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A War That Touched Lives

C H A P T E R 15The Union Severed

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In his remarks to Congress in 1862, Abraham Lincoln reminded congressmen that“We cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this administration will be

American Stories

Images of a safe and happy homecoming fill the dreams of Union soldiers sleeping in their camp in this paint-ing The Soldier’s Dream (c. 1865) by an unknown artist. Soldiers—both Union and Confederate—often ex-pressed their longing in their letters home. J. K. Street of the 9th Texas Infantry wrote to his wife: “I think ofyou so much and it is great pleasure to me to think of you and the many pleasant associations of home and it isendearments . . . I think of you so much thro’ the day that I dream of you at night.” In his letter of July 14,1861—his last letter—to his wife Sarah, Major Sullivan Ballou of the 2nd Rhode Island Volunteers wrote: “Thememories of the blissful moments I have spent with you come creeping over me . . . how hard it is for me togive them up and burn to ashes the hopes of future years when . . . we might still have lived and loved to-gether.” (© Atwater Kent Museum of Philadelphia, Courtesy of Historical Society of Pennsylvania Collection/Bridgeman Art Library)

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remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, canspare . . . us.The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dis-honor, to the latest generation.” Lincoln’s conviction that Americans would long re-member him and other major actors of the Civil War was correct. Jefferson Davis,Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant—these are the men whose characters, actions, anddecisions have been the subject of continuing discussion and analysis, whose statuesand memorials dot the American countryside and grace urban squares.Whether seenas heroes or villains, great men have dominated the story of the Civil War.

Yet from the earliest days, the war touched the lives of even the most uncele-brated Americans. From Indianapolis, 20-year-old Arthur Carpenter wrote to his par-ents in Massachusetts begging for permission to enlist in the volunteer army: “I havealways longed for the time to come when I could enter the army and be a militaryman, and when this war broke out, I thought the time had come, but you would notpermit me to enter the service . . . now I make one more appeal to you.” The pleasworked, and Carpenter enlisted, spending most of the war fighting in Kentucky andTennessee.

In that same year, in Tennessee, George and Ethie Eagleton faced anguishing deci-sions.Though not an abolitionist, George, a 30-year-old Presbyterian preacher, was un-sympathetic to slavery and opposed to secession. But when his native state left theUnion, George felt compelled to follow and enlisted in the 44th Tennessee Infantry.Ethie, his 26-year-old wife, despaired over the war, George’s decision, and her ownforlorn situation.

Mr. Eagleton’s school dismissed—and what for? O my God, must I write it? Hehas enlisted in the service of his country—to war—the most unrighteous warthat ever was brought on any nation that ever lived. Pres. Lincoln has done whatno other Pres. ever dared to do—he has divided these once peaceful and happyUnited States. And Oh! the dreadful dark cloud that is now hanging over ourcountry—’tis enough to sicken the heart of any one. . . . Mr. E. is gone. . . . Whatwill become of me, left here without a home and relatives, a babe just ninemonths old and no George.

Both Carpenter and the Eagletons survived the war, but the conflict transformedeach of their lives. Carpenter had difficulty settling down. Filled with bitter memoriesof the war years in Tennessee, the Eagletons moved to Arkansas. Ordinary peoplesuch as Carpenter and the Eagletons are historically anonymous.Yet their actions onthe battlefield and behind the lines helped to shape the course of events, as their lead-ers realized, even if today we tend to remember only the famous and influential.

For thousands of Americans, from Lincoln and Davis to Carpenter and

the Eagletons, war was both a profoundly personal and a major national event.

Its impact reached far beyond the four years of hostilities. The war that was

fought to conserve two political, social, and economic visions ended by

changing familiar ways of life in both North and South. War was a transforming

force, both destructive and creative in its effect on the structure and social

dynamics of society and on the lives of ordinary people. This theme underlies

this chapter’s analysis of the war’s three stages: the initial months of

preparation, the years of military stalemate between 1861 and 1865, and,

finally, resolution.

CHAPTER OUTLINE

Organizing for WarThe Balance of ResourcesThe Border StatesChallenges of WarLincoln and Davis

Clashing on the Battlefield,1861–1862War in the EastWar in the WestNaval WarfareCotton DiplomacyCommon Problems, Novel

SolutionsPolitical Dissension, 1862

The Tide Turns, 1863–1865The Emancipation Proclamation,

1863Unanticipated Consequences of

WarChanging Military Strategies,

1863–1865

Changes Wrought by WarA New SouthThe NorthOn the Home Front, 1861–1865Wartime Race RelationsWomen and the WarThe Election of 1864Why the North WonThe Costs of WarUnanswered Questions

Conclusion: An UncertainFuture

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488 PART 3 An Expanding People, 1820–1877

ORGANIZING FOR WARThe Confederate bombardment of Fort Sumter onApril 12, 1861, and the surrender of Union troops the

next day ended the uncertainty of the se-cession winter. The North’s response toFort Sumter was a virtual declaration ofwar as President Lincoln called for statemilitia volunteers to crush southern “in-surrection.” His action pushed severalslave states (Virginia, North Carolina, Ten-nessee, and Arkansas) off the fence and

into the southern camp. Other states (Maryland, Ken-tucky, and Missouri) agonizingly debated which wayto go. The “War Between the States” was now a reality.

Many Americans were unenthusiastic about thecourse of events. Southerners like George Eagletonreluctantly followed Tennessee out of the Union.When he enlisted, he complained of the “disgracefulcowardice of many who were last winter for seces-sion and war . . . but are now refusing self and meansfor the prosecution of war.” Robert E. Lee of Virginiaalso hesitated but finally decided that he could not“raise [a] hand against . . . relatives . . . children . . .home.” Whites living in the southern uplands (whereblacks were few and slaveholders were heartily dis-liked), yeoman farmers in the Deep South (whoowned no slaves), and many border state residentswere dismayed at secession and war. Many wouldeventually join the Union forces.

In the North, large numbers had supported nei-ther the Republican party nor Lincoln. Irish immi-grants fearing the competition of free black laborand southerners now living in Illinois, Indiana, andOhio harbored misgivings. Indeed, northern De-mocrats at first blamed Lincoln and the Republi-cans almost as much as southern secessionists forthe nation’s crisis.

Nevertheless, the days following Fort Sumter andLincoln’s call for troops saw an outpouring of supporton both sides, fueled in part by relief at decisive action,in part by patriotism and love of adventure, and in partby unemployment. Northern blacks and even somesouthern freedpeople proclaimed themselves “readyto go forth and do battle,” while whites like Carpenterenthusiastically flocked to enlist. In some places,workers were so eager to join up that trade unions col-lapsed. Sisters, wives, and mothers set to work makinguniforms. A New Yorker, Jane Woolsey, described thedrama of those early days “of terrible excitement”:

Outside the parlor windows the city is gay and brilliantwith excited crowds, the incessant movement and mu-sic of marching regiments and all the thousands offlags, big and little, which suddenly came fluttering out

of every window and door. . . . In our little circle offriends, one mother has just sent away an idolized son;another, two; another, four. . . . One sweet young wife ispacking a regulation valise for her husband today, anddoesn’t let him see her cry.

The war fever produced so many volunteers thatneither northern nor southern officials could han-dle the throng. Northern authorities turned asideoffers from blacks to serve. Both sides sent thou-sands of white would-be soldiers home. The convic-tion that the conflict would rapidly come to a glori-ous conclusion fueled the eagerness to enlist. “Wereally did not think that there was going to be an ac-tual war,” remembered Mary Ward, a young Georgiawoman. “We had an idea that when our soldiers gotupon the ground and showed, unmistakably thatthey were really ready and willing to fight . . . thewhole trouble would be declared at an end.” Lin-coln’s call for 75,000 state militiamen for only 90days of service, and a similar enlistment term forConfederate soldiers, supported the notion that thewar would be short.

The Balance of ResourcesThe Civil War was one of several military conflictsduring the nineteenth century that sought nationalindependence. In Europe, Italian and German pa-triots struggled to create new nations out of indi-vidual states. Unlike their European counterparts,however, southern nationalists proclaimed theirindependence by withdrawing from an alreadyunified state. Likening their struggle to that of theRevolutionary generation that had broken awayfrom Great Britain’s tyranny, southerners arguedthat they were “now enlisted in The Holy Cause ofLiberty and Independence.” While they legitimizedsecession by appealing to freedom, however,southerners were also preserving freedom’s an-tithesis, slavery.

The outcome of the southern bid for autonomywas much in doubt. Although statistics of popula-tion and industrial development suggested a north-ern victory, Great Britain with similar advantages in1775 had lost that war. Many northern assets wouldbecome effective only with time.

The North’s white population greatly exceededthe South’s, giving the appearance of a military ad-vantage. Yet early in the war, the armies were moreevenly matched. Almost 187,000 Union troops borearms in July 1861, while just over 112,000 menmarched under Confederate colors. Southerners be-lieved that their army would prove to be superiorfighters. Many northerners feared so, too. And slaves

ConfederateFlag over Fort

Sumter



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CHAPTER 15 The Union Severed 489

Lake Superior

Lake

Mic

higa

n

LakeH

uronLake Erie

Lake Ontario

Gulf of Mexico

ATLANTICOCEAN

BostonAlbany

New York

Buffalo

PhiladelphiaPittsburgh

Baltimore

Washington, D.C.

Richmond

Charleston

SavannahMontgomery

Atlanta

Mobile

Jackson

New Orleans

Memphis

Louisville

Cincinnati

Wheeling

Cleveland

Detroit

Indianapolis

Chicago

Springfield

Davenport

St. Louis

MAINE

N.H.

VT.

MASS.

NEWYORK

PENNSYLVANIA

VIRGINIA

NORTHCAROLINA

GEORGIA

FLORIDA

ALABAMA

MISSISSIPPI

LOUISIANA

ARKANSAS

MISSOURI

TENNESSEE

KENTUCKY

OHIO

MICHIGAN

INDIANAILLINOIS

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R.I.CONN.

DEL.

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CANADA

4' 81/2"Railroad Gauges

4' 10"

5'

5' 6"

6'

Railroads in 1860

This map shows the railroads at the beginning of the Civil War.What does it reveal about the differences in the transportationsystems in the North and the South? In what ways was the war effort of each side helped or hindered by the rail system? In whatways did the configuration of southern transportation benefit the South?

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Workers

Factories

Value ofgoods produced

Railroadtracks (% of total

U.S. mileage)

Textiles(including cotton

cloth andwoolen goods)

Firearms

Pig iron

110,000

18,000

155 million

30%

Ratio 20:1

Ratio 32:1

Ratio 17:1

70%

1.5 billion

1.3 million

110,000

North South

could carry on vital work behind the lines, freeingmost adult white males to serve the Confederacy.

The Union also enjoyed impressive economic ad-vantages. In the North, 1 million workers in 110,000

manufacturing concerns produced goodsvalued at $1.5 billion annually, while110,000 southern workers in 18,000 man-ufacturing concerns produced goods val-ued at only $155 million a year. Butnorthern industrial resources had to bemobilized. That would take time, espe-cially because the government did not in-

tend to direct production. A depleted northern trea-sury made the government’s first task the raising offunds to pay for military necessities.

The South depended on imported northern andEuropean manufactured goods. If Lincoln cut offthat trade, the South would have to create its indus-try almost from scratch. Its railroad system was orga-nized to move cotton, not armies and supplies. Yetthe agricultural South did have important resourcesof food, draft animals, and, of course, cotton, which

southerners believed would secure British andFrench support. By waging a defensive war, theSouth could tap regional loyalty and enjoy protectedlines. Because much of the South raised cotton andtobacco rather than food crops, Union armies couldnot live off the land, and extended supply lines werealways vulnerable. The Union had to conquer andoccupy; the South merely had to survive until its en-emy gave up.

The Border StatesUncertainty and divided loyalties produced indeci-sion in the border states. When the seven DeepSouth states seceded in 1860 and 1861, all the bor-der states except Unionist Delaware adopted a wait-and-see attitude. Their decisions were critically im-portant to both North and South.

The states of the Upper South could provide nat-ural borders for the Confederacy along the OhioRiver, access to its river traffic, and vital resources,wealth, and population. The major railroad link tothe West ran through Maryland and western Vir-ginia. Virginia boasted the South’s largest ironworks,and Tennessee provided its principal source ofgrain. Missouri opened the road to the West andcontrolled Mississippi River traffic.

For the North, every border state remaining loyalwas a psychological triumph. Nor was the North un-aware of the economic and strategic advantages ofkeeping the border states with the Union. However,Lincoln’s call for troops precipitated the secession ofVirginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolinabetween April 17 and May 20, 1861. Maryland, pre-cariously balanced between the pro-Confederatesouthern and Eastern Shore counties and Unionistwestern and northern areas, and with pro-southernenthusiasts abounding in Baltimore, vividly demon-strated the significance of border state loyalty.

On April 19, the 6th Massachusetts Regiment,heading for Washington, marched through Balti-more and was attacked by a mob of some 10,000southern sympathizers, some carrying Confederateflags. The bloody confrontation and confusion al-lowed would-be secessionists to burn the railroadbridges to the north and south. Washington wastemporarily cut off from the rest of the Union.

Lincoln took stern measures to secure Maryland.The president agreed temporarily to route troopsaround Baltimore. In return, the governor called thestate legislature into session at Frederick in Unionistwestern Maryland. This action and Lincoln’s swiftviolation of civil liberties dampened secessionistenthusiasm. Hundreds of southern sympathizers,including 19 state legislators and Baltimore’s mayor,

Resources for War: North Versus South

This chart shows the long-range advantages the Northenjoyed in the war, but the length and destruction of theconflict suggest that the North was not able to capital-ize on its strengths effectively to bring the war to aquick end.

Workers in D.C.During the Civil

War





NEBRASKA TERRITORYIOWA

UTAHTERRITORY KANSAS MISSOURI

INDIANTERRITORY

TEXASFebruary 1, 1861

M E X I C O

LOUISIANAJanuary 26, 1861

ARKANSASMay 6, 1861

MISSISSIPPIJanuary 9,

1861ALABAMA

January 11,1861

GEORGIAJanuary 19, 1861

FLORIDAJanuary 10, 1861

SOUTH CAROLINADecember 20, 1860

NORTH CAROLINAMay 20, 1861

TENNESSEEMay 7, 1861

VIRGINIAApril 17, 1861

KENTUCKY

ILLINOIS INDIANA

MICHIGAN

OHIO

PENNSYLVANIANEW JERSEY

DELAWARE

MARYLAND

NEW MEXICOTERRITORY

WESTVIRGINIA

1863 WashingtonD.C.

First secession

Second secession

Border states

Free statesand territories

Secession of the Southern States

This map provides a chronology of secession and shows the geographic importance of the border states.The map also highlightsthe vulnerable position of Washington and explains many of Lincoln’s actions in the early days of the war.

Owe Ever Pay Never This image, printed on an envelope,shows a design for a Confederate 50-cent piece. Who do you thinkthe man on the right is? Who is the man on the left and what is hepointing at the man wearing the top hat? In the background, you cansee a group of men hard at work and standing before them a manwielding a whip. What is the overall message of this design?(Collection of the New-York Historical Society, (PR-022-3-91-38)

were imprisoned without trial. Although Chief Jus-tice Roger B. Taney challenged the president’s actionand issued a writ of habeas corpus for the release ofa southern supporter, Lincoln ignored him. Amonth later, Taney ruled in Ex Parte Merryman thatif the public’s safety was endangered, only Congresscould suspend habeas corpus. By then, Lincoln hadsecured Maryland.

Although Lincoln’s quick and harsh response en-sured Maryland’s loyalty, he was more cautious else-where. Above all, he had to deal with slavery pru-dently, for hasty action would push border statesinto the Confederacy. Thus, when General John C.Frémont issued an unauthorized declaration ofemancipation in Missouri in August 1861, Lincolnrevoked the order and recalled him. The presidentexpected a chain reaction if certain key states se-ceded. After complex maneuvering, Kentucky andMissouri, like Maryland, remained in the Union.

Challenges of WarThe tense weeks after Fort Sumter spilled over withunexpected challenges. Neither side could handlethe floods of volunteers. Both faced enormous orga-nizational problems as they readied for war. In theSouth, a nation–state had to be created and its ap-paratus set in motion. Everything from a constitu-tion and government departments to a flag andpostage stamps had to be devised. As one onlookerobserved, “The whole country was new. Everythingwas to be done—and to be made.”

In February 1861, the original seceding statessent delegates to Montgomery, Alabama, to workon a provisional framework and to select a provi-sional president and vice president. The delegatesswiftly wrote a constitution resembling the federal



492

constitution of 1787 except in its empha-sis on the “sovereign and independentcharacter” of the states and its explicitrecognition of slavery. The provisionalpresident, Jefferson Davis of Mississippi,tried to assemble a geographically andpolitically balanced cabinet of moder-ates. His cabinet was balanced but con-

tained few of his friends and, more serious, fewmen of political stature. As time passed, it turnedout to be unstable as well.

Davis’s cabinet appointees faced the formidablechallenge of creating government departments fromscratch. They had to hire employees and initiate ad-ministrative procedures with woefully inadequate re-sources. The president’s office was in a hotel parlor.The Confederate Treasury Department was merely aroom in an Alabama bank “without furniture of any

kind; empty . . . of desks, tables, chairs or other appli-ances for the conduct of business.” Treasury Secre-tary Christopher G. Memminger bought furniturewith his own money; operations lurched forward infits and starts. In those early days, when an army cap-tain came to the treasury with a warrant from Davisfor blankets, he found only one clerk. After readingthe warrant, the clerk offered the captain a few dol-lars of his own, explaining, “This, Captain, is all themoney that I will certify as being in the ConfederateTreasury at this moment.” Other departments facedsimilar difficulties.

Despite such challenges, the new Confederategovernment could count on widespread civilian en-thusiasm and a growing sense of nationalism. Ordi-nary people spoke proudly of the South as “our na-tion” and referred to themselves as the “southernpeople.” Georgia’s governor insisted that “poor and

HOW OTHERS SEE US“The American Difficulty,”from Punch, 1861

This English journal became famous for its cartoons. HereLincoln appears without his beard.

■ What does this cartoon suggest about the ways in whichsome British commentators viewed Lincoln’s racial views?

■ How might an American respond to this view?

The American Difficulty President Abe: “Whata nice White House this would be, if it were not for theblacks!”(Source: Punch Cartoon Library).

ConfederateConstitution(March 11,

1861)





rich, have a common interest, a common destiny.”Southern Protestant ministers encouraged a senseof collective identity and reminded southerners thatthey were God’s chosen people. The conflict was asacred one.

Unlike Davis, Lincoln did not have to establish apostal system or decide the status of laws passedbefore 1861. But he too faced organizational prob-lems. Military officers and government clerks dailyleft the capital for the South. The treasury wasempty. The Republicans had won their first presi-dential election, and floods of office seekersthronged the White House looking for rewards.

Nor was it easy for Lincoln, who knew few of the“prominent men of the day,” to select a cabinet. Fi-nally, he appointed important Republicans from

different factions of the party to cabinetposts whether they agreed with him ornot. Most were almost strangers. Severalscorned him as a bumbling backwoodspolitician. Treasury Secretary Salmon P.Chase actually hoped to replace Lincolnas president in four years’ time. Soon af-

ter the inauguration, Secretary of State William Se-ward sent Lincoln a memo condescendingly offer-ing to oversee the formulation of presidential policy.

Lincoln and DavisA number of Lincoln’s early actions illustrated hisleadership skills. As his Illinois law partner, WilliamHerndon, pointed out, Lincoln’s “mind was tough—solid—knotty—gnarly, more or less like his body.” Inhis reply to Seward’s memo, the president firmly in-dicated that he intended to run his own administra-tion. After Sumter, he swiftly called up the state mili-tias, expanded the navy, and suspended habeascorpus. He ordered a naval blockade of the Southand approved the expenditure of funds for militarypurposes, all without congressional sanction, be-cause Congress was not in session. As Lincoln toldlegislators later, “The dogmas of the quiet past areinadequate to the stormy present. . . . As our case isnew, so must we think anew, and act anew . . . andthen we shall save our country.” This willingness to“think anew” was a valuable personal asset, eventhough some regarded the expansion of presidentialpower as despotic.

By coincidence, Lincoln and his rival, JeffersonDavis, were born only 100 miles apart in Kentucky.However, the course of their lives diverged radically.Lincoln’s father had migrated north and eked out asimple existence as a farmer in Indiana and Illinois.Lincoln’s formal education was rudimentary; he was

largely self-taught. Davis’s family hadmoved south to Mississippi and becomecotton planters. Davis grew up in com-fortable circumstances, went to Transyl-vania University and West Point, andfought in the Mexican-American War before hiselection to the U.S. Senate. His social, political, andeconomic prominence led to his appointment assecretary of war under Franklin Pierce (1853–1857).Tall, distinguished-looking, and very rich, he ap-peared every inch the aristocratic southerner.

Although Davis was not eager to accept the presi-dency, he loyally responded to the call of the provi-sional congress in 1861 and worked tirelessly untilthe war’s end. His wife, Varina, observed that “thePresident hardly takes time to eat his meals andworks late at night.” Some contemporaries sug-gested that Davis’s inability to let subordinates han-dle details explained this schedule. Others observedthat he was sickly, reserved, humorless, too sensitiveto criticism, and hard to get along with. But, likeLincoln, Davis found it necessary to “think anew.”He reassured southerners in his inaugural addressthat his aims were conservative, “to preserve theGovernment of our fathers in spirit.” Yet under thepressure of events, he moved toward creating a newkind of South.

Lincoln and HisCabinet

Jefferson Davis






CLASHING ON THEBATTLEFIELD, 1861–1862The Civil War was the most brutal and destructiveconflict in American history. Much of the bloodshedresulted from changing military technology coupledwith inadequate communications. By1861, the range of rifles had increasedfrom 100 to 500 yards, in part owing to thenew French minié bullet, which traveledwith tremendous velocity and accuracy.The greater reach of the new rifles meantthat it was no longer possible to positionthe artillery close enough to enemy lines to supportan infantry charge. Therefore, during the Civil War,attacking infantry soldiers faced a final, often fatal,dash of 500 yards in the face of deadly enemy fire.

As it became clear that infantry charges resulted inhorrible carnage, military leaders increasingly valuedthe importance of the strong defensive position. Al-though Confederate soldiers criticized General Lee as“King of Spades” when he first ordered them to con-struct earthworks, the epithet evolved into one of af-fection as it became obvious that earthworks savedlives. Union commanders followed suit. By the end of

Union Artilleryat Yorktown





1862, both armies dug defensive earthworks andtrenches whenever they interrupted their march.

War in the EastThe war’s brutal character only gradually revealeditself. The Union’s commanding general, 70-year-old Winfield Scott, at first pressed for a cautious,

long-term strategy, the Anaconda Plan.Scott proposed weakening the Southgradually through blockades on land andsea until the northern army was strongenough for the kill. The public, however,hungered for quick victory. So did Lin-coln: He knew that the longer the warlasted, the more embittered the South

and the North would both become, making reunionever more difficult. So 35,000 partially trained menled by General Irwin McDowell left Washington insweltering July weather, heading for Richmond.

On July 21, 1861, only 25 miles from the capital atManassas Creek (also called Bull Run), inexperi-enced northern troops confronted 25,000 raw Con-federate soldiers commanded by Brigadier General

P. G. T. Beauregard, a West Point classmate of Mc-Dowell’s. Although sightseers, journalists, andpoliticians gaily accompanied the Union troops,Bull Run was no picnic. The battle was inconclusiveuntil the arrival of 2,300 fresh Confederate troops,brought by trains, decided the day. Terrified and be-wildered Union soldiers and sightseers fled towardWashington. Defeated though the Union forceswere, inexperienced Confederate troops failed toturn the rout into a quick, decisive victory. As Gen-eral Joseph E. Johnston pointed out, his men weredisorganized, confused by victory, and insufficientlysupplied with food to chase the Union army backtoward Washington.

In many ways, the Battle of Bull Run wasprophetic. Victory would be neither quick nor easy.Both armies were unprofessional. Both sides facedproblems with short-term enlistments and with thelogistical problems involved in moving and supply-ing the largest American armies ever put in the field.

South Carolinian Robert Allston viewed the bat-tlefield at Bull Run and decided it had been a “glori-ous tho bloody” day. For the Union, the loss wassobering. Lincoln began his search for a winning

Potomac River

James

River

SHENANDOAH

VALLEY

Chesapeake Bay

Norfolk

PENNSYLVANIA

AntietamSEPT. 1862

Harpers Ferry

Winchester

Frederick

Baltimore

Washington

MARYLAND

Manassas Junction

Bull RunJULY 1861AUG. 1862Cedar Mountain

AUG. 1862JACKSON

VIRGINIA

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JUNE 1862

NEWJERSEY

DELAWARE

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YorktownAPRIL–MAY 1862

Hagerstown

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BEAUREG

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S

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Union

Confederate

Union victoryConfederate victory

Union movementsConfederate movements

Eastern Theater of the Civil War, 1861–1862

This map reveals the military actions in the East during the early years of the war. Initially,military planners hoped to end the war quicklyby capturing Richmond.They soon discovered that the Confederate army was too powerful to allow them an easy victory. Eventually,Lincoln decided to combine military pressure on Virginia with an effort in the West aimed at cutting the Confederacy in two.

The Civil WarPart I:

1861–1862





commander by replacing McDowell with34-year-old General George McClellan.Formerly an army engineer, McClellanbegan the process of transforming theArmy of the Potomac into a fighting force.Short-term militias went home. In the fallof 1861, McClellan became general inchief of the Union armies.

McClellan had considerable organizational abil-ity but no desire to be a daring battlefield leader.Convinced that the North must combine militaryvictory with persuading the South to rejoin theUnion, he sought to avoid embittering loss of lifeand property—to win “by maneuvering rather thanfighting.”

In March 1862, pushed by an impatient Lincoln,McClellan finally led his army of 130,000 toward

Richmond, now the Confederate capital.But just as it seemed that victory waswithin grasp, Lee drove the Union forcesback. The Peninsula campaign was aban-doned. For the Union, the campaign wasa frustrating failure. For Lee, the successin repelling the invasion was one step in

the process that was making him and the Army ofNorthern Virginia into a symbol of the spirit of thenew nation.

Other Union defeats followed in 1862 as comman-ders came and went. In September, the South took

the offensive with a bold invasion of Maryland. Butafter a costly defeat at Antietam, in which more than5,000 soldiers were slaughtered and another 17,000wounded on the grisliest day of the war, Lee with-drew to Virginia. The war in the East was stalemated.

War in the WestThe early struggle in the East focused on Richmond,the Confederacy’s capital and one of the South’smost important railroad, industrial, and munitionscenters. But the East was only one of three theaters.Between the Appalachians and the Mississippi laythe western theater. The Mississippi River, with itsvital river trade and its great port, New Orleans, wasa major strategic objective. Here both George Eagle-ton and Arthur Carpenter served. Beyond lay thetrans-Mississippi West—Louisiana, Arkansas, Mis-souri, Texas, and the Great Plains—where NativeAmerican tribes joined the conflict on both sides.

Union objectives in the West were twofold. Thearmy sought to dominate Kentucky and easternTennessee, the avenues to the South and West, andto win control of the Mississippi in order to split theSouth in two.

In the western theater, Ulysses S. Grant rose toprominence. His modest military credentials in-cluded education at West Point, service in the Mexi-can-American War, and an undistinguished stint inthe peacetime army. After his resignation, he wentbankrupt. Shortly after Fort Sumter, Grant enlistedas a colonel in an Illinois militia regiment. Withintwo months, he was a brigadier general. He provedto be a military genius, able to see beyond individ-ual battles to larger goals. In 1862, he realized thatthe Tennessee and Cumberland rivers offered path-ways for the successful invasion of Tennessee. Apremature Confederate invasion of Kentucky al-lowed Grant to bring his forces into that state with-out arousing sharp local opposition. Assisted bygunboats, Grant was largely responsible for the cap-ture of Fort Henry and Fort Donelson, key points onthe rivers, in February 1862. His successes thereraised fears among Confederate leaders that south-ern mountaineers, loyal to the Union, would rush toGrant’s support.

Despite Grant’s grasp of strategy, his army wasnearly destroyed by a surprise Confederate attack atShiloh Church in Tennessee. The North won, but atenormous cost. In that two-day engagement, theUnion suffered more than 13,000 casualties, while10,000 Confederates lay dead or wounded. MoreAmerican men fell in this single battle than in theAmerican Revolution, the War of 1812, and the Mex-ican-American War combined. Because neither

A Toll of Death and Destruction This dying horse,stripped of saddle and bridle, was the mount of a Confederate officerkilled during the battle of Antietam. The stark character of the pic-ture reveals the devastating nature of the Civil War battlefield.(Library of Congress [LC-B8184-558])

Battle ofAntietam

GeorgeMcClellan to

AbrahamLincoln (July 7,

1862)






army offered sufficient care on the battlefield, un-treated wounds caused many of the deaths. A dayafter the battle ended, nine-tenths of the woundedstill lay in the rain, many dying of exposure ordrowning. Those who survived the downpour hadinfected wounds by the time they received medicalattention.

Though more successful than efforts in the East,such devastating Union campaigns failed to bringdecisive results. Western plans were never coordi-nated with eastern military activities. Victories theredid not force the South to its knees.

The war in the trans-Mississippi West was a spo-radic, far-flung struggle. California was the prizethat lured both armies into the Southwest. Confed-erate Texan troops held Albuquerque and Santa Febriefly in 1862, but a mixed force, including volun-teer soldiers from the Colorado mining fields andMexican Americans, drove them out. A Union forcerecruited in California arrived after the Confeder-ates were gone. It spent the remainder of the CivilWar years fighting the Apache and the Navajo andwith brutal competence crushed both Native Amer-ican nations.

Farther east was another prize, the MissouriRiver, which flowed into the Mississippi River, bor-dered Illinois, and affected military campaigns inKentucky and Tennessee. Initially, Confederatetroops were successful here, as they had been inNew Mexico. But in March 1862, at Pea Ridge innorthern Arkansas, Union forces whipped a Con-federate army that included a brigade of NativeAmericans from the Five Civilized Nations. Missourientered the Union camp for the first time in the war,but fierce guerrilla warfare continued.

Naval WarfareAt the beginning of the war, Lincoln decided tostrangle the South with a naval blockade. But suc-cess was elusive. In 1861, the navy intercepted onlyabout one blockade runner in ten and in 1862, onein eight.

More successful were operations to gainfootholds along the southern coast. In November1861, a Union expedition took Port Royal Sound,where it freed the first slaves, and the nearby SouthCarolina sea islands. By gaining these and other im-portant coastal points, the navy increased the possi-bility of an effective blockade. The Union’s majornaval triumph in the early war years was the captureof the South’s biggest port, New Orleans, in 1862.The success of this amphibious effort stimulatedother joint attempts to cut the South in two.

The Confederates, recognizing that they couldnot match the Union fleet, concentrated on devel-oping new weapons such as torpedoes and ironcladvessels. The Merrimac was one key to southernnaval strategy. Originally a U.S. warship that hadsunk as the federal navy hurriedly abandoned theNorfolk Navy Yard early in the war, the Confederatesraised the vessel and covered it with heavy iron ar-mor. Rechristened the Virginia, the ship steamedout of Norfolk in March 1862, heading directly forthe Union ships blocking the harbor. Using its1,500-pound ram and guns, the Virginia drove one-third of the vessels aground and destroyed the

Cumberland River

TennesseeRiver

Mis

siss

ippi

River

Gulf of Mexico

JOHNSTON

GR

AN

T

BR

AG

G

FARRAGUT

Fort DonelsonFEB. 16, 1862Fort Henry

FEB. 6, 1862

ShilohAPRIL 6–7, 1862

MemphisJUNE 6, 1862

VicksburgSIEGE

NOV. 1862–JULY 4, 1863

Fort JacksonAPRIL 24, 1862

New Orleans(OCCUPIED

APRIL 25, 1862)

Baton Rouge(OCCUPIED

MAY 12, 1862)

Cairo

Mobile

Port Hudson

MISSOURI

ILLINOIS

KENTUCKY

TENNESSEE

ARKANSAS

MISSISSIPPIALABAMA

FLORIDA

LOUISIANA

Union movements

Confederate movements

Union victory

Trans-Mississippi Campaign of the Civil War

The military movements in the trans-Mississippi West ap-pear here. Union forces operating in the Mississippi valleywere attempting to separate Texas,Arkansas, and Louisianafrom other southern states as part of an attempt tosqueeze the Confederacy.




squadron’s largest ships. But the victory was short-lived. The next day, the Virginia confronted theMonitor, a newly completed Union iron vessel. Theydueled inconclusively, and the Virginia withdrew. Itwas burned during the evacuation of Norfolk thatMay. Southern attempts to buy ironclad shipsabroad faded and, with them, southern hopes of es-caping the northern noose.

Still, Confederate attacks on northern commercebrought some success. Southern raiders, many ofthem built in Britain, wreaked havoc on northernshipping. In its two-year career, the Alabama de-stroyed 69 Union merchant vessels valued at morethan $6 million. But such blows did not seriouslydamage the North’s war effort.

Thus the first two years brought victories to bothsides, but the war remained deadlocked. The Southwas far from defeated; the North was equally farfrom giving up. Costs in manpower and supplies farexceeded what either side had expected.

Cotton DiplomacyBoth sides in the Civil War realized the critical impor-tance of European attitudes to the outcome of thestruggle. Diplomatic recognition of the Confederacywould legitimize the new nation in the eyes of theworld. Furthermore, just as French and Dutch aid hadhelped the American colonies win their indepen-dence, European loans and assistance might bringthe South victory. But if the European nations refusedto recognize the South, the fiction of the Union waskept alive, undermining Confederate chances forlong-term survival. The European powers, of course,consulted their own national interests. Neither Eng-land nor France, the two most important nations,wished to back the losing side. Nor did they wish toupset Europe’s delicate balance of power by hasty in-tervention in American affairs. One by one, therefore,the European states declared a policy of neutrality.

Southerners were sure that cotton would be theirtrump card. English and French textile mills neededcotton, and southerners believed that their ownerswould eventually force government recognition ofthe Confederacy and an end to the North’s blockade.But a glut of cotton in 1860 and 1861 left foreign millowners oversupplied. As stockpiles dwindled, Euro-pean industrialists found cotton in India and Egypt.The conviction that cotton was “the king who canshake the jewels in the crown of Queen Victoria”proved false.

Union secretary of state Seward sought above allelse to prevent diplomatic recognition of the Con-federacy. The North had its own economic ties withEurope, so the Union was not as disadvantaged as

southerners thought. Seward daringly threatenedGreat Britain with war if it interfered in what he in-sisted was an internal matter. Some called his bold-ness reckless, even mad. Nevertheless, his policysucceeded. Even though England allowed the con-struction of Confederate raiders in its ports, it didnot intervene in American affairs in 1861 or 1862.Nor did the other European powers. Unless the mili-tary situation changed dramatically, the Europeanswere willing to sit on the sidelines.

Common Problems, Novel SolutionsAs the conflict dragged on into 1863, unanticipatedproblems appeared in both the Union and the Con-federacy, and leaders devised novel approaches tosolve them. War acted as a catalyst for changes thatno one could have imagined in the heady springdays of 1861.

The problem of fighting a long war was partlymonetary. Both treasuries had been empty initially,and the war proved extraordinarily expensive. Nei-ther side considered trying to finance the war by im-posing direct taxes. Such an approach violated cus-tom and risked alienating support. Nevertheless,each side was so starved for funds that it initiatedtaxation on a small scale. Ultimately, taxes financed21 percent of the North’s war expenses (but only 1percent of southern expenses). Both treasuries alsotried borrowing. Northerners bought more than $2billion worth of bonds, but southerners proved re-luctant to buy their government’s bonds.

As in the American Revolution, the unwelcomesolution was to print paper money. In August 1861,the Confederacy put into circulation $100 million incrudely engraved bills. Millions more followed thenext year. Five months later, the Union issued $150million in paper money, soon nicknamed “green-backs” because of their color. Although financingthe war with paper money was unexpected, the re-sulting inflation was not. Inflation was particularlytroublesome in the Confederacy, but a “modest” 80percent increase in food prices brought southerncity families near starvation and contributed to ur-ban unhappiness during the war.

Both sides confronted similar manpower prob-lems as initial enthusiasm for the war evaporated.Soldiering, it turned out, was nothing like the militiaparades and outings familiar to mostAmerican males. Young men were shockedat the deadly diseases that accompaniedthe army and were unprepared for theboredom of camp life. As one North Car-olina soldier explained, “If anyone wishesto become used to the crosses and trials of

When This CruelWar Is Over




Men

(in

th

ou

san

ds)

1862 1863 1864 1865Year

Union forces Confederate forces


A Recruiting Poster How many different strategies doesthis poster use to persuade men to join the 36th Regiment of NewYork Volunteers? The central picture shows a soldier on the rightwho calls out, “Americans! Your country calls. Your cherished institu-tions and your Noble Flag are threatened by rebels and traitors.” Theman on the left replies, “We will come. We know our country’sneeds and will respond to the call.” Who does the female figure inthe center represent? (Collection of the New-York Historical Society [PR-055-3-149])

this life, let him enter camp life.” None were preparedfor the vast and impersonal destruction of the battle-field, which mocked values such as courage andhonor. It was with anguish that Robert Carter ofMassachusetts saw bodies tossed into trenches “withnot a prayer, eulogy or tear to distinguish them fromso many animals.” Many in the service longed to gohome. The swarm of volunteers disappeared. Ratherthan fill their military quotas from within, rich north-ern communities began offering bounties of $800 to$1,000 to outsiders who would join up.

Arthur Carpenter’s letters give a good picture of lifein the ranks and his growing disillusionment with thewar. As Carpenter’s regiment moved into Kentucky

and Tennessee in the winter of 1862, his enthusiasmfor army life evaporated. “Soldiering in Kentucky andTennessee,” he complained, “is not so pretty as it wasin Indianapolis. . . . We have been half starved, halffrozen, and half drowned. The mud in Kentucky is aw-ful.” Soldiering often meant marching over ruttedroads carrying 50 or 60 pounds of equipment with in-sufficient food, water, or supplies. Oneblanket was not enough in the winter. Inthe summer, stifling woollen uniforms at-tracted lice and other vermin. Poor food,bugs, inadequate sanitation, and exposureinvited disease. Carpenter marchedthrough Tennessee suffering from diarrheaand then fever. His regiment left him be-hind in a convalescent barracks in Louisville. Fearingthe hospital at least as much as the sickness, he fled assoon as he could.

Confederate soldiers, even less well supplied thantheir northern counterparts, complained similarly. In1862, a Virginia captain described what General Leecalled the best army “the world ever saw”:

Men Present for Duty in the Civil War

This chart demonstrates the growing superiority of theNorth in terms of manpower and the impact of draftlaws. After 1863, blacks, like native-born Americans andIrish and German immigrants, served in the armed forces.

Charles HarveyBrewster, ThreeLetters from theFront (1862)




499

AMERICAN VOICESIsaac Watts,A Description of Camp Life with the Vermont Heavy Artillery

Isaac Watts grew up in a farm family in Peacham,Vermont.When the war broke out, he was too young to serve, but in1862, his half brother, Dustan, enlisted. The next year,Dustan wrote his sister that he had heard that Isaac wasthinking of joining up,“but that Father would not here of it—I do not blame Father for not wanting him to go, as heseems to be all the one left him to see to things.”WhenIsaac turned 21, however, he left Peacham and joined theVermont Heavy Artillery, then stationed near Washington.Hisletter describes camp life and items he wants from home.

I[t] blew all the morning pretty hard and justbefore noon commenced blowing a perfect hurri-canes. . . . quite a number of the tents blew downand though ours did not we expected everyminute when it would and thought we would beon the safe side and move into the barracks.Theyare pretty much done except the bunks . . . Idon’t know but I can sleep just as sound and rest

as well on the floor with a blanket under me as Iused to at home on a good bed.There is nothinglike getting used to a thing . . . I want my boots, acouple of pocket hdkfs. And a towel. . . . Myclothes have been good, but will rip a little asevery thing else that is sewn with machines. Iwant about 15 lbs. Of butter and 8 or 10 of sugar.. . . If you have or can get some cheese withouttoo much trouble, put in two or three pounds . . .a hank of linen thread and a little ball of yarn. Iwant my razor strop put in, a quire of paper and abunch of envelopes.

■ How would you describe the tone of this letter?

■ What does the list of things that Isaac wants suggestabout army life?

During our forced marches and hard fights, the sol-diers have been compelled to throw away their knap-sacks and there is scarcely a private in the army whohas a change of clothing of any kind. Hundreds of menare perfectly barefooted and there is no telling whenthey can be supplied with shoes.

Such circumstances prompted some to desert.An estimated one of every seven Union soldiers andone of every nine men enlisting in the Confederatearmies deserted. The majority, however, stayed withtheir units. As one southern soldier explained, “I amdetermined to anything and do everything I can formy country.”

Manpower needs led both governments to resortto the draft. Despite the sacrosanct notion of states’rights, the Confederate Congress passed the firstconscription act in American history in March 1862.Four months later, the Union Congress approved adraft measure. Rather than forcing men to serve,both laws sought to encourage men already in thearmy to re-enlist and to attract volunteers. Ulti-mately, more than 30 percent of the Confederatearmy were drafted. But because the northern draftlaw allowed payment to secure volunteers, only 6percent of the Union forces were draftees.

The Confederacy relied more heavily on thedraft than the Union did because the North’s initial

manpower pool was larger and growing. Duringthe war, 180,000 foreigners of military age pouredinto the northern states. Some came specifically toclaim bounties and fight. Immigrants constitutedat least 20 percent of the Union army.

Necessary though they were, draft laws were veryunpopular. The first Confederate conscription de-clared all able-bodied men between 18 and 35 eligi-ble for military service but allowed numerous ex-emptions and the purchase of substitutes. Criticscomplained that the provision entitling everyplanter with more than 20 slaves to one exemptionfrom military service favored rich slave owners. Cer-tainly, the legislation fed class tension in the Southand undermined the loyalty of the poorer classes,particularly southern mountaineers. The advice onewoman shouted after her husband as he wasdragged off to the army was hardly unique. “Youdesert again, quick as you kin. . . . Desert, Jake!” Thelaw, as one southerner pointed out, “aroused a spiritof rebellion.” But as long as the South won battle-field victories, the discontent did not reach danger-ous proportions.

Northern legislation was neither more popularnor fair. The 1863 draft allowed the hiring of substi-tutes, and $300 bought an exemption from militaryservice. Already suffering from inflation, workers re-sented the ease with which moneyed citizens could




avoid army duty. In July 1863, the resentment boiledover in New York City in the largest civil disturbanceof the nineteenth century. The violence demon-strated that northern morale and support for thewar also wavered as the conflict persisted.

The three-day riot was sparked by the process ofselecting several thousand conscripts on an earlyJuly weekend. By Monday, workers opposed to thedraft were parading through the streets. SeveralIrish members of the Black Joker Volunteer FireCompany, whose names had been listed, were de-termined to destroy draft records and the hated En-rollment Office. Events spun out of control as a mobtorched the armory, plundered the houses of therich, and looted jewelry stores. African Americans,whom the Irish hated as economic competitors andthe cause of the war, became special targets. Crowdsshouting “Vengeance on every nigger in New York”beat and lynched African Americans and evenburned the Colored Orphan Asylum. More than 100people died in the violence. There was much truthin the accusation that the war on both sides was arich man’s war but a poor man’s fight.

Political Dissension, 1862As the war continued, rumbles of dissension grewlouder. On February 24, 1862, the Richmond Exam-iner summarized many southerners’ frustration.“The Confederacy has had everything that was re-quired for success but one, and that one thing it wasand is supposed to possess more than anything else,namely Talent.” As victory proved elusive, necessi-tating unpopular measures like the draft, criticismof Confederate leaders mounted. Jefferson Davis’svice president, Alexander Stephens of Georgia, be-came one of the administration’s bitterest accusers.Public criticism reflected private disapproval. Wroteone southerner to a friend, “Impeach Jeff Davis forincompetency & call a convention of the States. . . .West Point is death to us & sick Presidents & Gener-als are equally fatal.”

Because the South had no party system, dissatis-faction with Davis and his handling of the wartended to be factional, petty, and personal. No partymechanism channeled or curbed irresponsible crit-icism. Detractors rarely felt it necessary to offer pro-grams in place of Davis’s policies. Davis sufferedpersonally from the carping comments of his de-tractors. More important, the Confederacy suffered.Without a party leader’s traditional weapons and re-wards, Davis had no mechanism to generate enthu-siasm for his war policies.

Although Lincoln has since become a folk hero, atthe time, many northerners derided his performance

and eagerly looked forward to a new president in1864. Peace Democrats, called Copperheads, claimedthat Lincoln betrayed the Constitution and thatworking-class Americans bore the brunt of his con-scription policy. New York Democrats warned thecity’s Irish residents that freed blacks would “steal thework and bread of honest Irish.” Immigrant workersin eastern cities and those who lived in the southernparts of the Midwest had little sympathy for aboli-tionism or blacks, and they supported the antiwarstance of the Copperheads. Even Democrats favoringthe war effort found Lincoln arbitrary and tyrannical.They also worried that extreme Republicans wouldpush Lincoln into making the war a crusade for theabolition of slavery.

Republicans were themselves divided. Moderatesfavored a cautious approach toward winning thewar, fearing the possible consequences of emanci-pating the slaves, confiscating Confederate prop-erty, or arming blacks. The radicals, however, urgedLincoln to make emancipation a wartime objective.They hoped for a victory that would revolutionizesouthern social and racial arrangements.

Before the war, Lincoln had advocated endingslavery’s expansion in the West but not its abolitionin the South. In the early stages of the conflict, he re-tained his moderate stance. He hoped that pro-Union sentiment would emerge in the South andcompel its leaders to abandon their rebellion. Hebegan changing his mind in early 1862. The reduc-tion of the congressional Republican majority in thefall elections of 1862 made it imperative that Lin-coln listen not only to both factions of his party butalso to the Democratic opposition.




THE TIDE TURNS, 1863–1865Hard political realities as well as Lincoln’s sense ofthe public’s mood help explain why he delayed anemancipation proclamation until 1863. Like con-gressional Democrats, many northerners supporteda war for the Union but not one for emancipation.Not only did many, if not most, whites see blacks asinferior, but they also suspected that emancipationwould trigger a massive influx of former slaves whowould steal white men’s jobs and political rights.Race riots in New York, Brooklyn, Philadelphia, andBuffalo dramatized white attitudes. In Cincinnati,Irish dockworkers attacked blacks who were offer-ing to work for less pay with the cry, “Let’s clear outthe niggers.” Arthur Carpenter’s evaluation of blackswas typical of many northern soldiers confrontingblacks for the first time. In December 1861, he wroteto his parents:




No one who has ever seen the nigger in all its glory onthe southern plantations . . . will ever vote for emanci-pation. . . . If emancipation is to be the policy of thewar (and I think it will not) I do not care how quick thecountry goes to pot. The negro never was intended tobe equal with the white man.

The Emancipation Proclamation, 1863If the president moved too fast on emancipation, herisked losing the allegiance of people like Carpenter,offending the border states, and increasing the De-mocrats’ chances for political victory. But if Lincolndid not move at all, he would alienate abolitionistsand lose the support of radical Republicans, whichhe could ill afford.

For these reasons, Lincoln proceeded cautiously.At first, he hoped the border states would take theinitiative. In the early spring of 1862, he urged Con-gress to pass a joint resolution offering federal com-pensation to states beginning a “gradual abolishmentof slavery.” Border-state opposition killed the idea,for people there refused to believe, as Lincoln did,that the “friction and abrasion” of war would finallyend slavery. Abolitionists and northern blacks, how-ever, greeted Lincoln’s proposal with a “thrill of joy.”

That summer, Lincoln told his cabinet he in-tended to emancipate the slaves. Secretary of StateSeward urged the president to delay any generalproclamation until the North won a decisive mili-tary victory. Otherwise, he warned, Lincoln wouldappear to be urging racial insurrection behind theConfederate lines to compensate for northern mili-tary bungling.

Lincoln followed Seward’s advice, using that sum-mer and fall to prepare the North for the shift in the

war’s purpose. To counteract white racialfears of free blacks, he promoted variousschemes for establishing free black com-munities in Haiti and Panama. Seizing un-expected opportunities, he lay the ground-work for the proclamation itself. In August,Horace Greeley, the influential abolitionisteditor of the New York Tribune, printed an

open letter to Lincoln attacking him for failing to acton slavery. In his reply, Lincoln linked the idea ofemancipation to military necessity. His primary goal,he wrote, was to save the Union:

If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, Iwould do it; and if I could save it by freeing all theslaves, I would do it; and if I could do it by freeing someand leaving others alone, I would also do that. What Ido about Slavery and the colored race, I do because Ibelieve it helps to save this Union.

If Lincoln attacked slavery, then, it would be be-cause emancipation would save white lives, pre-serve the democratic process, and bring victory.

In September 1862, the Union success at Anti-etam gave Lincoln the opportunity to issue a pre-liminary emancipation proclamation. It stated thatunless rebellious states (or parts of statesin rebellion) returned to the Union byJanuary 1, 1863, the president would de-clare their slaves “forever free.” Althoughthe proclamation was supposedly aimedat bringing the southern states back intothe Union, Lincoln no longer expectedthe South to lay down arms. Rather, hewas preparing northerners to accept the eventual-ity of emancipation on the grounds of necessity.Frederick Douglass greeted the president’s actionwith jubilation. “We shout for joy,” he wrote, “thatwe live to record this righteous decree.”

Not all northerners shared Douglass’s joy. In fact,the September proclamation probably harmed Lin-coln’s party in the fall elections. As one Democraticditty put it:

“De Union!” used to be de cry—For dat we want it strong;But now de motto seems to be,“De nigger, right or wrong.”

Although the elections of 1862 weakened the Re-publicans’ grasp on the national government, theydid not destroy it. Still, cautious cabinet membersbegged Lincoln to forget about emancipation. Hisrefusal demonstrated his vision and humanity, asdid his efforts to reduce racial fears. “Is it dreadedthat the freed people will swarm forth and cover thewhole land?” he asked. “Are they not already in theland? Will liberation make them any more numer-ous? Equally distributed among the whites of thewhole country, and there would be but one coloredto seven whites. Could the one, in any way, greatlydisturb the other?”

Finally, on New Year’s Day 1863, Lincoln issuedthe promised Emancipation Proclamation. It was an“act of justice, warranted by the Constitu-tion upon military necessity.” Thus, whathad started as a war to save the Unionnow also became a struggle that, if victo-rious, would free the slaves. Yet theproclamation had no immediate impacton slavery. It affected only slaves living inthe unconquered portions of the Confed-eracy. It was silent about slaves in the border statesand in parts of the South already in northern hands.These limitations led Elizabeth Cady Stanton andSusan B. Anthony to establish the women’s Loyal

Lincoln VisitingGeneral

McClellan

TheEmancipationProclamation

AbrahamLincoln to

Horace Greeley(1862)







National League to lobby Congress to emancipateall southern slaves.

Though the Emancipation Proclamation did notimmediately liberate southern slaves from theirmasters, it had a tremendous symbolic importanceand changed the nature of the war. On New Year’sDay, blacks gathered outside the White House tocheer the president and tell him that if he would“come out of that palace, they would hug him todeath.” For the first time, the government hadcommitted itself to freeing slaves. Jubilant blackscould only believe that the president’s action her-alded a new era for their race. More immediately,the proclamation sanctioned the policy of accept-ing blacks as soldiers. Blacks also hoped that thenews would reach southern slaves, encouragingthem either to flee to Union lines or to subvert thesouthern war effort by refusing to work for theirmasters.

Diplomatic concerns also lay behind the Eman-cipation Proclamation. Lincoln and his advisersanticipated that the commitment to abolish slav-ery would favorably impress foreign powers. Euro-pean statesmen, however, remained cautious. TheEnglish prime minister called the proclamation“trash.” But important segments of the Englishpublic who opposed slavery now regarded any at-tempt to help the South as immoral. Foreignerscould better understand and sympathize with a

war to free the slaves than they could with a war tosave the Union. In diplomacy, where image is soimportant, Lincoln had created a more attractivepicture of the North. The Emancipation Proclama-tion became the North’s symbolic call for humanfreedom.

Unanticipated Consequences of WarThe Emancipation Proclamation was but another ex-ample of the war’s surprising consequences. Innova-tion was necessary for victory. In the final two yearsof the war, both North and South experimented onthe battlefields and behind the lines in desperate ef-forts to conclude the conflict successfully.

One of the Union’s experiments involved usingblack troops for combat duty. Blacks had offeredthemselves as soldiers in 1861 but had been re-jected. They were serving as cooks, laborers, team-sters, and carpenters in the army, however, andcomposed as much as a quarter of the navy. But aswhite casualties mounted, so did the interest inblack service on the battlefield. The Union govern-ment allowed states to escape draft quotas if theyenlisted enough volunteers, and they allowed themto count southern black enlistees on their state ros-ters. Northern governors grew increasingly inter-ested in black military service. One piece of dog-gerel reflected changing attitudes:

A French View ofEmancipation Thisdepiction of African Ameri-cans celebrating the Emanci-pation Proclamation ap-peared in the Frenchpublication Le Monde Illustre.How has the artist provideda triumphant and sympatheticpicture of rejoicing freedpeo-ple? What does this picture,published in France, suggestabout the diplomatic impor-tance to the Union cause ofthe Emancipation Proclama-tion?




Some tell us ’tis a burnin’ shameTo make the naygers fight;And that the thrade of bein’ kiltBelongs but to the white:But as for me, upon my soul!So liberal are we here.I’ll let Sambo be murthered instead of myselfOn every day in the year.

Beyond white self-interest lay the promises of theEmancipation Proclamation and the desire to proveblacks’ value to the Union. Black leaders such asFrederick Douglass pressed for military service.“Once let the black man get upon his person thebrass letter, U.S., let him get an eagle on his button,

and a musket on his shoulder and bulletsin his pocket,” Douglass believed that“there is no power on earth that can denythat he has earned the right to citizen-ship.” By the war’s end, 186,000 blacks (10percent of the army) had served theUnion cause, 134,111 of them escapeesfrom slave states.

Enrolling blacks in the Union armywas an important step toward citizenshipand acceptance of blacks by white soci-ety. But the black experience in the armyhighlighted some of the obstacles to

racial acceptance. Black soldiers, usually led bywhite officers, were second-class soldiers for mostof the war, receiving lower pay ($10 a month ascompared with $13), poorer food, often more me-nial work, and fewer benefits than whites. Evenwhites working to equalize black and white pay of-ten considered blacks inferior. Many white soldiers,including an entire regiment from Illinois, quit theservice rather than fight alongside blacks.

The army’s racial experiment had mixed results.But the faithful and courageous service of blacktroops helped modify some of the most demeaningwhite racial stereotypes of blacks. The black sol-diers, many former slaves, who conquered theSouth felt a sense of pride and dignity as they per-formed their duties. Wrote one, “We march throughthese fine thoroughfares where once the slave wasforbid being out after nine P.M. . . . Negro soldiers!—with banners floating.”

As the conflict continued, basic assumptionsweakened about how it should be waged. Onewartime casualty was the courtly idea that war in-volved only armies. Early in the war, many officerstried to protect civilians and their property. In theRichmond campaign, General McClellan actuallyposted guards to prevent stealing. Such concern forrebel property soon vanished, and along with it wentchickens, corn, livestock, and, as George Eagleton

Contrabands This photograph was taken inthe summer of 1862 in Cumberland Landing, Vir-ginia. Sitting in front of the cabin are about 20 menand women who had fled to Union lines and free-dom. The flight of slaves, called contrabands, hadthe potential of seriously undermining the south-ern war effort and southern morale, but theirpresence also posed difficulties for Union com-manders and northern leaders who were oftennot sure what to do with them. What might besome of the reasons why there were morewomen than men in this picture?(Library of Congress [LC-B811-0383])

James HenryGooding, Letter

to PresidentLincoln

(1863); Letterfrom a Free

Black Volunteerto The

ChristianRecorder(1864)





Black Troops Storm Fort Wagner Newspaper engravings provided civilians with images of theconflict. This colored lithograph by Currier & Ives was produced a generation after the war, but it is verymuch like the journalistic images of the time. The picture shows a famous black regiment, the 54th Massachu-setts, storming Fort Wagner, South Carolina. What specific elements of this depiction provide an interpreta-tion of the behavior of the troops during the assault? The experiences of the 54th formed the basis for theHollywood movie Glory. (Library of Congress)

noted with disgust, even the furnishings of churches,down to the binding of the Bible in the pulpit. South-ern troops, on the few occasions when they cameNorth, also lived off the land. War touched all of soci-ety, not just the battlefield participants.

Changing Military Strategies,1863–1865In the early war years, the South’s military strategycombined defense with selective maneuvers. Untilthe summer of 1863, the strategy seemed to be suc-

ceeding, at least in the eastern theater.But an occasional victory over the invad-ing northern army, such as at Fredericks-burg in December 1862, did not changethe course of the war. Realizing this, Leereviewed his strategy and concluded,

“There is nothing to be gained by this army remain-ing quietly on the defensive.” Unless the South won

victories in the North, he believed, civilian confi-dence would disintegrate, and the North wouldcontinue its efforts to crush the southern bid for in-dependence. He was willing to take risks to gainpeace and national recognition.

In the summer of 1863, Lee led the Confederatearmy of northern Virginia across the Potomac intoMaryland and southern Pennsylvania. Hoping for avictory that would threaten both Philadelphia andWashington, he even dreamed of capturing anorthern city. Such spectacular featswould surely bring diplomatic recogni-tion and might even force the North tosue for peace. On a practical level, Leesought provisions for his men and theiranimals.

At Gettysburg on a hot and humid July1, Lee came abruptly face to face with aUnion army led by General George Meade. Duringthree days of fighting, Lee ordered costly infantry

Robert E. Lee

The Civil WarPart II:

1863–1865





assaults that probably lost him the battle. On July3, Lee sent three divisions, about 15,000 men in all,against the Union center. The assault, known asPickett’s Charge, was as futile as it was gallant. At700 yards, the Union artillery opened fire. Onesouthern officer described the scene: “Pickett’s di-vision just seemed to melt away in the blue mus-ketry smoke which now covered the hill. Nothingbut stragglers came back.”

Despite his losses, Lee did procure the food andfodder he needed and captured thousands of pris-oners. Gettysburg was a defeat, but nei-ther Lee, nor his men, nor southern civil-ians regarded it as conclusive. Fightingwould continue for another year and ahalf. In 1864, one high army officer re-vealed his continuing belief in the strug-gle’s outcome. “Our hearts are full of

hope,” he wrote. “Oh! I dopray that we may be estab-lished as an independentpeople, . . . [and] recognizedas God’s Peculiar People!”While many remained hope-ful, Lee’s Gettysburg losseswere so heavy that he couldnever mount another south-ern offensive.

Despite the Gettysburgvictory, Lincoln was dissatis-fied with General Meade,who had failed to finish offLee’s retreating army. Hisdisappointment faded withnews of a great victory onJuly 4 at Vicksburg in thewestern theater. The captureof the city completed theUnion campaign to gaincontrol of the MississippiRiver and to divide the

505

AMERICAN VOICESSusie King Taylor, From Reminiscences of My Life in Camp

In 1902, Susie King Taylor’s account of her life as an armylaundress during the Civil War was published. She was con-nected to the 33rd U.S. Colored Infantry, her husband’sregiment.After escaping from slavery, she spent some timeon St. Simon’s, an island liberated by Union troops.

There were about six hundred men, women,and children on St. Simon’s, the women and chil-dren being in the majority, and we were afraid togo very far from our own quarters in the daytime,and at night even to go out of the house for a longtime, although the men were on the watch all thetime; for there were not any soldiers on the island,only the marines who were on the gunboats along

the coast. The rebels, knowing this, could steal bythem under cover of the night, and getting on theisland would capture any person venturing outalone and carry them to the mainland. Several ofthe men disappeared, and as they were neverheard from we came to the conclusion they hadbeen carried off in this way.

■ What does this account reveal about the realities andfears of former slaves?

■ What does it suggest about the Confederate point ofview?

John Dooley,Journal (1863)

GRANTL

EE

LE

EGRANT

The Wilderness(May 5–7, 1864)

Spotsylvania Court House(May 8–19, 1864)

North Anna(May 23–26, 1864)

Cold Harbor(June 3, 1864)

Petersburg(besieged June 20, 1864–April 1865)Five Forks

(April 1, 1865)

Fredericksburg

RichmondAppomattoxCourt House

Norfolk

MARYLAND

VIRGINIA

James R.

YorkR.

Chesapeake

Bay

Confederate states

Union states

Confederate offensive

Union offensive

Confederate victory

Union victory

The Last Year of Conflict

This map shows the major campaigns in the East during the final year of the conflict.Note Grant’s rapid offensive in the spring of 1864.





South. Ulysses S. Grant, who was responsible for thevictory, demonstrated the boldness and flexibility

that Lincoln had been looking for in acommander.

By the summer of 1863, the Unioncontrolled much of Arkansas, Louisiana,Mississippi, Missouri, Kentucky, and Ten-nessee. The following spring, Lincoln ap-pointed Grant general in chief of theUnion armies. Grant planned for victory

within a year. “The art of war is simple enough,” hereasoned. “Find out where your enemy is. Get athim as soon as you can. Strike at him as hard as youcan, and keep moving on.”

As an outsider to the prewar military establish-ment, Grant easily rejected conventional military

wisdom. “If men make war in slavish ob-servance of rules, they will fail,” he as-serted. He anticipated no one decisiveengagement but rather a grim campaignof annihilation, using the North’s superiorresources of men and supplies to weardown and defeat the South. AlthoughGrant’s plan entailed large casualties on

both sides, he justified the strategy by arguing that“now the carnage was to be limited to a single year.”

A campaign of annihilation involved the destruc-tion not only of enemy armies but also of the re-sources that fueled the southern war effort. Al-though the idea of cutting the enemy off fromneeded supplies was implicit in the naval blockade,

economic or “total” warfare was a relatively newand shocking idea. Grant, however, “regarded it ashumane to both sides to protect the persons ofthose found at their homes, but to consume every-thing that could be used to support or supplyarmies.” Following this policy, he set out after Lee’sarmy in Virginia. General William Tecumseh Sher-man, who pursued General Joseph John-ston from Tennessee toward Atlanta, fur-ther refined this plan.

The war, Sherman believed, must alsobe waged in the minds of civilians, and heintended to make southerners “fear anddread” their foes. His campaign to seizeAtlanta and his march to Savannahspread destruction and terror. Ordered to forage“liberally” on the land, his army left desolation in itswake. “Reduction to poverty,” Sherman asserted,“brings prayers for peace.” A Georgia woman de-scribed in her diary the impact of Sherman’s march:

There was hardly a fence left standing all the way fromSparta to Gordon. The fields were trampled down andthe road was lined with carcasses of horses, hogs andcattle that the invaders, unable either to consume or tocarry away with them, had wantonly shot down, tostarve out the people. . . . The dwellings that werestanding all showed signs of pillage, and on every plan-tation we saw . . . charred remains.

This destruction, with its goal of total victory,demonstrated once more how conflict produced

Gettysburg 1863 This albumen printby Timothy H. O’Sullivan is titled A Harvest ofDeath, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, July, 1863. Whatdid O’Sullivan wish to suggest with this pictureof the battlefield? Civil War pictures made itclear that photography was starting to play animportant role in recording the sweep ofAmerican life. (Rare Books Division, The NewYork Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foun-dations/Art Resource, NY)

Lincoln, TheGettysburg

Address (1863)

General UlyssesS. Grant at CityPoint, Virginia

William T.Sherman, TheMarch ThroughGeorgia (1875)







the unexpected. The war that both North andSouth had hoped would be quick and relativelypainless was ending after four long years with greatcost to both sides. But the bitter nature of warfareduring that final year threatened Lincoln’s hopesfor reconciliation.

Washington, D.C.

Baltimore

Philadelphia

Richmond

NorfolkLynchburg

Charlotte

Charleston

JacksonvillePensacolaMobile

New Orleans

Baton Rouge

Vicksburg Montgomery

Memphis

Corinth

Nashville

Chattanooga

Louisville

Cincinnati

Pittsburgh

St. Louis

AtlantaAugusta

Savannah

MISSOURI

ARKANSAS

LOUISIANA

MISSISSIPPI

ALABAMAGEORGIA

FLORIDA

SOUTHCAROLINA

NORTH CAROLINATENNESSEE

KENTUCKY

WESTVIRGINIA

VIRGINIA

DEL.MD.

PA.OHIO

INDIANAILLINOIS

1861

1862

1863

1864

1865

Union gains in:

Southern limit offree states atbeginning of war

The Progress of War, 1861–1865

In this map you can see the very slow progression of the North’s effort to conquer the South. For much of the war,the South controlled large areas of contiguous territory.This control of the southern homeland helped southern-ers to feel that it was possible for them to win the war.At what point in time might the realities depicted in thismap have made southerners decide their cause was lost?




CHANGES WROUGHT BY WARAs bold new tactics emerged both on and off thebattlefield, both governments took steps thatchanged their societies in surprising ways. Of thetwo, the South, which had left the Union to conservea traditional way of life, experienced the more radi-cal transformation.

A New SouthThe expansion of the central government’s power inthe South, starting with the passage of the 1862Conscription Act, continued in the last years of the

war. Secession grew out of the concept of states’rights, but, ironically, winning the war depended oncentral direction and control. Many southerners de-nounced Davis because he recognized the need forthe central government to take the lead. Despite theaccusations, the Confederate Congress cooperatedwith him and established important precedents. In1863, it enacted a comprehensive tax law and an im-pressment act that allowed government agents torequisition food, horses, wagons, and other neces-sary war materials, often for only about half theirmarket price. These were prime examples of thecentral government’s power to interfere with privateproperty. Government impressment of slaves forwar work in 1863 affected the very form of privateproperty that had originally driven the South fromthe Union.

The Conscription Act of 1862 did not solve theConfederate army’s manpower problems. By 1864,the southern armies were only one-third the size ofthe Union forces. Hence, in February 1864, an ex-panded conscription measure made all white malesbetween ages 17 and 50 subject to the draft. By




1865, the necessities of war had led to the unthink-able: arming slaves as soldiers. Black companieswere recruited in Richmond and other southerntowns. However, because the war soon ended, noblacks actually fought for the Confederacy.

In a message sent to Congress in November 1864,Davis speculated on some of the issues involved inarming slaves. “Should a slave who had served hiscountry” be retained in servitude, he wondered, “orshould his emancipation be held out to him as a re-ward for faithful service, or should it be granted atonce on the promise of such service . . . ?” The warfought by the South to preserve slavery ended in thecontemplation of emancipation.

Southern agriculture also changed under thepressure of war. Earlier, the South had importedfood from the North, concentrating on the produc-tion of staples such as cotton and tobacco for mar-ket. Now, more and more land was turned over tofood crops. Some farmers voluntarily shifted crops,but others responded only to state laws reducingthe acreage permitted for cotton and tobacco culti-vation. These measures never succeeded in raisingenough food to feed southerners adequately. Butthey contributed to a dramatic decline in the pro-duction of cotton, from 4.5 million bales in 1861 to300,000 bales in 1864.

The South had always relied on imported manu-factured goods. Even though some blockade runnerswere able to evade the Union ships, the noose tight-ened after 1862. The Confederacy could not, in anycase, rely on blockade runners to arm and equip thearmy. Thus, war triggered the expansion of military-related industries in the South. Here, too, the govern-ment played a crucial role. The war and navy officesdirected industrial development, awarding contractsto private manufacturing firms such as Richmond’sTredegar Iron Works and operating other factoriesthemselves. The number of southern industrialworkers rose dramatically. In 1861, the Tredegar IronWorks employed 700 workers; two years later, it em-ployed 2,500, more than half of them black. The headof the Army Ordnance Bureau reflected on the amaz-ing transformation: “Where three years ago we werenot making a gun, pistol nor a sabre, no shot nor shell. . . we now make all these in quantities to meet thedemands of our large armies.” At the end of the war,the soldiers were better supplied with arms and mu-nitions than with food.

Although the war did not transform the southernclass structure, relations between the classes beganto change. The pressures of the struggle under-mined the solidarity of whites, which was based onracism and supposed political unanimity. Draft re-sistance and desertion reflected the alienation of

some southerners from a war perceived as servingonly the interests of upper-class plantation owners.More and more yeoman families suffered grindingpoverty as the men went off to war and governmentofficials and armies requisitioned needed resources.Harlan Fuller, a poor farmer from Georgia, ex-plained his family’s situation in the spring of 1864.Even though Fuller was 50, he was now eligible forthe draft. “I am liable at any time to be taken awayfrom my little crops leaving my family almost with-out provisions & no hope of making any crop atal. Ihave sent six sons to the war & now the seventh en-rolled he being the last I have no help left atal.” Thisnew poverty was an ominous hint of the decline ofthe yeoman farming class in postwar years.

The NorthAlthough changes in the South were more noticeable,the Union’s government and economy also re-sponded to the demands of war. Like Davis, Lincolnwas accused of being a dictator. Although he rarelytried to control Congress, veto its legislation, or direct

On the Home Front Appearing on a printed envelope, thisimage reveals several aspects of female experience during wartime.Why is this woman doing laundry? What is being suggested about thechanges in her life that have occurred as a result of the war? Whatfeelings does she express? This women’s speculation about the possi-bilities of doing humble work in the military alerts us to the fact thatwasherwomen accompanied the armies wherever they went.(Collection of the New-York Historical Society [PR-022-3-88-5])




government departments, Lincoln did use executivepower freely. He violated the writ of habeas corpusby suspending the civil rights of more than 13,000northerners, who languished in prison without tri-als; curbed the freedom of the press because of sup-posedly disloyal and inflammatory articles; estab-lished conscription; issued the EmancipationProclamation; and removed army generals. Lincolnargued that this vast extension of presidential powerwas temporarily justified because, as president, hewas responsible for defending and preserving theConstitution.

Many of the wartime changes in governmentproved more permanent than Lincoln imagined. Thefinancial necessities of war helped revolutionize thecountry’s banking system. Ever since Andrew Jack-son’s destruction of the Bank of the United States,state banks had served American financial needs.Treasury Secretary Chase found this banking systeminadequate and proposed to replace it. In 1863 and1864, Congress passed banking acts that establisheda national currency issued by federally charteredbanks and backed by government bonds. The coun-try had a federal banking system once again.

The northern economy also changed underwartime demands. The need to feed soldiers andcivilians stimulated the expansion of agricultureand new investment in farm machinery. With somany men off soldiering, farmers were at first shortof labor. McCormick reapers performed the work offour to six men, and farmers began to buy them.During the war, McCormick sold 165,000 of his ma-chines. Northern farming, especially in the Mid-west, was well on the way to becoming mechanized.Farmers not only succeeded in growing enoughgrain to feed civilians and soldiers but also gathereda surplus to export as well.

The war also selectively stimulated manufactur-ing. Although it is easy to imagine that northern in-dustry as a whole expanded during the Civil War, infact, the war retarded overall economic growth. Warconsumed rather than generated wealth. Between1860 and 1870, the annual rate of increase in realmanufacturing value added was only 2.3 percent, incontrast with 7.8 percent for the years between 1840

and 1860 and 6 percent for the periodfrom 1870 to 1900. Some important pre-war industries, such as cotton textiles,languished without a supply of southerncotton.

However, industries that produced forthe war machine, especially those with

advantages of scale, expanded and made large prof-its. Each year, the Union army required 1.5 millionuniforms and 3 million pairs of shoes; the woollen

and leather industries grew accordingly. Meatpack-ers and producers of iron, steel, and pocket watchesall profited from wartime opportunities. Cincinnatiwas one city that flourished from supplying soldierswith everything from pork to soap and candles.

On the Home Front, 1861–1865Events on the battlefield were intimately connectedto life behind the lines. As both northern and south-ern leaders realized, civilian morale was crucial tothe war’s outcome. If civilians lost faith, they wouldlack the will to continue the conflict.

The war stimulated religious efforts to generateenthusiasm and loyalty on the home front. On bothsides, Protestant clergymen threw themselves be-hind the war effort. As northern preacher HenryWard Beecher proclaimed, “God hates lukewarmpatriotism as much as lukewarm religion, and wehate it too.” Southern ministers gave similar mes-sages and urged southerners to reform their lives,for victory could not come without moral change. InNorth and South, every defeat was a cause for soulsearching. Fast days and revivals provided a spiri-tual dimension to the conflict and helped peopledeal with discouragement and death.

In numerous ways, the war transformed north-ern and southern society. The very fact of conflictestablished a new perspective for most civilians.War news vied with local events for their attention.They read newspapers and national weekly maga-zines with a new eagerness. The use of the mails in-creased dramatically as they corresponded with far-away relatives and friends. Wrote one NorthCarolina woman, “I never liked to write letters be-fore, but it is a pleasure as well as a relief now.” Dis-tant events became almost as real and vivid as thoseat home. The war helped make Americans lessparochial, integrating them into the larger world.

For some Americans, such as John D. Rockefellerand Andrew Carnegie, war brought army contractsand unanticipated riches. The New YorkHerald reported that New York City hadnever been “so gay, . . . so crowded, soprosperous,” as it was in March 1864. Res-idents of Cincinnati noted people who“became suddenly immensely wealthy,and in their fine equipages, with liveriedservants, rolled in magnificence along the citystreets.” In the South, blockade runners made for-tunes slipping luxury goods past Union ships.

For the majority of Americans, however, warmeant deprivation. The war effort gobbled up alarge part of each side’s resources, and ultimatelyordinary people suffered. To be sure, the demand

Effect of a 32-Pound Shell

Women Workingat U.S. Arsenal






for workers ended unemploy-ment and changed employ-ment patterns. Large numbersof women and blacks enteredthe workforce, a phenomenonthat would be repeated in allfuture American wars. Butwhereas work was easy to getand wages appeared to in-crease, real income actuallydeclined. Inflation, especiallydestructive in the South, waslargely to blame. By 1864, eggssold in Richmond for $6 adozen; butter brought $25 apound. Strikes and union or-ganizing pointed to working-class discontent.

Low wages compoundedthe problem of declining in-come and particularly harmedwomen workers. Often forcedinto the labor market becausehusbands could save littlefrom small army stipends, army wives and otherwomen took what pay they could get. As morewomen entered the workforce, employers cut costsby slashing wages. In 1861, the Union governmentpaid Philadelphia seamstresses 17 cents per shirt. Atthe height of inflation, three years later, the govern-ment reduced the piecework rate to 15 cents. Pri-vate employers paid even less, about 8 cents a shirt.Working women in the South fared no better. Warmay have brought prosperity to a few Americans inthe North and South, but for most it meant trying tosurvive on an inadequate income.

Economic dislocation caused by the war re-duced the standard of living for civilians. Shortagesand hardships were severe in the South, whichbore the brunt of the fighting. Most white south-erners did without food, manufactured goods, andmedicine during the war. Farming families withoutslaves to help with fieldwork fared poorly. As oneGeorgia woman explained, “I can’t manage a farmwell enough [alone] to make a suporte.” Condi-tions were most dismal in cities, where cartsbrought in vital supplies, because trains were re-served for military use. Hunger was rampant. Foodriots erupted in Richmond and other cities; crowdsof hungry whites broke into stores to steal food.The very cleanliness of southern cities pointed tourban hunger. As one Richmond resident noted,everything was so “cleanly consumed that nogarbage or filth can accumulate.”

Thousands of southerners who fled as Unionarmies advanced suddenly found themselveshomeless. “The country for miles around is filledwith refugees,” noted an army officer in 1862. “Everyhouse is crowded and hundreds are living inchurches, in barns and tents.” Caught up in the ef-fort of mere survival, refugees worried about whathad happened to homes and possessions left be-hind and whether anything would remain whenthey returned. Life was probably just as agonizingfor those who chose to stay put when Union troopsarrived. Virginia Gray, an Arkansas woman, wrote inher diary of her fear of the “Feds” and the turmoilthey caused when they suddenly appeared and thendisappeared.

White flight also disrupted slave life. Even the ar-rival of Union forces could prove a mixed blessing.One slave described the upsetting behavior of theYankees at his plantation in Arkansas: “Them folksstood round there all day. Killed hogs . . . killedcows. . . . Took all kinds of sugar and preserves. . . .Tore all the feathers out of the mattresses lookingfor money. Then they put Old Miss and her daughterin the kitchen to cooking.” So frightened was thisslave’s mother that she hid in her bed, only to beroused by the lieutenant, who told her, “We ain’t a-going to do you no hurt. . . . We are freeing you.” Butthe next day, the Yanks were gone and the Confeder-ates back. During Sherman’s march through Georgiain 1864, his troops stole not only from whites but

The Impact of the War in the South The dislocations caused by the war weremany. These southerners, forced to leave their home by invading troops, have packed what fewbelongings they could transport and stand ready to evacuate their homestead. How many childrencan you find in the picture? What does the fact that the woman in the foreground is smoking apipe suggest about the social class of this group? (Library of Congress)




from slaves as well. Indeed some soldiers floggedblacks who tried to stop the looting.

Wartime Race RelationsThe journal kept by Emily Harris in South Carolinaconveys some of the character of life behind thelines. She revealed not only the predictable story ofshortages, hardships, and the psychological bur-dens of those at home but also the subtle socialchanges the war stimulated. Emily and her hus-band, David, lived on a 500-acre farm with theirseven young children and 10 slaves. When Davidwent to war, Emily had to manage the farm, eventhough David worried that she would be “much at aloss with the . . . farm and the negroes.”

Emily’s early entries establish two themes that per-sist for the years she kept her diary. She worried abouthow David would survive the “privation and hard-ships” of army life and was also anxious about herown “load of responsibilities.” Her December 1862entry provides a poignant picture of a wife’s thoughts.“All going well as far as I can judge but tonight it israining and cold and a soldier’s wife cannot be happyin bad weather and during a battle.” The dozens oftasks she had to do depressed her. “I shall never getused to being left as the head of affairs,” she wrote inJanuary 1863. “I am not an independent woman norever shall be.” As time passed and the war went badly,the dismal news and mounting list of casualtiesheightened her concern about David’s safety.

Her relations with her slaves compounded Emily’sproblems. As so many southerners discovered, wartransformed the master–slave relationship. BecauseEmily was not the master David had been, her slavesgradually claimed unaccustomed liberties. At Christ-

mas in 1864, several left the farm withouther permission; others stayed away longerthan she allowed. “Old Will” boldly re-quested his freedom. Worse yet, she dis-covered that her slaves had helped threeYankees who had escaped from prisoncamp.

The master–slave relationship wascrumbling, and Emily reported in her jour-

nal the consequences for whites. “It seems people aregetting afraid of negroes.” Although not admitting tofear, she revealed that she could no longer control theblacks, who were increasingly unwilling to play asubservient role.

Understanding what was at stake, slaves, in theirown way, often worked for their freedom. Said onelater, “Us slaves worked den when we felt like it, whichwasn’t often.” Emily’s journal entry for February 22

confessed a “painful necessity.” “I am reduced,” shesaid, “to the use of a stick but the negroes are becom-ing so impudent and disrespectful that I cannot bearit.” A mere two weeks later she added, “The Negroesare all expecting to be set free very soon and it causesthem to be very troublesom.”

Similar scenes occurred throughout the South. In-subordination, refusal to work, and refusal to acceptpunishment marked the behavior of black slaves, es-pecially those who worked as field hands. Thousandsof blacks (probably 20 percent of all slaves), many ofthem women who had been exploited as workers andas sexual objects, fled toward Union lines after theearly months of the war. Their flight pointed to thechanging nature of race relations and the harm slavescould do to the southern cause. Reflected one slave-owner, “The ‘faithful slave’ is about played out.”

Women and the WarIf Emily Harris’s journal reveals that she was some-times overwhelmed by her responsibilities andshocked by the changes in dealings with her slaves, italso illustrates how the war affected women’s lives.Nineteenth-century ideology promoted women’s do-mestic role and minimized their economic impor-tance. But the war made it impossible for manywomen to live according to conventional norms. Somany men on both sides had gone off to fight that,just like many of their grandmothers during theAmerican Revolution, women had to find jobs andcarry on farming operations. During the war years,southern women who had no slaves to help with thefarmwork and northern farm wives who laboredwithout the assistance of husbands or sons carriednew physical and emotional burdens. For southernwomen, who faced shortages and even displace-ment, sanity sometimes seemed at stake. Emily Har-ris felt she was going crazy. Others found their patrio-tism waning and urged their men to come home.

Women supported the war effort by participatingin numerous war-related activities. In both Northand South, they entered government service in largenumbers. In the North, hundreds ofwomen became military nurses. Underthe supervision of Drs. Emily and Eliza-beth Blackwell; Dorothea Dix, superin-tendent of army nurses; and Clara Barton,northern women nursed the woundedand dying for low pay or even for none atall. They also attempted to improve hos-pital conditions by attacking red tape and bureau-cracy. The diary of a volunteer, Harriet Whetten, re-vealed the activist attitude of many others:

Clara Barton,Medical Life onthe Battlefield

(1862)

Annie L. Burton,“Memories ofChildhood’s

Slavery Days”(1909)





The invention of photography in 1839 expanded the vi-sual and imaginative world of nineteenth-centuryAmericans. For the first time,Americans could visuallyrecord events in their own lives and see images of peo-ple and incidents from far away. Photographs, ofcourse, also expand the boundaries of the historian’sworld. As photographic techniques became simpler,more and more visual information about the nine-teenth century was captured. Historians can use pho-tographs to discover what nineteenth-century Ameri-cans wore, how they celebrated weddings and funerals,and what their families, houses, and cities looked like.Pictures of election campaigns, parades, strikes, andwars show the texture of public life. But historians canalso study photographs, as they do paintings, to gleaninformation about attitudes and norms.The choice ofsubjects, the way people and objects are arranged andgrouped, and the relationships between people in pho-tographs are all clues to the social and cultural valuesof nineteenth-century Americans.

Some knowledge of the early history of photogra-phy helps place the visual evidence in the proper

perspective.The earliest type of photograph, the da-guerreotype, was not a print but the negative itselfon a sheet of silver-plated copper. The first da-guerreotype required between 15 and 30 minutesfor the proper exposure. This accounts for the stiffand formal quality of many of these photographs.Glass ambrotypes (negatives on glass) and tintypes(negatives on gray iron bases), developed after thedaguerreotype, were easier and cheaper to produce.But both techniques produced only one picture andrequired what to us would seem an interminabletime for exposure.

A major breakthrough came in the 1850s with thedevelopment of the wet-plate process. In this process,the photographer coated a glass negative with a sensi-tive solution, exposed the negative (took the picture),and then quickly developed it.The new procedure re-quired a relatively short exposure time of perhapsfive seconds outdoors and one minute inside. Actionshots, however, were still not feasible. The entireprocess tied the photographer to the darkroom.Trav-eling photographers carried their darkrooms with

RECOVERING THE PAST

Photography

512

Mathew Brady,Confederate Captives,Gettysburg. (NationalArchives)



them. The advantage of the wet-plate process wasthat it was possible to make many paper prints fromone negative, opening new commercial vistas for pro-fessional photographers.

Mathew Brady, a fashionable Washington photogra-pher, realized that the camera was the “eye of his-tory” and asked Lincoln for permission to record thewar with his camera. He and his team of photogra-phers left about 8,000 glass negatives, currentlystored in the Library of Congress and the NationalArchives, as their record of the Civil War. Shown hereare two photographs, one of three Confederate sol-diers captured at Gettysburg, the other of the battle-field of Cold Harbor in Virginia.

In the first photograph, study and describe thethree soldiers. How are they posed? What kind ofclothes are they wearing? What about their equip-ment? What seems to be their physical condition?

The second picture was taken in April 1865, abouta year after the battle at Cold Harbor. In the back-ground, you can see two Union soldiers digginggraves. In the foreground are the grisly remains of thebattle.What do you think is the intent of the photo-graph? The choice of subject matter shows clearly

that photography reveals attitudes as well as facts.What attitude toward war and death is conveyed inthis picture? Why is the burial taking place a full yearafter the battle? What does this tell us about the na-ture of civil warfare? Notice that the soldiers orderedto undertake this ghastly chore are black, as was cus-tomary.What might this scene suggest about the ex-perience of black soldiers in the Union army?

REFLECTING ON THE PAST Using the photograph ofConfederate captives as evidence, what might youconclude about the southern soldier—his equipment,uniforms, shoes? How well fed do the men in the pic-ture appear? What attitudes are conveyed throughtheir facial expressions and poses? What kind ofmood was the northern photographer trying to cre-ate? What might a northern viewer conclude aboutthe South’s war effort after looking at this picture?

These photographs just begin to suggest what canbe discovered from old photographs. Your local his-torical society and library probably have photographcollections available to you. In addition, at home or ina relative’s attic, you may find visual records of yourfamily and its history.

513

Mathew Brady, Burial Partyat Cold Harbor. (Chicago Histori-cal Society, ICHi-07868)




I have never seen such a dirty disorganized place as theHospital. The neglect of cleanliness is inexcusable. Allsorts of filth, standing water, and the embalming housenear the Hospital. . . . No time had to be lost. Miss Gilland I set the contrabands at work making beds &cleaning.

Although men largely staffed southern militaryhospitals, Confederate women also cared for the sickand wounded in their homes and in makeshift hospi-tals behind the battle lines. Grim though the workwas, many women felt that they were participating inthe real world for the first time in their lives.

Women moved outside the domestic sphere inother forms of volunteer war work. Some womengained administrative experience in soldiers’ aid so-cieties and in the U.S. Sanitary Commission, whichraised $50 million by the war’s end for medical sup-

plies, nurses’ salaries, and other wartimenecessities. Others made bandages andclothes, put together packages for sol-diers at the front, and helped army wivesand disabled soldiers find jobs.

Many of the changes women experi-enced during the war years ended whenpeace returned. Jobs in industry and gov-ernment disappeared when the men came

to reclaim them. Women turned over the operation offarms to returning husbands. But for women whosemen came home maimed or not at all, the work hadnot ended. Nor had the discrimination. Trying to pickup the threads of their former lives, they found it im-possible to forget what they had done to help the wareffort. At least some of them were sure they hadequaled their men in courage and commitment.

The Election of 1864In the North, the election of 1864 brought some ofthe transformations of wartime into the politicalarena. The Democrats, seeking to regain power bycapitalizing on war weariness, nominated GeneralGeorge McClellan for president. The party pro-claimed the war a failure and demanded an armisticewith the South. During the campaign, Democrats ac-cused Lincoln of arbitrarily expanding executivepower and denounced sweeping economic measuressuch as the banking bills. Arguing that the presidenthad transformed the war from one for Union intoone for emancipation, they tried to inflame racialpassions by insinuating that if the Republicans won,a fusion of blacks and whites would result.

Although Lincoln gained the Republican renom-ination because of his tight control over party ma-chinery and patronage, his party did not unite

behind him. Lincoln seemed to please no one. Hisveto of the radical reconstruction plan for theSouth, the Wade–Davis bill, led to cries of “usurpa-tion.” The Emancipation Proclamation did not sitwell with conservatives. Union defeats during thesummer encouraged those who wanted to makepeace with the South. In August 1864, a gloomy Lin-coln told his cabinet that he expected to lose theelection. As late as September, some Republicansactually hoped to reconvene the convention andselect another candidate.

Sherman’s capture of Atlanta in September 1864and the march through Georgia to Savannah helpedswing voters to Lincoln. In the end, Republicans hadno desire to see the Democrats oust their party. Lin-coln won 55 percent of the popular vote and sweptthe electoral college.

Why the North WonIn the months after Lincoln’s re-election, the wardrew to an agonizing conclusion. Sherman movednorth from Atlanta to North Carolina, while Grantpummeled Lee’s forces in Virginia. Thelosses Grant sustained in Virginia werestaggering: 18,000 in the Battle of theWilderness, more than 8,000 at Spotsylva-nia, and another 12,000 at Cold Harbor.New recruits stepped forward to replacethe dead. On April 9, 1865, Grant ac-cepted Lee’s surrender at Appomattox. Southernsoldiers and officers were allowed to return homewith their personal equipment after promising toremain there peaceably. The war was finally over.

Technically, the war was won on the battlefieldand at sea. But Grant’s military strategy succeededbecause the Union’s manpower and economic re-sources could survive staggering losses of men andequipment while the Confederacy’s could not. AsUnion armies pushed back the borders of the Con-federacy, the South lost control of territories essen-tial for its war effort. Finally, naval strategy eventu-ally paid off because the North could build enoughships to make its blockade work. In 1861, fully 90percent of the blockade runners were slippingthrough the naval cordon. By the war’s end, onlyhalf made it.

The South had taken tremendous steps towardmeeting war needs. But despite the impressivegrowth of manufacturing and the increasing acreagedevoted to foodstuffs, the southern army and thesouthern people were poorly fed and poorly clothed.As one civilian realized, “The question of bread andmeat . . . is beginning to be regarded as a more seri-ous one even than that of War.” Women working

AppomattoxCourt House

U.S. SanitaryCommission,Sketch of Its

Purposes(1864)






alone or with disgruntled slaves on farms could notproduce enough food. Worn-out farm equipmentwas not replaced. The government’s impressment ofslaves and animals cut production. The half millionblacks who fled to Union lines also played their partin pulling the South down in defeat.

New industries could not meet the extraordinarydemands of wartime, and advancing Union forcesdestroyed many of them. A Confederate officer in

northern Virginia observed, “Many of oursoldiers are thinly clothed and withoutshoes and in addition to this, very few ofthe infantry have tents. With this freezingweather, their sufferings are indescrib-able.” Skimpy rations, only one-third of apound of meat for each soldier a day by

1864, weakened the Confederate force, whose trailwas “traceable by the deposit of dysenteric stool” itleft behind. By that time, the Union armies were sowell supplied that soldiers often threw away heavyblankets and coats as they advanced.

The South’s woefully inadequate transportationsystem also contributed to defeat. Primitive roadsdeteriorated and became all but impassable with-out repairs. The railroad system, geared to theneeds of cotton, not war, was inefficient. Whentracks wore out or were destroyed, they were notreplaced. Rails were too heavy for blockade run-ners to bother with, and as the Confederate rail-road coordinator observed in 1865, “Not a singlebar of railroad iron has been rolled in the Confed-eracy since the war, nor can we hope to do better.”Thus, food intended for the army rotted awaitingshipment. Supplies were tied up in bottlenecks andsoldiers went hungry. Food riots in southern citiespointed to the hunger, anger, and growing demor-alization of civilians.

Ironically, measures the Confederacy took tostrengthen its ability to win the war, as one Texanlater observed, “weakened and paralyzed it.” Con-scription, impressment, and taxes all contributedto resentment and sometimes open resistance.They fueled class tensions already strained by thepoverty that war brought to many yeoman farmersand led some of them to assist the invaders or tojoin the Union army. The proposal to use slaves assoldiers called into question the war’s purpose. Themany southern governors who refused to con-tribute men, money, and supplies on the scaleDavis requested implicitly condoned disloyalty tothe cause.

It is natural to compare Lincoln and Davis as warleaders. There is no doubt that Lincoln’s humanity,his awareness of the terrible costs of war, his deter-mination to save the Union, and his eloquence set

him apart as one of this country’s most extraordi-nary presidents. Yet the men’s personal characteris-tics were probably less important than the differ-ences between the political and social systems ofthe two regions. Without the support of a party be-hind him, Davis failed to engender enthusiasm orloyalty. Even though the Republicans rarely unitedbehind Lincoln, they uniformly wanted to keep theDemocrats from office. Despite all the squabbles,Republicans tended to support Lincoln’s policies inCongress and back in their home districts. Com-manding considerable resources of patronage, Lin-coln was able to line up federal, state, and local offi-cials behind his party and administration.

Just as the northern political system providedLincoln with more flexibility and support, its socialsystem also proved more able to meet the war’s ex-traordinary demands. Although both societiesadopted innovations in an effort to secure victory,northerners were more cooperative, disciplined,and aggressive in meeting the organizational andproduction challenges of wartime. In the southernstates, old attitudes, habits, and values impededthe war effort. Southern governors, wedded tostates’ rights, refused to cooperate with the Con-federate government. North Carolina, the center ofthe southern textile industry, actually kept backmost uniforms for its own regiments. At the war’send, 92,000 uniforms and thousands of blankets,shoes, and tents still lay in its warehouses. WhenSherman approached Atlanta, Georgia’s governorwould not turn over the 10,000 men in the statearmy to Confederate commanders. Even slave-holders, whose property had been the cause for se-cession, resisted the impressment of their slavesfor war work.

In the end, the Confederacy collapsed, exhaustedand bleeding. Hungry soldiers received letters fromtheir families revealing desperate situations athome. They worried and then slipped away. By De-cember 1864, the Confederate desertion rate hadpassed 50 percent. Replacements could not befound. Farmers hid livestock and produce from taxcollectors. Many southerners felt their cause waslost and resigned themselves to defeat. But somefought on till the end. One northerner describedthem as they surrendered at Appomattox:

Before us in proud humiliation stood the embodimentof manhood: men whom neither toils and sufferings,nor the fact of death, nor disaster, nor hopelessnesscould bend from their resolve; standing before us now,thin, worn, and famished, but erect, and with eyeslooking level into ours, waking memories that boundus together as no other bond.

Destruction ofthe Confederacy





The Costs of WarThe long war was over, but the memories of thatevent would fester for years to come. About 3 mil-lion American men, one-third of all free males be-

tween ages 15 and 59, had served in thearmy. Each would remember his own per-sonal history of the war. For George Ea-gleton, who had worked in army fieldhospitals, the history was one of “Deathand destruction! Blood! Blood! Agony!Death! Gaping flesh wounds, broken

bones, amputations, bullet and bomb fragment ex-tractions.” Of all wars Americans have fought, nonehas been more deadly. The death rate during thiswar was more than five times the death rate duringWorld War II. About 360,000 Union soldiers and an-other 258,000 Confederate soldiers died, about one-third of them because their wounds were either im-properly treated or not treated at all. Diseaseclaimed more lives than combat. Despite the effortsof men such as Eagleton and the women armynurses, hospitals could not handle the scores ofwounded and dying. “Glory is not for the privatesoldier, such as die in the hospitals,” reflected oneTennessee soldier, “being eat up with the deadlygangrene, and being imperfectly waited on.”

Thousands of men would be re-minded of the human costs of war bythe injuries they carried with them to

the grave, by the missinglimbs that marked them asCivil War veterans. About275,000 on each side weremaimed. Another 410,000(195,000 northerners and215,000 southerners) wouldremember wretchedly over-

crowded and unsanitary prisoncamps. The lucky ones would recallonly the dullness and boredom. Theworst memory was of those who rot-ted in prison camps, such as Ander-sonville in Georgia, where 31,000Union soldiers were confined. At thewar’s end, more than 12,000 graveswere counted there.

Some Americans found it hard tothrow off wartime experiences and ad-just to peace. As Arthur Carpenter’s let-ters suggest, he gradually grew accus-tomed to army life. War provided himwith a sense of purpose. When it wasover, he felt aimless. A full year after thewar’s end, he wrote, “Camp life agrees

with me better than any other.” Many others had diffi-culty returning to civilian routines and finding a newfocus for life. Even those who adjusted successfullydiscovered that they looked at life from a different per-spective. The experience of fighting, of mixing with allsorts of people from many places, and of traveling farfrom home had lifted former soldiers out of their fa-miliar local world and widened their vision. Fightingthe war made the concept of national union real.

Unanswered QuestionsWhat, then, had the war accomplished? On the onehand, death and destruction. Physically, the wardevastated the South. Historians have es-timated a 43 percent decline in southernwealth during the war years, exclusive ofthe value of slaves. Great cities like At-lanta, Columbia, and Richmond lay in ru-ins. Fields lay weed-choked and unculti-vated. Tools were worn out. One-third ormore of the South’s stock of mules, horses, andswine had disappeared. Two-thirds of the railroadshad been destroyed. Thousands were hungry,homeless, and bitter about their four years of whatnow appeared a useless sacrifice. More than 4 mil-lion slaves, a vast financial investment, were free.

Field Hospital,Virginia, 1862

Charleston, South Carolina, in 1865 What does this picture suggestabout the impact of the war on Charleston?(Library of Congress, [LC-DIG-cwpb 02421DLC])

Richmond inRuins

AmputationBeing

Performed,1863







On the other hand, the war had resolved thequestion of union and ended the debate over the re-lationship of the states to the federal government.During the war, Republicans seized the opportunityto pass legislation that would foster national unionand economic growth: the Pacific Railroad Act of1862, which set aside huge tracts of public land to fi-nance the transcontinental railroad; the HomesteadAct of 1862, which was to provide yeoman farmerscheaper and easier access to the public domain; theMorrill Act of 1862, which established support foragricultural (land-grant) colleges; and the bankingacts of 1863 and 1864.

The war had also resolved the issue of slavery, thethorny problem that had so long plagued Americanlife. Yet uncertainties outnumbered certainties.What would happen to the former slaves? Whenblacks had fled to Union lines during the war, com-manders had not known what to do with them. Nowthe problem became even more pressing. Wereblacks to have the same civil and political rights aswhites? In the Union army, they had been second-class soldiers. The behavior of Union forces towardliberated blacks in the South showed how deep thestain of racism went. One white soldier, caughtstealing a quilt by a former slave, shouted, “I’mfighting for $14 a month and the Union”—not toend slavery. Would blacks be given land, the meansfor economic independence? What would be theirrelations with their former owners?

What, indeed, would be the status of the con-quered South in the nation? Should it be punishedfor the rebellion? Some people thought so. Shouldsoutherners keep their property? Some peoplethought not. There were clues to Lincoln’s inten-tions. As early as December 1863, the president

had announced a generous plan of reconciliation.He was willing to recognize the government of for-mer Confederate states established by a group ofcitizens equal to 10 percent of those voting in 1860,as long as the group swore to support the Constitu-tion and to accept the abolition of slavery. He be-gan to restore state governments in three formerConfederate states on that basis. But not all north-erners agreed with his leniency, and the debatecontinued.

In his 1865 inaugural address, Lincoln urgedAmericans to harbor “malice towards none . . . andcharity for all.” “Let us strive,” he urged,“to finish the work we are in; to bind upthe nation’s wounds . . . to do all whichmay achieve a just and lasting peace.”Privately, the president said the samething. Generosity and goodwill wouldpave the way for reconciliation. On April14, he pressed the point home to his cabinet. Hiswish was to avoid persecution and bloodshed. Thatsame evening, only five days after the surrender atAppomattox, the president attended a play atFord’s Theatre. There, as one horrified eyewitnessreported,

a pistol was heard and a man . . . dressed in a black suitof clothes leaped onto the stage apparently from thePresident’s box. He held in his right hand a daggerwhose blade appeared about 10 inches long. . . . Everyone leaped to his feet, and the cry of “thePresident is assassinated” was heard—Gettingwhere I could see into the President’s box, Isaw Mrs. Lincoln . . . in apparent anguish.

John Wilkes Booth, a southern sympa-thizer, had killed the president.

LincolnAssassinationReward Poster

Battles of Gettysburg and VicksburgUnion Banking ActSouthern tax laws and impressment actNew York draft riotsSouthern food riots

1864 Sherman’s march through GeorgiaLincoln re-electedUnion Banking Act

1865 Lee surrenders at AppomattoxLincoln assassinated; Andrew Johnson becomes

president

T I M E L I N E

1861 Lincoln calls up state militia and suspends habeascorpus

First Battle of Bull RunUnion blockades the South

1862 Battles at Shiloh, Bull Run, and AntietamMonitor and Virginia battleFirst black regiment authorized by UnionUnion issues greenbacksSouth institutes military draftPacific Railroad ActHomestead ActMorrill Land-Grant College Act

1863 Lincoln issues Emancipation ProclamationCongress adopts military draft

Lincoln, SecondInaugural

Address (1865)






As the war ended, many Americans grieved for theman whose decisions had so marked their lives forfive years. “Strong men have wept tonight & the na-tion will mourn tomorrow,” wrote one eyewitness tothe assassination. Many more wept for friends andrelations who had not survived the war, but whoseactions had in one way or another contributed to itsoutcome. The lucky ones, like Arthur Carpenter andGeorge and Ethie Eagleton, now faced the necessity

of putting their lives back together and moving for-ward into an uncertain future. Perhaps not all Amer-icans realized how drastically the war had alteredtheir lives, their prospects, and their nation. It wasonly as time passed that the war’s impact becameclear to them. And it was only with time that theyrecognized how many problems the war had left un-solved. It is to these years of Reconstruction that weturn next.

Conclusion

An Uncertain Future

1. Assess the strengths and weaknesses of the Northand South at the beginning of the war. What northernstrengths actually led to northern victory and whatConfederate weaknesses explain southern defeat?

2. Describe the military campaigns in each region of thecountry over the course of the war.

3. What were the most important transformations inthe Union and Confederacy during the war and why,in your opinion, were these changes so significant?

Questions for Review and Reflection

4. Compare and contrast Lincoln and Davis as warleaders and the two governments over which theypresided.

5. What role did race play during the war?

6. Consider the Civil War as a struggle between differingbeliefs and values and assess the importance ofnorthern victory for this struggle. In what ways didthe war’s outcome realize or fail to realize the found-ing principles of this nation?

Recommended ReadingRecommended Readings are posted on the Web site for this textbook. Visit www.ablongman.com/nash

Fiction and Film

Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage (1895) ex-amines the soldier’s experience during the war, whileMacKinlay Kantor’s novel Andersonville (1955) pro-vides an insight into the Civil War’s worst prisoncamp. Enemy Women (2002) by Paulette Jiles followsthe journey of a young Missouri woman who tries torescue her father who has been carried off by theUnion militia to St. Louis. The feature film Glory(1989) focuses on a black regiment, the 54th Massa-chusetts, that demonstrated its heroism in the midstof battle. You will get a better sense of the character

of warfare and race relations if you see this film. ColdMountain (2003) follows a Confederate soldier as hetries to reach his home in 1864. The movie gives agood picture of the disintegration of southern society,but you will not find much indication of why theSouth went to war. The classic Gone with the Wind(1939) offers a romanticized but powerful picture ofsouthern life before, during, and after the Civil War.Ken Burns’s famous documentary series The CivilWar (1990) is a powerful evocation of that period withample use of period photographs and documents.




Index of Civil War Information on the Internetwww.cwc.lsu.eduA good starting place for research, this index has as itsmission to “locate, index, and make available all appropri-ate private and public data on the Internet regarding theCivil War” and to promote the study of the Civil War fromthe perspectives of all professions, occupations, and acad-emic disciplines. It includes a guide on evaluating sourcesof information on the Internet.

Causes of the Civil Warwww.members.aol.com/jfepperson/causes.htmlThe site offers a collection of “primary documents fromthe period of the secession crisis . . . with the goal of shed-ding light on the causes of secession, hence of the war.”Document sections include “Party Platforms and Seces-sion Documents,” “Compromise Proposals,” and “Abra-ham Lincoln’s Speeches and Letters,” as well as docu-ments from individual states, other quotes, and politicalspeeches and commentaries.

Crisis at Fort Sumterwww.tulane.edu/~latner/CrisisMain.htmlThis well-crafted use of hypermedia with assignmentsand problems explains and explores the events andcauses leading to the Civil War.

Charlestonwww.awod.com/gallery/probono/cwchas/cwlayout.htmlWilliam Hamilton, the author, attorney and Civil War re-enactor, presents the history of the Civil War in and

around Charleston, South Carolina, via timelines, biogra-phies, primary sources, battleground information, and il-lustrations.

Abraham Lincolnwww.ipl.org/ref/POTUS/alincoln.htmlThis site contains basic factual data about Lincoln, in-cluding his presidency, speeches, cabinet members, andelection information.

Black American Contributions to Union IntelligenceDuring the Civil Warwww.odci.gov/cia/publications/dispatches/This illustrated article, reprinted from the CIA journalStudies in Intelligence (Winter 1998–1999) offers informa-tion about this little-known contribution to the Union wareffort.

America’s First Look into the Camera: DaguerreotypePortraits and Views, 1839–1864www.memory.loc.gov/ammem/daghtml/dagpres.htmlThis exhibit presents samples of the major subjects of thissearchable database of more than 650 daguerreotypes.Portraits, architectural views, and some street scenesmake up most of the collection.

Discovering U.S. History Online



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