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The American Civil War

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The American Civil War

What did it take to preserve the Union?

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What was the result of the First Battle of Bull Run?

1/5

Union forces captured Richmond.

Both sides agreed to a temporary truce.

Confederate forces won, shattering hopes for a quick Union victory.

Correct!

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Which of the following was an advantage for the Confederacy?

2/5

More agriculture and access to food for troops

Fighting primarily a defensive war on familiar terrain.

Larger population and industrial capacity.

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Why was General McClellan considered cautious by Lincoln and Congress?

3/5

He was a southerner himself

He relied solely on naval forces.

He believed Confederate forces were too strong

Correct!

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What was the result of the Battle of Shiloh?

4/5

The battle ended in a truce with no clear winner.

The Union controlled the upper Mississippi River.

Confederate forces captured Grant’s army completely.

Correct!

4/5

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How did civilians in New Orleans respond to the Union forces entering the city?

5/5

They fought and destroyed ships and supplies.

They welcomed Union forces peacefully.

They evacuated the city

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The American Civil War

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The Southern Economy

False

True

Question 1/5

The Confederate government’s reliance on cotton exports to Britain and France, refusal to tax wealthy planters, and printing of large amounts of paper money led to inflation, food shortages, and widespread hardship for poor Southern citizens.

Contrabands

False

Question 2/5

During the Civil War, “contrabands” were enslaved people who escaped to Union lines but were treated like fugitive slaves and returned to their owners.

True

The Battle of Vickburg

Question 3/5

False

True

Robert E. Lee’s victories at Shiloh and Vicksburg helped the Confederacy gain control over the Mississippi River and split the Union.

The Battle of Antietam

Question 4/5

The Battle of Antietam was significant because it delayed Lincoln from issuing the Emancipation Proclamation.

False

True

The Emancipation Proclamation

Question 5/5

Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation only freed enslaved people in the Confederate-held areas, not in Union or border states.

False

True

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The American Civil War

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Union Mobilization

The Homestead Act and the funding of a transcontinental railroad were intended solely to expand the Union’s territory, with no connection to the war effort.

1/5

True

False

Sherman's March & Total War

2/5

Sherman's March to the Sea avoided destroying any civilian property, focusing only on Confederate military targets, so it did not impact the South’s economy or the will of its people to fight.

True

False

Women and African American Contributions

3/5

Women and African American men both played important roles in the Civil War, with women providing medical and logistical support, and African American men serving in the Union army despite facing discrimination and danger.

True

False

The Battle of Gettysburg

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El 17 de mayo se celebra el Día Mundial del Reciclaje

True

False

The Gettysburg Address

5/5

Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address was a lengthy speech of several thousand words delivered to tens of thousands of spectators.

True

False

End of the American Civil War

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The American Civil War

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In the spring and summer of 1862, the Union was successful in gaining control of part of the Mississippi River. In April 1862, the Union navy under Admiral David Farragut fought its way past the forts that guarded New Orleans and fired naval guns upon the below-sea-level city. When it became obvious that New Orleans could no longer be defended, Confederate major general Marshall Lovell sent his artillery upriver to Vicksburg, Mississippi. Armed civilians in New Orleans fought the Union forces that entered the city. They also destroyed ships and military supplies that might be used by the Union. Upriver, Union naval forces also bombarded Fort Pillow, forty miles from Memphis, Tennessee, a Southern industrial center and one of the largest cities in the Confederacy. On June 4, 1862, the Confederate defenders abandoned the fort. On June 6, Memphis fell to the Union after the ships defending it were destroyed.

The Confederates had the advantage of being able to wage a defensive war, rather than an offensive one. The war would be fought primarily in the South, which gave the Confederates the advantages of the knowledge of the terrain and the support of the civilian population. Further, the vast coastline from Texas to Virginia offered ample opportunities to evade the Union blockade. Still, the Confederacy had disadvantages. The South’s economy depended heavily on the export of cotton, but with the naval blockade, the flow of cotton to England, the region’s primary importer, came to an end. The blockade also made it difficult to import manufactured goods. Overall, the South lacked substantive industry or an extensive railroad infrastructure to move men and supplies. To deal with the lack of commerce and the resulting lack of funds, the Confederate government began printing paper money, leading to runaway inflation. The advantage that came from fighting on home territory quickly turned to a disadvantage when Confederate armies were defeated and Union forces destroyed Southern farms and towns, and forced Southern civilians to take to the road as refugees. Finally, the population of the South stood at fewer than nine million people, of whom nearly four million were enslaved Black people, compared to over twenty million residents in the North. These limited numbers became a major factor as the war dragged on and the death toll rose. The Union side held many advantages as well. Its larger population, bolstered by continued immigration from Europe throughout the 1860s, gave it greater manpower reserves to draw upon. The North’s greater industrial capabilities and extensive railroad grid made it far better able to mobilize men and supplies for the war effort. The Industrial Revolution and the transportation revolution, beginning in the 1820s and continuing over the next several decades, had transformed the North. Throughout the war, the North was able to produce more war materials and move goods more quickly than the South. Furthermore, the farms of New England, the Mid-Atlantic, the Old Northwest, and the prairie states supplied Northern civilians and Union troops with abundant food throughout the war. Food shortages and hungry civilians were common in the South, where the best land was devoted to raising cotton, but not in the North.

The military forces of the Confederacy and the Union battled in 1861 and early 1862 without either side gaining the upper hand. The majority of military leaders on both sides had received the same military education and often knew one another personally, either from their time as students at West Point or as commanding officers in the Mexican-American War. This familiarity allowed them to anticipate each other’s strategies. Both sides believed in the use of concentrated armies charged with taking the capital city of the enemy. For the Union, this meant the capture of the Confederate capital in Richmond, Virginia, whereas Washington, DC, stood as the prize for Confederate forces. After hopes of a quick victory faded at Bull Run, the months dragged on without any major movement on either side. General George B. McClellan, the general in chief of the army, responsible for overall control of Union land forces, proved especially reluctant to engage in battle with the Confederates. In direct command of the Army of the Potomac, the Union fighting force operating outside Washington, DC, McClellan believed, incorrectly, that Confederate forces were too strong to defeat and was reluctant to risk his troops in battle. His cautious nature made him popular with his men but not with the president or Congress. By 1862, however, both President Lincoln and the new Secretary of War Edwin Stanton had tired of waiting. The Union put forward a new effort to bolster troop strength, enlisting one million men to serve for three-year stints in the Army of the Potomac. In January 1862, Lincoln and Stanton ordered McClellan to invade the Confederacy with the goal of capturing Richmond.

The First Battle of Bull Run

In order to fund the war, the Confederate government also took over the South’s economy. The government ran Southern industry and built substantial transportation and industrial infrastructure to make the weapons of war. Over the objections of slaveholders, it impressed enslaved people, seizing these enslaved workers from their owners and forcing them to work on fortifications and rail lines. Concerned about the resistance to and unhappiness with the government measures, in 1862, the Confederate Congress gave President Davis the power to susend the writ of habeas corpus, the right of those arrested to be brought before a judge or court to determine whether there is cause to hold the prisoner. With a stated goal of bolstering national security in the fledgling republic, this change meant that the Confederacy could arrest and detain indefinitely any suspected enemy without giving a reason. This growth of the Confederate central government stood as a glaring contradiction to the earlier states’ rights argument of pro-Confederate advocates. The war efforts were costing the new nation dearly. Nevertheless, the Confederate Congress heeded the pleas of wealthy plantation owners and refused to place a tax on enslaved people or cotton, despite the Confederacy’s desperate need for the revenue that such a tax would have raised. Instead, the Confederacy drafted a taxation plan that kept the Southern elite happy but in no way met the needs of the war. The government also resorted to printing immense amounts of paper money, which quickly led to runaway inflation. Food prices soared, and poor, White Southerners faced starvation. In April 1863, thousands of hungry people rioted in Richmond, Virginia. Many of the rioters were mothers who could not feed their children. The riot ended when President Davis threatened to have Confederate forces open fire on the crowds. One of the reasons that the Confederacy was so economically devastated was its ill-advised gamble that cotton sales would continue during the war. The government had high hopes that Great Britain and France, which both used cotton as the raw material in their textile mills, would ensure the South’s economic strength—and therefore victory in the war—by continuing to buy. Furthermore, the Confederate government hoped that Great Britain and France would make loans to their new nation in order to ensure the continued flow of raw materials. These hopes were never realized. Great Britain in particular did not wish to risk war with the United States, which would have meant the invasion of Canada. The United States was also a major source of grain for Britain and an important purchaser of British goods. Furthermore, the blockade made Southern trade with Europe difficult. Instead, Great Britain, the major consumer of American cotton, found alternate sources in India and Egypt, leaving the South without the income or alliance it had anticipated.

Mobilization for war proved easier in the North than in the South. The federal government in Washington, DC, undertook wide-ranging efforts to ensure victory, including expanding government activism, imposing new taxes, and contracting with suppliers for food, weapons, and other materials. Republicans in Congress passed measures like the Homestead Act to encourage settlement and farming in the West and funded a transcontinental railroad to improve transportation and logistics. Virtually every sector of the Northern economy became linked to the war effort. The Republicans also promoted free labor through the 1862 Land Grant College Act (Morrill Act), creating agricultural colleges funded by federal land grants. Congress financed the war through income and inheritance taxes, high tariffs, war bonds via the National Bank Acts, and printing paper money known as greenbacks under the Legal Tender Act of 1862. While these measures boosted economic activity, inflation also resulted. To provide troops, the Union enacted the Enrollment Act of 1863, requiring men within certain age ranges to register for conscription, though loopholes allowed hiring substitutes or paying a $300 fee, and African Americans were exempt. The Union also suspended habeas corpus in Confederate-sympathizing areas and closed newspapers deemed a threat to national security. These wartime actions, along with similar measures in the South, marked a dramatic increase in the power of central government, as both sides mobilized resources and citizens on an unprecedented scale.

As men on both sides went off to fight, women stepped in to take over farms and businesses, organize aid societies, and care for soldiers. In the South, women nursed wounded soldiers in their homes, while in the North, they volunteered for the United States Sanitary Commission to improve camp cleanliness, raise money for supplies, and help care for the sick and injured. Thousands also served as cooks, laundresses, and nurses. Women on both sides also acted as spies and, at times, disguised themselves as men to engage in combat. The Emancipation Proclamation allowed African American men, including formerly enslaved and free Black people, to enlist in the Union army, eventually totaling over 190,000 soldiers. Despite racism and fears about their reliability, Black soldiers served in labor roles, dug trenches, and saw combat, sometimes heroically, such as the Fifty-Fourth Regiment of Massachusetts at Fort Wagner. They initially received lower pay than White soldiers, but by 1864 Congress corrected this and provided retroactive pay. The Confederacy, however, showed no mercy to captured Black soldiers, as seen at Fort Pillow in 1864, where they were executed instead of taken prisoner.

Since the beginning of the war, thousands of enslaved people had fled to the safety of Union lines. In May 1861, Union general Benjamin Butler and others labeled these refugees from slavery contrabands. Butler reasoned that since Southern states had left the United States, he was not obliged to follow federal fugitive slave laws. Escaped enslaved people who made it through the Union lines were shielded by the U.S. military and not returned to slavery. The intent was not only to assist them but also to deprive the South of a valuable source of manpower. Congress began to define the status of formerly enslaved people in 1861 and 1862. In August 1861, legislators approved the Confiscation Act of 1861, empowering the Union to seize property, including the enslaved, used by the Confederacy. The Republican-dominated Congress took additional steps, abolishing slavery in Washington, DC, in April 1862. Congress passed a second Confiscation Act in July 1862, which extended freedom to escaped enslaved people and those captured by Union armies. In that month, Congress also addressed the issue of slavery in the West, banning the practice in the territories. This federal law made the 1846 Wilmot Proviso and the dreams of the Free-Soil Party a reality. However, even as the Union government took steps to aid enslaved individuals and to limit the practice of slavery, it passed no measure to address the institution of slavery as a whole.

By late 1862, the course of the war had changed to take on the characteristics of total war, in which armies attempt to demoralize the enemy by both striking military targets and disrupting their opponent’s ability to wage war through destruction of their resources. In this type of war, armies often make no distinction between civilian and military targets. Both the Union and Confederate forces moved toward total war, although neither side ever entirely abolished the distinction between military and civilian. Total war also requires governments to mobilize all resources, extending their reach into their citizens’ lives as never before.