History of USA Civil War 1850-1865 Brief Overview People & Qs
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Brief Overview
The Election of 1848
Some historians have called the Mexican War the first battle of the Civil War, for it revived intense and heated debate about the expansion of slavery in the West. Tensions came to a head when Pennsylvanian congressman David Wilmot set forth the Wilmot Proviso in 1846, proposing that slavery be banned in the West. Not surprisingly, Southerners killed the proviso in the Senate before it could become law.
Nonetheless, the damage had been done, and expansion of slavery remained the hot topic in the election of 1848. The Whigs nominated war hero General Zachary Taylor on a rather noncommittal platform (they didn’t want to lose Southern votes), while the Democrats nominated Lewis Cass. Hoping to appeal to voters from both regions, Cass proposed applying popular sovereignty to the slavery question, arguing that the citizens living in each territory should decide for themselves whether theirs would become a slave state or a free state. Taylor won the election, but he died after only sixteen months in office, and Vice President Millard Fillmore became president in 1850.
The Compromise of 1850
Because Taylor and Fillmore had never made their views on slavery in the West clear, the issue remained unresolved. When California applied for admission as a free state, the debate picked up right where it had left off. In Congress, heavyweights Daniel Webster and Henry Clay met for the last time to hammer out a compromise. After much debate, the North and South finally came to an agreement that both sides thought would be lasting and binding.
There were five components to this Compromise of 1850. First, California would be admitted as a free state. Second, popular sovereignty would determine the fate of the other western territories. Third, Congress would cancel some of Texas’s debts and, in exchange, give some of Texas’s western land to New Mexico Territory. Fourth, slave trading would be banned in Washington, D.C. Finally, Congress would pass a tougher Fugitive Slave Law, to reduce the number of slaves who escaped to the North and Canada every year. Although Southerners had not conceded a lot in making the bargain, Northerners were still offended by the new law, and many refused to obey it.
Pierce and Expansion
The pro–Southern Democrat Franklin Pierce replaced Fillmore after defeating Whigs and Free-Soilers in the election of 1852. Playing off manifest destiny and the Southern desire for new slave states, Pierce supported a variety of proposals to acquire more territory. He tacitly supported adventurer William Walker’s attempt to annex Nicaragua but backed off after Walker was deposed and executed. Pierce also investigated the possible acquisition of Cuba from Spain, but the plan backfired after his machinations were leaked to Northerners in the Ostend Manifesto. More productively, he sent the U.S. Navy to Japan to open trade negotiations and bought a small strip of land in present-day Arizona and New Mexico in the 1853Gadsden Purchase.
The Kansas-Nebraska Act
Hoping to attract railroad development through the North, Illinois Senator Stephen Douglas introduced the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854 and pushed it successfully through Congress. The act carved the territory into the Kansas and Nebraska territories and, more controversially, declared that popular sovereignty would determine the future of slavery there.
The Death of the Missouri Compromise
Southerners jumped at this opportunity, because the act effectively repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820 that had banned slavery north of the 36˚ 30' parallel. As soon as the Kansas-Nebraska Act passed, hundreds of Missourians crossed the state line into Kansas with their slaves to push for slavery. These “border ruffians” set up a government in Lecompton, Kansas, and rigged elections to get more proslavery delegates sent to the constitutional convention. Northerners were shocked and astonished that Southerners had managed to repeal the almost-sacred Missouri Compromise.
Bleeding Kansas
Fearing that Kansas would become the next slave state, hundreds of Northern abolitionists also flocked to the territory and set up their own government in Lawrence. A band of proslavery men, however, burned Lawrence to the ground in 1856. In revenge, an abolitionist gang led by John Brown killed five border ruffians at the Pottawatomie Massacre.
These two events started an internal war so savage that many referred to the territory as “Bleeding Kansas.” The Kansas crisis was so shocking and so controversial that it even ignited tempers in Washington, D.C. In the most infamous case, one Southern congressman nearly caned abolitionist Senator Charles Sumner to death on the Senate floor for speaking out against the act and its authors.
The Election of 1856
Bleeding Kansas was the hottest topic in the presidential election of 1856. Democrat James Buchanan eventually defeated his Republican and Know-Nothing foes after many Southern states threatened to secede if a Republican became the next president. Just days after Buchanan took office, a new controversy hit: Chief Justice Roger Taney, along with a majority of the other justices of the Supreme Court, declared the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional in the 1857Dred Scott v. Sanford decision. The ruling startled Northerners because it meant that slavery technically could no longer be banned anywhere in the United States.
The Buchanan Years
Several states flat-out ignored the ruling, and Stephen Douglas challenged the Court when he proclaimed in his Freeport Doctrine during the Lincoln-Douglas debates that only popular sovereignty could decide the slavery question. But Buchanan backed Taney and also accepted the proslavery Lecompton Constitution, which border ruffians had drafted to make Kansas a new slave state. Douglas and others, however, blocked the constitution in the Senate.
Buchanan’s presidency was also marred by John Brown’s attempt to incite a massive slave uprising by seizing the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (in present-day West Virginia). The Harpers Ferry Raid went awry, however, and resulted only in Brown’s capture. While Northerners mourned his execution, Southerners cheered.
The Election of 1860
The election of 1860 took place amid this supercharged atmosphere. The Republicans nominated Abraham Lincoln, who was morally opposed to slavery but wanted to maintain the Union above all else. Northern Democrats wanted Stephen Douglas to run, but Southerners in the party refused to back him after he betrayed the South by opposing the Lecompton Constitution. As a result, the party split: Northern Democrats nominated Douglas, while Southern Democrats nominated Vice President John C. Breckinridge. The Constitutional Union Party, a minor offshoot of the Republican Party, nominated John Bell.
Southerners again threatened to secede if a Republican was elected. On Election Day, Lincoln received 40 percent of the popular vote and more electoral votes than all the other candidates combined.
Secession
South Carolina made good on its threats and seceded from the Union shortly after Lincoln’s election. Six other states soon followed. Together, they established a new government called the Confederate States of America in Richmond, Virginia, and chose Jefferson Davis as its first president. Four slave states, however, chose to remain in the Union. These border states proved invaluable to the North in the war.
In April 1861, Confederate forces attacked Fort Sumter, a Union stronghold in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina. The Union forces fell after intense bombardment, and the Civil War had begun. Shortly after the battle, four more states seceded from the Union and joined the Confederacy.
Strengths and Weaknesses
Both sides initially believed the war would end quickly. The Union had greater population, a larger army, and a robust industrial economy. The Confederacy, however, thought it stood a good chance because it would be fighting a defensive war with better military commanders. The South also was confident that cotton-dependent Britain would take its side. Illusions of an easy victory vanished for both, however, after the First Battle of Bull Run in 1861 and the bloody Battle of Shiloh in 1862.
A Strong Federal Government
President Lincoln pushed the limits of the Constitution several times throughout the war, believing that desperate times called for desperate measures. He suspended the writ of habeas corpus, illegally increased the size of the army, and ordered a naval blockade of the South. The Supreme Court often objected, but Congress usually sided with Lincoln.
Congress itself took bold action by passing a series of progressive new laws such as the Morrill Tariff, the Legal Tender Act, and the National Bank Act. These acts helped industry and gave the federal government unprecedented control over the economy. A draft was also enacted to increase the size of the army, much to the consternation of poorer Americans. Protests and riots, such as the New York City Draft Riots of 1863, erupted throughout the country.
Antietam and Emancipation
The 1862 Union victory at the very bloody Battle of Antietam convinced Britain to abandon the struggling South and find new sources of cotton. Antietam also convinced Lincoln to fire the incompetent General George McClellan, commander of the Army of the Potomac, who was too battle-shy to engage the Confederacy’s General Robert E. Lee. Lincoln also used the Antietam victory to issue his 1863Emancipation Proclamation, which nominally freed all slaves in the secessionist South.
1863 and 1864
The Battle of Gettysburg and the Battle of Vicksburg, both in 1863, were the major turning points in the war: Union troops crushed Lee’s forces at Gettysburg, while General Ulysses S. Grant’s victory at Vicksburg gave the Union control of the Mississippi and cracked the South in two.
In 1864, Grant also sent General William Tecumseh Sherman on his now-famous March to the Sea from Atlanta to Savannah, Georgia. Sherman’s men destroyed everything in their path, including crops, homes, livestock, and the entire city of Atlanta. Sherman’s rampage, along with the devastated economy, brought the South to its knees.
The Election of 1864
As the war dragged on into its fourth year, many Northerners began clamoring for peace. None were as loud as the Peace Democrats, or Copperheads, who wanted to negotiate a settlement with the South. They nominated George McClellan to run against Lincoln for the presidency in 1864. Lincoln and the Republicans, on the other hand, campaigned for continuation of the war until the South surrendered unconditionally and the Union was restored. Lincoln won, with 55 percent of the popular vote.
The Final Months
Lincoln’s reelection spelled doom for the South. Unable to control his government, secure any outside help, or even feed his people, Davis requested peace negotiations as a final attempt to save the Confederacy. Lincoln, however, rejected his requests at the Hampton Roads Conference in February 1865, because Davis was unwilling to accept anything less than full independence. A month later, retreating Confederates burned Richmond to prevent Union troops from taking it before Grant cornered and defeated the remains of Lee’s bedraggled army. Lee’s unconditional surrender at Appomattox Courthouse on April 9, 1865, ended the war.
Key People
John Brown
A zealous, itinerant radical who crusaded violently against slavery in the 1850s. Brown moved to Kansas with his family in the mid-1850s to prevent the territory from becoming a slave state. In 1856, he and a band of vigilantes helped start the Bleeding Kansas crisis when they slaughtered five border ruffians at the Pottawatomie Massacre. Three years later, Brown led another group of men in the Harpers Ferry Raid to incite a slave rebellion. He was captured during the raid and hanged shortly before the election of 1860. Brown’s death was cheered in the South but mourned in the North.
James Buchanan
A pro-Southern Democrat who became the fifteenth president of the United States in 1856. Buchanan defeated John Frémont of the new Republican Party and former president Millard Fillmore of the Know-Nothing Party in one of the most hotly contested elections in U.S. history. During his term, Buchanan supported the Lecompton Constitution to admit Kansas as a slave state, weathered the Panic of 1857, and did nothing to prevent South Carolina’s secession from the Union.
Jefferson Davis
A former Senator from Mississippi who was selected as the first president of the Confederacy in 1861. Overworked and underappreciated by his fellow Confederates, Davis struggled throughout the Civil War to unify the Southern states under the central government they had established.
Stephen Douglas
An influential Democratic senator and presidential candidate from Illinois. Douglas pushed the 1854Kansas-Nebraska Act through Congress to entice railroad developers to build a transcontinental railroad line in the North. The act opened Kansas and Nebraska territories to slavery and thus effectively repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820. A champion of popular sovereignty, he announced his Freeport Doctrine in the Lincoln-Douglas debates against Abraham Lincoln in 1858. Although Douglas was the most popular Democrat, Southern party members refused to nominate him for the presidency in 1860 because he had rejected the Lecompton Constitution to make Kansas a slave state. As a result, the party split: Northern Democrats nominated Douglas, while Southern Democrats nominated John C. Breckinridge. In the election of 1860, Douglas toured the country in an effort to save the Union.
Ulysses S. Grant
The Union’s top general in the Civil War, who went on to become the eighteenth U.S. president. Nicknamed “Unconditional Surrender” Grant, he waged total war against the South in 1863 and 1864.
Robert E. Lee
Arguably the most brilliant general in the U.S. Army in 1860, who turned down Abraham Lincoln’s offer to command the Union forces in favor of commanding the Army of Northern Virginia for the Confederacy. Although Lee loved the United States, he felt he had to stand by his native state of Virginia. His defeat at the Battle of Gettysburg proved to be the turning point in the war in favor of the North. Lee made the Confederacy’s unconditional surrender at Appomattox Courthouse to Ulysses S. Grant in April 1865 to end the Civil War.
Abraham Lincoln
A former lawyer from Illinois who became the sixteenth president of the United States in the election of 1860. Because Lincoln was a Republicanand was associated with the abolitionist cause, his election prompted South Carolina to secede from the Union. Lincoln, who believed that the states had never truly left the Union legally, fought the war until the South surrendered unconditionally. During the war, in 1863, Lincoln issued the largely symbolic Emancipation Proclamation to free all slaves in the South. Just at the war’s end, in April 1865, Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth in Washington, D.C.
George McClellan
A young, first-rate U.S. Army general who commanded the Union army against the Confederates during the Civil War. Unfortunately, McClellan proved to be overly cautious and was always reluctant to engage Confederate forces at a time when Abraham Lincoln badly needed military victories to satisfy Northern public opinion. McClellan did manage to defeat Robert E. Lee at the Battle of Antietam in 1862, which gave Lincoln the opportunity to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln eventually fired McClellan, however, after the general began to criticize publicly the president’s ability to command. In 1864, McClellan ran for president as a Peace Democrat on a platform for peace against Lincoln but was defeated.
Franklin Pierce
Fourteenth president of the United States, elected in 1852 as a proslavery Democrat from New England. Pierce combined his desire for empire and westward expansion with the South’s desire to find new slave territories. He tacitly backed William Walker’s attempt to seize Nicaragua and used the Ostend Manifesto to try to acquire Cuba from Spain. Pierce also oversaw the opening of trade relations with Japan, upon the return of Commodore Matthew Perry, and authorized the Gadsden Purchase from Mexico in 1853.
William Tecumseh Sherman
A close friend of Ulysses S. Grant who served as a general in the Union army during the Civil War. Sherman, like Grant, understood that the war would only truly be won when the Union forces had broken the will of the Southern public to fight. Sherman is best known for the total war he and his expedition force waged on the South during his March to the Sea.
Charles Sumner
A senator from Massachusetts who delivered an antislavery speech in the wake of the Bleeding Kansas crisis in 1856. In response, Sumner was caned nearly to death by South Carolinian congressman Preston Brooks on the Senate floor. The attack indicated just how passionately some Southerners viewed the popular sovereignty and slavery issue.
Zachary Taylor
A hero of the Mexican War who became the second and last Whig president in 1848. In order to avoid controversy over the westward expansion of slavery in the Mexican Cession, Taylor campaigned without a solid platform. He died after only sixteen months in office and was replaced by Millard Fillmore.
Terms
Bleeding Kansas
A violent crisis that enveloped Kansas after Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854. After the act passed, hundreds of Missourians crossed the border to make Kansas a slave state. Outraged by the intimidation tactics these “border ruffians” used to bully settlers, many Northern abolitionists moved to Kansas as well in the hopes of making the territory free. Tensions mounted until proslavery men burned the Free-Soil town of Lawrence, Kansas. John Brown and a band of abolitionist vigilantes countered by killing five men at the Pottawatomie Massacre in 1856. In many ways, Bleeding Kansas was a prelude to the war that loomed ahead.
“Border Ruffians”
A group of hundreds of Missourians who crossed the border into Kansas, hoping to make Kansas a slave state after Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854. The border ruffians rigged the elections to choose delegates for the Kansas constitutional convention, with the aim of making Kansas a new slave state. They succeeded and drafted the proslavery Lecompton Constitution in the winter of 1857. Outraged, many Northern abolitionists settled in Kansas to counter the border ruffians. The territory erupted into a civil war that became known as Bleeding Kansas. In 1858, the Senate rejected the Lecompton Constitution on the grounds that the elections had been rigged.
Compromise of 1850
A bundle of legislation that enabled the North and South to end, temporarily, the debate over the expansion of slavery. First proposed by Henry Clay and championed by Stephen Douglas, the Compromise of 1850 contained several provisions. California was admitted as a free state; the other western territories were left to popular sovereignty; the slave trade (but not slavery itself) was banned in Washington, D.C.; Texas ceded disputed land to New Mexico Territory; and a new Fugitive Slave Law was enacted. Though the compromise was only a temporary solution, it effectively postponed the Civil War, and this extra time allowed the Northern industrial economy to grow in the decade before the war.
Dred Scott v. Sanford
A landmark 1857 Supreme Court decision that effectively ruled that slaves were property. Dred Scott, a slave to a Southern army doctor, had lived with his master in Illinois and Wisconsin in the 1830s. While there, he married a free woman and had a daughter. Scott and his daughter eventually returned to the South. Scott sued his master for his and his family’s freedom, but Chief Justice Roger Taney and a conservative Supreme Court ruled against Scott, arguing that Congress had no right to restrict the movement of private property. Moreover, Taney ruled that blacks like Scott could not file lawsuits in federal courts because they were not citizens. The 1857 decision outraged Northerners and drove them further apart from the South.
Emancipation Proclamation
A presidential proclamation that nominally freed all slaves in the Confederacy. President Abraham Lincoln, emboldened by the Union victory at the Battle of Antietam, issued the proclamation on January 1, 1863. The proclamation did not free all slaves (North and South), because Lincoln did not want the proslavery border states to secede in anger. Though the proclamation had no immediate effect on black slaves in the South, it did mark an ideological turning point in the war, because it irrevocably linked emancipation with the restoration of the Union.
Free-Soil Party
A party formed by disgruntled Northern abolitionists in 1848, when Democrats nominated Lewis Cass for president and Whigs nominated the politically inept Zachary Taylor. Former president Martin Van Buren became the Free-Soil candidate for president, campaigning for the Wilmot Proviso and against popular sovereignty and the westward expansion of slavery. Van Buren received no votes in the electoral college but did detract enough popular votes from Cass to throw the election to Taylor.
Fugitive Slave Act
A law passed under the Compromise of 1850that forced Northerners to return runaway slaves to the South. Angered by the fact that many Northerners supported the Underground Railroad, Southerners demanded this new and stronger Fugitive Slave Act as part of the compromise. The act was so unpopular in the North that federal troops were often required to enforce it. One slave in Boston, Massachusetts, had to be escorted by 300 soldiers and a U.S. Navy ship. The law, like the Dred Scott v. Sanford decision, drove the North and South even further apart.
Hampton Roads Conference
A peace conference that Jefferson Davis requested in the winter of 1865, aware that the end of the war was near. At the conference, Abraham Lincoln’s representatives opened negotiations by demanding the unconditional surrender of the South and full emancipation of all slaves. The Southern delegation, however, refused anything less than full independence. The conference thus ended without resolution. However, the war ended only a few months later, completely on Lincoln’s terms.
Harpers Ferry Raid
An October 16, 1859, raid by John Brown, the infamous Free-Soiler who had killed five proslavery men at the Pottawatomie Massacre. This time around, Brown stormed an arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (present-day West Virginia), with twenty other men. He hoped the raid would prompt slaves throughout Virginia and the South to rise up against their masters. There was no rebellion, though, and Brown and his men found themselves cornered inside the arsenal. A long standoff ensued. Half the raiders were killed and the rest, including Brown, captured. After a speedy trial, Brown was convicted of treason and hanged. Although his death was cheered in the South, he became an abolitionist martyr in the North.
Lecompton Constitution
The Kansas constitution that resulted when hundreds of proslavery border ruffians from Missouri crossed into Kansas after the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 and rigged the elections to choose delegates for the Kansas constitutional convention. The border ruffians succeeded and submitted the proslavery Lecompton Constitution in the winter of 1857. After taking office that same year, pro-Southern president James Buchanan immediately accepted the constitution to make Kansas a new slave state. Democrat Stephen Douglas, however, rejected the Lecompton Constitution in the Senate on the grounds that the elections had been rigged. The South denounced Douglas as a traitor when a new (and more honest) vote in Kansas overwhelmingly made the territory free. Kansas was admitted into the Union after the Civil War began.
Liberty Party
A Northern abolitionist party formed in 1840 when the abolitionist movement split into a social wing and a political wing. The Liberty Party nominated James G. Birney in the election of 1844 against Whig Henry Clay and Democrat James K. Polk. Surprisingly, the Liberty Party detracted just enough votes from Clay to throw the election to the Democrats.
Lincoln-Douglas Debates
A series of public debates between the relatively unknown former congressman Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas in their home state of Illinois in 1858. Hoping to steal Douglas’s seat in the Senate in the national elections that year, Lincoln wanted to be the first to put the question of slavery to the voters. The “Little Giant” Douglas accepted and engaged Lincoln in a total of seven debates, each in front of several thousand people. Even though Lincoln lost the Senate seat, the debates made Lincoln a national figure.
Peace Democrats
A Northern party, also nicknamed the “Copperheads” after the poisonous snake, that criticized Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War. The Peace Democrats did not particularly care that the Southern states had seceded and wanted to let them go in peace. The Copperheads nominated George McClellan for president in 1864 on a peace platform but lost to Lincoln and the Republican Party.
Popular Sovereignty
The idea that citizens in the West should vote to determine whether their respective territories would become free states or slave states upon admission to the Union. Popular sovereignty was first proposed by presidential candidate Lewis Cass in 1848 and later championed by Stephen Douglas. The Whigs and the Republican Party flatly rejected popular sovereignty, because they opposed the westward expansion of slavery.
Pottawatomie Massacre
The killing of five proslavery men near Pottawatomie Creek, Kansas, by John Brown and a band of abolitionist vigilantes in retaliation for the burning of Free-Soil Lawrence, Kansas. Neither Brown nor any of his men were brought to justice. Instead, border ruffians and other proslavery settlers responded in kind and initiated the “Bleeding Kansas” crisis. Eventually, the entire territory became embroiled in a bloody civil war that foreshadowed the war between the North and South.
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
A novel, published by Harriet Beecher Stowe in 1852, that turned Northern public opinion against slavery and the South more than anything else in the decade before the Civil War. Uncle Tom’s Cabin became the first American bestseller almost overnight and went on to sell 250,000 copies in just a few short months. In the wake of the strengthened Fugitive Slave Act, Northerners identified with the black slave protagonist and pitied his suffering. The book affected the North so much that when Abraham Lincoln met Stowe in 1863, he called her “the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war.”
Study Questions
In your opinion, was the Civil War inevitable? Were the North and the South doomed from the beginning to battle each other eventually over the slavery issue?
The Civil War was essentially inevitable. Ever since Eli Whitney’s invention of the cotton gin in the 1790s, the South had been on a completely different economic and social path from the North. In the 1850s, social and political developments, including the publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the Fugitive Slave Act, Bleeding Kansas, the Dred Scott decision, and John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry, drove the regions further apart. Although the North and the South tried to reconcile their differences with major political compromises in 1820 and in 1850, both attempts failed.
The cotton gin transformed the slave South completely in the early 1800s, when plantation owners abandoned almost all other crops in favor of the newly profitable cotton. To raise more cotton, planters also purchased more slaves from Africa and the West Indies before the slave trade was banned in 1808. Thousands of blacks were brought into the United States during these years to tend to cotton fields. The size of plantations increased from relatively small plots to huge farms with as many as several hundred slaves each. Because the entire Southern economy became dependent on cotton, it also became dependent on slavery. Although Northern factories certainly benefited indirectly from slavery, Northern social customs were not tied to slavery as Southern customs were.
Events in the 1850s proved that the North-South slavery divide was irreconcilable. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 1852 novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which awakened Northerners to the plight of Southern slaves, became an overnight bestseller in the North but was banned in the South. The book was particularly powerful in the wake of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act, which forbade both Northerners and Southerners to assist runaway slaves—a law that troubled even those who had shown little sympathy for the abolitionist cause. The “Bleeding Kansas” violence of 1856 between proslavery groups and Free-Soilers shocked people in the North and in the South and demonstrated just how strongly the opposing camps felt about their beliefs. In 1857, the Dred Scott decision outraged Northerners because it declared the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional and effectively opened the North to slavery. Finally, John Brown’s 1859 raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia, and subsequent execution proved to be the last straw for many on both sides. Northerners mourned the “martyr” Brown, while Southerners celebrated his death as a great victory. These events of the 1850s convinced Americans in both the North and South that there could be no compromise on the slavery issue.
Both sides had tried to resolve the issue on numerous occasions, but to no avail. The Missouri Compromise of 1820 had established the 36˚ 30' parallel as the border between the slave states and the free states. This compromise satisfied both sides for a while but eventually became too restrictive for the South. The Compromise of 1850 likewise sought to end the slavery debate after the Mexican War and the Wilmot Proviso raised the question of slavery in the West—but in the end these peaceful resolutions were also unsatisfactory. As a result, in light of the deep political, economic, and social divides, as well as the failure of compromise attempts, armed conflict was thus inevitable.
Why were the border states so important to Lincoln?
When South Carolina seceded from the Union in 1860, four of the other fourteen slave states—Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky, and Missouri—chose to remain in the Union rather than join the Confederacy. West Virginia eventually seceded from Virginia in 1863 to become a nonslave state in the Union, too. These five border states were crucial to the North both geographically and economically. As a result, Lincoln was careful to maintain the border states’ allegiance and refrained from pursuing any policies that might be too bold and potentially alienating to slave owners in those states. Ultimately, the North’s possession of the border states directly affected the outcome of the war.
First and foremost, the border states provided a physical and ideological buffer between the North and South: if Maryland had seceded, Washington, D.C., would have been entirely surrounded by Confederate territory. Lincoln was acutely aware of Maryland’s importance: in the spring of 1861, he even turned to military force and instituted martial law in the state to keep it loyal to the Union.
The border states were just as important economically, especially because Maryland and Delaware contained many factories and industrial complexes. Had just those two states joined the Confederacy, they would have doubled the South’s manufacturing capability. Lacking these factories, though, the South ended up starving under the Union’s naval blockade. Indeed, the Civil War was in many ways an economic war, and doubling Southern manufacturing output could have seriously altered the duration and even the outcome of the conflict.
Finally, the border states’ loyalty to the Union showed that slave states had an alternative to secession. The South, for its part, had justified secession by claiming that slave states had to secede to save their “peculiar institution” and their way of life. The fact that the border states—where slavery was practiced—remained in the Union severely weakened this claim.
For all these reasons, Lincoln remained careful not to offend slave owners in the border states. The most notable example of his sensitivity to this issue is the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation, which declared slaves free in only the secessionist states—not the loyal border states. Ultimately, Lincoln’s measures were effective, and the continued loyalty of the border states was a major factor in the Union’s eventual victory.
Compare the North and the South in 1860 and then again in 1864. Why did the North win the war?
Although both the North and the South thought they would easily win the Civil War, the South was in many ways doomed from the start. Indeed, by 1864 the South was in ruins, its economy destroyed by blockade, hyperinflation, and the North’s campaign of total warfare. In the end, it was the Northern economy and deficiencies in the Southern political system that won and lost the war.
When war broke out in 1861, both sides thought they would win quickly and easily. The Union had experience and international recognition, a robust industrial economy, a strong federal government, twice the population of the South, and twice as many young men for its army. On the other hand, the new Confederacy had cotton (which it believed to be superior to industry), had better military commanders, and believed it could bring Britain into the war on its side. Just as important, however, was the South’s feeling of righteousness that followed secession: Southerners felt they were carrying on the tradition of overthrowing tyrannous governments that the founding fathers of the United States had begun. In addition, Southern soldiers, fighting on their home territory, also had an intense desire to fight to protect their homes and families.
By the end of 1864, however, the South lay in ruins, and very little remained of the once-proud Cotton Kingdom. The price of goods was so high and money was so worthless that it cost Southerners in some places several hundred Confederate dollars to buy a single loaf of bread. As a result, hunger and malnutrition became rampant. In addition, much of the landscape from Tennessee to Georgia and up to South Carolina had been razed by General William Tecumseh Sherman’s troops on their March to the Sea. Many slaves in the South effectively emancipated themselves by refusing to work and flocking to Union lines in droves. The North, meanwhile, was in many ways better off in 1864 than it had been before the war, for the economy had experienced an enormous boom during the war years and had set the industrial machine into high gear.
This industrial boom in the North, coupled with the Richmond government’s inability to provide cohesive leadership, won the war for the Union. Virtually all the effective measures passed by the Union government went unanswered by the Confederacy. Congress in Washington, D.C., for example, stabilized the Northern economy early on in the war by passing the Legal Tender Act, replacing the hundreds of different state and private bank currencies with a single federal dollar. Because this “greenback” currency was supported by the U.S. Treasury, investors knew it was safe and reliable. The National Banking Act also gave the federal government unprecedented control over the banking system and the economy as a whole. The Confederate government, on the other hand, dominated by states’ righters, never enacted any such federal laws but instead continued to reserve most powers for the individual states. This inaction, combined with the devastating economic effects of the Union’s naval blockade of the South, left the Confederate war effort doomed early on.
