"Future years will never know the seething hell and the black infernal background, of this war; and it is best they should not.  The real war will never get in the books."

Walt Whitman

NCSCOS Goal 3

Page 22

Shots Fired

-War begins at Fort Sumter, S.C., 1861

-Bull Run/ Manassas

-July 1861

-Southern victory

-did not pursue the retreating Union army

-citizens watched the battle

Approximately 500 from Washington, DC

South could have captured capital, but too disorganized

"Our Southern brethren have done grievously, they have rebelled and have attacked their father's house and their loyal brothers. They must be punished and brought back, but this

necessity breaks my heart."

Major Robert Anderson,

Union defender of Fort Sumter in April of 1861

"There is Jackson standing like a stone wall. Let us

determine to die here, and we will conquer. Follow

me."

Brigadier General Bee, First Bull Run

"You are green, it is true; but they are green also. You are all green alike."

- Abraham Lincoln gave this description of the Union Army to its commander, Irvin

McDowell, while urging McDowell to attack the Confederates shortly before First Bull

Run

"They came in all manner of ways," wrote a Union officer, "some in stylish carriages, others in city hacks, and still

others in buggies, on horseback, or even on foot. Apparently everything in the shape of vehicles in and

around Washington had been pressed into service for the occasion."

Shiloh

-April 1862 (Tennessee)

Some of the most difficult fighting of the entire war

-Confederate commander Albert Sidney Johnson killed in fighting

-costly victory for Grant

-demonstrated the cost of victory would be great

"The rebels are out there thicker than fleas on a dog's back!!"

- An excited Union officer used these words to report the advance

of Confederate forces at Shiloh-

“Shiloh”: Hebrew word for place of peace

“Bloody Pond” of Shiloh

Accounts say that the water of the pond turned red with the blood of soldiers and animals following the battle

Casualties:

Union: 13, 047

Confederate: 10, 694

Antietam

-Sept. 1862 (Maryland)

-Bloodiest single day of the war

Union Casualties: 12,410

Confederate Casualties: 10,316

-Union victory for McClellan

Lee’s first move on offensive into North

McClellan could have crushed CSA but moved too slowly

Lincoln visits Antietam shortly after the battle, disappointed with McClellan’s slow

movement of troops. McClellan is dismissed shortly afterwards.

"I have heard of 'the dead lying in heaps', but never saw it till this battle. Whole ranks

fell together."

-Captain Emory Upton,

2nd U.S. Artillery at Antietam-

"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 slain lay in rows precisely as they stood in their

ranks a few minutes before."

- A Union officer ‘s description of the destruction of a Confederate force

at Antietam.-

Vicksburg

-Nov. 1862 (Mississippi)

-Grant surrounds city on the Mississippi

-try to split the south

Begins long siege of town (surrounds and tries to starve out)

Bombards the city, soldiers and civilians, continuously

Northern lines were

so tight “not even a

cat could get out.”

“What is to become of all the living things in this place when the boats commend shelling--God only knows--shut up as in a trap--no

ingress or egress--and thousands of women and children”

Diarist Emma Balfour, civilian of Vicksburg

The town's food supply grew dangerously low as the siege wore on. Cooks served mule meat at the dinner table. An anonymous citizen, refusing to surrender a sense of humor,

wrote a fictitious menu advertising such local delicacies as "Mule Head Stuffed a La Mode" and "Mule Tongue Cold a La Bray." Many were forced to live in caves to escape

bombardments.

Confederate Victories

-Confederates greatly outnumbered but Lee still wins

-Dec. 1862 (Virginia)

-Fredericksburg

(Union slaughter)

(Confederates use trenches)

-May 1863 (Virginia)

-Chancellorsville

-Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson is killed

(By his own men)

It is well that war is so terrible--we should grow too fond of it"

- Robert E. Lee gave this observation while watching thousands of Union

soldiers sent to the slaughter at Fredericksburg

Fredericksburg Casualties

US: 12,653

CS: 5,309

Then and Now:

The Wall at Marye’s Heights

"General, if you put every [Union soldier] now on the other side of the Potomac on that field to approach me over the same

line, I will kill them all before they reach my line."

- General James Longstreet made this vow to Robert E. Lee as countless Federal assaults were beaten back by Longstreet's men at

the Battle of Fredericksburg.

Prior to the Battle of

Fredericksburg, Longstreet lost

three of his children to a Scarlet Fever epidemic in

Richmond within one week. This incident made

dedication to his troops became

top priority.

"My religious belief teaches me to feel as safe in battle as in bed. God has fixed the time for my death. I do not

concern myself about that, but to always be ready, no matter when it

may overtake me."- Stonewall Jackson

“Give General Jackson my affectionate regards, and say to

him: he has lost his left arm but I my right.“ – Robert E. Lee

Gettysburg

-July 1863 (Pennsylvania)

-Lee invades North

(First time ever – on offensive)

-Little Round Top

-Cemetery Ridge

-Pickett’s Charge

-turning point of the war as Lee is defeated

-Gettysburg Address given by Lincoln several months later

Lt. Col. Joshua Chamberlain’s

20th Maine regiment holds

off Confederates, keeping Union

line from folding

Official Union photographer Alexander Gardner took these photos in the days after the Battle of Gettysburg. Like other Civil War photographers, Alexander Gardner sometimes tried to communicate both pity and patriotism with his photographs, reminding his audience of the tragedy of war without forgetting the superiority of his side's cause. Sometimes, the most effective means of elevating one's cause while demeaning the other was to create a scene -- by posing bodies -- and then draft a dramatic narrative to accompany the picture. The top photo shows a staged photograph of the “Home of the Rebel Sharpshooter”, while the bottom is the true scene of the aftermath. The soldier was probably actually an infantryman, killed while advancing up the hillside. After taking pictures of the dead soldier from several angles, the photographer noticed the picturesque sharpshooter's den -- forty yards away -- and moved the corpse to this rocky niche and photographed him again. The type of weapon seen in these photographs was not used by sharpshooters. This particular firearm is seen in a number of Gardner's scenes at Gettysburg and probably was the photographer's prop.

The Home of a Rebel Sharpshooter.By Alexander Gardner

On the Fourth of July, 1863, Lee's shattered army withdrew from Gettysburg, and started on its retreat from Pennsylvania to the Potomac. From Culp's Hill, on our right, to the forests that stretched away from Round Top, on the left, the fields were thickly strewn with Confederate dead and wounded, dismounted guns, wrecked caissons, and the debris of a broken army. The artist, in passing over the scene of the previous days' engagements, found in a lonely place the covert of a rebel sharpshooter, and photographed the scene presented here. The Confederate soldier had built up between two huge rocks, a stone wall, from the crevices of which he had directed his shots, and, in comparative security, picked off our officers. The side of the rock on the left shows, by the little white spots, how our sharpshooters and infantry had endeavored to dislodge him. The trees in the vicinity were splintered, and their branches cut off, while the front of the wall looked as if just recovering from an attack of geological small-pox. The sharpshooter had evidently been wounded in the head by a fragment of shell which had exploded over him, and had laid down upon his blanket to await death. There was no means of judging how long he had lived after receiving his wound, but the disordered clothing shows that his sufferings must have been intense. Was he delirious with agony, or did death come slowly to his relief, while memories of home grew dearer as the field of carnage faded before him? What visions, of loved ones far away, may have hovered above his stony pillow! What familiar voices may he not have heard, like whispers beneath the roar of battle, as his eyes grew heavy in their long, last sleep!

On the nineteenth of November, the artist attended the consecration of the Gettysburg Cemetery, and again visited the "Sharpshooter's Home." The musket, rusted by many storms, still leaned against the rock, and the skeleton of the soldier lay undisturbed within the mouldering uniform, as did the cold form of the dead four months before. None of those who went up and down the fields to bury the fallen, had found him. "Missing," was all that could have been known of him at home, and some mother may yet be patiently watching for the return of her boy, whose bones lie bleaching, unrecognized and alone, between the rocks at Gettysburg.

“General Lee, I have no division.”

– Pickett to Lee following the infamous charge.

"All this has been my fault."- Robert E. Lee repeatedly spoke this line to the

survivors of Pickett's Charge as they stumbled back to Confederate lines.-

Pickett’s Charge

Time:50 minutes

Confederate Casualties:

5,600

Casualties from Pickett’s Division Alone: 3,000

"I do not want to make this charge. I do not see how it can succeed. I would not make it now but that General Lee

has ordered it and expects it."

- James Longstreet on Pickett’s Charge

Following the war and the death of Robert E. Lee, James Longstreet, Lee’s second in command, would become the

scapegoat for the South’s loss at Gettysburg. He argued against a

Confederate frontal attack at Gettysburg but Lee did not heed his

advice.

“Error lives but a day. Truth is eternal.”

James Longstreet

“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon 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.”

South is Split

-July 1863

-Grant captures Vicksburg after long siege

-Grant is called to command Union armies

Nickname: “The Butcher”

Two parts of the Anaconda Plan are now complete

“Tell me what brand of whiskey that Grant drinks. I would like to send a barrel of it to

my other generals.”

-Abraham Lincoln-

Sherman’s March

-1864

-”March to the Sea”:

(From Georgia to Atlantic Ocean)

-Total War

Take the war to civilians

“War is Hell”

-burning of Atlanta

-destroy the will to fight

Citizens suffer most

"War is cruelty. There is no use trying to

reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner it will

be over"

- Union General William T. Sherman-

"Yes, I am one of those whom Sherman's shells drove from a dismantled city. He has made some

of us women wade through seas of pain and suffering, I can tell you; but as much as we have suffered from his cruelty, there isn't one of us

who would exchange places with him in the next world for all the wealth and stores he has allowed

his men to steal from we poor down-trodden rebels, as he terms us." -- Henrietta Barnes

Atlanta Depot

"I don’t see any horns. You are supposed to have horns" A child's answer to Sherman's question of why he repeatedly was staring at

his head.

Grant in Pursuit

-1864

-Lee in retreat

-Grant attacks repeatedly at great loss of life

Examples: Cold Harbor and

Petersburg

-Lincoln wants speedy end to war

Can replace killed men with immigrants

"The dead covered more than five acres of ground about as thickly as they could be

laid."

-A Confederate survivor so described the Union dead at the Battle of Cold Harbor in

1864.

Union Casualties at Cold Harbor: 13,000

Confederate Casualties at Cold Harbor: 2,500

Then and Now:

Petersburg Crater

Petersburg: Battle of the Crater

The Union Army dug a mine shaft under the Confederate lines and planted explosive charges directly underneath a fort in the middle of the Confederate line. If successful, this would not only kill all the defenders in the area, it would also open a hole in the Confederate defenses.

Upon explosion, a crater (still visible today) was created, 170 feet long, 60 to 80 feet wide, and 30 feet deep. Between 250 and 350 Confederate soldiers were instantly killed in the blast

A Union division went across the field to the crater and, instead of moving around it, thought it would make an excellent rifle pit and it would be well to take cover and so they moved down into the crater itself, wasting valuable time while the Confederates, gathered as many troops together as they could for a counterattack. In about an hour's time, they had formed up around the crater and began firing rifles and artillery down into it, in what was later described as a "turkey shoot".

Union Casualties: 5,300Confederate Casualties: 1,032

War’s End

-April 1865

-Grant surrounds Lee outside Richmond

-Surrender at Appomattox

Troops Go Home Pardoned

Feed Confederate Army

"General, unless he offers us honorable terms, come back and let us fight it out!"

- James Longstreet to Robert E. Lee -

"What General Lee's feelings were I do not know, as he was a man of much dignity, with an impassable face, it was impossible to say whether he felt inwardly glad that the end had finally come, or felt sad over the result," wrote Grant. "But my own feelings, which had been quite jubilant on the receipt of his letters, were sad and depressed . . . Our

conversation grew so pleasant that I almost forgot the object of our meeting . . . General Lee called my attention to the object.“ – Ulysses S. Grant’s Memoirs

"Men, we have fought the war together, and I have done the best I could for you. You will all be paroled and go to your homes until exchanged. My heart is too full to say

more.“ – Robert E. Lee to troops after surrender