Virtual MuseumChapter 11

Presented by

Mike Connelly and Hayden Roche

Battles• First Bull Run- Union casualties were 460 killed, 1,124 wounded, and 1,312

missing or captured; Confederate casualties were 387 killed, 1,582 wounded, and 13 missing. The Northern public was shocked at the unexpected loss of their army in a battle for which an easy victory was widely anticipated. Both sides quickly came to realize that the war would be longer and more brutal than they had thought. On July 22 President Lincoln signed a bill that provided for the enlistment of 500,000 men for up to three years of service.

• Second Bull Run- Union casualties were about 10,000 killed and wounded out of 62,000 engaged; the Confederates lost about 1,300 killed and 7,000 wounded out of 50,000. As the Union Army concentrated on Centreville, Lee sent Jackson on another march in an attempt to interpose his army between Pope and Washington. Pope countered the move and the two forces clashed a final time at the Battle of Chantilly. Marching toward a fateful encounter with the Army of the Potomac in the Maryland Campaign and the Battle of Antietam.

• Antietam- This was the single most bloodiest day of the war. Union had 12,401 casualties with 2,108 dead. Confederate casualties were 10,318 with 1,546 dead. This represented 25% of the Federal force and 31% of the Confederate. Lee's forces began withdrawing across the Potomac that evening to return to Virginia. Lincoln ordered McClellan to chase Lee but he did not.

• During the American Civil War, the Copperheads nominally favored the Union and strongly opposed the war, for which they blamed abolitionists, and they demanded immediate peace and resisted draft laws. They wanted President Lincoln and the Republicans ousted from power, seeing the president as a tyrant who was destroying American republican values with his despotic and arbitrary actions.

Copperheads

Confederate War Strategy

• The southern commander at Manassas was Pierre G. T. Beauregard, the dapper, voluble hero of Fort Sumter, Napoleonic in manner and aspiration. Heading the rebel forces in the Shenandoah Valley was Joseph E. Johnston, a small, impeccably attired, ambitious but cautious man with a piercing gaze and an outsized sense of dignity. In their contrasting offensive-and defensive-mindedness, Beauregard and Johnston represented the polarities of southern strategic thinking. The basic war aim of the Confederacy, like that of the United States in the Revolution, was to defend a new nation from conquest. The South could "win" the war by not losing; the North could win only by winning. The large territory of the Confederacy--750,000 square miles, as large as Russia west of Moscow, twice the size of the thirteen original United States--would make Lincolns task difficult.

Weapons• Infantry tactics at the time of the Civil War were based on the use of the smoothbore

musket, a weapon of limited range and accuracy. Firing lines that were much more than a hundred yards apart could not inflict very much damage on each other, and so troops which were to make an attack would be massed together, elbow to elbow, and would make a run for it; if there were enough of them, and they ran fast enough, the defensive line could not hurt them seriously, and when they got to close quarters the advantage of numbers and the use of the bayonet would settle things. But the Civil War musket was rifled, which made an enormous difference. It was still a muzzle-loader, but it had much more accuracy and a far longer range than the old smoothbore, and it completely changed the conditions under which soldiers fought. An advancing line could be brought under killing fire at a distance of half a mile, now, and the massed charge of Napoleonic tradition was miserably out of date. When a defensive line occupied field entrenchments-which the soldiers learned to dig fairly early in the game-a direct frontal assault became almost impossible. The hideous casualty lists of Civil War battles owed much of their size to the fact that soldiers were fighting with rifles but were using tactics suited to smoothbores. It took the generals a long time to learn that a new approach was needed.

Martial Law• The martial law concept in the U.S. is closely tied with the right of habeas

corpus, which is in essence the right to a hearing on lawful imprisonment, or more broadly, the supervision of law enforcement by the judiciary. The ability to suspend habeas corpus is often equated with martial law. Article 1, Section 9 of the U.S. Constitution states, "The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it."

Emancipation Proclamation

• The Emancipation Proclamation consists of two executive orders issued by United States President Abraham Lincoln during the American Civil War. The first one, issued September 22, 1862, declared the freedom of all slaves in any state of the Confederate States of America that did not return to Union control by January 1, 1863. The second order, issued January 1, 1863, named ten specific states where it would apply. Lincoln issued the Executive Order by his authority as "Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy" under Article II, section 2 of the United States Constitution.

Contraband Issue

• At Fort Monroe in Virginia's Hampton Roads, Brigadier General Benjamin Butler, commander, came into the possession of three slaves who had made their way across Hampton Roads harbor from Confederate-occupied Norfolk County, Virginia and presented themselves at Union-held Fort Monroe. General Butler refused to return escaped slaves to masters supporting the Confederacy, which amounted to classifying them as "contraband," although credit for first use of that terminology occurred elsewhere

African-Americans in War

• Approximately 180,000 African Americans comprising 163 units served in the Union Army during the Civil War, and many more African Americans served in the Union Navy. Both free African-Americans and runaway slaves joined the fight.

Prison Camps

• In the very beginning of the Civil War, prisoners of war were exchanged right on the battlefield, a private for a private, a sergeant for a sergeant and a captain for a captain. This system broke down and caused the creation of large holding pens for prisoners in both the North and South. On Major General John A. Dix of the Union Army met with the Confederate representative, Major General Daniel H. Hill, and a cartel was drafted providing for the parole and exchange of prisoners. This draft was submitted to and approved by their superiors. Four days later, the cartel was formally signed and ratified, and became known as the Dix-Hill Cartel.        The Dix-Hill Cartel failed by midyear, for reasons including the refusal of the Confederate, Government to exchange or parole black prisoners. They threatened to treat black prisoners as slaves and to execute their white officers. There was also the problem of prisoners returning too soon to the battlefield. When Vicksburg surrendered on July 4, most of those Confederate prisoners who were paroled were back in the trenches within weeks.

Medical Care

• The Civil War was fought, claimed the Union army surgeon general, "at the end of the medical Middle Ages." Little was known about what caused disease, how to stop it from spreading, or how to cure it. Surgical techniques ranged from the barbaric to the barely competent.        A Civil War soldier's chances of not surviving the war was about one in four. These fallen men were cared for by a woefully underqualifled, understaffed, and undersupplied medical corps. Working against incredible odds, however, the medical corps increased in size, improved its techniques, and gained a greater understanding of medicine and disease every year the war was fought.

Lee’s Victories

• Lee then won a number of victories in the following months. In June of '62, Lee drove the Union army away from the Richmond area in the Seven Days' Battle. Lee then drove the northern army back into Washington D.C. after the second Battle of Bull Run. Antietam soon followed on September 17, 1862, where he won a costly battle with northern general McClellan. Soon after, Lee began his with drawl through Virginia, where again he won a costly battle on the Union at Fredericksburg in December.

Union War Strategy• The Civil War drove many innovations in military

strategy. W. J. Hardee published the first revised infantry tactics for use with modern rifles in 1855. However, even these tactics proved ineffective in combat, as it involved massed volley fire, in which entire units (primarily regiments) would fire simultaneously. These tactics had not been tested before in actual combat, and the commanders of these units would post their soldiers at incredibly close range, compared to the range of the rifled musket, which led to disastrous mortality rates. In a sense, the weapons had evolved beyond the tactics, which would soon change as the war drew to a close. Railroads provided the first mass movement of troops. The electric telegraph was used by both sides, which enabled political and senior military leaders to pass orders to and receive reports from commanders in the field.

Vicksburg

• The Siege of Vicksburg was the final major military action in the Vicksburg Campaign of the American Civil War. In a series of maneuvers, Union Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant and his Army of the Tennessee crossed the Mississippi River and drove the Confederate army of Lt. Gen. John C. Pemberton into the defensive lines surrounding the fortress city of Vicksburg, Mississippi.

Ulysses S. Grant

• Ulysses S. Grant born Hiram Ulysses Grant (April 27, 1822– July 23, 1885) was the 18th President of the United States (1869–77) as well as military commander during the Civil War and post-war Reconstruction periods. Under the command of Grant, the Union Army defeated the Confederate military and ended the Confederate States of America. His image as a war hero was tarnished by corruption scandals during his presidency. Grant began his life long career as a soldier after graduating from the United States Military Academy in 1843. Fighting in the Mexican American War, he was a close observer of the techniques of Generals Zachary Taylor and Winfield Scott. He retired from the Army in 1854, then struggled to make a living in St. Louis. After many financial setbacks, he finally moved to Galena, Illinois where he worked as a clerk in his father's tannery shop, making Galena his permanent legal home.

William T. Sherman

• William Tecumseh Sherman (February 8, 1820 – February 14, 1891) was an American soldier, businessman, educator and author. He served as a General in the Union Army during the American Civil War (1861–65), for which he received recognition for his outstanding command of military strategy as well as criticism for the harshness of the "scorched earth" policies that he implemented in conducting total war against the Confederate States. Military historian B. H. Liddell Hart famously declared that Sherman was "the first modern general".

Election of 1864

• In the United States Presidential election of 1864, Abraham Lincoln was re-elected as president. Lincoln ran under the National Union banner against his former top Civil War general, the Democratic candidate, George B. McClellan. McClellan was the "peace candidate" but did not personally believe in his party's platform.

• The 1864 election occurred during the Civil War; none of the states loyal to the Confederate States of America participated.

• Republicans loyal to Lincoln, in opposition to a group of Republican dissidents who nominated John C. Frémont, joined with a number of War Democrats to form the National Union Party. The new political party was formed to accommodate the War Democrats.

Thirteenth Amendment

• The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution officially abolished and continues to prohibit slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. It was adopted on December 6, 1865, and was then declared in a proclamation of Secretary of State William H. Seward on December 18. It was the first of the Reconstruction Amendments.

• Many people, including President Abraham Lincoln, were concerned that the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared the freedom of slaves in ten Confederate states still in rebellion in 1863, would be seen as a temporary war measure. They supported this amendment in order to outlaw slavery throughout the United States.

Assassination of Lincoln

• The assassination of Abraham Lincoln was the shooting of President Abraham Lincoln on Good Friday, April 14, 1865, followed by his death the following morning. Lincoln was shot as the American Civil War was drawing to a close, just six days after the large-scale surrender of Confederate forces under General Robert E. Lee to Union General U. S. Grant. The assassination was planned and carried out by John Wilkes Booth as part of a larger conspiracy in an effort to rally the remaining Confederate troops to continue fighting. Lincoln was attending a stage performance of Our American Cousin at Ford's Theater with his wife and a twenty-eight year-old officer named Major Henry R. Rathbone, and his fiancée, Clara Harris. Lincoln was the first American president to be assassinated, though there had been earlier attempted assassinations of other presidents.

In loving support of Thomas James D’Andrea