Girding for War: The North and the South Pages 434-442 Chapter 20 Girding for War: The North and the South Pages 434-442

The Menace of Secession On March 4, 1861, Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated president, slipping into Washington D.C. to thwart assassins. In his inaugural address, he stated that there would be no conflict unless the South provoked it.

The Menace of Secession Lincoln marked restoration of the union as his top goal. He stated that geographically, the United States could not be split (which was true with the way the rivers and mountains ran). A split U.S. brought up questions about the sharing of the national debt and the allocation of federal territories. Who pays what? Who gets what? European countries favored a civil war because war would weaken U.S. power in the Western Hemisphere. Since the U.S. was the only major display of democracy in the Western Hemisphere, with a split U.S., the Monroe Doctrine could be undermined as well if the new C.S.A. allowed Europe to gain a foothold in America.

South Carolina Assails Fort Sumter Most of the forts in the South had relinquished their power to the Confederacy, but Fort Sumter was among the two that didn’t. And since its supplies were running out against a besieging South Carolinian army, Lincoln had the problem of how to deal with the situation. Lincoln wisely chose to send supplies to the fort, and he told the South Carolinian governor that the ship to the fort only held provisions, not reinforcements. BUT, to the South, provisions WERE reinforcements, and on April 12, 1861, cannons were fired at the fort; after 34 hours of non-lethal firing, the fort surrendered.

Many Northerners had been willing to allow Southern states to leave the Union until the South attacked Fort Sumter. Now, however, they were inflamed by the South’s actions, and when Lincoln called on 75,000 volunteers, so many came that many had to be turned away. On April 19 and 27, Lincoln also called a naval blockade on the South, which was leaky at first but soon clamped down tight. The Deep South (which had already seceded), felt that Lincoln was now waging an aggressive war, and was joined by four more Southern states: Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina. The capital of the Confederacy was moved from Montgomery, AL to Richmond, VA.

Fort Sumter is Captured

Brother’s Blood and Border Blood The remaining Border States (Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland) offered all of the following advantages: A large population A good supply of horses and mules Valuable manufacturing capacity Large navigable rivers They were called “border states” because… they were on the North-South border and… they were slave-states. They had not seceded, but at any moment, they just might….. Thus, to retain them, Lincoln used moral persuasion…and methods of dubious legality: In Maryland, he declared martial law in order to retain it. Without doing so, Maryland may have gone to the South, in effect, isolating Washington D.C. within Confederate territory. He also sent troops to western Virginia and Missouri to secure those areas.

At the beginning, in order to hold the remaining Border States, Lincoln repeatedly said that the war was to save the Union, not free the slaves. Quite simply, a war for the slaves’ freedom would likely have lost the Border States. Most of the Five Civilized Tribes (Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Seminole) sided with the South, although parts of the Cherokee and most of the Plains Indians were pro-North. Sadly, in return for support from the Plains Indians, the Union ultimately ended up waging war on them and herded them onto reservations. The war was one of brother vs. brother, with the mountain men of what’s now West Virginia sending some 50,000 men to the Union. The nation’s division was very visible here, as Virginia literally split in half and West Virginia was born.

The 1st Known Published Uncle Sam Cartoon

The Balance of Forces The South, at the beginning of the war, did have many advantages: To achieve its independence, the Confederacy only had to fight to a draw to win, since all it had to do was keep the North from invading and taking over all of its territory. It had the most talented officers, including Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, and most of the Southerners had been trained in a military-style upbringing and education since they were children, as opposed to the comparatively “tame” Northerners. Many top Southern young men attended military schools like West Point, The Citadel, or VMI.

The Balance of Forces Continued

However, the South was handicapped by a shortage of factories and manufacturing plants, although during the war, those did begin to develop – though much too little too late. As the war dragged on, the South found itself with a shortage of shoes, uniforms, blankets, clothing, and food, which didn’t reach soldiers largely due to its rickety transportation system. In short, the Southern economy was its greatest weakness.

On the other hand, the North’s greatest strength was its huge economy. Other advantages included the fact it had many more men available to fight, and it’s navy controlled the sea. Its officers weren’t as well-trained as some in the South, however, so the Union was forced to find effective high-level commanders through trial and error. As the war dragged on, Northern strengths, specifically a seemingly limitless ability to produce resources ultimately outweighed any Southern advantages. But, ultimately, the real killer for both sides was the ravages of disease.