Introduction
The American Civil War broke out in April 1861 as a result of simmering tensions between the American states primarily in the North and the South of the country. The main cause of the war was disagreement between the states over the issue of the continuing existence of slavery in the nation. States’ rights vis-a-vis the federal government in Washington, D.C. and conflict over the continuing expansion of the US to the Pacific coast also were causes that led to the war.
The election of Abraham Lincoln, from the Republican Party as President of the US was the trigger for the southern states to secede from the Union. Initially, seven states and eventually four more joining them took the total number of seceding states to eleven. These states formed a new nation known as the Confederate States of America (CSA) or the Confederacy, which, however, was not recognized by either the federal US government or any other foreign government.
The war lasted for four years until June 1865, when the last Confederate army surrendered to Union forces. President Lincoln was assassinated in April 1865 by a southern sympathizer. The war was fought mostly in the southern states, infrastructure in which was destroyed as a result of the same. Around 620,000 to 750,000 soldiers were killed on both sides making the war the deadliest and costliest to have been ever fought on US soil. During the war, President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which made ending slavery, a goal of the war. After the war and Lincoln’s death, the US Congress passed the Thirteenth Amendment ending slavery in the US.
The war is significant in the annals of world history as it was the first modern war to be fought with the help of heavy industry and mass production of weapons. The war also involved the use of railways, telegraphs, steamships, and ironclad warships. The war preceded far deadly, global conflicts like World War I and World War II in the use of industrial warfare and ‘scorched earth’ or ‘total war’ policies.
Causes of the War
There was a fundamental difference between the American states from the beginning of the nation’s founding. The northern states were more heavily industrialized as well as involved in manufacturing and had lesser agriculture as part of their economies. The southern states on the other hand were heavily dependent on agriculture for their economic well-being. The agricultural labor was mostly provided by Black African-American slaves who worked on large plantations of mostly cotton and tobacco.
There was a growing sentiment for the abolition of slavery in the North after the 1830s and the northerners opposed slavery’s extension into the new western territories that were being added to the Union as the nation expanded westward. This led many southerners to fear that the existence of slavery in the US, and thus the backbone of their economy, was in danger.
Attempts at a compromise between the states on the issue of slavery which was carried out in the 1850s led to nowhere. In 1854, the US Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which essentially allowed the expansion of slavery in the new states and territories which were being added to the country. This in turn led to the violent ‘Bleeding Kansas’ violence between pro-and anti-slavery groups in the new states.
In the north, abolitionists led the movement to abolish slavery. They came together to form the new Republican Party which spearheaded the abolitionist movement. The publishing of novels like ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ by Harriet Beecher Stowe depicted the horrors of slavery to the general public especially in the North where slavery came to be considered as immoral as a result.
The abolitionist John Brown’s unsuccessful raid at the Harper’s Ferry arsenal in what is now West Virginia in 1859 and his subsequent trial and hanging increased the tensions between the northern states and the southern ones. The southern states argued that just as each state had decided to join the Union, a state had the right to secede and leave the Union at any time. Northerners were opposed to the idea of secession. The southern states mostly complained that the northern states were asserting their states’ rights and that the national government was not powerful enough to counter the northern claims.
In the 1840s and 1850s, the issue of accepting slavery also split the country’s largest religious sects (the Methodist, Baptist, and Presbyterian churches) into separate Northern and Southern denominations. Slave owners were in favor of low-cost human labor with no automated work. Northern industries called for tariffs and trade barriers while Southern plantation owners called for free markets. The Republicans had called for an increase in tariffs in the 1860 presidential election. The increases were executed in 1861 after the Southerners had seceded from the Union and were no more in Congress.
American nationalism had become an important force in the 19th century. While practically all the Northerners supported the Union, Southerners were divided between those who were loyal to the US as a whole and those who were loyal to the south and later the Confederacy. The immense popularity of the anti-slavery book, ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ in the 1850s, especially in the abolitionist North as well as the unsuccessful raid by the northern abolitionist, John Brown at the Harper’s Ferry arsenal in modern West Virginia are examples of perceived insults of southern honor. Whereas the South imbibed a Southern nationalism, the North became more national-minded and rejected any notion of dissolving the Union. The Republicans had warned in the elections of 1860 that they regarded disunion as treason and would not bear it. The South neglected these warnings. The Southerners did not comprehend that the North would zealously fight to keep the Union united.
The election of Republican President Abraham Lincoln was the key trigger for generating the crisis, All efforts at compromise failed. The first four and then a total of eleven slave-owning states of the south left the Union and seceded to form a new country called the Confederate States of America, where slavery would be legally allowed to exist. No other country however recognized the new nation, including powerful European states like Britain and France. The new president Lincoln called the secession ‘legally void’ and considered the southern government to be illegitimate thus making it difficult to directly or indirectly recognize the same. Though Lincoln tried his best to bring about a solution, he was not successful.
The course of the War
In April 1861, Confederate forces surrounded and then began bombarding the Federal held Fort Sumter facility in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, which soon surrendered marking the official start of the American Civil War. The Confederate states elected their own president, Jefferson Davis. Initial battles were won by the Confederacy and led to huge Union casualties.
The Union victory at the Battle of Antietam in 1862 led President Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation which freed all the slaves in the states in rebellion (viz. the Confederate states). The Union’s capture of the city of Vicksburg in Mississippi caused the Confederacy to split into two in 1863. Also, the Union victory at the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863 marked a turning point in the conflict as the Union now went on the offensive.
In 1864, General Ulysses S. Grant was made the commanding general in charge of all the Union armies. His colleague, General William T. Sherman captured Atlanta in 1864 and then began his famous ‘March to the Sea’ during which he and his army cut a swathe through the heart of the Confederacy and destroyed infrastructure following a ‘scorched earth’ policy of ‘total war’. Finally, in 1865, General Grant pursued the main Confederate army under the command of General Robert E. Lee. He occupied the Confederate capital, Richmond, and surrounded Lee and his army, causing Lee to surrender at Appomattox Court House in April 1865, which effectively ended the War. President Lincoln’s assassination and the surrender of other smaller Confederate armies formally ended the War in June 1865. The United States of America was united once more.