Topic 13

The Civil War and Reconstruction

1861-1877

A. Lincoln: his inauguration and the Ft. Sumter crisis

B. First, the great question: why Civil War?

1. Lincoln’s view: the war was fought to preserve the Union and, secondarily, to end slavery.

2. The South: Why was the South trying to leave the Union? To me the answer is in order to protect and preserve slavery.

3. Therefore, in my opinion, had there been no slavery, there would have been no secession and no need to fight a war to preserve the Union. Hence, slavery, as I see it, was THE cause of the Civil War.

C. The Opposing Sides

1. Northern Advantages

– A balanced economy made up of:

§ Manufacturing – 90% of the nation’s industries (remember NY).

§ Agriculture - Had an agricultural system that produced a much greater variety of crops than the South (cotton, tobacco and rice)

§ An abundance of raw materials – Most of the nation’s iron, coal, and copper located in the North.

– Railroads – 2/3 of the nation’s railroad system.

– Population – 22 million to 9 million (3.5 million slaves); men of military age, 1.1. million in the South, 4.5 million in the North

– U.S. Navy – loyal, almost to a man

2. Southern Advantages

– Fighting a defensive war

– The size of the South – Europe, not including Italy

– Military leadership

D. The First Battle – Bull Run, July 21, 1861: the clash of the amateur armies

1. Irvin McDowell attacks at Manassas Junction

2. Confederates falter but then stand like a stonewall, and Confederate General Thomas J. Jackson was forever thereafter known as Stonewall Jackson!

3. The aftermath, North and South: Made Northerners realize this would be a long, hard war; made Southerners overconfident.

E. The war in the West and U.S. Grant: The most unlikely military hero

1. Failed at everything he ever tried, except being a soldier

2. Fort Henry (on Tennessee River) and Fort Donelson (on the Cumberland River), February 1862 – Drove Confederate forces from western Tennessee and forced Confederates to abandon Nashville.

3. Confederate counterattack at Shiloh – bloodiest two days in American history up to that point. April 6-7, 1862. More men died than in all previous American wars combined!

F. Back in the East: Antietam

1. Lee invades Maryland and fights at Antietam: why?

2. Bloody losses on both sides but a technical Union victory.

3. The Emancipation Proclamation: the timing had to be right!

G. 1863: The Year of Decision

1. Grant and the Vicksburg campaign – The Confederacy is divided

2. Lee and Gettysburg – July 1, 2, and 3, 1863 – Perhaps the most important battle ever fought on American soil!

3. The fall of Chattanooga

4. The final defeat of the Confederacy was now just a matter of time – and blood!

H. The Final Campaigns against the Army of the Tennessee and the Army of Northern Virginia

1. Grant takes command and knew what he had to do

2. Sherman in Georgia – Captured Atlanta and then his army marched to Savannah (the march to the sea) destroying everything that could support the Confederate war effort.

3. Grant in Virginia – refuses to give up!

4. Confederate lines crack west of Petersburg and the last days of General Lee’s Army

5. Surrender – April 9, 1865

I. The Civil War: If nothing else, it accomplished two things:

1. Saved the union of states and guaranteed that this union was permanent. By forces of arms the federal government had put down southern efforts to destroy the union, and since Lee’s surrender, no one has made any serious effort to take any state or states out of the union.

2. Destroyed the institution of slavery – The Emancipation Proclamation and the 13^th amendment ended slavery in the United States forever, and while black people to this day have not achieved true equality, at least it was now written into our Constitution that no one could hold another person in permanent bondage in the United States.