Us History LO 23-27 Essay Example for Free

Us History LO 23-27 Essay The Secession of the South was not, initially, a matter of bloodshed. In the beginning the movement toward secession was based solely on legal and political grounds. In the North, te newly elected President Abraham Lincoln vowed to preserve the Union but also vowed not to be the first to spill blood over the crisis of secession. In the South, however, the feeling of euphoria mixed with antagonism toward the North which swept over the Southern states resulted in a crisis-within-a-crisis when the issue of Fort Sumter became the unforeseen trigger of the Civil War. By 1861, in the newly seceded states, the only remaining property in Union hands were two obscure forts in the Florida Keys along with Fort Pickens on an island at the mouth of Pensacola Bay and Fort Sumter on an island in Charleston harbor. Fort Sumter had become a commanding symbol of national sovereignty in the very cradle of secession, a symbol that the Confederate government could not tolerate if it wished its own sovereignty to be recognized by the world. Would Lincoln use force to defend Sumter? 1 In fact, the issue of Fort Sumter was resolved by violence with the Fort surrendering after a short period of bombardment from Confederate forces. This early victory for the South would prove to be pyric in nature as it touched off a larger conflict which they could not hope to win. Only the Southern resourcefulness and conviction in their right to secession prolonged the war as long as it could be prolonged, as the North commanded a superior economy, superior manpower, and superior armaments from the wars beginning to its end. Question 2: Explain the various internal political conflicts in the North, focusing on Copperheadism and the 1864 campaign. By the time of the 1864 elections, there was a strong sentiment brewing in the North for finding an end to the Civil War, whether or not this end would bring about the immediate reintegration of the Southern States into the Union. The Democratic party in tye North chose to run McClellan as a probable peace candidate against Lincoln. This , in turn, brought upon accusations that McClellan was a Souther Sympathizer or a copperhead as they were often called in the A Civil War era. Copperheadism, in fact, became a core issue of the Persidential election; as Union military victories portended a continuation of Lincolns war-policy, Far to the north George B. McClellan digested the news of Atlanta as he wrote his letter accepting the Democratic nomination. If he endorsed the platform, or said nothing about it, he would by implication commit himself to an armistice and negotiations. McClellan felt great pressure from the partys peace faction to do just that 2 Basically, an armistice was desired by certain peace factions in the North who were painted as copperheads by their detractors who supported the continuation of the war. True copperheads were those in the North or border states who were Southern sympathizers. The 1864 election turned out to be a referendum on the war itself, obviously, with McClellan having been successfully painted by his opponents as a peace candidate and perhaps even a copperhead. The Democrats Janus face toward the war presented Republicans with an easy target. 3 Question 3: Explain why the North won the Civil War and why the South lost. The South suffered a military defeat which wa exacerbated by its inabiolity to gain International, specifically European, recognition and thus the ability to break the Union naval blockade and open up to international commerce. The military defeat of the South was total. The Civil War is often called â€Å"the first modern war. † It saw the introduction of rapid-fire weapons. Trenches were first used extensively in battle. The railway and the telegraph were first used in a large-scale war. The campaigns of Lee, Jackson, Grant, Sherman, and Joseph E. Johnston were studied aboard for new concepts of strategy and tactics. At sea, ironclad ships and rifled cannon had made the wooden navies of the world obsolete. Few observers at the start of the American Civil War imagined the ultimate de-evolution of the war from its psuedo-Napoleonic beginnings with armies in formation maneuvering along classical military lines to achieve a tactical advantage. Because so many of the generals on both sides of the war derived their knowledge of battlefield tactics from the same sources, particularly Jomini, and also because many of the generals on either side received training at West Point, the wars beginning gave but a small hint of the total war which would be achieved by the close of 1865. In fact, the realization that much more than battlefield victory would be necessary to put down the Southern rebellion was slow to be reached by Lincolns generals. It was Sherman, perhaps, who first understood the underlying economic nature of the war, realizing that the Union with its superior material and financial power would ultimately prevail. However, his conception of how to convince the South of this truth was founded on a concept of total war, a strategic approach first used on the famous march to the sea. During this late period of the war, Sherman envisioned a dazzling campaign to march his army across Georgia to the sea, tearing the Confederacy asunder, and destroying everything in his path. (Ades, 226) The ensuing destruction wrought havoc and despair on the civilian population of the South and undermined the Souths economic and psychological ability to survive. The idea of war as a psychological tool of destruction was both new and devastatingly powerful. It turned out that the Georgia countryside had an abundance of supplies for Shermans 62,000 strong army. Nearly all the fighting took place on Southern soil, so that section suffered heavy war damage. Some regions, such as central Georgia and the Shenandoah Valley, were deliberately ravaged. Freeing of the slaves added a property loss estimated at $2 billion. The Federal government spent more than $6 billion on the war; the Confederacy, perhaps $ 2 billion. Both sides sustained heavy casualties. There were far more deaths caused by disease than by combat. Estimated total deaths are 360,000 for the union army and 260,000 for the Confederate army.