Life During Wartime• African-Americans

• By 1862, they could serve in the military.

• After EP, large-scale enlistment

• They made up 1% of Northern population.

• By the end of the war, 10% of the Union army was black.

• The majority were former slaves.

• They were for the most part accepted as soldiers however, there was still discrimination.

• Served in separate regiments commanded by white officers.

• They usually could not rise above the rank of Captain.

• White Privates earned $13 a month plus $3.50 clothing allowance.

• Black Privates earned $10 a month with no clothing allowance.

• Finally equaled in 1864.

• Worked in garrisons• They caught typhoid, pneumonia,

malaria…etc.• If captured by the Confederacy,

they were executed, usually not held as prisoners of war.• If they were not killed, then

soldiers found ways of putting some back into slavery.

• Fort Pillow, TN/1864• Confederate troops shot more than

200 African-American prisoners and some whites as they begged for their lives. It was a massacre.

• One slave owner said since, “slaves caused the fight, they should share in the burden of battle.”• Another Southerner responded, “if

slaves will make good soldiers our whole theory of slavery is wrong.”

War Affects Regional Economics

1. Decline of the plantation system2. Inflation3. Federal tax4. Expanded Northern economy and shattered

Southern economy.• Southern Shortages

• Food• Drain of manpower and slaves working in fields.• Meat became a once a week luxury.• Prices skyrocketed• In 1861, the average family spent $6.65 on food…in

1863, they spent $68 a month.• Union blockade of Southern ports caused people

to smuggle goods into the North for exchange…trading with the enemy in order to survive.

Northern Economic Growth• Army needs supported factories.• Western farmers bought goods to use on land.• Wages did not keep up with prices.

• Factory owners hired immigrants, free blacks, children, and women to work for lower wages.

• Standard of living declined.• Greenbacks- paper money that was issued.

• Confederacy had their own version.• Lost value because people lost value in the

country.

Women• Replaced men on farms and in city jobs.• Obtained government jobs for the first time.• Worked as clerks, copying ledgers and letters by hand.

• Congress began collecting an income tax in 1863 to help pay for the war.

Life for soldiers on both sides…

• No garbage disposal or latrines in camps• The armies tried to get soldiers to wash their hands

and face every day and take a bath once a week.• Body lice and diarrhea were common.

• Union troops practically lived on beans, bacon, and hardtack.

• Confederate troops ate “cush” a stew of small cubes of beef and crumbled cornbread mix with bacon grease.

Civil War Medicine

• U.S. Sanitary Commission:1. Improve hygienic conditions of army camps2. Recruit and train nurses

• Sent out agents to teach soldiers how to avoid contaminating water supplies.

• Developed hospital trains and ships to transport wounded men from battlefield.

• Dorthea Dix:• Nation’s first superintendent of women nurses.• Some 3,000 women served as nurses.• Clara Barton- “Angel of the Battlefield” helped

soldiers on the front lines of Antietam.• The Confederacy did not have a Sanitary

Commission but they did have nurses.

A monument at Antietam

dedicated to Clara Barton

A Federal Hospital and Union soldiers are now amputees.

Prisons• Conditions were worse than camps.• Confederate prison- Andersonville, Georgia.

– 33,000 men into 26 acres or about 34 square feet per person.

– No shelter from the sun or rain. They tried to make tents out of their blankets and sticks.

– They drank from the same river they used the bathroom in.

– 1/3 of the prisoners died.

• Camp commander, Henry Wirz (eventually executed as a war criminal)

• Union prisons such as Elmira, NY were only slightly better.– Men slept in barracks but had adequate food.– Most contracted pneumonia from lack of heat.– Hundreds suffered from malnutrition

and dysentery.

1863• Battle of Chancellorsville, Virginia– May, 1863– South defeated the North– Lee outmaneuvered General Joseph Hooker and the

Union forces retreated.• General Stonewall Jackson returned from patrol

on May 2. He was shot in the left arm. His arm was amputated.– He died from pneumonia a couple of weeks later.

• Lee wanted to invade the North. He crossed into Maryland and continued into Pennsylvania.

North Takes Charge• Gettysburg, Pennsylvania

– July 1-3, 1863– TURNING POINT of the Civil

War.– Crippled the South

• Confederate soldiers led by General Lee.– Majority of them were barefoot.

They heard there was a supply of shoes in Gettysburg.

– While marching, they came across a couple of brigades of Union cavalry.

• Union soldiers led by General George Meade.– Sent his troops to back up the

cavalry.

• Day 2:– 90,000 Union soldiers vs. 75,000 Confederates.– Lee gave orders to General Longstreet to attack a

ridge held by the Union.– Colonel Chamberlain’s men from Maine

successfully fought back.– His men began to run out of ammunition so he

ordered a bayonet charge.– The Confederates began to surrender.

• Day 3:– Both armies exchanged fire for 2 hours straight.

People say it could be heard in Pittsburgh.– Longstreet reluctantly pushed forward along with

General Pickett’s men to the center of the Union troops. (Pickett’s charge).

– They were unsuccessful again.• Union losses= 23,000• Confederate losses= 28,000

General Pickett

Colonel Chamberlain

General Longstreet

Gettysburg Address• November, 1863• A ceremony was held to dedicate a cemetery for

those who died fighting.• Lincoln’s speech was only 2 minutes long but it

had a big impact.

Vicksburg• Grant was in Vicksburg, Mississippi

– It was one of two Confederate holdouts preventing the Union from taking the Mississippi River.

– 1863, Grant destroyed railways to distract the Southern soldiers.

– While distracted, Grant was able to get an infantry into Vicksburg.

– 18 days later, he took control of Jackson, the capital of the state.

– Confederates surrendered on July 4th.

– 5 days later, Port Hudson, Louisiana the other Confederate key to the River fell and the Confederacy was split in two.

• Hard times…– Food ran low and people

ate dogs and mules.

The Confederacy Wears Down

• The South is no longer able to fight…– Low on ammunition, supplies, food, men– Would not give up so easily

• Confederate morale deteriorated.– Some soldiers deserted after receiving letters from home

about the lack of food and labor to work farms.

• General Grant appoints William Tecumseh Sherman as commander of the military division of the Mississippi River.– They were old friends.– Both believed in total war…fighting both the army and

civilians.• Civilians helped produce food and weapons and were a

major contributor to the war effort.• If you eliminate this then the army couldn’t survive and

would collapse.

Grant and Lee meet in Virginia

• Grant’s strategy:– Immobilize Lee’s army in VA while Sherman raided Georgia.

– May, 1864- Grant threw his troops into battle after battle with Lee’s.• Fredericksburg, Spotsylvania, Petersburg

• In just a little over 1 month, Union lost nearly 60,000 soldiers.

Petersburg

Spotsylvania

Sherman’s March to the Sea…• Sherman’s men occupied the transportation center of

Atlanta, Georgia.• September, 1864 Sherman started marching

Southeast through Georgia, leaving a path of destruction and living off the land.

• He wanted to make Southerners “so sick of war that generations would pass away before they would again appeal to it.”

• By November, he burned most of the city and set off toward the East coast.

• He went up through North Carolina destroying it like Georgia. He accumulated 25,000 free slaves willing to fight for the Union.

The Burning of Atlanta-Gone With The Wind

Hospital in the streets of Atlanta- Gone With The Wind

Election of 1864

• Lincoln was disliked by a lot of people.– The war had gone on too long.

• George McClellan is nominated to run against him. – He agrees. He is still bitter from being fired.

• Other opponents- John C. Fremont, Andrew Johnson• Lincoln won a second term.

Surrender at Appomattox

• March, 1865• Confederate President, Jefferson Davis and his

government abandon their capital, setting it on fire.• Lee and Grant arranged a surrender on April 9,

1865 in a Virginia village called Appomattox Court House.

• Grant paroled Lee’s soldiers and sent them home with their personal possessions, horses, and rations.

• The Civil War was finally over.

The Legacy of the War

• The power of the Federal government increased:– Passed laws that gave more

control over citizens, including an income tax and draft.

• Economic changes:– National Bank Act- set up a

system of federally chartered banks, set requirements for loans, and provided for bank inspections.

– Made safer for investors.• Union War cost- $2.3 Billion$2.3 Billion

– 360,000 soldiers died, 275,000 wounded

• Confederate War cost- $1 $1 BillionBillion– 260,000 soldiers died,

225,000 wounded

Changed Lives• 13th Amendment- outlawed slavery.• Red Cross

– Started by Clara Barton in 1881

Lincoln is Assassinated

• 5 days after the surrender at Appomattox, Lincoln and his wife, Mary attended a play at Ford’s theater in Washington.– John Wilkes Booth, 26 year

old actor, and Southern sympathizer

– Shot Lincoln in the back of the head

– He was captured and shot.• Lincoln died the following

morning, April 15th.– 1st President to be

assassinated.– A funeral train carried

Lincoln’s body from Washington to Springfield, IL in 14 days.

– 7 million turned out to mourn him.