 Causes
"A
house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot
endure permanently half-slave and half-free." - Abraham Lincoln, 1858. In this
quote Abraham Lincoln accurately predicted the fate of a divided nation - the
compromises that had been imposed prior to the American Civil War only succeeded
in prolonging an unavoidable conflict between North and South. However, one must
understand that the war was not a war to end slavery, although slavery was
abolished after the war ended. The Northerners sought to preserve the Union, and
they would go to war to accomplish their goal. One can plainly see that the
South had a far more noble incentive to go to war - Northern autocrats were
rescinding their civil liberties, and they would have to wage war to end it.
Thus, sectionalism, not slavery, was the sole cause of the American Civil War.
Cultural and economic differences widened the existing rift between North and
South, hurling them perilously close to a clash of arms. Accordingly, when the
Civil War began, on April 12, 1861, the Union forces expected a short conflict -
they had nearly every advantage: abundant supplies and munitions, unremitting
hoards of incoming immigrants, political stability, tremendous weapon
development programs, availability of railroads and transportation, superior
military strategy, and more soldiers. The only significant advantage that the
Confederate States of America possessed was their superior military leadership.
These factors decided the outcome of the Civil War, the most significant
occurrence in our nation's history - and the most tragic. It amalgamated the
states of the Union to form the United States, ended the chattel of slavery, and
dissolved sectional disagreement. Most intelligent historians agree that none of
this could have been accomplished without violence, for the once-unified nation
had been wrenched apart on a systemic level. Conflict was inevitable, sectional
strife had continued for far too long - it had to end, and soon.
The
Civil War Begins
As
the Southern states seceded, they seized and occupied most of the federal forts
within their borders or off their shores. Only four remained in the hands of
the Union. Fort Sumter stood guard in the mouth of the harbor of Charleston,
South Carolina. The other three forts were in Florida: Fort Jefferson in the
Dry Tortugas, Fort Pickens in Pensacola Bay, and Fort Taylor at Key West. Of
the four, Sumter was the most important.
In
January 1861 President James Buchanan tried to send troops and supplies to Major
Robert Anderson, commander of the garrison at Fort Sumter. Star of the West,
the ship Buchanan sent, was an unarmed merchant vessel. When the shore batteries
at Charleston Harbor fired on the ship, it sailed away. Lincoln, during his
first full day in office, learned that Anderson had only enough provisions for
a month and could obtain no supplies from the mainland. Sumter had become a
symbol of the Union. To give it up, Lincoln felt, was to violate his sworn oath
to protect the properties of the United States. On the other hand, there was
grave doubt that a relief expedition could succeed in supplying the fort. If
it failed, it might touch off war.
1861
Both
sides prepared for what would become a much longer war than either at first
imagined. Hundreds of thousands of volunteers poured into the armies, and the
respective economies tried to adjust to meet the demands of supplying huge military
forces. On the battlefield, the Confederates won victories in Virginia at the
First Battle of Bull Run in mid-July, and in Missouri at Wilson's Creek in August.
Despite these setbacks, the Union army and navy took steps to begin operations
along the upper Mississippi River and along the southern Atlantic coast. The
goal was to implement Winfield Scott's Anaconda Plan to seize control of the
Mississippi River and institute a naval blockade of the Confederacy. Away from
the military sphere, the Trent Affair presented the Lincoln administration with
a major diplomatic crisis that threatened to involve Britain in the American
war.
1862
Furious
military action flared in both the eastern and western theaters. In the West,
Union victories at forts Henry and Donelson in February and at Shiloh in April
gave the Union control of the heartland of Tennessee. The Battle of Pea Ridge
in March frustrated a Confederate effort to gain a hold in Missouri, and the
capture of New Orleans in late April cost the Confederacy its largest city and
busiest port. Confederates responded with an invasion of Kentucky in late summer
and fall, which ended in failure at the Battle of Perryville in October. Heavy
fighting for the year ended with the inconclusive battle of Stones River or
Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and unsuccessful opening movements in the Union campaign
to capture Vicksburg, Mississippi. In the East, a Confederate victory at the
Seven Days Battle in late June and early July turned back a major threat to
Richmond, followed by another Southern triumph at Second Bull Run in late August,
and the Union's strategic success at Antietam in mid-September, which ended
Robert E. Lee's first invasion of the North. The year closed in Virginia with
a costly Union setback at Fredericksburg in mid-December. The year also saw
the Confederacy enact the first national conscription act in American history,
and the North place emancipation alongside unification as a second great war
aim.
1863
The
year opened poorly for the Northern military. In the West, their efforts to
capture Vicksburg during the winter and spring were continually frustrated.
In the East, the Union forces were defeated at Chancellorsville in early May.
The North rebounded in June and July with a trio of successes: the Tullahoma
campaign, which cleared major Confederate forces from Tennessee; the capture
of Vicksburg, which together with the fall of Port Hudson, Louisiana, gave the
North control of the Mississippi River; and the Battle of Gettysburg, where
Lee's last movement across the Potomac River ended in bloody repulse. Another
success at Chattanooga in late November closed a most auspicious year of campaigning
for the North. The Union also adopted a national conscription act in 1863, prompting
wide opposition and considerable violence. The Emancipation Proclamation went
into effect on January 1, and soon thereafter the North began recruiting black
soldiers on a large scale. Shortages of food and material goods became quite
severe in the Confederacy, which experienced bread riots at several locations.
1864
The
year 1864 began optimistically for the North, which expected Grant, its new
general-in-chief, to bring victory. However, the bloody Overland Campaign in
Virginia during May and June, which featured clashes at the Wilderness, Spotsylvania,
and Cold Harbor, depressed Northern morale, as did the failure of General Sherman
to capture Atlanta. A swift strike through the Shenandoah Valley brought a small
Confederate army to the outskirts of Washington in early July, which further
alarmed the North. By August, Northern morale had reached its lowest point of
the war, and there were expectations that Lincoln would be defeated in his bid
for reelection in November. As Grant and Lee settled into a siege along the
Petersburg-Richmond lines, Union victories at Mobile Bay in late August, at
Atlanta in early September, and in the Shenandoah Valley in September and October
raised Northern morale and ensured Lincoln's reelection. Lincoln's political
triumph in turn guaranteed that the North would continue to prosecute the war
vigorously. The year ended with Union victories at Franklin and Nashville, Tennessee,
in November and December, and Sherman's destructive march across the interior
of Georgia. Hopes for Confederate success had virtually ended, the Northern
blockade was tightening, and civilian and military morale in the South sagged
badly.
For 1864 Grant planned an aggressive campaign. In the spring, when the roads
had dried, the Army of the Potomac, still under Meade's direct command, moved
against Lee in Virginia. Union General Benjamin F. Butler's Army of the James
would advance from Bermuda Hundred, Virginia, on the James River. Sherman, now
in full command in the West, would take the offensive against Johnston's army
and Atlanta. For these moves the Union armies could muster 235,000 men. The
Confederates had no more than 150,000 to oppose them.
1865
The
Union moved toward victory during the first four months of 1865. In mid-January,
the capture of Fort Fisher, which guarded Wilmington, North Carolina, closed
the final significant Confederate port. On the political front, the U.S. House
of Representatives passed the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing
slavery on January 31, and a last-ditch effort at negotiating an end to the
war failed at the Hampton Roads conference in early February. In February and
March, the siege of Petersburg and Richmond continued, while Sherman's army
worked its way northward through South Carolina and into North Carolina. Union
success at the Battle of Five Forks on April 1 signaled the end of the long
defense of Richmond, after which Lee's army retreated westward until forced
to surrender at Appomattox Court House on April 9. With Lee's surrender, the
war was clearly drawing to a close. However, Northern celebrations were quickly
silenced when Lincoln was shot on April 14 and died the next day. Large-scale
Union raids into Alabama and Northern successes elsewhere further weakened an
already reeling Confederacy, and in late April Sherman accepted surrender of
the South's last major field army at Durham Station, North Carolina.
The
War Ends
Looking
backward, anyone must marvel at the fact that the war lasted four years. All
the advantages seemed to favor the North. In 1860 the 22 states that would remain
in the Union (three more would come in before 1865) had a combined population
of 22 million. The 11 states that made up the Confederacy could count only 9
million inhabitants, including almost 4 million black slaves. Most of the factories
capable of producing war materials were located in the North, and the section
was well equipped with railroads. It had a merchant marine and could maintain
worldwide commerce. The South, on the other hand, was a region of farms. Although
these farms produced products that Europe wanted, particularly cotton, the South
had few ships, and its principal ports were soon closed.
Much
has been made of the superiority of Southern commanders. Although Lee was more
than a match for every opponent except Grant, Grant overcame the Confederate
general by force of numbers and determination of will. Neither side had another
corps commander equal to Stonewall Jackson, but Jackson was killed before the
war was half over. In the West, the Union commanders clearly outmatched their
opposites. No Confederate leader could stand comparison with Grant, Sherman,
or Thomas. In naval operations, Foote, Farragut, and Porter had no Confederate
rivals.
Little
distinction can be made between Northern and Southern morale. Desertion was
common on both sides. The North had its Copperheads, its bounty jumpers, and
its draft rioters, and millions of Northerners were weary of the war long before
its end. In the South, draft dodging and tax evasion were common, and fortunes
were made by profiteers who preferred to run luxuries, instead of war supplies,
through the blockade.
The
South had two important advantages. First, it did not need to conquer the North.
It could win the war simply by defending its soil and by waiting for the North
to become so discouraged by repeated failures that it would grant independence.
Second, the South could operate with shorter interior lines, thus making better
use of its fewer men.
In
the long run, Northern superiority in supplies and men was decisive. That Southern
armies remained in the field and took a toll from their opponents until the
spring of 1865 is a remarkable achievement in determination and fortitude. Lincoln's
position on slavery and democracy was equally important in the outcome of the
war. The Emancipation Proclamation put an end to Southern hopes of foreign intervention.
In the North the majority of the people remained firmly resolved that the Union
must be restored.
Costs
of the War
The human cost of the war far exceeded what anyone had imagined in 1861. The
North placed roughly 2.2 million men in uniform (180,000 of them blacks), of
whom about 640,000 were killed, wounded in battle, or died of disease. Of the
360,000 Northern soldiers who died, two-thirds perished from illnesses such
as dysentery, diarrhea, measles, malaria, and typhoid. Casualties in Confederate
forces are more difficult to estimate, but they probably approached 450,000
out of approximately 750,000 to 850,000 Confederate soldiers. Of these, it is
estimated that more than 250,000 died. The proportion of battlefield deaths
to deaths by disease was probably the same as in the Northern armies. Total
deaths thus exceeded 600,000, and the dead and wounded combined totaled about
1.1 million. More Americans were killed in the Civil War than in all other American
wars combined from the colonial period through the later phase of the Vietnam
War (1959-1975).
Human suffering also extended beyond the military sphere and continued long
after fighting ceased. During the conflict, thousands of black and white Southerners
became refugees, losing many of their possessions and facing an uncertain future
in strange surroundings. Far fewer Northern civilians experienced the war so
directly, although the citizens of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, saw their town
burned by Confederate cavalry in 1864. An unknown number of civilians perished
at the hands of guerrillas, deserters, and, less frequently, regular soldiers
in both armies. After the war, many thousands of veterans struggled to cope
with lost limbs and other wounds. Thousands of families faced difficult financial
circumstances due to the death of husbands and fathers. The United States government
made available small pensions for disabled veterans and widows of soldiers,
and southern states did the same for former Confederate soldiers and their widows.
In neither instance, however, were the funds sufficient to provide for all the
needs of a family.
The war generated spending on a scale dwarfing that of any earlier period in
American history. In 1860, the federal budget was $63 million; in 1865, federal
government expenditures totaled nearly $1.3 billion—a 200-fold increase
that did not include the money spent by the Confederate government. An estimate
in 1879 placed war-related costs to that date for the United States at $6.1
billion, including pension payments that would continue for many years. Figures
for the Confederacy are very unreliable, but one estimate places expenditures
through 1863 at $2 billion. After 1863, records for Confederate expenditures
are not available. Whatever the total figure, there is no doubt that expenditures
and indebtedness grew to a size that were not imaginable before the war.
The war also caused wide-scale economic destruction to the South. The Confederate
states lost two-thirds of their wealth during the war. The loss of slave property
through emancipation accounted for much of this, but the economic infrastructure
in the South was also severely damaged in other ways. Railroads and industries
in the South were in shambles, more than one-half of all farm machinery was
destroyed, and 40 percent of all livestock had been killed. In contrast, the
Northern economy thrived during the war. Two numbers convey a sense of the economic
cost to the respective sections: between 1860 and 1870, Northern wealth increased
by 50 percent; during that same decade, Southern wealth decreased by 60 percent.
Effects of the War
The
Civil War was the central event in the lives of most of the men who served in
the armed forces. Many of them had never traveled more than a few miles beyond
their homes, and the war took them to places they otherwise would not have seen,
made them participants in great events, and often left them with scars that
constantly reminded them of how much they had sacrificed. During the postwar
years, thousands of men joined veterans' organizations such as the Grand Army
of the Republic in the North and the United Confederate Veterans in the South.
They revisited the sites of their battles, raised monuments to commemorate their
service, and, in large numbers, wrote reminiscences about their part in the
war. For black men who fought for the Union, the war provided the strongest
possible claim for full citizenship. They had risked their lives, along with
their white comrades in the military, and they argued that they should have
the right to vote and otherwise live as full members of American society.
The
war touched the lives of almost every person in the United States. Women assumed
larger responsibilities in the workplace because so many men were absent in
the armies. In the North, they labored as nurses (previously a male occupation),
government clerks, and factory workers and contributed to the war effort in
other ways. Southern white women also worked as clerks and nurses and in factories,
and thousands took responsibility for running family farms. Several hundred
women disguised themselves as men and served in the military, a few of whom
were wounded in battle. Although the war opened opportunities for work outside
the household, its end brought a general return to old patterns of employment.
Still, the war remained a major event in the lives of women as it did for the
men in uniform.
Slave
men and women in the South shouldered a major part of the labor burden, as they
always had, and made it possible for the Confederacy to put nearly 80 percent
of its military-age white men in uniform, a level of mobilization unequaled
in American history. No group was more directly affected by the outcome of the
war than the almost 4 million black people who were slaves in 1861. They emerged
from the conflict with their freedom, which was confirmed by the 13th Amendment
to the Constitution in December 1865. However, blacks did not have equal rights
until long after the war.
The
war also touched children in profound ways. Fathers and brothers left home to
fight, and thousands of boys 17 years old or younger entered military service
as drummers, musicians, or soldiers in the ranks. Children behind the lines
followed the progress of the war, pretending to be soldiers or nurses. All too
often, they were affected by the loss of parents or siblings. Many grew to adulthood
with a sense that whatever they might face in life, it would be less important
than the great national crisis in which their fathers fought.
The
war was followed by twelve years of Reconstruction, during which the North and
South debated the future of black Americans and waged bitter political battles.
In 1877, the white South tacitly conceded national power to the Republican Party
in return for the right to rule their own states with minimal interference from
the North. Republican domination of presidential politics and a solidly Democratic
white South were two legacies of the war and Reconstruction. Despite ratification
of the 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution, black Americans failed
to win equal rights during the acrimonious postwar political debates. As the
19th century closed, they faced a rigidly segregated life in the South and hostility
across most of the North.
Despite
the destruction, the war did settle the question of secession. Since 1861 no
state has seriously considered withdrawing from the Union. In addition, the
war brought slavery to an end. After the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation,
there was widespread acceptance of the fact that Union victory would mean general
emancipation. Since the proclamation was a war measure that might be held unconstitutional
after the war, the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, which abolished slavery,
was passed by both houses of Congress early in 1865. It was ratified by three-fourths
of the states and was formally proclaimed in effect on December 18, 1865.
The
war also set the South back at least a generation in industry and agriculture.
Factories and farms were devastated by the invading armies. The labor system
fell into chaos. Not until the 20th century did the South recover fully from
the economic effects of the war. In contrast, the North forged ahead with the
building of a modern industrial state.
In
conclusion, it must be remarked that the Civil War did not raise blacks to a
position of equality with whites. Nor did the war bring about that emotional
reunion that Lincoln hoped for when he spoke in his first inaugural address
of “the bonds of affection” that had formerly held the two sections
together.
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