Civil War Begins

The Civil War Begins

The sectional conflict that led to the firing on Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, had a long history. The institution of slavery had plagued the United States from the nation's earliest existence. At the time of the American Revolution, critics of the patriots' opposition to Great Britain asked how the colonists could decry tyranny while holding half a million people in bondage. Some Southerners withheld support of the Declaration of Independence until Thomas Jefferson agreed to delete from it his denunciation of slavery. At the Constitutional Convention in 1787, the founding fathers spent days arguing about slavery, the slave trade, and the effect of the presence of a host of unfree blacks in the South on proposals concerning taxation and representation.

In the first half of the 19th century, the North grew rapidly. It began to industrialize, and millions of immigrants came to the region to work in the factories. The South, however, stayed mostly agricultural and fell behind in population and economic power. This caused a shift in political power, as the House of Representatives, which is based on population, was increasingly dominated by the North. To prevent Congress from being dominated by the North, the South began to focus on the other chamber, the Senate, where every state is guaranteed two seats regardless of size. Accordingly, the South advocated the expansion of slavery into the western territories that would one day become states. Major political battles ensued as Northerners became increasingly angered by the expansionist appetite of the “slavocracy” and Southerners developed an intense fear of the national government as a threat to their slave society.

Only grudging accommodations prevented even greater troubles. The Compromise of 1820 admitted Missouri to the Union as a slave state in return for the entrance of Maine as a free state, thus preserving the South's equal voice in the Senate. The Missouri Compromise also forbade the extension of slavery into the Louisiana Territory above a specific northern latitude.

Many Americans condemned the War with Mexico from 1846 to 1848 as an attempt by supporters of the South to extend the area available for slavery. Twice during the conflict, David Wilmot, a Pennsylvania Democrat, won strong Northern support by proposing a ban on the introduction of slavery into any territory taken from Mexico, but Congress rejected this Wilmot Proviso. The Compromise of 1850 partially calmed the North by establishing California as a free state and by ending the slave trade in the nation's capital of Washington, D.C.; on the other hand, the South received a strong law requiring the return of fugitive slaves.

After 1850, hopes of compromise faded as slavery became a moral issue beyond political solution. Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, which appeared in book form in 1852, filled many Northerners with repulsion for the treatment of human beings as mere chattels. The decision of the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case of 1857 that the Missouri Compromise represented an unconstitutional limitation on the property rights of slave owners alienated even more residents of the free states.

Southerners also found the situation intolerable. Denounced as immoral, they countered with a description of slavery as a benefit that “civilized” the slave. Angered by the cries of abolitionists, slaveholders saw little reason why they should not have the opportunity to extend the institution to the western territories. Political parties, the vehicles of compromise, found themselves unable to overcome the new spirit of discord. Reflecting the inflexibility of their constituents, the Democratic Party broke into factions, and the Whigs totally disbanded. Gradually, dissidents from all camps formed the Republican Party, which was based on opposition to the extension of slavery. Both Republicans and Democrats recognized that the 1860 presidential election would be crucial.

Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois, the leading contender for the Democratic nomination, advocated that the residents of the territories, prior to admission to the Union, have the power to accept or outlaw slavery within their own areas. Antislavery Northerners distrusted Douglas because he had formulated the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, which applied this policy of “popular sovereignty” to the Kansas and Nebraska territories. Southerners disliked Douglas because he argued that people could keep slave owners out of their territories by simply not passing the police regulations necessary to maintain the system.

Douglas remained the strongest candidate when the Democratic convention opened in Charleston, South Carolina, on April 23, 1860, but he did not have enough strength to control the gathering. When a majority of the delegates accepted popular sovereignty as part of the platform, the representatives of eight Southern states walked out, making it impossible for Douglas to garner the two-thirds vote necessary for nomination. The Democrats adjourned and reconvened in Baltimore, Maryland, on June 8, but the Southerners again bolted rather than accept Douglas. The remaining delegates thereupon nominated him.

Dissident Southern Democrats held their own convention in Baltimore on June 28, 1860 and drew up a platform demanding an equal opportunity to take part in the settlement of the territories. They then nominated John C. Breckenridge of Kentucky for president. In May the newly formed Constitutional Union party, a coalition of conservatives from several defunct political organizations, had also met in Baltimore and chosen John Bell of Tennessee to run on a platform denouncing sectionalism and encouraging support of the Constitution.

The Republicans had convened in Chicago, Illinois, on May 16, jubilant over the chaotic state of the Democrats. They nominated Abraham Lincoln of Illinois, Douglas's unsuccessful opponent in the 1858 senatorial election and a foe of the extension of slavery into the territories. Lincoln received 1,866,452 votes in the November 6, 1860, election, only a plurality of those cast, but he won the necessary majority in the electoral college with 180 votes, not one of which came from a slave state. Douglas obtained 1,375,157 votes, but his strength was so dispersed that he garnered only 12 electoral ballots. Breckenridge won 847,953 votes and 72 electoral votes, all from slave states. Bell won 590,631 votes and 39 electoral votes from slave-owning border states.

Many Southerners were unable to reconcile themselves to Lincoln's election. Although he claimed not to be an abolitionist, he was the candidate of the North's antislavery party. Furthermore, Lincoln's victory confirmed the increasing political and economic dominance of the Northeast and West. Unable to maintain their relative strength, Southerners looked away from the Union toward a country of their own. On December 20, 1860, South Carolina, the most defiant of the Southern states, repealed its ratification of the United States Constitution and announced its secession from the United States. Mississippi, Florida, and Alabama followed suit in 1861, on January 10, and January 11, respectively. The similar actions of Georgia on January 19, Louisiana on January 26, and Texas on February 1 brought to seven the number of rebellious states. On February 4 the first six met in Montgomery, Alabama, to form the Confederate States of America, and Texas soon joined the new confederation as well.

Not all Southerners were in accord with the secessionists. Some, known as cooperationists, wanted to give Lincoln time to show his intentions: If he proved to be an abolitionist, then the slave states could leave with a demonstration of unity rather than in a piecemeal manner. Georgia cooperationists conducted a vigorous but futile campaign against secession. In Texas, Governor Sam Houston, an ardent Unionist, held out until the secessionists forced him to call a special convention. That gathering decided that Texas should withdraw from the Union, and it won the approval of a plebiscite for its decision.

James Buchanan remained in the White House during the opening months of the secession crisis. A lame-duck president with Southern sympathies, he was politically and psychologically unable to act effectively against the rebellious states. Other leaders took up the slack and attempted to engineer a compromise satisfactory to the contending sections. Senator John J. Crittenden of Kentucky put forward the most important proposal, which offered federal protection for slavery in the states where it already existed and permission for the institution to expand into the Southwest.

Lincoln had no authority to act prior to his inauguration, but he exerted a powerful behind the scenes influence. Through his friends, the president-elect made it clear that he would not accept any proposal that authorized the extension of slavery into the territories and thus doomed the hopes of Crittenden and others who wished to conciliate the South. The nation could only wait for the March 4 ceremony at which the new president would take office and announce his plans.

In his first inaugural address, Lincoln outlined his obligations and intentions, but he avoided a call to action. He declared the constitutional separation of the states to be as impossible as a physical one, and he affirmed that he had an “oath in Heaven…to preserve, protect, and defend” the government. Yet Lincoln offered to support a constitutional amendment that would guarantee the domestic institutions of the states, including slavery, and promised that the federal government would not resort to violence unless attacked. The new president ended his speech with the hope that “the mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

Once in office, Lincoln had to deal with the gravest threat to the national government, the demand of the Confederate States of America for the surrender of the four remaining federal forts in the South. Forts Jefferson and Taylor in Florida appeared secure, but to assure the safety of Fort Pickens, Florida, Lincoln ordered troops waiting in Pensacola harbor to join the forces already at that outpost. In January 1861, however, the Star of the West, a merchant steamer bearing reinforcements and provisions for Fort Sumter, had been driven away from Charleston harbor by South Carolina forces. By the time of Lincoln's inauguration, Major Robert Anderson's garrison at Fort Sumter had supplies for only six additional weeks.

On March 5, 1861, the day after Lincoln assumed office, Secretary of State William H. Seward brought the president letters from Anderson, reporting that his situation was virtually hopeless. In light of the commander's pessimism, Seward and the aged General Winfield Scott advised the president to surrender Fort Sumter. During the following weeks, Seward and Scott continued to bring Lincoln messages from Southern Unionists and Northern conservatives, urging him not to provoke South Carolina lest the remaining slave states also declare secession. On March 15 the cabinet advised the president to withdraw Union forces from the fort.

Many Americans strenuously opposed any concession on Sumter, however. Some Republicans advised the president that surrender to the Confederates on this point would destroy both the party and the government. Postmaster General Montgomery Blair and his father, Francis P. Blair, formerly a trusted adviser of Andrew Jackson, warned Lincoln that to evacuate the fort would be an ignominious “surrender of the Union.” Blair's brother-in-law, Gustavus Vasa Fox, a retired naval officer, presented a plan to relieve Sumter with troops and supplies.

The president kept his silence for several weeks. While sending Fox to inspect Fort Sumter, Lincoln also dispatched his friend Stephen A. Hurlbut, who had relatives in Charleston, to visit the South Carolina capital. On March 27 Hurlbut reported that even the moderates in the state would fire on any ship that attempted to bring provisions, let alone troops, to Sumter. After a state dinner on March 28, Lincoln informed his cabinet that Scott now advocated abandoning both Pickens and Sumter as a means of guaranteeing the support of the remaining slave states for the Union. The proposal did not sit well with the cabinet. The next day the cabinet reversed its former position, and all the members save Seward argued that Lincoln should hold both Pickens and Sumter. The President then issued orders for expeditions to both outposts.

On April 1, Secretary Seward, dismayed by the failure of his policy to win acceptance, offered a desperate alternative solution. He advocated that the president conciliate the South by yielding Sumter while holding Pickens and unify the nation through the creation and exploitation of a crisis with a foreign nation. Lincoln rejected the proposal and stated that his policy would be to maintain all federal positions.

On April 4, Lincoln told Fox to carry out his plans for an expedition including a chartered steamboat with 200 soldiers and one year's provisions, a gunboat, three tugs, and three warships, one of which was later diverted to the Pickens convoy. The president advised Major Anderson of the mission and, on April 6, dispatched a message to the governor of South Carolina to inform him of the shipment of provisions to Fort Sumter. The South Carolina authorities dared not allow the reinforcement of Sumter, lest the fort indefinitely threaten the activity of one of the Confederacy's leading ports. The governor ordered General Pierre G. T. Beauregard on April 11 to demand Anderson's surrender. The Union major asked for permission to delay evacuation until his supplies ran out, but the Confederates, aware that the relief ships were approaching, refused his request.

The Confederates gave Anderson until 4:00 A.M. on April 12, 1861, to surrender Fort Sumter. When the major held firm past the deadline, Beauregard ordered the Charleston shore batteries to fire on the fort. It is often alleged that it was Edmund B. Ruffin, the South Carolina radical, who pulled the lanyard that set off the first shot. At 2:30 P.M. on April 13, after 34 hours of intense but bloodless bombardment, the Union troops, their ammunition expended, surrendered their burnt-out post. In the interim, Fox's ships arrived and, with the permission of the Southerners, took the defenders off their island fort. Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederate States, condemned Lincoln's Sumter policy as a maneuver designed to make the South appear to be the aggressor.

In the attempt to provision Sumter, Lincoln followed a strategy of calculated risk to preserve the Union. The president believed that the government would gain nothing by the surrender of Sumter, but he also recognized that any expedition to provision the fort would be fraught with risks. The North might suffer a psychological defeat if the mission failed; worse, the federal government might well seem the aggressor if in the course of the operation the Confederates managed to draw the first fire from the fort.

The firing on Fort Sumter began the Civil War. On April 15, 1861, Lincoln issued a proclamation asking the states to provide 75,000 militiamen to put down the insurrection in the South. On April 19 he ordered the navy to blockade the ports of the Confederacy.

The state of Virginia, previously divided on the question, declared its secession from the Union on April 17. A number of Virginians who were leaders in the U.S. Army, most notably Robert E. Lee, followed their state into secession. Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina also joined the Confederacy, on May 6, May 7, and May 20, respectively. The slave states of Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri remained loyal to the Union. The Delaware legislature raised troops in response to Lincoln's call, and pro-Northern elements in Maryland, with the aid of the federal government, arrested officials with Confederate sympathies. Kentucky at first announced its neutrality, but it called for federal troops when it was invaded by the Southern army. Missouri underwent an internal conflict to determine its allegiance, with the pro-Union forces gaining victory by March 1862.

Confederate armies enjoyed early successes, especially on July 21, 1861, at the first battle of Bull Run in Virginia, near Washington, D.C. There General Joseph E. Johnston repulsed an attack by Union forces under Brigadier General Irvin McDowell and, with the aid of reinforcements under General Thomas J. (“Stonewall”) Jackson, drove them in a disorderly retreat toward Washington. Northerners were shocked by the Confederate victory, and Lincoln replaced McDowell with Major General George B. McClellan.

Northern armies were more successful in 1862, although the Confederates scored a repeat victory near Bull Run on August 29 and 30, 1862. Earlier in the year, Union forces under General Ulysses S. Grant had defeated the Confederates in Tennessee at Fort Henry on February 6 and at Fort Donelson on February 16. Grant's men turned what was almost a defeat into a victory at Shiloh in Tennessee on April 6 and 7. On September 17, McClellan won a technical victory in one of the bloodiest battles of the war, defeating the Southerners in a near stand-off at Antietam, Maryland. The killed and wounded totaled close to 24,000, more or less evenly divided between the two sides. McClellan's victory gave President Lincoln enough political leverage to issue on New Year's Day, 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation, ordering the freeing of slaves in areas controlled by the rebels.

The turning point of the Civil War came in 1863 with the Union victory at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, which ended the South's attempt to invade the North and end the war. On July 4, Grant accepted the surrender of Vicksburg, Mississippi, thus assuring Northern control of the Mississippi River and dividing the South in half. These twin successes ended all Southern hopes of obtaining aid from friendly foreign nations such as Great Britain.

Union forces continued the attack in 1864. General William T. Sherman set out from Chattanooga, Tennessee, on May 7 on his famous march through Georgia and captured Atlanta on September 2. On November 14, Sherman began his March to the Sea, during which his men cut a wide path of destruction between Atlanta and the port city of Savannah, which fell on December 22. In the spring of 1864, Grant began a siege of nearly ten months outside Petersburg, Virginia, near the Confederate capital of Richmond. The costly operation eventually brought final victory.

By the spring of 1865, the Southerners were no longer able to hold off their opponents. On April 2, the Confederate commander, General Robert E. Lee, evacuated both Petersburg and Richmond. Grant requested Lee's surrender on April 7, and two days later he received it at Appomattox Court House, Virginia. Lee's surrender virtually ended the war. Northerners rejoiced at the restoration of the Union, but the assassination of President Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth on April 14 brought a time of mourning rather than celebration.

The Civil War was the costliest war in American history. Between 33 and 40 percent of the Union and Confederate soldiers involved became casualties. The North suffered 359,528 dead and 275,175 wounded, while the South suffered 258,000 dead and at least 100,000 wounded. The social, economic, and psychological devastation cannot be calculated.