The First Battle of Bull Run

This was the first major land battle of the armies in Virginia. On July 16, 1861, Brigadier General Thomas Jackson’s Virginia brigade, Col. Wade Hampton and his Legion, and Col. J.E.B. Stuart’s cavalry arrived at Henry Hill to reinforce the Confederates. Jackson set up a line of artillery on the crest of the hill, where the artillerymen would be protected. McDowell moved his artillery from Dogan Ridge to Matthews Hill, and the contesting batteries engaged in a fierce fight, during which a civilian was wounded; Mrs. Judith Henry, ill and in bed in her home on Henry Hill, would succumb to her wounds later in the day.

Near the end of the artillery fight, Brig. Gen. Barnard Bee, on Henry Hill with Jackson, declared that the Union was about to break their lines, to which Jackson replied "Then we shall give them the bayonet!" To rally his troops—or perhaps in anger at Jackson coming to his aide too slowly—Bee exclaimed "Look at Jackson standing like a stonewall," bestowing the nickname "Stonewall" on Jackson. In a show of persistence and bravery, Jackson’s brigade charged the Union artillery line, overran it, captured guns, and changed the course of the battle. Jackson continued to press against the Union lines, telling his men to wait until they were within 50 yards of the enemy before attacking, "And when you charge, yell like furies!" Confederate troops gave the first Rebel yell of the war.

The Emancipation Proclamation

The North and the South began the Civil War with different aims. The people in the North were fighting to preserve the Union, while people in the South were fighting to defend their way of life and states’ rights. Lincoln hesitated to make the Civil War and crusade against slavery, despite the pressure he received from northern abolitionists. Lincoln feared that if he freed the slaves in the Border States (slave states that stayed in the Union: Missouri, Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky) they would seceded and join the Confederacy.

After a Union victory at the Battle of Antietam, Lincoln changed his mind. President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring that all slaves in the rebelling states (the Confederacy) would be freed on January 1, 1863. Because the southern states did not consider Abraham Lincoln their president, the Emancipation Proclamation freed no one. But the Proclamation did something else: it changed the focus of the war from preserving the Union to freeing slaves. After signing this historic document, President Lincoln said, “If my name ever goes into history, it will be for this act, and my whole soul is in it.”

African Americans in the Civil War When the Civil War first began, African Americans were not allowed in the Union army. They were told, “This is a white man’s war!” On January 1, 1863, Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed slaves in rebellious states. The Emancipation Proclamation made it an African American’s war as well. Shortly after it was issued, President Lincoln ordered the Union Army to accept African Americans. 215,000 African Americans joined the army.

More than half of these African American soldiers were runaway slaves who flocked to the Union army in search of freedom. Many found not only freedom but dignity. No longer did they have to bow their heads or lower their eyes around whites. When former slaves put on their uniforms, for many the first decent clothes they had every worn, they looked and felt like free men.

Many whites voiced doubts that former slaves were capable of fighting in the war, but the officers who led units of runaway slaves soon learned that they were hard working and brave. One officer said, “You have no idea how my prejudices against African Americans have been dispelled by the battle the other day. The brigade of African Americans behaved magnificently and fought splendidly. They are far superior in discipline to white troops, and just as brave.”

One of the most famous African American units was the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Volunteers. When the men in this unit learned that white soldiers were being paid more than African American soldiers, they refused to accept pay at all. “We did not come to fight for money,” one of them said, “we came to make men not only of ourselves, but of our African American brothers at home.” In 1864, Congress finally agreed to pay African Americans equally.

Diseases

By 1863 the early enthusiasm for war faded as people on both sides faced the terrible realities of war. Of the many hardships Americans endured, the worst by far was the death of loved ones. This was a tragedy few families escaped. There were two main causes for the high death rates: disease and weapons. Of these, disease was the more deadly enemy.

“These big battles,” wrote one solder, “is not as bad as the fever.” Another soldier observed that sickness was widespread because, “the boys had not learned how to cook, nor take proper care of themselves.” They left garbage and sewage lying around their camps. As long as the water looked clean, they drank it. Bad water washed down a diet off beans, corn, and salt pork. No wonder one soldier came to believe that “beans killed more than bullets.”

During the Civil War, doctors knew nothing about the cause of disease. The wounded man’s first stop was the surgeon’s tent, and the usual treatment was amputation. One surgeon said, “We performed amputations in old, blood-stained and often pus-stained coats. We used dirty tools to fix the soldier’s wounds. If a tool fell on the floor, it was picked up and used as if it were clean.” Such practices led to the spread of infections and disease.

New Weapons

Many of those killed in battle were victims of two new weapons, the Napoleon cannon and rifled muskets. Of these, the Napoleon cannon was the more terrifying. Besides traditional cannon balls, this weapon could shoot a canister filled with lead shot, iron bolts, or rusty nails. Once fired, the canister blew apart, spraying deadly hail of flying metal. It was enough to make the bravest soldier duck for cover during a bombardment.

The new weapon of choice for the foot soldier was the rifled musket or rifle. By putting a spin on a bullet, the rifle, extended both the range and accuracy of small-arms fire as far as 500 yards. The bullet used in the new rifle was a heavy, inch-long projectile called the Minie Ball. The Minie Ball slammed into its victims with bone-shattering force, sometimes wrenching off an arm or leg with one shot.

These weapons did not, at first, lead to new military tactics. As in earlier wars, battles were still fought by large groups of men marching toward each other over open ground. In the past, few men had been killed because guns were simply too inaccurate to be effective. Most of the fighting and killing had been done with bayonets. But when Civil War soldiers marched across open ground against troops armed with new rifles, they were like ducks in a shooting gallery. Most were picked off long before reaching bayonet range.

As casualties piled up, tactics began to change. Soldiers learned to take cover behind fences during battles. When there was no cover, they dug trenches. Bayonets were used mostly for digging or opening cans, rarely for killing.

Gettysburg

The frightful power of new weapons became all too apparent to both sides in 1863. In a desperate attempt to destroy the Union’s will to fight, Robert E. Lee invaded the North. On July 1, his force of 75,000 men reached the town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. They gathered behind a hill known as Seminary Ridge. About a mile east, 90,000 Union troops gathered behind another hill named Cemetery Ridge.

The next day, Confederate troops poured around the edges of their hill. On July 3, Lee ordered General George Pickett to lead a massive assault against the center of the Union position. Pickett’s charge was a disaster. Once the 15,000 attackers were on the open group between the two hills, Union fire enveloped them in a “storm of lead and iron.” “We could not help hitting them at every shot” said a Northern officer. Another wrote that “arms, heads, blankets, guns and knapsacks were tossed into the clean air.” Another remembered seeing “men going down on hands and knees, spinning round like tops, throwing out their arms, gulping blood, falling; legless, armless, headless. There are ghastly heaps of dead men.”

Lee rode out among the survivors as they staggered back to Seminary Ridge. “It was all my fault,” he told them. “Get together and let us do the best we can toward saving that which is left us.” But there was nothing left to save that day. The bloodiest battle of the war was over. The North suffered 23,000 casualties, the South 28,000. While Lee’s army staggered back to Virginia, Union troops had the unpleasant task of burying the 7,000 corpses that littered the battlefield.

The following November, President Lincoln came to Gettysburg to dedicate the new Union cemetery. A crowd of nearly 6,000 people had gathered to hear speeches and browse around tables selling lemonade, cookies, and souvenirs such as Mini balls, uniform buttons, or dried wildflowers from the battlefield. Lincoln rose to speak.

After several other speeches, Lincoln rose to address the crowd. In just a few brief remarks, the President reminded Americans that they were fighting to preserve a nation “[founded] in liberty and dedicated to the [idea] that all men were created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war,” he continued, “testing whether that nation, or any nation…can long endure.” Lincoln finished by honoring the dead, and encouraging the nation to fight on so that the people who died will not have died in vain.

Women in the Civil War

For women in the North and South, the Civil War brought hardships and opportunities. With men at war, women took over the running of farms and plantations. They moved into factory jobs that had previously been held by men.

Women served in both the Union and Confederate armies as soldiers and spies. Former slaves Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth worked as spies for the Union Army. In one raid led by Tubman, the African American troops of the Second South Carolina Volunteers liberated 727 slaves. Confederate spy Rose O’Neal Greenhow was accused by General McClellan of passing on his plans to the enemy, causing him “four times to change them.”

Women made their greatest contribution to the war effort in the field of nursing. Most of the hospitals were dark and dirty, and few wounded men emerged alive. Author Louisa May Alcott recalled “the vilest odors that ever assaulted the human nose.” Confederate nurse Kate Cummings wrote that: “Nothing that I had ever heard or read had given me the faintest idea of the horrors here.”

The nurses attacked these grim hospitals with soap and water. They threw open windows to let in air and sunlight. They treated the wounded with tender care. Even so, the nurses could do little to improve the survival rate of the severely wounded.

The most remarkable Civil War nurse was a small, courageous woman named Clara Barton. Barton did not wait for the wounded to come to the hospital. Instead, she risked her life to carry food and medical supplies onto the battlefield. Her face dark with gunpowder, she followed troops into battle, feeding the sick, bandaging the wounded, and digging bullets out of flesh with her penknife. One surgeon said she was “the true heroine of the age, the angel of the battlefield.” Many years later, Barton would build on her experiences by founding the American Red Cross.

Total destruction of the South

Lincoln’s hope for victory depended on one of the Union’s most trusted generals, William T. Sherman. In 1864, Sherman was battling his way into Georgia. On September 1, his army captured Atlanta, a key Confederate manufacturing and transportation center. “We have completely destroyed Atlanta,” wrote a Union soldier. “I don’t think any people will want to try and live there now. It is pretty tough to force people out of their homes in this way, but it is war.”

With Atlanta firmly in his grasp, Sherman vowed to “make Georgia howl.” He marched his army across the state to the coastal town of Savannah. Along the way, his troops destroyed everything in their path. Railroads were torn up. Farms were burned. Houses were looted. From Savannah, Sherman moved north through the Carolinas. Here, the destruction was, if possible, even worse. “They say no living thing is found in Sherman’s track.”

By the time Sherman ended his campaign in Raleigh, North Carolina, his troops had passed through 425 miles of hostile territory and destroyed $100 million worth of property. This was a new approach to warfare, something we now call “total war.” It was based on Sherman’s belief that the best way to defeat an enemy army was to crush the will of the civilians who sustained that fighting force. “We cannot change the hearts of these people in the South,” he said, “but we can make war so terrible…and make them so sick of war that generations will pass away before they again appeal to it.”

Meanwhile in Richmond, Grant and his men had forced the Confederate Army of Richmond. Lee fled with Grant’s army in hot pursuit. Grant caught up with the Confederates in the village of Appomattox. The Civil War had come to a close.

Surrender at Appomattox Court House

On April 9, 1865, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered his approximately 28,000 troops to Union General Ulysses S. Grant in the front parlor of Wilmer McLean’s home in Appomattox Court House, Virginia, effectively ending the American Civil War (1861-65). Days earlier, Lee had abandoned the Confederate capital of Richmond and city of Petersburg, hoping to escape with the remnants of his Army of Northern Virginia, meet up with additional Confederate forces in North Carolina and resume fighting. When Union forces cut off his final retreat, Lee was forced to surrender, finally ending four years of bloody sectional conflict.

Characteristically, Grant arrived in his muddy field uniform while Lee had turned out in full dress attire, complete with sash and sword. Lee asked for the terms, and Grant hurriedly wrote them out. All officers and men were to be pardoned, and they would be sent home with their private property–most important to the men were the horses, which could be used for a late spring planting. Officers would keep their side arms, and Lee’s starving men would be given Union rations.

Quieting a band that had begun to play in celebration, Grant told his officers, “The war is over. The Rebels are our countrymen again.” Although scattered resistance continued for several weeks, for all practical purposes the Civil War had come to an end.