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American Civil War

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Pre 1900 Military

          "The Civil War" is the most common term in the United States of
          America for this conflict. See Naming the American Civil War.

   American Civil War
   (clockwise from upper right) Confederate prisoners at Gettysburg;
   Battle of Fort Hindman, Arkansas; Rosecrans at Stones River, Tennessee

      Date     April 12, 1861 – April 9, 1865
    Location   Principally in the Southern United States
     Result    Union victory; Reconstruction; slavery abolished
   Casus belli Confederate attack on Fort Sumter
   Combatants
   United States of America ( Union) Confederate States of America
   (Confederacy)
   Commanders
   Lincoln, President
   Ulysses S. Grant, General Jefferson Davis, President
   Robert E. Lee, General
   Strength
   2,200,000 1,064,000
   Casualties
   110,000 killed in action,
   360,000 total dead,
   275,200 wounded 93,000 killed in action,
   258,000 total dead
   137,000+ wounded
                         Theaters of the American Civil War
   Union blockade – Eastern – Western – Lower Seaboard – Trans-Mississippi
   – Pacific Coast

   The American Civil War (1861–1865) was a war between the United States
   Federal government (the " Union") and eleven Southern slave states that
   declared their secession and formed the Confederate States of America,
   led by President Jefferson Davis. The Union, led by President Abraham
   Lincoln and the Republican Party, opposed the expansion of slavery and
   rejected any right of secession. Fighting commenced on April 12, 1861,
   when Confederate forces attacked a Federal military installation at
   Fort Sumter in South Carolina.

   During the first year, the Union asserted control of the border states
   and established a naval blockade as both sides raised large armies. In
   1862 the large, bloody battles began. In September 1862, Lincoln's
   Emancipation Proclamation made the freeing of the slaves a war goal,
   despite opposition from northern Copperheads who tolerated secession
   and slavery. Emancipation ensured that Britain and France would not
   intervene to help the Confederacy. In addition, the goal also allowed
   the Union to recruit African-Americans for reinforcements, a resource
   that the Confederacy did not dare exploit until it was too late. War
   Democrats reluctantly accepted emancipation as part of total war needed
   to save the Union. In the East, Robert Edward Lee rolled up a series of
   Confederate victories over the Army of the Potomac, but his best
   general, Thomas Jonathan "Stonewall" Jackson, was killed at the Battle
   of Chancellorsville in May 1863. Lee's invasion of the North was
   repulsed at the Battle of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania in July 1863; he
   barely managed to escape back to Virginia. In the West, the Union Navy
   captured the port of New Orleans in 1862, and Ulysses S. Grant seized
   control of the Mississippi River by capturing Vicksburg, Mississippi in
   July 1863, thus splitting the Confederacy.

   By 1864, long-term Union advantages in geography, manpower, industry,
   finance, political organization and transportation were overwhelming
   the Confederacy. Grant fought a number of bloody battles with Lee in
   Virginia in the summer of 1864. Lee won most of the battles in a
   tactical sense but on the whole lost strategically, as he could not
   replace his casualties and was forced to retreat into trenches around
   his capital, Richmond, Virginia. Meanwhile, William Tecumseh Sherman
   captured Atlanta, Georgia. Sherman's March to the Sea destroyed a
   hundred-mile-wide swath of Georgia. In 1865, the Confederacy collapsed
   after Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Court House and the slaves
   were freed.

   The full restoration of the Union was the work of a highly contentious
   postwar era known as Reconstruction. The war produced about 970,000
   casualties (3% of the population), including approximately 620,000
   soldier deaths—two-thirds by disease. The causes of the war, the
   reasons for its outcome, and even the name of the war itself are
   subjects of lingering controversy even today. The main results of the
   war were the restoration and strengthening of the Union, and the end of
   slavery in the United States.

Causes of the War

   Secession was caused by the coexistence of a slave-owning South and an
   increasingly anti-slavery North. Lincoln did not propose federal laws
   making slavery unlawful where it already existed, but he had, in his
   1858 House Divided Speech, envisioned it as being set on "the course of
   ultimate extinction". Much of the political battle in the 1850s focused
   on the expansion of slavery into the newly created territories. Both
   North and South assumed that if slavery could not expand it would
   wither and die.

   Well-founded Southern fears of losing control of the Federal government
   to antislavery forces, and northern fears that the slave power already
   controlled the government, brought the crisis to a head in the late
   1850s. Sectional disagreements over the morality of slavery, the scope
   of democracy and the economic merits of free labor vs. slave
   plantations caused the Whig and " Know-Nothing" parties to collapse,
   and new ones to arise (the Free Soil Party in 1848, the Republicans in
   1854, Constitutional Union in 1860). In 1860, the last remaining
   national political party, the Democratic Party, split along sectional
   lines.

   Other factors include states' rights, modernization, sectionalism, the
   nullification crisis and economic differences between the North and
   South.

Note on causes

   Civil rights and voting rights for blacks were not major issues before
   the Civil War; they became important afterward during Reconstruction.
   The issue of maltreatment of slaves was promoted by abolitionists
   (especially in the novel and play "Uncle Tom's Cabin"), but was not one
   of the main causes of secession or the war itself. Slavery was at the
   root of economic, moral and political differences that led to control
   issues, states' rights and secession of seven states. The creation of
   an independent Confederate nation in defiance of the United States was
   the main reason for the war. That is, secession itself triggered the
   war. The secession of four more states was (from the Southern point of
   view) a protest against Lincoln's call to invade the South. From the
   North's point of view it was an attempt to defend the nation after it
   was attacked at Fort Sumter. Lincoln's war goals evolved, and were
   separate from causes of the war. He did not emphasize national unity
   during the 1860 campaign but brought it to the front in his March,
   1861, inaugural address. At first Lincoln stressed the Union as a war
   goal to unite the War Democrats, border states and Republicans. In 1862
   he added emancipation because it would weaken the Confederacy and
   permanently remove a divisive issue. In his 1863 Gettysburg Address he
   tied preserving democracy to emancipation and the Union as a war goal.

State Rights

   The " States' Rights" debate cut across the issues. Southerners argued
   that the federal government was strictly limited and could not abridge
   the rights of states as reserved in Amendment X, and so had no power to
   prevent slaves from being carried into new territories. States' rights
   advocates also cited the fugitive slave clause in the Constitution to
   demand federal jurisdiction over slaves who escaped into the North.
   Anti-slavery forces took reversed stances on these issues.

   As Jefferson Davis said,

     Resolved, That the union of these States rests on the equality of
     rights and privileges among its members, and that it is especially
     the duty of the Senate, which represents the States in their
     sovereign capacity, to resist all attempts to discriminate either in
     relation to person or property, so as, in the Territories -- which
     are the common possession of the United States -- to give advantages
     to the citizens of one State which are not equally secured to those
     of every other State.

   Thomas Jefferson's version of the states' rights theory was based on
   the idea of states defending free speech against the Alien and Sedition
   Acts. John C. Calhoun added the idea that Southern states could defend
   their sectional interests through nullification and secession.
   According to McPherson, Calhoun regarded the territories as the "common
   property" of sovereign states, and said that Congress was acting merely
   as the "joint agents" of the states. As Allan Nevins described it,
   "Governments, observed Calhoun, were formed to protect minorities, for
   majorities could take care of themselves."

   Like Calhoun, Davis believed that the states' rights theory protected
   the rights of the minority against a tyranical majority of Northerners.
   Jefferson Davis said that a "disparaging discrimination" and a fight
   for "liberty" against "the tyranny of an unbridled majority" gave the
   Confederate states a right to secede.

   In 1860, Congressman Laurence M. Keitt of South Carolina said, "The
   anti-slavery party contend that slavery is wrong in itself, and the
   Government is a consolidated national democracy. We of the South
   contend that slavery is right, and that this is a confederate Republic
   of sovereign States."

   The South defined equality in terms of the equal rights of states, and
   opposed the declaration that all men are created equal. When arguing
   for the equality of states, Jefferson Davis said, "Who has been in
   advance of him in the fiery charge on the rights of the States, and in
   assuming to the Federal Government the power to crush and to coerce
   them? Even to-day he has repeated his doctrines. He tells us this is a
   Government which we will learn is not merely a Government of the
   States, but a Government of each individual of the people of the United
   States." When arguing against equality of individuals, Davis said, "We
   recognize the fact of the inferiority stamped upon that race of men by
   the Creator, and from the cradle to the grave, our Government, as a
   civil institution, marks that inferiority."

   South Carolina's "Declaration of the Immediate Causes for Secession"
   started with an argument for states' rights for slaveowners in the
   South, followed by a complaint about states' rights in the North,
   claiming that Northern states were not fulfilling their federal
   obligations. South Carolina's argument for secession was as follows:

     We maintain that in every compact between two or more parties, the
     obligation is mutual; that the failure of one of the contracting
     parties to perform a material part of the agreement, entirely
     releases the obligation of the other; and that where no arbiter is
     provided, each party is remitted to his own judgment to determine
     the fact of failure, with all its consequences. In the present case,
     that fact is established with certainty. We assert that fourteen of
     the States have deliberately refused, for years past, to fulfill
     their constitutional obligations, and we refer to their own Statutes
     for the proof.

   The Constitutional obligations in question were as follows:
     * Refusal of Northern states to enforce the fugitive slave code by
       passing personal liberty laws.
     * Agitation against slavery, which "denied the rights of property"
       established in the Constitution.
     * Assisting "thousands of slaves to leave their homes" through the
       Underground Railroad.
     * The election of Lincoln "because he has declared that that
       'Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free,' and
       that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the
       course of ultimate extinction."
     * "...elevating to citizenship, persons who, by the supreme law of
       the land, are incapable of becoming citizens."

   It was an exageration to claim that the North granted blacks the rights
   of citizens, but most Northerners disagreed with the Dred Scott
   decision.

Slavery in the territories

   The specific political crisis that led to secession stemmed from a
   dispute over the expansion of slavery into new territories. The
   Republicans, while maintaining that Congress had no power over slavery
   in the states, asserted that it did have power to ban slavery in the
   territories. The Missouri Compromise of 1820 maintained the balance of
   power in Congress by adding Maine as a free state and Missouri as a
   slave state. It prohibited slavery in the remainder of the Louisiana
   Purchase Territory north of 36°30'N lat. (the southern boundary of
   Missouri). The acquisition of vast new lands after the Mexican-American
   War (1846–1848), however, reopened the debate—now focused on the
   proposed Wilmot Proviso, which would have banned slavery in territories
   annexed from Mexico. Though it never passed, the Wilmot Proviso aroused
   angry debate. Northerners argued that slavery would provide unfair
   competition for free migrants to the territories; slaveholders claimed
   Congress had no right to discriminate against them by preventing them
   from bringing their legal property there.

   The dispute led to open warfare in the Kansas Territory after it was
   organized by the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. This act repealed the
   prohibition on slavery there under the Missouri Compromise, and put the
   fate of slavery in the hands of the territory's settlers, a process
   known as " popular sovereignty". Fighting erupted between proslavery
   "border ruffians" from neighboring Missouri and antislavery immigrants
   from the North (including John Brown, among other abolitionists).
   Tensions between North and South now were violent.

Slavery and antislavery

   The institution of slavery, introduced into colonial North America in
   1619, had become a contentious issue between the North and the South
   early in the 1800s. The Compromise of 1850 included a new, stronger
   fugitive slave law that required federal agents to capture and return
   slaves that escaped into northern free states.

   The Supreme Court decision of 1857 in Dred Scott v. Sandford added to
   the controversy. Chief Justice Roger B. Taney's decision said that
   slaves "have no rights which any white man is bound to respect", and
   that slaves could be taken to free states and territories. Lincoln
   warned that "the next Dred Scott decision" could threaten northern
   states with slavery.

   Since fewer than 800 of the almost 4 million slaves escaped in 1860,
   the fugitive slave controversy was not a practical reason for
   secession. (More had escaped in previous years; see Underground
   Railroad.) The number that escaped was offset by free Northern blacks
   who were kidnapped as slaves. And secession only did away with
   enforcement of the fugitive slave law altogether. Kansas had only two
   slaves in 1860 because the territories had the wrong soil and climate
   for labor-intensive forms of agriculture. Allan Nevins summarizes this
   argument by concluding that "Both sides were equally guilty of
   hysteria."

   There was a strong correlation between the number of plantations in a
   region and the degree of support for secession. The states of the deep
   south had the greatest concentration of plantations and were the first
   to secede. The upper South slave states of Virginia, North Carolina,
   Arkansas, and Tennessee had fewer plantations and rejected secession
   until the Fort Sumter crisis forced them to choose sides. Border states
   had fewer plantations still and never seceded.

Rejection of compromise

   Until December 20, 1860, the political system had always successfully
   handled inter-regional crises. All but one crisis involved slavery,
   starting with debates on the three-fifths clause in the Constitutional
   Convention of 1787. Congress had solved the crisis over the admission
   of Missouri as a slave state in 1819-21, the controversy over South
   Carolina's nullification of the tariff in 1832, the acquisition of
   Texas in 1845, and the status of slavery in the territory acquired from
   Mexico in 1850.
   J.L. Magee's famous political cartoon of the attack on Charles Sumner
   Enlarge
   J.L. Magee's famous political cartoon of the attack on Charles Sumner

   However, in 1854, the old Second Party System broke down after passage
   of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. The Whig Party disappeared, and the new
   Republican Party arose in its place. It was the nation's first major
   party with only sectional appeal and a commitment to stop the expansion
   of slavery.

   One Republican leader, Senator Charles Sumner, was violently attacked
   and nearly killed at his desk in the Senate by Congressman Preston
   Brooks of South Carolina. Brooks attacked Sumner with a gold-knobbed
   gutta-percha cane, which his Southern admirers replaced with similar
   canes with inscriptions like "Hit him again."

   Open warfare in the Kansas Territory (" Bleeding Kansas"), the Dred
   Scott decision of 1857, John Brown's raid in 1859 and the split in the
   Democratic Party in 1860 polarized the nation between North and South.
   The election of Lincoln in 1860 was the final trigger for secession.
   During the secession crisis, many sought compromise—of these attempts,
   the best known was the " Crittenden Compromise"—but all failed.

   A deeper reason for the rejection of compromise was the fear that
   conspiracies threatened to destroy the republic. By the 1850s, two
   loomed most threatening: the South feared the supposedly abolitionist
   Republican Party (the "Black Republicans"); Republicans in the North
   feared what they called the Slave Power.

Abolitionism

   The Second Great Awakening of the 1820s and 1830s in religion inspired
   reform movements, one of the most notable of which was the
   abolitionists; these were later supported by Transcendentalism.
   Unfortunately, "abolitionist" had several meanings at the time, and
   still retains some ambiguity. The followers of William Lloyd Garrison,
   including Wendell Phillips and Frederick Douglass, demanded the
   "immediate abolition of slavery", hence the name. Others, like Theodore
   Weld and Arthur Tappan, wanted immediate action, but that action might
   well be a program of gradual emancipation, with a long intermediate
   stage. "Antislavery men", like John Quincy Adams, did what they could
   to limit slavery and end it where possible. In the last years before
   the war, "antislavery" could mean the Northern majority, like Abraham
   Lincoln, who opposed expansion of slavery or its influence, as by the
   Kansas-Nebraska Act, or the Fugitive Slave Act. Many Southerners called
   all these abolitionists, without distinguishing them from the
   Garrisonians.

   James McPherson explains the abolitionists' deep beliefs: "All people
   were equal in God's sight; the souls of black folks were as valuable as
   those of whites; for one of God's children to enslave another was a
   violation of the Higher Law, even if it was sanctioned by the
   Constitution."

   Slaveowners were angry over the attacks on their "peculiar institution"
   of slavery. Starting in the 1830s, there was a vehement and growing
   ideological defense of slavery. Slaveowners claimed that slavery was a
   positive good for masters and slaves alike, and that it was explicitly
   sanctioned by God. Biblical arguments were made in defense of slavery
   by religious leaders such as the Rev. Fred A. Ross and political
   leaders such as Jefferson Davis.

   Beginning in the 1830s, the U.S. Postmaster General refused to allow
   the mails to carry abolition pamphlets to the South. Northern teachers
   suspected of any tinge of abolitionism were expelled from the South,
   and abolitionist literature was banned. Southerners rejected the
   denials of Republicans that they were abolitionists, and pointed to
   John Brown's attempt in 1859 to start a slave uprising as proof that
   multiple Northern conspiracies were afoot to ignite bloody slave
   rebellions. Although some abolitionists did call for slave revolts, no
   evidence of any other actual Brown-like conspiracy has been discovered.
   The North felt threatened as well, for as Eric Foner concludes,
   "Northerners came to view slavery as the very antithesis of the good
   society, as well as a threat to their own fundamental values and
   interests".

Uncle Tom’s Cabin

   The most famous antislavery novel was Uncle Tom’s Cabin ( 1852) by
   Harriet Beecher Stowe. Inspired by the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 which
   made the escape narrative part of everyday news, Stowe emphasized the
   horrors that abolitionists had long claimed about slavery. Her
   depiction of the evil slaveowner Simon Legree, a transplanted Yankee
   who kills the Christ-like Uncle Tom, outraged slaveowners. Stowe made
   Simon Legree a transplanted Yankee to show that she was attacking not
   the southern people but slavery as an institution. She published a Key
   to Uncle Tom’s Cabin to prove that, even though the book was fiction,
   many events in the book were based on fact. According to Stowe's son,
   when President Lincoln met her in 1862, he commented, "So you're the
   little woman who wrote the book that made this great war!" In response
   to Stowe's book, novelist Caroline Lee Hentz published a widely-read,
   but largely now forgotten, work entitled The Planter's Northern Bride
   in 1854, countering many of Stowe's depictions of the slavery
   institution.

John Brown

   John Brown
   Enlarge
   John Brown

   John Brown has been called "the most controversial of all
   nineteenth-century Americans." His attempt to start a slave rebellion
   in 1859 electrified the nation. Uniquely among the Garrisonians, he
   resorted to violence. Most historians depict Brown as a bloodthirsty
   zealot and madman who briefly stepped into history but did little to
   influence it. Some scholars, however, glorify Brown, giving him credit
   for starting the Civil War and arguing "it is misleading to identify
   Brown with modern terrorists."

   John Brown started his fight against slavery in Kansas in 1856, during
   the Bleeding Kansas crisis. Border Ruffians used bowie knives and vote
   fraud to establish a pro-slavery government at Lecompton. There was
   Border Ruffian violence in Lawrence, Kansas, in 1855 and 1856 (see
   Sacking of Lawrence). And Border Ruffians kidnapped and killed six
   Free-State men. In response, Brown and his band killed five pro-slavery
   people at Pottawatomie Creek, Kansas.

   His famous raid in October 1859, involved a band of 22 men who seized
   the federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry, Virginia, knowing it contained
   tens of thousands of weapons. Brown, like his Boston supporters,
   believed that the South was on the verge of a gigantic slave uprising
   and that one spark would set it off. Brown's raid, says historian David
   Potter, "was meant to be of vast magnitude and to produce a
   revolutionary slave uprising throughout the South." The raid was a
   fiasco. Not a single slave revolted. Instead, Brown was quickly
   captured, tried for treason (against the state of Virginia) and hanged.
   At his trial, Brown exuded a remarkable strength of character that
   impressed Southerners, even as they feared he might be right about an
   impending slave revolt. Shortly before his execution, Brown prophesied,
   "the crimes of this guilty land : will never be purged away; but with
   Blood."

Arguments for and against slavery

   William Lloyd Garrison, the leading abolitionist, was motivated by a
   belief in the growth of democracy. Because the Constitution had a
   three-fifths clause, a fugitive slave clause and a 20-year extension of
   the Atlantic slave trade, Garrison once publicly burned a copy of the
   U. S. Constitution and called it "a covenant with death and an
   agreement with hell."

   In 1854, he said

     I am a believer in that portion of the Declaration of American
     Independence in which it is set forth, as among self-evident truths,
     "that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their
     Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life,
     liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Hence, I am an abolitionist.
     Hence, I cannot but regard oppression in every form—and most of all,
     that which turns a man into a thing—with indignation and abhorrence.

   Wendell Phillips, one of the most ardent abolitionists, attacked the
   Slave Power and presaged disunion as early as 1845:

     The experience of the fifty years… shows us the slaves trebling in
     numbers—slaveholders monopolizing the offices and dictating the
     policy of the Government—prostituting the strength and influence of
     the Nation to the support of slavery here and elsewhere—trampling on
     the rights of the free States, and making the courts of the country
     their tools. To continue this disastrous alliance longer is
     madness.… Why prolong the experiment?

   Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens said that the cornerstone
   of the South was "That the Negro is not equal to the white man; that
   slavery—subordination to the superior race—is his natural and normal
   condition."

   Jefferson Davis said slavery "…was established by decree of Almighty
   God… it is sanctioned in the Bible, in both Testaments, from Genesis to
   Revelation… it has existed in all ages, has been found among the people
   of the highest civilization, and in nations of the highest proficiency
   in the arts."

   Robert E. Lee said, "There are few, I believe, in this enlightened age,
   who will not acknowledge that slavery as an institution is a moral and
   political evil."

Economics

   Abraham Lincoln16th President (1861–1865)
   Enlarge
   Abraham Lincoln
   16th President (1861–1865)

Regional economic differences

   The South, Midwest, and Northeast had quite different economic
   structures. Charles Beard in the 1920s made a highly influential
   argument to the effect that these differences caused the war (rather
   than slavery or constitutional debates). He saw the industrial
   Northeast forming a coalition with the agrarian Midwest against the
   Plantation South. Critics pointed out that his image of a unified
   Northeast was incorrect because the region was highly diverse with many
   different competing economic interests. In 1860-61, most business
   interests in the Northeast opposed war. After 1950, only a few
   historians accepted the Beard interpretation, though it was picked up
   by libertarian economists. As Historian Kenneth Stampp—who abandoned
   Beardianism after 1950, sums up the scholarly consensus:

     Most historians of the sectional conflict, whatever differences they
     may have on other matters, now see no compelling reason why the
     divergent economies of the North and South should have led to
     disunion and civil war; rather, they find stronger practical reasons
     why the sections, whose economies neatly complemented one another,
     should have found it advantageous to remain united. Beard
     oversimplified the controversies relating to federal economic
     policy, for neither section unanimously supported or opposed
     measures such as the protective tariff, appropriations for internal
     improvements, or the creation of a national banking system. Except
     for the nullification crisis of 1832-33, economic issues, though
     sometimes present, were not crucial in the various sectional
     confrontations. During the 1850s, Federal economic policy gave no
     substantial cause for southern disaffection, for policy was largely
     determined by pro-Southern Congresses and administrations. Finally,
     the characteristic posture of the conservative northeastern business
     community was far from anti-Southern. Most merchants, bankers, and
     manufacturers were outspoken in their hostility to antislavery
     agitation and eager for sectional compromise in order to maintain
     their profitable business connections with the South. The conclusion
     seems inescapable that if economic differences, real though they
     were, had been all that troubled relations between North and South,
     there would be no substantial basis for the idea of an irrepressible
     conflict.

   The South, in addition to much subsistence agriculture, depended upon
   large-scale production of export crops, primarily cotton and (to a
   lesser extent) tobacco, raised by slaves. The slaveowning
   plantations—which comprised less than a third of the white
   population—were export-dependent. Plantation owners typically accepted
   the theory that protective tariffs on iron and textiles hurt them,
   though they bought very little iron and only the cheapest cloth for the
   slaves. They believed cotton was in such heavy demand that Britain and
   France had no choice but to buy expensive southern cotton. James M.
   McPherson suggests that what South Carolina nullifiers really feared
   was not so much high tariffs but centralization of Federal government
   power, which might eventually threaten slavery itself.

   Tariffs were low and did not protect northern industry before 1861. The
   Tariff of 1857 was the lowest since 1816 and a great victory for the
   South. However the Panic of 1857 energized the iron protectionists to
   fight back. The Morrill Tariff passed the House of Representatives on a
   strictly sectional vote on May 10, 1860. Pressures to pass the bill in
   the Senate quickly became a campaign issue for the Republican Party in
   the Northeast, while Southerners delayed voting on the tariff in the
   Senate until the following year. A heated battle of rhetoric from both
   sides compounded the tariff issue. Economist Henry C. Carey led the
   protectionist charge in Northern newspapers by blaming free trade for
   the economic recession and accompanying budget shortfalls. Southerners
   circulated copies of Thomas Prentiss Kettell's 1857 book Southern
   Wealth and Northern Profits, which argued that protective tariffs
   unduly burdened the slave states to the benefit of the north. The
   Morrill Tariff did not pass until after the deep South seceded—it was
   signed by President Buchanan (a Democrat) in March 1861 and took effect
   in April, the same month the fighting started. The tariff was rarely
   mentioned in the heated debates of 1860-61 over secession, although
   Robert Toombs of Georgia did denounce "the infamous Morrill bill" as
   where "the robber and the incendiary struck hands, and united in joint
   raid against the South." The tariff also appeared in two secession
   documents of the states. South Carolina's secession convention
   published a declaration by Robert Barnwell Rhett that listed as its
   reason for secession "the consolidation of the North to rule the South,
   by the tariff and Slavery issues." Georgia also published a declaration
   listing economic grievances such as the tariff , though it emphasized
   the future of slavery as the main cause.

   Alexander Stephens, for example, mentioned tariffs in his "Cornerstone
   Speech", but said the main cause was slavery. Stephens had been
   previously sympathetic to tariffs though, and had argued against
   Toombs's critique of the Morrill bill (as well as secession itself) a
   few months prior.

   The many compromises proposed to resolve the crisis in 1860-61 never
   included the tariff, but instead always focused on the slavery issue.
   Economic historian Lee A. Craig points out, "In fact, numerous studies
   by economic historians over the past several decades reveal that
   economic conflict was not an inherent condition of North-South
   relations during the antebellum era and did not cause the Civil War."

Free labor vs. pro-slavery arguments

   Historian Eric Foner (1970) has argued that a free-labor ideology
   dominated thinking in the North, which emphasized economic opportunity.
   By contrast, Southerners described free labor as "greasy mechanics,
   filthy operators, small-fisted farmers, and moonstruck theorists." They
   strongly opposed the homestead laws that were proposed to give free
   farms in the west, fearing the small farmers would oppose plantation
   slavery. Indeed, opposition to homestead laws was far more common in
   secessionist rhetoric than opposition to tariffs. They argued that only
   a slave-owning society allowed the leisure for education and cultural
   refinement. They depicted slavery as a positive good for the slaves
   themselves, especially the Christianizing that had rescued them from
   the paganism of Africa.

Southern fears of modernization

   In a broader sense, the North was rapidly modernizing in a manner
   deeply threatening to the South, for the North was not only becoming
   more economically powerful; it was developing new modernizing, urban
   values while the South was clinging more and more to the old rural
   traditional values of the Jeffersonian yeoman. As James McPherson
   argues:

          The ascension to power of the Republican Party, with its
          ideology of competitive, egalitarian free-labor capitalism, was
          a signal to the South that the Northern majority had turned
          irrevocably towards this frightening, revolutionary future.

Southern fears of Republican control

   Southern secession was triggered by the election of Republican Abraham
   Lincoln because regional leaders feared that he would make good on his
   promise to stop the expansion of slavery and would thus put it on a
   course toward extinction. Many Southerners thought that even if Lincoln
   did not abolish slavery, sooner or later another Northerner would do
   so, and that it was thus time to quit the Union. The slave states,
   which had already become a minority in the House of Representatives,
   were now facing a future as a perpetual minority in the Senate and
   Electoral College against an increasingly powerful North.

A house divided against itself

Secession winter

   Before Lincoln took office, seven states declared their secession from
   the Union, and established a Southern government, the Confederate
   States of America on February 9, 1861. They took control of federal
   forts and other properties within their boundaries, with little
   resistance from President Buchanan, whose term ended on March 3, 1861.
   Buchanan asserted, "The South has no right to secede, but I have no
   power to prevent them." One quarter of the U.S. Army—the entire
   garrison in Texas—was surrendered to state forces by its commanding
   general, David E. Twiggs, who then joined the Confederacy. By seceding,
   the rebel states would reduce the strength of their claim to the
   Western territories that were in dispute, cancel any obligation for the
   North to return fugitive slaves to the Confederacy, and assure easy
   passage in Congress of many bills and amendments they had long opposed.

The Confederacy

   Seven Deep South cotton states seceded by February 1861, starting with
   South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and
   Texas. These seven states formed the Confederate States of America (
   February 4, 1861), with Jefferson Davis as president, and a
   governmental structure closely modeled on the U.S. Constitution. In
   April and May 1861, four more slave states seceded and joined the
   Confederacy: Arkansas, Tennessee, North Carolina and Virginia. Virginia
   was split in two, with the eastern portion of that state seceding to
   the Confederacy and the northwestern part joining the Union as the new
   state of West Virginia on June 20, 1863.

The Union states

   There were 23 states that remained loyal to the Union during the war:
   California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas,
   Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota,
   Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oregon,
   Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Wisconsin. During the war,
   Nevada and West Virginia joined as new states of the Union. Tennessee
   and Louisiana were returned to Union control early in the war.

   The territories of Colorado, Dakota, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico,
   Utah, and Washington fought on the Union side. Several slave-holding
   Native American tribes supported the Confederacy, giving the Indian
   territory (now Oklahoma) a small bloody civil war.

Border states

   The Border states in the Union comprised West Virginia (which broke
   away from Virginia and became a separate state), and four of the five
   northernmost slave states ( Maryland, Delaware, Missouri, and
   Kentucky).

   Maryland had numerous pro-Confederate officials who tolerated
   anti-Union rioting in Baltimore and the burning of bridges. Lincoln
   responded with martial law and called for troops. Militia units that
   had been drilling in the North rushed toward Washington and Baltimore.
   Before the Confederate government realized what was happening, Lincoln
   had seized firm control of Maryland (and the separate District of
   Columbia), by arresting the entire Maryland statehouse and holding them
   without trial.

   In Missouri, an elected convention on secession voted decisively to
   remain within the Union. When pro-Confederate Governor Claiborne F.
   Jackson called out the state militia, it was attacked by federal forces
   under General Nathaniel Lyon, who chased the governor and the rest of
   the State Guard to the southwestern corner of the state. (See also:
   Missouri secession). In the resulting vacuum the convention on
   secession reconvened and took power as the Unionist provisional
   government of Missouri.

   Kentucky did not secede; for a time, it declared itself neutral.
   However, the Confederates broke the neutrality by seizing Columbus,
   Kentucky in September 1861. That turned opinion against the
   Confederacy, and the state reaffirmed its loyal status, while trying to
   maintain slavery. During a brief invasion by Confederate forces,
   Confederate sympathizers organized a secession convention, inaugurated
   a governor, and gained recognition from the Confederacy. The rebel
   government soon went into exile and never controlled the state.

   Counties in the northwestern portion of Virginia opposed secession and
   formed a pro-Union government shortly after Richmond's secession in
   1861. Unlike the remainder of Virginia, residents in this mountainous
   region were poor subsistence farmers. These counties were admitted to
   the Union in 1863 as West Virginia. Similar secessions appeared in East
   Tennessee, but were suppressed by the Confederacy. Jefferson Davis
   arrested over 3,000 men suspected of being loyal to the Union and held
   them without trial.

Overview

   A Roman Catholic Union army chaplain celebrating a Mass.
   Enlarge
   A Roman Catholic Union army chaplain celebrating a Mass.

   Some 10,000 military engagements took place during the war, 40% of them
   in Virginia and Tennessee. Separate articles deal with every major
   battle and some minor ones. This article only gives the broad outline.
   For more information see Battles of the American Civil War.

The war begins

   Lincoln's victory in the presidential election of 1860 triggered South
   Carolina's declaration of secession from the Union. By February 1861,
   six more Southern states made similar declarations. On February 7, the
   seven states adopted a provisional constitution for the Confederate
   States of America and established their temporary capital at
   Montgomery, Alabama. A pre-war February peace conference of 1861 met in
   Washington in a failed attempt at resolving the crisis. The remaining
   eight slave states rejected pleas to join the Confederacy. Confederate
   forces seized all but three Federal forts within their boundaries (they
   did not take Fort Sumter); President Buchanan protested but made no
   military response aside from a failed attempt to resupply Fort Sumter
   via the ship Star of the West, and no serious military preparations.
   However, governors in Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania began
   buying weapons and training militia units to ready them for immediate
   action.

   On March 4, 1861, Abraham Lincoln was sworn in as President. 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". He stated he had no intent to invade Southern states, nor did he
   intend to end slavery where it existed, but that he would use force to
   maintain possession of federal property. His speech closed with a plea
   for restoration of the bonds of union.

   The South sent delegations to Washington and offered to pay for the
   federal properties and enter into a peace treaty with the United
   States. Lincoln rejected any negotiations with Confederate agents on
   the grounds that the Confederacy was not a legitimate government, and
   that making any treaty with it would be tantamount to recognition of it
   as a sovereign government.

   Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina, was one of the three
   remaining Union-held forts in the Confederacy, and Lincoln was
   determined to hold it. Under orders from Confederate President
   Jefferson Davis, Confederates under General Pierre Gustave Toutant
   Beauregard bombarded the fort with artillery on April 12, forcing the
   fort's capitulation. Northerners reacted quickly to this attack on the
   flag, and rallied behind Lincoln, who called for all of the states to
   send troops to recapture the forts and to preserve the Union. With the
   scale of the rebellion apparently small so far, Lincoln called for
   74,000 volunteers for 90 days. For months before that, several Northern
   governors had discreetly readied their state militias ; they began to
   move forces the next day.

   Four states in the upper South (Tennessee, Arkansas, North Carolina,
   and Virginia) which had repeatedly rejected Confederate overtures, now
   refused to send forces against their neighbors, declared their
   secession, and joined the Confederacy. To reward Virginia, the
   Confederate capital was moved to Richmond. The city was the symbol of
   the Confederacy; if it fell, the new nation would lose legitimacy.
   Richmond was in a highly vulnerable location at the end of a tortuous
   supply line.

Anaconda Plan and blockade, 1861

   1861 cartoon of Scott's "Anaconda Plan"
   Enlarge
   1861 cartoon of Scott's " Anaconda Plan"

   Winfield Scott, the commanding general of the U.S. Army, devised the
   Anaconda Plan to win the war with as little bloodshed as possible. His
   idea was that a Union blockade of the main ports would strangle the
   rebel economy; then the capture of the Mississippi River would split
   the South. Lincoln adopted the plan, but overruled Scott's warnings
   against an immediate attack on Richmond.

   In May 1861, Lincoln proclaimed the Union blockade of all southern
   ports, which immediately shut down almost all international shipping to
   the Confederate ports. Violators risked seizure of the ship and cargo,
   and insurance probably would not cover the losses. Almost no large
   ships were owned by Confederate interests. By late 1861, the blockade
   shut down most local port-to-port traffic as well. Although few naval
   battles were fought and few men were killed, the blockade shut down
   King Cotton and ruined the southern economy. Some British investors
   built small, very fast "blockade runners" that brought in military
   supplies (and civilian luxuries) from Cuba and the Bahamas and took out
   some cotton and tobacco. When the U.S. Navy did capture blockade
   runners, the ships and cargo were sold and the proceeds given to the
   Union sailors. The British crews were released. The ironclad CSS
   Virginia’s maiden voyage sank the blockade ship USS Cumberland and
   burned the USS Congress on her "trial run." The second day, the Battle
   at Hampton Roads took place between the ironclads USS Monitor and the
   CSS Virginia in March 1862, ending in a tactical draw; it was a
   strategic Union victory, for the blockade was sustained. Other naval
   battles included Island No. 10, Memphis, Drewry's Bluff, Arkansas Post,
   and Mobile Bay. The Second Battle of Fort Fisher virtually ended
   blockade running.

Eastern Theatre 1861–1863

   Because of the fierce resistance of a few initial Confederate forces at
   Manassas, Virginia, in July 1861, a march by Union troops under the
   command of Maj. Gen. Irvin McDowell on the Confederate forces there was
   halted in the First Battle of Bull Run, or First Manassas, whereupon
   they were forced back to Washington, D.C., by Confederate troops under
   the command of Generals Joseph E. Johnston and P.G.T. Beauregard. It
   was in this battle that Confederate General Thomas Jackson received the
   nickname of "Stonewall" because he stood like a stone wall against
   Union troops. Alarmed at the loss, and in an attempt to prevent more
   slave states from leaving the Union, the U.S. Congress passed the
   Crittenden-Johnson Resolution on July 25 of that year, which stated
   that the war was being fought to preserve the Union and not to end
   slavery.

   Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan took command of the Union Army of the
   Potomac on July 26 (he was briefly general-in-chief of all the Union
   armies, but was subsequently relieved of that post in favour of Maj.
   Gen. Henry W. Halleck), and the war began in earnest in 1862.

   Upon the strong urging of President Lincoln to begin offensive
   operations, McClellan attacked Virginia in the spring of 1862 by way of
   the peninsula between the York River and James River, southeast of
   Richmond. Although McClellan's army reached the gates of Richmond in
   the Peninsula Campaign, Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston halted
   his advance at the Battle of Seven Pines, then General Robert E. Lee
   defeated him in the Seven Days Battles and forced his retreat.
   McClellan was stripped of many of his troops to reinforce General John
   Pope's Union Army of Virginia. Pope was beaten spectacularly by Lee in
   the Northern Virginia Campaign and the Second Battle of Bull Run in
   August.
   Confederate dead behind the stone wall of Marye's Heights,
   Fredericksburg, Virginia, killed during the Battle of Chancellorsville,
   May 1863.
   Enlarge
   Confederate dead behind the stone wall of Marye's Heights,
   Fredericksburg, Virginia, killed during the Battle of Chancellorsville,
   May 1863.

   Emboldened by Second Bull Run, the Confederacy made its first invasion
   of the North, when General Lee led 45,000 men of the Army of Northern
   Virginia across the Potomac River into Maryland on September 5. Lincoln
   then restored Pope's troops to McClellan. McClellan and Lee fought at
   the Battle of Antietam near Sharpsburg, Maryland, on September 17,
   1862, the bloodiest single day in United States military history. Lee's
   army, checked at last, returned to Virginia before McClellan could
   destroy it. Antietam is considered a Union victory because it halted
   Lee's invasion of the North and provided an opportunity for Lincoln to
   announce his Emancipation Proclamation.

   When the cautious McClellan failed to follow up on Antietam, he was
   replaced by Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside. Burnside was soon defeated at
   the Battle of Fredericksburg on December 13, 1862, when over twelve
   thousand Union soldiers were killed or wounded. After the battle,
   Burnside was replaced by Maj. Gen. Joseph "Fighting Joe" Hooker.
   Hooker, too, proved unable to defeat Lee's army; despite outnumbering
   the Confederates by more than two to one, he was humiliated in the
   Battle of Chancellorsville in May 1863. He was replaced by Maj. Gen.
   George Meade during Lee's second invasion of the North, in June. Meade
   defeated Lee at the Battle of Gettysburg ( July 1 to July 3, 1863), the
   bloodiest battle in United States history, which is sometimes
   considered the war's turning point. Pickett's Charge on July 3 is often
   recalled as the high-water mark of the Confederacy, not just because it
   signaled the end of Lee's plan to pressure Washington from the north,
   but also because Vicksburg, Mississippi, the key stronghold to control
   of the Mississippi fell the following day. Lee's army suffered some
   28,000 casualties (versus Meade's 23,000). However, Lincoln was angry
   that Meade failed to intercept Lee's retreat, and after Meade's
   inconclusive fall campaign, Lincoln decided to turn to the Western
   Theatre for new leadership.

Western Theatre 1861–1863

   While the Confederate forces had numerous successes in the Eastern
   theatre, they crucially failed in the West. They were driven from
   Missouri early in the war as a result of the Battle of Pea Ridge.
   Leonidas Polk's invasion of Kentucky enraged the citizens there who
   previously had declared neutrality in the war, turning that state
   against the Confederacy.

   Nashville, Tennessee, fell to the Union early in 1862. Most of the
   Mississippi was opened with the taking of Island No. 10 and New Madrid,
   Missouri, and then Memphis, Tennessee. The Union Navy captured New
   Orléans without a major fight in May 1862, allowing the Union forces to
   begin moving up the Mississippi as well. Only the fortress city of
   Vicksburg, Mississippi, prevented unchallenged Union control of the
   entire river.

   General Braxton Bragg's second Confederate invasion of Kentucky was
   repulsed by Maj. Gen. Don Carlos Buell at the confused and bloody
   Battle of Perryville, and he was narrowly defeated by Maj. Gen. William
   Rosecrans at the Battle of Stones River in Tennessee.

   The one clear Confederate victory in the West was the Battle of
   Chickamauga. Bragg, reinforced by Lt. Gen. James Longstreet's corps
   (from Lee's army in the east), defeated Rosecrans, despite the heroic
   defensive stand of Maj. Gen. George Henry Thomas. Rosecrans retreated
   to Chattanooga, which Bragg then besieged.

   The Union's key strategist and tactician in the West was Maj. Gen.
   Ulysses S. Grant, who won victories at Forts Henry and Donelson, by
   which the Union seized control of the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers;
   the Battle of Shiloh; the Battle of Vicksburg, cementing Union control
   of the Mississippi River and considered one of the turning points of
   the war. Grant marched to the relief of Rosecrans and defeated Bragg at
   the Third Battle of Chattanooga, driving Confederate forces out of
   Tennessee and opening a route to Atlanta and the heart of the
   Confederacy.

Trans-Mississippi Theatre 1861–1865

   Though geographically isolated from the battles to the east, a few
   small-scale military actions took place west of the Mississippi River.
   Confederate incursions into Arizona and New Mexico were repulsed in
   1862. Guerrilla activity turned much of Missouri and Indian Territory
   (Oklahoma) into a battleground. Late in the war, the Union Red River
   Campaign was a failure. Texas remained in Confederate hands throughout
   the war, but was cut off from the rest of the Confederacy after the
   capture of Vicksburg in 1863 gave the Union control of the Mississippi
   River.

End of the war 1864–1865

   Jefferson Davis, first and only President of the Confederate States of
   America
   Enlarge
   Jefferson Davis, first and only President of the Confederate States of
   America

   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 bring an end to the
   war. Grant devised a coordinated strategy that would strike at the
   heart of the Confederacy from multiple directions: Generals George
   Meade and Benjamin Butler were ordered to move against Lee near
   Richmond; General Franz Sigel (and later Philip Sheridan) were to
   attack the Shenandoah Valley; General Sherman was to capture Atlanta
   and march to the sea (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.

   Union forces in the East attempted to maneuver past Lee and fought
   several battles during that phase ("Grant's Overland Campaign") of the
   Eastern campaign. Grant's battles of attrition at the Wilderness,
   Spotsylvania, and Cold Harbour resulted in heavy Union losses, but
   forced Lee's Confederates to fall back again and again. An attempt to
   outflank Lee from the south failed under Butler, who was trapped inside
   the Bermuda Hundred river bend. Grant was tenacious and, despite
   astonishing losses (over 66,000 casualties in six weeks), kept pressing
   Lee's Army of Northern Virginia back to Richmond. He pinned down the
   Confederate army in the Siege of Petersburg, where the two armies
   engaged in trench warfare for over nine months.

   Grant finally found a commander, General Philip Sheridan, aggressive
   enough to prevail in the Valley Campaigns of 1864. Sheridan proved to
   be more than a match for Maj. Gen. Jubal A. Early, and defeated him in
   a series of battles, including a final decisive defeat at the Battle of
   Cedar Creek. Sheridan then proceeded to destroy the agricultural base
   of the Shenandoah Valley, a strategy similar to the tactics Sherman
   later employed in Georgia.

   Meanwhile, Sherman marched from Chattanooga to Atlanta, defeating
   Confederate Generals Joseph E. Johnston and John Bell Hood along the
   way. The fall of Atlanta, on September 2, 1864, was a significant
   factor in the reelection of Lincoln as president. Hood left the Atlanta
   area to menace Sherman's supply lines and invade Tennessee in the
   Franklin-Nashville Campaign. Union Maj. Gen. John M. Schofield defeated
   Hood at the Battle of Franklin, and George H. "Pap" Thomas dealt Hood a
   massive defeat at the Battle of Nashville, effectively destroying
   Hood's army.

   Leaving Atlanta, and his base of supplies, Sherman's army marched with
   an unknown destination, laying waste to about 20% of the farms in
   Georgia in his celebrated " March to the Sea". He reached the Atlantic
   Ocean at Savannah, Georgia in December 1864. Sherman's army was
   followed by thousands of freed slaves; there were no major battles
   along the March. When Sherman turned north through South Carolina and
   North Carolina to approach the Confederate Virginia lines from the
   south, it was the end for Lee and his men.

   Lee's army, thinned by desertion and casualties, was now much smaller
   than Grant's. Union forces won a decisive victory at the Battle of Five
   Forks on April 1, forcing Lee to evacuate Petersburg and Richmond. The
   Confederate capital fell to the Union XXV Corps, comprised of black
   troops. The remaining Confederate units fled west and after a defeat at
   Sayler's Creek, it became clear to Robert E. Lee that continued
   fighting against the United States was both tactically and logistically
   impossible.

   Lee surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia on April 9, 1865, at
   Appomattox Court House. In an untraditional gesture and as a sign of
   Grant's respect and anticipation of folding the Confederacy back into
   the Union with dignity and peace, Lee was permitted to keep his
   officer's saber and his near-legendary horse, Traveller. Johnston
   surrendered his troops to Sherman on April 26, 1865, in Durham, North
   Carolina. On June 23, 1865, at Fort Towson in the Choctaw Nations' area
   of the Oklahoma Territory, Stand Watie signed a cease-fire agreement
   with Union representatives, becoming the last Confederate general in
   the field to stand down. The last Confederate naval force to surrender
   was the CSS Shenandoah on November 4, 1865, in Liverpool, England.

Slavery during the war

   Lincoln initially declared his official purpose to be the preservation
   of the Union, not emancipation. He had no wish to alienate the
   thousands of slaveholders in the Union border states.

   The issue of what to do with Southern slaves, however, would not go
   away: As early as May 1861, some slaves working on Confederate
   fortifications escaped to the Union lines, and their owner, a
   Confederate colonel, demanded their return under the Fugitive Slave
   Act. The response was to declare them "contraband of war"—effectively
   freeing them. Congress eventually approved this for slaves used by the
   Confederate military.

   By 1862, when it became clear that this would be a long war, the
   question became more general. The Southern economy and military effort
   depended on slave labor; was it reasonable to protect slavery while
   blockading Southern commerce and destroying Southern production? As one
   Congressman put it, the slaves "…cannot be neutral. As laborers, if not
   as soldiers, they will be allies of the rebels, or of the Union."

   There was a range of positions on the final settlement of slavery; the
   same Congressman—and his fellow radicals—felt the victory would be
   profitless if the Slave Power continued. Conservative Republicans still
   hoped that the states could end slavery and send the freedmen abroad.
   Lincoln, and many others, agreed with both the aversion to slavery and
   to colonization; but all factions came rapidly to agree that the slaves
   of Confederates must be freed.

   At first, Lincoln reversed attempts at emancipation by Secretary of War
   Cameron and Generals Fremont and Hunter in order to keep the loyalty of
   the border states and the War Democrats. Lincoln then tried to persuade
   the border states to accept his plan of gradual, compensated
   emancipation and voluntary colonization, while warning them that
   stronger measures would be needed if the moderate approach was
   rejected. Only the District of Columbia accepted Lincoln's gradual
   plan, and Lincoln issued his final Emancipation Proclamation on January
   1 of 1863. In his letter to 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."

   The Emancipation Proclamation, announced in September 1862 and put into
   effect four months later, ended the Confederacy's hope of getting aid
   from Britain or France. Lincoln's moderate approach succeeded in
   getting border states, War Democrats and emancipated slaves fighting on
   the same side for the Union.

   The Union-controlled border states (Kentucky, Missouri, Maryland,
   Delaware and West Virginia) were not covered by the Emancipation
   Proclamation. All abolished slavery on their own, except Kentucky. The
   great majority of the 4 million slaves were freed by the Emancipation
   Proclamation, as Union armies moved South. The 13th amendment, ratified
   December 6, 1865, finally freed the remaining 40,000 slaves in
   Kentucky, as well as 1,000 or so in Delaware.

Threat of international intervention

   The best chance for Confederate victory was entry into the war by
   Britain and France. The Union, under Lincoln and Secretary of State
   William Henry Seward worked to block this, and threatened war if any
   country officially recognized the existence of the Confederate States
   of America. (None ever did.) In 1861, Southerners voluntarily embargoed
   cotton shipments, hoping to start an economic depression in Europe that
   would force Britain to enter the war in order to get cotton. 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. It was said that "King Corn was more powerful than
   King Cotton", as US grain went from a quarter of the British import
   trade to almost half.

   When the UK did face a cotton shortage, it was temporary; being
   replaced by increased cultivation in Egypt and India. The war created
   employment for arms makers, iron workers, and British ships to
   transport weapons.

   Lincoln's announcement of a naval blockade of the Confederacy, a clear
   act of war, enabled Britain—followed by other European powers—to
   announce their neutrality in the dispute. This in turn enabled the
   Confederacy to begin to attempt to gain support and funds in Europe.
   President Jefferson Davis replaced his first two secretaries of state (
   Robert Toombs and Robert M. T. Hunter) with Judah P. Benjamin in early
   1862. Although Benjamin had more international knowledge and legal
   experience, he failed to create a dynamic foreign policy for the
   Confederacy.

   The first attempts to achieve European recognition of the Confederacy
   were dispatched on February 25, 1861, and led by William Lowndes
   Yancey, Pierre A. Rost, and Ambrose Dudley Mann. The British foreign
   minister Lord John Russell met with them, and the French foreign
   minister Edouard Thouvenel received the group unofficially. Neither
   Britain nor France ever promised formal recognition, for that meant war
   with the Union.

   Charles Francis Adams proved particularly adept as minister to Britain
   for the Union, and Britain was reluctant to boldly challenge the
   Union's blockade. Independent British maritime interests spent hundreds
   of millions of pounds to build and operate highly profitable blockade
   runners — commercial ships flying the British flag and carrying
   supplies to the Confederacy by slipping through the blockade. The
   officers and crews were British and when captured they were released.
   The Confederacy purchased several warships from commercial ship
   builders in Britain; the most famous, the CSS Alabama, did considerable
   damage and led to serious postwar disputes. The Confederacy sent
   journalists Henry Hotze and Edwin De Leon to open propaganda stations
   to feed news media in Paris and London. However, public opinion against
   slavery created a political liability for European politicians,
   especially in Britain. War loomed in late 1861 between the U.S. and
   Britain over the Trent Affair, involving the Union boarding of a
   British mail steamer to seize two Confederate diplomats. However,
   London and Washington were able to smooth over the problem after
   Lincoln released the two diplomats.

   In 1862, the British considered mediation—though even such an offer
   would have risked war with the U.S. Lord Palmerston read Uncle Tom’s
   Cabin three times when deciding on this. The Union victory in the
   Battle of Antietam caused them to delay this decision. The Emancipation
   Proclamation further reinforced the political liability of supporting
   the Confederacy. As the war continued, the Confederacy's chances with
   Britain grew hopeless, and they focused increasingly on France.
   Napoléon III proposed to offer mediation in January 1863, but this was
   dismissed by Seward. Despite some sympathy for the Confederacy,
   France's own seizure of Mexico ultimately deterred them 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.

Analysis of the Outcome

   Could the South have won? A significant number of scholars believe that
   the Union held an insurmountable advantage over the Confederacy in
   terms of industrial strength, population, and the determination to win.
   Confederate actions, they argue, could only delay defeat. Southern
   historian Shelby Foote expressed this view succinctly in Ken Burns's
   television series on the Civil War: "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." After Lincoln defeated McClellan in the
   election of 1864, the threat of a political victory for the South was
   ended. At this point, Lincoln had succeeded in getting the support of
   the border states, War Democrats, Republicans, emancipated slaves and
   Britain and France. By defeating the Democrats and McClellan, he also
   defeated the Copperheads and their secessionist party platform. And he
   found military leaders like Grant and Sherman that were a match for
   Lee. From the end of 1864 on, there was no hope for the South.

   The goals were not symmetric. To win independence, the South had to
   convince the North it could not win, but did not have to invade the
   North. To restore the Union, the North had to conquer vast stretches of
   territory. In the short run (a matter of months), the two sides were
   evenly matched. But in the long run (a matter of years), the North had
   advantages that increasingly came into play, while it prevented the
   South from gaining diplomatic recognition in Europe.

Long-term economic factors

   Both sides had long-term advantages but the Union had more. To win the
   Union had to use its long-term resources to accomplish multiple goals,
   including control of the entire coastline, control of most of the
   population centers, control of the main rivers (especially the
   Mississippi and Tennessee), defeat of all the main Confederate armies,
   and finally seizure of Richmond. As the occupying force they had to
   station hundreds of thousands of soldiers to control railroads, supply
   lines, and major towns and cities. The long-term advantages widely
   credited by historians to have contributed to the Union's success
   include:
   USA economic advantages; graph shows USA value with CSA = 100
   Enlarge
   USA economic advantages; graph shows USA value with CSA = 100
     * The more industrialized economy of the North aided in the
       production of arms, munitions and supplies, as well as finances,
       and transportation. The graph shows the relative advantage of the
       USA over the Confederate States of America (CSA) at the start of
       the war. The advantages widened rapidly during the war, as the
       Northern economy grew, and Confederate territory shrank and its
       economy weakened.
     * The Union population was 22 million and the South 9 million in
       1861; the Southern population included more than 3.5 million slaves
       thus leaving the South's white population outnumbered by a ratio of
       more than four to one. The disparity grew as the Union controlled
       more and more southern territory with garrisons, and cut off the
       trans-Mississippi part of the Confederacy.
     * The Union at the start controlled over 80% of the shipyards,
       steamships, river boats, and the Navy. It augmented these by a
       massive shipbuilding program. This enabled the Union to control the
       river systems and to blockade the entire southern coastline.
     * Excellent railroad links between Union cities allowed for the quick
       and cheap movement of troops and supplies. Transportation was much
       slower and more difficult in the South which was unable to augment
       its much smaller rail system, repair damage, or even perform
       routine maintenance.

Political and diplomatic factors

     * The Union's more established government, particularly a mature
       executive branch which accumulated even greater power during
       wartime, gave a more streamlined conduct of the war, with minimal
       bickering between Lincoln and the governors. The failure of Davis
       to maintain positive and productive relationships with state
       governors damaged his ability to draw on regional resources.
     * A strong party system enabled the Republicans to mobilize soldiers
       and support at the grass roots, even when the war became unpopular.
       The Confederacy deliberately did not use parties.
     * The failure to win diplomatic or military support from any foreign
       powers cut the Confederacy from access to markets and to most
       imports. Its " King Cotton" misperception of the world economy led
       to bad diplomacy, such as the refusal to ship cotton before the
       blockade started.

Military factors

     * Strategically, the location of the capital Richmond tied Lee to a
       highly exposed position at the end of supply lines. Loss of its
       national capital was unthinkable for the Confederacy, for it would
       lose legitimacy as an independent nation. Washington was equally
       vulnerable, but if it had been captured, the Union would not have
       collapsed.
     * The Confederacy's tactic of invading the North (Antietam 1862,
       Gettysburg 1863, Nashville 1864) drained manpower strength, when it
       could not replace its losses.
     * The Union devoted much more of its resources to medical needs,
       thereby overcoming the unhealthy disease environment that sickened
       (and killed) more soldiers than combat did.
     * Despite the Union's many tactical blunders (like the Seven Days
       Battles), those committed by Confederate generals (such as Lee's
       miscalculations at the Battles of Gettysburg and Antietam) were far
       more serious—if for no other reason than that the Confederates
       could so little afford the losses.
     * Lincoln proved more adept than Davis in replacing unsuccessful
       generals with better ones.
     * Lincoln grew as a grand strategist, in contrast to Davis. The
       Confederacy never developed an overall strategy. It never had a
       plan to deal with the blockade. Davis failed to respond in a
       coordinated fashion to serious threats (such as Grant's campaign
       against Vicksburg in 1863; in the face of which, he allowed Lee to
       invade Pennsylvania).
     * 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. They fought in several key
       battles in the last two years of the war.
     * Finally, the Confederacy may have lacked the total commitment
       needed to win the war. Lincoln and his team never wavered in their
       commitment to victory.

Civil War leaders and soldiers

   Most of the important generals on both sides had formerly served in the
   United States Army—some, including Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee,
   during the Mexican-American War between 1846 and 1848. Most were
   graduates of the United States Military Academy at West Point.

   The senior Southern military commanders and strategists included
   Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, Joseph E. Johnston, Thomas Jonathan
   "Stonewall" Jackson, James Longstreet, Pierre Gustave Toutant
   Beauregard, John Singleton Mosby, Braxton Bragg, John Bell Hood, James
   Ewell Brown "J.E.B." Stuart, and Jubal Early.

   The senior Northern military commanders and strategists included
   Abraham Lincoln, Edwin M. Stanton, Winfield Scott, George B. McClellan,
   Henry W. Halleck, Joseph Hooker, Ambrose Burnside, Ulysses S. Grant,
   William Tecumseh Sherman, George Henry Thomas, Winfield Scott Hancock,
   and George Gordon Meade.

   After 1980, scholarly attention turned to ordinary soldiers, women, and
   African Americans involved with the War. As James McPherson observed
   "The profound irony of the Civil War was that Confederate and Union
   soldiers… interpreted the heritage of 1776 in opposite ways.
   Confederates fought for liberty and independence from what they
   regarded as a tyrannical government; Unionists fought to preserve the
   nation created by the founders from dismemberment and destruction."

Nature of the war

   The traditional definition of a Civil War is a war in which two
   governments fight for control over the same state. The Government of
   Abraham Lincoln viewed the conflict as a Civil War, with both sides
   fighting to govern the South. The other side, the Government of
   Jefferson Davis, viewed it as a war in which one sovereign nation (the
   United States) invaded another (the Confederate States).

Aftermath

   The fighting ended with the surrender of the conventional Confederate
   forces. There was no significant guerrilla warfare. Many senior
   Confederate leaders escaped to Europe, to Mexico, or even to Brazil;
   Davis was captured and imprisoned for two years, but never brought to
   trial. Indeed, there were no treason trials for anyone.

Reconstruction

   Northern leaders agreed that victory would require more than the end of
   fighting. It had to encompass the two war goals: Southern nationalism
   had to be totally repudiated, and all forms of slavery had to be
   eliminated. They disagreed sharply on the criteria for these goals.
   They also disagreed on the degree of federal control that should be
   imposed on the South, and the process by which Southern states should
   be reintegrated into the Union.

   Reconstruction, which began early in the war and ended in 1877,
   involved a complex and rapidly changing series of federal and state
   policies. The long-term result came in the three "Civil War" amendments
   to the Constitution (the XIII, which abolished slavery, the XIV, which
   extended federal legal protections to citizens regardless of race, and
   the XV, which abolished racial restrictions on voting). Reconstruction
   ended in the different states at different times, the last three by the
   Compromise of 1877. For details on why the Fourteenth Amendment and
   Fifteenth Amendment were largely ineffective until the American Civil
   Rights movement, see Jim Crow laws, Ku Klux Klan, Plessy v. Ferguson,
   United States v. Cruikshank, Civil Rights Cases and Reconstruction.

Memories of the war

   The war had a lasting impact on United States culture. Lincoln and Lee
   became iconic heroes. Every town and city built memorials to its heroic
   soldiers, battlefields became sacred places, and stories of the war
   became part of national folklore. By the 1890s, the veterans of the
   North and South had reconciled and were holding joint reunions. The
   South's strong support for the war against Spain in 1898 convinced the
   remaining doubters that the South was patriotic.
   The Peace Monument at Lookout Mountain, Tennessee depicts a Union and
   Confederate soldier shaking hands.
   Enlarge
   The Peace Monument at Lookout Mountain, Tennessee depicts a Union and
   Confederate soldier shaking hands.

   However, for decades after the war, some Republican politicians "waved
   the bloody shirt," bringing up wartime casualties as an electoral
   tactic. Memories of the war and Reconstruction held the segregated
   South together as a Democratic block—the " Solid South"—in national
   politics for another century. A few debates surrounding the legacy of
   the war continue into the 21st century, especially regarding memorials
   and celebrations of Confederate heroes and battle flags.

Cinema and television

Films about the war

     * The Birth of a Nation (1915)
     * Gone With the Wind (1939)
     * Friendly Persuasion (1956)
     * The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)
     * The Blue and the Gray (1982)
     * Glory (1989)
     * Gettysburg (1993)
     * Ride with the Devil (1999)
     * Gods and Generals (2003)
     * Cold Mountain (2003)

Documentaries about the war

     * The Civil War, directed by Ken Burns
     * The Great Battles of the Civil War, directed by Jay Wertz

     * "Wynn Ward's The Civil War : Missouri" , featuring Civil War expert
       Wynn Ward, produced by Tom Pieper and J. L. Palermo

   American Civil War – Navigate through History:
   Issues & Combatants

   Prelude: Origins • Timeline • Antebellum • Bleeding Kansas • Secession
   • Border states • Anaconda Plan
   Slavery: African-Americans • Emancipation Proclamation • Fugitive slave
   laws • Slavery • Slave power • Uncle Tom's Cabin
   Abolition: Abolitionism • John Brown • Frederick Douglass • Harriet
   Tubman • Underground Railroad
   Combatants: Union (USA) • Union Army • Union Navy • Confederacy (CSA) •
   Confederate States Army • Confederate States Navy
   Theaters & Campaigns

   Theaters: Union naval blockade • Eastern • Western • Lower Seaboard •
   Trans-Mississippi • Pacific Coast
   1862: New Mexico • Jackson's Valley • Peninsula • Northern Virginia •
   Maryland • Stones River
   1863: Vicksburg • Tullahoma • Gettysburg • Morgan's Raid • Chickamauga
   • Bristoe
   1864: Red River • Overland • Atlanta • Valley 1864 • Bermuda Hundred •
   Richmond-Petersburg • Franklin-Nashville • Price's Raid • Sherman's
   March
   1865: Carolinas • Appomattox
   Major Battles

   List by state • List by date • Naval battles • Antietam • Atlanta • 1st
   Bull Run • 2nd Bull Run • Chancellorsville • Chattanooga • Chickamauga
   • Cold Harbour • Five Forks • Fort Donelson • Fort Sumter • Franklin •
   Fredericksburg • Gettysburg • Hampton Roads • Mobile Bay • New Orleans
   • Nashville • Pea Ridge • Perryville • Petersburg • Pickett's Charge •
   Seven Days • Seven Pines • Shiloh • Spotsylvania • Stones River •
   Vicksburg • Wilderness • Wilson's Creek
   Key CSA
   Leaders

   Military: Anderson • Beauregard • Bragg • Cooper • Early • Ewell •
   Forrest • Gorgas • A.P. Hill • Hood • Jackson • A.S. Johnston • J.E.
   Johnston • Lee • Longstreet • Morgan • Mosby • Price • Quantrill •
   Semmes • E. K. Smith • Stuart • Taylor • Wheeler
   Civilian: Benjamin • Davis • Mallory • Seddon • Stephens
   Key USA
   Leaders

   Military: Anderson • Buell • Butler • Burnside • du Pont • Farragut •
   Foote • Grant • Halleck • Hooker • Hunt • McClellan • McDowell • Meade
   • Meigs • Pope • Porter • Rosecrans • Scott • Sheridan • Sherman •
   Thomas
   Civilian: Adams • Chase • Ericsson • Lincoln • Pinkerton • Seward •
   Stanton • Stevens • Wade • Welles
   Aftermath

   13th Amendment • 14th Amendment • 15th Amendment • Alabama Claims •
   Carpetbaggers • Freedmen's Bureau • Jim Crow laws • Ku Klux Klan •
   Reconstruction • Redeemers
   Other Topics

   ACW Topics • Draft Riots • Naming the War • Photography • Rail
   Transport • Supreme Court Cases • Turning points
   State involvement: AL • AZ • CA • CO • CT • DC • DE • FL • GA • ID • IL
   • IN • IA • KY • LA • ME • MD • MA • MI • MN • MS • MO • NH • NJ • NM •
   NY • NC • OH • OK • OR • PA • RI • SC • TN • TX • VA • VT • WV • WI
   Military: Balloons • Bushwhacker • Cavalry • Field Artillery • Military
   Leadership • Official Records • Signal Corps
   Politics: Copperheads • Committee on the Conduct • Political General •
   Radical Republicans • Trent Affair • War Democrats
   Prisons: Andersonville • Camp Chase • Camp Douglas • Fort Delaware •
   Johnson's Island • Libby Prison
   Categories

   American Civil War • American Civil War people • Battles • Union Army
   generals • Union armies • Union Army corps • Confederate States of
   America (CSA) • Confederate Army generals • Confederate armies •
   National Battlefields • Veterans' Organizations
   InterWiki

   American Civil War from Wiktionary • ACW Textbooks from Wikibooks • ACW
   Quotations from Wikiquote

   ACW Source texts from Wikisource • ACW Images and media from Commons •
   ACW News stories from Wikinews

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