RARE Antique Open Pontil Whittled Civil War Bottle Eagle UNION Philidelphia
Antique 1860s era whiskey bottle. Would have been drank during the American Civil War. Samuels Glass Company of Philly!
Pontil mark on the bottle. Bright, shiny, clean, no chips, no cracks, no residue. Glass factories in America began producing inexpensive, mold-formed-flasks like this in the early 1800s.
These figured glass containers were often decorated with symbols of national pride and political and cultural affiliations, which appealed to America's common man. This one contains images associated with the Union (an eagle and clasping hands). Very crude neck that is misaligned.
And crudely applied square lip that inludes a drip of glass. 7.75" T x 4" W.
A peice of Americana to be cheerished. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. April 12, 1861 - May 26, 1865.
(4 years, 1 month and 2 weeks). Abolition of slavery in the United States. Beginning of the Reconstruction era. Passage of the Reconstruction Amendments.
Dissolution of the Confederate States of America. 25,000-30,000 died in Confederate prisons. 26,000-31,000 died in Union prisons. 50,000 free civilians dead. 80,000+ slaves dead (disease). Theaters of the American Civil War. End of Atlantic slave trade. End of slavery in British colonies. Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Nat Turner's slave rebellion.American Slavery As It Is. The Impending Crisis of the South. John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry.
President Lincoln's 75,000 volunteers. This article is part of a series on the. The American Civil War April 12, 1861 - May 26, 1865; also known by other names. ("the North") and the Confederacy. ("the South"), which had been formed by states.The central 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.
Over slavery were brought to a head by the victory in the 1860 U. 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. 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.
Four years of intense combat, mostly in the South, ensued. The Union made significant permanent gains-though in the Eastern Theater. 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. S incursion north ended at the Battle of Gettysburg. Western successes led to General Ulysses S.
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.Lincoln lived to see this victory but on April 14, he was assassinated. While the conclusion of the American Civil War. Arguably has several different dates, Appomattox is often referred to symbolically. It set off a wave of Confederate surrenders. On May 26, the last military department of the Confederacy, the Department of the Trans-Mississippi.
A few small confederate ground forces continued formal surrenders through June 23. By the end of the war, much of the South's infrastructure was destroyed.
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. The Civil War is one of the most extensively studied and written about. 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. 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.
The technology and brutality of the Civil War foreshadowed the coming World Wars. 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. 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. Have offered additional reasons for the war. Slavery was the central source of escalating political tensions in the 1850s. 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. In his second inaugural address.
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. 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.
Slavery had been controversial during the framing of the Constitution. Which, because of compromises, ended up with proslavery and antislavery. 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. The motivations of the average person were not necessarily those of their faction.Some Northern soldiers were indifferent on the subject of slavery, but a general pattern can be established. 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.
Confederate soldiers fought the war primarily to protect a Southern society of which slavery was an integral part. Opponents of slavery considered slavery an anachronistic.
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. The slaveholding interests in the South denounced this strategy as infringing upon their constitutional rights. 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. In particular, many Southerners feared a repeat of the 1804 Haiti massacre. (referred to at the time as "the horrors of Santo Domingo"). 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. 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. These fears were exacerbated by the 1859 attempt. To instigate an armed slave rebellion in the South. Main article: Abolitionism in the United States. 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.In it, Sewall condemned slavery and the slave trade and refuted many of the era's typical justifications for slavery. 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. 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. 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. The establishment of the Northwest Territory. As "free soil"-no slavery-by Manasseh Cutler. (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. A former slave, was a leading abolitionist. In the decades leading up to the Civil War, abolitionists, such as Theodore Parker. 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. 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. 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.
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....
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. 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. Over the issue of slavery. Abolitionist sentiment was not strictly religious or moral in origin. Became increasingly opposed to slavery because it saw it as inherently against the ideals of capitalism and the free market. (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.As the Whig party dissolved in the 1850s, the mantle of abolition fell to its newly formed successor, the Republican Party. Further information: Slave states and free states.
Heightened the conflict over slavery. Each new territory acquired had to face the thorny question of whether to allow or disallow the "peculiar institution". 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. And its aftermath was a key territorial event in the leadup to the war.
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. 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. 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. In the Southern states, the question of the territorial expansion of slavery westward again became explosive.
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. 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. Author of the Kansas-Nebraska Act.
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. 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. Of 1860 was an expression of this view. 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.
Thus Congress could restrict human bondage, but never establish it. Announced this position in 1846. 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. 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. Of 1854 legislated this doctrine. In the Kansas Territory, political conflict spawned Bleeding Kansas.
, a five-year paramilitary conflict between pro- and anti-slavery supporters. 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. The fourth doctrine was advocated by Mississippi Senator (and soon to be Confederate President) Jefferson Davis. It was one of state sovereignty ("states' rights").Also known as the "Calhoun doctrine". Named after the South Carolinian political theorist and statesman John C.
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. These four doctrines comprised the dominant ideologies presented to the American public on the matters of slavery, the territories, and the U. Constitution before the 1860 presidential election. 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.
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. Historian James McPherson points out that even if Confederates genuinely fought over states' rights, it boiled down to states' right to slavery.
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. States' rights was an ideology formulated and applied as a means of advancing slave state interests through federal authority.
Krannawitter points out, the Southern demand for federal slave protection represented a demand for an unprecedented expansion of Federal power. 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.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. Some Northern states resisted the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act.
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. 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.
Also "federally" required slavery to be legal in all Confederate states and claimed territories. Of two unidentified young boys, one in blue Union cap, one in gray Confederate cap Liljenquist collection. 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. 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. 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. In the 1920s, and emphasize that Northern and Southern economies were largely complementary.While socially different, the sections economically benefited each other. Owners of slaves preferred low-cost manual labor with no mechanization. Northern manufacturing interests supported tariffs and protectionism while Southern planters demanded free trade. 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. The tariff issue was a Northern grievance. 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.
Pamphleteers from the North and the South rarely mentioned the tariff. Nationalism was a powerful force in the early 19th century, with famous spokesmen such as Andrew Jackson. 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. 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.
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. The South ignored the warnings; Southerners did not realize how ardently the North would fight to hold the Union together.
Main article: 1860 United States presidential election. S Portrait of Abraham Lincoln, 1860.
The election of Abraham Lincoln in November 1860 was the final trigger for secession. Southern leaders feared that Lincoln would stop the expansion of slavery and put it on a course toward extinction. 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. 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.
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. Followed suit, seceding in January and February 1861.
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.However, at least four states-South Carolina. 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. These states agreed to form a new federal government, the Confederate States of America. 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". Army-the entire garrison in Texas-was surrendered in February 1861 to state forces by its commanding general, David E. Who then joined the Confederacy.
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 transcontinental railroad the Pacific Railroad Acts.
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.
To help finance the war. President of the Confederate States of America. 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.
Lincoln stated that any compromise that would extend slavery would in time bring down the Union. 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. On March 4, 1861, Abraham Lincoln was sworn in as president. 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". 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. Including forts, arsenals, mints, and customhouses that had been seized by the Southern states. Where popular conditions did not allow peaceful enforcement of federal law, U. Marshals and judges would be withdrawn. No mention was made of bullion lost from U.Mints in Louisiana, Georgia, and North Carolina. He stated that it would be U. 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.
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. Lincoln instead attempted to negotiate directly with the governors of individual seceded states, whose administrations he continued to recognize. 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. However, President Lincoln was determined to hold all remaining Union-occupied forts in the Confederacy: Fort Monroe. In Florida, and 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.
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.
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.On March 5, the newly sworn in Lincoln was informed that the Fort was running low on supplies. Fort Sumter proved to be one of the main challenges of the new Lincoln administration. Back-channel dealing by Secretary of State Seward with the Confederates undermined Lincoln's decision-making; Seward wanted to pull out of the fort.
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. An April 9 Confederate cabinet meeting resulted in President Davis's ordering General P. To take the Fort before supplies could reach it. The loss of Fort Sumter lit a patriotic fire under the North.
On April 15, Lincoln called on the states to field 75,000 volunteer. Troops for 90 days; impassioned Union states met the quotas quickly. On May 3, 1861, Lincoln called for an additional 42,000 volunteers for a period of three years.
Seceded and joined the Confederacy. To reward Virginia, the Confederate capital was moved to Richmond.
Attitude of the border states. Main article: Border states (American Civil War).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. Union territories that permitted slavery (claimed by Confederacy) at the start of the war, but where slavery was outlawed by the U. 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. And was admitted to the Union. Maryland's territory surrounded the United States' capital of Washington, D.
And could cut it off from the North. 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. Lincoln responded by establishing martial law. And unilaterally suspending habeas corpus. In Maryland, along with sending in militia units from the North. 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. All were held without trial, with Lincoln ignoring a ruling on June 1, 1861, by U. Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney. Not speaking for the Court. 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. In Missouri, an elected convention. On secession voted decisively to remain within the Union. When pro-Confederate Governor Claiborne F. 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. 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.After Virginia's secession, a Unionist government. 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). Twenty-four secessionist counties were included in the new state.
And the ensuing guerrilla war engaged about 40,000 federal troops for much of the war. 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. 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. 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. See also: Economic history of the United States Civil War. Rioters attacking a building during the New York anti-draft riots.
As the first seven states began organizing a Confederacy in Montgomery, the entire U. However, Northern governors had begun to mobilize their militias.
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. 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. Congress followed in July, authorizing a militia draft within a state when it could not meet its quota with volunteers. Joined the Union Army in large numbers, including 177,000 born in Germany. And 144,000 born in Ireland. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. See also: Women in the military § United States. And Gender issues in the American Civil War. 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. Women also served as spies, resistance activists, nurses, and hospital personnel. And nursed Union and Confederate troops at field hospitals. 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.Battle between the USS Monitor. Of 1861 was rapidly enlarged to 6,000 officers and 45,000 sailors in 1865, with 671 vessels, having a tonnage of 510,396.
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. Meanwhile, the main riverine war was fought in the West, where a series of major rivers gave access to the Confederate heartland. 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. 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. 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.
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. The Confederacy experimented with the submarine.
Which did not work satisfactorily. 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.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. General Scott's Anaconda Plan. 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. Lincoln adopted parts of the plan, but chose to prosecute a more active vision of war. 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. 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. Main article: Blockade runners of the American Civil War. Gunline of nine Union ironclads.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.
The Confederacy subsequently looked to foreign sources for their enormous military needs and sought out financiers and companies like S. 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. 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.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. 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.
Surdam argues that the blockade was a powerful weapon that eventually ruined the Southern economy, at the cost of few lives in combat. Critical imports were scarce and the coastal trade was largely ended as well.
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.And the commerce raiders were used in raiding U. After the war ended, the U. 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. Dinçaslan argues that another outcome of the blockade was oil's rise to prominence as a widely used and traded commodity.
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. Main article: Diplomacy of the American Civil War.
Further information: United Kingdom and the American Civil War. And France and the American Civil War. A December 1861 cartoon in Punch magazine in London ridicules American aggressiveness in the Trent Affair. At right, warns Uncle Sam.
You do what's right, my son, or I'll blow you out of the water. 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. The Union, under Lincoln and Seward, worked to block this and threatened war if any country officially recognized the existence of the Confederate States of America. Worse, Europe turned to Egypt and India for cotton, which they found superior, hindering the South's recovery after the war. 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. Grain went from a quarter of the British import trade to almost half. 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. 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. However, there was still a European public with liberal sensibilities, that the U. 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. To Britain Charles Francis Adams. Proved particularly adept and convinced Britain not to openly challenge the Union blockade. The most famous, 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. War loomed in late 1861 between the U.
And Britain over the Trent affair. And seized two Confederate diplomats. However, London and Washington were able to smooth over the problem after Lincoln released the two men.
Had left his deathbed to issue diplomatic instructions. 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.
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. 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 and installed the Habsburg. 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. Supported the Union, largely because it believed that the U. 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. Further information: Eastern Theater of the American Civil War. 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. And the coastal fortifications and seaports of North Carolina. 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. , and the war began in earnest in 1862. The 1862 Union strategy called for simultaneous advances along four axes. 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.
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.
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. Asserts that the army received its final name from Lee when he issued orders assuming command on June 1, 1862. However, Freeman does admit that Lee corresponded with Brigadier General Joseph E. 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. To command all the cavalry companies of the Army of the Shenandoah. He eventually commanded the Army of Northern Virginia's cavalry.In one of the first highly visible battles, in July 1861, a march by Union troops under the command of Maj. On the Confederate forces led by 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. Under the relatively unknown brigadier general from the Virginia Military Institute. 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. McClellan's army reached the gates of Richmond in the Peninsula Campaign.
The Civil War's deadliest one-day fight. 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. 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.Which included the Second Battle of Bull Run. Ended in yet another victory for the South. McClellan resisted General-in-Chief Halleck's orders to send reinforcements to John Pope's. Which made it easier for Lee's Confederates to defeat twice the number of combined enemy troops.
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. 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.
When the cautious McClellan failed to follow up on Antietam, he was replaced by Maj. Burnside was soon defeated at the Battle of Fredericksburg. On December 13, 1862, when more than 12,000 Union soldiers were killed or wounded during repeated futile frontal assaults against Marye's Heights.
After the battle, Burnside was replaced by Maj. 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.
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. 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. Lee famously said: He has lost his left arm, but I have lost my right arm. 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. Hooker was replaced by Maj.During Lee's second invasion of the North. Meade defeated Lee at the Battle of Gettysburg. (July 1 to 3, 1863).
This was the bloodiest battle of the war and has been called the war's turning point. 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).