Chapter 14

A New Birth of Freedom: The Civil War, 1861-

1865
1. [Introduction: Marcus Spiegel]
2. The First Modern War
1. The Two Combatants
1. The Union had many advantages (e.g., manufacturing, railroad mileage, and
financial resources), but it would need to conquer an area larger than western
Europe to win.
2. Confederate soldiers were highly motivated fighters.
3. On both sides, the outbreak of war stirred powerful feelings of patriotism.
2. The Technology of War
1. Railroads were vital to the war effort.
2. The introduction of the rifle changed the nature of combat.
3. Modern warfare included POW camps and disease.
3. The Public and the War
1. Both sides were assisted by a vast propaganda effort to mobilize public
opinion.
2. The war was brought to the people via newspapers and photographs.
4. Mobilizing Resources
1. The outbreak of the war found both sides unprepared.
2. Feeding and supplying armies was a challenge for both sides.
5. Military Strategies
1. The Confederacy adopted a defensive strategy.
2. Lincoln realized that his armies had to defeat the Confederacy's armies and
dismantle slavery.
6. The War Begins
1. In the East, most of the war's fighting took place in a narrow corridor
between Washington and Richmond.
2. The first Battle of Bull Run, a Confederate victory, shattered any illusions
that war was romantic.
3. After the First Bull Run, George McClellan assumed command of the Union
army of the Potomac.
7. The War in the East, 1862
1. General Lee blunted McClellan's attacks in Virginia and forced him to
withdraw to the vicinity of Washington.
2. Successful on the defensive, Lee now launched an invasion of the North.
3. McClellan's Army of the Potomac stopped Lee at the Battle of Antietam
(Maryland), the single bloodiest day in U.S. history (September 17, 1862).
8. The War in the West
1. Ulysses S. Grant was the architect of early success in the West.
2. In February 1862, Grant won the Union's first significant victory when he
captured Fort Henry and Fort Donelson in Tennessee.
3. Grant withstood a surprise Confederate attack at the Battle of Shiloh
(Tennessee).
3. The Coming of Emancipation
1. Slavery and the War
1. In numbers, scale, and the economic power of the institution of slavery,
American emancipation dwarfed that of any other country.
 2. At the outset of the war, Lincoln invoked time-honored northern values to
mobilize public support.
3. Lincoln initially insisted that slavery was irrelevant to the conflict.
4. Early in the war, Congress adopted a resolution proposed by Senator John J.
Crittenden of Kentucky, which affirmed that the Union had no intention of
interfering with slavery.
5. The policy of ignoring slavery unraveled and by the end of 1861 the military
began treating escaped blacks as contraband of war (property of military
value subject to confiscation).
6. Blacks saw the outbreak of fighting as heralding the long-awaited end of
bondage.
2. Steps toward Emancipation
1. Since slavery stood at the foundation of the southern economy, antislavery
northerners insisted that emancipation was necessary to weaken the South's
ability to sustain the war.
2. Throughout 1861 and 1862, Lincoln struggled to retain control of the
emancipation issue.
1. Union General John C. Frémont issued a proclamation freeing slaves
in Missouri (August 1861).
2. Fearing the negative impact on loyal border states, Lincoln rescinded
Frémont's order.
3. Lincoln proposed gradual emancipation and colonization for border-
state slaves.
3. Lincoln's Decision
1. Sometime during the summer of 1862, Lincoln concluded that emancipation
had become a political and military necessity.
2. Upon Secretary of State William Seward's advice, he delayed announcing
emancipation until a Union victory.
3. On September 22, 1862, five days after Antietam, Lincoln issued the
Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation.
4. The initial northern reaction was not encouraging, with important Democratic
wins in the fall elections.
4. The Emancipation Proclamation
1. Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, which
declared slaves in Confederate-held territory to be free.
2. Despite its limitations, the proclamation set off scenes of jubilation among
free blacks and abolitionists in the North and "contrabands" and slaves in the
South.
3. The Emancipation Proclamation not only altered the nature of the Civil War
and the course of American history, but represented a turning point in
Lincoln's own thinking.
5. Enlisting Black Troops
1. Of the proclamation's provisions, few were more radical in their implications
than the enrollment of blacks into military service.
2. By the end of the war, over 180,000 black men had served in the Union army,
and 24,000 in the navy.
3. Most black soldiers were emancipated slaves who joined the army in the
South.
6. The Black Soldier
1. For black soldiers, military service proved to be a liberating experience.
1. At least 130 former soldiers served in political office after the Civil
War.
2. Within the army, black soldiers did not receive equal treatment to white
soldiers.
 3. Black soldiers played a crucial role not only in winning the Civil War but
also in defining the war's consequences.
4. The Second American Revolution
1. Liberty, Union, and Nation
1. The Union's triumph consolidated the northern understanding of freedom as
the national norm.
2. To Lincoln, the American nation embodied a set of universal ideas, centered
on political democracy and human liberty.
3. The Gettysburg Address identified the nation's mission with the principle that
"all men are created equal."
4. The war forged a new national self-consciousness, reflected in the increasing
use of the word "nation"-a unified political entity-in place of the older
"Union" of separate states.
2. The War and American Religion
1. Northern Protestantism combined Christianity and patriotism in a civic
religion that saw the war as transforming the United States into a true land of
freedom.
2. Lincoln shrewdly used religious symbolism to generate public support.
3. Religion helped Americans to cope with unprecedented mass death.
4. New government action to deal with death
1. Systems for recording deaths and other casualties
2. National military cemeteries
3. Liberty in Wartime
1. Lincoln consolidated executive power and twice suspended the writ of habeas
corpus throughout the entire Union for those accused of "disloyal activities."
2. After the war, the Court made it clear that the Constitution was not suspended
in wartime (Ex parte Milligan, 1866).
4. The North's Transformation
1. The North experienced the war as a time of prosperity.
5. Government and the Economy
1. Congress adopted policies that promoted economic growth and permanently
altered the nation's financial system.
1. The Homestead Act
2. The Land-Grant College Act
2. Congress passed land grants for railroads.
3. The transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869.
6. The War and Native Americans
1. The withdrawal of troops from the West increased conflict between Indians
and white settlers.
1. The Sioux attack in Minnesota.
2. The Union campaign against Navajo led to the tribe's Long Walk, or removal
to a reservation.
3. Some slave-owning tribes, such as the Cherokee, sided with the Confederacy.
7. A New Financial System
1. The need to pay for the war produced dramatic changes in U.S. financial
policy:
1. Increased tariff
2. New taxes on goods
3. First income tax
2. Wartime economic policies greatly benefited northern manufacturers,
railroad men, and financiers.
3. Taken together, the Union's economic policies vastly increased the power and
size of the federal government.
8. Women and the War
 1. Women stepped into the workforce as nurses, factory workers, and
government clerks.
2. Hundreds of thousands of northern women took part in humanitarian
organizations.
3. Northern women were brought into the public sphere and the war work
offered them a taste of independence.
1. Clara Barton, president of the American National Red Cross, became
an advocate of woman suffrage and a strong proponent of the humane
treatment of battlefield casualties.
9. The Divided North
1. Republicans labeled those opposed to the war "Copperheads."
2. The war heightened existing social tensions and created new ones.
1. Draft riots
5. The Confederate Nation
1. Leadership and Government
1. Jefferson Davis proved unable to communicate the war's meaning effectively
to ordinary men and women.
2. Under Davis, the Confederate nation became far more centralized than the
Old South had been.
1. Confederate government controlled railroads
2. Confederate government built factories
3. King Cotton diplomacy sought to pressure Europeans to side with the
Confederacy, but this failed.
2. The Inner Civil War
1. Social change and internal turmoil engulfed much of the Confederacy.
1. The draft encouraged class divisions among whites.
3. Economic Problems
1. The South's economy, unlike the North's, was in crisis during the war.
2. By the war's end, over 100,000 southern men had deserted.
4. Women and the Confederacy
1. Even more than in the North, the war placed unprecedented burdens on
southern white women.
2. The growing disaffection of southern white women contributed to the decline
in home-front morale and encouraged desertion from the army.
5. Black Soldiers for the Confederacy
1. A shortage of manpower led the Confederate Congress in March 1865 to
authorize the arming of slaves, but the war ended before black soldiers were
actually recruited.
6. Turning Points
1. Gettysburg and Vicksburg
1. Lee advanced onto northern soil in Pennsylvania, but was held back by
Union forces under the command of General George Meade at the Battle of
Gettysburg (July 1863).
1. Pickett's Charge
2. General Grant secured a Union victory at Vicksburg, Mississippi (July 1863)
2. 1864
1. In 1864, Grant began a war of attrition against Lee's army in Virginia.
2. At the end of six weeks of fighting, Grant's casualties stood at 60,000-almost
the size of Lee's entire army-while Lee had lost 30,000 men.
3. General William T. Sherman entered Atlanta, seizing Georgia's main railroad
center.
4. Some Radical Republicans nominated John C. Frémont on a platform calling
for a constitutional amendment to abolish slavery, federal protection of the
freedpeople's rights, and confiscation of the land of leading Confederates.
 5. The Democratic candidate for president was General George B. McClellan.
6. Lincoln won, aided by Frémont's withdrawal and Sherman's capture of
Atlanta.
7. Rehearsals for Reconstruction and the End of the War
1. The Sea Island Experiment
1. The Union occupied the Sea Islands (on the coast of South Carolina) in
November 1861.
2. Women took the lead as teachers in educating the freed slaves of the islands.
1. Charlotte Forten and Laura Towne
3. By 1865, black families were working for wages, acquiring education, and
enjoying more humane conditions than under slavery.
2. Wartime Reconstruction in the West
1. After the capture of Vicksburg, the Union army established regulations for
plantation labor.
1. Freedpeople signed labor contracts and were paid wages.
2. Neither side was satisfied with the new labor system.
3. At Davis Bend, the emancipated slaves saw the land divided among
themselves.
3. The Politics of Wartime Reconstruction
1. In 1863, Lincoln announced his Ten-Percent Plan of Reconstruction.
2. Free blacks in New Orleans complained about the Ten-Percent Plan and
found sympathy from Radical Republicans.
3. The Wade-Davis Bill was offered as an alternative plan.
1. Required a majority of a state's voters to pledge loyalty
2. Lincoln pocket-vetoed the plan.
4. Victory at Last
1. Sherman marched from Atlanta to the sea in November-December 1864.
2. The Thirteenth Amendment was approved on January 31, 1865.
3. On April 3, 1865, Grant took Richmond.
4. Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, on April 9.
5. Lincoln was fatally shot on April 14 and died the next morning.
5. The War and the World
1. Grant's post-presidential world tour illustrates how non-Americans saw the
war.
1. England's Duke of Wellington hailed Grant as a military genius.
2. English workers saw war as having saved the leading experiment in
democracy and vindicated free labor principles.
3. German Chancellor Bismarck saw nation-building as war's central
achievement.
6. The War in American History
1. The Civil War laid the foundation for modern America.
2. Both sides lost something they had gone to war to defend.
1. The Confederacy lost slavery.
2. The war hastened the transformation of Lincoln's America of free
labor, small shops, and independent farmers into an industrial giant.