, aggressive enough to prevail against the army of Maj. Gen.
Jubal A. Early
. After a cautious start, Sheridan defeated Early in a series of battles in September and October 1864, including a decisive defeat at the
Battle of Cedar Creek
. Sheridan then proceeded through that winter to destroy the agricultural base of the Shenandoah Valley, a strategy similar to the tactics Sherman later employed in Georgia.
209
Sherman's March to the Sea and Carolinas campaign
Main articles:
Sherman's March to the Sea
and
Carolinas campaign
Meanwhile, Sherman maneuvered from Chattanooga to Atlanta, defeating Confederate Generals Joseph E. Johnston and
John Bell Hood
. The fall of Atlanta on September 2, 1864, guaranteed the reelection of Lincoln.
210
Hood left the Atlanta area to swing around and menace Sherman's supply lines and invade Tennessee in the
Franklin–Nashville Campaign
. Union Maj. Gen.
John Schofield
defeated Hood at the
Battle of Franklin
, and George H. Thomas dealt Hood a massive defeat at the
Battle of Nashville
, effectively destroying Hood's army.
211
Leaving Atlanta, and his base of supplies, Sherman's army marched, with no destination set, laying waste to about 20 percent of the farms in Georgia on his
March to the Sea
212
He reached the Atlantic at
Savannah
, Georgia, in December 1864. Sherman's army was followed by thousands of freed slaves;
213
there were no major battles along the march. Sherman turned north through South Carolina and North Carolina in his
Carolinas campaign
, to approach the Confederate Virginia lines from the south, increasing the pressure on Lee's army.
214
The Waterloo of the Confederacy
Lee's army, thinned by desertion and casualties, was now much smaller than Grant's. One last Confederate attempt to break the Union hold on Petersburg failed at the decisive
Battle of Five Forks
on April 1. The Union now controlled the entire perimeter surrounding Richmond–Petersburg, completely cutting it off from the Confederacy. Realizing the capital was now lost, Lee's army and the Confederate government were forced to evacuate. The Confederate capital fell on April 2–3, to the
Union XXV Corps
, composed of black troops. The remaining Confederate units fled west after a defeat at
Sayler's Creek
on April 6.
215
End of the war
Main article:
Conclusion of the American Civil War
This
New York Times
front page celebrated Lee's surrender, headlining how Grant let Confederate officers retain their sidearms and "paroled" the Confederate officers and men.
216
News of Lee's April 9 surrender reached this southern newspaper (Savannah, Georgia) on April 15—after the April 14 shooting of President Lincoln. The article quotes Grant's terms of surrender.
217
Lee did not intend to surrender, but planned to regroup at
Appomattox Station
, where supplies were to be waiting, and then continue the war. Grant chased Lee and got in front of him, so that when Lee's army reached the
village of Appomattox Court House
, they were surrounded. After
an initial battle
, Lee decided the fight was hopeless, and surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia to Grant on April 9, 1865, during a conference at the
McLean House
218
219
In an untraditional gesture and as a sign of Grant's respect and anticipation of peacefully restoring Confederate states to the Union, Lee was permitted to keep his sword and horse,
Traveller
. His men were
paroled
, and a chain of Confederate surrenders began.
220
On April 14, 1865,
Lincoln was shot
by
John Wilkes Booth
, a Confederate sympathizer. Lincoln died early the next morning. Lincoln's vice president,
Andrew Johnson
, was unharmed, because his would-be assassin,
George Atzerodt
, lost his nerve, so Johnson was immediately sworn in as president.
Meanwhile, Confederate forces across the South surrendered, as news of Lee's surrender reached them.
On April 26, the same day Sergeant
Boston Corbett
killed Booth at a tobacco barn, Johnston surrendered nearly 90,000 troops of the
Army of Tennessee
to Sherman at
Bennett Place
, near present-day Durham, North Carolina. It proved to be the largest surrender of Confederate forces. On May 4, all remaining Confederate forces in Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana east of the Mississippi, under the command of Lt. General
Richard Taylor
, surrendered.
221
Confederate president Davis was captured in retreat at
Irwinville, Georgia
on May 10.
222
The final land battle was fought on May 13, 1865, at the
Battle of Palmito Ranch
in Texas.
223
224
225
On May 26, 1865, Confederate Lt. Gen.
Simon B. Buckner
, acting for Edmund Smith, signed a military convention surrendering Confederate forces in the
Trans-Mississippi Department
226
227
This date is often cited by contemporaries and historians as the effective end date of the war.
On June 2, with most of his troops having already gone home, a reluctant Kirby Smith had little choice but to sign the official surrender document.
228
229
On June 23,
Cherokee
leader and Brig. General
Stand Watie
became the last Confederate general to surrender his forces.
230
231
On June 19, 1865, Union Maj. Gen.
Gordon Granger
announced
General Order No. 3
, bringing the Emancipation Proclamation into effect in Texas and freeing the last slaves of the Confederacy.
232
The anniversary of this date is now celebrated as
Juneteenth
233
The naval part of the war ended more slowly. On April 11, two days after Lee's surrender, when Lincoln proclaimed that foreign nations had no further "claim or pretense" to deny equality of maritime rights and hospitalities to US warships and, in effect, that rights extended to Confederate ships to use neutral ports as safe havens from US warships should end.
234
235
Having no response to Lincoln's proclamation, President Johnson issued a similar proclamation dated May 10, more directly stating that the war was almost at an end and insurgent cruisers still at sea, and prepared to attack US ships, should not have rights to do so through use of safe foreign ports or waters.
236
Britain finally responded on June 6, by transmitting a letter from Foreign Secretary
John Russell, 1st Earl Russell
, to the Lords of the
Admiralty
withdrawing rights to Confederate warships to enter British ports and waters.
237
US Secretary of State Seward welcomed the withdrawal of concessions to the Confederates.
238
Finally, on October 18, Russell advised the Admiralty that the time specified in his June message had elapsed and "all measures of a restrictive nature on vessels of war of the United States in British ports, harbors, and waters, are now to be considered as at an end".
239
Nonetheless, the final Confederate surrender was in Liverpool, England where
James Iredell Waddell
, the captain of
CSS
Shenandoah
, surrendered the cruiser to British authorities on November 6.
240
Legally, the war did not end until August 20, 1866, when President Johnson issued a proclamation that declared "that the said insurrection is at an end and that peace, order, tranquillity, and civil authority now exist in and throughout the whole of the United States of America".
Union victory
Map of Confederate territory losses year by year
The
causes of the war
, reasons for its outcome, and even
its name
are subjects of lingering contention. The North and West grew wealthy while the once-rich South became poor for a century. The national political power of the slaveowners and rich Southerners ended. Historians are less sure about the results of postwar Reconstruction, especially regarding the second-class citizenship of the freedmen and their poverty.
241
Historians have debated whether the Confederacy could have won the war. Most scholars, including
James M. McPherson
, argue Confederate victory was possible.
242
McPherson argues that the North's advantage in population and resources made Northern victory likely, but not guaranteed. He argues that if the Confederacy had fought using unconventional tactics, it would have more easily been able to hold out long enough to exhaust the Union.
243
Confederates did not need to invade and hold enemy territory to win, but only to fight a defensive war to convince the North the cost of winning was too high. The North needed to conquer and hold vast stretches of enemy territory and defeat Confederate armies to win.
243
Lincoln was not a military dictator and could fight only as long as the American public supported the war. The Confederacy sought to win independence by outlasting Lincoln; however, after Atlanta fell and Lincoln defeated McClellan in the election of 1864, hope for a political victory for the South ended. Lincoln had secured the support of the Republicans, War Democrats, border states, emancipated slaves, and the neutrality of Britain and France. By defeating the Democrats and McClellan, he defeated the
Copperheads
, who had wanted a negotiated peace with the Confederacy.
244
Comparison of Union and Confederacy, 1860–1864
245
246
Year
Union
Confederacy
Population
1860
22,100,000 (71%)
9,100,000 (29%)
1864
28,800,000 (90%)
3,000,000 (10%)
247
Free
1860
21,700,000 (98%)
5,600,000 (62%)
Slave
1860
490,000 (2%)
3,550,000 (38%)
1864
negligible
1,900,000
Soldiers
1860–64
2,100,000 (67%)
1,064,000 (33%)
Railroad miles
248
1860
21,800 (71%)
8,800 (29%)
1864
29,100 (98%)
negligible
Manufactures
1860
90%
10%
1864
98%
2%
Arms production
1860
97%
3%
1864
98%
2%
Cotton bales
1860
negligible
4,500,000
1864
300,000
negligible
Exports
1860
30%
70%
1864
98%
2%
Some scholars argue the Union held an insurmountable long-term advantage over the Confederacy in industrial strength and population. Confederate actions, they argue, only delayed defeat.
250
251
Historian
Shelby Foote
expressed this view succinctly:
I think that the North fought that war with one hand behind its back.... If there had been more Southern victories, and a lot more, the North simply would have brought that other hand out from behind its back. I don't think the South ever had a chance to win that War.
252
A minority view among historians is that the Confederacy lost because, as
E. Merton Coulter
put it, "people did not will hard enough and long enough to win".
253
254
255
However, most historians reject the argument.
256
McPherson, after reading thousands of letters written by Confederate soldiers, found strong patriotism that continued to the end; they truly believed they were fighting for freedom and liberty. Even as the Confederacy was visibly collapsing in 1864–65, most Confederate soldiers were fighting hard.
257
Historian
Gary Gallagher
cites General Sherman, who in early 1864 commented, "The devils seem to have a determination that cannot but be admired." Despite their loss of slaves and wealth, with starvation looming, Sherman continued, "yet I see no sign of let-up—some few deserters—plenty tired of war, but the masses determined to fight it out".
258
Also important were Lincoln's eloquence in articulating the national purpose and his skill in keeping the border states committed to the Union cause. The Emancipation Proclamation was an effective use of the president's war powers.
259
The Confederate government failed to get Europe involved militarily. Southern leaders needed to get European powers to help break the blockade the Union had created around Southern ports. Lincoln's naval blockade was 95 percent effective at stopping trade goods; as a result, imports and exports to the South declined significantly. The abundance of European cotton and Britain's hostility to slavery, along with Lincoln's naval blockades, severely decreased any chance that Britain or France would enter the war.
260
Historian
Don H. Doyle
has argued that the Union victory had a major impact on world history.
261
The Union victory energized popular democratic forces. A Confederate victory, on the other hand, would have meant a new birth of slavery, not of freedom. Historian
Fergus Bordewich
, following Doyle, argues:
The North's victory decisively proved the durability of democratic government. Confederate independence, on the other hand, would have established an American model for reactionary politics and race-based repression that would likely have cast an international shadow into the 20th century and perhaps beyond.
262
Scholars have debated what the effects of the war were on political and economic power in the South.
263
The prevailing view is that the southern planter elite retained its powerful position in the South.
263
However, a 2017 study challenges this, noting that while some Southern elites retained their economic status, the turmoil of the 1860s created greater opportunities for economic mobility in the South, than in the North.
263
Casualties
One in thirteen veterans were amputees.
Remains of both sides were reinterred.
Andersonville National Cemetery
, Georgia
Casualties according to the US National Park Service
Category
Union
Confederate
Killed in action
110,100
94,000
Disease
224,580
164,000
Wounded in action
275,154
194,026
Captured
(inc those who died as POWs)
211,411
(30,192)
462,634
(31,000)
Total
821,245
914,660
Further information:
Environmental history of the United States § Civil War
Exact casualty figures were collected for the Union, but Confederate records were poorly kept, or lost in the chaos of defeat. Thus, the casualty figures are imprecise and based on statistical extrapolation. Neither side kept a tally of civilian deaths due to the war. In the 19th century, the death toll had been estimated at a lower 620,000.
In 2011, the death toll was recalculated based on a 1% sample of census data, yielding approximately 750,000 soldier deaths, 20 percent higher than traditionally estimated, and possibly as high as 850,000.
12
264
The figure was recalculated to 698,000 soldier deaths in 2024 after examining newly available full census records. Mortality rates among men were as high as 19 percent in Louisiana, and 16.6–16.7 percent in Georgia and South Carolina respectively.
265
266
The war resulted in at least 1,030,000 casualties (3 percent of the population), including an estimated 698,000 soldier deaths—two-thirds by disease.
266
Based on 1860 census figures, 8 percent of all white men aged 13–43 died in the war, including 6 percent in the North and 18 percent in the South.
267
268
About 56,000 soldiers
died in prison camps
during the War.
269
An estimated 60,000 soldiers lost limbs.
270
As McPherson notes, the war's "cost in American lives was as great as in all of the nation's other wars combined through
Vietnam
".
271
Of the 359,528 Union Army dead, amounting to 15 percent of the over two million who served:
110,070 were killed in action (67,000) or died of wounds (43,000).
199,790 died of disease (75 percent was due to the war, the remainder would have occurred in civilian life anyway)
24,866 died in Confederate prison camps
9,058 were killed by accidents or drowning
15,741 other/unknown deaths
In addition, there were 4,523 deaths in the Navy (2,112 in battle) and 460 in the Marines (148 in battle).
After the Emancipation Proclamation authorized freed slaves to "be received into the armed service of the United States", former slaves who escaped from plantations or were liberated by the Union Army were recruited into the
United States Colored Troops
regiments of the Union Army, as were black men who had not been slaves. The US Colored Troops made up 10 percent of the Union death toll—15 percent of Union deaths from disease and less than 3 percent of those killed in battle.
Losses among
African Americans
were high. In the last year and a half and from all reported casualties, approximately 20 percent of all African Americans enrolled in the military died during the war. Their mortality rate was significantly higher than white soldiers. While 15 percent of US Volunteers and just 9 percent of white Regular Army troops died, 21 percent of US Colored Troops died.
272
: 16
An illustration of the war dead following the
Battle of Antietam
battlefield in 1862
While the figures of 360,000 army deaths for the Union and 260,000 for the Confederacy remained commonly cited, they are incomplete. In addition to many Confederate records being missing, partly as a result of Confederate widows not reporting deaths due to being ineligible for benefits, both armies only counted troops who died during their service and not the tens of thousands who died of wounds or diseases after being discharged. This often happened only days or weeks later.
Francis Amasa Walker
, superintendent of the 1870 census, used census and surgeon general data to estimate a minimum of 500,000 Union military deaths and 350,000 Confederate military deaths, a total of 850,000 soldiers. While Walker's estimates were originally dismissed because of the 1870 census's undercounting, it was later found that the census was only off by 6.5 percent and that the data Walker used would be roughly accurate.
12
Losses were far higher than during the war with Mexico, which saw roughly 13,000 American deaths, including fewer than two thousand killed in battle, between 1846 and 1848. One reason for the high number of battle deaths in the civil war was the continued use of tactics similar to those of the
Napoleonic Wars
, such as
charging
. With the advent of more accurate rifled barrels,
Minié balls
, and (near the end of the war for the Union) repeating firearms such as the
Spencer repeating rifle
and the
Henry repeating rifle
, soldiers were mowed down when standing in lines in the open. This led to the adoption of trench warfare, a style of fighting that defined much of
World War I
273
Deaths among former slaves has proven hard to estimate, due to the lack of reliable census data, though they were known to be considerable, as former slaves were set free or escaped in massive numbers in areas where the Union army did not have sufficient shelter, doctors, or food for them. Professor
Jim Downs
states that tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of slaves died during the war from disease, starvation, or exposure, and that if these deaths are counted in the war's total, the death toll would exceed 1 million.
274
It is estimated that during the war, of the
equines
killed, including horses, mules, donkeys and even confiscated children's
ponies
, over 32,600 of them belonged to the Union and 45,800 the Confederacy. However, other estimates place the total at 1,000,000.
275
It is estimated that 544
Confederate flags
were captured during the war by the Union. The flags were sent to the
War Department
in Washington.
276
277
The Union flags captured by the Confederates were sent to Richmond.
citation needed
Emancipation
Abolition of slavery in the various states of the US over time:
Abolition of slavery during or shortly after the American Revolution (Vermont, 1777; Massachusetts [including Maine], 1783)
The Northwest Ordinance, 1787
Gradual emancipation in New York (starting 1799, ended 1827), Pennsylvania (1780–1857), New Hampshire (1783–1857), Connecticut [including the Western Reserve] (1784–1848), Rhode Island (1784–1853) and New Jersey (starting 1804; ended by Thirteenth Amendment, 1865)
The Missouri Compromise, 1821
Effective abolition of slavery by Mexican or joint US/British authority
Abolition of slavery by Congressional action, 1861
Abolition of slavery by Congressional action, 1862
Emancipation Proclamation as originally issued, 1 Jan 1863
Subsequent operation of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863
Abolition of slavery by state action during the Civil War
Operation of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1864
Operation of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1865
Thirteenth Amendment to the US constitution, 18 Dec 1865
Territory incorporated into the US after the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment
Abolishing slavery was not a Union war goal from the outset but quickly became one.
278
Lincoln initially claimed that preserving the Union was the central goal.
279
In contrast, the South fought to preserve slavery.
278
While not all Southerners saw themselves as fighting for slavery, most officers and over a third of the rank and file in Lee's army had close family ties to slavery. To Northerners, the motivation was primarily to preserve the Union, not to abolish slavery.
280
However, as the war dragged on, and it became clear that slavery was central to the conflict, and that emancipation was (to quote the Emancipation Proclamation) "a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing [the] rebellion", Lincoln and his cabinet made ending slavery a war goal, culminating in the Emancipation Proclamation.
278
281
Lincoln's decision to issue the Proclamation angered
Peace Democrats
("Copperheads") and
War Democrats
, but energized most Republicans.
281
By warning that free blacks would flood the North, Democrats made gains in the
1862 elections
, but they did not gain control of Congress. The Republicans' counterargument that slavery was the mainstay of the enemy steadily gained support, with the Democrats losing decisively in the 1863 elections in the Northern state of Ohio, when they tried to resurrect anti-black sentiment.
282
Emancipation Proclamation
Main article:
Emancipation Proclamation
The Emancipation Proclamation legally freed the slaves in states "in rebellion", but, as a practical matter, slavery for the 3.5 million black people in the South effectively ended in each area when Union armies arrived. The last Confederate slaves were freed on June 19, 1865, celebrated as the modern holiday of Juneteenth. Slaves in the border states and those in some former Confederate territory occupied before the Emancipation Proclamation were freed by state action or (on December 6, 1865) by the
Thirteenth Amendment
283
284
The Emancipation Proclamation enabled African Americans, both free blacks and escaped slaves, to join the Union Army. About 190,000 volunteered, further enhancing the numerical advantage the Union armies enjoyed over the Confederates, who did not dare emulate the equivalent manpower source for fear of undermining the legitimacy of slavery.
During the war, sentiment concerning slaves, enslavement, and emancipation in the United States was divided. Lincoln's fears of making slavery a war issue were based on a harsh reality: abolition did not enjoy wide support in the west, the territories, and the border states.
286
In 1861, Lincoln worried that premature attempts at emancipation would mean the loss of the border states, and that "to lose Kentucky is nearly the same as to lose the whole game".
Copperheads and some War Democrats opposed emancipation, although the latter eventually accepted it as part of the total war needed to save the Union.
287
Lincoln reversed attempts at emancipation by Secretary of War
Simon Cameron
and Generals
John C. Frémont
and
David Hunter
, in an effort to retain the loyalty of the border states and the War Democrats. Lincoln warned the border states that a more radical type of emancipation would happen if they rejected his plan of gradual compensated emancipation and
voluntary colonization
288
But compensated emancipation occurred only in the District of Columbia, where Congress had the power to enact it. When Lincoln told his cabinet about his proposed emancipation proclamation, which would apply to the states still in rebellion on January 1, 1863, Seward advised Lincoln to wait for a Union military victory before issuing it, because to do otherwise would seem like "our last shriek on the retreat".
289
Walter Stahr, however, writes, "There are contemporary sources, however, that suggest others were involved in the decision to delay", and Stahr quotes them.
290
Contrabands
, who were fugitive slaves, including cooks, laundresses, laborers, teamsters, railroad repair crews, fled to the Union Army, but were not legally freed until the Emancipation Proclamation, which Lincoln signed on January 1, 1863, more than two years before the end of the Civil War.
In 1863, the Union Army accepted
Freedmen
; seen here are black and white teenaged soldiers who volunteered to fight for the Union.
Lincoln laid the groundwork for public support in an open letter published in response to
Horace Greeley
's "The Prayer of Twenty Millions"; the letter stated that Lincoln's goal was to save the Union, and that, if he freed the slaves, it would be as a means to that end.
291
292
293
He also had a meeting at the White House with five African American representatives on August 14, 1862. Arranging for a reporter to be present, he urged his visitors to agree to the voluntary colonization of black people. Lincoln's motive for both his letter to Greeley and his statement to the black visitors was apparently to make his forthcoming Emancipation Proclamation more palatable to racist
white people
294
A Union victory in the Battle of Antietam on September 17, 1862, provided Lincoln with an opportunity to issue the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, and the
War Governors' Conference
added support for the proclamation.
295
Lincoln issued his preliminary Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, 1862. It stated that slaves in all states in rebellion on January 1, 1863, would be free. He issued his final Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, keeping his promise. In his letter to Albert G. Hodges, Lincoln explained his belief that "If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.... And yet I have never understood that the Presidency conferred upon me an unrestricted right to act officially upon this judgment and feeling.... I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me."
296
Lincoln's moderate approach succeeded in inducing the border states to remain in the Union and War Democrats to support the Union. The border states, which included Kentucky, Missouri, Maryland, Delaware, and Union-controlled regions around New Orleans,
Norfolk, Virginia
, and elsewhere, were not covered by the Emancipation Proclamation. Nor was Tennessee, which had come under Union control.
298
Missouri and Maryland abolished slavery on their own; Kentucky and Delaware did not.
299
Still, the proclamation did not enjoy universal support. It caused much unrest in what were then considered western states, where racist sentiments led to a great fear of abolition. There was some concern that the proclamation would lead to the secession of western states, and its issuance prompted the stationing of Union troops in Illinois in case of rebellion.
286
Since the Emancipation Proclamation was based on the president's war powers, it applied only in territory held by Confederates at the time it was issued. However, the Proclamation became a symbol of the Union's growing commitment to add emancipation to the Union's definition of liberty.
300
The Emancipation Proclamation greatly reduced the Confederacy's hope of being recognized or otherwise aided by Britain or France.
301
By late 1864, Lincoln was playing a leading role in getting the House of Representatives to vote for the Thirteenth Amendment, which mandated the ending of chattel slavery.
302
Reconstruction
Main article:
Reconstruction era
Through the supervision of the
Freedmen's Bureau
, Northern teachers traveled into the South to provide education and training for the newly freed population.
The war devastated the South and posed serious questions of how it would be reintegrated into the Union. The war destroyed much of the South's wealth, in part because wealth held in enslaved people (at least $1,000 each for a healthy adult prior to the war) was wiped off the books.
303
All accumulated investment in Confederate bonds was forfeited; most banks and railroads were bankrupt. The income per person dropped to less than 40 percent of that of the North, and that lasted into the 20th century. Southern influence in the
federal government
, previously considerable, was greatly diminished until the second half of the 20th century.
304
Reconstruction began during the war, with the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1863, and it continued until 1877.
305
Its most important elements were the three "
Reconstruction Amendments
" to the Constitution: the
13th
outlawing slavery (1865), the
14th
guaranteeing citizenship to former slaves (1868), and the
15th
prohibiting the denial of voting rights "on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude" (1870). From the Union perspective, the goals of Reconstruction were to consolidate victory by reuniting the Union, to guarantee a "republican form of government" for the ex-Confederate states, and to permanently end slavery—and prevent semi-slavery status.
306
President Johnson, who took office in April 1865, took a lenient approach and saw the achievement of the main war goals as realized in 1865, when each ex-rebel state repudiated secession and ratified the Thirteenth Amendment.
Radical Republicans
demanded proof that Confederate nationalism was dead and that the slaves were truly free. They
overrode Johnson's vetoes
of
civil rights legislation
, and the House
impeached
him, although the Senate did not convict him. In 1868 and 1872, the Republican candidate Grant won the presidency. In 1872, the
"Liberal Republicans"
argued that the war goals had been achieved and Reconstruction should end. They chose
Horace Greeley
to head a presidential ticket in 1872 but were decisively defeated. In 1874, Democrats, primarily Southern, took control of Congress and opposed further reconstruction. The
Compromise of 1877
closed with a national consensus, except on the part of former slaves, that the war had finally ended.
307
With the withdrawal of federal troops, however, white men retook control of every Southern legislature, and the Jim Crow era of
disenfranchisement
and legal segregation was ushered in.
308
The war had a demonstrable impact on American politics. Many veterans on both sides were elected to political office, including five US presidents: Ulysses Grant,
Rutherford B. Hayes
James A. Garfield
Benjamin Harrison
, and
William McKinley
309
Memory and historiography
Monument
to the
Grand Army of the Republic
, a Union veteran organization
Cherokee Confederates
reunion in
New Orleans
in 1903
The war is a central event in American collective memory. There are innumerable statues, commemorations, books, and archival collections. The memory includes the home front, military affairs, the treatment of soldiers, both living and dead, in the war's aftermath, depictions of the war in literature and art, evaluations of heroes and villains, and considerations of the moral and political lessons of the war.
310
The last theme includes moral evaluations of
racism
and slavery, heroism and cowardice in combat
311
and behind the lines, and issues of democracy and minority rights, as well as the notion of an "
Empire of Liberty
" influencing the world.
312
Historians have paid great attention to the causes of the war as well as to the war itself. Military history has developed outside as well as inside academia, leading to a proliferation of studies by non-scholars who nevertheless are familiar with the primary sources and pay close attention to battles and campaigns and who write for the general public.
313
314
Practically every major figure in the war, both North and South, has had a serious biographical study.
citation needed
Even the name used for the conflict has been controversial, with
many names used for it
. During and immediately after the war, Northern historians often used a term like "War of the Rebellion". Writers in rebel states often referred to the "War for Southern Independence". Some Southerners have described it as the "War of Northern Aggression".
315
Lost Cause
Main article:
Lost Cause of the Confederacy
The memory of the war in the white South crystallized in the myth of the "Lost Cause": that the Confederate cause was just and heroic. The myth shaped regional identity and race relations for generations.
316
Alan T. Nolan
notes that the Lost Cause was expressly a rationalization, a cover-up to vindicate the name and fame of those in rebellion. Some claims revolve around the insignificance of slavery as a cause; some appeals highlight cultural differences between North and South; the military conflict by Confederate actors is idealized; in any case, secession was said to be lawful.
317
Nolan argues that the adoption of the Lost Cause perspective facilitated the reunification of the North and the South while excusing the
"virulent racism" of the 19th century
, sacrificing black American progress to white man's reunification. He also deems the Lost Cause "a caricature of the truth. This caricature wholly misrepresents and distorts the facts of the matter" in every instance.
318
The Lost Cause myth was formalized by
Charles A. Beard
and
Mary R. Beard
, whose
The Rise of American Civilization
(1927) spawned
Beardian historiography
. The Beards downplayed slavery, abolitionism, and issues of morality. Though this interpretation was abandoned by the Beards in the 1940s, and by historians generally by the 1950s, Beardian themes still echo among Lost Cause writers.
319
320
additional citation(s) needed
Battlefield preservation
Main article:
American Civil War battlefield preservation
Beginning in 1961, the
US Post Office
released
commemorative stamps
for five famous battles, each issued on the 100th anniversary of the respective battle.
The first efforts at Civil War battlefield preservation and memorialization came during the war, with the establishment of National Cemeteries at Gettysburg, Mill Springs and Chattanooga. Soldiers began erecting markers on battlefields beginning with the First Battle of Bull Run in 1861. The oldest surviving monument is the
Hazen Brigade Monument
near
Murfreesboro
in
Central Tennessee
, built in the summer of 1863 by soldiers in Union Col.
William B. Hazen's
brigade to mark the spot where they buried their dead, following the Battle of Stones River.
321
In the 1890s, the government established five Civil War battlefield parks under the jurisdiction of the War Department, beginning with the creation of the
Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park
at
Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia
, and the
Antietam National Battlefield
in Sharpsburg, Maryland, in 1890. The
Shiloh National Military Park
was established in 1894 in
Shiloh, Tennessee
, followed by the
Gettysburg National Military Park
in 1895, and
Vicksburg National Military Park
in 1899. In 1933, these five parks and other national monuments were transferred to the National Park Service.
322
Chief among modern efforts to preserve Civil War sites has been the
American Battlefield Trust
, with more than 130 battlefields in 24 states.
323
324
The five major battlefield parks operated by the National Park Service had a combined 3 million visitors in 2018, down 70% from 10 million in 1970.
325
Commemoration
Main article:
Commemoration of the American Civil War
See also:
Commemoration of the American Civil War on postage stamps
Grand Army of the Republic (Union)
United Confederate Veterans
The Civil War has been commemorated in many ways, ranging from the reenactment of battles, to statues and memorial halls being erected, to films, and to stamps and coins with Civil War themes being issued, all of which helped to shape public memory. These commemorations occurred in greater numbers on the 100th and 150th anniversaries of the war.
326
Hollywood
's take on the war has been especially influential in shaping public memory, as in such film classics as
The Birth of a Nation
(1915),
Gone with the Wind
(1939), and
Lincoln
(2012).
Ken Burns
's
PBS
television series
The Civil War
(1990) is well-remembered, though criticized for its historical inaccuracy.
327
328
Technological significance
Technological innovations during the war had a great impact on 19th-century science. The war was an early example of an "
industrial war
", in which technological might is used to achieve military supremacy.
329
New inventions, such as the
train
and
telegraph
, delivered soldiers, supplies and messages at a time when horses had been the fastest way to travel.
330
331
It was also in this war that aerial warfare, in the form of reconnaissance
balloons
, was first used.
332
It saw the first action involving steam-powered
ironclad warships
in naval warfare history.
333
Repeating firearms
such as the Henry rifle, Spencer rifle,
Colt revolving rifle
Triplett & Scott carbine
and others, first appeared during the Civil War; they were a revolutionary invention that would soon replace
muzzle-loading
and
single-shot
firearms. The war saw the first appearances of rapid-firing weapons and
machine guns
such as the
Agar gun
and
Gatling gun
334
In works of culture and art
The Peacemakers
by
George Peter Alexander Healy
portrays, from left to right, Sherman, Grant, Lincoln, and
Porter
discussing plans for the last weeks of the Civil War aboard the steamer
River Queen
in March 1865. It currently hangs in the
Oval Office
dining room.
The Civil War is one of the most studied events in American history, and the collection of cultural works around it is enormous.
335
This section gives an abbreviated overview of the most notable works.
Literature
When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd
and
O Captain! My Captain!
(1865) by
Walt Whitman
, famous poetic eulogies to Lincoln
Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War
(1866), poetry by
Herman Melville
The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government
(1881) by
Jefferson Davis
The Private History of a Campaign That Failed
(1885) by
Mark Twain
Texar's Revenge, or, North Against South
(1887) by
Jules Verne
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
(1890) by
Ambrose Bierce
The Red Badge of Courage
(1895) by
Stephen Crane
The Challenge to Sirius
(1917) by
Sheila Kaye-Smith
Gone with the Wind
(1936) by
Margaret Mitchell
North and South
(1982) by
John Jakes
The March: A Novel
(2005) by
E. L. Doctorow
, fictionalized account of
Sherman's March to the Sea
Film
The Birth of a Nation
(1915, US)
The General
(1926, US)
Operator 13
(1934, US)
Gone with the Wind
(1939, US)
The Red Badge of Courage
(1951, US)
The Horse Soldiers
(1959, US)
Shenandoah
(1965, US)
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
(1966, Italy-Spain-FRG)
The Beguiled
(1971, US)
The Outlaw Josey Wales
(1976, US)
North and South
(miniseries; 1985–1994, US)
Glory
(1989, US)
The Civil War
(1990, US)
Gettysburg
(1993, US)
The Last Outlaw
(1993, US)
Cold Mountain
(2003, US)
Gods and Generals
(2003, US)
Lincoln
(2012, US)
Free State of Jones
(2016, US)
Music
See also:
Music of the American Civil War
Dixie
Battle Cry of Freedom
Battle Hymn of the Republic
The Bonnie Blue Flag
John Brown's Body
When Johnny Comes Marching Home
Marching Through Georgia
The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down
O Captain! My Captain!
", Walt Whitman's poem set to music by
Kurt Weill
When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd
", Walt Whitman's poem set to music by
Paul Hindemith
, by
Roger Sessions
, by
Jennifer Higdon
, and by
Charles Villiers Stanford
Video games
North & South
(1989, France)
Sid Meier's Gettysburg!
(1997, US)
Sid Meier's Antietam!
(1999, US)
American Conquest: Divided Nation
(2006, US)
Forge of Freedom: The American Civil War
(2006, US)
The History Channel: Civil War – A Nation Divided
(2006, US)
AGEOD's American Civil War
(2007, US/France)
History Civil War: Secret Missions
(2008, US)
Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood
(2009, US)
Darkest of Days
(2009, US)
Victoria II: A House Divided
(2011, US)
AGEOD's American Civil War II
(2013, US/France)
Ultimate General: Gettysburg
(2014, Ukraine)
Ultimate General: Civil War
(2016, Ukraine)
War of Rights
(TBD, US)
See also
American Civil War portal
American Civil War by state
Foreign enlistment in the American Civil War
African Americans in the American Civil War
German Americans in the American Civil War
Hispanics in the American Civil War
Irish Americans in the American Civil War
Italian Americans in the Civil War
Native Americans in the American Civil War
Cherokee
Choctaw
Outline of the American Civil War
Removal of Confederate monuments and memorials
Notes
"End of the Rebellion; The Last Rebel Army Disbands"
The New York Times
United States Department of War
. May 29, 1865. Archived from
the original
on September 15, 2018
. Retrieved
July 29,
2022
Robertson 1963
, p. 31. "Lee's surrender left Johnston with no place to go. On April 26, near Durham, N.C., the Army of Tennessee laid down its arms before Sherman's forces. With the surrender of isolated forces in the Trans-Mississippi West on May 4, 11, and 26, the most costly war in American history came to an end."
Catton 1965
, p. 445. "[A]nd on May 26 he [E. Kirby Smith] surrendered and the war was over."
Gallagher et al. 2003
, p. 308. "By 26 May, General Edward Kirby Smith had surrendered the Rebel forces in the trans-Mississippi west. The war was over."
Blair 2015
, p. 9. "The sheer weight of scholarship has leaned toward portraying the surrenders of the Confederate armies as the end of the war."
Among the many other contemporary sources and later historians citing May 26, 1865, as the end date for the American Civil War hostilities are
George Templeton Strong
, who was a prominent New York lawyer; a founder, treasurer, and member of the Executive Committee of United States Sanitary Commission throughout the war; and a diarist. A diary excerpt is published in Gienapp, William E. (ed.).
The Civil War and Reconstruction: A Documentary Collection.
New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2001, pp. 313–314
ISBN
978-0-393-97555-0
. A footnote in Gienapp shows the excerpt was taken from an edited version of the diaries by Allan Nevins and Milton Halsey Thomas, eds.,
The Diary of George Templeton Strong
, vol. 2 (New York: The Macmillan Company), pp. 600–601, which differs from the volume and page numbers of the original diaries; the page in Strong's original handwriting is shown at
"Volume 4, pages 124–125: diary entries for May 23 (continued)–June 7, 1865"
Archived
from the original on November 16, 2022 – via New-York Historical Society Museum & Library.
211,411 Union soldiers were captured, and 30,218 died in prison. The ones who died have been excluded to prevent double-counting of casualties.
462,634 Confederate soldiers were captured and 25,976 died in prison. The ones who died have been excluded to prevent double-counting of casualties.
The Union was the US government and included the states that remained loyal to it, both the non-slave states and the
border states
(Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, and Delaware) where slavery was legal. Missouri and Kentucky were also claimed by the Confederacy and given full state delegations in the Confederate Congress for the duration of the war.
Appomattox is often referred to as the end of the war, although different dates for the war's conclusion have been considered. (See, Vorenberg, Michael.
Lincoln's Peace: The Struggle to End the American Civil War
. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2025.) Lee's surrender to Grant set off a wave of Confederate surrenders. The last military department of the Confederacy, the
Trans-Mississippi Department
disbanded on May 26.
This assumes that Union and Confederate deaths are counted together; more Americans were killed in
World War II
than in either the Union or Confederate Armies if their death totals are counted separately.
Unaware of the surrender of Lee, on April 16 the last major battles of the war were fought at the
Battle of Columbus, Georgia
, and the
Battle of West Point
Murray 1967
, p.
336
Neff 2010
, p. 207
Trudeau 1994
, p. 396. In
United States v. Anderson
, 76 U.S. 56 (1869), "The U.S. attorneys argued that the Rebellion had been suppressed following the surrender of the Trans-Mississippi Department, as established in the surrender document negotiated on May 26, 1865."
Trudeau 1994
, p. 397. The Supreme Court decided that the "legal end of the American Civil War had been decided by Congress to be August 20, 1866—the date of Andrew Johnson's final proclamation on the conclusion of the Rebellion."
"Union population 1864" aggregates 1860 population, average annual immigration 1855–1864, and population governed formerly by CSA per Kenneth Martis source. Contrabands and after the Emancipation Proclamation freedmen, migrating into Union control on the coasts and to the advancing armies, and natural increase are excluded.
"Slave 1864, CSA" aggregates 1860 slave census of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Texas. It omits losses from contraband and after the Emancipation Proclamation, freedmen migrating to the Union controlled coastal ports and those joining advancing Union armies, especially in the Mississippi Valley.
"Total Union railroad miles" aggregates existing track reported 1860 @ 21800 plus new construction 1860–1864 @ 5000, plus southern railroads administered by USMRR @ 2300.
249
In spite of the South's shortage of soldiers, most Southern leaders—until 1865—opposed enlisting slaves. They used them as laborers to support the war effort. As
Howell Cobb
said, "If slaves will make good soldiers our whole theory of slavery is wrong." Confederate generals
Patrick Cleburne
and
Robert E. Lee
argued in favor of arming blacks late in the war, and
Jefferson Davis
was eventually persuaded to support plans for arming slaves to avoid military defeat. The Confederacy surrendered at
Appomattox
before this plan could be implemented.
285
Lincoln's letter to O. H. Browning, September 22, 1861.
Wittke 1952
failed verification
. "Sentiment among
German Americans
was largely antislavery especially among
Forty-Eighters
, resulting in hundreds of thousands of German Americans volunteering to fight for the Union."
Keller 2009
for primary sources, see Walter D. Kamphoefner and Wolfgang Helbich, eds.,
Germans in the Civil War: The Letters They Wrote Home
(2006). "On the other hand, many of the recent immigrants in the North viewed freed slaves as competition for scarce jobs, and as the reason why the Civil War was being fought."
Baker 2003
. "Due in large part to this fierce competition with free blacks for labor opportunities, the poor and working class
Irish Catholics
generally opposed emancipation. When the draft began in the summer of 1863, they launched
a major riot in New York City
that was suppressed by the military, as well as much smaller protests in other cities."
Schecter 2006
, ch. 6. "Many Catholics in the North had volunteered to fight in 1861, sending thousands of soldiers to the front and suffering high casualties, especially at
Fredericksburg
; their volunteering fell off after 1862."
In late March 1864 Lincoln met with
Governor Bramlette
, Archibald Dixon, and Albert G. Hodges, to discuss recruitment of African American soldiers in the state of Kentucky. In a letter dated April 4, 1864, Lincoln summarized his stance on slavery, at Hodges' request.
297
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Lifeline of the Confederacy: Blockade Running During the Civil War
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Beringer, Richard E.; Hattaway, Herman; Jones, Archer; Still, William N. Jr. (1986).
Why the South Lost the Civil War
. Athens: University of Georgia Press.
ISBN
978-0-8203-0815-9
Influential analysis of factors; an abridged version is
Beringer, Richard E. (1988).
The Elements of Confederate Defeat: Nationalism, War Aims, and Religion
. Athens: University of Georgia Press.
ISBN
978-0-8203-1077-0
Bestor, Arthur (1964). "The American Civil War as a Constitutional Crisis".
American Historical Review
69
(2):
327–
352.
doi
10.2307/1844986
JSTOR
1844986
Gallagher, Gary W. (2011).
The Union War
. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
ISBN
978-0-674-06608-3
Gallagher, Gary W.
Varon, Elizabeth R.
, eds. (2019).
New Perspectives on the Union War
. New York: Fordham University Press.
doi
10.2307/j.ctvh1dnpx
ISBN
978-0-8232-8456-6
JSTOR
j.ctvh1dnpx
Gara, Larry (1964). "The Fugitive Slave Law: A Double Paradox". In
Unger, Irwin
(ed.).
Essays on the Civil War and Reconstruction
. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston (published 1970).
ISBN
978-0-03-079640-1
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Civil War History
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Hofstadter, Richard
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American Historical Review
44
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55.
doi
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JSTOR
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Johannsen, Robert W. (1973).
Stephen A. Douglas
. New York: Oxford University Press.
ISBN
978-0-19-501620-8
Krannawitter, Thomas L. (2008).
Vindicating Lincoln: defending the politics of our greatest president
. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
ISBN
978-0-7425-5972-1
McPherson, James M.
(2007).
This Mighty Scourge: Perspectives on the Civil War
. Oxford University Press.
ISBN
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Nevins, Allan
Ordeal of the Union
, an 8-volume set (1947–1971); the most detailed political, economic and military narrative; by Pulitzer Prize-winner.
Ordeal of the Union: Fruits of Manifest Destiny, 1847–1852
online
Ordeal of the Union: A House Dividing, 1852–1857
The Emergence of Lincoln: Douglas, Buchanan, and Party Chaos, 1857–1859
The Emergence of Lincoln: Prologue to Civil War, 1859–1861
War for the Union: The Improvised War, 1861–1862
War for the Union: War Becomes Revolution, 1862–1863
online
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War for the Union: The Organized War to Victory, 1864–1865
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Political Culture and Secession in Mississippi: Masculinity, Honor, and the Antiparty Tradition, 1830–1860
. Oxford University Press.
ISBN
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American Historical Review
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950.
doi
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Ritter, Charles F.; Wakelyn, Jon L., eds. (1998).
Leaders of the American Civil War: A Biographical and Historiographical Dictionary
Provides short biographies and historiographical summaries.
Russell, Robert R. (1966). "Constitutional Doctrines with Regard to Slavery in Territories".
Journal of Southern History
32
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486.
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Sheehan-Dean, Aaron (April 2014).
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. 2-Volume Set. New York: Wiley-Blackwell.
ISBN
978-1-4443-5131-6
Archived
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1232 pp; 64 Topical chapters by scholars and experts; emphasis on historiography.
Stampp, Kenneth M.
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America in 1857: A Nation on the Brink
. Oxford University Press.
ISBN
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Thornton, Mark; Ekelund, Robert Burton (2004).
Tariffs, Blockades, and Inflation: The Economics of the Civil War
. Wilmington, DE: SR.
ISBN
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Varon, Elizabeth R.
(2008).
Disunion!: The Coming of the American Civil War, 1789–1859
. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
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The New Cambridge History of American Foreign Relations
. Vol. 1. Cambridge University Press.
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Soldier life: North and South
Carmichael, Peter S.
(2018).
The War for the Common Soldier: How Men Thought, Fought, and Survived in Civil War Armies
. The Littlefield history of the Civil War era. Chapel Hill:
The University of North Carolina Press
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Frank, Joseph Allan; Reaves, George A. (2003) [1989].
'Seeing the Elephant': Raw Recruits at the Battle of Shiloh
. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
ISBN
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Archived
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2025
Hesseltine, William B., ed. (1972).
Civil War Prisons
. Kent, Ohio:
Kent State University Press
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Archived
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Linderman, Gerald (1989).
Embattled Courage: The Experience of Combat in the American Civil War
. New York:
Free Press
ISBN
978-1-4391-1857-3
Archived
from the original on March 4, 2025
. Retrieved
February 13,
2025
Livermore, Thomas L. (1901).
Numbers and Losses in the Civil War in America, 1861–65
. Boston and New York:
Houghton, Mifflin and Company
McPherson, James M. (1997).
For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War
. New York; Oxford:
Oxford University Press
ISBN
978-0-19-509023-9
Manning, Chandra
(2007).
What This Cruel War Was Over: Soldiers, Slavery, and the Civil War
. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
ISBN
978-0-307-26482-4
OCLC
72989064
Archived
from the original on September 12, 2025
. Retrieved
February 13,
2025
Uses letters, diaries, and regimental newspapers to probe the world view of soldiers—black and white, Yankee and Rebel.
Interview with author
Mitchell, Reid (1988).
Civil War Soldiers: Their Expectations and Their Experiences
. New York:
Viking
ISBN
978-0-670-81742-9
Robertson, James I. (1988).
Soldiers Blue and Gray
. American military history. Columbia, S.C:
University of South Carolina Press
ISBN
978-0-87249-572-2
Meier, Kathryn (2013).
Nature's Civil War: Common Soldiers and the Environment in 1862 Virginia
. Civil War America. Chapel Hill:
The University of North Carolina Press
ISBN
978-1-4696-1076-4
Archived
from the original on March 4, 2025
. Retrieved
February 13,
2025
Wiley, Bell I.
(1994).
The Life of Johnny Reb
and
The Life of Billy Yank
. New York: Book-of-the-Month Club.
Two standard scholarly histories combined, originals:
—— (1943).
The Life of Johnny Reb: The Common Soldier of the Confederacy
. Indianopolis; New York:
Bobbs-Merrill Company
—— (1952).
The Life of Billy Yank: The Common Soldier of the Union
. Indianopolis; New York:
Bobbs-Merrill Company
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