For all practical purposes, President Lincoln had little if any battle ready troops to end the Southern rebellion. Just before the war began, the US Army had only 1,105 officers and 15, 259 enlisted soldiers. Since there had been no threats of war from other nations, the US armed forces were small in number.
One week after General McClellan was given command of the Eastern Department, he presented to President Lincoln his plan to end the war in a single campaign. His plan encompassed a military, diplomatic and political set of strategies to end the Southern rebellion in a single campaign.
Northerners rallied to President Lincoln's call to end the rebellion when Fort Sumter was attacked and captured by Confederate forces. Up until that point, there was no huge public protest regarding the secession of the South by the North. The attack and then the surrender of Fort Sumter caused many men in the North to be available to join the military effort to end the Southern rebellion.
Clearly in the early part of the US Civil War, President Lincoln was facing serious obstacles in his plans to bring an early end to the Southern rebellion. To bring the Confederacy to an end would require the mobilization and operational use of forces on a scale larger to any previous US war The opinion of may pundits there was good reason to doubt the ability of any civilian leader to master a large and complex military machine. Lincoln had no military or executive experience. Many of Lincoln's supporters believed he had the capacity the war would require.
After President Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteer troops to end the Southern rebellion, the North Carolina militia took control of federal forts Caswell and Johnston.
When US President Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers to help end the Southern rebellion, four more Southern states joined the Confederacy. These were the states of Virginia, North Carolina, Arkansas and Tennessee. The Confederacy now was composed of eleven states.
Abraham Lincoln was the president of the entire country, Jefferson Davis led the southern rebellion against U.S.
President Abraham Lincoln's main goal as the US president was to end the Southern rebellion. Which was the US Civil War. He therefore appointed generals, made military decisions, and did everything in his power to reunite the United States. He was successful in that endeavor.
States in open rebellion.
In the early stages of the US Civil War, it was clearly US President Lincoln's plan to keep the United States a whole nation and stop the Southern rebellion. Anti slavery abolitionists were concerned that early on Lincoln did not proclaim that his use of military force was to abolish slavery. Rather, Lincoln clearly had the goal of keeping the Union as one nation.
President Lincoln was frustrated with his military leaders from 1861 to 1862.
US President Lincoln had declared the Southern "rebellion" a threat to the Union and the US Constitution. His first step to weaken this "outlaw government" was to call up volunteers to use force to end it. He soon after understood that he had a major crisis on hand and mobilized more troops in his address to Congress in July of 1861. The First Battle of Bull Run and his call for a blockade of Southern ports were attempts to weaken the South. Aside from actual military action, his two Emancipation Proclamations were "war measures" attempting to create social chaos in the South. Also, the Confiscation Acts, were passed to confiscate Southern property that was in the way of the Union's efforts to end the Southern rebellion.
The upper southern states seceded when Lincoln was elected president of the United States.