5.7 The Civil War Years 1861 – 1863

It may seem hard to believe, but more Americans died in the Civil War than in all other wars the nation has fought combined. Scholars most recent estimation equals 750,000 wartime deaths.¹ The Civil War is without question the most traumatic and profound even in American history, and its legacy endures. The war swept away entire institutions and ideas. It eliminated slavery and an entire culture based on it. It devastated the economy of the South so badly it would not fully recover for nearly a century. The Civil War also eliminated the idea that the United States was a nation of semi-sovereign states, and it forged the concept that the US was a single indissoluble nation.

It also made a tremendous impact on the lives of individual Americans. More men served and died than ever before. Most of those deaths were from disease and infection. Treatment for infected wounds was usually amputation. Men would come home missing parts and deeply changed. Women suffered the difficulties of maintaining their own roles during shortages and danger, while also replacing the men and supporting the war effort. African Americans struggled for the opportunity to serve, and faced danger and hardship even as they gained their freedoms.

The war and Reconstruction also launched the idea of racial equality, but that quest, particularly in the South, was abandoned at the end of the Reconstruction Era in 1877. It would take massive federal intervention to obtain equal opportunity and voting rights, but that would not come for another century.

A War for Union 1861-1863

In his inaugural address, Lincoln declared secession “legally void.”² While he did not intend to invade southern states, he would use force to maintain possession of federal property within seceded states. Attention quickly shifted to the federal installation of Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina. The fort was in need of supplies, and Lincoln intended to resupply it. South Carolina called for U.S. soldiers to evacuate the fort. Commanding officer Major Robert Anderson refused. On April 12, 1861, Confederate Brigadier General P. G. T. Beauregard fired on the fort. Anderson surrendered on April 13 and the Union troops evacuated. In response to the attack, President Abraham Lincoln called for seventy-five thousand volunteers to serve three months to suppress the rebellion. The American Civil War had begun.

The assault on Fort Sumter and subsequent call for troops provoked several Upper South states to join the Confederacy. In total, eleven states renounced their allegiance to the United States. The new Confederate nation was predicated on the institution of slavery and the promotion of any and all interests that reinforced that objective. Some southerners couched their defense of slavery as a preservation of states’ rights. But in order to protect slavery, the Confederate constitution left even less power to the states than the U.S. Constitution, an irony not lost on many.

Shortly after Lincoln’s call for troops, the Union adopted General-in-Chief Winfield Scott’s Anaconda Plan to suppress the rebellion. This strategy intended to strangle the Confederacy by cutting off access to coastal ports and inland waterways via a naval blockade. Ground troops would enter the interior. Like an anaconda snake, they planned to surround and squeeze the Confederacy.

The border states of Delaware, Maryland, Missouri, and Kentucky maintained geographic, social, political, and economic connections to both the North and the South. All four were immediately critical to the outcome of the conflict. Abraham Lincoln famously quipped, “I think to lose Kentucky is nearly the same as to lose the whole game.”³ Lincoln and his military advisors realized that the loss of the border states could mean a significant decrease in Union resources and threaten the capital in Washington. Consequently, Lincoln hoped to foster loyalty among their citizens, so Union forces could minimize their occupation. In spite of terrible guerrilla warfare in Missouri and Kentucky, the four border states remained loyal to the Union throughout the war.

Foreign countries, primarily in Europe, also watched the unfolding war with deep interest. The United States represented the greatest example of democratic thought at the time, and individuals from as far afield as Britain, France, Spain, Russia, and beyond closely followed events across the Atlantic Ocean. If the democratic experiment within the United States failed, many democratic activists in Europe wondered what hope might exist for such experiments elsewhere. Conversely, those with close ties to the cotton industry watched with other concerns. War meant the possibility of disrupting the cotton supply, and disruption could have catastrophic ramifications in commercial and financial markets abroad.

While Lincoln, his cabinet, and the War Department devised strategies to defeat the rebel insurrection, black Americans quickly forced the issue of slavery as a primary issue in the debate. As early as 1861, black Americans implored the Lincoln administration to serve in the army and navy.⁴ Lincoln initially waged a conservative, limited war. He believed that the presence of African American troops would threaten the loyalty of slaveholding border states, and white volunteers might refuse to serve alongside black men. However, army commanders could not ignore the growing populations of formerly enslaved people who escaped to freedom behind Union army lines. These former enslaved people took a proactive stance early in the war and forced the federal government to act. As the number of refugees ballooned, Lincoln and Congress found it harder to avoid the issue.⁵

In May 1861, General Benjamin F. Butler went over his superiors’ heads and began accepting fugitive slaves who came to Fort Monroe in Virginia. In order to avoid the issue of the slaves’ freedom, Butler reasoned that runaway slaves were “contraband of war,” and he had as much a right to seize them as he did to seize enemy horses or cannons.⁶ Later that summer Congress affirmed Butler’s policy in the First Confiscation Act. The act left “contrabands,” as these runaways were called, in a state of limbo. Once a slave escaped to Union lines, her master’s claim was nullified. She was not, however, a free citizen of the United States. Runaways lived in “contraband camps,” where disease and malnutrition were rampant. Women and men were required to perform the drudge work of war: raising fortifications, cooking meals, and laying railroad tracks. Still, life as a contraband offered a potential path to freedom, and thousands of slaves seized the opportunity.

Fugitive slaves posed a dilemma for the Union military. Soldiers were forbidden to interfere with slavery or assist runaways, but many soldiers found such a policy unchristian. Even those indifferent to slavery were reluctant to turn away potential laborers or help the enemy by returning his property. Also, fugitive slaves could provide useful information on the local terrain and the movements of Confederate troops. Union officers became particularly reluctant to turn away fugitive slaves when Confederate commanders began forcing slaves to work on fortifications. Every slave who escaped to Union lines was a loss to the Confederate war effort.

Any hopes for a brief conflict were eradicated when Union and Confederate forces met at the Battle of Bull Run, near Manassas, Virginia. While not particularly deadly, the Confederate victory proved that the Civil War would be long and costly. Furthermore, in response to the embarrassing Union rout, Lincoln removed Brigadier General Irvin McDowell and promoted Major General George B. McClellan to commander of the newly formed Army of the Potomac. For nearly a year after the First Battle of Bull Run, the Eastern Theater remained relatively silent. Smaller engagements only resulted in a bloody stalemate.

But while the military remained quiet, the same could not be said of Republicans in Washington. The absence of fractious, stalling southerners in Congress allowed Republicans to finally pass the Whig economic package, including the Homestead Act, the Land-Grant College Act (aka the Morrill Act), and the Pacific Railroad Act.⁷ The federal government also began moving toward a more nationally controlled currency system (the greenback) and the creation of banks with national characteristics. Such acts proved instrumental in the expansion of the federal government and industry. 

The Democratic Party, absent its southern leaders, divided into two camps. War Democrats largely stood behind President Lincoln. Peace Democrats—also known as Copperheads—clashed frequently with both War Democrats and Republicans. Copperheads were sympathetic to the Confederacy; they exploited public antiwar sentiment (often the result of a lost battle or mounting casualties) and tried to push President Lincoln to negotiate an immediate peace, regardless of political leverage or bargaining power. Had the Copperheads succeeded in bringing about immediate peace, the Union would have been forced to recognize the Confederacy as a separate and legitimate government and the institution of slavery would have remained intact.

While Washington buzzed with political activity, military life consisted of relative monotony punctuated by brief periods of horror. Daily life for a Civil War soldier was one of routine. A typical day began around six in the morning and involved drill, marching, lunch break, and more drilling followed by policing the camp. Weapon inspection and cleaning followed, perhaps one final drill, dinner, and taps around nine or nine thirty in the evening. Soldiers in both armies grew weary of the routine. Picketing or foraging afforded welcome distractions to the monotony.

Soldiers devised clever ways of dealing with the boredom of camp life. The most common was writing. These were highly literate armies; nine out of every ten Federals and eight out of every ten Confederates could read and write.⁸ Letters home served as a tether linking soldiers to their loved ones. Soldiers also read; newspapers were in high demand. News of battles, events in Europe, politics in Washington and Richmond, and local concerns were voraciously sought and traded.

While there were nurses, camp followers, and some women who disguised themselves as men, camp life was overwhelmingly male. Soldiers drank liquor, smoked tobacco, gambled, and swore. Social commentators feared that when these men returned home, with their hard-drinking and irreligious ways, all decency, faith, and temperance would depart. But not all methods of distraction were detrimental. Soldiers also organized debate societies, composed music, sang songs, wrestled, raced horses, boxed, and played sports.

Neither side could consistently provide supplies for their soldiers, so it was not uncommon, though officially forbidden, for common soldiers to trade with the enemy. Confederate soldiers prized northern newspapers and coffee. Northerners were glad to exchange these for southern tobacco. Supply shortages and poor sanitation were synonymous with Civil War armies. The close proximity of thousands of men bred disease. Lice were soldiers’ daily companions.

Music was popular among the soldiers of both armies, creating a diversion from the boredom and horror of the war. As a result, soldiers often sang on fatigue duty and while in camp. Favorite songs often reminded the soldiers of home, including “Lorena,” “Home, Sweet Home,” and “Just Before the Battle, Mother.” Dances held in camp offered another way to enjoy music. Since there were often few women nearby, soldiers would dance with one another.

When the Civil War broke out, one of the most popular songs among soldiers and civilians was “John Brown’s Body,” which began “John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in the grave.” Started as a Union anthem praising John Brown’s actions at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, then used by Confederates to vilify Brown, both sides’ version of the song stressed that they were on the right side. Eventually the words to Julia Ward Howe’s poem “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” were set to the melody, further implying Union success. The themes of popular songs changed over the course of the war, as feelings of inevitable success alternated with feelings of terror and despair.⁹

After an extensive delay on the part of Union commander George McClellan, his 120,000-man Army of the Potomac moved via ship to the peninsula between the York and James Rivers in Virginia. Rather than crossing overland via the former battlefield at Manassas Junction, McClellan attempted to swing around the rebel forces and enter the capital of Richmond before they knew what hit them. McClellan, however, was an overly cautious man who consistently overestimated his adversaries’ numbers. This cautious approach played into the Confederates’ favor on the outskirts of Richmond. Confederate General Robert E. Lee, recently appointed commander of the Army of Northern Virginia, forced McClellan to retreat from Richmond, and his Peninsular Campaign became a tremendous failure.¹⁰

Union forces met with little success in the East, but the Western Theater provided hope for the United States. In February 1862, men under Union general Ulysses S. Grant captured Forts Henry and Donelson along the Tennessee River. Fighting in the West greatly differed from that in the East. At the First Battle of Bull Run, for example, two large armies fought for control of the nations’ capitals, while in the West, Union and Confederate forces fought for control of the rivers, since the Mississippi River and its tributaries were key components of the Union’s Anaconda Plan. One of the deadliest of these clashes occurred along the Tennessee River at the Battle of Shiloh on April 6–7, 1862. This battle, lasting only two days, was the costliest single battle in American history up to that time. The Union victory shocked both the Union and the Confederacy with approximately twenty-three thousand casualties, a number that exceeded casualties from all of the United States’ previous wars combined.¹¹ The subsequent capture of New Orleans by Union forces proved a heavy blow to the Confederacy and capped an 1862 spring of success in the Western Theater.

The Union and Confederate navies helped or hindered army movements around the many marine environments of the southern United States. Each navy employed the latest technology to outmatch the other. The Confederate navy, led by Stephen Russell Mallory, had the unenviable task of constructing a fleet from scratch and trying to fend off a vastly better equipped Union navy. Led by Gideon Welles of Connecticut, the Union navy successfully implemented General-in-Chief Winfield Scott’s Anaconda Plan. The future of naval warfare also emerged in the spring of 1862 as two “ironclad” warships fought a duel at Hampton Roads, Virginia. The age of the wooden sail was gone and naval warfare would be fundamentally altered. While advances in naval technology ruled the seas, African Americans on the ground were complicating Union war aims to an even greater degree.

USS Monitor vs. CSS Virginia (aka USS Merrimack)

In March of 1862, the first battle of the ironclad ships occurred in Hampton Roads, an inlet between the two southern peninsulas of Virginia separating the riverways from the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. Fleeing from a Confederate advance, Union soldiers had scuttled any non-seaworthy vessel in the Gosport Naval Yard in Portsmouth, Virginia as they left. Included in these scuttled vessels was the USS Merrimack which sat in dry dock. Confederate troops arrived quickly enough they were able to put out the fire on the traditional wooden steam ship and save the keel. They retrofitted the ship by outfitting her with iron plates and rechristened her the CSS Virginia.

On the first day of the Battle of Hampton Roads, the CSS Virginia was dominant, sinking several wooden Union vessels. They then retired from the field intending to sink the remaining Union vessels in daylight the following day. That evening, however, the USS Monitor – a newly invented iron ship including an innovative rotating turret – arrived and engaged the CSS Virginia the following morning. The Virginia carried more guns than the Monitor, but as a result of being retrofit, it was top heavy and unwieldy. The Monitor was the smaller ship, but it was not retrofit and this made it faster and more maneuverable. The engagement was a stalemate, but the Virginia was forced to retreat.¹²

The CSS Virginia’s history was short. The ship ran aground in May of 1862 and its ordinance exploded, sinking the ship. The Monitor did not last much longer either, as it floundered and sunk in December of 1862 off the coast of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina with no survivors. The Monitor was rediscovered on the ocean’s floor in 1945 and with new technology parts of the ship were raised to the surface in 1998. The ship now resides at the Mariners’ Museum in Newport News, Virginia where visitors can see the ship itself – especially the turret, undergoing preservation.

By the summer of 1862, the actions of black Americans were pushing the Union toward a full-blown war of emancipation.¹³ Following the First Confiscation Act, in April 1862, Congress abolished the institution of slavery in the District of Columbia. In July 1862, Congress passed the Second Confiscation Act, effectively emancipating slaves that came under Union control. Word traveled fast among enslaved people, and this legislation led to even more runaways making their way into Union lines. Abraham Lincoln’s thinking began to evolve. By the summer of 1862, Lincoln first floated the idea of an Emancipation Proclamation to members of his cabinet. By August 1862, he proposed the first iteration of the Emancipation Proclamation. While his cabinet supported such an idea, secretary of state William Seward insisted that Lincoln wait for a “decisive” Union victory so the proclamation would not appear too desperate a measure on the part of a failing government.

This decisive moment that prompted the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation occurred in the fall of 1862 along Antietam Creek in Maryland. Emboldened by their success in the previous spring and summer, Lee and Confederate president Jefferson Davis planned to win a decisive victory in Union territory and end the war. On September 17, 1862, McClellan’s and Lee’s forces collided at the Battle of Antietam near the town of Sharpsburg. This battle was the first major battle of the Civil War to occur on Union soil. It remains the bloodiest single day in American history: over twenty thousand soldiers were killed, wounded, or missing.

Despite the Confederate withdrawal and the high death toll, the Battle of Antietam was not a decisive Union victory. It did, however, result in enough of a victory for Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed slaves in areas under Confederate control. There were significant exemptions to the Emancipation Proclamation, including the border states and parts of other states in the Confederacy. A far cry from a universal end to slavery, the Emancipation Proclamation nevertheless proved vital, shifting the war’s aims from simple union to emancipation. Framing it as a war measure, Lincoln and his cabinet hoped that stripping the Confederacy of its labor force would not only debilitate the southern economy but also weaken Confederate morale. Furthermore, the Battle of Antietam and the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation all but ensured that the Confederacy would not be recognized by European powers. Nevertheless, Confederates continued fighting. Union and Confederate forces clashed again at Fredericksburg, Virginia, in December 1862. This Confederate victory resulted in staggering Union casualties.

Wartime Technology and Prisoner of War Camps

Innovation and industry led to the invention of improved wartime technology. This partly explains why the Civil War was so deadly. “Cone-shaped bullets replaced musket balls, and beginning in 1862, smooth-bore muskets were replaced with rifles with grooved barrels, which imparted spin on a bullet and allowed a soldier to hit a target a quarter of a mile away.”¹⁴ The Civil War also saw the use of repeating rifles, breechloading arms, and automated weapons like the Gatling gun. Americans also used land mines, booby traps, shrapnel, and trenches. Along with the creation and use of ironclad ships, hot air balloons for surveillance, and submarines such as the CSS Hunley, new wartime technology made the Civil War particularly deadly. Also contributing to the mortality rate were the conditions in prisoner of war camps.

From late 1862 onwards, both sides were holding a large number of prisoners. Neither side set out to maltreat prisoners, but both sides believed the war would be short, so no expenditures were made to create habitable prisons. Once it became apparent that the war would drag on and arrangements for housing prisoner soldiers needed to be made, there was little money available to make these arrangements. As a result, most prisons were makeshift at best. Management of the prisons was bad on both sides, but it was worse in the South owing to poorer, decentralized organization and fewer resources.

During the first two years of the war, prisoner exchanges occurred regularly, but in late 1862 this agreement broke down, in part because the North refused to label Confederates “prisoners of war.” As a result of Lincoln’s declaration that secession was invalid, the Confederates were not enemy combatants. Instead, they were traitors. The Dix Hill Cartel, codified on July 22, 1862, had agreed to equal exchanges with all exchanged soldiers being allowed to return to their units only after serving parole for the remainder of the war at home. This was complicated in September of 1862 when the Union allowed the enlistment of black soldiers. The Confederacy responded by proclaiming that neither black soldiers, nor their white officers would be exchanged.

By the 1863, both sides were holding a large number of enemy combatants and in July, President Lincoln suspended the Dix Hill Cartel. Then on April 17, 1864, General Grant ordered that there be no more prisoner exchanges until the South agreed to make no distinction between white and black soldiers. On August 10, 1864, the Confederacy offered to resume the Dix Hill Cartel including black soldiers, accompanying the proposal with a report of conditions at the Andersonville Prison in Georgia. Grant agreed to the idea of exchanging man for man, but he did not agree with a full resumption of the cartel. The Union held far more Confederate prisoners than the Confederacy held Union soldiers. If the cartel were resumed, this would release thousands more Confederate soldiers than Union soldiers. He also believed that those Confederate soldiers would violate their paroles and rejoin their units on the battlefield.

On August 18, 1864, Grant disclosed this belief in a communication to Union General Benjamin Butler when he wrote: “It is hard on our men held in Southern prisons not to exchange them, but it is humanity to those left in the ranks to fight our battles. Every man we hold, when released on parole or otherwise, becomes an active soldier against us at once either directly or indirectly. If we commence a system of exchange which liberates all prisoners taken, we will have to fight on until the whole South is exterminated. If we hold those caught they amount to no more than dead men.”¹⁵ Grant is often blamed for being callous regarding the conditions of Union soldiers in southern prisoner of war camps, but the reality is that conditions were bad on both sides. While the prisons were smaller, there is evidence that the Union maintained more than 30 prisons during the war and there were actually more prisoner of war camps total in the North than in the South. The two most notorious camps include the Confederate Andersonville in Sumter County, Georgia, and the Union Camp Douglas in Chicago, Illinois.

Notes

1. The most recent estimation of wartime deaths is cited in The American Yawp as coming from J. David Hacker, “A Census-Based Account of the Civil War Dead,” Civil War History 57, no. 4 (December 2011): 306 – 347.
2. Abraham Lincoln, “Inaugural Address,” March 4, 1861, Abraham Lincoln Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
3. Abraham Lincoln to Orville Browning, September 22, 1861, Abraham Lincoln Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
4. Thomas H. O’Connor, Civil War Boston: Home Front and Battlefield (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1997), 67.
5. Excerpt from Benj. F. Butler to Lieutenant Genl. Scott, 27 May 1861, B-99 1861, Letters Received Irregular, Secretary of War, Record Group 107, National Archives, http://www.freedmen.umd.edu/Butler.html.
6. “THE SLAVE QUESTION.; Letter from Major-Gen. Butler on the Treatment of Fugitive Slaves,” New York Times (August 6, 1861).
7. Heather Cox Richardson, The Greatest Nation of the Earth: Republican Economic Policies During the Civil War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997).
8. For literacy rates within the armies, see Bell Irvin Wiley, The Life of Billy Yank: The Common Soldier of the Union (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1952), 304–306; and Bell Irvin Wiley, The Life of Johnny Reb: The Common Soldier of the Confederacy (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1943), 335–337.
9. For more on music in the Civil War, see Christian McWhirter, Battle Hymns: The Power and Popularity of Music in the Civil War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012).
10. Ethan S. Rafuse, McClellan’s War: The Failure of Moderation in the Struggle for the Union (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005).
11. Steven E. Woodworth, ed., The Shiloh Campaign (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2009).
12. For more information see “Hampton Roads: Monitor vs. Merrimack,” American Battlefield Trust, accessed December 27, 2018, https://www.battlefields.org/learn/civil-war/battles/hampton-roads.
13. Glenn David Brasher, The Peninsula Campaign and the Necessity of Emancipation: African Americans and the Fight for Freedom (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012).
14. S. Mintz and S. McNeil, “Why the Civil War Was So Lethal?,” Digital History, accessed December 27, 2018, http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=2&psid=3062.
15. Ulysses S. Grant, “Communication to Union General Benjamin Butler, August 18, 1864,” at “Andersonville: National Historic Site, Georgia,” National Park Service, accessed December 27, 2018, https://www.nps.gov/ande/learn/historyculture/grant-and-the-prisoner-exchange.htm.