American Civil War

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American Civil War
Secession Begun December 20, 1860
Hostilities Begun April 12, 1861
Confederate Surrender April 9, 1865
Hostilities End May 12, 1865
Result Union Victory
33 star flag.png
United States
of America

"The Union" or U.S.A.
1st National 11 Stars.png
Confederate States
of America

"The Confederacy" or C.S.A.

15th U.S. President
33 star flag.png James Buchanan
16th U.S. President
33 star flag.png Abraham Lincoln

33 star flag.png Lincoln's Cabinet...

C.S. President
1st National 11 Stars.png Jefferson Davis
C.S. Vice-President
1st National 11 Stars.png Alexander Stephens

1st National 11 Stars.png Davis' Cabinet...
U.S. Military Commanders

33 star flag.png Robert Anderson
33 star flag.png Winfield Scott
33 star flag.png Irvin McDowell
33 star flag.png George B. McClellan
33 star flag.png Ulysses S. Grant

C.S. Military Commanders

1st National 11 Stars.png P.G.T. Beauregard
1st National 11 Stars.png Robert E. Lee
1st National 11 Stars.png Joseph E. Johnston
1st National 11 Stars.png Thomas J. Jackson
1st National 11 Stars.png James Longstreet

Battles and Events of 1861
Lincoln Takes Office
Siege of Fort Sumter
The Anaconda Plan
First Battle of Bull Run
Battle of Wilson's Creek
The Trent Affair

The American Civil War, arguably the most traumatic event in the history of the United States, was fought from 1861 to 1865, the culmination of sectional issues which deeply divided the country between a pro-Federal government North and a pro-states rights, pro-slavery South, whose eleven states formed a breakaway government called the Confederate States of America. The costliest war in terms of human lives, the American Civil War claimed in excess of 620,000 battle or disease-related deaths - roughly two percent of the country's total population, and nearly more deaths than all other American wars combined.


North and South

The line between North and South, geographically at least, was the line established by Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon between Pennsylvania and Maryland westward to the Ohio River. On both sides of the line the country was typically-rural; small towns and hamlets were the norm, and farms large and small dotted the countryside. But that is where similarities end.

The South's economy was predominantly based in agriculture on general, and on cotton in particular. Growing in amount since the turn of the 19th century, Southern cotton had by the 1830's exceeded the amount grown in all other places in the world; by 1849 the number of bales exported was 2 million, and ten years later the amount jumped to 5.9 million. Cotton was by the start of the Civil War more than half of all American exports and seven-eighths of the total amount of cotton in the world. (TL 1, pg 10)

The wealth cotton brought, as well as Southern politics, was controlled by the owners of large plantations, a small minority of well-to-do planters. Some of their profits went back into the plantations, either to purchase new land for expansion, maintain the buildings, or feed and clothe the slaves who worked them. Much of their money went into education or leisure; horse racing was popular throughout the South, and several plantations – principally in Kentucky and Tennessee – were among the first breeders of thoroughbred and walking horses in the country. It was common for a planter to send a son to college, especially if the college was a military academy. West Point in New York was high on the list, but the South boasted of several as well – among them the Virginia Military Institute and the Citadel, which are still opened today - and many of the students received educations as good or better than private colleges. But very few would make a career out of the military after their time at the academies were done, opting to return to private life after graduation, or resigning their commissions after a few short years. One Mississippi planter, Jefferson Davis, remarked that only in the South "did a gentlemen go to a military academy who did not intend to follow the profession of arms." (TL 1, pg 12)

Southern planters practiced a cultivated chivalry. They fancied themselves the heirs of the knights of old, displaying a code of honor among equals, gallantry towards white women, and kindness - marked with superiority at times - with inferiors (TL 1, pg 12).

By contrast the North was a marked by a population that prized hard work. Immigrants or descendents of immigrants brought with them a work ethic that required a “do it yourself” attitude; this translated into a great deal of manufacturing and free trade. At roughly the same time, the Industrial Revolution spread from Europe to the northern states; factories were being built at almost breakneck speed, producing machines, tools, shoe peggers, looms, farm equipment, locomotives and railroad cars, and the rails they rode on; by the middle of the century 70% of railroad track was set down north of the Ohio River. John Deere would invent a plow made from stainless steel, and his easily-manufactured creation opened up the rich farmlands of the Midwest to the point that by 1857 it became the country's largest wheat-producing area. Farm equipment also included the first examples of steam-powered plows, and in 1859 there were contests as to who could build and deploy the best plow. A contest at Freeport, Illinois caused an official committee to declare the machine could "plow 25 acres a day at 62.5 cents an acre" versus a normal manual charge of $2.50 an acre. (Nevins, pg 166-168)

Weapons manufacturing increased; rifles and pistols were being produced under the new “American system”, as the British called the creation of standardized spare parts for easy repair and replacement. One state - Massachusetts - had twenty-seven gun manufacturers.

Largely agrarian, the South was left far behind in when industrialization and the explosion in population took over the North, but Southerners didn't care. “We want no manufactures,” said an Alabama politician; “we desire no trading, no mechanical or manufacturing classes. As long as we have our rice, our sugar, our tobacco, and our cotton, we can command wealth to purchase all we want.” But one invention they did trade the North for. In 1793 Eli Whitney patented his cotton gin, a device in which the cotton was separated from the boll by means of a mesh screen, as well as the means of increasing the weekly bales of cotton to over 1,000 per week; prior to the gin, it was a slow process by hand, giving a planter 100 bales a week if he was lucky. The increase in the number of bound cotton bales to market at faster rates enabled planters to increase their cotton crops to two or three per season, thus increasing their wealth.

To get their cotton harvested, baled, and sold, Southern planters required that other commodity which was thought to be headed on the road to extinction until ironically rescued by Whitney's invention, the “peculiar institution” that the South couldn't be without: African slaves.


Just a few years after the first successful English settlements are established in Virginia, a Dutch trader brings the first African-born slaves to the colony in 1619, and over the next two centuries the number of slaves and the need for them gradually increases as much of the South is put under the plow. By the period of the American Revolution (1775-1783) slavery had been relatively-confined to to the South, as much manpower was required to harvest the large crops on the plantations. But by 1800 many assumed that the institution was dying out; times were changing, and a new nation - the United States - was created under the proposition that "all men are created equal". Several of the Founding Fathers owned slaves and admitted needing them, despite their statements that slavery was a "monstrous system"; Thomas Jefferson had hoped that slavery would drift on a gradual course towards extinction, while George Washington set an example that he had hoped others would follow: he set his free upon the death of himself (1799) and his wife (1802), while providing an endowment to support them for the remainder of their lives[1]. The cotton gin changed everything, and the jump in cotton crops brought the demand for more slaves to harvest them. As the years went by since Washington's and Jefferson's deaths the South began to rationalize it less as an evil and more of an economic necessity; so ingrained into the fabric had slavery become that Vice President John C. Calhoun was to say in 1838:

"many in the South once believed that slavery was a moral and political evil. That folly and delusion are gone. We see it now in its true light, and regard it as the most safe and stable basis for free institutions in the world." (TL 1, pg 40)

Slaves for the most part were treated brutally. Born in bondage, a slave usually began his first work in the fields at the age of twelve. They would work in the fields from the light of day until, in the words of a Louisiana slave, "until it is too dark to see, and when the moon is full, they often labor until the middle of the night" (TL, pg 48). They were fed and clothed poorly, usually in rags; shoes were uncommon, and they only dressed in finer material when they were either house slaves - those fortunate enough to serve the master from within the main house - or set upon the auction block, where they were examined by potential buyers as if they were buying a horse. Disease was rampant; only four out of 100 lived past age 60. Absolute subservience to whites was enforced. Slaves who created hostility or revolt - as Gabriel Prosser did in 1800 and Nat Turner in 1831 - were quickly caught and hung, with laws and regulations tightened regarding slave movements and control. Punishment for other infractions was severe, involving stocks, pronged metal neck collars, and multiple whippings where salt water was used to clear infection, with the resulting pain so excruciating a slave recollecting it wrote "the flesh crawls upon my bones" (TL 1, pp 49-58).

But such punishments never deterred those who wanted freedom. Many would make their way north by following a circuitous route called the Underground Railroad; some would find freedom in Canada, while others would stop somewhere in the northern states, fearful of the new Fugitive Slave Laws which were implemented in several cities. And while this was going on, Abolition movements were springing to life in the North; the South, feeling more and more isolated, was digging in, and politicians were creating laws and compromises in an attempt to stave off a potential conflict. Territories had been added to the country, and it became a priority for one side to restrict slavery into them, and for the other side to push it.

Political machinations and compromises

By 1860, the United States was deeply-divided into slavery and free states, with the territory of Kansas a portrait of things to come.




Bleeding Kansas

The remains of the Free State Hotel after the sacking of Lawrence, Kansas by pro-slavery forces on May 21, 1856.
The caning of Charles Sumner by Preston Brooks




The day after the Free State Hotel in Lawrence was burned, a South Carolina congressman named Preston Brooks, incensed over an anti-slavery speech given by Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner[5], walked onto the senate floor and beat him with a cane so severely that Sumner took three years to recover. [1]

Dred Scott decision

Dred Scott





Emergence of Lincoln

The Illinois candidates for the United States Senate in 1858: Abraham Lincoln and Stephan A. Douglas.






John Brown at Harpers Ferry

John Brown







1860 Presidential campaign

1860 Presidential Election





The Secession

Special edition of the Charleston Mercury, Charleston, South Carolina, December 20, 1860



On January 6, 1861, Florida troops take the Federal arsenal at Apalachicola. Fort Marion at St. Augustine is seized on the 7th. On the 9th, the Star of the West was fired upon as she neared Charleston, causing her to turn around and head back to Norfolk. That same day public celebrations erupt in Mississippi as the state legislature votes 84-15 to secede.

  • January 10, Florida votes 67-2 to secede.
  • January 11, Alabama votes 69-31 to secede.
  • January 19, Georgia votes 208-89 to secede.
  • January 26, Louisiana votes 114-17 to secede.
  • February 1, Texas votes 166-7 to secede.





Fort Sumter

Fort Sumter under fire (Currier and Ives)




The American Civil War had begun.



  • McPherson, James M. Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (1988), 900 pages; excerpt and text search; also complete online edition


The Official Records of the War of the Rebellion


North and South

Emergence of Lincoln

1860 Presidential Campaign



  1. (Bowman, pg 38)
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