01. Introduction to the Civil War Print Email Civil War, American, a military conflict between the United States of America (the Union) and the Confederate States of America (the Confederacy) from 1861 to 1865.
The American Civil War is sometimes called the War Between the States, the War of Rebellion, or the War for Southern Independence. It began on April 12, 1861, when Confederate General P. G. T. Beauregard opened fire on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina, and lasted until May 26, 1865, when the last Confederate army surrendered. The war took more than 600,000 lives, destroyed property valued at $5 billion, brought freedom to 4 million black slaves, and opened wounds that have not yet completely healed more than 125 years later.
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02. Causes of the Civil War Print Email The chief and immediate cause of the war was slavery. Southern states, including the 11 states that formed the Confederacy, depended on slavery to support their economy. Southerners used slave labor to produce crops, especially cotton. Although slavery was illegal in the Northern states, only a small proportion of Northerners actively opposed it. The main debate between the North and the South on the eve of the war was whether slavery should be permitted in the Western territories recently acquired during the Mexican War (1846-1848), including New Mexico, part of California, and Utah. Opponents of slavery were concerned about its expansion, in part because they did not want to compete against slave labor.
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03. The Fight Over Slavery Print Email Up to 1860 only a few extremists in the South, called fire-eaters, wanted to apply the doctrine of secession to create a separate Southern country. Moderates of both North and South kept hoping to compromise their differences over slavery, tariffs, and the territories in the forum of the Congress of the United States. Compromise was possible as long as neither side controlled the Senate.
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04. Civil War Begins Print Email As the Southern states seceded, they seized and occupied most of the federal forts within their borders or off their shores. Only four remained in the hands of the Union. Fort Sumter stood guard in the mouth of the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina. The other three forts were in Florida: Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas, Fort Pickens in Pensacola Bay, and Fort Taylor at Key West. Of the four, Sumter was the most important.
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05. Civil War, 1861 Print Email Both sides prepared for what would become a much longer war than either at first imagined. Hundreds of thousands of volunteers poured into the armies, and the respective economies tried to adjust to meet the demands of supplying huge military forces. On the battlefield, the Confederates won victories in Virginia at the First Battle of Bull Run in mid- July, and in Missouri at Wilson's Creek in August. Despite these setbacks, the Union army and navy took steps to begin operations along the upper Mississippi River and along the southern Atlantic coast. The goal was to implement Winfield Scott's Anaconda Plan to seize control of the Mississippi River and institute a naval blockade of the Confederacy. Away from the military sphere, the Trent Affair presented the Lincoln administration with a major diplomatic crisis that threatened to involve Britain in the American war.
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06. Civil War, 1862 Print Email Furious military action flared in both the eastern and western theaters. In the West, Union victories at forts Henry and Donelson in February and at Shiloh in April gave the Union control of the heartland of Tennessee. The Battle of Pea Ridge in March frustrated a Confederate effort to gain a hold in Missouri, and the capture of New Orleans in late April cost the Confederacy its largest city and busiest port. Confederates responded with an invasion of Kentucky in late summer and fall, which ended in failure at the Battle of Perryville in October. Heavy fighting for the year ended with the inconclusive battle of Stones River or Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and unsuccessful opening movements in the Union campaign to capture Vicksburg, Mississippi. In the East, a Confederate victory at the Seven Days Battle in late June and early July turned back a major threat to Richmond, followed by another Southern triumph at Second Bull Run in late August, and the Union's strategic success at Antietam in mid-September, which ended Robert E. Lee's first invasion of the North. The year closed in Virginia with a costly Union setback at Fredericksburg in mid-December. The year also saw the Confederacy enact the first national conscription act in American history, and the North place emancipation alongside unification as a second great war aim.
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07. Civil War, 1863 Print Email The year opened poorly for the Northern military. In the West, their efforts to capture Vicksburg during the winter and spring were continually frustrated. In the East, the Union forces were defeated at Chancellorsville in early May. The North rebounded in June and July with a trio of successes: the Tullahoma campaign, which cleared major Confederate forces from Tennessee; the capture of Vicksburg, which together with the fall of Port Hudson, Louisiana, gave the North control of the Mississippi River; and the Battle of Gettysburg, where Lee's last movement across the Potomac River ended in bloody repulse. Another success at Chattanooga in late November closed a most auspicous year of campaigning for the North. The Union also adopted a national conscription act in 1863, prompting wide opposition and considerable violence. The Emancipation Proclamation went into effect on January 1, and soon thereafter the North began recruiting black soldiers on a large scale. Shortages of food and material goods became quite severe in the Confederacy, which experienced bread riots at several locations.
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08. Civil War, 1864 Print Email The year 1864 began optimistically for the North, which expected Grant, its new general- in-chief, to bring victory. However, the bloody Overland Campaign in Virginia during May and June, which featured clashes at the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, and Cold Harbor, depressed Northern morale, as did the failure of General Sherman to capture Atlanta. A swift strike through the Shenandoah Valley brought a small Confederate army to the outskirts of Washington in early July, which further alarmed the North. By August, Northern morale had reached its lowest point of the war, and there were expectations that Lincoln would be defeated in his bid for reelection in November. As Grant and Lee settled into a siege along the Petersburg-Richmond lines, Union victories at Mobile Bay in late August, at Atlanta in early September, and in the Shenandoah Valley in September and October raised Northern morale and ensured Lincoln's reelection. Lincoln's political triumph in turn guaranteed that the North would continue to prosecute the war vigorously. The year ended with Union victories at Franklin and Nashville, Tennessee, in November and December, and Sherman's destructive march across the interior of Georgia. Hopes for Confederate success had virtually ended, the Northern blockade was tightening, and civilian and military morale in the South sagged badly.
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09. Civil War, 1865 Print Email The Union moved toward victory during the first four months of 1865. In mid-January, the capture of Fort Fisher, which guarded Wilmington, North Carolina, closed the final significant Confederate port. On the political front, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery on January 31, and a last-ditch effort at negotiating an end to the war failed at the Hampton Roads conference in early February. In February and March, the siege of Petersburg and Richmond continued, while Sherman's army worked its way northward through South Carolina and into North Carolina. Union success at the Battle of Five Forks on April 1 signaled the end of the long defense of Richmond, after which Lee's army retreated westward until forced to surrender at Appomattox Court House on April 9. With Lee's surrender, the war was clearly drawing to a close. However, Northern celebrations were quickly silenced when Lincoln was shot on April 14 and died the next day. Large-scale Union raids into Alabama and Northern successes elsewhere further weakened an already reeling Confederacy, and in late April Sherman accepted surrender of the South's last major field army at Durham Station, North Carolina.
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10. The War Ends Print Email President Lincoln lived to learn of Lee's surrender and to rejoice that the war was almost at an end. A few days later, on April 14, he was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth, a crazed actor and defender of the Confederacy. The North, overwhelmed with grief, was not disposed to be generous to the conquered Confederacy.
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11. Assessment of the Civil War Print Email Looking backward, anyone must marvel at the fact that the war lasted four years. All the advantages seemed to favor the North. In 1860 the 22 states that would remain in the Union (three more would come in before 1865) had a combined population of 22 million. The 11 states that made up the Confederacy could count only 9 million inhabitants, including almost 4 million black slaves. Most of the factories capable of producing war materials were located in the North, and the section was well equipped with railroads. It had a merchant marine and could maintain worldwide commerce. The South, on the other hand, was a region of farms. Although these farms produced products that Europe wanted, particularly cotton, the South had few ships, and its principal ports were soon closed.
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Naming the American Civil War Print Email The American Civil War has been known by numerous alternative names that reflect the historical, political, and cultural sensitivities of different groups and regions. Unlike some other civil wars, the conflict was not fought over control of a single government, but rather was fought to defeat or defend a secession movement. The combatants, armies, and battles of the war also had distinctive names used at the time and historically.
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