Bell-Ringer

1. Bell-Ringer • In her book This Republic of Suffering, historian Drew Faust surveys the many ways the Civil War generation coped with the trauma of death on a massive scale: the concept of the Good Death and the intellectual quest to find meaning—or its absence—in the war's carnage. In the process, she contends, the nation invented the modern culture of reverence for military death and used the fallen to elaborate its new concern for individual rights. Why do you think we try to apply meaning to those who die in wartime situations?

2. The Civil War: Major Military Events, 1861-1863 During the first year and a half, armies fought major campaigns in both the East and West. Union/Confederate capitals (Richmond/D.C.) only seventy miles apart, each threatened more than once with capture. Added extra drama to initial eastern campaigns.

3. The East: Bull Run/Manassas Junction and its lessons; The Peninsular Campaign, the Seven Days’ Battle and the failure to capture Richmond; Antietam (single bloodiest day of battle) and the Confederacy’s failure to launch a northern offensive; Fredericksburg, VA--one of the Union’s worst defeats. • Essentially, for the first year and a half, the East is at a stalemate. After these additions to the forces engaged… contending with three divisions of the United States army and superior forces of cavalry and artillery; yet the brave Southern volunteers lost not a foot of ground, but repelled the repeated attacks of the heavy masses of the enemy, whose numbers enabled them to bring forward fresh troops after each repulse. -General Joseph E. Johnston- Bull Run Battlefield photo

4. Antietam, MarylandSeptember 17, 1862 At Antietam, the Confederate army under Robert E. Lee attempted a rare northern offensive. In the bloodiest day of the entire war, 5,000 men died and another 18,000 were wounded. General Lee was lucky to escape destruction, for Union General GeorgeMcClellan intercepted a lost battle order wrapped around a cigar!

5. Fredericksburg, VirginiaDecember 13, 1862 Union general Ambrose Burnside unwisely ordered his soldiers to attack General Lee’s army, which held fortified positions on high ground. Lee’s men performed so efficiently in killing northerners that Lee was moved to say, “It is well that war is so terrible. We should grow too fond of it.” In this telegram to President Lincoln, General Burnside relates the heavy losses his soldiers Faced at Fredericksburg.

6. The West: Union’s strategy was to divide the Confederacy in half along major river ways. Brutal guerilla warfare waged in the west, but the Confederacy was unable to expand its empire past Texas. By the end of 1862, the far West and most (not all) of the Mississippi Valley lay in Union hands. At Shiloh, Tennessee, General U.S. Grant surveyed a field “so covered with dead that it would have been possible to walk… in any direction, stepping on dead bodies, without a foot touching the ground.”

7. The War on the High Seas • The War at Sea • Union naval blockade strengthened over time. • Confederate ships had limited success • running the blockade. • Restriction of trade hurt the Southern cause. • On the high seas of the Atlantic, the Union continued its blockade. Attempts by the Confederacy to break it are largely unsuccessful. Dramatic showoff of “ironclad” warships (Monitor & Virginia). The Confederacy was sealed off, with devastating results.

8. Major Diplomatic Events, 1861-1863 • Of the utmost importance to the Confederacy was international recognition and support under the banner of self-determination against a “tyrannical power”. • Confederates based their hope for European support on King Cotton, but this strategy did not work in getting official European support. At best, the Confederates received “belligerent” trading status with Great Britain to buy goods and build ships in European ports. • Why was support refused? Initially, Europeans had a cotton surplus. Once that was gone, they found new suppliers for cotton (India, Egypt, etc.). In addition, once Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation was delivered, slavery became the other deciding factor (Britain and France had outlawed it earlier).

9. Why So Bloody? Civil War…Warfare! • Despite early hopes that this war would be quick and would avoid too much violence, Civil War battles were terribly deadly. • One reason for this was technology: improved weapons, especially more modern rifles, had better range and were more accurate than muskets (for a ¼ mile or more). • Generals during the Civil War, despite the better range and accuracy of weapons, still insisted on the old method of rushing the enemy in a huge mass of men, which resulted in many, many deaths. • Terrible medical knowledge/treatment was the other major reason why battles were so deadly. Many wounds that were minor ended up turning into deadly infections. Disease was a more frequent killer than the battles themselves!

10. Tools of the Trade

11. Battlefields & Aftermath Battlefield on the day of the Battle - Antietam, MD, September 17, 1862

12. Confederate Dead by a Fence on the Hagerstown Road - Antietam, MD, September 1862

13. Breastworks on Little Round Top, Round Top in Distance - Gettysburg, PA, July 1863

14. Dead Confederate Soldiers in the "Slaughter Pen" at the Foot of Little Round Top - Gettysburg, PA, July 1863

15. Medical Treatment/Hospitals Amputation Being Performed in a Hospital Tent - Gettysburg, PA, July 1863

16. Smith's Barn, used as a Hospital After the Battle of Antietam , near Keedysville, MD, September 1862 Ambulance Wagons and Drivers at Harewood Hospital (View 1) - Washington, D.C., July 1863