All Nations Warned Against Harboring Their Privateers. [140] Of the 168,649 men procured for the Union through the draft, 117,986 were substitutes, leaving only 50,663 who had their services conscripted. The Confederates used ships called blockade runners to bring things from Europe like weapons. On July 20 and 21, the Army of the Shenandoah and forces from the District of Harpers Ferry were added. Beard and Mary R. Beard, whose The Rise of American Civilization (1927) spawned "Beardian historiography". America has always had its divisions, and Americans have never really been a monolith. Focused on enslavement and states rights, these issues came to a head following the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860. [143] In the North, "bounty jumpers" enlisted to get the generous bonus, deserted, then went back to a second recruiting station under a different name to sign up again for a second bonus; 141 were caught and executed. The Army originated as the (Confederate) Army of the Potomac, which was organized on June 20, 1861, from all operational forces in northern Virginia. 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. The most radical anti-slavery newspaper, The Liberator, invoked the Puritans and Puritan values over a thousand times. Of the approximately 180,000 United States Colored Troops, however, over 36,000 died, or 20.5 percent. On May 4, all remaining Confederate forces in Alabama and Mississippi surrendered. The Eastern Theater was the land east of the Appalachian Mountains. For example, two important battles were the Battle of Wilson's Creek and the Battle of Pea Ridge. Bragg's second invasion of Kentucky in the Confederate Heartland Offensive included initial successes such as Kirby Smith's triumph at the Battle of Richmond and the capture of the Kentucky capital of Frankfort on September 3, 1862. [266], At first, Lincoln reversed attempts at emancipation by Secretary of War Simon Cameron and Generals John C. Frémont (in Missouri) and David Hunter (in South Carolina, Georgia and Florida) to keep the loyalty of the border states and the War Democrats. These two surrenders gave the Union control over the entire Mississippi. Calhoun. Confederate representatives, on the other hand, were much more successful by ignoring slavery and instead focusing on their struggle for liberty, their commitment to free trade, and the essential role of cotton in the European economy. Over four years, 237 named battles were fought, as were many more minor actions and skirmishes, which were often characterized by their bitter intensity and high casualties. [111], On March 4, 1861, Abraham Lincoln was sworn in as president. Robert E. Lee [86][87], Owners of slaves preferred low-cost manual labor with no mechanization. In attempting to capture Charleston, the Union military tried two approaches; by land over James or Morris Islands or through the harbor. Although the two non-profit organizations joined forces on several battlefield acquisitions, ongoing conflicts prompted the boards of both organizations to facilitate a merger, which happened in 1999 with the creation of the Civil War Preservation Trust. [98] Efforts at compromise, including the Corwin Amendment and the Crittenden Compromise, failed. Most of the war was fought in the South. 462,634 Confederate soldiers were captured and 25,976 died in prison. The Southern states viewed this as a violation of their constitutional rights, and as the first step in a grander Republican plan to eventually abolish slavery. The primary Confederate force in the Eastern theater was the Army of Northern Virginia. However, the same ships were reflagged with European flags and continued unmolested. Rosecrans retreated to Chattanooga, which Bragg then besieged in the Chattanooga Campaign. The fighting started at Fort Sumter in South Carolina on April 12, 1861. [95], While the South moved towards a Southern nationalism, leaders in the North were also becoming more nationally minded, and they rejected any notion of splitting the Union. The Union believed that it was illegal for the states to break away. The Mississippi River was opened to Union traffic to the southern border of Tennessee with the taking of Island No. The Shiloh National Military Park was established in 1894, followed by the Gettysburg National Military Park in 1895 and Vicksburg National Military Park in 1899. The Confederates assumed that European countries were so dependent on "King Cotton" that they would intervene,[22] but none did, and none recognized the new Confederate States of America. Even in southern states, laws were changed to limit slavery and facilitate manumission. Lincoln and his cabinet made ending slavery a war goal, which culminated in the Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln's vice president, Andrew Johnson, was unharmed as his would-be assassin, George Atzerodt, lost his nerve, so he was immediately sworn in as president. Abraham Lincoln from the Republican Party won the 1860 United States presidential election. [162] Scott argued that a Union blockade of the main ports would weaken the Confederate economy. [305] 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 in warfare. [146], Women also served on the Union hospital ship Red Rover and nursed Union and Confederate troops at field hospitals. [164], British investors built small, fast, steam-driven blockade runners that traded arms and luxuries brought in from Britain through Bermuda, Cuba, and the Bahamas in return for high-priced cotton. Britain acquiesced to their demand, paying the U.S. $15 million in 1871. [133], As the first seven states began organizing a Confederacy in Montgomery, the entire U.S. army numbered 16,000. The war began on April 12, 1861, when Confederate forces attacked Fort Sumter, a fort in South Carolina that was held by Union soldiers. About 12,000 Indian warriors fought for the Confederacy and smaller numbers for the Union. General Lee led 45,000 men of the Army of Northern Virginia across the Potomac River into Maryland on September 5. The Union army occupied the fort for the rest of the war after repairing it. Later, many other Confederate armies surrendered as well. The siege continued until July 4, 1863, when the Confederates there surrendered to Grant. The biggest was the Battle of Olustee in early 1864. Units from the Army of the Northwest were merged into the Army of the Potomac between March 14 and May 17, 1862. From the Union perspective, the goals of Reconstruction were to consolidate the Union victory on the battlefield 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.[278]. They came to the fore after the 1866 elections and undid much of Johnson's work. Congress tightened the law in March 1863. Simple History, tellin The American Civil War divided North and South and became the most destructive conflict fought in North America. The "cotton states" of Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas followed suit, seceding in January and February 1861. Northern manufacturing interests supported tariffs and protectionism while Southern planters demanded free trade. Fought from 1861–1865, the American Civil War was the result of decades of sectional tensions between the North and South. [281] The last theme includes moral evaluations of racism and slavery, heroism in combat and heroism behind the lines, and the issues of democracy and minority rights, as well as the notion of an "Empire of Liberty" influencing the world. [3] In the four months between the election and the day that Lincoln became president, seven Southern states declared their independence from the Union. 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. It also helped to turn European opinion further away from the Confederacy. In his inaugural address, he argued that the Constitution was a more perfect union than the earlier Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, that it was a binding contract, and called any secession "legally void". The conflict began primarily as a result of the long … In the East, the Navy supplied and moved army forces about and occasionally shelled Confederate installations. Many people could not afford the higher prices and went hungry. On December 18, 1860, the Crittenden Compromise was proposed to re-establish the Missouri Compromise line by constitutionally banning slavery in territories to the north of the line while guaranteeing it to the south. Pro- and anti-slavery forces collided over the territories west of the Mississippi. [168] The measure of the blockade's success was not the few ships that slipped through, but the thousands that never tried it. Memphis fell to Union forces on June 6, 1862, and became a key base for further advances south along the Mississippi River. In it, Sewall condemned slavery and the slave trade and refuted many of the era's typical justifications for slavery. Before Lincoln took office in March 1861, seven slave states had declared their secession and joined to form the Confederacy. On April 14, 1865, President Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth, a Southern sympathizer. Ulysses S. Grant [273] The Emancipation Proclamation greatly reduced the Confederacy's hope of getting aid from Britain or France. "King Cotton" was dead, as the South could export less than 10 percent of its cotton. Benjamin Franklin and James Madison each helped found manumission societies. The American Civil War was fought between the United States of America and the Confederate States of America, a collection of eleven southern states that left the Union in 1860 and 1861. [40][41], The American Revolution and the cause of liberty added tremendous impetus to the abolitionist cause. Lee's escape attempt ended with his surrender at Appomattox Court House, on April 9, 1865. John Bell Hood There was much evasion and overt resistance to the draft, especially in Catholic areas. One of the first battles of the war was fought in Virginia. Lincoln then asked the Union states to bring soldiers to fight the Confederates.[5]. He reached the Atlantic Ocean at Savannah, Georgia, in December 1864. 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 can be seen as an informal consequence of its parent department's name. News of Lee's April 9 surrender reached this southern newspaper (Savannah, Georgia) on April 15—after the April 14 shooting of President Lincoln. Public opinion, however, demanded an immediate attack by the army to capture Richmond. The Confederates were driven from Missouri early in the war as a result of the Battle of Pea Ridge. 211,411 Union soldiers were captured, and 30,218 died in prison. [129][130] Congress admitted West Virginia to the Union on June 20, 1863. A Union army force commanded by Major General Benjamin Butler landed near the forts and forced their surrender. [240] However, most historians reject the argument. One of the most famous of the land attacks was the Second Battle of Fort Wagner, in which the 54th Massachusetts Infantry took part. The draft riot in New York City 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. Northerners (including President Buchanan) rejected that notion as opposed to the will of the Founding Fathers, who said they were setting up a perpetual union. The southern states didn't want the North telling them what to do or making laws they didn't want. [75] Rejecting the arguments for federal authority or self-government, state sovereignty would empower states to promote the expansion of slavery as part of the federal union under the U.S. Of all these interpretations, the states'-rights argument is perhaps the weakest. [165] When the Union Navy seized a blockade runner, the ship and cargo were condemned as a prize of war and sold, with the proceeds given to the Navy sailors; the captured crewmen were mostly British, and they were released.[166]. [138] The U.S. Congress followed in July, authorizing a militia draft within a state when it could not meet its quota with volunteers. [52][53][54], By 1840 more than 15,000 people were members of abolitionist societies in the United States. [121][123] All were held without trial, ignoring a ruling by the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court Roger Taney, a Maryland native, that only Congress (and not the president) could suspend habeas corpus (Ex parte Merryman). The first six to declare secession had the highest proportions of slaves in their populations, with an average of 49 percent. Reconstruction began during the war, with the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863, and it continued until 1877. Pressing Issues That Led to the Civil War. The American Civil War was among the earliest industrial wars. The army was formed on November 20, 1862, when General Braxton Bragg renamed the former Army of Mississippi. Over the next several months, 11 southern states seceded and formed the Confederate States of America. Union Naval activities were dictated by the Anaconda Plan. Shipyards at Cairo, Illinois, and St. Louis built new boats or modified steamboats for action. [142] At least 100,000 Southerners deserted, or about 10 percent; Southern desertion was high because, according to one historian writing in 1991, the highly localized Southern identity meant that many Southern men had little investment in the outcome of the war, with individual soldiers caring more about the fate of their local area than any grand ideal. Sherman won the battle. He bombarded Fort Sumter on April 12–13, forcing its capitulation. Four more southern slave states joined the Confederates, rather than supply forces to fight against them. There was some concern that the proclamation would lead to the secession of Western states, and prompted the stationing of Union troops in Illinois in case of rebellion. [192] This was the bloodiest battle of the war and has been called the war's turning point. The Confederates fought a successful delaying action at the Battle of Salem Church. The ones who died have been excluded to prevent double-counting of casualties. Nathan Bedford Forrest rallied nearly 4,000 Confederate troops and led them to escape across the Cumberland. [274] By late 1864, Lincoln was playing a leading role in getting Congress to vote for the Thirteenth Amendment, which made emancipation universal and permanent. However, neo-Confederate writers[who?] "[237][238] According to Charles H. Wilson, in The Collapse of the Confederacy, "internal conflict should figure prominently in any explanation of Confederate defeat. The Republican national electoral platform of 1860 warned that Republicans regarded disunion as treason and would not tolerate it. General Lee and top subordinates James Longstreet and Stonewall Jackson defeated McClellan in the Seven Days Battles and forced his retreat.[185]. The American Civil War began on April 12, 1861, in Charleston, South Carolina.Confederate troops captured Fort Sumterfrom the Union Army. The Eastern theater refers to the military operations east of the Appalachian Mountains, including the states of Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, the District of Columbia, and the coastal fortifications and seaports of North Carolina. The westernmost attack would originate from Kansas. [226], The causes of the war, the reasons for its outcome, and even the name of the war itself are subjects of lingering contention today. Even as the Confederacy was visibly collapsing in 1864–65, he says most Confederate soldiers were fighting hard. President Johnson officially declared an end to the insurrection on May 9, 1865; Confederate president, Jefferson Davis, was captured the following day. Congress. During a brief invasion by Confederate forces in 1861, Confederate sympathizers organized a secession convention, formed the shadow Confederate Government of Kentucky, inaugurated a governor, and gained recognition from the Confederacy. [89][90] The tariff issue was a Northern grievance. Meanwhile, the war created employment for arms makers, ironworkers, and ships to transport weapons. After 1863, the Polish revolt against Russia further distracted the European powers and ensured that they would remain neutral. [24] Slavery was the central source of escalating political tension in the 1850s. The Union Army of the Potomac then tried to capture Richmond in the Peninsula Campaign during the spring of 1862, but Robert E. Lee became leader of the Army of Northern Virginia and defeated the Union Army. That was one of the turning points in the war by dividing the Confederacy into two parts. The primary Union forces in the Western theater were the Army of the Tennessee and the Army of the Cumberland, named for the two rivers, the Tennessee River and Cumberland River. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/timeline-death [7] When the South seceded, its first capital was Montgomery, Alabama, but it moved the capital to Richmond, Virginia. After the war ended, Lincoln pardoned all of the Confederate soldiers and so they could not be arrested or punished for fighting against the Union. The Confederacy purchased several warships from commercial shipbuilders in Britain (CSS Alabama, CSS Shenandoah, CSS Tennessee, CSS Tallahassee, CSS Florida, and some others). Thomas L. Livermore, using Fox's data, put the number of Confederate non-combat deaths at 166,000, using the official estimate of Union deaths from disease and accidents and a comparison of Union and Confederate enlistment records, for a total of 260,000 deaths. Grant chased Lee and got in front of him so that when Lee's army reached Appomattox Court House, they were surrounded. Speaking directly to the "Southern States", he attempted to calm their fears of any threats to slavery, reaffirming, "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly to interfere with the institution of slavery in the United States where it exists. Lacking the technology and infrastructure to build effective warships, the Confederacy attempted to obtain warships from Great Britain. An additional four slave states joined the Confederacy in the following two months. [279] With the withdrawal of federal troops, however, whites retook control of every Southern legislature; the Jim Crow period of disenfranchisement and legal segregation was ushered in. [248] 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. The abundance of European cotton and Britain's hostility to the institution of slavery, along with Lincoln's Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico naval blockades, severely decreased any chance that either Britain or France would enter the war.[245]. Professor James Downs. [37] In particular, Southerners feared a repeat of "the horrors of Santo Domingo",[citation needed] in which nearly all white people – including men, women, children, and even many sympathetic to abolition – were killed after the successful slave revolt in Haiti. States and local communities offered higher and higher cash bonuses for white volunteers. They thought that slavery would die out if it could go to new places. [246] The Union victory energized popular democratic forces. Missouri not only stayed in the Union but Lincoln took 70 percent of the vote for re-election. At the beginning of 1864, Lincoln made Grant commander of all Union armies. Radical Republicans demanded proof that Confederate nationalism was dead and that the slaves were truly free. Critical imports were scarce and the coastal trade was largely ended as well. [1][224] On June 2, Kirby Smith officially surrendered his troops in the Trans-Mississippi Department. Lincoln's naval blockade was 95 percent effective at stopping trade goods; as a result, imports and exports to the South declined significantly. 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% and that the data Walker used would be roughly accurate.[12]. It proved to be the largest surrender of Confederate forces. [38] These fears were exacerbated by the 1859 attempt of John Brown to instigate an armed slave rebellion in the South. The war was about slavery, … The causes of secession were complex and have been controversial since the war began, but most academic scholars identify slavery as the central cause of the war. [307] This section gives an abbreviated overview of the most notable works. There are innumerable statues, commemorations, books and archival collections. The Revolution changed that and made it into an issue that had to be addressed. [28] Lincoln's initial claims were that preserving the Union was the central goal of the war. He also thought that banning it suddenly would anger the South. Henry Halleck Families used the substitute provision to select which man should go into the army and which should stay home. 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. West Virginia provided about 20,000–22,000 soldiers to both the Confederacy and the Union. [260] However, as the war dragged on it became clear that slavery was the central factor of the conflict. However, the Confederates were able to drive back each Union attack. The successful 1863 Union siege of Vicksburg split the Confederacy in two at the Mississippi River. In September 1862, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which made ending slavery a war goal. Timeline of significant events related to the American Civil War, from the election of Abraham Lincoln as U.S. president in 1860 to major turning points in the war, including the Battle of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania in July 1863 and the capture of … [25][26], Slavery was the main cause of disunion. After an initial battle, Lee decided that the fight was now hopeless, and surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia on April 9, 1865, at the McLean House. The outgoing US president, James Buchanan, said that was against the law but he could do nothing to stop them. In the Indian Territory, civil war broke out within tribes. 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 twentieth century and perhaps beyond. [229] Lincoln was not a military dictator and could continue to fight the war only as long as the American public supported a continuation of the war. [207], Numerous small-scale military actions south and west of Missouri sought to control Indian Territory and New Mexico Territory for the Union. Outgoing Democratic President James Buchanan and the incoming Republicans rejected secession as illegal. The American Civil War was fought between the southern states and the northern states. It was fought because 11 Southern states left the United States and formed the Confederate States of America, also called the Confederacy. "Sick from Freedom: African-American Illness and Suffering during the Civil War and Reconstruction". More soldiers died at Gettysburg than in any other Civil War battle, which the Union won. Maryland, Delaware, Missouri, and Kentucky were slave states that were opposed to both secession and coercing the South. American Civil War, also called War Between the States, four-year war (1861–65) between the United States and 11 Southern states that seceded from the Union and formed the Confederate States of America. [292], The modern Civil War battlefield preservation movement began in 1987 with the founding of the Association for the Preservation of Civil War Sites (APCWS), a grassroots organization created by Civil War historians and others to preserve battlefield land by acquiring it. The U.S. Navy eventually gained control of the Red, Tennessee, Cumberland, Mississippi, and Ohio rivers. Ulysses S. Grant was an important Union general in the West. All accumulated investment Confederate bonds were forfeit; most banks and railroads were bankrupt. Lincoln then restored Pope's troops to McClellan. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so. [8] Some of them also became politicians. have claimed it as a Southern grievance. [2] The war lasted four years and caused much damage in the South. Meade defeated Lee at the Battle of Gettysburg (July 1 to 3, 1863). This led to the adoption of trench warfare, a style of fighting that defined much of World War I. Claudia Goldin, "The economics of emancipation. Its jurisdiction extended only as far as Confederate battle lines in the Commonwealth and went into exile for good after October 1862. Slavery had been a controversial issue during the framing of the Constitution, but the issue was left unsettled. [23] To the west, the Union destroyed the Confederate river navy by summer 1862, then much of its western armies, and seized New Orleans. On one side was the Union and on the other the Confederacy, divided over the future of slavery. A brigade of Virginians under the relatively unknown brigadier general from the Virginia Military Institute, Thomas J. Jackson, stood its ground, which resulted in Jackson receiving his famous nickname, "Stonewall". These states agreed to form a new federal government, the Confederate States of America, on February 4, 1861. Many of the ships were designed for speed and were so small that only a small amount of cotton went out. That was one thing that made the Confederacy surrender. They were paid, but they were not allowed to perform any military duties. By defeating the Democrats and McClellan, he also defeated the Copperheads and their peace platform. Abolishing slavery was not a Union war goal from the outset, but it quickly became one. Prices went up and so everything became more expensive. [60][61] The US government and the states that remained loyal to it were called the Union. The swiftness of Jackson's men earned them the nickname of "foot cavalry". They tried to recapture western Tennessee by attacking Grant's army at the Battle of Shiloh, but Grant won the battle. The Compromise of 1850 over California balanced a free-soil state with stronger fugitive slave laws for a political settlement after four years of strife in the 1840s. Although there were opposing views[clarification needed] even in the Union States,[30][31] most Northern soldiers were mostly indifferent on the subject of slavery,[32] while Confederates fought the war mainly to protect a Southern society of which slavery was an integral part. However, London and Washington were able to smooth over the problem after Lincoln released the two. [173], Cotton diplomacy proved a failure as Europe had a surplus of cotton, while the 1860–62 crop failures in Europe made the North's grain exports of critical importance. 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