Activity

• What are the main justification(s) for South Carolina’s secession?

• Then, compare the 1860 Republican Party Platform with South Carolina’s 1860 Secession Declaration

• How are they similar? On which points do they agree?

• Is it weird that they do? And what does that mean for us?

Is this just like the Revolutionary War, or what?

Who’s gonna win?

• How do these guys stack up?• Who’s gonna win?• Does anyone have any special advantages or

disadvantages?

From a letter by Gen. William T Sherman, 1861(would he be correct in his prediction?)

• “You people of the South don't know what you are doing. This country will be drenched in blood, and God only knows how it will end. It is all folly, madness, a crime against civilization! You people speak so lightly of war; you don't know what you're talking about. War is a terrible thing!

• Besides, where are your men and appliances of war to contend against them? The North can make a steam engine, locomotive, or railway car; hardly a yard of cloth or pair of shoes can you make. You are rushing into war with one of the most powerful, ingeniously mechanical, and determined people on Earth--right at your doors.You are bound to fail. Only in your spirit and determination are you prepared for war. In all else you are totally unprepared, with a bad cause to start with. At first you will make headway, but as your limited resources begin to fail, shut out from the markets of Europe as you will be, your cause will begin to wane. If your people will but stop and think, they must see in the end that you will surely fail.

• You mistake, too, the people of the North. They are a peaceable people but an earnest people, and they will fight, too. They are not going to let this country be destroyed without a mighty effort to save it …”

How do these maps suggest a potential weakness for the South?

So, how do you run a government like this? A government based on the principle that any centralized power is dangerous to the individual states? More to the

point, how do you fight a war this way? Answer, you don’t.

The most ardent states' rights proponents, claimed that the president sought dictatorial powers and denied that Davis had any real power as executive.

Some even advocated that their states secede from the Confederacy and form separate countries.

After the next congressional elections, held over a nearly six-month period in 1863 due to the logistical problems of the Union military presence across the South, nearly two-fifths of the Confederate House and one half of the Senate

were openly anti-administration. Nor was the Davis gov’t successful at raising money to fund the war. Hampered

by a constitution similar to the Articles of Confederation (remember that?) in philosophy, its attempts included issuing paper currency, which brought rampant

inflation, seeking loans and selling government bonds, which did not produce sufficient revenue, and passing taxes, which was hugely unpopular.

And a draft? That was cause for riots!

Comparison of Union and CSA

Who do you think will win based on this chart? Union CSA

• Total population 22,000,000 9,000,000• Free population 22,000,000 5,500,000• Slave population Negligible 3,500,000• Soldiers 2,200,000 1,064,000• Railroad miles 21,788 (71%) 8,838 (29%)• Manufactured items 90 percent 10 percent• Firearm production 97 percent 3 percent• Bales of cotton in 1860 Negligible 4.5 million• Bales of cotton in 1864 Negligible 300,000• Pre-war U.S. exports 30 percent 70 percent

From wikipedia.org

Why it’s called the “Anaconda Plan”Why it’s called the “Anaconda Plan”

Scott went on to warn against hot-headed demands for a march on the Confederate capital of Richmond.

Scott's plan involved two main parts:

1. Blockade the coast of the South to prevent the export of cotton, tobacco, and other cash crops from the South and to keep them from importing much-needed war supplies.

2. Divide the South by controlling the Mississippi River to cut off the southeastern states from the West. Scott considered this an "envelopment" rather than an "invasion", although it would require armies and fleets of river gunboats to accomplish it.

--This would ultimately win the war for the North. The british were prevented from supplying the South without risking war with the Union. The Confederates wouldn’t be able to break the blockade, and by 1863, the southerners were starving. Bread riots broke out in major cities, and these were a factor in the high numbers of Confederate desertions towards the end of the war. The North could probably have won without a major military engagement, but it would have taken a long time, so…

Unfortunately, Lincoln couldn’t ignore the “hot- headed” demands. Can you guess why?

We are a little behind. I need to cover:

• The other Northern military strategy• The nature of Civil War battles• The Emancipation Proclamation• Changes to Northern and Southern societies

• Your journal, due Friday, is based on the effects of Civil War battle strategies on the war and civil society

This modern map of Virginia should help you fix the battle sites more easily. Many of the eastern cities saw major battles.

Antietam/Sharpsburg, Sept. 1862Emboldened by Second Bull Run, the Confederacy made its first invasion of the North, when General Lee led 45,000 men of the Army of Northern Virginia across the Potomac River into Maryland (technically, a slave holding border state loyal to the North) on September 5. Lincoln then restored Pope's troops to McClellan. McClellan and Lee fought at the Battle of Antietam near Sharpsburg, Maryland, on September 17, 1862, the bloodiest single day in United States military history, with almost 23,000 casualties. Lee's army, checked at last, returned to Virginia before McClellan could destroy it. Antietam is considered a Union victory because it halted Lee's invasion of the North and provided an opportunity for Lincoln to announce his Emancipation Proclamation.

Antietam/Sharpsburg

In some respects, the American Civil War provided European observers with a foretaste of the slaughter in World War One.

...the most deadly fire of the war. Rifles are shot to pieces in the hands of the soldiers, canteens and haversacks are riddled with bullets, the dead and wounded go down in scores. -- Captain Benjamin F. Cook of the 12th Massachusetts Infantry, on the attack by the Louisiana Tigers at the Cornfield

.. every stalk of corn in the northern and greater part of the field was cut as closely as could have been done with a knife, and the [Confederates] slain lay in rows precisely as they had stood in their ranks a few moments before. -- Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker

We were shooting them like sheep in a pen. If a bullet missed the mark at first it was liable to strike the further bank, angle back, and take them secondarily. --Sergeant of the 61st New York.

Antietam/Sharpsburg

I am not going to go into strategy, so I will sum this battle up:

1. Lee wanted to fight in Maryland to convince Marylanders to join the Confederacy, and to convince Britain and France to recognize the South. His failure to win here doomed both those chances.

2. However, by holding off a Northern Army twice his size, Lee created the legend that the Confederate Army would never have lost the war had they not run out of supplies by 1864. Many Southerners still believe this today.

3. Lincoln, enraged by McClellan’s inability to destroy a numerically inferior enemy, fired him and replaced him with another general, who would also be fired, and so on…until Lincoln would find a general who would sacrifice as many soldiers as needed to win.

GettysburgFor those of you interested in “strategery”--the two armies kind of blundered into each other near the Pennsylvania village of Gettysburg. Luckily, the Union Army grabbed the heights, which meant that any Confederate charge would have to be uphill, and into cannon fire.

Nonetheless, the Confederates charged, frequently, despite some divisions losing up to 80% of their men. Both sides fought to allow time for reinforcements to arrive. Interestingly, Col. Abner Doubleday, who “invented” baseball, was a commander for the North here.

Gettysburg

The most famous part of the battle came on the 3rd day, when Lee decided to throw the bulk of his Army of Northern Virginia against the center of the Union lines. The Confederates had to walk nearly a mile of open ground in the face of direct gunfire to reach the Union lines. This became known as Pickett’s Charge, as Pickett was one of the three major generals ordered forward that day by Lee.

GettysburgThe destruction was incredible. Over the 50% of the 12,500 men in the charge were casualties, including all 13 of Pickett’s field commanders. When Lee told Pickett to rally his division for the defense, Pickett allegedly replied, "General Lee, I have no division.”

The battle destroyed the Southern hopes for any offensive attack in the future, as Lee was forced to retreat and fight defensive actions while trying to rebuild his shattered army. That is called rolling the dice, and Lee crapped out. Some historians think Lee lost his mind, or at least never quite recovered emotionally, from the loss

The victory saved Lincoln, who might have lost the 1864 election to his democratic opponent, his former commander, George McClellan, who was running on a peace platform.

Southerners have never forgotten this battle--especially Pickett’s Charge. In the 1920s, Southern novelist William Faulkner wrote,

“For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it's still not yet two o'clock on that July afternoon in 1863, the brigades are in position behind the rail fence, the guns are laid and ready in the woods and the furled flags are already loosened to break out and Pickett himself with his long oiled ringlets and his hat in one hand probably and his sword in the other looking up the hill waiting for Longstreet to give the word and it's all in the balance, it hasn't happened yet, it hasn't even begun yet, it not only hasn't begun yet but there is still time for it not to begin against that position and those circumstances which made more men than Garnett and Kemper and Armistead and Wilcox look grave yet it's going to begin, we all know that, we have come too far with too much at stake and that moment doesn't need even a fourteen-year-old boy to think This time. Maybe this time with all this much to lose than all this much to gain: Pennsylvania, Maryland, the world, the golden dome of Washington itself to crown with desperate and unbelievable victory the desperate gamble, the cast made two years ago.”

The Gettysburg AddressAfter learning of the slaughter, Lincoln strove for some way to make sense of it. The result is one of the greatest speeches in American history--with the last sentence carved into stone at Lincoln’s memorial in DC.

“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion, that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Assignment (related to journal on effects of war)

• How did both societies have to reorganize themselves to fight this war?

• For the North, it’s on pages: 310-313 • For the South, it’s on pages: 310-311, 313-314 • What were the strains and stresses on each

side? How is each side changing because of the war?

• Who changes more?

For Next Class

• Go on to Moodle tonight and post some of your observations on changes/effects in the North and South due to the war in the forum there labeled “Civil War Changes”

• Gonna start class with the Emancipation Proclamation

• Then cover the March through Georgia briefly• Then end the 2nd half of class with the 2nd

Inaugural Speech, so be prepared to discuss it

Start Reading the Emancipation Proclamation

• And if you have time, write in your “journal”—what exactly does it say?

The March through Georgia, 1864Grant and Lincoln searched for a way to bring the war to a close. Grant developed the “Scorched Earth” doctrine, which meant bringing the reality of the war home to Southern civilians, as well crippling the South’s ability to supply its armies. A series of bloody battles brought the Union Army into Georgia and into control of Atlanta. Grant then dispatched his best commander, William T. Sherman, with orders to burn everything on his way to Savannah, on the Atlantic Ocean.

"There is many a boy here today who looks on war as all glory, but, boys, it is all hell.”

--William T. Sherman

Sherman’s route is in gray—both wings

Sherman ordered his troops to burn crops, kill livestock, consume supplies, and destroy civilian infrastructure along their path. This policy is often also referred to as total war. The recent reelection of President Abraham Lincoln ensured that short-term political pressure would not be applied to restrain these tactics.

A second objective of the campaign was more traditional. Grant's armies in Virginia continued to be in a stalemate against Robert E. Lee's army, besieged in Petersburg, Virginia. By moving in Lee's rear, performing a massive turning movement against him, Sherman could possibly increase pressure on Lee, allowing Grant the opportunity to break through, or at least keep Southern reinforcements away from Virginia.

The campaign was designed to be similar to Grant's innovative and successful Vicksburg Campaign, in that Sherman's armies would reduce their need for traditional supply lines by "living off the land" after their 20 days of rations were consumed. Foragers, known as "bummers", would provide food seized from local farms for the Army while they destroyed the railroads and the manufacturing and agricultural infrastructure of the state. The twisted and broken railroad rails that the troops wrapped around tree trunks and left behind became known as "Sherman's neckties". Since the army would be out of touch with the North throughout the campaign, Sherman gave explicit orders regarding the conduct of the campaign, only allowing his soldiers to attack civilians if they themselves were attacked.

An picture from 1865, showing the effects of total war in South Carolina.

Whether the accounts are exaggerated or not, Southerners still tell stories about the atrocities carried out by Northern soldiers, from looting, to “slave stealing,” to rape, to murder. After 4 years of war, who’s to say the Northern soldiers weren’t incapable of venting their anger on the people they saw as responsible for the war. As Sherman said, “War is hell.”

Secession Hall in Charleston, South Carolina

But here’s something interesting: from his general order regarding soldier conduct:

“VII. Negroes who are able-bodied and can be of service to the several columns may be taken along, but each army commander will bear in mind that the question of supplies is a very important one and that his first duty is to see to them who bear arms...”

In other words, this raised the question of what to do with slaves who would be freed by the march of the Union Army. Sherman was worried they would burden the Army, so he issued what became known as Field Order no. 15, or, “the twenty acres and a mule” rule. It was meant to settle the slaves where they were, rather than have them move North or get in the way of the Army. And the freed slaves began to set themselves up as property owners almost immediately. This will have big repercussions later.

What was the meaning of the Civil War to Abraham Lincoln

• Read the 2nd inaugural address

–What was the war about?–Why did the war happen?–Whose fault was it?–What do we do now?

The End of the War (?)Despite a series of bloody battles in Virginia in which Grant took horrific losses, the success of Sherman’s march meant the South was doomed, as he was now able to swing up from the deep south and attack Lee to his rear. Lee realized the inevitability of defeat and

formally

surrendered

at Appomattox

in 1865.