Natalie Pociask
Chapter 14: A New Birth of Freedom - The Civil War 1861-1865
I. The First Modern War - Why is the Civil War considered the first modern war?
A. The Two Combatants
1. The Union was just better in every way than the Confederacy
a) 1860 population: 22M in North, 9M in South
b) Wayyy more railroads and money in the North
c) Confederate was very motivated though and a lot of land
2. Both started very patriotic and everyone enlisted, but they had to do a draft later
B. The Technology of War
1. First war with railroads
a) way easier to transport soldiers and supplies
b) Railroad junctions were now major military objectives
2. Ironclad ships are better than wooden ships!
a) Sea battle of Union Monitor and Confederate Merrimac 1862
3. The rifle was the MOST IMPORTANT new technology
a) More accurate from really far away
b) Now people need heavier fortifications and elaborate trenches
c) Gave defense the advantage
d) Contributed to huge # of deaths
4. 750,000 people died - more than Americans have died in any other war
5. Diseases still killed a lot because medicine sucked
C. The Public and the War
1. Propaganda was huge for both sides
2. Public was very aware of all of the death because of newspapers and photography
D. Mobilizing Resources
1. Neither side was prepared
a) No railroad gauge - idk what this means but basically something with trains
b) No national banking system
c) No tax system - they didn’t have enough money to fund war
d) No accurate maps of the South
2. Anaconda Plan - Lincoln’s plan to make the South poor
a) Naval blockade except there wasn’t enough ships so it didn’t really work
3. The Union was really good about giving their army food and other stuff but the
South was really bad at mobilizing resources
E. Military Strategies
1. Confederacy - defensive strategy
a) Robert E Lee thought this would weaken the Union army
2. Union - occupy Southern territory and their capital, Richmond
a) This didn’t really work so then they just tried to beat the Confederate Army
F. The War Begins
1. Fighting in the East was mostly in a small space between DC and Richmond
2. Army of the Potomac led by Union leaders targeted Richmond
3. First Battle of Bull Run - July 21, 1861, first conflict in this area in northern Virginia
ending in the Union soldiers retreating
4. After this, George B. McClellan becomes Union commander
a) Army engineer
b) Democrat
c) Good at organizing soldiers
d) Reluctant to go to battle because he overestimated the enemy
G. The War in the East, 1862
1. McClellan didn’t lead them into battle until Congress and Lincoln told him to
a) Seven Days’ Campaign - Joseph E Johnston and Lee defeated McClellan in
June 1862
2. Second Battle of Bull Run - Lee defeated Union army led by General John Pope in
August 1862
3. Battle of Antietam - Lee tries to invade the North in Maryland but Army of the
Potomac and McClellan defeat him in September 1862
a) More Americans died during this battle than any other day in history
H. The War in the West
1. Don’t be fooled by the East, the Union was a lot more successful here
2. Ulysses S. Grant - West Point grad, resigned from the army in 1854 and became a
lame civilian until he was asked to come back to the army for the war
3. Capturing of Forts Henry and Donelson - February 1862, first major Union victory
4. Navy forces led by Admiral David G. Farragut captured New Orleans
5. Grant defeated Confederate attack in Shiloh Tennessee
6. After these they kinda lost their mojo
II. The Coming of Emancipation - How did a war to preserve the Union become a war to end slavery?
A. Slavery and the War
1. “War is the midwife of revolution”??????
a) Civil War → destruction of slavery
2. American emancipation was way better and cooler than anyone else in the world
3. AT first, Lincoln said slavery had nothing to do with the war so that the border states
wouldn’t join the confederacy
a) Congress even passed a law saying they wouldn’t interfere with slavery
4. It was actually the South who had made slavery a war issue
a) They would capture escaped slaves to serve in the army - contrabands
5. Free Black Americans referred to the Civil War as the “freedom war”
a) If public opinion thinks the war is about slavery then it is
6. Fugitives escaping to the Union were now women and children
7. Once the Union captured Southern territory, enslaved workers would protest
B. Steps toward Emancipation
1. Radical Republicans and abolitionists also wanted slavery to be a Union war target
2. Besides Congress, Frederick Douglass was the most influential toward emancipation
3. March 1862 - new law that Union army cannot return fugitive slaves!
4. Abolition in D.C. and territories
5. Second Confiscation Act - July 1862, liberation of slaves in Union-occupied
Southern territory and to fugitives who escaped to Northern lines
6. Lincoln decided that border states should have gradual emancipation to prevent
conflict
7. Lincoln also believed in colonization :( he sent a bunch of Black people to Haiti
because he thought they shouldn’t live with white people
C. Lincoln’s Decision
1. Summer of 1862 - emancipation is a political and military NECESSITY
a) Emancipated slaves could help out in the army
b) It would make the British stop liking the Confederacy
2. He waited to announce emancipation until after the Union won a battle so he would
seem less desperate
3. After Antietam, he issued the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation - unless South
surrenders by the end of 1862, he would abolish slavery
4. Democrats OPPOSED emancipation
D. The Emancipation Proclamation
1. January 1, 1863 Lincoln signed the document
2. Emancipation did not apply to slaves in areas under Union control (border states)
a) Vast majority, 3 million, were emancipated
3. Very positive reactions
4. Seen as a change and radicalization in Lincoln’s thinking
E. Enlisting Black Troops
1. Most radical part of the Emancipation Proclamation
a) Because they thought the white soldiers wouldn’t want to fight alongside
2. Black people were allowed to work in the navy before the document
3. Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Volunteers - company of free Black soldiers from
around the North led by Robert Shaw, more than half died at Fort Wagner
4. In border states where emancipation didn’t apply, enlistment was the only way to
freedom
F. The Black Soldier
1. 130 former soldiers served in political offices after the war
2. Black military service was forgotten by white America
3. Black soldiers received unequal treatment in the army
a) Segregated units
b) Abusive officers
c) Lower pay
d) Disproportionately assigned to labor over combat
e) Couldn’t become officers until later in the war
4. The service of Black soldiers led Lincoln to advocate for suffrage
III. The Second American Revolution - How did the Civil War transform the national economy and
create a stronger nation-state?
A. Liberty, Union, and the Nation
1. Everyone wants liberty but liberty is different to everyone
a) North: men want to enjoy the product of their own labor
b) South: men deserve the product of other men’s labor
2. 19th century was a big time for nation building
a) Strong nation-states of Germany and Italy formed
b) The U.S. wasn’t based on shared ethnicity but based on universal values
3. The Gettysburg Address - Lincoln’s most famous speech, less than 3 minutes, given
on November 1863 at the dedication of a military cemetery
a) He identified the nation’s mission! “Of the people, by the people, for the
people”
4. Big shift from using the word “Union” (of all the states) to one “nation”
B. The War and American Religion
1. Northern Protestants came up with justifications for so many ppl dying
2. Many churches focused a lot on military and political matters during this time
3. The war was seen as God’s way of getting rid of slavery
4. Religion became a coping mechanism for grief
5. After the war there were a lot of efforts to count and bury dead men
C. Liberty in Wartime
1. Republicans thought any criticism of the war was treason
a) Sooo many people arrested unnecessarily
2. Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus
3. the Supreme Court case Ex parte Milligan, after the war ended, reversed this
4. Not really that big of a deal because they were usually released
5. This is an example though of the fragility of civil liberties during war times with
patriotism/nationalism
D. The North’s Transformation
1. Mobilizing resources meant that new capitalists could make a lot of money
2. Industry gained super high profits from wartime inflation
3. Expansion of agriculture and mechanization
E. Government and the Economy
1. The new American nation really wanted to change the economy
2. Homestead Act - gave free public land to settlers in the West January 1, 1863
3. Morrill Land Grant College Act - they made a bunch of colleges
4. Transcontinental railroad - railroad from Missouri River to Pacific coast, relied on
immigrant Chinese labor, from Omaha, Nebraska to San Francisco
a) Reduced xc trip from 4 months to 6 days
b) Expanded national market
c) Facilitated spread of settlement and investment in the West
d) Very bad for Plains Native Americans
F. The West and the War
1. They don’t talk about it a lot but the West was also involved in the war
2. Divided communities
3. Confederate army invaded New Mexico in October 1861
a) Defeated at Glorieta Pass in March 1862
b) Last shot at a slavery empire in the West
4. Lincoln wanted more troops protecting DC than in the West
a) Native Americans didn’t want this because then any white people can steal
their land without enforcement
b) There had been many violent conflicts between natives and settlers
c) 300 Native Americans were hanged - largest American execution
5. Colorado militia men were looking for their opps but couldn't find them so they
killed their families instead, the Cheyennes and Arapahos retaliated
6. Union troops would launch campaigns on tribes who would raid ranches except one
time they launched a campaign on the Navajo who were actually victims of these
raids
a) Navajos Long Walk - 8000 people were forced to move to a reservation
7. Cherokee people owned slaves also so they sided with the Confederacy
a) After the war they were forced to cede land and free their slaves
G. A New Financial System
1. How are they gonna afford this war?
a) Raising tariffs a lot
b) Imposing new taxes including first income tax
c) Hella debt
d) Printing new money - greenbacks
e) New system of nationally chartered banks
2. Capitalists used the war as a leverage opportunity - Andrew Carneige (steel) , John
D. Rockefeller (oil) , Jay Gould and J.P. Morgan (financers) , Phillip D. Armour (beef)
3. New federal budget was over a billion
H. Women and the War
1. Labor shortages so now women can work in factories and nursing
2. Expansion of national government so new jobs like clerks in gov offices
3. Women created organizations to send stuff to soldiers like money and food
a) U.S. Sanitary Commission - centralized national relief agency to coordinate
donations on the northern home front
b) Controlled by men but grassroots work done by women
c) Sanitary Fairs - sold military banners, uniformes, etc. to raise money for aid
I. The Divided North
1. Republicans - labeled war opposers “Copperheads”
a) Except a lot of people died and people didn’t like that
2. Growing federal gov challenged local autonomy
3. Social tensions from the draft law - rich people can get out of military service
4. Normal people didn’t like rich people because they were profiting from inflation
5. Change in status for Black people made some Northerners racist
6. July 1863 - a bunch of Irish people rioted in NYC against the draft, rich Republicans
and the city’s Black population.
IV. The Confederate Nation - How did the war effort affect the society and economy of the
Confederacy?
A. Leadership and Government
1. Jefferson Davis - from Mississippi, went to West Point, had a plantation
a) Bad at being flexible like Lincoln
2. The Confederacy made the South much more centralized
3. “King Cotton diplomacy” - They limited cotton production so that cotton
plantations would produce food so they could be self sufficient, also so that Great
Britain would support them who relied heavily on their cotton
a) Wasn’t really that effective
b) other countries to make up the difference in cotton production, but when the
U.S. was back after the war there was a surplus so the farmers’ all starved
B. The Inner Civil War
1. Most Southerners passionately supported the war because they loved slavery
a) However, there were some divisions
2. The draft - for slaveholders, a white man for every 20 enslaved workers was exempt
C. Economic Problems
1. The economy was BAD girl
a) The navy blockade
b) Many areas became under Union control so production from slavery declined
c) Commodity shortages like salt, corn, and meat
d) Infrastructure left in ruins
2. Non-slaveholders felt like they had an unfair share of the war’s burdens
3. They wouldn’t levy taxes to fund the war because Confederate Congress was made
of planters who didn’t want to pay
D. Women and the Confederacy
1. Lots of burdens on Southern white women who had to run plantations and work in
commercial establishments
2. All this while coping with the fact their loved ones were fighting
3. They protested not being able to afford food and it was effective
E. Black Soldiers for the Confederacy
1. There was a shortage of white guys willing to fight
2. Slave-holders initially resisted the idea but they needed to arm Black people
3. The war actually ended before the recruitment began
4. Black people were still laborers though just not soldiers
V. Turning Points - What were the military and political turning points of the war?
A. Gettysburg and Vicksburg
1. Chancellorsville - April 1863 “Fighting Joe” Hooker tried to attack 2 - 1 on Lee but he
was defeated. This is when “Stonewall” Jackson (Confederate) was accidently killed
by his own soldiers
2. Battle of Gettysburg - July 3, 1863 Lee tried to invade the North with the largest
battle of North America, they never event made it to the Union lines and were
severely defeated
3. Battle of Vicksburg - July 4, 1863 on the same day as the retreat from Gettysburg,
but in the West, Grant seized Vicksburg, Mississippi, the last step to gaining control of
the entire Mississippi River Valley
B. 1864
1. Grant decided to attack continuously regardless of casualties because the North’s
manpower could afford loss, but the South’s could not
2. May 1864 - Grant crosses a river into Virginia to fight for SIX WEEKS, losing 60K men
while Lee lost 30K men
a) More similar to WWI trench warfare than early Civil War style
3. Once the casualty counts came out for 1864, the North lost morale
4. John C Fremont, another Republican and General George B McClellan, a Democrat,
both ran in election of 1864 but Lincoln won by a large majority
VI. Rehearsals for Reconstruction and the End of the War - What were the most important wartime
“rehearsals” for Reconstruction?
A. The Sea Islands Experiment
1. The Union navy occupied the Sea Islands off of South Carolina in 1861 when the
white population fled leaving only former slaves
2. Many Northern reformers moved to the islands - Gideon’s Band
3. Instead of the Black people getting land, reformers would get the land and hire the
Black people under wage-labor
4. The experiment was seen as a success
5. This is an example of the debate of if land ownership should be part of Black
freedom
B. Wartime Reconstruction in the West
1. After the Union got Vicksburg, plantations gave out labor contracts for wages, no
physical punishment, and no threat of sale
a) Black people didn’t like being forced into a contract
b) Planters didn’t like regulations
2. Jefferson Davis’ land was divided among his former enslaved workers
C. The Politics of Wartime Reconstruction
1. Lincoln’s Ten Percent Plan of Reconstruction - if 10% of voters affirmed their
loyalty to the North, they could elect their state government
2. The free Black population in New Orleans advocated for equality under the law
a) Inspired the Wade-Davis Bill - required majority of white male Southerners to
pledge their loyalty before Reconstruction and guaranteed Black people
equality under the law but still no right to vote
b) The bill passed Congress but Lincoln didn’t sign it
D. Victory at Last
1. William T Sherman’s army marched through Atlanta to the sea killing hella ppl
2. Thirteenth Amendment - January 31, 1865 abolished slavery
3. April 1865
a) Grant’s army broke through Lee’s lines near Richmond
b) Lee finally surrender at Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia
c) Lincoln gave a public speech promising Black suffrage
d) John Wilkes Booth shot and killed Lincoln
E. The War and the World
1. When Grant was president, everyone around the world loved him
F. The War in American History
1. The Civil War laid foundation for modern America
a) Shifted wealth/power from Southern planters to Northern capitalists
b) Increased federal government
c) Added the challenging of defining and protecting Black freedom
2. Both sides lost something
a) South lost slavery to freedom
b) North lost free labor/independences to industrialism
