The Civil War

The Compromise of 1850.

By 1850 the national territory united 31 states with 23 million people. In the East, industry boomed. In the Midwest and the South, agriculture flourished. After 1849 the gold mines of California poured a golden stream into the channels of trade.

The main internal problem was slavery.

In some sea bound areas, slavery by 1850 was well over 200 years old, but only a minority of Southern whites owned slaves. In 1860 there were a total of 46,274 planters throughout the slave-holding states, with a planter defined as someone who owned at least 20 slaves.

The “poor whites” and yeoman farmers (who had very few slaves or none) supported slavery for the fear of competition for land. The presence of slaves also raised the standing of the yeomen and the poor whites on the social scale.

The country was divided into two camps; those who were for the abolition of slavery formed an abolitionist movement.

The abolitionist movement of the 1830s was uncompromising. Its brightest leader was William Lloyd Garrison, a young man from Massachusetts. He recognized no rights of the masters, was impatient and reminded a martyr. Other abolitionists supported legal and peaceful means.

One phase of the antislavery movement involved helping slaves escape to safe refuges in the North or over the border into Canada. A network of secret routes became known as the “underground Railroad” (in Ohio alone, from 1830 to 1860 no fewer than 40,000 fugitive slaves were helped to freedom).

The process of forming states was controversial. Texas was a slave state, but California, New Mexico and Utah did not have slavery. Extremists in the South urged all the new lands be thrown to slaveholders. Antislavery Northerners demanded them be closed to slavery.

The discovery of gold in California worsened the situation. The “Golden Rush” increased the number of population in California who needed government.

The Compromise of Senator Henry Clay contained a number of key provisions: that California be admitted as a state with a free-soil (slavery-prohibited) constitution; that the remainder of the new annexation be divided into the two territories of New Mexico and Utah and organized without mention of slavery; that more effective machinery be established for catching runaway slaves and returning then to their masters; and that the buying and selling of slaves (but not slavery) be abolished in the District of Columbia.

The Compromise gave a country a three year period of peace.

In 1854 the region that now comprises Kansas and Nebraska was being rapidly settled. Under terms of the Missouri Compromise of 1820, the entire region was closed to slavery. The Compromise of 1850, however, reopened the question. If Kansas became a free territory, Missouri would have three free-soil neighbors (Illinois, Iowa and Kansas) and the prospect of becoming a free state itself.

At this point, Stephen A. Douglas, the Democratic senior senator from Illinois, proposed the Kansas-Nebraska Act which permitted settlers to carry slaves into these two states. The inhabitants themselves were to determine whether they should enter the Union free or slave states. In May 1854, the Act passed the Senate.

As a reaction a new powerful organization arose – the Republican Party, whose primary demand was that slavery be excluded from all the territories. The Party got the support of a great part of the North.

In 1858 when Stephen A. Douglas was fighting for the post in the Senate from Illinois he was opposed by Abraham Lincoln. Douglas – known as the “Little Giant” – was a wonderful orator but he met his match in Lincoln. In the end, Douglas won the election by a small margin, but Lincoln had achieved stature as a national figure.

On October 16-18, 1859 at Harper Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia), John Brown, one of the most radical of the abolitionists, led an armed group (5 blacks, 16 whites, including his 3 sons) that seized the Federal arsenal. The attempt was not supported by other people. Within 24 hours Brown and four other survivors were captured by a force of U.S. Marines led by Colonel Robert E. Lee. (President Buchanan had put a price of $250 on Brown’s head; Brown had put a price of $2.50 on Buchanan’s). Within 6 weeks Brown was tried for criminal conspiracy and treason, convicted and hanged on December 2, 1859 in Charlestown. His last note was that only by using blood could the country be rid of slavery.

For many Southerners, Brown’s attempt confirmed their worst fears. Though many Northerners condemned the way that Brown went about his plan, they admired him and his goal.

The Civil War.

In the presidential election of 1860 the Republican Party nominated Lincoln as its candidate. Although Lincoln had deliberately muffled his message of attacking slavery, there was no mistaking that fact that for the first time in its history the U.S. had a president of a party that declared “the normal condition of all the territory of the U.S. was that of freedom”.

Lincoln’s election made South Carolina’s secession from the Union a foregone conclusion. The state had long been waiting for an event that would unite the South against the antislavery forces. By February 1, 1861, 7 states (South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Virginia, Louisiana) had seceded. On February 7, they adopted a provisional constitution for the Confederate States of America. The rest Southern states remained in the Union. Two days later (February 9) the Confederate Provisional Congress elected Jefferson Davis President.

Later Texas, Arkansas, North Carolina and Tennessee seceded from the Union.

On April 12, 1861 South Carolina forces opened fire on the federal troops at Fort Sumter in the Charlestown, S. Carolina harbor.

On April 15, 1861, President Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers for three months’ service. Four days later he ordered a blockade of Southern ports.

Virginia that had provided the nation with five presidents left the Union with great reluctance. With Virginia went Colonel Robert E. Lee, who declined the command of the Union Army out of loyalty to his state.

Each side entered the war with hopes for an early victory. The North had 23 states with a population of 22 million, the South had 11 states inhabited by 9 million. The North had industrial superiority (arms, ammunition, clothing, network of railways). On the side of the south was geographical advantage: it was fighting a defensive was on its own territory. It also had a stronger military tradition.

The first large battle of the war, at Bull Run, Virginia, (also known as First Manassas) near Washington, stripped away any illusions that victory would be quick or easy. (After this battle Thomas J. Jackson – a Southerner - got the name “Stonewall”). It also established a pattern of bloody Southern victories never translated into a decisive military advantage. For the first years, the South would often win the battle, but not the war. The pattern in the West was different: Union forces slowly obtained strategic success and sea. The blockade of the Southern coast proclaimed by Lincoln almost completely prevented shipment of cotton to Europe and the importation of goods (munition, clothing, medical supplies) necessary for the south.

The navy was week but secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles took measures to strengthen it.

A brilliant naval commander, David Farragut, the chief of West Gulf blockading Squadron, conducted two remarkable operations. First, he took a Union fleet into the mouth of the Mississippi River and captured New Orleans, Louisiana, the largest city in the South. Second, he captured a Confederate ironclad vessel and sealed up the port in Mobile Bay, Alabama.

In the Mississippi Valley, the Union forces won an almost uninterrupted series of victories. They began by breaking a long confederate line in Tennessee. After seizing the port of Memphis Union troops advanced some 320 km into the heart of Confederacy. At Shiloh, Union forces headed by General Ulysses S. Grant withstood a sudden Confederate counterattack. Those killed and wounded at Shiloh numbered more than 10,000 on each side. But it was only the beginning.

In Virginia, by contrast, Union troops continued to meet one defeat after another. The attempts to capture Richmond, the Confederate capital, were beaten back. Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. (“Stonewall”) Jackson far surpassed in ability the early Union commanders. The Second Battle of Bull Run (or Second Manassas) was won by Confederates. After the battle General Lee crossed the Potomac River and invaded Maryland. The two armies met at Antietam Creek, near Sharpsburg, Maryland, on September 17, 1862. More than 4,000 died on both sides and 18,000 were wounded in the bloodiest single day of the war.

England, however, proclaimed neutrality in the conflict, dashing Southern hopes for a foreign ally; France and Spain soon made similar declarations.

Antietam also gave Lincoln the opening he needed to issue the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation which declared that as of January 1, 1863, all slaves in states rebelling against the Union were free. Of course, it freed slaves only in the Confederate states, but politically it meant that the abolition of slavery was a declared objective of the Union war effort. It also authorized the recruitment of blacks into the Union Army. About 178,000 African Americans served in the U.S. Colored Troops, and 29,500 blacks served in the Union Navy.

In May 1863, at Chancellorswille, Lee defeated the Union forces again, but his brilliant military victory was costly for it was last for General Jackson; he lost his left hand and died two days after. Robert E. Lee said: “He has lost his left arm, but I have lost my right.”

Yet none of the Confederate victories was decisive. The federal government simply mustered new armies and tried again. After the North’s defeat at Chancellorswille, Lee struck northward into Pennsylvania, in July 1863.

The Gettysburg Address

A strong Union force intercepted Lee’s march at Gettysburg, where, in a titanic three-day battle – the largest of the Civil War – the Confederates made a valiant effort to break the Union lines. They failed and fell back to the Potomac.

On the third day Lee, in one of his rare mistakes, ordered the disastrous attack on impregnable Union lines that came to be know as “Pickett’s Charge” (though that General did not lead it).

More than 3,000 Union soldiers and almost 4,000 Confederates died at Gettysburg; wounded and missing totaled more than 20,000 on each side. On November 19, 1863 Lincoln dedicated a new national cemetery at Gettysburg with perhaps the most famous address in the U.S. history.

On July 4, 1863, General Grant captured Vicksburg, Mississippi, and gave the Union control of the Mississippi River thus splitting the Confederacy north to south.

The victories at Vicksburg and Gettysburg marked the turning point of the war. Grant was made commander-in-chief of all Union forces. In May 1863 Grant met Lee’s Confederate Army in the three-day Battle of the Wilderness. Losses on both sides were heavy: over 60,000 out of 115,000 Northmen – equal to Lee’s total strength (app. 75,000); the South lost 25-30,000. (18,000 Northmen died on May 5-6, 14,000 on May 8-18, and 12,000 on June 3-12.)

Victories at Chattanooga (November 24-25, 1863) and near Lookout Mountain opened the way for General William T. Sherman to invade Georgia. He occupied the state capital of Atlanta, then marched to the Atlantic coast, destroying railroads, factories, warehouses in his path. From the coast, Sherman marched northward, and by February 1865, he had taken Charleston, S. Carolina.

Grant, meanwhile, lay siege to Petersburg, Virginia, for 9 months. On April 9, 1865, Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomatox Couthouse.

As Lincoln requested, the terms were generous: Confederate officers and men were free to go home with their own horses and officers might retain sidearms; all equipment was to be surrendered. Grant told his soldiers: “The rebels are our countrymen again.”

Robert E. Lee became hero of the Southerners, but Abraham Lincoln became nation’s hero. In 1864 he had been elected for a second term as president. His second inaugural address closed with these words: “…With malice towards none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to cure for him who shall have borne the battle; and for his widow and his orphan … to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

On April 14, the president held his last Cabinet meeting. That evening – with his wife and a young couple who were his guests – he attended a performance at Ford’s Theater. He was assassinated in the presidential box by John Wilkes Booth, a Virginia actor. Some days later Booth was killed in a shootout in a barn in the Virginia countryside. His accomplices were captured and later executed.

Lincoln died in a downstairs bedroom of a house across the street from Ford’s on the morning of April 15.