HISTORY
When the United States were formed in 1776, the founders were unable to agree on several issues. The most controversial subjects included slavery and state sovereignty. Many from the Southern states favored slavery and state sovereignty, while many from the Northern states favored centralized government and were anti-slavery. The founders were unable to find common ground on these topics during the revolutionary days of the country's birth, and so, in the interest of winning their war of independence and establishing their fledgling country, they left these issues for future generations to resolve.
1861
For more than eighty years, these hotbed topics were avoided as much as possible. Approaching them politically brought hot tempers and little achievement. As a result, the Southern states continued to build upon their agrarian, slave owning culture that valued the separation of states from the federal government, while the North built upon an urban, industrialized culture that valued centralized government. The resulting polarization pulled the two civilizations apart to the brink of collapse.
The pressure boiled over when western expansion brought up the question of how the new states would be ruled. At the center of the debate was whether they would be slave states or free states. The states would be allowed to choose for themselves, so people from both belief systems swarmed the next state expected to join, Kansas, to encourage the residents to join their cause; sometimes at the point of a knife or the end of a gun.
When Lincoln refused to remove garrisons from several forts in the south, soldiers of the newly formed Confederacy under General Beauregard fired on one of them. These shots on Sumter signaled the beginning of America's Civil War. President Lincoln called on 75,000 volunteers to crush the rebellion. Jefferson Davis, the new president of the Confederacy, made a similar call to arms. The two armies met in late July at a serene railroad juncture known as Manassas, along a creek called Bull Run.
In the 1860 election, a new party called the Republicans ran on an anti-slavery platform of centralized government. Even though their representative for president, Abraham Lincoln, had promised not to change slavery where it currently existed, his name did not appear on the ballot of several Southern states. When he won anyway, hundreds of thousands of Southerners protested, and secession became a reality.
It began with South Carolina, who seceded on December 20, 1860, followed by Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana in January, 1861, Texas in February, then Virginia, Arkansas, and North Carolina in the spring, and finally, Tennessee in the summer. Lincoln struggled through his early days as president to hold the remaining states together, particularly the border ones, from Missouri, through Kentucky, across the new state of West Virginia, and Maryland, all slave states who determined to remain neutral during the war.
1862
Everyone had expected the war to last only a few months. Both sides thought the other would capitulate after one solid defeat. And both expected to be victorious in that first engagement. The battles at Bull Run in the east, (Manassas to the Confederates,) and Wilson’s Creek in the west, changed that thinking. The Northerners were surprised that the Confederates had so much fight in them, having won both battles, and the Southerners were surprised that the Union did not give up on their goal to reunite the country after two such humiliating defeats in a row. The South was not defeated by a longshot, but even the North, who had lost the battles, was still in a better position than it looked.
For one thing, the Anaconda plan, the strategy to cut the Confederacy off from trading with other countries through a blockade and occasional raids and invasions, was working. Throughout the winter, landing forces took various points along the coast, and riverboats were fitted with iron armor in preparation for a push south along the myriad rivers. For another, every border state fell under their rule.
Despite General Lyon’s death at Wilson’s Creek, the Federals under his command had managed to push the Confederates out of Missouri and hold it. Maryland, which had threatened to leave the Union, was forced into submission by units out of Washington, D.C. Kentucky went to the Northerners when Confederate General Leonidas Polk ignored warnings by state officials to stay out or they would join the other side, and moved his units in to take a relatively unimportant location within the state. Kentucky immediately turned to the Union for help, and they did, sending first a fierce new commander named Ulysses S. Grant. The east also had a hero; a short general who had pushed the Confederates out of western Virginia. Now that region was preparing for statehood, and General George McClellan went to Washington to lead the battered army to victory over the Southern forces.
Regardless of these setbacks, the South had a lot for which to be proud. They had forged a nation through the flames of war, and had held on through their first year against incredible odds. Though outnumbered and out-supplied, they had formed armies that rivaled their superior armed opponents, and other armies throughout the world. They now needed enough victories against that opponent to tire the Union of war so they would ask for an armistace, or to get the sort of European intervention that the revolutionaries had gotten in the 18th century.
As the winter snows thawed, Federal forces began to move against the Confederate states. In the east, McClellan made an amphibius landing onto the Virginia Penninsula with the intent of catching the Confederate army by surprise. But he did it so slowly that they were able to maneuver to defend against him. When the more cautious Confederate general, Joseph E. Johnston, fell in combat and was replaced by Robert E. Lee, the war took a dramatic turn. Lee pushed the Federals off the peninsula, then began a campaign of his own, pressing northward to the old Bull Run battlefield where two forces clashed, and finally climaxing with a battle in Maryland that turned out to be the bloodiest day in American history.
In the west, aggressive Union generals like Grant, McPherson, and Sherman were being outranked by slow and often incompetent superior officers. They made steady progress when allowed to push forward, but it was all going slow as long as cautious generals were at thet top. This gave the initiative to the Confederates, which their commander, Albert Sydney Johnston, gladly took. He gathered all his forces and hit hard at a place called Pittsburg Landing, also known as Shiloh. The result was a new sort of warfare, one with unspeakable slaughter, which the nation would have to get used to as it trudged through its second year of war.
Throughout 1862, the war continued to escalate until it reached epic proportions. Both sides instituted a draft system, enlisting most of the men of fighting age, and sometimes those a little older and younger. From Shiloh to Fredericksburg, the thousand mile front exploded in battle after battle, each bigger, and with more casualties than before. Hundreds of thousands of men now made war on each other across the prairies, woods, and hills of America, and tens of thousands died in each battle. With ever-improving modern weapons utilized with outdated tactics, the war was dwarfing most others, including the Napoleonic wars at the beginning of the century.
In the east, where the capitals were a mere 100 miles apart, Robert E. Lee and his dream team of some of the best generals in the country overcame incredible odds. They had been beating back the vastly larger Army of the Potomac in battle after battle. Like a master fencing match, they parried the blows of two invading armies, then lunged forward into Maryland, striking a blow right to the face of the Union. Then, to end the year, they fortified their position and decimated the Union army when it came at them at Fredericksburg.
Meanwhile, in the west, Federal generals Grant and Rosecrans had been faring better. After the Confederacy angered Kentucky, the state supported the Union, giving them the edge, which they used to invade Tennessee, Grant taking two forts and the capital in the west, and Rosecrans pushing all southward in the east. With the fall of New Orleans and the Trans-Mississippi forces, the days could be numbered for Confederate forces in the west. It would all come down to whether they could hold Vicksburg.
The war had made legends of its generals. Confederate General “Stonewall” Jackson’s valley campaign gave him an almost mythical reputation for speed. Federal General William Sherman in the west, though originally thought to be crazy, was gaining huge admiration because of his foresight; Confederate cavalry commander Nathan Bedford Forrest became known as the “wizard of the saddle,” while his eastern counterpart Stuart had gotten away with literally riding circles around the enemy several times; and generals such as “Fighting Joe” Hooker were being called upon to to save the Union. Some generals, like Pope, Burnside, and Bragg, were getting much worse reputations due to devastating defeats.
1863 began with the very face of the war changing. On the first of the new year, the Emmancipation Proclomation took effect, declaring that all slaves in rebellious states would be freed once those states were conquered. The North now had a new purpose, not just reuniting the country, but ending a crime against humanity. People were mixed, however, on the new direction of the war. Some in the North who would fight for unity would not fight to save a group of people they thought were inferior. Many in the South, who had not joined to preserve slavery now found themselves defending an institution for which they had never benefitted. Most Southern soldiers owned no slaves, and were too poor to ever hope to get any. They were fiercely independent, and joined to create a country, and that’s what they continued to fight for, and die for.
Regardless of the soldiers’ intentions, the Confederate government wasn’t about to free any slaves, but they were willing to free slave owners from the ranks of the armies. Thus it became a “rich man’s war, and a poor man’s fight.” Still, the Southern soldiers fought fiercely, hoping to gain the respect of European powers so they would join in the fight and force the North to recognize their right to exist as a nation. Though England and France admired the armies’ abilities, they were fiercely anti-slavery, and the Emancipation Proclomation did a lot to convince them to stay out.
Throughout 1862, the war continued to escalate until it reached epic proportions. Both sides instituted a draft system, enlisting most of the men of fighting age, and sometimes those a little older and younger. From Shiloh to Fredericksburg, the thousand mile front exploded in battle after battle, each bigger, and with more casualties than before. Hundreds of thousands of men now made war on each other across the prairies, woods, and hills of America, and tens of thousands died in each battle. With ever-improving modern weapons utilized with outdated tactics, the war was dwarfing most others, including the Napoleonic wars at the beginning of the century.
1863
