Military history of the United States
Conflict	American Civil War
Date	1861–1865
Place	Central and southern USA
Result	Defeat of seceding CSA
Battles of the American Civil War
Combatants United States of America USA flag (34 stars, after the admission of Kansas to the Union and before that of West Virginia), 1861–1863 Confederate States of America CSA flag to May 1863 May 1863 Briefly from March 1865 Strength 2,803,300 1,064,200 Casualties KIA: 110,070 Total dead: 359,528 Wounded: 275,175 KIA: 74,524 Total dead: 198,524 Wounded: 137,000+

The American Civil War was fought in the United States from 1861 until 1865 between the northern states, popularly referred to as "the U.S.," "the Union," "the North," or "the Yankees"; and the seceding southern states, commonly referred to as "the Confederate States of America," "the CSA," "the Confederacy," "the South," "the Rebels," or "Dixie." Individual soldiers who fought for the North were referred to as "Billy Yank"; those who fought for the South were called "Johnny Reb."

Contents

1 Naming conventions 2 The division of the country 3 Origins of the conflict 4 Narrative summary 5 Reasons for the Outcome 6 Major battles 7 Military developments in the war 8 Civil War leaders 9 Aftermath 10 Works inspired by the American civil war 11 See also 12 External links 13 References 14 External links

Naming conventions

The most common and most neutral term for this conflict in the U.S. is simply The Civil War, but this name has never carried official status. The first legally-sanctioned term originated out of a Northeastern wartime usage; the officially-commissioned 1880 U.S. War Department report and compilation of Union and Confederate army records was entitled The War of the Rebellion. The usage of The War Between the States, as preferred by some reenactment and Southern heritage groups to this day, is based upon a Congressional resolution of the 1920's declaring this the proper designation for the war, in deference to those who asserted that the generic category of "civil war" did not apply to the events of 1861-65 in the United States. The War Between the States is also the name used on the Marine Corps War Memorial in Arlington.

The war had a host of unusual or biased names as well; usage of these terms today often signifies an affiliation with one side of the conflict or the other. Some preferred Southern names, in addition to The War Between the States, included The War of Northern Aggression, The War of Southern Independence, Mr. Lincoln's War, The War of Secession or, simply, The War; more obscure Southern terms include The Second American Revolution and The War in Defense of Virginia. A particular favorite in the immediate postwar South was The Late Unpleasantness. However, most of these names are not in common usage today, except among Southern nationalist, historical and cultural groups such as the League of the South (LS) and the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV). Northerners were known to refer to the conflict as The War of the Rebellion (often seen on veterans' monuments in Massachusetts) or The War of Southern Rebellion, The War to Save the Union and The War for Abolition; these names are in even rarer modern use than their pro-Southern counterparts, due to comparatively lesser interest in Civil War heritage study in the North. The earliest name was The War of the Insurrection.

The division of the country

Several states seceded right after the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860. They were South Carolina (December 20, 1860) Mississippi (January 9, 1861), Florida (January 10, 1861), Alabama (January 11, 1861), Georgia (January 19, 1861), Louisiana (January 26, 1861), and Texas (February 1, 1861). These Deep South States, where slavery and cotton plantation agriculture were most dominant, formed the Confederate States of America February 4, 1861, with Jefferson Davis as its President, and with a Constitution closely modeled on the U.S. Constitution (see also Confederate States Constitution). After the attack on Fort Sumter, 4 more states seceded. They were Virginia (April 17, 1861), Arkansas (May 6, 1861), Tennessee (May 7, 1861), and lastly, North Carolina (May 20, 1861).

Four "slave states" did not secede, and one seceding State split, and these are known as the Border States. Delaware never considered secession. The Maryland Legislature rejected secession (April 27, 1861), but only after the rioting in Baltimore and other events had prompted a federal declaration of martial law. Missouri and Kentucky remained in the Union, but in both, minorities organized "secessions", which were recognized by the Confederate States of America. In Missouri, the State government, dominated by Confederates, dissolved, with some officials forming a State government-in-exile in Confederate territory; the Union government of Missouri was organized by a constitutional convention, originally called to vote on secession. Although Kentucky did not secede, for a time, it declared itself neutral in the conflict, and southern sympathizers organized a secession convention, and swore in a Confederate Governor, during a brief sojourn by the Confederate Army. Unionists in Virginia organized the state of West Virginia from Virginia's northwestern counties, entering the Union in 1863.

Origins of the conflict

For details see the main article Origins of the American Civil War. See also the Timeline of events leading to the American Civil War.

The American Civil War originated in a constitutional crisis, precipitated when several southern States "seceded" from the United States, and formed their own federal republic, the Confederate States of America. The Southern belief that they had a right, unilaterally, to secede, can be attributed to the doctrine of State Sovereignty or States Rights. The motivation for the secession was to protect the institution of slavery, as it existed in those southern States, against the anticipated hostility of an emerging non-Southern, antislavery majority. The immediate trigger for war was the election of the Republican candidate for President in 1860, Abraham Lincoln, a moderately antislavery politician pledged to oppose "slavery expansion" -- that is, the admission of additional slave states to the Union. The election of Lincoln was the culmination of a long political struggle over federal policy toward slavery and southern dominance of the federal government.

Narrative summary

Lincoln's victory in the presidential election of 1860 triggered South Carolina's secession from the Union. Leaders in the state had long been waiting for an event that might unite the South against the antislavery forces. Once the election returns were certain, a special South Carolina convention declared "that the Union now subsisting between South Carolina and other states under the name of the 'United States of America' is hereby dissolved." By February 1, 1861, six more Southern states had seceded. On February 7, the seven states adopted a provisional constitution for the Confederate States of America and established their capital at Montgomery, Alabama. The remaining southern states as yet remained in the Union. Several seceding states seized federal forts within their boundaries; President Buchanan made no military response.

Less than a month later, on March 4, 1861, Abraham Lincoln was sworn in as president of the United States. In his inaugural address, he argued that the Constitution was a more perfect union than the earlier voluntary confederation, that it was a binding contract, and called the secession "legally void". He stated he had no intent to invade southern states, but would use force to maintain possession of federal property. His speech closed with a plea for restoration of the bonds of union. The South, particularly South Carolina, ignored the plea, and on April 12, the South fired upon the Federal troops stationed at Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina until the troops surrendered.

Lincoln called for all of the states in the Union to send troops to defend the country against the secessionist forces. Most Northerners believed that a quick brutal victory for the Union would put out the rebellion, and so Lincoln only called for volunteers for 90 days. This was an impetus for the rest of the Southern states to vote for secession. Once Virginia seceded, the Confederate capital was moved to Richmond, Virginia.

Even though the Southern states had seceded, there was considerable anti-secessionist sentiment within several of the seceding states. Eastern Tennessee, in particular, was a hotbed for pro-Unionism. Winston County, Alabama issued a resolution of secession from the state of Alabama. The Red Strings were a prominent Southern anti-secession group.

Winfield Scott created the Anaconda Plan as the Union's main plan of attack during the war.

As a Confederate force was built up by July 1861 at Manassas, Virginia, a march by Union troops under the command of Maj. Gen. Irvin McDowell on the Confederate forces there was halted in the First Battle of Bull Run, or First Manassas, whereupon they were forced back to Washington, DC by Confederate troops under the command of Generals Joseph E. Johnston and P.G.T. Beauregard. Alarmed at the loss, and in an attempt to prevent more slave states from leaving the Union, the U.S. Congress passed the Crittenden-Johnson Resolution on July 25 of that year which stated that the war was being fought to preserve the Union and not to end slavery.

Major General George McClellan took command of the Union Army of the Potomac on July 26 (he was briefly given supreme command of all the Union armies, but was subsequently relieved of that post in favor of Maj. Gen. Henry W. Halleck), and the war began in earnest in 1862. Ulysses S. Grant gave the Union its first victory of the war, by capturing Fort Henry, Tennessee on February 6 of that year.

McClellan reached the gates of Richmond in the spring of 1862, but Robert E. Lee defeated him in the Seven Days Campaign; he was stripped of many of his troops to help create John Pope's Union Army of Virginia . Pope was beaten spectacularly by Lee at Second Bull Run in August. Emboldened, the Confederacy made its first invasion of the North, when General Lee led 55,000 men of the Army of Northern Virginia across the Potomac River at White's Ford near Leesburg, Virginia into Maryland on September 5. Lincoln then restored Pope's troops to McClellan. McClellan won a bloody, almost Pyrrhic victory at the Battle of Antietam near Sharpsburg, Maryland, on September 17, 1862. Lee's army, checked at last, returned to Virginia.

Antietam is considered a Union victory because it halted Lee's invasion of the North. It is less a victory than a bloody standoff, however; McClellan possessed a copy of Lee's orders and had overwhelming superiority on the battlefield. McClellan talked loudly of possessing Lee's battle plans, and a Confederate sympathizer overheard and rushed news to Lee's camp.

When McClellan failed to follow up on Antietam, he was replaced by Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside. Burnside suffered near-immediate defeat at the Battle of Fredericksburg, and was in his turn replaced by Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker. Hooker, too, proved unable to defeat Lee's army, and was relieved after the Battle of Chancellorsville in May 1863. He was replaced by Maj. Gen. George Meade, who stopped Lee's invasion of Union-held territory at what is sometimes considered the war's turning point, the Battle of Gettysburg (July 1-3, 1863), inflicting 28,000 casualties on Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, and again forcing it to retreat to Virginia.

While the Confederate forces had some success in the Eastern theater holding on to their capital, they failed in the West. Confederate forces were driven from Missouri early in the war as result of the Battle of Pea Ridge.

Nashville, Tennessee fell to the Union early in 1862. The Mississippi was opened, at least to Vicksburg, with the taking of Island No. 10 and New Madrid, Missouri and then Memphis, Tennessee. New Orleans, Louisiana was captured in January, 1862, allowing the Union forces to begin moving up the Mississippi as well.

The Union's key strategist and tactician was Ulysses S. Grant, who won victories at Fort Donelson, Battle of Shiloh, Vicksburg, Mississippi, and Chattanooga, Tennessee, driving Confederate forces out of Tennessee. Grant understood the concept of total war and believed, along with Lincoln, that only the utter defeat of Confederate forces would bring an end to the war.

At the beginning of 1864, Grant was given command of all Union armies. He chose to make his headquarters with the Army of the Potomac although Meade remained the actual commander of that army. Union forces in the East attempted to maneuver past Lee and fought several battles during that phase of the Eastern campaign: the Battle of the Wilderness, Spotsylvania Court House, and Cold Harbor. An attempt to outflank Lee from the South failed under Generals Butler and Smith, who were 'corked' into the Bermuda Hundred river bend. Grant was tenacious and kept pressing the Army of Northern Virginia under the command of Robert E. Lee. He extended the Confederate army, pinning it down in the Siege of Petersburg and, after two failed attempts (under Siegel and Hunter), finally found a commander, Philip Sheridan, who could clear the threat to Washington DC from the Shenandoah Valley.

Meanwhile General William Tecumseh Sherman marched from Chattanoga on Atlanta and laid waste to much of the rest of Georgia after he left Atlanta and marched to the sea at Savannah. Burning towns and plantations as they went, Sherman's armies hauled off crops and killed livestock to retaliate and to demonstrate Union power. When Sherman turned north through South Carolina and North Carolina to approach the Virginia lines from the south, it was the end for Lee and his men, and for the Confederacy.

Lee surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia on April 9, 1865 at Appomattox Court House. Joseph E. Johnston, who commanded Confederate forces in North Carolina, surrendered his troops to Sherman shortly thereafter. The Battle of Palmito Ranch, fought on May 13, 1865, in the far south of Texas was the last land battle of the war and ended with a Confederate victory. All Confederate land forces had surrendered by June 1865. Confederate naval units surrendered as late as November of 1865.

Reasons for the Outcome

Why the Confederacy lost, or why the Union won, the Civil War, has been the subject of extensive analysis and debate. Advantages widely believed to have contributed to the Union's success include:

• The North's strong, industrial economy.
• The North's strong compatible railroad links (and the South's lack thereof).
• The North's larger population and greater immigration.
• The North's possession of the U.S. merchant marine fleet and naval ships (and successful blockade of the South).
• The North's established government.
• The North's moral cause (the Emancipation Proclamation) given to the war by Abraham Lincoln mid-way during the war and encouraged international support.
• The recruitment of black men, including many freed slaves, into the Union Army after the Emancipation Proclamation was approved: towards the end of the war, the Confederacy relented, and began to allow Blacks to enter the Confederate Army, but this action was only a token effort.

Major battles

Main article: Battles of the American Civil War

Major battles included First Bull Run, Second Bull Run, Battle of Shiloh, The Seven Days, Antietam, Vicksburg, Gettysburg, and the Siege of Petersburg. There was also the Atlanta Campaign, Red River Campaign , Missouri Campaign and many coastal battles.

Military developments in the war

The American Civil War is often called the first total war because of its tremendous drain on the economies of the participants. It was the first war fought after the Industrial Revolution which tapped an entire economy of an emerging first world power. It was also the first war between two industrialized nations.

The repeating rifle was first used in large quantities during the American Civil War. The American Civil War was also the first war in which trenches were dug on a wide scale, such as in defense of Vicksburg or at Cold Harbor. Also a first in the American Civil War was use of machine guns in warfare. Rifled artillery was also first used heavily during the war. Land mines were also introduced during the American Civil War, but were initially rejected as being inhumane.

The Battle of Hampton Roads in 1862, a naval battle between the USS Monitor and the CSS Virginia, was the first battle in history between steam-powered, iron-armored ships with shell-firing guns called ironclads. The Union's naval blockade of the Confederate coast was one of the most ambitious up to that time, and was the first major blockade under the Declaration of Paris of 1856. The CSS Hunley, a Confederate submarine, was built during the war. It was the first submarine to sink an enemy ship, the USS Housatonic.

Railroads were first used at the first Battle of Manassas to transport troops into combat. Telegraphs were also used on a wide scale to communicate orders between a capital and an army. The concept of Total war was also worked out, particularly during General Sherman's famous March to the Sea.

Civil War leaders

One of the reasons that the US Civil War wore on as long as it did and the battles were so fierce was that leaders on both sides had formerly served in the United States Armed Forces together, many including U.S. Grant and Robert E. Lee during the Mexican-American War between 1846 and 1848. Most were graduates of the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, where Lee had been commandant for 3 years in the 1850s.

Significant Southern leaders included Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, Joseph E. Johnston, Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson, James Longstreet, P.G.T. Beauregard, John Mosby, Braxton Bragg, James Ewell Brown (JEB) Stuart, William Mahone, Judah P. Benjamin, Jubal Early, and Nathan Bedford Forrest.

Northern leaders included Abraham Lincoln, William H. Seward, Edwin M. Stanton, Ulysses S. Grant, William Tecumseh Sherman, George B. McClellan, Henry W. Halleck, Joseph Hooker, Ambrose Burnside, Irvin McDowell, Philip Sheridan, George Crook, George Armstrong Custer, Christopher "Kit" Carson, John E. Wool, George G. Meade, and Abner Read.

Aftermath

Slavery and disputes over constitutional questions concerning States' Rights were clearly the "causes" of the war, and Union victors determined to end slavery and to strip the States of their powers to define citizenship and to deny citizens fundamental rights. During the early part of the war, Lincoln, to hold together his war coalition of Republicans and War Democrats, emphasized preservation of the Union as the sole objective of the war, from a northern perspective, but with the Emancipation Proclamation, announced in September 1862, and put into effect on January 1, 1863, Lincoln adopted an end to slavery as a second war aim. The Emancipation Proclamation freed all slaves held in territory under Confederate control at the time of the Proclamation. It had little immediate effect except as territories were conquered by Union forces, but, as a practical matter, it committed the United States to the war aim of ending slavery. The border States of Missouri and Maryland moved during the course of the war to end slavery, and in December 1864, the Congress proposed the 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution, barring slavery throughout the United States; the 13th amendment was fully ratified by the end of 1865. The 14th Amendment, defining citizenship and giving the Federal government broad power to require the States to provide equal protection of the laws was adopted in 1868. The 15th Amendment guaranteeing black Americans the right to vote was ratified in 1870. The 14th and 15th Amendments reversed the effects of the Supreme Court's Dred Scott decision of 1857, but the 14th Amendment, in particular, had unanticipated and far-reaching effects. The expansion of "fundamental rights" under the 14th Amendment's first clause, requiring due process and equal protection for all citizens was not anticipated by its sponsors. Yet under this clause the Supreme Court has recognized such rights as the right to abortion, the right to contraceptives, the right to medical treatment, and the right to marry

According to data from the United States Department of Veterans Affairs, the last surviving Union veteran of the conflict, Albert Woolson, died on August 2, 1956 at the age of 109, and the last Confederate veteran, John Salling, died on March 16, 1958 at the age of 112. However, William Marvel investigated the claims of both for a 1991 piece in the Civil War history magazine Blue & Gray. Using census information, he found that Salling was born in 1858, far too late to have served in the Civil War. In fact, he concluded, "Every one of the last dozen recognized Confederates was bogus." He found Woolson to be the last true veteran of the Civil War on either side; he had served as a drummer boy late in the war.

In 1905, a campaign medal was authorized for Civil War veterans, known as the Civil War Campaign Medal.

Many of the Union military leaders, such as Sheridan, Sherman and Custer would take the concept of total war and apply it to the Indian Wars on the Great Plains, which resulted in ethnic cleansing and attempted genocide.

From the election of 1876 until the election of 1964, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Arkansas gave no electoral votes to the Republican Party, with South Carolina and Louisiana making an exception only once each. Most other states that had seceded voted overwhelmingly against Republican presidential nominees also, with the same trend predominantly applying in state elections too. This phenomenon was known as the Solid South. With Democrats responsible for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and other later civil rights legislation, since 1964, with some exception, this trend has almost completely reversed and most of the Southern states have now become Republican strongholds.

A good deal of ill will among the Southern survivors resulted from the consequent shift of political power to the North, the destruction inflicted on the South by the Union armies as the end of the war approached, and the Reconstruction program instituted in the South by the Union after the war's end. Bitterness about the war continues almost 150 years after it officially ended. Many Southern whites have bumper stickers that say "The South shall rise again". Heated political debates still occur over such things as the use of Confederate Flags in public life, and monuments to Lincoln. When asked, many southerners argue that the Confederate Flag no longer represents any type of prejudice and/or racism, but is instead a symbol of the bond the southern states share; others disagree.

Works inspired by the American civil war

• Gone With the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell
• The Red Badge of Courage, by Stephen Crane
• North against South (Nord Contre Sud) by Jules Verne
• The Blue Tunics by Lambil and Cauvin [1] http://www.thebluetunics.com/
• Robert E. Lee, by Dr. Douglas Southall Freeman
• Lee's Lieutenants: A Study in Command, by Dr. Douglas Southall Freeman

See also

• List of American Civil War topics
• Photography and photographers of the American Civil War
• Canada and the American Civil War

External links

Wikimedia Commons has multimedia related to American Civil War .

• Civil War Sites Advisory Commission http://www2.cr.nps.gov/abpp/battles/tvii.htm Battle Summaries
• Civil War Preservation Trust http://www.civilwar.org Organization dedicated to preserving America's Civil War battlefields
• American Civil War Search Directory http://www.civilwarsearch.com
• American Civil War http://www.us-civilwar.com
• Online Civil War Records, Indexes & Rosters http://www.militaryindexes.com/civilwar/
• The Civil War http://www.pbs.org/civilwar , a PBS documentary by Ken Burns
• On-Line Civil War Books http://www.sonofthesouth.net/leefoundation/ebooks.htm
• Apostles of Disunion http://www.upress.virginia.edu/apostles/index.html , companion website to the book (ISBN 0-8139-2036-1) by historian Charles B. Dew of Williams College
• Order of secession http://www.confederatemilitaryhistory.com/reference/states/secession.php
• 1861-1865 Harper's Weekly Civil War Newspapers http://www.sonofthesouth.net/leefoundation/the-civil-war.htm Online
• The Military Book Club offers military books including books from various wars http://www.militarybookclub.com
• USS Monitor Center and Exhibit Newport News , Virginia http://www.monitorcenter.org/
• Mariner's Museum, Newport News, Virginia http://www.mariner.org/
• Hampton Roads Naval Museum http://www.hrnm.navy.mil/
• Civil War Naval History http://www.multied.com/Navy/cwnavalhistory/
• USS Monitor National Historical Site http://monitor.nos.noaa.gov/
• Monitor in the news http://www.HavenWorks.com/military/uss-monitor – Its 'revolutionary' gun turret has been raised from the ocean floor.
• On-line exhibition of the Monitor http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/monitor/
• website devoted to the CSS Virginia http://cssvirginia.org/
• Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond, VA official website http://www.moc.org/
• U.S. Navy, Craney Island Fuel Terminal, History http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/craney-island.htm

References

• Woodword, C. V. Ed. (1981). Mary Chesnut's Civil War. New Haven, Conneticut , Yale University Press.

External links

• The American Civil War Homepage http://sunsite.utk.edu/civil-war/
• National Archives Military Resources: Civil War http://www.archives.gov/research_room/alic/reference_desk/military_resources/civ
  il_war_resources.html
• National Park Service Heritage Preservation Services: The Civil War http://www2.cr.nps.gov/abpp/civil.htm
• National Park Service: Civil War Soldiers and Sailors System http://www.itd.nps.gov/cwss/
• Louisiana State University: The Civil War Center http://www.cwc.lsu.edu/
• U.S. Army Online Bookshelf: Civil War http://www.army.mil/cmh-pg/online/Bookshelves/CW.htm
• University of Tennessee: US Civil War Generals http://sunsite.utk.edu/civil-war/generals.html ]
• Library of Congress Civil War Maps http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/civil_war_maps/

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