Mortoza Mohammadi

The Pendulum of War Eleven states of the Confederacy established a

functioning government at Richmond in May 1861 with its armies in control of virtually all of the 750,000 square miles that constituted its national territory.

To “win” the war that began with Confederate seizure of Fort Sumtur, the South needed only to defend what it already possessed by repelling enemy invasions and wearing out the will of the Northern people to carry on war.

President Lincoln wished to achieve his war aims of preserving the U.S. as a whole—a Union of all the states—his armies would have to invade the Confederacy, defeat its armies, conquer and occupy its territory, and destroy its government

Taking Off the Kid Gloves The first cloud on the horizon of Union military

success in 1862 appeared in the Shenandoah Valley. The Union commander was General Nathaniel P.

Banks, one of the North’s “political generals” appointed not because of his military skills but because of his political influence.

It was Bank’s misfortune that he faced Confederate General Thomas J. Jackson, known as “Stonewall.”

Jackson’s mission was to create a diversion that would compel Lincoln to divert to the Valley some of the reinforcements slated for McClellan

Jackson succeeded so well the he became one of the most renowned commanders in the South and most feared in the North until his death a year later

“The Federals Got a Very Complete Smashing” Little good news for the Union came out of the

Western theaters to offset bad news in Virginia during July and August.

In late June two previously unbeatable task forces, supported by 3,000 army soldiers, tried in vain to batter into submission this “Gibralter of the West” as Confederates labeled it.

For several weeks in July 1862 the navy’s two hundred guns and twenty-three mortars pounded Vicksburg and took heavy fire in return. Northern soldiers tried to dig a bypass canal out of range of Vicksburg’s batteries, but low water in the Mississippi foiled their efforts. In result more then half of the soldiers got sick with different diseases.

Showdown at Sharpsburg

The first casualty of the Confederate invasion was the anticipation that Marylanders would flock to the Sothern Banner.

“Maryland, My Maryland” Walter Taylor declared on September 7

that “now is the time for Maryland or never. After this she does not rise, hush up ‘My Maryland.’ ’’

The Beginning Of the End The Army of Northern Virginia was not

destroyed at Antietam, as Lincoln had hoped, nor was it beaten, as McClellan claimed, but it was badly hurt.

Three of the nine division commanders, nineteen of thirty-six brigade commanders, and eighty-six of 173 regimental commanders were killed or wounded.

This war went down as one of the most brutal wars of our history.