American Civil War

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American civil war (1861-5), the most important event in the history of the USA. It resulted from a fundamental disagreement between two sections, North and South, about the place of chattel slavery in the Union. Without the slavery question there would have been no war. The southern emphasis on ‘states rights’ was essentially a coded phrase for the defence of slavery. By the 1840s a pro-slavery ideology had grown up in the Deep South which argued that slavery was a positive good and by 1860 this had become popular throughout the entire South and imbued it with a strong feeling that the slave states enjoyed a unique culture. Increasing numbers of secessionists claimed that this culture could only be protected by gaining independence. The war itself was detonated by the refusal of the slave states to accept the decision of the 1860 presidential election, which had seen the first Republican candidate, Abraham Lincoln, sweep the northern states but did not gain a single electoral vote in the South. From December 1860-February 1861 seven states in the Deep South passed ordinances of secession, occupied federal installations, and called out their militias. These states set up their own Confederacy with a pro-slavery constitution headed by a Confederate president, Jefferson Davis, and this new government located its capital initially at Montgomery, Alabama. The rebel government was eager to remove the two remaining federal outposts on their territory, at Pensacola in Florida and at Fort Sumter in Charleston harbour. After a stand-off lasting four months, the Confederacy bombarded the latter on 12-13 April 1861.

President Lincoln responded by issuing a proclamation calling for 75, 000 volunteers for three months to suppress a rebellion against federal authority. Virtually all participants believed that the conflict would be short. Perhaps it would have been if the seceded states had remained only seven in number; however, four important states of the Upper South, Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Arkansas, seceded rather than co-operate in the ‘coercion’ of their sister slave states. They added not only to the Confederacy's population and territory but also to its sparse industrial resources. However, geography placed Virginia and Tennessee especially in the very front line should military operations escalate. So large was the Confederacy that a number of influential figures doubted whether it could be physically occupied and placed their hopes in the naval blockade which was announced on 19 April. Certainly, the South's geographical advantages added to a prevailing sense of overconfidence that independence could be achieved easily.

A widespread belief in a short war was buttressed in the North by an awareness of a great disparity in resources. The total population of the USA in 1860 was 31, 443, 321. Of these the population of the southern states was 8, 726, 644 (of whom 3, 953, 760 were slaves). The Border States (Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri) had a population of 3, 588, 729. Throughout 1861-2 ensuring the loyalty of the Border States remained a top priority for the Lincoln administration. Should secession be limited to eleven states then the northern states could mobilize 4 million fighting men to the Confederacy's 1, 100, 000. The industrial disparity was even greater. The states of Massachusetts and Pennsylvania alone produced more manufactured goods than the entire Confederacy. The South could produce sufficient food to feed itself but lacked the means to transport it. In 1860 only 9, 000 miles (14, 481 km) of the American total of 31, 000 miles (49, 879 km) of railway track could be found in the South, and southern engineers had completed only nine of the 470 locomotives built before 1860. Yet a material disparity in itself does not guarantee victory and Lincoln's main problem was in mobilizing and organizing the great resources available to him for waging war.

The secession crisis had generated the largest arms race yet seen in North America. In the North the 75, 000 volunteers were soon supplemented, and by 1 July 1861 300, 000 men had been raised, the majority for three years. Jefferson Davis had succeeded in raising 200, 000 Confederate volunteers by August 1861. These hosts on both sides were difficult to command. The men believed that they were civilians in uniform and enjoyed all their previous rights; they were not deferential to their officers, who were often elected. Many incompetents had to be weeded out by commissions boards over the next year. Important politicians, such as John C. Frémont, Benjamin F. Butler, and Nathaniel P. Banks, were awarded generals' commissions. Consequently, armies on both sides were subject to political influences, but especially those Union forces that were encamped near Washington, known by the summer as the Army of the Potomac, because the process of congressional and presidential elections continued unabated despite the war.

Political pressure helped shape the first campaign. The elderly general-in-chief, Winfield Scott preferred to launch a well-prepared campaign in the Mississippi basin relying on the economic strangulation of the South. This concept was strategically sensible but was unacceptable to public opinion because it would work slowly. The press dubbed it the ‘Anaconda Plan’. The power of the press and propaganda was potent throughout the conflict. In the spring of 1861 the Confederacy decided to move its capital to Richmond, Virginia, a mere 100 miles (161 km) from Washington. A clamour developed that the federal army should move ‘on to Richmond’. The result was an advance towards Centreville and a Confederate defensive victory at first Bull Run. However, Confederate forces were disorganized by their success and could not exploit it. McClellan was appointed to command the Army of the Potomac and began an energetic programme of consolidation, reorganization, and training. In November he replaced Scott as general-in-chief and became overburdened by his dual role. The first lull in the eastern theatre ensued, but this brought immense political dissatisfaction with the war's conduct and culminated in the creation of the Congressional Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War on 20 December 1861. This body was highly critical of McClellan's conciliatory policy, which stressed that the war aimed at the restoration of the Union and not the destruction of slavery.

The American civil war: The Union and the Confederacy, 1861.
(Click to enlarge)

Despite rising discontent with ‘champagne and oysters on the Potomac’—a sarcastic reference to McClellan's penchant for elaborate reviews of his troops, the federal government made rapid progress in suppressing the Confederacy by the spring of 1862. Indeed by March of that year it looked as if the optimistic view that the civil war would be short was the right one. A series of successful amphibious operations on the coastal littoral of the Carolinas was followed by the seizure of New Orleans (the greatest city in the Confederacy) on 24-5 April 1862. An early Confederate victory at Wilson's Creek, Missouri, in August 1861 was followed by crushing Union victory at Pea Ridge, Arkansas, 6-8 March 1862 which made incursions into the south-west possible. In Tennessee, Grant seized Forts Henry and Donelson, which led to the fall of Nashville on 25 February 1862. The Confederate forces, commanded by Albert Sidney Johnston, launched a counterstroke and took Union troops by surprise at Shiloh on 6 April, Grant recovered, parried the Confederate blows, and then threw in a counter-attack in co-operation with Don Carlos Buell's Army of the Ohio. This success enabled the overall commander in the west, Halleck, to concentrate 130, 000 men and occupy Memphis.

But appearances were deceptive and the war was actually taking the form that would prevail for a further three years. Although military operations took place in the areas west of the Mississippi, and in Arkansas, there were three central theatres of operations: first, the west centred in western Tennessee and Mississippi, where the Union attempted to complete its stranglehold of the Mississippi basin; second, eastern Tennessee and Kentucky, focused around the railway junction of Chattanooga; and third, northern Virginia between the Rappahannock and Potomac rivers. As strategic movement over such huge distances was dependent on the railway, railway junctions assumed an enormous importance in all three theatres. The eastern theatre was the most sensitive politically and also bore more on the attention of the great European powers. Great Britain and France sympathized with the Confederacy, the former having awarded the Confederacy belligerent rights in 1861; France was supporting a puppet government in Mexico; but neither would enter the war, thus transforming its character, until the Confederacy could demonstrate that it could win its independence by its own exertions; and that meant winning a battle on northern soil. By the spring of 1862 Confederate armies had given scant evidence that they were capable of such efforts.


The American civil war: principal campaigns, 1861-5.
(Click to enlarge)

In April 1862 McClellan set out on his ‘grand campaign’ designed to seal the Confederacy's doom by an amphibious operation up the peninsula between the James and York rivers, occupying Yorktown and the Confederate capital at Richmond. He was relieved of his duties as general-in-chief and replaced by Halleck. Lincoln had disliked McClellan's plan, preferring a direct advance towards Manassas Junction and thence on Richmond from the north. He ordered that a corps be retained at Fredericksburg to cover Washington. But McClellan advanced so cautiously that he permitted a Confederate concentration before the city. An initial Confederate counterstroke at Seven Pines (31 May-1 June) was bungled and the Confederate commander Johnston was severely wounded. In a fateful decision Davis replaced him with Lee, who had meanwhile encouraged Jackson to carry out his campaign in the Shenandoah which distracted Lincoln's attention; he was then ordered to join Lee's forces before Richmond and help turn McClellan's right. In a brilliantly conceived operation (and despite several tactical repulses) Lee's Army of Northern Virginia in the Seven Days battles succeeded in driving McClellan back to Harrison's Landing, shattering his nerves and political prestige. However, Lee failed to secure his ultimate objective, the destruction of the Army of the Potomac.

Thereupon Lee moved to tighten his hold on the initiative, defeated the Army of Virginia at second Bull Run and then crossed over into Maryland, determined to seek an outright Confederate victory at the earliest opportunity. McClellan's army had been evacuated from the peninsula and covered Washington. One of Lee's orders detailing the dispersal of his army was found by Union troops and enabled McClellan to attack him at Antietam before his concentration was complete. Yet McClellan's attack was clumsy and poorly co-ordinated; Lee was able to parry his blows. Nonetheless, he was forced to evacuate Maryland, and this meagre strategic success enabled Lincoln to issue the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation on 22 September. His move widened the social dimension of the war and freed all slaves currently held in Confederate territory; the war was no longer solely for the Union as it was. The Maryland adventure, in any case, was only one wing of a Confederate counter-offensive. Bragg, the Confederate commander in Tennessee, moved into Kentucky, but on 8 October Don Carlos Buell caught up with him at Perryville, and repulsed his attacks; only one-third of the Union army was engaged but Bragg escaped through the Cumberland Gap. A fleeting opportunity to gain foreign intervention was allowed to slip through Confederate fingers.

The civil war now entered a period of stalemate, and increasingly the Union resorted to an attritional strategy to bring the Confederacy down. McClellan, the chief spokesman for limited war, was removed on 8 November. But Lincoln's chief problem was in finding a general who could match Lee's operational skills and put into practice a grim strategy that would wear away the Confederacy's lighter, more mobile armies which excelled at manoeuvre. Union defeats at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville almost brought Lincoln's administration to its knees. A defensive success at Murfreesboro (Stone's River, 31 December 1862-2 January 1863) in central Tennessee seemed a greater triumph than it actually was. It was also becoming clear that battles could no longer be won in a single day and demanded nerve and stamina not only from the fighting troops but from the commanders as well.

The spring of 1863 placed the Confederacy uncomfortably on the horns of a strategic dilemma. Grant was inching closer to the crucial Mississippi communications centre at Vicksburg. Yet the brilliant victory at Chancellorsville offered an opportunity to renew the campaign north of the Potomac. Davis had already sent a recuperated Johnston to take charge of the west, but he was cautious and acted without confidence. Lee's view prevailed and he invaded Pennsylvania. Lacking cavalry while Stuart indulged in a cavalry raid that skirted Washington, Lee allowed himself to be drawn into the battle of Gettysburg (1-3 July 1863), where he was defeated. As for operations in the west, Grant slipped south of Vicksburg and crossed to the east bank of the Mississippi river. In an object lesson in calculated audacity, he advanced towards Jackson, Mississippi, and then turned west, defeating the Confederates at Champion's Hill before investing Vicksburg on 19 May. The city surrendered on 4 July 1863 thus cutting off the Confederate Trans-Mississippi from Richmond and permitting untrammelled Union passage of the Mississippi river. A third success for Union arms was recorded when William S. Rosecrans occupied most of east Tennessee in August 1863 in a series of sweeping turning movements that drove Bragg back into Georgia with his army intact.

The Union needed to deliver a knockout blow. Despite its successes, Confederate armies still remained in the field, Richmond was inviolate, and the secessionist heartland in the Deep South remained untouched. The capacity of the Confederacy to strike back was revealed in the autumn of 1863 when Bragg defeated Rosecrans's Army of the Cumberland at Chickamauga (19-20 September) and moved to besiege Chattanooga. His opportunity was thrown away by what amounted to a virtual mutiny of the general officers of the Confederate Army of Tennessee, most of whom called for Bragg to be dismissed. This unseemly fracas required the presence of Jefferson Davis to sort out. In the meantime, Grant was given command at Chattanooga, and first concentrated overwhelming Union forces before defeating the Confederates who occupied the high ground south and east of the town. This success led to his promotion (as lieutenant general) to general-in-chief of the Union armies, and he moved to Washington to take command in March 1864.

Although it had been tried before, Grant was determined to unleash a simultaneous concentric advance on all fronts that would prevent a Confederate concentration at key points. However, he would be frustrated because the terrain favoured the tactical defence in the two major theatres, Virginia and Georgia, and the war had demonstrated that the defensive was growing in potency. The civil war was an infantryman's war. Soldiers were equipped with rifled muskets which fired the Minié bullet to a range of about 1, 000 yards (914 metres) ; this was a significant improvement on the Napoleonic musket. Consequently, soldiers of both sides increasingly resorted to entrenchments by 1863; but as the rifle-musket still had to be fired standing up in volleys, these consisted of shallow rifle pits, perhaps 3-4 feet (0.9-1.2 metres) deep with a breastwork several feet high placed on top of this. The role of cavalry was reduced to that of intelligence gathering and screening, and as a result, often fought its own separate, mounted engagements away from the main battlefield. Artillery was experiencing a transitional period; it still had to be ‘pointed’ by direct fire at the enemy. Although devastating against attacking infantry, it as yet lacked explosive power to destroy even shallow entrenchments. In short, Grant's dynamic strategy faced severe tactical obstacles, but he was remorseless in pursuit of his objective.

The 1864 campaign consisted of two attritional thrusts on geographical objectives, Atlanta and Richmond. The two overall Union commanders, Grant and Sherman, sought to destroy the two Confederate armies in front of them before either could fall back into Richmond or Atlanta's defences. The main difference between them was that Lee fought Grant for the initiative whereas Joseph E. Johnston did not contest this with Sherman. The result in Virginia, where two well-matched adversaries were determined to fight it out, was a ferocious series of great attritional battles, Wilderness (4-6 May), Spotsylvania (8-21 May), followed by the shattering Union repulse at Cold Harbor on 3 June. The Confederates inflicted casualties equal to their own strength, but Grant recovered from this setback to cross the James river and on 15 June advance on Petersburg, Richmond's communications centre on the Appomattox river. Lee arrived in the nick of time but only ensured that the siege that he had always feared was the result of his tenacious defence. Sherman, who now commanded the Military Division of the West, was determined to apply pressure on Johnston so that he could not send reinforcements to aid Lee. The strategic co-ordination of Union armies over such great distances was facilitated by the use of the telegraph. Outflanking his opponent's position on the Rocky Face Ridge, Sherman almost cut the Army of Tennessee off from its communications. Johnston considered launching a counter-attack at Cassville but refrained, and withdrew back through the Allatoona Pass behind the Etowah river. Sherman moved into the woods around his left, and was blocked at New Hope Church. Sherman tried to force the Confederate lines at Kennesaw Mountain but was repulsed on 27 June with 3, 000 casualties. Yet Sherman inched towards Atlanta and by 9 July was only 4 miles (6.4 km) from its centre. Johnston was replaced by the impulsive Hood. He launched a series of disastrous counter-attacks, which failed to prevent Sherman from extending his tentacles south of Atlanta, and the city was finally evacuated on 1 September 1864. This tremendous success guaranteed Lincoln's re-election in the presidential contest in November, and offered Sherman the chance to cut the Confederacy in two by marching towards the Atlantic coast.

The event which made this possible was the rash decision by Hood to attack towards Chattanooga, thus evacuating the critical theatre of operations. Sherman was eventually able to advance towards Savannah with impunity. Neither Grant nor Lincoln was keen on this alternative, but Sherman reassured them by sending George H. Thomas and the Army of the Cumberland to Nashville to defend his rear. There on 15-16 December 1864 Thomas crushed Hood's army. Sherman's prime targets in his famous marches were Confederate war-making resources and morale. Property rather than the people themselves were the victims of his depredations but his attacks were aimed just as much at the civil will as the morale of Confederate soldiers. He set about demonstrating that the Confederacy was an ‘empty shell’. In January 1865 he moved through South Carolina and thence into North Carolina, determined to link up with Grant.

The final Confederate collapse was precipitate. A much enfeebled Army of Northern Virginia was besieged in Richmond. Lee's efforts the previous summer to distract attention by sending a small force under Jubal A. Early up the Shenandoah valley towards Washington brought an awful retribution on this beautiful rural area. Confederate troops were driven back and the new Union commander Sheridan, was ordered by Grant to destroy all provisions and crops, a duty which he executed with great zeal. Denied the foodstuffs of the Shenandoah, the fall of Richmond was just a matter of time. Sheridan rejoined Grant and shattered Lee's right flank at Five Forks (31 March 1865), causing the evacuation of Richmond on 1-2 April. Grant pursued the remnants of the Confederate army and forced their capitulation at Appomattox Court House on 9 April 1865. Remaining Confederate troops in North Carolina surrendered to Sherman at Durham Station on 26 April, although small detachments in the Trans-Mississippi did not surrender until May.

The civil war had cost 620, 000 American soldiers' lives (360, 000 Union and 260, 000 Confederate), although two-thirds of these were victims of disease not bullets. The economic damage inflicted on the South was enormous. Total southern capital, heavily invested in now-demonetized slaves, shrank by 46 per cent, whereas northern capital grew by 50 per cent. In 1860 the slave states contained 30 per cent of the total wealth of the USA, by 1870 this figure had slumped to 12 per cent. The war's political significance was enormous: the issue of secession was dealt with once and for all; slavery was abolished; and the power of the federal government was greatly increased. Its military significance was no less momentous. The civil war pointed to the great importance in modern war of organization, especially in the related spheres of logistics, communications, and transportation. Further, as the North was dragged into an attritional conflict due to early disappointments, so the deployment of numbers and quantities of equipment became more important than operational skill. Consequently, victory in the civil war (as in the two world wars of the twentieth century) went to the side with the largest population, the most durable financial system, and the greatest industrial capacity. But if Lincoln had been less able to unite the North, and Davis more successful in rallying the South, it could have been otherwise.

Bibliography

• Grant, Susan-Mary, and Reid, Brian Holden (eds.), The American Civil War (London, 2000).
• Hattaway, Herman, and Jones, Archer, How the North Won (Urbana, Ill., 1983).
• McPherson, James M., The Battle Cry of Freedom (New York, 1998).
• Parish, Peter J., The American Civil War (London, 1975).
• Reid, Brian Holden, The Origins of the American Civil War (London, 1996)

— Brian Holden Reid

(1861 – 65)

Causes
Military and Diplomatic Course
Domestic Course
Postwar Impact
Changing Interpretations

Constitutional history of the Civil War period underscores the principal characteristics of the Supreme Court as a coordinate branch of government in the context of nineteenth‐century political culture. As the war signaled the end of three decades of Democratic rule and the start of a long period of Republican dominance, so it marked the transition from the state sovereignty doctrines of the Taney Court to the constitutional nationalism of the Chase Court. The process of change that accelerated these political and jurisprudential trends was dramatically illustrated in the withdrawal from the federal government of southern members of Congress and the resignation from the Supreme Court of Justice John A. Campbell of Alabama.

Changes in the membership of the Supreme Court at the start of the Civil War permitted the effects of the political realignment that put Abraham Lincoln in the White House to be registered in constitutional law more rapidly than is usually the case following critical elections in American political history. Problems arising from the war encouraged the Court to refrain from judicial activist policy making at the expense of the political branches. Military exigencies caused most of the major constitutional questions that arose to be resolved by the executive and Congress and induced in the justices a more deferential attitude toward political officers than might otherwise have prevailed (see War).

Three vacancies existed on the Supreme Court at the start of President Abraham Lincoln's administration. Justice Peter V. Daniel died in 1860 and President James Buchanan's nomination of a Democratic successor was blocked by Republicans in the Senate in February 1861. Justice John McLean died on 4 April 1861, and on 25 April Justice Campbell resigned. Lincoln appointed Noah H. Swayne, an Ohio Republican, in January 1862, Republican Samuel F. Miller of Iowa in July, and Illinois Republican David Davis, a state judge, in October. When Congress created a tenth judicial circuit (thereby increasing the size of the Court to ten justices) in 1863, Lincoln named Stephen J. Field of California, a Democrat and ardent Unionist, to the high bench. These appointments produced a more politically balanced Court, consisting of six antebellum Democrats (Samuel Nelson, Nathan Clifford, James M. Wayne, Robert C. Grier, John Catron, and Roger B. Taney), and four wartime appointees sympathetic to the Republican administration. The composition of the Court remained stable until Chief Justice Taney died in October 1864 and was replaced by Salmon P. Chase, secretary of the treasury under Lincoln.

The war raised constitutional questions that were inappropriate for judicial resolution because of their military and political nature. Confiscation, emancipation, taxation and fiscal policy, conscription, and treason were among these issues. Yet the judiciary's traditional concern for individual liberty and property rights provided the basis for limited Supreme Court involvement in matters relating to internal security policy and to the politically sensitive question of the legal nature of the war.

President Lincoln's suspension of the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus in April 1861 presented an issue of government infringement of civil liberties that could reasonably be brought before the judiciary. The executive and Congress provided for the nation's internal security without benefit of any Supreme Court opinion on the constitutionality of the measures adopted. Before the government's policy was put in place, however, Chief Justice Taney attempted to control the actions of the executive branch by invalidating Lincoln's suspension of the writ of habeas corpus. Taney questioned the president's action in Ex parte Merryman in May 1861.

John Merryman was a pro‐Confederate Maryland political leader who was arrested under authority of Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus in May 1861 for participating in the destruction of railroad bridges. He petitioned Chief Justice Taney, presiding judge of the circuit court at Baltimore, for a writ of habeas corpus. Taney issued the writ, but the military commander to whom it was addressed refused to produce Merryman. The chief justice then issued a writ of attachment ordering the military commander to be apprehended. He was again rebuffed. Holding a session at chambers as chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (rather than presiding over a session of the circuit court), Taney on 28 May 1861 declared Merryman entitled to his freedom. In an unusual move, he filed an opinion condemning Merryman's arrest as an arbitrary and illegal denial of civil liberty (see Military Trials and Martial Law).

Taney stated that military detention of civilians like Merryman was unconstitutional because only Congress had authority to suspend the writ of habeas corpus. He based this conclusion on the fact that the provision authorizing suspension of the writ appears in Article I of the Constitution, dealing with the powers of the legislative branch. In a broader constitutional analysis, Taney described the president as a mere administrative officer charged with faithful enforcement of the laws. According to the chief justice, this amounted to a constitutional duty not to execute the laws on the president's own authority or initiative, but rather to act in support of the judicial authority by executing the laws “as they are expounded and adjudged by the co‐ordinate branch of the government, to which that duty is assigned by the Constitution.” Taney sent a copy of his opinion to Lincoln, who in his 4 July 1861 message to Congress justified his action suspending the writ of habeas corpus on the basis of his constitutional oath to take care that the laws be faithfully executed. The president reasoned further that the Constitution did not expressly state who can order suspension of the writ and that the framers did not intend that in an emergency no action should be taken to protect the public safety by suspending habeas corpus until Congress could be assembled. Lincoln prevailed in the contest with Taney.

The Supreme Court at other times deferred to the government's internal security policy, even when executive action exceeded habeas corpus suspension, as in Ex parte Vallandigham in 1864. In April 1863, General Ambrose Burnside issued an order prohibiting in the area of his command any declarations of sympathy for the enemy. He also declared that persons who helped the enemy would be tried under military authority. Former Democratic representative Clement L. Vallandigham condemned the order and urged resistance to it. He was arrested, tried, and convicted by a military commission. Burnside imposed a prison sentence, which President Lincoln commuted into banishment beyond Confederate lines. Removing to Canada, Vallandigham petitioned a federal circuit court in Ohio for a writ of habeas corpus, but since he was no longer in custody, no basis existed for Supreme Court review of the lower court's denial of the petition. Vallandigham then applied to the Supreme Court for a writ of certiorari to review directly the decision of the military commission.

With Chief Justice Taney not participating in the case, the Court denied the petition for certiorari. Justice Wayne's opinion for a unanimous Court asserted that the Court lacked jurisdiction under the Judiciary Act of 1789 because a military commission was not a court whose decisions could be reviewed by the Supreme Court. He noted that the Constitution defined the original jurisdiction of the Court in a way that precluded review of the case. Although the disposition of the case was favorable to the government, the Court did not reach the issue of the constitutionality of military trial of civilians in circumstances like those surrounding the arrest of Vallandigham.

While generally refraining from decisions having an impact on military or war‐related policies, the Supreme Court handed down a major decision determining the legal nature of the conflict. This question was presented in the Prize Cases (1863), where the issue was the legality of the navy's capture of ships bound for Confederate ports under the blockade ordered by President Lincoln in April 1861. If a state of war recognized by international law existed, the blockade was legal and the captures legitimate. If a war did not exist when the executive imposed the blockade, the captures were illegal. In March 1863, the Supreme Court decided 5 to 4 that the blockade was legal. According to Justice Grier's majority opinion, a state of war existed in April 1861 that justified resort to a blockade. Grier wrote that although the conflict began as an insurrection against the federal government and without a formal declaration, it was nonetheless a war—a civil war. He observed that the Civil War was a fact of which the Supreme Court was bound to take notice. Turning to the Constitution, he pointed out that although neither Congress nor the executive could declare war on a state, the president was authorized by statutes of 1795 and 1807 to call out the militia and use military force to suppress insurrection against the United States. Grier stated that it was for the president as commander in chief to decide whether in suppressing an insurrection it was justifiable to treat the opponents as belligerents (see Presidential Emergency Powers). He furthermore contended that the Supreme Court must be governed by the president's decision. Grier concluded that the proclamation of the blockade was evidence that a state of war existed.

The Prize Cases recognized broad executive power to respond to military attack on the United States. Of more immediate practical import was the Court's holding that persons in the seceded states could be treated both as rebels and enemies, or as a belligerent party. The Court did not, however, acknowledge or confer executive authority unilaterally to declare and carry on a war indefinitely without legislative approval.

Justice Nelson wrote a dissenting opinion joined by Justices Clifford, Catron, and Taney. Nelson argued that war did not exist when Lincoln ordered the blockade because Congress had not exercised its exclusive power to declare war. He said that whether war existed was a legal question unaffected by material facts and realities. When Congress on 13 July 1861 authorized the executive to declare the existence of a state of insurrection, war began and the blockade was legal. Before that date the conduct of hostilities by the United States was a “personal war” of President Lincoln.

During the Civil War the Supreme Court decided many nonmilitary questions. California land disputes arising out of Mexican rule were prominent on its docket, as were cases dealing with contracts, partnership, bankruptcy, usury, patent rights, and other commercial matters. A few cases illustrated continuity with earlier trends in constitutional law despite changes in the Court's membership.

In Gelpcke v. Dubuque (1864), the Court overruled an Iowa supreme court decision holding that a city's nonpayment of municipal bonds, issued for a railroad that was never built, was constitutional under the state constitution. Although not expressly stated, the effective basis of the Court's decision seemed to be the Contract Clause of the Constitution. The case also may have illustrated the Court's belief that it could shape a federal common law of commerce, as in Swift v. Tyson (1842).

The Supreme Court also ruled against state power in People ex rel. Bank of Commerce v. Commissioner of Taxes (1863). In this case the Court considered a New York tax on bank stock, including federal government securities that were otherwise exempt from state taxation. Although Congress in 1862 passed an act declaring stocks, bonds, and other U.S. securities exempt from state taxes, the Court struck down the state tax on constitutional grounds. Yet the Court declined to decide the constitutionality of the Legal Tender Act of 1862. In Roosevelt v. Meyer (1863), it inexplicably held that it lacked jurisdiction to review a New York state court ruling favorable to the Legal Tender Act. It is not clear whether this decision, which was overruled in 1872, reflected unwillingness to tackle the controversial issue of national currency policy or was instead a flawed legal analysis of the Judiciary Act of 1780. (See Legal Tender Cases.)

The December 1864 term of the Supreme Court marked the end of the Taney era. While Congress debated and rejected a proposal to place a marble bust of the late Chief Justice Taney in the Supreme Court room in the Capitol, the Court under Chief Justice Chase disposed of a series of cases involving the illegal slave trade. In February 1865, John S. Rock was sworn in as the first African‐American attorney to be admitted to the bar of the Supreme Court. This event signified the emergence of racial equality as a major constitutional issue in the judicial history of the Reconstruction period that would soon engage the Court's attention.

See also History of the Court: Establishment of the Union.

Bibliography

• David P. Currie, The Constitution in the Supreme Court: The First Hundred Years 1789–1888 (1985).
• David M. Silver, Lincoln's Supreme Court (1956).
• Carl B. Swisher, History of the Supreme Court of the United States, vol. 5, The Taney Period 1836–64 (1974).
• Charles Warren, The Supreme Court in United States History, 2 vols (1926)

— Herman Belz

(April 1861- April 1865) costing more than 600, 000 American lives, the Civil War consolidated the Revolutionary War of 1776 by ensuring that the United States would remain a single republic rather than a collection of potentially independent states. The Civil War brought enormous changes to the United States, most notably in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments, which abolished slavery and gave citizenship to African Americans. The war also made use of several military innovations. Longer-range and more destructive ammunition, primarily the minié rifle bullet, made casualty rates much higher than in previous wars. The Civil War also was the first to make use of the draft and ironclad warships, and extensive use of rail transport and military telegraph lines, and it was first to be widely documented by photographers. Prompted by sectional disputes between slaveholding southern states and northern states, the Civil War began following the election of Republican Abraham Lincoln, whose party was committed to free labor ideology. Rather than accepting Lincoln's leadership, seven southern states, led by South Carolina and comprising Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas elected to secede from the Union and form the Confederate States of America (CSA) in February 1861. The Confederacy elected Mexican War (1846-48) hero and former Secretary of War Jefferson Davis as their president, and began organizing an independent government modeled on the U.S. Constitution, with caveats guaranteeing slavery. On April 12, the Confederacy began fighting to assert its independence when Confederate troops fired on Fort Sumter in the Charleston, South Carolina harbor. Soon after, Arkansas, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia joined the Confederacy.

Union commander Gen. Winfield Scott's strategic response was to blockade and encircle the Confederacy in a strategy dubbed the Anaconda Plan. Nevertheless, the first two years of fighting favored Confederate armies. Despite the superiority in men and supplies held by the Union's Army of the Potomac, the Army of Northern Virginia led by Robert E. Lee won or dramatically stopped U.S. armies in a series of battles fought in northern Virginia and Maryland. Notable among these were the 1861 First Battle of Bull Run, in which southern armies won the war's first major contest; a series of dramatic raids conducted in the Shenandoah Valley by troops under Gen. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson; the Seven Days' Battle (1862), in which Lee, at high cost, drove Union general George B. McClellan back from the Confederate capital at Richmond; the 1862 Second Battle of Bull Run, in which Lee virtually crushed Union armies fighting under John Pope; Antietam, that same year, where McClellan failed to capitalize on a costly victory that stopped Lee's advance into the heart of Maryland; and Fredericksburg (also 1862), which witnessed well-defended Confederates cutting down 13, 000 Union troops with only 5, 000 losses of their own.

While Lee stymied Union armies in the East, federal forces under Ulysses S. Grant chipped away at the South's western defenses. In February 1862 Grant launched joint army-navy attacks that took Fort Henry and Fort Donelson in Kentucky and Tennessee, piercing the center of the Confederacy's western defenses. As Union armies began moving into the Confederacy from the West, Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston counterattacked near Shiloh (1862) on the Tennessee River. Grant's unprepared troops suffered heavy casualties, but managed to repel the attack. The Union then began a long push into the South. The year 1863 proved crucial in many ways. After Antietam, Lincoln had issued the Emancipation Proclamation stating that the federal government considered all slaves still in Confederate territory to be free, which went into effect on January 1, 1863. The proclamation had two important consequences. For many in the North it transformed the war into a crusade against slavery. It also dissuaded Britain from officially recognizing and aiding the Confederacy. That year, the United States accepted African American enlistments to the army for the first time since 1820. By war's end, over 179, 000 African-American men served in the U.S. armed forces. the year 1863 also witnessed two of the most crucial Confederate military defeats. Lee attempted to bring the Union to negotiate a peace by making an offensive strike. Federal armies under Gen. George G. Meade stopped that advance in the Battle of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania in July—the war's largest and most consequential battle. In the west, on July 4, Grant took the city of Vicksburg, the Confederacy's last major stronghold on the Mississippi. In 1864, Lincoln promoted Grant to general-in-chief. As Grant pushed against Lee's armies toward the Confederate capital at Richmond, Gen. William T. Sherman assailed Atlanta and then conducted his infamous March to the Sea (1864-65). Aiming to undercut the Confederacy's ability to sustain warfare in terms of both material and morale, Sherman's forces cut a sixty-mile wide trail through Georgia from Atlanta to the Atlantic, earning him the longstanding enmity of many southerners, despite his own personal regard for the region and its people. These two offensives combined with a concerted Union press to shatter the Confederacy. The war effectively ended on April 9, 1865, when Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox, Virginia. In something of an anticlimax, Gen. Joseph E. Johnston handed over the last Confederate army to Sherman near Durham, North Carolina, on April 26. The Reconstruction that followed in its wake was fraught, a situation only made worse by Abraham Lincoln's death on April 15, 1865.

See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.

Civil wars, 1642-51. In 1629 Charles I dismissed Parliament, resolving never to call another. He might have succeeded but for the problem of the multiple kingdoms. During the 1630s he decided to bring Scottish religious practice into conformity with English by abolishing presbyterian worship and substituting an Anglican service. The Scots revolted, and Charles's two attempts to subdue them—the Bishops' wars of 1639 and 1640—were abject failures. At the insistence of the nobility he summoned Parliament. Once convened, the Commons refused him the taxes he needed, and set about dismantling the apparatus of prerogative government, abolishing ship money, the courts of Star Chamber, High Commission, Wards, and others; passing a Triennial Act, depriving church courts of their punitive powers, and attainting Charles's chief minister Strafford. Charles ratified these changes, but with such ill grace that many doubted whether he would keep his word. Trust became a critical issue upon the outbreak of rebellion in Ireland in the autumn of 1641. Exaggerated reports of atrocities perpetrated against the protestant settlers in Ireland inflamed English opinion. It was accepted that an army should crush the rebellion, but there was no agreement about entrusting the king with command. Charles's attempt to arrest five of the parliamentary ringleaders contributed to the deepening distrust of him. Mistrust was compounded by fear that the king could not be counted on to defend England against the threat of international catholicism. Thus legal and constitutional arguments about taxation, the rights of Parliament, and the extent of royal power were inflamed by religious panic.

Despite its control of the midlands, the east, and the south-east including London, there was nothing inevitable about Parliament's victory. Charles almost overthrew his foes at Edgehill October 1642), while in 1643 there were a number of royalist victories. For all the efforts of John Pym to hold together the parliamentary coalition, parliamentary fortunes reached their nadir in that year.

What turned the tide against Charles I was again the reality of multiple kingdoms. In return for a promise to uphold presbyterian church government and impose it in England, the Scots came to Parliament's aid with an army of 20, 000. This bargain was sealed in the Solemn League and Covenant of 1643, and the Scots army entered England early in 1644. The joint armies dealt a crushing blow to the king's forces at Marston Moor, near York July 1644). However, this victory was almost frittered away by Essex when he allowed his army to become trapped by Charles at Lostwithiel in Cornwall September 1644). Completely disenchanted with the aristocratic leadership of Parliament's armies, the win-the-war faction under Sir Henry Vane and Oliver Cromwell purged the armies of their noble and parliamentary leadership, creating the New Model Army. Led by Sir Thomas Fairfax, and knit together by constant pay and religious indoctrination, this army quickly put the royalist forces to flight at Naseby June 1645), Langport July 1645), and Bristol September 1645). By May 1646 Charles had handed himself over to the Scots.

Refusing to accept the verdict of the battlefield, Charles dragged out peace negotiations with Parliament, attempting to exploit the rift between army and Parliament and redoubling his efforts to persuade the Scots to assist him. Early in 1648 royalist risings erupted in Kent, Essex, Wales, and the navy in anticipation of a Scottish intervention on behalf of the king. But the Scots were late, and the New Model Army had no difficulty crushing the revolts. When the duke of Hamilton crossed the border in July, he attracted little support, and Cromwell destroyed his forces between Preston and Uttoxeter August 1648). Everywhere triumphant in battle, the army found that Parliament was still intent on negotiating with the king. To prevent such an outcome it occupied London, purged the House of Commons of those who favoured negotiation, and engineered the trial and execution of the king. Once the Rump Parliament had abolished monarchy and the House of Lords, it launched invasions of Ireland (1649) and Scotland (1650). In spite of Cromwellian ruthlessness at Drogheda and Wexford, Ireland took three years to subjugate. The Scots were devastated at Dunbar September 1650), but continued to resist, to the point of invading England a year later under Charles II. His forces scattered at Worcester September 1651), the hapless king fled to the continent. Although the king, lords, and Church of England were brought back in 1660, prerogative government was not. The constitutional changes of 1641 were preserved, while the legacy of the civil wars in radical thought, religious liberty, and parliamentary domination of the state re-emerged in the ‘Glorious’ Revolution of 1688-9.

Historians have long debated the causes of the Civil War. They have argued that a split developed between the industrialized North and the agricultural South as both sections vied for control of the nation. Closely related is the belief that the two sections fought over the tariff, which, some have stated, protected Northern manufactures. Others have contended that the war erupted over states' rights. Northerners advocated a more expanded federal government than did Southerners, who held fast to a federal system in which the preponderant power lay with the states. Some have also suggested that politicians in the 1850s failed by their own in competency to broker a compromise to the sectional controversy during the secession crisis, so that the nation blundered into civil strife.

Each of these explanations has serious shortcomings. The Northern states accounted for two of every three farms in the United States, and Southern staple crop production, especially cotton, provided raw material for many Northern factories. The tariff was not a powerful political issue in the critical decade leading up to the war. Nor did Southerners complain about the import duty when it protected regional interests, such as those of sugar growers. Like their Southern countrymen, many Northerners—perhaps even a majority—believed instates' rights, and on the surface, the differences of opinion were not sufficient to warrant separation or war. The blundering generation argument assumes that politicians in Washington were unusually incompetent in the 1850s or that there was room to compromise on the vital moral issue of the day: slavery. There is little evidence to substantiate charges of massive political incompetence and the argument plays down the buildup of mistrust that controversies and compromises had generated since the Missouri Crisis four decades earlier. The willingness of so many millions of people to march off to war or endure hardships for their section proves just how deeply people in the North and South felt about the great issues of their day.

Slavery, Secession, and the War's Onset

Slavery lay at the root of the Civil War. The Republican Party dedicated itself to blocking the expansion of the "peculiar institution," and many of its leaders had publicly avowed their desire to see slavery abolished. Southern states had maintained that if a member of the Republican Party were elected president, they would secede. When the voters chose the Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln in 1860, seven slave states voted to leave the union and began to form a Southern confederacy. In their ordinances of secession or justifications, they stated clearly that they dissolved their connection to the United States to protect slavery. As the state of Mississippi argued, "Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery." Slavery had divided families, religions, institutions, political parties, and finally, the nation itself.

Although the U.S. Constitution did not specifically forbid secession, Lincoln and most Northerners believed that the concept would undercut the linchpin of any democratic republic, respect for the outcome of fair elections. By allowing secession, a group could nullify the expressed wishes of the people acting under constitutional law.

Northerners viewed the union and the Constitution as sacrosanct. It was the basis for the world's great experiment, a democratic republic, a kind of beacon of light for people everywhere. All freedoms derived from the Constitution and the union. For those who had gone before them and for future generations, they had an obligation to preserve that system.

Representatives from the seceding states met during the months of February and March in Montgomery, Alabama, to form a new government, the Confederate States of America. The convention chose Jefferson Davis of Mississippi as provisional president and Alexander Stephens of Georgia as provisional vice president. The constitution itself greatly resembled that of the United States. Major distinctions included a single, six-year term as president, a line-item veto for the president, and a provision stipulating that states could not secede from the country. The most fundamental difference, according to Stephens, rested with the underlying premise: the United States acknowledged the notion that all men were created equal, whereas the Confederate States of America insisted that "the negro is not the equal of the white man" and that "slavery …is his natural and normal condition."

The fighting began when the Lincoln administration determined to preserve the union and to protect federal property. Lincoln attempted to maintain Union control of several forts on Confederate soil, including Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor. As food supplies for the garrison began to run low, the president let it be known that he would send a resupply ship that would carry no munitions of war. The plan forced the Rebels' hand. If the Confederacy allowed the ship to deposit supplies safely, it would be tolerating the existence of a United States fort not just on Confederate soil, but in the birthplace of secession. Such a presence was a slap at the viability of the new nation. The other alternative would be for the new Confederate government to employ force to prevent the re-supply, and thus commit the first act of violence. Rather than endure the insult of a Union post on secessionist soil, the Confederates began shelling Fort Sumter on 12 April. After a thirty-four-hour bombardment, the garrison surrendered. In response to the attack, Lincoln called for seventy-five thousand militiamen to suppress the insurrection. The war was on.

Rather than fight their fellow slave states, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas seceded and joined the Confederate States of America. The Confederacy then shifted its seat of government from Montgomery to Richmond, Virginia. While the new Confederate capital would be only 110 miles from Washington, D.C., and in a more exposed area than Montgomery, the choice of Richmond made good sense. Richmond was a larger city and could better accommodate the new government. It was the seat of vital manufacturing operations that would be essential to preserve during the war and it served as a key railroad nexus in a powerful agricultural state. Moving the capital to Richmond had the effect of bonding Virginia more strongly to the Confederacy. The site also reminded everyone of the legacy to the American Revolution and the work of the founding fathers. Secessionists insisted that they were the true inheritors of the Constitution, one that forged compromises to permit slave ownership. Like their forefathers, they would fight a war for independence to protect their rights.

Comparative Advantages

The Union possessed the preponderance of resources. It had a population of twenty-two million, well educated and with a sound work ethic. Ninety percent of U.S. manufacturing was produced in the loyal states and virtually all arms manufacturing took place there. One half of its adult males listed farming as their occupation, and the region's output of food crops was staggering. Almost three times as many draft animals, an extremely valuable wartime asset, were in Northern hands. The Union had a vast financial network, with four of every five bank accounts, huge gold reserves, and ready access to commercial credit, all of which were essential to finance a massive war. It had a sophisticated and modern railroad network, with two and one-half times as many miles as the South, and a large commercial fleet to carry trade and, in wartime, to haul supplies. Finally, the Union inherited a small U.S. Army, numbering around sixteen thousand, with experienced officers, and a U.S. Navy with only twenty-three active ships, but an industrial base that could transform it into the largest and probably the best in the world.

As history has demonstrated time after time, however, overwhelming resources do not guarantee victory. Furthermore, the Confederacy had some advantages of its own. It had a population of 9 million, 5.5 million of whom were white, scattered over an area of almost 750,000 square miles. Its white citizenry, on the whole, was educated and motivated to support the cause. The seceding states produced some superb military leaders, many from the regular army. One in eight regular army officers resigned their commissions to join the Confederacy. A number of them were among the most respected, including Robert E. Lee, Albert Sidney Johnston, and Joseph E. Johnston, to name a few. To join those, the South had hundreds of graduates from military schools such as the Virginia Military Institute and The Citadel, who could teach recruits the basics in drill, tactics, and soldierly comportment. Even more so than their revolutionary ancestors, they had a wealth of experienced politicians on the state, local, and national levels. And perhaps most importantly, the Confederacy had to be conquered to lose. A stalemate was tantamount to Rebel victory.

Over the course of the war, the Confederacy steadily lost a resource on which it had depended heavily: its slave population. Confederates expected their 3.5 million slaves would help produce foodstuffs, manufacture materials for the army and their people, and serve the Rebel cause in sundry other ways. Instead, hundreds of thousands of slaves ultimately escaped to Union lines, many of them taking up arms against their old masters. Other slaves disrupted life on the home front, generated fears of servile insurrections while most of the young adult white males were away in the service, slowed production of essential wartime commodities, or aided the Union armies in many different ways.

From a legal standpoint, the war began when Lincoln called out the militiamen and ordered the Union navy to blockade Confederate ports. Internationally, the Confederacy achieved recognition as a belligerent, but never received recognition as an independent state by any foreign power. No nation attempted to intervene, although the British government considered it and the French government offered to mediate, an overture the United States rebuffed.

Before Lincoln's first Congress met in July 1861, the president adopted measures that gave the Union war policy its controlling character. Besides proclaiming an insurrection, calling out militia, and blockading Rebel ports, he suspended the habeas corpus privilege, expanded the regular army, directed emergency expenditures, and in general assumed executive functions beyond existing law. That summer, Congress ratified his actions and in 1863, by a five to four vote, the U.S. Supreme Court sustained the constitutionality of his executive decisions in the Prize Cases. In general, Lincoln's method of meeting the emergency and suppressing disloyal tendencies was to employ arbitrary executive power, such as his extensive program of arbitrary arrests, wherein thousands of citizens were thrust into prison on suspicion of disloyal or dangerous activity. These prisoners were held without trial, deprived of their usual civil rights, and subjected to no accusations under the law. Such policies, which Lincoln justified as necessary for the survival of the union, led to severe and widespread criticism of the Lincoln administration. Yet it cannot be said that Lincoln became a dictator. He allowed freedom of speech and of the press, contrary examples being exceptional, not typical. He tolerated newspaper criticism of himself and of the government, interposed no party uniformity, permitted free assembly, avoided partisan violence, recognized opponents in making appointments, and above all submitted his party and himself, even during war, to the test of popular election.

Confederate president Jefferson Davis also faced dissent, but Davis suffered from the additional burden of attempting to build a government and a nation during wartime. Many Confederates opposed the kind of concentration of power under the central government that was necessary to prosecute the war. With only one political party, vicious factions emerged, heaping sharp criticism on the overworked Davis and many of his appointees.

Enlistment and Conscription

Neither side was prepared for war, yet both sides rallied around their flag and cause. That regular army of only sixteen thousand men was transformed into two massive national armies. Before the war was over, the Union would maintain more than one million men in uniform at one time; the Confederacy's peak estimate was about one half that number. In order to draw people into military service, both sides relied primarily on volunteers. Locals organized companies, batteries, or regiments and offered them to the governor, who then tried to convince the secretary of war to accept them. Those early waves of recruits left home with a hero's good-bye. Over time, the celebrations ceased as more and more men failed to return home.

Early in the war, both sides had more volunteers than they could arm and clothe, and many frustrated volunteers were not accepted. By 1862, however, matters began to change. Most of the Confederates who enlisted in 1861 did so for a one-year term. As both sides geared up for spring offensives, the Davis administration and his generals feared their armies would dissolve. In April 1862, the Confederate Congress passed laws that established all white males between ages eighteen and thirty-five as eligible for military service. Everyone called into service would be subject to a three-year term, unless the war ended sooner, and those people already in service who were of draft age had their terms of service extended to three years. This was the first conscription act in American history. Draftees had the opportunity to hire substitutes, and in October 1862 the act was amended so that individuals who owned more than twenty slaves could acquire an exemption for an adult white male. Throughout the remainder of the war, the Confederacy continued to draft, expanding the age limits on both ends, and to recruit to fill its ranks. The Confederacy eventually forbade substitutes as well.

The Lincoln administration suffered similar problems. In The summer of 1862, dismal Union progress in the East convinced most people that the war would extend on for years. As enlistment slowed to a trickle, the Northern government also resorted to conscription through the Militia Act of 17 July 1862, which could keep individuals in uniform for only nine months. This proved so unsatisfactory that Congress replaced it with a stronger law in March 1863, establishing state quotas for three-year terms of service. Local communities raised bounty money to lure individuals to enlist, there by reducing or filling their draft quotas. For those slots that volunteers did not fill, locals would have to draft. Inmost cases, results were achieved by the threat of being drafted and the amount of money available as bounty for recruits.

Recruitment policies in the North and the South generated complaints against both governments, including charges that it was a rich man's war and a poor man's fight, and even sparked draft riots. In The end, though, comparatively few soldiers were drafted. Conscription acted as a stick to encourage enlistments, while bounties and avoiding the shame of being drafted were the carrots.

Virtually all of those who entered the two armies did so with naive notions of military service, duty, and combat. Disease took greater tolls on their ranks than did enemy shot and shell. Perceptions of glory faded as hard-ships mounted. Approximately one in eight, unwilling to endure the sacrifices and suffering any longer, deserted. Yet for the bulk of those who donned the blue and the gray, their commitment to cause and comrades sustained them through the most trying moments. Over time, they learned to be skilled soldiers, men who knew how to execute on the battlefield and care for themselves in camp. They took pride in themselves, their units, and their service and vowed to stay the course until they achieved victory or all hope was lost.

The Early War

The first major engagement of the war took place in July 1861, near Manassas Junction, Virginia. Confederates under Major General P. G. T. Beauregard had assembled in northern Virginia to defend the area and guard the connection of the Manassas Gap Railroad from the Shenandoah Valley, running east-west, and the Orange and Alexandria Railroad, which sliced from southwest Virginia toward Washington, D.C. A Union army of a little more than thirty thousand men, the largest ever assembled for battle in American history, under Brigadier General Irvin McDowell, pushed southwest from Washington. After marching all night, McDowell's columns engaged the Confederates around a creek called Bull Run. McDowell feigned an attack on the Rebel right and swung wide on the opposite side, crossing Bull Run and rolling up on Beauregard's left. Just as it appeared that the Union would win the day, two events occurred. Soldiers under Brigadier General Thomas J. Jackson held firm, like a "stone wall," and critical reinforcements from the Shenandoah

Valley under Major General Joseph E. Johnston arrived by rail to bolster the defenders. As the Union attackers grew exhausted, the Confederates launched a counterattack that swept the battlefield. President Davis, who arrived that afternoon, joined his generals in trying to mount a pursuit, but Confederate confusion in victory was almost as bad as Union panic in defeat. The Federals fled back to Washington, having endured a staggering three thousand casualties; in triumph, the Confederates suffered almost two thousand losses.

Lincoln promptly replaced McDowell with Major General George B. McClellan, a highly touted engineer who oversaw a minor Union victory in western Virginia. McClellan accumulated and trained a massive army, but tarried so long that winter fell before he moved out. Meanwhile, McClellan politicked to remove the aged commanding general of all Union armies, Winfield Scott, and got himself installed. "I can do it all," a cocky McClellan boasted.

The following spring, after much prodding from Lincoln, the Union army shifted its base by water to the Virginia coast east of Richmond and began an arduous advance up the peninsula between the York and James Rivers. As the Union forces neared Richmond, Confederates under Joseph E. Johnston attacked; Johnston was badly wounded, and the Federals held.

To replace Johnston, Davis chose his military adviser, General Robert E. Lee, a highly regarded West Point graduate who had not achieved much success theretofore. With his back up against Richmond, Lee drew Stonewall Jackson's men in from the Shenandoah Valley, where they had conducted a spectacular campaign against superior Union numbers, and launched a massive surprise attack on McClellan's right flank. In the Seven Days' Battles in June and July 1862, Lee's army failed to crush McClellan, but it drove the Federals back twenty miles to the protection of the Union navy. With the fight whipped out of McClellan, Lee began moving northward in August. At the Battle of Second Manassas, Lee crushed a Union army under Major General John Pope, and then turned on the Union garrison at Harpers Ferry and crossed over into Maryland in September. A lost copy of the Confederate invasion plan, which a Union soldier had discovered and passed on to headquarters, emboldened McClellan, who had replaced Pope. He fought Lee to a draw at Antietam in the single bloodiest day of fighting in the war, with combined casualties of nearly twenty-three thousand. After the fight, Lee fell back to Virginia while McClellan dawdled until an exasperated Lincoln replaced him with Major General Ambrose P. Burnside. In just three months, though, Lee had completely reversed Rebel fortunes in the East and had established himself as the great Confederate general.

Emancipation and Black Enlistment

Strangely enough, despite Lee's overall achievements, the Union repulse of Lee's raid offered Lincoln an opportunity to transform the war. With the failure of McClellan's Richmond campaign, Lincoln had decided on emancipation and black enlistment. The war was all about slavery, Lincoln had concluded, and if the nation reunited, the United States would have to settle the slavery issue and move beyond it. Federal recruitment, moreover, had slowed to a trickle. The largest untapped resource available was African Americans. They produced for the Confederacy; they could contribute in and out of uniform to the Union.

Despite the hopes of Lincoln and other politicians to keep blacks out of the war, they had forced their way to the heart of it from the beginning. In April 1861, several slaves who were being used for Confederate military construction projects fled to Union lines. The Union general, Benjamin Butler, declared them contraband of war and subject to confiscation, in accordance with international law, and then hired them to work for the Union army. Congress established Butler's ruling as the law of the land in the First Confiscation Act in August 1861. But soon, slaves who worked for the Rebel army began arriving with family members who had not labored on Rebel military projects and the original law broke down as many Union officers were loath to return anyone to slavery. In July 1862 Congress passed the Second Confiscation Act, which allowed the president to authorize the seizure of any Rebel property, including slaves. It also passed legislation that enabled Lincoln to use blacks for any military duties he found them competent to perform.

Lincoln issued his most important executive pronouncement, the Emancipation Proclamation, in September 1862, just after the Battle of Antietam. In it, Lincoln announced that slaves in all areas beyond control of Union armies on 1 January 1863, would become free. Based on his powers as commander in chief, Lincoln rightly believed that slavery aided the Confederacy and that its destruction would strengthen the Union effort. Yet the program also fulfilled one of Lincoln's dreams: the destruction of an immoral institution. By eradicating it, Lincoln altered the Union goal from a war to restore the Union to one that would destroy slavery as well. The decision generated some opposition, but in the end, those who were principally responsible for enforcing the proclamation, the Union soldiery, embraced it as a vital step in winning the war.

Although Lincoln waited to issue his emancipation decree until the Union won its next victory—almost three months later—he had begun bringing blacks into Union uniform in the summer of 1862. He tried to control the experiment carefully, but after black troops fought heroically at the Battles of Port Hudson, Milliken's Bend, and Fort Wagner in 1863, he authorized a dramatic expansion of black enlistment. Blacks served in segregated units, largely under white officers, and in time they proved to be an invaluable force in the Union war effort.

Union Progress in the Western Theater

While the Yankees struggled to achieve positive results in the eastern theater, out west their armies made great progress. Ulysses S. Grant, a West Point graduate who resigned under a cloud in 1854, emerged as an unlikely hero. In February 1862, he launched an outstandingly effective campaign against Confederate forces at Forts Henry and Donelson on the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers, respectively. In conjunction with the Union gun-boat fleet, he secured Fort Henry and then besieged the prize, Fort Donelson and its garrison of nearly twenty thousand men. Although some Confederates escaped, its fall resulted in the first great Union victory of the war and shattered the cordon of Rebel defenses in the Kentucky-Tennessee region. Several weeks later, Union troops occupied Nashville, the capital of Tennessee, and by the end of March, Grant's reinforced command had occupied a position around Shiloh Church near the Mississippi border.

Then, early on 6 April, Confederates under General Albert Sidney Johnston launched a vicious attack. Grant, caught unprepared, saw his men driven back. Valiant fighting and some timely reinforcements saved the day, however, and the following afternoon, Union troops swept the field. Johnston was wounded and bled to death on the first day of fighting. At Shiloh, Grant's army suffered thirteen thousand casualties, horrifying politicians and civilians alike, and he soon found his reputation damaged and his command responsibilities curtailed.

When his superior, Major General Henry W. Halleck, returned East to become the new general in chief that summer, however, Grant was given a second chance. On 1 May 1862, Union forces began entering New Orleans; opening the entire length of the Mississippi River became a high priority. Grant began the difficult task of securing Vicksburg, Mississippi, a Confederate bastion located high on bluffs that dominated the Mississippi River. After months of toil and failure, including a repulsed assault on the bluffs, Grant finally conceived a way to defeat the Rebels. With Navy help, he shifted his army below the city in April 1863 by marching men along the opposite bank and shuttling them across the river. He then pushed inland toward Jackson, the capital of Mississippi, and turned on Vicksburg. Over the course of several weeks, in perhaps the most brilliant campaign of the war, Grant's forces defeated two Confederate armies in five separate battles and then laid siege to the city. On 4 July 1863, the Vicksburg garrison of nearly thirty thousand men surrendered. Grant had captured his second army, and with news of the fall of Vicksburg, the Confederates at Port Hudson, Louisiana, surrendered, giving the Union control of the Mississippi River and isolating a large portion of the Confederacy.

After a Union disaster at Chickamauga, Georgia, in September, Grant was brought in to preserve the Federal hold on Chattanooga, Tennessee. With extensive reinforcements and an audacious assault up a steep incline called Missionary Ridge, Grant's command shattered the Rebel positions. The victory drove the Confederates back into Georgia and pushed Grant's star into the ascendancy. In March 1864, Grant was promoted to lieutenant general, commander of all U.S. forces, while his key subordinate, William Tecumseh Sherman, took over in the West.

The Road to Union Victory

To the east, the Union army under Burnside suffered a disastrous repulse at Fredericksburg, Virginia, in December 1862. Again in April and May 1863, the same reinforced army under Major General Joseph Hooker was crushed by a much smaller force under Lee. In the Battle of Chancellorsville, Jackson led a brilliant flanking march that surprised and routed the Union forces, but that night Jackson sustained an accidental mortal wound from his own troops.

With some momentum from the Chancellorsville victory, Lee decided to raid Pennsylvania and perhaps convince the Northern public that continuation of the war was pointless. His troops marched through Maryland and approached Harrisburg, the capital of Pennsylvania, before pulling back. At a vital crossroad village called Gettysburg, Lee and Hooker's new replacement, Major General George G. Meade, fought the most costly battle of the war. After three days and close to fifty thousand casualties, Lee withdrew back to Virginia, his third-day assault having been repulsed. For the second time, Lee had invaded the Union states and failed.

For the spring campaign of 1864, Grant determined to launch simultaneous offensives to squeeze the outnumbered Confederates. He elected to travel alongside Meade's army in Virginia, while Sherman commanded a group of armies in the West that advanced toward Atlanta. Against Grant, Lee put up a bold defense. His Army of Northern Virginia inflicted unprecedented losses, some sixty thousand, in seven weeks at the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, and elsewhere, yet the Yankees kept the initiative. Eventually, Grant was able to lock Lee's army up in a siege around Petersburg. Yet he could not crush Lee's men.

Meanwhile, to the westward, Sherman had more success against the Confederates, led by Joseph E. Johnston. Sherman largely avoided the enormous casualties of the eastern theater, holding and then turning his Rebel opponents. By mid-July, as the Confederates backed up near Atlanta, President Davis replaced Johnston with the aggressive John Bell Hood. Hood did what Davis expected of him: fight. But in each instance, the Confederates lost. In early September, Sherman forced the Rebel defenders out of Atlanta, a victory that ensured Lincoln's reelection two months later.

By mid-November, Sherman—with three-fifths of his army—began his famous March to the Sea, wrecking railroads, consuming foodstuffs, and proving to the Southern people that their armies could not check these massive Union raids. The other two-fifths of his army served as the core of a large force under Major General George Thomas that crushed the remainder of Hood's army around Nashville, a victory that elevated the importance of Sherman's march all the more.

On water, the Union navy contributed mightily to the ultimate victory. Those original twenty-three active vessels increased to more than 700 thanks to Northern shipbuilding. With this huge fleet, the Federal blockade closed ports or discouraged trading ships, while the wood and ironclad river boats supported land campaigns on the Tennessee, Cumberland, and Mississippi Rivers and also along the coast. In January 1865, the Union sealed the last significant port city, Wilmington, with the fall of Fort Fisher.

That same month, Sherman launched a destructive overland campaign through the Carolinas, once again wrecking railroads; eating foodstuffs; destroying anything of military value; terrifying civilians; and in the case of South Carolina, burning homes and towns. By late March, the end was in sight. Sherman's army had reached central North Carolina and could be in Virginia in a few weeks. Grant, meanwhile, slowly extended his superior numbers around Lee's flank, severing the railroads that supplied Richmond and Petersburg and penetrating the Confederate rear. His works outflanked, Lee abandoned the Petersburg-Richmond line and took flight westward, hoping to swing around Grant's army and unite with Johnston, who was back in command opposing Sherman. Before Lee could escape, a Union force under Philip Sheridan boxed him in and he surrendered at Appomattox Court House on 9 April 1865.Several weeks later, Johnston surrendered to Sherman near Durham, North Carolina, and all Confederate resistance soon succumbed.

Sustaining the Soldier and Civilian Populations

Approximately 2.25 million served in the Union army, and from 800,000 to 900,000 donned Confederate gray. The Union had over 20,000 African American sailors and almost 180,000 African American soldiers, about 150,000 of whom came from the Confederate States. In the final stages of the war, the Confederacy attempted to create black regiments, with very limited success.

With a large industrial and agricultural base, the Union provided better for its soldiery. After some initial scandals over ostensibly shoddy clothing and shoes and accusations of profiteering on a grand scale, the Northern states churned out vast quantities of food, clothing, weapons, ammunition, and other equipment necessary for war, while providing for its domestic market as well. To offset the labor loss of the up to one million young males who were in service at a given time, women took to the fields and factories and owners adopted more labor-saving machinery. Through hard work, cooperation, technology, and innovation, the Union produced enough food and clothing to provide for those soldiers in the field, the people at home, and in some cases, a number of people in Europe.

To pay for the war, the Union Congress raised the tariff dramatically and passed into law a series of taxes, including the first income tax, under the Internal Revenue Act of 1862.Despite this heavy taxation by the Lincoln administration, much of the war was financed by bond sales and the printing of paper money called greenbacks. The banker Jay Cooke and Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase convinced the Northern public to buy long-term war bonds.(Cooke's firm alone sold over $1.2 billion worth.) The paper money circulated as legal tender. Still, inflation drove prices up to twice their prewar level, causing considerable hardship for those on fixed wages and those who did not grow their own food. Families and communal organizations attempted to ease the burden on those with breadwinners in uniform.

Philanthropic organizations also contributed to the well-being of the soldiers. The United States Sanitary Commission was formed to combat the atrocious conditions in Union hospitals. The group promoted cleanliness, better medical care, proper nursing, and a host of other issues to improve care for the sick and injured. The U.S. Christian Commission championed religion through the publication of vast amounts of religious tracts. For those seeking spiritual comfort or for activity-starved soldiers in camp, these readings filled an important void.

The Davis administration lacked the established apparatus to collect taxes, and with the Union blockade, little in the way of import taxes entered the coffers. Congressional laws establishing an income tax, a levy on agricultural products at the source, and a duty on the buying and selling of most basic goods generated more frustration with the government than revenue. The government floated war bonds, which raised a little more than a third of the needed funds. The Confederates generated the remainder by printing money. Early on, the notes circulated reasonably well, but as the fortunes of war declined and the amount of paper money in circulation escalated, its value plummeted. Late in the war, these paper notes were more a keepsake than a circulating medium.

The Confederate States performed minor miracles in creating a munitions industry, but in other areas, scarcity plagued the armies and the civilian population. Refugees flooded cities, driving up prices and reducing the amount of food crops harvested. Despite an extraordinary agricultural base, southerners devoted too many acres to the production of tobacco and cotton and not enough to food. A congressional resolution and state laws tried to rectify this problem, but they did not succeed satisfactorily. Other basic items, like clothing and shoes, became so rare that only the well-off could afford them. People made do with makeshift footgear, homespun garments, whatever they could. Still, basic shortages damaged morale and resulted in protests and even riots. In one instance, Davis tossed all the money he had in his pockets into a crowd to quell a bread riot.

With limited financial means, huge government expenses, and shortages, inflation rates soared. By the last two years of the war, prices rose so rapidly that many Southern farmers refused to sell their crops and livestock to the Confederate government; the authorized price could not keep up with escalating market prices. In order to feed and supply soldiers, many commissary and quartermaster officials simply impressed the goods or foodstuffs and provided receipts to the owner. Even though Confederate law authorized these seizures, they alienated many people from the Confederate cause and did little to check inflation. Throughout the war, but especially in the last few months, soldiers and civilians alike suffered severe shortages.

Military Strategy and Administration

Both the Lincoln and the Davis administrations ran their respective war efforts well. For the most part they managed military affairs effectively, appointed fairly competent officers (although both sides suffered through a few dreadful politicians who were appointed as generals), and adopted sensible strategies. Davis was aware of both the demands for protection from all Confederate citizens and the limited resources available to provide it. He therefore attempted to employ what historians have called an "offensive-defensive" strategy. Davis oversaw the creation of large military departments. He had the officers in charge position their major army or armies along the logical invasion routes, and called on them to concentrate their forces to defeat major Union advances. Whenever they had opportunities, Davis encouraged offensives, even raids into Union territories. Those raids would take the war to the enemy, compelling the Northern public to taste the hazards of invasion. He also hoped to draw valuable supplies from the Northern populace. While there was some Confederate guerrilla fighting, the Davis administration never embraced it, largely because guerrilla warfare would have exposed their people and property, including slaves, to Federal harassment, destruction, or confiscation.

When both sides optimistically believed the war would be of relatively brief duration, Lincoln embraced Win-field Scott's Anaconda Plan, which called for a blockade, river gunboats to penetrate deep into the Confederacy, and Union armies to slice their way through the rebellious territory. As the war expanded, Lincoln urged his generals to target the Confederate armies as their objectives, not simply Confederate territory. With Rebel military forces crushed, resistance would collapse, Lincoln believed. He skillfully tapped diplomacy to keep European powers and their money out of the conflict, and he used a blockade to cut off supplies to the under-industrialized Confederacy. By proclaiming emancipation, Lincoln won over all advocates of human rights, co-opted those in the North who criticized him for his slowness to embrace the concept, and allowed him to use a weapon that worked doubly, depriving Southerners of a valuable laborers force and putting them to work for the Union cause as soldiers, sailors, teamsters, stevedores, cooks, and farmers. Where Lincoln failed as a strategist was in his belated grasp of the value of Grant and Sherman's raiding strategy. Both generals realized that by marching Union armies directly through the Confederacy, destroying military resources and terrifying Southern people, they could promote the destruction of Rebel armies without suffering the staggering losses of direct military campaigns. Lincoln acquiesced because of his faith in those commanders, a faith that events fully justified, not just in Georgia and the Carolinas but also in Virginia under Philip Sheridan. Those marches destroyed valuable supplies, severed rail connections, damaged Southern morale, and caused mass desertions as soldiers abandoned the army to look after their loved ones.

The greatest administrative failure was in the area of prisons. Neither side prepared adequately for the huge number of captives as both sections assumed that they would exchange or parole prisoners regularly. But two major factors resulted in the breakdown of exchange. The Confederates claimed that many of the prisoners Grant took at Vicksburg were paroled illegally and could therefore return to service without formal exchange. The second revolved around black soldiers. The Confederacy resisted notions of treating them like white soldiers, and refused to exchange them. In response, the trading cartel broke down and prison populations soared beyond anyone's expectations. Lacking adequate preparation, camps quickly became overcrowded. Food, clothing, and housing shortages developed, and sanitary problems escalated as a consequence of these conditions. Over fifty-six thousand men died from the spread of disease as a result of overcrowding and food and clothing shortages in these horrible prison camps.

Confederate and Union Politics

In the political arena, the Confederate Congress exhibited some foresight when it established conscription and passed innovative taxing legislation, but it generally got mired in the inconsequential and failed to address many important issues in a timely way. Congress never passed legislation to flesh out a Supreme Court and other important pieces of legislation died of inertia or petty squabbles. Quite a number of legislators used the halls of Congress as a forum in which to bash Davis, his appointees, and the policies they opposed. Davis's popular election to the presidency in 1861 was unopposed, but administration critics had already begun to complain publicly. The congressional elections of 1863 reflected the public's growing disillusionment. When the second Congress convened in May 1864, clear opponents of Davis fell just short of a majority in both houses. Without organized political parties, however, opposition to the Davis administration splintered. In just one instance did Congress override a presidential veto, and only on a minor postage bill.

Lincoln's relationship with Congress and his own party varied. Early in his administration, with Republicans in the clear majority after secession, Congress passed into law all of the party's important planks for promoting economic growth and opportunity: an increase in the tariff; a homestead bill that offered free western land to anyone agreeing to settle on it; land subsidies for the construction of a transcontinental railroad; and federal land grants to promote agricultural and mechanical colleges. In addition to war legislation, Congress established the first national currency in the Legal Tender Act. Yet the president's relations with Congress and his own party waxed and waned in accordance with progress in the war. The failure of eastern campaigns in 1862, perhaps compounded by an initial backlash to the Emancipation Proclamation, resulted in Republican losses at the polls that year.

Numerous individuals within the Republican Party came to believe that Lincoln was not up to the job of president. They began lobbying to dump him from the 1864 ticket, rallying around John C. Frémont or Salmon Chase. Like so many other people, both men and their supporters underestimated Lincoln's political savvy, and the president outmaneuvered them to secure renomination.

Much has been made about divisions between Lincoln and the more extreme wing in his own party, the Radical Republicans. In fact, Lincoln generally got along with the radical element. His differences with them were often minor policy distinctions, issues of timing or arguments over legislative versus executive power, not necessarily policy objectives.

Many administration critics outside the Republican Party, fueled by wartime failures, huge casualty lists, the draft, emancipation, and civil rights violations, organized into the Peace Democrats. These Copperheads, as supporters of the war called them, made some election gains in 1862, and their leading spokesman, Clement L. Vallandigham, almost won the governorship of Ohio in 1863.

During the difficult days in the summer of 1864, with the armies of both Grant and Sherman apparently bogged down, and Confederate Jubal Early threatening Washington, it appeared to Lincoln that he would not win reelection. The Democratic Party nominated for president the former general George B. McClellan, a pro-war administration critic, on a peace platform. Yet Lincoln stayed the course, and the war issue turned his way when Sheridan defeated Early and Sherman captured Atlanta. With the overwhelming support of Union soldiers, who detested the Copperheads, Lincoln and the Union Party (a coalition of Republicans and pro-war Democrats) swept the 1864 election.

Between his reelection and his assassination at the hands of John Wilkes Booth in April 1865, Lincoln endorsed several important initiatives to help those who had been held in bondage to succeed after the war. He pressed for passage and ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which abolished slavery; encouraged and signed into law the Freedmen's Bureau Bill, which created an organization to assist blacks in the transition from slavery to freedom; and began discussing with close political friends the idea of giving blacks the vote.

Davis and Lincoln As Leaders

Most modern scholars believe that Jefferson Davis did a competent job as Confederate president under extremely adverse circumstances. However, his inability to under-stand alternative viewpoints and his lack of personal charm served him badly. The distinction of Lincoln, on the other hand, was discernible not in the enactment of laws through his advocacy, nor in the adoption of his ideals as a continuing postwar policy, nor even in his persuasion of Republicans to follow his lead. Rather, the qualities that marked him as a leader were vision, personal tact, fairness toward opponents, popular appeal, dignity and effectiveness in state papers, absence of vindictiveness, and withal a personality that was remembered for its own uniqueness while it was almost canonized as a symbol of the Union cause. Military success, though long delayed, and the dramatic martyrdom of his assassination must also be reckoned as factors in Lincoln's fame. On the Southern side, the myth of the lost cause has diminished the true role of slavery in the war and has elevated the reputation of numerous talented Confederate individuals, most notably Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and Jefferson Davis, to extraordinary heights.

The Consequences of the War

The cost of the war was staggering. Some 258,000 Confederates soldiers gave their lives for slavery and an independent nation; more than 360,000 Federals paid the ultimate price for the union. In addition, one-half million sustained wounds in the war and untold thousands permanently damaged their health by contracting wartime illnesses. From a monetary standpoint, the best guess places the cost of the war at $20 billion. The Confederate States alone suffered an estimated $7.4 billion worth of property damage. In fact, so devastated was the Southern economy that it was not until well into the twentieth century that its annual agricultural output reached the 1860 level.

Among the other consequences of the war, the union was established as inviolate. The central government would continue to increase its power at the expense of the states, and the Northern vision of rights, economic opportunity, and industrialization would prevail. For African Americans, in addition to the abolition of slavery forever, the Fourteenth Amendment granted them citizenship. Unfortunately, the court system refused to apply the due process and equal protection clause of that amendment to African Americans, and it was not long before whites regained control in the South and stripped blacks of many of their newfound rights. Southern whites even managed to circumvent the Fifteenth Amendment, which gave African Americans the right to vote. All the while, as Southern whites restored themselves to power and forced blacks into a subordinate position, a Northern public, tired of war and reform, acquiesced. It took another one hundred years for blacks to gain their civil liberties.

Bibliography

Boritt, Gabor S., ed. Why the Confederacy Lost. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.

Cooper, William C., Jr. Jefferson Davis, American. New York: Knopf, 2000.

Davis, William C. Jefferson Davis: The Man and His Hour. New York: Harper Collins, 1991.

———. Look Away!; A History of the Confederate States of America. New York: Free Press, 2002.

Donald, David Herbert. Lincoln. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995.

———, ed. Why the North Won the Civil War. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1960.

Foner, Eric. Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party before the Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press, 1970.

Gienapp, William E. The Origins of the Republican Party, 1852– 1856. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.

Glatthaar, Joseph T. Forged in Battle: The Civil War Alliance of Black Soldiers and White Officers. New York: Free Press, 1990.

Hattaway, Herman, and Archer Jones. How the North Won: A Military History of the Civil War. Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 1983.

McPherson, James M. Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.

Paludan, Phillip Shaw. "A People's Contest": The Union and the Civil War, 1861–1865. New York: Harper and Row, 1988.

Roland, Charles P. An American Iliad: The Story of the Civil War. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1991.

Thomas, Emory M. The Confederate Nation, 1861–1865. New York: Harper and Row, 1979.

—Joseph T. Glatthaar

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The importance of diplomacy during the American Civil War has long been underestimated. Both Northerners, who were committed to the preservation of the Union, and Southerners, determined to create a new nation, understood that without support from Europe, the secession movement in the United States was doomed. Thus, the foreign policy of the Union, in the able hands of Secretary of State William Henry Seward, was directed toward preventing the Confederacy from securing diplomatic recognition, military supplies, and any kind of encouragement from abroad. Toward that end, Seward conducted a vigorous foreign policy composed of bluff, bluster, and ultimately cautious moderation. The Confederates, on the other hand, were confident that the reliance of Britain and other industrialized nations of Europe on Southern cotton for their economic health and well-being and their desire for free trade guaranteed full support. Confederate foreign policy, therefore, was largely passive and dependent on King Cotton. Britain and France were indeed dependent on Southern cotton, and their leaders were convinced that the United States was irrevocably divided. All that was needed, they thought, was for the Union to recognize that fact. That conviction, a broad hostility toward slavery, an ample supply of cotton already in British warehouses, and a highly profitable wartime trade with the Union led to a uniform European policy of neutrality. That policy, however, which helped the North but hurt the South, was never carved in stone. Union blunders, British impatience, the actual and feared depletion of cotton stocks, and European horror at the bloodshed and destruction in America all threatened to move Europe from neutrality to intervention and Confederate success. Diplomacy, as much as military leadership, strategy and tactics, and Northern economic dominance, provided an essential key to the ultimate triumph of the Union and preservation of the United States as a single nation.

Because of the phenomenal development of the American economy and the expansion of the United States during the first half of the nineteenth century, Europe and Latin America closely watched the American crisis unfold. The health of the economies of Britain and France depended greatly upon the import of American raw materials, primarily cotton, and access to the prosperous American market. Early on it was recognized that peace in North America best served European interests and therefore European leaders hoped that Americans would not engage in hostilities. They were convinced that restoration of the Union was impossible. When hostilities began, they decided that neutrality best served their interests.

The Confederate States of America also hoped for a peaceful separation. Shortly after his appointment as provisional president, Jefferson Davis and his secretary of state, Robert Toombs of Georgia, dispatched a mission to Washington to secure recognition and the transfer of all federal property to Confederate authorities. Davis and Toombs also dispatched three commissioners to Europe to explain the reasons for the creation of the Confederacy and to secure recognition and treaties of amity and commerce. Support from Europe, Southerners understood, was critical, for without a navy or industry of its own, the Confederacy had to have foreign backing. They placed primary reliance on European, and particularly British, dependence on their cotton, believing this ensured a favorable response.

Northern leaders, particularly Abraham Lincoln and Seward, were absolutely committed to the preservation of the Union and also understood that the European reaction to the American crisis was critical. Seward, especially, believed that secession lacked majority support in the South and that Southern Unionists would rise and end the secession movement by the spring of 1861. It was essential that the Southern extremists receive no encouragement from abroad, without which expectation, Seward believed, the Confederacy would be short-lived.

Seward and Early Union Policy

Seward was the driving force behind American Civil War diplomacy, and much of his diplomacy was shaped by his imperial vision. For more than thirty-five years, Seward had extolled the promise, potential, and perpetuity of the American empire, and much of his Civil War diplomacy aimed at preserving, expanding, and ensuring the successful completion of that empire. Well before "manifest destiny" became the slogan of expansionists, Seward envisioned the expansion of the United States to include all of North America and quite likely South America and the islands of the Caribbean as well. He also spoke eloquently about the certain growth of the American economy and American overseas commerce and predicted that U.S. merchants, commercial agents, and diplomats would spread the principles and ideology of the American System around the world.

Seward's program required the centralization of American political power and the containment and eventual abolition of slavery in the United States. He promoted legislation to attract, Americanize, and assimilate immigrants, liberalize land policies, centralize banking and monetary programs, and fund internal improvements and federal money. He also believed that the gradual end of slavery and its replacement by free labor were essential for peaceful American expansion and the full growth of the American economy. Without the stain of slavery, he thought, Canada and Mexico would eagerly seek admission to the American commonwealth.

Slavery also gave excessive power to reactionary agrarian interests in the South. Containment of slavery to the states where it presently existed, gradual emancipation, and the reduction of Southern power in Congress, Seward believed, were made possible by the Republican victory of 1860, as was the restructuring of the American political economy and the expansion of the American territorial, commercial, and ideological empire. During the war years these programs were subordinated to the preservation of the Union, an end that Seward never questioned and a goal from which he never wavered.

Throughout the secession winter of 1860–1861 that followed Lincoln's election, Seward worked tirelessly to find a compromise or modus vivendi with those Southern leaders whose states had not left the Union. While Lincoln remained in Springfield, Illinois, preparing for his inauguration, Seward made a number of public speeches emphasizing the dangers, impracticality, and fruitlessness of secession. He opposed all actions that would close the door to the return of the disaffected states and tried to ensure that the Confederates received no encouragement, prospect of support, or tangible aid from overseas.

Although Seward did not assume office until Lincoln's inauguration on 4 March, he engaged European diplomats in Washington in private conversations that aimed, first, at assuring them that the secession effort would shortly collapse, and, second, warning Europe that the United States would not tolerate any foreign intervention in American or hemispheric affairs. Seward had predicted that if the United States became divided, European nations would sweep down upon the Americas to reestablish or expand their authority and influence. During the last weeks of March, these concerns appeared justified. Rumors were rife that Britain, France, and Spain were planning to intervene in Mexico, that Spain was about to recolonize the Dominican Republic, and that France was about to move back into Haiti. The first two had a basis in fact. The three European powers were discussing an intervention limited to collecting debts for their nationals who had invested in Mexican bonds, and the Dominican Republic, engaged in civil war, had asked Spain to return. Spain had agreed and dispatched a force from Cuba to reestablish a colonial government in Santo Domingo. The information that France was contemplating recolonizing Haiti was groundless. Seward chose to use this information both to reassert his waning authority in the cabinet and perhaps to take effective control of the Lincoln administration and generate an issue calculated to reunite the fractured nation.

On 1 April 1861, Seward sent Lincoln an extraordinary memo entitled "Some Thoughts for the President's Consideration." In the memo, Seward complained that the government lacked both a domestic and a foreign policy and was adrift. He recommended that Lincoln change the thrust of the American dispute from the question of slavery to that of union, and proposed that the United States seek "explanations" from France, Spain, Britain, and Russia for their plans and actions. (The Russian minister, Edouard de Stoeckl, had met with one of Davis's Confederate commissioners, and Northern newspapers reported that Russia was about to recognize the Confederacy.) If, Seward continued, France and Spain could not satisfactorily explain their intentions and their recent actions, Lincoln should convene Congress and ask for a declaration of war. In addition, Seward recommended sending agents to Canada and Latin America to promote independence and opposition to European interference in the New World. Finally, he suggested that this policy required energetic and constant attention and implied that if Lincoln was unwilling to provide leadership, Seward was willing to assume it himself.

Lincoln responded to Seward immediately, pointing out that he had already made it clear that his administration would not interfere with slavery in the states where it already existed and that the fundamental issue in the crisis was indeed the question of union. He also noted that recent dispatches which Seward had sent to American agents abroad clearly stated his administration's foreign policy. Finally, Lincoln said that he would continue to determine policy with the help of his entire cabinet.

Seward's chief purpose, aside from taking control of the administration, had been to create a crisis that was calculated to restore unity. It is most unlikely that he either expected or wanted war with Europe—a foreign crisis only, not war, would have served his purpose. It was a dangerous strategy, however, and it is just as well that Lincoln rejected it. Although the memo remained confidential, Seward's foreign war panacea was well known among diplomats and merely confirmed their view that Seward would be a difficult person with whom to deal.

Seward's memo stemmed partly from his disagreement with his fellow cabinet members over the question of maintaining federal control of Fort Sumter in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina. The fort, well within the range of shore batteries, could not be defended, and when President James Buchanan had attempted to send provisions to the fort early in January, Confederate gunners opened fire on the supply ship Star of the West, forcing it to retreat. Buchanan left the question of reprovisioning the fort or evacuating it to his successor, and shortly after Seward took office, he recommended the evacuation of Fort Sumter. Initially, Seward had majority support in the cabinet. He argued that attempting to resupply the fort would be regarded as a hostile act against the Confederate States of America and would not only strengthen the separatists' hands but also cause critical border states, such as Virginia, to secede from the Union. Lincoln, however, did not agree. He had pledged that he would yield no federal property to the Confederate government and decided to let events help him decide on a course of action. Over the following few weeks, public sentiment for holding the fort strengthened, and by the end of March, a majority of the cabinet came to the same position. This isolated Seward, who still counseled delaying any confrontation and who now feared that attempting to reprovision the fort would lead to war. His memo was his last effort to dissuade Lincoln from sending fresh supplies to the fort.

On 6 April, Lincoln notified South Carolina authorities that he had dispatched a supply force to Fort Sumter. Four days later, South Carolina demanded that the commandant of the fort, Major Robert J. Anderson, immediately surrender. When Anderson offered to surrender only after a few days when his supplies ran out, the Confederates, aware that fresh supplies were in transit, rejected Anderson's offer. On 12 April, Confederate General Pierre G. T. Beauregard opened fire on Fort Sumter. As Seward had feared, the decision to hold on to the fort had provoked the Confederates. The Civil War had begun.

Following the outbreak of hostilities and Jefferson Davis's announcement on 17 April that the Confederacy would issue letters of marque and reprisal, creating privateers for action against Union shipping, Union policy changed. Lincoln responded to Davis on 19 April by announcing that the Union would treat privateers as pirates and proclaiming a blockade of Southern ports. Seward attempted to open negotiations with the British foreign minister, Lord John Russell, for American adherence to the Declaration of Paris of 1856, an international agreement that, among other things, outlawed privateering. The United States had declined to participate earlier because, as a small-navy nation, it wanted to hold on to the privateering option. Seward hoped that the negotiation would cause Britain to postpone recognition of the Confederate belligerency and that an Anglo-American convention committing the United States to the Declaration of Paris would require Britain and other nations to treat Confederate privateers as pirates. Negotiations, however, began on 18 May, four days after Britain had recognized Confederate belligerency and collapsed in July, when Russell announced that if negotiations with the Union were successful, Britain would neither hold the Confederacy to the agreement nor treat Confederate privateers as pirates.

Lincoln's blockade proclamation had an important effect on British policy. A blockade was universally regarded as an act of war and therefore an implicit recognition that a state of belligerency existed. Therefore, Lincoln's proclamation opened the door to a British proclamation of neutrality and recognition of Confederate belligerency, which (except when in violation of neutrality laws) gave the Confederate States the right to, among other things, solicit loans, buy arms, engage in recruiting, and put cruisers on the high seas with the rights of search and seizure. Because British commerce with the United States and reliance on Southern cotton was so heavy, Russell had to respond to Lincoln's proclamation. The British proclamation became public on 14 May 1861, and as Seward had feared, the other nations of Europe immediately followed with their own proclamations of neutrality. The way was now clear for Confederate agents to scour Europe for money and material to conduct their war.

The Union blockade was a double-edged sword. If effective, or even moderately effective, it would reduce the ability of the Confederates to import war material. But it would also interfere with foreign commerce and deprive Britain, France, and other industrialized nations of vital supplies of cotton. Reducing the export of cotton to Europe could increase pressure in Europe for involvement in American affairs in support of the Confederacy, which the Confederates hoped and expected would be the case.

Confederate Agents in Washington and Europe

While Seward was meeting regularly with diplomats in Washington and, after Lincoln's inauguration on 4 March 1861, sending elaborate instructions to American ministers abroad, Confederate leaders—confident that foreign support would be forthcoming with little or no effort on their part—had a casual attitude toward foreign affairs. Thus, Jefferson Davis chose Robert Toombs of Georgia as his first secretary of state, despite the fact that Toombs had no experience and little interest in foreign affairs. After six months Toombs resigned to become a general in the Confederate army. Davis then replaced Toombs with Robert M. T. Hunter of Virginia, who also lacked experience and had previously declined appointment as secretary of state when it was offered by Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan. Hunter remained in office only seven months. Finally, on 17 March 1862, Davis appointed his close personal friend, former attorney general, and current secretary of war Judah P. Benjamin of Louisiana to the post. Benjamin, who had had limited experience dealing with international legal disputes regarding slavery, served ably until the end of the Confederacy. Neither Davis nor any of these secretaries of state, however, ever attempted to develop a cohesive or imaginative foreign policy program.

Confederate officials did not develop a foreign policy program chiefly because they were confident they did not need one. Committed to the notion that "cotton is king," they were certain that Britain, France, and the other industrial nations of Europe could not tolerate a destructive civil war in the United States that would weaken or destroy the cotton culture. Neither, Confederates believed, would Europeans tolerate interference in their North American commerce. Furthermore, for decades Southerners had demanded free trade and had resisted the high, protective tariffs favored by Northern manufacturing interests. Confederates reasoned that the prospect of free trade with the Confederacy would also win British approval and ensure support. And surrounding these economic considerations, Confederate leaders were certain that the European elite felt a special affinity to the planter class. All that was needed, therefore, was to explain why the Southern states had seceded, to convince European governments that the Confederacy had an effective government, and to assure European governments that the Confederates were determined to preserve their independence.

On 25 February 1861, Davis and Toombs dispatched A.B. Roman, Martin J. Crawford, and John Forsyth to Washington to negotiate a peaceful separation and the evacuation of all federal property in the Confederacy. Two days later, Toombs sent William Lowndes Yancey, Pierre A. Rost, and Ambrose Dudley Mann to Europe to secure de jure recognition of the Confederate States of America and treaties of amity and commerce. No thought was given to establishing permanent missions in Washington or any European capital.

Not surprisingly, Roman, Forsyth, and Crawford—who arrived in Washington in early March—had no success there. Seward refused to meet with the commissioners or to arrange a meeting with Lincoln, which they had requested. Unwilling, however, to antagonize the agents, Seward maintained contact through a third party. He assured the Confederates that the Union would not attempt to coerce the seceded states into returning to the Union and still hoped that a peaceful reunion was possible. On 8 April, after a month of waiting impatiently and distrusting Seward's assurance of Lincoln's commitment to the maintenance of peace, Crawford informed Davis of rumors that Lincoln was committed to war. A few days later the three Confederates returned home.

The Confederate mission to Europe began with considerably more promise than the mission to Washington. Russell and French foreign minister Edouard Thouvenel both received Yancey, Rost, and Mann unofficially, as was common practice in dealing with nonaccredited agents. Toombs had instructed the Confederate agents to visit Britain first, and then continue on to France, Russia, and Belgium. They were to explain that the secession of Southern states was provided for by the U.S. Constitution, and was necessary to prevent Northern social, political, and economic domination of the Southern states. Toombs had instructed the commissioners to avoid mention of slavery and emphasize the economic benefits to Europe of an independent Confederacy.

Meeting with the British and French foreign ministers was all that the commissioners accomplished. Russell expressed sympathy for the Confederacy but refused either to discuss treaty negotiations or to grant de jure recognition without a treaty. The British neutrality proclamation was already forthcoming when he spoke with the Confederate commissioners on May 3 and May 9. Russell had also reached an agreement with France that the two nations would act jointly on American affairs and instructed his minister in Washington, Lord Lyons, to coordinate policy and work closely with his French counterpart, Henri Mercier. In France, Thouvenel also expressed sympathy for the Confederacy but would go no further than Britain.

Britain's proclamation of neutrality did not address the question of whether the Union blockade was effective and therefore legal. Confederate agents understood that access to Southern ports was essential for the import of war material legitimized by belligerent status, and that the ability of the small Union navy to blockade all Southern ports and the extensive Southern coast was implausible at the least. Britain was divided on the issue. Commercial interests, legal purists, Southern sympathizers, and Confederate propagandists insisted the blockade was ineffective and demanded that Britain, with its powerful navy, confront the United States; the Admiralty and several in the government, however, understood that a loose interpretation of effectiveness could be most useful to the British navy sometime in the future.

The consequence of this division was that Russell never challenged the legality of the Union blockade, which became more effective as the war continued. Initially, the appearance of effectiveness was inadvertently enhanced by the decision of Southerners to impose a voluntary cotton embargo of their own. The Confederates reasoned that the sooner Britain and France felt the effects of the loss of fresh supplies of cotton, the more rapidly the former would demand the end of the Union blockade and come to the aid of the South. Southerners stated that no cotton would leave the Confederacy until the Northern blockade ended and Europe provided recognition and support. Their policy created the illusion that the blockade was more effective than it was, which Union agents and propagandists abroad used to their advantage; it also opened the Confederacy to charges of blackmail and hypocrisy.

Yancey, Rost, and Mann, having failed to secure de jure recognition from either Britain or France, saw no reason to continue their mission on to Russia and Belgium. They returned to Britain and began an intensive propaganda campaign in association with a number of other Southerners whose goal was to strengthen and expand support for the Confederacy among sympathetic members of Parliament and the upper classes, journalists, and conservatives generally. Yancey was confident that the upper classes and those in power in both Britain and France supported the Confederacy, but he understood that positive sentiment was not enough. Only a decisive Confederate military victory and a deprivation of fresh cotton would move both nations to act.

Latin American Developments

After Lincoln squelched Seward's call for an aggressive program to meet European interference on 1 April, the secretary's policy changed. The secretary of state followed a surprisingly mild policy toward Spain, toward British, French, and Spanish intervention in Mexico, and toward the subsequent French occupation of Mexico City and establishment of Archduke Maximilian of Austria as emperor of Mexico. For example, he officially protested the Spanish occupation of Santo Domingo to the Spanish minister to the United States, Gabriel García y Tassara, and to the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Madrid through the American chargé in Madrid. Tassara dismissed Seward's note as being meant primarily for the American public and not to be taken seriously. When Spanish officials explained that Spain had returned to Santo Domingo by invitation and asked Seward to explain his note further, Seward retreated, noting to Tassara that Congress would consider sometime later on whether war was justified.

With regard to the impending tripartite intervention in Mexico, Britain had been firm in insisting that the three powers invite the United States to participate. Seward declined the offer, and since foreign intervention for the purpose of collecting debts was allowed under international law, he had no justification to oppose the three nations. Seward did propose lending Mexico funds to pay off its creditors with Baja California and other Mexican territory as collateral if the European nations would agree not to intervene. The plan failed when Britain, France, and Spain responded unenthusiastically and the U.S. Senate rejected the proposal. In October 1861 the three European nations signed the Tripartite Treaty of London and in December they jointly landed troops in Vera Cruz.

It soon became apparent that the French emperor, Louis Napoléon, had more ambitious schemes in mind, and Britain and Spain withdrew their forces. Seward warned France that the United States would not "view with indifference" the establishment of a European monarchy in the New World, especially so close to the United States, but Napoléon was undeterred. In June 1863, French troops seized Mexico City. Napoléon, with the support of Mexican conservatives in the capital, offered Maximilian an imperial throne. Maximilian accepted and set up his government in the following year. Benito Juárez fled to the countryside and initiated a guerrilla war against Maximilian and the French army that protected him. Seward was unhappy with this turn of events, but did nothing to oppose either Napoléon or Maximilian. War with France or even a threat of war, he decided, would not serve Union interests. Mexican affairs, like Caribbean matters, could wait until after peace had returned to the United States.

Confederate involvement in Mexico began in May 1861, when Toombs sent John T. Pickett to Mexico City to open a permanent embassy, secure recognition, and negotiate a treaty of amity and commerce. Astonishingly, Toombs also instructed Pickett to point out to the reformist Juárez the similarity of the Confederate and Mexican economies and the resemblance between slavery and peonage. Pickett's career as a filibusterer in Cuba and his record as consul in Vera Cruz did not inspire confidence among Mexicans, and Juárez was not impressed.

Pickett's mission was a disaster. He was unable to overcome Mexican fears of Southern expansionism or hostility toward slavery, both emphasized by the Union minister, Thomas Corwin. When Pickett suggested that the Confederacy might return some of the territory taken in the Mexican War in exchange for recognition, Mexican officials were skeptical. By the fall of 1861 Pickett had alienated all of those with whom he had dealt, chiefly by exposing his contempt for Mexico and his racism. When he became involved in a public brawl with a Union sympathizer in November, the Mexican authorities arrested him as a common criminal. When Davis and his cabinet learned of Pickett's behavior and arrest, they did not defend him but, rather, recalled their diplomat in disgrace and repudiated his actions. The damage, however, had been done. Juárez had no interest in supporting the Confederacy and maintained a strict neutrality throughout the Civil War.

In Mexico, the Confederates had greater success in negotiations with Santiago Vidaurri, the governor of Nuevo León and Coahuilla, who had long had separatist inclinations and conducted his affairs autonomously. The Confederate agent, Juan A. Quintero, had solid relations with Vidaurri. Quintero secured an important commercial agreement and a promise from Vidaurri that he would block any requests for the transit of Union troops across territory under his authority. The Confederate government instructed Quintero to discourage Vidaurri from separating from Mexico and asking for annexation to the Confederacy. President Davis doubted the Confederate Congress would welcome the addition of a Mexican province to their nation and he wished to avoid the embarrassment of a rejection. For all their efforts, Mexico was a low priority for the Confederates. They understood that the key to a successful foreign policy remained in Europe.

Pressure and Counterpressure on Britain and France

Seward understood that British policy would be decisive in Europe, and he was pleased that in the patronage battles, he had succeeded in having Charles Francis Adams, the son and grandson of former American ministers to the Court of St. James, appointed to Britain. Lincoln's choice, William Dayton of New Jersey—John C. Frémont's running mate on the Republican ticket in 1856—went to France instead. Adams had his first interview with Russell on 18 May. Seward had been outraged by the British neutrality proclamation and the granting of belligerent rights to the Confederacy, and Adams complained to Russell. Russell only assured Adams that Britain had no intention at that time to move to the next step of recognizing Confederate independence.

Seward also reacted harshly to the willingness of Russell to meet, even informally, with the Confederate agents. He sent Adams his notorious Dispatch No. 10, dated 21 May 1861, instructing Adams to break off all relations with the British government if Russell continued to meet with the Confederate commissioners. Seward had wanted Adams to read the message to Russell, but Lincoln wisely insisted that Seward change the instructions so that Adams had discretion in his discussion with Russell and was to use the document only for his own guidance. Adams had the good sense to soften the dispatch by presenting only noninflammatory parts to Russell. Russell, as it happened, had already decided to have no further discussions with the Confederate commissioners.

By late summer Yancey, Rost, Mann, and their colleagues had had enough success in arousing British and French support to alarm both Adams and Dayton. Hunter, who had replaced Toombs as Confederate secretary of state, saw great potential in the use of propaganda and decided to formalize the propaganda effort by appointing journalists Henry Hotze and Edwin De Leon to promote the Confederate cause in London and Paris, respectively. Hotze established a weekly journal, the Index, that was highly successful. After De Leon ran into difficulties, Hotze took over the French propaganda operation as well.

Whatever success these agents had in shaping opinion, however, Britain and France refused to move from their neutral policies. Yancey remained confident that a military victory and lack of cotton would bring about British support, and he was relieved when Lincoln emphasized that the Union had no intention to abolish slavery. All of the elements he believed necessary for tangible British support were in place by midsummer 1861. The Confederates scored a stunning military success on 21 July at Bull Run, Virginia, and distress was already apparent in the cotton manufacturing areas. When, however, the Confederate agents requested an unofficial meeting with Russell, he put them off and informed them that Britain would remain neutral. Both British public opinion and the cabinet remained divided, and whatever Lincoln's position on slavery, British abolitionists and Union sympathizers emphasized that the Confederacy was based on slavery and its expansion. Neither Prime Minister Lord Palmerston nor Foreign Minister Russell were willing to appear as champions of a slave nation or to contribute to its perpetuation and expansion.

Shortly after Russell's response, Davis and Hunter decided to take a more aggressive approach and establish formal diplomatic missions in Britain, France, Spain, and Belgium. The previous passive policy was clearly not working; Yancey submitted his resignation to Davis and prepared to return to Alabama. Davis ordered Mann to open a diplomatic mission in Belgium, and he sent Rost to Spain. More significantly, Davis selected James Murray Mason of Virginia to establish a mission in London and John Slidell of Louisiana, a highly experienced and able diplomat, to go to Paris.

Following Adams's assumption of his duties in London, Anglo-American relations proceeded smoothly until the end of the year. Adams deftly handled Seward's Dispatch No. 10, and Russell's decision to have no further meetings with the Confederates resolved the matter raised by the dispatch. For the most part, Adams attempted to counter the increasingly effective Confederate propaganda campaign and to gather information on the activities of Confederate agents. The only major diplomatic issue was the unsuccessful negotiation on the Declaration of Paris.

The Trent Affair and Its Aftermath

A much more serious dispute in Anglo-American relations arose over the Union capture of Mason and Slidell in November. The two Confederate diplomats ran the blockade on 12 October 1861, sailing from Charleston to Nassau and thence to Cuba. On 7 November they boarded the Trent, a British mail packet, for the remaining leg of their voyage to England. On the next day the USS San Jacinto, under the command of Captain Charles Wilkes, stopped the Trent on the high seas, boarded the vessel, and after a minor skirmish removed Mason and Slidell and their secretaries. Wilkes carried his prisoners to Boston where they were imprisoned in Fort Warren in Boston harbor. Wilkes had acted without instructions and the seizure raised a number of questions of international law that resembled the issue of impressment that had so aroused Americans before 1812. While feigning outrage, the Confederates were delighted with Wilkes's action. They were certain that the Union would never give up the prisoners and that the resulting Anglo-American hostility could only help the Confederate cause overseas. Wilkes was widely applauded in the North, and the seizure of Confederate "traitors" from a British ship struck many as just and a proper response to Britain's assumed partiality toward the Confederacy. The crisis intensified during November and December as Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles, the House of Representatives, and the Northern press extolled Wilkes's heroism. Meanwhile, the British developed an extensive case for the illegality of his action and made it clear that they regarded the seizure as an affront to Britain's national honor. Prime Minister Palmerston was furious. Britain prepared for war, and sent more than eleven thousand troops to Canada. Russell charged that Wilkes had violated international law and instructed Lyons to demand the immediate release of Mason and Slidell and an apology. At Queen Victoria's request, Prince Albert, although mortally ill, softened Russell's dispatch and provided an out for the Americans by allowing Seward to deny that Wilkes had acted under instruction.

Seward may have initially been pleased by Wilkes's action, but he very quickly adopted a moderate tone in a dispatch to Adams that the latter presented to Russell. Seward's note did much to defuse the crisis at the highest level. Lyons also presented Russell's demands in such a way to make a favorable American response more likely. Finally, on 25 December Seward responded by informing the British that Wilkes had indeed acted on his own and, while not violating international law, had made certain technical errors. The two diplomats would be "cheerfully liberated" and turned over to Lord Lyons. Seward had convinced Lincoln, others in the cabinet, and a number of prominent senators that retaining the Confederates was decidedly not in the Union's interest.

The furor generated by the Trent affair dissipated quickly. Support for Wilkes disappeared as American attention turned to the war at home and journals published calculations of the costs of a war with Britain. Seward had demonstrated genuine statesmanship that Russell and others recognized. For the first time, British officials began to reconsider their early estimation of the secretary of state. Seward perhaps understood better than before that threatening war was, indeed, a dangerous policy. Seward's reputation among influential associates, however, did not improve. A number of prominent Radical Republicans, never supportive, renewed efforts to remove him from office. By this time Lincoln had come to regard Seward as an effective secretary and as a valuable ally in his opposition to the Radical Republicans and was determined to keep him in the cabinet.

Seward meanwhile sought to capitalize on the relief felt in Britain and the Union over the peaceful resolution of the issue. Although the details remain vague, there is evidence that he facilitated the deployment of British troops in Canada—they had arrived after the St. Lawrence River froze over. Whatever the case, Seward skillfully used the story that he had granted permission to Her Majesty's troops to cross American territory to emphasize that he held no animosity nor aggressive intent toward Britain. Seward also resisted suggestions that the United States abrogate or let expire the Marcy-Elgin Reciprocity Treaty of 1854. The treaty, set to expire in 1864, eliminated duties in trade between the United States and Canada, opened the St. Lawrence to the United States, and regulated fishing off the Canadian coast. Seward saw Canadian-American free trade as a means of integrating the Canadian economy into America's as a prelude to annexation.

Seward also concluded negotiations with Lyons in April 1862 for the suppression of the African slave trade. The agreement extended the reciprocal right to search and detain merchant ships off the coasts of Africa and Cuba and established prize courts in Sierra Leone, the Cape of Good Hope, and New York. In February 1863, Seward and Lyons expanded the agreement to include the coasts of Madagascar, Puerto Rico, and Santo Domingo. These treaties completed efforts to end the Atlantic slave trade that had begun a half century earlier. (In the absence of Southern senators, Seward also recognized Liberia and Haiti in 1862 and treaties of amity and commerce with Liberia on 21 October 1862 and Haiti on 3 November 1864.) These agreements with Britain after the Trent crisis contributed to the restoration of friend-lier relations. This was especially important at a time when pressure for mediation was increasing in Britain and France because of a developing crisis in cotton textile manufacturing centers.

Cotton Diplomacy

Confederates were disheartened by the peaceful settlement of the Trent affair, and by 1862 had realized that their best hope for British and European support would come from a cotton famine in England. Distress in the cotton manufacturing districts increased greatly during the spring and summer of 1862. The jobs of an estimated 900,000 workers in the textile industry, centered in Lancashire, were in jeopardy. The British welfare system was severely strained, and Southern sympathizers increased their demands for intervention to relieve the cotton shortage. Although Seward made available cotton that came into Union hands, and imports of non-American cotton increased, the distress in Lancashire did not diminish, and Confederate reliance on cotton diplomacy seemed to be working.

In fact, although less American cotton was reaching Britain, British manufacturers, unlike their workers, were not in dire straits. In 1859 and 1860 the South had produced bumper crops that had glutted the market and driven down world prices. British warehouses were thus filled with huge stocks of cheap cotton fiber, and manufacturers were producing cloth at unprecedented levels, which also depressed textile prices. The Union blockade and Southern embargo were a blessing for these manufacturers as well as financiers dealing in cotton securities and futures. The prospect of a shortage of fiber and cloth immediately caused the value of both raw and finished cotton to rise dramatically. Merchants and manufacturers hoarded their goods, reduced their output, and made fortunes in the process. Those who had been promoting the development of alternate sources in Egypt and India appeared vindicated as planters in those regions also reaped huge profits. Only the workers suffered.

Outside of the cotton districts, other British industries prospered from the war. Both the Union and the Confederacy purchased war materials in increasing quantities, and producers of woolen cloth benefited from the reduced production of cotton cloth and inflated textile prices. Finally, Confederate raiders had enormous success in attacking Northern commercial vessels. American merchantmen were driven from the seas or forced to pay enormous premiums for maritime insurance. British merchants replaced American merchants in direct trade and strengthened their domination of other markets.

Despite the new wealth generated by the American war and continued national prosperity, by the fall of 1862 the distress in Lancashire was real and the news of bloodshed and destruction from America was shocking. It also seemed that the Union would never be able to subdue the South and that continuing the war was pointless. With the approval of Palmerston and Chancellor of the Exchequer William E. Gladstone and the prior agreement of Napoléon, Russell therefore brought the question of mediation to the cabinet. The discussion was extensive, and the cabinet was divided. Russell and Gladstone urged their colleagues to support an offer of mediation to both sides. However, after an impassioned argument against offering mediation by Minister of War George Cornewall Lewis—who pointed out that neither Lincoln nor Seward would accept the offer and that Britain could be forced into supporting the slaveholding Confederacy—news arrived that the Battle of Antietam had ended without a clear victory by either side. Palmerston decided to continue waiting until the war took "a more decided turn." Napoléon then proposed offering the Americans a six-month armistice if both Britain and Russia agreed to act jointly with him. Russia declined first, and on 13 November the British also declined. Confederate confidence in King Cotton was shaken, and the Confederate government sought support from Europe along other avenues.

Declining Confederate Prospects

In May 1861 Confederate secretary of the navy Stephen Mallory sent James Dunwoody Bulloch, a retired naval officer, to Britain to build or purchase six steamships to serve as commerce raiders and James H. North to purchase two ironclads for use against the Union blockade. By August, Bulloch had begun the construction of two ships, later christened the Florida and the Alabama, and in 1862 the North contracted for the construction of an ironclad ram.

Union agents learned of Bulloch's plans and Adams attempted to prevent the sailing of the Alabama. Russell refused to seize the ship for lack of evidence that its construction violated British neutrality laws. When Adams amassed evidence and a legal opinion to the contrary, Russell sought legal opinion himself and ultimately became convinced that the ship should be detained, but his order to that effect arrived too late to prevent the launching of the Alabama in early August 1862. Captained by Raphael Semmes, the ship wreaked havoc on Union shipping, which after the war became the basis of demands by the United States for massive compensation. After the departure of the Alabama from Britain, Adams and Russell engaged in a rancorous exchange of notes. Adams was determined to prevent future Confederate cruisers from leaving British ports.

Russell ultimately decided that it would better serve British interests if other ships being constructed for the Confederacy did not put to sea. In April 1863 he ordered seizure of the Alexandria, then under construction. Later in the year, following strong protests from Adams and the threat of privateering by the Union, Russell decided to detain rams that Bulloch was having constructed. By 1863 the Confederates had given up hope for recognition and substantial support from Britain. British consuls, whom the Confederate government had allowed to remain at their posts and who initially had written home about Confederate invincibility, had antagonized Confederate officials by their protests on behalf of British subjects being conscripted into the Confederate army. (Seward had gone out of his way to appease British consuls in the North over the same problem.) In October 1863, President Davis expelled all British consuls still at their posts. Two months earlier, on 4 August 1863, Judah Benjamin ordered Mason to close his London mission and to join Slidell in Paris.

Confederate officials had come to the conclusion that their best hope for support lay in Napoléon and France rather than in Palmerston and Britain. Napoléon had taken the initiative, following the failure of the Anglo-French mediation discussions in 1862, in proposing an armistice. In January 1863 he unilaterally proposed mediation, which Seward summarily rejected. During the previous September and October, Slidell successfully concluded a loan of $14.5 million with the French firm Emile Erlanger and Company that allowed Confederate agents used to purchase war materials.

Also, Mallory honored Bulloch's request that he shift operations to Paris, and in April and June 1863 the latter contracted for four commerce raiders and two ironclad rams. Unfortunately for the Confederates, France proved little more hospitable than Britain. Napoléon clearly sympathized with the Confederates, but pressure from Seward and Dayton forced him to prevent the ships from sailing. Napoléon, about to embark on his imperial program in Mexico, had no wish to become embroiled with the Union.

The construction of Confederate naval vessels in Britain and France was not the only issue that created difficulties on the high seas. As the demand for goods rose in both Britain and the Confederacy, success in running the Union blockade became ever more profitable. Similarly, the owners of Union vessels that captured blockade runners could take the ships to prize courts and receive a substantial proportion of the value of condemned prizes. The system led to a number of questionable seizures of not only British ships but also of vessels flying French and Spanish colors. Charles Wilkes continued to create problems after the Trent affair by using neutral ports as bases of operation against ships suspected of intentions to run the blockade. These possibly illegal seizures and violations of international law led to continual protests, legal battles, and ill will. Palmerston, however, saw value in the continual stretching of international law by Americans. They were setting precedents that could be useful to Britain in subsequent conflicts. None of these issues rose above the level of annoyances.

The Slavery Issue and the End of Confederate Diplomacy

Until 1863 the slavery issue lingered in the background of the American crisis. For domestic reasons, Lincoln and Seward had attempted to make it clear that the conflict in the United States had little to do with slavery and everything to do with preserving the Union. The North, they argued, had no intention of interfering with slavery in the states, and even after hostilities began they suggested that no assault would be made on the institution. Confederate agents abroad did their best to avoid discussion of slavery altogether, and when pressed argued that the war was not about slavery but rather over the right of states to preserve their social and economic institutions. British supporters of the Confederacy took Lincoln at his word, and Palmerston, firmly hostile to slavery, was relieved that it was not an issue, since otherwise Britain would have had less flexibility in developing policies toward the American war. Nevertheless, the Confederates could not disguise the fact that their nation was committed to the preservation of the slave system, and the British could never forget that to aid the Confederacy was to aid a slave nation. Furthermore, whatever the wishes of Lincoln and Seward, Radical Republicans at home and abroad, abolitionists on both sides of the Atlantic, and Union propagandists called for a change in Union policy toward slavery and kept the issue alive in public discourse. The question of the future of American slavery never disappeared from view.

Following the Battle of Antietam in September 1862, Lincoln decided to confront slavery directly. On 22 September he issued his Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation freeing all slaves in areas that were still in rebellion in January 1863. Lincoln had presented the plan to his cabinet on 22 July, but Seward and others persuaded him to wait until the Union had a military success lest the policy be regarded as an act of desperation. Seward strenuously objected to the proclamation because he feared it would antagonize slaveholders who had remained loyal; strengthen Confederate morale and determination; and, worst of all, encourage blacks in the South to rise in "servile insurrection." He also doubted that emancipation was constitutional and feared that the sudden end of slavery would permanently weaken the American economy and either delay or destroy altogether the rise and completion of the American empire. Seward remained committed to the containment of slavery and its gradual abolition and replacement by free labor.

European diplomats in Washington were uniformly critical of the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. They regarded it, indeed, as an act of desperation following the Union failure to score a major victory at Antietam; some saw it as signifying the triumph of the Radical Republicans and abolitionists in the North. All worried that its enunciation would trigger a slave insurrection, extend race war, and then lead to the thorough destruction of the cotton culture in the United States. The European home offices were also critical of this turn in Union policy, especially since Seward had continually warned Britain and France that it was their policies of neutrality and support for the Confederacy that had extended the war and increased the danger of a slave uprising.

Nevertheless, by 1 January 1863, when the Emancipation Proclamation was issued, Europeans had reconciled themselves to the impending end of slavery in the United States should the Union win the war. (It was expected that slavery could not long survive in areas not in rebellion.) This understanding made it appear that the outcome of the war would determine the future of slavery, which changed the character of European-American relations for the remainder of the conflict by making it even more difficult for Europe to adopt policies in support of the Confederacy. When the Union armies scored major victories in July at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, European ministries began to regard a full Union military victory as more likely, and the continued successes of Generals Ulysses S. Grant and William Sherman convinced them that victory was certain. As the British and French discarded their working assumption that the division of the United States was irreversible, their foreign policies changed accordingly. Confederate appeals for support were now largely ignored.

Jefferson Davis and Judah Benjamin understood that survival depended on European support and that this support would not be forthcoming without altering the Confederate position on slavery. In November 1864, Davis presented to the Confederate Congress a plan to employ forty thousand slaves in noncombatant military service to be followed by their emancipation. While this proposal was being considered, he dispatched Duncan F. Kenner of Louisiana to Europe on a secret mission with instructions to offer European governments a promise of emancipation of the slaves in exchange for recognition. Napoléon, then deeply involved in his Mexican policy, declined the offer and replied that France could not act without British concurrence. When Kenner made the same proposal to the British government, Palmerston rejected it out of hand, informing Kenner that Britain would never recognize the Confederate States of America. Confederate diplomacy in Europe had come to a dead end.

The final episode in the diplomacy of the American Civil War occurred in February 1865, when Lincoln and Seward agreed to meet with a delegation of Confederate leaders at Hampton Roads, Virginia. Francis P. Blair, Sr., had arranged the meeting at Davis's request, and Davis had selected Confederate Vice President Alexander H. Stephens, former Confederate secretary of state Robert M. T. Hunter, and former U.S. Supreme Court justice and Confederate assistant secretary of war John A. Campbell to conduct the negotiations. Both Lincoln and Davis hoped to arrange a return of peace, but their terms were incompatible. Lincoln demanded reunion, acceptance of emancipation, and the disbanding of all Confederate military forces. He was prepared to offer the South generous terms on a number of issues, including compensation to slaveholders. Davis had wanted an armistice, to be followed by discussion of all these and other issues. When Lincoln would not yield in his demands for reunion and the breakup of Confederate military force first, the meeting collapsed.

Military action resumed fully after the Hampton Roads conference, and within four months the last of the Confederate armies had surrendered to Union forces. Jefferson Davis, who refused to admit defeat and promoted guerrilla war to the end, was captured by Union troops in Irwinsville, Georgia, on 10 May. He was imprisoned and indicted for treason, but was paroled two years later.

Conclusion

It is doubtful that the Confederacy could ever have achieved the support that it expected during the Civil War. It never was in the interest of the nations of Europe to become entangled in the American conflict. Rather, they profited by a neutral policy. Confederates relied on sympathy and the pressure from cotton textile manufacturers to force Britain, and then other nations in Europe, to their support and defense. They believed that time was on their side. As a consequence, the Confederate government delayed in adopting a bold diplomatic strategy until it was far too late. At the same time, William Henry Seward, with the significant aid of Charles Francis Adams in London and a number of other superb diplomats, developed an aggressive and consistent program that did not always win friends but was effective. Seward began his term of office with a reputation for recklessness and hostility toward the British, and his initial maneuvers seemed to confirm, as Lyons wrote home, that he would be a "dangerous foreign minister." Seward's erratic behavior had the positive effect of making European foreign ministers more cautious. During the critical first year of the war, Palmerston and Russell worried that Seward had little understanding of the limits to which he could go in his threats and bluster against British policy, and so as not to arouse him and precipitate a crisis, the British leaders adopted a largely passive policy, ended official contacts with Confederate officials, and resisted attempts by pro-Confederate members of Parliament to support the Southern cause. After Seward's first year in office, his reputation improved, and by the end of the war, he and Adams were highly regarded overseas.

It is clear that international relations during the war years were largely determined by the interests of all the nations involved directly and indirectly in the struggle. It is difficult to see how the Confederacy could have acquired the support it needed or how the Union could have done better. It is also clear that the Confederacy's weak policy did not help its cause and that the strong and clearsighted Union policy, conducted by able hands, made a profound difference and was essential to a Union victory in 1865.

Bibliography

Adams, Ephraim D. Great Britain and the American Civil War. 2 vols. New York, 1925. The classic study.

Bernath, Stuart L. Squall Across the Atlantic: American Civil War Prize Cases and Diplomacy. Berkeley, Calif., 1970. A superb analysis.

Blackburn, George M. French Newspaper Opinion on the American Civil War. Westport, Conn., 1997.

Blackett, R. J. M. Divided Hearts: Britain and the American Civil War. Baton Rouge, La., 2001. A thorough and sophisticated analysis.

Blumenthal, Henry. "Confederate Diplomacy: Popular Notions and International Realities." Journal of Southern History 32 (1966): 151–171. An important essay.

Brauer, Kinley. "Gabriel Garcia y Tassara and the American Civil War: A Spanish Perspective." Civil War History 21 (1975): 5–27.

——. "The Slavery Problem in the Diplomacy of the American Civil War." Pacific Historical Review 46 (1977): 439–469.

Carroll, Daniel B. Henry Mercier and the American Civil War. Princeton, N.J., 1971. An excellent examination of the diplomacy of the French minister to the United States.

Case, Lynn Marshall, and Warren F. Spencer. The United States and France: Civil War Diplomacy. Philadelphia, 1970. A thorough and judicious examination.

Clapp, Margaret. Forgotten First Citizen: John Bigelow. Boston, 1947. A biography of the American consul in Paris.

Cortada, James W. "Spain and the American Civil War Relations at Mid-Century, 1855–1868." Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 70, no. 4 (1980).

Crook, D. P. The North, The South, and the Powers, 1861–1865. New York, 1974. An able synthesis that emphasizes British and Canadian relations with the Union and Confederacy.

Cullop, Charles P. Confederate Propaganda in Europe, 1861–1865. Coral Gables, Fla., 1969.

Duberman, Martin B. Charles Francis Adams, 1807–1866. New York, 1961. Excellent biography of the U.S. Minister to Great Britain.

Ellison, Mary. Support for Secession: Lancashire and the American Civil War. Chicago, 1972. Excellent study of the effects of the cotton famine on British opinion in the Lancashire cotton district.

Evans, Eli N. Judah P. Benjamin: The Jewish Confederate. New York, 1988. Especially strong on Benjamin's relations with Jefferson Davis.

Ferris, Norman B. "Diplomacy." In Allan Nevins et al., eds. Civil War Books: A Critical Bibliography. Vol. 1. Baton Rouge, La., 1967. An excellent starting point for books published before 1967.

——. Desperate Diplomacy: William H. Seward's Foreign Policy, 1861. Knoxville, Tenn., 1976. A study of the difficult first year of the war.

——. The Trent Affair: A Diplomatic Crisis. Knoxville, Tenn., 1977. Best detailed study of the crisis.

Hanna, Alfred J., and Kathryn Abbey Hanna. Napoleon III and Mexico: American Triumph over Monarchy. Chapel Hill, N.C., 1971.

Hyman, Harold, ed. Heard Round the World: The Impact Abroad of the Civil War. New York, 1968. Looks at the influence of the Civil War primarily on Europe.

Jenkins, Brian A. Britain and the War for the Union. 2 vols. Montreal, 1974, 1980. More recent and useful treatment than the Adams work.

Jones, Howard. Union in Peril: The Crisis over British Intervention in the Civil War. Chapel Hill, N.C., 1992. Excellent study of the mediation crisis of 1862.

——. Abraham Lincoln and a New Birth of Freedom: The Union and Slavery in the Diplomacy of the Civil War. Lincoln, Nebr., 1999.

Mahoney, Harry T., and Marjorie Locke Mahoney. Mexico and the Confederacy, 1860–1867. San Francisco, 1998. Good narrative survey.

May, Robert E., ed. The Union, the Confederacy, and the Atlantic Rim. West Lafayette, Ind., 1995. Information on the impact of the Civil War on Europe, European colonies, and Latin America and examines the role of African Americans in influencing British opinion.

Meade, Robert D. Judah P. Benjamin, Confederate Statesman. New York, 1943. A good treatment of Benjamin's diplomacy.

Merli, Frank. Great Britain and the Confederate Navy, 1861–1965. Bloomington, Ind., 1970. Best study of the subject.

Monaghan, Jay. Diplomat in Carpet Slippers: Abraham Lincoln Deals with Foreign Affairs. New York, 1945. A popular study that overemphasizes Lincoln's role and is oversimplified.

Owsley, Frank L. King Cotton Diplomacy: Foreign Relations of the Confederate States of America. 2d ed. Chicago, 1959. A full examination of Confederate diplomacy but somewhat dated.

Richardson, H. Edward. Cassius Marcellus Clay: Firebrand of Freedom. Lexington, Ky., 1976. Covers Union diplomacy with Russia.

Saul, Norman E. Distant Friends: The United States and Russia, 1763–1867. Lawrence, Kans., 1991. Based on research in both Russian and American materials.

Schoonover, Thomas D. Dollars over Dominion: The Triumph of Liberalism in Mexican–United States Relations, 1861–1867. Baton Rouge, 1978.

Smiley, David L. Lion of Whitehall: The Life of Cassius M. Clay. Madison, Wis., 1962. On Union diplomacy with Russia.

Spencer, Warren F. The Confederate Navy in Europe. University, Ala., 1983. Deals with Bulloch and Confederate naval warfare.

Stern, Philip Van Doren. When the Guns Roared: World Aspects of the American Civil War. Garden City, N.Y., 1965. A popular study.

Taylor, John M. William Henry Seward: Lincoln's Right Hand. New York, 1991. A readable popular account.

Tyler, Ronnie C. Santiago Vidaurri and the Southern Confederacy. Austin, Tex., 1973. On Mexican-American relations.

Van Deusen, Glyndon G. William Henry Seward. New York, 1967. A scholarly biography.

Warren, Gordon H. Fountain of Discontent: The Trent Affair and Freedom of the Seas. Boston, 1981. A study of the first year of the war.

Willson, Beckles. John Slidell and the Confederates in Paris, 1862–1865. New York, 1932.

Winks, Robin. Canada and the United States: The Civil War Years. Baltimore, 1960. An able treatment of Canadian-American relations.

Woldman, Albert A. Lincoln and the Russians. Cleveland, Ohio, 1952. A narrative based on diplomatic correspondence from the United States.

— Kinley Brauer

This entry contains information applicable to United States law only.

The U.S. Civil War, also called the War between the States, was waged from April 1861 until April 1865. The war was precipitated by the secession of eleven Southern states during 1860 and 1861 and their formation of the Confederate States of America under President Jefferson Davis. The Southern states had feared that the new president, Abraham Lincoln, who had been elected in 1860, and Northern politicians would block the expansion of slavery and endanger the existing slaveholding system. Though Lincoln did free Southern slaves during the war by issuing the Emancipation Proclamation, he fought primarily to restore the Union.

The war began on April 12, 1861, when Confederate artillery fired on Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina. In the ten weeks between the fall of Fort Sumter and the convening of Congress in July 1861, Lincoln began drafting men for military service, approved a naval blockade of Southern ports, and suspended the writ of habeas corpus. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld Lincoln's authority to take these actions in the Prize cases, 67 U.S. (2 Black) 635, 17 L. Ed. 459; 70 U.S. (3 Wall.) 451, 18 L. Ed. 197; 70 U.S. (3 Wall.) 514, 18 L. Ed. 200; 70 U.S. 559, 18 L. Ed. 220 (1863). The Court concluded that the president had the authority to resist force without the need for special legislative action.

On July 21, 30,000 Union troops marched on Richmond, Virginia, the capital of the Confederacy. They were routed at the Battle of Bull Run and forced to retreat to Washington, D.C. The defeat shocked Lincoln and Union leaders, who called for 500,000 new troops for the Union Army of the Potomac.

General Ulysses S. Grant brought the Union its first victory in February 1862, when his troops captured Forts Henry and Donelson in Tennessee. Grant fought in the Battles of Shiloh and Corinth, Tennessee, before forcing the surrender of Vicksburg, Mississippi, on July 4, 1862.

The Army of the Potomac, however, did not have such success. A Union summer offensive against Confederate forces led by General Robert E. Lee fared badly. Union forces were defeated at the Seven Days Battle and later that summer at the Second Battle of Bull Run. Lee then invaded Maryland but was checked at Antietam on September 17, 1862.

Lincoln despaired at the poor leadership demonstrated by the commanders of the Army of the Potomac. He replaced General George B. McClellan with General A. E. (Ambrose Everett) Burnside, but when Burnside faltered, Lincoln appointed General Joseph Hooker commander. Hooker proved no better. His attempt to outmaneuver Lee's forces at Chancellorsville, Virginia, in May 1863 led to defeat, retreat, and Hooker's dismissal as commander. Lee then invaded Pennsylvania, where a chance encounter of small units led to the Battle of Gettysburg on July 1. The new Union commander, General George G. Meade, directed a successful defense at Gettysburg, forcing Lee to return to Virginia.

In March 1864 Lincoln gave Grant command of the Union armies. Grant planned a campaign of attrition that would rely on the Union's overwhelming superiority in numbers and supplies. Though Union forces would suffer enormous casualties as a result of this strategy, he concluded that the devastation experienced by the Confederate troops would be even greater.

In the late summer of 1864, Grant sent General William T. Sherman and his troops into Georgia. Sherman captured and burned the city of Atlanta in September and then set out on his march through Georgia, destroying everything in his path. He reached Savannah on December 10 and soon captured the city.

In the spring of 1864, Grant commanded the Army of the Potomac against Lee's forces in the Wilderness Campaign, a series of violent battles that took place in Virginia. Battles at Spotsylvania and Cold Harbor extracted heavy Union casualties, but Lee's smaller army was, as Grant had hoped, devastated. Grant laid siege to Petersburg for ten months, pinning down Lee's troops and slowly destroying their morale.

By March 1865 Lee's army had suffered numerous casualties and desertions. Grant began the final advance on April 1 and captured Richmond on April 3. On April 9, 1865, at Appomattox Court House, Lee surrendered his Confederate forces, signaling an end to the Civil War.

The casualties had been enormous for both sides. More than 359,000 Union soldiers had died, while the Confederate dead numbered 258,000.

The war ended slavery. On September 22, 1862, Lincoln had announced the abolition of slavery in areas occupied by the Confederacy effective January 1, 1863. The wording of the Emancipation Proclamation on that date had made clear that slavery was still to be tolerated in the border states and areas occupied by Union troops so as not to jeopardize the war effort. Lincoln was uncertain that the Supreme Court would uphold the constitutionality of his action, so he lobbied Congress to adopt the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which abolished slavery.

Lincoln's wartime suspension of the writ of habeas corpus meant that military commanders could arrest persons suspected of being sympathetic to the Confederacy and have them imprisoned indefinitely. After the war the Supreme Court, in Ex parte Milligan, 71 U.S. 2, 18 L. Ed. 281 (1866), condemned Lincoln's directive establishing military jurisdiction over civilians outside the immediate war zone. The Court strongly affirmed the fundamental right of a civilian to be tried in a regular court of law with all the required procedural safeguards.

See: Military Government; Milligan, Ex parte; Texas v. White.

The war fought in the United States between northern (Union) and southern (Confederate) states from 1861 to 1865, in which the Confederacy sought to establish itself as a separate nation. The Civil War is also known as the War for Southern Independence and as the War between the States. The war grew out of deep-seated differences between the social structure and economy of North and South, most notably over slavery; generations of political maneuvers had been unable to overcome these differences (see Missouri Compromise and Compromise of 1850). The secession of the southern states began in late 1860, after Abraham Lincoln was elected president. The Confederacy was formed in early 1861. The fighting began with the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter. Most of the battles took place in the South, but one extremely crucial episode, the Battle of Gettysburg, was fought in the North. The war ended with the surrender of General Robert E. Lee to General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House. (See Battle of Bull Run, Battle of Chancellorsville, Emancipation Proclamation, and Sherman's march to the sea; also see map, next page.)

The Civil War has been the most serious test yet of the ability of the United States to remain one nation.

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