The American Civil War

History in an Hour

Kat Smutz

About History in an Hour

History in an Hour is a series of ebooks to help the reader learn the basic facts of a given subject area. Everything you need to know is presented in a straightforward narrative and in chronological order. No embedded links to divert your attention, nor a daunting book of 600 pages with a 35-page introduction. Just straight in, to the point, sixty minutes, done. Then, having absorbed the basics, you may feel inspired to explore further.

Give yourself sixty minutes and see what you can learn . . .

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Contents

Cover

Title Page

About History in an Hour

Introduction

From One Revolution to Another

Outline of the War

The Leaders

The Generals

The War at Sea

The Soldiers

The Women

The African-Americans

War, the Mother of Invention

The End Began Here

The Fatal Blow

War Crimes

This Ends the Job

Aftermath

Appendix 1: Key Players

Appendix 2: Timeline of the American Civil War

Copyright

Got Another Hour?

About the Publisher

Introduction

The Confederate States can no longer delay assuming actual possession of a fortification commanding the entrance of one of their harbors.

Brigadier General P. G. T. Beauregard to Major Robert Anderson, Charleston, South Carolina, 11 April 1861

It was early on a Friday morning in the spring of 1861 that the American Civil War began. At 4.30 a.m. on 12 April, Confederate forces in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina, were ordered to open fire on Fort Sumter where Union forces were entrenched. The State of South Carolina had led the way in seceding from the Union, and had been joined by several other slave states in forming a separate government called the Confederate States of America. But the United States and its new president, Abraham Lincoln, refused to recognize the Confederacy as a country, and refused to withdraw Union troops from Southern positions, including the one in Charleston Harbor. Confederate commander Brigadier General P. G. T. Beauregard had sent word to Union commander Major Robert Anderson advising him that he and his troops must leave. When Anderson refused, Beauregard’s troops opened fire. The next day, a Saturday, the Union commander, Major Robert Anderson, knew that he was outnumbered, out of food and out of options. The first engagement of the American Civil War had been fought, and the Confederate States of America was the victor. More than 40,000 shells had been dropped on the fort that sat on a spit of land in the harbour, and yet there were few wounded and no casualties.

The bombardment of Fort Sumter was the first actual engagement between Union and Confederate forces, and is considered the official beginning of the American Civil War. However, the storm clouds of conflict had been gathering for some time before those first shots were fired. When the First Continental Congress presented their Declaration of Independence to the country in 1776, it included the promise of ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’ They neglected to mention that the promise was limited to white males. But it didn’t go unnoticed.

Despite the resistance to the inequality inherent in the Declaration of Independence, the US president, Abraham Lincoln, went to war not for the benefit of slaves or in support of the cause of abolitionism, but for the preservation of the Union.

Four years later, the war was won, the Confederate States of America had ceased to exist, and through Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, slaves were free. But peace had come at a high cost and to this day the American Civil War remains the bloodiest conflict in America’s history. And with the end of the war came the difficult years of Reconstruction. Lincoln was dead, felled by an assassin’s bullet, the South lay in ruins and the legacy of conflict would affect the US for decades to come.

This, in an hour, is the American Civil War.

From One Revolution to Another

After the American Revolution ended in 1783, there were those who took notice that slaves had no rights at all, much less freedom. A war had been fought with the intent of liberty for all, and yet women, Africans, African-Americans, and Native Americans still had no voice and no rights in the governing and development of the nation that had just been born. They had all done their part in the fight for freedom, only to be excluded once the fight was done. And so the first seeds of dissent were sown, and the growing discontent would end with the American Civil War.

Slaves picking cotton

It was an issue that would eventually divide the fledgling nation. In the North, slave labour was used, but it was not as crucial to industrial growth as it was in the Southern states, where the economy was based upon agriculture (pictured above). In the North, the State of Pennsylvania was the first to enact a plan that would gradually set free their slaves, with the aim of eventually abolishing slavery. But as other states in the North began to follow the growing anti-slavery movement, the South felt threatened by the possibility that abolition would spread until it was illegal to own slaves at all.

Then, as the nation began to expand westwards across the continent, a new cause for concern arose. How to determine whether each new state that entered the Union was free or slave? It could mean upsetting the balance of power in the new government, and representatives of slave states and free states were constantly at odds. Those on each side of the slavery issue would not stand for the opposition to have more power and influence. Level-headed statesmen, who could see the threat of war and the potential destruction of the new nation, worked to maintain that delicate balance and keep both in check. But tension continued to build.

The United States was still an infant nation, still learning to walk and still growing. As it developed, legislation was a matter of trial and error in an effort to meet its changing needs. With every new piece of legislation seemed to arise the question of how slavery fitted into the picture. And once again, tempers flared as each side tried to maintain at least an equal – if not greater – influence in the governing of the country.

Controversy between anti-slavery supporters in the North and slaveholders in the South slowly grew into animosity and resentment, and violence flared. Each side fought hard for political control in order to protect their rights and beliefs and the relations between the two regions of the new nation finally reached a breaking point.

A series of events that seemed to fall like dominos led up to that fateful April day in Charleston Harbor. A politician from Illinois, Abraham Lincoln, a man known for his opposition to slavery, was nominated as the Republican candidate for president. The Southern members of Congress declared they would not stand for it if Lincoln was elected. But, in November 1860, that was exactly what happened.

Abraham Lincoln, photograph by Henry F. Warren

The first domino had fallen. True to the promise of intolerance of a president who might outlaw slavery, South Carolina was the first state to opt to secede, to severe ties to the Union and strike out as a country on its own. That was in December 1860. Other states followed, then a ship attempting to resupply Federal forces in Charleston was fired upon and the dominoes began to fall faster. The seceding states held a convention, wrote their own constitution, set up their own provisional government and elected a provisional president. By the time those first fateful shots were fired upon Fort Sumter, the controversy over slavery had already given birth to the Confederate States of America.

Outline of the War

The official beginning of the American Civil War is regarded as 12 April 1861, when Confederate forces fired on the Southern-based Union forces at Fort Sumter, Charleston Harbor.

In response, President Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers to suppress the rebellion. A total of eleven states came to comprise the Confederate States of America – South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Texas. Lincoln invoked the writ of habeas corpus and declared martial law before Missouri and Kentucky could join the Confederacy. Both acts have since been debated as illegal actions on Lincoln’s part. Martial law as also declared in Maryland to prevent any attempt that state might make to join the South and leaving the city of Washington DC geographically cut off from the rest of the North.

First Battle of Bull Run, chromolithograph by Kurz & Allison

In the spring of 1861 the Confederacy moved its capital from Montgomery, Alabama to Richmond, Virginia, just one hundred miles away from Washington DC. Confident of a quick win, Union forces marched on Richmond, but were repulsed at First Battle of Bull Run (also known as the Battle of First Manassas) on 21 July 1861 (pictured above). This was the first major battle of the civil war. The year that followed would see primarily land engagements in the eastern theatre of war, with Union troops attempting to take the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia, and being repulsed by Confederate forces.

In November of 1861, General George B. McClellan was named general-in-chief of the Union army by Abraham Lincoln. During his four months in the role, McClellan proved hesitant to act, continuously overestimating the strength of his adversaries, and was constantly at odds with Lincoln, often because McClellan had overstepped his authority. In March of 1862, McClellan was relieved as general-in-chief and resumed his command of the Army of the Potomac, an army McClellan had built and trained for the defence of Washington DC. The post of general-in-chief of the Union army would remain vacant until later that year.

In the western theatre of war, on February 1862, the Union army of Brigadier General Ulysses S. Grant captured Forts Henry and Donelson, and two months later, in April 1862, defeated a Confederate army at Shiloh, Tennessee. That same month, the Union navy captured New Orleans, the Confederacy’s largest port, leaving them only Vicksburg and Port Hudson on the Mississippi in Confederate hands.

In the eastern theatre, the Confederates still had the upper hand. Lee moved north and defeated another Union force at the Second Battle of Bull Run, which ran from 28–30 August 1862. Buoyed by his success, Lee crossed the Potomac into the State of Maryland, taking the war further into the North, and in September 1862, fought McClellan at Antietam (also known as the Battle of Sharpsburg). Lee lost a quarter of his men and was forced back to Virginia, but McClellan’s victory was far from decisive. Nonetheless, following the win at Antietam, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing slaves in the Confederate States.

In November 1862, Lincoln had finally appointed another general-in-chief, General Ambrose Burnside who, only a month later, in December, lost the Battle of Fredericksburg and was in turn replaced by General Joseph Hooker. In May 1863, Hooker met Lee at Chancellorsville. Although outnumbered two to one, Lee outthought Hooker, forcing the Union forces to retreat. But in winning, Lee lost his most able general, Thomas ‘Stonewall’ Jackson, who was accidentally shot by his own men. He died several days later from complications.

In June 1863, Lee invaded the North for the second time, crossing the border into Pennsylvania. Following the defeat at Chancellorsville, Lincoln had replaced Hooker with Major General George Meade. On 1 July, Lee’s army came across Union forces at Gettysburg and the following three days saw the most famous battle of the war, which ended with Lee’s defeat. The following day, 4 July, Major General Ulysses S. Grant finally ended the siege of Vicksburg and captured the town. Port Hudson, the last Confederate port on the Mississippi River, fell within a matter of days. The whole of the length of the Mississippi River from Memphis to the Gulf of Mexico now lay in Union hands and the Confederacy had been cut in two.

In spite of his victory at Vicksburg, Grant was still criticized by his colleagues. Lincoln was still looking for a general who could end the war and sent his own man to investigate Grant’s alleged drinking. In October 1863, the president gave Grant command of the Division of the Mississippi. Grant proved his worth with a victory at Chattanooga and earned a brevet promotion to lieutenant general and command of the Union army. With Generals Phillip Sheridan, William Sherman and George Meade, Grant planned the Overland Campaign, a strategy that would prove to be the beginning of the end for the Confederacy.

The strategy was simple. Keep all the Confederate forces busy so that they were unable to provide one another with reinforcements. Grant would push towards Richmond with the help of Phillip Sheridan while Sherman and Meade took advantage of the opening into Georgia that the victory at Chattanooga had provided.

On 5 May 1864, Grant and Lee clashed at the Battle of the Wilderness, one of the bloodiest battles of the war. Grant then moved south, gradually forcing Lee further back, winning battles at Spotsylvania and Cold Harbor, until the Confederate forces had retreated to Petersburg, south of Richmond. Grant laid siege to Lee’s forces in Richmond (pictured below). With provisions down to nothing, Lee evacuated the city on 2 April 1865, allowing the Confederate capital to fall into Union hands, and the next day President Lincoln visited the city that had been the Confederate capital. Lee retreated westwards but a week later, on 9 April, at the Appomattox Courthouse in southern Virginia, Lee finally surrendered to Grant.

Ruins of Richmond, Virginia, photograph by Mathew Brady

Meanwhile, General William Sherman, also advancing south and destroying everything in his wake, took Atlanta, Georgia on 1 September 1864, and then headed towards Savannah, his ‘March to the Sea’, taking the city on 10 December 1864. Then, having reached the Atlantic, Sherman marched north through the Carolinas, pushing back Confederate forces. Unable to sustain the fight, the Confederate commander, General Joseph Johnston, surrendered at Durham, North Carolina on 26 April 1865. The Confederate States of America was no more.

Now it was time to reunite and rebuild. Lincoln had been making plans for returning the Confederate States to their Union with reunification and rebuilding in mind. Lincoln believed in forgiveness for the South and spent time holding off Radical Republicans in Congress who felt the South should be punished for their insolence. But whatever plans Lincoln had, they would go unfulfilled. On 14 April, whilst attending the theatre in Washington DC, President Lincoln was shot by a Southern sympathizer, John Wilkes Booth, and died the following morning. Although isolated skirmishes continued until June 1865, the American Civil War was over. Estimates vary but the conflict had cost about 620,000 lives (517,000 Americans lost their lives in the two world wars). The Union lost over 360,000 lives (250,000 in battle and 110,000 to disease, wounds and other causes); and the Confederacy lost approximately 258,000 (94,000 in battle and 164,000 to disease). It remains one of the the bloodiest conflicts in America’s history.

The Leaders

Negro slavery shall be recognized and protected.

Constitution of the Confederate States of America

When Abraham Lincoln was elected as the sixteenth president of the United States, he had been active as a politician for some years and had been elected to office several times before the Republican Party chose him as their candidate. Lincoln had been involved in the formation of the party itself, and became the first Republican to hold the office of president. Lincoln had always been open about his opposition to slavery, and with an antislavery president, the South feared that slavery would be abolished entirely.

When Lincoln was announced as the Republican candidate for president, Southern politicians declared that they would not stand for it if he was elected. They were certain that his first act as president would be to outlaw slavery. They threatened secession, separating them from the newly formed nation. Lincoln was duly voted into office on 6 November 1860, and the State of South Carolina voted to secede from the Union less than two months later, on 20 December, leading the way for ten more states that would join them to form the Confederate States of America.

With martial law in place, Kentucky was unable to join the South and instead declared neutrality in May, while a portion of Virginia that disagreed with the secessionist decision opted to form the State of West Virginia and remain with the Union while the rest of the state became part of the Confederacy.

On 4 February 1861, the states that had seceded came together to form a provisional government and adopt a constitution that was very similar to the United States Constitution, but that clearly protected slavery and the rights of slaveholders. They also elected a president for their new confederacy.

Jefferson Finis Davis was a West Point graduate and a Mississippi planter. When war came, he was serving as a United States Senator and announced to the US Senate that Mississippi would be withdrawing from the Union. He was in attendance at the convention in Montgomery, Alabama, hoping to be given a command in the Confederate States army. Instead, he was elected provisional president of the Confederate States of America. Following a general election, the citizens of the South opted to keep Davis in office. Elected for a six-year term, he would be the first, last and only president of the Confederacy.

The Generals

Save in the defense of my native State, I never desire again to draw my sword.

General Robert E. Lee, 20 April 1861

Lincoln realized that the nation was about to tear itself in half. He felt that secession was unconstitutional and refused to recognize the Confederate States of America as a separate country. He was determined to prevent the division of the country and the only way to do that was war. To fight a war, he needed an army. The United States Military Academy at West Point, New York held a reputation for providing the country’s military with officers whose education was focused on warfare, and many of the officers on both sides of the conflict were graduates of the prestigious school.

Although not a West Point graduate, Brevet Lieutenant General Winfield Scott was a commanding general of the Armies of the United States when war came. In spite of failing health, he managed to supervise recruitment and training to build up the army in order to wage war with the South. But Scott knew he would eventually have to step down and told Lincoln that he wanted a man named Robert Edward Lee (pictured below) as his top commander.

Robert E. Lee

Lee, originally from Virginia, was a career officer in the United States army. In private, he criticized the South, referring to secession as rebellion, and although a slaveholder himself, Lee supported his wife, Mary Custis Lee, in her efforts to benefit African-Americans, which included funding an illegal school for slaves at Arlington Plantation. Their plantation sat just across the Potomac River from Washington DC.

Lee’s personal opinions left him in a difficult position when he was offered the command of the Union army with the rank of major general. He knew that his home state of Virginia would follow the slave states and opt for secession. Lee’s loyalties were divided, but he could not bring himself to raise his hand against his own people. And so, after thirty-two years as an officer who had distinguished himself in the United States army, Robert E. Lee resigned in order to take command of the Confederate forces in Virginia. Like many graduates of the prestigious academy, Lee would find himself riding alongside fellow alumni while facing other West Pointers across a battlefield.

Lincoln’s priority was to hold the Union together by whatever means necessary, and he was constantly searching for the general who would end the war quickly. After the Union defeat at the First Battle of Bull Run (First Manassas), Winfield Scott’s health forced him to resign. On 1 November 1861, he was replaced by General George B. McClellan.

McClellan was another West Point graduate who had shown great promise. He had raised and trained the Army of the Potomac when political pressure forced Lincoln to retire Scott and replace him with McClellan. But he fell far short of Lincoln’s expectations. McClellan tended to spend too much time planning and preparing, to the point where the opportunity to face the enemy had passed by. He was accused of not being aggressive enough on the battlefield. McClellan and Lincoln’s dislike for one another didn’t help matters. Finally, on 11 March 1862, McClellan was relieved as general-in-chief of the Union army and returned to his command of the Army of the Potomac. For the remainder of the spring of 1862, Lincoln and a group of officers that he referred to as the ‘War Board’ directed military operations.

It was 23 July 1862 before Lincoln finally named a replacement for McClellan. Major General George Henry W. Halleck was another graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point. Halleck was known as a scholar and had earned the nickname ‘Old Brains’. Unfortunately, his strengths lay in administration rather than planning strategy and commanding troops. It was less than a year before Lincoln replaced Halleck.

This time Lincoln seemed to have found the right man for the job. Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant had graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1843, but when the American Civil War began, he was a civilian. He went back to the army and was named a colonel in June 1861 and promoted to brigadier general in August that same year.

Grant was popular with his men, but not with other officers. Military promotions had become a political game, one that Grant didn’t fit well with. He was known to ride through camp in a private’s fatigue blouse (a uniform jacket), he drank too much, and most officers said he always seemed to be in a foul temper. But Grant got the job done. He set out to break the Confederate ranks and end the war and that’s what he did.

The War at Sea

In spite of his limited experience of the military, Abraham Lincoln realized early in the war the importance of strategy and planning. He needed a plan of action to defeat the South and keep the states unified. Before his retirement, his general-in-chief, Brevet Lieutenant General Winfield Scott came up with a plan that was initially discarded by McClellan in favour of his own plan. But a series of moves on the part of the Union ended with the same results Scott had hoped for.

Scott’s basic concept was twofold. Firstly, Union ships would blockade Confederate harbours along the east coast. This would not only cut off trade and supplies, but would mean fewer lives lost than in a pitched battle. Secondly, Scott proposed sending troops down the Mississippi to capture key towns and take control of the river. It was this wrapping around and squeezing of the South that gave his strategy its name: the ‘Anaconda Plan’.

In order to blockade Southern ports, steam-powered vessels would be required. This presented a problem. The ships were fueled by coal, and would spend more time returning to port for refueling than they would guarding the Southern harbours. The solution was to find a port that the Union navy could take command of and where they could resupply their ships with coal.

USS Cairo on the Mississippi River

Two minor forts on the Outer Banks of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina were seized by the Union in August of 1861, and Port Royal, Virginia was taken in November of the same year. Port Royal became the base of operations for the blockade of Savannah, almost completely sealing it off. Union ships from Port Royal were also able to blockade Charleston Harbor, South Carolina, although not as effectively. To accomplish that would take one of the bloodiest engagements of the war.

Less than a year into the war, before Scott’s failing health forced him to step down, Major General George B. McClellan proposed a plan to Scott, who passed the idea along to Lincoln. It involved a direct assault on Richmond, Virginia, the Confederate capital. Many in the North supported such a plan, feeling that it would bring a swift end to the war.

But they were wrong. By attacking Richmond and moving on from there, the Union would be taking the South piecemeal. It gave Confederate forces opportunity to regroup, reinforce and resupply. The plan was also complicated by the Union sympathies in the western portion of Virginia that would later become West Virginia. The area was primarily pro-Union, with a ratio of seven Union supporters to one Secessionist. There was also the State of Kentucky which had declared itself neutral. McClellan’s march on Richmond would take him through these two areas and endanger the North’s good relations with states Lincoln was counting on to remain within the Union.

McClellan had begun to neglect the Mississippi River, leaving it as a back door of sorts for entering the South. But the navy hadn’t. On 24 April 1862, Captain (later Admiral) David Glasgow Farragut led his fleet up the mouth of the Mississippi River and took the city of New Orleans, Louisiana. He stopped only long enough to make repairs before steaming north and taking Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Natchez, Mississippi.

A Union flotilla moving down the Mississippi River from the North had taken Memphis, Tennessee just before Farragut’s assault on New Orleans. That left only the city of Vicksburg, Mississippi, and a small fort at Port Hudson to hinder movement of Union ships. If they fell to Union occupation, the Mississippi River would be open from its source right the way to the Gulf of Mexico. It proved a much more difficult target than Farragut had anticipated. The town’s location atop high bluffs made bombardment futile. The city would stubbornly hold its position for more than a year until 4 July 1863, when it finally fell to Ulysses S. Grant, then commander of the Union forces in the west.

The Soldiers

While the leaders of the two armies were plotting and planning, the soldiers in the camps were waiting for their orders. The required age to join the military was eighteen, but recruiters were under pressure to fill the rolls, and there were plenty of underage men who saw the war as a great adventure in which they could participate and return home as heroes after banishing the enemy. Some boys would write the number ‘18’ on a slip of paper and tuck in under their heel inside their shoe so that when a recruiter asked if they were over eighteen, they could honestly reply yes.

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