HOTA Civil War

civil war ID's

Fort Sumter

was a battle that started when Confederate forces opened fire and shot Union supply ships that attempted to supply Fort Sumter with extra troops and supplies. Ft sumter took place in Charleston, SC, and lasted for 2 days, April 12-14, 1861. When the first 7 slave states seceded in December 1860 to February 1861, they immediately seized federal property, forts, arsenals, and government offices within their boundaries. Initially, the states did not have sufficient military power to seize 2 fortified offshore military installations, one of them being Fort Sumter. SC sent commissioners to Washington asking for the surrender of Fort Sumter. President Buchanan refused, and in January 1861, as President Lincoln ordered an unarmed merchant ship to supply Fort Sumter with extra troops and supplies. Confederates fired the first shots from the shore at the vessel. As conditions worsened & supplies ran low in Ft. Sumter, Lincoln sent a relief expedition, believing that surrendering Ft. Sumter would deem his commitment to maintaining the union, untrustworthy. Lincoln had informed SC that troops would be sent only if they were met w/ resistance. In this dilemma, SC leaders decided that it was better to appear belligerent than cowardly, and ordered the commander at Charleston, General P.G.T. Beauregard, to take ft sumter by force. On April 14th, Major Robert Anderson surrenders. This is HS because this battle was the trigger of the official start of the Civil War, and increased the divide between the North and South, and also led 4 more slave states to secede (Virginia, Arkansas, NC, & tennessee).

Conscription

AKA the draft, was the compulsory enlistment of men into the armed forces by the Union and Confederacy when volunteer numbers dwindled. By March 1863, Congress was forced to pass a national draft law. Virtually all young adult males were eligible to be drafted; but a man could escape service by hiring someone to go in his place or by paying the government a fee of $300. Only about 46,000 men were ever actually conscripted, but the draft greatly increased voluntary enlistments. To a people accustomed to a remote and inactive national government, conscription was strange and threat-ening. Opposition to the law was widespread, particularly among laborers, immigrants, and Democrats opposed to the war (known as “Peace Democrats” or “Copperheads” by their opponents). Occasionally opposition to the draft erupted into violence. Demonstrators against the draft rioted in New York City for four days in July 1863, after the fi rst names were selected for conscription. It was among the most violent urban uprisings in American history. Over 100 people died. Irish workers were at the center of the violence. They were angry because black strikebreakers had been used against them in a recent longshoremen’s strike, and they blamed African Americans generally for the war, which they thought was being fought for the benefit of slaves who would soon be competing with white workers for jobs. The rioters lynched a number of African Americans, burned down homes and businesses (mostly those of free blacks), and even destroyed an orphanage for African-American children. Only the arrival of federal troops subdued the rioters.

Total War

a conflict that involves the entire society and its resources, targeting not only the enemy's military but also its civilian population and infrastructure to break their will to fight. This was exemplified in the American Civil War, particularly through Union campaigns like Sherman's March to the Sea, which aimed to cripple the South's ability to wage war by destroying farms, factories, and railroads.

Missouri Compromise

in 1820, there were 11 free states and 11 slave states(good balance of power). But Missouri wanted to be admitted as a slave state. The big problem was the imbalance of power, & the North wanted Maine to enter as a free state. The compromise limited the spread of slavery, and for the addition of Missouri, a slave state, Maine was added as a free state to have balanced power. Established the 36’30’ line, prohibiting slavery north of the line, and allowed slavery below the line in the rest of the Louisiana Purchase. HS, as this caused controversy about whether the federal government could limit or allow slavery.