American Civil War Description - Term Paper Example

Order: 295965 Civil War "Even if the Civil War had not touched slavery, the conflict still wouldhave transformed America." (Roark, et al; page 370). Yet, it fortuitously touched slavery, and "most whites fought to preserve their government and society, while most black men in the Union military saw service as an opportunity to fight slavery". (Roark, et al; page 369). "Slaves took the first steps toward making the war for Union also a war for freedom. For the first 18 months of the war, Union soldiers sought solely to uphold the Constitution and preserve the nation. But with the Emancipation Proclamation, the Northern war effort took on a dual purpose: to save the Union and to free the slaves." (Roark, et al; Page 370) The Civil War mobilized "the entire populations of North and South, and produced battles that fielded 200,000 soldiers and created casualties in the tens of thousands" (Roark, et al; page 370). The carnage lasted four years and cost the nation an estimated 633,000 lives. The war helped mold the modern American nation-state, and encouraged industrialization. The federal government emerged with new power and responsibility over national life. "But because the war for Union also became a war against slavery, the northern victory had truly revolutionary meaning. (Roark, et al; Page 370). "Defeat and emancipation destroyed the slave society of the Old South, and gave birth to a different southern society." (Roark, et al; Page 370). "All Americans experienced the crucible of war; but the war affected no group more than the four million African Americans who saw its beginning as slaves and emerged as free people" (Roark, et al; page 370). "Abraham Lincoln faced the worst crisis in the history of the nation: the threat of disunion. He revealed his strategy on March 4, 1861, in his inaugural address, firm yet conciliatory. First, he vowed to avoid any act that would push the Upper South out of the Union; second, he reassured the Lower South that the Republicans would not abolish slavery. (Roark, et al; Page 370) Always, Lincoln denied the right of secession and upheld Union. "His counterpart, Jefferson Davis, however, fully intended to establish the Confederate States of America as an independent republic." (Roark, et al; Page 370). "To achieve permanence, Davis had to sustain the secession fever that had carried the Lower South out of the Union" and add new stars to the Confederate flag." (Roark, et al; page 371). However, both wanted to achieve their objectives peacefully; but, as Lincoln later observed, "both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish." (Roark, et al; page 371). Masterfully, Lincoln thus shifted the fateful decision of war or peace to Davis." (Roark, et al; page 371). "On April 9, 1861, Davis and his Cabinet met to consider the situation in Charleston harbor. Territorial integrity of the Confederacy demanded the end of the federal presence, Davis argued, but his secretary of State Robert Toombs of Georgia pleaded against military action. Davis rejected Toombs' prophecy and sent word to Confederate troops in Charleston to take the fort. Bombardment reduced the fort to rubble. On April 14, Major Anderson offered his surrender and lowered the US flag. The Confederates had Fort Sumter, but they also had war. (Roark, et al; Page 371) On April 15, when Lincoln called for 75,000 militiamen to serve for 90 days to put down the rebellion, several times that number rushed to defend the flag. Democrats responded as fervently as Republicans. But the people of the Upper South found themselves torn (Roark, et al; Page 371). They had to fight either against the Lower South or against the Union. Many who only months earlier had rejected secession now embraced the Confederacy. To vote against southern independence was one thing, to fight fellow southerners another. (Roark, et al; page 371). One by one, the States of the Upper South jumped off the fence, but in the Border States Unionism triumphed. Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus, and ordered US troops into Baltimore. Maryland's legislature rejected secession (Roark, et al; page 372) Mobilization required effective political leadership, and at first glance the South appeared to have the advantage. Jefferson Davis brought to the Confederate presidency a distinguished political career, including experience in the Senate. He was also a combat veteran, and authentic hero of the Mexican-American War, and a former Secretary of War. In contrast, Lincoln brought to the White House one term in the House of Representatives, and his sole brush with anything military was as a captain in the militia in the Black Hawk War. (Roark, et al; Page 374). However, Davis proved to be less than he appeared. He had no gift for military strategy, and yet intervened often in military affairs. He was an even less able political leader. He had an acid tongue that made enemies the Confederacy could ill afford. With Lincoln, in contrast, the North got far more than met the eye. (Roark, et al; Page 374) He proved himself a master politician and a superb leader. When forming his Cabinet, he appointed the ablest men even if they were his chief rivals and critics; and despite his civilian background, Lincoln displayed an innate understanding of military strategy, and galvanized Union citizens in defense of the nation he called "the last best hope of earth". (Roark, et al; Page 374). Both Lincoln and Davis began gathering their armies. In 1860, the federal army numbered only 16,000 men, most of them scattered over the West subjugating Indians. One-third of the officers resigned their commissions and headed south. The navy was, however, better placed. Possessing a much weaker navy, the South pinned its hopes on its armies. Recruiting and supplying huge armies required enormous new revenues; at first, both sides sold war bonds, and turned to taxes; eventually, both began printing paper money. Inflation soared, but the Confederacy suffered more because it financed a greater part of wartime costs through the printing press. (Roark, et al; Page 374). Within months both sides found men to fight and ways to supply and support them, but the underlying strength of the northern economy gave the Union a decided advantage. With their military and industrial muscles beginning to ripple, Northerners became itchy for action; they wanted an invasion that once and for all would smash the rebellion. (Roark, et al; Page 374). By Civil War standards, casualties (wounded and dead) at Bull Run, a branch of the Potomac River, attacked by the Union army on July 21, (or Manassas, as Southerners called the battle, a railroad junction in Virginia, about thirty miles southwest of Washington), were light. The significance of the battle lay in the lessons both sides drew from it. While victory elevated southern pride, defeat sobered Northerners; Bull Run taught Lincoln that victory would be neither quick nor easy. Within four days of the disaster, the President authorized the enlistment of one million men for three years. On September 17, 1862, the Union army did severe damage. With "solid shotcracking skulls like eggshells," according to one observer, the armies went after each other. (Roark, et al; Page 374). As 1862 ended, the North seemed no nearer to ending the rebellion than it had been when the war began. Throughout the Border States, but especially in Kentucky, the Civil War was truly a "brother's war". Seven of Henry Clay's grandsons fought, four for the Confederacy and three for the Union. Lincoln understood the importance and resources of the Border States, particularly Kentucky." (Roark, et al; page 372) In the end, however, only eleven of the fifteen slave states joined the Confederate States of America. Moreover, the four seceding Upper South States contained many people who felt little affection for the Confederacy. Dissatisfaction was so rife in the western counties of Virginia that, in 1863, citizens there voted to create the separate State of West Virginia, loyal to the Union. Still, acquisition of four new States greatly strengthened the Confederacy's drive for national independence. (Roark, et al; page 371) "Only slaveholders had a direct stake in preserving slavery, but whites in the Confederacy defended the institution, the way of life built on it, and the Confederacy itself. The degraded and subjugated status of blacks elevated the status of the poorest whites." (Roark, et al; page 373). Moreover, Yankee "aggression" was now real and at South's door. For Northerners, rebel "treason" threatened to destroy the best government on earth. The South's failure to accept the democratic election of a president, and its firing on the nation's flag challenged the rule of law, the authority of the Constitution, and the ability of people to govern themselves. (Roark, et al; Page 373) Census figures show that the North's resources far surpassed the South's. The twenty-three states remaining in the Union had a population of 22.3 million; the eleven Confederate states had a population of only 9.1 million of whom 3.67 million (40 percent) were slaves. Did that mean the South's cause was lost before Confederates fired the first rounds at Fort Sumter "The answer quite simply is 'no'. Southerners expected to win, and they came very close to doing so." (Roark, et al; page 373). The South's confidence also rested on its belief that northern prosperity depended on the South's cotton, and the commodity would also make Europe a powerful ally of the Confederacy, Southerners reasoned. (Roark, et al; Page 374).. Each month the conflict dragged on, it became clearer that the Confederate war machine depended heavily on slavery; rebel armies used slaves to haul material, tend horses, and perform camp chores. Union military commanders and politicians alike gradually realized that to defeat the Confederacy, the North would have to destroy slavery. (Roark, et al; Page 380) Lincoln detested human bondage, but, as President, he felt compelled to act prudently in the interests of the Union. He doubted his right under the Constitution to tamper with the "domestic institutions" of any State, even States in rebellion. An astute politician, Lincoln worked within the tight limits of public opinion. The issue of black freedom was particularly explosive in the loyal Border States where slaveholders threatened to jump into the arms of Confederates at even the hint of emancipation. (Roark, et al; Page 380) Black freedom also raised alarms in the Free States. The Democratic Party gave notice that emancipation would make the war strictly a Republican affair. Moreover, many white Northerners were not about to risk their lives to satisfy abolitionist "fanaticism". They feared that emancipation would propel "two or three million semi-savages" northward where they would crowd into white neighborhoods, compete for white jobs, mix with white "sons and daughters". Thus a surge of anti-emancipation, anti-black sentiment threatened to dislodge the loyal slave States from the Union, alienate the Democratic Party, deplete the armies, and perhaps even spark race warfare. (Roark, et al; Page 380). On its part, the Republican-dominated Congress declined to leave slavery policy entirely in Lincoln's hands. In August 1861, it approved the Confiscation Act which allowed the seizure of any slave employed directly by the Confederate military; it also fulfilled the free-soil dream of prohibiting slavery in the Territories, and abolished it in Washington, D.C. Democrats and Border State representatives voted against even these mild measures, but Congress's attitude stiffened as it cast about for a just and practical slavery policy. Lincoln's policy of non-interference with slavery gradually crumbled. To calm Northerners' racial fears, Lincoln offered colonization, deportation of African Americans from the United States to Haiti, Panama, or elsewhere. (Roark, et al; Page 381) While Lincoln was developing his own initiatives, he snuffed out actions that he believed would jeopardize northern unity. He was particularly alert to Union commanders who tried to dictate slavery policy from the field. Events, however, moved so rapidly that Lincoln found it impossible to control federal policy on slavery. (Roark, et al; Page 381). Yet, by the summer of 1862, events were tumbling rapidly toward emancipation. On July 17, Congress adopted a second Confiscation Act. The first had confiscated slaves employed by the Confederate military; the second declared all slaves of rebel masters "forever free of their servitude". In theory, this measure freed most Confederate slaves, for slaveholders formed the backbone of the rebellion. On July 21, Lincoln informed his Cabinet that he was ready "to take some definitive steps in respect ofslavery"; the next day he read a draft of a preliminary emancipation proclamation that promised to free all slaves in the seceding States on January 1, 1863.But the lengthening casualty lists sobered him. (Roark, et al; Page 382). Meanwhile, as successive defeats engendered dissent within the South, the North too looked, though to a lesser extent, like a house divided against itself, mainly over racism. (Roark, et al; Page 383).As 1865 dawned, military disaster befell Confederate landscape, and more and more Confederates turned their backs on the rebellion; and as the war ended, Lincoln told his Cabinet that his post-war burdens would weigh almost as heavily as those of wartime. He did not live to bear the anticipated burdens, but Lincoln left as his legacy a transformed nation: Antebellum America was decentralized politically and loosely integrated economically; Congress created national currency and banking systems, and also established the sovereignty of the federal government and permanently increased its powers. (Roark, et al; Page 395). The massive changes, including the abolition of slavery, led one historian to describe the Civil War as the "Second American Revolution". References: Roark, L. James; Johnson, P. Michael; Cohen, Patricia Cline; Stage, Sarah; Lawson, Alan; Hartman, M. Susan; "The American Promise: A Compact History; Vol.1 to 1877; Amazon; (ISBN: 0312192061/0-312-19206: 1); 2008 Read More