NORTHERN ADVANTAGES

1. NORTHERN ADVANTAGES • 22 million people • Only 9 million in South • And 1/3 of them were slaves • 4:1 military numerical advantage • Huge advantage in industrial capacity • Built 453 of 470 locomotives in U.S • Manufactured 97% of all firearms • State of New York produced twice many manufactured products as the entire South

2. SOUTHERN ADVANTAGES I • Easier military job to do • To obtain their objective, all the South had to do was turn back invading forces from the North • Did not have to conquer one inch of northern territory • The North, on the other hand, had to attack and subdue a region as large as Western Europe

3. SOUTHERN ADVANTAGES II • Union army only numbered 16,000 men with limited serious combat experience in 1860 • Best young officers were from the South and sided with the Confederacy • Robert E. Lee, Joseph Johnson, P.T Beauregard • Best and brightest young men in the North attracted to business; in the South they were attracted to the army • To mobilize the people of the North into a disciplined, well-equipped and well-led fighting machine would be an immense and difficult job Robert E. Lee P.T. Beauregard

4. SOUTHERN ADVANTAGES III • No one in Washington knew how many draft-age males lived in the North • Department of War had no detailed maps of the topography of the South • No standard time or time zones in the U.S. • Could be three different “correct” times in some cities • Some southerners believed North lacked the courage and determination to win • Others believed that war-weariness would eventually divide the North and lead to a peace movement there • As was the case with the Viet Nam War in the 1960s/1970s

5. SOUTHERN ADVANTAGES IV • Confederate leaders knew that all the cotton used in northern textile mills and 80% used in Europe came from the South • Could devastate northern industry by holding crop off market • Could create such economic havoc in Europe that European powers would be forced to recognize an independent Confederacy and sell it manufactured products it needed • If north established a naval blockade, England and France would run it and maybe join the South in the war

6. CASUALTIES • Bloodiest military conflict in U.S. history • 600,000 men died • More than combined U.S. casualties in WWI and WWII • 7000 men killed, 33,000 wounded, and 11,000 MIA at the Battle of Gettysburg alone • One out four young men who put on a uniform between 1861 and 1865 never made it back home

7. WHY HIGH CASUALTIES? (I) • Outmoded military strategy • During Mexican War, soldiers use traditional smooth bore muskets • Civil War troops had new and deadlier rifles • Springfield .58 and Enfield .577 • Artillery more accurate and lethal too • Made frontal assaults an invitation to slaughter • But frontal assaults had worked in the Mexican War, so generals used them over and over in the Civil War too • Result was carnage on a massive scale

8. WHY HIGH CASUALTIES? (II) • Germ theory of disease and modern antiseptic techniques had not yet been discovered • So infection and death often followed the most minor wounds • Overcrowded camps often lacked clean water and proper sanitation facilities • Spawning deadly diseases • Average regiment lost almost 50% of its fighting strength through disease during its first year in the field • For every soldier killed in combat during the war, two more died from infectious disease

9. PURPOSE OF THE WAR • War was provoked by the belief that slavery must not spread into new territories • But war did not begin as a war to abolish slavery in the South • Lincoln’s position was that he had “no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists” • Crittenden Resolution • Passed by Congress in July 1861 • Stated that the war was not waged “for the purpose of overthrowing or interfering with the established institutions of the Southern states, but to maintain the states unimpaired”

10. THE BORDER STATES • Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, and Delaware stood between hardcore South and hardcore North • All slave states and contained 5 million people • If they joined Confederacy, they would dramatically shift strategic balance in favor of the South • It was therefore critical for Lincoln not to antagonize them by pushing the abolitionist issue

11. Many people there were from the South and had southern racial attitudes They might support a war to preserve the Union but not one to destroy slavery Abolitionism unpopular in southern Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa Lincoln therefore downplayed the slavery issue to retain the loyalty of southern northern states and win over the border states

12. FIRST BATTLE OF BULL RUN • North originally estimated that 75,000 men from state militias, signed up for 3 months, would be enough to knock out the South • First Battle of Bull Run destroyed that illusion • Fought in northern Virginia in July 1861 • Union troops panicked under Confederate fire and ran back to Washington without packs and guns • Disaster shocked Lincoln into calling for a 500,000 man army, signed up for three years

13. INDUSTRIAL MOBILIZATION • New 500,000 man army needed uniforms, boots, weapons, ammunition, blankets, tents, compasses, and countless other things in quantities far in excess of normal civilian output • North did produce these items but only after dramatic changes occurred in industries • In terms of increasing firm size, changes in division of labor, increase in degree of mechanization, increase in worker productivity

14. CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT • Responsibility lay with Confederate President Jefferson Davis and Confederate Congress • Constitution of Confederacy was different from 1787 Constitution in two ways • It made the preservation of slavery a specific aim of government • It gave states more rights and limited power of Congress and the president to a greater extent • Weakness of central government would hamper the southern war effort

15. CONFEDERATE MANPOWER PROBLEMS • Although South did not need as many soldiers as the North, its manpower pool was much smaller • Had to institute the draft in April 1862 when volunteers began to drop off • Many loopholes • Many occupations exempted • State governments often did not cooperate fully

16. CONFEDERATE SUPPLY PROBLEMS • South experienced problems is securing enough weapons, equipment, transportation, and food for its army • Central government simply not strong enough to procure these supplies and industrial base too small to produce enough • Had to rely on smuggled supplies from abroad • 80% of ships that ran Union naval blockade between 1861 and 1862 made it through and thereby kept the South adequately supplied

17. 1861-1862 • Most dramatic theater of war was the East • Army of Northern Virginia • Commanded by Robert E. Lee • Army of the Potomac • Commanded by George B. McClellan • After First Battle of Bull Run • Union army repeatedly tried to capture Richmond but failed

18. MCCLELLAN’S WEAKNESSES • McClellan was excellent organizer but had little aptitude for leading troops in battle • A perfectionist • Overestimated enemy strength by factor of 2 or 3 • No match for Robert E. Lee or Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson • Procrastinated for almost a year before trying to march on Richmond

19. BATTLE OF THE SEVEN DAYS • McClellan finally moves on Richmond under heavy pressure from Lincoln • Battle of the Seven Days • June 25-July 1, 1862 • Near Richmond • McClellan inflicts heavy losses on Lee • But withdraws back to Washington instead of pushing on to Richmond against outnumbered enemy

20. ANTIETAM • Fought ten weeks after Battle of Seven Days • Lee goes on offensive by invading western Maryland • McClellan corners him at Antietam with a former 50% larger than Lee’s • Result was the bloodiest battle in the entire war • 21,000 casualties • McClellan lets Lee slip away instead of wiping him out • Lincoln fires him

21. AMBROSE BURNSIDE • McClellan replaced by Ambrose Burnside • Demonstrated that foolish boldness could be just as devastating as McClellan’s timid caution • Attacked well-fortified town of Fredericksburg • December 1862 • Sent wave after wave of soldiers against impregnable positions • Union casualties exceeded Confederate ones by 3 to 1 • No ground was gained

22. THE WEST • Union army held Missouri against invading army from the South • General Ulysses S. Grant drove Confederate forces out of Kentucky and Tennessee and heads for Mississippi • Almost trapped against the Tennessee River • Battle of Shiloh • April 1862 • Saved by arrival of reinforcements • Henry Halleck takes control of Grant’s army • Indecisively disperses forces and attack on South loses all momentum

23. CAPTURE OF NEW ORLEANS • David Farragut’s fleet captured New Orleans in April 1862 • Largest city in the South • Closed down Mississippi River for duration of the war • Eventually helped to split Confederacy by cutting communication between western states of Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas and eastern states

24. EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION • War ultimately transformed conflict into a war against slavery • Lincoln issued Emancipation Proclamation in September 1862 • Went into effect January 1, 1863 • Did not actually eliminate slavery throughout entire U.S. • Border states and areas of South already under Union control were exempted • Not an entirely meaningless document • Meant that every future advance of Union army would free slaves • Also gave stronger incentive for slaves to help Union troops and to escape for Union lines

25. AFRICAN-AMERICAN SOLDIERS • Racist sentiments in the North were strong and at first even free blacks were considered unfit for military service • But as more Confederate territory fell into Union hands and the Union grew more desperate for manpower, necessity dictated opening up the army to black soldiers • Emancipation Proclamation therefore announced black recruits would be welcome in the Union army

26. HUGE RESPONSE • By 1865, almost 100,000 blacks had served in the Union army • They were not treated particularly well • Segregated into black units led by white officers • Paid 33% less than white soldiers • Some commanders flatly refused to use black troops • Others assigned them only to non-combat roles • But whenever they were given the chance to fight, they proved to be just as brave as any other soldier

27. REAL COURAGE • It took particular courage for black soldiers to take the field • Because of the barbaric treatment they would inevitably receive in case of defeat • Confederates refused to exchange black prisoners of war • In many cases, they did not take black prisoners at all • Preferring to slaughter them on the spot

28. DRAMATIC SHIFT IN UNION MILITARY POLICY • April 1863 • Became legitimate to forage for supplies and destroy everything the Union army found in the South • Vividly demonstrated by General William T. Sherman’s March Through Georgia • Cut a path of destruction 60 miles wide and 300 miles long from Atlanta to the coast • Cut supply lines between Lower South and Lee’s army • Shattered enemy’s economic system and civilian morale • Age of total war began

29. 1863 • After his victory at Chancellorsville (May 1863), Lee invades Pennsylvania • Hoping to win great victory on northern soil and demoralize the North • Result was the Battle of Gettysburg (early July 1863)

30. GETTYSBURG • At climax of three-day battle, 15,000 Rebel soldiers make a suicidal assault across an open field against massive Union troop and artillery concentrations • Pickett’s Charge • The few who survived this charge either surrendered or retreated • Union commander, George Meade, let remnants of Lee’s army withdraw instead of wiping them out when he had the chance • Confederates lost 25,000 men • South no longer had capacity to replace them • Lee would never again have the men to launch another offensive

31. 1863 IN THE WEST • Grant captured Vicksburg (Mississippi) after brutal seven month campaign • July 4, 1863 • Definitively cut off western Confederate states from the east • Grant then successfully repelled Confederate attack on Chattanooga, Tennessee • And then Sherman began his “March Through Georgia” • Further splitting the Confederacy

32. ULYSSES S. GRANT • Lincoln appoints Grant as general-in-chief of all Union forces and moves him east • Late 1863 • Disliked by Easterners because he was not a “gentleman” • But he displayed a singleness of purpose and a will to win that none of his predecessors possessed • He was just what the North needed

33. GRANT’S STRATEGY • Realized that the South had lost ability to replace lost men and supplies • Could be defeated by just hammering away at its two main armies • Sent Sherman to deal with Joseph Johnson’s Army of Tennessee • Personally went after Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia

34. 1864 • Grant threw all he had in an assault on Lee in Virginia • Paid no attention to the body count • Bloody May (1864) • Grant and Lee fight a series of bitter engagements • Grant suffered 55,000 casualties and Lee suffers 30,000 • But Grant had replacements for his fallen men and Lee did not • Confederates therefore steadily fell back to the town of Petersburg • Where they were besieged by Grant

35. But most Americans did not like McClellan and news of Farragut’s capture of Mobile and Sherman’s destruction of Atlanta weakened case of those who wanted to pull out of war Lincoln had faced opposition from Democrats who wanted to pull out of war and radicals within his own party who believed that Lincolns plan for the defeated South was too soft While siege of Petersburg went on for 9 months, Lincoln was re-elected over Democrat George McClellan

36. SOUTHERN PROBLEMS • South now in big trouble • Forced to draft 17 year old boys and 50 year old men • Even considered using slave troops • Union naval blockade had become effective • By 1865, only 50% of ships that tried to run it made it through • Running out of food • Economic strangulation of Confederacy destroyed troop and civilian morale

37. THE LAST CHAPTER • No grand climatic battle • Confederacy simply collapsed • In April 1865, Lee’s army was forced to evacuate Petersburg and its escape route was cut off • Had shrunk to only 25,000 men • Lee surrenders to Grant at Appamattox courthouse on April 9, 1865 • Civil War over

38. FINAL SHOT • Lincoln shot in the back of the head by John Wilkes Booth • April 14, 1865 • Booth pursued into Virginia and trapped and killed in burning barn • Nation now had to heal gaping wounds caused by Civil War without Lincoln • New president Andrew Johnson of Tennessee would now lead shattered nation into Reconstruction of the South