American Civil War

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American Civil War
American Civil War Montage.jpg
Clockwise from top left: Battle of Stones River; Confederate prisoners of war; Battle of Fort Hindman.
DateApril 12, 1861 – May 10, 1865 (by declaration)[1]
(4 years, 3 weeks and 6 days)
(last shot fired June 22, 1865)
LocationSouthern United States, Northeastern United States, Western United States, Atlantic Ocean
ResultUnion victory
 United States Confederate States
Commanders and leaders
Abraham Lincoln

Edwin M. Stanton
Ulysses S. Grant
William T. Sherman
David Farragut
David D. Porter

and others
Jefferson Davis

Judah P. Benjamin
Robert E. Lee
Joseph E. Johnston
Raphael Semmes
Josiah Tattnall

and others
Casualties and losses
110,000 Army killed in action/dead of wounds [2]
25,000 Army dead in Confederate prisons [3]
2,260 Navy/Marines killed [4]

~ 365,000 total dead[5]
275,200 wounded
72,524 killed in action[5]
~ 260,000 total dead
137,000+ wounded
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American Civil War
American Civil War Montage.jpg
(4 years, 3 weeks and 6 days)
(last shot fired June 22, 1865)
ResultUnion victory
 United States Confederate States
Commanders and leaders
Abraham Lincoln

Edwin M. Stanton
Ulysses S. Grant
William T. Sherman
David Farragut
David D. Porter

and others
Jefferson Davis

Judah P. Benjamin
Robert E. Lee
Joseph E. Johnston
Raphael Semmes
Josiah Tattnall

and others
Casualties and losses
110,000 Army killed in action/dead of wounds [2]
25,000 Army dead in Confederate prisons [3]
2,260 Navy/Marines killed [4]

~ 365,000 total dead[5]
275,200 wounded
72,524 killed in action[5]
~ 260,000 total dead
137,000+ wounded

The American Civil War, also known as the War Between the States, or simply the Civil War in the United States (see naming), was a civil war fought from 1861 to 1865 in the United States after seven Southern slave states declared their secession and formed the Confederate States of America (the "Confederacy" or the "South"). The states that remained in the Union were known as the "Union" or the "North". The war had its origin in the fractious issue of slavery, especially the extension of slavery into the western territories.[6] Foreign powers did not intervene. After four years of bloody combat that left over 600,000 soldiers dead and destroyed much of the South's infrastructure, the Confederacy collapsed, slavery was abolished, and the difficult Reconstruction process of restoring national unity and guaranteeing rights to the freed slaves began.


Hostilities began on April 12, 1861, when Confederate forces fired upon Fort Sumter, a key fort held by Union troops in South Carolina. Lincoln called for each state to provide troops to retake the fort; consequently, four more slave states joined the Confederacy, bringing their total to eleven. The Union soon controlled the border states and established a naval blockade that crippled the southern economy. The Eastern Theater was inconclusive in 1861–62. The autumn 1862 Confederate campaign into Maryland (a Union state) ended with Confederate retreat at the Battle of Antietam, dissuading British intervention.[7] Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which made ending slavery a war goal.[8] To the west, by summer 1862 the Union destroyed the Confederate river navy, then much of their western armies, and the Union siege of Vicksburg split the Confederacy in two at the Mississippi River. In 1863, Robert E. Lee's Confederate incursion north ended at the Battle of Gettysburg. Western successes led to Ulysses S. Grant's command of all Union armies in 1864. In the Western Theater, William T. Sherman drove east to capture Atlanta and marched to the sea, destroying Confederate infrastructure along the way. The Union marshaled the resources and manpower to attack the Confederacy from all directions, and could afford to fight battles of attrition through the Overland Campaign towards Richmond, the Confederate capital. The defending Confederate army failed, leading to Lee's surrender to Grant at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865. All Confederate generals surrendered by that summer.


Causes of secession

The causes of the Civil War were complex and have been controversial since the war began. The issue has been further complicated by historical revisionists, who have tried to offer a variety of reasons for the war.[11] Slavery was the central source of escalating political tension in the 1850s. The Republican Party was determined to prevent any spread of slavery, and many Southern leaders had threatened secession if the Republican candidate, Lincoln, won the 1860 election. After Lincoln had won without carrying a single Southern state, many Southern whites felt that disunion had become their only option, because they felt as if they were losing representation, which hampered their ability to promote pro-slavery acts and policies.[12]


The slavery issue was primarily about whether the system of slavery was an anachronistic evil that was incompatible with Republicanism in the United States, or a state-based property system protected by the Constitution.[13] The strategy of the anti-slavery forces was containment—to stop the expansion and thus put slavery on a path to gradual extinction.[14] To slave holding interests in the South, this strategy was perceived as infringing upon their Constitutional rights.[15] Slavery was being phased out of existence in the North and was fading in the border states and urban areas, but was expanding in highly profitable cotton districts of the south.

A 1863 photo of a whipped slave Gordon, distributed in the North during the war.[16]

Despite compromises in 1820 and 1850, the slavery issues exploded in the 1850s. Causes include controversy over admitting Missouri as a slave state in 1820, the acquisition of Texas as a slave state in 1845 and the status of slavery in western territories won as a result of the Mexican–American War and the resulting Compromise of 1850.[17] Following the U.S. victory over Mexico, Northerners attempted to exclude slavery from conquered territories in the Wilmot Proviso; although it passed the House, it failed in the Senate. Northern (and British) readers recoiled in anger at the horrors of slavery as described in the novel and play Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) by abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe.[18] Irreconcilable disagreements over slavery ended the Whig and Know Nothing political parties, and later split the Democratic Party between North and South, while the new Republican Party angered slavery interests by demanding an end to its expansion. Most observers believed that without expansion slavery would eventually die out; Lincoln argued this in 1845 and 1858.[19]

Meanwhile, the South of the 1850s saw an increasing number of slaves leave the border states through sale, manumission and escape. During this same period, slave-holding border states had more free African-Americans and European immigrants than the lower South, which increased Southern fears that slavery was threatened with rapid extinction in this area.[20] With tobacco and cotton wearing out the soil, the South believed it needed to expand slavery.[21] The Southern states had advocates arguing to reopen the international slave trade to populate territory that was to be newly opened to slavery.[22] Southern demands for a slave code to ensure slavery in the territories repeatedly split the Democratic Party between North and South by widening margins.[23]

To settle the dispute over slavery expansion, Abolitionists and proslavery elements sent their partisans into Kansas, both using ballots and bullets. In the 1850s, a miniature civil war in Bleeding Kansas led pro-South Presidents Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan to attempt a forced admission of Kansas as a slave state through vote fraud.[24] The 1857 Congressional rejection of the pro-slavery Lecompton Constitution was the first multi-party solid-North vote, and that solid vote was anti-slavery to support the democratic majority voting in the Kansas Territory.[25] Violence on behalf of Southern honor reached the floor of the Senate in 1856 when a Southern Congressman, Preston Brooks, physically assaulted Republican Senator Charles Sumner when he ridiculed prominent slaveholders as pimps for slavery.[26]

The earlier political party structure failed to make accommodation among sectional differences. Disagreements over slavery caused the Whig and "Know-Nothing" parties to collapse. In 1860, the last national political party, the Democratic Party, split along sectional lines. Anti-slavery Northerners mobilized in 1860 behind moderate Abraham Lincoln because he was most likely to carry the doubtful western states. In 1857, the Supreme Court's Dred Scott decision ended the Congressional compromise for Popular Sovereignty in Kansas. According to the court, slavery in the territories was a property right of any settler, regardless of the majority there. Chief Justice Taney's decision said that slaves were "so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect". The decision overturned the Missouri Compromise which banned slavery in territory north of the 36°30' parallel.[27]

Members of slave-owning planter aristocracy dominated society and politics in the South.

Republicans denounced the Dred Scott decision and promised to overturn it; Abraham Lincoln warned that the next Dred Scott decision could threaten the Northern states with slavery. The Republican party platform called slavery "a national evil", and Lincoln believed it would die a natural death if it were contained.[28] The Democrat Stephen A. Douglas developed the Freeport Doctrine to appeal to North and South. Douglas argued, Congress could not decide either for or against slavery before a territory was settled. Nonetheless, the anti-slavery majority in Kansas could stop slavery with its own local laws if their police laws did not protect slavery introduction.[29] Most 1850 political battles followed the arguments of Lincoln and Douglas, focusing on the issue of slavery expansion in the territories.[30]

But political debate was cut short throughout the South with Northern abolitionist John Brown's 1859 raid at Harpers Ferry Armory in an attempt to incite slave insurrections. The Southern political defense of slavery transformed into widespread expansion of local militias for armed defense of their "peculiar" domestic institution.[31] Lincoln's assessment of the political issue for the 1860 elections was that, "This question of Slavery was more important than any other; indeed, so much more important has it become that no other national question can even get a hearing just at present."[32] The Republicans gained majorities in both House and Senate for the first time since Democrats in the 1856 elections, they were to be seated in numbers which Lincoln might use to govern, a national parliamentary majority even before pro-slavery House and Senate seats vacated.[33] Meanwhile, Southern Vice President, Alexander Stephens, in the Cornerstone Speech, declared the new confederate "Constitution has put at rest forever all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institutions—African slavery as it exists among us—the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution."[34] The Republican administration enacted the Confiscation Acts that set conditions for emancipation of slaves prior to the official proclamation of emancipation.[35] Likewise, Lincoln had previously condemned slavery and called for its "extinction."[36]

Considering the relative weight given to causes of the Civil War by contemporary actors, historians such as Chandra Manning argue that both Union and Confederate fighting soldiers believed slavery to be the cause of the Civil War. Union men mainly believed the war was to bring emancipation to the slaves. Confederates fought to protect southern society, and slavery as an integral part of it.[37] Addressing the causes, Eric Foner would relate a historical context with multidimensional political, social and economic variables. The several causes united in the moment by a consolidating nationalism. A social movement that was individualist, egalitarian and perfectionist grew to a political democratic majority attacking slavery, and slavery's defense in the Southern pre-industrial traditional society brought the two sides to war.[38]

States' rights



Secondly, the South argued that each state had the right to secede—leave the Union—at any time, that the Constitution was a "compact" or agreement among the states. Northerners (including President Buchanan) rejected that notion as opposed to the will of the Founding Fathers who said they were setting up a "perpetual union".[39] Historian James McPherson writes concerning states' rights and other non-slavery explanations:



Status of the states, 1861.
   States that seceded before April 15, 1861
   States that seceded after April 15, 1861
   Union states that permitted slavery
   Union states that banned slavery

Sectionalism refers to the different economies, social structure, customs and political values of the North and South.[41][42] It increased steadily between 1800 and 1860 as the North, which phased slavery out of existence, industrialized, urbanized and built prosperous farms, while the deep South concentrated on plantation agriculture based on slave labor, together with subsistence farming for the poor whites. The South expanded into rich new lands in the Southwest (from Alabama to Texas).[43]


Fears of slave revolts and abolitionist propaganda made the South militantly hostile to abolitionism.[45][46] Southerners complained that it was the North that was changing, and was prone to new "isms", while the South remained true to historic republican values of the Founding Fathers (many of whom owned slaves, including Washington, Jefferson, and Madison). Lincoln said that Republicans were following the tradition of the framers of the Constitution (including the Northwest Ordinance and the Missouri Compromise) by preventing expansion of slavery.[47]

The issue of accepting slavery (in the guise of rejecting slave-owning bishops and missionaries) split the largest religious denominations (the Methodist, Baptist and Presbyterian churches) into separate Northern and Southern denominations.[48] Industrialization meant that seven European immigrants out of eight settled in the North. The movement of twice as many whites leaving the South for the North as vice versa contributed to the South's defensive-aggressive political behavior.[49]






Slave power and free soil



Territorial crisis

Between 1803 and 1854, the United States achieved a vast expansion of territory through purchase, negotiation, and conquest.[55] Of the states carved out of these territories by 1845, all had entered the union as slave states: Louisiana, Missouri, Arkansas, Florida and Texas, as well as the southern portions of Alabama and Mississippi.[56] And with the conquest of northern Mexico, including California, in 1848, slaveholding interests looked forward to the institution flourishing in these lands as well. Southerners also anticipated garnering slaves and slave states in Cuba and Central America.[57][58] Northern free soil interests vigorously sought to curtail any further expansion of slave soil. It was these territorial disputes that the proslavery and antislavery forces collided over.[59][60]

The existence of slavery in the southern states was far less politically polarizing than the explosive question of the territorial expansion of the institution westward.[61] Moreover, Americans were informed by two well-established readings of the Constitution regarding human bondage: first, that the slave states had complete autonomy over the institution within their boundaries, and second, that the domestic slave trade – trade among the states – was immune to federal interference.[62][63] The only feasible strategy available to attack slavery was to restrict its expansion into the new territories.[64] Slaveholding interests fully grasped the danger that this strategy posed to them.[65][66] Both the South and the North drew the same conclusion: "The power to decide the question of slavery for the territories was the power to determine the future of slavery itself."[67][68]


By 1860, four doctrines had emerged to answer the question of federal control in the territories, and they all claimed to be sanctioned by the Constitution, implicitly or explicitly.[69] Two of the "conservative" doctrines emphasized the written text and historical precedents of the founding document (specifically, the Northwest Ordinance and the Missouri Compromise), while the other two doctrines developed arguments that transcended the Constitution.[70]

The first of these "conservative" theories, represented by the Constitutional Union Party, argued that the historical designation of free and slave apportionments in territories should become a Constitutional mandate. The Crittenden Compromise of 1860 was an expression of this view.[71]

The second doctrine of Congressional preeminence, championed by Abraham Lincoln and the Republican Party, insisted that the Constitution did not bind legislators to a policy of balance – that slavery could be excluded altogether in a territory at the discretion of Congress [71][72] – with one caveat: the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment must apply. In other words, Congress could restrict human bondage, but never establish it.[70] The Wilmot Proviso announced this position in 1846.[71]

Of the two doctrines that rejected federal authority, one was articulated by northern Democrat of Illinois Senator Stephen A. Douglas, and the other by southern Democratic Senator Jefferson Davis of Mississippi and Vice-President John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky.[70]

Douglas proclaimed the doctrine of territorial or "popular" sovereignty, which declared that the settlers in a territory had the same rights as states in the Union to establish or disestablish slavery – a purely local matter.[70] Congress, having created the territory, was barred, according to Douglas, from exercising any authority in domestic matters. To do so would violate historic traditions of self-government, implicit in the US Constitution.[73] The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 legislated this doctrine.

The fourth in this quartet is the theory of state sovereignty ("states' rights"),[73] also known as the "Calhoun doctrine",[74] named after the South Carolinian political theorist and statesman John C. Calhoun.[75] Rejecting the arguments for federal authority or self-government, state sovereignty would empower states to promote the expansion of slavery as part of the Federal Union under the US Constitution – and not merely as an argument for secession.[76][77] The basic premise was that all authority regarding matters of slavery in the territories resided in each state. The role of the federal government was merely to enable the implementation of state laws when residents of the states entered the territories.[78] The Calhoun doctrine asserted that the federal government in the territories was only the agent of the several sovereign states, and hence incapable of forbidding the bringing into any territory of anything that was legal property in any state. State sovereignty, in other words, gave the laws of the slaveholding states extra-jurisdictional effect.[79]

"States' rights" was an ideology formulated and applied as a means of advancing slave state interests through federal authority.[80] As historian Thomas L. Krannawitter points out, "[T]he Southern demand for federal slave protection represented a demand for an unprecedented expansion of federal power." [81][82]


National elections


Nationalism and honor

Abraham Lincoln
16th U.S. President (1861–1865)

Nationalism was a powerful force in the early 19th century, with famous spokesmen such as Andrew Jackson and Daniel Webster. While practically all Northerners supported the Union, Southerners were split between those loyal to the entire United States (called "unionists") and those loyal primarily to the southern region and then the Confederacy.[84] C. Vann Woodward said of the latter group, "A great slave society ... had grown up and miraculously flourished in the heart of a thoroughly bourgeois and partly puritanical republic. It had renounced its bourgeois origins and elaborated and painfully rationalized its institutional, legal, metaphysical, and religious defenses ... When the crisis came it chose to fight. It proved to be the death struggle of a society, which went down in ruins."[85] Perceived insults to Southern collective honor included the enormous popularity of Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852)[86] and the actions of abolitionist John Brown in trying to incite a slave rebellion in 1859.[87]


Lincoln's election


Secession and war begins

Resolves and developments

Secession of South Carolina


Secession winter



States align

Confederate states

Jefferson Davis, President of Confederacy (1861–1865)



Among the ordinances of secession passed by the individual states, those of three – Texas, Alabama, and Virginia – specifically mentioned the plight of the 'slaveholding states' at the hands of northern abolitionists. The rest make no mention of the slavery issue, and are often brief announcements of the dissolution of ties by the legislatures,[94] however at least four states – South Carolina,[95] Mississippi,[96] Georgia,[97] and Texas[98] – also passed lengthy and detailed explanations of their causes for secession, all of which laid the blame squarely on the influence over the northern states of the movement to abolish slavery, something regarded as a Constitutional right by the slaveholding states.[99]

Union states



Border states



The Union: blue, yellow (slave);
The Confederacy: brown
*territories in light shades; control of Confederate territories disputed



After Virginia's secession, a Unionist government in Wheeling asked 48 counties to vote on an ordinance to create a new state on October 24, 1861. A voter turnout of 34% approved the statehood bill (96% approving).[106] The inclusion of 24 secessionist counties[107] in the state and the ensuing guerrilla war[108] engaged about 40,000 Federal troops for much of the war.[109] Congress admitted West Virginia to the Union on June 20, 1863. West Virginia provided about 20,000–22,000 soldiers to both the Confederacy and the Union.[110]

A Unionist secession attempt occurred in East Tennessee, but was suppressed by the Confederacy, which arrested over 3,000 men suspected of being loyal to the Union. They were held without trial.[111]

Beginning the war

Lincoln's victory in the presidential election of 1860 triggered South Carolina's declaration of secession from the Union in December, and six more states did so by February 1861. A pre-war February Peace Conference of 1861 met in Washington, Lincoln sneaking into town to stay in the Conference's hotel its last three days. The attempt failed at resolving the crisis, but the remaining eight slave states rejected pleas to join the Confederacy following a two-to-one no-vote in Virginia's First Secessionist Convention on April 4, 1861.[112]

Lincoln's policy

Since December, secessionists with and without state forces had seized Federal Court Houses, U.S. Treasury mints and post offices. Southern governors ordered militia mobilization, seized most of the federal forts and cannon within their boundaries and U.S. armories of infantry weapons. The governors in big-state Republican strongholds of Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania quietly began buying weapons and training militia units themselves.[113] President Buchanan protested seizure of Federal property, but made no military response apart from a failed attempt in January to resupply Fort Sumter using the ship Star of the West, which was fired upon by South Carolina forces and turned back before it reached the fort.[112]


On March 4, 1861, Abraham Lincoln was sworn in as President. In his inaugural address, he argued that the Constitution was a more perfect union than the earlier Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, that it was a binding contract, and called any secession "legally void".[114] He had no intent to invade Southern states, nor did he intend to end slavery where it existed, but said that he would use force to maintain possession of federal property. The government would make no move to recover post offices, and if resisted, mail delivery would end at state lines. Where popular conditions did not allow peaceful enforcement of Federal law, U.S. Marshals and Judges would be withdrawn. No mention was made of bullion lost from U.S. mints in Louisiana, Georgia and North Carolina. In Lincoln's Inaugural, U.S. policy would only collect import duties at its ports, there could be no serious injury to justify revolution in the politics of four years. His speech closed with a plea for restoration of the bonds of union.[115]

The South sent delegations to Washington and offered to pay for the federal properties and enter into a peace treaty with the United States. Lincoln rejected any negotiations with Confederate agents because he claimed the Confederacy was not a legitimate government, and that making any treaty with it would be tantamount to recognition of it as a sovereign government.[116] Secretary of State William Seward who at that time saw himself as the real governor or "prime minister" behind the throne of the inexperienced Lincoln, engaged in unauthorized and indirect negotiations that failed.[116] President Lincoln was determined to hold all remaining Union-occupied forts in the Confederacy, Fort Monroe in Virginia, in Florida, Fort Pickens, Fort Jefferson, and Fort Taylor, and in the cockpit of secession, Charleston, South Carolina's Fort Sumter.

Battle of Fort Sumter


Ft. Sumter was located in the middle of the harbor of Charleston, SC where the U.S. forts garrison had withdrawn to avoid incidents with local militias in the streets of the city. Unlike Buchanan who allowed commanders to relinquish possession to avoid bloodshed, Lincoln required Maj. Anderson to hold on until fired upon. Jefferson Davis ordered the surrender of the fort. Anderson gave a conditional reply which the Confederate government rejected, and Davis ordered P. G. T. Beauregard to attack the fort before a relief expedition could arrive. Troops under Beauregard bombarded Fort Sumter on April 12–13, forcing its capitulation. On April 15, Lincoln's Secretary of War then called on Governors for 75,000 volunteers to recapture the fort and other federal property.[117]

Northerners rallied behind Lincoln's call for all the states to send troops to recapture the forts and to preserve the Union,[118] citing presidential powers given by the Militia Acts of 1792. With the scale of the rebellion apparently small so far, Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers for 90 days.[119] Several Northern governors began to move forces the next day, and Secessionists seized Liberty Arsenal in Liberty, Missouri the next week.[113] Two weeks later, on May 3, 1861, Lincoln called for an additional 42,034 volunteers for a period of three years.[120]


The War

The Civil War was a contest marked by the ferocity and frequency of battle. Over four years, 237 named battles were fought, and many more minor actions and skirmishes. In the scales of world military history, both sides fighting were characterized by their bitter intensity and high casualties. "The American Civil War was to prove one of the most ferocious wars ever fought". Without geographic objectives, the only target for each side was the enemy's soldier.[122]




Union soldiers before Marye's Heights, Second Fredericksburg
Confederate dead overrun at Marye's Heights, reoccupied next day May 4, 1863.


North and South, the draft laws were highly unpopular. An estimated 120,000 men evaded conscription in the North, many of them fleeing to Canada, and another 280,000 Northern soldiers deserted during the war,[129][130] along with at least 100,000 Southerners, or about 10% all together.[131] However, desertion was a very common event in the 19th century; in the peacetime Army about 15% of the soldiers deserted every year.[132] In the South, many men deserted temporarily to take care of their families,[133] then returned to their units.[134] In the North, "bounty jumpers" enlisted to get the generous bonus, deserted, then went back to a second recruiting station under a different name to sign up again for a second bonus; 141 were caught and executed.[135]

Rioters attacking a building during the New York anti-draft riots of 1863

From a tiny frontier force in 1860, in a few years the Union and Confederates armies had grown to be the "largest and most efficient armies in the world". European observers at the time dismissed them as amateur and unprofessional, but British historian John Keegan's assessment is that each outmatched the French, Prussian and Russian armies of the time, and but for the Atlantic, would have threatened any of them with defeat.[136]


Perman and Taylor (2010) say that historians are of two minds on why millions of men seemed so eager to fight, suffer and die over four years:

"Some historians emphasize that Civil War soldiers were driven by political ideology, holding firm beliefs about the importance of liberty, Union, or state rights, or about the need to protect or to destroy slavery. Others point to less overtly political reasons to fight, such as the defense of one's home and family, or the honor and brotherhood to be preserved when fighting alongside other men. Most historians agree that no matter what a soldier thought about when he went into the war, the experience of combat affected him profoundly and sometimes altered his reasons for continuing the fight."[137]

Naval war

The small U.S. Navy of 1861 was rapidly enlarged to 6,000 officers and 45,000 men in 1865, with 671 vessels, having a tonnage of 510,396.[138][139] Its mission was to blockade Confederate ports, take control of the river system, defend against Confederate raiders on the high seas, and be ready for a possible war with the British Royal Navy.[140] Meanwhile, the main riverine war was fought in the West, where a series of major rivers gave access to the Confederate heartland, if the U.S. Navy could take control. In the East, the Navy supplied and moved army forces about, and occasionally shelled Confederate installations.

Union blockade

A cartoon map of the South surrounded by a snake.

By early 1861, General Winfield Scott had devised the Anaconda Plan to win the war with as little bloodshed as possible.[141] Scott argued that a Union blockade of the main ports would weaken the Confederate economy. Lincoln adopted parts of the plan, but he overruled Scott's caution about 90-day volunteers. Public opinion however demanded an immediate attack by the army to capture Richmond.[142]


Modern navy evolves

The Civil War prompted the industrial revolution and subsequently many naval innovations emerged during this time, most notably the advent of the ironclad warship. It began when the Confederacy, knowing they had to meet or match the Union's naval superiority,[144] responded to the Union blockade by building or converting more than 130 vessels, including twenty-six ironclads and floating batteries. Only half of these saw active service. Many were equipped with ram bows, creating "ram fever" among Union squadrons wherever they threatened. But in the face of overwhelming Union superiority and the Union's own ironclad warships, they were unsuccessful.[145]

The Confederacy experimented with a submarine, which did not work well,[146] and with building an ironclad ship, the CSS Virginia, which was based on rebuilding a sunken Union ship, the Merrimac. On its first foray on March 8, 1862, the Virginia decimated the Union's wooden fleet, but the next day the first Union ironclad, the USS Monitor, arrived to challenge it. The Battle of the Ironclads was a draw, but it marks the worldwide transition to ironclad warships.[147]

The Confederacy lost the Virginia when the ship was scuttled to prevent capture, and the Union built many copies of the Monitor. Lacking the technology to build effective warships, the Confederacy attempted to obtain warships from Britain.[148]

Blockade runners

British investors built small, very fast, steam-driven blockade runners that traded arms and luxuries brought in from Britain through Bermuda, Cuba, and the Bahamas in return for high-priced cotton. The ships were so small that only a small amount of cotton went out. When the Union Navy seized a blockade runner, the ship and cargo were condemned as a Prize of war and sold with the proceeds given to the Navy sailors; the captured crewmen were mostly British and they were simply released.[149] The Southern economy nearly collapsed during the war. There were multiple reasons for this: the severe deterioration of food supplies, especially in cities, the failure of Southern railroads, the loss of control of the main rivers, foraging by Northern armies, and the seizure of animals and crops by Confederate armies. Historians agree that the blockade was a major factor in ruining the Confederate economy. However, Wise argues that they provided just enough of a lifeline to allow Lee to continue fighting for additional months, thanks to fresh supplies of 400,000 rifles, lead, blankets, and boots that the homefront economy could no longer supply.[150]

Economic impact

Surdam argues that the blockade was a powerful weapon that eventually ruined the Southern economy, at the cost of very few lives in combat. Practically, the entire Confederate cotton crop was useless (although was sold to Union traders), costing the Confederacy its main source of income. Critical imports were very scarce and the coastal trade was largely ended as well.[151] The measure of the blockade's success was not the few ships that slipped through, but the thousands that never tried it. Merchant ships owned in Europe could not get insurance and were too slow to evade the blockade; they simply stopped calling at Confederate ports.[152]

To fight an offensive war the Confederacy purchased ships from Britain, converted them to warships, and raided American merchants ships in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Insurance rates skyrocketed and the American flag virtually disappeared from international waters. However, the same ships were reflagged with European flags and continued unmolested.[153] After the war, the U.S. demanded that Britain pay for the damage done, and Britain paid the U.S. $15 million in 1871.[154]




Ulysses Grant used river transport and Andrew Foote's gunboats of the Western Flotilla to threaten the Confederacy's "Gilbraltar of the West" at Columbus, Kentucky. Grant was rebuffed at Belmont, but cut off Columbus. The Confederates, lacking their own gunboats, were forced to retreat and the Union took control of western Kentucky in March 1862.[156]

In addition to ocean-going warships coming up the Mississippi, the Union Navy used timberclads, tinclads, and armored gunboats. Shipyards at Cairo, Illinois, and St. Louis built new boats or modified steamboats for action.[157] They took control of the Red, Tennessee, Cumberland, Mississippi, and Ohio rivers after victories at Fort Henry and Fort Donelson, and supplied Grant's forces as he moved into Tennessee. At Shiloh, (Pittsburg Landing) in Tennessee in April 1862, the Confederates made a surprise attack that pushed Union forces against the river as night fell. Overnight, the Navy landed additional reinforcements, and Grant counter-attacked. Grant and the Union won a decisive victory – the first battle with the high casualty rates that would repeat over and over.[158]

Memphis fell to Union forces and became a key base for further advances south along the Mississippi River. In April 1862, US Naval forces under Farragut ran past Confederate defenses south of New Orleans. Confederates abandoned the city, which gave the Union a critical anchor in the deep South.[159] Naval forces assisted Grant in his long, complex campaign that resulted in the surrender of Vicksburg in July 1863, and full Union control of the Mississippi soon after.[160]

Eastern theater




Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan took command of the Union Army of the Potomac on July 26 (he was briefly general-in-chief of all the Union armies, but was subsequently relieved of that post in favor of Maj. Gen. Henry W. Halleck), and the war began in earnest in 1862. Upon the strong urging of President Lincoln to begin offensive operations, McClellan attacked Virginia in the spring of 1862 by way of the peninsula between the York River and James River, southeast of Richmond. Although McClellan's army reached the gates of Richmond in the Peninsula Campaign,[163][164][165] Johnston halted his advance at the Battle of Seven Pines, then General Robert E. Lee and top subordinates James Longstreet and Stonewall Jackson[166] defeated McClellan in the Seven Days Battles and forced his retreat. The Northern Virginia Campaign, which included the Second Battle of Bull Run, ended in yet another victory for the South.[167] McClellan resisted General-in-Chief Halleck's orders to send reinforcements to John Pope's Union Army of Virginia, which made it easier for Lee's Confederates to defeat twice the number of combined enemy troops.

Emboldened by Second Bull Run, the Confederacy made its first invasion of the North. General Lee led 45,000 men of the Army of Northern Virginia across the Potomac River into Maryland on September 5. Lincoln then restored Pope's troops to McClellan. McClellan and Lee fought at the Battle of Antietam[166] near Sharpsburg, Maryland, on September 17, 1862, the bloodiest single day in United States military history.[168] Lee's army, checked at last, returned to Virginia before McClellan could destroy it. Antietam is considered a Union victory because it halted Lee's invasion of the North and provided an opportunity for Lincoln to announce his Emancipation Proclamation.[169]

When the cautious McClellan failed to follow up on Antietam, he was replaced by Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside. Burnside was soon defeated at the Battle of Fredericksburg[170] on December 13, 1862, when over 12,000 Union soldiers were killed or wounded during repeated futile frontal assaults against Marye's Heights. After the battle, Burnside was replaced by Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker.

Hooker, too, proved unable to defeat Lee's army; despite outnumbering the Confederates by more than two to one, he was humiliated in the Battle of Chancellorsville[171] in May 1863. Gen. Stonewall Jackson was mortally wounded by his own men during the battle and subsequently died of complications. Gen. Hooker was replaced by Maj. Gen. George Meade during Lee's second invasion of the North, in June. Meade defeated Lee at the Battle of Gettysburg[172] (July 1 to 3, 1863). This was the bloodiest battle of the war, and has been called the war's turning point. Pickett's Charge on July 3 is often considered the high-water mark of the Confederacy because it signaled the collapse of serious Confederate threats of victory. Lee's army suffered 28,000 casualties (versus Meade's 23,000).[173] However, Lincoln was angry that Meade failed to intercept Lee's retreat, and after Meade's inconclusive fall campaign, Lincoln turned to the Western Theater for new leadership. At the same time, the Confederate stronghold of Vicksburg surrendered, giving the Union control of the Mississippi River, permanently isolating the western Confederacy, and producing the new leader Lincoln needed, Ulysses S. Grant.

Western theater



The Mississippi was opened to Union traffic to the southern border of Tennessee with the taking of Island No. 10 and New Madrid, Missouri, and then Memphis, Tennessee. In April 1862, the Union Navy captured New Orleans,[175] which allowed Union forces to begin moving up the Mississippi. Only the fortress city of Vicksburg, Mississippi, prevented Union control of the entire river.

General Braxton Bragg's second Confederate invasion of Kentucky ended with a meaningless victory over Maj. Gen. Don Carlos Buell at the Battle of Perryville,[176] although Bragg was forced to end his attempt at invading Kentucky and retreat due to lack of support for the Confederacy in that state. Bragg was narrowly defeated by Maj. Gen. William Rosecrans at the Battle of Stones River[177] in Tennessee.


The Union's key strategist and tactician in the West was Ulysses S. Grant, who won victories at Forts Henry and Donelson (by which the Union seized control of the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers); the Battle of Shiloh;[178] and the Battle of Vicksburg,[179] which cemented Union control of the Mississippi River and is considered one of the turning points of the war. Grant marched to the relief of Rosecrans and defeated Bragg at the Third Battle of Chattanooga,[180] driving Confederate forces out of Tennessee and opening a route to Atlanta and the heart of the Confederacy.



Extensive guerrilla warfare characterized the trans-Mississippi region, as the Confederacy lacked the troops and the logistics to support regular armies that could challenge Union control.[183] Roving Confederate bands such as Quantrill's Raiders terrorized the countryside, striking both military installations and civilian settlements.[184] The "Sons of Liberty" and "Order of the American Knights" attacked pro-Union people, elected officeholders, and unarmed uniformed soldiers. These partisans could not be entirely driven out of the state of Missouri until an entire regular Union infantry division was engaged.

By 1864, these violent activities harmed the nationwide anti-war movement organizing against the re-election of Lincoln. Missouri not only stayed in the Union, Lincoln took 70 percent of the vote for re-election.[185]


After the fall of Vicksburg in July 1863, General Kirby Smith in Texas was informed by Jefferson Davis that he could expect no further help from east of the Mississippi River. Although he lacked resources to beat Union armies, he built up a formidable arsenal at Tyler, along with his own Kirby Smithdom economy, a virtual "independent fiefdom" in Texas, including railroad construction and international smuggling. The Union in turn did not directly engage him.[188] Its 1864 Red River Campaign to take Shreveport, Louisiana was a failure and Texas remained in Confederate hands throughout the war.

End of war

Conquest of Virginia



Union forces in the East attempted to maneuver past Lee and fought several battles during that phase ("Grant's Overland Campaign") of the Eastern campaign. Grant's battles of attrition at the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, and Cold Harbor[190] resulted in heavy Union losses, but forced Lee's Confederates to fall back repeatedly. An attempt to outflank Lee from the south failed under Butler, who was trapped inside the Bermuda Hundred river bend. Grant was tenacious and, despite astonishing losses (over 65,000 casualties in seven weeks),[191] kept pressing Lee's Army of Northern Virginia back to Richmond. He pinned down the Confederate army in the Siege of Petersburg, where the two armies engaged in trench warfare for over nine months.


Meanwhile, Sherman maneuvered from Chattanooga to Atlanta, defeating Confederate Generals Joseph E. Johnston and John Bell Hood along the way. The fall of Atlanta on September 2, 1864, guaranteed the reelection of Lincoln as president.[193] Hood left the Atlanta area to swing around and menace Sherman's supply lines and invade Tennessee in the Franklin-Nashville Campaign.[194] Union Maj. Gen. John Schofield defeated Hood at the Battle of Franklin, and George H. Thomas dealt Hood a massive defeat at the Battle of Nashville, effectively destroying Hood's army.



Confederacy surrenders

Map of Confederate territory losses year by year

Lee surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia on April 9, 1865, at the McLean House in the village of Appomattox Court House.[197] In an untraditional gesture and as a sign of Grant's respect and anticipation of peacefully restoring Confederate states to the Union, Lee was permitted to keep his sword and his horse, Traveller. On April 14, 1865, President Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth, a Southern sympathizer. Lincoln died early the next morning, and Andrew Johnson became president. Meanwhile, Confederate forces across the South surrendered as news of Lee's surrender reached them.[198] President Johnson officially declared a virtual end to the insurrection on May 9, 1865.[1] On June 23, 1865, Cherokee leader Stand Watie was the last Confederate General to surrender his forces.[199]


Europe in the 1860s was more fragmented than it had been since before the American Revolution. France was in a weakened state while Britain was still shocked by its own poor performance in the Crimean War.[200] France was unable or unwilling to support either side without Britain, where popular support remained with the Union though elite opinion was more varied. They were further distracted by Germany and Italy, who were experiencing unification troubles, and by Russia, who was almost unflinching in their support for the Union.[200][201]

Though the Confederacy hoped that Britain and France would join them against the Union, this was never likely, and so they instead tried to bring Britain and France in as mediators.[200][201] The Union, under Lincoln and Secretary of State William H. Seward worked to block this, and threatened war if any country officially recognized the existence of the Confederate States of America. In 1861, Southerners voluntarily embargoed cotton shipments, hoping to start an economic depression in Europe that would force Britain to enter the war in order to get cotton but this did not work.[202] Worse, Europe developed other cotton suppliers, which they found superior, hindering the South's recovery after the war.



Charles Francis Adams proved particularly adept as minister to Britain for the U.S. and Britain was reluctant to boldly challenge the blockade. The Confederacy purchased several warships from commercial ship builders in Britain. The most famous, the CSS Alabama, did considerable damage and led to serious postwar disputes. However, public opinion against slavery created a political liability for European politicians, especially in Britain (which had abolished slavery in her its colonies in 1834).[204]



Victory and aftermath

Results and costs

The causes of the war, the reasons for its outcome, and even the name of the war itself are subjects of lingering contention today. There is much less dispute about the results. Confederate nationalism died. American nationalism triumphed. The North and West grew rich while the once-rich South became poor for a century. The national political power of the slaveowners and rich southerners ended. Historians are less sure about the results of the postwar Reconstruction, especially regarding the second class citizenship of the Freedmen and their poverty. The Freedmen did indeed get their freedom, their citizenship, and control of their lives, their families and their churches.


Historians have debated whether the Confederacy could have won the war. Most scholars, such as James McPherson, argue that Confederate victory was at least possible.[206] McPherson argues that the North's advantage in population and resources made Northern victory likely but not guaranteed. He also argues that if the Confederacy had fought using unconventional tactics, they would have more easily been able to hold out long enough to exhaust the Union.[207]

Comparison of Union and CSA, 1860–1864[208]
Population186022,100,000 (71%)9,100,000 (29%)
186428,800,000 (90%)[209]3,000,000 (10%)[210]
Free186021,700,000 (81%)5,600,000 (19%)
Slave1860400,000 (11%)3,500,000 (89%)
1864negligible1,900,000 [211]
Soldiers1860–642,100,000 (67%)1,064,000 (33%)
Railroad miles186021,800 (71%)8,800 (29%)
186429,100 (98%) [212]negligible
Arms production186097%3%
Cotton bales1860negligible4,500,000


Many scholars argue that the Union held an insurmountable long-term advantage over the Confederacy in terms of industrial strength and population. Confederate actions, they argue, only delayed defeat.[214][215][216] Civil War historian Shelby Foote expressed this view succinctly: "I think that the North fought that war with one hand behind its back ... If there had been more Southern victories, and a lot more, the North simply would have brought that other hand out from behind its back. I don't think the South ever had a chance to win that War."[217]




The war produced about 1,030,000 casualties (3% of the population), including about 620,000 soldier deaths—two-thirds by disease, and 50,000 civilians.[219] Binghamton University historian J. David Hacker believes the number of soldier deaths was approximately 750,000, 20% higher than traditionally estimated, and possibly as high as 850,000.[220][221] The war accounted for roughly as many American deaths as all American deaths in other U.S. wars combined.[222]

One in thirteen veterans were amputees
Remains of both sides were reinterred
National cemetery in Andersonville GA

Based on 1860 census figures, 8% of all white males aged 13 to 43 died in the war, including 6% in the North and 18% in the South.[223][224] About 56,000 soldiers died in prison camps during the War.[225] An estimated 60,000 men lost limbs in the war.[226]



The war destroyed much of the wealth that had existed in the South. All accumulated investment Confederate bonds was forfeit; most banks and railroads were bankrupt. Income per person in the South dropped to less than 40% of that of the North, a condition which lasted until well into the 20th century. Southern influence in the US federal government, previously considerable, was greatly diminished until the latter half of the 20th century.[227] The full restoration of the Union was the work of a highly contentious postwar era known as Reconstruction.


Issue of Slavery During the War

While not all Southerners saw themselves as fighting to preserve slavery, most of the officers and over a third of the rank and file in Lee's army had close family ties to slavery. To Northerners, in contrast, the motivation was primarily to preserve the Union, not to abolish slavery.[228] Abraham Lincoln consistently made preserving the Union the central goal of the war, though he increasingly saw slavery as a crucial issue and made ending it an additional goal.[229] Lincoln's decision to issue the Emancipation Proclamation angered both Peace Democrats ("Copperheads") and War Democrats, but energized most Republicans.[230] By warning that free blacks would flood the North, Democrats made gains in the 1862 elections, but they did not gain control of Congress. The Republicans' counterargument that slavery was the mainstay of the enemy steadily gained support, with the Democrats losing decisively in the 1863 elections in the northern state of Ohio when they tried to resurrect anti-black sentiment.[231]

Emancipation Proclamation

The Emancipation Proclamation enabled African-Americans, both free blacks and escaped slaves, to join the Union Army.[232] About 190,000 volunteered, further enhancing the numerical advantage the Union armies enjoyed over the Confederates, who did not dare emulate the equivalent manpower source for fear of fundamentally undermining the legitimacy of slavery.[233] During the Civil War, sentiment concerning slaves, enslavement and emancipation in the United States was divided. In 1861, Lincoln worried that premature attempts at emancipation would mean the loss of the border states, and that "to lose Kentucky is nearly the same as to lose the whole game." [234] Copperheads and some War Democrats opposed emancipation, although the latter eventually accepted it as part of total war needed to save the Union.[235]

In 1863, the Union army accepted Freedmen. Here are Black and White teen-aged soldiers.

At first, Lincoln reversed attempts at emancipation by Secretary of War Simon Cameron and Generals John C. Frémont (in Missouri) and David Hunter (in South Carolina, Georgia and Florida) to keep the loyalty of the border states and the War Democrats. Lincoln warned the border states that a more radical type of emancipation would happen if his gradual plan based on compensated emancipation and voluntary colonization was rejected.[236] But only the District of Columbia accepted Lincoln's gradual plan, which was enacted by Congress. When Lincoln told his cabinet about his proposed emancipation proclamation, Seward advised Lincoln to wait for a victory before issuing it, as to do otherwise would seem like "our last shriek on the retreat".[237] Lincoln laid the groundwork for public support in an open letter published letter to abolitionist Horace Greeley's newspaper.[238]

In September 1862, the Battle of Antietam provided this opportunity, and the subsequent War Governors' Conference added support for the proclamation.[239] Lincoln issued his preliminary Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, 1862, and his final Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. In his letter to Albert G. Hodges, Lincoln explained his belief that "If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong ... And yet I have never understood that the Presidency conferred upon me an unrestricted right to act officially upon this judgment and feeling ... I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me." [240]

Lincoln's moderate approach succeeded in inducing border states, War Democrats and emancipated slaves to fight for the Union. The Union-controlled border states (Kentucky, Missouri, Maryland, Delaware and West Virginia) and Union controlled regions around New Orleans, Norfolk and elsewhere, were not covered by the Emancipation Proclamation. All abolished slavery on their own, except Kentucky and Delaware.[241]

Since the Emancipation Proclamation was based on the President's war powers, it only included territory held by Confederates at the time. However, the Proclamation became a symbol of the Union's growing commitment to add emancipation to the Union's definition of liberty.[242] The Emancipation Proclamation greatly reduced the Confederacy's hope of getting aid from Britain or France.[243] By late 1864, Lincoln was playing a leading role in getting Congress to vote for the Thirteenth Amendment, which made emancipation universal and permanent.[244]


Northern teachers traveled into the South to provide education and training for the newly freed population.

Reconstruction began during the war, with the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863 and continued to 1877.[245] It comprised multiple complex methods to resolve the war, the most important of which were the three "Reconstruction Amendments" to the Constitution which remain in effect to the present time: the 13th (1865), the 14th (1868) and the 15th (1870). From the Union perspective, the goals of Reconstruction were to guarantee the Union victory on the battlefield by reuniting the Union; to guarantee a "republican form of government for the ex-Confederate states; and to permanently end slavery—and prevent semi-slavery status.[246]

President Johnson took a lenient approach and saw the achievement of the main war goals as realized in 1865, when each ex-rebel state repudiated secession and ratified the Thirteenth Amendment. Radical Republicans demanded strong proof that Confederate nationalism was dead and the slaves were truly free. They came to the fore after the 1866 elections and undid much of Johnson's work. They used the Army to dissolve Southern state governments and hold new elections with Freedmen voting. The result was a Republican coalition that took power in ten states for varying lengths of time, staying in power with the help of U.S. Army units and black voters. Grant was elected president in 1868 and continued the Radical policies. Meanwhile the Freedmen's Bureau, started by Lincoln in 1865 to help the freed slaves, played a major role in helping the blacks and arranging work for them. In opposition paramilitary groups such as the first Ku Klux Klan used violence to thwart these efforts.[247]

The "Liberal Republicans" argued the war goals had been achieved and Reconstruction should end. They ran a ticket in 1872 but were decisively defeated as Grant was reelected. In 1874, Democrats took control of Congress and opposed any more reconstruction. The disputed 1876 elections were resolved by the Compromise of 1877 which put Republican Rutherford B. Hayes in the White House. He pulled out the last federal troops and the last Republican state governments in the South collapsed, marking the end of Civil War and Reconstruction.[248]

Memory and historiography

Cherokee Confederates reunion in New Orleans, 1903


Beginning in 1961 the U.S. Post Office released Commemorative stamps for five famous battles, each issued on the 100th anniversary of the respective battle.

Civil War commemoration

[252] The American Civil War has been commemorated in many capacities ranging from the reenactment of battles, to statues and memorial halls erected, to films being produced, to stamps and coins with Civil War themes being issued, all of which helped to shape public memory. This varied advent occurred in greater proportions on the 100th and 150th anniversary. [252] Hollywood's take on the war has been especially influential in shaping public memory, as seen in such film classics as Birth of a Nation (1915), Gone with the Wind (1939), and Lincoln (2012).

See also

General reference



Ethnic articles

Topical articles

National articles


  1. ^ a b "IMPORTANT PROCLAMATIONS. – The Belligerent Rights of the Rebels at an End. All Nations Warned Against Harboring Their Privateers. If They Do Their Ships Will be Excluded from Our Ports. Restoration of Law in the State of Virginia. The Machinery of Government to be Put in Motion There.". New York: Retrieved 2012-11-19. 
  2. ^ Fox, William F. Regimental losses in the American Civil War (1889)
  4. ^ Official DOD data
  6. ^ Territories are organized areas that could potentially become states.
  10. ^ "Killing ground: photographs of the Civil War and the changing American landscape". John Huddleston (2002). Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 978-0-8018-6773-6. Retrieved 2012-11-28.
  12. ^ See sections below this introduction, including citations in these four: Freehling, William W., The Road to Disunion: Secessionists Triumphant 1854–1861, pp. 9–24, and Martis, Kenneth C., "The Historical Atlas of Political Parties in the United States Congress, 1789–1989", ISBN 0-02-920170-5, p. 111–115, and Foner, Eric. Politics and Ideology in the Age of the Civil War, Oxford U. Press, 1980 ISBN 0-19-502781-7, p. 18–20, 21–24, and Eskridge, Larry (Jan 29, 2011). "After 150 years, we still ask: Why 'this cruel war'?.". Canton Daily Ledger (Canton, Illinois). Retrieved 2011-01-29.
  13. ^ Fletcher Melvin Green (1930). Constitutional Development in the South Atlantic States, 1776–1860: A Study in the Evolution of Democracy. U. of North Carolina Press. p. 291. 
  14. ^ William Earl Weeks (2013). The New Cambridge History of American Foreign Relations. Cambridge U.P. p. 240. 
  15. ^ Christopher J. Olsen (2002). Political Culture and Secession in Mississippi: Masculinity, Honor, and the Antiparty Tradition, 1830–1860. Oxford University Press. p. 237. 
  16. ^ Miriam Forman-Brunell, Leslie Paris (2010) "The Girls' History and Culture Reader: The Nineteenth Century". University of Illinois Press. p.136. ISBN 978-0-252-07765-4. "Recognized as a searing indictment of slavery, Gordon's portrait was presented as the latest evidence in the abolitionist campaign. ... Abolitionist leaders such as William Lloyd Garrison referred to it repeatedly in their work."
  18. ^ McPherson, "Battle Cry", pp. 88–91. In Gerson, Harriet Beecher Stowe, p. 68; See also Stowe, Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin (1953), p. 39.
  24. ^ Vote fraud in Kansas
  25. ^ Potter, The Impending Crisis, 299–327.
  28. ^ Potter, David. The Impending Crisis, p. 275.
  31. ^ Potter, David. The Impending Crisis, pp. 356–384.
  34. ^ Schott, Thomas E. (1996). Alexander H. Stephens of Georgia: A Biography. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. p. 334. ISBN 978-0-8071-2106-1. 
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  40. ^ James McPherson, This Mighty Scourge, pp. 3–9.
  45. ^ Clement Eaton, Freedom of Thought in the Old South (1940)
  46. ^ John Hope Franklin, The Militant South 1800–1861 (1956).
  51. ^ Hofstadter, Richard (1938). "The Tariff Issue on the Eve of the Civil War". American Historical Review 44 (1): 50–55. JSTOR 1840850. 
  55. ^ Bestor, 1964, pp. 10–11
  56. ^ McPherson, 2007, p. 14.
  57. ^ McPherson, 2007, p. 14.
  58. ^ Stampp, pp. 190–193.
  59. ^ Bestor, 1964, p. 11.
  60. ^ Krannawitter, 2008, pp. 49–50.
  61. ^ McPherson, 2007, pp. 13–14.
  62. ^ Bestor, 1964, pp. 17–18.
  63. ^ Guelzo, pp. 21–22.
  64. ^ Bestor, 1964, p. 15.
  65. ^ Miller, 2008, p. 153.
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  67. ^ Bestor, 1964, p. 19.
  68. ^ McPherson, 2007, p. 16.
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  70. ^ a b c d Bestor, 1964, p. 21
  71. ^ a b c Bestor, 1964, p. 20
  72. ^ Russell, 1966, p. 468–469
  73. ^ a b Bestor, 1964, p. 23
  74. ^ Varon, 2008, p. 58
  75. ^ Russell, 1966, p. 470
  76. ^ Varon, 2008, p. 34
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  78. ^ Bestor, 1964, pp. 23–24
  79. ^ Holt, 2004, pp. 34–35.
  80. ^ McPherson, 2007, p. 7.
  81. ^ Krannawitter, 2008, p. 232.
  82. ^ Gara, 1964, p. 190
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  84. ^ Potter, David M. (1962). "The Historian's Use of Nationalism and Vice Versa". American Historical Review 67 (4): 924–950. JSTOR 1845246. 
  90. ^ David Potter, The Impending Crisis, p. 485.
  91. ^ McPherson, Battle Cry, p. 254.
  92. ^ President James Buchanan, Message of December 8, 1860. Retrieved 2012-11-28.
  93. ^ "Profile Showing the Grades upon the Different Routes Surveyed for the Union Pacific Rail Road Between the Missouri River and the Valley of the Platte River". World Digital Library. 1865. Retrieved 2013-07-16. 
  94. ^ Ordinances of Secession by State. Retrieved 2012-11-28.
  96. ^ The text of A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union. Retrieved 2012-11-28.
  97. ^ The text of Georgia's secession declaration. Retrieved 2012-11-28.
  98. ^ The text of A Declaration of the Causes which Impel the State of Texas to Secede from the Federal Union. Retrieved 2012-11-28.
  99. ^ Declaration of Causes of Secession. Retrieved 2012-11-28.
  103. ^ McPherson, Battle Cry, pp. 284–287.
  109. ^ McPherson, Battle Cry, p. 303.
  112. ^ a b McPherson, Battle Cry, pp. 234–266.
  113. ^ a b Schouler, William. Massachusetts in the Civil War, William Schouler. 1868 republished by Digital Scanning Inc, 2003. Retrieved book cover November 28, 2012
  114. ^ Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address, Monday, March 4, 1861.
  115. ^ Lincoln, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1861.
  117. ^ Bornstein, David (April 14, 2011). "Lincoln's Call to Arms". Archived from the original on 2011-07-13. Retrieved 2011-08-11. 
  118. ^ "Lincoln's Call for Troops". 
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  121. ^ McPherson, Battle Cry, pp. 276–307.
  122. ^ Keegan, "The American Civil War", p.73. Over 10,000 military engagements took place during the war, 40% of them in Virginia and Tennessee. See Gabor Boritt, ed. War Comes Again (1995), p. 247.
  123. ^ "With an actual strength of 1,080 officers and 14,926 enlisted men on June 30, 1860, the Regular Army ..." Civil War Extracts p. 199–221, American Military History.
  124. ^ Coulter, E. Merton, "Confederate States of America", p.308. Accounts of historians differ as to the date and the agency of the Confederate 100,000-man call. See also Matloff, Maurice (1973). "American Military History". U.S. Army and U.S. Government Printing Office, ISBN 0-938289-70-5, ISBN 978-0-938289-70-8. Retrieved 2012-11-28. , "Secession, Sumter, and Standing to Arms", "... on March 6 the new Confederate Executive, Jefferson Davis, called for a 100,000-man volunteer force to serve for twelve months ..." . See also Civil War extracts, American Military History Online. Retrieved 2012-11-28. and Nicolay, J.G. and Hay, John. Abraham Lincoln: a history, vol. 4, p.264. Retrieved 2012-11-28. "Since the organization of the Montgomery government in February, some four different calls for Southern volunteers had been made ... In his message of April 29 to the rebel Congress, Jefferson Davis proposed to organize for instant action an army of 100,000 ..." Coulter reports that Alexander Stephens took this to mean Davis wanted unilateral control of a standing army, and from that moment on became a implacable opponent.
  134. ^ Ella Lonn, Desertion during the Civil War (1928), pp. 205–6.
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  137. ^ Michael Perman and Amy Murrell Taylor, eds. (2010). Major Problems in the Civil War and Reconstruction. Cengage. p. 177. 
  140. ^ Donald L. Canney (1998). Lincoln's Navy: The Ships, Men and Organization, 1861–65. Naval Institute Press. p. ??.
  142. ^ Timothy D. Johnson, Winfield Scott (1998) p. 228
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  144. ^ Nelson, 2005, p. 92
  145. ^ Anderson, By Sea and by river, p. 300
  147. ^ Nelson, 2005, pp. 345
  148. ^ Fuller, 2008, p. 36
  153. ^ Anderson, "By Sea and by river". p.300"
  155. ^ Bern Anderson, By Sea and by river, p. 91.
  157. ^ Myron J. Smith, Tinclads in the Civil War: Union Light-Draught Gunboat Operations on Western Waters, 1862–1865 (2009)
  161. ^ McPherson, Battle Cry, pp. 339–345.
  162. ^ McPherson, Battle Cry, p. 342.
  164. ^ Bruce Catton, Terrible Swift Sword, pp. 263–296.
  165. ^ McPherson, Battle Cry, pp. 424–427.
  166. ^ a b McPherson, Battle Cry, pp. 538–544.
  167. ^ McPherson, Battle Cry, pp. 528–533.
  168. ^ McPherson, Battle Cry, pp. 543–545.
  169. ^ McPherson, Battle Cry, pp. 557–558.
  170. ^ McPherson, Battle Cry, pp. 571–574.
  171. ^ McPherson, Battle Cry, pp. 639–645.
  172. ^ McPherson, Battle Cry, pp. 653–663.
  173. ^ McPherson, Battle Cry, p. 664.
  174. ^ McPherson, Battle Cry, pp. 404–405.
  175. ^ McPherson, Battle Cry, pp. 418–420.
  176. ^ McPherson, Battle Cry, pp. 419–420.
  177. ^ McPherson, Battle Cry, pp. 480–483.
  178. ^ McPherson, Battle Cry, pp. 405–413.
  179. ^ McPherson, Battle Cry, pp. 637–638.
  180. ^ McPherson, Battle Cry, pp. 677–680.
  183. ^ James B. Martin, Third War: Irregular Warfare on the Western Border 1861–1865 (Combat Studies Institute Leavenworth Paper series, number 23, 2012). See also, Michael Fellman, Inside War: The Guerrilla Conflict in Missouri during the Civil War (1989). Missouri alone was the scene of over 1,000 engagements between regular units, and uncounted numbers of guerrilla attacks and raids by informal pro-Confederate bands, especially in the recently settled western counties.
  187. ^ J. Frederick Neet, Jr. "Stand Watie: Confederate General in the Cherokee Nation," Great Plains Journal (1996) 6#1 pp 36–51.
  188. ^ Keegan, "The American Civil War: a military history", p. 220–221
  190. ^ McPherson, Battle Cry, pp. 724–735.
  191. ^ McPherson, Battle Cry, pp. 741–742.
  192. ^ McPherson, Battle Cry, pp. 778–779.
  193. ^ McPherson, Battle Cry, pp. 773–776.
  194. ^ McPherson, Battle Cry, pp. 812–815.
  195. ^ McPherson, Battle Cry, pp. 825–830.
  196. ^ McPherson, Battle Cry, pp. 846–847.
  200. ^ a b c McPherson, Battle Cry, pp. 546–557.
  202. ^ a b McPherson, Battle Cry, p. 386.
  203. ^ Allan Nevins, War for the Union 1862–1863, pp. 263–264.
  206. ^ McPherson, Battle Cry, pp. 855.
  209. ^ "Union population 1864" aggregates 1860 population, average annual immigration 1855–1864, and population governed formerly by CSA per Kenneth Martis source. Contrabands and after the Emancipation Proclamation freedmen, migrating into Union control on the coasts and to the advancing armies, and natural increase are excluded.
  212. ^ Digital History Reader, U.S. Railroad Construction, 1860–1880 Virginia Tech, Retrieved 2012-08-21. "Total Union railroad miles" aggregates existing track reported 1860 @ 21800 plus new construction 1860–1864 @ 5000, plus southern railroads administered by USMRR @ 2300.
  213. ^ McPherson, Battle Cry, pp. 771–772.
  214. ^ Williamson Murray; Alvin Bernstein; MacGregor Knox (1996). The Making of Strategy: Rulers, States, and War. Cambridge U.P. p. 235. 
  217. ^ Ward 1990. p. 272
  218. ^ Fehrenbacher, Don (2004). "Lincoln's Wartime Leadership: The First Hundred Days". University of Illinois. Retrieved 2007-10-16. 
  224. ^ Richard Wightman Fox (2008)."National Life After Death".
  230. ^ McPherson, pp. 506–8
  231. ^ McPherson. p. 686
  238. ^ "Lincoln Letter to Greeley, August 22, 1862 "
  239. ^ Pulling, Sr. Anne Francis. "Images of America: Altoona, 2001, 10.
  240. ^ Lincoln's Letter to A. G. Hodges, April 4, 1864.
  241. ^ Harper, Douglas (2003). "SLAVERY in DELAWARE". Archived from the original on 2007-10-16. Retrieved 2007-10-16. 
  242. ^ " James McPherson, The War that Never Goes Away"
  247. ^ Hans L Trefousse, Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth-Century Egalitarian (2005) pp 161–238


  • Fuller, Howard J (2008). Clad in Iron – The American Civil War and the Challenge of British Naval Power. Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press. p. 409. ISBN 978-1-59114-297-3. 
  • Guelzo, Allen C. Fateful Lightning: A New History of the Civil War and Reconstruction (2012) 593pp; covers 1848–1877 excerpt and text search
  • Keegan, John, The American Civil War: A Military History. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009. ISBN 978-0-307-26343-8.
  • Nelson, James L. (2005). Reign of Iron: The Story of the First Battling Ironclads, the Monitor and the Merrimack. New York: HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-06-052404-3. 
  • Quarstein, John V. (1999). The Battle of the Ironclads. Arcadia Publishing. p. 128. ISBN 978-0-7385-0113-0. 
  • Russell, Robert R. (1966). "Constitutional Doctrines with Regard to Slavery in Territories". Journal of Southern History 32 (4): 466–486. doi:10.2307/2204926. JSTOR 2204926. 
  • Varon, Elizabeth R. Disunion!: The Coming of the American Civil War, 1789–1859. Chapel Hill [N.C.]: University of North Carolina Press, 2008.



Reference books, historiography and bibliographies

  • Woods, Michael E., "What Twenty-First-Century Historians Have Said about the Causes of Disunion: A Civil War Sesquicentennial Review of the Recent Literature," Journal of American History 99 (Sept. 2012), 415–39.

Primary sources

  • John S. Jackman; William C. Davis (March 1, 1997 – Vol. 58, No. Aug 3, 1992). Diary of a Confederate Soldier: John S. Jackman of the Orphan Brigade. University of South Carolina Press. ISBN 978-1-57003-164-9.  JSTOR online edition

Further reading

External links