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The American Civil War
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Election of 1860
The election of Abraham Lincoln for president was the final event that triggered the South's decision to leave the Union. The South warned that if Lincoln was elected president their states would leave. Republicans had an easy lead against the divided Democrats. The populous free states had enough electoral votes to select Abraham as president without needing a single electoral vote from the South. -
Jefferson Davis
Jefferson Davis was elected the President of the Confederate States of America. Davis tried to increase his executive powers during the war, but southern governors resisted attempts at centralization, some holding back men and resource to protect their own states. Davis took charge of the Confederate's war plans, but was unable to find a strategy to stop the larger and stronger, and better organized Union. -
Fort Sumter
The first shot of the Civil War took place at Fort Sumter. The attack on Fort Sumter and its capture after two days of unending pounding united most of the northerners behind a patriotic fight to save the Union. At Fort Sumter, President Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers to put down the "insurrection" in the South, authorized spending for the war, and suspended the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus. -
Winfield Scott and the Anaconda Plan
Winfield Scott, veteran of the 1812 and Mexican wars, devised a three-part strategy for winning a long war. One, use the U.S. navy to blockade the southern ports and thereby cut off essential supplies from reaching the South. Two, divide the Confederacy in two by taking control of the Mississippi River. Three, raise and train an army 500,000 strong to take Richmond. All three parts of Scott's plan were important for Northern victory. -
Battle of Bull Run
The First Battle of Bull Run was the first major battle of the war. 30,000 federal troops marched from Washington, D.C., to attack Confederate forces stationed near Bull Run Creek at Manassas Junction, Virginia. Once the Union forces seemed close to victory, Confederate reinforcements couterattacked. The battle ended the illusion of a short war and also promoted the myth that the Rebels were invincible in battle. -
Thomas Stonewall Jackson
Confederate reinforcements were under General Thomas Stonewall Jackson when they counterattacked and sent the inexperienced Union troops in disorderly and panicky flight back to Washington. He lost an arm when he was accidentally shot at the Battle of Chancellorsville on May 2, 1863. Jackson died of complications from pneumonia on May 10, 1863. -
Ulysses S. Grant
Ulysses S. Grant was the 18th President of the United States, and a West Point graduate. He was the commander for the North's campaign for control of the Mississippi River. Grant used a combination of gunboats and army maneuvers to capture Fort Henry and Fort Donelson on the Cumberland River. These victories, in which 14,000 Confederates were taken prisoner, opened up Mississippi to Union attack. Grant died on July 23, 1885. -
Monitor vs. Merrimac
The North's hopes of winning the war depended on maximizing its economic and naval advantages by shutting down South's sources of supply, which is why the Anaconda Plan was established. During the Peninsula Campaign, The North's blockade strategy was in trouble by the Confederate ironclad ship, the Merrimac. It could sink and attack Union wooden ships almost at will. Union countered with an ironclad of its own, the Monitor. The Monitor and Merrimac fought a five hour duel which ended in a draw. -
George McClellan
General George B. McClellan was the new commander of the Union army in the East. He insisted that his troops be given a long period of training and discipline before going back into battle. The Peninsula campaign took place when McClellan's army invaded Virginia in March 1862, but the Union army was stopped by the Confederate forces. McClellan died unexpectedly at 58. On October 29, 1885, his final words were, "I feel easy now. Thank you." -
Robert E. Lee
Robert E. Lee was a Confederate general, and emerged as the commander of the South's eastern forces. His forces stopped the Union army by a result of brilliant tactical moves. On September 28, 1870, Lee suffered a stroke leaving him without the ability to speak. Lee died of pneumonia on October 12, 1870 in Lexington, Virginia. -
Battle of Antietam
Following his victory at Bull Run, Lee led his army across the Potomac into enemy territory in Maryland. He hoped a major victory in the North would convince Britain to give official recognition and support to the Confederacy. McClellan had an advange of knowing Lee's battle plan, because a copy was accidentally dropped by a Confederate officer. This battle was the bloodiest single day of combat in the entire war. -
Battle of Fredericksburg
The Battle of Fredericksburg last from December 11-15. Lincoln discovered that a strategy of reckless attack could have even worse consequences that McClellan's strategy. He replaced McClellan with the more aggressive Gerneral Ambrose Burnside. December 1862, a large Union army under Burnside attacked Lee's army at Fredericksburg and suffered immense losses. By the end of 1862, the awful magnitude of the war was all too clear, with no prospect of military victory for either side. -
Emancipation Proclamation
Lincoln used his political power to free slaves and issued a warning that slaves in all states still in rebellion on January 1, 1863 would be "then, thenceforward, and forever free." This proclamation increase the purpose of the war. Now Union armies were fighting against slavery instead of South's secession and rebellion. With each advance of northern troops into the South, more slaves were liberated, and as an added blow to the South, authorized recruitment of freed slaves as Union soldiers. -
Battle of Gettysburg
Lee again took the offensive by leading an army into enemy territory: the Union states of Maryland and Pennsylvania. If he could destroy the Union army or capture a major northern city, Lee hoped to force the North to call for peace. The invading southern army surprised Union units at Gettysburg. Lee's assault on Union lines on the second and third days, including Pickett's charge, proved futile, and destroyed a good part of the Confederate army. -
Battle of Vicksburg
By the spring of 1863, Union forces controlled New Orleans and most of the Mississippi River and surrounding valley. Union artillery bombarded Vicksburg for seven weeks before the Confederates finally surrendered the city. Federal warships now controlled the full length of the Mississippi and cut off Texas, Louisiana, and Arkansas from the rest of the Confederacy. -
Gettysburg Address
Gettysburg Address is one of the best-known speeches in United States history and is by President Abraham Lincoln. In a couple of minutes, Lincoln called forth the principles of human equality, edefined the Civil War as a struggle not merely for the Union, but as "a new birth of freedom," and that would also create a unified nation where states' rights were no longer dominant. -
Sherman's March
General William Tecumseh Sherman was the chief instrument of Grant's aggressive tactics for subduing the South. He led a force of 100,000 men on a campaign of deliberate destruction going clear across Georgia and north into South Carolina. His troops destroyed everything in their path, anything the enemy might use to survive.He marched into Savannah in December and completed his campaign in February 1865 by setting fire to Columbia, the capital of South Carolina and cradle of secession. -
Appomattox Court House
The Confederate government tried to negotiate for peace, but Lincoln would accept nothing short of restoration of the Union and Jefferson Davis nothing less than independence. Lee tried to escape to the mountains but was cut off and forced to surrender to Grant at Appomattox Court House. The Union general treated his longtime enemy with respect and allowed Lee's men to return to their homes with their horses. -
Lincoln's Assassination
At Lincoln's speech, the second inaugural address, he urged that the defeated South be treated benevolently, "with malice toward none; with charity for all." John Wilkes Boothshot and killed the president while he was attending a performance in Ford's Theater in Washington. The loss of Lincoln's leadership was widely mourned, but the extent of the loss was not fully appreciated until the two sections of a reunited country had to cope with the overwhelming problems of postwar Reconstruction.
