• Secession "7 states leaves the union" (page 398)

• Attack on Fort Sumter.

• Lincoln Sends Troops.

• Confederates States of America.

click here to listen to media

Robert E. Lee was a brilliant general who commanded the Confederate Army during the American Civil War (1861-1865). He was known for his leadership, dignity, and calm manner, even in times of stress.

Sherman, William Tecumseh (1820-1891), United States general in the American Civil War (1861-1865). Sherman is remembered for his campaign in Georgia and the Carolinas in which the Northern troops devastated the Southern landscape and resources.

Sherman was born on February 8, 1820, in Lancaster, Ohio, and educated at the U.S. Military Academy. After an undistinguished military career he resigned from the army in 1853 to become a partner in a banking firm in San Francisco. He was president of a military college in Alexandria, Louisiana (now Louisiana State University) from 1859 to the beginning of 1861, when Louisiana seceded from the Union. At the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, he offered his services to the Union Army and was put in command of a volunteer infantry regiment, becoming a brigadier general of volunteers after the First Battle of Bull Run. Sherman led a division at the Battle of Shiloh on April 6 and 7, 1862, and was rewarded for his part in the victory by being promoted to major general of volunteers. In December of that year he failed in an attempt to seize the Confederate stronghold of Vicksburg, on the Mississippi River, but in 1863 he fought under General Ulysses S. Grant in the campaign that ended in the capture of that city in July. He was given command of the Army of Tennessee in the fall of 1863 and fought in the Battle of Chattanooga.

After three months of fighting, Sherman reached Raleigh, North Carolina, and was prepared to continue north to Virginia. However, the war came to an end. Following the surrender of Confederate General Robert E. Lee to Grant on April 9, the Confederate army confronting Sherman surrendered to him at Durham Station on April 26, 1865.

After the war Sherman was commissioned lieutenant general in the regular army and, following Grant’s election to the presidency, he was promoted to the rank of full general on March 4, 1869 and given command of the entire U.S. Army. He published his Memoirs in 1875 and retired in 1883. The famous phrase "war is hell" is attributed to Sherman.

• http://www.rjgeib.com/thoughts/sherman/sherman-to-burn-atlanta.html

• http://encyclopedia.com/articles/11803.html

• http://www.sfmuseum.org/bio/sherman.html

War is Hell

Britain Abandons the South

Charles Francis Adams, the Union minister to Great Britain, knew very well that the rams were intended for Confederate service. Time after time, Adams warned the British government of the destination of the rams and demanded that their delivery be prevented. He could get no promise. The British government, however, had decided to prevent departure of the vessels and, on October 9, 1863, seized the ships. Bulloch sadly reported to the Confederate secretary of the navy: "No amount of discretion or management on my part can effect the release of the ships." Thereafter the Confederacy could no longer hope for aid from Europe.

Union General Ulysses S. Grant (North)

click here to listen to media Ulysses S. Grant, the Union Army's greatest general, led his troops to victory in the American Civil War. President Abraham Lincoln selected Grant to lead the Union forces on March 9, 1864, following a string of unsuccessful commanders. In this excerpt recited by an actor, Grant describes his straightforward and relentless approach to warfare.
Hulton Deutsch; (p) 1992 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved

Gettysburg

On June 3, 1863, Lee began to move his Army of Northern Virginia across the Rappahannock. Hooker, who was aware of Lee’s movements, shifted the Army of the Potomac northward, using it as a shield between Lee and the capital at Washington. Late in June, Hooker resigned his command, convinced that he had lost the confidence of the administration. On June 28, General George G. Meade replaced Hooker. Meade had been one of Hooker’s corps commanders.

On July 1 advance units of the two armies stumbled into each other near the little town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, 16 km (10 mi) north of the Maryland border. Both Lee and Meade realized that a battle was unavoidable. Fighting began that day. Union troops, after early reverses, managed to hold a strategic position on Cemetery Hill. The second day, July 2, saw confused fighting on both Union flanks. Generals Longstreet and John B. Hood assaulted high ground at the Peach Orchard and Little Round Top, but by night the Federals held key positions. The most dramatic action of the battle came on the third day, when General George E. Pickett led a gallant but hopeless charge against the Union center, "the bloody angle." Pickett’s drive tried to charge across an open field at Cemetery Ridge, but concentrated Union fire stopped him. The battle was a decisive Union victory, but both armies suffered very heavy losses. Meade’s casualties numbered 23,000 and Lee’s about 25,000. Lee began his retreat on July 4. To the great disappointment of President Lincoln, Meade did not pursue the Confederate army and make Lee stand and fight. By July 14 the Confederate commander had brought the remnant of his army back to the safety of Virginia. Gettysburg had been a severe defeat for the South, both in terms of men lost and the army’s morale. In November 1863 President Lincoln dedicated a national cemetery to those who had died in the Battle of Gettysburg. His speech, known as the Gettysburg Address, became famous as an expression of the democratic spirit and reconfirmed Lincoln’s intention to reunite the country.

Reconstruction, in United States history, the process of rebuilding that followed the American Civil War (1861-1865). Since the United States had never before experienced civil war, the end of hostilities left Americans to grapple with a set of pressing questions over what to do with the South after the defeat of the Confederacy and the overthrow of slavery. These questions included:

1) What was the relationship between the former Confederate states and the federal Union? What should be demanded of those states before they were regarded as reconstructed?

Although the debate over these questions began during the war and continued for decades, the time period traditionally assigned to Reconstruction is 1865 to 1877. This period began with the onset of an intense national struggle over the shape of society and government in the postwar South; it ended with the collapse of the last Southern state governments under Republican control and the tacit acknowledgment that the federal attempt to remake the South was over.

Presidential Reconstruction

Despite these measures, the precise nature of the Reconstruction settlement remained undetermined when the war ended. Complicating the situation was the assassination of Lincoln, whose death on April 15, 1865, moved Vice President Andrew Johnson into the presidency. A Tennessee Democrat, Johnson soon made it clear that he did not share the Republican commitment to remaking the South. Blaming a small number of wealthy aristocrats for the Confederate rebellion, Johnson pursued a policy of leniency toward former rebels and one of neglect toward former slaves. He offered amnesty to all who would take the oath of allegiance, except for those with a post-war wealth valued at more than $20,000, who had to apply to him personally for pardon, which he almost always gave. In conjunction with these pardons, he abruptly reversed General Sherman's Special Field Order No. 15 and ordered that abandoned plantations be returned to their former owners. Meanwhile, he sought to restore political rights to the Southern states as quickly as possible. For each state he appointed a provisional governor who was required to call a constitutional convention that would draft a new constitution outlawing slavery and disavowing secession. No further changes would be required.

Cheered by the unexpected presence of an ally in the White House, Southern whites quickly reorganized their governments according to Johnson's plan. The new state governments also passed a series of acts known as black codes, which sharply restricted the rights of the newly freed slaves. The codes varied somewhat from state to state, but they typically included vagrancy laws, under which blacks who were viewed as unemployed could be hired out as forced labor; apprenticing laws, under which children without proper care, as defined by the courts, could be bound out to white employers; and severe limitations on black occupations and property holding. Because they seemed to represent an effort to provide blacks with a status in-between that of slave and free, the codes aroused dismay in a Northern public already unhappy with what increasingly appeared to be the president's sell-out of Union victory.

Congressional Reconstruction

Congressional Reconstruction activity continued after 1867. Among the most important acts were the impeachment proceedings against President Johnson, who in 1868 was spared conviction and removal from office by one vote in the Senate. Republicans in Congress disapproved of Johnson's dismissal of radical politicians and generals active in Reconstruction, and felt that he was obstructing implementation of the government's Reconstruction policy. In 1869 Congress passed the 15th Amendment to the Constitution, which was ratified in 1870. It broadened the 14th Amendment's protection of black suffrage by providing that no citizen could be denied the right to vote on the basis of "race, color or previous condition of servitude." Another important act was the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which barred discrimination by hotels, theaters, and railroads. In 1883, however, it was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of the United States. Despite this continuing legislative activity, the basic course of Reconstruction was set with the passage of the Reconstruction Act in March 1867. Although this course constituted a major new departure for both the South and the country as a whole, it represented a compromise carefully pieced together by competing factions in Congress rather than a total Radical victory. Radical Republicans lacked the political power to secure two of their most cherished goals: redistribution of plantation lands to former slaves and poor whites, and a prolonged federal supervision of the former Confederate states. According to the Reconstruction compromise, those states would be required to provide equal civil and political rights to blacks, but once they complied with those requirements, the states would be free to govern themselves.

Johnson, Andrew (1808-1875), 17th president of the United States (1865-1869). Johnson was the only U.S. president ever to be impeached, which means that he was charged and tried for misbehavior in office (see Impeachment). Johnson became president at a critical time in American history. He succeeded Abraham Lincoln when Lincoln was assassinated in April 1865, only a few days after the Civil War ended. In addition to these trying circumstances, Johnson also had trouble cooperating with other political leaders while proceeding to accomplish his aims.

Johnson’s impeachment was the result of a struggle to preserve the powers of the presidency in the face of attacks by a determined Congress of the United States. Even though Johnson contributed materially to his own difficulties, he must be respected for his staunch defense of the rights reserved to the president by the Constitution of the United States.

Carpetbaggers, term of contempt applied by the people of the Southern states mainly to government agents, politicians, businessmen, and adventurers from the Northern states who traveled to the South during the Reconstruction period following the American Civil War (1861-1865). (The term was coined to suggest that northerners could stuff everything they owned into a carpetbag, a satchel made of carpet). Some carpetbaggers were representatives of the Freedmen's Bureau and other Reconstruction agencies; some were humanitarians intent on aiding the blacks; and others were opportunists seeking to exploit the political and financial problems of the South. Because the Congress of the United States had temporarily banned former Confederate political leaders and soldiers from voting or holding political office, many carpetbaggers were able to become politicians with the support of newly emancipated slaves. Although a few carpetbaggers established corrupt and wasteful governments, many were able to broaden black voting activity, improve education, and aid in the restoration of Southern cities and roads. Carpetbaggers generally cooperated with native southern Unionists known as scalawags, and both groups were bitterly resented by most white Southerners. Secret terrorist societies such as the Ku Klux Klan were formed to terrorize the blacks and drive the carpetbaggers out. Today the term carpetbagger refers to roving opportunists or politicians. see also page 453-457

Answar to question 3 (c) for the study guide