Civil War

Civil War, the conflict (1861–65) between the Northern states which remained in the Union and the Southern states which seceded to form the Confederacy. The underlying causes became more pronounced after the Missouri Compromise (1820) in the hostility that developed from the two fundamentally different economic and social systems of the U.S. The South, with its large plantations, staple crops, and institution of slavery, inevitably came into conflict with the free industrial and commercial North. States'‐rights doctrines and tariff questions further complicated these differences. Clay, Webster, Calhoun, and others attempted solutions, but after the Compromise of 1850 and the Kansas‐Nebraska bill, each side became more radical. Following Lincoln's election, the Southern states feared a hostile majority in Congress, and resorted to secession. The Confederacy was organized, South Carolina seized Fort Sumter (April 12, 1861), and the war began. Northern forces, beginning an advance on Richmond, the Confederate capital, were defeated in the first Battle of Bull Run (July 1861), although the Southerners failed to follow up this victory, while the North established a fairly successful blockade of Southern ports. In 1862 each side continued without decisive gains, Grant's forces taking much ground in the West, although at Shiloh (April 1862) he suffered severe losses. New Orleans was captured (May 1862), and the Union army had some success in eastern Tennessee and Kentucky. McClellan launched the Peninsular Campaign to take Richmond, which ended in failure in the Seven Days' Battles (June–July, 1862) after Stonewall Jackson prevented McDowell from joining McClellan. Under Jackson and Lee, the Confederate forces were again victorious at Bull Run (Aug. 30, 1862). Lee was checked in his march northward at Antietam (Sept. 1862), but Burnside's Union army was stopped in its advance on Richmond at the Battle of Fredericksburg (Dec. 13, 1862). The Emancipation Proclamation was issued to take effect in January 1863, and the beginning of that year saw the death of Jackson at Chancellorsville (May 1863), where the new drive on Richmond was stopped. Lee then made a Northern campaign, which ended disastrously at Gettysburg (July 1863), the most decisive battle of the war. The South was split by Grant's capture of Vicksburg (July 4, 1863), Rosecrans's seizure of Tennessee, and Banks's victories in Louisiana, although in September the Confederates won the bloody battle of Chickamauga. In 1864 Grant became commander in chief of the Union forces, continuing in command despite tremendous losses in the Battle of the Wilderness (May 1864). Sherman captured Atlanta (Sept. 3, 1864) and began his devastating march to the sea. Meanwhile the Southern cruiser Alabama was defeated by the Kearsarge and the Confederacy was obviously doomed at sea and on land. On April 9, 1865, Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox. A few days later Lincoln was assassinated, and the settlement of the effects of the war, the Reconstruction, fell into other hands.

A great many of the generals wrote memoirs, as did numberless plainer soldiers and other participants in the war. From the outbreak of hostilities the war began to generate a great variety of literature. In the beginning, poetry ranged from popular songs such as The Battle Hymn of Republic and Tramp, Tramp, Tramp of the Union and Maryland, My Maryland of the Confederacy to serious works like H.H. Brownell's Lyrics of a Day (1864) and War Lyrics (1866), Lowell's Biglow Papers, Second Series (1867), Melville's Battle‐Pieces (1866), Whitman's Drum‐Taps (1865), and Whittier's In War Time (1864) in the North, and Simms's War Poetry of the South (1866), gathering Hayne's Vicksburg—A Ballad and other such expressions of the Confederates.