We Must Settle This Question Now, Whether In A Free Government The Minority Have The Right To Break Up The

Government Whenever They Choose. If We Fail It Will Go Far To Prove The Incapability Of The People To Govern

Themselves…….A. Lincoln May 7, 1861

The Menace of Secession On March 4, 1861, Abraham

Lincoln was inaugurated the 16th President. In his inauguraladdress, he stated that there would be no conflict unless the South provoked one.

He marked restoration of the union as his top goal.

Lincoln stated that geographically, the United States could not be split.

How would national debt and the allocation of federal territories be decided?

A split U.S. would also please the European countries, since the U.S. was the only major display of democracy in the Western Hemisphere.

South Carolina Assails Fort Sumter Most of the forts in the South

had relinquished their power to theConfederacy, but Fort Sumter was among the two that had not. Its supplies were running out against a besieging South Carolinian army. What would Lincoln do? Lincoln wisely chose to send

supplies to the fort, and he told theSouth Carolinian governor that the ship to the fort only heldprovisions, not reinforcements.

However, to the South, provisions were reinforcements, and on April12, 1861, cannons were fired onto the fort; after 34 hours ofnon-lethal firing, the fort surrendered.

Aftermath of firing on Fort Sumter

Northerners were inflamed by the South’s actions, and Lincolnnow called on 75,000 volunteers to prepare for war. On April 19 and 27, Lincoln also called a naval blockade on the South that was leaky at first but soon clamped down tight. The Deep South (which had already seceded), felt that Lincoln wasnow waging an aggressive war, and was joined by four more Southernstates: Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina.

The capital of the Confederacy was moved from Montgomery, AL to Richmond, VA.

The Boarder StatesThe boarder states

were Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland and Delaware (later West Virginia when 46 counties seceded from Virginia)

Lincoln kept boarder states in Union by declaring martial law, military occupation and not initially making Civil War a war of abolition

The Balance of Forces The South, at the beginning of the war had some advantages

It only had to fight to a draw to win, since all it had to do waskeep the North from invading and taking over all of its territory.

It had the most talented officers, including Robert E. Lee andThomas “Stonewall” Jackson, and most of the Southerners hadbeen trained in a military-style upbringing and education since theywere children, as opposed to the tame Northerners. Many top Southernyoung men attended military schools like West Point, The Citadel, orVMI.

However, the South was handicapped by a shortage of factories andmanufacturing plants, but during the war, those developed in the South.

Still, as the war dragged on, the South found itself with ashortage of shoes, uniforms, blankets, clothing, and food, whichdidn’t reach soldiers due to supply problems.

However, the North had a huge economy, many more men available tofight, and it controlled the sea, though its officers weren’t aswell-trained as some in the South.

As the war dragged on, Northern strengths beat Southern advantages.

Dethroning King CottonSouthern strategy was to hope England would join their

side because of a shortage of cotton. However, the North sent cotton and King Grain to England and Uncle Tom’s Cabin had impacted the English people greatly. England also got cotton from Egypt and India.

The Trent Affair On November 8, 1861, the

USS Jacinto, flouting international laws, stopped the British mail packet the Trent sailing from Havana to England and arrested two Confederate diplomats and their secretaries who were on a diplomatic mission to England. They were imprisoned in Boston. The British government demanded their release.

The affair caused a "profound sensation" in British North America as the Maritimes and Canada realized that they could become a battlefield in a potential Anglo-Northern war. The militia was called up. London announced that it would defend its colonies with all its power and sent 14,000 officers and men as reinforcements.

On Christmas Day the prisoners were released and tension relaxed for the moment.

The Alabama Claims The controversy began when

Confederate agents contracted for warships from British boatyards. Disguised as merchant vessels during their construction in order to circumvent British neutrality laws, the craft were actually intended as commerce raiders. The most successful of these cruisers was the Alabama, which was launched on July 29, 1862. It captured 58 Northern merchant ships before it was sunk in June 1864 by a U.S. warship off the coast of France. In addition to the Alabama, other British-built ships in the Confederate Navy included the Florida, Georgia, Rappahannock, and Shenandoah.

Together, they sank more than 150 Northern ships and impelled much of the U.S. merchant marine to adopt foreign registry. The damage to Northern shipping would have been even worse had not fervent protests from the U.S. Government persuaded British and French officials to seize additional ships intended for the Confederacy. Most famously, on September 3, 1863, the British Government impounded two ironclad, steam-driven “Laird rams” that Confederate agent James D. Bulloch had surreptitiously arranged to be built at a shipyard in Liverpool. Minister to England Charles Francis Adams negotiated this with England.

The Alabama Claims The United States demanded

compensation from Britain for the damage wrought by the British-built, Southern-operated commerce raiders, based upon the argument that the British Government, by aiding the creation of a Confederate Navy, had inadequately followed its neutrality laws. The damages discussed were enormous. Charles Sumner, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, argued that British aid to the Confederacy had prolonged the Civil War by 2 years, and indirectly cost the United States hundreds of millions, or even billions of dollars (the figure Sumner suggested was $2.125 billion). Some Americans adopted this argument and suggested that Britain should offer Canada to the United States in compensation. Such proposals were not taken seriously by British statesmen, but they convey the passion with which some Americans viewed the issue.

Laird Rams

Alabama Claims Treaty of Washington After years of unsuccessful U.S.

diplomatic initiatives, a Joint High Commission meeting in Washington, D.C. during the early part of 1871 arrived at the basis for a settlement. The British Government expressed regret for its contribution to the success of Confederate commerce raiders. This agreement, dated May 8, 1871, and known as the Treaty of Washington, also established an arbitration commission to evaluate the merit of U.S. financial claims on Britain. In addition, the treaty addressed Anglo-American disputes over boundaries and fishing rights. The arbitration commission, which issued its decision in September 1872, rejected American claims for indirect damages, but did order Britain to pay the United States $15.5 million as compensation for the Alabama claims.

Foreign Flare Ups Near Canada, Confederate

agents plotted (and sometimes succeeded)to burn down American cities, and as a result, there were severalmini-armies (raised mostly by British-hating Irish-Americans) sent toCanada.

Napoleon III of France also installed a puppet government in MexicoCity, putting in the Austrian Archduke Maximilian as emperor of Mexico,but after the war, the U.S. threatened violence, and Napoleon leftMaximilian to doom at the hands of a Mexican firing squad.

Napoleon III

President Lincoln v. President Davis The problem with the South

was that it gave states the ability tosecede in the future, and getting Southern states to send troops tohelp other states was always difficult to do. By definition in aconfederacy, national power was weak.

Jefferson Davis was never really popular and he overworked himself.

Lincoln, though with his problems, had the benefit of leading anestablished government and grew patient and relaxed as the war dragged on.

Limitations on Wartime Liberties Abe Lincoln did make some tyrannical

acts during his term as president, such as illegally proclaiming a blockade, proclaiming actswithout Congressional consent, and sending in troops to the Border States, but he justified his actions by saying that such actsweren’t permanent, and that he had to do those things in order to preserve the Union.

Such actions included the advancement of $2 million to three private citizens for war purposes, the suspension of habeas corpus so that anti-Unionists could be arrested without a formal charge, and theintimidation of voters in the Border States.

The Confederate states’ refusal to

sacrifice some states’ rights led to the handicapping of the South, and perhapsto its ultimate downfall.

Volunteers and DrafteesAt first, there were

numerous volunteers, but after the initial enthusiasm slacked off, Congress passed its first conscription law ever(the draft), one that angered the poor because rich men could hire a substitute instead of entering the war just by paying $300 to Congress. As a result, many riots

broke out, such as one in New York City.

Bounty jumpers ( three hundred dollar men)

Volunteers manned more than 90% of the Union army, and as volunteers became scarce, bonuses were offered in return for service; still, there were many deserters.

The South had to resort to a draft nearly a year before the North ,and it also had its privileges for the rich—those who owned or oversaw 20 slaves or more were exempt from the draft.

Northern Draft Day

Financing the Civil War

The North passed the 1861 Morrill Tariff Act, increasing tariff rates by about 5 to 10%, but war soon drove those rates even higher.

The Washington Treasury also issued greenback paper money totalingnearly $450 million, but this money was very unstable and sank to aslow as 39 cents per gold dollar.

The federal Treasury also netted $2.6 billion in the sale of bonds.

The National Banking System was a landmark of the war, created toestablish a standard bank-note currency, and banks that joined theNational Banking System could buy government bonds and issue soundpaper money. The National Banking Act was

the first step toward a unifiednational banking network since 1836, when the Bank of the United States was killed by Andrew Jackson.

In the South, runaway inflation plagued the Confederates, andoverall, in the South inflation went up to 9000%, as opposed to“just” 80% in the North.

The North’s Economic BoomThe North actually emerged

from the Civil War more prosperous than before, since new factories had been formed and a millionaire class wasborn for the first time in history.

However, many Union suppliers used shoddy equipment in their supplies, such as using cardboard as the soles of shoes.

Sizes for clothing were invented, and the reaper helped feed millions.

In 1859, a discovery of petroleum oil sent people to Pennsylvania. First oil drilling

Women in the WarWomen gained new

advances in the war, taking the jobs left behind by men going off to battle, and other women posed as men and becamesoldiers with their husbands. Clara Barton and Dorothea

Dix helped transform nursing from a lowlyservice to a respected profession, and in the South, Sally Tompkins rana Richmond infirmary for wounded Confederate soldiers and was awardedthe rank of Captain by Jefferson Davis.

A Crushed Cotton KingdomThe South was ruined by the

war, as transportation collapsed andsupplies of everything became scarce, and by the end of the war, theSouth claimed only 12% of the national wealth as opposed to 30% beforethe war, and it’s per capita income was now 2/5 that ofNortherners, as opposed to 2/3 of Northerners before the war.

Still, though many Southerners were resourceful and spirited, the South just could not win.