Civil War

The American Civil War (1861–1865) is also known as the War Between the States or the War of the Rebellion. The issue of whether to expand slavery into federal territories and new states provoked existing tensions within the established states. When war finally broke out, the tensions created a geographic split of the states.

The southern states that chose to secede (leave the United States) formed the Confederate States of America , also known as the Confederacy. The northern states still considered themselves the United States and strove to restore the rebellious southern states to that union. Their army was called the Union army.

The tensions between the states were rooted in a few main issues. The expansion of slavery was an important question that arose from differences between northern and southern economies. Whether or not to expand slavery into new territories also emphasized the constitutional question of how much power the individual states had compared with the federal government. The northern and southern states had different answers to these questions.

Tension between economies

The southern states built their economy on plantation crops of cotton and tobacco . Plantations thrived in the South with the support of slaves, and the southern economy would collapse if slavery were abolished. Since these states needed to protect their interests, and what they considered to be their property, the southern states were very intent on keeping and expanding slavery.

Southern states wanted state laws, not federal laws, to decide whether slavery was allowed or not. A state's ability to maintain a strong, decisive, and independent government is called “popular sovereignty.” Under popular sovereignty, a state's legislation is more powerful than the federal government's legislation.

Northern states built their economy on the labor of immigrants within factories. Paying immigrants to work in factories costs money. Slavery, which did not cost as much to support, was an economic threat to the northern communities and industries. Instead of slavery, they supported the concept of “free labor,” which allowed jobs to be available to

the community. Because factories sent their goods to other states, the northern states wanted a strong union. They favored a strong central government that would unite the states and their economies.

Expansion of slavery

When the United States purchased the Louisiana Territory in 1803 (see Louisiana Purchase ), the question of slavery expansion arose. It quickly became a heated debate but was temporarily calmed when Congress passed the Missouri Compromise in 1820. The compromise allowed Missouri to be admitted into the Union as a slave state. It also created a geographic line that split the rest of the purchased territory into northern and southern halves. The northern half would not allow slavery, but the southern territories would have the right to choose for themselves.

In 1854, Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act . It challenged the Missouri Compromise by allowing the two new northern states of Kansas and Nebraska to choose for themselves whether slavery would be allowed. The passage of this act sparked tensions that would eventually lead to the American Civil War.

Secession

The presidential election of 1860 was a complicated one that had four candidates. Former U.S. representative Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865; served 1861–65) of Illinois , a Republican, was elected. The Republican Party wanted to stop the expansion of slavery. Its members also believed in a strong federal government.

Though the Republican Party had no interest in abolishing slavery where it already was, the southern states feared Lincoln's upcoming administration. Before Lincoln's inauguration, South Carolina was the first state to secede from the Union on December 20, 1860. Mississippi , Florida , Alabama , Georgia , Louisiana, and Texas followed by February. Before Lincoln took office, they formed the Confederate States of America and elected their own president, U.S. senator Jefferson Davis (1808–1889) of Mississippi.

The war begins

When he entered office in March 1861, Lincoln was intent on maintaining and protecting federal property throughout the rebellious states. In April, he sent supply ships to the troops at Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina, and told the Confederate troops not to interfere. Confederate forces, however, opened fire on the fort; Union officials there surrendered the next day. When Lincoln called for volunteers to put down the rebellion, Virginia , North Carolina , Tennessee , and Arkansas joined the Confederacy. The American Civil War had begun.

Battle of Bull Run

Lincoln called seventy-five thousand state militiamen into service for ninety days and later called for men to enlist for three years. Winfield Scott (1786–1866), commander of the U.S. army, crafted Lincoln's military plan to cut off Confederate access to supplies and to respond to rebellious attacks. Scott knew the Confederacy would eventually collapse without the important supplies from the outside.

Though Lincoln incorporated elements of the plan, both he and the public were impatient. He sent General Irvin McDowell (1818–1885) to attack the Confederate capital of Richmond. At the Battle of Bull Run , July 21, 1861, the two armies met for the first time. The Union army was soundly defeated and forced to flee back to Washington. With defeat, Lincoln began to prepare for a longer war.

Union general George B. McClellan

General George B. McClellan (1826–1885) was appointed to command the Army of the Potomac (the main eastern army of the Union) in the summer of 1861. When General Scott retired as U.S. army commander in November, Lincoln appointed McClellan to replace him. Though General McClellan was strong in some respects, he proved to be overly cautious. His resistance to mounting a major attack or to pursuing the enemy would frustrate Lincoln.

Confederate general Robert E. Lee

General Robert E. Lee (1807–1870) was a commanding general in the Confederate army. Originally approached by Lincoln to take field command of Union forces, Lee joined instead with his home state of Virginia to fight for the Confederate army. Lee's forces were an aggressive element that enjoyed several key victories. General Lee's surrender to Union general Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) at Appomattox Courthouse , Virginia, in April 1865, however, marked the beginning of the Confederate surrender and the end of the American Civil War.

The Second Battle of Bull Run and the Battle at Antietam

By August 1862, the Confederate army's superior tactics had dealt the Union army multiple defeats. The Confederates had protected their capital of Richmond and were pushing the Union army back towards Washington. The Second Battle of Bull Run, August 28 through 30, was a Confederate victory that inspired Generals Lee and Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson (1824–1863) to move their troops into Maryland . Union general McClellan followed.

The two armies met on September 17 at Antietam. The resulting Battle of Antietam was the single bloodiest day of the American Civil War. While McClellan forced the Confederates back to Virginia, he refused to pursue them aggressively. The Confederate army escaped damaged, but intact. After the battle, Lincoln removed McClellan from command in November 1862.

Emancipation Proclamation

The victory at Antietam provided Lincoln with the success he waited for in order to announce the Emancipation Proclamation . Legally, the Union armies were unable to assist or use any escaped slaves that crossed into Union territory. Federal laws provided that the slaves were property and had to be returned to the owners. Since a few of the Union states were slaveholding states, Lincoln could not ignore these laws without upsetting these states.

The Union army, however, would benefit from the manpower of escaped slaves. Lincoln's solution was the Emancipation Proclamation, which he announced in September 1862 to take effect in January 1863. It declared slaves within the rebel states to be free. While it did not abolish slavery throughout the Union, it allowed the Union army to begin using the manpower of escaped slaves. It also set the tone for the eventual passage of the Thirteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution , which abolished slavery entirely.

Battle of Gettysburg

In June 1863 General Lee moved his army into Pennsylvania . Union general George Meade (1815–1872) moved to block him. The two armies clashed on July 1 in the Battle of Gettysburg . After three days of fighting, Lee was forced to retreat with a loss of nearly a third of his men. It was a major victory that marked the turning point of the war for the Union.

Union general Ulysses S. Grant and the Battle of Vicksburg

General Ulysses S. Grant was charged with overseeing the Union armies in the west. He experienced many successes, gaining control of the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers for the Union. His victory at the Battle of Vicksburg in Mississippi in July 1863 was significant. The victory allowed Grant to take the Confederate fortress guarding the Mississippi River and earned him Lincoln's attention. Grant was appointed to general in chief of the Union armies and came east to command the Army of the Potomac.

General Sherman and his “march to the sea”

Union general William Tecumseh Sherman (1820–1891) replaced Grant as the commander of the Union's western army. When General Grant began his charge to Richmond in 1864, he coordinated it with an attack on Atlanta, Georgia, by General Sherman. Sherman initially was stopped outside of Atlanta by Confederate troops.

By September, Sherman cut off Atlanta's supplies and captured the city. Determined to break the South's will to fight, he divided his army in half. As half held off the Confederate army to the north, the other half marched to capture the port of Savannah, Georgia. On their “march to the sea,” or Sherman's March , the soldiers destroyed everything in their path and took Savannah on December 20.

The siege at Petersburg

In May 1864, General Grant, now in charge of the Army of the Potomac, led his army in a push towards Richmond. They engaged General Lee in several battles and refused to allow him to withdraw. Grant hoped to cut off Richmond and force its surrender by capturing the vital rail junction at Petersburg, Virginia. General Lee, however, refused to surrender Petersburg, and the two armies settled into a siege.

The siege continued into the spring of 1865. On April 1, the last rail link into Petersburg was captured, and Richmond was cut off from the rest of the Confederacy. Grant blocked Lee's retreat into North Carolina. Lee's surrender to Grant on April 9 at Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia, was the last major defeat of the war. The remaining Confederate troops surrendered nine days later, and the American Civil War was over.

Election of 1864 and the Thirteenth Amendment

Lincoln's reelection in 1864 was not certain to happen. The Union was growing weary of the war and the Union army was struggling. The victories at Vicksburg and Gettysburg, however, instilled confidence in Lincoln, and he was elected for a second term. It was a clear signal that the American people valued the Union and were ready to abolish slavery.

With Lincoln's reelection, the Republican Congress presented the Thirteenth Amendment for ratification, or approval by the states, on January 31, 1865. Ratified on December 6, 1865, the amendment officially ended slavery throughout the United States and made emancipation permanent. Ratification took place eight months after President Lincoln was assassinated.

At a great cost to the lives of the nation, the American Civil War produced an entirely different Union than existed before. Not only was slavery abolished, but states were now undeniably linked into a solid alliance. State powers were minimized and replaced by a strong, centralized federal government. This demanded that communities and states work together in new ways. The American Civil War changed the nation that Americans had known, and it would be a challenging path to reintegrating and reconstructing a whole nation.