5.8 and 5.9: Secession and the Civil War
5.8: Explain the various factors that contributed to the Union victory in the Civil War.
5.9: Explain how Lincoln’s leadership during the Civil War impacted American ideals over the course of the war.
In the last set of notes, we went over the lead-up to the Civil War and the secession of the South and now, we’re going to be talking about the Civil War itself and how it was carried out.
Advantages and Disadvantages
For Union advantages, they had a far greater population than the Confederacy and they also had a large navy, unlike their opponent. They also had control over most of the banks, manufacturing districts, factories, and railroads in the country. They rapidly modernized their productive capacity during this war and future barons of industry such as Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller got their start during this period by manufacturing goods for the war.
For Union disadvantages, they were the ones invading, so they had to deal with attacking a part of the country that they were unfamiliar with. Additionally, they had poor military leadership and they needed to create supply lines as they moved down south during the war.
For Confederate advantages, they were fighting a defensive war, meaning they didn’t need to do anything besides fight off the Union and just wait it out. They also had far more experienced military leaders than the Union such as Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson
For Confederate disadvantages, they had written up a new Constitution that weakened their central power and instead transferred it over to the states. They also had poor transportation systems and a lack of factories to produce war supplies. Their economy was also reliant on tariffs and taxes on exports to gain money, making them vulnerable to naval blockades and embargos.
Riots
But for both sides, they experienced a lot of opposition from their own people that they both had to deal with. For example, the North had to deal with draft riots such as the New York City Draft Riots in 1863. During this time, you could pay money in order to avoid being drafted but only the wealthy could afford this, so the poor working class saw this as unfair discrimination. During these riots, over 120 people were killed in New York City. In contrast, the South faced resistance from states that refused to fund the war effort. Because the Confederacy was built on the principle of states' rights and a decentralized government, many southern states declined to pay the Confederate government’s war tax. Additionally, food shortages and rising bread prices led to bread riots in the southern states during the course of the war.
Timeline
Now, at first, the South won many battles under General Robert E. Lee but as the war went on, northern leaders such as Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman, along with access to more resources, allowed the North to win several key battles and turn the tide of the war in the long run.
One of the first major battles, the First Battle of Bull Run, is pretty important to talk about because up until this battle, the Union was convinced that the war would be short and be over in a few months. In this battle, 30,000 Union troops confronted Confederate troops at Bull Run Creek in Virginia and while they were winning at first, they eventually had to retreat and flee after Confederate reinforcements arrived.
So if you didn’t already know, the Union (the North) won the war. But it was a long war, lasting four years, meaning it wasn’t one-sided and as such, it’s important to go over the advantages and disadvantages for both sides.
Soon after though, the Confederacy began to struggle as they were relying on the fact that other countries, such as Britain and France, would help them with the war due to their reliance on southern cotton for their textile industries. But both countries, instead of helping the Confederacy, switched their cotton sources to India and Egypt and ended up not helping them. Additionally, the Union developed the Anaconda Plan, a strategy in which they would use their navy to block off southern ports and control the Mississippi River in order to split the Confederacy in half. Essentially, their goal was to surround and then suffocate the Confederacy economically.
The Battle of Antietam in September of 1862 was the bloodiest day ever in U.S. history and led Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, an executive order that freed all slaves in the Confederate states and was designed to change the scope of the war from being a war over Confederate secession to being a war over abolition in order to keep the British out of the war, who had just recently also abolished slavery in 1833. Additionally, the Emancipation Proclamation also led to many enslaved people in the South escaping to the North, here some even joined the military to fight against their former enslavers.
Starting in May of 1863, the Siege of Vicksburg allowed the Union to gain control of the Mississippi River and so now, the Confederacy was split in half along the river. After Vicksburg was captured by Grant in July, Sherman was then sent to head eastward and capture Atlanta in Georgia.
In July of 1863, the Battle of Gettysburg continued to keep Europe out of the war and after Robert E. Lee lost a third of his army, the Confederacy was now permanently put on the defensive. Additionally, this would later lead to Lincoln’s famous Gettysburg Address commemorating the soldiers that died in the war.
In September of 1863, Lincoln declared martial law (military rule) in the country and also suspended habeas corpus (the right for prisoners to know what they’re being locked up for) in order to keep border states in the Union. Border states were slave states that were still loyal to the Union and these states were Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, and Delaware. This eventually led to the Supreme Court ruling Ex parte Milligan, which ruled that the use of military tribunals to try civilians is unconstitutional.
In July of 1864, the victory at the Battle of Atlanta led to Lincoln’s re-election a few months later in the Election of 1864, in which he narrowly beat the Democratic candidate, former General George B. McClellan, whose election campaign was based on opposition to the war, the draft, and Lincoln’s aggressive tactics.
Starting in November of 1864, Sherman’s March to the Sea was a campaign through the state of Georgia in which William Tecumseh Sherman led his troops from Atlanta to the Port of Savannah and enacted a scorched-earth policy, destroying everything in their path, including infrastructure, fields, farms, crops, railroads, and houses.
Finally, on April 9, 1865, Robert E. Lee’s army ran out of resources and was exhausted against Ulysses S. Grant’s army and this led to his surrendering at the Appomattox Courthouse, ending the Civil War.
