The American Civil War: 1862-5

The Invasion of New Mexico

• General Sibley (CSA) with 3,000 men go north

• Santa Fe falls to them

• Defeated at Glorietta Pass by Colorado and New Mexico forces

The War in the West

The Fall of the First Line of Defense: Union Ascendant, Spring 1862

• Mill Spring: January, 1862– Collapse of eastern anchor

• Forts Henry and Donelson: February 6-16, 1862. – Collapse of the center– Rise of Grant begins

• Pea Ridge: 6 Mar 1862 - 8 Mar 1862– Collapse of the western anchor– Missouri henceforth firmly in Union hands

Pea Ridge: Main Action

The Confederate Plan at Shiloh

Battle of Shiloh: April 6-7, 1861

• Albert Sidney Johnson + Beauregard (45,000) vs. Grant (49,000)

• Initial Plan is Basically Stupid, but surprise is total

• Grant driven back to Pittsburgh Landing

• Buell reinforces overnight (17,000); Johnson dies

• Counterattack crushes Confederates

After Shiloh

• Halleck Takes Over– Month-long crawl to

Corinth

• The Fall of New Orleans (April-May, 1862)– Victory for the Navy

The Peninsular Campaign (March-July 1862)

• General McClellan goes south with 121,000 men

• Slow Progress up the Peninsula

• Battle of Seven Pines (May 31, 1862): Joe Johnson (CSA, 55,000) vs. III and IV Corps (33,000)– Overly complex plan fails; many troops are lost;

Joe Johnson is injured and replaced by Robert E. Lee.

The Valley Campaign (March-June 1862)

• Stonewall Jackson takes 17,000 men to Shenandoah Valley to threaten Washington

• Fights off 50,000 soldiers in 5 battles

• Draws away strength from McClellan

• Then Returns to Help Lee

Seven Days' Battles (June 26th-July 2, 1862)

Seven Days' Battles (June 26th-July 2, 1862)

• Lee attempts to cut off and destroy pieces of McClellan's army

• Stonewall Jackson is mostly useless

• Overly complex plans go awry

• McClellan escapes but his will to fight is broken

Summer-Fall 1862: Lee’s Counterattack

• Second Bull Run (August 29-30)– General Pope is Crushed– McClellan retreats to Washington

• Overreach—The Antietam Campaign (September, 1862)– Lee Invades Maryland

• Protect Virginia Harvest

• Hope for foreign intervention

Lee in Maryland

• Lee disperses to live off land; expects McClellan to be slow

• But McClellan finds his plans and strikes fast

• Battle of Antietam (September 17, 1862)– A tie, but Lee retreats– Bloodiest Day of the Civil War– Leads to Emancipation Proclamation and firing

of McClellan

Summer-Fall 1862: Bragg’s Counterattack

• Bragg uses railroads to move to Eastern Tennessee with great speed, unites with Kirby Smith

• They invade Kentucky, forcing Union General Buell to chase them into Kentucky

• Kentucky does not rise to join Confederacy as Bragg hoped.

Battle of Perryville (October 8, 1862)

• 16,000 Union vs. 22,000 Confederates

• Battle is a tie

• But Bragg retreats, afraid to press his advantage– This begins turning his subordinates against him

and will be a pattern

• Buell saves Kentucky, but the Union fails to take Chattanooga and has lost ground.

A War Against Slavery?

• Most originally fight for Union, not end of Slavery

• Some commanders try to enact anti-slavery without authorization

• Confiscation Act of 1862—Seize land and slaves of traitors!

The War To End Slavery!

• Antietam allows Emancipation Proclamation– All slaves in

Confederate lands are now free!

– But not ones in loyal lands

Black Soldiers

• 180,000 soldiers

• 20,000 sailors.

• 80% were ex-slaves

• Segregated Units with White Officers • Corps d'Afrique

• Recruited in Louisiana

• First Black Soldiers

Battery Wagner

• Subject of movie “Glory”

• 54th Massachusetts, first Northern Black unit leads the attack

• 116 dead + Commander, 156 Injured or Captured

• Unit fights on through 1865

The Life of the Soldier: FoodThe Daily Ration (Union)

• (3/4ths of a pound of pork or bacon) or 1.25 pounds of fresh or salt beef

• 18 ounces of fresh bread or .75 pounds of hardtack (2-3 large 'crackers') or 1.25 pounds of cornmeal

• Each 100 men get

– eight quarts of peas or beans or ten pounds of rice, ten pounds of coffee or one and a half pounds of tea, fifteen pounds of sugar, four quarts of vinegar, and two quarts of salt.

The Life of the Soldier: FoodThe Daily Ration (Confederate)

• Same as Union ration...in theory. Often smaller.– Most commonly issued cornmeal for a grain– Substitutions had to be made for items (such as

beer made from sassafras or potatos)

Other Food Sources

• Scavenging the Countryside– Sometimes heavily restricted – Sometimes officially sanctioned

• The Sutler– Licensed vendor of food and other items– Sometimes pillaged by angry soldiers

Military Food

• Coffee: – Unground beans for Union– Substitutes for Confederates: Acorns, Okra, etc.

• Hardtack: Union dry biscuit, often stale– Skillygalee: salted pork fried with hardtack

crumbled into the mixture

– Confederates usually ate Johnnycake--made with bacon grease, cornmeal, salt, sugar, and water

Military Food II

• Fresh Bread: When armies camped, you got fresh bread

• Salt Beef or Pork: Often hard to eat; usually made into stew

• Scurvy: Diet was unhealthy– Dehydrated vegetables added– Dry vegetables (potatoes)– Onions: Also used for powder burns

Canning

• Invented in Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815)

• Huge improvements vastly raise production

• Many brands still exist today

Cooking

• 5 men / 100 would cook

• Sandwiches and Stews

• Tools had to be improvised

Lee’s Reign of Terror: Two Victories in the East

• Fredericksburg: December 13, 1862. – Ambrose Burnside launches suicidal frontal

attack on Lee. 10% casualty rate

• Chancellorsville: May 1-4, 1863. – Flank attack crushes “Fighting” Joe Hooker– But Stonewall Jackson is killed

Gettysburgh

The Gettysburg Campaign

• Hubris and the desire for foreign intervention send Lee north to Pennsylvania

• The armies stumble into each other at Gettysburg

• 3 days of battle ensue (July 1-3, 1863)

• Both sides lose 23,000 men killed, captured or wounded

• Lee retreats; glory days are over

Grant vs. Vicksburg (I)

• Attack from the North fails due to cavalry raids

• Various expedients to bypass Vicksburg fail

• Grant's Gamble: Sail ships past Vicksburg at night, then cross downstream

Grant vs. Vicksburg II

• Grant: 44,000

• Pemberton (CSA): 30,000

• Joe Johnson (CSA): 6,000

• April 29, 1863: Grant crosses the Mississippi and takes Grand Gulf

• May 14, 1863: Grant crushes Johnson at Jackson; Johnson flees east

• May 16-17th: Champion's Hill, Grant defeats Pemberton, forces him west

Vicksburg and Port Hudson

• Downstream, General Banks besieges Port Hudson

• Siege of Vicksburg: May 18-July 4, 1863– Huge victory for the Union; Pemberton

surrenders whole army

Rosencrans vs. Chattanooga

• Rosencrans is very cautious, often slow as a result

• Murfeesboro: (31 Dec 1862 - 2 Jan 1863). – First offensive– Huge tie battle of Bragg (CSA) vs Rosencrans

(USA)– Armies hang out until September 1863

The Chickamauga Campaign

• September 1863: Rosencrans maneuvers Bragg out of Chattanooga without firing a shot.

• Reinforcements from Lee sent to Bragg.

• Battle of Chickamauga (September 19th, 1863): Bragg and Longstreet crush Rosencrans– Siege of Chattanooga begins

Grant Saves Chattanooga

• Grant comes East, takes command

• Grant breaks the siege

• Bragg heads south; Grant now commands entire West.

Whiggism Triumphant

• The Homestead Act of 1862– 160 acres of public land if you farm it 5 years– 420,000 square miles given out by 1975.

• The Morrill Land Grant College Act of 1862– Each state given 30,000 acres of land per

Congressman as of 1860 to fund co-ed colleges focused on military tactics, agriculture, and science

Whiggism Triumphant II

• The Protective Tariff of 1862– Triples taxes on imported European goods– Raises money for war; protects US industries

• National Bank Act of 1863– Creates Office of Comptroller of the Currency

• The Office charters and regulates 'National' Banks

• Used to create a uniform currency and ensure higher banking standards

Whiggism Triumphant III

• Government tends to back strikebreaking

• Government war contracts make some super-rich and there is a lot of graft in contracting

• Unlike the South, the North can easily buy war goods without mass economic regulation

Suppressing Dissent

• The New York Draft Riot

• Civil Liberties Curtailed– Suspensions of Habeas Corpus– Suppression of Free Speech and Assembly

• Copperheads

• Radical Republicans

Grant Takes Command: March 1864

• Simultaneous Onslaught• Army of the Potomac (Meade) moves south towards

Richmond

• Army of the James (Butler) moves to the Peninsula and moves up it to take Richmond from the rear.

• Armies of the Ohio, Cumberland, and Tennessee (united under Sherman) move together against Atlanta.

• Banks’ Corps moves from Louisiana to invade the gulf and attack Mobile.

• Hunter’s Corps moves against Southwestern Virginia.

• Grant Goes South

“We cannot withstand a siege”: Grant Takes Virginia

• Many in Army of Potomac resent Grant's presence.

• Lee must win fast; his reserves are low

• The Wilderness: May 5-6.

– Lee attempts to break Grant

– But Grant just shrugs and heads South

• Spotsylvania Courthouse: 7 May 1864 - 19 May 1864.

– From here on out, Lee must fortify; no more offensives.

The Siege of Richmond and Petersburg

• Grant suffers high casualties (55,000 in one month)

• Lee's back is to the wall

• Grant besieges Petersburg, which controls Richmond's rail connections

– A battle of attrition– In the long term, Lee cannot win this

The Battle of the Crater—June 30, 1864

• Dig a tunnel under the Confederate line and blow a hole open!

• Initial explosion works

• But the attack is not followed up properly, so failure

War in Georgia

“War is Hell”: Sherman Invades Georgia

• Sherman's Three Armies: 98,500-112,000• Joe Johnson: 50-65,000• Mission: Take Atlanta; destroy Johnson• Defensive War: May-Mid-July, slow

advance• Johnson is now fired at the gates of Atlanta

John Bell Hood

• One of Lee's Generals

• Loses arm and leg

• Hired because he is aggressive

The Battles of Atlanta (July 20-September 1)

• Hood launches four aggressive Lee-style attacks on Sherman

• Each time it fails—officers perform poorly and his plans are over-ambitious

• Atlanta falls and Hood withdraws

• Leads to Lincoln's re-election

Discontent and the Election of 1864

• The Union Ticket—War Democrats + Republicans – Lincoln + Johnson

• Peace Democrats – George McClellan?

• Lincoln’s Victory– 55% Popular, 212 to 21 Electoral

• Thirteenth Amendment—End of Slavery

The Confederacy Unravels

• Loss of Confidence in Davis

• Economic Collapse

• Loss of Resources

• Arming the Slaves

• Deserters Take Over

Sherman's March to the Sea

• Sherman now heads for the sea

• Cuts a 60 mile wide swathe of destruction

• Then invades the Carolinas

The Gallant Hood Fails in Tennessee (Fall-Winter 1864-5)

• Hood invades in November with 39,000 to try to force Sherman to pull back

• He is sick and leads poorly

• Wasted lives at Battle of Franklin

• December 15-6: General Thomas CRUSHES Hood at Battle of Nashville

The Fall of Richmond

• After April 1, 1865, Richmond cannot be held

• Lee Evacuates Richmond

• Lee Surrenders at Appomattox: April 9, 1865

• Lincoln Dies: April 14, 1865

John Wilkes Booth

From a famous acting

Family

Kills Lincoln because he is Pro-Confederacy

Killed on the run

The Ends

• April 26, 1865: Joe Johnson surrenders in North Carolina.

• May 10, 1865: Union forces capture Davis.

• May 26, 1865: Kirby Smith surrenders the Trans-Mississippi forces.

Why did the South lose?

• Inferiority in virtually every resource• Constantly having to watch for slave revolt• Rest of world content to sit back and watch the

South lose• Gradual loss of top command staff

• The South had no reasonable hope of winning by force unless North lost will to fight.