The National College of Informatics

“Traian Lalescu”

Hunedoara

2018

AMERICAN CIVIL WAR

Student: Supervisor:

Popp Cluadia-Mihaela Dan Sorina

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 Table of Contents

I. Argument ............................................................................................................ 3
II. Précis................................................................................................................... 3
III. Chapter I: Prelude to war .................................................................................... 4
- The pre–Civil War years…………………………………………….....4

-Prelude to war…………………………………………………………..5

- The military background of the war…………………………………....7

IV. Chapter II: War (1861-1865) .............................................................................. 9

- Outbreak of the civil war (1861) ............................................................. 9
- The war in 1862 ..................................................................................... 10
- The war in 1863 ..................................................................................... 13
-The war in 1864-65 ................................................................................. 15
V. Chapter III: Aftermath of the civil war ............................................................. 18
- Reconstruction………………………………………………………...18

- The cost and significance of the Civil War…………………………...19

VI. Conclusion ........................................................................................................ 19

VII. Sitography ......................................................................................................... 20

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 Argument

The Civil War was certainly the most catastrophic event in American history. More than 600,000
Northerners and Southerners died in the war, a greater number than all those who had died in all other
American wars combined. We have two different models of a society confronted with a war some
wanted and are accountable for, and some truly despised.

On one hand, there were some that were committed to the Confederacy, to ''serve the Cause'', but on
the other hand, there were some people that were committed to the Union took action to free the South
and struggled to claim the slaves' liberty and create a new nationwide order. In both cases, lives were
scattered and shattered, torn to pieces, because the wind of the war blew across the country.

I have chosen to write about this subject because we are interested in world history. An important
moment like The American Civil War could not be left out. Why is The Civil War such a big event?
Because it changed a whole nation and the lives of many people.

This war restored freedom for many people but with a big price. Many people died trying to restore
this freedom.

Along those lives, America lost something else too, better said someone. Abraham Lincoln, the man
who fought for freedom, abolished slavery with the price of his own life.

This war changed the entire world and because of this I have chosen it.

Précis

In the first chapter I made an introduction of the war. I wrote about the conflicts between the Northern
states and Southern states and the causes of the war.

In the second chapter I wrote about life during the war and other issues. I focused on the military
aspect and the emancipation proclamation.

In the final chapter I presented the reconstruction period, the changes that were made after the war and
the impact of the war at a social and economic level.

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 Chapter I: Prelude to war

The pre–Civil War years

The pre–Civil War years (1820–1860, or the “antebellum years”) were among the most chaotic in
American history—a time of significant changes that took place as the United States came of age.
During these years, the nation was transformed from an underdeveloped nation of farmers and
frontiersmen into an urbanized economic powerhouse. As the industrialized North and the agricultural
South grew further apart, five major trends dominated American economic, social, and political life
during this period.

First, the Market Revolution—the shift from an agricultural economy to one based on wages and the
exchange of goods and services—completely changed the northern and western economy between
1820 and 1860. After Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin and perfected manufacturing with
interchangeable parts, the North experienced a manufacturing boom that continued well into the next
century. Cyrus McCormick’s mechanical mower-reaper also revolutionized grain production in the
West. Internal improvements such as the Erie Canal and the Cumberland Road, combined with new
modes of transportation such as the steamboat and railroad, allowed goods and crops to flow easily
and cheaply between the agricultural West and manufacturing North. The growth of manufacturing
also spawned the wage labor system.

Second, American society urbanized drastically during this era. The United States had been a land
comprised almost entirely of farmers, but around 1820, millions of people began to move to the cities.
They, along with several million Irish and German immigrants, flooded northern cities to find jobs in
the new industrial economy. The advent of the wage labor system played a large role in transforming
the social fabric because it gave birth to America’s first middle class. Comprised mostly of white-
collar workers and skilled laborers, this growing middle class became the driving force behind a
variety of reform movements. Among these were movements to reduce consumption of alcohol,
eliminate prostitution, improve prisons and insane asylums, improve education, and ban slavery.
Religious revivalism, resulting from the Second Great Awakening, also had a large impact on
American life in all parts of the country.

Third, the major political struggles during the antebellum period focused on states’ rights. Southern
states were dominated by “states’ righters”—those who believed that the individual states should have
the final say in matters of interpreting the Constitution. Inspired by the old Democratic-Republicans,
John C. Calhoun argued in his “South Carolina Exposition and Protest” essay that the states had the
right to nullify laws that they deemed unconstitutional because the states themselves had created the
Constitution. Others, such as President Andrew Jackson and Chief Justice John Marshall, believed that
the federal government had authority over the states. The debate came to a head in the Nullification
Crisis of 1832–1833, which nearly touched off a civil war.

Fourth, and closely tied to the states’ rights issue, was the debate over slavery—the most divisive issue
the nation had yet faced. Between 1820 and 1860, more and more northerners came to realize the
horrors and injustices of slavery, while southerners grew increasingly reliant upon it to support their
cotton-based economy. Northerners did not necessarily want social and political equality for blacks;
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they sought merely their emancipation. The debate in politics centered primarily on the westward
expansion of slavery, which southern elites saw as vital to the survival of their aristocratic social and
economic order. Others vehemently opposed the expansion of slavery outside the South. The debate
was critical in the Missouri crisis, the annexation of Texas, and after the Mexican War.

Finally, the issue of westward expansion itself had a profound effect on American politics and society
during the antebellum years. In the wake of the War of 1812, many nationalistic Americans believed
that God intended for them to spread democracy and Protestantism across the entire continent. This
idea of “manifest destiny” spurred over a million Americans to sell their homes in the East and set out
on the treacherous Oregon, Mormon, Santa Fe, and California Trails. Policymakers capitalized on
public sentiment to acquire Florida and Oregon and declared war on Mexico in 1846 to seize Texas,
California, and everything in between.

Ultimately, these trends irreconcilably split the North from the South. The Market Revolution, wage
labor, improved transportation, social reforms, and growing middle class of the North all clashed with
the deep-seated, almost feudal social hierarchies of the South. Each successive debate on slavery and
westward expansion drove the regions further apart until finally, in the 1850s, the North and the South
were two wildly different places, culturally, socially, and economically.

Prelude to war
The secession of the Southern states (in chronological order, South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida,
Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina) in 1860–61
and the ensuing outbreak of armed hostilities were the culmination of decades of growing sectional
friction over slavery. Between 1815 and 1861 the economy of the Northern states was rapidly
modernizing and diversifying. Although agriculture—mostly smaller farms that relied on free labor—
remained the dominant sector in the North, industrialization had taken root there. Moreover,
Northerners had invested heavily in an expansive and varied transportation system that included
canals, roads, steamboats, and railroads; in financial industries such as banking and insurance; and in a
large communications network that featured inexpensive, widely available newspapers, magazines,
and books, along with the telegraph. By contrast, the Southern economy was based principally on
large farms (plantations) that produced commercial crops such as cotton and that relied on slaves as
the main labor force. Rather than invest in factories or railroads as Northerners had done, Southerners
invested their money in slaves—even more than in land; by 1860, 84 percent of the capital invested in
manufacturing was invested in the free (nonslaveholding) states. Yet, to Southerners, as late as 1860,
this appeared to be a sound business decision. The price of cotton, the South’s defining crop, had
skyrocketed in the 1850s, and the value of slaves—who were, after all, property—rose
commensurately. By 1860 the per capita wealth of Southern whites was twice that of Northerners, and
three-fifths of the wealthiest individuals in the country were Southerners

The extension of slavery into new territories and states had been an issue as far back as the Northwest
Ordinance of 1784. When the slave territory of Missouri sought statehood in 1818, Congress debated
for two years before arriving upon the Missouri Compromise of 1820. This was the first of a series of
political deals that resulted from arguments between pro-slavery and antislavery forces over the
expansion of the “peculiar institution,” as it was known, into the West. The end of the Mexican-
American War in 1848 and the roughly 500,000 square miles (1.3 million square km) of new territory

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that the United States gained as a result of it added a new sense of urgency to the dispute. More and
more Northerners, driven by a sense of morality or an interest in protecting free labor, came to believe,
in the 1850s, that bondage needed to be eradicated. White Southerners feared that limiting the
expansion of slavery would consign the institution to certain death. Over the course of the decade, the
two sides became increasingly polarized and politicians less able to contain the dispute through
compromise. When Abraham Lincoln, the candidate of the explicitly antislavery Republican Party,
won the 1860 presidential election, seven Southern states (South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida,
Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas) carried out their threat and seceded, organizing as the
Confederate States of America.

In the early morning hours of April 12, 1861, rebels opened fire on Fort Sumter, at the entrance to the
harbor of Charleston, South Carolina. Curiously, this first encounter of what would be the bloodiest
war in the history of the United States claimed no victims. After a 34-hour bombardment, Maj. Robert
Anderson surrendered his command of about 85 soldiers to some 5,500 besieging Confederate troops
under P.G.T. Beauregard. Within weeks, four more Southern states (Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee,
and North Carolina) left the Union to join the Confederacy.

Fort Sumter
Confederate forces bombarding Fort Sumter, Charleston, South Carolina, on April 12, 1861, in a
lithograph by Currier & Ives.

With war upon the land, President Lincoln called for 75,000 militiamen to serve for three months. He
proclaimed a naval blockade of the Confederate states, although he insisted that they did not legally
constitute a sovereign country but were instead states in rebellion. He also directed the secretary of the
treasury to advance $2 million to assist in the raising of troops, and he suspended the writ of habeas
corpus, first along the East Coast and ultimately throughout the country. The Confederate government
had previously authorized a call for 100,000 soldiers for at least six months’ service, and this figure
was soon increased to 400,000.

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The military background of the war

Comparison of North and South

At first glance it seemed that the 23 states that remained in the Union after secession were more than a
match for the 11 Southern states. Approximately 21 million people lived in the North, compared with
some nine million in the South of whom about four million were slaves. In addition, the North was the
site of more than 100,000 manufacturing plants, against 18,000 south of the Potomac River, and more
than 70 percent of the railroads were in the Union. Furthermore, the Federals had at their command a
30-to-1 superiority in arms production, a 2-to-1 edge in available manpower, and a great
preponderance of commercial and financial resources. The Union also had a functioning government
and a small but efficient regular army and navy.

The Confederacy was not predestined to defeat, however. The Southern armies had the advantage of
fighting on interior lines, and their military tradition had bulked large in the history of the United
States before 1860. Moreover, the long Confederate coastline of 3,500 miles (5,600 km) seemed to
defy blockade, and the Confederate president, Jefferson Davis, hoped to receive decisive foreign aid
and intervention. Confederate soldiers were fighting to achieve a separate and independent country
based on what they called “Southern institutions,” the chief of which was the institution of slavery. So
the Southern cause was not a lost one; indeed, other countries—most notably the United States itself in
the American Revolution against Britain—had won independence against equally heavy odds.

The high commands

Command problems plagued both sides. Of the two rival commanders in chief, most people in 1861
thought Davis to be abler than Lincoln. Davis was a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy, a hero of
the Mexican-American War, a capable secretary of war under Pres. Franklin Pierce, and a U.S.
representative and senator from Mississippi. Lincoln—who had served in the Illinois state legislature
and as an undistinguished one-term member of the U.S. House of Representatives—could boast of
only a brief period of military service in the Black Hawk War, in which he saw no action.

As president and commander in chief of the Confederate forces, Davis revealed many fine qualities,
including dignity, firmness, determination, and honesty, but he was flawed by his excessive pride,
hypersensitivity to criticism, poor political skills, and tendency to micromanage. He engaged in
extended petty quarrels with generals and cabinet members. He also suffered from ill health
throughout the conflict. Davis’s effectiveness was further hampered by a political system that limited
him to a single six-year term—thereby making him a lame duck immediately upon his election—and
that frowned on organized political parties, which Southerners accused of having been at least partly
responsible for the coming of the Civil War. The lack of political parties meant that Davis could
command no loyalty from a broad group of people such as governors or political appointees when he
came under heavy criticism.

To a large extent and by his own preference, Davis was his own secretary of war, although five
different men served in that post during the lifetime of the Confederacy. Davis himself also filled the
position of general in chief of the Confederate armies until he named Robert E. Lee to that position on
February 6, 1865, when the Confederacy was near collapse. In naval affairs—an area about which he
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knew little—the Confederate president seldom intervened directly, allowing the competent secretary
of the navy, Stephen Mallory, to handle the Southern naval buildup and operations on the water.
Although his position was onerous and quite likely could not have been filled as well by any other
Southern political leader—most of them having come to prominence in a period of growing
disinclination to compromise—Davis’s overall performance in office left something to be desired.

To the astonishment of many, Lincoln grew in stature with time and experience, and by 1864 he had
become a consummate politician and war director. Lincoln matured into a remarkably effective
president because of his great intelligence, communication skills, humility, sense of purpose, sense of
humour, fundamentally moderate nature, and ability to remain focused on the big picture. But he had
much to learn at first, especially in strategic and tactical matters and in his choices of army
commanders. With an ineffective first secretary of war—Simon Cameron—Lincoln unhesitatingly
insinuated himself directly into the planning of military movements. Edwin M. Stanton, a well-known
lawyer appointed to the secretaryship on January 20, 1862, was equally untutored in military affairs,
but he was fully as active a participant as his superior.

Winfield Scott was the Federal general in chief when Lincoln took office. The 75-year-old Scott—a
hero of the War of 1812 and the Mexican-American War—was a magnificent and distinguished
soldier whose mind was still keen, but he was physically incapacitated and had to be retired from the
service on November 1, 1861. Scott was replaced by young George B. McClellan, who was an
excellent organizer. McClellan, however, lacked tenacity, persistently overestimated the Confederates’
strength (and therefore stalled his attacks), and was openly disdainful of the president. Because he
wanted McClellan to focus his attentions on the Army of the Potomac, Lincoln relieved McClellan as
general in chief on March 11, 1862. Henry W. Halleck, who proved to be a strong administrator but
did little in the way of strategic planning, succeeded McClellan on July 11 and held the position until
he was replaced by Ulysses S. Grant on March 9, 1864. Halleck then became chief of staff under Grant
in a long-needed streamlining of the Federal high command. Grant served efficaciously as general in
chief throughout the remainder of the war.

After the initial call by Lincoln and Davis for troops, and as the war lengthened indeterminately, both
sides turned to raising massive armies of volunteers. Local citizens of prominence and means would
organize regiments that were uniformed and accoutred at first under the aegis of the states and then
mustered into the service of the Union and Confederate governments. On each side, the presidents
appointed so-called “political generals,” men who had little or no military training or experience but
had important political connections (for example, Northern Democrats) or had ties to immigrant
communities. Although successful politically, most of these appointments did not yield happy military
results. As the war dragged on, the two governments had to resort to conscription to fill the ranks
being so swiftly thinned by battle casualties.

Strategic plans

In the area of grand strategy, Davis persistently adhered to the defensive, permitting only occasional
“spoiling” forays into Northern territory. Perhaps the Confederates’ best chance of winning would
have been an early grand offensive into the Union states before the Lincoln administration could find
its ablest generals and bring the preponderant resources of the North to bear against the South. On the
other hand, protecting the territory the Confederacy already controlled was of paramount importance,

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and a defensive position allowed the rebels to husband their resources somewhat better. To crush the
rebellion and reestablish the authority of the Federal government, Lincoln had to direct his blue-clad
armies to invade, capture, and hold most of the vital areas of the Confederacy. His grand strategy was
based on Scott’s so-called Anaconda Plan, a design that evolved from strategic ideas discussed in
messages between Scott and McClellan on April 27, May 3, and May 21, 1861. It called for a Union
blockade of the Confederacy’s coastline as well as a decisive thrust down the Mississippi River and an
ensuing strangulation of the South by Federal land and naval forces. But it was to take four years of
grim, unrelenting warfare and enormous casualties and devastation before the Confederates could be
defeated and the Union preserved.

Chapter II: War (1861-1865)

Outbreak of the civil war (1861)

The first military operations took place in northwestern Virginia, where nonslaveholding pro-Union
Virginians sought to secede from the Confederacy. McClellan, in command of Federal forces in
southern Ohio, advanced on his own initiative in the early summer of 1861 into western Virginia with
about 20,000 men. He encountered smaller forces sent there by Lee, who was then in Richmond in
command of all Virginia troops. Although showing signs of occasional hesitation, McClellan quickly
won three small but significant battles: on June 3 at Philippi, on July 11 at Rich Mountain, and on July
13 at Carrick’s (or Corrick’s) Ford (all now in West Virginia). McClellan’s casualties were light, and
his victories went far toward eliminating Confederate resistance in northwestern Virginia, which had
refused to recognize secession, and toward paving the way for the admittance into the Union of the
new state of West Virginia in 1863.

Meanwhile, sizable armies were gathering around the Federal capital of Washington, D.C., and the
Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia, which was about 100 miles (160 km) south of
Washington. Federal forces abandoned positions in Virginia, including, on April 18, Harpers Ferry
(now in West Virginia), which was quickly occupied by Southern forces, who held it for a time, and
the naval base at Norfolk, which was prematurely abandoned to the Confederacy on April 20. On May
6 Lee ordered a Confederate force—soon to be commanded by P.G.T. Beauregard—northward to hold
the rail hub of Manassas Junction, Virginia, some 26 miles (42 km) southwest of Washington. With
Lincoln’s approval, Scott appointed Irvin McDowell to command the main Federal army that was
being hastily collected near Washington. But political pressure and Northern public opinion impelled
Lincoln, against Scott’s advice, to order McDowell’s still-untrained army to push the Confederates
back from Manassas. Meanwhile, Federal forces were to hold Confederate soldiers under Joseph E.
Johnston in the Shenandoah Valley near Winchester, Virginia, thus preventing them from reinforcing
Beauregard along the Bull Run near Manassas.

McDowell advanced from Washington on July 16 with some 32,000 men and moved slowly toward
Bull Run. Two days later a reconnaissance in force (an attack by a large force to determine the size
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and strength of the enemy) was repulsed by the Confederates at Mitchell’s Ford and Blackburn’s Ford.
When McDowell attacked on July 21 in the First Battle of Bull Run (which came to be known in the
South as First Manassas), he discovered that Johnston had escaped the Federals in the valley and had
joined Beauregard near Manassas just in time, bringing the total Confederate force to around 28,000.
McDowell’s sharp attacks with green troops forced the equally untrained Southerners back a bit, but a
strong defensive stand by Thomas Jonathan Jackson (who thereby gained the nickname “Stonewall”)
enabled the Confederates to check and finally throw back the Federals in the afternoon. The Federal
retreat to Washington soon became a rout. McDowell lost 2,708 men—killed, wounded, and missing
(including prisoners)—against a Southern loss of 1,981. Both sides now settled down to a long war,
but the First Battle of Bull Run left a lasting impression on both the Confederacy and the Union.
Confederates took their victory as confirmation of their belief that a single rebel soldier was worth 10
Yankees, an overconfident and dangerously unrealistic mindset. On the Union side, the loss seems to
have infected the high command of the Army of the Potomac with both an inferiority complex and a
wary fear of Southern military proficiency. This attitude was in evidence until Grant became the
general in charge of all the armies in the spring of 1864.

The war in 1862

The year 1862 marked a major turning point in the war, especially the war in the East, as Lee took
command of the Confederate army, which he promptly renamed the Army of Northern Virginia. With
Lee’s ascent the Army of the Potomac found itself repeatedly battered. While the Army of the
Potomac was beleaguered by less-than-visionary leadership, Union forces in the West experienced far
greater success under more-aggressive generals. Paradoxically, Lee kept the Confederate war effort
going long enough for Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, which struck at the very
institution the South had gone to war to protect.

The war in the East

Fresh from his victories in western Virginia, McClellan was called to Washington to replace Scott.
There he began to mold the Army of the Potomac into a resolute, effective shield and sword of the
Union. But personality clashes and unrelenting opposition to McClellan from the Radical Republicans
in Congress hampered the sometimes tactless general, who was a Democrat. It took time to drill,
discipline, and equip this force of considerably more than 100,000 men, but, as fall blended into
winter, loud demands arose that McClellan advance against Johnston’s Confederate forces at
Centreville and Manassas in Virginia. McClellan fell seriously ill with typhoid fever in December, and
when he had recovered weeks later he found that Lincoln, desperately eager for action, had ordered
him to advance on February 22, 1862. Long debates ensued between president and commander. These
disagreements led the obstreperous and balky McClellan to make statements and take actions that
would have been—and indeed were—considered insubordinate by almost anyone other than the
extremely patient Lincoln. When in March McClellan finally began his Peninsular Campaign, he
discovered that Lincoln and Stanton had withheld large numbers of his command in front of

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Washington for the defense of the capital—forces that actually were not needed there. Upon taking
command of the army in the field, McClellan was relieved of his duties as general in chief.

The Peninsular Campaign

Advancing up the historic peninsula between the York and James rivers in Virginia, McClellan began
a monthlong siege of Yorktown and captured that stronghold on May 4, 1862. A Confederate
rearguard action at Williamsburg the next day delayed the blue-clads, who then slowly moved up
through heavy rain to within 4 miles (6 km) of Richmond. Striving to seize the initiative, Johnston
attacked McClellan’s left wing at Seven Pines (Fair Oaks) on May 31 and, after scoring initial gains,
was checked. Johnston was severely wounded, and, in a major though often overlooked development
of the war, Lee, who had been serving as Davis’s military adviser, succeeded him. Lee promptly
renamed the command the Army of Northern Virginia. McClellan counterattacked on June 1 and
forced the Southerners back into the environs of Richmond. The Federals suffered a total of 5,031
casualties out of a force of nearly 100,000, while the Confederates lost 6,134 of about 74,000 men.

As McClellan inched forward toward Richmond in June, Lee prepared a counterstroke. He recalled
from the Shenandoah Valley Jackson’s forces—which had threatened Harpers Ferry and had
brilliantly defeated several scattered Federal armies—and, with about 90,000 soldiers, attacked
McClellan on June 26 to begin the fighting of the Seven Days’ Battles (usually dated June 25–July 1).
In the ensuing days at Mechanicsville, Gaines’s Mill, Savage’s Station, Frayser’s Farm (Glendale),
and Malvern Hill, Lee tried unsuccessfully to crush the Army of the Potomac, which McClellan was
moving to another base on the James River, but the Confederate commander had at least saved
Richmond. McClellan inflicted 20,614 casualties on Lee while suffering 15,849 himself. McClellan
felt that he could not move upon Richmond without considerable reinforcement, and his estimates of
the men he needed went up and up and up. Against his protests his army was withdrawn from the
peninsula to Washington by Lincoln and the new general in chief, Halleck—a man McClellan
scornfully considered to be his inferior. Many of McClellan’s units were given to a new Federal army
commander, John Pope, who was directed to move overland against Richmond.

Cold Harbor, Battles of: Gaines's Mill

Ruins of Gaines's Mill, near Cold Harbor, Virginia, photograph by John Reekie, April 1865.

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The Emancipation Proclamation

Despite its shocking casualty figures, the most important consequence of Antietam was off the field.
From the outset of the war, slaves had been pouring into Federal camps seeking safety and freedom.
Early in the war, Lincoln had slapped the wrists of commanders who tried to issue emancipation edicts
in areas under their control. Trying to balance political and military necessity against moral
imperatives, Lincoln believed that keeping the slave-owning border states—Maryland, Delaware,
Missouri, and particularly Kentucky—in the Union was critical and that making any move toward
freeing slaves could incite those states to secede. Moreover, the Constitution protected slavery in
several ways, most importantly through its defense of property rights. Finally, Lincoln believed for the
first year or so of the war that a significant number of Unionists existed in the seceded states and that,
given time, those people would rise up and revolt against the Confederate government.

As early as August 1861, though, slaveholders’ claims to property rights had begun to erode when
Congress passed its First Confiscation Act, which allowed Union troops to seize rebels’ property,
including slaves who fought with or worked for the Confederate military. One Union general,
Benjamin Butler, a prominent attorney and politician in civilian life, read up on military law and used
confiscation laws to the Union’s benefit by turning the slave owner’s claim to property rights on its
head. Armies had always been able to confiscate property of military value, Butler argued, and slaves
were instrumental in supporting the Confederate cause. With so many slaves manning factories and
working fields, about 80 percent of eligible white Southern men wound up serving in the military.
Butler declared slaves who came into his lines to be “contrabands” of war and therefore not liable for
return to their masters. The name contrabands was used for the remainder of the war to describe slaves
who ran from their masters to the Union army.

In April 1862 Congress abolished slavery in the District of Columbia and paid owners in the district
about $300 on average for each slave. Three months later Congress passed the Second Confiscation
Act, which mandated that any Confederate civilian or military official who did not surrender within 60
days would have his slaves freed. Two days after that, Congress banned slavery from the territories.

Lincoln, meanwhile, was meeting with men from the border states, especially Kentucky, hoping to
persuade them to agree to a compensated emancipation. Over the course of these encounters, it became
clear to him that the broad Unionist sentiment he thought existed in the South was a chimera. When
talks with the Kentucky delegates broke off in July, Lincoln immediately sat down and drafted the
Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. In its final form, the Emancipation Proclamation would free
the slaves in areas that were not under Union control as of January 1, 1863, when it went into effect.
This meant it did not apply in the border states or places such as New Orleans, which were already
under Union military occupation by that time. Lincoln realized that such a move would strike a serious
blow militarily to the Confederates, who relied on bondsmen for the bulk of their labour during the
war, by both demoralizing white Southerners and giving additional incentive to slaves to run away.

However, the summer of 1862 had been a bleak one for Federal forces, and Lincoln did not want to
issue the proclamation when the North appeared to be losing. He did not want other countries to
consider it an act of desperation. So he put the document in his desk drawer and waited for a victory.
Antietam, while technically a draw, was close enough that Lincoln claimed it as a Union win and
announced the proclamation. This was an important turning point. The war was now a contest not just
about saving the Union but also about freeing four million bondsmen and bondswomen. This new

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moral element to the war persuaded the British and French to stay out of the conflict and to never offer
the Confederates the diplomatic recognition they desperately sought.

The Emancipation Proclamation also allowed black men to serve in the Union army. This had been
illegal under a federal law enacted in 1792 (although African Americans had served in the army in the
War of 1812 and the law had never applied to the navy). With their stake in the Civil War now
patently obvious, African Americans joined the service in significant numbers. By the end of the war,
about 180,000 African Americans were in the army, which amounted to about 10 percent of the troops
in that branch, and another 20,000 were serving in the navy.

The war in 1863

The first half of 1863 was grim for the Union cause. In the East, Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia
experienced its greatest successes. Meanwhile, Union armies in the West were stifled, especially in
their efforts to take Vicksburg, Mississippi. Catastrophic Confederate losses in early July, however,
left Lee unable to ever take the offensive again, gave the Union control of the Mississippi River from
top to bottom, and divided the Confederacy in half. Nevertheless, problems plagued both sides as
the war’s toll weighed increasingly on the people at home.

The Copperheads

In January 1863 Lincoln was despondent about the political situation in the North. Antiwar Democrats
had been in evidence since the beginning of the conflict, but the North’s defeats in the summer and fall
of 1862, along with the deeply divisive Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, had given the so-
called Peace Democrats credibility and an audience. Republicans had not fared well in the midterm
elections, and a movement in the Midwestern states to break off and either join the Confederacy or
start a third country seemed to be gaining ground. “The fire in the rear,” Lincoln told a senator, posed
a greater threat to the nation than the Confederates did to its front.

The Peace Democrats, dubbed “Copperheads” by Republicans after a poisonous snake, braided
together three coalitions: immigrants, especially Irish and German Catholics, who had been the target
of ugly discrimination by nativists and Protestant reformers and who had gravitated into the
Democratic Party in the mid-1850s; people in the Lower Midwest with family ties to the South; and
conservative Democrats who had a strict constructionist reading of the Constitution. Poorly led and
having only loose formal connections beyond county lines, Peace Democrats universally characterized
themselves as conservatives worried that Lincoln and the Republicans were reaching far past
constitutional bounds. They also shared a deep antipathy toward African Americans. By the summer
of 1862 the rallying cry of these conservatives was “The Union as it was, the Constitution as it is.”

The movement was galvanized by the suspension of habeas corpus, first on the East Coast and then
throughout the Union; the Emancipation Proclamation, which confirmed the worst suspicions of the
Copperheads, who believed this had always been a war about abolition rather than reunion; and
conscription, which Congress approved in March 1863. Other changes that were widely accepted by
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most Northerners and would have major implications for the American economy for generations to
come were also reviled by the Copperheads. Specifically, they believed that the income tax that was
levied for the first time in the country’s history and the issuance of paper currency—so-called
greenbacks—were further gross violations of the Constitution that represented yet another dangerous
extension of executive power. These were indeed more examples of the executive’s broader power,
although the income tax, like many other war measures, disappeared after the war. A nationally
recognized paper currency, however, was with the country to stay.

Ultimately the Copperheads really had very little control over their own fate. Instead, the extent of
their influence rested with the armies. Although they never seemed to realize it, the power of the Peace
Democrats waxed and waned through the war in direct opposition to how well the Union armies
performed in the field.

Conscription and the New York City draft riot

The U.S. Congress resorted to the first draft in the country’s history in March 1863. As with the
Confederates the year before, the inflow of volunteers was drying up, and the Union needed to keep
the ranks filled. All able-bodied men between ages 20 and 45 were required to be enrolled and
available for military service. Draftees were chosen by lottery. Once conscripted, a man could avoid
service for that particular round of the draft either by paying a $300 commutation fee or by hiring a
substitute to take his place. As in the South, this raised accusations that the war had become “a rich
man’s war but a poor man’s fight.” Nevertheless, in both North and South, statistics indicate that
wealthy men were represented in the service in at least the same proportion as they were in the general
population.

The war in 1864–65

Finally dissatisfied with Halleck as general in chief and impressed with Grant’s victories, Lincoln
appointed Grant to supersede Halleck and to assume the rank of lieutenant general, which Congress
had re-created. Leaving Sherman in command in the west, Grant arrived in Washington on March 8,
1864. He was given largely a free hand in developing his grand strategy. He retained Meade in
technical command of the Army of the Potomac but in effect assumed direct control by establishing
his own headquarters with it. He sought to move this army against Lee in northern Virginia while
Sherman marched against Johnston and Atlanta. Several lesser Federal armies were also to advance in
May.

Grant’s Overland Campaign

Grant surged across the Rapidan and Rappahannock rivers in Virginia on May 4, hoping to get
through the tangled Wilderness before Lee could move. But the Confederate leader reacted instantly
and, on May 5, attacked Grant from the west in the Battle of the Wilderness. Two days of bitter,
indecisive combat ensued. Although Grant had 115,000 men available against Lee’s 62,000, he found
both Federal flanks endangered. Moreover, Grant lost 17,666 soldiers, compared with a probable
Southern loss of about 8,000. Pulling away from the Wilderness battlefield, Grant tried to hasten
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southeastward to the crossroads point of Spotsylvania Court House, only to have the Confederates get
there first. In savage action (May 8–19), including hand-to-hand fighting at the famous “Bloody
Angle,” Grant, although gaining a little ground, was essentially thrown back. He had lost 18,399 men
at Spotsylvania. Lee’s combined losses at the Wilderness and Spotsylvania were an estimated 17,250.

Again Grant withdrew, only to move forward in another series of attempts to get past Lee’s right
flank. Again, at the North Anna River and at Totopotomoy Creek, he found Lee confronting him.
Finally, at Cold Harbor, just northeast of Richmond, Grant launched several heavy attacks, including a
frontal, nearly suicidal one on June 3, only to be repelled with grievous total losses of 12,737. Lee’s
casualties are unknown but were much lighter.

Grant, with the vital rail centre of Petersburg—the southern key to Richmond—as his objective, made
one final effort to swing around Lee’s right and finally outguessed his opponent and stole a march on
him. But several blunders by Federal officers, swift action by Beauregard, and Lee’s belated though
rapid reaction enabled the Confederates to hold Petersburg. Grant attacked on June 15 and 18, hoping
to break through before Lee could consolidate the Confederate lines east of the city, but he was
contained with 8,150 losses.

Unable to admit defeat but having failed to destroy Lee’s army and capture Richmond, Grant settled
down to a nine-month active siege of Petersburg. The summer and fall of 1864 were highlighted by the
Federal failure with a mine explosion under the gray lines at Petersburg on July 30 (the Battle of the
Crater), the near capture of Washington by the Confederate Jubal Early in July, and Early’s later
setbacks in the Shenandoah Valley at the hands of Philip H. Sheridan.

Sherman’s Georgia campaigns and total war

Meanwhile, Sherman was pushing off toward Atlanta from Dalton, Georgia, on May 7, 1864, with
110,123 men against Johnston’s 55,000. This masterly campaign comprised a series of cat-and-mouse
moves by the rival commanders. Nine successive defensive positions were taken up by Johnston.
Trying to outguess his opponent, Sherman attempted to swing around the Confederate right flank
twice and around the left flank the other times, but each time Johnston divined which way Sherman
was moving and each time pulled back in time to thwart him. At one point Sherman’s patience
snapped, and he frontally assaulted the Southerners at Kennesaw Mountain, Georgia, on June 27;
Johnston threw him back with heavy losses. All the while Sherman’s lines of communication in his
rear were being menaced by audacious Confederate cavalry raids conducted by Nathan Bedford
Forrest and Joseph Wheeler. Forrest administered a crushing defeat to Federal troops under Samuel D.
Sturgis at Brice’s Cross Roads, Mississippi, on June 10. But these Confederate forays were more
annoying than decisive, and Sherman pressed forward.

When Johnston finally informed Davis that he could not realistically hope to annihilate Sherman’s
mighty army, the Confederate president replaced him with John B. Hood, who had already lost two
limbs in the war. Hood inaugurated a series of premature offensive battles at Peachtree Creek, Atlanta,
Ezra Church, and Jonesboro, but he was repulsed in each of them. With his communications
threatened, Hood evacuated Atlanta on the night of August 31–September 1. Sherman pursued only at
first. Then, on November 15, he commenced his great March to the Sea with 62,000 men, laying waste
to the economic resources of Georgia in a 50-mile- (80-km-) wide swath of destruction. He captured
Savannah, 285 miles (460 km) from Atlanta, on December 21.

Sherman’s March to the Sea marked a new development in the war. To this point, Union armies had
generally avoided targeting civilians and their property other than slaves. Sherman had decided,

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though, that he had to crush the will of white Southern civilians if the Union were to bring the rebels
to heel. He promised to “make Georgia howl,” and he did. His men destroyed everything of military
value that they encountered, including railroads, telegraph lines, and warehouses. They were trailed by
foragers, stragglers, deserters, Georgia militiamen, local ne’er-do-wells, and some Confederate cavalry
who committed a variety of depredations on the population, including pillaging and burning civilian
property. Sherman became the bête noire of the South not only for his own actions but also because he
was blamed for the actions of others not necessarily under his control. Nevertheless, Sherman himself
reported that his men had racked up $100 million in damage to Georgia, 80 percent of which was
“simple waste and destruction” and the remainder being straightforward military targets. Because
civilians were not killed, historians have debated whether this was an instance of “total war” (other
examples being the bombing of Dresden, Tokyo, or Hiroshima during World War II) or one of “hard
war.”

Hood had sought unsuccessfully to lure Sherman out of Georgia and back into Tennessee by marching
northwestward with nearly 40,000 men toward the key city of Nashville, the defense of which had
been entrusted by Sherman to George H. Thomas. At Franklin, Hood was checked for a day with
severe casualties by a Federal holding force under John M. Schofield. This helped Thomas to retain
Nashville, where on December 15–16 he delivered a crushing counterstroke against Hood’s besieging
army, cutting it up so badly that it was of little use thereafter.

Western campaigns

Sherman’s force might have been larger and his Atlanta-Savannah Campaign consummated much
sooner had not Lincoln approved the Red River Campaign in Louisiana led by Banks in the spring of
1864. Accompanied by Porter’s warships, Banks moved up the Red River with some 40,000 men. He
had two objectives: to capture cotton and to defeat Southern forces under Kirby Smith and Richard
Taylor. Not only did he fail to net much cotton but also he was checked with loss on April 8 at Sabine
Cross Roads, Louisiana, and forced to retreat. Porter lost several gunboats, and the campaign
amounted to a costly debacle.

That fall Kirby Smith ordered the reconquest of Missouri. Sterling Price’s Confederate army advanced
on a broad front into Missouri but was set back temporarily by Thomas Ewing at Pilot Knob on
September 27. Resuming the advance toward St. Louis, Price was forced westward along the south
bank of the Missouri River by pursuing Federal troops under A.J. Smith, Alfred Pleasonton, and
Samuel Curtis. Finally, on October 23, at Westport, near Kansas City, Price was decisively defeated
and forced to retreat along a circuitous route, arriving back in Arkansas on December 2. This ill-fated
raid cost Price most of his artillery as well as the greater part of his army, which numbered about
12,000.

Sherman’s Carolina campaigns

On January 10, 1865, with Tennessee and Georgia now securely in Federal hands, Sherman’s 60,000-
man force began to march northward into the Carolinas. It was only lightly opposed by much smaller
Confederate forces. Sherman’s men blamed South Carolina for bringing on the war and sought to
punish them for their actions. What had happened in Georgia paled in comparison with the devastation
the Yankees wrought in South Carolina. Once again, civilians were not killed, but the Union troops
did everything they could to demoralize the population and undermine their support for the war.
Sherman captured Columbia, South Carolina, on February 17 and compelled the Confederates to

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evacuate Charleston (including Fort Sumter). When Lee was finally named Confederate general in
chief, he promptly reinstated Johnston as commander of the small forces striving to oppose the Federal
advance. Nonetheless, Sherman pushed on into North Carolina, capturing Fayetteville on March 11
and, after an initial setback, repulsing the counterattacking Johnston at Bentonville on March 19–20.
Goldsboro fell to the Federals on March 23 and Raleigh on April 13. Finally, perceiving that he no
longer had any reasonable chance of containing the relentless Federal advance, Johnston surrendered
to Sherman at the Bennett House near Durham Station on April 18. When Sherman’s generous terms
proved unacceptable to Secretary of War Stanton (Lincoln had been assassinated on April 14), the
former submitted new terms that Johnston signed on April 26.

The final land operations

Grant and Meade were continuing their siege of Petersburg and Richmond early in 1865. For months
the Federals had been lengthening their left (southern) flank while operating against several important
railroads supplying the two Confederate cities. This stretched Lee’s dwindling forces very thin. The
Southern leader briefly threatened to break the siege when he attacked and captured Fort Stedman on
March 25. But an immediate Federal counterattack regained the strongpoint, and Lee, when his lines
were subsequently pierced, evacuated both Petersburg and Richmond on the night of April 2–3.

An 88-mile (142-km) pursuit west-southwestward along the Appomattox River in Virginia ensued,
with Grant and Meade straining every nerve to bring Lee to bay. The Confederates were detained at
Amelia Court House, awaiting delayed food supplies, and were badly cut up at Five Forks and
Sayler’s Creek, with their only avenue of escape now cut off by Sheridan and George A. Custer. When
Lee’s final attempt to break out failed, he surrendered the remnants of his Army of Northern Virginia
at the McLean house at Appomattox Court House on April 9. The lamp of magnanimity was reflected
in Grant’s unselfish terms.

On the periphery of the Confederacy, 43,000 gray-clad soldiers in Louisiana under Smith surrendered
to Canby on May 26. The port of Galveston, Texas, yielded to the Federals on June 2, and the greatest
war on American soil was over.

Chapter III: Aftermath of the civil war

Reconstruction
Both Lincoln and Johnson had foreseen that the Congress would have the right to deny Southern
legislators seats in the U.S. Senate or House of Representatives, under the clause of the Constitution
that says "Each house shall be the judge of the...qualifications of its own members." This came to pass
when, under the leadership of Thaddeus Stevens, those congressmen (called "Radical Republicans")
who sought to punish the South refused to seat its elected senators and representatives. Then, within
the next few months, the Congress proceeded to work out a plan for the reconstruction of the South
quite different from the one Lincoln had started and Johnson had continued.

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Wide public support gradually developed for those members of Congress who believed that blacks
should be given full citizenship. By July 1866, Congress had passed a civil rights bill and set up a new
Freedmen's Bureau -- both designed to prevent racial discrimination by Southern legislatures.
Following this, the Congress passed a 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which states that "All
persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of
the United States and of the states in which they reside," thus repudiating the Dred Scott ruling which
had denied slaves their right of citizenship.

All the Southern state legislatures, with the exception of Tennessee, refused to ratify the amendment,
some voting against it unanimously. In addition, in the aftermath of the war, Southern state legislatures
passed black codes, which aimed to reimpose bondage on the freedmen. The codes differed from state
to state, but some provisions were common. Blacks were required to enter into annual labor contracts,
with penalties imposed in case of violation; dependent children were subject to compulsory
apprenticeship and corporal punishments by masters; and vagrants could be sold into private service if
they could not pay severe fines.

In response, certain groups in the North advocated intervention to protect the rights of blacks in the
South. In the Reconstruction Act of March 1867, Congress, ignoring the governments that had been
established in the Southern states, divided the South into five districts and placed them under military
rule. Escape from permanent military government was open to those states that established civil
governments, took an oath of allegiance, ratified the 14th Amendment and adopted black suffrage.

The amendment was ratified in 1868. The 15th Amendment, passed by Congress the following year
and ratified in 1870 by state legislatures, provided that "The rights of citizens of the United States to
vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on account of race, color or
previous condition of servitude."

The Radical Republicans in Congress were infuriated by President Johnson's vetoes (even though they
were overridden) of legislation protecting newly freed blacks and punishing former Confederate
leaders by depriving them of the right to hold office. Congressional antipathy to Johnson was so great
that for the first time in American history, impeachment proceedings were instituted to remove the
president from office.

Johnson's main offense was his opposition to punitive congressional policies and the violent language
he used in criticizing them. The most serious legal charge his enemies could level against him was that
despite the Tenure of Office Act (which required Senate approval for the removal of any officeholder
the Senate had previously confirmed), he had removed from his Cabinet the secretary of war, a
staunch supporter of the Congress. When the impeachment trial was held in the Senate, it was proved
that Johnson was technically within his rights in removing the Cabinet member. Even more important,
it was pointed out that a dangerous precedent would be set if the Congress were to remove a president
because he disagreed with the majority of its members. The attempted impeachment failed by a narrow
margin, and Johnson continued in office until his term expired.

Under the Military Reconstruction Act, Congress, by June 1868, had readmitted Arkansas, North
Carolina, South Carolina, Louisiana, Georgia, Alabama and Florida, to the Union. In many of these
seven reconstructed states, the majority of the governors, representatives and senators were Northern
men -- so-called "carpetbaggers" -- who had gone South after the war to make their political fortunes,
often in alliance with newly freed African Americans. In the legislatures of Louisiana and South

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Carolina, African Americans actually gained a majority of the seats. The last three Southern states --
Mississippi, Texas and Virginia -- finally accepted congressional terms and were readmitted to the
Union in 1870.

Many Southern whites, their political and social dominance threatened, turned to illegal means to
prevent blacks from gaining equality. Violence against blacks became more and more frequent. In
1870 increasing disorder led to the passage of an Enforcement Act severely punishing those who
attempted to deprive the black freedmen of their civil rights.

The End of Reconstruction

As time passed, it became more and more obvious that the problems of the South were not being
solved by harsh laws and continuing rancor against former Confederates. In May 1872, Congress
passed a general Amnesty Act, restoring full political rights to all but about 500 Confederate
sympathizers.

Gradually Southern states began electing members of the Democratic Party into office, ousting so-
called carpetbagger governments and intimidating blacks from voting or attempting to hold public
office. By 1876 the Republicans remained in power in only three Southern states. As part of the
bargaining that resolved the disputed presidential elections that year in favor of Rutherford B. Hayes,
the Republicans promised to end Radical Reconstruction, thereby leaving most of the South in the
hands of the Democratic Party. In 1877 Hayes withdrew the remaining government troops, tacitly
abandoning federal responsibility for enforcing blacks' civil rights.

The South was still a region devastated by war, burdened by debt caused by misgovernment, and
demoralized by a decade of racial warfare. Unfortunately, the pendulum of national racial policy
swung from one extreme to the other. Whereas formerly it had supported harsh penalties against
Southern white leaders, it now tolerated new and humiliating kinds of discrimination against blacks.
The last quarter of the 19th century saw a profusion of "Jim Crow" laws in Southern states that
segregated public schools, forbade or limited black access to many public facilities, such as parks,
restaurants and hotels, and denied most blacks the right to vote by imposing poll taxes and arbitrary
literacy tests.

In contrast with the moral clarity and high drama of the Civil War, historians have tended to judge
Reconstruction harshly, as a murky period of political conflict, corruption and regression. Slaves were
granted their freedom, but not equality. The North completely failed to address the economic needs of
the freedmen. Efforts such as the Freedmen's Bureau proved inadequate to the desperate needs of
former slaves for institutions that could provide them with political and economic opportunity, or
simply protect them from violence and intimidation. Indeed, federal Army officers and agents of the
Freedmen's Bureau were often racists themselves. Blacks were dependent on these Northern whites to
protect them from white Southerners, who, united into organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan,
intimidated blacks and prevented them from exercising their rights. Without economic resources of
their own, many Southern blacks were forced to become tenant farmers on land owned by their former
masters, caught in a cycle of poverty that would continue well into the 20th century.

Reconstruction-era governments did make genuine gains in rebuilding Southern states devastated by
the war, and in expanding public services, notably in establishing tax-supported, free public schools
for blacks and whites. However, recalcitrant Southerners seized upon instances of corruption (hardly
unique to the South in this era) and exploited them to bring down radical regimes. The failure of
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Reconstruction meant that the struggle of African Americans for equality and freedom was deferred
until the 20th century -- when it would become a national, and not a Southern issue.

The cost and significance of the Civil War

The triumph of the North, above and beyond its superior naval forces, numbers, and industrial and
financial resources, was partly due to the statesmanship of Lincoln, who by 1864 had become a
masterful political and war leader, to the pervading valor of Federal soldiers, and to the increasing skill
of their officers. The victory can also be attributed in part to failures of Confederate transportation,
materiel, and political leadership. Only praise can be extended to the continuing bravery of
Confederate soldiers and to the strategic and tactical dexterity of such generals as Robert E. Lee,
Stonewall Jackson, and Joseph E. Johnston.

Scalawags and Carpetbaggers were derogatory terms used in the aftermath of the Civil War.
Scalawags referred to a group of white Republican Southerners who sympathized with the federal
Reconstruction effort. Scalawags were often politically allied with Carpetbaggers, white business
people from the North who moved to the South during Reconstruction. Many Carpetbaggers were
former abolitionists who wished to continue the struggle for equality, while others Carpetbaggers saw
the reconstruction of the South as a political or economic opportunity. Because of the collapse of
much of the southern economy during the Civil War, many northerners became mayors and political
leaders.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I have chosen to write about The American Civil War because I consider that is one of
the most important events in American history. Nearly every American lost someone in the war: a
friend, relative, brother, son, or father. In fact, the war was so divisive that it split some families
completely in two. One U.S. senator, for example, had a son who served as a general in the Union
army and another as a general for the Confederacy. Even the “Great Emancipator” Abraham Lincoln
himself had four brothers-in-law who fought for the South. As disastrous as the war was, however, it
also brought the states—in the North as well as the South—closer together. After the war, the United
States truly was united in every sense of the word.

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 Sitography

 http://mrnussbaum.com/scalawags_carpetbagger
 http://www.history.com/topics/american-civil-war/american-civil-war-history
 http://history-world.org/american_civil_war.htm
 https://www.civilwar.org/learn/articles/brief-overview-american-civil-war
 http://www.sonofthesouth.net/American-civil-war.htm
 http://www.hyperhistory.com/online_n2/civil_n2/histscript6_n2/civil_war.html
 http://www.socialstudiesforkids.com/subjects/civilwar.htm
 http://spartacus-educational.com/USAcivilwar.htm
 http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/outlines/history-1994/sectional-conflict/radical-reconstruction.php
 http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/outlines/history-1994/sectional-conflict/the-end-of-
reconstruction.php

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"War means fighting, and fighting means killing."
- Nathan Bedford Forrest

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