The Civil War or American Civil War was the military conflict
that lasted from 1861 to 1865 between the southern states that
had seceded from the United States and joined the Confederacy,
and the northern states that remained in the Union (Union
states).
The cause was a deep economic, social and
political divide between the northern and southern states, which
was particularly evident in the slavery issue and had been
growing ever deeper since around 1830. In response to the
election of the moderate abolitionist Abraham Lincoln as US
President, most of the southern states seceded from the Union in
the winter of 1860/61. The war began on April 12, 1861 with the
bombardment of Fort Sumter by the Confederates. It essentially
ended with the surrender of the Confederate Army of Northern
Virginia at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865. The last
Confederate troops surrendered in Indian Territory on June 23,
1865. After the North's victory, the Southern states were
readmitted to the Union as part of Reconstruction.
The
most important consequences of the war were the final abolition
of slavery in the USA, the strengthening of central power
vis-à-vis the states, and the increased orientation of the
country as an industrial state.
The Civil War permanently consolidated and united the United States
and paved the way for its rise to great power. Due to its totalitarian
nature and numerous technical innovations on the battlefield, it is
considered the first modern war in history fought on industrial scale.
It was the most costly conflict ever fought on US soil; more Americans
died in it than in any other war in which the country was involved in
the course of its history. The Civil War is still present in the
collective memory of Americans today, especially in the southern states,
on whose territory the fighting was almost exclusively fought. Numerous
monuments still commemorate battles or military leaders.
At the
beginning of the war, both sides were unclear about how long the war
could last and what means and strategies should be used to fight it.
Only after the first Battle of Manassas, which was victorious for the
South, did the North seriously begin to set up and equip a powerful
army. The leaders in the North had become aware that the war would not
end quickly.
After the battle, the South attempted to politically
and militarily integrate the border states of Kentucky and Missouri into
its territory. These attempts were abandoned at the end of 1862 without
success.
In the West, the Northern states succeeded in conquering
large parts of Louisiana, Tennessee and Arkansas as early as the
beginning of 1862. In the East, the Union initially attempted to take
the Confederacy's capital, Richmond, Virginia, with the Peninsula
Campaign. This failed because of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. He
used his success in the Seven Days Battle and his victory in the Second
Battle of Manassas to invade Maryland with his Northern Virginia Army.
This first invasion of the North ended with the Battle of Antietam.
After this battle, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which
declared all slaves in the rebellious states free from January 1, 1863,
but not those in the slave states that remained with the Union.
Nevertheless, the North's resulting moral advantage made it impossible
for Great Britain and France to intervene on behalf of the South.
Lincoln's primary war goal remained the restoration of the Union.
In 1863, the Northern states occupied most of Tennessee and captured
Vicksburg, Mississippi, the last Confederate bastion on the Mississippi.
This divided the Confederacy, as the Union controlled the entire course
of the river. In the east, General Lee achieved some spectacular
successes in the spring. In order to force the Union to withdraw siege
troops from Vicksburg, establish a military stalemate and force the
North to negotiate a peace, he used his victories to invade Maryland and
Pennsylvania again. This second attempted invasion of Northern territory
failed at the Battle of Gettysburg. The Confederate defeats at Vicksburg
and Gettysburg in July 1863 are considered turning points in the war. At
the end of the year, the front line in the east ran along the
Rappahannock River in Virginia, in the west the Mississippi was firmly
in the hands of the Northern states and after the capture of the
transport hub Chattanooga the way to the Deep South was open. The
conquest of the Mississippi Valley had already begun in 1862 with the
capture of New Orleans, Louisiana and Fort Donelson, Tennessee. The
blockade of the southern ports by the Northern fleet had its first
effects on industry and supplies.
In 1864 President Lincoln
appointed General Ulysses S. Grant, the victor of Vicksburg, as
Commander-in-Chief of the US Army. Grant went on the offensive
simultaneously in the eastern and western theaters of war. The campaign
in the east, which he himself led, ended with great losses and without a
clear result in the trench warfare in front of Petersburg, Virginia. The
Atlanta campaign in the west, commanded by General William T. Sherman,
finally led to the victory that Lincoln urgently needed for his
re-election: the capture of Atlanta. Sherman's subsequent march to the
sea, across Georgia and into the Carolinas, brought war and destruction
to previously untouched areas and threatened Virginia, with its capital
Richmond, from the south.
In 1865, the Confederates made
desperate efforts to avert total defeat, but the economic resources to
supply the army and the population were exhausted - not least due to the
warfare of General Sherman, who was considered an advocate of total war.
The most powerful army of the southern states, the Northern Virginia
Army under General Lee, surrendered to Grant's troops at Appomattox
Court House on April 9. The other southern armies also laid down their
arms by the summer.
With the 13th Amendment to the Constitution,
which was passed by Congress on January 31, 1865, and came into force
after ratification by the states on December 18, 1865, slavery was
finally abolished throughout the entire federal territory. After the end
of the war, the reconstruction and reintegration of the southern states
into the Union followed, the "Reconstruction", which ended in 1877.
After the end of Reconstruction, however, many of its achievements were
reversed by Black Codes and other racially discriminatory laws in the
South. Many of these measures only ended in the 1950s and 1960s as a
result of the civil rights movement. In the long term, the Civil War
meant that the northern states now also took on the cultural leadership
role within the Union. The USA increasingly transformed itself into a
centrally managed, industrially dominated federal state and laid the
foundations for the economic boom of the Gilded Age and its position as
a world power in the 20th century.
Representatives of both sides later denied that the slavery issue was
the reason for the outbreak of the Civil War. However, it was a major
factor in the development of different economic and social systems in
the North and South, which then led to growing political and economic
conflicts that culminated in the Civil War in 1861.
The
differences date back to the founding of the United States. Slavery was
protected by the Constitution where it already existed. In addition,
when determining seats in the House of Representatives and the Electoral
College, the Constitution calculated the number of slaves as
three-fifths of the population. Since only adult white men were entitled
to vote, the southern states thus received a voting weight that was
significantly higher than their share of the electorate.
The
difficult balance between the two sides was repeatedly threatened when a
new state joined the Union. When Missouri and Maine were to be admitted
to the Union in 1820, the representatives agreed on the Missouri
Compromise. According to this, slavery was to be permitted in all new
states south of the Missouri Compromise line, but in principle
prohibited north of it, with the exception of Missouri. The areas east
of the Mississippi continued to be divided into northern and southern
states on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line. Thomas Jefferson feared
that the division of the country by the Missouri Compromise line could
lead to the destruction of the Union.
“[…] this momentous
question, like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with
terror. I considered it at once as the knell of the Union.”
The
balance that the Missouri Compromise had established was again
threatened by the large territorial gains made by the USA in the
Mexican-American War in 1848. Although the Wilmot Proviso in the Senate
failed in an attempt to ban slavery in the territories that Mexico had
ceded to the United States after its defeat in the Mexican-American War,
it quickly became clear that large parts of the area were not
climatically suitable for plantation farming in the style of the
slave-holding states. California joined the Union in 1850 as a free
state. This not only gave the slave-free states a majority of 32 to 30
in the Senate, but also put a stop to the expansion of slavery as far as
the Pacific. In the Compromise of 1850, Senator Henry Clay from Kentucky
once again achieved a compromise: slavery was to be permitted in the
remaining territory that Mexico had ceded in the Treaty of Guadalupe
Hidalgo (the later states of New Mexico and Arizona). In addition, the
Fugitive Slave Act obliged the authorities of the northern states to
transfer escaped slaves to the South. In return, the slave trade was
banned in the District of Columbia.
The conflict escalated again
when it became clear that only Florida in the South would join the
Union, but three more states in the North would join. When the majority
of Congress repealed the Missouri Compromise in 1854 with the
Kansas-Nebraska Act, the conflict escalated: Events that polarized the
nation into North and South occurred more and more frequently. These
included, above all, the open civil war in Kansas, the sensational Dred
Scott ruling of the Supreme Court in 1857, according to which blacks had
no "rights that white people must respect," and the attempt by the
abolitionist John Brown to trigger a slave revolt in 1859 by raiding an
army depot in Harpers Ferry. The question of whether slavery should be
fundamentally permissible for economic reasons or abolished in the long
term for moral and religious reasons was a constant and increasing
source of conflict.
From the South's perspective, however, the
conflict was not just about the slavery issue, but generally about the
rights of the individual states vis-à-vis the federal government.
Proponents of secession argued that the individual states had not given
up their sovereignty by joining the Union and could therefore leave the
USA at any time. In addition, the Union could not dictate a particular
social system to any individual state. Rather, an individual state had
the right to annul a federal law in its territory that violated its
interests (nullification doctrine). If this had not already applied when
the Union was founded, which explicitly guaranteed the right to own
slaves in the Constitution of 1787, the Southern states would never have
joined it, it was now said. In the Southern states' opinion, the
Northern states were therefore continually violating the spirit of the
Constitution by criticizing slavery and by other interference with the
laws of the individual states, thus endangering the existence of the
Union. If the federal government refused to accept the nullification
doctrine, secession would be the only legitimate way out for the state.
Historians such as James M. McPherson point out, however, that
slavery was closely linked to the argument of "states' rights": states'
rights were in fact always more of a means to an end than an actual
principle, and since the end of the nullification crisis, this end was
primarily the preservation of slavery in the South. Brian Holden Reid
makes a similar statement: "Without the problem of serfdom [...] there
would have been no war. [...] The emphasis with which the South
emphasized "states' rights" was essentially just a coded expression for
the defense of slavery."
The Unionists in the northern states
countered the proponents of the nullification doctrine by arguing that a
democratic community could only survive if the principle of majority
decision applied: the minority had no right to renounce its loyalty to
the community if a decision was made democratically and was not in their
interest. Such an approach would ultimately make democracy impossible,
as the minority could always refuse to accept the will of the majority
and threaten secession. Such a right to secession therefore did not
exist in a democracy. By threatening to secede from the United States if
slavery were restricted or a US president they did not like was elected,
the southern states were endangering American democracy as such. This
idea was also the basis of Lincoln's famous Gettysburg Address, in which
he demanded two years after the outbreak of war that "government of the
people, by the people, and for the people, should not perish from the
earth."
As the Southerners and secessionists placed sovereignty
in the individual states, while the Unionists in the North placed it at
the federal level, it became clear that there was disagreement about the
nature of the USA: was it more of a union of states from which one could
secede, or a federal state from which this was not possible? Only the
outcome of the Civil War decided this dispute in favor of the Unionists
and defined the USA as a federal state.
In fact, there was no
majority in the Northern states for the abolition of slavery. The
abolitionists remained in the minority even during the war. The Unionist
politicians in the North therefore always officially took the position
that it was not about slavery, but about democracy and the preservation
of the United States. Abraham Lincoln, the Republican Party's
presidential candidate for the 1860 election year, did not advocate the
immediate abolition of slavery, but rather its consistent restriction to
the states in which it already existed. The extent to which polarization
had already progressed at that time is shown by the fact that Lincoln
was not even on the ballot in ten southern states.
While industrialization and the associated steep increase in wage
labor productivity progressed in the northern states, the focus of the
southern states' economy, especially that of the deep south, remained on
the production of cheap raw materials, where price pressure favored
slavery, which was cheaper than wage labor. The north thus offered
immigrants better working conditions, and the general labor shortage
that existed at the time became more pronounced in the south. This led
to the south's dependence on slavery.
A long-standing point of
contention between the north and the south was the federal government's
protective tariff policy, which had led, among other things, to the
greatest constitutional crisis to date, the Nullification Crisis of
1832/33. In some northern states, as a result of the economic crisis of
1857, the belief that higher tariffs could help the domestic economy
survive the crisis re-emerged. This desire for a renewed protective
tariff policy was expressed in the Republican party platform. The
protective tariffs were primarily intended to make cheap imports of
foreign industrial goods more expensive and thus improve sales of
industrial goods produced in the North. However, the agrarian South
hardly produced any industrial goods, but had to import them either from
abroad or from the North. A price increase caused by the protective
tariffs would therefore have hit the South's economy hard. In addition,
the South produced almost two-thirds of all exports in 1860 and feared
that its sales markets could impose similar tariffs. Despite these
conflicting economic interests, the North and South were dependent on
each other for further economic growth. What the South did not export
went to the North, which supplied the inhabitants of the Southern states
with the products of industrial production. In addition to the direct
impact on the economy, tariffs were by far the most important source of
income for the federal government at that time (there was no nationwide
income tax) and while the Southern states were more in favor of a night
watchman state, the North was convinced of the need for state investment
in infrastructure. These measures, known at the time as "internal
improvements", were advocated primarily by Henry Clay, and after the
Southern members of Congress were no longer able to block such advances
during the Civil War, the construction of the transcontinental railroad
was decided in 1863 and completed in 1869 - with low tariffs, as
preferred by the Southern political leadership, this would never have
been possible.
Different societies had developed in the North and
South: the majority of the population in the Northern states consisted
of small farmers in the West and wage workers in the East. There was
also a small middle class and a few long-established and newly rich
upper class residents. The public education system was well developed,
as qualified workers were needed in industry. Four fifths of
industrially manufactured goods were produced in the North, which had
six times as many engineers and twice as many teachers and doctors as
the South. However, access to universities was mostly only available to
the privileged. There were also major differences in mobility: in 1850,
the rail network across the country covered 15,000 kilometers, and in
1860, it was 45,000. Three quarters of these ran in the northern states,
which had the largest rail network in the world.
The South was
home to impoverished white day laborers and farmers, a small middle
class of artisans and small plantation owners with a few slaves, who
were opposed by a small, long-established upper class of large
plantation owners, as well as slaves. 80 percent worked in agriculture.
The public education system remained rudimentary, with three times as
many illiterates as in the North, but members of the upper class were
well educated at private schools. Despite the enormous wealth
differences, there were hardly any tensions within white society in the
South. The ideal of the planter aristocrat and the opposing image of the
slave, who was fundamentally far below a white person because of his
skin color - regardless of how low the individual white person had sunk
- (white supremacy), meant that southerners almost unanimously supported
the institution of slavery.
Another factor that should not be
underestimated was the white people's fear of a freed slave population.
"The horrors of Santo Domingo", where between 3,000 and 5,000 members of
the French colonial power were killed by former slaves after the
revolution in Haiti in 1804, was still in the memory of older people and
was also invoked again and again.
Before the 1860 presidential election, the Democratic Party split
into two wings. The Northern Democrats nominated Senator Stephen A.
Douglas from Illinois, who was moderately critical of slavery, as their
presidential candidate, while the Southern Democrats nominated Vice
President John C. Breckinridge, a clear supporter of slavery. Abraham
Lincoln ran for the Republicans. A fourth party was the Constitutional
Union Party, a platform of former moderate Whigs who did not want to
join the Republicans or any of the Democratic wings. Their candidate was
John Bell. The party attempted to mediate between the North and the
South and adopted the slogan "... the Union as it is, and the
Constitution as it is."
As expected, Breckinridge won all the
electoral votes in the Lower South. In the Upper South, however, he lost
to John Bell, while Douglas was particularly strong in the border
states. The electoral votes from the North went almost entirely to
Lincoln, who thus received 180 votes in the Electoral College, 28 more
than he needed to be elected. Lincoln had repeatedly stressed on the
issue of slavery that the decision on this was a matter for the
individual states, and that a federal government led by him would not
intervene. Nevertheless, secession occurred after his election because
several southern states did not want to accept Lincoln's election
victory. There were about four months between the presidential election
in 1860 and the inauguration of the new president in early 1861. A power
vacuum developed because the incumbent President James Buchanan was not
prepared to take energetic measures to preserve the Union. Within three
months of Abraham Lincoln's election in November 1860, six southern
states seceded from the Union:
South Carolina December 20, 1860
Mississippi January 9, 1861
Florida January 10, 1861
Alabama
January 11, 1861
Georgia January 19, 1861
Louisiana January 26,
1861
These six states, in which plantation farming (peanuts,
sugar cane, tobacco, cotton) using slave labor was the most important
economic factor, founded a union of states independent of the USA on
February 4, 1861, the Confederate States of America (CSA). The
Confederates began the war with the attack on Fort Sumter on April 12,
occupying this and other US military bases on their territory. In
response, Lincoln mobilized the armed forces to recapture the bases.
Four other states subsequently seceded from the Union; Texas had already
seceded in February and joined the Confederacy in March, which now
comprised a total of eleven states.
Texas February 1, 1861 March
2, 1861
Virginia April 17, 1861 May 7, 1861
Arkansas May 6, 1861
May 18, 1861
North Carolina May 20, 1861 May 20, 1861
Tennessee
June 8, 1861 June 8, 1861
Four "slave-holding states" remained in
the Union: Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland and Delaware. In Virginia, the
northwestern counties seceded from Virginia in Wheeling on June 20,
1861, declared their withdrawal from the Union invalid and formed the
"Restored Government of Virginia". The area was admitted to the Union on
June 20, 1863 as the 35th state of West Virginia. These five states
formed the "Border States".
In Delaware, Lincoln's Democratic
opponent Breckinridge received the majority of votes after the
presidential election. On January 3, 1861, the state's representatives
decided against secession.
Breckinridge also won the election in
Maryland. The state parliament rejected secession on April 27, 1861.
When a volunteer regiment from Massachusetts wanted to march through
Baltimore to Washington, D.C., serious unrest and riots broke out with a
secessionist mob. These events, as well as fears of an invasion of the
capital itself, prompted the U.S. government to station troops in
Maryland and declare martial law. Had Maryland left the Union, it would
have been a disaster for the U.S. government, as Washington, D.C. would
have become an isolated exclave between Maryland and Virginia. The
psychological impact on the population could have jeopardized the
achievement of the Union's war goals. Even with Maryland on the Union
side, the capital of the Northern states bordered enemy territory.
Richmond, the capital of the CSA, was only 100 miles away.
Missouri also remained in the Union. Governor Claiborne F. Jackson, who
sympathized with the Confederacy, called up the militia. Union Brigadier
General Nathaniel Lyon attacked him on June 14, 1861, and pursued him
and the remnants of the militia into the southwest corner of the state.
In the resulting vacuum, the elected assembly reconstituted itself and
formed the provisional government, which remained loyal to the Union.
Meanwhile, the secessionists proclaimed Missouri's secession and formed
their own government in the area they controlled. The Confederacy
recognized this on October 30, 1861.
Kentucky declared itself
neutral (Kentucky Declaration of Neutrality). When Southern troops
invaded southern and eastern Kentucky, supporters of the Confederacy
organized an assembly that elected a secessionist governor, George W.
Johnson. However, when Confederate troops occupied the city of Columbus,
public opinion swung back to the Union course. The Confederate
government was deposed and Kentucky remained loyal to the Union.
New Mexico was not yet a state at the time, but merely a territory. The
southern half joined the secession. The Confederacy took it in as
Arizona Territory with Mesilla as its capital. This area was sparsely
populated by whites and played only a minor role in the war.
California had been a state without slavery since joining the Union in
1850. Lincoln had a relative majority here. There were a number of
sympathizers of the Southern states and their presidential candidate
John C. Breckinridge, who had won 28% of the vote. California was
considered a "northern" state. The Californian troops were not
subordinate to the US government, but California sent them to fight
against the Southern states. In addition, the newly discovered gold in
California partly financed the war.
The Constitution of the
Confederate States, adopted on March 11, 1861, was very similar to the
U.S. Constitution, with the exception of the explicit permission of
slavery. After the founding of the Confederacy, there were several
attempts to persuade the Northern states to peacefully recognize it, all
of which were unsuccessful. The Confederate Congress, constituted on
February 6, 1861 in Montgomery, Alabama, elected Jefferson Davis as
provisional president on February 9, 1861 and approved the establishment
of the War Department on February 21, 1861. Alexander Hamilton Stephens
became provisional vice president. After Virginia joined the
Confederacy, the capital was moved from Montgomery to Richmond. However,
the move to the more prestigious Richmond also brought with it proximity
to the territory of the Northern states.
The newly elected
President of the Northern States, Abraham Lincoln, tried repeatedly to
pacify the Southerners until he took office on March 4, 1861. However,
the fronts were so entrenched that there seemed to be no other solution
than a military conflict. Lincoln made it clear in his inaugural address
that the Northern States would not start the war.
The North was far superior to the South in terms of population and
economic power. The approximately 21 million Northerners were compared
to only 9 million inhabitants of the Southern states, of which only 5
million belonged to the white population from which the Confederacy's
army had to be recruited. In 1860, the industrial production of the
Northern states was about nine times greater than that of the Southern
states, even after the four northern states joined the Confederacy.
On the other hand, the South had some strategic advantages over the
North: Firstly, due to its geographical location, it could use the
"inner lines" for its defense. In addition, the upper classes of the
Southern states had a more pronounced military tradition than those of
the North, which meant that the Confederacy had a relatively larger
number of capable military personnel at its disposal.
Above all,
however, unlike the North, it did not have to wage a war of conquest to
achieve its war aims. It did not need a complete military victory to
achieve independence. It would have been enough to drag out the conflict
until the North grew tired of war or the major European powers England
and France, whose economies were suffering from the loss of cotton
supplies, intervened in favor of the South. Both goals were pursued by
Jefferson Davis's government.
The United States Army consisted of
around 16,000 men before the war began. Many soldiers whose homeland was
in the Southern states had already left the army and often joined the
militias of the southern states. In addition, the garrisons were almost
all in the West and along the Canadian border. Some units were stationed
in forts on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts.
The Confederate
Congress approved the formation of the provisional army on February 28,
1861. On March 6, it approved the drafting of 100,000 volunteers and
militia members into the provisional army and on the same day approved
the formation of the regular army with a strength of 15,015 soldiers.
On Confederate territory, there were only two naval ports: Norfolk,
Virginia and Pensacola, Florida. Both were occupied by the Northern
states. The Confederacy had no ships. Nevertheless, the Navy Department
was established on February 21, 1861.
Some garrisons of the
Northern states were located on Confederate territory. Fort Sumter in
the port of Charleston, South Carolina, and Fort Monroe at the tip of
the Virginia Peninsula were to be given particular importance. After the
fall of Fort Sumter, President Lincoln called on the states of the Union
on April 15, 1861, to call up 75,000 men for three months to crush the
"rebellion" of the Southern states.
The United States Navy burned
its ships in Norfolk on April 20 so that they would not fall into the
hands of the Confederates.
At the start of the war, 313 graduates
of the US Military Academy in West Point, New York, had joined the army
of the Confederate States of America; 440 officers remained in the Union
army. However, many of the future Southern officers had more experience
- they had been regimental commanders or department heads in the
ministry.
In the Confederacy, there was no commander-in-chief of
the army or navy. The army was led by President Jefferson Davis himself;
he was a West Point graduate and former Union Secretary of War. The navy
was led by Secretary of the Navy Stephen Russell Mallory.
President Abraham Lincoln was commander-in-chief of all Union forces.
The commander-in-chief of the army was Brevet Lieutenant General
Winfield Scott, who acted largely independently of the War Department.
The division into theaters of war resulted from the geographical structure of the United States. The eastern theater of war stretched from the Atlantic coast to the Appalachians, the western theater of war lay between the Appalachians and the Mississippi, and the area west of the Mississippi, excluding the states bordering the Pacific, formed the Trans-Mississippi theater of war. The states and territories on the west coast formed the Pacific coast theater of war, and the coasts of the southern states, including the mouth of the Mississippi, formed the Lower Coast and Gulf Approaches theater of war.
Lincoln's demand for 75,000 soldiers gave the northern southern
states and Arkansas reason to secede from the Union. Both warring
parties expected the war to be short - the South had committed the
soldiers for a year, the North for only three months.
General
Scott developed the first strategic ideas with the so-called Anaconda
Plan. Scott did not want to destroy the land of the southern states
because it would have to be rebuilt later. The plan was to blockade the
seaports and the Mississippi, cutting off the Confederacy from supplies
from overseas and the West and forcing it to surrender.
The
Confederates expected diplomatic recognition from France and the United
Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and ordered warships from Great
Britain. Queen Victoria's government initially declared Britain's
neutrality in the internal American conflict. The Confederacy's war aim
was to secure independence. The southern states ruled out violent
territorial gains at the expense of the Union, but allowed other states
to join the Confederacy. To this end, they supported the secession
efforts of the residents of Missouri and Kentucky. At the initiative of
local politicians, their own militias and regular troops were formed in
the respective areas.
A scramble for positions arose in the
Union. Experienced military instructors were rare and personalities from
politics and business with influential political friends applied for
officer commissions. After initial military successes in northwest
Virginia, the northwestern counties seceded from the Confederacy under
the "Restored Government of Virginia" and applied to join the Union. On
July 4, the U.S. Congress approved President Lincoln's request to call
up an additional 500,000 volunteers and decided on July 22 that the
abolition of existing institutions (especially slavery) was not the goal
of the conflict with the South.
After the initial victories, the
South admitted Missouri and Kentucky into the Confederacy. President
Davis appointed ambassadors to Great Britain, France and Spain. The
Confederacy assumed that Great Britain would use the Royal Navy to
protect the trade in urgently needed cotton. To increase pressure on the
European powers, the Confederates imposed an unofficial cotton embargo.
From this point on, the plantation owners hoarded cotton, hoping that a
cotton shortage in European countries, especially in English factories,
would force their fleets to intervene. However, the cotton processing
companies had built up enormous stocks of raw cotton in the run-up to
the conflict between the North and South, which made intervention
unnecessary. In addition, the unsold cotton stocks reduced the urgently
needed foreign currency even further. President Davis offered letters of
marque to armed private ships so that they could be used as auxiliary
cruisers against the US merchant marine. In the presidential election in
the Confederate States on November 6, the only candidate, Jefferson
Davis, was elected by the people as regular President of the Confederate
States.
The US Navy managed to capture two of the appointed
ambassadors on the English mail ship Trent. Britain then imposed an
export ban and reinforced its troops on the Canadian border (Trent
Affair). The United States was forced to release the two Confederate
diplomats.
Under pressure from political supporters of Major
General McClellan, General Scott resigned and was released on November
1. McClellan succeeded him as Commander in Chief of the U.S. Army.
In the South, it became clear towards the end of the year that
logistics was one of the biggest problems. There were only about 8,500
miles of rail available, compared to about 22,500 miles in the North.
Although the South had the advantage of the Inner Line and thus tended
to have to cover shorter distances by rail than the North, its weaker
rail network was still a significant disadvantage. In addition, more and
more soldiers left their units in the fall to see what was going on at
home and return to fight in the spring.
Missouri was the most divided state. In May there were riots in St.
Louis. After victories over Union troops at Wilsons Creek and in
Lexington, Missouri, the Union troops succeeded in driving the
Southerners into the southwest corner of the state. Towards the end of
the year, Missouri was admitted to the Confederacy, although almost the
entire state was governed by a Union-loyal governor.
The various
tribes living in Indian Territory were courted by both sides. On July
12, the South concluded a pact of assistance with the Choctaw and
Chickasaw, and the Cherokee also joined the South. The Upper Creek
supported the North, and the Seminoles were divided. Many Indians were
deployed in regiments on both sides. In November and December, the
Southerners tried to drive the Indians allied with the Northern states
out of Indian Territory in order to bring undecided people over to their
side. The Confederates won the three battles, in which not only Indians
but also regular troops were involved on the Southern side.
In
the New Mexico Territory, Southerners organized the formation of troops.
In July, the first skirmishes with Union troops took place. On August 1,
the Southern states declared the territory of New Mexico south of the
34th parallel to be the Confederate Territory of Arizona.
Kentucky had declared itself neutral under a pro-secession governor
and a Union-loyal Congress. The first to violate this neutrality was
Major General Leonidas Polk, known as "the Fighting Bishop," who
occupied Columbus, Kentucky on the Mississippi with Southern troops. In
response, the Northerners under Brigadier General Ulysses S. Grant
occupied Paducah, Kentucky at the confluence of the Tennessee and Ohio.
From that point on, neither of the warring parties respected Kentucky's
neutrality.
The commander-in-chief of the Confederate troops from
the Cumberland Gap to the Mississippi was General Albert S. Johnston.
These forces were inferior to those of the Union, but had the advantage
of good lines of communication and unified leadership. Polk was in
charge in the west, and Major General William J. Hardee in the east.
The Northern army in the western theater of war was organized into
three armies and had no commander-in-chief. Attacks across the
Mississippi took place in a different organizational area - the
Trans-Mississippi theater of war - and were not coordinated with it. By
occupying Paducah, the Union succeeded in preventing the eventual
secession of Kentucky.
Both warring parties tried to win the
people of Kentucky over to their side through military pressure. In
October, Brigadier General Felix K. Zollicoffer (CSA) led a campaign
from eastern Tennessee with the aim of advancing along the Wilderness
Road into the Bluegrass Country and conquering Lexington, Kentucky. The
campaign failed and Zollicoffer had to spend the winter on the
Cumberland south of Somerset, Kentucky.
In November, Grant
intended to relieve the pressure on the Missourians loyal to the Union
by attacking Columbus. He succeeded in driving out Polk's Confederate
troops, who had crossed to the banks of the Missouri; however, the
attack on Columbus had to be called off. This action was considered a
success at a time when the Union was inactive on all fronts.
The
Southern states occupied Bowling Green, Kentucky and designated it as
the capital of Confederate Kentucky, which was admitted into the
Confederacy as its 13th state.
Major General George B. McClellan was appointed commander of the Ohio
military district at the beginning of May and a month later he took
action against the Confederate forces in western Virginia. With a slow
and cautious campaign, McClellan managed to defeat the Confederates by
mid-July and enable northwest Virginia to secede from the Confederacy.
By the end of the year, the area west of the Shenandoah and Allegheny
Mountains as far as the Ohio was secured for the Union.
On the
Potomac opposite the Shenandoah Valley, Major General Patterson led an
18,000-man division of three-month volunteers. Major General McDowell
led a 28,000-man U.S. Army corps around Washington. The few successes in
the theater of war were achieved by McClellan, who thereby became the
first war hero. Pressured by the public, Lincoln finally ordered
McDowell to advance against the southern states' positions at Bull Run.
To prevent Beauregard's troops from being reinforced, Scott ordered
General Patterson to tie down Johnston's army in the Shenandoah Valley.
However, when the 90-day call-up period expired, Patterson aborted
his mission. McDowell attacked the Confederates at Bull Run. Patterson's
retreat enabled the Confederates to withdraw troops from the Shenandoah
Valley and reinforce Beauregard at Manassas. For the first time, the
railroad was used to tactically move troops. The Confederates did not
take advantage of the victory at Manassas; after the battle, the
positions along Bull Run remained almost unchanged.
The Union's
most successful troop leader to date, Major General McClellan, was
called to Washington and tasked with assembling a strong army, later
known as the Army of the Potomac. He repeatedly emphasized to the
President that the army was not yet ready for an offensive approach. As
a concession to Lincoln, he ordered two actions on the south bank of the
Potomac, one of which turned into a disaster and gave politicians a
handle on appointing a "Congressional Joint Committee on the Conduct of
the War" to assess the conduct of officers during battles. This made it
possible to monitor particularly democratically minded officers. On
November 1, McClellan succeeded Winfield Scott - for the first time, the
leadership of all Union forces was in the hands of an assertive general.
In the South, the victory at Manassas led to the assumption that the
Union now had no choice but to recognize the Confederacy.
The industrialization of the southern states was far less advanced
than that of the north. The factories of the state of Massachusetts
alone produced more goods than those of the entire south. The newly
founded Confederacy was therefore dependent on importing important goods
for the war effort from abroad and exporting cotton in return.
In
order to cut off the southern states from this important source of
supplies and money, the USA imposed a blockade of the southern coast in
late spring 1861, in accordance with the plans of General Winfield
Scott. This posed a major challenge for the US Navy, as it had to block
a coastline of around 3,500 miles with ten major seaports with its few
ships.
In addition to the initial insufficient strength, the Navy
also faced the problem of having only a few bases in the south. As a
result, the US Navy was unable to deploy more than one of twelve
blockade runners in the first year of the war. In return, the
Confederacy attempted to support the departure of its ships from the
Chesapeake Bay while blocking the Chesapeake Bay and the mouth of the
Potomac. Union forces made several unsuccessful attempts to destroy the
Confederate coastal batteries. The mouth of the Potomac remained blocked
until March 1862.
To improve the situation of the blockade fleet
and make its work easier, the Navy decided to capture additional bases
and ports in the South or to close them off to blockade runners.
At the end of August, an amphibious battle group captured Forts Hatteras
and Clark in North Carolina, thus closing Pamlico Sound to blockade
runners. The same fate befell Port Royal Sound in South Carolina three
months later: a US fleet under the command of Samuel Francis Du Pont
forced Fort Beauregard and Fort Walker to surrender and enabled the
occupation of the port of Port Royal, South Carolina and its
surroundings.
In the Gulf of Mexico, Ship Island in the mouth of
the Mississippi was also captured, which became the starting point for
further operations against New Orleans, Louisiana as the war progressed.
The South, clearly inferior to the North at sea, relied on newly
developed weapons. The Southern states used sea mines called torpedoes
to protect their ports and rivers.
After the victories in the autumn, the South limited itself to
defensive measures at the beginning of the year. The leading figures
believed, in memory of the American War of Independence, that it was
enough to hold on to the territory in order to be recognized as a state
by the Union. In this way, the American colonies had defeated the mighty
British Empire in the War of Independence, despite enormous material
inferiority and the temporary loss of their most important cities. Since
the North's superiority over the South was far less than that of the
British Empire over the 13 colonies, the majority of military experts of
the time also took the view that the North could not win a war against
the South and could not force it back into the Union. In contrast to the
American commanders around George Washington, who were quite willing to
sacrifice territory during the War of Independence in order to maintain
the striking power of their troops, the South assumed that everything
had to be defended. The implementation of this doctrine therefore led to
a fragmentation of forces, as troops were stationed at all possible
targets, both on the borders with the North and along the entire coast.
The troops, divided into small contingents and stationed in isolation
from one another, often found themselves facing far superior troop
contingents in the event of an attack by the North on their positions,
against which they could do nothing.
The blockade by the Northern
states was not yet effective in 1862. However, since almost all of the
war goods manufacturing industry was located in the Northern states, the
development of war goods production began in the agrarian Southern
states. This industry soon found itself in competition with the army for
white male workers. On January 23, Congress approved the drafting of
400,000 volunteers and militiamen.
The North had used the time
after the defeats to reorganize and train its troops. Under pressure
from politicians and the public to finally take active action against
the South, Lincoln ordered on January 27 in War Proclamation No. 1 that
all armies should begin offensives on February 22. Lincoln relieved
McClellan of his command as Commander-in-Chief of the Army on March 11
and led the forces together with Secretary of War Stanton. With the
largest army that had ever existed on American soil, McClellan attacked
on the Virginia Peninsula and pushed ever further towards Richmond.
Finally, he was defeated by General Lee just a few miles from Richmond.
The South used a new weapon for the first time during the campaign: the
first land mines detonated at Redoubt No. 4 near Yorktown, Virginia.
Jefferson Davis appointed General Lee as his military advisor on
March 3. Under the impression of the defeats in the West, Congress
introduced conscription for white men between the ages of 18 and 35 on
April 16 for the duration of hostilities. In the west, Albert S.
Johnston concentrated his troops in the Corinth, Mississippi area. In
the east, Joseph E. Johnston, who favored a strategic defense, began to
oppose the invasion of the Virginia Peninsula. The surrender of
territory did not correspond to Confederate doctrine and led to fierce
controversy with Jefferson Davis. The largest city of the Confederacy,
New Orleans, was lost on April 28, and the lower reaches of the
Mississippi were controlled by the Union as far as Vicksburg,
Mississippi. At the Battle of Hampton Roads in the spring, two ironclad
ships met for the first time, a further step towards the end of the era
of wooden warships and the era of steam-powered ironclads.
President Lincoln asked the state governors on July 2 to call up another
300,000 volunteers and make them available to the federal army. Congress
authorized the president on July 17 to draft colored people into the
armed forces. On the same day, all able-bodied men between the ages of
18 and 45 were required to serve for nine months in the state militia
organizations. In Alabama, the Union-loyal Winston County withdrew from
the Confederacy and provided 2,000 soldiers for the North. In South
Carolina and Kansas, the first regiments consisting only of African
Americans, mostly former slaves, were commissioned. Like all other black
regiments, they were led by white officers. The first combat deployment
of a black regiment took place on October 29th in a skirmish in
Missouri.
In the summer and fall, the Confederacy went on the
offensive again in all theaters of war. In the west, Lieutenant General
Braxton Bragg marched into Kentucky, and in the east, Lee invaded
Maryland. The aim was to get the European powers to recognize the
Confederacy under international law by occupying Maryland, Pennsylvania,
and Missouri, to conclude a compromise peace with the Northern states,
to prevent autumn offensives by the Northern states in Virginia and
Tennessee, and to weaken Lincoln's position vis-à-vis his war opponents
in the North.
After repelling the invasion of Maryland at the
Battle of Antietam, Lincoln announced a provisional emancipation
proclamation for all slaves, which was to come into force in the
secessionist territories on January 1. The emancipation proclamation
allowed all states that returned to the Union before January 1, as well
as Maryland and Delaware, to continue to practice slavery. The aim of
the war remained the restoration of the Union, not the abolition of
slavery. In the congressional elections, the Republicans retained the
majority despite significant losses to the Democrats.
In the
South, the maximum age of conscripts was raised to 45 on September 27,
starting on July 15, 1863. Davis again emphasized that he would not make
any territorial claims on the North. In December, the Southern armies
succeeded in repelling attacks by the Northern states in the western and
eastern theaters of war. The blockade showed the first supply
bottlenecks, there was a shortage of raw materials in the war industry,
and inflation weakened the currency.
Despite the Europeans'
dependence on cotton imports from the Confederacy, the monarchies of
Europe showed goodwill for the Southern cause, but were reluctant to
recognize the Confederacy. However, after the Confederate victories in
the summer and the offensives on Northern territory, the British
government considered recognizing the Southern states. The news of the
Confederacy's defeat at Antietam and the subsequent Emancipation
Proclamation put an end to these considerations. The European states
continued to support the Confederacy only by exporting goods that were
essential to the South's war effort, but fewer and fewer of these
reached the Confederacy due to the blockade by the Northern states.
The complete incorporation of Missouri into the national territory
was the Confederacy's most important goal in the theater of war. To this
end, the energetic Major General Earl Van Dorn took command of the
Confederate forces in Missouri and Arkansas. In Kansas, the Union
imposed martial law. On March 4, Van Dorn's Western Army advanced
against the Northern defenses at Sugar Creek, northwest of Fayetteville,
Arkansas. Choctaw, Chickasaw, Cherokee and Seminoles fought on the
Southern side. In the Battle of Pea Ridge, Missouri, the Confederates
faced Brigadier General Samuel Curtis' Southwestern Army, which included
Sigel's "Missouri and Illinois Germans." Van Dorn only had to leave the
battlefield when he ran out of ammunition.
The Confederate threat
to Missouri was averted for 1862. That did not mean that there was no
more fighting.
The battle for Missouri took the form of a
guerrilla war. The Confederates - called "bushwhackers" - repeatedly set
ambushes and attacked troops of the Northern states. Both sides
frequently harassed the civilian population. Historians estimate that
the population of Missouri fell by a third during the Civil War. After
the war, one of these groups kept its weapons and, under the leadership
of Jesse James and his brother Frank, murdered and robbed banks until
1881.
In October, the Union enlisted colored people as volunteers
in Missouri for the first time. The Southerners achieved a tactical draw
at Prairie Grove, Arkansas on December 7, but this was a strategic
defeat, as it meant that northwest Arkansas remained firmly in Union
hands.
In Minnesota, the Santee, a Sioux people, rose up in
August. Army units succeeded in putting down the uprising in September.
The victims of the uprising were primarily the civilian population on
both sides. In a mass execution on December 26, 38 Santee were hanged.
In the Arizona Territory, Brigadier General Sibley set out with a
brigade to conquer the New Mexico Territory for the Confederates. At the
same time, the gold fields in Colorado were to be occupied and the ports
of California threatened. After initial successes, Sibley had to retreat
south after the Battle of Glorieta Pass. The Confederates managed to
defeat the Union troops, but at the same time the Northerners destroyed
the Confederate baggage train. The Confederates' retreat to El Paso,
Texas marked the end of the invasion of the New Mexico Territory.
As in the Trans-Mississippi theater of war, this theater of war was
also about the possession of a state - Kentucky. Confederate troops
invaded northeastern Kentucky from Virginia. Southerners under Brigadier
General Zollicoffer were north of the Cumberland in central Kentucky
near Somerset. Columbus on the Mississippi was still occupied.
Scott's Anaconda Plan, which was designed for a long war, was not
reactivated, but was used as the basis for action. In order to invade
Tennessee, it was necessary to control the Mississippi and its navigable
tributaries. Forts Henry and Donelson protected the Tennessee and
Cumberland. Brigadier General Grant led a joint army and navy operation
against Columbus to conceal Major General Don Carlos Buell's planned
advance into Tennessee. However, since there was no unified leadership,
Buell did not take part at all. The Ohio Army only attacked the
Confederates at Prestonsburg and Somerset in January. One of the
commanders was the future President James A. Garfield. The Southerners
retreated to Virginia and south of the Cumberland. The Union had won its
first victory of the year on the theater of war.
In another joint
operation in February, Grant first attacked Forts Henry and Donelson.
Fort Henry was evacuated and abandoned by the Confederates, and Fort
Donelson surrendered unconditionally. This is where Grant received his
nickname - "Unconditional Surrender" Grant instead of "Ulysses Simpson."
As a result of the defeat, the Confederate commander-in-chief, General
Albert S. Johnston, lost a third of his forces. The defensive line
between Columbus and Bowling Green could no longer be held. The
Confederates evacuated Columbus and organized a new defense along the
line of Island No. 10, Tennessee, Corinth, Mississippi, and Chattanooga,
Tennessee. The Confederates moved Tennessee's capital from Nashville to
Memphis. Nashville was the first capital of a Confederate state to fall
into Union hands.
Major General Henry W. Halleck relieved Grant
of his command. Lincoln reinstated Grant as commander-in-chief of the
West Tennessee Army with the words "I can't spare this man, he fights."
Buell rejected a joint operation against Corinth. Lincoln therefore
appointed Halleck commander-in-chief in the theater of war in March,
thus establishing unified leadership. Halleck ordered Grant to travel up
the Tennessee, disembark at Pittsburg Landing near Shiloh, Tennessee,
wait there for Major General Don Carlos Buell's army marching overland,
and jointly attack the Confederates at Corinth.
Albert S.
Johnston intended to defeat Grant before Buell arrived, and marched from
Corinth to Shiloh. The attack was delayed due to bad weather and Grant's
army was saved by the arrival of Buell. Johnston was fatally wounded
during the battle and Beauregard was appointed his successor. The
Confederates retreated to the fortified Corinth. General Halleck
attacked Corinth from Pittsburg Landing with 100,000 men. After a siege
lasting almost a month, the Confederates under Beauregard left the city,
primarily because of the catastrophic sanitary conditions. This cut off
the railroad connections from the north and west, which were important
for the South.
On the Mississippi, the Northerners managed to
break through the river's barriers at New Madrid, Missouri, Island No.
10 and Fort Pillow and occupy Memphis. In June, the Northerners tried to
divert the Mississippi at Vicksburg and thus bypass the fortifications.
Jefferson Davis described Vicksburg as the nail that held the two halves
of the Confederacy together. The construction of the canal failed.
The Confederates completed the ironclad CSS Arkansas on the Yazoo,
which passed the Union fleet north of Vicksburg in July and entered the
protection of Vicksburg. Several attempts to sink the Arkansas failed.
In August, the ship was to support Major General Breckinridge in an
attack on Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The ship's engines failed and it had
to be abandoned. The attack on Baton Rouge also failed, but the city was
evacuated by the Northern states shortly afterwards and not reoccupied
until December.
In the summer, the Union attempted to gain
complete control of Tennessee by attacking Chattanooga. Almost
simultaneously, two Southern armies under Major General Edmund Kirby
Smith and Braxton Bragg, who had replaced Beauregard, marched towards
Kentucky. In September, the Confederates succeeded in taking Frankfort,
Kentucky and Munfordville, Kentucky. General Don Carlos Buell pursued
the Confederate armies. In the south, Earl Van Dorn unsuccessfully
attacked Corinth, Mississippi in October, but still prevented Buell's
army from being reinforced. After the Battle of Perryville in
mid-October, Bragg retreated from Kentucky to Chattanooga. Despite the
victories, the Confederacy's summer offensives had been unsuccessful and
costly.
Braxton Bragg occupied Murfreesboro, Tennessee, again
towards the end of the year. After his recovery, Joseph E. Johnston
became the new commander-in-chief of the Confederate troops west of the
Appalachians and in North Carolina. Grant prepared a campaign against
Vicksburg, but individual attacks on Vicksburg failed. Rosecrans
attacked Bragg's southerners at the Stones River near Murfreesboro on
December 31st and forced him to retreat to middle Tennessee again on
January 2nd, 1863.
After taking New Orleans, the federal troops
tried to expand their sphere of influence in Louisiana. The northerners
intended to take control of the sugar and cotton production there and
use the area to prepare future operations to control the Mississippi.
From February onwards, the Confederates introduced a new type of
warfare - the so-called raids. Nathan Bedford Forrest and John Hunt
Morgan were the two most successful generals who repeatedly managed to
advance deep into the hinterland and permanently destroy Union rail
lines and depots.
After the victory at Manassas, General Joseph E. Johnston built
defensive positions along Bull Run. Bypassing the positions by water
prevented the blockade of the Potomac and the Chesapeake Bay. The hero
of Manassas, Major General Thomas J. Jackson, raised a division in the
Shenandoah Valley and unsuccessfully attacked the Baltimore & Ohio
railroad line in January.
President Lincoln thought highly of the
commander-in-chief, General McClellan. He let him get away with
disobedience and rudeness. At the urging of politicians and the public,
Lincoln relieved him of command on March 11. McClellan was to
concentrate exclusively on leading the Army of the Potomac. General
Johnson thwarted the first operational plan for the attack on Richmond
because the Confederates abandoned the positions at Bull Run and
retreated to the south bank of the Rappahannock.
Only after the
immediate threat to the sea routes from the Virginia had been eliminated
did McClellan embark the Army of the Potomac on March 17 and land at
Fort Monroe on the southeastern edge of the Virginia Peninsula. The Army
of the Potomac was around 120,000 strong. To support the campaign,
Lincoln ordered troops to be withdrawn from the lower Shenandoah Valley
and from Washington's security. The Peninsula Campaign began on April 5
with the siege of Yorktown, Virginia. The Confederates surrendered the
city after a month and fought their first battle near Williamsburg,
Virginia. McClellan reported the outcome of the battle as a tremendous
success, although Johnston's troops were able to evade in an orderly and
planned manner, albeit with losses. McClellan pursued the Confederates
cautiously. He overestimated the number of Confederate troops facing the
Army of the Potomac; at times McClellan was convinced that he would have
to fight against 200,000 soldiers.
The slow advance gave Johnston
time to move his large units and deceive McClellan about the actual
strength of the Northern Virginia Army. As Johnston continued to retreat
towards Richmond, he repeatedly clashed with President Jefferson Davis.
At the end of May, Johnston saw the first opportunity to destroy parts
of the superior Potomac Army. However, McClellan managed to repel this
attack at the Battle of Seven Pines. General Johnston was seriously
wounded in the battle and was succeeded by General Robert E. Lee as
commander-in-chief of the Northern Virginia Army.
In North
Carolina, Major General Ambrose E. Burnside managed to occupy the ports
on the Pamlico and Albemarle Sounds as well as New Bern and Fort Macon
during the winter and spring.
After his appointment, Lee, as
military advisor to the President, had instructed General Jackson to tie
up as many Union troops as possible in the Shenandoah Valley and thus
prevent McClellan's advance from being supported from the north. Jackson
succeeded in doing this with the brilliantly conducted Shenandoah
Campaign.
Every time the Union troops wanted to leave the valley
and support McClellan from the north, he attacked the withdrawing
Northerners and threatened Washington. President Lincoln did not want to
accept the threat to the capital and therefore ordered the marches that
had just begun in support of the Peninsula Campaign to be ended and the
threat to Washington to be eliminated.
After the Battle of Seven
Pines, Lee reinforced the fortifications of Richmond. On June 26, he
took the initiative and attacked the Army of the Potomac for seven
consecutive days. Lee was unable to win a single day during the Seven
Days Battle - but the overly cautious McClellan did not take advantage
of the advantages and Lee achieved his first strategic victory.
McClellan had repeatedly asked the President to place all available
troops under his command for the duration of the attack on Richmond.
McClellan did not consider the threat to Washington as high as Lincoln
did. McClellan was given this command for a short time, but when Jackson
threatened Washington again, Lincoln again led the units in the North
himself. For this reason, McClellan placed the sole blame for the
failure of the campaign on the President. On August 3, the new
Commander-in-Chief of the US Army, Major General Henry W. Halleck,
ordered the evacuation of the Army of the Potomac and the support of the
offensive of the Army of Virginia under Major General John Pope.
McClellan carried out these orders only half-heartedly and reluctantly.
After the fighting on the Virginia Peninsula had ended, Lee had
decided to attack Pope's Army of Virginia before it could be reinforced
by McClellan. Lee positioned Pope's army near the battlefield of the
previous year at Manassas and defeated the Northerners. In consultation
with President Davis, Lee decided to invade Maryland. There he wanted to
replenish the supplies of the Army of Northern Virginia and, if
possible, recruit volunteers for the army from the population of the
border state. In addition, Lee hoped that his invasion could influence
public opinion in the North and support peace efforts.
After the
defeat at Manassas, the Army of Virginia was absorbed into the Army of
the Potomac. After the battle, a commanding general, Major General Fitz
J. Porter, was removed from office. Dismissed from the army after a
court martial, Porter was rehabilitated after the war. McClellan
reluctantly followed the Army of Northern Virginia. On September 17, the
battle took place at Antietam, during which McClellan was unable to
defeat Lee due to a lack of coordination despite having twice the number
of men. In October, Lincoln repeatedly called on McClellan to pursue the
enemy ("Give battle to the enemy"). It was not until the end of the
month that McClellan crossed the Potomac. The energetic pursuit of the
now reorganized Army of Northern Virginia was not undertaken.
Lee
succeeded in leading the Army of Northern Virginia back to Virginia.
Longstreet's wing took up positions on the south bank of the
Rappahannock near Fredericksburg, while Jackson remained with the left
wing of the army in the Shenandoah Valley.
President Lincoln
relieved General McClellan of command of the Army of the Potomac on
November 5 due to public pressure. His successor was Major General
Ambrose Burnside, who felt he was not up to the task. Nevertheless, he
immediately developed an operational plan to capture Richmond. One of
the first measures was a change in the organization of the
100,000-strong Army of the Potomac. Burnside intended to cross the
Rappahannock near Fredericksburg on pontoon bridges, defeat the Army of
Northern Virginia on the other bank, and capture Richmond. The battle
took place on December 13. All of Burnside's attacks failed. The two
armies faced each other on the Rappahannock. A renewed attack in January
1863 failed due to bad weather.
In North Carolina, Union troops
attacked the railroad bridge at Goldsboro. The Wilmington & Weldon
railroad line ran over it, transporting important supplies from
Wilmington that blockade runners landed there. The Northerners managed
to destroy the railroad bridge, but it was soon rebuilt by the
Confederates.
In 1862, the North continued its strategy of capturing ports along
the Southern coast or making them inaccessible to blockade runners. In
Georgia, the port of Savannah was closed to blockade runners by the
occupation of Fort Pulaski by US troops. In Florida, Jacksonville and
St. Augustine were captured, and Pensacola was evacuated by the
Confederates in May. However, a Northern advance on Charleston, South
Carolina, failed when the Southerners won a victory at Secessionville.
To break the blockade, the South relied on new weapons and built the
ironclad Virginia (armored gunboats had already been used by both sides,
but only on the rivers in the West). The North reacted quickly, however,
and built the ironclad Monitor based on a design by John Ericsson. On
March 8, the Virginia sank or destroyed two wooden US ships on the first
day of the Battle of Hampton Roads, demonstrating the superiority of the
new ironclads. The following day, however, she encountered the Monitor.
The first battle between ironclad warships ended in a draw, and the
Virginia eventually withdrew. The threat posed by her had been
neutralized by the Monitor. The Virginia was destroyed by the
Confederates in May when she lost her home port of Norfolk due to
General McClellan's Peninsula campaign. The greatest naval victory to
date was won by a US fleet under David Glasgow Farragut. He captured New
Orleans, the most populous city in the South, on April 28. Farragut
subsequently advanced further up the Mississippi, captured Baton Rouge,
passed the batteries of Vicksburg and met up with a freshwater flotilla
above it. For his successes, he was appointed the first rear admiral of
the US Navy.
In October, the Northern states captured the port of
Galveston, Texas. However, the city was recaptured a short time later,
on New Year's Day 1863, by Confederate troops under General Magruder and
remained in Confederate hands until the end of the war.
The
Southern states' privateering war was very successful from August
onwards. The Alabama, with an English crew under Captain Raphael Semmes
and flying the Confederate flag, captured 60 merchantmen and became the
terror of US merchant shipping before it was sunk by the Kearsarge on
June 19, 1864.
The Emancipation Proclamation came into force on January 1st. The
reasons for the proclamation were, firstly, that the will to win in the
North needed a new moral impulse and, secondly, that a crusade against
slavery would remove the constant threat of intervention by the European
powers. The proclamation had a decisive impact on the war. A compromise
peace was no longer possible because the proclamation resulted in the
destruction of the economic order of the South. The Democrats, as
opponents of the war, gained more and more support. Among other things,
they stoked fears among the population that blacks would soon flood the
entire country as cheap labor. In June, West Virginia was admitted to
the Union as the 35th state.
The Union embargo became
increasingly effective. It led to supply shortages in the South - a
shortage of raw materials endangered the conduct of the war, inflation
weakened the currency. War speculators drove up prices. There were riots
in Mobile, Alabama in August. Because of France's involvement in Mexico,
the Confederacy was hopeful that it would still be recognized if it
supported Napoleon III's plans.
Medical corps were created on
both sides to care for the wounded. For the first time in military
history, hospital ships and trains were used.
On March 3,
Congress in the North passed a general draft. On both sides, it was
possible to buy one's freedom or provide a substitute for a payment of
$300. This led to riots in New York in July, which were bloodily
suppressed by regiments that had come directly from Gettysburg. In
October, Lincoln demanded that the states provide another 300,000
volunteers, who were to be recruited with a cash payment. This system
proved to be unsuitable. Many enlisted, deserted and enlisted again, or
enlisted multiple times under pseudonyms. The southern states banned the
provision of substitutes in December.
The situation on all fronts
was deadlocked at the beginning of the year - Grant was stubbornly
struggling to no avail on the Mississippi, in Tennessee the two armies
had retreated to their starting positions at Nashville and Chattanooga
after the Battle of Stones River, and in Virginia the armies faced each
other on the Rappahannock. In March Grant made a new attempt to capture
Vicksburg. After the magnificent victory at Chancellorsville, Lee
attacked the Union in Pennsylvania. These two operations ended almost
simultaneously - Lee was defeated by Meade at Gettysburg and one day
later Vicksburg surrendered. Many historians see the outcome of these
two battles as important turning points in the war in favor of the
Union. In November, President Lincoln declared the Gettysburg
battlefield a National Cemetery with the Gettysburg Address. In the
autumn the Confederacy achieved another major victory in northern
Georgia, but was unable to capitalize further. By the end of 1863 the
South had lost more territory in the western theater of war than at the
beginning of the year and was now effectively divided into two halves.
In the East, despite bloody fighting, the year had brought no great
advantage to either side; the positions at the end of 1863 were largely
the same as at the beginning of the year.
Last year, a stalemate had developed on the battlefield. The
Confederacy's war goal of controlling Missouri could no longer be
achieved in the foreseeable future. The Southern states were only
concerned with inflicting as much damage as possible on the North in
Missouri. Almost any means were acceptable to achieve this.
The
Confederates mostly carried out raids on Union depots and supply lines.
The neuralgic points were specially secured. Fierce battles then broke
out there. In October, the Southerners succeeded in using a different
style of fighting - they adopted the tactics of the Indians - and caused
damage totaling several million dollars.
The Southern states
continued to rely on guerrilla warfare. They did not conduct their
operations according to the rules of war, i.e. the soldiers fought in
civilian clothes or in Northern uniforms. They often carried out
terrorist attacks against the civilian population. In August, irregulars
from the South attacked Lawrence, Kansas and murdered 160 unarmed men,
women and children (see Lawrence Massacre). In retaliation, the
Northerners drove 19,000 Southerners out of counties bordering Kansas.
The federal troops under Major General Nathaniel P. Banks, a
"political general," fought in western Louisiana in April. The fighting
was aimed at taking possession of as much of Louisiana as possible and
securing traffic on the Mississippi. The Confederate commander in
western Louisiana fought to relieve the garrison of Port Hudson during
and after the siege by the Union. Banks advanced in western Texas in the
fall to alert France to the risks of its Mexican adventure. Brownsville,
Corpus Christi, and Indianola fell into Union hands. Major General
Taylor tried to disrupt Banks. Despite a victory, he was unsuccessful,
but in the spring of 1864 the Northern states gave up most of their
conquests on the Texas coast.
Because of the major battles in the
summer in the other theaters of war, Trans-Mississippi became a
secondary theater of war. The fighting shifted from Missouri and
Arkansas to Indian Territory and Utah Territory. The civil war of the
"Missourians" took place in front of Vicksburg - there 17 Confederate
and 22 Union regiments from Missouri faced each other. In the Battle of
Honey Springs, Indian Territory in July, black Union soldiers met
Confederate Indians for the first time.
In January, the South
succeeded in recapturing the port city of Galveston, Texas, but it
continued to be blockaded by the US Navy. Galveston remained in
Confederate hands until the end of the war. In the Dakota Territory,
more than 3,000 Sioux were killed, wounded or captured in a punitive
expedition.
Fewer soldiers were involved in the operations west
of the Mississippi than in other theaters of war. Nevertheless, the
battles were just as intense and the percentage of losses was the same
as in the theaters of war to the east.
At the beginning of the
year, Union troops launched an expedition against the Shoshone on the
Pacific coast. The Indians had carried out several raids against white
establishments at the end of the previous year. In January, the US Army
carried out a punitive campaign in Idaho. Union soldiers killed 384
Indian warriors, women and children in the battle at Bear River, which
is why the incident is also known as the Boa Ogoi Massacre.
In the first half of the year, the Union shifted its focus to opening
up the Mississippi for trade. Vicksburg, Mississippi was the
Confederacy's most important bulwark, both to prevent the Union from
using the Mississippi and to keep a land connection to the western
states open. Vicksburg is located on the east bank of the Mississippi on
a cliff that protrudes about 50 m above the land. From here, shipping
traffic on the Mississippi could be stopped and attacks from the east
could be repelled from elevated positions.
Major General Grant,
with his usual tenacity, repeatedly tried to eliminate Vicksburg. On
March 29, he began the Second Vicksburg Campaign with the Tennessee
Army, marching south through Louisiana past Vicksburg. A month later, he
crossed the Mississippi to the east and, after a series of battles and
skirmishes, attacked the capital of Mississippi, Jackson, and partially
burned it down. He then turned his army west and attacked Vicksburg.
Grant failed twice because of the Confederates' strong fortifications
and good use of the terrain. Since further attacks had little chance of
success, Grant decided to lay siege to the city. The siege of the city
ended with the surrender of the Confederate Mississippi Army on July 4,
1863.
The commander-in-chief of the Southern states in Vicksburg
was Lieutenant General Pemberton. He was under General Johnston.
Pemberton did not attack Grant on the west bank of the Mississippi in
March because he saw Grant's behavior as a break in operations against
Vicksburg. After Grant had crossed the Mississippi, Johnston ordered
Pemberton to take advantage of the invaders' moment of weakness and
attack Grant. Pemberton ignored this order and did not oppose Grant with
significant forces until May 16.
When the threat to Vicksburg
became acute, Johnston reported to President Davis that the Confederacy
could hold either Tennessee or Mississippi. The forces in the West were
too weak for either. A soldier could not decide this political question.
Davis fell back into the old Confederate mistake of wanting to hold
everything and made no decision. Instead, he ordered Johnston and his
5,000 men to relieve Vicksburg. This did not happen because Johnston had
to avoid Grant, who was more than six times superior, at Jackson and
Pemberton ignored orders to jointly attack Grant's army.
From
May, Major General Banks attacked north from New Orleans via Baton Rouge
to Port Hudson, Louisiana, and then to Vicksburg, the last bastion of
the Southern states on the Mississippi. This was intended to relieve
Grant before Vicksburg. Banks captured the city after the fall of
Vicksburg.
In middle Tennessee, after the Battle of Stones River,
Major General William Rosecrans's Cumberland Army and Bragg's
Confederate Tennessee Army faced each other almost inactively until
mid-June. When Rosecrans began the advance, Bragg retreated with the
Army of Tennessee to Chattanooga, which he abandoned in September after
another envelopment maneuver by Rosecrans. The Confederates reacted to
the loss of territory in Tennessee with a strategic concentration and
reinforced Bragg's army with troops from other parts of the country, in
particular with a corps of the Army of Northern Virginia under General
Longstreet. Thus reinforced, Bragg attacked Rosecrans in September at
the Battle of Chickamauga. On the second day of fighting, Longstreet led
the decisive attack that led to the retreat of the Northern Army of the
Cumberland. Bragg did not pursue the defeated army and instead began to
besiege Chattanooga. The defeat of the Northern states led to
significant personnel changes: Major General George Henry Thomas
replaced Rosecrans, and on October 17, Grant became commander-in-chief
of the newly created Mississippi Territorial Command, which covered the
entire western theater of war. The Northern states also reinforced the
war theater in Tennessee with troops from the east: Major General Hooker
gained a new reputation with the XI and XII Corps of the Army of the
Potomac. Grant used Hooker's troops and other reinforcements for a
concerted attack on Bragg's Tennessee Army near Chattanooga at the end
of November. The Union troops captured the ridges south of the Tennessee
and forced Bragg to retreat south. Bragg resigned his command and was
replaced by General Joseph E. Johnston.
In eastern Tennessee,
Major General Ambrose Burnside's Ohio Army advanced from Kentucky.
Burnside managed to take Knoxville and hold it against Confederate
counterattacks.
The concept of raiding the enemy's rear was used
by both sides of the war. The Confederates carried out four major raids
during the year: Major General Earl Van Dorn disrupted Major General
Sherman's offensive efforts on the left bank of the Mississippi against
Vicksburg at the beginning of the year. Brigadier General Bedford
Forrest led a raid on Ft. Donelson in February, occupied it and lost it
again. In April he repelled the Union raid in northern Georgia.
Brigadier General Morgan made it through Kentucky to Indiana and Ohio,
where he was captured. Morgan caused about $1,000,000 in damage, but his
brigade was completely wiped out. Brigadier General James R. Chalmer
intended to disrupt General Sherman's lines of communication during his
advance to Chattanooga.
The Union carried out two major raids:
Colonel Streight intended to disrupt Bragg's lines of communication in
northern Alabama and Georgia. He was intercepted by Forrest. Colonel
Benjamin Grierson led a raid to Baton Rouge to distract attention from
Grant's Vicksburg campaign. The Union had achieved all of its objectives
in the theater of war. Vicksburg and Port Hudson had fallen and the
Mississippi was open for traffic. The Confederacy was divided. All of
Tennessee was under the control of the Northern states.
After the catastrophic defeat at Fredericksburg, President Lincoln
rejected Major General Burnside's resignation. Burnside intended to use
a period of good weather in January to bypass the right of the Army of
Northern Virginia, attack its left flank and clear the way to Richmond.
However, shortly after the march along the Rappahannock began westward
on just one road, the weather changed - it rained day and night. The
Army of the Potomac sank in the mud. Burnside broke off the attack and
returned to its starting positions. Major General "Fighting Joe" Hooker
became his successor.
The Army of Northern Virginia was
struggling with considerable difficulties. The land was exhausted and
the army's food supplies were limited. General Lee sent his cavalry and
artillery horses to remote areas of Virginia to get them through the
winter. He gladly accepted the deployment of Lieutenant General
Longstreet with two divisions to southern Virginia.
Hooker
insisted to Lincoln in the spring that there should be a paradigm shift
in operational leadership. The goal of every campaign should be the
opposing army and not the opposing capital. By the beginning of May,
Hooker had brought the Army of the Potomac back to a high level of
operational readiness. He disbanded the "Grand Divisions" created by
Burnside, introduced corps and set up an independent cavalry corps. At
the end of April, the Army of the Potomac, reaching far to the west,
attacked the right flank of the Army of Northern Virginia. Lee faced the
attacking Army of the Potomac at the Chancellorsville farm. With
Jackson's corps, he bypassed Hooker's army in the south almost unnoticed
and in turn attacked the Army of the Potomac from behind. Hooker was
unable to repel the Southerners due to a lack of coordination with his
army, which was almost twice as strong. The Army of the Potomac was
defeated and had to retreat to the north bank of the Rappahannock. The
Confederates lost one of their most capable troop leaders during the
battle; Lieutenant General Thomas J. Jackson was fatally wounded by
friendly fire.
After his greatest victory, Lee planned an
invasion of the North. He reorganized the Army of Northern Virginia from
two to three corps and, from June, marched under the protection of the
Blue Ridge Mountains through the Shenandoah Valley and the Cumberland
Valley to Pennsylvania. The cavalry corps of the Army of the Potomac
under Major General Pleasonton and the cavalry division of the Army of
Northern Virginia under Major General J.E.B. Stuart met at Brandy
Station in the largest cavalry battle of the Civil War. Hooker had to
hand over his command to Major General George G. Meade on June 28th. The
Army of the Potomac and the Army of Northern Virginia met at Gettysburg
on July 1st. Lee left the battlefield as a loser after three days.
Due to Meade's hesitant pursuit, General Lee was able to lead the
Army of Northern Virginia back to Virginia and reorganize it. The two
armies faced each other again on the Rappahannock in August. Over the
next two months there were numerous skirmishes and advances into the
opposing territory. Neither side gained any advantages. In November,
Major General Meade intended to attack the Army of Northern Virginia
before the onset of winter and drive it off the Rappahannock in the Mine
Run campaign. The attack failed, and both armies spent the winter on
either side of the river.
Lieutenant General Longstreet was
appointed commander of the Virginia and North Carolina military district
on February 25th and immediately began operations in the border area
between Virginia and North Carolina. He managed to tie down more than
20,000 Northerners and Navy ships until he was recalled to the Northern
Virginia Army at the beginning of May at the instigation of General Lee.
Raids also took place on both sides in this theater of war. Colonel
John S. Mosby is famous on the Confederate side, who repeatedly
interrupted the Union's rear lines of communication all year round with
the 43rd Battalion of the 1st Virginia Cavalry Regiment, the Partisan
Rangers.
In 1863, Charleston, South Carolina was the most contested port in
the South. In January, the Confederates attacked the blockade fleet, and
in April they repelled an attack by Union ironclads. In July, the U.S.
Navy took part in the battles for Fort Wagner and Morris Island.
African-American units demonstrated their high morale and fighting
strength.
In the spring, the Union fleet looked for opportunities
to test its ironclads. Small Confederate bases were available for this
purpose, which meant that little resistance and minimal damage to the
Confederates were expected.
The Confederates continued to
experiment with new weapons. However, an experimental submarine, the
H.L. Hunley, sank twice in Charleston harbor.
Another newly
developed Confederate weapon was the David. The boat, equipped with a
spar torpedo, attacked the U.S. ironclad New Ironsides in the waters off
Charleston in October and severely damaged it.
In Texas, the
Confederates repelled a US Navy expedition on Sabine Pass. The Union
succeeded in destroying several Confederate cargo ships in Florida.
Meanwhile, on the open sea, the privateer cruisers of the CS Navy,
especially the Alabama and the Florida, spread fear and terror among the
ships of the US merchant marine. The two ships, built in England, took a
total of 97 prizes during their service.
The most important event in the northern states was to be the
presidential election in the autumn. The Union had not consistently
exploited the great victories of the previous year, and in all theaters
of war the opposing armies faced each other in the positions they had
achieved the previous year. War weariness in the North grew due to the
restrictions on supplies for the civilian population and the renewed
call-up of conscripts, as well as the army's ever-increasing losses. In
the spring, the three-year volunteers were due to be discharged, as they
could no longer be encouraged to show the greatest heroism in their
final months of service. A further 500,000 conscripts were called up to
cover the losses.
The situation of the Confederacy was
considerably worse at the beginning of 1864 than it had been a year
earlier. In the West, the devastating defeat at Chattanooga had opened
the way for the North to enter the "deep South". The war here had to be
considered lost, while in the East, a laborious draw had been achieved
after the defeat at Gettysburg. There was no prospect of improvement for
the Confederate troops. The blockade by the US Navy continued to
restrict the war goods-producing industry, and the occupation of
Tennessee, Louisiana and Mississippi led to a shortage of food supplies
and starvation among the population. In terms of foreign policy, the
Confederacy was isolated. Only a few countries allowed Southern ships to
enter; the hope of recognition of the Confederacy by the major European
powers had not been fulfilled.
The last remaining hope was a
possible defeat of Lincoln in the US presidential election and a
possible negotiated peace with his successor. The armies of the South
therefore had to offer as much resistance as possible and inflict heavy
losses on the advancing Union troops in order to shake morale in the
North and weaken Lincoln politically. The Confederacy government
therefore tightened the military law in February and allowed the
conscription of all men between the ages of 17 and 50. Those soldiers
whose term of service had actually expired were called up for further
military service. Braxton Bragg was replaced in the West as
Commander-in-Chief of the Tennessee Army by General Joseph E. Johnston,
who was regarded as a master of the defensive. Brigadier General John H.
Morgan's escape from prison in Ohio was celebrated frenetically.
However, the armies of the Confederacy suffered from a serious shortage
of horses.
President Lincoln needed success to be re-elected. The
most successful general of the Northern states in the last year was
Ulysses S. Grant, who had fought victoriously in the West. With the
consent of Congress, Lincoln therefore appointed him Commander-in-Chief
of the Union Army in March 1864 and made him Lieutenant General. Grant
set up his headquarters "in the field" with the Army of the Potomac and
ordered simultaneous attacks in all theaters of war. One of Grant's
declared goals was to wear out the Southerners. His reasoning was as
simple as it was inhumane - the North would be able to compensate for
high losses, but the South would not - which earned Grant the name "the
Butcher".
In the West, General William T. Sherman set out on the
Atlanta campaign, in the East General George G. Meade on the overland
campaign, each with 100,000 men. In the West, Sherman advanced on
Atlanta against the constantly evasive Johnston, in the East General Lee
managed to anticipate every move of the Army of the Potomac and
successfully counter it. The enormous losses suffered by the Union
forced the leadership to deploy untested troops from all parts of the
country in the various battles even before the Battle of Cold Harbor.
After the Battle of Cold Harbor, Meade managed to tactically surprise
Lee. The Army of the Potomac bypassed the Army of Northern Virginia and
threatened Richmond's last lines of communication near Petersburg. Lee
reacted in time and the war in the East froze in the Siege of
Petersburg. The huge losses provided the supporters of a negotiated
peace with new arguments in the upcoming election campaign. Sherman
managed to take Atlanta and thus bring his campaign to a victorious end.
The fall of Atlanta was the much-needed success for Lincoln's
re-election. Atlanta was an important trading and economic center and an
important transport hub. Johnston's defensive strategy was successful
against Sherman, but it did not lead to a decisive battle and was
associated with constant territorial losses. President Davis therefore
replaced Johnston with General John B. Hood, who was considered
"aggressive". This personnel change did not prevent the fall of Atlanta.
Sherman began the march to the Atlantic in the fall. On his way to the
sea he left behind a strip of devastation up to 60 miles wide - towns,
farms and plantations were plundered, industrial plants and railway
facilities destroyed. Sherman marched into Savannah, Georgia in
December. To relieve the Northern Virginia Army, Lee sent Lieutenant
General Jubal Early's corps through the Shenandoah Valley towards
Washington. The goal was not achieved and in pursuit of Early, Major
General Sheridan systematically destroyed the Shenandoah Valley.
In the summer, the Democrats chose George B. McClellan as their
presidential candidate. McClellan did not intend to end the war
immediately, but did not insist on a victory over the Confederacy, but
wanted to achieve a negotiated peace. In the November election, the
incumbent Lincoln won with 55% of the votes cast. Only three states -
Kentucky, New Jersey and Delaware - did not vote for Lincoln. The vice
president was Democrat Andrew Johnson, the only Southern senator who
remained loyal to the Union during the secession in 1861 and later
military governor of Tennessee.
The war year of 1864 cast its
shadow over events of the 20th century. Trench warfare, never seen
before with such intensity, began in Cold Harbor and continued during
the siege of Petersburg and the battles for Atlanta. Mine attacks were
carried out against the enemy positions. New weapons such as mortars
fired into the enemy positions day and night and led to further
improvements in position construction. The destruction during the Second
Shenandoah Campaign and Sherman's March to the Sea became a military
tactic. The "scorched earth" was not only intended to weaken the
opposing army, but especially to break the will of the population to
resist. In contrast to later "scorched earth" actions, however, personal
attacks on the civilian population only occurred in exceptional cases
during these two campaigns. The term "war of attrition" appeared for the
first time in history.
The two states west of the Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas,
continued to produce goods and export them to Europe via Mexico in
exchange for war products. The Union had already tried unsuccessfully
the previous year to occupy these two states or at least to prevent
trade. This year saw the Union's last equally unsuccessful attempts.
Lieutenant General E. Kirby Smith and Major General Frederick Steele
faced each other on the Arkansas at the beginning of the year. The front
remained quiet until spring, apart from a few skirmishes. Major General
Banks intended to take Shreveport, Louisiana, in March, which was then
the capital of Confederate Louisiana and E. Kirby Smith's headquarters.
Steele was to come to Banks' aid from the north. The two campaigns were
poorly coordinated; Steele set out three weeks later than Banks and made
slow progress. Banks conducted an amphibious operation along the Red
River. Rear Admiral David Dixon Porter's gunboats were unable to provide
sufficient support to Banks due to the low water level. Banks abandoned
the campaign after his defeat in the Battle of Mansfield, Louisiana
against Major General Richard Taylor, a son of the twelfth US President.
At the end of April, Smith defeated Steele, who retreated to Little
Rock, Arkansas with the VII Corps. Both campaigns failed.
E.
Kirby Smith and his subordinate Sterling Price intended to invade
Missouri in the fall. The Confederates hoped to turn public opinion in
the Union against Lincoln's re-election by occupying Missouri, to win
the people of Missouri over to the side of the Confederacy and to force
the Union to move troops to the west side of the river. To this end,
Major General Sterling Price was to take St. Louis, Missouri, with
12,000 cavalrymen from the newly formed Missouri Army and supply himself
there. Price was then to conquer Jefferson City, the capital of
Missouri, and thereby symbolically bring Missouri back into the
Confederacy. E. Kirby Smith then intended to return to Arkansas with the
Missouri Army through Kansas and the Indian Territory, confiscating all
horses, mules and other military goods found along the way.
Every
third soldier in the Missouri Army was unarmed at the start of the raid.
Price was facing the Union military districts of Missouri under Major
General Rosecrans and Kansas under Major General Curtis. Rosecrans
concentrated his troops so that Price could not take St. Louis or
Jefferson City. He also sent a cavalry division under Major General
Alfred Pleasonton to pursue Price. From mid-October, Curtis set up the
Frontier Army, which blocked the Missouri Army's path to the west. On
October 23, Curtis and Pleasonton defeated Price in the Battle of
Westport and then pursued him to Arkansas. The casualties amounted to
around 6,000 men. The raid was the last major combat action in the
theater of war.
Skirmishes between guerrillas and militias took
place in Missouri, Kansas and northern Arkansas throughout the year.
Lieutenant William "Bloody Bill" Anderson, like Colonel William C.
Quantrill a guerrilla, murdered 25 unarmed Union soldiers on September
27 after plundering and burning the town of Centralia, Missouri, and
that evening killed 116 soldiers from the 39th Missouri Infantry
Regiment, which was supposed to provide Anderson. Frank and Jesse James,
who were later wanted as criminals, were also involved in the murder
known as the "Anderson Massacre."
In the summer, Brigadier
General Alfred Sully led another punitive expedition against the Sioux
in the Dakota Territory with around 2,500 soldiers. The Indians'
resistance was to be broken once and for all. Thanks to his superior
weapons technology, especially his artillery, Sully managed to put the
approximately 5,000 Indians to flight and defeat them after a nine-mile
pursuit.
The Atlanta campaign dominated operations that year. However,
fighting was not limited to Georgia. From Vicksburg, Mississippi, Major
General Sherman attacked the railroad junction of Meridian, Mississippi
in the Meridian Campaign in January. If things went well, Sherman
intended to capture Selma, Alabama, and from there threaten Mobile,
Alabama. At the same time, a cavalry division from Memphis, Tennessee,
was to support Sherman's operations. The cavalry was to set out on
February 1 and reach Meridian with Sherman on February 10. However,
Smith's cavalry did not begin its advance until February 11. It soon had
to face Major General Forrest's Confederate cavalry and, without
reaching Meridian, retreated back to Memphis. Sherman encountered
Lieutenant General Polk's ragtag troops west of Meridian. Polk had the
upper hand in numbers, but still retreated from the city. Sherman
destroyed the railroad facilities and all the rolling stock he found in
the city. He abandoned the campaign on February 20 without having
achieved his objectives because the cavalry did not join him, and
returned to Vicksburg. The unreliability of the cavalry reinforced
Sherman's belief that the Union cavalry was useless. General Johnston
had to send two divisions of the Tennessee Army to support Polk. Major
General Thomas took advantage of this moment of weakness and attacked
the Tennessee Army with the Army of the Cumberland, but without success.
Major General Sherman succeeded Grant in the western theater of war.
At the same time as the overland campaign of the Army of the Potomac in
the east, Sherman began the Atlanta campaign in May. He deployed the
Tennessee Army under the command of Major General James B. McPherson,
the Ohio Army under Major General John M. Schofield, and the Cumberland
Army under Major General George H. Thomas, a total of around 112,000
men. His opponent was the Confederate Tennessee Army under Joseph E.
Johnston, initially with around 50,000 and later 65,000 soldiers.
Sherman advanced south along the Western and Atlantic Railroad (W&A)
line. His goal was to destroy the Confederate Tennessee Army. Atlanta,
an important industrial center and railroad junction, lay along the way
and would fall into his hands after the Tennessee Army was destroyed.
The W&A was the main supply line for the Union armies. Accordingly, it
was frequently interrupted by Confederate cavalry raids. Sherman
therefore assigned a division to protect the railroad line and the
repair crews.
Johnston repeatedly clashed with the Tennessee Army
during the campaign. He took advantage of the natural terrain obstacles
in northern, mountainous Georgia and defended himself from field
fortifications. Because the Union armies mostly attacked these field
fortifications unsuccessfully, Sherman bypassed the positions each time
and forced Johnston to retreat again. At Kennesaw Mountain, Johnston won
one of the greatest victories of the campaign.
Johnston believed
that defending Atlanta would only be possible with great losses and
therefore did not intend to defend the city. President Jefferson Davis
seized this moment and relieved the unpopular general of his command.
Lieutenant General John B. Hood became his successor and intended to
attack and defeat the Union armies one after the other. Hood's first two
attacks against the Cumberland and Tennessee armies failed with heavy
losses and fit perfectly into Sherman's strategy, who was better able to
use his superiority in open battle than against dug-in troops. After
several attempted attacks, Sherman began the siege of the city and
marched in on September 3. He destroyed what the Confederates had left
standing during their retreat and resettled the population.
In
the fall, Hood marched north with the Tennessee Army. He repeatedly
attacked Sherman's supply lines, but without causing any lasting damage,
and he invaded Tennessee. Hood intended to prevent Sherman from
advancing further south and to entice him to pursue him. Sherman
assigned Major General Thomas to repel the advance. He placed
Schofield's Army of the Ohio under Thomas' command. Thomas ordered parts
of his Tennessee Army to Nashville, Tennessee, in order to confront the
Confederate Tennessee Army there at the latest, and pursued Hood with
the rest of the troops. During this advance, Hood worked closely with
Major General Nathan Bedford Forrest, who led a raid into southern
Tennessee. A series of battles ensued, all of which the Union was able
to decide in its favor. Thomas finally repelled Hood's advance at the
Battle of Nashville, Tennessee in December. Hood retreated with the
defeated army to Tupelo, Mississippi.
Sherman initially left his
troops, with whom he had conquered Atlanta, to rest. He began the
Savannah campaign, better known as "Sherman's March to the Sea," on
November 15. Sherman was convinced that the war could only end when the
strategic, economic and psychological capabilities of the Confederacy
had been significantly weakened. He ordered his troops to feed
themselves from the land. Military and sometimes civilian infrastructure
buildings were destroyed. In what today's perspective was also war
crimes on both sides. The Confederates unsuccessfully opposed the march
several times. The campaign ended on December 22 with the capture of
Savannah, Georgia.
The year 1864 produced another hero of the
Confederacy. Major General Nathan Bedford Forrest led three large,
ultimately unsuccessful raids into Tennessee. In two of them he tied
down considerable Union forces, and in the last Forrest was unable to
provide decisive support for Hood's campaign to Nashville. Another raid
into Kentucky that was celebrated in the South was that of the folk hero
Morgan, who had managed to escape from a Union prison the previous year.
The importance of the raids lay in the fact that they tied down
significant troops from the other side. However, Morgan was killed in a
battle in Tennessee on September 4, 1864.
At the beginning of the year, the armies faced each other again on
the Rappahannock. The fronts were calm, with only isolated firefights.
There were also isolated skirmishes in the Shenandoah Valley and on the
coast of North Carolina.
The government in Washington wanted to
send a political signal with a raid on Richmond: 15,000 prisoners were
to be freed and Lincoln's amnesty decree distributed to the residents.
The Army of the Potomac first diverted the troops on the Rapidan before
Major General Hugh Judson Kilpatrick set out on the raid at the end of
February. The raid failed due to a lack of coordination between the two
attack columns, among other things. Kilpatrick was transferred to the
west. Major General Philip H. Sheridan took command of the Army of the
Potomac's cavalry corps at the beginning of April.
Lieutenant
General Grant had three armies at his disposal for his plans. The
strongest army was the Army of the Potomac under Major General Meade
with around 122,000 soldiers. The other two armies were the Army of
James with 33,000 soldiers in the east of the peninsula and the Army of
West Virginia with 10,000 soldiers in the Shenandoah Valley. These two
were led by the "political" generals Benjamin Butler and Franz Sigel.
Grant intended to attack the armies of Generals Lee and Beauregard with
these three armies and a raid to disrupt the Confederate supply lines.
The Army of Northern Virginia had to hand over Lieutenant General
James Longstreet's corps to the western theater of war in the fall.
General Lee had around 60,000 soldiers at his disposal at the end of
April, and General Beauregard had 20,000 soldiers to defend Richmond.
Grant ordered the attack at the beginning of May. The Army of the
Potomac was to attack and destroy the Army of Northern Virginia, the
Army of the James was to permanently disrupt the Confederate supply
lines east of Richmond, the Army of the West Virginia was to tie down
the Confederate troops in the Shenandoah Valley, and the raid was to
permanently disrupt the Virginia & Tennessee Railroad line in
southwestern Virginia.
The Bermuda Hundred campaign failed
despite having five times the number of troops in some cases. Beauregard
managed to keep Butler's army in check with small forces and was even
able to reinforce Lee during the Battle of Cold Harbor. The Lynchburg
campaign failed at first attempt, and Commander-in-Chief Sigel was
replaced by Major General David Hunter. Hunter almost reached Lynchburg,
the goal of the campaign. However, the approach took so long that in the
meantime Lieutenant General Jubal A. Early had reached the Shenandoah
Valley and pushed the Union troops back across the Potomac. The raid on
the Virginia & Tennessee Railroad led to the destruction of the bridge
over the New River.
The Army of the Potomac crossed the Rapidan
on May 4 and began the overland campaign, its troops attacking the Army
of Northern Virginia in the Chancellorsville area. The Battle of the
Wilderness ended in a draw. Lieutenant General Longstreet arrived on the
second day of the battle, saved the draw and was wounded in the process.
Major General Richard H. Anderson took over the corps. Unlike other
generals before him, Grant did not end the campaign after the defeat in
the Wilderness, but ordered Meade to continue attacking. To do this,
Grant used the same method as Sherman during the Atlanta campaign -
Grant tried to envelop the enemy. The envelopment failed. Lee had
anticipated the movement of the Army of the Potomac and had the Army of
Northern Virginia dug in again at Spotsylvania Court House. At the same
time, Major General Sheridan was supposed to cut off the supply lines of
the Northern Virginia Army. At Beaver Dam Creek and at Mechanicsville,
he encountered the cavalry of the Northern Virginia Army under Major
General J.E.B. Stuart. Stuart was killed in the last major cavalry
battle at the Yellow Tavern. Sheridan was unable to complete his
mission.
The Army of the Potomac attacked Lee again at
Spotsylvania C.H. With bayonet attacks, the soldiers managed to break
into the Confederate positions - the famous "Stonewall" Brigade was
almost completely taken prisoner. The Northern Virginia Army retreated
again before the Northerners could expand their success and dug in again
at North Anna.
The Army of the Potomac again attempted to
outflank the positions of the Army of Northern Virginia. At North Anna,
the Confederates missed the opportunity to destroy two Union corps.
During the next attempt to outflank, Sheridan's cavalry occupied and
held the important road junction at Cold Harbor. The Army of Northern
Virginia had dug in again, and the frontal attack of three corps ordered
by Grant collapsed under Confederate fire. The two armies then faced
each other for a week. The soldiers' days and nights were marked by
artillery and mortar fire, raids, sniper operations, and night attacks.
General Grant finally managed to leave the positions unnoticed by the
Confederates. The Army of the Potomac crossed the James River and
marched on Petersburg. With a one-day delay, General Lee was able to
position the Army of Northern Virginia around Petersburg just in time
and repel the first attacks of the Army of the Potomac.
The
overland campaign was over. Grant's theory that the North would survive
a ruthless war of attrition better than the South had been confirmed.
The Army of the Potomac's losses, however, amounted to around 55,000
men. Despite making up for the losses, the Army of the Potomac's ability
to attack was limited because the soldiers brought in were either
inexperienced fortress troops or recruits. The Army of Northern
Virginia's losses amounted to around 30,000 soldiers. The South was only
able to replace the losses to a very limited extent with recruits and
convalescents.
The Army of the Potomac and the Army of the James
began the siege of Petersburg on June 15, which was not a siege in the
true sense of the word, in which a city was completely cut off. After
the unsuccessful attempts by the Army of the Potomac to attack, both
sides faced each other in field fortifications. The positions eventually
extended over a length of 30 miles. During the siege, several corps of
the Union armies repeatedly attacked the Confederate positions. Major
General Burnside's attempt to use a tunnel to get under the Confederate
positions and blow them up became famous. The detonation killed around
300 Confederates, and the subsequent poorly coordinated attack by the
federal troops collapsed under fire from the Confederate reserves. The
fighting and battles continued into the spring of the following year.
The Northern Virginia Army held the positions in front of Petersburg
until the end of the year.
During the Battle of Cold Harbor,
General Lee had instructed Lieutenant General Early to drive Hunter out
of the Shenandoah Valley with the II Corps and to cut the Baltimore &
Ohio railroad line. Lee left the further advance through Maryland
towards Washington to Early's discretion. This was to force Grant to
send troops from the Army of the Potomac to protect Washington and thus
reduce the pressure on the Army of Northern Virginia. Grant ordered
Major General Horatio G. Wright's VI Corps to defend Early in
Washington.
Early led the campaign in a similar way to Jackson
two years earlier - after great marches, he struck by surprise and then
disappeared again. Early refrained from attacking Washington because he
was too weak. Parts of the cavalry rode to Chambersburg, Pennsylvania
and demanded gold worth 100,000 dollars. When the citizens could not
raise this, the Confederates burned the city to the ground.
Grant
wanted to eliminate Early's "source of unrest" and appointed Major
General Philip Sheridan, Commanding General of the Cavalry Corps of the
Army of the Potomac, as Commander-in-Chief of the Army of the
Shenandoah. He was in charge of the VI Corps. and the XIX Corps, three
cavalry divisions and all of Major General Hunter's troops. Sheridan
proceeded very cautiously so as not to cause any failures in Lincoln's
election campaign. At Cedar Creek, the Shenandoah Army achieved a
decisive victory over Early. Washington was no longer threatened.
Sheridan, like Sherman, used the scorched earth tactic in the Shenandoah
Valley. Sheridan returned to the Army of the Potomac and took part in
the siege of Petersburg. Early had to hand over almost all of his troops
to General Lee by the end of the year, who were deployed at Petersburg.
Early himself remained in the Shenandoah Valley.
After two failed attempts with the experimental submarine H. L.
Hunley, the Confederates managed the first successful submarine attack
in history in February 1864. The Hunley attacked the Housatonic with a
spar torpedo and sank it. The submarine was also lost in the attack. The
crew was probably killed by the shock wave.
In April, the
Confederates commissioned the ironclad Albemarle, which played a key
role in the recapture of Plymouth, North Carolina. The Albemarle
subsequently effectively secured the Roanoke. Only the sinking of the
ship in October by an attack with spar torpedoes enabled the Northern
states to recapture Plymouth.
In August 1864, a fleet under
Admiral Farragut attacked the Confederate fortifications and ships off
Mobile. The Battle of Mobile Bay was a great victory for the Union:
Forts Morgan and Gaines at the entrance to the bay were occupied by land
troops, and the ships of the Confederate flotilla in the bay, including
the ironclad Tennessee, were all sunk, captured or forced to flee. The
commander of the Confederate ships, Admiral Franklin Buchanan, was
wounded and taken prisoner. Mobile itself remained in Confederate hands
until April 1865, but was blockaded from then on. Farragut was promoted
to the newly created rank of vice admiral for his services.
By
the end of 1864, Wilmington, North Carolina was the most important
remaining Confederate port on the east coast. The Unions launched an
attack on Fort Fisher, which guarded the city, in December, but were
repulsed. The Union Navy, however, achieved further successes on the
open sea: on June 19, the frigate USS Kearsarge sank the fearsome CSS
Alabama off Cherbourg, and the CSS Florida was captured by the USS
Wachusett in the waters of Bahia, Brazil, on October 7. Attacks by
Confederate cruisers continued, however: in August 1864, the CSS
Tallahassee attacked Union merchant ships, and on October 19, the
Confederates commissioned the English-built CSS Shenandoah.
The military situation of the Confederacy was desperate. The armies
in the west had been defeated, in the east the Northern Virginia Army
defended the area around Petersburg against the Potomac Army, which was
more than twice as strong, the Shenandoah Valley was under the control
of federal troops, and from the south the Carolinas and Virginia were
threatened by Sherman's troops. On January 31, General Lee became
commander-in-chief of the Confederacy's army.
The economic
situation was equally desolate. The Confederacy only had one seaport,
Wilmington, North Carolina, in the west the southern states were divided
after the fall of Atlanta and the supply routes to the west had
collapsed, agriculture in the Shenandoah Valley, formerly the
breadbasket of the south, was largely destroyed, and the few usable rail
lines ran from east to west via Petersburg to Richmond in western
Virginia. People were starving and the soldiers had to make do with
everything.
President Lincoln intended to enact the 13th
Amendment at the beginning of January. Despite fierce opposition from
the House of Representatives, this was not achieved until January 31.
The abolition of slavery only then became the official war goal.
Although it was clear to everyone in the southern states after Lincoln's
re-election that a negotiated peace had become impossible, the
introduction of the 13th Amendment led to the realization that the
southern economic system was at an end after the northern states'
victory. This led to two opposing reactions: many soldiers deserted
because there was nothing left to gain, and others continued to fight
under the motto "now more than ever".
The last seaport,
Wilmington, fell on February 22. At the same time, Sherman began to
attack Virginia through the Carolinas. On February 10, the Southern
Congress approved Lee's demand to conscript slaves into military service
with a federal law. The law came into force on March 13 against fierce
opposition and came too late; no more colored regiments were deployed.
The voters in Tennessee, although still a member state of the
Confederacy after having been occupied by US troops for a long time,
voted for the abolition of slavery. In his speech at the beginning of
his second term, Lincoln promised the southern states that he would
treat them with leniency.
The Army of the Potomac began its final
offensive at the end of March with up to five times the number of
troops. In order to avoid being encircled, Lee decided to abandon
Petersburg and Richmond and join forces with General Johnston in western
Virginia. Confronted by the Army of the Potomac at Appomattox Court
House, the Army of Northern Virginia surrendered on April 9. Johnston
surrendered on April 20, in Alabama Generals Taylor and Forrest
surrendered on May 8 and 9, and in the west General Kirby Smith on June
2 and Brigadier General Stand Watie on June 23. The last Confederate
warship surrendered on November 4 in Liverpool, Great Britain.
President Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth on April 14. His
successor was Vice President Andrew Johnson, who continued Lincoln's
policies. The Northern states celebrated the victory with a parade of
several armies on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington on May 23 and 24.
President Jefferson Davis, who had fled Richmond with the Confederate
government on April 5, hoped to be able to re-form the government in
Texas and continue the war from there until victory. He was captured on
May 10 while fleeing and imprisoned for two years. President Johnson
ordered the release of the prisoners of war. In November, a court
martial sentenced the commandant of the Andersonville prisoner of war
camp to death as a war criminal, the only Southern soldier to do so:
Henry Wirz was hanged on November 10.
The Union troops focused their attention on fighting the Confederate
irregulars and border bandits. After Lee's surrender, there were a
number of skirmishes and shootings, some with regular Confederate
forces. Major General John Pope had been commander of the Missouri
military district since January 31.
The last battle of the Civil
War took place in May on the Rio Grande in Texas. Both sides had agreed
to a non-aggression pact there in March. The US commander nevertheless
attacked the Confederate outposts. Eyewitnesses reported that Mexican
government troops had crossed the Rio Grande but had not taken part in
the shootings. It is not certain whether during the actions on the Rio
Grande Confederates fired on the US units from the Mexican bank of the
Rio Grande or whether Mexican government troops took part in the battle
from there. The commander-in-chief of the Confederate troops west of the
Mississippi, General Edmund Kirby Smith, surrendered on June 2 in
Galveston, Texas. The last Confederate commander to surrender was
Brigadier General Stand Watie, a Cherokee Indian, on June 23.
The Tennessee Army was the last major Confederacy unit on the
battlefield. The army had lost around 20,000 men in the fighting of the
previous two months. The new commander-in-chief, Lieutenant General
Richard Taylor, was given the task of defending the Carolinas against
Major General Sherman. General Johnston took over command there, while
Taylor remained in the west.
As in Trans-Mississippi, there were
many small battles, skirmishes and local raids, especially in Tennessee.
The last major city not yet in Union hands was Mobile, Alabama. The
attack began in mid-March from the north and east and led to the city's
fall on April 11. The most important industrial site remaining for the
Confederacy after Richmond, Virginia was Selma, Alabama. The city was to
be destroyed in a raid that began on March 22. Lieutenant General
Forrest, who was considered invincible, defended the city. Union troops
under the command of Brevet Major General James Harrison Wilson defeated
Forrest in the Battle of Selma and destroyed much of Selma. On April 12,
they occupied the Confederacy's first capital, Montgomery, Alabama.
Lieutenant Generals Richard Taylor and Nathan Bedford Forrest
surrendered on May 8 and 9, 1865.
The war ended in the state where the first major battle had taken
place three and three-quarter years earlier - in Virginia. The Northern
Virginia and Potomac armies faced each other in fortified positions near
Petersburg. As he had done during the overland campaign, Lieutenant
General Grant attempted to outflank the Southern positions on the left
and cut off their supply lines. In January the positions extended over
thirty miles around Petersburg. By March General Lee had been able to
fend off all attempts to bypass the Northern Virginia Army. However, the
difficulties in manning the positions were growing. The last attempt by
the Northern Virginia Army to break through Grant's lines and destroy
the Union supply depot failed in the deep Union trenches on March 25.
The Tennessee Army reached the area in northern South Carolina in
February. General Johnston took command of all troops in the Carolinas
and formed the Southern Army with them. The strength of the troops was
around 10,000 in mid-March and around 15,000 in mid-April.
Grant
had initially ordered Sherman to embark his army and reinforce the Army
of the Potomac in front of Petersburg. Sherman convinced Grant that a
campaign through the Carolinas, similar to the March to the Sea, would
hit the Confederacy harder. Sherman intended to bypass the small
garrisons on the Carolina coast and capture the capital of South
Carolina, Columbia. He then wanted to march to Virginia and threaten the
Northern Virginia Army from behind. The scorched earth principle was to
be applied again during the campaign. The strength of Sherman's forces
was around 60,000 on February 1 and around 90,000 on April 1.
At
the end of January, Major General Sherman began the advance from
Savannah, Georgia through the Carolinas with the three armies -
Tennessee, Ohio and Georgia -. The advancing units were repeatedly
opposed by parts of the Southern Army, who were briefly successful but
hopelessly outnumbered. Columbia, South Carolina fell on February 17. On
March 19, Johnston managed to concentrate all of his forces at
Bentonville, North Carolina and slow Sherman's advance again.
In
the south of the Shenandoah Valley, Lieutenant General Early's small
force of around 1,600 men held out until February and blocked Major
General Sheridan's cavalry divisions from crossing the passes of the
Blue Ridge Mountains. Sheridan attacked the Confederates on March 2 at
Waynesboro, Virginia and crushed Early's forces. Sheridan reached the
Army of the Potomac on March 26 and played a decisive role in the
Appomattox campaign.
After the attack on Fort Stedman, General
Lee no longer felt able to defend the positions and decided to abandon
Petersburg and Richmond, which had since become an industrial center. He
intended to move to Lynchburg, Virginia, and replenish the Army of
Northern Virginia with supplies stored there. Lee then wanted to join
forces with General Johnston in the north of North Carolina and then use
their combined forces to defeat Sherman and then Grant.
Lieutenant General Grant began the Appomattox campaign on March 29.
First, he again tried to outflank the Army of Northern Virginia on the
left. In the decisive Battle of Five Forks on April 1, Grant succeeded
in cutting off the Southern Railroad line, the Army of Northern
Virginia's main supply line. On April 2, Major General Meade managed to
break through Petersburg. Lee evacuated Richmond and the positions
around Petersburg to the west across the Appomattox. Grant pursued the
retreating Northern Virginia Army, partially overtaking it, and forced
it into daily battles. In the battles at Saylor's Creek, the Northern
Virginia Army lost a quarter of its personnel on April 6. Brevet Major
General Custer's division blocked Lee's army's retreat route on April 8.
General Lee surrendered on April 9. Grant released the soldiers of the
Northern Virginia Army on their word of honor.
General Johnston
had not succeeded in slowing Sherman's advance for good. Johnston agreed
to a ceasefire near Raleigh, North Carolina on April 18 and surrendered
with all troops from the Carolinas, Georgia and Florida on April 26.
The war in the eastern theater was over.
At the beginning of January 1865, an amphibious expeditionary force
again attacked Fort Fisher, which was captured this time. Wilmington,
one of the most important ports on the eastern coast of the Southern
states, was also blockaded and was occupied by the Northern states a
month later. Four days before Wilmington, on February 18, 1865, the
long-fought Charleston had been evacuated as part of Sherman's Carolina
campaign. The Union forces carried out the last amphibious operation of
the war in the Florida panhandle on St. Marks on March 6. Galveston in
Texas fell with the surrender of E. Kirby Smith on June 2.
On the
open sea, however, the CSS Shenandoah continued to hunt Union merchant
ships. The ship, under the command of James I. Waddell, attacked the US
whaling fleet in the Pacific in the summer and fired the last shots of
the war. Waddell learned of the Confederacy's surrender from a British
ship in August. He decided to go to England. In Liverpool, the
Shenandoah was the last ship of the Confederate Navy to lower its flag
and surrender on November 6, 1865.
Shortly after the end of
hostilities, the worst shipping disaster in the history of US shipping
occurred on the Mississippi: the paddle steamer Sultana, overloaded with
exchanged US prisoners, sank on April 27 as a result of an explosion in
its boilers. An estimated 1,700 people died. It was never clear whether
this was an accident or an attack.
At least 620,000 soldiers died in the American Civil War, 360,000
from the Northern states and 260,000 from the Southern states. These
figures are based on counts based on casualty reports, discharge forms
and applications for widows' and orphans' pensions. However, this
information was often missing for the Southern states, so the number of
260,000 killed is only a rough approximation. An alternative calculation
method estimates the death toll statistically by calculating the
deviation of the death rate of men of military age from the norm from
census data. This calculation method suggests a range of 650,000–850,000
casualties for able-bodied men, with 750,000 being the most likely
scenario. The number of casualties in the civilian population is
estimated at around 50,000, the vast majority of them in the South.
In the South, where the brunt of the fighting took place, eleven
cities were destroyed or severely damaged. This represented about 7% of
Confederate cities, but included important population centers such as
Charleston and Columbia in South Carolina and Richmond in Virginia. In
addition, 45 courthouses in the Confederacy were destroyed as a result
of hostilities. The value of agricultural machinery and equipment in the
South fell by 43% between 1860 and 1870. Railroad lines were also badly
affected during the war, but recovered relatively quickly after the war
ended.
The Civil War fundamentally changed medical services on both sides.
One of these changes was the establishment of ambulance services that
provided first aid and transported the wounded from the battlefield to
field hospitals. This organization became the model for European armies
until World War I, and the Germans and French adopted the model in the
Franco-Prussian War.
From a medical perspective, the Civil War
occurred in the late Middle Ages. In Europe, groundbreaking discoveries
began to be made in the 1860s. Doctors in the Civil War knew nothing of
the connections between water and typhus, unsterilized instruments and
infections, or mosquitoes and malaria. Terms such as asepsis and
antisepsis were unknown. The large caliber of infantry weapons and the
low speed of flight meant that the bullets usually got stuck in the
body. In order to avoid gangrene, osteomyelitis or blood poisoning,
surgeons usually had no choice but to amputate the affected part of the
body. Gunshot wounds to the abdomen almost always led to death.
Chloroform and ether were used for anesthesia, but in the south they
were sometimes so scarce that the wounded had to be anaesthetized with
whiskey.
Diseases were often a greater danger to soldiers than
the enemy's weapons. Mortality due to disease was comparatively
significantly lower than in all previous armies; For every two soldiers
who died of illness, there was only one killed in combat, which was
still a high number by 20th century standards. Nevertheless, illness was
a factor that hindered military campaigns: for example, in the tent
camps in which the soldiers were housed before the start of the
campaign, up to half of all members of regiments often fell ill with
infectious diseases such as measles or mumps. In the Peninsula campaign,
many soldiers fell ill with malaria and typhus in the warm, humid
climate of the lowlands, and during the siege of Corinth more than half
fell ill with diarrhea.
In the USA, Reconstruction is the term used to describe the phase of
the reintegration of the southern states into the Union of the United
States of America after the Civil War. It began during the war in 1863
and lasted until 1877. Translating the term "Reconstruction" as
"restoration of the original state" does not seem sufficient. It
encompasses both the concepts of reconstruction and transformation as
well as the technical term "reconstruction". "Reconstruction" included,
among other things, the political and economic reintegration of the
states that had seceded from the Union into the Union, the criminal and
social treatment of the leaders of the Confederacy, and the
constitutional and legal status of those freed from slavery. The
treatment of these issues led to violent controversies.
The first
phase of Reconstruction is called Presidential Reconstruction because it
was largely shaped by President Andrew Johnson. Johnson, himself a
southerner who had remained loyal to the Union, initially pursued a
lenient strategy with the South. He quickly demobilized the army,
returned confiscated land to its owners, and gave the South a free hand
in how it treated former slaves. The Southern states refused to give
freed male slaves the right to vote, and white voters voted primarily
for former Confederates in the first post-war elections in the summer
and fall of 1865. The state legislatures of the defeated Southern states
passed the first Black Codes, and violence broke out in response to the
freed slaves' demands for the right to vote and land. Public sentiment,
which had initially supported Johnson's course, now turned against the
president. Radical Republicans such as Thaddeus Stevens and Charles
Sumner argued that Reconstruction was incomplete as long as blacks did
not have the right to vote. Stevens even called for land to be
confiscated from disloyal planters and distributed to freed slaves,
thereby destroying the basic structure of Southern society.
In
response to Johnson's policies, Congress passed the Reconstruction Act
in 1867, ushering in the second phase of Reconstruction, Congressional
Reconstruction. The South was divided into five military districts, and
the states were not allowed to be readmitted to the Union until they had
given all black citizens the right to vote. These provisions helped
Republicans win elections in the South in the years that followed, and
enabled blacks to hold public office for the first time. The southern
states received new constitutions that stipulated equality before the
law and gave the state a more active role in, for example, school
policy. In Texas, for example, a State Board of Education and a police
department were established during this period. This increased provision
of public goods by the state was very controversial in the southern
states. The taxes required for this were levied primarily on white
landowners, and the white population believed that blacks benefited
disproportionately from this. In response to this, there was political
resistance, but also increased violence against blacks, for example by
the Ku Klux Klan. The government of Ulysses S. Grant, which came into
office in 1869, initially took energetic and successful action against
this. However, these successes were short-lived, and in several southern
states black voters were systematically intimidated, which helped the
Democratic Party to regain power in Alabama in 1874 and Mississippi in
1875, among others. This was also made possible by the fact that public
interest in the United States turned away from the South after the Panic
of 1873. The South gradually fell back to the Democratic Party, which
reversed large parts of the measures previously passed.
In the
course of the controversial presidential election of 1876, a compromise
was reached between Democrats and Republicans that finally ended
Reconstruction: The Democrats accepted the election of Republican Hayes
as president, in return for which the last federal troops were withdrawn
from the South.
The three "Reconstruction" amendments to the
Constitution had the longest lasting effect. The 13th abolished slavery,
the 14th extended the protection of citizens to all races, and the 15th
abolished racial restrictions in elections. However, the latter was
undermined, especially from the turn of the century in the southern
states, by voting restrictions that tied the right to vote to literacy
tests or the payment of poll taxes. In fact, these measures excluded
blacks and poor whites in particular from voting, thereby cementing the
local power monopoly of the Democratic Party. It was only the civil
rights movement after World War II and the passing of the Voting Rights
Act in 1965 that made such voting rights restrictions illegal.
Overall, Reconstruction failed to break the power of the southern elite
at the state level. The land-owning planter elite was not expropriated,
plantations remained largely intact and now relied on the cheap labor of
landless former slaves. With the end of Reconstruction, the planters
again became politically influential. In Texas, for example, in the late
1890s more than half of the representatives in the state legislature
were former slave owners or their descendants. Southern legislation
reflected this: the South remained a low-wage economy based on
labor-intensive agriculture. As a result, the region invested little in
general education and instead tried to hinder the mobility of
agricultural labor. As a result, the South remained economically
underdeveloped compared to the rest of the United States well into the
20th century.
With the victory of the North, the nature and politics of the United
States changed significantly. The old Jeffersonian ideals that the
Constitution should be interpreted as narrowly as possible and that the
central government should have as little power as possible were no
longer upheld. Instead, the power of the federal government was further
expanded: while eleven of the first twelve amendments to the
Constitution (see also the Bill of Rights) had weakened the central
government, its position was strengthened by six of the next seven
amendments. The Civil War brought the first national income tax, the
first general military conscription (ironically on the side of the
South) and an expanded jurisdiction of the federal courts. This change
was also reflected in language: before the Civil War, Americans spoke of
the United States in the plural (the United States are...); after the
war, this changed to the singular (the United States is...). At the
national level, the victory of the Union also drastically changed the
balance of power. Before the war, the South had a clear political
advantage, which was reflected, among other things, in the fact that the
majority of presidents, speakers of the United States House of
Representatives, and Supreme Court judges came from slave-holding
states. After the war, no Southerner held the office of president for
fifty years. At the national level, the Republican Party also benefited:
the next Democratic president after James Buchanan (before Abraham
Lincoln) was Grover Cleveland. He was elected president in 1884, almost
20 years after the end of the Civil War. At the same time, after the end
of Reconstruction, the South remained the Democratic stronghold as the
Solid South until the 1960s.
With the 13th Amendment, slaves had
gained their freedom, and Amendments 14 and 15 gave them citizenship and
voting rights. Nevertheless, African Americans in the South continued to
face discrimination and racial segregation, which was put right by the
Supreme Court's ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson (Separate but equal) was de
facto confirmed.
In both the North and the South, veterans' associations kept the memory of the Civil War alive. Joint meetings of former war participants from the North and South took place in 1913 and 1938 in Gettysburg on the occasion of the 50th and 75th anniversaries of the battle there. The last meeting of Civil War veterans, which took place on August 28, 1949 in Indianapolis, was attended by six survivors. The last soldier who was known to have actively participated in the American Civil War was James Hard, who died on March 12, 1953 at the age of 111.
The term The Lost Cause refers to a revisionist understanding of
history that developed among the white population of the Southern states
following the defeat. The Lost Cause allowed many white Southerners to
portray the defeat as being beyond their control and a betrayal of their
heroes. The term Lost Cause for this mentality goes back to the book The
Lost Cause: A New Southern History of the War of the Confederates
published by Edward Pollard in 1866. The main principles of the Lost
Cause were:
The main reason for secession was not the retention
of slavery, but the defense of the rights of the individual state.
Secession was the constitutional and legal response to the cultural
and economic attacks of the North on the "Southern way of life".
Confederate generals like Lee or Jackson embodied the virtues of the
Southern aristocracy compared to most Union generals, whose low moral
level led to degrading acts such as Sherman's march to the sea or
Sheridan's destruction in the Shenandoah Valley.
The defeats on the
battlefield were an inevitable consequence of the North's superiority in
strength and means.
But defeats were also the result of betrayal and
incompetence on the part of individual subordinates of General Lee.
In the memory of many people, Lee remained the leader whose soldiers
went through fire for him. At the same time, Lee represented the ideal
image of a Southern gentleman, a man who selflessly and God-fearingly
served Virginia and the Confederacy. Lee's tactical brilliance at Bull
Run and Chancellorsville and his declaration that he alone was to blame
for the defeat at Gettysburg elevated Lee to the status of a living
legend. Lee was considered untouchable for a long time and historians
spared him from critical comments.
Lieutenant General Jubal A.
Early wrote many articles for the Southern Historical Society in the
1870s, making the Lost Cause a long-lasting literary and cultural
phenomenon. Early identified Lieutenant General James Longstreet as the
main traitor, whose conduct, contrary to Lee's instructions, had led to
the defeat on the second and third days of the Battle of Gettysburg. Lee
had never expressed his dissatisfaction with Longstreet's behavior.
Longstreet was also the appropriate traitor because he worked with
President Grant after the war and joined the Republican Party. Grant
accepted the political myth because he wanted to avoid repeating the
arguments that had heated tempers before the war began.
The
publication of Douglas Southall Freeman's biography of Lee in 1934
reawakened the Lost Cause mentality. In the four-volume work, Freeman
also blamed other subordinates of Lee, such as Richard Ewell, J.E.B.
Stuart, A. P. Hill, George Pickett and even Jubal Early. Freeman based
his work on "previously unknown data" from the Southern Historical
Society. The Lost Cause perspective also influenced Margaret Mitchell's
1936 novel Gone with the Wind and D.W. Griffith's 1915 film The Birth of
a Nation. The Lost Cause's theses received new attention through the
"New Confederacy Movement" of the late 20th century.
In today's
historiography, the Lost Cause is considered outdated. However, it
continues to have a significant influence on the perception of the Civil
War among the white population, particularly in the South. The
right-wing extremist demonstrations in Charlottesville in 2017 against
the removal of an equestrian statue of Robert E. Lee showed the strong
emotions that can still be mobilized with the help of the Lost Cause,
even more than 150 years after the end of the war.
Immediately after the end of the Civil War, a phase of romantic
idealization of the "old South" began in the literary scene of the
South; poets such as Thomas Nelson Page and (posthumously) Henry Timrod
found a large audience here and contributed to the stylization of the
Lost Cause. Beginning at the end of the 19th century, the Civil War
finally became a popular topic in music, novels and films; later, the
Civil War was also used as material for comics and video games. Jules
Verne made the Civil War the subject of his 1887 novel North versus
South. Just like Margaret Mitchell in her 1937 novel Gone with the Wind
(filmed in 1939), William Faulkner, the most important representative of
a style known as the Southern Renaissance, repeatedly dealt in his works
with the lost culture of the old (pre-war) South and the influence of
the lost Civil War on the South and its society. Likewise, the 1915
silent film The Birth of a Nation dealt with the Civil War and the
subsequent Reconstruction phase. Subsequently, the Civil War also became
a common background material for westerns.
Film adaptations
The following films are about the Civil War (selection):
The Birth of
a Nation (1915)
The General with Buster Keaton (1926)
Gone with
the Wind (1939)
The Red Medal of Courage (1951)
Under Two Flags
(1954)
The Last Command (1959)
North & South (1985, 1986, 1994)
The Blue and the Gray (1982, 1985; short series)
Glory (1989)
PBS
documentary The Civil War by Ken Burns (1990)
Gettysburg (1993)
Ride with the Devil (USA 1999)
Gods and Generals (2003)
Cold
Mountain (2003)
Lincoln (2012)
Free State of Jones (2016)
Music
Songs of the Civil War: The Cumberland Three, concept album
with historical songs (1960)
New And Original Folk Songs of the Civil
War, Don Reno & Red Smily, concept album with new and historical songs
(1961)
Songs of Billy Yank and Johnny Reb, Jimmie Driftwood, 1961
Tennessee Ernie Ford sings Songs of Civil War, concept album with
historical songs (1961)
The Civil War: Its Music And Its Sounds,
music compilation (1962)
Songs of the Civil War, compilation of Ken
Burns' documentary The American Civil War
The Night They Drove Old
Dixie Down by The Band, 1969
Computer games
North & South
(1989, FR)
Wargame Construction Set III: Age of Rifles 1846-1905
(1996, US)
Sid Meier's Gettysburg! (1997, US)
Sid Meier's
Antietam! (1999, US)
American Conquest: Divided Nation (2006, US)
Forge of Freedom: The American Civil War (2006, US)
The History
Channel: Civil War – A Nation Divided (2006, US)
Ageod's American
Civil War (2007, US/FR)
History Civil War: Secret Missions (2008, US)
Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood (2009, US)
Darkest of Days (2009, US)
Victoria II: A House Divided (2011, US)
Ageod's American Civil War II
(2013, US/FR)
Ultimate General: Gettysburg (2014, UKR)
Ultimate
General: Civil War (2016, UKR)
War of Rights (2018, US)
Strategic
Command American Civil War (2022, UK)