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The American Yawp, Volume 1, edited by Joseph Locke and Ben Wright, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Read the original free This shelf’s study material is shared under the same license (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Chapter 14 · pp. 450–488
This chapter follows the United States from the disputed election of 1860 through secession, four years of war, and the end of slavery in 1865. It covers the political split that led to secession, the major battles and strategies, emancipation and Black military service, life on the home front and in camp, medicine and death, and the war's unfinished business. This part begins with the election of 1860 and the first months of the crisis.
The 1860 presidential race was chaotic because the country's parties could not agree on slavery. Two parties split or fractured, and four candidates ended up in the race.
The Democrats split in two. The party met in Charleston, South Carolina, a center of secessionist feeling. Northern Democrats backed Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois, who favored popular sovereignty (letting settlers in each territory decide about slavery). Southern Democrats wanted a different nominee and demanded a proslavery platform. When party leaders refused, Southern delegates walked out. Without them, Douglas could not reach the two-thirds majority needed to win the nomination. The two wings held new conventions in Baltimore. Northern Democrats nominated Douglas, and Southern Democrats nominated Vice President John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky. The nation's oldest party had broken apart over slavery. (p. 450)
The Republicans chose Lincoln. Republicans knew they could win only if they carried every free state. That requirement shaped their choice. William Seward of New York was a leading contender, but his pro-immigrant stance might cost votes in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Abraham Lincoln of Illinois was fairly unknown, but people liked him, and he offered little to offend voters in those states. Delegates picked him on the third ballot. (p. 450)
A fourth party appeared. John Bell of Tennessee led the Constitutional Union Party, made up mostly of former Whigs and a few Southern Democrats. Its only goal was to avoid disunion. It offered no plan for the problems that were actually dividing the country. (p. 450)
The result. Lincoln won every free state except New Jersey, which he split with Douglas. Turnout was 81.2 percent, a record at the time. Lincoln got under 40 percent of the popular vote, but because his opponents divided the rest, he won 180 electoral votes. The others finished this way:
Douglas's result shows how the electoral college rewards winning states, not just collecting votes spread across the country. (p. 450)
The Republican platform opposed expanding slavery into future Western states. Because of this, every future Confederate state except Virginia left Lincoln's name off its ballots. Southern leaders saw his party as a direct threat to slavery. (pp. 450–451)
The Deep South leaves. South Carolina moved first. Its convention voted 169–0 on December 20, 1860, to dissolve its union with the United States. Six more states followed in quick succession in early 1861: Mississippi (January 9), Florida (January 10), Alabama (January 11), Georgia (January 19), Louisiana (January 26), and Texas (February 1). Texas was the only one to hold a popular vote, but secession had wide support across the South. (p. 451)
What held the Confederacy together. Confederates quickly dropped their American identity for a new nationalism. Its main pillars were slavery and white supremacy. Vice President Alexander Stephens said the new government's "cornerstone" was the belief that Black people were not equal to whites. Slavery was everywhere in the antebellum South and served as the common image of powerlessness. Many white Southern men feared nothing more than being reduced to a slave's level, and Lincoln's election showed them how outnumbered they were in national politics. (p. 451)
Religion also shaped the new identity. Southerners believed they were carrying out God's will, and the Confederate founding document named Christianity directly, unlike the US Constitution. Even so, every reason given for secession came back to slavery. Mississippi's statement said its position was tied to slavery, "the greatest material interest of the world." All eleven eventual Confederate states built their cause on it. (pp. 451–452)
A planned slaveholding empire. Confederate leaders did not plan to stay small. They dreamed of a huge slaveholding empire stretching from the mines of the Southwest to the island plantations of the Caribbean, with control of world markets for cotton and other cash crops. This shows they wanted to expand slavery, not only defend it. Confederate banknotes make the point: they showed George Washington to suggest an aristocratic past, John C. Calhoun to stand for states' rights, and enslaved workers in fields to show what the economy rested on. (pp. 452–453)
Divided loyalties. Not every Southerner backed the Confederacy. White Unionists were most common in the upcountry, where slavery was weakest, and some joined the Union army. Most Black Southerners, who were enslaved, strongly supported the Union. Many ran away from plantations, which forced the Union army to decide what to do about slavery. (p. 453)
President James Buchanan would not deal with secession before his term ended in early March. So Congress took it up through a Committee of Thirteen that included Douglas, Seward, Robert Toombs, and John Crittenden. Crittenden proposed constitutional amendments that would:
The committee rejected the plan, and the full Senate defeated it 25–23. Peaceful reconciliation looked impossible. (p. 453)
On February 4, 1861, delegates from the seven seceding states met in Montgomery, Alabama. They chose Jefferson Davis of Mississippi as president and made Montgomery the capital, which moved to Richmond in May. The Upper South was still undecided. North Carolina and Tennessee held no secession conventions, and conventions in Virginia, Missouri, and Arkansas first voted secession down. That loyalty was conditional, though. It depended on the federal government staying out of Southern affairs. This was the fragile situation Lincoln faced at his inauguration on March 4, 1861. (p. 453)
In his inaugural address, Lincoln called secession "legally void." He said he would not invade the seceded states but would use force to keep federal property in them. (p. 453)
The test came at Fort Sumter, in Charleston harbor, whose garrison needed supplies. Lincoln decided to resupply it. South Carolina demanded that the fort be evacuated, and Major Robert Anderson refused. On April 12, 1861, Confederate General P. G. T. Beauregard fired on the fort. Anderson surrendered the next day, and Union troops left. Lincoln then called for seventy-five thousand volunteers to serve three months and put down the rebellion. The Civil War had begun. (pp. 453–454)
Lincoln's call for troops pushed Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas to secede, bringing the Confederacy to eleven states. There was an irony here. Some Southerners defended slavery in the name of states' rights, yet the Confederate Constitution gave states less power than the US Constitution, in order to protect slavery. (p. 454)
In the North, men rushed to join the army. Some wanted to strike a blow against slavery, but most fought to save the Union, which they saw as history's greatest experiment in self-government. Republicans, most Northern Democrats, and former Whigs could all agree on that goal. (p. 454)
Soon after Lincoln asked for volunteers, the Union adopted a strategy from Commanding General Winfield Scott, known as the Anaconda Plan. The idea was to squeeze the Confederacy the way an anaconda squeezes its prey. A naval blockade would shut Southern coastal ports and inland waterways. That would stop imports from coming in and cotton exports from going out. Meanwhile, ground troops would push into the interior and close the circle (p. 454, p. 456). The plan helps explain why so much Western fighting centered on the Mississippi River and its tributaries rather than on one capital city (p. 463).
The Union also needed the four border states: Delaware, Maryland, Missouri, and Kentucky. They had ties to both North and South, and slavery was legal in all of them. Maryland mattered most because it lay next to Washington, DC. Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus there, which let military commanders jail people who favored secession without charging them with a crime. Kentucky mattered too. Lincoln said that losing it would be almost like losing the whole war. His advisors feared that losing the border states would shrink Union resources and endanger the capital. So Lincoln tried to win over ordinary citizens there, which meant fewer occupying troops would be needed. Guerrilla fighting in Missouri and Kentucky was brutal, but all four states stayed in the Union (pp. 454, 456).
Europeans watched the war closely. Democratic reformers wondered whether republican government anywhere could survive if the United States failed. Businesspeople worried about a different problem: a war might cut off Southern cotton and shake markets overseas (p. 456).
The Confederacy tried to use that fear. Through 'cotton diplomacy,' it placed an embargo on cotton shipments to Britain and France, hoping they would feel pressure to support Southern independence. The plan failed. Both nations found other places to buy cotton. Tensions with Britain rose several times, but no foreign power entered the war (pp. 456–457).
Lincoln began with a limited aim: restore the Union, not abolish slavery. He feared that attacking slavery would push the loyal slaveholding border states toward the Confederacy. For the same reason he turned away Black men who volunteered to fight. But enslaved people did not wait for policy. They fled to Union lines in growing numbers, and the army, Congress, and Lincoln found the slavery question harder and harder to avoid (p. 457).
In May 1861, General Benjamin Butler began accepting escapees at Fort Monroe, Virginia, without waiting for approval from his superiors. He called them 'contraband of war.' His argument was legal and practical. If the army could seize enemy horses and cannons, it could also seize enslaved laborers who were helping the enemy. This gave him a reason not to return people to their enslavers (p. 457).
Congress backed this approach later that summer in the First Confiscation Act. The law left the refugees, called contrabands, in an unclear status. Once a person reached Union lines, the enslaver's claim ended. Yet the person was not a free citizen. Many lived in contraband camps, where disease and malnutrition were common. Men and women were put to work building fortifications, cooking, and laying railroad track. Even so, thousands took this chance and built new communities inside the camps (p. 457).
Fugitives put the army in a tough spot. Soldiers were told not to interfere with slavery or help runaways, yet many thought turning people away was morally wrong. Others simply did not want to give up useful workers or return property that could help the enemy. Escapees knew the land and the location of rebel units, and they often served as spies and guides. When Confederate commanders began forcing enslaved people to build fortifications, each escape became a loss for the Confederate war effort. That made Union officers even less willing to send people back (pp. 457–458).
Many people hoped for a short war. The First Battle of Bull Run, fought near Manassas, Virginia, on July 21, 1861, ended that hope. The battle was not especially deadly, but the Confederate win showed that the conflict would be long and costly. Lincoln replaced General Irvin McDowell with George McClellan, who led the newly formed Army of the Potomac. Then the Eastern Theater stayed fairly quiet for nearly a year, with small, bloody fights that settled nothing (p. 458).
In Washington, politics moved quickly. With Southern members gone from Congress, Republicans could pass long-delayed economic measures. These included the Homestead Act, the Morrill Land-Grant College Act, and the Pacific Railroad Act. The government also moved toward a national paper currency, the greenback, and national-style banks. These new financial systems tied European investors more closely to the Union. Together, the measures expanded the power of the federal government and of industry (pp. 458–459).
The Democratic Party, without its Southern leaders, divided in two. War Democrats supported Lincoln's effort to save the Union. Peace Democrats, called Copperheads, sympathized with the Confederacy and fought often with both War Democrats and Republicans. They used antiwar feeling that rose after lost battles and heavy casualties, and they pushed Lincoln to make peace at once. A peace on those terms would have meant recognizing the Confederacy as a legitimate government, and slavery would have survived (p. 459).
Soldiers' lives were mostly routine. A day began near 6 a.m. and filled up with drill, marching, a midday break, more drill, camp cleanup, weapon inspection, dinner, and taps around 9 or 9:30 p.m. Duties like picket watch or foraging were welcome breaks (pp. 459–460).
Reading and writing were the most common ways to fight boredom. About nine of every ten Union soldiers and eight of every ten Confederates could read and write. Letters kept them tied to family, and newspapers carrying news of battles, Europe, and politics were traded eagerly (pp. 460–461).
Camp life was overwhelmingly male, though nurses, camp followers, and a few women disguised as men were present. As many as 10 percent of Union soldiers were boys who lied about their age. Men drank, smoked, gambled, and swore, and critics feared they would bring those habits home. Others set up debate societies, wrote songs, wrestled, boxed, and raced horses. Because neither army could always supply its troops, soldiers sometimes traded across the lines against orders, with Southerners wanting Northern newspapers and coffee and Northerners wanting Southern tobacco. Crowding and poor sanitation spread disease, and lice plagued everyone (p. 461).
Music was another popular escape. Songs about home, such as 'Lorena' and 'Home, Sweet Home,' were favorites, and soldiers sometimes danced with one another when few women were nearby. 'John Brown's Body' shows how a song can change hands. Union troops made it an anthem praising John Brown. Confederates reused it to mock him. Later, Julia Ward Howe's 'Battle Hymn of the Republic' was set to its tune. Song themes shifted as the mood moved between confidence and despair (p. 461).
In March 1862, after long delays, McClellan moved his 120,000 men by ship to the peninsula between Virginia's York and James Rivers. Instead of marching overland past the Manassas battlefield, he tried to swing around Confederate forces and reach Richmond before they could respond (pp. 461–462).
The plan was bold, but McClellan was careful to a fault and kept guessing that the enemy had more troops than it really did. That slowness helped the Confederates near Richmond. Robert E. Lee took command of the Army of Northern Virginia after its previous commander was wounded, and he pushed McClellan into retreat. The Peninsula Campaign ended in failure (p. 462).
The war looked different in the West than in the East. In the East, two big armies fought mainly over the capital cities. In the West, the fight was over rivers. The Mississippi and its tributaries were the highways of the region, and controlling them was a key part of the Union's Anaconda Plan, the strategy of squeezing the Confederacy by controlling its waterways and ports. (p. 463)
The Union won a string of victories in early 1862:
The pattern is worth remembering. While Union armies struggled in the East, the West gave them steady progress along the rivers.
The war also reached the New Mexico Territory, which then included present-day New Mexico, Arizona, and part of Nevada. Secessionist feeling was strong in its southern part. The Confederates invaded in 1861 and set up an Arizona Territory. They hoped to open a path to California, which shows their imperial ambitions. The Union stopped them at the Battle of Glorieta Pass and drove them out in July 1862. (p. 463)
The Union then pursued expansion goals of its own. It fought a destructive campaign against the Apache and the Navajo. Troops led by frontiersman Kit Carson destroyed Navajo crops and cattle, which left people with little to eat. Carson's forces then forced the Navajo onto a reservation at Fort Sumner, New Mexico. The forced marches there, from 1864 to 1866, are called the Long Walk. Thousands of Navajo died of disease and starvation. (p. 463)
Native nations did not simply watch the white men's war. They used their choices in the conflict as leverage to protect their own interests. (p. 463)
The Cherokee chief Stand Watie became a Confederate general. He was the last Confederate general to surrender at the end of the war. (pp. 464–465)
Far from the main battlefields, settlers and Native peoples clashed in the Union-controlled West. These clashes usually ended badly for Native peoples.
Minnesota's white population grew from about 6,000 in 1850 to over 150,000 by 1858, when it became a state. The 1851 Treaty of Traverse had traded about 1,665,000 acres of Dakota land for money payments (annuities) and other promises. But the treaty was violated. (p. 465)
The punishment was harsh. Over two thousand Dakota were taken prisoner. Military tribunals sentenced 303 to hang. Lincoln commuted all but 38 of the sentences. Settlers and officials still demanded that the Dakota lose much of their land and be removed farther west, and that those who had fled be hunted down. On September 3, 1863, American troops surrounded a large Dakota camp and killed an estimated 300 men, women, and children. They then burned the Dakota's winter food supplies to starve out resistance. (pp. 465–466)
In Colorado, a gold rush in 1858 brought about 100,000 white gold seekers. They demanded new treaties to secure land. Cheyenne bands disagreed about whether to sign a treaty that would confine them to a reservation. Settlers already feared raids, and newspaper stories about Minnesota raised the fear. In the summer of 1864, militia leader John M. Chivington told settlers the Cheyenne were dangerous and promised a quick victory. Fighting broke out. (p. 466)
The aged chief Black Kettle wanted peace. He traveled to Denver for talks and then led his followers toward Fort Lyon, as government instructions told him to. On November 29, 1864, Chivington ordered his 700 militiamen to attack the Cheyenne camp at Sand Creek anyway, even though the Cheyenne showed they were peaceful. The militia killed about 200 men, women, and children. The massacre became a national scandal. Some people condemned it and others applauded it. (p. 466)
Navies mattered because the South had so many coasts, rivers, and bays. The Union Navy, led by Secretary Gideon Welles, carried out Winfield Scott's Anaconda Plan through its blockade. The Confederate Navy, led by Stephen Mallory, had to build a fleet from scratch against a far better-equipped enemy. Both sides used the newest technology. In spring 1862 two "ironclad" warships fought a duel at Hampton Roads, Virginia. That battle signaled that wooden sailing warships were obsolete and that naval warfare would never be the same. (p. 466)
By the summer of 1862, the Union was drifting toward a war that would end slavery. Two forces drove this. One was the actions of enslaved people, who kept escaping to Union lines. The other was the biracial abolitionist movement. Abolitionists built a new argument aimed at white Northerners. They said emancipation was not just a moral cause. It was in the North's own interest, because slavery powered the Confederacy, and ending it was the surest way to weaken the South and win. The argument grew popular. Even some War Democrats and former Whigs, such as Daniel S. Dickinson and Edward Everett, came to accept emancipation as a tool of war (p. 467).
This change in opinion led to laws. In April 1862, Congress abolished slavery in the District of Columbia. In July, it passed the Second Confiscation Act. That law in effect freed enslaved people living in places the Union army had taken over (p. 467). News moved quickly among enslaved communities, so the law drew even more runaways to Union lines (p. 468).
Lincoln's own thinking changed too. In the summer of 1862 he began raising the idea of an Emancipation Proclamation with his cabinet. By August he had a first draft. The cabinet liked the idea, but Secretary of State William Seward objected to the timing. He told Lincoln to wait for a "decisive" Union victory. If Lincoln announced emancipation during a run of defeats, it could look like a desperate move by a government that was failing (p. 468).
The victory came in September 1862. Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis, encouraged by Confederate successes in the spring and summer, planned to invade the North and win a knockout blow on Union soil, perhaps ending the war. On September 17, Lee's army and McClellan's army met near Sharpsburg, Maryland, along Antietam Creek. It was the first major battle of the war fought in Union territory. It remains the bloodiest single day in American history, with more than 20,000 soldiers killed, wounded, or missing (pp. 468–469).
Antietam was not a clear, final Union triumph. Still, Lee withdrew, and that gave Lincoln enough of a win to act. The war went on, and in December 1862 the Confederates won at Fredericksburg, Virginia, with huge Union losses (p. 469).
The Emancipation Proclamation freed enslaved people in areas under Confederate control. Its limits were large. It exempted the loyal border states and the parts of the Confederacy already held by the Union, so it was far from a complete end to slavery. Even so, it mattered a great deal. It changed the war from a fight only to save the Union into a fight for both Union and freedom (p. 469).
Lincoln called it a war measure. His reasoning was practical: take away the Confederacy's labor force, and its economy and morale would suffer. The proclamation, together with Antietam, also made it very unlikely that European powers would recognize the Confederacy, since few governments wanted to back a nation fighting to keep slavery (p. 469).
A few commanders formed Black units in 1862. One example was Thomas Wentworth Higginson's First South Carolina Volunteers, the first regiment of Black soldiers. Widespread enlistment, however, began only after the proclamation took effect on January 1, 1863. The proclamation said Black men would be accepted to garrison forts and man vessels. That wording hinted that Lincoln wanted them kept apart from the main white armies (p. 469).
More than 180,000 Black men served, about 10 percent of the Union army. Most United States Colored Troops (USCT) stayed behind the lines as garrison troops, often doing labor and other noncombat work (p. 470).
Black soldiers faced harsh treatment. They met constant discrimination and were paid less than white soldiers. If captured, they risked being killed or sold into slavery. Corporal James Henry Gooding of the 54th Massachusetts wrote to Lincoln in September 1863 to protest the pay gap. He argued that he and his comrades were native-born Americans who had left their lives behind to serve, so they deserved to be treated as soldiers and not as hired menials (p. 470).
Black soldiers used their service to challenge the racial order. Most USCT men had once been enslaved. To their families, an armed man in a blue uniform stood for freedom and the end of slavery. To white Southerners, he stood for the collapse of the old racial hierarchy. As part of occupying armies, Black soldiers held real authority in towns and on plantations (p. 470).
Black leaders saw a bigger purpose. Frederick Douglass and Henry Highland Garnet recruited eagerly because they believed that battlefield courage would persuade white Northerners to grant equal rights. Douglass argued that a Black man with a uniform button and a musket could not be denied citizenship. Some USCT men did fight, and they disproved the racist myth that Black men would not stand up in battle. They fought in over four hundred battles and skirmishes, including Milliken's Bend, Port Hudson, Fort Wagner, and Nashville. Fifteen received the Medal of Honor (pp. 470–471).
Some people today claim that many Black men fought as soldiers for the Confederacy. The evidence does not support this. Enslaved men who accompanied the army were mostly camp servants, who cooked, pitched tents, and carried supplies, or laborers impressed by the government. Their work was almost always forced. Their loyalties could be mixed: a man might want freedom and Confederate defeat yet still worry about the people he lived beside. White Confederates saw them as property, not soldiers (p. 471).
A camp servant might pick up a dead enslaver's rifle to defend himself, but that was informal and not military service. In March 1865, in desperation, the Confederacy allowed Black enlistment. Only a few dozen men signed up, mostly Richmond hospital workers, and no Black enlisted Confederate soldiers fought in battle (p. 471).
In the East, Lee's army kept attacking. At Chancellorsville, Virginia (April 30–May 6, 1863), the Confederates won a stunning victory but suffered heavy losses. Major General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson was mortally wounded there by friendly fire, a serious loss for Lee (pp. 471–472).
Lee then invaded Pennsylvania. At Gettysburg (July 1–3), both armies took heavy losses, about 51,000 casualties in all, making it the bloodiest battle of the war. On July 3, Pickett's Charge against the Union center failed with devastating results, and Lee retreated. It was his last invasion of the North (p. 472).
In the West, Grant besieged Vicksburg, Mississippi, the "Gibraltar of the West," the last Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi River. The city surrendered on July 4, 1863. The Union now controlled the river, and the Confederacy was split in two (p. 472).
The Northern draft caused anger. The Enrollment Act required military-age men to serve, but a wealthy man could pay $300 for a substitute. Workers summed up their resentment with the saying "a rich man's war, but a poor man's fight." Many immigrants in Northern cities also feared that freed slaves would take their jobs. These tensions exploded in the New York City Draft Riots of July 1863. White rioters killed about 120 people in four days, including at least eleven Black New Yorkers who were lynched. They destroyed over fifty properties, including the Colored Orphan Asylum. Union troops, some fresh from Gettysburg, ended the riot (p. 472).
The North also showed unity. Sanitary fairs, which began in the Old Northwest, raised millions of dollars for soldiers' supplies. Women took leading roles in organizing them. The fairs strengthened Northern unity as casualties mounted, though the home front still mixed loyalty with violent dissent (pp. 472–473).
The Confederacy had similar problems. Its conscription law came in spring 1862, a year before the North's, and covered men ages eighteen to thirty-five (later forty-five). It exempted anyone who owned twenty or more enslaved people, which fed class resentment. In spring 1863, food shortages and inflation sparked "bread riots" in Richmond, Augusta, Macon, and Columbus, led by women. Women also sent petitions to governors asking for help and for husbands to be released from service (p. 473).
Women helped both sides in ways that did not involve a battlefield. Spying was one of them (p. 474).
Rose Greenhow (Confederate). She was a well-connected socialite in Washington, DC. She used her social position to collect information for the Confederacy. Allan Pinkerton of the Union Intelligence Service watched her, had her house raided for evidence, and placed her under house arrest. She was later jailed in Old Capitol Prison. After her release, she traveled to Europe to seek support for the Confederacy but failed. On the voyage home aboard the blockade runner Condor, the ship ran aground off North Carolina. Her lifeboat capsized in a storm and she drowned (p. 474).
Elizabeth Van Lew (Union). She came from a leading Richmond family and held antislavery views. She ran a Union spy ring inside the Confederate capital. Her neighbors scorned her, and she lost her social standing. She also nursed Union prisoners at Libby Prison. When Grant's army took Richmond, he assigned a special guard to protect her (p. 474).
Pauline Cushman. An actress, she worked for the Union. She smuggled plans and drawings in her shoes after befriending Confederate officers. She was caught and sentenced to death, but Union forces occupied New Orleans and apparently saved her (p. 475).
Hard war in 1864. Early in the war, Union commanders mostly spared Southern civilians and property. In 1864 this restraint faded. The new goal was to demoralize Southerners and wreck the Southern economy (p. 474). Grant's wins at Vicksburg and Chattanooga made Lincoln trust him. General Meade, by contrast, had been too cautious in chasing Lee after Gettysburg. In early 1864 Lincoln made Grant Commanding General. Grant's Overland Campaign aimed at Richmond. It meant repeated, bloody clashes at the Wilderness, Spotsylvania and Cold Harbor. Grant accepted heavy losses to wear down Lee's shrinking army. By June 1864 he surrounded Petersburg, Virginia, a key supply depot. The siege cut Lee's army and supplies off from Richmond (pp. 474–475). In the West, Sherman fought through central Tennessee and northern Georgia. He captured the rail hub of Atlanta in September 1864 (p. 475).
Disease. Illness caused more than half of all Civil War casualties. Sometimes half a company was sick at once (p. 475). Most soldiers came from the countryside. They had been exposed to fewer diseases, so they lacked immunity. They were also less likely to have been vaccinated, for example against smallpox. City men, though often thought of as weak, got sick less often. Tuberculosis, measles, rheumatism, typhoid, malaria and smallpox spread through the camps (p. 475).
No germ theory. Doctors tried to cure illness, not prevent it. Soldiers made their own remedies from wild plants, and these did not work. Men ate badly cooked and handled food and drank unsafe water. Diarrhea and dysentery were common. Nobody knew that lost fluids had to be replaced. Dehydrated men grew weak and could not march, and their weakened bodies caught other infections (pp. 475–476). Around 1862, both armies began digging latrines and burying waste. This reduced exposure to disease considerably (p. 476).
Surgery. Wounds to the torso, throat or head usually could not be treated. Surgeons who tried to repair organs or stop bleeding in these areas generally saw the patient die. About one in six wounds were of this kind. Most others hit the limbs, and amputation was the treatment. Survival chances were best if the limb came off within 48 hours. A skilled surgeon could finish in three to five minutes. Dirty tools, filthy gowns and shared water buckets still spread infection, yet amputation gave the best chance of survival (p. 476).
Misconception: no anesthesia, no consent. In fact, Americans had known since the 1830s that ether and nitrous oxide eased pain. Surgeons also used chloroform and opium to knock patients out or dull pain. They did not amputate without the patient's consent (pp. 476–477). The Union army alone used 2.8 million ounces of opium and over 5.2 million opium pills (p. 477).
Supplies and nurses. Surgeon General William Hammond tried to control opium doses and save supplies for later battles. His rules mostly covered the regular army. Most Union soldiers were in state volunteer units, and their surgeons often ignored the limits or used homemade drugs from local plants (pp. 477–478). Union hospitals were somewhat better than Confederate ones. Dorothea Dix led the Union army nurses, and women in the US Sanitary Commission helped staff and supply hospitals (p. 478). Conditions could shock volunteers. Kate Cumming's group of volunteers with the Army of Tennessee lost all but one woman within a week (p. 478).
The end of the "Good Death." Before the war, a wife expected to sit beside her husband as he died after a long life. Soldiers instead died far from home among strangers, from disease, prisons, bullets and even lightning. Casualty reports were unreliable, so a woman might learn of her husband's death only from the men in his unit (p. 478).
Widows. Over 200,000 women became widows. Losing a husband could remove income and emotional support. For some women it also meant freedom from a bad marriage and a path to independence (p. 478). The ideal widow wore black for at least two and a half years, focused on her children, honored her husband's memory and brought his body home. Many could not meet this standard. Mourning clothes were expensive and scarce. Many widows were young and pregnant or nursing, and the typical woman then bore eight to ten children, so they had little time. Each widow ended up deciding how to mourn (pp. 478–479).
Election of 1864. Three new states (West Virginia, Nevada and Kansas) voted, but the eleven Confederate states did not. Lincoln ran with Andrew Johnson of Tennessee on the "National Union" ticket to attract conservative Unionists. His opponent was George McClellan. McClellan was a War Democrat, but his party's platform, friendly to Copperheads, called for an immediate end to the war. His running mate, George Pendleton, was a known Copperhead (p. 479). Lincoln doubted he would win. But Sherman's capture of Atlanta on September 2, 1864, and strong support from Union soldiers helped him. He won 55.1 percent of the popular vote and the Electoral College by 212 to 21. McClellan carried only New Jersey, Delaware and Kentucky (p. 479).
In his second inaugural address (March 4, 1865), Lincoln urged "malice toward none" and charity for all (p. 480). Sherman left Atlanta on his March to the Sea in November 1864 and took Savannah. In early 1865 he turned north. Columbia, South Carolina, burned, and Charleston fell, which brought the war to the birthplace of secession (pp. 480–481). In Virginia, the Petersburg siege forced Lee to abandon Richmond. He surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865, ending major Confederate operations (p. 481).
Republicans passed the Thirteenth Amendment to make the end of slavery permanent. But racial injustice continued. Disease-ridden contraband camps lasted past emancipation. Reconstruction efforts to protect Black rights gave way to racism and white Southern violence (p. 481). Many Black Southerners stayed on plantations as tenants or sharecroppers. They faced segregation and disfranchisement (p. 482). Planters had land but no labor, and freed people had labor but no land. Freedom brought legal marriage, family reunions and new work, but also prejudice and violence (p. 482).
