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Summary of the Civil War

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

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

Lincoln called for all of the states in the Union to send troops to recapture the forts and preserve the Union. Most Northerners believed that a quick brutal victory for the Union would put out the rebellion, and so Lincoln only called for volunteers for 90 days. This resulted in four more states voting to secede. Once Virginia seceded, the Confederate capital was moved to Richmond, Virginia.

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

Eastern Theater 1861-1863

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

Major General George McClellan took command of the Union Army of the Potomac on July 26 (he was briefly given supreme command of all the Union armies, but was subsequently relieved of that post in favor of Maj. Gen. Henry W. Halleck), and the war began in earnest in 1862.

Upon the strong urging of President Lincoln to begin offensive operations, McClellan invaded Virginia in the spring of 1862 by way of the peninsula between the York River and James River, southeast of Richmond. His Army of the Potomac reached the gates of Richmond, but Robert E. Lee defeated him in the Seven Days Campaign and forced his retreat; he was stripped of many of his troops to help create John Pope’s Union Army of Virginia. Pope was beaten spectacularly by Lee at Second Bull Run in August.

Emboldened by Second Bull Run, the Confederacy made its first invasion of the North, when General Lee led 55,000 men of the Army of Northern Virginia across the Potomac River into Maryland on September 5. Lincoln then restored Pope’s troops to McClellan. McClellan won a bloody, but inconclusive, victory at the Battle of Antietam near Sharpsburg, Maryland, on September 17, 1862. Lee’s army, checked at last, returned to Virginia before McClellan could destroy it. Antietam is considered a Union victory because it halted Lee’s invasion of the North and provided justification for Lincoln to announce his Emancipation Proclamation.

When McClellan failed to follow up on Antietam, he was replaced by Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside. Burnside suffered near-immediate defeat at the Battle of Fredericksburg, and was in his turn replaced by Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker. Hooker, too, proved unable to defeat Lee’s army, despite possessing twice its numbers, and was humiliated in the Battle of Chancellorsville in May 1863. He was replaced by Maj. Gen. George G. Meade during Lee’s second invasion of the North, in June. Meade defeated Lee at the Battle of Gettysburg (July 1-3, 1863), the largest battle in North American history, which is sometimes considered the war’s turning point. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia suffered 28,000 casualties (versus Meade’s 23,000), again forcing it to retreat to Virginia, never to invade the north again.

Western Theater 1861-1863

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While the Confederate forces had numerous successes in the Eastern theater, they failed in the West. Confederate forces were driven from Missouri early in the war as result of the Battle of Pea Ridge. Leonidas Polk’s invasion of Kentucky enraged the citizens who previously had declared neutrality in the war, removing that state from the list of those friendly to the Confederacy.

Nashville, Tennessee fell to the Union early in 1862. Most of the Mississippi was opened with the taking of Island No. 10 and New Madrid, Missouri, and then Memphis, Tennessee. New Orleans, Louisiana, was captured in January, 1862, allowing the Union forces to begin moving up the Mississippi as well. Only the fortress city of Vicksburg, Mississippi prevented full Union control of the river.

Braxton Bragg’s second Confederate invasion of Kentucky was repulsed at the bloody Battle of Perryville and he was defeated by William S. Rosecrans at the Battle of Stones River in Tennessee.

The one clear Confederate victory in the West was the Battle of Chickamauga in Tennessee, near the Georgia border, where Bragg, reinforced by the corps of James Longstreet (from Lee’s army in the east), defeated Rosecrans and forced him into a siege at Chattanooga.

The Union’s key strategist and tactician in the west was Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, who won victories at Fort Henry, Fort Donelson, Shiloh, Vicksburg, Mississippi, and Chattanooga, Tennessee, driving Confederate forces out of Tennessee.

Fall of the Confederacy 1864-1865

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At the beginning of 1864, Grant was promoted to lieutenant general and given command of all Union armies. He chose to make his headquarters with the Army of the Potomac although Meade remained the actual commander of that army. He left Maj. Gen. William Techumseh Sherman in command of most of the western armies. Grant understood the concept of total war and believed, along with Lincoln and Sherman, that only the utter defeat of Confederate forces and their economic base would bring an end to the war. Therefore, scorched earth tactics would be required in some important theaters. He devised a coordinated strategy that would strike at the heart of the Confederacy from multiple directions: Grant, Meade, and Benjamin Butler against Lee near Richmond; Franz Sigel in the Shenandoah Valley; Sherman to invade Georgia and capture Atlanta; Nathaniel Banks to capture Mobile, Alabama

Union forces in the East attempted to maneuver past Lee and fought several battles during that phase of the Eastern campaign, known as Grant’s Overland Campaign. An attempt to outflank Lee from the South failed under Butler, who was corked into the Bermuda Hundred river bend. Grant was tenacious and, despite astonishing losses (over 66,000 casualties in six weeks), kept pressing the Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. He pinned down the Confederate army in the Siege of Petersburg, where the two armies engaged in trench warfare for over nine months.

After two failed attempts (under Sigel and David Hunter) to seize key points in the Shenandoah Valley, Grant finally found a commander, Philip Sheridan, aggressive enough to prevail in the Valley Campaigns of 1864. Sheridan was sent as a result of a raid by Jubal Early, whose corps reached the outer defenses of Washington, scaring the government, before withdrawing back to the Valley. Sheridan defeated Early in a series of battles, decisively at Cedar Creek, and proceeded to destroy the agricultural and industrial base of the Valley, similar to tactics Sherman would use in Georgia.

Meanwhile, Sherman marched from Chattanooga to Atlanta, Georgia, defeating Generals Joseph E. Johnston and John B. Hood. The capture of Atlanta on September 2, 1864, was a significant factor in re-electing Abraham Lincoln. Leaving Atlanta, he laid waste to much of the rest of Georgia in what has been called Sherman’s March to the Sea, reaching the sea at Savannah, Georgia in December, 1864. Burning towns and plantations as they went, Sherman’s armies hauled off crops and killed livestock to retaliate and to deny use of these economic assets to the Confederacy, a consequence of Grant’s scorched earth doctrine. When Sherman turned north through South Carolina and North Carolina to approach the Virginia lines from the south, it was the end for Lee and his men, and for the Confederacy.

Lee attempted to escape from Petersburg and link up with Johnston in North Carolina, but he was overtaken by Grant. He surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia on April 9, 1865, at Appomattox Court House. Johnston surrendered his troops to Sherman shortly thereafter. The Battle of Palmito Ranch, fought on May 13, 1865, in the far south of Texas, was the last land battle of the war and ended, ironically, with a Confederate victory. All Confederate land forces surrendered by June 1865. Confederate naval units surrendered as late as November 1865.

© 2005-2006 Travis Thomas
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