Lecture 6: The Civil War (1860-1865)
Lecture 6: The Civil War (1860-1865)
Objectives
ü To analyze the issues that led to the Civil War and the effects of the war on the nation.
ü To trace the economic, social, political and cultural events from the Mexican War to the outlook of the Civil War.
ü To identify political and military turning points of the revolt and assess their significance to the outcome of the conflict.
Introduction
A war which brother fought against brother, the American Civil War cost the lives of more American soldiers than any other war the nation has fought. Although the Civil War was not fought over the issue of slavery as some people might claim, slavery galvanized the tensions which exploded into war. However, the central cause was the issue of the states’ rights over the power of the central government. The industrial Northern states and the predominantly agricultural states had contradictory views of the concepts of states’ rights. The North saw the federal government as the country’s primary and indisputable power; meanwhile, the South continued to claim that states retained much sovereignty. When eleven Southern states voted to establish the Confederate States of America, Abraham Lincoln denied their right to separate. As commander-in-chief, he inspired the Union forces to preserve the undivided nation.
Lincoln and the Civil War
Lincoln lost the senatorial race, but in 1860, he and Douglas faced each other again as the Republican and Democratic candidates for presidency. By now the tension between the north and the south was extreme, especially about the issue of slavery. The two regions disagreed over the issue of slavery: the North supporting the doctrine of “Popular Sovereignty”, and the south supporting “the extension of slavery into the territories”. In 1851, John Brown an abolitionist zealot had tried to begin a slave rebellion in Virginia by attacking an army munitions’ depot. Brown was quickly captured and hanged, whereupon many northerners hailed him as a martyr. Southern whites, however, believed that the north was preparing to end slavery by bloody warfare. Douglas urged the southern democrats to remain in the Union, but they nominated their own separate presidential candidate and threatened to secede if the Republicans were victorious.
Secession
The majority in every Southern and border state voted against Lincoln, but the North supported him and he won election. The vote, not surprisingly, was highly sectional. Lincoln won almost all the electoral votes of the Free states, giving him clear victory in the Electoral College (despite the fact that he had won only 40% of the popular vote). A few weeks later, exercising what it considered its legitimate right to autonomy, South Carolina seceded from the Union on December 20, 1860. By February of the following year, it was soon joined by Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina. These eleven states proclaimed themselves as independent states.
The Firing on Fort Sumter
When Abraham Lincoln assumed the office of president on March 4, 1861, seven states already had seceded from the Union and four others had announced that they would oppose any attempts of the Federal Government to coerce the States. The Civil War was only a month away. In his first inaugural Address, President Lincoln reiterated his constitutional doctrine that the Union was older than the States and that the contract between the States was biding and irrevocable. He stressed his intention to do everything possible to preserve the Union. Nonetheless, on April 12, 1861, South Carolina troops fired on the federally controlled Fort Sumter, which surrendered the next day. The Civil War had begun, prompting Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina and Tennessee to secede as well. Five slave holding states-Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, West Virginia (known as border states) –remained loyal to the Union.
The Southerners proclaimed that they were fighting not just for slavery; after all most confederate soldiers were poor to own slaves. The South was waging a war for independence, a second American Revolution. The Confederates usually had the advantage of fighting on their home territory and their moral was excellent. They had good soldiers and generals, but they were greatly outnumbered by the Union forces. The Southern railroad network and industrial base could not support a modern war effort. The Union Navy quickly imposed a blockade, which created serious shortages of war material and consumer goods in the Confederacy. To fight the war, both sides suspended some civil liberties, printed mountains of paper and resorted to conscription.
Lincoln’s two priorities were to keep the United States one country and to get rid the nation of slavery. Indeed, he realized that by making the war a battle against slavery, he could win support for the Union at home and abroad. Accordingly, on January, 1st, 1863, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which granted freedom to all slaves in areas still controlled by the Confederacy.
Steps of the War
The Southern army won some victories in the early part of the war, but in the summer of 1863, their commander General Robert E. Lee marched into Pennsylvania. He met a Union army at Gettysburg and the largest battle ever fought on the American soil ensued. After three days of desperate fighting the Confederates were defeated. At the same time, on Mississippi River, Union General Ulysses S. Grant captured the important city of Vicksburg splitting the Confederacy in two.
In 1864, a Union army under General William T. Sherman marched across Georgia destroying the country side. Meanwhile, General Grant relentlessly battled Lee’s forces in Virginia. On April, 2nd, 1865, Lee was forced to abandon Richmond, the Confederate capital. A week later, he surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Courts House and all other forces soon surrendered. On April 14th, 1865, Lincoln was assassinated by an angry Southern actor John Wilkes Booth. Lincoln died the following day, his Vice-President Andrew Jackson, succeeding him. Unfortunately for the South, the death of Lincoln also meant the demise of his conciliatory plans for the post-war period.
From Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address (March 1865)
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds.
The Civil War was the most traumatic episode in the American history. Even today, the scars have not been entirely healed. All of America’s later wars would be fought well beyond the boundaries of the United States, but this conflict devastated the South and subjected that region to military occupation. America lost more soldiers in this war than in any other a total of 635.000 dead from both sides. The war resolved two fundamental questions that had divided the United States since 1776. It put an end to slavery, which was completely abolished by the 13 Amendment to the Constitution in 1865. It also decided once and for all that America not a collection of semi-independent states but a single indivisible nation.
References
· Ashworth, John. Slavery, Capitalism, and Politics in the Antebellum Republic. (1995)
· Ayers, Edward L. What Caused the Civil War? Reflections on the South and Southern History. New York: W.W. Norton, 2005.
· Boritt, Gabor S., ed. Why the Civil War Came. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
· Broadwater, Robert P. Did Lincoln and the Republican Party Create the Civil War?: An Argument. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2008. ISBN 978-0786433612.
· Calore, Paul. The Causes of the Civil War: The Political, Cultural, Economic, and Territorial Disputes between North and South. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co., 2008.
· Donald, David. "An Excess of Democracy: The Civil War and the Social Process" in David Donald, Lincoln Reconsidered: Essays on the Civil War Era, 2d ed. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1966), 209–35.
· Egnal, Marc. Clash of Extremes: The Economic Origins of the Civil War. New York: Hill and Wang, 2009.
· Grant, Susan-Mary. North Over South: Northern Nationalism and American Identity in the Antebellum Era. Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 2000.
· Helper, Hinton Rowan. The Impending Crisis of the South: How to Meet It. New York: Burdock Brothers, 1857.
· Holt, Michael F. The Political Crisis of the 1850s. 1978.
· Link, William A. Roots of Secession: Slavery and Politics in Antebellum Virginia. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003.
· Olsen, Christopher J. Political Culture and Secession in Mississippi: Masculinity, Honor, and the Antiparty Tradition, 1830–1860. 2000.
· Potter, David M., edited and completed by Don E. Fehrenbacher, The Impending Crisis, 1848–1861. 1976.
· Schoen, Brian. The Fragile Fabric of Union: Cotton, Federal Politics, and the Global Origins of the Civil War. Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009.
· Stampp, Kenneth M. America in 1857: A Nation on the Brink. 1990.