Things you should know about the Civil War
After decades of conflicts between the North and the South regarding segregation, state sovereignty, and migration into the West, the civil war in the United States erupted in 1861. The election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860 contributed to the incorporation of seven southern States into the Confederate States, which were shortly followed by four other nations. The Civil War, as it has since been called, began in 1865 with the defeat of the Confederate. With about 620,000 of 2,4 million troops killed, millions wounded, and most of the South reduced to ruin, the fighting became the most expensive and destructive battle in America.
The reasons behind the Civil War
Although America had a time of immense prosperity in the mid-19th century, between the northern and southern parts of the nation, there was a profound economic gap. In the North, industry, and manufacturing were well developed, while agriculture was confined mainly to small-scale farming. While in the South, there was a large-scale farming system that was dependent on the black slave labor to grow some crops, mainly cotton and tobacco.
In the North since the 1830s, an increasing sense of abolitionism and northern reaction to the spread of slavery into the new Western territory. Congress enacted the Kansas Nebraska Act, which, by guaranteeing the presumption of conventional supremacy over the legislative edict, effectively opened up new land to slavery.
In Kansas, the anti-Slavery and pro parties met with brutality. A modern political organization founded on the idea of resisting the expansion of slavery to Western territories was established as the Republican Party, against the act in the North.
The victory of Abraham Lincoln in November 1860 was the last straw, and seven southern countries, Southern Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas, were split from the United States within three months.
Beginning of the Civil War
In March 1861, just as Lincoln assumed power, confederation troops in Charleston, South Carolina, attacked Fort Sumter. The Confederate cannons fired the first shots of civil war on April 12, after Lincoln directed a ship to resupply Sumter. Commander of Sumter, Colonel Robert Anderson, fled handing the fort to the Confederate troops under Pierre G.T. Beauregard, after fewer than two days of the bombardment. Following Fort Sumter, the Confederacy entered four more southern nations, Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina. There wasn't any seceding from frontier colonies in Missouri, Kentucky, or Maryland, but a lot of solidarity was felt in the residents.
At the 1st Bull Run War on July 21, 1861, Jackson compelled a significant amount of Union (or federal) armies to withdraw to Washington, D.C., crushing every possibility that they could win a rapid success and forcing Lincoln to ask for another 500,000 reinforcements. Thirty-five thousand confederate troops under Thomas Jonathan "Stonewall" were forced to evacuate to Washington. Nonetheless, when it was clear that the conflict would not be a limited or quick fight, the original demand for reinforcements from both sides needed to be broadened.
Virginia's Revolutionary War in 1862
George B. McClellan, who within the first months of the war succeeded the elderly General Winfield Scott as the supreme commander of the Union Army, was respected by his soldiers. McClellan marched his Potomac force eventually up the peninsula between the York and the James Rivers in the spring of 1862 and took York City on May 4.
Lincoln dismissed and returned to Washington than the Potomac force. By mid-1862, Henry W. Halleck had relieved McClellan, who had served in command of the Potomac Army as the Union General-in-chief.
The Potomac Army reached Lee's troops on September 17, and it was the bloodiest day in the battle. There were 12,410 of some 69,000 unit soldiers on Union foot, and 13,724 of about 52,000 were overall losses in the battle of Antietam.
Antietam's success by the Union would be crucial, as it hindered advancement in Maryland by the Confederate and compelled Lee to withdraw into Virginia. Nevertheless, he was expelled by Lincoln and Halleck excluded him from command in favor of Ambrose E. Burnside because McClellan failed to benefit. In the winter quarters of the Rappahannock valley, Burnside's raid on Lee's forces near Fredericksburg resulted in severe Union losses, and a Confederate triumph immediately succeeded by the Joseph 'Combat Joe' Hooker.
The Declaration of Independence
The Union victory at Antietam was used by Lincoln to create the provisional declaration of Emancipation, which freed all the slaves after January 1, 1863, in the united states. He defended his action as a moment of war and did not go to the extent of freeing the frontier countries faithful to the Union's slaves.
Nevertheless, the Proclamation of Emancipation stripped Reconstruction of the majority of the working powers and firmly positioned the Union's foreign popular image. Around 186,000 veterans of the Black Civil War joined the Union Army before the conflict began in 1865, and 38,000 were killed.
The victory in Vicksburg, the success which would be the turning point of the western theater's battle, took Union Forces under Ulysses S. Grant in July 1863. In September, Lincoln extended Grant's authority and guided the enlarged Federal Army, including two units from the Potomac Army, to conquer the Battle of Chattanooga.
The triumph of the Union
Lincoln installed Grant at the forefront of the Union armies in March 1864, replacing Halleck. Grant left William Tecumseh Sherman in the West to Washington, where they directed the Potomac Army in northern Virginia against Lee's forces. Given the significant casualties of the Union at the Battle of the West, Cold Harbor, and Petersburg's most extensive railway hub, Grant followed a tactic of squandering Petersburg over the next nine months.
Lee's military launched the final effort at rebellion, assaulted and seized the federally run fort Stedman on March 25, which was defeated by the Union takeover of Petersburg and Richmond. The triumph was reversed by rapid counterattack, though Lee's troops left Richmond on the night of April 2 and 3. Grant and Meade rode down the Appomattox River for much of the next week, wholly exhausted their escape possibilities.
Lee's surrender was approved on April 9 by Grant at Appomattox Court House. In the brink of triumph, the Union sacrificed its true leader. On April 14 in Washington, President Lincoln was murdered by actor and Southern sympathizer John Wilkes Booth. On April 26, Sherman obtained the surrender of Johnston, essentially ending the civil war, at the Durham Station, North Carolina.