The
American Civil War (1861–1865), also known as the
War Between the States and several other names, was a civil war in the United States of America
. Eleven
Southern slave
states declared their
secession from
the United States and formed the
Confederate States of America
(the Confederacy). Led by
Jefferson
Davis, they fought against the United States (the
Union), which was supported by
all the
free states and
the five
border slave
states. Union states were loosely referred to as "the
North".
In the
presidential election
of 1860, the
Republican Party, led by
Abraham Lincoln, had campaigned
against the expansion of
slavery beyond the
states in which it already existed. The Republican victory in that
election resulted in seven Southern states declaring their
secession from the Union even
before Lincoln took office on March 4, 1861. Both the outgoing and
incoming US administrations rejected the legality of secession,
considering it
rebellion.
Hostilities began on April 12, 1861, when
Confederate forces attacked a US
military installation at Fort Sumter
in South
Carolina
.
Lincoln responded by calling for a volunteer army from each state,
leading to declarations of secession by four more Southern slave
states. Both sides raised armies as the Union assumed control of
the border states early in the war and established a
naval blockade. In September 1862, Lincoln's
Emancipation Proclamation
made ending slavery in the South a war goal, and dissuaded the
British from intervening. Confederate commander
Robert E. Lee won battles
in the east, but in 1863 his northward advance was turned back
after the Battle of
Gettysburg
and, in the west, the Union gained control of the
Mississippi River at the Battle of
Vicksburg
, thereby splitting the Confederacy.
Long-term Union advantages in men and material were realized in
1864 when
Ulysses S. Grant fought battles of attrition against Lee, while
Union general William
Sherman captured Atlanta
, Georgia
, and marched
to the sea. Confederate resistance collapsed after Lee
surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Court House
on April 9, 1865.
The American Civil War was the deadliest war in
American history, resulting in
the deaths of 620,000 soldiers and an undetermined number of
civilian casualties. It legally abolished
slavery in the United States,
restored the Union and strengthened the role of the
federal government. The social,
political, economic and racial
issues of the war
decisively shaped the
reconstruction era that
lasted to 1877, and brought changes that helped make the
country a united
superpower.
Causes of secession
The coexistence of a slave-owning South with an increasingly
anti-slavery North made conflict likely, if not inevitable.
Abraham Lincoln did not propose
federal laws against slavery where it already existed, but he had,
in his 1858
House Divided
Speech, expressed a desire to "arrest the further spread of it,
and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it
is in the course of ultimate extinction." Much of the political
battle in the 1850s focused on the expansion of slavery into the
newly created territories. All of the organized territories were
likely to become free-soil states, which increased the Southern
movement toward secession. Both North and South assumed that if
slavery could not expand it would wither and die.
Southern fears of losing control of the federal government to
antislavery forces, and Northern resentment of the influence that
the
Slave Power already wielded in
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 versus 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, the
Constitutional
Union in 1860). In 1860, the last remaining national political
party, the
Democratic
Party, split along sectional lines.
Both North and South were influenced by the ideas of
Thomas Jefferson. Southerners used the
states' rights ideas mentioned in
Jefferson's
Kentucky
Resolutions to defend slavery. Northerners ranging from the
abolitionist
William Lloyd
Garrison to the moderate Republican leader Lincoln emphasized
Jefferson's declaration that
all men are created equal. Lincoln
mentioned this proposition in his
Gettysburg Address.
Confederate Vice President
Alexander
Stephens said that slavery was the chief cause of secession in
his
Cornerstone Speech shortly before the war.
After Confederate defeat, Stephens became one of the most ardent
defenders of the
Lost
Cause. There was a striking contrast between Stephens' post-war
states' rights assertion that slavery did
not cause
secession and his pre-war
Cornerstone Speech. Confederate
President
Jefferson Davis also
switched from saying the war was caused by slavery to saying that
states' rights was the cause. While Southerners often used states'
rights arguments to defend slavery, sometimes roles were reversed,
as when Southerners demanded national laws to defend their
interests with the
Gag Rule and the
Fugitive
Slave Law of 1850. On these issues, it was Northerners who
wanted to defend the rights of their states.
Almost all the inter-regional crises involved slavery, starting
with debates on the
three-fifths
clause and a twenty year extension of the
African slave trade in the
Constitutional Convention of 1787. The 1793 invention of the
cotton gin by
Eli
Whitney increased by fiftyfold the quantity of cotton that
could be processed in a day and greatly increased the demand for
slave labor in the South.
There was controversy over adding the slave
state of Missouri
to the Union
that led to the Missouri
Compromise of 1820, the Nullification Crisis over the Tariff of 1828 (although the tariff was low
after 1846, and even the tariff issue was related to slavery), the
gag rule that prevented discussion in Congress of petitions for
ending slavery from 1835–1844, the acquisition of Texas
as a
slave state in 1845 and Manifest Destiny as an argument for gaining
new territories where slavery would become an issue after the
Mexican–American War
(1846–1848), which resulted in the Compromise of 1850. The Wilmot Proviso was an attempt by Northern
politicians to exclude slavery from the territories conquered from
Mexico
. The extremely popular antislavery novel
Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852)
by
Harriet Beecher Stowe
greatly increased Northern opposition to the Fugitive Slave Law of
1850.
The 1854
Ostend Manifesto was an
unsuccessful Southern attempt to annex Cuba
as a slave
state. The
Second Party
System broke down after passage of the
Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854, which
replaced the Missouri Compromise ban on slavery with
popular sovereignty, allowing the people
of a territory to vote for or against slavery. The
Bleeding Kansas controversy over the status
of slavery in the
Kansas Territory
included massive vote fraud perpetrated by Missouri pro-slavery
Border Ruffians. Vote fraud led
pro-South Presidents
Franklin Pierce
and
James Buchanan to make attempts
(including support for the pro-slavery
Lecompton Constitution) to admit
Kansas as a slave state. Violence over the status of slavery in
Kansas erupted with the
Wakarusa War,
the
Sacking of Lawrence, the
caning of Republican
Charles Sumner by the Southerner Preston Brooks, the
Pottawatomie Massacre, the
Battle of Black Jack, the
Battle of Osawatomie and the
Marais des Cygnes massacre. The
1857 Supreme Court
Dred Scott
decision allowed slavery in the territories even where the
majority opposed slavery, including Kansas. The
Lincoln-Douglas debates of
1858 included Northern Democratic leader
Stephen A. Douglas'
Freeport Doctrine. This doctrine was an
argument for thwarting the Dred Scott decision which, along with
Douglas' defeat of the Lecompton Constitution, divided the
Democratic Party between North and South. Northern abolitionist
John Brown's raid at
Harpers Ferry Armory was an
attempt to incite
slave
insurrections in 1859. The North-South split in the
Democratic
Party in 1860 due to the Southern demand for a slave code for
the territories completed polarization of the nation between North
and South.
Other factors include sectionalism, which was caused by the
prosperity and growth of slavery in the cotton South while slavery
was phased out of Northern states and steadily declined in the
Border states that lacked cotton. Historians have debated whether
economic differences between the industrial Northeast and the
agricultural South helped cause the war; most historians now
disagree with the economic determinism of historian
Charles Beard and argue that Northern and
Southern economies were largely complementary. There was the
polarizing effect of slavery that split the largest religious
denominations (the
Methodist,
Baptist and
Presbyterian churches) and controversy
caused by the worst cruelties of slavery (whippings, mutilations
and families split apart). The fact that seven immigrants out of
eight settled in the North, plus movement of twice as many whites
leaving the South for the North as vice versa, contributed to the
South's defensive-aggressive political behavior.
The
election
of Lincoln in 1860 was the final trigger for secession. Efforts
at compromise, including the "
Corwin
Amendment" and the "
Crittenden
Compromise", failed.Southern leaders feared that Lincoln would
stop the expansion of slavery and put it on a course toward
extinction. 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.
Slavery
[[Image:Abraham Lincoln seated, Feb 9,
1864.jpg|thumb|upright|
Abraham
Lincoln16th
President of the United
States (1861–1865)]]
Support for secession was strongly correlated to the number of
plantations in the region; states of the
deep
South which had the greatest concentration of plantations 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. As of 1850 the percentage of Southern
whites living in families that owned slaves was 43 percent in the
lower South, 36 percent in the upper South and 22 percent in the
border states that fought mostly for the Union. 85 percent of
slaveowners who owned 100 or more slaves lived in the lower South,
as opposed to one percent in the border states. Ninety-five percent
of African-Americans lived in the South, comprising one third of
the population there as opposed to one percent of the population of
the North. Consequently, fears of eventual emancipation were much
greater in the South than in the North.
The
US Supreme
Court
decision of 1857 in Dred Scott v.
Sandford added to
the controversy.
Chief Justice Roger B. Taney's decision said that slaves were "so
far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound
to respect". Taney then overturned the
Missouri Compromise, which banned
slavery in territory north of the 36°30' parallel. He stated that
"the Act of Congress which prohibited a citizen from holding and
owning [enslaved persons] in the territory of the United States
north of the line therein is not warranted by the Constitution and
is therefore void." The
Dred Scott decision was praised by
Democrats, but Republicans branded it a "willful perversion" of the
Constitution. They argued that if Scott could not legally file
suit, the Supreme Court had no right to consider the Missouri
Compromise's constitutionality. Lincoln warned that "the next
Dred Scott decision" could threaten Northern states with
slavery.
Abraham Lincoln said, "this question
of Slavery was more important than any other; indeed, so much more
important has it become that no other national question can even
get a hearing just at present." The slavery issue was related to
sectional competition for control of the territories, and the
Southern demand for a
slave code for the
territories was the issue used by Southern politicians to split the
Democratic Party in two, which all but guaranteed the election of
Lincoln and secession. When secession was an issue, South Carolina
planter and state Senator John Townsend said that "our enemies are
about to take possession of the Government, that they intend to
rule us according to the caprices of their fanatical theories, and
according to the declared purposes of abolishing slavery." Similar
opinions were expressed throughout the South in editorials,
political speeches and declarations of reasons for secession. Even
though Lincoln had no plans to outlaw slavery where it existed,
whites throughout the South expressed fears for the future of
slavery.
Southern concerns included not only economic loss but also fears of
racial equality. The Texas Declaration of Causes for Secession said
that the non-slave-holding states were "proclaiming the debasing
doctrine of equality of all men, irrespective of race or color",
and that the African race "were rightfully held and regarded as an
inferior and dependent race". Alabama secessionist
E. S. Dargan warned that whites and free
blacks could not live together; if slaves were emancipated and
remained in the South, "we ourselves would become the executioners
of our own slaves. To this extent would the policy of our Northern
enemies drive us; and thus would we not only be reduced to poverty,
but what is still worse, we should be driven to crime, to the
commission of sin."
Beginning in the 1830s, the US
Postmaster General refused
to allow mail which carried 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.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."
During the 1850s, slaves left the
border states through sale,
manumission and escape, and border
states also had more free African-Americans and European immigrants
than the lower South, which increased Southern fears that slavery
was threatened with rapid extinction in this area.
Such fears greatly
increased Southern efforts to make Kansas
a slave
state. By 1860 the number of white border state families
owning slaves plunged to only 16 percent of the total. Slaves sold
to lower South states were owned by a smaller number of wealthy
slave owners as the price of slaves increased.
Even though Lincoln agreed to the
Corwin Amendment, which would have
protected slavery in existing states, secessionists claimed that
such guarantees were meaningless. Besides the loss of Kansas to
free soil Northerners, secessionists feared that the loss of slaves
in the border states would lead to emancipation, and that upper
South slave states might be the next dominoes to fall. They feared
that Republicans would use patronage to incite slaves and
antislavery Southern whites such as
Hinton Rowan Helper. Then slavery in the
lower South, like a "scorpion encircled by fire, would sting itself
to death." A few secessionists mentioned the
tariff issue along with slavery, but these were rare.
Among other reasons, slavery represented much more money than the
tariff. However, a few
libertarian
economists place more importance on the tariff issue. There were
non-slavery
related causes of secession, but they had little to do with
tariffs or states' rights.
Secession begins
[[Image:US Secession map 1861.svg|thumb|right|
Status of the states, 1861.
]]
[[Image:US Secession map 1865.svg|thumb|right|
State and territory boundaries,
1864–5.
]]
Secession of South Carolina
South Carolina
did more to
advance nullification and secession than any other Southern
state. South Carolina adopted the "
Declaration
of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of
South Carolina from the Federal Union" on December 24, 1860. It
argued for states' rights for slave owners in the South, but
contained a complaint about states' rights in the North in the form
of opposition to the
Fugitive
Slave Act, claiming that Northern states were not fulfilling
their federal obligations under the Constitution. All the alleged
violations of the rights of Southern states were related to
slavery.
Secession winter
Before Lincoln took office, seven states had declared their
secession from the Union. They established a Southern government,
the Confederate States of America on February 4, 1861. They took
control of federal forts and other properties within their
boundaries with little resistance from outgoing President
James Buchanan, whose term ended on March 4,
1861. Buchanan said that the
Dred
Scott decision was proof that the South had no reason for
secession, and that the Union "was intended to be perpetual", but
that "the power by force of arms to compel a State to remain in the
Union" was not among the "enumerated powers granted to Congress".
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.
As Southerners resigned their seats in the Senate and the House,
secession later enabled Republicans to pass bills for projects that
had been blocked by Southern Senators before the war, including the
Morrill Tariff, land grant colleges
(the
Morill Act), a
Homestead Act, a trans-continental
railroad (the
Pacific Railway
Acts), the
National Banking
Act and the authorization of
United States Notes by the Legal Tender
Act of 1862. The
Revenue Act of
1861 introduced the
income tax to
help finance the war.
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. Following the
attack on Fort Sumter,
President Lincoln called for a volunteer army from each state.
Within
two months, four more Southern slave states declared their
secession and joined the Confederacy: Virginia
, Arkansas
, North
Carolina
and Tennessee
. The northwestern portion of Virginia
subsequently seceded from Virginia, joining the Union as the new
state of West
Virginia
on June 20,
1863. By the end of 1861, Missouri
and Kentucky
were divided each of them having a pro-Southern and
pro-Northern government.
The Union states
Twenty-three states remained loyal to the
Union: 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 military 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 were West Virginia
(which was separated from Virginia and became a new
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,
DC
and Baltimore. Before the Confederate
government realized what was happening, Lincoln had seized firm
control of Maryland and the District of Columbia, by arresting all
the Maryland government members 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.
After the Camp Jackson
Affair
Lyon 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.
When Confederate forces entered the state in September, 1861,
neutrality ended and the state reaffirmed its Union 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 Kentucky.
After Virginia's secession, a Unionist government in
Wheeling asked a total of 48 counties to vote on an
ordinance to create a new state on October 24, 1861.
Returns were received
from 41 of the 48 counties, and a minority turnout voted heavily in
favor of the new state, at first called Kanawha but later renamed West Virginia
, which was admitted to the Union on June 20,
1863. Jefferson and Berkeley counties were annexed to the
new state in late 1863. The western counties of Virginia had voted
nearly 2 to 1 against secession, though 24 of the 50 counties had
voted for secession. Soldier numbers from West Virginia were about
evenly divided between the Confederacy and the Union.
A similar Unionist secession attempt occurred in
East Tennessee, but was suppressed by the
Confederacy. Jefferson Davis arrested over 3000 men suspected of
being loyal to the Union and held them without trial.
Overview
Over 10,000 military engagements took place during the war, 40% of
them in Virginia and Tennessee. Since separate articles deal with
every major battle and many minor ones, this article only gives the
broadest outline. For more information see
List of American Civil War
battles and
Military
leadership in 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 most of the federal forts
within their boundaries. President Buchanan protested but made no
military response apart from a failed attempt to resupply Fort
Sumter using the ship
Star of the
West, which was fired upon by South Carolina forces and
turned back before it reached the fort. However, governors in
Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania quietly began buying
weapons and training militia units.
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
because 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. However, Secretary of State
William Seward engaged in unauthorized and
indirect negotiations that failed.
Fort Sumter
in Charleston, South Carolina, Fort Pickens
and Fort Taylor
were the remaining Union-held forts in the
Confederacy, and Lincoln was determined to hold Fort Sumter.
Under orders from Confederate President
Jefferson Davis, troops controlled by the
Confederate government under
P.
G. T. Beauregard bombarded the fort with
artillery on April 12, forcing the fort's capitulation. Northerners
rallied behind Lincoln's call for all 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 75,000
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.
Liberty
Arsenal
in Liberty, Missouri
was seized eight days after Fort
Sumter.
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.
Richmond was in a highly vulnerable location at the end of a
tortuous Confederate supply line.
Although Richmond was heavily fortified,
supplies for the city would be reduced by Sherman's capture of
Atlanta
and cut off
almost entirely when Grant besieged Petersburg
and its railroads that supplied the Southern
capital.
Anaconda Plan and blockade, 1861
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 weaken
the Confederate 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 enacted the Union blockade of all Southern
ports, ending regular international shipments to the Confederacy.
When violators' ships and cargoes were seized, they were sold and
the proceeds given to Union sailors, but the British crews were
released. By late 1861, the blockade stopped most local
port-to-port traffic. The blockade shut down
King Cotton, ruining the Southern economy.
British
investors built small, fast "blockade
runners" that traded arms and luxuries brought in from Bermuda
, Cuba
and the
Bahamas
in return for high-priced cotton and
tobacco. Shortages of food and other goods triggered by the
blockade, foraging by Northern armies, and the impressment of crops
by Confederate armies combined to cause
hyperinflation and
bread riots in the South.
On March 8, 1862, the
Confederate Navy waged a fight
against the
Union Navy when the
ironclad CSS Virginia attacked the blockade;
against wooden ships she seemed unstoppable but the next day she
had to fight the new Union warship
USS
Monitor in the
Battle of the Ironclads. The battle
ended in a draw, which was a strategic victory for the Union in
that the blockade was sustained. The Confederacy lost the
Virginia when the ship was scuttled to prevent capture,
and the Union built many copies of
Monitor. Lacking the
technology to build effective warships, the Confederacy attempted
to obtain warships from Britain. The Union victory at the
Second Battle of Fort Fisher in
January 1865 closed the last useful Southern port and virtually
ended blockade running.
Eastern Theater 1861–1863

A Union Regimental Fife and Drum
Corps
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 favor 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, Johnston halted his advance at the
Battle of
Seven Pines
, then General Robert
E. Lee and top subordinates
James Longstreet and Stonewall
Jackson defeated McClellan in the
Seven Days Battles and forced his
retreat.
The Northern Virginia Campaign
, which included the Second
Battle of Bull Run
, ended in yet another victory for the South.
McClellan resisted General-in-Chief Halleck's orders to send
reinforcements to
John
Pope's Union
Army of Virginia,
which made it easier for Lee's Confederates to defeat twice the
number of combined enemy troops.
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.

Confederate dead behind the stone wall
of Marye's Heights, Fredericksburg, Virginia, killed during the
Battle of Chancellorsville, May 1863
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 during repeated futile
frontal assaults against Marye's Heights. After the battle,
Burnside was replaced by Maj. Gen.
Joseph
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 of
the war, 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 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 Theater for
new leadership.
Western Theater 1861–1863
While the Confederate forces had numerous successes in the Eastern
theater, they were defeated many times 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 Columbus
, Kentucky
ended Kentucky's policy of neutrality and turned
that state against the Confederacy. Nashville
and central Tennessee
fell to the Union early in 1862, leading to
attrition of local food supplies and livestock and a breakdown in
social organization.
Most of the
Mississippi was opened
to Union traffic with the taking of
Island No. 10 and New
Madrid
, Missouri
, and then Memphis, Tennessee
. In May 1862 the Union
Navy captured New
Orleans
without a major fight, which allowed Union forces
to begin moving up the Mississippi. Only the fortress
city of Vicksburg
, Mississippi
, prevented Union control of the entire
river.
General
Braxton Bragg's second
Confederate invasion of Kentucky ended with a meaningless victory
over Maj. Gen.
Don Carlos
Buell at the Battle of Perryville
, although Bragg was forced to end his attempt at
invading Kentucky and retreat due to lack of support for the
Confederacy in that state. Bragg 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
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
; and the Battle of Vicksburg
, which cemented Union control of the Mississippi
River and is 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 Theater 1861–1865
Guerrilla activity turned much of
Missouri into a battleground. Missouri had, in total, the
third-most battles of any state during the war. The other states of
the west, though geographically isolated from the battles to the
east, saw numerous small-scale military actions. Battles in the
region served to secure
Missouri,
Indian Territory,
and
New
Mexico Territory for the Union. Confederate incursions into
New Mexico territory were
repulsed in 1862 and a Union campaign to secure
Indian Territory succeeded in 1863. Late in
the war, the Union's
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
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. This was total war not in terms of killing
civilians but rather in terms of destroying homes, farms, and
railroads.
Grant devised a coordinated strategy that
would strike at the entire 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 (the Atlantic Ocean); Generals George Crook and William W. Averell were to operate against railroad
supply lines in West
Virginia
; and
Maj. Gen.
Nathaniel
P. Banks was to capture Mobile
, Alabama
.
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 Harbor
resulted in heavy Union losses, but forced Lee's
Confederates to fall back repeatedly. 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 65,000 casualties in seven 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 defeated Maj. Gen.
Jubal A. Early 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 Schofield
defeated Hood at the Battle of Franklin
, and George
H. Thomas dealt Hood
a massive defeat at
the Battle of
Nashville, effectively destroying Hood's army.
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 "
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. Sherman turned north through South Carolina and
North Carolina to approach the Confederate Virginia lines from the
south, increasing the pressure on Lee's army.
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, composed 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.
Confederate Surrenders
Lee
surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia on April 9, 1865, at the
McLean House in
the village of Appomattox Court
House
. In an untraditional gesture and as a sign
of Grant's respect and anticipation of peacefully folding the
Confederacy back into the Union, Lee was permitted to keep his
officer's saber and his horse,
Traveller.
On April 14, 1865, President Lincoln was
shot
. Lincoln died early the next morning, and
Andrew Johnson became
President.
Events leading to Lee's surrender began with the capture of key
Confederate officers
Richard S.
Ewell and
Richard H. Anderson on April 6, following
Confederate defeat at the battle of Sayler's Creek
. On April 8 Union cavalry under Major
General
George Armstrong
Custer destroyed three trains of Confederate supplies at
Appomattox Station, leading to
the surrender of General Lee the next day. General
St. John Richardson Liddell's
army surrendered after the loss of the Confederate fortifications
at the
Battle of Spanish Fort
in Alabama, also on April 9.
On April 21
John S. Mosby’s raiders of the
43rd Battalion Virginia
Cavalry disbanded and on April 26 General
Joseph E. Johnston surrendered his troops to
Sherman at Bennett
Place
in Durham
, North Carolina
.Surrendering on May 4 and 5 were the
Confederate departments of Alabama, Mississippi and East Louisiana
regiments and the District of the Gulf. The Confederate President
was captured on May 10 and the surrender of the Department of
Florida and South Georgia happened the same day. Confederate
Brigadier General
"Jeff" Meriwether
Thompson surrendered his brigade the next day and the day
following saw the surrender of the Confederate forces of North
Georgia.
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 ship to surrender was
the CSS Shenandoah, on
November 6, 1865, in Liverpool
, England
. These surrenders marked the
conclusion of the American
Civil War.
Slavery during the war
At the beginning of the war some Union commanders thought they were
supposed to return escaped slaves to their masters. By 1862, when
it became clear that this would be a long war, the question of what
to do about slavery became more general. The Southern economy and
military effort depended on slave labor. It began to seem
unreasonable 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." The same
Congressman—and his fellow Radical Republicans—put pressure on
Lincoln to rapidly emancipate the slaves, whereas moderate
Republicans came to accept gradual, compensated emancipation and
colonization.
Copperheads,
the
border states
and
War Democrats opposed
emancipation, although the border states and War Democrats
eventually accepted it as part of
total
war needed to save the Union.
In 1861, Lincoln expressed the fear that premature attempts at
emancipation would mean the loss of the border states, and that "to
lose Kentucky is nearly the same as to lose the whole game." At
first, Lincoln reversed attempts at emancipation by Secretary of
War
Simon Cameron and Generals
John C. Frémont (in Missouri) and
David Hunter (in South Carolina, Georgia and
Florida) to keep the loyalty of the border states and the War
Democrats.
Lincoln warned the border states that a more radical type of
emancipation would happen if his gradual plan based on compensated
emancipation and voluntary colonization was rejected. Only the
District of Columbia accepted Lincoln's gradual plan, and Lincoln
mentioned his Emancipation Proclamation to members of his cabinet
on July 21, 1862. Secretary of State
William H. Seward told Lincoln to wait for a victory
before issuing the proclamation, as to do otherwise would seem like
"our last shriek on the retreat".
In September 1862 the Battle of
Antietam
provided this opportunity, and the subsequent
War Governors' Conference
added support for the proclamation. Lincoln had already
published a letter encouraging the border states especially to
accept emancipation as necessary to save the Union. Lincoln later
said that slavery was "somehow the cause of the war". Lincoln
issued his preliminary
Emancipation Proclamation on
September 22, 1862, and his final Emancipation Proclamation on
January 1, 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."
Since the Emancipation Proclamation was based on the President's
war powers, it only included territory held by Confederates at the
time. However, the Proclamation became a symbol of the Union's
growing commitment to add emancipation to the Union's definition of
liberty. Lincoln also played a leading role in getting Congress to
vote for the
Thirteenth
Amendment, which made emancipation universal and
permanent.
Enslaved African Americans did not wait for Lincoln's action before
escaping and seeking freedom behind Union lines. From early years
of the war, hundreds of thousands of African Americans escaped to
Union lines, especially in occupied areas like Nashville, Norfolk
and the Hampton Roads region in 1862, Tennessee from 1862 on, the
line of Sherman's march, etc. So many African Americans fled to
Union lines that commanders created camps and schools for them,
where both adults and children learned to read and write. The
American Missionary Association entered the war effort by sending
teachers south to such contraband camps, for instance establishing
schools in Norfolk and on nearby plantations. In addition, nearly
200,000 African-American men served as soldiers and sailors with
Union troops. Most of those were escaped slaves.
Confederates enslaved captured black Union
soldiers, and black soldiers especially were shot when trying to
surrender at the Fort Pillow Massacre
. This led to a breakdown of the prisoner
exchange program and the growth of prison camps such as Andersonville prison
in Georgia, where almost 13,000 Union prisoners of
war died of starvation and disease.
In spite of the South's shortage of manpower, until 1865, most
Southern leaders opposed arming slaves as soldiers. They used them
as laborers to support the war effort. As
Howell Cobb said, "If slaves will make good
soldiers our whole theory of slavery is wrong." Confederate
generals
Patrick Cleburne and
Robert E. Lee argued in favor of arming blacks late in
the war, and
Jefferson Davis was
eventually persuaded to support plans for arming slaves to avoid
military defeat.
The Confederacy surrendered at Appomattox
before this plan could be implemented.
The Emancipation Proclamation greatly reduced 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
and Delaware. 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 slaves in Kentucky, Delaware, and New Jersey, that
numbered 225,000 for Kentucky, 1,800 in Delaware, and 18 in New
Jersey as of 1860.
Historian Stephen Oates said that many myths surround Lincoln: "man
of the people", "true Christian", "arch villain" and racist. The
belief that Lincoln was racist was caused by an incomplete picture
of Lincoln, such as focusing on only selective quoting of
statements Lincoln made to gain the support of the border states
and Northern Democrats, and ignoring the many things he said
against slavery, and the military and political context within
which such statements were made. Oates said that Lincoln's letter
to
Horace Greeley has been
"persistently misunderstood and misrepresented" for such
reasons.
Threat of international intervention
Entry into the war by Britain and France on behalf of the
Confederacy would have greatly increased the South's chances of
winning independence from the Union. The Union, under Lincoln and
Secretary of State
William H.
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 Britain did face a cotton shortage, it was temporary, being
replaced by increased cultivation in Egypt and India. Meanwhile,
the war created employment for arms makers, iron workers, and
British ships to transport weapons.
Charles Francis Adams
proved particularly adept as
minister to
Britain for the U.S. and Britain was reluctant to boldly challenge
the blockade. 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. 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 U.S. Navy's 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.
In 1862, the British considered mediation—though even such an offer
would have risked war with the U.S.
Lord Palmerston
reportedly 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. Despite 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.
Victory and aftermath
Historians have debated whether the Confederacy could have won the
war. Most scholars emphasize that the Union held an insurmountable
long-term advantage over the Confederacy in terms of industrial
strength and population. Confederate actions, they argue, only
delayed defeat. Southern historian
Shelby
Foote expressed this view succinctly: "I think that the North
fought that war with one hand behind its back...If there had been
more Southern victories, and a lot more, the North simply would
have brought that other hand out from behind its back. I don't
think the South ever had a chance to win that War." The Confederacy
sought to win independence by out-lasting Lincoln; however, after
Atlanta fell and Lincoln defeated McClellan in the election of
1864, all hope for a political victory for the South ended. At that
point, Lincoln had succeeded in getting the support of the border
states, War Democrats, emancipated slaves and Britain and France.
By defeating the Democrats and McClellan, he also defeated the
Copperheads and their peace
platform. Lincoln had also found military leaders like Grant and
Sherman who would press the Union's numerical advantage in battle
over the Confederate Armies. Generals who did not shy from
bloodshed won the war, and from the end of 1864 onward there was no
hope for the South.
On the other hand,
James
McPherson has argued that the North’s advantage in population
and resources made Northern victory likely, but not inevitable.
Confederates did not need to invade and hold enemy territory to
win, but only needed to fight a defensive war to convince the North
that the cost of winning was too high. The North needed to conquer
and hold vast stretches of enemy territory and defeat Confederate
armies to win.
Also important were Lincoln's eloquence in rationalizing the
national purpose and his skill in keeping the border states
committed to the Union cause. Although Lincoln's approach to
emancipation was slow, the Emancipation Proclamation was an
effective use of the President's war powers.
The Confederate government failed in its attempt to get Europe
involved in the war militarily, particularly England and France.
Southern leaders needed to get European powers to help break up the
blockade the Union had created around the Southern ports and
cities. Lincoln's naval blockade was 95% effective at stopping
trade goods, as a result, imports and exports to the South declined
significantly. The abundance of European cotton and England's
hostility to the institution of slavery, along with Lincoln's
Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico naval blockades, severely decreased any
chance that either England or France would enter the war.
Comparison of Union and CSA
|
Union |
CSA |
Total population |
22,100,000 (71%) |
9,100,000 (29%) |
Free population |
21,700,000 |
5,600,000 |
1860 Border state slaves |
400,000 |
NA |
1860 Southern slaves |
NA |
3,500,000 |
Soldiers |
2,100,000 (67%) |
1,064,000 (33%) |
Railroad miles |
21,788 (71%) |
8,838 (29%) |
Manufactured items |
90% |
10% |
Firearm production |
97% |
3% |
Bales of cotton in 1860 |
Negligible |
4,500,000 |
Bales of cotton in 1864 |
Negligible |
300,000 |
Pre-war U.S. exports |
30% |
70% |
The more industrialized economy of the North aided in the
production of arms, munitions and supplies, as well as finances,
and transportation. The table shows the relative advantage of the
Union 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 and about 5.5 million whites,
thus leaving the South's white population outnumbered by a ratio of
more than four to one compared with that of the North. The
disparity grew as the Union controlled an increasing amount of
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. The failure of
Davis to maintain positive and productive relationships with state
governors (especially governor
Joseph
E. Brown of Georgia and governor
Zebulon Baird Vance of North
Carolina) damaged his ability to draw on regional resources. The
Confederacy's "
King Cotton"
misperception of the world economy led to bad diplomacy, such as
the refusal to ship cotton before the blockade started.The
Emancipation Proclamation enabled African-Americans, both free
blacks and escaped slaves, to join the Union Army. About 190,000
volunteered, further enhancing the numerical advantage the Union
armies enjoyed over the Confederates, who did not dare emulate the
equivalent manpower source for fear of fundamentally undermining
the legitimacy of slavery. Emancipated slaves mostly handled
garrison duties, and fought numerous battles in 1864–65. European
immigrants
joined the
Union Army in large numbers,
including 177,000 born in Germany and 144,000 born in
Ireland.
Reconstruction
Northern leaders agreed that victory would require more than the
end of fighting. It had to encompass the two war goals: secession
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
Reconstruction Amendments to the
Constitution: the
Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery; the Fourteenth
Amendment, which extended federal legal protections equally to
citizens regardless of race; and the Fifteenth Amendment, which
abolished racial restrictions on voting. Reconstruction ended in
the different states at different times, the last three by the
Compromise of 1877.
For further details on how the protections of the
Fourteenth
and
Fifteenth
Amendments were subverted, see:
Results
Slavery effectively ended in the U.S. in the spring of 1865 when
the Confederate armies surrendered. All slaves in the Confederacy
were freed by the Emancipation Proclamation, which stipulated that
slaves in Confederate-held areas were free. Slaves in the border
states and Union-controlled parts of the South were freed by state
action or (on December 6, 1865) by the
Thirteenth
Amendment. The full restoration of the Union was the work of a
highly contentious postwar era known as
Reconstruction. The
war produced about 1,030,000 casualties (3% of the population),
including about 620,000 soldier deaths—two-thirds by disease. The
war accounted for roughly as many American deaths as all American
deaths in other U.S. wars combined. The
causes of the war, the
reasons for its outcome, and even
the name of the war itself are
subjects of lingering contention today. About 4 million
black slaves
were freed in 1861–65. Based on 1860 census figures, 8% of all
white males aged 13 to 43 died in
the war, including 6% in the North and an extraordinary 18% in the
South. One reason for the high number of battle deaths during the
war was the use of
Napoleonic
tactics such as charges. With the advent of more accurate rifled
barrels,
Minié balls and (near the
end of the war for the
Union army)
repeating firearms such as the
Spencer repeating rifle and a few
experimental
Gatling guns, soldiers were
devastated when standing in lines in the open. This gave birth to
trench warfare, a tactic heavily used
during
World War I.
See also
Notes
- Frank J. Williams, "Doing Less and Doing More: The President
and the Proclamation—Legally, Militarily and Politically," in
Harold Holzer, ed. The Emancipation Proclamation (2006) pp
74–5.
- Howard Jones, Abraham Lincoln and a New Birth of Freedom:
The Union and Slavery in the Diplomacy of the Civil War (1999)
p. 154
- Abraham Lincoln, House Divided Speech, Springfield, Illinois,
June 16, 1858.
- Shelby Foote, The Civil War: Fort Sumter to Perryville, p.
34.
- Let there be no compromise on the question of extending
slavery. If there be, all our labor is lost, and, ere long, must be
done again. The dangerous ground—that into which some of our
friends have a hankering to run—is Pop. Sov. Have none of it. Stand
firm. The tug has to come, & better now, than any time
hereafter. – Abraham Lincoln to Lyman Trumbull, December 10,
1860.
- James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, pp. 241, 253.
- Declarations of Causes for: Georgia, Adopted in January 29,
1861; Mississippi, Adopted in 1861 (no exact date found); South
Carolina, Adopted in December 24, 1860; Texas, Adopted in February
2, 1861.
- The New Heresy, Southern Punch, editor John Wilford Overall,
September 19, 1864 is one of many references that indicate that the
Republican hope of gradually ending slavery was the Southern fear.
It said in part, "Our doctrine is this: WE ARE FIGHTING FOR
INDEPENDENCE THAT OUR GREAT AND NECESSARY DOMESTIC INSTITUTION OF
SLAVERY SHALL BE PRESERVED."
- David Potter, The Impending Crisis, pages 33–50. Potter argued
that the states rights theory of causes (page 33) and various
cultural and economic "causes" can't be separated from the slavery
issue.
- Jefferson Davis' Resolutions on the Relations of States, Senate
Chamber, U.S. Capitol, February 2, 1860, From The Papers of
Jefferson Davis, Volume 6, pp. 273–76. – Davis states' rights
argument for slavery in the territories is as follows: 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."
- J.L.M. Curry: The Perils and Duty of the South – Speech
Delivered in Talladega, Alabama, November 26, 1860 – This was one
of many Southern states' rights arguments for defending
slavery.
- Lincoln's Speech in Chicago, December 10, 1856 in which he
said, "We shall again be able not to declare, that 'all States as
States, are equal,' nor yet that 'all citizens as citizens are
equal,' but to renew the broader, better declaration, including
both these and much more, that 'all men are created equal.'"; Also,
Lincoln's Letter to Henry L. Pierce, April 6, 1859.
- From Alexander Stephens' Cornerstone Speech, March 21, 1861,
The Athenaeum, Savannah Georgia – 'The new constitution has put at
rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar
institution – African slavery as it exists amongst us – the proper
status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the
immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution.
Jefferson in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the "rock upon
which the old Union would split." He was right. What was conjecture
with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended
the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be
doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the
leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old
constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in
violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle,
socially, morally, and politically. It was an evil they knew not
well how to deal with, but the general opinion of the men of that
day was that, somehow or other in the order of Providence, the
institution would be evanescent and pass away. This idea, though
not incorporated in the constitution, was the prevailing idea at
that time. The constitution, it is true, secured every essential
guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no
argument can be justly urged against the constitutional guarantees
thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those
ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the
assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a
sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the
"storm came and the wind blew." Our new government is founded upon
exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its
cornerstone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal
to the white man; that slavery – subordination to the superior race
– is his natural and normal condition. [Applause.] '
- Stampp, The Causes of the Civil War, pages 152–153
(Cornerstone Speech). Stampp said
Stephens' Cornerstone Speech "was in striking contrast to his
postwar constitutional interpretation."
- Stampp, The Causes of the Civil War, page 32 (A
Constitutional View of the Late War Between the States) Stampp
used the following quote to illustrate the fact that, after
Confederate defeat, Stephens argued that the war was caused not by
slavery but by states' rights controversies: "It is a postulate,
with many writers of this day, that the late War was the result of
two opposing ideas, or principles, upon the subject of African
Slavery. Between these, according to their theory, sprung the
'irrepressible conflict,' in principle, which ended in the terrible
conflict in arms. Those who assume this postulate, and so theorize
upon it, are but superficial observers. That the war had its origin
in opposing principles, which in their action upon the conduct of
men, produced the ultimate conflict of arms, may be assumed as an
unquestionable fact. But the opposing principles which produced
these results in physical action were of a very different character
from those assumed in the postulate. They lay in the organic
Structure of the Government of the States ... between the
supporters of a strictly Federative Government, on the one side,
and a thoroughly National one, on the other."
- James McPherson, This Mighty Scourge page 4. McPherson writes,
"After the war, however, Davis and Stephens changed their tune. By
the time they wrote their histories of the Confederacy, slavery was
gone with the wind – a dead and discredited institution. To concede
that the Confederacy had broken up the United States and launched a
war that killed 620,000 Americans in a vain attempt to keep four
million people in bondage would not confer honor on their lost
cause.
- James McPherson, This Mighty Scourge, pages 3–9. Speaking of
alternative explanations for secession, McPherson writes (p.7),
"While one or more of these interpretations remain popular among
the Sons of Confederate Veterans and other Southern heritage
groups, few professional historians now subscribe to them. Of all
these interpretations, the state's-rights argument is perhaps the
weakest. It fails to ask the question, state's rights for what
purpose? State's rights, or sovereignty, was always more a means
than an end, an instrument to achieve a certain goal more than a
principle.
- The People's Chronology, 1994 by James Trager
- Allan Nevins, Ordeal of the Union: A House Dividing –
1852–1857, pp. 267–269.
- Freehling, Prelude to Civil War, page 297; Willentz
page 388 – On March 13, 1833, Rhett said, "A people, owning slaves,
are mad, or worse than mad, who do not hold their destinies in
their own hands... Every stride of this Government, over your
rights, brings it nearer and nearer to your peculiar policy. ...
The whole world are in arms against your institutions … Let
Gentlemen not be deceived. It is not the Tariff – not Internal
Improvement – nor yet the Force bill, which constitutes the great
evil against which we are contending... These are but the forms in
which the despotic nature of the government is evinced – but it is
the despotism which constitutes the evil: and until this Government
is made a limited Government... there is no liberty – no security
for the South."
- As early as 1830, in the midst of the Nullification Crisis,
Calhoun identified the right to own slaves as the chief southern
minority right being threatened: "I consider the tariff act as the
occasion, rather than the real cause of the present unhappy state
of things. The truth can no longer be disguised, that the peculiar
domestick [sic] institution of the Southern States and the
consequent direction which that and her soil have given to her
industry, has placed them in regard to taxation and appropriations
in opposite relation to the majority of the Union, against the
danger of which, if there be no protective power in the reserved
rights of the states they must in the end be forced to rebel, or,
submit to have their paramount interests sacrificed, their domestic
institutions subordinated by Colonization and other schemes, and
themselves and children reduced to wretchedness." – Ellis, Richard
E. The Union at Risk: Jacksonian Democracy, States' Rights, and the
Nullification Crisis (1987), page 193; Freehling, William W.
Prelude to Civil War: The Nullification Crisis in South Carolina
1816–1836. (1965), page 257; Ellis p. 193. Ellis further notes that
"Calhoun and the nullifiers were not the first southerners to link
slavery with states’ rights. At various points in their careers,
John Taylor, John
Randolph, and Nathaniel Macon had warned that giving too
much power to the federal government, especially on such an
open-ended issue as internal improvement, could ultimately provide
it with the power to emancipate slaves against their owners’
wishes."
- John Niven, John C. Calhoun and the Price of Union, page 197 –
The author said the following about Calhoun's description of the
tariff issue: "Finally, the root of the nullification crisis was
exposed. What had begun as a reaction to a depression in the cotton
states, a slump that had been particularly severe in South
Carolina, had rapidly resolved itself into an all-encompassing fear
on the part of a majority of the planter elite class that the
growing industrialization of the North, expressing itself
politically through the majority will, would eventually demand
emancipation, heedless of the social consequences."
- William E. Gienapp, "The Crisis of American Democracy: The
Political System and the Coming of the Civil War." in Boritt ed.
Why the Civil War Came 79–123.
- McPherson, Battle Cry pp. 88–91.
- Most of her slave owners are "decent, honorable people,
themselves victims" of that institution. Much of her description
was based on personal observation, and the descriptions of
Southerners; she herself calls them and Legree representatives of
different types of masters.;Gerson, Harriet Beecher Stowe,
p. 68; Stowe, Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin (1953) p. 39.
- David Potter, The Impending Crisis, pp. 201–204, 299–327.
- David Potter, The Impending Crisis, page 208
- David Potter, The Impending Crisis, pages 208–209
- Fox Butterfield; All God's Children page 17
- David Potter, The Impending Crisis, pages 210–211
- David Potter, The Impending Crisis, pages 212–213
- David Potter, The Impending Crisis, p. 356–384
- Kenneth M. Stampp, The Imperiled Union: Essays on the
Background of the Civil War (1981) p 198; Woodworth, ed.
The American Civil War: A Handbook of Literature and
Research (1996), 145 151 505 512 554 557 684; Richard
Hofstadter, The Progressive Historians: Turner, Beard,
Parrington (1969)
- James McPherson, Drawn With the Sword, page 11
- James McPherson, "Antebellum Southern Exceptionalism: A New
Look at an Old Question," Civil War History 29 (September
1983)
- David Potter, The Impending Crisis, page 485
- James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom 1988 p 242,
255, 282–83. Maps on page 101 (The Southern Economy) and page 236
(The Progress of Secession) are also relevant
- David Potter, The Impending Crisis, pages 503–505
- William W. Freehling, The Road to Disunion: Secessionists at
Bay 1776–1854, pages 17- 19. Freehling also said that as of 1850,
21 percent of border state blacks were free, as opposed to two
percent in the lower South, and that over half of the South's
manufactured goods were made in the border states, while less than
a fifth of the total was produced in the lower South.
- James McPherson, Drawn with the Sword, page 15
- David Potter, The Impending Crisis, page 275
- Roger B. Taney: Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857)
- First Lincoln Douglas Debate at Ottawa, Illinois August 21,
1858
- Abraham Lincoln, Speech at New Haven, Conn., March 6, 1860
- McPherson, Battle Cry, page 195
- John Townsend, The Doom of Slavery in the Union, its Safety out
of it, October 29, 1860
- McPherson, Battle Cry, page 243
- David Potter, The Impending Crisis, page 461
- William C. Davis, Look Away, pages 130–140
- William W. Freehling, The Road to Disunion, page 42
- A Declaration of the Causes which Impel the State of Texas to
Secede from the Federal Union, February2, 1861 – A declaration of the causes which impel the State
of Texas to secede from the Federal Union.
- Speech of E. S. Dargan to the Secession Convention of Alabama,
11 January 1861, in Wikisource
- Schlesinger Age of Jackson, p.190
- David Brion Davis, Inhuman Bondage (2006) p 197, 409;
Stanley Harrold, The Abolitionists and the South,
1831–1861 (1995) p. 62; Jane H. and William H. Pease,
"Confrontation and Abolition in the 1850s" Journal of American
History (1972) 58(4): 923–937.
- Eric Foner. Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology
of the Republican Party Before the Civil War (1970), p. 9
- William W. Freehling, The Road to Disunion: Secessionists
Triumphant 1854–1861, pages 9–24
- William W. Freehling, The Road to Disunion, Secessionists
Triumphant, pages 269–462, page 274 (The quote about slave states
"encircled by fire" is from the New Orleans Delta, May 13,
1860)
- Mark Thornton and Robert B. Ekelund, Jr., Tariffs, Blockades,
and Inflation: The Economics of the Civil War
- James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, page 254
- President James Buchanan, Message of December 8,
1860 online
- McPherson, Battle Cry, pages 284–287
- McPherson, Battle Cry, pages 290–293
- McPherson, Battle Cry, pages 293–297
- Curry, Richard O. "A House Divided", pgs. 149-50
- "Now, Mr. President, to show you-and it needs but to look at
the figures to satisfy the mind of every member-that even a
majority of the people within the district of the thirty-nine
counties have never come to the polls and expressed their
sentiments in favor of a new State. In a voting population of some
40,000 or 50,000 we see a poll of only 17,627-and even some of them
were in the [Union] army." Judge Chapman J. Stuart, Wheeling,
December 10, 1861, "Debates and Proceedings of the First
Constitutional Convention of West Virginia", Vol. 1, pg. 376.
- Lewis, Virgil "History and Government of West Virginia", 1973
ed., pg. 191
- West Virginia – a History, Otis K. Rice and Stephen W. Brown,
page 116 – The authors state that of the 47 members of the Virginia
Convention of 1861 that were from West Virginia, 32 opposed
secession, 11 were in favor of secession, and four did not vote.
The four that did not vote later signed the ordinance of
secession.
- Curry, ibid., pgs. 142-47
- Linger, James Carter, "Confederate Military Units of West
Virginia", Tulsa, OK, 2002 ed.. pgs. 59–81; Ambler, Charles
"Disfranchisement in West Virginia", Yale Review, 1905, pg. 38,
"About twenty thousand men, coming chiefly from the "loyal" region,
joined the Federal armies. The number accredited the State is about
thirty-two thousand, but many of these came from Ohio and
Pennsylvania. There were also many re-enlistments.";Reid, Whitelaw
"Ohio in the War", Vol. 2, pg. 3, "In the course of the war she
furnished...large parts of five regiments credited to the West
Virginia contingent...
- Mark Neely, Confederate Bastille: Jefferson Davis and Civil
Liberties 1993 p. 10–11
- Gabor Boritt, ed. War Comes Again (1995) p 247
- McPherson, Battle Cry, pages 234–266
- Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address, Monday, March 4,
1861
- Lincoln, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1861
- David Potter, The Impending Crisis, pages 572–573
- James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, page 274
- Massachusetts in the Civil War, William Schouler, 1868 book
republished by Digital Scanning Inc, 2003 – See the account at
[1]
- McPherson, Battle Cry, pages 276–307
- McPherson, Battle Cry, pages 333–335
- McPherson, Battle Cry, pages 378–380
- Heidler, 1651–53
- McPherson, Battle Cry, pages 373–377
- McPherson, Battle Cry, pages 339–345
- James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, page 342
- Shelby Foote, The Civil War: Fort Sumter to Perryville, pages
464–519
- Bruce Catton, Terrible Swift Sword, pages 263–296
- McPherson, Battle Cry, pages 424–427
- McPherson, Battle Cry, pages 538–544
- McPherson, Battle Cry, pages 528–533
- McPherson, Battle Cry, pages 543–545
- McPherson, Battle Cry, pages 557–558
- McPherson, Battle Cry, pages 571–574
- McPherson, Battle Cry, pages 639–645
- McPherson, Battle Cry, pages 653–663
- James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, page 664
- McPherson, Battle Cry, pages 404–405
- McPherson, Battle Cry, pages 418–420
- McPherson, Battle Cry, pages 419–420
- McPherson, Battle Cry, pages 480–483
- McPherson, Battle Cry, pages 405–413
- McPherson, Battle Cry, pages 637–638
- McPherson, Battle Cry, pages 677–680
- Mark E. Neely Jr.; "Was the Civil War a Total War?" Civil
War History, Vol. 50, 2004 pp 434+
- McPherson, Battle Cry, pages 724–735
- James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, pages 741–742
- McPherson, Battle Cry, pages 778–779
- McPherson, Battle Cry, pages 773–775
- James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, pages 774–776
- McPherson, Battle Cry, pages 812–815
- McPherson, Battle Cry, pages 825–830
- McPherson, Battle Cry, pages 846–847
- McPherson, Battle Cry, pages 848–850
- Davis, To Appomattox – Nine April Days, 1865, pp. 298,
322, 331–333, 359
- McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom page 495
- McPherson, Battle Cry page 355, 494–6, quote from
George Washington Julian on
495.
- Lincoln's letter to O. H. Browning, September 22, 1861
- Lincoln, the War President: The Gettysburg Lectures (Gettysburg
Civil War Institute Books) by Gabor S. Boritt (Editor), pages
52–54. The article is by James McPherson
- Stephen B. Oates, Abraham Lincoln: The Man Behind the Myths,
page 106
- Images of America: Altoona, by Sr. Anne Francis Pulling, 2001,
10.
- Letter to Greeley, August 22, 1862
- Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address, March 4, 1865 – Here
Lincoln states, "One-eighth of the whole population were colored
slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in
the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and
powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the
cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this
interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the
Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more
than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it."
- Lincoln's Letter to A. G. Hodges, April 4, 1864
- James McPherson, The War that Never Goes Away
- James McPherson, Drawn With the Sword, from the article Who
Freed the Slaves?
- Bruce Catton, Never Call Retreat, page 335
- Civil War Topics
- James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, pages 791–798
- James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, pages 831–837
- McPherson, Battle Cry, pages 557–558 and 563
- McPherson, Battle Cry, pages 840–842
- U. S. Census of 1860
- Stephen B. Oates, Abraham Lincoln: The Man Behind the Myths,
1984, Harper & Row
- James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, pp
546–557
- McPherson, Battle Cry p 386
- Allen Nevins, War for the Union 1862–1863, pages
263–264
- Stephen B. Oates, The Approaching Fury: Voices of the Storm
1820–1861, page 125
- Ward 1990 p 272
- McPherson, Battle Cry, pages 771–772
- James McPherson, Why did the Confederacy Lose?
- [2]|King Cotton|"The Confederacy" A Macmillan
Information Now Encyclopedia|Orville Vernon Burton and Patricia
Dora Bonnin|Last website update 02/16/02
- Railroad mileage is from: Chauncey Depew (ed.), One Hundred Years
of American Commerce 1795–1895, p. 111; For other data see:
1860 US census and Carter, Susan B., ed.
The Historical Statistics of the United States: Millennial
Edition (5 vols), 2006.
- McPherson 313–16, 392–3
- Heidler, David Stephen, ed. Encyclopedia of the American Civil
War: A Political, Social, and Military History (2002), 1591–98
- McPherson 432–44
- Heidler, David Stephen, ed. Encyclopedia of the American Civil
War: A Political, Social, and Military History (2002), 598–603
- Ira Berlin et al., eds. Freedom's Soldiers: The Black
Military Experience in the Civil War (1998)
- Albert Bernhardt Faust, The German Element in the United
States (1909) p. 523 online
- Eric Foner, Reconstruction – America's Unfinished Revolution –
1863–1877, Harper & Row, 1988
- James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, page xix (from the
introduction by C. Vann Woodward as of 1988)
References
- Overviews
- Beringer, Richard E., Archer Jones, and Herman Hattaway,
Why the South Lost the Civil War (1986) influential
analysis of factors; The Elements of Confederate Defeat:
Nationalism, War Aims, and Religion (1988), abridged
version
- Catton, Bruce, The Civil
War, American Heritage, 1960, ISBN 0-8281-0305-4, illustrated
narrative
- Davis, William C. The Imperiled Union, 1861–1865 3v
(1983)
- Donald, David et al. The Civil War and Reconstruction
(latest edition 2001); 700 page survey
- Eicher, David J., The Longest Night: A Military History of
the Civil War, (2001), ISBN 0-684-84944-5.
- Fellman, Michael et al. This Terrible War: The Civil War
and its Aftermath (2nd ed. 2007), 544 page survey
- Foote, Shelby. The Civil War: A Narrative
(3 volumes), (1974), ISBN 0-394-74913-8. Highly detailed military
narrative covering all fronts
- McPherson, James M.
Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (1988), 900 page
survey of all aspects of the war; Pulitzer prize
- James M. McPherson. Ordeal By Fire: The Civil
War and Reconstruction (2nd ed 1992), textbook
- Nevins, Allan. Ordeal of the Union, an 8-volume
set (1947–1971). the most detailed political, economic and military
narrative; by Pulitzer Prize winner
- 1. Fruits of Manifest Destiny, 1847–1852; 2. A House Dividing,
1852–1857; 3. Douglas, Buchanan, and Party Chaos, 1857–1859; 4.
Prologue to Civil War, 1859–1861; 5. The Improvised War, 1861–1862;
6. War Becomes Revolution, 1862–1863; 7. The Organized War,
1863–1864; 8. The Organized War to Victory, 1864–1865
- Rhodes, James Ford. History of the Civil War, 1861–1865
(1918), Pulitzer Prize; a short version of his 5-volume
history
- Savage, Kirk, Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves: Race, War, and
Monument in Nineteenth-Century America. Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press, 1997. (The definitive book on Civil War
monuments.)
- Ward, Geoffrey C. The Civil War (1990), based on PBS
series by Ken Burns; visual emphasis
- Weigley, Russell Frank. A Great Civil War: A Military and
Political History, 1861–1865 (2004); primarily military
- Reference books and bibliographies
- Blair, Jayne E. The Essential Civil War: A Handbook to the
Battles, Armies, Navies And Commanders (2006)
- Carter, Alice E. and Richard Jensen. The Civil War on the
Web: A Guide to the Very Best Sites- 2nd ed. (2003)
- Current, Richard N., et al. eds. Encyclopedia of
the Confederacy (1993) (4 Volume set; also 1 vol abridged
version) (ISBN 0-13-275991-8)
- Faust, Patricia L. (ed.) Historical Times Illustrated
Encyclopedia of the Civil War (1986) (ISBN 0-06-181261-7) 2000
short entries
- Esposito, Vincent J., West Point Atlas of American
Wars online edition 1995
- Heidler, David Stephen, ed. Encyclopedia of the American
Civil War: A Political, Social, and Military History (2002),
1600 entries in 2700 pages in 5 vol or 1-vol editions
- Resch, John P. et al., Americans at War: Society,
Culture and the Homefront vol 2: 1816–1900 (2005)
- Tulloch, Hugh. The Debate on the American Civil War
Era (1999), historiography
- Wagner, Margaret E. Gary W. Gallagher, and Paul Finkelman, eds.
The Library of Congress Civil War Desk Reference
(2002)
- Woodworth, Steven E. ed. American Civil War: A Handbook of
Literature and Research (1996) (ISBN 0-313-29019-9), 750 pages
of historiography and bibliography online edition
- Biographies
- American National Biography 24 vol (1999), essays by
scholars on all major figures; online and
hardcover editions at many libraries
- McHenry, Robert ed. Webster's American Military
Biographies (1978)
- Warner, Ezra J., Generals in Blue: Lives of the Union
Commanders, (1964), ISBN 0-8071-0822-7
- Warner, Ezra J., Generals in Gray: Lives of the Confederate
Commanders, (1959), ISBN 0-8071-0823-5
- Soldiers
- Berlin, Ira, et al., eds. Freedom's Soldiers: The Black
Military Experience in the Civil War (1998)
- Hess, Earl J. The Union Soldier in Battle: Enduring the
Ordeal of Combat (1997)
- McPherson, James. For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in
the Civil War (1998)
- Wiley, Bell Irvin. The Life of Johnny Reb: The Common
Soldier of the Confederacy (1962) (ISBN 0-8071-0475-2)
- Wiley, Bell Irvin. Life of Billy Yank: The Common Soldier
of the Union (1952) (ISBN 0-8071-0476-0)
- Primary sources
- Commager, Henry Steele (ed.). The Blue and the Gray.
The Story of the Civil War as Told by Participants.
(1950), excerpts from primary sources
- Hesseltine, William B. ed.; The Tragic Conflict: The Civil
War and Reconstruction (1962), excerpts from primary
sources
External links
- Causes of
the Civil War
- Civil
War Letters — Primary Sources and First Person Accounts.
- Declarations of Causes of Secession
- Alexander Stephens' Cornerstone Speech
- Lincoln's Call for Troops
- The Civil
War Home Page
- Civil War photos at the National Archives

- "Preview: 5,000 Images" from the Civil War Photographs Collection at the Library of
Congress
- University of Tennessee: U.S. Civil War Generals
- The
Civil War, a PBS documentary by Ken Burns
- Individual state's contributions to the Civil War: California, Florida, Illinois #1,
Illinois #2, Ohio, Pennsylvania
- WWW-VL: History: USA Civil War 1855–1865
- Civil War
Preservation Trust
- Civil War Era Digital Collection at Gettysburg
College This collection contains digital images of political
cartoons, personal papers, pamphlets, maps, paintings and
photographs from the Civil War Era held in Special Collections at
Gettysburg College.
- ”Fort Morgan and the Battle of Mobile
Bay”, a National Park Service Teaching with Historic Places
(TwHP) lesson plan
- “Andersonville: Prisoner of War Camp”, a
National Park Service Teaching with Historic Places (TwHP) lesson
plan
- TOCWOC Civil War Blog A group Civil War blog
consisting of informed amateurs.
- Civil War
Books and Authors Blog A Civil War blog focusing mainly on book
reviews.
- Civil War
Bookshelf American Civil War historiography and publishing
blogged daily by Dimitri Rotov.
- American Civil War in Alabama, Encyclopedia of
Alabama
- Grand Valley State University Civil War digital
collection
- Seven Civil War Stories Your Teacher Never Told
You by Eric Johnson, CNN, June 12 2009