Unit 2: The Civil War (1861-1865)

April 12-13, 1861: Battle of Fort Sumter

• The purpose of the Battle of Fort Sumter was to bring the South back to the Union. P.G.T Beauregard demanded that Charles Anderson should surrender the fort. Anderson refused. Instead, the Confederates attacked the fort and eventually took it. 
• The good news? Nobody died in the battle of Fort Sumter.

February 13, 1861: Virginia Secession (The Virginia Convention of 1861)

• The fall of Fort Sumter unites the Northern states, and volunteers rush to enlist in the Union Army  
• Virginia was unwilling to fight the Southern states, eventually to the point where the state seceded from Union
• Antislavery western counties secede from Virginia
• Three more states secede
• There were now 11 Confederate states after the secession
• Some of the bordering states such as Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri, and Delaware are undecided about the secession of Virginia
• President Abraham Lincoln believes the four slave states are essential to Union success in war, choosing to ignore slavery for a little bit and keeping the four border states in the Union

1861-1865: General Winifred Scott creates the Anaconda Plan for the Union Army

• This was a tactic for attacking the Confederacy: the Union would blockade the Confederate ports, divide the Confederacy in two, and capture Richmond (Virginia’s capital), which was the central point of the Confederacy.
• The Confederacy had its own plan: defence and the invasion of the North in case an event like the battle of Fort Sumter happened.

July 21, 1861: Battle of Bull Run (First Manassas in the South)

• Bull Run was the first full-scale battle of the Civil War. The fierce fight there forced both the North and South to face the sobering reality that the war would be long and bloody.
• Federal forces under General Irvin McDowell attempted to flank Confederate positions by crossing Bull Run but were turned back. The end result of the battle was a Confederate victory and Federal forces retreated to the defences of Washington, DC.

What impact did General George McClellan create during the Civil War?

• George McClellan organized and led the Union army in the Peninsula Campaign in southeastern Virginia from March through July 1862. 
• His reticence to attack the Confederacy with the full force of his army put him at odds with President Abraham Lincoln. He was also criticized for being too cautious in his advance on Richmond.

What impact did General and President Ulysses S. Grant create during the Civil War?

• Ulysses S. Grant led the Union Armies to victory over the Confederacy in the American Civil War.

February 11-15, 1862: The (Five-Day) Battles of Fort Henry and Donaldson

• The Battle of Fort Donelson was the first major Union victory in the Civil War and a major victory for Ulysses S. Grant. The losses of Fort Henry and Fort Donelson were disasters for the Confederates. Kentucky was lost and Tennessee lay wide open to the Yankees.

April 6-7, 1862: The Battle of Shiloh (or the Battle of Pittsburg Landing)

• The fighting took place in southwestern Tennessee, which was part of the war's Western Theater. Two days of fighting produced more losses than in America's three previous wars combined. What was ironic is that this battle took its name from a Methodist meetinghouse in the middle of the arena. The church was called Shiloh, a Hebrew word from the Old Testament that means "place of peace."
• The battle was the costliest engagement of the Civil War up to that point, and its nearly 24,000 casualties made it one of the bloodiest battles in the entire war.

April 25 – May 1, 1862: The Capture of New Orleans/David Farragut

• The capture of New Orleans on April 29, 1862 gave Union forces under Flag Officer David Farragut and Major General Benjamin Franklin Butler control of the Confederacy's largest port on the Mississippi River.
• David Farragut was an accomplished U.S. naval officer, who received great acclaim for his service to the Union during the American Civil War. He commanded the Union blockade of Southern ports, helped capture the Confederate city of New Orleans and provided support for General Ulysses S. Grant.

Ironclad warship: In the Civil War, naval ships called “Ironclads” were created and deployed to the naval battlefields to destroy wooden ships.

General Robert E. Lee: Robert E. Lee commanded the Army of Northern Virginia, the most successful of the Southern armies during the American Civil War, and ultimately commanded all the Confederate armies. As the military leader of the defeated Confederacy, Lee became a symbol of the American South.

November 8, 1861: The Trent Affair

• Charles Wilkes, a U.S. Navy Officer, captured two Confederate envoys aboard the British mail ship, the Trent. Great Britain accused the United States of violating British neutrality, and the incident created a diplomatic crisis between the United States and Great Britain during the Civil War.

September 22, 1862: The Emancipation Proclamation

• President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, as the nation approached its third year of bloody civil war. The proclamation declared "that all persons held as slaves" within the rebellious states "are, and henceforward shall be free." The Emancipation Proclamation confirmed their insistence that the war for the Union must become a war for freedom. It added moral force to the Union cause and strengthened the Union both militarily and politically.

July 11, 1863 – July 16, 1863: Conscription and the Draft Riots

• The New York Draft Riots occurred in July 1863, when the anger of working-class New Yorkers over a new federal draft law during the Civil War sparked five days of some of the bloodiest and most destructive rioting in U.S. history. President Abraham Lincoln diverted several regiments of militia and volunteer troops after the Battle of Gettysburg to control the city.

African American Soldiers in the Civil War

• On March 13, 1865, with the main Rebel armies facing long odds against much larger Union armies, the Confederacy, in a desperate measure, reluctantly approved the use of Black troops. The situation was bleak for the Confederates in the spring of 1865. Many African-American men wanted to prove their masculinity, some wanted to prove their equality to white men, and many wanted to fight for the freedom of their people. During the Civil War, black troops were often assigned tough, dirty jobs like digging trenches. Black regiments were commonly issued inferior equipment and were sometimes given inadequate medical treatment in racially segregated hospitals. African-American troops were paid less than white soldiers.

July 1-3, 1863: The Battle of Gettysburg

• The Union had won the Battle of Gettysburg. Though the cautious Meade would be criticized for not pursuing the enemy after Gettysburg, the battle was a crushing defeat for the Confederacy. Union casualties in the battle numbered 23,000, while the Confederates had lost some 28,000 men–more than a third of Lee's army.

November 19, 1863: Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address

• President Abraham Lincoln invoked the principles of human equality contained in the Declaration of Independence and connected the sacrifices of the Civil War with the desire for “a new birth of freedom,” as well as the all-important preservation of the Union created in 1776 and its ideal of self-government. The main message of the Gettysburg Address is that ideals are worth dying for and that it is up to the living to carry on the work of those who died to protect ideals. The ideals of equality and freedom are the bedrock of the United States as a nation.

May 18 - July 4, 1863: The Siege of Vicksburg

• Grant hoped to secure control of the Mississippi River for the Union. By having control of the river, Union forces would split the Confederacy in two and control an important route to move men and supplies. The last major Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi River was the city of Vicksburg, Mississippi. The siege turned out to be a great victory for the Union army because it gave control of the Mississippi River to the Union. Around the same time, the Confederate army under General Robert E. Lee was defeated at the Battle of Gettysburg. These two victories marked the major turning point of the Civil War in favor of the Union.

General William Sherman

• Sherman was one of the ablest Union generals in the Civil War. He saw that conflict in its broadest strategic terms, and his “March to the Sea” is generally regarded as the first example of the use of total war in the modern era.

The Election of 1864

• Lincoln's re-election ensured that he would preside over the successful conclusion of the Civil War. Lincoln's victory made him the first president to win re-election since Andrew Jackson in 1832, as well as the first Northern president to ever win re-election. Near the end of the American Civil War, incumbent President Abraham Lincoln of the National Union Party easily defeated the Democratic nominee, former General George B. McClellan, by a wide margin of 212–21 in the electoral college, with 55% of the popular vote.

April 9, 1865: Surrender at Appomattox Courthouse

• Trapped by the Federals near Appomattox Court House, Confederate general Robert E. Lee surrendered his army to Union general Ulysses S. Grant, precipitating the capitulation of other Confederate forces and leading to the end of the bloodiest conflict in American history.

Clara Barton: Clara Barton was the founder of the American Red Cross. Barton risked her life to bring supplies and support to soldiers in the field during the Civil War. She founded the company in 1881, at age 59, and led it for the next 23 years. Her understanding of the ways she could provide help to people in distress guided her throughout her life. 

Camp Sumter, The Andersonville Prison

• The largest and most famous of 150 military prisons of the Civil War, Camp Sumter, commonly known as Andersonville, was the deadliest landscape of the Civil War. Of the 45,000 Union soldiers imprisoned here, nearly 13,000 died. During the summer of 1864, Union prisoners suffered greatly from hunger, exposure and disease. Within seven months, about a third had died from dysentery and scurvy; they were buried in mass graves, the standard practice for Confederate prison authorities at Andersonville. 32 Union soldiers are confirmed to have escaped from Andersonville between February of 1864 and May of 1865. This means that 0.07%, or only one out of every 1,400 prisoners held at Andersonville successfully escaped.

What was the cost of the American Civil War? Also, what consequences came out of this war?)

• During the course of the conflict, the North spent approximately 3.36 billion dollars and the South spent 3.28 billion dollars, for a total of approximately 6.64 billion dollars (or the equivalent to 90 billion today).
• Some negative outcomes from the Civil War was the South's loss of land and crop from the devastated land left behind and the South's hold on to racism. After the Civil War ended and the devastation, the country experienced. Also, the number of soldiers who died during the Civil War, generally estimated at 620,000, is approximately equal to the total of American fatalities in the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Mexican War, the Spanish American War, World War I, World War II, and the Korean War, combined.

The 13th Amendment

• Passed by Congress on January 31, 1865, and ratified on December 6, 1865, the 13th Amendment abolished slavery in the United States.

April 14, 1865: Abraham Lincoln’s Assassination

• As the war drew to a close with the fall of Richmond on April 3, 1865, and Lee's surrender at Appomattox on April 9, there were Southern sympathizers who believed that the Confederacy could be restored. John Wilkes Booth held that belief, and it was the motive behind his plot to murder President Abraham Lincoln.