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Chapter 21. “ The Furnace of the Civil War ”. Battle of Bull Run #1. Lincoln felt the war would be a swift one. Believed that one decisive knockout punch would dispel the folly of secession.
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Chapter 21 “The Furnace of the Civil War”
Battle of Bull Run #1 • Lincoln felt the war would be a swift one. Believed that one decisive knockout punch would dispel the folly of secession. • On July 21, 1861, ill-trained Yankee recruits swaggered out toward Bull Run to engage a smaller Confederate unit • After initial success by the Union, Confederate reinforcements arrived and, coupled with Stonewall Jackson’s line holding, sent the Union soldiers into disarray. • After the Confederate victory it was clear that this would not be a quick war. The Civil War became a war of exhaustion • Defeat better than victory for the Union • Dispelled the illusions of a one-punch war and caused the Northerners to buckle down to the staggering task at hand.
George McClellan • 1st commander of the Army of the Potomac • 34 years old and loved by his troops • Brilliant general from West Point • Superb organizer and drillmaster • Cautious to a fault
Peninsula Campaign • McClellan was very slow to act on Richmond • After pleading by Lincoln, McClellan finally agreed to a water-borne approach to Richmond, called the Peninsula Campaign, taking about a month to capture Yorktown before coming to the Richmond • Lee launched a devastating counter attack. The Confederates drove McClellan back to the sea and the assault on Richmond was abandoned
Union’s Total War Plan • Suffocating blockade • Liberation of Slaves to undermine the South • Capture Richmond the capital of the Confederacy • Cut the Confederacy in two by seizing control of the Mississippi River • Grind the South into submission
War at Sea • Union blockade provided mixed results • Britain, who would ordinarily protest such interference in the seas that she “owned,” recognized the blockade as binding, since Britain herself often used blockades in her wars • Monitor vs the Merrimack
Union’s Monitor • the Monitor, built for the Union navy in the U.S. Civil War by John Ericsson. Launched in Jan., 1862, the Monitor was 179 ft long, of 41.5-ft beam, and weighed 1,200 tons. A revolving turret, protected by 8 in. of iron armor and containing two 11-in. smooth-bore guns, was its main feature. The sides were covered by iron plates from 3 to 5 in. thick, with about 27 in. of wood backing, and the deck, only 18 in. above water, was shielded with 1-in. armor. The ship was moved by steam power, with a screw propeller. Monitors were used extensively in the Civil War, but the type had limitations—it was too heavy to navigate the oceans—and was eventually abandoned
Merrimack • On 20 April 1861, when Virginia authorities took over the Norfolk Navy Yard after its evacuation by Federal forces, they found, among other valuable items, the hulk of the steam frigate USS Merrimack. Though burned to the waterline and sunk, the big ship's lower hull and machinery were intact. During the remainder of 1861 and the first two months of 1862, the Confederate States Navy raised, drydocked and converted her into a casemate ironclad ram, a new warship type that promised to overcome the Union's great superiority in conventional warships. Placed in commission as CSS Virginia in mid-February 1862, the ship's iron armor made her virtually invulnerable to contemporary gunfire.
http://www.ship-paintings.com/large_images/monitor_and_merrimac.JPGhttp://www.ship-paintings.com/large_images/monitor_and_merrimac.JPG
Battle of Antietam • Battle occurred after the Confederate victory at the battle of Bull Run #2. • Confederated hoped to take advantage of momentum, convince Maryland to secede, persuade European counties to help, and relieve pressure coming down on them from the North. • McClellan’s men found a copy of Lee’s plans and were able to stop the Southerners at Antietam on September 17, 1862 in one of the bloodiest days of the Civil War • Jefferson Davis was never so close to victory as he was that day, since European powers were very close to helping the South, but after the Union army displayed unexpected power at Antietam, that help faded • The Union Victory at Antietam enabled Lincoln to introduce the Emancipation Proclamation
Antietam the single bloodies day of fighting in American History22,720 Casualties in a day
Emancipation Proclamation • Issued by Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863 • "all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free." • The proclamation also authorized the recruitment of African Americans as Union soldiers. • By the end of the Civil War, approximately 180,000 African Americans had served in the Union army and 18,000 in the navy.
Lincoln and the E.P. • This print is based on David Gilmore Blythe's painting of Lincoln writing the Emancipation Proclamation. Blythe imagined the President in a cluttered study at work on the document near an open window draped with a flag. His left hand is placed on a Bible that rests on a copy of the Constitution in his lap. The scales of justice appear in the left corner, and a railsplitter's maul lies on the floor at Lincoln's feet.
Value of the E.P. • Although the E.P. never freed a single slave it had much value: • Civil War became a a war not only to save the Union but also a war to free the slaves • Served to strengthen the moral cause of the war • A call-to-arms for African-Americans • Ensured that Europe would not get involved in the conflict
African-Americans Arlington, Virginia Band of 107th U.S. Colored Infantry at Fort Corcoran
Pre- Gettysburg • After Antietam, A. E. Burnside (known for sideburns) took over the Union army, but he lost badly after launching a rash frontal attack at Fredericksburg, Virginia, on Dec. 13, 1862. • “Fighting Joe” Hooker (known for his girls, aka prostitutes) was badly beaten at Chancellorsville, Virginia, when Lee divided his outnumbered army into two and sent “Stonewall” Jackson to attack the Union flank, but later in that battle, Jackson’s own men mistakenly shot him during dusk, and he died • Lee now prepared to follow up his stunning victory by invading the North again • Second time South invaded North.
Stonewall Jackson • Next to Robert E. Lee himself, Thomas J. Jackson is the most revered of all Confederate commanders • A graduate of West Point (1846), he had served in the artillery in the Mexican War, earning two brevets, before resigning to accept a professorship at the Virginia Military Institute • In his greatest day he led his corps around the Union right flank at Chancellorsville and routed the 11th Corps • Reconnoitering that night, he was returning to his own lines when he was mortally wounded by some of his own men. • Following the amputation of his arm, he died eight days later on May 10, 1863, from pneumonia • Lee wrote of him with deep feeling: " He has lost his left arm; but I have lost my right arm."
Gettysburg • Lee now prepared to invade the North for the second and final time, at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, but he was met by new General George G. Meade, who by accident took a stand atop a low ridge flanking a shallow valley and the Union and Confederate armies fought a bloody and brutal battle in which the North “won. • In the Battle of Gettysburg (July 1-3, 1863), General George Pickett led a hopeless, bloody, and pitiful charge up a hill that ended in the pig-slaughter of Confederates • Battle lasted from July 1-3 1863 • Huge victory for Union • South never able to mount an offensive war again
Gettysburg Address • 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
Battle of Vicksburg • Victory came on same day as the victory of Gettysburg. (July 3, 1863) • Hero of the battle was General Ulysses S. Grant • The victory combined with General Farragut’s victory at New Orleans enabled the Union to control the Mississippi River and thus securing one of their major goals
Grant • Grant has been described as a "butcher" for his strategy, particularly in 1864, but he was able to achieve objectives that his predecessor generals had not. • a mediocre West Point graduate who drank a lot and also fought under the ideal of “immediate and unconditional surrender.” • Lincoln finally found his general (8th time was a charm)
Sherman’s March to the Sea • After Grant cleared out Tennessee, General William Tecumseh Sherman was given command to march through Georgia, and he delivered, capturing and burning down Atlanta before completing his famous “march to the sea” at Savannah • His men cut a trail of destruction one-mile wide, waging “total war” by cutting up railroad tracks, burning fields, and destroying everything.
Election of 1864 • Republicans – Lincoln • The Congressional Committee on the Conduct of the War was created in 1861 was dominated by “radical” Republicans and gave Lincoln much trouble. • Copperheads were those who totally against the war, and denounced the president (the “Illinois Ape”) • In 1864, the Republicans joined the War Democrats to form the Union Party and renominated Abe Lincoln • The Union Party chose Democrat Andrew Johnson to ensure that the War Democrats would vote for Lincoln, and the campaign was once again full of mudslinging • Democrats – McClellan • Former Civil War general
Battle of Richmond • Grant was a man who could send thousands of men out to die just so that the Confederates would lose, because he knew that he could afford to lose many men while Lee could not • In a series of wilderness encounters, Grant fought Lee, with Grant losing about 50,000 men. • At Cold Harbor, Union soldiers with papers pinned on their backs showing their names and addresses rushed the fort, and over 7000 died in a few minutes • Finally, Grant and his men captured Richmond, burning it, and cornered Lee at Appomattox Courthouse at Virginia in April of 1865, where Lee formally surrendered; the war was over.
Andersonville Prison • In November of 1863, Confederate Captain W. Sidney Winder was sent to the village of Andersonville in Sumter County, Georgia, to assess the potential of building a prison for captured Union soldiers. The deep south location, the availability of fresh water, and its proximity to the Southwestern Railroad, made Andersonville a favorable prison location. In addition, Andersonville had a population of less than 20 persons, and was, therefore, politically unable to resist the building of such an unpopular facility. So Andersonville was chosen as the site for a prison that would later become infamous in the North for the thousands of prisoners that would die there before the war ended. Andersonville Prison in 1864 as painted from memory by an ex-prisoner Thomas O’Dea
The Confederate Memorial Carving depicts three Southern heroes of the Civil War: Confederate President Jefferson Davis, Generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson. The figures measure 90 by 190 feet, surrounded by a carved surface that covers three acres, it is larger than a football field – the largest relief sculpture in the world. The carving is recessed 42 feet into the mountain. Work on the carving began in 1915 and was finally complete in 1972.
Death of Lincoln • On April 14, 1865, Abraham Lincoln was shot in the head by John Wilkes Booth and died shortly. • Before his death, few people had suspected his greatness, but his sudden and dramatic death erased his shortcomings and made people remember him for his good things
Ford’s Theatre • On April 14th, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln and his wife were attending a show at Ford's Theatre in Washington D.C. when John Wilkes Boothe shot him in the head. Lincoln was carried across the street to a bording house, where he died early the next morning.
Last Moments • Max Rosenthal, The Last Moments of Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, colored lithograph, 1865. “Now he belongs to the ages” (or perhaps “angels”) were the words spoken by Secretary of War Edwin Stanton at the moment of Lincoln’s death.
