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What was the Wilmot proviso, what were the reactions to it, and was it rejected or approved?
The Wilmot Proviso divided Congress along regional lines.
meant that California, as well as the territories of Utah and New Mexico, would be closed to slavery forever.
Northerners were angry over the refusal of southern congressmen to vote for internal improvements.
Many southerners feared that the inevitable addition of free states would shift the balance of power permanently to the North.
The House of Representatives approved the proviso, but the Senate rejected it.
What was the outcome of the Gold rush?
California had grown in population so quickly that it skipped the territorial phase of becoming a state.
Late 1849, Californians held a constitutional convention, adopted a state constitution, and elected a governor and a legislature.
Applied to join Union early 1850
What did california propose and what was the reaction?
California's proposed new constitution forbade slavery, a fact that alarmed southerners.
They had assumed that because most of California lay south of the Missouri Compromise line of 36°30' the state would be open to slavery.
Southerners saw any move to block slavery in the territories as an attack on the southern way of life.
They began to question whether the South should remain in the Union.
What was clay’s compromise, what did the N and S get, and what was the reaction of the people?
Clay presented to the Senate the Compromise of 1850, which he hoped would settle "all questions in controversy between the free and slave states, growing out of the subject of Slavery."
A compromise between the North and the South on slavery.
included provisions to appease northerners as well as southern Americans.
Northerners were pleased because, in effect, it limited slavery in Texas to within its current borders.
Southerners were relieved that Texas would pay $10 million to surrender its claim to New Mexico.
The North gets:
Cali admitted as a free state.
Slave trade prohibited in Washington D.C.
Texas loses boundary dispute with New Mexico
The South gets:
No slavery restrictions in Utah or New Mexico territories
Slaveholding permitted in Washington D.C.
Texas gets $10 mil
Fugitive slave law/act.
Required ppl in the free states to help capture and return escaped slaves.
How did the senate originally respond to Clay’s compromise?
rejected in July but voted into law after 8 months of effort.
What happened with Douglas and clay’s compromise?
Clay had presented his compromise as a single bill, meaning that all of its resolutions would be voted on as a package.
Douglas wisely realized that the compromise was doomed to failure if it was offered this way because every member of Congress opposed at least one of its provisions.
Despite Douglas's careful planning, the debate over the compromise continued for several months as some members of each side refused to give.
What was the fugitive slave act of 1850 and what was the N and S reaction?
The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was part of the Compromise of 1850.
Under the law, runaway slaves who had escaped to the North could be sent back to the South.
Anyone convicted of helping a fugitive was subject to a fine of $1,000, imprisonment, or both.
Alleged fugitives were not entitled to a trial by jury, despite the Sixth Amendment provision calling for a speedy and public jury trial and the right to counsel.
A statement by a slave owner was all that was required to have a slave returned.
Infuriated by the Fugitive Slave Act, some northerners resisted it by organizing vigilance committees to send endangered African Americans to safety in Canada.
Nine northern states passed personal liberty laws, which forbade the imprisonment of runaway slaves and guaranteed that they would have jury trials.
Northern resistance to the Fugitive Slave Act enraged southern slave owners.
Explain the Underground Railroad and Harriet Tubman:
The Underground Railroad was a network of people who aided fugitive slaves in their escape from slavery.
The "conductors" hid fugitives in secret tunnels and false cupboards, provided them with food and clothing, and escorted or directed them to the next "station," often in disguise.
Even with assistance from the Underground Railroad, escaping from slavery was indeed a dangerous process.
traveling on foot at night without any sense of distance or direction except for the North Star and other natural signs.
Harriet Tubman, born a slave in MA and later an ardent speaker for abolition.
In all, Tubman made 19 trips back to the south and is said to have helped 300 slaves—including her own parents—flee to freedom.
Uncle Tom’s cabin:
In 1852 ardent abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe published Uncle Tom's Cabin, which became an instant bestseller.
More than a million copies had sold by the middle of 1853.
The novel delivered the message that slavery was not just a political contest but also a great moral struggle.
Northern abolitionists increased their protests against the Fugitive Slave Act; southerners criticized the book as an attack on the South.
what was Popular sovereignty, what was douglas’ belief abt it, and what was he doing?
A government based on consent of the ppl.
As early as 1844, Douglas was pushing to organize the huge territory west of Iowa and Missouri.
In 1854 he developed a proposal to divide the area into two territories, Nebraska and Kansas.
Douglas was pushing for the construction of a railroad between Chicago and San Francisco.
He believed popular sovereignty provided the most fair and democratic way to organize new state governments.
Douglas failed to fully understand how strongly opposed to slavery northerners had become.
To win over the South, Douglas decided to support repeal of the Missouri Compromise.
what was the kansa-nebraska act and what would it do?
Not a compromise
Douglas introduced a bill in Congress to divide the area into two territories: Nebraska in the north and Kansas in the south. (Jan 23, 1854)
If passed, it would repeal the Missouri Compromise and establish popular sovereignty for both territories.
Some northern members of Congress saw the bill as part of a plot to turn the territories into slave states. But nearly 90 percent of southern members voted for the bill.
After months of struggle, the Kansas-Nebraska Act became law in May 1854.
The sack of lawrence:
In 1856 President Pierce declared his support for the proslavery government of Kansas.
In Kansas, a proslavery grand jury condemned Lawrence's inhabitants as traitors.
On May 21, 1856, a posse of 800 armed men swept into Lawrence to carry out the grand jury's will.
Pottawatomie Massacre?
John Brown believed that God had called on him to fight slavery.
On May 24, he and his followers pulled five men from their beds in the proslavery settlement of Pottawatomie Creek, hacked off their hands, and stabbed them with broadswords.
This attack became famous as the "Pottawatomie Massacre" and quickly led to cries for revenge.
The massacre triggered dozens of similar incidents throughout Kansas.
John Brown fled Kansas but left behind men and women who lived with rifles by their sides.
People began calling Bleeding Kansas, as it had become a violent battlefield in the civil war.
Examples of violence in the senate?
On May 19, Massachusetts senator Charles Sumner delivered in the Senate an impassioned speech later called "The Crime Against Kansas".
For two days he verbally attacked colleagues for their support of slavery.
Northerners condemned the incident as yet another example of southern brutality and antagonism toward free speech.
Congressman Preston brooks struck sumner with his cane over and over again.
Sumner suffered shock and apparent brain damage and did not return to his Senate seat for more than three years.
The widening gulf between the North and the South had far-reaching implications for party politics.
The tensions that resulted led to new political alliances as well as to violence.
What ended the Whig party?
By end of 1856, Whig party split over slavery and democrats were weak.
Divisions in the Whig Party widened in 1852.
The Whig vote in the South fell from 50 percent in 1848 to 35% in 1852, handing the election to the Democratic candidate Franklin Pierce.
In 1854 the Kansas-Nebraska Act brought about the final demise of the Whigs, who once again took opposing positions on slavery legislation.
Main points of the Know-Nothing party:
One alternative to the Whigs was the American Party, which called for strict limits on the number of immigrants allowed into the country.
When nativists formed the American Party in 1854, it soon became better known as the Know-Nothing Party.
The Know-Nothing Party did surprisingly well at the polls in 1854, winning more than 40 seats in Congress and many state and local offices.
Like the Whig Party, by 1856, the Know-Nothings split over the issue of slavery in the territories.
Antislavery parties main points:
Several parties dedicated to stopping the spread of slavery emerged during the 1840s.
The Liberty Party was founded in New York in 1840.
In 1844 the tiny party—whose purpose was to pursue the cause of abolition by passing new laws—received only a small percentage of votes in the presidential election.
Yet the Liberty Party won enough votes to throw the election to Democrat James K. Polk instead of Whig candidate Henry Clay.
Later, antislavery parties attracted more members and, eventually, played major roles in American politics.
Free-soil party main points:
The Free-Soil Party formed when members of the Liberty Party banded together with some northern Whigs and Democrats.
They opposed slavery's impact on free white workers in the wage-based labor-force, upon which the North depended.
The party failed to win any electoral votes in 1848, but it received 10 percent of the popular vote.
Nominated former president Martin Van Buren in 1848.
New Republican party main points:
On July 6 the new Republican Party was formally organized in Jackson, Michigan.
In 1854, some discontented northern Whigs joined with antislavery Democrats and Free-Soilers to form a new political party.
The Republican Party was united in opposing the Kansas-Nebraska Act and keeping slavery out of the territories.
opposed the expansion of slavery into territories.
By 1855 the Republicans had set up party organizations in about half of the northern states, but they lacked a national organization.
Then, in quick succession, came the sack of Lawrence, the Pottawatomie massacre, and the caning of Sumner.
1856 Election Main Points
John C. Frémont, the famed "Pathfinder" who had led U.S. troops into California during the war with Mexico, won the 1856 presidential election.
The Democrats nominated James Buchanan of Pennsylvania, a northerner whose Washington friends were southerners.
John C. Breckinridge was chosen as Buchanan's running mate to balance support between the North and the South.
Although he received only 45 percent of the popular vote, Buchanan won the entire South except for Maryland.
First, the Democrats could win the presidency with a national candidate who could compete in the North without alienating southerners.
Second, the Know-Nothings were in decline.
Third, the Republicans were a political force in the North
Dred Scott Decision Summary and Main points:
The worst decision.
African americans were not citizens
Dred Scott was a Slave from missouri.
master brought him from slave state, Missouri, to free state Illinois.
For four years they had lived in free territory in Illinois and Wisconsin.
In 1854, Scott then filed a lawsuit to gain his freedom.
He claimed that he had become a free person by living in free territory for several years.
The Court ruled that slaves were property, not people.
Furthermore, said the Court, Dred Scott had no claim to freedom, because he had been living in Missouri, a slave state, when he began his suit.
Finally, the Court ruled that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional.
Ruled that congress could not pass any laws limiting slavery.
Southerners cheered the Court's decision, anger in North.
By striking down the Missouri Compromise, the S__upreme Court had cleared the way for the extension of slavery.__
Opponents of slavery now pinned their hopes on the Republican Party.
The lecompton constitution main points:
In the fall of 1857, the proslavery government at Lecompton, Kansas, wrote a constitution and applied for admission to the Union.
The legislature called for a referendum in which the people could vote on the proslavery constitution.
Free-Soldiers rejected the proposed constitution bc it protected the rights of slaveholders.
President Buchanan made a poor decision: he endorsed the proslavery Lecompton constitution.
Buchanan sent the constitution to Congress and requested that Kansas be admitted as a slave state.
In the summer of 1858, voters rejected the constitution once again.
What did Lincoln and Douglas do, how were the 2 different, and was what they did important?
Lincoln challenged Douglas to a series of seven open-air debatesto be held throughout Illinois on the issue of slavery in the territories.
Douglas accepted the challenge, and the stage was set for some of the most celebrated debates in U.S. history.
Lincoln and Douglas had very different speaking styles.
Douglas exuded self-confidence, pacing back and forth on the stage and dramatically using his fists to pound home his points.
Lincoln, on the other hand, delivered his comments solemnly, using direct and plain language.
How were the position’s of Lincoln and Douglass different, and what did they do to each other?
The two men's positions were simple and consistent.
Douglas believed deeply in popular sovereignty, in allowing the residents of a territory to vote for or against slavery.
The crucial difference between the two was that Douglas believed that popular sovereignty would allow slavery to pass away on its own, while Lincoln doubted that slavery would cease to spread without legislation outlawing it in the territories.
In the course of the debates, each candidate tried to distort the views of the other.
Lincoln tried to make Douglas look like a defender of slavery and of the Dred Scott decision.
In turn, Douglas accused Lincoln of being an abolitionist and an advocate of racial equality.
Explain the Freeport Doctirine:
At 2nd debate at Freeport, Lincoln asks, “Could the settlers of a territory vote to exclude slavery before the territory became a state?”
Everyone knew that the Dred Scott decision said no.
Douglas’ response to Lincoln’s question became known as the Freeport Doctrine.
Douglas argued that if the people of a territory were Free-Soilers, then all they had to do was elect representatives who would not enforce slave property laws.
He won the Senate seat, but his response worsened the split between the northern and southern wings of the Democratic Party.
As for Lincoln, his attacks on the "vast moral evil" of slavery drew national attention, and some Republicans began thinking of him as an excellent candidate for the presidency in 1860.
What was Harpers ferry?
John Brown part of bleeding kansas.
John Brown secretly obtained financial backing from several prominent northern abolitionists.
Led a band of 21 men, black and white, into Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in Oct. 1859.
His aim was to seize the federal arsenal there, distribute the captured arms to slaves in the area, and start a general slave uprising.
Brown was turned over to VA to be tried for treason.
Local troops killed eight of Brown's men; federal troops killed two more of the raiders.
John Brown’s Hanging main points:
On December 2, 1859, Brown was hanged for high treason in the presence of federal troops and a crowd of curious observers.
Lincoln and Douglas condemned Brown as a murderer, but many northerners expressed admiration for him. (died a martyr in North, church bells were rung)
The response was equally extreme in the South, where mobs assaulted whites suspected of holding antislavery views.
Harpers Ferry terrified southern slaveholders, who were convinced the North was plotting slave uprisings everywhere.
Even longtime supporters of the Union called for secession.
Seward vs Lincoln:
Senator William H. Seward appeared to have everything one needed in order to be a successful presidential candidate: the credential of having led antislavery forces in Congress, the financial support of New York political organizations, and a desire to be the center of attention.
Well before the voting took place, Seward drafted his senatorial resignation speech, which he planned to deliverwhen his nomination became official.
Seward's well-known name and his reputation may have worked against him, however.
Abraham Lincoln's being relatively unknown probably won him the nomination.
Unlike Seward, Lincoln had not had much chance to offend his fellow Republicans.
Election of 1860 main points:
Three major candidates vied for office in addition to Lincoln. (4 candidates)
Republican: Lincoln
Southern Democrat: Breckinridge
Constitutinal Union: Bell
Compromised party.
Northern Democrat: Douglas
The Democratic Party split over the issue of slavery.
Southern Democrats backed Vice-President John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky.
Former Know-Nothings and Whigs from the South, along with some moderate northerners, organized the Constitutional Union Party, which ignored the issue of slavery altogether.
Lincoln emerged as the winner, but like Buchanan in the previous election, he received less than half the popular vote.
Unlike Buchanan, Lincoln had sectional rather than national support, carrying every free state but not even appearing on the ballot in most of the slave states.
Southern States leave the union main points:
A convention called by the governor and state legislature voted unanimously to secede from the Union on December 20, 1860.
William Sherman underestimated the depth and intensity of the South's commitment.
For many southern planters, the cry of "States' rights!" meant the complete independence of southern states from federal government control.
Many were desperate for one last chance to preserve the slave labor system and saw secession as the only way.
Mississippi followed South Carolina's lead and seceded on January 9, 1861.
Florida seceded the next day.
How was the confederacy formed?
On February 4, 1861, delegates from the secessionist states met in Montgomery, Alabama, where they formed the Confederacy, or Confederate States of America.
The Confederate constitution closely resembled that of the United States.
The most notable difference was that the Confederate constitution "protected and recognized" slavery in new territories.
The new constitution also stressed that each state was to be "sovereign and independent," a provision that would hamper efforts to unify the South.
On February 9, delegates to the Confederate constitutional convention unanimously elected former senator Jefferson Davis of Mississippi as president and Alexander Stephens of Georgia as vice-president.
At his inauguration, Davis declared, "The time for compromise has now passed."
How many states seceded and formed a new nation?
How many states remained with the union?
Seven slave states had seceded and formed a new nation.
Eight slave states remained within the Union.
Background of the Confederate Attack on Fort Sumter:
The Confederate attack on Fort Sumter signaled the start of the Civil War.
The seven southern states that had already seceded formed the Confederate States of America on February 4, 1861.
Confederate soldiers immediately began taking over federal installations in their states: courthouses, post offices, and especially forts.
By the time of Abraham Lincoln's inauguration on March 4, only two southern forts remained in Union hands.
The more important of the two was South Carolina's Fort Sumter, on an island in Charleston harbor.
What was Lincoln’s conflict during the beginning of The attack on fort sumter and what was his plan? Same with Jefferson Davis?
If Lincoln ordered the navy to shoot its way into Charleston harbor and reinforce Fort Sumter, he would be responsible for starting hostilities.
Such an action might prompt the slave states still in the Union to secede.
If he ordered the fort evacuated, he would be treating the Confederacy as a legitimate nation.
Lincoln executed a clever political maneuver.
He would not abandon Fort Sumter, but neither would he reinforce it.
Now it was Jefferson Davis who faced a dilemma.
If he did nothing, he would damage the image of the Confederacy as a sovereign, independent nation.
On the other hand, if he ordered an attack on Fort Sumter, he would turn peaceful secession into war.
Davis chose war.
Virginia’s Secession main points:
News of Fort Sumter's fall united the North.
When President Lincoln called for 75k volunteers to serve in the Union army for three months, the response was overwhelming.
Lincoln's call for troops provoked a very different reaction in the states of the upper South.
On April 17 Virginia, unwilling to fight against other southern states, seceded—a terrible loss to the Union.
In May, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina followed Virginia, bringing the number of Confederate states to 11.
However, the western counties of Virginia were antislavery, so they seceded from Virginia and remained loyal to the North.
How did Lincoln feel about the border states and what was his decision?
By April four slave states—Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri, and Delaware—were undecided about secession.
Lincoln believed that these states would be essential to the success of the Union if war broke out.
As president, Lincoln faced a difficult choice.
If he listened to abolitionist calls to free the slaves, he would make many Republicans happy, but he might alienate the border states.
Not wanting to do anything to risk driving these states away, Lincoln chose to ignore slavery for the moment.
Nevertheless, with militia intervention and some political maneuvering, Lincoln kept the four border states in the Union.
Union vs Confederate Strategies:
Although civilians on both sides of the Civil War felt that victory was assured, in reality, the two sides were unevenly matched.
The Union seemed to have an overwhelming advantage.
It had a much larger population than the Confederacy did—22 million people compared to the South's 9 million—meaning that it could field a much larger army and bring more fighting power to bear.
North had more factories, greater food production, and a more extensive railroad system.
However, the advantages were not all on the Union's side.
Because of their different circumstances, the two sides pursued very different military strategies.
The Union, which had to conquer the South to win, devised a three-part plan:
Called the Anacando Plan:
(1) the Union navy would blockade southern ports, so the South could neither export cotton nor import muchneeded manufactured goods;
(2) Union riverboats and armies would move down the Mississippi River and split the Confederacy in two; and
(3) Union armies would capture the Confederate capital at Richmond, Virginia.
Because the Confederacy's goal was its own survival as a nation, its strategy was mostly defensive.
Battle of Bull Run:
Confederate W
The first major bloodshed of the Civil War occurred on July 21, about three months after Fort Sumter fell.
An army of 30,000 inexperienced Union soldiers on their way toward the Confederate capital at Richmond, only 100 miles from Washington, DC, came upon an equally inexperienced Confederate army encamped near the little creek of Bull Run, just 25 miles from the Union capital.
Lincoln commanded General Irvin McDowell to attack, noting, "You are green, it is true, but they are green also."
The battle was a seesaw affair.
In the afternoon Confederate reinforcements arrived and turned the tide of battle into the first victory for the South.
Adding to the chaos were the carriages of civilians who had ridden out to observe the battle.
After the Bull Run disaster, no one still predicted that the war would be over after one skirmish.
Fortunately for the Union, the Confederates were too exhausted and disorganized to attack Washington.
Still, Confederate morale soared.
Bull Run "has secured our independence," declared a Georgia secessionist, and many southern soldiers, confident that the war was over, left the army and went home.
Response:
Lincoln responded to defeat at Bull run by calling for the enlistment of 500k men.
3 days later he called for 500k more.
Named General George McClellan to lead new Union army encamped near Washinton.
McClellan later called his army the Army of the Potomac.
Explain what happened in Forts Henry and Donelson and explain the importance of who was part of it:
In February 1862 a Union army invaded western Tennessee.
General Ulysses S. Grant was, however, a brave, tough, and decisive military commander.
In just 11 days, Grant's forces captured two Confederate forts that held strategic positions on important rivers: Fort Henry on the Tennessee River and Fort Donelson on the Cumberland River.
In the latter victory, Grant informed the southern commander that "no terms except unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted."
The Confederates surrendered, earning Grant a new reputation.
What happened at Shiloh and why was it important?
One month after the victories at Fort Henry and Fort Donelson, in late March of 1862, Grant gathered his troops near a small Tennessee church named Shiloh, which was close to the Mississippi border.
Many Union troops were shot while making coffee; some died while they were still lying in their blankets.
The Battle of Shiloh taught both sides a strategic lesson.
Shiloh also demonstrated how bloody the war might become, as nearly one-fourth of the battle's 100,000 troops were killed, wounded, or captured.
Although the battle seemed to be a draw, it had a long-range impact on the war.
The Confederate failure to hold on to its western frontier showed that at least part of the Union's three-way strategy, the drive to take the Mississippi and split the Confederacy, might succeed.
Who was Farragut and what was his mission?
As Grant pushed toward the Mississippi River, a Union fleet of about 40 ships approached the river's mouth in Louisiana.
Its commander was 60-year-old David G. Farragut
its assignment: to seize New Orleans, the Confederacy's largest city and busiest port.
Within five days, the U.S. flag flew over New Orleans.
During the next two months, Farragut also took control of Baton Rouge and Natchez.
If the Union captured all the major cities along the lower Mississippi, then Texas, Louisiana, and Arkansas would be cut off.
Ironclads main points:
Driven by steam and armored with heavy metal plates, an ironclad ship could splinter wooden hulls, withstand cannon fire, and resist burning.
Grant used four ironclad ships when he captured forts Henry and Donelson.
On March 9, 1862, two ironclads, the North's Monitor and the South's Merrimack (renamed Virginia by the South), fought a historic duel.
A Union steam frigate, the Merrimack, had sunk off the coast of Virginia in 1861.
Naval engineer John Ericsson designed a ship, the Monitor, that resembled a "gigantic cheese box" on an "immense shingle," with two guns mounted on a revolving turret.
Although the battle was a draw, the era of wooden fighting ships was over.
What were the new weapons and their advancements?
Even more deadly than the development of ironclad ships was the invention of new weapons.
New weapons: rifle and the minié ball.
Rifle:
were more accurate than old-fashioned muskets.
A soldier with a rifle could accurately fire at targets as much as 500 yards away, about five times as far as a musket could accurately be fired.
Soldiers could also load rifles more quickly and therefore fire more rounds during battle—up to ten rounds per minute.
Troops in the Civil War also used primitive hand grenades and land mines.
Minié ball:
a soft lead bullet that was more destructive than earlier bullets.
The killing power of large artillery also increased during the Civil War.
Explain the new strategies developed during the war.
The new technology of war gradually changed military strategy.
Soldiers fighting from inside trenches or behind barricades had a great advantage in mass infantry attacks.
Generals had to learn to be flexible in their planning.
They had to learn to take advantage of local terrain to protect their troops from enemy fire, while still allowing them to attack.
In making their plans, generals had access to more information than commanders had in previous wars.
Generals also used the telegraph to communicate quickly with government officials for orders and information.
Observers in hot air balloons identified targets for artillery fire, at least until soldiers started using camouflage to hide their camps from the air.
Such changes have led some historians to call the Civil War the first modern war.
What was the problem with McClellan?
As the campaign in the West progressed and the Union navy tightened its blockade of southern ports, the third part of the North's three-part strategy—the plan to capture the Confederate capital at Richmond—faltered.
One of the problems was General McClellan.
Although he was an excellent administrator and popular with his troops, McClellan was extremely cautious.
After five full months of training an army of 120,000 men, he insisted that he could not move against Richmond until he had 270,000 men.
Who Robert E. Lee and how was he different from McClellan?
McClellan marched the Army of the Potomac slowly toward the Confederate capital.
After a series of battles, Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston was wounded, and command of the army passed to Robert E. Lee.
Lee was very different from McClellan—modest rather than vain, and willing to go beyond military textbooks in his tactics.
He had opposed secession.
However, he declined an offer to head the Union army and cast his lot with his beloved state of Virginia.
Determined to save Richmond, Lee moved against McClellan in a series of battles known collectively as the Seven Days' Battles, fought from June 25 to July 1, 1862.
Main points of the Battle at Antietam:
Now Lee moved against the enemy's capital.
On August 29 and 30, Lee’s troops won a resounding victory at the Second Battle of Bull Run.
A Union corporal, exploring a meadow where the Confederates had camped, found a copy of Lee's army orders wrapped around a bunch of cigars.
The plan revealed that Lee's and Stonewall Jackson's armies were separated for the moment.
For once McClellan acted aggressively and ordered his men forward after Lee.
The two armies fought on September 17 beside a sluggish creek called the Antietam.
The clash proved to be the bloodiest single-day battle in American history.
Casualties totaled more than 26,000, as many as in the War of 1812 and the war with Mexico combined.
Instead of pursuing the battered Confederate army and possibly ending the Civil War, McClellan, cautious as always, did nothing.
On November 7, 1862, Lincoln fired McClellan.
This solved one problem by getting rid of the general whom Lincoln characterized as having "the slows."
Explain the Confederate’s cotton diplomacy.
This use of cotton as a tool of Confederate foreign policy was known as cotton diplomacy.
Receiving foreign aid—and recognition of southern independence—had been crucial goals in the South's war strategy from the beginning.
Monetary aid would help the South balance the advantage the North enjoyed due to its industry and railroads.
Diplomatic recognition by major powers like England or France would legitimize the Confederacy as an independent country and help gain support for the war around the world.
As the single greatest importer of American cotton before the Civil War, England became the main focus of the South's diplomatic efforts.
At the start of the war, southern leaders believed that the English economy would collapse without southern cotton.
Therefore, they assumed that England would do almost anything to secure the cotton trade.
A number of economic factors made Britain no longer dependent on southern cotton.
At the same time, Union diplomats worked tirelessly in England to keep the British out of the war.
Explain the trent affair:
Fall of 1861
The Confederate government sent two diplomats, James Mason and John Slidell, in a second attempt to gain support from Britain and France.
The two men traveled aboard a British merchant ship, the Trent.
Captain Charles Wilkes of the American warships San Jacinto stopped the Trent and arrested the two men.
The British threatened war against the Union and dispatched 8,000 troops to Canada.
Aware of the need to fight just "one war at a time," Lincoln freed the two prisoners, publicly claiming that Wilkes had acted without orders.
Explain Lincoln’s view on slavery:
Prominent abolitionists, including Frederick Douglass, repeatedly called on Lincoln to end slavery as an institution.
Lincoln disliked slavery, but he did not believe the fed gov had the power to abolish it where it existed.
As the war progressed, however, Lincoln did find a way to extend his constitutional war powers to end slavery.
Because slaves built fortifications and grew food for the Confederacy, they could be seen as military assets.
Although it had not been his intention at the start of the war, he now found abolition to be a cornerstone of his war plan.
Emancipation offered a strategic benefit in foreign policy as well.
Emancipation was therefore not just a moral issue; it became a weapon of war.
Lincoln vs Davis:
*Lincoln vs. Davis important comparison pg 46*
Lincoln dealt forcefully with disloyalty and dissent.
Lincoln used this same strategy later in the war to deal with dissent in other states.
As a result, more than 13k suspected Confederate sympathizers in the Union were arrested and held without trial, although most were quickly released.
When Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney declared that Lincoln had gone beyond his constitutional powers, the president ignored his ruling.
Jefferson Davis at first denounced Lincoln's suspension of civil liberties.
In 1862 he suspended habeas corpus in the Confederacy.
Just as Davis ultimately followed Lincoln's example, so have other presidents.
Lincoln's action in dramatically expanding presidential powers to meet the crises of wartime set a precedent in U.S. history.
Draft Riots main points:
Northern resentment over the draft led to several riots.
The worst one occurred in New York City and was sparked by opposition, mostly among Irish immigrants, to Republican war policies such as emancipation.
When officials began to draw names for the draft, angry men gathered all over the city to complain.
They thought it unfair that poor white workers would have to fight a war to free slaves who (they believed) would then swarm north and take all the jobs.
For four days, July 13–16, mobs rampaged through the city.
The rioters wrecked draft offices, Republican newspaper offices, and the homes of antislavery leaders.
They attacked well-dressed men on the street (those likely to be able to pay the $300 commutation fee) and attacked African Americans.
By the time federal troops ended the melee, more than 100 persons lay dead.
African American Soldiers main points:
When the Civil War started, it was a white man's war.
Neither the Union nor the Confederacy officially accepted African Americans as soldiers.
In 1862 Congress passed a law allowing African Americans to serve in the military.
Although African Americans made up only 1 percent of the North's population, by war's end, nearly 10% of the Union army was African American.
Although accepted as soldiers, African Americans suffered discrimination.
They served in separate regiments commanded by white officers.
Congress finally equalized the pay of white and African American soldiers in 1864.
Despite this discrimination, some African American units won great acclaim.
Nonetheless, the bravery of the soldiers of the 54th paved the way for future black regiments.
As the New York Tribune pointed out, "If this Massachusetts 54th had faltered when its trial came, 200,000 troops for whom it was a pioneer would never have been put into the field.
Throughout the Civil War, the mortality rate for African American soldiers was higher than that for white soldiers.
Then, too, the Confederacy would not treat captured African American soldiers as prisoners of war.
Many were executed on the spot, and those who were not killed were returned to slavery.
Even though most southerners opposed the idea of African American soldiers, the Confederacy did consider drafting slaves and free blacks in 1863 and again in 1864.
Explain slave resistance in the confederacy:
As Union forces pushed deeper into Confederate territory, thousands of slaves sought freedom behind the lines of the Union army.
When southern plantation owners fled before approaching Union troops, many slaves refused to be dragged along.
For whites on farms and plantations in the South, slave resistance compounded the stresses and privations of the war.
Fearful of a general slave uprising, southerners tightened slave patrols and spread rumors about how Union soldiers abused runaways.
No general uprising occurred, but slave resistance gradually weakened the plantation system.
By 1864 even many Confederates realized that slavery was doomed.
Explain what happened before gettysburg:
The year 1863 actually had gone well for the South.
During the first four days of May, the South defeated the North at Chancellorsville, Virginia.
Lee outmaneuvered Union general Joseph Hookerand forced the Union army to retreat.
The North's only consolation after Chancellorsville came as the result of an accident.
As General Stonewall Jackson returned from a patrol on May 2, Confederate guards mistook him for a Yankee and shot him in the left arm.
Despite Jackson's tragic death, Lee decided to press his military advantage and invade the North.
He needed supplies.
He also hoped that an invasion would force Lincoln to pull troops away from Vicksburg and that a major Confederate victory on northern soil might tip the political balance of power in the Union to pro-southern Democrats.
Gettysburg:
The most decisive battle of the war was fought near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
The town was an unlikely spot for a bloody battle, no one planned to fight there.
Confederate soldiers led by A. P. Hill, heard there was a supply of footwear in Gettysburg and went to find it.
They also hoped to meet up with Lee's forces.
The shooting attracted more troops, and each side sent for reinforcements.
The northern armies, now under the command of General George Meade, that were north and west of Gettysburg began to fall back under a furious rebel assault.
The Confederates took control of the town.
Lee knew, however, that the battle would not be won unless the northerners were also forced to yield their positions on Cemetery Ridge, the high ground south of Gettysburg
2nd day of the battle of gettysburg:
On July 2 almost 90,000 Yankees and 75,000 Confederates stood ready to fight for Gettysburg.
Lee ordered General James Longstreet to attack the Union forces that held Cemetery Ridge.
The yelling Rebels overran Union troops, who had mistakenly left their positions on Little Round Top, a hill that overlooked much of the southern portion of the battlefield.
Colonel Joshua L. Chamberlain, who had been a language professor before the war, led his Maine troops to meet the Rebels and succeeded in repulsing repeated Confederate attacks.
The Rebels, exhausted by the uphill fighting and the 25-mile march of the previous day, were shocked by the Union assault and surrendered in droves.
Chamberlain and his men succeeded in saving the Union lines from certain rebel artillery attacks from Little Round Top.
3rd day of the battle of gettysburg:
Early in the afternoon of July 3, Lee ordered an artillery barrage on the middle of the Union lines.
When the Union artillery fell silent, Lee insisted that Longstreet press forward.
Longstreet reluctantly ordered his men, including those under the command of General Pickett, to attack the center of the Union lines.
The northerners had succeeded in holding the high ground south of Gettysburg.
Stuart's campaign stalled, however, when his men clashed with Union forces under David Gregg three miles away.
Not knowing that Gregg had stopped Stuart nor that Lee's army was severely weakened, Union General Meade never ordered a counterattack.
After the battle, Lee gave up any hopes of invading the North and led his army in a long, painful retreat back to Virginia through a pelting rain.
The three-day battle produced staggering losses.
Total casualties were more than 30%.
Union losses included 23,000 men killed or wounded.
Lee would continue to lead his men brilliantly in the next two years of the war, but neither he nor the Confederacy would ever recover from the loss at Gettysburg or the surrender of Vicksburg, which occurred the very next day
Gettysburg address main points:
In November 1863 a ceremony was held to dedicate a cemetery in Gettysburg.
The first speaker was Edward Everett, a noted orator, who gave a flowery two-hour oration.
Abraham Lincoln spoke for a little more than two minutes.
His brief speech garnered little public attention at the time.
In the years since the Civil War, however, the Gettysburg Address has become one of the most famous speeches in American history.
With just a few words, Lincoln reassured Americans that they were right in fighting the bloody war.
He also reminded Americans in glowing terms of the principles upon which their country had been founded.
According to historian Garry Wills, Lincoln's Gettysburg Address "remade America."
Before the war, people said, "The United States are."
After Lincoln's speech, they said, "The United States is."
Explain the Union win at Vicksburg and how that impacted the confederacy:
While the Army of the Potomac was turning back the Confederates in central Pennsylvania, Union general Ulysses S. Grant continued his campaign in the West.
Vicksburg, Mississippi, was one of only two Confederate holdouts preventing the Union from taking complete control of the Mississippi River, an important waterway for transporting goods.
In the spring of 1863, Grant sent a cavalry brigade to destroy rail lines in central Mississippi.
His goal was to damage southern supply lines and draw attention away from Vicksburg.
In 18 days Union forces whipped several rebel units and sacked Jackson, the capital of the state.
Two frontal assaults on the city failed; so, in the last week of May 1863, Grant settled in for a siege.
He set up a steady barrage of artillery, shelling the city from both the river and the land for several hours a day and forcing its residents to take shelter in caves that they dug out of the yellow clay hillsides.
Food supplies ran so low that people ate dogs and mules.
"On July 3, 1863, the same day as Pickett's charge, the Confederate commander of Vicksburg asked Grant for terms of surrender.
The city fell on July 4.
Five days later, Port Hudson, Louisiana, the last Confederate holdout on the Mississippi, also fell—and the Confederacy was cut in two.
The twin defeats at Gettysburg and Vicksburg cost the South much of its limited fighting power.
Southern newspapers, state legislatures, and individuals began to call openly for an end to the hostilities.
President Lincoln finally found not just one but two generals who would fight.
Explain confederate morale towards after defeats at gettysburg and vicksburg
As war progressed, morale on the Confederacy's home front deteriorated.
The Confederate Congress passed a weak resolution in 1863 urging planters to grow fewer cash crops like cotton and tobacco and increase production of food.
Many soldiers deserted after receiving letters from home about the lack of food and the shortage of farm labor to work the farms.
In every southern state except South Carolina, there were soldiers who decided to turn and fight for the North; 2,400 Floridians served in the Union army.
Discord in the Confederate government made it impossible for Jefferson Davis to govern effectively.
Members of the Confederate Congress squabbled among themselves.
In 1863 North Carolinians who wanted peace held more than 100 open meetings in their state.
A similar peace movement sprang up in Georgia in early 1864.
Who did lincoln nominate as commander of all union armies and in turn who was nominated as commander of the military divison of Mississippi? What did they believe in?
In March 1864 President Lincoln appointed Ulysses S. Grant, the hero of the battle at Vicksburg, commander of all Union armies.
Grant, in turn, appointed William Tecumseh Sherman as commander of the military division of the Mississippi.
Old friends and comrades in arms, both men believed in total war.
They believed that it was essential to fight not only the South's armies and government but its civilian population as well.
In addition, the strength of the people's will kept the war going.
If the Union destroyed that will to fight, the Confederacy would collapse.
Grant and Lee in VA main points:
Grant's overall strategy was to immobilize Lee's army in Virginia while Sherman raided Georgia.
Starting in May 1864, Grant threw his troops into battle after battle, the first in a wooded area, known as the Wilderness, near Fredericksburg, Virginia.
The string of battles continued at Spotsylvania, at Cold Harbor (where Grant lost 7,000 men in one hour), and finally at Petersburg, which would remain under Union attack from June 1864 to April 1865.
During the period from May 4 to June 18, 1864, Grant lost nearly 60,000 men—which the North could replace—to Lee's 32,000 men—which the South could not replace.
Democrats and northern newspapers called Grant a butcher, especially after the heavy losses at Cold Harbor.
However, Grant kept going because he had promised Lincoln, "Whatever happens, there will be no turning back."
Sherman’s march main points:
While Grant kept Lee's army pinned down, Sherman made good progress on his own task.
Throughout the summer of 1864, he marched his army deeper into the Confederate heartland, fighting small skirmishes the entire way.
Sherman reached Atlanta in late July and laid siege to the city.
After Sherman's capture of Atlanta, a Confederate army tried to circle around him and cut his railroad supply lines.
Deep in Confederate territory, Sherman knew that his long supply lines made him vulnerable.
Therefore, he decided to fight a different battle.
He would abandon his supply lines and march southeast through Georgia, creating a wide path of destruction and living off the land as he went.
He would make southerners "so sick of war that generations would pass away before they would again appeal to it."
As the army marched through South Carolina in 1865, it inflicted even more destruction than it had in Georgia.
The army burned almost every house in its path.
Election of 1864:
As the 1864 presidential election approached, Lincoln faced heavy opposition.
Many Democrats, dismayed at the war's length, its high casualty rates, and recent Union losses, joined pro-southern party members to nominate George McClellan on a platform of an immediate armistice.
Lincoln's other opponents, the Radical Republicans, favored a harsher proposal than Lincoln's for readmitting the Confederate states.
They formed a third political party and nominated John C. Frémont as their candidate.
To attract Democrats, Lincoln's supporters dropped the Republican name, retitled themselves the National Union Party, and chose Andrew Johnson, a pro-Union Democrat from Tennessee, as Lincoln's running mate.
Lincoln was pessimistic about his chances.
By month's end, Frémont had withdrawn from the presidential race.
The victories buoyed the North, and with the help of absentee ballots cast by Union soldiers, Lincoln won a second term.
At his second inauguration in early March 1865, Lincoln optimistically expressed hope that the Union could be restored.
With the war drawing to a close, the president was focused on the country's future.
Explain the fall of richmond and its importance:
By late March 1865 it was clear that the end of the Confederacy was near.
On April 2—in response to news that Lee and his troops had been overcome by Grant's forces at Petersburg—President Davis and his government abandoned their capital, setting it afire to keep the northerners from taking it.
Trying to salvage what he could, Lee led his remaining troops out of Richmond.
He wanted to join forces with another Confederate army currently fleeing from Sherman in North Carolina.
However, Grant's army blocked his escape.
Lee found himself surrounded by Union forces and decided that he had no choice but to surrender.
The surrender at appomattox main points:
Lee and Grant met to arrange a surrender on April 9, 1865, in a Virginia village called Appomattox Court House.
At Lincoln's request, the terms were generous.
Grant paroled Lee's soldiers and sent them home with their personal possessions, their horses, and three days' rations.
Within two months, all remaining Confederate resistance collapsed.
In Grant's camp, celebrations broke out.
After four long years, at tremendous human and economic costs, the Civil War was over.
What were the south’s issues after the war?
To help pay for the war effort, Confederate states began to print paper money.
Unlike earlier forms of paper money, Confederate notes were backed not by gold but by the people's faith in the government.
As the war weakened the southern economy, however, the public lost faith in Confederate currency.
The money's value plummeted, and prices soared.
The Confederacy's war inflation rate reached close to 7,000 percent; prices were 70 times higher at the end of the war than at the beginning.
Shortages of several products, including food, added to price problems in the South.
Meat became a once-a-week luxury at best, and even such staples as rice and corn were in short supply.
Food prices skyrocketed.
In 1861 the average family spent $6.65 a month on food.
One result was that many Confederates smuggled cotton into the North in exchange for gold, food, and other goods.
explain the north’s economic growth after the war:
North’s economy was more positively effected by the war rather than the south.
Cotton textiles and a few industries declined while most industries boomed.
The army’s need for uniforms, shoes, guns, and other supplies supported woolen mills, steel foundries, coal mines, and many other industries.
The economic boom had a dark side, though.
Wages did not keep up with prices, and many people's standard of living declined.
When white male workers went out on strike, employers hired free blacks, immigrants, women, and boys to replace them for lower pay.
Northern women—who like many southern women replaced men on farms and in city jobs—also obtained government jobs for the first time.
Although they earned less than men, they remained a regular part of the Washington work force after the war.
Because of the booming economy and rising prices, many businesses in the North made immense profits.
They passed off spoiled meat as fresh and demanded twice the usual price for guns.
This corruption spilled over into the general society.
Although some individuals found themselves in possession of lots of cash, the federal government needed money to pay for the war effort.
It took several steps to raise the money it needed.
First, like the Confederate states, the federal government began to print paper money.
Unlike Confederate money, northern currency did not lose its value.
Northerners did not, on the whole, lose faith in the government like southerners did.
While inflation did drive prices upward, they did not rise to nearly the degree that they did in the South.
Union inflation peaked at 182 percent.
In addition to the new money, Congress decided to help pay for the war through taxes.
The government also took steps to tap its citizens' wealth.
What were the conditions southern soldiers faced?
Southern soldiers ate beans, hardtack and hard biscuits, which were supposedly hard enough to stop a bullet, and fresh vegetables were hardly ever available.
Although army regulations called for washing one's hands and face every day, many soldiers failed to do so and suffered from body lice, dysentery, and diarrhea.
Southern soldiers had only substitutes for coffee brewed from peanuts, dried apples, or corn.
explain civil war medicine:
During the Civil War, weapons technology overtook medical technology.
Minié balls, or soft lead bullets, caused traumatic wounds that could often be treated only by amputation.
These operations were generally performed at impromptu field hospitals set up in tents ornearby homes or barns.
A typical surgeon's kit might contain cloth for bandages or administering chloroform as anesthesia, opium pills to kill pain, forceps and knives for cleaning wounds, and saws for amputations.
Soon after Fort Sumter fell, the federal government set up the United States Sanitary Commission.
Its task was twofold: to improve the hygienic conditions of army camps and to recruit and train nurses.
The "Sanitary" proved a great success.
It developed hospital trains and hospital ships to transport wounded men from the battlefield.
At the age of 60, Dorothea Dix became the nation's first superintendent of women nurses.
Impressed by the work of women nurses he observed, the surgeon general required that at least one-third of Union hospital nurses be women; some 3,000 served.
Union nurse Clara Barton often cared for the sick and wounded at the front lines.
Most women, however, served in hospitals rather than on the front lines.
On the battlefield, male medics usually attended soldiers.
As a result of the Sanitary Commission's work, the death rate among Union wounded, although terrible by 20th-century standards, showed considerable improvement over that of previous wars.
What was lincoln’s emancipation proclamation?
On January 1, 1863, Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation.
he declared that all slaves living in areas currently under Confederate control were now free.
Despite Lincoln's assertion, the proclamation did not free any slaves immediately.
Its terms applied only to areas behind Confederate lines, outside Union control.
Since the proclamation was a military action aimed at the states in rebellion, it did not apply to southern territory already occupied by Union troops nor to the slave states that had not seceded.
what were the reactions to the emancipation proclamation?
For many, the proclamation gave the war a high moral purpose by turning the struggle into a fight to free the slaves.
Free blacks also welcomed the section of the proclamation that allowed them to enlist in the Union army.
Not everyone in the North approved of the proclamation, however.
The Democrats claimed that it would only prolong the war by antagonizing the South.
Confederates reacted to the proclamation with outrage.
Jefferson Davis called it the "most execrable [hateful] measure recorded in the history of guilty man."
After the Emancipation Proclamation, compromise was no longer an option.
From January 1863 on, it was a fight to the death.
George McClellan:
2nd union army general
Ulysses S. Grant:
4th union army general
Jefferson davis
confederate pres.
Robert E. Lee
confederate general
explain the political changes:
Decades before the war, southern states had threatened secession when federal policies angered them.
After the war, the federal government assumed supreme national authority, and no state has ever seceded again.
The states' rights issue did not go away; it simply led in a different direction from secession.
Today, arguments about states' rights versus federal control focus on such issues as whether the state or national government should determine how to use local funds.
In addition to ending the threat of secession, the war greatly increased the federal government's power.
Before the Civil War, t__he federal government had little impact on most people's daily lives.__
During the war, however, the federal government reached into people's pockets, taxing private incomes.
After the war, U.S. citizens could no longer assume that the national government in Washington was too far away to bother them.
this may possibly be part of the quiz i’m not sure
The Civil War had a profound impact on the nation's economy.
Between 1861 and 1865, the federal government did much to help business, in part through subsidizing construction of a national railroad system.
The economies of northern states boomed.
Entrepreneurs who had grown rich selling war supplies to the government had money to invest in new businesses after the war.
As army recruitment created a labor shortage,
By war's end, large-scale commercial agriculture had taken hold in the North.
The war devastated the South economically.
It took away the South's source of cheap labor—slavery—and wrecked most of the region's industry.
It wiped out 40 percent of the livestock, destroyed much of the South's farm machinery and railroads, and left thousands of acres of land uncultivated.
The economic gap between North and South had widened drastically.
Before the war, southern states held 30 percent of the national wealth; in 1870 they held only 12 percent.
In 1860 southerners earned about 70 percent of the northern average; in 1870 they earned less than 40 percent.
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