{"id":144,"date":"2023-03-07T18:19:29","date_gmt":"2023-03-07T18:19:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/ppschis1210\/chapter\/module-5-8\/"},"modified":"2023-04-26T19:39:11","modified_gmt":"2023-04-26T19:39:11","slug":"module-5-8","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/ppschis1210\/chapter\/module-5-8\/","title":{"raw":"5.8 The Civil War Years 1863 \u2013 1865","rendered":"5.8 The Civil War Years 1863 \u2013 1865"},"content":{"raw":"

War for Emancipation 1863 - 1865<\/h2>\r\nAs Union armies penetrated deeper into the Confederacy, politicians and generals came to understand the necessity and benefit of enlisting black men in the army and navy. Although a few commanders began forming black units in 1862, such as Massachusetts abolitionist Thomas Wentworth Higginson\u2019s First South Carolina Volunteers (the first regiment of black soldiers), widespread enlistment did not occur until the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect on January 1, 1863. \u201cAnd I further declare and make known,\u201d Lincoln\u2019s proclamation read, \u201cthat such persons of suitable condition, will be received into the armed service of the United States to garrison forts, positions, stations, and other places, and to man vessels of all sorts in said service.\u201d1<\/sup><\/a>\r\n\r\nThe language describing black enlistment indicated Lincoln\u2019s implicit desire to segregate African American troops from the main campaigning armies of white soldiers. \u201cI believe it is a resource which, if vigorously applied now, will soon close the contest. It works doubly, weakening the enemy and strengthening us,\u201d Lincoln remarked in August 1863 about black soldiering.2<\/sup><\/a> Although more than 180,000 black men (10 percent of the Union army) served during the war, the majority of United States Colored Troops (USCT) remained stationed behind the lines as garrison forces, often laboring and performing noncombat roles.\r\n\r\nBlack soldiers in the Union army endured rampant discrimination and earned less pay than white soldiers, while also facing the possibility of being murdered or sold into slavery if captured. James Henry Gooding, a black corporal in the famed 54th Massachusetts Volunteers, wrote to Abraham Lincoln in September 1863, questioning why he and his fellow volunteers were paid less than white men. Gooding argued that because he and his brethren were born in the United States and selflessly left their private lives to enter the army, they should be treated \u201cas American SOLDIERS, not as menial hirelings.\u201d3<\/sup><\/a>\r\n\r\nAfrican American soldiers defied the inequality of military service and used their positions in the army to reshape society, North and South. The majority of the USCT had once been enslaved, and their presence as armed, blue-clad soldiers sent shock waves throughout the Confederacy. To their friends and families, African American soldiers symbolized the embodiment of liberation and the destruction of slavery. To white southerners, they represented the utter disruption of the Old South\u2019s racial and social hierarchy. As members of armies of occupation, black soldiers wielded martial authority in towns and plantations. At the end of the war, as a black soldier marched by a cluster of Confederate prisoners, he noticed his former master among the group. \u201cHello, massa,\u201d the soldier exclaimed, \u201cbottom rail on top dis time!\u201d4<\/sup><\/a>\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n[caption id=\"\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"700\"]\"\u201cTwo \u201cTwo Brothers in Arms.\u201d \u202fThe Library of Congress<\/a>.[\/caption]\r\n\r\nThe majority of the USCT occupied the South by performing garrison duty; other black soldiers performed admirably on the battlefield, shattering white myths that docile, cowardly black men would fold in the maelstrom of war. Black troops fought in more than four hundred battles and skirmishes, including Milliken\u2019s Bend and Port Hudson, Louisiana; Fort Wagner, South Carolina; Nashville; and the final campaigns to capture Richmond, Virginia. Fifteen black soldiers received the Medal of Honor, the highest honor bestowed for military heroism. Through their voluntarism, service, battlefield contributions, and even death, black soldiers laid their claims for citizenship. \u201cOnce let a black man get upon his person the brass letters U.S.\u201d Frederick Douglass, the great black abolitionist, proclaimed, \u201cand there is no power on earth which can deny that he has earned the right to citizenship.\u201d5<\/sup><\/a>\r\n\r\nMany slaves accompanied their masters in the Confederate army. They served their masters as \u201ccamp servants,\u201d cooking their meals, raising their tents, and carrying their supplies. The Confederacy also impressed slaves to perform manual labor. There are three important points to make about these \u201cConfederate\u201d slaves. First, their labor was almost always coerced. Second, people are complicated and have varying, often contradictory loyalties. A slave could hope in general that the Confederacy would lose but at the same time be concerned for the safety of his master and the Confederate soldiers he saw on a daily basis.\r\n\r\nFinally, white Confederates did not see African Americans as their equals, much less as soldiers. There was never any doubt that black laborers and camp servants were property. Though historians disagree on the matter, it is a stretch to claim that not a single African American ever fired a gun for the Confederacy; a camp servant whose master died in battle might well pick up his dead master\u2019s gun and continue firing, if for no other reason than to protect himself. But this was always on an informal basis. The Confederate government did, in an act of desperation, pass a law in March 1865 allowing for the enlistment of black soldiers, but only a few dozen African Americans (mostly Richmond hospital workers) had enlisted by the war\u2019s end.\r\n\r\nThe Civil War also involved Native Americans on many sides of the conflict.\u00a0 A surprisingly large number of native forces fought for the Rebellion, usually for one or both of two reasons.\u00a0 First, the reality that many tribal nations that had acculturated alongside the Southern slave states had adopted racial chattel slavery.\u00a0 This would be later reflected in the US government decision to require such tribal nations to free their African-American and Afro-native slaves and bring them \u2013 both those known to have native ancestors and those without such proof \u2013 into their tribes as members with citizenship rights, just as all of America and especially the defeated secessionist slave states were supposed to under the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments.\u00a0 The racial controversies this entire set of issues created among those native nations continue to echo in controversies to this day, as do the larger racial controversies of American slavery and Native American policies.\r\n\r\nSecond, the constant breaking of agreements and treaties by the United States federal government, whether through action, inaction, or outright neglect, convinced some tribes that a new \u201cConfederate States\u201d government in desperate need of support against its larger enemy would be more likely to keep their agreements.\u00a0 This was also particularly true of tribal nations who held slaves of African ancestry, despite the fact that states now fighting for secession like George had expelled these acculturated native nations under the Removal Act et al.\u00a0 Ultimately, the desperation of native nations to find some solution to the lack of any ability to trust even the meager promises of treaties made with the US government overwhelmed those memories for many.\u00a0 Some native units within the Confederate military continued to fight on long after most others had halted.\r\n\r\nNative nations also fought for the United States, while others remained neutral.\u00a0 Agreements and even support for the United States in this war was no guarantee of escaping racism and violence on the frontier.\u00a0 But, as seen in the horrifying Sand Creek Massacre in Colorado, it was likewise no guarantee of protection against even military forces associated with the United States cause, with the people cut down despite the American flags and other sigils they had been instructed to fly signaling their support.\u00a0 Mass executions of other native groups by the United States made clear that a war for emancipation was no sign of a true new leaf in racial relations with Native Americans.\r\n\r\nOther aspects of the Civil War and its aftermath changed individual tribes in other ways.\u00a0 The Potawatomi people relocated from the Ohio Valley to Kansas before the war divided in this period over a choice of whether or not to accept United States citizenship.\u00a0 Those who did reorganized into the Citizen Band Potawatomi, today known as the Citizen Potawatomi Nation.\u00a0 Yet even for this group American citizenship generations before the recognition of US citizenship for all Native Americans in 1924 was no benefit, at least at first.\u00a0 Struggling without the tribal communal land holdings and immunity against state and local law they had, for a time, lost with this change, the tribe\u2019s members became so impoverished that a later mission to the US capital pleaded for a new grant of a type of tribal land in what is now Oklahoma.\u00a0 That was granted.\u00a0 It would then be broken up in the 1880s under the Dawes Act, but by then the hard, brutal lessons of accepting US citizenship without protections had begun to teach some Potawatomi how to endure.\r\n\r\nAs 1863 dawned, Lee\u2019s Army of Northern Virginia continued its offensive strategy in the East. One of the war\u2019s major battles occurred near the village of Chancellorsville, Virginia, between April 30 and May 6, 1863. While the Battle of Chancellorsville was an outstanding Confederate victory, it also resulted in heavy casualties and the mortal wounding of Confederate major general \u201cStonewall\u201d Jackson, who was killed by friendly fire.\r\n\r\nIn spite of Jackson\u2019s death, Lee continued his offensive against federal forces and invaded Pennsylvania in the summer of 1863. During the three-day battle (July 1\u20133) at Gettysburg, heavy casualties crippled both sides. Yet the devastating July 3 infantry assault on the Union center, also known as Pickett\u2019s Charge, caused Lee to retreat from Pennsylvania. The Gettysburg Campaign was Lee\u2019s final northern incursion and the Battle of Gettysburg remains the bloodiest battle of the war, and in American history, with fifty-one thousand casualties.\r\n\r\nConcurrently in the West, Union forces continued their movement along the Mississippi River and its tributaries. Grant launched his campaign against Vicksburg, Mississippi, in the winter of 1862. Known as the \u201cGibraltar of the West,\u201d Vicksburg was the last holdout in the West, and its seizure would enable uninhibited travel for Union forces along the Mississippi River. Grant\u2019s Vicksburg Campaign, which lasted until July 4, 1863, ended with the city\u2019s surrender. The fall of Vicksburg split the Confederacy in two.\r\n\r\nDespite Union success in the summer of 1863, discontent over the war simmered across the North. This was particularly true in the wake of the Enrollment Act\u2014the first effort at a draft among the northern populace during the Civil War. Working-class northerners were especially angry that the wealthy could pay $300 for substitutes, sparing themselves from the carnage of war. \u201cA rich man\u2019s war, but a poor man\u2019s fight,\u201d was a popular refrain.6<\/sup><\/a> The Emancipation Proclamation convinced many immigrants in northern cities that freed people would soon take their jobs. These economic and racial anxieties culminated in the New York City Draft Riots in July 1863. Over the span of four days, white rioters killed some 120 citizens, including the lynching of at least eleven black New Yorkers. Property damage was in the millions, including the complete destruction of more than fifty properties\u2014most notably that of the Colored Orphan Asylum. It was the largest civil disturbance to date in the United States (aside from the war itself) and was only stopped by the deployment of Union soldiers, some of whom came directly from the battlefield at Gettysburg.\r\n\r\nElsewhere, the North produced widespread displays of unity. Sanitary fairs originated in the Old Northwest and raised millions of dollars for Union soldiers. Indeed, many women rose to take pivotal leadership roles in the sanitary fairs\u2014a clear contribution to the northern war effort. The fairs also encouraged national unity within the North\u2014something that became more important as the war dragged on and casualties continued to mount. The northern homefront was complicated: overt displays of loyalty contrasted with violent dissent.\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n[caption id=\"\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"700\"]\"Thomas Thomas Nast, \u201cOur Heroines, United States Sanitary Commission,\u201d in Harper\u2019s Weekly, April 9, 1864 \u202fCushing\/Whitney Medical Library at Yale University<\/a>.[\/caption]\r\n\r\nA similar situation played out in the Confederacy. The Confederate Congress passed its first conscription act in the spring of 1862, a full year before its northern counterpart. Military service was required from all able-bodied males between ages eighteen and thirty-five (eventually extended to forty-five). Notable class exemptions likewise existed in the Confederacy: those who owned twenty or more slaves could escape the draft. Popular discontent reached a boiling point in 1863. Through the spring of 1863 consistent food shortages led to \u201cbread riots\u201d in several Confederate cities, most notably Richmond, Virginia, and the Georgia cities of Augusta, Macon, and Columbus. Confederate women led these mobs to protest food shortages and rampant inflation within the Confederate South. Exerting their own political control, women dramatically impacted the war through violent actions in these cases, as well as constant petitions to governors for aid and the release of husbands from military service. One of these women wrote a letter to North Carolina governor Zebulon Vance, saying, \u201cEspecially for the sake of suffering women and children, do try and stop this cruel war.\u201d7<\/sup><\/a> Confederates waged a multifront struggle against Union incursion and internal dissent.\r\n\r\nFor some women, the best way to support their cause was spying on the enemy. When the war broke out, Rose O\u2019Neal Greenhow was living in Washington, D.C., where she traveled in high social circles, gathering information for her Confederate contact. Suspecting Greenhow of espionage, Allan Pinkerton placed her under surveillance, instigated a raid on her house to gather evidence, and then placed her under house arrest, after which she was incarcerated in Old Capitol Prison. Upon her release, she was sent, under guard, to Baltimore, Maryland. From there Greenhow went to Europe to attempt to bring support to the Confederacy. Failing in her efforts, Greenhow decided to return to America, boarding the blockade runner Condor<\/em>, which ran aground near Wilmington, North Carolina. Subsequently, she drowned after her lifeboat capsized in a storm. Greenhow gave her life for the Confederate cause, while Elizabeth \u201cCrazy Bet\u201d Van Lew sacrificed her social standing for the Union. Van Lew was from a prominent Richmond, Virginia, family and spied on the Confederacy, leading to her being \u201cheld in contempt & scorn by the narrow minded men and women of my city for my loyalty.\u201d8<\/sup><\/a> Indeed, when General Ulysses Grant took control of Richmond, he placed a special guard on Van Lew. In addition to her espionage activities, Van Lew also acted as a nurse to Union prisoners in Libby Prison. For pro-Confederate southern women, there were more opportunities to show their scorn for the enemy. Some women in New Orleans took these demonstrations to the level of dumping their chamber pots onto the heads of unsuspecting federal soldiers who stood underneath their balconies, leading to Benjamin Butler\u2019s infamous General Order Number 28, which arrested all rebellious women as prostitutes.\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n[caption id=\"\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"700\"]\"Portrait Pauline Cushman was an American actress and a wartime spy. Using her guile to fraternize with Confederate officers, Cushman snuck military plans and drawings to Union officials in her shoes. She was caught, tried, and sentenced to death, but was apparently saved days before her execution by the occupation of her native New Orleans by Union forces. Whether as spies, nurses, or textile workers, women were essential to the Union war effort. \u201cPauline Cushman,\u201d between 1855 and 1865. \u202fLibrary of Congress<\/a>.[\/caption]\r\n\r\nMilitary strategy shifted in 1864. The new tactics of \u201chard war\u201d evolved slowly, as restraint toward southern civilians and property ultimately gave way to a concerted effort to demoralize southern civilians and destroy the southern economy. Grant\u2019s successes at Vicksburg and Chattanooga, Tennessee (November 1863), and Meade\u2019s cautious pursuit of Lee after Gettysburg prompted Lincoln to promote Grant to general-in-chief of the Union army in early 1864. This change in command resulted in some of the bloodiest battles of the Eastern Theater. Grant\u2019s Overland Campaign, including the Battle of the Wilderness, the Battle of Cold Harbor, and the siege of Petersburg, demonstrated Grant\u2019s willingness to tirelessly attack the ever-dwindling Army of Northern Virginia. By June 1864, Grant\u2019s army surrounded the Confederate city of Petersburg, Virginia. Siege operations cut off Confederate forces and supplies from the capital of Richmond. Meanwhile out west, Union armies under the command of William Tecumseh Sherman implemented hard war strategies and slowly made their way through central Tennessee and northern Georgia, capturing the vital rail hub of Atlanta in September 1864.\r\n

Sherman\u2019s March to the Sea and Total Warfare<\/h3>\r\nIn August 1864, Union General William Sherman left Chattanooga, Tennessee for Atlanta, Georgia. He was briefly held off by Confederate General Joseph Johnston, but when Johnston was replaced with Confederate General John Hood, Sherman was able to defeat Hood and force the surrender of Atlanta to Union troops on September 1, 1864. The taking of Atlanta boosted northern morale and it is possible that this victory contributes to Lincoln\u2019s victory at the polls in November. Once occupying Atlanta, Sherman determined that the only way to guarantee a victory in the South was to destroy all of her resources so that they could not be used against the North. This practice of total warfare was new in that it was considered immoral and uncivilized to attack civilians in this manner. Regardless, Sherman issued an order that Atlanta be evacuated in five days. The mayor and city council appealed, pointing out that the majority of the population of the city were women and children with no place to go. Sherman\u2019s reply was uncompromising: \u201cI have read [the petition] carefully, and give full credit to your statements of the distress that will be occasioned, and yet shall not revoke my orders, because they were not designed to meet the humanities of the case, but to prepare for the future struggles in which millions of good people outside of Atlanta have a deep interest.\u201d9<\/sup><\/a> When all the preparation for Sherman\u2019s march south had been made, intentionally or not, Atlanta was burned.\r\n\r\nSherman guaranteed a march to the sea, cutting off his own supply lines, determined that his soldiers would live off the land and destroy anything that they couldn't take with them beyond the bare necessities left behind for the civilian population. His foragers were instructed to take all necessary provisions, horses, and mules, but were ordered not to enter dwellings, insult the people, and were told to leave part of the property for every family so none would be destitute. They didn\u2019t follow orders though, pillaging land and towns, destroying farms, fields, and factories, bridges, railroads, and even murdering people and raping women. Sherman\u2019s troops cut a path that is estimated to be 300 miles long and 60 miles wide.\r\n\r\nSherman was most concerned with breaking the supply chain for Confederate soldiers on the battlefield. To this end, he ordered that any food supplies that were not needed for his soldiers or the civilian population be destroyed. In this way, he promised Grant, he would \u201cmake Georgia howl.\u201d10<\/sup><\/a> Sherman, in his own memoirs, testifies to the conduct of his men, estimating they had destroyed $80,000,000 worth of property of which he could make no use. This he describes as simple \u201cwaste and destruction.\u201d11<\/sup><\/a> While Sherman\u2019s March to the Sea and total war strategy were successful, the long term result was animosity and resentment from southern civilians toward northern Yankees for years to come.\r\n

For more information, explore the following resources and watch the related video:<\/strong><\/p>\r\n

Marszalek, John. \u201cScorched Earth: Sherman\u2019s March to the Sea.\u201d American Battlefield Trust.<\/em> <\/a>Accessed April 28, 2021.<\/p>\r\nWGBH Educational Foundation. The Civil War: A Biography of America. Produced by Annenberg Learner. 2000. Video, <\/a>25:52.\r\n