1861–1865 conflict in the United States

American Civil WarClockwise from top:

Battle of Gettysburg
Union Captain John Tidball's artillery
Confederate prisoners
ironclad USS Atlanta
Ruins of Richmond, Virginia
Battle of Franklin
DateApril 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865[a][1][2]
(4 years, 1 month and 2 weeks)LocationUnited States, Atlantic OceanResult
Union victory

Abolition of slavery in the United States

Beginning of the Reconstruction era
Passage of the Reconstruction AmendmentsTerritorialchanges
Dissolution of the Confederate States of AmericaBelligerents
United States
Confederate StatesCommanders and leaders
Abraham Lincoln X Ulysses S. Grant and others...
Jefferson Davis Robert E. Lee and others...Strength
2,200,000[b]698,000 (peak)[3][4]
750,000–1,000,000[b][5]360,000 (peak)[3][6]Casualties and losses

110,000+ †/ (DOW)
230,000+ accident/disease deaths[7][8]
25,000–30,000 died in Confederate prisons[3][7]
365,000+ total dead[9]

282,000+ wounded[8]
181,193 captured[3][better source needed][c]

Total: 828,000+ casualties

94,000+ †/ (DOW)[7]
26,000–31,000 died in Union prisons[8]
290,000+ total dead

137,000+ wounded
436,658 captured[3][better source needed][d]

Total: 864,000+ casualties

50,000 free civilians dead[10]

80,000+ slaves dead (disease)[11]
Total: 616,222[12]–1,000,000+ dead[13][14]

vteTheaters of the American Civil War

Union blockade
Eastern
Western
Lower seaboard
Trans-Mississippi
Pacific coast

Events leading to the American Civil War

Economic
End of Atlantic slave trade
Panic of 1857

Political
Northwest Ordinance
Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions
Missouri Compromise
Nullification crisis
Gag rule
Tariff of 1828
End of slavery in British colonies
Texas Revolution
Texas annexation
Mexican–American War
Wilmot Proviso
Nashville Convention
Compromise of 1850
Fugitive Slave Act of 1850
Kansas–Nebraska Act
Ostend Manifesto
Caning of Charles Sumner
Lincoln–Douglas debates
1860 presidential election
Crittenden Compromise
Secession of Southern states
Peace Conference of 1861
Corwin Amendment

Social
Nat Turner's slave rebellion
Martyrdom of Elijah Lovejoy
Burning of Pennsylvania Hall
American Slavery As It Is
Uncle Tom's Cabin
Bleeding Kansas
The Impending Crisis of the South
Oberlin–Wellington Rescue
John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry

Judicial
Trial of Reuben Crandall
Commonwealth v. Aves
The Amistad affair
Prigg v. Pennsylvania
Recapture of Anthony Burns
Dred Scott v. Sandford
Virginia v. John Brown

Military
Star of the West
Battle of Fort Sumter
President Lincoln's 75,000 volunteers
vte
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The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names)
was a civil war in the United States between the Union[e] ("the North") and the
Confederacy ("the South"), which had been formed by states that had seceded from
the Union. The cause of the war was the dispute over whether slavery would be
permitted to expand into the western territories, leading to more slave states, or
be prevented from doing so, which many believed would place slavery on a course of
ultimate extinction.
Decades of political controversy over slavery were brought to a head by the victory
in the 1860 U.S. presidential election of Abraham Lincoln, who opposed slavery's
expansion into the western territories. Seven southern slave states responded to
Lincoln's victory by seceding from the United States and forming the Confederacy.
The Confederacy seized U.S. forts and other federal assets within their borders.
Four more southern states seceded after the war began and, led by Confederate
President Jefferson Davis, the Confederacy asserted control over about a third of
the U.S. population in eleven states. Four years of intense combat, mostly in the
South, ensued.
During 1861–1862 in the Western Theater, the Union made significant permanent gains
—though in the Eastern Theater the conflict was inconclusive. The abolition of
slavery became a Union war goal on January 1, 1863, when Lincoln issued the
Emancipation Proclamation, which declared all slaves in rebel states to be free,
which applied to more than 3.5 million of the 4 million enslaved people in the
country. To the west, the Union first destroyed the Confederacy's river navy by the
summer of 1862, then much of its western armies, and later seized New Orleans. The
successful 1863 Union siege of Vicksburg split the Confederacy in two at the
Mississippi River. In 1863, Confederate General Robert E. Lee's incursion north
ended at the Battle of Gettysburg. Western successes led to General Ulysses S.
Grant's command of all Union armies in 1864. Inflicting an ever-tightening naval
blockade of Confederate ports, the Union marshaled resources and manpower to attack
the Confederacy from all directions. This led to the fall of Atlanta in 1864 to
Union General William Tecumseh Sherman, followed by his March to the Sea. The last
significant battles raged around the ten-month Siege of Petersburg, gateway to the
Confederate capital of Richmond. The Confederates abandoned Richmond, and on April
9, 1865, Lee surrendered to Grant following the Battle of Appomattox Court House,
setting in motion the end of the war.
A wave of Confederate surrenders followed. On April 14, just five days after Lee's
surrender, Lincoln was assassinated. On May 26, the last military department of the
Confederacy, the Department of the Trans-Mississippi, effectively surrendered. The
conclusion of the American Civil War lacks a clear end date; Appomattox is often
symbolically referred to. Small confederate ground forces continued surrendering
past the May 26 surrender date until June 23. By the end of the war, much of the
South's infrastructure was destroyed, especially its railroads. The Confederacy
collapsed, slavery was abolished, and four million enslaved black people were
freed. The war-torn nation then entered the Reconstruction era in an attempt to
rebuild the country, bring the former Confederate states back into the United
States, and grant civil rights to freed slaves.
The Civil War is one of the most extensively studied and written about episodes in
U.S. history. It remains the subject of cultural and historiographical debate. Of
particular interest is the persisting myth of the Lost Cause of the Confederacy.
The American Civil War was among the first wars to use industrial warfare.
Railroads, the telegraph, steamships, the ironclad warship, and mass-produced
weapons were all widely used during the war. In total, the war left between 620,000
and 750,000 soldiers dead, along with an undetermined number of civilian
casualties, making the Civil War the deadliest military conflict in American
history.[f] The technology and brutality of the Civil War foreshadowed the coming
World Wars.

Causes of secession
Main articles: Origins of the American Civil War and Timeline of events leading to
the American Civil War
Status of the states, 1861 Slave states that seceded before April 15, 1861
Slave states that seceded after April 15, 1861 Border Southern states that
permitted slavery but did not secede (both KY and MO had dual competing Confederate
and Unionist governments) Union states that banned slavery Territories
The reasons for the Southern states' decisions to secede have been historically
controversial, but most scholars today identify preserving slavery as the central
reason, in large part because the seceding states' secession documents say that it
was. Although some historical revisionists have offered additional reasons for the
war,[15] slavery was the central source of escalating political tensions in the
1850s.[16] The Republican Party was determined to prevent any spread of slavery to
the territories, which, after they were admitted as free states, would give the
free states greater representation in Congress and the Electoral College. Many
Southern leaders had threatened secession if the Republican candidate, Lincoln, won
the 1860 election. After Lincoln won, many Southern leaders felt that disunion was
their only option, fearing that the loss of representation would hamper their
ability to enact pro-slavery laws and policies.[17][18] In his second inaugural
address, Lincoln said that: slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest.
All knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war. To strengthen,
perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would
rend the Union, even by war; while the government claimed no right to do more than
to restrict the territorial enlargement of it.[19]
Slavery
Main article: Slavery in the United States
Disagreements among states about the future of slavery were the main cause of
disunion and the war that followed.[20][21] Slavery had been controversial during
the framing of the Constitution, which, because of compromises, ended up with
proslavery and antislavery features.[22] The issue of slavery had confounded the
nation since its inception and increasingly separated the United States into a
slaveholding South and a free North. The issue was exacerbated by the rapid
territorial expansion of the country, which repeatedly brought to the fore the
question of whether new territory should be slaveholding or free. The issue had
dominated politics for decades leading up to the war. Key attempts to resolve the
matter included the Missouri Compromise and the Compromise of 1850, but these only
postponed the showdown over slavery that would lead to the Civil War.[23]
The motivations of the average person were not necessarily those of their faction;
[24][25] some Northern soldiers were indifferent on the subject of slavery, but a
general pattern can be established.[26] As the war dragged on, more and more
Unionists came to support the abolition of slavery, whether on moral grounds or as
a means to cripple the Confederacy.[27] Confederate soldiers fought the war
primarily to protect a Southern society of which slavery was an integral part.[28]
[29] Opponents of slavery considered slavery an anachronistic evil incompatible
with republicanism. The strategy of the anti-slavery forces was containment—to stop
the expansion of slavery and thereby put it on a path to ultimate extinction.[30]
The slaveholding interests in the South denounced this strategy as infringing upon
their constitutional rights.[31] Southern whites believed that the emancipation of
slaves would destroy the South's economy, because of the large amount of capital
invested in slaves and fears of integrating the ex-slave black population.[32] In
particular, many Southerners feared a repeat of the 1804 Haiti massacre (referred
to at the time as "the horrors of Santo Domingo"),[33][34] in which former slaves
systematically murdered most of what was left of the country's white population—
including men, women, children, and even many sympathetic to abolition—after the
successful slave revolt in Haiti. Historian Thomas Fleming points to the historical
phrase "a disease in the public mind" used by critics of this idea and proposes it
contributed to the segregation in the Jim Crow era following emancipation.[35]
These fears were exacerbated by the 1859 attempt of John Brown to instigate an
armed slave rebellion in the South.[36]

Abolitionists
Main article: Abolitionism in the United States
Uncle Tom's Cabin, authored by Harriet Beecher Stowe and published in 1852, helped
enlighten the public to slavery's evil and contributed to increased American
opposition to it. According to an apocryphal story, when Lincoln was introduced to
Stowe at the White House, his first words were, "So this is the little lady who
started this Great War."[37][38]
The abolitionists—those advocating the end of slavery—were active in the decades
leading up to the Civil War. They traced their philosophical roots back to
Puritans, who believed that slavery was morally wrong. One of the early Puritan
writings on this subject was The Selling of Joseph, by Samuel Sewall in 1700. In
it, Sewall condemned slavery and the slave trade and refuted many of the era's
typical justifications for slavery.[39][40]
The American Revolution and the cause of liberty added tremendous impetus to the
abolitionist cause. Even in Southern states, laws were changed to limit slavery and
facilitate manumission. The amount of indentured servitude dropped dramatically
throughout the country. An Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves sailed through
Congress with little opposition. President Thomas Jefferson supported it, and it
went into effect on January 1, 1808, which was the first day that the Constitution
(Article I, section 9, clause 1) permitted Congress to prohibit the importation of
slaves. Benjamin Franklin and James Madison each helped found manumission
societies. Influenced by the American Revolution, many slave owners freed their
slaves, but some, such as George Washington, did so only in their wills. The number
of free black people as a proportion of the black population in the upper South
increased from less than one percent to nearly 10 percent between 1790 and 1810 as
a result of these actions.[41][42][43][44][45][46]
The establishment of the Northwest Territory as "free soil"—no slavery—by Manasseh
Cutler and Rufus Putnam (who both came from Puritan New England) would also prove
crucial. This territory (which became the states of Ohio, Michigan, Indiana,
Illinois, Wisconsin and part of Minnesota) doubled the size of the United States.
[47][48][40]

Frederick Douglass, a former slave, was a leading abolitionist

In the decades leading up to the Civil War, abolitionists, such as Theodore Parker,
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Frederick Douglass, repeatedly used
the Puritan heritage of the country to bolster their cause. The most radical anti-
slavery newspaper, The Liberator, invoked the Puritans and Puritan values over a
thousand times. Parker, in urging New England congressmen to support the abolition
of slavery, wrote, "The son of the Puritan ... is sent to Congress to stand up for
Truth and Right."[49][50] Literature served as a means to spread the message to
common folks. Key works included Twelve Years a Slave, the Narrative of the Life of
Frederick Douglass, American Slavery as It Is, and the most important: Uncle Tom's
Cabin, the best-selling book of the 19th century aside from the Bible.[51][52][53]
A more unusual abolitionist than those named above was Hinton Rowan Helper, whose
1857 book, The Impending Crisis of the South: How to Meet It, "[e]ven more perhaps
than Uncle Tom's Cabin ... fed the fires of sectional controversy leading up to the
Civil War."[54] A Southerner and a virulent racist, Helper was nevertheless an
abolitionist because he believed, and showed with statistics, that slavery "impeded
the progress and prosperity of the South, ... dwindled our commerce, and other
similar pursuits, into the most contemptible insignificance; sunk a large majority
of our people in galling poverty and ignorance, ... [and] entailed upon us a
humiliating dependence on the Free States...."[55]
By 1840 more than 15,000 people were members of abolitionist societies in the
United States. Abolitionism in the United States became a popular expression of
moralism, and led directly to the Civil War. In churches, conventions and
newspapers, reformers promoted an absolute and immediate rejection of slavery.[56]
[57] Support for abolition among the religious was not universal though. As the war
approached, even the main denominations split along political lines, forming rival
Southern and Northern churches. For example, in 1845 the Baptists split into the
Northern Baptists and Southern Baptists over the issue of slavery.[58][59]
Abolitionist sentiment was not strictly religious or moral in origin. The Whig
Party became increasingly opposed to slavery because it saw it as inherently
against the ideals of capitalism and the free market. Whig leader William H. Seward
(who would serve as Lincoln's secretary of state) proclaimed that there was an
"irrepressible conflict" between slavery and free labor, and that slavery had left
the South backward and undeveloped.[60] As the Whig party dissolved in the 1850s,
the mantle of abolition fell to its newly formed successor, the Republican Party.
[61]

Territorial crisis
Further information: Slave states and free states
Manifest destiny heightened the conflict over slavery. Each new territory acquired
had to face the thorny question of whether to allow or disallow the "peculiar
institution".[62] Between 1803 and 1854, the United States achieved a vast
expansion of territory through purchase, negotiation, and conquest. At first, the
new states carved out of these territories entering the union were apportioned
equally between slave and free states. Pro- and anti-slavery forces collided over
the territories west of the Mississippi River.[63]
The Mexican–American War and its aftermath was a key territorial event in the
leadup to the war.[64] As the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo finalized the conquest of
northern Mexico west to California in 1848, slaveholding interests looked forward
to expanding into these lands and perhaps Cuba and Central America as well.[65][66]
Prophetically, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote that "Mexico will poison us", referring to
the ensuing divisions around whether the newly conquered lands would end up slave
or free.[67] Northern free-soil interests vigorously sought to curtail any further
expansion of slave territory. The Compromise of 1850 over California balanced a
free-soil state with a stronger federal fugitive slave law for a political
settlement after four years of strife in the 1840s. But the states admitted
following California were all free: Minnesota (1858), Oregon (1859), and Kansas
(1861). In the Southern states, the question of the territorial expansion of
slavery westward again became explosive.[68] Both the South and the North drew the
same conclusion: "The power to decide the question of slavery for the territories
was the power to determine the future of slavery itself."[69][70] Soon after the
Utah Territory legalized slavery in 1852, the Utah War of 1857 saw Mormon settlers
in the Utah territory fighting the US government.[71][72]

Sen. Stephen A. Douglas, author of the Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854Sen. John J.

Crittenden, of the 1860 Crittenden Compromise
By 1860, four doctrines had emerged to answer the question of federal control in
the territories, and they all claimed they were sanctioned by the Constitution,
implicitly or explicitly.[73] The first of these theories, represented by the
Constitutional Union Party, argued that the Missouri Compromise apportionment of
territory north for free soil and south for slavery should become a constitutional
mandate. The failed Crittenden Compromise of 1860 was an expression of this view.
[74]
The second doctrine of congressional preeminence was championed by Abraham Lincoln
and the Republican Party. It insisted that the Constitution did not bind
legislators to a policy of balance—that slavery could be excluded in a territory,
as it was in the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, at the discretion of Congress.[75]
Thus Congress could restrict human bondage, but never establish it. The ill-fated
Wilmot Proviso announced this position in 1846.[76] The Proviso was a pivotal
moment in national politics, as it was the first time slavery had become a major
congressional issue based on sectionalism, instead of party lines. Its support by
Northern Democrats and Whigs, and opposition by Southerners, was a dark omen of
coming divisions.[77]
Senator Stephen A. Douglas proclaimed the third doctrine: territorial or "popular"
sovereignty, which asserted that the settlers in a territory had the same rights as
states in the Union to allow or disallow slavery as a purely local matter.[78] The
Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854 legislated this doctrine.[79] In the Kansas Territory,
political conflict spawned "Bleeding Kansas", a five-year paramilitary conflict
between pro- and anti-slavery supporters. The U.S. House of Representatives voted
to admit Kansas as a free state in early 1860, but its admission did not pass the
Senate until January 1861, after the departure of Southern senators.[80]
The fourth doctrine was advocated by Mississippi Senator (and soon to be
Confederate President) Jefferson Davis.[81] It was one of state sovereignty
("states' rights"),[82] also known as the "Calhoun doctrine",[83] named after the
South Carolinian political theorist and statesman John C. Calhoun.[84] Rejecting
the arguments for federal authority or self-government, state sovereignty would
empower states to promote the expansion of slavery as part of the federal union
under the U.S. Constitution.[85] These four doctrines comprised the dominant
ideologies presented to the American public on the matters of slavery, the
territories, and the U.S. Constitution before the 1860 presidential election.[86]

States' rights
A long-running dispute over the origin of the Civil War is to what extent states'
rights triggered the conflict. The consensus among historians is that the Civil War
was not fought about states' rights.[87][88][89][90] But the issue is frequently
referenced in popular accounts of the war and has much traction among Southerners.
Southerners advocating secession argued that just as each state had decided to join
the Union, a state had the right to secede—leave the Union—at any time. Northerners
(including pro-slavery President Buchanan) rejected that notion as opposed to the
will of the Founding Fathers, who said they were setting up a perpetual union.[91]
Historian James McPherson points out that even if Confederates genuinely fought
over states' rights, it boiled down to states' right to slavery.[90] McPherson
writes concerning states' rights and other non-slavery explanations:

While one or more of these interpretations remain popular among the Sons of
Confederate Veterans and other Southern heritage groups, few professional
historians now subscribe to them. Of all these interpretations, the states'-rights
argument is perhaps the weakest. It fails to ask the question, states' rights for
what purpose? States' rights, or sovereignty, was always more a means than an end,
an instrument to achieve a certain goal more than a principle.[90]
States' rights was an ideology formulated and applied as a means of advancing slave
state interests through federal authority.[92] As historian Thomas L. Krannawitter
points out, the "Southern demand for federal slave protection represented a demand
for an unprecedented expansion of Federal power."[93][94] Before the Civil War,
slavery advocates supported the use of federal powers to enforce and extend
slavery, as with the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 and the Dred Scott v. Sandford
decision.[95][96] The faction that pushed for secession often infringed on states'
rights. Because of the overrepresentation of pro-slavery factions in the federal
government, many Northerners, even non-abolitionists, feared the Slave Power
conspiracy.[95][96] Some Northern states resisted the enforcement of the Fugitive
Slave Act. Historian Eric Foner states that the act "could hardly have been
designed to arouse greater opposition in the North. It overrode numerous state and
local laws and legal procedures and 'commanded' individual citizens to assist, when
called upon, in capturing runaways." He continues, "It certainly did not reveal, on
the part of slaveholders, sensitivity to states' rights."[88] According to
historian Paul Finkelman, "the southern states mostly complained that the northern
states were asserting their states' rights and that the national government was not
powerful enough to counter these northern claims."[89] The Confederate Constitution
also "federally" required slavery to be legal in all Confederate states and claimed
territories.[87][97]

Sectionalism
Sectionalism resulted from the different economies, social structure, customs, and
political values of the North and South.[98][99] Regional tensions came to a head
during the War of 1812, resulting in the Hartford Convention, which manifested
Northern dissatisfaction with a foreign trade embargo that affected the industrial
North disproportionately, the Three-Fifths Compromise, dilution of Northern power
by new states, and a succession of Southern presidents. Sectionalism increased
steadily between 1800 and 1860 as the North, which phased slavery out of existence,
industrialized, urbanized, and built prosperous farms, while the deep South
concentrated on plantation agriculture based on slave labor, together with
subsistence agriculture for poor whites. In the 1840s and 1850s, the issue of
accepting slavery (in the guise of rejecting slave-owning bishops and missionaries)
split the nation's largest religious denominations (the Methodist, Baptist, and
Presbyterian churches) into separate Northern and Southern denominations.[100]
Historians have debated whether economic differences between the mainly industrial
North and the mainly agricultural South helped cause the war. Most historians now
disagree with the economic determinism of historian Charles A. Beard in the 1920s,
and emphasize that Northern and Southern economies were largely complementary.
While socially different, the sections economically benefited each other.[101][102]

Protectionism
Owners of slaves preferred low-cost manual labor with no mechanization. Northern
manufacturing interests supported tariffs and protectionism while Southern planters
demanded free trade.[103] The Democrats in Congress, controlled by Southerners,
wrote the tariff laws in the 1830s, 1840s, and 1850s, and kept reducing rates so
that the 1857 rates were the lowest since 1816. The Republicans called for an
increase in tariffs in the 1860 election. The increases were only enacted in 1861
after Southerners resigned their seats in Congress.[104][105] The tariff issue was
a Northern grievance. However, neo-Confederate writers have claimed it as a
Southern grievance. In 1860–61 none of the groups that proposed compromises to head
off secession raised the tariff issue.[106] Pamphleteers from the North and the
South rarely mentioned the tariff.[107]

Nationalism and honor

Marais des Cygnes massacre of anti-slavery Kansans, May 19, 1858
Nationalism was a powerful force in the early 19th century, with famous spokesmen
such as Andrew Jackson and Daniel Webster. While practically all Northerners
supported the Union, Southerners were split between those loyal to the entirety of
the United States (called "Southern Unionists") and those loyal primarily to the
Southern region and then the Confederacy.[108]
Perceived insults to Southern collective honor included the enormous popularity of
Uncle Tom's Cabin and abolitionist John Brown's attempt to incite a slave rebellion
in 1859.[109][110]
While the South moved towards a Southern nationalism, leaders in the North were
also becoming more nationally minded, and they rejected any notion of splitting the
Union. The Republican national electoral platform of 1860 warned that Republicans
regarded disunion as treason and would not tolerate it.[111] The South ignored the
warnings; Southerners did not realize how ardently the North would fight to hold
the Union together.[112]

Lincoln's election
Main article: 1860 United States presidential election
Mathew Brady's Portrait of Abraham Lincoln, 1860
The election of Abraham Lincoln in November 1860 was the final trigger for
secession.[113] Southern leaders feared that Lincoln would stop the expansion of
slavery and put it on a course toward extinction.[114] However, Lincoln would not
be inaugurated until five months after the election, which gave the South time to
secede and prepare for war in the winter and spring of 1861.[115]
According to Lincoln, the American people had shown that they had been successful
in establishing and administering a republic, but a third challenge faced the
nation: maintaining a republic based on the people's vote, in the face of an
attempt to destroy it.[116]

Outbreak of the war

Secession crisis
The election of Lincoln provoked the legislature of South Carolina to call a state
convention to consider secession. Before the war, South Carolina did more than any
other Southern state to advance the notion that a state had the right to nullify
federal laws, and even to secede from the United States. The convention unanimously
voted to secede on December 20, 1860, and adopted a secession declaration. It
argued for states' rights for slave owners in the South, but contained a complaint
about states' rights in the North in the form of opposition to the Fugitive Slave
Act, claiming that Northern states were not fulfilling their federal obligations
under the Constitution. The "cotton states" of Mississippi, Florida, Alabama,
Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas followed suit, seceding in January and February 1861.
[117]

The first published imprint of secession, a broadside issued by the Charleston

Mercury, December 20, 1860
Among the ordinances of secession passed by the individual states, those of three—
Texas, Alabama, and Virginia—specifically mentioned the plight of the "slaveholding
states" at the hands of Northern abolitionists. The rest make no mention of the
slavery issue and are often brief announcements of the dissolution of ties by the
legislatures.[118] However, at least four states—South Carolina,[119] Mississippi,
[120] Georgia,[121] and Texas[122]—also passed lengthy and detailed explanations of
their reasons for secession, all of which laid the blame squarely on the movement
to abolish slavery and that movement's influence over the politics of the Northern
states. The Southern states believed slaveholding was a constitutional right
because of the Fugitive Slave Clause of the Constitution. These states agreed to
form a new federal government, the Confederate States of America, on February 4,
1861.[123] They took control of federal forts and other properties within their
boundaries with little resistance from outgoing President James Buchanan, whose
term ended on March 4, 1861. Buchanan said that the Dred Scott decision was proof
that the South had no reason for secession, and that the Union "was intended to be
perpetual", but that "The power by force of arms to compel a State to remain in the
Union" was not among the "enumerated powers granted to Congress".[124] One-quarter
of the U.S. Army—the entire garrison in Texas—was surrendered in February 1861 to
state forces by its commanding general, David E. Twiggs, who then joined the
Confederacy.[125]
As Southerners resigned their seats in the Senate and the House, Republicans were
able to pass projects that had been blocked by Southern senators before the war.
These included the Morrill Tariff, land grant colleges (the Morrill Act), a
Homestead Act, a transcontinental railroad (the Pacific Railroad Acts),[126] the
National Bank Act, the authorization of United States Notes by the Legal Tender Act
of 1862, and the ending of slavery in the District of Columbia. The Revenue Act of
1861 introduced the income tax to help finance the war.[127]
In December 1860, the Crittenden Compromise was proposed to re-establish the
Missouri Compromise line by constitutionally banning slavery in territories to the
north of the line while guaranteeing it to the south. The adoption of this
compromise likely would have prevented the secession of the Southern states, but
Lincoln and the Republicans rejected it.[128] Lincoln stated that any compromise
that would extend slavery would in time bring down the Union.[129] A pre-war
February Peace Conference of 1861 met in Washington, proposing a solution similar
to that of the Crittenden compromise; it was rejected by Congress. The Republicans
proposed an alternative compromise to not interfere with slavery where it existed
but the South regarded it as insufficient. Nonetheless, the remaining eight slave
states rejected pleas to join the Confederacy following a two-to-one no-vote in
Virginia's First Secessionist Convention on April 4, 1861.[130]

Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America (1861–1865)

On March 4, 1861, Abraham Lincoln was sworn in as president. In his inaugural
address, he argued that the Constitution was a more perfect union than the earlier
Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, that it was a binding contract, and
called any secession "legally void".[131] He had no intent to invade Southern
states, nor did he intend to end slavery where it existed, but said that he would
use force to maintain possession of federal property,[131] including forts,
arsenals, mints, and customhouses that had been seized by the Southern states.[132]
The government would make no move to recover post offices, and if resisted, mail
delivery would end at state lines. Where popular conditions did not allow peaceful
enforcement of federal law, U.S. marshals and judges would be withdrawn. No mention
was made of bullion lost from U.S. mints in Louisiana, Georgia, and North Carolina.
He stated that it would be U.S. policy to only collect import duties at its ports;
there could be no serious injury to the South to justify the armed revolution
during his administration. His speech closed with a plea for restoration of the
bonds of union, famously calling on "the mystic chords of memory" binding the two
regions.[131]
The Davis government of the new Confederacy sent three delegates to Washington to
negotiate a peace treaty with the United States of America. Lincoln rejected any
negotiations with Confederate agents because he claimed the Confederacy was not a
legitimate government, and that making any treaty with it would be tantamount to
recognition of it as a sovereign government.[133] Lincoln instead attempted to
negotiate directly with the governors of individual seceded states, whose
administrations he continued to recognize.[134]
Complicating Lincoln's attempts to defuse the crisis were the actions of the new
Secretary of State, William Seward. Seward had been Lincoln's main rival for the
Republican presidential nomination. Shocked and embittered by this defeat, Seward
agreed to support Lincoln's candidacy only after he was guaranteed the executive
office that was considered at that time to be the most powerful and important after
the presidency itself. Even in the early stages of Lincoln's presidency Seward
still held little regard for the new chief executive due to his perceived
inexperience, and therefore Seward viewed himself as the de facto head of
government or "prime minister" behind the throne of Lincoln. In this role, Seward
attempted to engage in unauthorized and indirect negotiations that failed.[133]
However, President Lincoln was determined to hold all remaining Union-occupied
forts in the Confederacy: Fort Monroe in Virginia, Fort Pickens, Fort Jefferson,
and Fort Taylor in Florida, and Fort Sumter in South Carolina.[135][citation
needed]

Battle of Fort Sumter

Main article: Battle of Fort Sumter
See also: President Lincoln's 75,000 volunteers
The Battle of Fort Sumter, as depicted by Currier and Ives
The American Civil War began on April 12, 1861, when Confederate forces opened fire
on the Union-held Fort Sumter. Fort Sumter is located in the middle of the harbor
of Charleston, South Carolina.[136] Its status had been contentious for months.
Outgoing President Buchanan had dithered in reinforcing the Union garrison in the
harbor, which was under command of Major Robert Anderson. Anderson took matters
into his own hands and on December 26, 1860, under the cover of darkness, sailed
the garrison from the poorly placed Fort Moultrie to the stalwart island Fort
Sumter.[137] Anderson's actions catapulted him to hero status in the North. An
attempt to resupply the fort on January 9, 1861, failed and nearly started the war
then and there. But an informal truce held.[138] On March 5, the newly sworn in
Lincoln was informed that the Fort was running low on supplies.[139]
Fort Sumter proved to be one of the main challenges of the new Lincoln
administration.[139] Back-channel dealing by Secretary of State Seward with the
Confederates undermined Lincoln's decision-making; Seward wanted to pull out of the
fort.[140] But a firm hand by Lincoln tamed Seward, and Seward became one of
Lincoln's staunchest allies. Lincoln ultimately decided that holding the fort,
which would require reinforcing it, was the only workable option. Thus, on April 6,
Lincoln informed the Governor of South Carolina that a ship with food but no
ammunition would attempt to supply the Fort. Historian McPherson describes this
win-win approach as "the first sign of the mastery that would mark Lincoln's
presidency"; the Union would win if it could resupply and hold onto the Fort, and
the South would be the aggressor if it opened fire on an unarmed ship supplying
starving men.[141] An April 9 Confederate cabinet meeting resulted in President
Davis's ordering General P. G. T. Beauregard to take the Fort before supplies could
reach it.[142]
At 4:30 am on April 12, Confederate forces fired the first of 4,000 shells at the
Fort; it fell the next day. The loss of Fort Sumter lit a patriotic fire under the
North.[143] On April 15, Lincoln called on the states to field 75,000 volunteer
troops for 90 days; impassioned Union states met the quotas quickly.[144] On May 3,
1861, Lincoln called for an additional 42,000 volunteers for a period of three
years.[145][146] Shortly after this, Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas, and North
Carolina seceded and joined the Confederacy. To reward Virginia, the Confederate
capital was moved to Richmond.[147]

Attitude of the border states

Main article: Border states (American Civil War)
US Secession map. The Union vs. the Confederacy. Union states Union
territories not permitting slavery Southern Border Union states, permitting
slavery (One of these states, West Virginia, was created in 1863, while KY and MO
had dual competing Confederate and Unionist governments) Confederate states
Union territories that permitted slavery (claimed by Confederacy) at the start of
the war, but where slavery was outlawed by the U.S. in 1862
Maryland, Delaware, Missouri, and Kentucky were slave states whose people had
divided loyalties to Northern and Southern businesses and family members. Some men
enlisted in the Union Army and others in the Confederate Army.[148] West Virginia
separated from Virginia and was admitted to the Union on June 20, 1863.[149]
Maryland's territory surrounded the United States' capital of Washington, D.C., and
could cut it off from the North.[150] It had numerous anti-Lincoln officials who
tolerated anti-army rioting in Baltimore and the burning of bridges, both aimed at
hindering the passage of troops to the South. Maryland's legislature voted
overwhelmingly (53–13) to stay in the Union, but also rejected hostilities with its
southern neighbors, voting to close Maryland's rail lines to prevent them from
being used for war.[151] Lincoln responded by establishing martial law and
unilaterally suspending habeas corpus in Maryland, along with sending in militia
units from the North.[152] Lincoln rapidly took control of Maryland and the
District of Columbia by seizing many prominent figures, including arresting 1/3 of
the members of the Maryland General Assembly on the day it reconvened.[151][153]
All were held without trial, with Lincoln ignoring a ruling on June 1, 1861, by
U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney, not speaking for the Court,[154] that
only Congress (and not the president) could suspend habeas corpus (Ex parte
Merryman). Federal troops imprisoned a prominent Baltimore newspaper editor, Frank
Key Howard, Francis Scott Key's grandson, after he criticized Lincoln in an
editorial for ignoring Taney's ruling.[155]
In Missouri, an elected convention on secession voted decisively to remain within
the Union. When pro-Confederate Governor Claiborne F. Jackson called out the state
militia, it was attacked by federal forces under General Nathaniel Lyon, who chased
the governor and the rest of the State Guard to the southwestern corner of the
state (see also: Missouri secession). Early in the war the Confederacy controlled
the southern portion of Missouri through the Confederate government of Missouri but
was largely driven out of the state after 1862. In the resulting vacuum, the
convention on secession reconvened and took power as the Unionist provisional
government of Missouri.[156]
Kentucky did not secede; for a time, it declared itself neutral. When Confederate
forces entered the state in September 1861, neutrality ended and the state
reaffirmed its Union status while maintaining slavery. During a brief invasion by
Confederate forces in 1861, Confederate sympathizers and delegates from 68 Kentucky
counties organized a secession convention at the Russellville Convention, formed
the shadow Confederate Government of Kentucky, inaugurated a governor, and gained
recognition from the Confederacy and Kentucky was formally admitted into the
Confederacy on December 10, 1861. Its jurisdiction extended only as far as
Confederate battle lines in the Commonwealth which at its greatest extent was over
half the state, and it went into exile after October 1862.[157]
After Virginia's secession, a Unionist government in Wheeling asked 48 counties to
vote on an ordinance to create a new state on October 24, 1861. A voter turnout of
34 percent approved the statehood bill (96 percent approving).[158] Twenty-four
secessionist counties were included in the new state,[159] and the ensuing
guerrilla war engaged about 40,000 federal troops for much of the war.[160][161]
Congress admitted West Virginia to the Union on June 20, 1863. West Virginia
provided about 20,000–22,000 soldiers to both the Confederacy and the Union.[162]
A Unionist secession attempt occurred in East Tennessee, but was suppressed by the
Confederacy, which arrested over 3,000 men suspected of being loyal to the Union.
They were held without trial.[163]

War
See also: List of American Civil War battles and Military leadership in the
American Civil War
The Civil War was a contest marked by the ferocity and frequency of battle. Over
four years, 237 named battles were fought, as were many more minor actions and
skirmishes, which were often characterized by their bitter intensity and high
casualties. In his book The American Civil War, British historian John Keegan
writes that "The American Civil War was to prove one of the most ferocious wars
ever fought". In many cases, without geographic objectives, the only target for
each side was the enemy's soldier.[164]

Mobilization
See also: Economic history of the United States Civil War
As the first seven states began organizing a Confederacy in Montgomery, the entire
U.S. army numbered 16,000. However, Northern governors had begun to mobilize their
militias.[165] The Confederate Congress authorized the new nation up to 100,000
troops sent by governors as early as February. By May, Jefferson Davis was pushing
for 100,000 soldiers for one year or the duration, and that was answered in kind by
the U.S. Congress.[166][167][168]
In the first year of the war, both sides had far more volunteers than they could
effectively train and equip. After the initial enthusiasm faded, reliance on the
cohort of young men who came of age every year and wanted to join was not enough.
Both sides used a draft law—conscription—as a device to encourage or force
volunteering; relatively few were drafted and served. The Confederacy passed a
draft law in April 1862 for young men aged 18 to 35; overseers of slaves,
government officials, and clergymen were exempt. The U.S. Congress followed in
July, authorizing a militia draft within a state when it could not meet its quota
with volunteers. European immigrants joined the Union Army in large numbers,
including 177,000 born in Germany and 144,000 born in Ireland.[169]

Rioters attacking a building during the New York anti-draft riots of 1863
When the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect in January 1863, ex-slaves were
energetically recruited by the states and used to meet the state quotas. States and
local communities offered higher and higher cash bonuses for white volunteers.
Congress tightened the law in March 1863. Men selected in the draft could provide
substitutes or, until mid-1864, pay commutation money. Many eligibles pooled their
money to cover the cost of anyone drafted. Families used the substitute provision
to select which man should go into the army and which should stay home. There was
much evasion and overt resistance to the draft, especially in Catholic areas. The
draft riot in New York City in July 1863 involved Irish immigrants who had been
signed up as citizens to swell the vote of the city's Democratic political machine,
not realizing it made them liable for the draft.[170] Of the 168,649 men procured
for the Union through the draft, 117,986 were substitutes, leaving only 50,663 who
had their services conscripted.[171]
In both the North and South, the draft laws were highly unpopular. In the North,
some 120,000 men evaded conscription, many of them fleeing to Canada, and another
280,000 soldiers deserted during the war.[172] At least 100,000 Southerners
deserted, or about 10 percent; Southern desertion was high because, according to
one historian writing in 1991, the highly localized Southern identity meant that
many Southern men had little investment in the outcome of the war, with individual
soldiers caring more about the fate of their local area than any grand ideal.[173]
In the North, "bounty jumpers" enlisted to get the generous bonus, deserted, then
went back to a second recruiting station under a different name to sign up again
for a second bonus; 141 were caught and executed.[174]
From a tiny frontier force in 1860, the Union and Confederate armies had grown into
the "largest and most efficient armies in the world" within a few years. Some
European observers at the time dismissed them as amateur and unprofessional,[175]
but historian John Keegan concluded that each outmatched the French, Prussian, and
Russian armies of the time, and without the Atlantic, would have threatened any of
them with defeat.[176]

Prisoners
Main article: American Civil War prison camps
At the start of the Civil War, a system of paroles operated. Captives agreed not to
fight until they were officially exchanged. Meanwhile, they were held in camps run
by their army. They were paid, but they were not allowed to perform any military
duties.[177] The system of exchanges collapsed in 1863 when the Confederacy refused
to exchange black prisoners. After that, about 56,000 of the 409,000 POWs died in
prisons during the war, accounting for nearly 10 percent of the conflict's
fatalities.[178]

Women
See also: Women in the military § United States, and Gender issues in the American
Civil War
Historian Elizabeth D. Leonard writes that, according to various estimates, between
five hundred and one thousand women enlisted as soldiers on both sides of the war,
disguised as men.[179]: 165, 310–11 Women also served as spies, resistance
activists, nurses, and hospital personnel.[179]: 240 Women served on the Union
hospital ship Red Rover and nursed Union and Confederate troops at field hospitals.
[180]
Mary Edwards Walker, the only woman ever to receive the Medal of Honor, served in
the Union Army and was given the medal for her efforts to treat the wounded during
the war. Her name was deleted from the Army Medal of Honor Roll in 1917 (along with
over 900 other Medal of Honor recipients); however, it was restored in 1977.[181]
[182]

Naval tactics
Clashes on the rivers were melees of ironclads, cottonclads, gunboats and rams,
complicated by naval mines and fire rafts.
Battle between the USS Monitor and Merrimack
The small U.S. Navy of 1861 was rapidly enlarged to 6,000 officers and 45,000
sailors in 1865, with 671 vessels, having a tonnage of 510,396.[183][184] Its
mission was to blockade Confederate ports, take control of the river system, defend
against Confederate raiders on the high seas, and be ready for a possible war with
the British Royal Navy.[185] Meanwhile, the main riverine war was fought in the
West, where a series of major rivers gave access to the Confederate heartland. The
U.S. Navy eventually gained control of the Red, Tennessee, Cumberland, Mississippi,
and Ohio rivers. In the East, the Navy shelled Confederate forts and provided
support for coastal army operations.[186]
The Civil War occurred during the early stages of the industrial revolution. Many
naval innovations emerged during this time, most notably the advent of the ironclad
warship. It began when the Confederacy, knowing they had to meet or match the
Union's naval superiority, responded to the Union blockade by building or
converting more than 130 vessels, including twenty-six ironclads and floating
batteries.[187] Only half of these saw active service. Many were equipped with ram
bows, creating "ram fever" among Union squadrons wherever they threatened. But in
the face of overwhelming Union superiority and the Union's ironclad warships, they
were unsuccessful.[188]
In addition to ocean-going warships coming up the Mississippi, the Union Navy used
timberclads, tinclads, and armored gunboats. Shipyards at Cairo, Illinois, and St.
Louis built new boats or modified steamboats for action.[189]
The Confederacy experimented with the submarine CSS Hunley, which did not work
satisfactorily,[190] and with building an ironclad ship, CSS Virginia, which was
based on rebuilding a sunken Union ship, Merrimack. On its first foray, on March 8,
1862, Virginia inflicted significant damage to the Union's wooden fleet, but the
next day the first Union ironclad, USS Monitor, arrived to challenge it in the
Chesapeake Bay. The resulting three-hour Battle of Hampton Roads was a draw, but it
proved that ironclads were effective warships.[191] Not long after the battle, the
Confederacy was forced to scuttle the Virginia to prevent its capture, while the
Union built many copies of the Monitor. Lacking the technology and infrastructure
to build effective warships, the Confederacy attempted to obtain warships from
Great Britain. However, this failed, because Great Britain had no interest in
selling warships to a nation that was at war with a stronger enemy, and doing so
could sour relations with the U.S.[192]

Union blockade
Main article: Union blockade
General Scott's "Anaconda Plan" 1861. Tightening naval blockade, forcing rebels out
of Missouri along the Mississippi River, Kentucky Unionists sit on the fence, idled
cotton industry illustrated in Georgia.
By early 1861, General Winfield Scott had devised the Anaconda Plan to win the war
with as little bloodshed as possible, which called for blockading the Confederacy
and slowly suffocating the South to surrender.[193] Lincoln adopted parts of the
plan, but chose to prosecute a more active vision of war.[194] In April 1861,
Lincoln announced the Union blockade of all Southern ports; commercial ships could
not get insurance and regular traffic ended. The South blundered in embargoing
cotton exports in 1861 before the blockade was effective; by the time they realized
the mistake, it was too late. "King Cotton" was dead, as the South could export
less than 10 percent of its cotton. The blockade shut down the ten Confederate
seaports with railheads that moved almost all the cotton, especially New Orleans,
Mobile, and Charleston. By June 1861, warships were stationed off the principal
Southern ports, and a year later nearly 300 ships were in service.[195]

Blockade runners
Main article: Blockade runners of the American Civil War
Gunline of nine Union ironclads. South Atlantic Blockading Squadron off Charleston.
Continuous blockade of all major ports was sustained by North's overwhelming war
production.
The Confederates began the war short on military supplies and in desperate need of
large quantities of arms which the agrarian South could not provide. Arms
manufactures in the industrial North were restricted by an arms embargo, keeping
shipments of arms from going to the South, and ending all existing and future
contracts. The Confederacy subsequently looked to foreign sources for their
enormous military needs and sought out financiers and companies like S. Isaac,
Campbell & Company and the London Armoury Company in Britain, who acted as
purchasing agents for the Confederacy, connecting them with Britain's many arms
manufactures, and ultimately becoming the Confederacy's main source of arms.[196]
[197]
To get the arms safely to the Confederacy, British investors built small, fast,
steam-driven blockade runners that traded arms and supplies brought in from Britain
through Bermuda, Cuba, and the Bahamas in return for high-priced cotton. Many of
the ships were lightweight and designed for speed and could only carry a relatively
small amount of cotton back to England.[198] When the Union Navy seized a blockade
runner, the ship and cargo were condemned as a prize of war and sold, with the
proceeds given to the Navy sailors; the captured crewmen were mostly British, and
they were released.[199]

Economic impact
The Southern economy nearly collapsed during the war. There were multiple reasons
for this: the severe deterioration of food supplies, especially in cities, the
failure of Southern railroads, the loss of control of the main rivers, foraging by
Northern armies, and the seizure of animals and crops by Confederate armies.[200]
Most historians agree that the blockade was a major factor in ruining the
Confederate economy; however, Wise argues that the blockade runners provided just
enough of a lifeline to allow Lee to continue fighting for additional months,
thanks to fresh supplies of 400,000 rifles, lead, blankets, and boots that the
homefront economy could no longer supply.[200]
Surdam argues that the blockade was a powerful weapon that eventually ruined the
Southern economy, at the cost of few lives in combat. Practically, the entire
Confederate cotton crop was useless (although it was sold to Union traders),
costing the Confederacy its main source of income. Critical imports were scarce and
the coastal trade was largely ended as well.[201] The measure of the blockade's
success was not the few ships that slipped through, but the thousands that never
tried it. Merchant ships owned in Europe could not get insurance and were too slow
to evade the blockade, so they stopped calling at Confederate ports.[202]
To fight an offensive war, the Confederacy purchased arms in Britain and converted
British-built ships into commerce raiders. Purchasing arms involved the smuggling
of 600,000 arms (mostly British Enfield rifles) that enabled the Confederate Army
to fight on for two more years[203][204] and the commerce raiders were used in
raiding U.S. Merchant Marine ships in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Insurance
rates skyrocketed and the American flag virtually disappeared from international
waters. However, the same ships were reflagged with European flags and continued
unmolested.[188] After the war ended, the U.S. government demanded that Britain
compensate it for the damage done by blockade runners and raiders outfitted in
British ports. Britain partly acquiesced to the demand, paying the U.S. $15 million
in 1871 only for commerce raiding.[205]
Dinçaslan argues that another outcome of the blockade was oil's rise to prominence
as a widely used and traded commodity. The already declining whale oil industry
took a blow as many old whaling ships were used in blockade efforts such as the
Stone Fleet, and Confederate raiders harassing Union whalers aggravated the
situation. Oil products that had been treated mostly as lubricants, especially
kerosene, started to replace whale oil used in lamps and essentially became a fuel
commodity. This increased the importance of oil as a commodity, long before its
eventual use as fuel for combustion engines.[206]

Diplomacy
Main article: Diplomacy of the American Civil War
Further information: United Kingdom and the American Civil War and France and the
American Civil War
Although the Confederacy hoped that Britain and France would join them against the
Union, this was never likely, and so they instead tried to bring the British and
French governments in as mediators.[207][208] The Union, under Lincoln and
Secretary of State William H. Seward, worked to block this and threatened war if
any country officially recognized the existence of the Confederate States of
America. In 1861, Southerners voluntarily embargoed cotton shipments, hoping to
start an economic depression in Europe that would force Britain to enter the war to
get cotton, but this did not work. Worse, Europe turned to Egypt and India for
cotton, which they found superior, hindering the South's recovery after the war.
[209][210]
Cotton diplomacy proved a failure as Europe had a surplus of cotton, while the
1860–62 crop failures in Europe made the North's grain exports of critical
importance. It also helped to turn European opinion further away from the
Confederacy. It was said that "King Corn was more powerful than King Cotton", as
U.S. grain went from a quarter of the British import trade to almost half.[209]
Meanwhile, the war created employment for arms makers, ironworkers, and ships to
transport weapons.[210]
Lincoln's administration initially failed to appeal to European public opinion. At
first, diplomats explained that the United States was not committed to the ending
of slavery, and instead repeated legalistic arguments about the unconstitutionality
of secession. Confederate representatives, on the other hand, started off much more
successful, by ignoring slavery and instead focusing on their struggle for liberty,
their commitment to free trade, and the essential role of cotton in the European
economy.[211] The European aristocracy was "absolutely gleeful in pronouncing the
American debacle as proof that the entire experiment in popular government had
failed. European government leaders welcomed the fragmentation of the ascendant
American Republic."[211] However, there was still a European public with liberal
sensibilities, that the U.S. sought to appeal to by building connections with the
international press. As early as 1861, many Union diplomats such as Carl Schurz
realized emphasizing the war against slavery was the Union's most effective moral
asset in the struggle for public opinion in Europe. Seward was concerned that an
overly radical case for reunification would distress the European merchants with
cotton interests; even so, Seward supported a widespread campaign of public
diplomacy.[211]
U.S. minister to Britain Charles Francis Adams proved particularly adept and
convinced Britain not to openly challenge the Union blockade. The Confederacy
purchased several warships from commercial shipbuilders in Britain (CSS Alabama,
CSS Shenandoah, CSS Tennessee, CSS Tallahassee, CSS Florida, and some others). The
most famous, the CSS Alabama, did considerable damage and led to serious postwar
disputes. However, public opinion against slavery in Britain created a political
liability for British politicians, where the anti-slavery movement was powerful.
[212]

A December 1861 cartoon in Punch magazine in London ridicules American

aggressiveness in the Trent Affair. John Bull, at right, warns Uncle Sam, "You do
what's right, my son, or I'll blow you out of the water."
War loomed in late 1861 between the U.S. and Britain over the Trent affair, which
began when U.S. Navy personnel boarded the British ship Trent and seized two
Confederate diplomats. However, London and Washington were able to smooth over the
problem after Lincoln released the two men.[213] Prince Albert had left his
deathbed to issue diplomatic instructions to Lord Lyons during the Trent affair.
His request was honored, and, as a result, the British response to the United
States was toned down and helped avert the British becoming involved in the war.
[214] In 1862, the British government considered mediating between the Union and
Confederacy, though even such an offer would have risked war with the United
States. British Prime Minister Lord Palmerston reportedly read Uncle Tom's Cabin
three times when deciding on what his decision would be.[213]
The Union victory in the Battle of Antietam caused the British to delay this
decision. The Emancipation Proclamation over time would reinforce the political
liability of supporting the Confederacy. Realizing that Washington could not
intervene in Mexico as long as the Confederacy controlled Texas, France invaded
Mexico in 1861. Washington repeatedly protested France's violation of the Monroe
Doctrine. Despite sympathy for the Confederacy, France's seizure of Mexico
ultimately deterred it from war with the Union. Confederate offers late in the war
to end slavery in return for diplomatic recognition were not seriously considered
by London or Paris. After 1863, the Polish revolt against Russia further distracted
the European powers and ensured that they would remain neutral.[215]
Russia supported the Union, largely because it believed that the U.S. served as a
counterbalance to its geopolitical rival, the United Kingdom. In 1863, the Russian
Navy's Baltic and Pacific fleets wintered in the American ports of New York and San
Francisco, respectively.[216]

Eastern theater
Further information: Eastern Theater of the American Civil War
County map of Civil War battles by theater and year
The Eastern theater refers to the military operations east of the Appalachian
Mountains, including the states of Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, and
Pennsylvania, the District of Columbia, and the coastal fortifications and seaports
of North Carolina.[citation needed]

Background
Army of the Potomac
Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan took command of the Union Army of the Potomac on July
26, 1861 (he was briefly general-in-chief 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. The 1862 Union strategy called for simultaneous
advances along four axes:[217]

McClellan would lead the main thrust in Virginia towards Richmond.

Ohio forces would advance through Kentucky into Tennessee.
The Missouri Department would drive south along the Mississippi River.
The westernmost attack would originate from Kansas.
Army of Northern Virginia
Robert E. Lee
The primary Confederate force in the Eastern theater was the Army of Northern
Virginia. The Army originated as the (Confederate) Army of the Potomac, which was
organized on June 20, 1861, from all operational forces in Northern Virginia. On
July 20 and 21, the Army of the Shenandoah and forces from the District of Harpers
Ferry were added. Units from the Army of the Northwest were merged into the Army of
the Potomac between March 14 and May 17, 1862. The Army of the Potomac was renamed
Army of Northern Virginia on March 14. The Army of the Peninsula was merged into it
on April 12, 1862.
When Virginia declared its secession in April 1861, Robert E. Lee chose to follow
his home state, despite his desire for the country to remain intact and an offer of
a senior Union command.
Lee's biographer, Douglas S. Freeman, asserts that the army received its final name
from Lee when he issued orders assuming command on June 1, 1862.[218] However,
Freeman does admit that Lee corresponded with Brigadier General Joseph E. Johnston,
his predecessor in army command, before that date and referred to Johnston's
command as the Army of Northern Virginia. Part of the confusion results from the
fact that Johnston commanded the Department of Northern Virginia (as of October 22,
1861) and the name Army of Northern Virginia can be seen as an informal consequence
of its parent department's name. Jefferson Davis and Johnston did not adopt the
name, but it is clear that the organization of units as of March 14 was the same
organization that Lee received on June 1, and thus it is generally referred to
today as the Army of Northern Virginia, even if that is correct only in retrospect.
On July 4 at Harper's Ferry, Colonel Thomas J. Jackson assigned Jeb Stuart to
command all the cavalry companies of the Army of the Shenandoah. He eventually
commanded the Army of Northern Virginia's cavalry.

Battles
"Stonewall" Jackson obtained his nickname at the Battle of Bull Run.
In one of the first highly visible battles, in July 1861, a march by Union troops
under the command of Maj. Gen. Irvin McDowell on the Confederate forces led by Gen.
P. G. T. Beauregard near Washington was repulsed at the First Battle of Bull Run
(also known as First Manassas).
The Union had the upper hand at first, nearly pushing confederate forces holding a
defensive position into a rout, but Confederate reinforcements under Joseph E.
Johnston arrived from the Shenandoah Valley by railroad, and the course of the
battle quickly changed. A brigade of Virginians under the relatively unknown
brigadier general from the Virginia Military Institute, Thomas J. Jackson, stood
its ground, which resulted in Jackson receiving his famous nickname, "Stonewall".
Upon the strong urging of President Lincoln to begin offensive operations,
McClellan attacked Virginia in the spring of 1862 by way of the peninsula between
the York River and James River, southeast of Richmond. McClellan's army reached the
gates of Richmond in the Peninsula Campaign.[219][220][221]
Also in the spring of 1862, in the Shenandoah Valley, Stonewall Jackson led his
Valley Campaign. Employing audacity and rapid, unpredictable movements on interior
lines, Jackson's 17,000 troops marched 646 miles (1,040 km) in 48 days and won
several minor battles as they successfully engaged three Union armies (52,000 men),
including those of Nathaniel P. Banks and John C. Fremont, preventing them from
reinforcing the Union offensive against Richmond. The swiftness of Jackson's men
earned them the nickname of "foot cavalry".
Johnston halted McClellan's advance at the Battle of Seven Pines, but he was
wounded in the battle, and Robert E. Lee assumed his position of command. General
Lee and top subordinates James Longstreet and Stonewall Jackson defeated McClellan
in the Seven Days Battles and forced his retreat.[222]
The Northern Virginia Campaign, which included the Second Battle of Bull Run, ended
in yet another victory for the South.[223] McClellan resisted General-in-Chief
Halleck's orders to send reinforcements to John Pope's Union Army of Virginia,
which made it easier for Lee's Confederates to defeat twice the number of combined
enemy troops.[citation needed]

The Battle of Antietam, the Civil War's deadliest one-day fight

Emboldened by Second Bull Run, the Confederacy made its first invasion of the North
with the Maryland Campaign. General Lee led 45,000 troops of the Army of Northern
Virginia across the Potomac River into Maryland on September 5. Lincoln then
restored Pope's troops to McClellan. McClellan and Lee fought at the Battle of
Antietam near Sharpsburg, Maryland, on September 17, 1862, the bloodiest single day
in United States military history.[222][224] Lee's army, checked at last, returned
to Virginia before McClellan could destroy it. Antietam is considered a Union
victory because it halted Lee's invasion of the North and provided an opportunity
for Lincoln to announce his Emancipation Proclamation.[225]
When the cautious McClellan failed to follow up on Antietam, he was replaced by
Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside. Burnside was soon defeated at the Battle of
Fredericksburg[226] on December 13, 1862, when more than 12,000 Union soldiers were
killed or wounded during repeated futile frontal assaults against Marye's Heights.
[227] After the battle, Burnside was replaced by Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker.[228]

Confederate dead overrun at Marye's Heights, reoccupied next day May 4, 1863
Hooker, too, proved unable to defeat Lee's army; despite outnumbering the
Confederates by more than two to one, his Chancellorsville Campaign proved
ineffective, and he was humiliated in the Battle of Chancellorsville in May 1863.
[229] Chancellorsville is known as Lee's "perfect battle" because his risky
decision to divide his army in the presence of a much larger enemy force resulted
in a significant Confederate victory. Gen. Stonewall Jackson was shot in the left
arm and right hand by accidental friendly fire during the battle. The arm was
amputated, but he died shortly thereafter of pneumonia.[230] Lee famously said: "He
has lost his left arm, but I have lost my right arm."[231]
The fiercest fighting of the battle—and the second bloodiest day of the Civil War—
occurred on May 3 as Lee launched multiple attacks against the Union position at
Chancellorsville. That same day, John Sedgwick advanced across the Rappahannock
River, defeated the small Confederate force at Marye's Heights in the Second Battle
of Fredericksburg, and then moved to the west. The Confederates fought a successful
delaying action at the Battle of Salem Church.[232]

Pickett's Charge
Gen. Hooker was replaced by Maj. Gen. George Meade during Lee's second invasion of
the North, in June. Meade defeated Lee at the Battle of Gettysburg (July 1 to 3,
1863).[233] This was the bloodiest battle of the war and has been called the war's
turning point. Pickett's Charge on July 3 is often considered the high-water mark
of the Confederacy because it signaled the collapse of serious Confederate threats
of victory. Lee's army suffered 28,000 casualties (versus Meade's 23,000).[234]

Western theater
Further information: Western Theater of the American Civil War
The Western theater refers to military operations between the Appalachian Mountains
and the Mississippi River, including the states of Alabama, Georgia, Florida,
Mississippi, North Carolina, Kentucky, South Carolina, and Tennessee, as well as
parts of Louisiana.[235]

Background
Army of the Tennessee and Army of the Cumberland
Ulysses S. Grant
The primary Union forces in the Western theater were the Army of the Tennessee and
the Army of the Cumberland, named for the two rivers, the Tennessee River and
Cumberland River. After Meade's inconclusive fall campaign, Lincoln turned to the
Western Theater for new leadership. At the same time, the Confederate stronghold of
Vicksburg surrendered, giving the Union control of the Mississippi River,
permanently isolating the western Confederacy, and producing the new leader Lincoln
needed, Ulysses S. Grant.[236][citation needed]

Army of Tennessee
The primary Confederate force in the Western theater was the Army of Tennessee. The
army was formed on November 20, 1862, when General Braxton Bragg renamed the former
Army of Mississippi. While the Confederate forces had numerous successes in the
Eastern Theater, they were defeated many times in the West.[235]

Battles
The Union's key strategist and tactician in the West was Ulysses S. Grant, who won
victories at Forts Henry (February 6, 1862) and Donelson (February 11 to 16, 1862),
earning him the nickname of "Unconditional Surrender" Grant, by which the Union
seized control of the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers.[237] Nathan Bedford Forrest
rallied nearly 4,000 Confederate troops and led them to escape across the
Cumberland. Nashville and central Tennessee thus fell to the Union, leading to
attrition of local food supplies and livestock and a breakdown in social
organization.[citation needed]
Leonidas Polk's invasion of Columbus ended Kentucky's policy of neutrality and
turned it against the Confederacy. Grant used river transport and Andrew Foote's
gunboats of the Western Flotilla to threaten the Confederacy's "Gibraltar of the
West" at Columbus, Kentucky. Although rebuffed at Belmont, Grant cut off Columbus.
The Confederates, lacking their gunboats, were forced to retreat and the Union took
control of western Kentucky and opened Tennessee in March 1862.[238]

Albert Sidney Johnston died at Shiloh.

At the Battle of Shiloh, in Shiloh, Tennessee in April 1862, the Confederates made
a surprise attack that pushed Union forces against the river as night fell.
Overnight, the Navy landed additional reinforcements, and Grant counter-attacked.
Grant and the Union won a decisive victory—the first battle with the high casualty
rates that would repeat over and over.[239] The Confederates lost Albert Sidney
Johnston, considered their finest general before the emergence of Lee.[240]
One of the early Union objectives in the war was the capture of the Mississippi
River, to cut the Confederacy in half. The Mississippi River was opened to Union
traffic to the southern border of Tennessee with the taking of Island No. 10 and
New Madrid, Missouri, and then Memphis, Tennessee.[241]
In April 1862, the Union Navy captured New Orleans.[241] "The key to the river was
New Orleans, the South's largest port [and] greatest industrial center."[242] U.S.
Naval forces under Farragut ran past Confederate defenses south of New Orleans.
Confederate forces abandoned the city, giving the Union a critical anchor in the
deep South.[243] which allowed Union forces to begin moving up the Mississippi.
Memphis fell to Union forces on June 6, 1862, and became a key base for further
advances south along the Mississippi River. Only the fortress city of Vicksburg,
Mississippi, prevented Union control of the entire river.[244]

By 1863, the Union controlled large portions of the Western Theater, especially
areas surrounding the Mississippi River.
Bragg's second invasion of Kentucky in the Confederate Heartland Offensive included
initial successes such as Kirby Smith's triumph at the Battle of Richmond and the
capture of the Kentucky capital of Frankfort on September 3, 1862.[245] However,
the campaign ended with a meaningless victory over Maj. Gen. Don Carlos Buell at
the Battle of Perryville. Bragg was forced to end his attempt at invading Kentucky
and retreat due to lack of logistical support and lack of infantry recruits for the
Confederacy in that state.[246]
Bragg was narrowly defeated by Maj. Gen. William Rosecrans at the Battle of Stones
River in Tennessee, the culmination of the Stones River Campaign.[247]
Naval forces assisted Grant in the long, complex Vicksburg Campaign that resulted
in the Confederates surrendering at the Battle of Vicksburg in July 1863, which
cemented Union control of the Mississippi River and is considered one of the
turning points of the war.[248]

The Battle of Chickamauga, the highest two-day losses

The one clear Confederate victory in the West was the Battle of Chickamauga. After
Rosecrans' successful Tullahoma Campaign, Bragg, reinforced by Lt. Gen. James
Longstreet's corps (from Lee's army in the east), defeated Rosecrans, despite the
heroic defensive stand of Maj. Gen. George Henry Thomas.[citation needed]
Rosecrans retreated to Chattanooga, which Bragg then besieged in the Chattanooga
Campaign. Grant marched to the relief of Rosecrans and defeated Bragg at the Third
Battle of Chattanooga,[249] eventually causing Longstreet to abandon his Knoxville
Campaign and driving Confederate forces out of Tennessee and opening a route to
Atlanta and the heart of the Confederacy.[250]

Trans-Mississippi theater
Further information: Trans-Mississippi Theater of the American Civil War
Background
The Trans-Mississippi theater refers to military operations west of the Mississippi
River, encompassing most of Missouri, Arkansas, most of Louisiana, and Indian
Territory (now Oklahoma). The Trans-Mississippi District was formed by the
Confederate Army to better coordinate Ben McCulloch's command of troops in Arkansas
and Louisiana, Sterling Price's Missouri State Guard, as well as the portion of
Earl Van Dorn's command that included the Indian Territory and excluded the Army of
the West. The Union's command was the Trans-Mississippi Division, or the Military
Division of West Mississippi.[251]

Battles
Nathaniel Lyon secured St. Louis docks and arsenal, led Union forces to expel
Missouri Confederate forces and government.[252]
The first battle of the Trans-Mississippi theater was the Battle of Wilson's Creek
(August 1861). The Confederates were driven from Missouri early in the war as a
result of the Battle of Pea Ridge.[253]
Extensive guerrilla warfare characterized the trans-Mississippi region, as the
Confederacy lacked the troops and the logistics to support regular armies that
could challenge Union control.[254] Roving Confederate bands such as Quantrill's
Raiders terrorized the countryside, striking both military installations and
civilian settlements.[255] The "Sons of Liberty" and "Order of the American
Knights" attacked pro-Union people, elected officeholders, and unarmed uniformed
soldiers. These partisans could not be entirely driven out of the state of Missouri
until an entire regular Union infantry division was engaged. By 1864, these violent
activities harmed the nationwide anti-war movement organizing against the re-
election of Lincoln. Missouri not only stayed in the Union but Lincoln took 70
percent of the vote for re-election.[256]
Numerous small-scale military actions south and west of Missouri sought to control
Indian Territory and New Mexico Territory for the Union. The Battle of Glorieta
Pass was the decisive battle of the New Mexico Campaign. The Union repulsed
Confederate incursions into New Mexico in 1862, and the exiled Arizona government
withdrew into Texas. In the Indian Territory, civil war broke out within tribes.
About 12,000 Indian warriors fought for the Confederacy and smaller numbers for the
Union.[257] The most prominent Cherokee was Brigadier General Stand Watie, the last
Confederate general to surrender.[258]
After the fall of Vicksburg in July 1863, General Kirby Smith in Texas was informed
by Jefferson Davis that he could expect no further help from east of the
Mississippi River. Although he lacked resources to beat Union armies, he built up a
formidable arsenal at Tyler, along with his own Kirby Smithdom economy, a virtual
"independent fiefdom" in Texas, including railroad construction and international
smuggling. The Union, in turn, did not directly engage him.[259] Its 1864 Red River
Campaign to take Shreveport, Louisiana, was a failure and Texas remained in
Confederate hands throughout the war.[260]

Lower Seaboard theater

Further information: Lower Seaboard Theater of the American Civil War
Background
The Lower Seaboard theater refers to military and naval operations that occurred
near the coastal areas of the Southeast (Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi,
South Carolina, and Texas) as well as the southern part of the Mississippi River
(Port Hudson and south). Union Naval activities were dictated by the Anaconda Plan.
[261]

Battles
One of the earliest battles of the war was fought at Port Royal Sound (November
1861), south of Charleston. Much of the war along the South Carolina coast
concentrated on capturing Charleston. In attempting to capture Charleston, the
Union military tried two approaches: by land over James or Morris Islands or
through the harbor. However, the Confederates were able to drive back each Union
attack. One of the most famous of the land attacks was the Second Battle of Fort
Wagner, in which the 54th Massachusetts Infantry took part. The Union suffered a
serious defeat in this battle, losing 1,515 soldiers while the Confederates lost
only 174.[262] However, the 54th was hailed for its valor in that battle, which
encouraged the general acceptance of the recruitment of African American soldiers
into the Union Army, which reinforced the Union's numerical advantage.
Fort Pulaski on the Georgia coast was an early target for the Union navy. Following
the capture of Port Royal, an expedition was organized with engineer troops under
the command of Captain Quincy A. Gillmore, forcing a Confederate surrender. The
Union army occupied the fort for the rest of the war after repairing it.[263]

New Orleans captured

In April 1862, a Union naval task force commanded by Commander David D. Porter
attacked Forts Jackson and St. Philip, which guarded the river approach to New
Orleans from the south. While part of the fleet bombarded the forts, other vessels
forced a break in the obstructions in the river and enabled the rest of the fleet
to steam upriver to the city. A Union army force commanded by Major General
Benjamin Butler landed near the forts and forced their surrender. Butler's
controversial command of New Orleans earned him the nickname "Beast".[264]
The following year, the Union Army of the Gulf commanded by Major General Nathaniel
P. Banks laid siege to Port Hudson for nearly eight weeks, the longest siege in US
military history. The Confederates attempted to defend with the Bayou Teche
Campaign but surrendered after Vicksburg. These two surrenders gave the Union
control over the entire Mississippi.[265]
Several small skirmishes were fought in Florida, but no major battles. The biggest
was the Battle of Olustee in early 1864.[citation needed]

Pacific Coast theater

Further information: Pacific Coast Theater of the American Civil War
The Pacific Coast theater refers to military operations on the Pacific Ocean and in
the states and Territories west of the Continental Divide.[266]

Conquest of Virginia
William Tecumseh Sherman
At the beginning of 1864, Lincoln made Grant commander of all Union armies. Grant
made his headquarters with the Army of the Potomac and put Maj. Gen. William
Tecumseh Sherman in command of most of the western armies. Grant understood the
concept of total war and believed, along with Lincoln and Sherman, that only the
utter defeat of Confederate forces and their economic base would end the war.[267]
This was total war not in killing civilians but rather in taking provisions and
forage and destroying homes, farms, and railroads, that Grant said "would otherwise
have gone to the support of secession and rebellion. This policy I believe
exercised a material influence in hastening the end."[268] Grant devised a
coordinated strategy that would strike at the entire Confederacy from multiple
directions. Generals George Meade and Benjamin Butler were ordered to move against
Lee near Richmond, General Franz Sigel (and later Philip Sheridan) were to attack
the Shenandoah Valley, General Sherman was to capture Atlanta and march to the sea
(the Atlantic Ocean), Generals George Crook and William W. Averell were to operate
against railroad supply lines in West Virginia, and Maj. Gen. Nathaniel P. Banks
was to capture Mobile, Alabama.[269]

Grant's Overland Campaign

These dead soldiers—from Ewell's May 1864 attack at Spotsylvania—delayed Grant's
advance on Richmond in the Overland Campaign.
Grant's army set out on the Overland Campaign intending to draw Lee into a defense
of Richmond, where they would attempt to pin down and destroy the Confederate army.
The Union army first attempted to maneuver past Lee and fought several battles,
notably at the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, and Cold Harbor. These battles resulted in
heavy losses on both sides and forced Lee's Confederates to fall back repeatedly.
[270] At the Battle of Yellow Tavern, the Confederates lost Jeb Stuart.[271]
An attempt to outflank Lee from the south failed under Butler, who was trapped
inside the Bermuda Hundred river bend. Each battle resulted in setbacks for the
Union that mirrored those they had suffered under prior generals, though, unlike
those prior generals, Grant chose to fight on rather than retreat. Grant was
tenacious and kept pressing Lee's Army of Northern Virginia back to Richmond. While
Lee was preparing for an attack on Richmond, Grant unexpectedly turned south to
cross the James River and began the protracted Siege of Petersburg, where the two
armies engaged in trench warfare for over nine months.[272]

Sheridan's Valley Campaign

Philip Sheridan
Grant finally found a commander, General Philip Sheridan, aggressive enough to
prevail in the Valley Campaigns of 1864. Sheridan was initially repelled at the
Battle of New Market by former U.S. vice president and Confederate Gen. John C.
Breckinridge. The Battle of New Market was the Confederacy's last major victory of
the war and included a charge by teenage VMI cadets. After redoubling his efforts,
Sheridan defeated Maj. Gen. Jubal A. Early in a series of battles, including a
final decisive defeat at the Battle of Cedar Creek. Sheridan then proceeded to
destroy the agricultural base of the Shenandoah Valley, a strategy similar to the
tactics Sherman later employed in Georgia.[273]

Sherman's March to the Sea

The Peacemakers by George Peter Alexander Healy portrays Sherman, Grant, Lincoln,
and Porter discussing plans for the last weeks of the Civil War aboard the steamer
River Queen in March 1865. (Clickable image—use cursor to identify.)
Meanwhile, Sherman maneuvered from Chattanooga to Atlanta, defeating Confederate
Generals Joseph E. Johnston and John Bell Hood along the way. The fall of Atlanta
on September 2, 1864, guaranteed the reelection of Lincoln as president.[274] Hood
left the Atlanta area to swing around and menace Sherman's supply lines and invade
Tennessee in the Franklin–Nashville Campaign. Union Maj. Gen. John Schofield
defeated Hood at the Battle of Franklin, and George H. Thomas dealt Hood a massive
defeat at the Battle of Nashville, effectively destroying Hood's army.[275]
Leaving Atlanta, and his base of supplies, Sherman's army marched, with no
destination set, laying waste to about 20 percent of the farms in Georgia in his
"March to the Sea". He reached the Atlantic Ocean at Savannah, Georgia, in December
1864. Sherman's army was followed by thousands of freed slaves; there were no major
battles along the march. Sherman turned north through South Carolina and North
Carolina to approach the Confederate Virginia lines from the south, increasing the
pressure on Lee's army.[276]

The Waterloo of the Confederacy

Lee's army, thinned by desertion and casualties, was now much smaller than Grant's.
One last Confederate attempt to break the Union hold on Petersburg failed at the
decisive Battle of Five Forks (sometimes called "the Waterloo of the Confederacy")
on April 1. This meant that the Union now controlled the entire perimeter
surrounding Richmond-Petersburg, completely cutting it off from the Confederacy.
Realizing that the capital was now lost, Lee's army and the Confederate government
were forced to evacuate. The Confederate capital fell on April 2–3, to the Union
XXV Corps, composed of black troops. The remaining Confederate units fled west
after a defeat at Sayler's Creek on April 6.[277]

End of the war

Main article: Conclusion of the American Civil War
This New York Times front page celebrated Lee's surrender, headlining how Grant let
Confederate officers retain their sidearms and "paroled" the Confederate officers
and men.[278]News of Lee's April 9 surrender reached this southern newspaper
(Savannah, Georgia) on April 15—after the April 14 shooting of President Lincoln.
[279] The article quotes Grant's terms of surrender.[279]
Initially, Lee did not intend to surrender but planned to regroup at Appomattox
Station, where supplies were to be waiting and then continue the war. Grant chased
Lee and got in front of him so that when Lee's army reached the village of
Appomattox Court House, they were surrounded. After an initial battle, Lee decided
that the fight was now hopeless, and surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia to
Grant on April 9, 1865, during a conference at the McLean House[280][281] In an
untraditional gesture and as a sign of Grant's respect and anticipation of
peacefully restoring Confederate states to the Union, Lee was permitted to keep his
sword and his horse, Traveller. His men were paroled, and a chain of Confederate
surrenders began.[282]
On April 14, 1865, President Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth, a Confederate
sympathizer. Lincoln died early the next morning. Lincoln's vice president, Andrew
Johnson, was unharmed, because his would-be assassin, George Atzerodt, lost his
nerve, so Johnson was immediately sworn in as president. Meanwhile, Confederate
forces across the South surrendered as news of Lee's surrender reached them.[283]
On April 26, 1865, the same day Sergeant Boston Corbett killed Booth at a tobacco
barn, General Joseph E. Johnston surrendered nearly 90,000 troops of the Army of
Tennessee to Major General William Tecumseh Sherman at Bennett Place near present-
day Durham, North Carolina. It proved to be the largest surrender of Confederate
forces. On May 4, all remaining Confederate forces in Alabama, Louisiana east of
the Mississippi River, and Mississippi under Lieutenant General Richard Taylor
surrendered.[284]
The Confederate president, Jefferson Davis, was captured at Irwinville, Georgia on
May 10, 1865.[285]
On May 13, 1865, the last land battle of the war was fought at the Battle of
Palmito Ranch in Texas.[286][287][288]
On May 26, 1865, Confederate Lt. Gen. Simon B. Buckner, acting for General Edmund
Kirby Smith, signed a military convention surrendering the Confederate trans-
Mississippi Department forces.[289][290] This date is often cited by contemporaries
and historians as the end date of the American Civil War.[1][2] On June 2, 1865,
with most of his troops having already gone home, technically deserted, a reluctant
Kirby Smith had little choice but to sign the official surrender document.[291]
[292] On June 23, 1865, Cherokee leader and Confederate Brig. Gen. Stand Watie
became the last Confederate general to surrender his forces.[293][294]
On June 19, 1865, Union Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger announced General Order No. 3,
bringing the Emancipation Proclamation into effect in Texas and freeing the last
slaves of the Confederacy.[295] The anniversary of this date is now celebrated as
Juneteenth.[296]
The naval portion of the war ended more slowly. It had begun on April 11, 1865, two
days after Lee's surrender, when President Lincoln proclaimed that foreign nations
had no further "claim or pretense" to deny equality of maritime rights and
hospitalities to U.S. warships and, in effect, that rights extended to Confederate
ships to use neutral ports as safe havens from U.S. warships should end.[297][298]
Having no response to Lincoln's proclamation, President Andrew Johnson issued a
similar proclamation dated May 10, 1865, more directly stating the premise that the
war was almost at an end ("armed resistance...may be regarded as virtually at an
end") and that insurgent cruisers still at sea and prepared to attack U.S. ships
should not have rights to do so through use of safe foreign ports or waters and
warned nations which continued to do so that their government vessels would be
denied access to U.S. ports. He also "enjoined" U.S. officers to arrest the
cruisers and their crews so "that they may be prevented from committing further
depredations on commerce and that the persons on board of them may no longer enjoy
impunity for their crimes".[299] Britain finally responded on June 6, 1865, by
transmitting a June 2, 1865 letter from Foreign Secretary John Russell, 1st Earl
Russell to the Lords of the Admiralty withdrawing rights to Confederate warships to
enter British ports and waters but with exceptions for a limited time to allow a
captain to enter a port to "divest his vessel of her warlike character" and for
U.S. ships to be detained in British ports or waters to allow Confederate cruisers
twenty-four hours to leave first.[300] U.S. Secretary of State William Seward
welcomed the withdrawal of concessions to the Confederates but objected to the
exceptions.[301] Finally, on October 18, 1865, Russell advised the Admiralty that
the time specified in his June 2, 1865 message had elapsed and "all measures of a
restrictive nature on vessels of war of the United States in British ports,
harbors, and waters, are now to be considered as at an end".[302] Nonetheless, the
final Confederate surrender was in Liverpool, England where James Iredell Waddell,
the captain of the CSS Shenandoah, surrendered the cruiser to British authorities
on November 6, 1865.[303]
Legally, the war did not end until August 20, 1866, when President Andrew Johnson
issued a proclamation that declared "that the said insurrection is at an end and
that peace, order, tranquillity, and civil authority now exist in and throughout
the whole of the United States of America".[304][305][306]

Union victory and aftermath

Map of Confederate territory losses year by year
The causes of the war, the reasons for its outcome, and even the name of the war
itself are subjects of lingering contention today. The North and West grew rich
while the once-rich South became poor for a century. The national political power
of the slaveowners and rich Southerners ended. Historians are less sure about the
results of the postwar Reconstruction, especially regarding the second-class
citizenship of the freedmen and their poverty.[307]
Historians have debated whether the Confederacy could have won the war. Most
scholars, including James M. McPherson, argue that Confederate victory was at least
possible.[308] McPherson argues that the North's advantage in population and
resources made Northern victory likely but not guaranteed. He also argues that if
the Confederacy had fought using unconventional tactics, it would have more easily
been able to hold out long enough to exhaust the Union.[309]
Confederates did not need to invade and hold enemy territory to win but only needed
to fight a defensive war to convince the North that the cost of winning was too
high. The North needed to conquer and hold vast stretches of enemy territory and
defeat Confederate armies to win.[309] Lincoln was not a military dictator and
could continue to fight the war only as long as the American public supported a
continuation of the war. The Confederacy sought to win independence by outlasting
Lincoln; however, after Atlanta fell and Lincoln defeated McClellan in the election
of 1864, all hope for a political victory for the South ended. At that point,
Lincoln had secured the support of the Republicans, War Democrats, the border
states, emancipated slaves, and the neutrality of Britain and France. By defeating
the Democrats and McClellan, he also defeated the Copperheads, who had wanted a
negotiated peace with the Confederate States of America.[310]

Comparison of Union and Confederacy, 1860–1864[311]

Year

Union

Confederacy

Population

1860

22,100,000 (71%)

9,100,000 (29%)

1864

28,800,000 (90%)[g]

3,000,000 (10%)[312]

Free

1860

21,700,000 (98%)

5,600,000 (62%)
Slave

1860

490,000 (2%)

3,550,000 (38%)

1864

negligible

1,900,000[h]

Soldiers

1860–64

2,100,000 (67%)

1,064,000 (33%)

Railroad miles

1860

21,800 (71%)

8,800 (29%)

1864

29,100 (98%)[313]

negligible

Manufactures

1860

90%

10%

1864

98%

2%

Arms production
1860

97%

3%

1864

98%

2%

Cotton bales

1860

negligible

4,500,000

1864

300,000

negligible

Exports

1860

30%

70%

1864

98%

2%

Some scholars argue that the Union held an insurmountable long-term advantage over
the Confederacy in industrial strength and population. Confederate actions, they
argue, only delayed defeat.[314][315] Civil War historian Shelby Foote expressed
this view succinctly: I think that the North fought that war with one hand behind
its back .... If there had been more Southern victories, and a lot more, the North
simply would have brought that other hand out from behind its back. I don't think
the South ever had a chance to win that War.[316]
A minority view among historians is that the Confederacy lost because, as E. Merton
Coulter put it, "people did not will hard enough and long enough to win."[317][318]
However, most historians reject the argument.[319] McPherson, after reading
thousands of letters written by Confederate soldiers, found strong patriotism that
continued to the end; they truly believed they were fighting for freedom and
liberty. Even as the Confederacy was visibly collapsing in 1864–65, he says most
Confederate soldiers were fighting hard.[320] Historian Gary Gallagher cites
General Sherman, who in early 1864 commented, "The devils seem to have a
determination that cannot but be admired." Despite their loss of slaves and wealth,
with starvation looming, Sherman continued, "yet I see no sign of let-up—some few
deserters—plenty tired of war, but the masses determined to fight it out."[321]
Also important were Lincoln's eloquence in rationalizing the national purpose and
his skill in keeping the border states committed to the Union cause. The
Emancipation Proclamation was an effective use of the President's war powers.[322]
The Confederate government failed in its attempt to get Europe involved in the war
militarily, particularly Great Britain and France. Southern leaders needed to get
European powers to help break up the blockade the Union had created around the
Southern ports and cities. Lincoln's naval blockade was 95% effective at stopping
trade goods; as a result, imports and exports to the South declined significantly.
The abundance of European cotton and Britain's hostility to the institution of
slavery, along with Lincoln's Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico naval blockades, severely
decreased any chance that either Britain or France would enter the war.[323]
Historian Don Doyle has argued that the Union victory had a major impact on the
course of world history.[324] The Union victory energized popular democratic
forces. A Confederate victory, on the other hand, would have meant a new birth of
slavery, not freedom. Historian Fergus Bordewich, following Doyle, argues that:

The North's victory decisively proved the durability of democratic government.

Confederate independence, on the other hand, would have established an American
model for reactionary politics and race-based repression that would likely have
cast an international shadow into the twentieth century and perhaps
beyond."[325]Scholars have debated what the effects of the war were on political
and economic power in the South.[326] The prevailing view is that the southern
planter elite retained its powerful position in the South.[326] However, a 2017
study challenges this, noting that while some Southern elites retained their
economic status, the turmoil of the 1860s created greater opportunities for
economic mobility in the South than in the North.[326]
Casualties
One in thirteen veterans were amputees.Remains of both sides were
reinterred.Andersonville National Cemetery, Georgia
The war resulted in at least 1,030,000 casualties (3 percent of the population),
including about 620,000 soldier deaths—two-thirds by disease—and 50,000 civilians.
[10] Binghamton University historian J. David Hacker believes the number of soldier
deaths was approximately 750,000, 20 percent higher than traditionally estimated,
and possibly as high as 850,000.[327][13] A novel way of calculating casualties by
looking at the deviation of the death rate of men of fighting age from the norm
through analysis of census data found that at least 627,000 and at most 888,000
people, but most likely 761,000 people, died in the war.[328] As historian
McPherson notes, the war's "cost in American lives was as great as in all of the
nation's other wars combined through Vietnam."[329]
Based on 1860 census figures, 8 percent of all white men aged 13 to 43 died in the
war, including 6 percent in the North and 18 percent in the South.[330][331] About
56,000 soldiers died in prison camps during the War.[332] An estimated 60,000
soldiers lost limbs in the war.[333]
Of the 359,528 Union Army dead, amounting to 15 percent of the over two million who
served:[7]

110,070 were killed in action (67,000) or died of wounds (43,000).

199,790 died of disease (75 percent was due to the war, the remainder would have
occurred in civilian life anyway)
24,866 died in Confederate prison camps
9,058 were killed by accidents or drowning
15,741 other/unknown deaths
In addition, there were 4,523 deaths in the Navy (2,112 in battle) and 460 in the
Marines (148 in battle).[8]
After the Emancipation Proclamation authorized freed slaves to "be received into
the armed service of the United States", former slaves who escaped from plantations
or were liberated by the Union Army were recruited into the United States Colored
Troops regiments of the Union Army, as were black men who had not been slaves. The
U.S. Colored Troops made up 10 percent of the Union death toll—15 percent of Union
deaths from disease and less than 3 percent of those killed in battle.[7] Losses
among African Americans were high. In the last year and a half and from all
reported casualties, approximately 20 percent of all African Americans enrolled in
the military died during the Civil War. Notably, their mortality rate was
significantly higher than that of white soldiers. While 15.2% of United States
Volunteers and just 8.6% of white Regular Army troops died, 20.5% of United States
Colored Troops died.[334]: 16
The United States National Park Service uses the following figures in its official
tally of war losses:[3]
Union: 853,838

110,100 killed in action

224,580 disease deaths
275,154 wounded in action
211,411 captured (including 30,192 who died as POWs)
Confederate: 914,660

94,000 killed in action

164,000 disease deaths
194,026 wounded in action
462,634 captured (including 31,000 who died as POWs)
An illustration of the war dead following the Battle of Antietam battlefield in
1862
While the figures of 360,000 army deaths for the Union and 260,000 for the
Confederacy remained commonly cited, they are incomplete. In addition to many
Confederate records being missing, partly as a result of Confederate widows not
reporting deaths due to being ineligible for benefits, both armies only counted
troops who died during their service and not the tens of thousands who died of
wounds or diseases after being discharged. This often happened only a few days or
weeks later. Francis Amasa Walker, superintendent of the 1870 census, used census
and surgeon general data to estimate a minimum of 500,000 Union military deaths and
350,000 Confederate military deaths, for a total death toll of 850,000 soldiers.
While Walker's estimates were originally dismissed because of the 1870 census's
undercounting, it was later found that the census was only off by 6.5% and that the
data Walker used would be roughly accurate.[13]
Analyzing the number of dead by using census data to calculate the deviation of the
death rate of men of fighting age from the norm suggests that at least 627,000 and
at most 888,000, but most likely 761,000 soldiers, died in the war.[328] This would
break down to approximately 350,000 Confederate and 411,000 Union military deaths,
going by the proportion of Union to Confederate battle losses.[citation needed]
Deaths among former slaves has proven much harder to estimate, due to the lack of
reliable census data at the time, though they were known to be considerable, as
former slaves were set free or escaped in massive numbers in an area where the
Union army did not have sufficient shelter, doctors, or food for them. University
of Connecticut Professor Jim Downs states that tens to hundreds of thousands of
slaves died during the war from disease, starvation, or exposure and that if these
deaths are counted in the war's total, the death toll would exceed 1 million.[335]
Losses were far higher than during the recent defeat of Mexico, which saw roughly
thirteen thousand American deaths, including fewer than two thousand killed in
battle, between 1846 and 1848. One reason for the high number of battle deaths
during the war was the continued use of tactics similar to those of the Napoleonic
Wars at the turn of the century, such as charging. With the advent of more accurate
rifled barrels, Minié balls, and (near the end of the war for the Union army)
repeating firearms such as the Spencer Repeating Rifle and the Henry Repeating
Rifle, soldiers were mowed down when standing in lines in the open. This led to the
adoption of trench warfare, a style of fighting that defined much of World War I.
[336]

Emancipation
Abolition of slavery in the various states of the United States over
time: Abolition of slavery during or shortly after the American Revolution The
Northwest Ordinance, 1787 Gradual emancipation in New York (starting 1799,
completed 1827) and New Jersey (starting 1804, completed by Thirteenth Amendment,
1865) The Missouri Compromise, 1821 Effective abolition of slavery by Mexican
or joint US/British authority Abolition of slavery by Congressional action, 1861
Abolition of slavery by Congressional action, 1862 Emancipation Proclamation as
originally issued, January 1, 1863 Subsequent operation of the Emancipation
Proclamation in 1863 Abolition of slavery by state action during the Civil War
Operation of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1864 Operation of the Emancipation
Proclamation in 1865 Thirteenth Amendment to the US constitution, December 18,
1865 Territory incorporated into the US after the passage of the Thirteenth
Amendment
Abolishing slavery was not a Union war goal from the outset, but it quickly became
one.[21] Lincoln's initial claims were that preserving the Union was the central
goal of the war.[337] In contrast, the South saw itself as fighting to preserve
slavery.[21] While not all Southerners saw themselves as fighting for slavery, most
of the officers and over a third of the rank and file in Lee's army had close
family ties to slavery. To Northerners, in contrast, the motivation was primarily
to preserve the Union, not to abolish slavery.[338] However, as the war dragged on,
and it became clear that slavery was central to the conflict, and that emancipation
was (to quote from the Emancipation Proclamation) "a fit and necessary war measure
for suppressing [the] rebellion," Lincoln and his cabinet made ending slavery a war
goal, culminating in the Emancipation Proclamation.[21][339] Lincoln's decision to
issue the Emancipation Proclamation angered both Peace Democrats ("Copperheads")
and War Democrats, but energized most Republicans.[339] By warning that free blacks
would flood the North, Democrats made gains in the 1862 elections, but they did not
gain control of Congress. The Republicans' counterargument that slavery was the
mainstay of the enemy steadily gained support, with the Democrats losing decisively
in the 1863 elections in the Northern state of Ohio when they tried to resurrect
anti-black sentiment.[340]

Emancipation Proclamation
Main article: Emancipation Proclamation
Slavery for the Confederacy's 3.5 million blacks effectively ended in each area
when Union armies arrived; they were nearly all freed by the Emancipation
Proclamation. The last Confederate slaves were freed on June 19, 1865, celebrated
as the modern holiday of Juneteenth. Slaves in the border states and those located
in some former Confederate territory occupied before the Emancipation Proclamation
were freed by state action or (on December 6, 1865) by the Thirteenth Amendment.
[341][342] The Emancipation Proclamation enabled African Americans, both free
blacks and escaped slaves, to join the Union Army. About 190,000 volunteered,
further enhancing the numerical advantage the Union armies enjoyed over the
Confederates, who did not dare emulate the equivalent manpower source for fear of
fundamentally undermining the legitimacy of slavery.[i]
During the Civil War, sentiment concerning slaves, enslavement, and emancipation in
the United States was divided. Lincoln's fears of making slavery a war issue were
based on a harsh reality: abolition did not enjoy wide support in the west, the
territories, and the border states.[344][345] In 1861, Lincoln worried that
premature attempts at emancipation would mean the loss of the border states, and
that "to lose Kentucky is nearly the same as to lose the whole game."[345]
Copperheads and some War Democrats opposed emancipation, although the latter
eventually accepted it as part of the total war needed to save the Union.[346]
At first, Lincoln reversed attempts at emancipation by Secretary of War Simon
Cameron and Generals John C. Frémont (in Missouri) and David Hunter (in South
Carolina, Georgia, and Florida) to keep the loyalty of the border states and the
War Democrats. Lincoln warned the border states that a more radical type of
emancipation would happen if his plan of gradual compensated emancipation and
voluntary colonization was rejected.[347] But compensated emancipation occurred
only in the District of Columbia, where Congress had the power to enact it. When
Lincoln told his cabinet about his proposed emancipation proclamation, which would
apply to the states still in rebellion on January 1, 1863, Seward advised Lincoln
to wait for a Union military victory before issuing it, as to do otherwise would
seem like "our last shriek on the retreat".[348] Walter Stahr, however, writes,
"There are contemporary sources, however, that suggest others were involved in the
decision to delay", and Stahr quotes them.[349]
Lincoln laid the groundwork for public support in an open letter published in
response to Horace Greeley's "The Prayer of Twenty Millions".[350][351][352] He
also laid the groundwork at a meeting at the White House with five African American
representatives on August 14, 1862. Arranging for a reporter to be present, he
urged his visitors to agree to the voluntary colonization of black people,
apparently to make his forthcoming preliminary Emancipation Proclamation more
palatable to racist white people.[353] A Union victory in the Battle of Antietam on
September 17, 1862, provided Lincoln with an opportunity to issue the preliminary
Emancipation Proclamation, and the subsequent War Governors' Conference added
support for the proclamation.[354]

Contrabands, who were fugitive slaves, including cooks, laundresses, laborers,

teamsters, railroad repair crews, fled to the Union Army, but were not legally
freed until the Emancipation Proclamation, which Lincoln signed on January 1, 1863,
more than two years before the end of the Civil War.In 1863, the Union Army
accepted Freedmen; seen here are Black and White teen-aged soldiers who volunteered
to fight for the Union.
Lincoln issued his preliminary Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, 1862. It
stated that the slaves in all states in rebellion on January 1, 1863, would be
free. He issued his final Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, keeping his
promise. In his letter to Albert G. Hodges, Lincoln explained his belief that "If
slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong .... And yet I have never understood that
the Presidency conferred upon me an unrestricted right to act officially upon this
judgment and feeling .... I claim not to have controlled events, but confess
plainly that events have controlled me."[355][j]
Lincoln's moderate approach succeeded in inducing the border states to remain in
the Union and War Democrats to support the Union. The border states, which included
Kentucky, Missouri, Maryland, Delaware, and Union-controlled regions around New
Orleans, Norfolk, Virginia, and elsewhere, were not covered by the Emancipation
Proclamation. Nor was Tennessee, which had come under Union control.[357] Missouri
and Maryland abolished slavery on their own; Kentucky and Delaware did not.[358]
Still, the proclamation did not enjoy universal support. It caused much unrest in
what were then considered western states, where racist sentiments led to a great
fear of abolition. There was some concern that the proclamation would lead to the
secession of western states, and its issuance prompted the stationing of Union
troops in Illinois in case of rebellion.[359]
Since the Emancipation Proclamation was based on the President's war powers, it
applied only in territory held by Confederates at the time it was issued. However,
the Proclamation became a symbol of the Union's growing commitment to add
emancipation to the Union's definition of liberty.[360] The Emancipation
Proclamation greatly reduced the Confederacy's hope of being recognized or
otherwise aided by Britain or France.[361] By late 1864, Lincoln was playing a
leading role in getting the House of Representatives to vote for the Thirteenth
Amendment to the United States Constitution, which mandated the ending of chattel
slavery.[362]

Reconstruction
Main article: Reconstruction era
Through the supervision of the Freedmen's Bureau, Northern teachers traveled into
the South to provide education and training for the newly freed population.
The oath to defend the Constitution of the United States and, among other
commitments, to "abide by and faithfully support all acts of Congress passed during
the … rebellion having reference to slaves … ", signed by former Confederate
officer Samuel M. Kennard on June 27, 1865[363] The war devastated the South and
posed serious questions of how the South would be reintegrated into the Union. The
war destroyed much of the wealth that had existed in the South. All accumulated
investment in Confederate bonds was forfeited; most banks and railroads were
bankrupt. The income per capita in the South dropped to less than 40 percent of
that of the North, an economic condition that lasted into the 20th century.
Southern influence in the federal government, previously considerable, was greatly
diminished until the latter half of the 20th century.[364] Reconstruction began
during the war, with the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863, and it
continued until 1877.[365] It comprised multiple complex methods to resolve the
outstanding issues of the war's aftermath, the most important of which were the
three "Reconstruction Amendments" to the Constitution: the 13th outlawing slavery
(1865), the 14th guaranteeing citizenship to slaves (1868), and the 15th ensuring
voting rights to slaves (1870). From the Union perspective, the goals of
Reconstruction were to consolidate the Union victory on the battlefield by
reuniting the Union, to guarantee a "republican form of government" for the ex-
Confederate states, and to permanently end slavery—and prevent semi-slavery status.
[366]
President Andrew Johnson, who took office on April 15, 1865, took a lenient
approach and saw the achievement of the main war goals as realized in 1865 when
each ex-rebel state repudiated secession and ratified the Thirteenth Amendment.
Radical Republicans demanded proof that Confederate nationalism was dead and that
the slaves were truly free. They overrode Johnson's vetoes of civil rights
legislation, and the House impeached him, although the Senate did not convict him.
In 1868 and 1872, the Republican candidate Ulysses S. Grant won the presidency. In
1872, the "Liberal Republicans" argued that the war goals had been achieved and
that Reconstruction should end. They chose Horace Greeley to head a presidential
ticket in 1872 but were decisively defeated. In 1874, Democrats, primarily
Southern, took control of Congress and opposed further reconstruction. The
Compromise of 1877 closed with a national consensus, except perhaps on the part of
former slaves, that the Civil War had finally ended.[367] With the withdrawal of
federal troops, however, whites retook control of every Southern legislature, and
the Jim Crow era of disenfranchisement and legal segregation was ushered in.[368]
The Civil War had a demonstrable impact on American politics in the years to come.
Many veterans on both sides were subsequently elected to political office,
including five U.S. Presidents: General Ulysses Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, James
Garfield, Benjamin Harrison, and William McKinley.[369]

Memory and historiography

Monument to the Grand Army of the Republic, a Union veteran organizationCherokee
Confederates reunion in New Orleans in 1903
The Civil War is one of the central events in American collective memory. There are
innumerable statues, commemorations, books, and archival collections. The memory
includes the home front, military affairs, the treatment of soldiers, both living
and dead, in the war's aftermath, depictions of the war in literature and art,
evaluations of heroes and villains, and considerations of the moral and political
lessons of the war.[370] The last theme includes moral evaluations of racism and
slavery, heroism in combat and heroism behind the lines, and issues of democracy
and minority rights, as well as the notion of an "Empire of Liberty" influencing
the world.[371]
Professional historians have paid much more attention to the causes of the war than
to the war itself. Military history has largely developed outside academia, leading
to a proliferation of studies by non-scholars who nevertheless are familiar with
the primary sources and pay close attention to battles and campaigns and who write
for the general public. Bruce Catton and Shelby Foote are among the best known.
[372][373] Practically every major figure in the war, both North and South, has had
a serious biographical study.[374]
Even the name used for the conflict has been controversial, with many names for the
American Civil War. During and immediately after the war, Northern historians often
used a term like "War of the Rebellion". Writers in rebel states often referred to
the "War for Southern Independence". More recently, some Southerners have
described it as the "War of Northern Aggression".[375]

Lost Cause
Main article: Lost Cause of the Confederacy
The memory of the war in the white South crystallized in the myth of the "Lost
Cause": that the Confederate cause was just and heroic. The myth shaped regional
identity and race relations for generations.[376] Alan T. Nolan notes that the Lost
Cause was expressly a rationalization, a cover-up to vindicate the name and fame of
those in rebellion. Some claims revolve around the insignificance of slavery as a
cause of the war; some appeals highlight cultural differences between North and
South; the military conflict by Confederate actors is idealized; in any case,
secession was said to be lawful.[377] Nolan argues that the adoption of the Lost
Cause perspective facilitated the reunification of the North and the South while
excusing the "virulent racism" of the 19th century, sacrificing black American
progress to white man's reunification. He also deems the Lost Cause "a caricature
of the truth. This caricature wholly misrepresents and distorts the facts of the
matter" in every instance.[378] The Lost Cause myth was formalized by Charles A.
Beard and Mary R. Beard, whose The Rise of American Civilization (1927) spawned
"Beardian historiography". The Beards downplayed slavery, abolitionism, and issues
of morality. Though this interpretation was abandoned by the Beards in the 1940s,
and by historians generally by the 1950s, Beardian themes still echo among Lost
Cause writers.[379][380][additional citation(s) needed]

Battlefield preservation
Main article: American Civil War battlefield preservation
Beginning in 1961, the U.S. Post Office released commemorative stamps for five
famous battles, each issued on the 100th anniversary of the respective battle.
The first efforts at Civil War battlefield preservation and memorialization came
during the war itself with the establishment of National Cemeteries at Gettysburg,
Mill Springs and Chattanooga. Soldiers began erecting markers on battlefields
beginning with the First Battle of Bull Run in July 1861. The oldest surviving
monument is the Hazen Brigade Monument near Murfreesboro in Central Tennessee,
built in the summer of 1863 by soldiers in Union Col. William B. Hazen's brigade to
mark the spot where they buried their dead following the Battle of Stones River.
[381]
In the 1890s, the U.S. government established five Civil War battlefield parks
under the jurisdiction of the War Department, beginning with the creation of the
Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park at Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia, and
the Antietam National Battlefield in Sharpsburg, Maryland in 1890. The Shiloh
National Military Park was established in 1894 in Shiloh, Tennessee, followed by
the Gettysburg National Military Park in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania in 1895, and
Vicksburg National Military Park in Vicksburg, Mississippi in 1899.
In 1933, these five parks and other national monuments were transferred to the
jurisdiction of the National Park Service.[382] Chief among modern efforts to
preserve Civil War sites has been the American Battlefield Trust, with more than
130 battlefields in 24 states.[383][384] The five major Civil War battlefield parks
operated by the National Park Service (Gettysburg, Antietam, Shiloh,
Chickamauga/Chattanooga and Vicksburg) had a combined 3.1 million visitors in 2018,
down 70% from 10.2 million in 1970.[385]

Civil War commemoration

Further information: Commemoration of the American Civil War and Commemoration of
the American Civil War on postage stampsTop: Grand Army of the Republic
(Union)Bottom: United Confederate Veterans
The American Civil War has been commemorated in many capacities, ranging from the
reenactment of battles to statues and memorial halls erected, to films being
produced, to stamps and coins with Civil War themes being issued, all of which
helped to shape public memory. These commemorations occurred in greater numbers on
the 100th and 150th anniversaries of the war.[386]
Hollywood's take on the war has been especially influential in shaping public
memory, as in such film classics as The Birth of a Nation (1915), Gone with the
Wind (1939), and Lincoln (2012). Ken Burns's PBS television series The Civil War
(1990) is especially well-remembered, though criticized for its historical
inaccuracy.[387][388]

Technological significance
Numerous technological innovations during the Civil War had a great impact on 19th-
century science. The Civil War was one of the earliest examples of an "industrial
war", in which technological might is used to achieve military supremacy in a war.
[389] New inventions, such as the train and telegraph, delivered soldiers, supplies
and messages at a time when horses were considered to be the fastest way to travel.
[390][391] It was also in this war that aerial warfare, in the form of
reconnaissance balloons, was first used.[392] It saw the first action involving
steam-powered ironclad warships in naval warfare history.[393] Repeating firearms
such as the Henry rifle, Spencer rifle, Colt revolving rifle, Triplett & Scott
carbine and others, first appeared during the Civil War; they were a revolutionary
invention that would soon replace muzzle-loading and single-shot firearms in
warfare. The war also saw the first appearances of rapid-firing weapons and machine
guns such as the Agar gun and the Gatling gun.[394]

In works of culture and art

Woodblock etching (note the faint lines where smaller blocks meet to form the
larger image) depicting a foundering Confederacy and the upcoming 1864 U.S.
presidential election ("The Forlorn Hope—the ship Secession is on the breakers,
the Chicago wreckers rushing to the rescue" by Theodore Jones, Harper's Weekly,
October 29, 1864)
The Civil War is one of the most studied events in American history, and the
collection of cultural works around it is enormous.[395] This section gives an
abbreviated overview of the most notable works.

Literature
When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd and O Captain! My Captain! (1865) by Walt
Whitman, famous eulogies to Lincoln
Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War (1866) poetry by Herman Melville
The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government (1881) by Jefferson Davis
The Private History of a Campaign That Failed (1885) by Mark Twain
Texar's Revenge, or, North Against South (1887) by Jules Verne
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (1890) by Ambrose Bierce
The Red Badge of Courage (1895) by Stephen Crane
The Challenge to Sirius (1917) by Sheila Kaye-Smith
Gone with the Wind (1936) by Margaret Mitchell
North and South (1982) by John Jakes
The March: A Novel (2005) by E. L. Doctorow, fictionalized account of Sherman's
March to the Sea
Film

The Birth of a Nation (1915, US)

The General (1926, US)
Operator 13 (1934, US)
Gone with the Wind (1939, US)
The Red Badge of Courage (1951, US)
The Horse Soldiers (1959, US)
Shenandoah (1965, US)
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966, Italy-Spain-FRG)
The Beguiled (1971, US)
The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976, US)
Glory (1989, US)
The Civil War (1990, US)
Gettysburg (1993, US)
The Last Outlaw (1993, US)
Cold Mountain (2003, US)
Gods and Generals (2003, US)
North and South (miniseries)
Lincoln (2012, US)
Free State of Jones (2016, US)

Music
See also: Music of the American Civil War
"Dixie"
"Battle Cry of Freedom"
"Battle Hymn of the Republic"
"The Bonnie Blue Flag"
"John Brown's Body"
"When Johnny Comes Marching Home"
"Marching Through Georgia"
"The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down"
Video games

North & South (1989, FR)

Sid Meier's Gettysburg! (1997, US)
Sid Meier's Antietam! (1999, US)
American Conqest: Divided Nation (2006, US)
Forge of Freedom: The American Civil War (2006, US)
The History Channel: Civil War – A Nation Divided (2006, US)
Ageod's American Civil War (2007, US/FR)
History Civil War: Secret Missions (2008, US)
Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood (2009, US)
Darkest of Days (2009, US)
Victoria II: A House Divided (2011, US)
Ageod's American Civil War II (2013, US/FR)
Ultimate General: Gettysburg (2014, UKR)
Ultimate General: Civil War (2016, UKR)
War of Rights (2018, US)

See also

General reference
American Civil War Corps Badges
List of costliest American Civil War land battles
List of weapons in the American Civil War
Union
Presidency of Abraham Lincoln
Uniforms of the Union Army
Confederacy
Central Confederacy
Uniforms of the Confederate States Armed Forces
Ethnic articles
African Americans in the American Civil War
German Americans in the American Civil War
Irish Americans in the American Civil War
Italian Americans in the American Civil War
Native Americans in the American Civil War
Topical articles
Commemoration of the American Civil War
Commemoration of the American Civil War on postage stamps
Dorothea Dix
Education of freed people during the Civil War
History of espionage § American Civil War 1861–1865
Spies in the American Civil War
Gender issues in the American Civil War
Infantry in the American Civil War
List of ships captured in the 19th century § American Civil War
Slavery during the American Civil War

National articles
Canada in the American Civil War
Foreign enlistment in the American Civil War
Prussia in the American Civil War
United Kingdom in the American Civil War
State articles
Category:American Civil War by state
Category:Populated places destroyed during the American Civil War
Memorials
List of Confederate monuments and memorials
List of memorials and monuments at Arlington National Cemetery
List of memorials to Jefferson Davis
List of memorials to Robert E. Lee
List of memorials to Stonewall Jackson
List of monuments erected by the United Daughters of the Confederacy
List of monuments of the Gettysburg Battlefield
List of Union Civil War monuments and memorials
Memorials to Abraham Lincoln
Removal of Confederate monuments and memorials
Other civil wars in modern history
Main article: List of civil wars
Boxer Rebellion
Chinese Civil War
Finnish Civil War
Mexican Revolution
Russian Civil War
Spanish Civil War
Taiping Rebellion

Notes

^ See also Conclusion of the American Civil War and American Civil War#End of the
war

^ a b Total number that served

^ 211,411 Union soldiers were captured, and 30,218 died in prison. The ones who
died have been excluded to prevent double-counting of casualties.

^ 462,634 Confederate soldiers were captured and 25,976 died in prison. The ones
who died have been excluded to prevent double-counting of casualties.

^ The Union was the U.S. government and included the states that remained loyal to
it, both the non-slave states and the border states (Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland,
and Delaware) where slavery was legal. Missouri and Kentucky were also claimed by
the Confederacy and given full state delegations in the Confederate Congress for
the duration of the war.

^ Assuming Union and Confederate casualties are counted together—more Americans

were killed in World War II than in either the Union or Confederate Armies if their
casualty totals are counted separately.

^ "Union population 1864" aggregates 1860 population, average annual immigration

1855–1864, and population governed formerly by CSA per Kenneth Martis source.
Contrabands and after the Emancipation Proclamation freedmen, migrating into Union
control on the coasts and to the advancing armies, and natural increase are
excluded.

^ "Slave 1864, CSA" aggregates 1860 slave census of Virginia, North Carolina, South
Carolina, Georgia and Texas. It omits losses from contraband and after the
Emancipation Proclamation, freedmen migrating to the Union controlled coastal ports
and those joining advancing Union armies, especially in the Mississippi Valley.

^ In spite of the South's shortage of soldiers, most Southern leaders—until 1865—

opposed enlisting slaves. They used them as laborers to support the war effort. As
Howell Cobb said, "If slaves will make good soldiers our whole theory of slavery is
wrong." Confederate generals Patrick Cleburne and Robert E. Lee argued in favor of
arming blacks late in the war, and Jefferson Davis was eventually persuaded to
support plans for arming slaves to avoid military defeat. The Confederacy
surrendered at Appomattox before this plan could be implemented.[343]

^ In late March 1864 Lincoln met with Governor Bramlette, Archibald Dixon, and
Albert G. Hodges, to discuss recruitment of African American soldiers in the state
of Kentucky. In a letter dated April 4, 1864, Lincoln summarized his stance on
slavery, at Hodges' request.[356]

References

^ a b Blair, William A. (2015). "Finding the Ending of America's Civil War". The
American Historical Review. Oxford University Press. 120 (5): 1753–1766.
doi:10.1093/ahr/120.5.1753. JSTOR 43697075. Retrieved July 29, 2022. Pennsylvania
State University Professor William A. Blair wrote at pages 313–14: "the sheer
weight of scholarship has leaned toward portraying the surrenders of the
Confederate armies as the end of the war."; The New York Times: "End of the
Rebellion; The Last Rebel Army Disbands. Kirby Smith Surrenders the Land and Naval
Forces Under His Command. The Confederate Flag Disappears from the Continent. The
Era of Peace Begins. Military Prisoners During the War to be Discharged. Deserters
to be Released from Confinement. [Official.] From Secretary Stanton to Gen. Dix".
The New York Times. United States Department of War. May 29, 1865. Retrieved July
29, 2022.; United States Civil War Centennial Commission Robertson, James I. Jr.
(1963). The Civil War. Washington, D.C.: Civil War Centennial Commission.
OCLC 299955768. At p. 31, Professor James I. Robertson Jr. of Virginia Tech
University and Executive Director of the U. S. Civil War Centennial Commission
wrote, "Lee's surrender left Johnston with no place to go. On April 26, near
Durham, N. C., the Army of Tennessee laid down its arms before Sherman's forces.
With the surrender of isolated forces in the Trans-Mississippi West on May 4, 11,
and 26, the most costly war in American history came to an end."

^ a b Among the many other contemporary sources and later historians citing May 26,
1865, the date that the surrender of the last significant Confederate force in the
trans-Mississippi department was agreed upon, or citing simply the surrender of the
Confederate armies, as the end date for the American Civil War hostilities are
George Templeton Strong, who was a prominent New York lawyer; a founder, treasurer,
and member of the Executive Committee of United States Sanitary Commission
throughout the war; and a diarist. A diary excerpt is published in Gienapp, William
E., ed. The Civil War and Reconstruction: A Documentary Collection. New York: W.W.
Norton & Co., 2001, pp. 313–314 ISBN 978-0-393-97555-0. A footnote in Gienapp shows
the excerpt was taken from an edited version of the diaries by Allan Nevins and
Milton Halsey Thomas, eds., The Diary of George Templeton Strong, vol. 2 (New York:
The McMillan Company), pp. 600–601, which differs from the volume and page numbers
of the original diaries; the actual diary is shown at
https://digitalcollections.nyhistory.org/islandora/object/nyhs%3A55249 Archived
November 16, 2022, at the Wayback Machine, the page in Strong's original
handwriting is shown at that web page, it is Volume 4, pp. 124–125: diary entries
for May 23 (continued)-June 7, 1865 of the original diaries; Horace Greeley, The
American Conflict: A History of the Great Rebellion in the United States, 1860–'65.
Volume II. Hartford: O. D. Case & Company, 1866. OCLC 936872302. p. 757: "Though
the war on land ceased, and the Confederate flag utterly disappeared from this
continent with the collapse and dispersion of Kirby Smith's command...."; John
William Draper, History of the American Civil War. [1] Volume 3. New York: Harper &
Brothers, 1870. OCLC 830251756. Retrievfootnoed July 28, 2022. p. 618: "On the 26th
of the same month General Kirby Smith surrendered his entire command west of the
Mississippi to General Canby. With this, all military opposition to the government
ended."; Jefferson Davis. The Rise And Fall Of The Confederate Government. Volume
II. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1881. OCLC 1249017603. p. 630: "With General
E. K. Smith's surrender the Confederate flag no longer floated on the land; p. 663:
"When the Confederate soldiers laid down their arms and went home, all hostilities
against the power of the Government of the United States ceased."; Ulysses S. Grant
Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant. Volume 2. [2] New York: Charles L. Webster &
Company, 1886. OCLC 255136538. p. 522: "General E. Kirby Smith surrendered the
trans-Mississippi department on the 26th of May, leaving no other Confederate army
at liberty to continue the war."; Frederick H. Dyer A compendium of the War of the
Rebellion. [3] Des Moines, IA: Dyer Publishing Co., 1908. OCLC 8697590. Full entry
on last Table of Contents page (unnumbered on download): "Alphabetical Index of
Campaigns, Battles, Engagements, Actions, Combats, Sieges, Skirmishes,
Reconnaissances, Scouts and Other Military Events Connected with the "War of the
Rebellion" During the Period of Actual Hostilities, From April 12, 1861, to May 26,
1865"; Nathaniel W. Stephenson, The Day of the Confederacy, A Chronicle of the
Embattled South, Volume 30 in The Chronicles Of America Series. [4] New Haven: Yale
University Press; Toronto: Glasgow, Brook & Co.; London: Oxford University Press,
1919. p. 202: "The surrender of the forces of the Trans-Mississippi on May 26,
1865, brought the war to a definite conclusion."; Bruce Catton. The Centennial
History of the Civil War. Vol. 3, Never Call Retreat. Garden City, NY: Doubleday,
1965. p. 445. "and on May 26 he [E. Kirby Smith] surrendered and the war was over";
and Gary W. Gallagher, Stephen D. Engle, Robert K. Krick & Joseph T. Glatthaar,
foreword by James M. McPherson. The American Civil War: This Mighty Scourge of War.
New York: Osprey Publishing, Ltd., 2003 ISBN 978-1-84176-736-9. p. 308: "By 26 May,
General Edward Kirby Smith had surrendered the Rebel forces in the trans-
Mississippi west. The war was over."

^ a b c d e f "Facts". National Park Service.

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^ Long 1971, p. 705.

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^ Toward a Social History of the American Civil War Exploratory Essays, Cambridge
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^ a b c Hacker, J. David (September 20, 2011). "Recounting the Dead". The New York
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war. It was a cluster of issues profoundly dividing the nation along a fault line
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^ a b c d McPherson 1988, pp. vii–viii.

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^ The Impending Crisis of the South, Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of
Harvard University Press, 1968, p. 25.

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Press. ISBN 978-0-19-988317-2.

^ McPherson 1988, p. 40.

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^ Donald 1995, pp. 188–189.

^ McPherson 1988, pp. 41–46.

^ Krannawitter 2008, pp. 49–50.

^ McPherson 1988, pp. 49–77.

^ McPherson 2007, p. 14.

^ Stampp 1990, pp. 190–193.

^ McPherson 1988, p. 51.

^ McPherson 2007, pp. 13–14.

^ Bestor 1964, p. 19.

^ McPherson 2007, p. 16.

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^ Bestor 1964, p. 20.

^ Russell 1966, pp. 468–469.

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^ McPherson 1988, pp. 52–54.

^ Bestor 1964, pp. 21–23.

^ Johannsen 1973, p. 406.

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^ Bestor 1964, pp. 23–24.

^ Bestor 1964, pp. 24–25.

^ a b Flanagin, Jake (April 8, 2015). "For the last time, the American Civil War
was not about states' rights". Quartz. Retrieved June 12, 2021.

^ a b Foner, Eric (January 23, 2015). "When the South Wasn't a Fan of States'
Rights". Politico Magazine. Retrieved June 12, 2021.

^ a b Finkelman, Paul (June 24, 2015). "States' Rights, Southern Hypocrisy, and the
Crisis of the Union". Akron Law Review. 45 (2). ISSN 0002-371X.

^ a b c McPherson 2007, pp. 3–9.

^ Forrest McDonald, States' Rights and the Union: Imperium in Imperio, 1776–1876
(2002).

^ McPherson 2007, p. 7.
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^ Gara, 1964, p. 190.

^ a b "States' Rights, the Slave Power Conspiracy, and the Causes of the Civil
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^ a b Woods, Michael E. (2017). "'Tell Us Something about State Rights': Northern

Republicans, States' Rights, and the Coming of the Civil War". Journal of the Civil
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^ McCurry, Stephanie (June 21, 2020). "The Confederacy Was an Antidemocratic,

Centralized State". The Atlantic. Retrieved June 12, 2021.

^ Charles S. Sydnor, The Development of Southern Sectionalism 1819–1848 (1948).

^ Robert Royal Russel, Economic Aspects of Southern Sectionalism, 1840–1861 (1973).

^ Ahlstrom 1972, pp. 648–649.

^ Kenneth M. Stampp, The Imperiled Union: Essays on the Background of the Civil War
(1981), p. 198; Richard Hofstadter, The Progressive Historians: Turner, Beard,
Parrington (1969).

^ Woodworth 1996, pp. 145, 151, 505, 512, 554, 557, 684.

^ Thornton & Ekelund 2004, p. 21.

^ Frank Taussig, The Tariff History of the United States (1931), pp. 115–61

^ Hofstadter 1938, pp. 50–55.

^ Robert Gray Gunderson, Old Gentleman's Convention: The Washington Peace

Conference of 1861. (1961).

^ Jon L. Wakelyn (1996). Southern Pamphlets on Secession, November 1860 – April

1861. University of North Carolina Press. pp. 23–30. ISBN 978-0-8078-6614-6.

^ Potter 1962b, pp. 924–950.

^ Bertram Wyatt-Brown, The Shaping of Southern Culture: Honor, Grace, and War,
1760s–1880s (2000).

^ Avery Craven, The Growth of Southern Nationalism, 1848–1861 (1953).

^ "Republican Platform of 1860", in Kirk H. Porter, and Donald Bruce Johnson, eds.
National Party Platforms, 1840–1956, (University of Illinois Press, 1956). p. 32.

^ Susan-Mary Grant, North over South: Northern Nationalism and American Identity in
the Antebellum Era (2000); Melinda Lawson, Patriot Fires: Forging a New American
Nationalism in the Civil War North (2005).

^ Potter & Fehrenbacher 1976, p. 485.

^ McPherson 1988, pp. 254–255.

^ "1861 Time Line of the Civil War". Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
Retrieved January 22, 2022.
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the Civil War. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 1. ISBN 978-0-8476-9953-7.

^ "1861 | Time Line of the Civil War". Library of Congress. Retrieved June 12,
2021.

^ Ordinances of Secession by State Archived June 11, 2004, at the Wayback Machine.
Retrieved November 28, 2012.

^ The text of the Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the
Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union Archived February 20, 2019, at
the Wayback Machine.

^ The text of A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the
Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union Archived October 10,
2014, at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved November 28, 2012.

^ The text of Georgia's secession declaration Archived July 14, 2011, at the
Wayback Machine. Retrieved November 28, 2012.

^ The text of A Declaration of the Causes which Impel the State of Texas to Secede
from the Federal Union Archived August 11, 2011, at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved
November 28, 2012.

^ McPherson 1988, p. 24.

^ President James Buchanan, Message of December 8, 1860 Archived December 20, 2008,
at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved November 28, 2012.

^ Winters 1963, p. 28.

^ "Profile Showing the Grades upon the Different Routes Surveyed for the Union
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World Digital Library. 1865. Retrieved July 16, 2013.

^ "Abraham Lincoln imposes first federal income tax". History.com. Retrieved June
12, 2021.

^ McPherson 1988, pp. 252–54.

^ McPherson 1988, p. 253.

^ McPherson 1988, pp. 234–266.

^ a b c Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address, Monday, March 4, 1861.

^ McPherson 1988, p. 262.

^ a b Potter & Fehrenbacher 1976, pp. 572–573.

^ Harris, William C. (Winter 2000). "The Hampton Roads Peace Conference: A Final
Test of Lincoln's Presidential Leadership". Journal of the Abraham Lincoln
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^ Hardyman, Robyn (2016). What Caused the Civil War?. Gareth Stevens Publishing
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^ McPherson 1988, p. 264.

^ McPherson 1988, p. 265.

^ McPherson 1988, p. 266.

^ a b McPherson 1988, p. 267.

^ McPherson 1988, p. 268.

^ McPherson 1988, p. 272.

^ McPherson 1988, p. 273.

^ McPherson 1988, pp. 273–274.

^ McPherson 1988, p. 274.

^ "Abraham Lincoln: Proclamation 83 – Increasing the Size of the Army and Navy".
Presidency.ucsb.edu. Retrieved November 3, 2011.

^ McPherson 1988, p. 278.

^ McPherson 1988, pp. 276–307.

^ Jones 2011, pp. 203–204.

^ Jones 2011, p. 21.

^ "Civil War and the Maryland General Assembly, Maryland State Archives".
msa.maryland.gov. Retrieved May 28, 2017.

^ a b "Teaching American History in Maryland – Documents for the Classroom: Arrest

of the Maryland Legislature, 1861". Maryland State Archives. 2005. Archived from
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^ McPherson 1988, pp. 284–287.

^ William C. Harris, Lincoln and the Border States: Preserving the Union
(University Press of Kansas, 2011), p. 71.

^ "One significant point of disagreement among historians and political scientists

is whether Roger Taney heard Ex parte Merryman as a U.S. circuit judge or as a
Supreme Court justice in chambers." White, Jonathan W., Abraham Lincoln and Treason
in the Civil War: The Trials of John Merryman, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State
University Press, 2011, pp. 38–39; Vladeck, Stephen I., "The Field Theory: Martial
Law, The Suspension Power, and The Insurrection Act" Archived September 27, 2022,
at the Wayback Machine, Temple Law Review, vol. 80, no. 2 (Summer 2007), p. 391,
n.2.

^ Howard, F. K. (Frank Key) (1863). Fourteen Months in American Bastiles. London:

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^ Nevins, The War for the Union (1959), 1:119–29.

^ Nevins, The War for the Union (1959), 1:129–36.

^ "A State of Convenience, The Creation of West Virginia". West Virginia Archives &
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^ Curry, Richard Orr (1964), A House Divided: A Study of the Statehood Politics and
the Copperhead Movement in West Virginia, University of Pittsburgh Press, map on p.
49.

^ McPherson 1988, p. 303.

^ Weigley 2004, p. 55.

^ Snell, Mark A., West Virginia and the Civil War, History Press, Charleston, SC,
2011, p. 28.

^ Neely 1993, pp. 10–11.

^ Keegan, The American Civil War (2009), p. 73. Over 10,000 military engagements
took place during the war, 40 percent of them in Virginia and Tennessee. See Gabor
Boritt, ed., War Comes Again (1995), p. 247.

^ "With an actual strength of 1,080 officers and 14,926 enlisted men on June 30,
1860, the Regular Army ..." Civil War Extracts Archived October 17, 2012, at the
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^ Nicolay, John George; Hay, John (1890). Abraham Lincoln: A History. Century
Company.

^ Coulter, E. Merton (1950). The Confederate States of America, 1861–1865: A

History of the South. LSU Press. p. 308. ISBN 978-0-8071-0007-3.

^ Nicolay, John George; Hay, John (1890). Abraham Lincoln: A History. Century
Company. state: "Since the organization of the Montgomery government in February,
some four different calls for Southern volunteers had been made ... In his message
of April 29 to the rebel Congress, Jefferson Davis proposed to organize for instant
action an army of 100,000 ..." Coulter reports that Alexander Stephens took this to
mean Davis wanted unilateral control of a standing army, and from that moment on
became his implacable opponent.

^ Faust, Albert Bernhardt (1909). The German Element in the United States: With
Special Reference to Its Political, Moral, Social, and Educational Influence.
Houghton Mifflin Company. The railroads and banks grew rapidly. See Oberholtzer,
Ellis Paxson. Jay Cooke: Financier Of The Civil War. Vol. 2. 1907. pp. 378–430..
See also Oberholtzer, Ellis Parson (1926). A history of the United States since the
Civil War. The Macmillan company. pp. 69–12.

^ Barnet Schecter, The Devil's Own Work: The Civil War Draft Riots and the Fight to
Reconstruct America (2007).

^ Eugene Murdock, One Million Men: the Civil War draft in the North (1971).

^ Judith Lee Hallock, "The Role of the Community in Civil War Desertion." Civil War
History (1983) 29#2 pp. 123–134. online.

^ Bearman, Peter S. (1991). "Desertion as Localism: Army Unit Solidarity and Group
Norms in the U.S. Civil War". Social Forces. 70 (2): 321–342.
doi:10.1093/sf/70.2.321. JSTOR 2580242.

^ Robert Fantina, Desertion and the American Soldier, 1776–2006 (2006), p. 74.

^ Civil War Institute (January 5, 2015). "A Prussian Observes the American Civil
War". The Gettysburg Compiler. Retrieved January 6, 2022.

^ Keegan 2009, p. 57.

^ Roger Pickenpaugh (2013). Captives in Blue: The Civil War Prisons of the
Confederacy. University of Alabama Press. pp. 57–73. ISBN 978-0-8173-1783-6.

^ Tucker, Pierpaoli & White 2010, p. 1466.

^ a b Leonard, Elizabeth D. (1999). All the Daring of the Soldier: Women of the
Civil War Armies. W.W. Norton & Co. ISBN 0-3930-4712-1.

^ "Highlights in the History of Military Women". Women In Military Service For

America Memorial. Archived from the original on April 3, 2013. Retrieved June 22,
2013.

^ Pennington, Reina (2003). Amazons to Fighter Pilots: A Biographical Dictionary of

Military Women (Volume Two). Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press. pp. 474–75.
ISBN 0-313-32708-4.

^ "The Case of Dr. Walker, Only Woman to Win (and Lose) the Medal of Honor". The
New York Times. June 4, 1977. Retrieved January 6, 2018.

^ Welles 1865, p. 152.

^ Tucker, Pierpaoli & White 2010, p. 462.

^ Canney 1998, p. ?.

^ "American Civil War: The naval war". Britannica. Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Retrieved January 24, 2022.

^ Nelson 2005, p. 92.

^ a b Anderson 1989, p. 300.

^ Myron J. Smith, Tinclads in the Civil War: Union Light-Draught Gunboat Operations
on Western Waters, 1862–1865 (2009).

^ Gerald F. Teaster and Linda and James Treaster Ambrose, The Confederate Submarine
H. L. Hunley (1989).

^ Nelson 2005, p. 345.

^ Fuller 2008, p. 36.

^ Richter 2009, p. 49.

^ Johnson 1998, p. 228.

^ Anderson 1989, pp. 288–289, 296–298.

^ Wise, 1991, p. 49.

^ Mendelsohn, 2012, pp. 43–44.

^ Stern 1962, pp. 224–225.

^ Mark E. Neely Jr. "The Perils of Running the Blockade: The Influence of
International Law in an Era of Total War", Civil War History (1986) 32#2, pp. 101–
18, in Project MUSE.
^ a b Stephen R. Wise, Lifeline of the Confederacy: Blockade Running during the
Civil War (1991).

^ Surdam, David G. (1998). "The Union Navy's blockade reconsidered". Naval War
College Review. 51 (4): 85–107.

^ David G. Surdam, Northern Naval Superiority and the Economics of the American
Civil War (University of South Carolina Press, 2001).

^ David Keys (June 24, 2014). "Historians reveal secrets of UK gun-running which
lengthened the American civil war by two years". The Independent.

^ Kevin Dougherty (2010). Weapons of Mississippi. University Press of Mississippi.

p. 87. ISBN 9-7816-0473-4522.

^ Jones 2002, p. 225.

^ Dinçaslan 2022, p. 73.

^ McPherson 1988, pp. 546–557.

^ Herring 2011, p. 237.

^ a b McPherson 1988, p. 386.

^ a b Allan Nevins, War for the Union 1862–1863, pp. 263–264.

^ a b c Don H. Doyle, The Cause of All Nations: An International History of the

American Civil War, New York: Basic Books (2015), pp. 8 (quote), 69–70, 70–74.

^ Richard Huzzeym, Freedom Burning: Anti-Slavery and Empire in Victorian Britain

(2013).

^ a b Stephen B. Oates, The Approaching Fury: Voices of the Storm 1820–1861,

p. 125.

^ "The Trent Affair: Diplomacy, Britain, and the American Civil War – National
Museum of American Diplomacy". January 5, 2022. Retrieved January 18, 2022.

^ Herring 2011, p. 261.

^ Norman E. Saul, Richard D. McKinzie. Russian-American Dialogue on Cultural

Relations, 1776–1914 p. 95. ISBN 978-0826210975.

^ Anderson 1989, p. 91.

^ Freeman, Vol. II, p. 78 and footnote 6.

^ Foote 1974, pp. 464–519.

^ Bruce Catton, Terrible Swift Sword, pp. 263–296.

^ McPherson 1988, pp. 424–27.

^ a b McPherson 1988, pp. 538–44.

^ McPherson 1988, pp. 528–33.

^ McPherson 1988, pp. 543–45.

^ McPherson 1988, pp. 557–58.

^ McPherson 1988, pp. 571–74.

^ Matteson, John, A Worse Place Than Hell: How the Civil War Battle of
Fredericksburg Changed a Nation, New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2021.

^ Jones, Wilmer L. (2006). Generals in Blue and Gray: Lincoln's Generals. Stackpole
Books. pp. 237–38. ISBN 978-1-4617-5106-9.

^ McPherson 1988, pp. 639–45.

^ Jonathan A. Noyalas (2010). Stonewall Jackson's 1862 Valley Campaign. Arcadia

Publishing. p. 93. ISBN 978-1-61423-040-3.

^ Thomas, Emory M. (1997). Robert E. Lee: A Biography. W. W. Norton & Company.

p. 287. ISBN 978-0-393-31631-5.

^ "Salem Church". National Park Service. October 5, 2021. Retrieved March 30, 2022.

^ McPherson 1988, pp. 653–63.

^ McPherson 1988, p. 664.

^ a b Bowery, Charles R. (2014). The Civil War in the Western Theater, 1862.
Washignton, D.C.: Center of Military History. pp. 58–72. ISBN 978-0160923166.
OCLC 880934087.

^ "Vicksburg". American Battlefield Trust. Retrieved September 27, 2022.

^ McPherson 1988, pp. 405–13.

^ Whitsell, Robert D. (1963). "Military and Naval Activity between Cairo and
Columbus". Register of the Kentucky Historical Society. 62 (2): 107–21.

^ Frank & Reaves 2003, p. 170.

^ "Death of Albert Sidney Johnston – Tour Stop #17 (U.S. National Park Service)".
www.nps.gov. Retrieved March 12, 2022.

^ a b McPherson 1988, pp. 418–20.

^ Kennedy, p. 58.

^ Symonds & Clipson 2001, p. 92.

^ "10 Facts: The Vicksburg Campaign". American Battlefield Trust. January 31, 2013.
Retrieved September 13, 2022.

^ Brown, Kent Masterson. The Civil War in Kentucky: Battle for the Bluegrass State.
p. 95.

^ McPherson 1988, pp. 419–20.

^ McPherson 1988, pp. 480–83.

^ Ronald Scott Mangum, "The Vicksburg Campaign: A Study In Joint Operations",

Parameters: U.S. Army War College (1991) 21#3, pp. 74–86 online Archived November
27, 2012, at the Wayback Machine

^ McPherson 1988, pp. 677–80.

^ "Sherman's March to the Sea". American Battlefield Trust. September 17, 2014.

^ Jones 2011, p. 1476.

^ Keegan 2009, p. 100.

^ McPherson 1988, pp. 404–05.

^ James B. Martin, Third War: Irregular Warfare on the Western Border 1861–1865
(Combat Studies Institute Leavenworth Paper series, number 23, 2012). See also,
Michael Fellman, Inside War: The Guerrilla Conflict in Missouri during the Civil
War (1989). Missouri alone was the scene of over 1,000 engagements between regular
units, and uncounted numbers of guerrilla attacks and raids by informal pro-
Confederate bands, especially in the recently settled western counties.

^ Bohl, Sarah (2004). "A War on Civilians: Order Number 11 and the Evacuation of
Western Missouri". Prologue. 36 (1): 44–51.

^ Keegan 2009, p. 270.

^ Graves, William H. (1991). "Indian Soldiers for the Gray Army: Confederate
Recruitment in Indian Territory". Chronicles of Oklahoma. 69 (2): 134–45.

^ Neet, J. Frederick Jr. (1996). "Stand Watie: Confederate General in the Cherokee
Nation". Great Plains Journal. 6 (1): 36–51.

^ Keegan 2009, pp. 220–21.

^ Red River Campaign. Encyclopedia Britannica. online Archived March 27, 2022, at
the Wayback Machine.

^ Symonds, Craig L. (2012). The Civil War at sea. New York: Oxford University
Press. p. 110. ISBN 978-0-19-993168-2. OCLC 777948477.

^ "Second Battle of Fort Wagner | Summary | Britannica". www.britannica.com.

Retrieved January 25, 2022.

^ Lattimore, Ralston B. "Battle for Fort Pulaski – Fort Pulaski National Monument
(U.S. National Park Service)". www.nps.gov. Retrieved April 20, 2022.

^ Trefousse, Hans L. (1957). Ben Butler: The South Called Him Beast!. New York:
Twayne. OCLC 371213.

^ "Vicksburg". American Battlefield Trust. Retrieved March 12, 2022.

^ "War in the West · Civil War · Digital Exhibits".

digitalexhibits.wsulibs.wsu.edu. Retrieved March 7, 2022.

^ Mark E. Neely Jr.; "Was the Civil War a Total War?" Civil War History, Vol. 50,
2004, pp. 434+.

^ U.S. Grant (1990). Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant; Selected Letters. Library of
America. p. 247. ISBN 978-0-940450-58-5.

^ Ron Field (2013). Petersburg 1864–65: The Longest Siege. Osprey Publishing. p. 6.
ISBN 978-1-4728-0305-4.[permanent dead link]

^ McPherson 1988, pp. 724–35.

^ McPherson 1988, p. 728.

^ McPherson 1988, pp. 724–42.

^ McPherson 1988, pp. 778–79.

^ McPherson 1988, pp. 773–76.

^ McPherson 1988, pp. 812–15.

^ McPherson 1988, pp. 825–30.

^ McPherson 1988, pp. 846–47.

^ "Union / Victory! / Peace! / Surrender of General Lee and His Whole Army". The
New York Times. April 10, 1865. p. 1.

^ a b "Most Glorious News of the War / Lee Has Surrendered to Grant ! / All Lee's
Officers and Men Are Paroled". Savannah Daily Herald. Savannah, Georgia, U.S. April
16, 1865. pp. 1, 4.

^ Simpson, Brooks D., Let Us Have Peace: Ulysses S. Grant and the Politics of War
and Reconstruction, 1861–1868, Chapel Hill and London: The University of North
Carolina Press, 1991, p. 84.

^ William Marvel, Lee's Last Retreat: The Flight to Appomattox (2002), pp. 158–181.

^ Winik, Jay (2001). April 1865 : the month that saved America. New York:
HarperCollins Publishers. pp. 188–189. ISBN 0-06-018723-9. OCLC 46543709.

^ Unaware of the surrender of Lee, on April 16 the last major battles of the war
were fought at the Battle of Columbus, Georgia, and the Battle of West Point.

^ Long, p. 685.

^ Arnold, James R.; Wiener, Roberta (2016). Understanding U.S. Military Conflicts
through Primary Sources [4 volumes]. American Civil War: ABC-CLIO. p. 15. ISBN 978-
1-61069-934-1.

^ Long 1971, p. 688.

^ Bradley, Mark L. (2015). The Civil War Ends (PDF). US Army, Center of Military
History. p. 68. Archived (PDF) from the original on October 9, 2022. Retrieved May
26, 2022.

^ Hunt 2015, p. 5.

^ Long 1971, p. 690.

^ Dunkerly 2015, p. 117.

^ Long 1971, p. 692.

^ "Ulysses S. Grant: The Myth of 'Unconditional Surrender' Begins at Fort

Donelson". American Battlefield Trust. April 17, 2009. Archived from the original
on February 7, 2016.

^ Morris, John Wesley (1977). Ghost Towns of Oklahoma. University of Oklahoma

Press. p. 68. ISBN 978-0-8061-1420-0.

^ "The 58-year-old Cherokee chieftain was the last Confederate general to lay down
his arms. The last Confederate-affiliated tribe to surrender was the Chickasaw
nation, which capitulated on 14 July." Bradley, 2015, p. 69.

^ Conner, Robert C. General Gordon Granger: The Savior of Chickamauga and the Man
Behind "Juneteenth". Havertown, PA: Casemate Publishers, 2013. ISBN 978-1-61200-
186-9. p. 177.

^ Gates, Henry Louis Jr. (January 16, 2013). "What Is Juneteenth?". PBS. Retrieved
June 12, 2020.

^ Abraham Lincoln, Proclamation 128—Claiming Equality of Rights with All Maritime

Nations. Dated April 11, 1865. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The
American Presidency Project [5] Archived November 16, 2022, at the Wayback Machine.
University of California, Santa Barbara. Retrieved July 25, 2022. The proclamation
did not use the term "belligerent rights."

^ Neff 2010, p. 205.

^ Andrew Johnson, Proclamation 132—Ordering the Arrest of Insurgent Cruisers. Dated

May 10, 1865. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency
Project [6] Archived November 16, 2022, at the Wayback Machine. University of
California, Santa Barbara. Retrieved July 25, 2022. The proclamation did not use
the term "belligerent rights".

^ "Withdrawal of Belligerent Rights by Great Britain". Army and Navy Journal. New
York: American News Company. 2 (44): 695. June 24, 1865. Retrieved July 25, 2022.

^ "England and the Termination of the Rebellion". Army and Navy Journal. New York:
American News Company. 2 (48): 763. July 22, 1865. Retrieved July 25, 2022.

^ "Withdrawal of British Restrictions Upon American Naval Vessels". Army and Navy
Journal. New York: American News Company. 3 (11): 172. November 4, 1865. Retrieved
July 25, 2022.

^ Heidler, pp. 703–706.

^ Murray, Robert B. (Autumn 1967). The End of the Rebellion. The North Carolina
Historical Review. p. 336. Retrieved May 6, 2022.

^ Neff 2010, p. 207.

^ Trudeau, Noah Andre (1994). Out of the Storm: The End of the Civil War, April–
June 1865. Boston: Little, Brown and Company. p. 396. ISBN 978-0-316-85328-6. In
United States v. Anderson, 76 U.S. 56 (1869), "The U.S. attorneys argued that the
Rebellion had been suppressed following the surrender of the Trans-Mississippi
Department, as established in the surrender document negotiated on May 26, 1865."
p. 396. The Supreme Court decided that the "legal end of the American Civil War had
been decided by Congress to be August 20, 1866—the date of Andrew Johnson's final
proclamation on the conclusion of the Rebellion." p. 397.

^ McPherson 1988, p. 851.

^ McPherson 1988, p. 855.

^ a b Gabor S. Boritt, ed., Why the Confederacy Lost.

^ McPherson 1988, pp. 771–772.

^ Railroad length is from: Chauncey Depew (ed.), One Hundred Years of American
Commerce 1795–1895, p. 111; For other data see: 1860 U.S. Census Archived August
17, 2017, at the Wayback Machine and Carter, Susan B., ed. The Historical
Statistics of the United States: Millennial Edition (5 vols), 2006.

^ Martis, Kenneth C. (1994). The Historical Atlas of the Congresses of the

Confederate States of America: 1861–1865. Simon & Schuster. p. 27. ISBN 978-0-13-
389115-7. At the beginning of 1865, the Confederacy controlled one third of its
congressional districts, which were apportioned by population. The major slave
populations found in Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Alabama were
effectively under Union control by the end of 1864.

^ Digital History Reader, U.S. Railroad Construction, 1860–1880 Archived June 11,
2016, at the Wayback Machine Virginia Tech, Retrieved August 21, 2012. "Total Union
railroad miles" aggregates existing track reported 1860 @ 21800 plus new
construction 1860–1864 @ 5000, plus southern railroads administered by USMRR @
2300.

^ Murray, Bernstein & Knox 1996, p. 235.

^ Heidler, Heidler & Coles 2002, pp. 1207–10.

^ Ward 1990, p. 272.

^ E. Merton Coulter, The Confederate States of America, 1861–1865 (1950), p. 566.

^ Richard E. Beringer, Herman Hattaway, Archer Jones and William N. Still Jr, Why
the South Lost the Civil War (1991), ch 1.

^ see Alan Farmer, History Review (2005) Archived March 23, 2014, at the Wayback
Machine, No. 52: 15–20.

^ McPherson 1997, pp. 169–72.

^ Gallagher 1999, p. 57.

^ Fehrenbacher, Don (2004). "Lincoln's Wartime Leadership: The First Hundred Days".
Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association. University of Illinois. 9 (1).
Retrieved October 16, 2007.

^ McPherson 1988, pp. 382–88.

^ Don H. Doyle, The Cause of All Nations: An International History of the American
Civil War, New York: Basic Books (2015).

^ Fergus M. Bordewich, "The World Was Watching: America's Civil War slowly came to
be seen as part of a global struggle against oppressive privilege" Archived
February 21, 2017, at the Wayback Machine, Wall Street Journal (February 7–8,
2015).

^ a b c Dupont, Brandon; Rosenbloom, Joshua L. (2018). "The Economic Origins of the

Postwar Southern Elite". Explorations in Economic History. 68: 119–31.
doi:10.1016/j.eeh.2017.09.002.
^ "U.S. Civil War Took Bigger Toll Than Previously Estimated, New Analysis
Suggests". Science Daily. September 22, 2011. Retrieved September 22, 2011.

^ a b Hacker 2011, pp. 307–48.

^ McPherson 1988, p. 854.

^ Vinovskis 1990, p. 7.

^ Richard Wightman Fox (2008). "National Life After Death". Slate.com.

^ "U.S. Civil War Prison Camps Claimed Thousands Archived February 25, 2010, at the
Wayback Machine". National Geographic News. July 1, 2003.

^ Riordan, Teresa (March 8, 2004). "When Necessity Meets Ingenuity: Art of

Restoring What's Missing". The New York Times. Associated Press. Retrieved December
23, 2013.

^ Herbert Aptheker, "Negro Casualties in the Civil War", The Journal of Negro
History, Vol. 32, No. 1. (January 1947).

^ Jim Downs, Sick from Freedom: African-American Illness and Suffering during the
Civil War and Reconstruction, Oxford University Press, 2012.

^ "American Civil War Fortifications (2)". United States.

^ Foner 2010, p. 74.

^ Foner 1981, p. ?.

^ a b McPherson, pp. 506–08.

^ McPherson, p. 686.

^ Cathey, Libby (June 17, 2021). "Biden signs bill making Juneteenth, marking the
end of slavery, a federal holiday". ABC News. Retrieved June 17, 2021.

^ Claudia Goldin, "The economics of emancipation." The Journal of Economic History

33#1 (1973): 66–85.

^ McPherson 1988, pp. 831–37.

^ Donald 1995, pp. 417–19.

^ a b Lincoln's letter to O. H. Browning, September 22, 1861. Sentiment among

German Americans was largely antislavery especially among Forty-Eighters, resulting
in hundreds of thousands of German Americans volunteering to fight for the
Union."Wittke, Carl (1952). Refugees of Revolution. Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 978-1-5128-0874-2." Christian B. Keller, "Flying Dutchmen
and Drunken Irishmen: The Myths and Realities of Ethnic Civil War Soldiers",
Journal of Military History, Vol. 73, No. 1, January 2009, pp. 117–145; for primary
sources, see Walter D. Kamphoefner and Wolfgang Helbich, eds., Germans in the Civil
War: The Letters They Wrote Home (2006). "On the other hand, many of the recent
immigrants in the North viewed freed slaves as competition for scarce jobs, and as
the reason why the Civil War was being fought." Baker, Kevin (March 2003). "Violent
City", American Heritage. Retrieved July 29, 2010. "Due in large part to this
fierce competition with free blacks for labor opportunities, the poor and working
class Irish Catholics generally opposed emancipation. When the draft began in the
summer of 1863, they launched a major riot in New York City that was suppressed by
the military, as well as much smaller protests in other cities." Barnet Schecter,
The Devil's Own Work: The Civil War Draft Riots and the Fight to Reconstruct
America (2007), ch. 6. Many Catholics in the North had volunteered to fight in
1861, sending thousands of soldiers to the front and suffering high casualties,
especially at Fredericksburg; their volunteering fell off after 1862.

^ Baker, Kevin (March 2003). "Violent City", American Heritage. Retrieved July 29,
2010.

^ McPherson, James M., "Lincoln and the Strategy of Unconditional Surrender", in

Boritt, Gabor S., ed., Lincoln, the War President, pp. 52–54; also in McPherson,
James M., Abraham Lincoln and the Second American Revolution, pp. 83–85.

^ Oates, Stephen B., Abraham Lincoln: The Man Behind the Myths, p. 106.

^ Stahr, Walter, Stanton: Lincoln's War Secretary, New York: Simon & Schuster,
2017, p. 226.

^ "Horace Greeley (1811–1872). "The Prayer of Twenty Millions". Stedman and

Hutchinson, eds. 1891. A Library of American Literature: An Anthology in 11
Volumes". www.bartleby.com. June 14, 2022.

^ Lincoln's letter was published first in the Washington National Intelligencer on

August 23, 1862. Holzer, Harold, Lincoln and the Power of the Press: The War for
Public Opinion, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014, p. 401.

^ Abraham Lincoln (August 24, 1862). "A LETTER FROM PRESIDENT LINCOLN.; Reply to
Horace Greeley. Slavery and the Union The Restoration of the Union the Paramount
Object". The New York Times. The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331.
Wikidata Q116965145.

^ White, Jonathan W., A House Built by Slaves: African American Visitors to the
Lincoln White House, Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2022, ch. 3.

^ Pulling, Sr. Anne Frances, Altoona: Images of America, Arcadia Publishing, 2001,
10.

^ Lincoln's Letter to A. G. Hodges, April 4, 1864.

^ "Lincoln Lore – Albert G. Hodges". apps.legislature.ky.gov. Retrieved January 20,

2022.

^ "Andrew Johnson and Emancipation in Tennessee – Andrew Johnson National Historic

Site (U.S. National Park Service)". www.nps.gov.

^ Harper, Douglas (2003). "Slavery in Delaware". Archived from the original on

October 16, 2007. Retrieved October 16, 2007.

^ Donald 1995, pp. 417–419.

^ McPherson, James, "A War that Never Goes Away", American Heritage, Vol. 41, no. 2
(Mar 1990). Archived February 18, 2022, at the Wayback Machine

^ Asante & Mazama 2004, p. 82.

^ Holzer & Gabbard 2007, pp. 172–74.

^ "Copy of original document, via Ancestry.com". Ancestry.com.

^ The Economist, "The Civil War: Finally Passing Archived April 20, 2011, at the
Wayback Machine", April 2, 2011, pp. 23–25.

^ Hans L. Trefousse, Historical Dictionary of Reconstruction (Greenwood, 1991)

covers all the main events and leaders.

^ Eric Foner's A Short History of Reconstruction (1990) is a brief survey.

^ C. Vann Woodward, Reunion and Reaction: The Compromise of 1877 and the End of
Reconstruction (2nd ed. 1991).

^ Williams, Susan Millar; Hoffius, Stephen G. (2011). Upheaval in Charleston:

Earthquake and Murder on the Eve of Jim Crow. University of Georgia Press.
ISBN 978-0-8203-3715-9. JSTOR j.ctt46nc9q – via JSTOR.

^ "Presidents Who Were Civil War Veterans". Essential Civil War Curriculum.

^ Joan Waugh and Gary W. Gallagher, eds. (2009), Wars within a War: Controversy and
Conflict over the American Civil War (University of North Carolina Press).

^ David W. Blight, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (2001).

^ Woodworth 1996, p. 208.

^ Cushman, Stephen (2014). Belligerent Muse: Five Northern Writers and How They
Shaped Our Understanding of the Civil War. UNC Press Books. pp. 5–6. ISBN 978-1-
4696-1878-4.

^ Charles F. Ritter and Jon L. Wakelyn, eds., Leaders of the American Civil War: A
Biographical and Historiographical Dictionary (1998). Provides short biographies
and historiographical summaries.

^ Oscar Handlin; Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr.; Samuel Eliot Morison; Frederick Merk;
Arthur M. Schlesinger; Paul Herman Buck (1954), Harvard Guide to American History,
Belknap Press, pp. 385–98, Wikidata Q118746838

^ Gaines M. Foster (1988), Ghosts of the Confederacy: Defeat, the Lost Cause and
the Emergence of the New South, 1865–1913.

^ Nolan, Alan T., in Gallagher, Gary W., and Alan T. Nolan, The Myth of the Lost
Cause and Civil War History (2000), pp. 14–19.

^ Nolan, The Myth of the Lost Cause, pp. 28–29.

^ Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard, The Rise of American Civilization (1927),
2:54.

^ Richard Hofstadter (2012) [1968]. Progressive Historians. Knopf Doubleday.

p. 304. ISBN 978-0-307-80960-5.

^ [7] Archived November 18, 2018, at the Wayback Machine Murfreesboro Post, April
27, 2007, "Hazen's Monument a rare, historic treasure." Accessed May 30, 2018.

^ Timothy B. Smith, "The Golden Age of Battlefield Preservation" (2008; The

University of Tennessee Press).

^ Bob Zeller, "Fighting the Second Civil War: A History of Battlefield Preservation
and the Emergence of the Civil War Trust", (2017: Knox Press)
^ [8] Archived August 12, 2019, at the Wayback Machine American Battlefield Trust
"Saved Land" page. Accessed May 30, 2018.

^ Cameron McWhirter, "Civil War Battlefields Lose Ground as Tourist Draws" The Wall
Street Journal May 25, 2019 Archived October 10, 2019, at the Wayback Machine

^ Gary Gallagher, Causes Won, Lost, and Forgotten: How Hollywood and Popular Art
Shape What We Know about the Civil War (Univ of North Carolina Press, 2008).

^ "Debate over Ken Burns Civil War doc continues over decades | The Spokesman-
Review". spokesman.com. Retrieved May 4, 2020.

^ Merritt, Keri Leigh. "Why We Need a New Civil War Documentary". Smithsonian
Magazine. Retrieved May 4, 2020.

^ Bailey, Thomas and David Kennedy: The American Pageant, p. 434. 1987

^ Dome, Steam (1974). "A Civil War Iron Clad Car". Railroad History. The Railway &
Locomotive Historical Society. 130 (Spring 1974): 51–53.

^ William Rattle Plum, The Military Telegraph During the Civil War in the United
States, ed. Christopher H. Sterling(New York: Arno Press, 1974) vol. 1:63.

^ Buckley, John (2006). Air Power in the Age of Total War. Routledge. pp. 6, 24.
ISBN 978-1-135-36275-1.

^ Sondhaus, Naval Warfare 1815–1914 p. 77.

^ Keegan, John (2009). The American Civil War. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.
p. 75. ISBN 978-0-307-27314-7.

^ Hutchison, Coleman (2015). A History of American Civil War Literature. Cambridge

University Press. ISBN 978-1-316-43241-9.

Bibliography
Main article: Bibliography of the American Civil War

Ahlstrom, Sydney E. (1972). A Religious History of the American People. New Haven,
Connecticut: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-01762-5.
Anderson, Bern (1989). By Sea and By River: The naval history of the Civil War. New
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Chambers, John W.; Anderson, Fred (1999). The Oxford Companion to American Military
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Dinçaslan, M. Bahadırhan (2022). Amerikan İç Savaşı El Kitabı (US Civil War
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Dunkerly, Robert M. (2015). To the Bitter End: Appomattox, Bennett Place and the
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252-5.
Foner, Eric (1981). Politics and Ideology in the Age of the Civil War. Oxford; New
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Foner, Eric (2010). The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery. New
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Foote, Shelby (1974). The Civil War: A Narrative: Volume 1: Fort Sumter to
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Frank, Joseph Allan; Reaves, George A. (2003). Seeing the Elephant: Raw Recruits at
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Fuller, Howard J. (2008). Clad in Iron: The American Civil War and the Challenge of
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Gallagher, Gary W. (1999). The Confederate War. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard
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Gallagher, Gary W. (2011). The Union War. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard
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Gara, Larry (1964). "The Fugitive Slave Law: A Double Paradox," in Unger, Irwin,
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Hofstadter, Richard (1938). "The Tariff Issue on the Eve of the Civil War".
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Hunt, Jeffrey Wm (2015). The Last Battle of the Civil War: Palmetto Ranch. Austin:
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Johannsen, Robert W. (1973). Stephen A. Douglas. New York: Oxford University Press.
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Johnson, Timothy D. (1998). Winfield Scott: The Quest for Military Glory. Lawrence:
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McPherson, James M. (1988). Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. Oxford; New
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McPherson, James M. (1997). For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil
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Blockade Runners, and Civil War Profiteers" (PDF). Journal of the Southern Jewish
Historical Society. Southern Jewish Historical Society. 15: 41–79. Archived (PDF)
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Neff, Stephen C. (2010). Justice in Blue and Gray: A Legal History of the Civil
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the Monitor and the Merrimack. New York: HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-06-052404-3.
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1. Fruits of Manifest Destiny, 1847–1852 online; 2. A House Dividing, 1852–1857; 3.
Douglas, Buchanan, and Party Chaos, 1857–1859; 4. Prologue to Civil War, 1859–1861;
vols 5–8 have the series title War for the Union; 5. The Improvised War, 1861–1862;
6. online; War Becomes Revolution, 1862–1863; 7. The Organized War, 1863–1864; 8.
The Organized War to Victory, 1864–1865
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Scarecrow Press. ISBN 978-0-8108-6336-1.
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Territories". Journal of Southern History. 32 (4): 466–86. doi:10.2307/2204926.
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Sheehan-Dean, Aaron. A Companion to the U.S. Civil War 2 vol. (April 2014) Wiley-
Blackwell, New York ISBN 978-1-444-35131-6. 1232 pp; 64 Topical chapters by
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of the U.S. Navy. Naval Institute Press. ISBN 978-1-55750-984-0.
Thornton, Mark; Ekelund, Robert Burton (2004). Tariffs, Blockades, and Inflation:
The Economics of the Civil War. Rowman & Littlefield.
Tucker, Spencer C.; Pierpaoli, Paul G.; White, William E. (2010). The Civil War
Naval Encyclopedia. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO. ISBN 978-1-59884-338-5.
Varon, Elizabeth R. (2008). Disunion!: The Coming of the American Civil War, 1789–
1859. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 978-0-
8078-3232-5.
Vinovskis, Maris (1990). Toward a Social History of the American Civil War:
Exploratory Essays. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-39559-5.
Ward, Geoffrey R. (1990). The Civil War: An Illustrated History. New York: Alfred
A. Knopf. ISBN 978-0-394-56285-8.
Weeks, William E. (2013). The New Cambridge History of American Foreign Relations.
Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-107-00590-7.
Weigley, Frank Russell (2004). A Great Civil War: A Military and Political History,
1861–1865. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0-253-33738-2.
Welles, Gideon (1865). Secretary of the Navy's Report. Vol. 37–38. American
Seamen's Friend Society.
Winters, John D. (1963). The Civil War in Louisiana. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State
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Wise, Stephen R. (1991). Lifeline of the Confederacy: Blockade Running During the
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at: archive.org
Woodworth, Steven E. (1996). The American Civil War: A Handbook of Literature and
Research. Wesport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press. ISBN 978-0-313-29019-0.

Further reading
Further information: Bibliography of the American Civil War and Bibliography of
American Civil War naval history

Catton, Bruce (1960). The Civil War. New York: American Heritage Distributed by
Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 978-0-8281-0305-3.
Davis, William C. (1983). Stand in the Day of Battle: The Imperiled Union: 1861–
1865. Garden City, New York: Doubleday. ISBN 978-0-385-14895-5.
Davis, William C. (2003). Look Away!: A History of the Confederate States of
America. New York: Free Press. ISBN 978-0-7432-3499-3.
Donald, David; Baker, Jean H.; Holt, Michael F. (2001). The Civil War and
Reconstruction. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 978-0-393-97427-0.
Fehrenbacher, Don E. (1981). Slavery, Law, and Politics: The Dred Scott Case in
Historical Perspective. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-
502883-6.
Fellman, Michael; Gordon, Lesley J.; Sunderland, Daniel E. (2007). This Terrible
War: The Civil War and its Aftermath (2nd ed.). New York: Pearson. ISBN 978-0-321-
38960-2.
Green, Fletcher M. (2008). Constitutional Development in the South Atlantic States,
1776–1860: A Study in the Evolution of Democracy. Chapel Hill, North Carolina:
University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 978-1-58477-928-5.
Guelzo, Allen C. (2009). Lincoln: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford, New York:
Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-536780-5.
Guelzo, Allen C. (2012). Fateful Lightning: A New History of the Civil War and
Reconstruction. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-984328-2.
Holt, Michael F. (2005). The Fate of Their Country: Politicians, Slavery Extension,
and the Coming of the Civil War. New York: Hill and Wang. ISBN 978-0-8090-4439-9.
Huddleston, John (2002). Killing Ground: The Civil War and the Changing American
Landscape. Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 978-0-8018-
6773-6.
Jones, Howard (1999). Abraham Lincoln and a New Birth of Freedom: The Union and
Slavery in the Diplomacy of the Civil War. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of
Nebraska Press. ISBN 978-0-8032-2582-4.
Lipset, Seymour Martin (1960). Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics. Garden
City, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc.
McPherson, James M. (1992). Ordeal By Fire: The Civil War and Reconstruction
(2nd ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill. ISBN 978-0-07-045842-0.
Murray, Robert Bruce (2003). Legal Cases of the Civil War. Stackpole Books.
ISBN 978-0-8117-0059-7.
Perman, Michael; Taylor, Amy M. (2010). Major Problems in the Civil War and
Reconstruction: Documents and Essays (3rd ed.). Boston, Massachusetts: Cengage
Learning. ISBN 978-0-618-87520-7.
Potter, David M. (1962a) [1942]. Lincoln and His Party in the Secession Crisis. New
Haven: Yale University Press.
Rhodes, John Ford (1917). History of the Civil War, 1861–1865. New York: The
Macmillan Company.
Schott, Thomas E. (1996). Alexander H. Stephens of Georgia: A Biography. Baton
Rouge, Louisiana: Louisiana State University Press. ISBN 978-0-8071-2106-1.

External links

American Civil War at Wikipedia's sister projects

Definitions from WiktionaryMedia from CommonsNews from WikinewsQuotations from

WikiquoteTexts from WikisourceTextbooks from WikibooksResources from
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West Point Atlas of Civil War Battles

Civil War photos at the National Archives
View images from the Civil War Photographs Collection at the Library of Congress
The short film A House Divided (1960) is available for free viewing and download at
the Internet Archive.
"American Civil World" maps at the Persuasive Cartography, The PJ Mode Collection,
Cornell University Library
Civil War Manuscripts at Shapell Manuscript Foundation
Statements of each state as to why they were seceding, battlefields.org
National Park Service Civil War Places
Civil War Battlefield Places from the National Park Service
American Battlefield Trust – A non-profit land preservation and educational
organization with two divisions, the Civil War Trust and the Revolutionary War
Trust, dedicated to preserving America's battlefields through land acquisitions.
Civil War Era Digital Collection at Gettysburg College – This collection contains
digital images of political cartoons, personal papers, pamphlets, maps, paintings
and photographs from the Civil War Era held in Special Collections at Gettysburg
College.
Civil War 150 Archived October 27, 2019, at the Wayback Machine – Washington Post
interactive website on the 150th Anniversary of the American Civil War.
Civil War in the American South Archived March 13, 2021, at the Wayback Machine –
An Association of Southeastern Research Libraries (ASERL) portal with links to
almost 9,000 digitized Civil War-era items – books, pamphlets, broadsides, letters,
maps, personal papers, and manuscripts – held at ASERL member libraries
The Civil War – site with 7,000 pages, including the complete run of Harper's
Weekly newspapers from the Civil War
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