The American Civil War, 1861–1865

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Civil War Summary: The American Civil War, 1861–1865, as a result of long-standing sectional differences and questions not fully resolved when the United States Constitution was ratified in 1789, primarily of slavery and states’ rights Issue. With the defeat of the Southern Union and the subsequent passage of the XIII, XIV, and XV amendments to the Constitution, the lasting effects of the Civil War included ending slavery in America and consolidating the United States as a single, indivisible nation. definition is included. as compared to a loose collection of independent states.
milestones

This was a war in which America’s first income tax,
first battle between ironclad ships,
the first widespread use of black soldiers and sailors in American service,
The first use of quinine to treat typhoid fever,

America’s First Army was involved. draft, and many others. There were advances in medical treatment, military tactics, and clergy service. During the Civil War, weapons ranged from obsolete flintlocks to state-of-the-art repeaters. During the war, women took on new roles, including running farms and plantations and working as spies; Some disguised as men and fought in battle. All ethnic groups in the country participated in the war, including Irish, Germans, American Indians, Jews, Chinese, Hispanics, etc.

Other names for civil war

Northerners have also called the Civil War “the war to preserve the Union,” the “war of rebellion” (the War of the Southern Rebellion), and “the war to make men free”. Southerners may refer to it as “the war between the kingdoms” or the “war of the northern invasion”. In the decades following the conflict, those who did not wish to upset the adherents of either side called it a “late oblivion”. It is also known as “Mr.” Lincoln’s War” and, less commonly, as “Mr. Davis’s War.”

Army strength and casualties

Between April 1861 and April 1865, an estimated 1.5 million soldiers joined the war on the Union side and about 1.2 million went into Confederate service. An estimated total of 785,000–1,000,000 were killed in action or died of disease. More than twice that number were wounded, but at least lived long enough to be pulled out. Due to missing records (especially on the southern side) and the inability to determine how many combatants died of wounds, drug addiction, or other war-related causes after leaving service, Civil War casualties were calculated properly. cannot be done. An untold number of civilians also died, mainly from the disease, as entire cities became hospitals.

Naval battle

Most naval actions took place on rivers and inlets or ports, and involved the first conflict in history between two ironclad, USS Monitor and CSS Virginia (a captured and converted ship formerly called Merrimack) at Hampton Roads, Virginia, on March 9, 1862. Is. Other actions include the Battles of Memphis (1862), Charleston Harbor (1863), and Mobile Bay (1864), and the naval sieges of Vicksburg in 1862 and again in 1863. The most famous conflict between sea-going warships was a duel. USS Caresurge and CSS Alabama, Cherbourg, France, June 19, 1864. During the war, the Union had a definite advantage in both the number and quality of naval ships.

The beginning of the war between the states

On April 10, 1861, knowing that fresh supplies were being delivered to the Confederate garrison from the north at Fort Sumter in the port of Charleston, South Carolina, Provisional Confederate forces in the city demanded the surrender of the fort. Major Robert Anderson, the commander of the fort, refused. On 12 April, the Sanghis opened fire with cannon. 2:30 pm. The next day, Major Anderson surrendered.

On April 15, Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers to suppress the Southern Rebellion, a move that prompted Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas and North Carolina to reverse themselves and vote in favor of secession. (Most of Virginia’s western section rejected the secession vote and seceded, eventually forming a new, federally-loyal state, West Virginia.)

The United States had always maintained only a small professional army; The nation’s founders feared that a Napoleonic-esque leader might rise up and use a large army to overthrow the government and make himself a dictator. Many graduates of the US Army’s military academy, West Point, resigned their commissions to fight for the South—this was especially true in cavalry, but none of the artillery members “went south.” The Lincoln administration had to rely on large numbers of volunteers from states and territories.

In Richmond, Virginia, Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate States of America, faced a similar problem raising and equipping armies. Neither side expected a long-term war. The volunteers were asked to serve for 90 days. The generally expressed belief on both sides of the Mason–Dixon line was, “One big fight, and it will be over”. The southern people thought that the northern people were too weak and cowardly to fight. Northerners thought that their reliance on slave labor had made Southerners too weak physically and morally to present a serious battlefield threat. Both sides were due for a rude awakening.

North and South Challenges

Winning the war would require Lincoln’s forces and navy to subjugate an area from the east coast to the Rio Grande, from the Mason-Dixon Line to the Gulf of Mexico. To prevent a northern victory, the south would have to defend the same large area, but with a smaller population and less industry than the north might eventually bear. A short war will favor the South, a long war will favor the North.

Events of war

Actions in the war were divided in the Eastern Theater, mainly involving the coasts of Washington, D.C., Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, and North Carolina. Further south on the Atlantic coast was the Lower Seaboard Theatre. The Western Theater began west of the Alleghenies (except West Virginia) and continued up to the Mississippi River, but also included the interior of the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida. Further west events are believed to have taken place in the Trans-Mississippi Theater and the Far West.

First inland conflict 1861

The first inland conflict between significant bodies of soldiers occurred on the morning of June 3, 1861, when 3,000 Union volunteers surprised 800 Confederates at Philippi in (West) Virginia. The affair, which lasted less than half an hour, would have barely qualified as a skirmish later in the war, but Union victories there and subsequent victories in the area boosted the prestige of Major General George B. McClellan, the commander of the Ohio Department. Gave.

The first real fighting took place on July 21, 1861, on the hills around Bull Run Creek outside Manassas, Virginia, about 30 miles south of the northern capital at Washington City (Washington, DC) and about 90 miles north of the Confederate There is a railroad junction in the distance. The capital at Richmond in July, it is known as the First Battle of Bull Run (northern name) or the First Battle of Manassas (southern name). During the war, the north used the name of the battle for the nearest body of water, and the south used the name of the nearest city.

Union forces made progress early in the war, but Confederate reinforcements arrived late in the day from the Shenandoah Valley and drove the Federals away. The ill-fated Union commander, Irwin McDowell, was made the scapegoat and replaced by McClellan, an officer who had a few victories to his credit.

On September 10, a Union victory at Carnifex Ferry in (West) Virginia’s Big Kanawha Valley nearly ended Confederate control in most of the West, although there would be raids and guerrilla warfare. There was a successful naval offensive on North Carolina in August.

The Western Theater saw only minor skirmishes. Kentucky was striving to remain neutral and vowed to take sides against whichever side had moved troops first. It was the Confederacy who felt compelled to establish forts along the Mississippi River and set up camps within the state to prevent any Confederacy attempting to move south.

In Trans-Mississippi, near Springfield, Missouri, the South won a major battle on August 10, 1861, the Battle of Wilson’s Creek, also known as the Battle of Oak Hills, saw some 12,000 Confederates kill 5,500. Defeated and took fewer Union troops. Control of southwestern Missouri, but southerners did not immediately pursue north. The first Confederate general to die in action during the war was Union commander, Nathaniel Lyon. South already in a skirmish at Carrick’s Ford, (West) Virginia Brigadier General Robert S. Garnett and Brigadier General Barnard E.B. had been lost in the First Manassas. Following Wilson’s Creek, Confederate forces won another Missouri victory at the First Battle of Lexington on September 13–20, 1861.

During the fall and winter, both sides increased their ranks, trained troops, and received additional weapons, food and equipment, and horses and mules for the coming year’s campaigns.

Events of 1862

If 1861 had insulted the Americans in the North and South of the belief, it would have been a short war, 1862 showed just how terrible it would cost human lives, beginning with two bloody days at the Battle of Shiloh in Tennessee and Continued through a series of battles. The Battle of Antietam in Virginia and America’s Bloodiest One Day, Maryland.

The Battle of Hampton Roads this year saw the first conflict between ironclad warships. Lincoln announced his Emancipation Proclamation. The South found two heroes: Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, for his Shenandoah Valley campaign, and Robert E. Lee, who commanded the main Confederate army. Lincoln would be hard pressed to find a commander that Lee could not be out of the ordinary. Further south along the Atlantic coast, the Federals occupied territory in North and South Carolina and Georgia, but lost an opportunity to shorten the war when they withdrew at the Battle of Sessionsville, South Carolina.

In the Western Theater, Union forces made deep inroads into Dixie, beginning the year along the Ohio River and ending it under control of central and west Tennessee with outposts in the Mississippi. Even New Orleans was again subject to Stars and Stripes.

Beyond the Mississippi, the initial Union successes in the New Mexico Territory were nullified by the defeat of Glorieta Pass. Texans attacked 50 Unionists in what became known as the Great Hanging in Gainesville and German immigrants trying to leave the state, killing nine wounded after the Battle of Nuesses.

In August, hungry Sioux Indians in Minnesota, angered because they had not received the badly needed payment promised by their treaty, began a rebellion that killed at least 113 white men, women, and children. Three hundred Sioux were sentenced to death by hanging, but Lincoln reduced that number to 38—which is still the number one state in the U.S. The largest mass execution in history.

Antietam and Shiloho

The year 1862 ended—and the new year would begin—with another bloodbath, on the banks of the Stones River outside Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Overall, the scales were still roughly balanced between the two sides in their struggle to restore the union or establish a southern union.

Events of 1863

Despite Robert E. Lee’s resounding victory at the Battle of Chancellorsville, the tide of the war shifted markedly in the Union’s favor in 1863, a battle that cost the life of his courageous lieutenant Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson. In early July, Lee suffered a major defeat at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. The winner, George Gordon Meade, did not pursue the offensive, and the Confederate “Grey Fox” fled to fight another day. The two adversaries met again in November in a confusing, inconclusive case known as the Mine Run campaign.

Battle of Chancellorsville

On April 17, the Army of the Potomac, under another commander, Major General Joseph “Fighting Joe” Hooker, attempted to overtake Lee at Fredericksburg by crossing the Rappahannock and Rapidan Rivers over the city. In response, Lee divided his army at Fredericksburg, leaving part of it to defend the river. On April 30, Hooker and Lee collided in a thicket of woods near a mansion called Chancellorsville called The Wilderness. After a spectacular flank attack that dislocated Hooker’s authority, Lieutenant General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson was mortally wounded by his own men in the dark. He died on 10 May. Lee, learning that the Federals had captured Fredericksburg, redistributed his army and defeated them at Salem Church. Hooker abandoned the campaign and withdrew on the night of 5–6 May. The Battle of Chancellorsville is considered Lee’s most spectacular victory.

Vicksburg, Chickamauga, and Chattanooga

“Confederate Gibraltar,” Vicksburg, Mississippi, fell to Ulysses S. Grant on July 4 after a 47-day siege. The Confederates achieved their biggest victory in the Western Theater at the Battle of Chickamauga in September, but failed to capitalize on it and withdrew from the hills above Chattanooga in late November, opening the way to Atlanta for the Union’s western armies. . Grant was given command of all Western armies, a prelude to an even greater promotion to come the following spring.

1863 was marked by two massacres. In response to raids by Shoshone Indians in the far northwest Idaho region, Colonel Patrick E. American troops under Connor attacked Chief Bear Hunter’s camp on January 29. Many Shoshoni women, children and old men were killed in the Bear River Massacre (genocide at Boa Ogoi) along with the warriors of hunting bears. On August 21, Confederate guerrillas under Captain William C. Quantrill sacked and burned Lawrence, Kansas, a center of pro-Union, anti-slavery Jayhawkers and Redlegs, killing 150–200 men and boys.

Battle of Gettysburg

In mid-June, Lee led his army of Northern Virginia into Maryland and Pennsylvania in his second invasion of the North, hoping to pressurize Virginia fields during the growing season and win a victory on northern soil. His men encountered the Army of the Potomac, now under George Gordon Meade, on July 1 at a crossroads in southeastern Pennsylvania. Captured the city, but failing to take the higher ground around it, Lee attacked the Union flanks the next day. The Battle of the Union Left was particularly costly for both sides, with Little and Big Round Top, Devil’s Den, each missing Orchard and Wheatfield. To the right, the Confederates nearly broke through on the hills of Culp and Cemetery before being driven out. On July 3, Lee made perhaps his greatest mistake of the war, ordering a frontal attack in open ground against the Union Center on Cemetery Ridge. Known as the “Pickett’s Charge” for the commander of the largest Confederate division involved in George Pickett, the attack failed, leaving thousands of Southern soldiers dead and wounded. On Independence Day, a wagon train of the wounded more than 14 miles long began Lee’s return. The same day, July 4, 1863, is often described as the turning point of the Civil War, with the Confederate’s loss of Vicksburg, Mississippi.

This year also saw a unique event in American history. The counties of West Virginia refused to leave the union upon the state’s separation in 1861. On June 20, 1863, West Virginia entered the Union as the 35th state, although the US Constitution requires the permission of a mother state before a new state can be carved out.

In late 1863, both sides still had significant forces, and the Confederates enjoyed good defensive territory in Virginia and northern Georgia. If they could inflict substantial damage on their northern opponents, they could win at the ballot box which they could not do on the battlefield: Lincoln was weak and could be replaced in the 1864 election by a Democrat who made peace with the Union. Will make

1864

Since the start of the war, Lincoln had sought in vain for a general who understood that destroying Confederate forces in Virginia was more important than capturing Richmond, and who would not suffer defeat in the war. He believed that he was given Ulysses S. Grant had found the man who was put in charge of all Union forces in March 1864. The “unconditional surrender” grant proved Lincoln right, but the cost in life led many, including the president’s wife, Mary. , to call the general “the butcher”.

Wild

Following his promotion, Grant aligned himself with the largest army in the north, the Army of the Potomac, while leaving the Conqueror of Gettysburg, George Gordon Meade, in command of that force. On May 2, the Army of the Potomac crossed Virginia’s Rapidan River. Three days later, it was captured by Robert E. of Northern Virginia. Lee’s army collided in a thicket known as a dense forest with underbrush, near the old Chancellorsville battlefield, the site of Lee’s most spectacular victory. This time there was no such clear result. After two days of close bloody battles, Grant maneuvers his forces to overthrow Lee’s authority. Lee anticipated the move, and the two armies reprimanded each other again for two weeks around the Spotsylvania Courthouse in May. Again, Grant shrugged, and Lee again met him at the Battle of North Anna. Grant intended “to fight along this line if it took the whole summer,” and the two armies collided repeatedly, always moving south. At Cold Harbor, Grant made one of the worst mistakes of his career, inflicting 7,000 casualties within 20 minutes, while Lee’s loss was negligible. Eventually, the Federals moved their opponents so close to Richmond and Petersburg—a city essential to the Confederates’ supply line—that Lee had to abandon his ability to maneuver and settle in trench warfare. The sieges of Richmond and Petersburg had begun.

Petersburg and Richmond

On 30 July, the Union detonated a mine under a section of Confederate operations around Petersburg. A slow progress made by a large number of Union soldiers in a 30-foot-deep pit gave the Southerners time to recover. He fired into a densely packed federal; In the end, the fight was a one-on-one. Angered by the explosion and the presence of black soldiers, the Confederates gave no quarter and the Battle of the Crater resulted in 4,000 Union casualties without any profit.

Although most of Lee’s army was tied up in the defense of Richmond and Petersburg, other parts resisted the Union’s progress in the Shenandoah Valley. After a victory at Lynchburg in June, Jubal A. Early took his army of the Valley across the Potomac and marched boldly on the northern capital at Washington, D.C., a desperately delayed action at Monocacy, Maryland on July 9, by a large force under Lew, the future of Ben Hur. Wallace, author of Bought Capital Time to Prepare. When Early attacked Fort Stevens outside the city on July 11–12, the President and Mrs. Lincoln came out to watch the fight. After retiring early to the Shenandoah Valley, Grant orders Philip Sheridan to dump the trash in the valley. On October 9, Early surprised Sheridan’s camps at Cedar Creek near Winchester. Sheridan galloped to the sound of cannons, arriving in time to block the Union route and crush the Confederates, effectively ending Early’s ability to take offensive action to defend the valley.

When Grant went east to his friend and subordinate William Tecumseh Sherman, commanding the Tennessee and Cumberland armies at Chattanooga. While Grant leaned toward Richmond and left his way, Sherman was sliding through the mountains of North Georgia. There, Confederate General Joseph Johnston made brilliant use of the terrain to slow the Confederate advance. After several conflicts followed by maneuvers around Johnston’s defences, Sherman lost patience and ordered a frontal attack on Kennesaw Mountain, which cost 1,000 Confederates compared to 3,000 for Confederacy. But gradually, his army closed in on the railroad center of Atlanta. Finally, on September 2, Sherman’s men entered Atlanta after the Confederate army, now under the command of John Bell Hood, evacuated the city, setting fire to it before leaving.

The capture of Atlanta was one of the most important events of the war. The South’s last remaining hope was that war-weary Northern voters could oust Lincoln from the White House in November’s elections and be replaced by a peace Democrat. The Democrats nominated George B. McClellan, a former commander of the Army of the Potomac, as their candidate. The party made several mistakes during the campaign, and for the first time the North allowed troops to vote in the field. They both contributed to Lincoln winning a second term, but Sherman did not take Atlanta, the prolonged casualty roll from Grant’s overland campaign and the ongoing standoff around the Confederate capital for the Northerners to “give peace a chance”. That might have been enough to persuade. And vote against Lincoln and the war.

Sherman’s March to the Sea

Sherman left Atlanta on November 15 to march towards the sea. Along the way, he intended to “make Georgia howl”, letting his men off the ground and burning everything they could not take with them. He reached Savannah by Christmas, leaving ashes 60 miles wide, ruining the railroad and utter destruction behind him.

In an effort to pull Sherman back to Tennessee, John Bell Hood routed Tennessee’s army through Upper Alabama and struck north of Nashville. Sherman detaches George Thomas and Cumberland’s army to deal with him. In the city of Franklin, Hood ordered frontal attacks that, after five hours of intense fighting, shattered his army; Five generals died. Hood’s reduced force then laid siege to Nashville—the most heavily fortified city in America after Washington, DC. Its remains went back to Tupelo, Mississippi.

In the spring of 1864, Nathan Bedford Forrest began a campaign that reached Paduka, Kentucky on the Ohio River before raging against Confederate installations in West Tennessee. Stories that his men murdered Union soldiers, especially members of the United States Colored Troops captured Fort Pillow, a poorly designed fort on the Mississippi River north of Memphis, believed immediately to the north. Received, but two official inquiries were unable to come to a conclusion as to what had actually happened. At New Johnsonville, Tennessee, Forrest had the distinction of commanding the only cavalry group to defeat gunboats when they sank or were too scared to scuttle four ships.

On August 5 off the Gulf Coast of Alabama, Admiral David G. Farragut entered the Battle of Mobile Bay with 18 ships. Tradition has it that when he was warned about torpedoes (mines) in the bay, he replied, “Damn torpedoes! Forward with superb speed!” After Farragut’s ships defeated the unfinished ironclad CSS Tennessee, Union infantry captured Gaines and Morgan’s forts, sealed off the mouth of the bay, but the city of Mobile remained unscathed.

By the end of 1864, the Sangh was left with nothing but courage and tenacity. With Lincoln’s re-election, there was no longer any viable hope for a negotiated peace. Smoke rising over Georgia and thousands of bodies from the gates of Nashville to Atlanta to Petersburg and Washington said there would be no military victory. North Carolina legislators pressured Jefferson Davis to make peace before his state faces the fate of Georgia but to no avail. The South will fight, no matter what the cost.

1865

February 20, the state capital of Colombia had been captured; The fires destroyed much of the city, but whether they were deliberately carried out by Sherman’s troops or by retreating Confederates, or by mistake by Union soldiers to celebrate with too much wine has long been debated. Sherman’s men continued through North Carolina, setting fire to the pine forests that played a vital role in the state’s economy. Once again what was left of the Confederate forces under the command of Joseph Johnston were too small to stop the juggernaut.

Outside Petersburg, Virginia, Lee launched a costly unsuccessful assault on March 25 against the besieged Fort Steadman. When the Federal under Phil Sheridan captured the intersection of Five Forks, cutting off Lee’s supply line, it withdrew from the Petersburg–Richmond trenches and headed southwest, joining with Johnson coming from the south. are supposed to. Before leaving Richmond, the Confederates set fire to the city. On April 9, at Appomattox Courthouse, after discovering that Federal had beaten him in a supply cache, he handed over the Army of Northern Virginia to Grant. Despite his nickname of “Unconditional Surrender” Grant and his policy of waging total war against the South to end the rebellion, Grant offered generous terms, feeling that this surrender would nearly end the war.

Johnson surrendered to Sherman on April 26 at Bentonville, North Carolina. Sherman extended the terms even more lenient than Grant, but with harsher conditions endured the embarrassment of having to return to Johnston. Between Lee and Johnson’s surrender, an event occurred that diminished the North’s compassion for their arrogant, defeated enemies.

Assassination of Lincoln

On the night of April 14, John Wilkes Booth, a staunch pro-slavery Confederate sympathizer, slipped into the president’s box at Ford’s Theater in Washington and fired a shot in the back of Abraham Lincoln’s head. Lincoln died the next morning, the first US president to be assassinated. All those caught, who were believed to be his co-conspirators in the conspiracy, were hanged, including Mary Surratt, who had the boarding house where the conspirators met.

Jefferson Davis, who had fled Richmond, was captured in Georgia on May 10 and imprisoned for two years at Fort Monroe, Virginia, before being released on $100,000 bond.

One by one, the remaining Confederate forces surrendered. His last army in the field was surrendered by Cherokee Chief Stand Waititi in Indiana Territory (Oklahoma) on June 23.

The last battle

The last land battle, a Confederate victory, occurred May 12–13 at Palmito (or Palmetto) Ranch in South Texas, where word of Lee’s surrender had not yet been received. Across the Atlantic on November 6, 1865, sea raider CSS Shenandoah surrendered to a British captain; If the ship’s crew surrendered to America, they risked hanging as pirates.

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