The civil WAr
Withdrawal of the South
The Failure of Compromise
Fort Sumter
- South Carolina called a special convention which voted unanimously on December 20, 1860, to withdraw the state from the Union
- In February 1861, representatives of the seven states (Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas) met in Montgomery, Alabama and formed a new nation: the Confederate States of America
- Response from the North was confused and indecisive
- South Carolina sent commissioners to Washington to ask for the surrender of Sumter but Buchanan refused to yield it.
The Failure of Compromise
- Compromise forces gathered behind a proposal first submitted by senator John J. Crittenden of Kentucky known as the Crittenden Compromise. It called for several constitutional amendments which would guarantee the permanent existence f slavery in the slave states and would satisfy Southern demands on such issues as fugitive slaves and slavery in the District of Columbia. Also planned to reestablish the Missouri Comprise. Slavery would be prohibited north of the line and permitted south of it.
- Republicans were not willing to accept plan
Fort Sumter
- conditions at FS were deteriorating quickly.
- Union forces were running short of supplies, unless they received fresh provisions the fort would have to be evacuated
- Lincoln informed the South Caroling authorities that there would be no attempt to send troops or munitions unless the supply ships met with resistance
- When Anderson refused to surrender the fort, the Confederates bombarded it for two days and on April 14, Anderson surrendered and the Civil War had begun
- Union Advantage: its population was more than twice as large as that of the South. It had a greater manpower reserve both for its armies and its work force. North had an advanced industrial system. North had a much better transportation system than did the South and better railroads.North had the advantage of local support and familiarity with the territory.
- Southern Advantage: The commitment of the white population for the war was clear and firm. In eh North opinion about eh war was more divided and support for it remained shaky until very near the end. Many southerns believed that eh dependence of the English and French textile industries on American cotton would require them to intervene on the side of Confederacy.
- Congress passes aeries of tariff bills that by the end of the war had raised duties to the highest level in the nation's history
- Congress also moved to complete the dream of a transcontinental railroad creating two new federally chartered corporations: the Union Pacific Railroad Company and the Central Pacific
- National Bank Acts of 1863-1864 created new national banking system
- Government tried to finance war by levying taxes, issuing paper currency, and borrowing.
- Taxation raised only a small proportion of the funds, the new currency's value was worth only 39 percent of a gold dollar.
- Largest source of financing was the loans from the American people.
- First idea was to get volunteers in state militias
- by March 1863, Congress was forced to pass a national draft law. virtually all young adult males were eligible to be drafted
- Opposition to the law was widespread particularly among laborers
- Began to take jobs as nurses
- Gender roles began to shift as they took over positions vacated by men and worked as teachers, retail sales clerks, office workers, and mill and factory hands
- Confederate constitution was almost identical to the Constitution of the United States with a few exceptions: 1. it explicitly acknowledged the sovereignty of the individual states 2. it specifically sanctioned slavery and made its abolition practically impossible
- Jefferson Davis of Mississippi and Alexander H. Stephens of Georgia, who were later chosen by the general electorate, without opposition for six-year terms.
- Davis was in the end, an unsuccessful president. He was a reasonably able administrator and the dominating figure in his government, encountering little interference from the generally tame members of his unstable cabinet and serving as his own secretary of war.
- He rarely provided genuinely national leadership and spent too much time on routine items, and unlike Lincoln, displayed a punctiliousness about legal and constitutional niceties inappropriate to the needs of a new nation at war.
- No formal political parties in the Confederacy
- Many white Southerners supported the war, but as in the North many were openly critical for the government and the military, particularly as the tide of battle turned against the South and the Confederate economy decayed.
- The Confederate Congress tired at first not to tax the people directly but to requisition funds from the individual states
- Most of the states were also unwilling to tax their citizens and paid their shares with bonds or notes of dubious worth
- In 1863, the congress enacted an income tax, where planters could pay "in kind" as a percentage of their produce.
- Government issued bonds but the public stopped buying them.
- Conscription worked for a time to raise confederate army but the numbers decreased in 1862
- War had a devastating effect on the South
- it cut off Southern planters and producers from the markets in the North on which they had depended, it made the sale of cotton overseas much more difficult, it robbed farms and industries that did not have large slave populations of male work force
- In the North, production of all goods, agricultural and industrial, increased somewhat during the war, in the South it declined by more than a third.
- The fighting itself wreaked havoc on the Southern economy
- Almost all the major battles of the war occurred within the confederacy; both armies spent most of their time on southern soil
- The South's already inadequate railroad system was nearly destroyed, much of its most valuable farmland and many of is most successful plantations were ruined by Union troops.
- South experienced massive shortages of almost everything
- The region was overwhelmingly agricultural but did not grow enough food to meet its own needs
- Large numbers of doctors were conscripted to serve the needs of the military leaving many communities without any medical care.
- As the war continued, the shortages, the inflation, and the suffering created increasing instability in Southern society
- War effected the South largely on women
- Because so many men left the farms and plantations to fight, the task of keeping families together and maintaining agricultural production fell increasingly to women
- Most important was Abraham Lincoln whose previous military experience consisted only of brief service in his state militia during the Black Hawk War.
- He was a successful commander because he realized that numbers and resources were on his side and because he took advantage of the North's material advantages. He also realized that the proper objective of his armies was the destruction of the Confederate armies and not the occupation of Southern territory.
- Robert E. Lee: He failed to create an effective command system. Davis named Lee to the post but made clear that he expected to continue to make all basic decisions
- the railroad was particularly important in a war in which millions of soldiers were being mobilized and transferred to the front, and in which a single field army could number as many as 25,000 men.
- Transporting enormous numbers of soldiers, and the supplies necessary to sustain them, by land or by horse,and wagon would have been almost impossible
- Railroads made it possible for these large armies to be assembled and moved form place to place but they limited the mobility of the armies
- the dependence of the rails, and the resulting necessity of concentrating huge numbers of men in a few places also encouraged commanders to prefer great battles with large armies rather than smaller engagements with fewer troops
- Battle of Chancellorsville: May 1-5, Stonewall Jackson attacked the Union right and Lee himself charged the front. Hooker barely engaged to escape with his army. Lee had defeated the Union objectives, but he had not destroyed the Union army.
- Vicksburg: Ulysses S. Grant was driving at Vicksburg, : Mississippi, one of the Confederacy's two remaining strongholds on the southern Mississippi River. Grant boldly moved men and supplies overland and by water to an area south of the city. He then attacked Vicksburg form the rear. Six weeks later, on July 4, Vicksburg surrendered.
- Gettysburg: Lee's first assault on the Union forces on cemetery Ridge failed. On July 4, he withdrew from Gettysburg, another major tuning point in the war.
- Before the end of the year, there was a third important turning point, this one in Tennessee. After occupying Chattanooga on September 9, Union forces under William Rosecrans began an unwise pursuit of Bragg's retreating Confederate forces.
- Recognizing that further bloodshed was futile, Lee arranged to meet Grant at a private home in the small town of Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia.
- On April 9, he surrendered what was left of his forces. Nine days later, near Durham, North Carolina, Johnston surrendered to Sherman