Chapter 21

1. Chapter 21 The Furnace of the Civil War 1861-1864

2. “Ninety-Day War ?” • April 15, 1861 - Lincoln called for 75,000 militiamen • Believed a quick suppression of the South to prove the North’s superiority and end this foolishness • July 21, 1861 – First Battle of Manassas (Bull Run) • ill-trained Yankee recruits swaggered out toward Bull Run to engage a smaller Confederate unit • They had run advertisements in local newspapers to come see the battle • Congressmen gathered in picnics to watch • Stonewall Jackson & confederates pushed the Union army into retreat • Proved it was going to be longer than a 90-day war

3. “Tardy George” McClellan and the Peninsula Campaign • command of the Army of the Potomac(Union) was given to 34 year old General George B. McClellan • constantly believed that he was outnumbered • never took risks • held the army without moving for months • finally ordered by Lincoln to advance • decided upon a water-borne approach to Richmond, called the Peninsula Campaign, taking about a month to capture Yorktown before coming to the Richmond • Lincoln then sent him after Stonewall Jackson • Jeb Stuart marched around him • June 26 to July 2, 1862 - Lee then launched a devastating counterattack (the Seven Days’ Battles)

4. Union strategy (total war) • Suffocate the South through an oceanic blockade • Free the slaves to undermine the South’s very economic foundations • Cut the Confederacy in half by seizing control of the Mississippi River (The Anaconda Plan) • Chop the Confederacy to pieces by marching through Georgia and the Carolinas (Sherman’s March to the Sea) • Capture its capital, Richmond, VA • Try everywhere to engage the enemy’s main strength and grind it to submission

5. The War at Sea • Union blockade was leaky at first, but it clamped down later • Blockade-running (smuggling) was a risky but profitable business • Union navy also seized British freighters on the high seas, citing “ultimate destination” to the South • biggest Confederate threat - an old U.S. warship reconditioned & plated with iron railroad rails: the Virginia (formerly called the Merrimack) • Monitor arrived just in time to fight the Merrimack to a standstill, and the Confederate ship was destroyed later by the South to save it from the North

6. Pivotal Point: Antietam • Sept 17, 1862 - McClellan’s men found a copy of Lee’s plans and were able to stop the Southerners at Antietam • single bloodiest day of the Civil War • Federal losses were 12,410, Confederate losses 10,700 • European powers very close to helping the South, but after Antietam, that help faded • Antietam was also the Union display of power that Lincoln needed to announce his Emancipation Proclamation. • Now, the war wasn’t just to save the Union, it was to save the slaves a well

8. Proclamation without Emancipation • Jan. 1, 1863 - announced the emancipation of slaves in the confederate territories, when the Union was rejoined • but slaves in the Border States (KY, MD, DE, MO) and the conquered territories were not liberated • Lincoln freed the slaves where he couldn’t and wouldn’t free the slaves where he could • many soldiers refused to fight for abolition and deserted • many slaves, upon hearing the proclamation, left their plantations, • the Emancipation Proclamation did succeed in one of its purposes: the undermine the labor of the South • Angry Southerners cried that Lincoln was stirring up trouble and trying to have a slave insurrection • Unfair of President Lincoln?

9. Blacks Battle Bondage • At first, Blacks weren’t enlisted in the army • as men ran low, these men were eventually allowed in • by war’s end, Black’s accounted for about 10% of the Union army • Southerners refused to recognize Black soldiers as prisoners of war • executed them as runaways and rebels • Fort Pillow, Tennessee, Blacks who had surrendered were massacred • many others walked off of their jobs when Union armies conquered territory that included the plantations

10. Lee’s Last Lunge at Gettysburg • After Antietam, A. E. Burnside (known for sideburns) took over the Union army--lost badly--at Fredericksburg, Virginia, on Dec. 13, 1862 • “Fighting Joe” Hooker (known for his girls) was badly beaten at Chancellorsville, Virginia • Lee now prepared to invade the North for the second and final time, at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania • General George G. Meade, who by accident took a stand atop a low ridge flanking a shallow valley and the Union and Confederate armies fought a bloody and brutal battle in which the North “won.”

12. War in the West • Lincoln finally found a good general in Ulysses S. Grant • fought under the ideal of “immediate and unconditional surrender.” • Fort Henry, Fort Donelson, Shiloh • Vicksburg, Mississippi, U.S. Grant besieged the city and captured it on July 4, 1863, thus securing the important Mississippi River Sherman Scorches Georgia • General William Tecumseh Shermanwas given command to march through Georgia • he delivered, capturing and burning down Atlanta before completing his famous “march to the sea” at Savannah • waging “total war” by cutting up railroad tracks, burning fields, and destroying everything

13. Grant Outlasts Lee • Grant was a man who could send thousands of men out to die just so that the Confederates would lose • he knew that he could afford to lose many men while Lee could not • Example: Cold Harbor, Union soldiers with papers pinned on their backs showing their names and addresses rushed the fort, and over 7000 died in a few minutes • Grant and his men captured Richmond, burning it, and cornered Lee at Appomattox Courthouse at Virginia in April 9th of 1865 Aftermath of the Nightmare • Civil War cost 600,000 men, $15 billion, and wasted the cream of the American crop • slavery was destroyed • Reconstruction was about to begin but the course was unsure

14. Martyrdom of Lincoln • April 14, 1865 - Abraham Lincoln was shot in the head by John Wilkes Booth and died shortly thereafter • his sudden & dramatic death erased his shortcomings and made people remember him for his good things • he would have almost certainly treated the South much better than they were actually treated during Reconstruction