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CHAPTER 14 A New Birth of Freedom: The Civil War,
1861–1865
This chapter concentrates on the history of the American Civil War, touching on some major battles, the coming of
emancipation, and early experiments with Reconstruction. The chapter begins with a compelling story of a German
immigrant who volunteered in the Union army. His story illustrates how many northerners changed their view of the
CHAPTER OUTLINE
I. Introduction: Marcus Spiegel
A. The German Jewish immigrant explains why he fought for the Union side during the conflict.
II. The First Modern War
A. The Two Combatants
1. The Union had many advantages (e.g., manufacturing, railroad mileage, and financial resources), but it
would need to conquer an area larger than western Europe to win.
2. Confederate soldiers were highly motivated fighters.
3. On both sides, the outbreak of war stirred powerful feelings of patriotism.
B. The Technology of War
1. Railroads were vital to the war effort.
2. Ironclads were superior to wooden ships and revolutionized naval warfare.
3. Introduction of the rifle changed the nature of combat.
a. The most recent estimate has 750,000 soldiers killed.
4. Wars in other countries in the same general time period were deadly, too.
C. The Public and the War
1. Both sides were assisted by a vast propaganda effort to mobilize public opinion.
2. The war was brought to the people via newspapers and photographs.
D. Mobilizing Resources
1. The outbreak of the war found both sides unprepared.
E. Military Strategies
1. The Confederacy adopted a defensive strategy.
F. The War Begins
1. In the East, most of the war’s fighting took place in a narrow corridor between Washington and
Richmond.
G. The War in the East in 1862
1. General Lee blunted McClellan’s attacks in Virginia and forced him to withdraw to the vicinity of
Washington.
2. Successful on the defensive, Lee now launched an invasion of the North.
3. McClellan’s Army of the Potomac stopped Lee at the Battle of Antietam (Maryland), the single
bloodiest day in U.S. history (September 17, 1862).
H. The War in the West
1. Ulysses S. Grant was the architect of early success in the West.
3. Grant withstood a surprise Confederate attack at the Battle of Shiloh (Tennessee).
III. The Coming of Emancipation
A. Slavery and the War
1. In numbers, scale, and the economic power of the institution of slavery, American emancipation
dwarfed that of any other country.
2. At the outset of the war, Lincoln invoked time-honored northern values to mobilize public support.
3. Lincoln initially insisted that slavery was irrelevant to the conflict.
a. He feared four border states would leave the Union.
B. The Unraveling of Slavery
1. Early in the war, Congress adopted a resolution proposed by Senator John J. Crittenden of Kentucky,
which affirmed that the Union had no intention of interfering with slavery.
C. Steps toward Emancipation
1. Because slavery was the foundation of the southern economy, antislavery northerners insisted that
emancipation was necessary to weaken the South’s ability to sustain the war.
2. Throughout 1861 and 1862, Lincoln struggled to retain control of the emancipation issue.
a. Union general John C. Frémont issued a proclamation freeing slaves in Missouri (August 1861).
b. Fearing the negative impact on loyal border states, Lincoln rescinded Frémont’s order.
c. Lincoln proposed gradual emancipation and colonization for border-state slaves.
D. Lincoln’s Decision
1. During the summer of 1862, Lincoln concluded that emancipation had become a political and military
necessity.
2. Upon Secretary of State William Seward’s advice, he delayed announcing emancipation until a Union
victory.
E. The Emancipation Proclamation
1. Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, which declared slaves in
Confederate-held territory to be free.
2. Despite its limitations, the proclamation set off scenes of jubilation among free blacks and abolitionists
in the North and “contrabands” and slaves in the South.
3. The Emancipation Proclamation not only altered the nature of the Civil War and the course of American
history but also represented a turning point in Lincoln’s own thinking.
F. Enlisting Black Troops
1. Of the proclamation’s provisions, few were more radical in their implications than the enrollment of
blacks into military service.
2. It was initially not done because the Union army feared that white soldiers would not fight alongside
blacks and border states would be alienated.
G. The Black Soldier
1. For black soldiers, military service proved to be a liberating experience.
a. At least 130 former soldiers served in political office after the Civil War.
2. The Union navy treated black sailors much the same as white sailors.
3. Within the army, black soldiers did not receive equal treatment to white soldiers.
IV. The Second American Revolution
A. Liberty and Union
1. The Union’s triumph consolidated the northern understanding of freedom as the national norm.
2. Emancipation offered proof of the progressive nature and global significance of the country’s history.
B. Lincoln’s Vision
1. The U.S. Civil War took place as modern states around the world consolidated their power and reduced
local autonomy.
2. To Lincoln, the American nation embodied a set of universal ideas, centered on political democracy and
human liberty.
3. The Gettysburg Address identified the nation’s mission with the principle that “all men are created
equal.”
4. The war forged a new national self-consciousness, reflected in the increasing use of the word
“nation”—a unified political entity—in place of the older “Union” of separate states.
5. Voices of Freedom (Primary Source document feature) focuses on President Lincoln’s definition of
freedom given at his Address at Sanitary Fair, Baltimore, in 1864.
C. The War and American Religion
2. Lincoln shrewdly used religious symbolism to generate public support.
4. Religion helped Americans to cope with unprecedented mass death.
5. New government action to deal with death
a. Systems for recording deaths and other casualties
b. National military cemeteries were only for Union soldiers, not Confederates.
D. Liberty in Wartime
1. Republicans saw criticism of the war effort or Lincoln’s policies as equivalent to treason.
3. After the war, the Supreme Court made it clear that the Constitution was not suspended in wartime (Ex
parte Milligan, 1866).
4. Lincoln was not a despot, but the Civil War showed that civil liberties were curbed with demands for
patriotism and national unity.
E. The North’s Transformation
2. The North experienced the war as a time of prosperity.
a. Industry benefited from inflation and government contracts.
F. Government and the Economy
1. Congress adopted policies that promoted economic growth and permanently altered the nation’s
2. Congress passed land grants for railroads.
3. The transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869.
a. Its labor force included thousands of Chinese.
b. National markets were expanded.
G. The West and the War
2. The withdrawal of troops from the West increased conflict between Indians and white settlers.
3. The Union campaign against the Navajo led to the tribe’s Long Walk, or removal to a reservation.
4. Confederates treated Indians better than did the United States.
a. The Confederate Constitution allowed Indian tribes to elect congressional representatives.
b. Slave-owning tribes, such as the Cherokee, sided with the Confederacy.
H. A New Financial System
1. The need to pay for the war produced dramatic changes in U.S. financial policy:
a. Increased tariff
2. Wartime economic policies greatly benefited northern manufacturers, railroad men, and financiers.
3. Taken together, the Union’s economic policies vastly increased the power and size of the federal
government.
I. Women and the War
1. Women stepped into the workforce as nurses, factory workers, and government clerks.
3. Northern women were brought into the public sphere, and war work offered them a taste of
independence.
J. The Divided North
1. Republicans labeled those opposed to the war “Copperheads.”
2. The war heightened existing social tensions and created new ones.
a. The New York City draft riot killed more than 100 people.
b. The mob was largely composed of Irish immigrants.
c. Targets were draft offices, the wealthy, industrial sites, and blacks.
V. The Confederate Nation
A. Leadership and Government
2. Under Davis, the Confederate nation became far more centralized than the Old South had been.
3. “King Cotton diplomacy” sought to pressure Europeans to side with the Confederacy, but this failed.
4. Davis did not deal effectively with obstructionist governors.
B. The Inner Civil War
1. Social change and internal turmoil engulfed much of the Confederacy.
2. The draft encouraged class divisions among whites.
a. Wealthy slaveowners received draft exemptions for having twenty or more slaves.
b. Many southern yeomen started to see the conflict as “a rich man’s war and poor man’s fight.”
C. Economic Problems
1. The South’s economy, unlike the North’s, was in crisis during the war.
D. Southern Unionists
1. Southerners loyal to the Union made a significant contribution to Union victory.
a. At least 50,000 southern white men fought for the Union.
2. Virginian Elizabeth Van Lew provided vital information to Union forces.
E. Women and the Confederacy
2. The war led to the first political mobilization of non-slaveholding white women.
3. The growing disaffection of southern white women contributed to the decline in home front morale and
encouraged desertion from the army.
F. Black Soldiers for the Confederacy
2. The war ended before substantial recruitment of blacks as Confederate soldiers.
a. Only two companies reached the front in Richmond, and the war ended several days later.
3. The South’s decision to use black troops undermined proslavery ideology.
VI. Turning Points
A. Gettysburg and Vicksburg
1. Lee advanced onto northern soil in Pennsylvania but was held back by Union forces under the command
B. 1864
1. Grant began a war of attrition against Lee’s army in Virginia.
2. At the end of six weeks of fighting, Grant’s casualties stood at 60,000—almost the size of Lee’s entire
4. Some Radical Republicans nominated John C. Frémont on a platform calling for a constitutional
5. The Democratic candidate for president was General George B. McClellan.
6. Lincoln won, aided by Frémont’s withdrawal and Sherman’s capture of Atlanta.
VII. Rehearsals for Reconstruction and the End of the War
A. The Sea Island Experiment
2. Women took the lead as teachers in educating the freed slaves of the islands.
a. Charlotte Forten and Laura Towne
3. By 1865, black families were working for wages, acquiring education, and enjoying better shelter and
clothing and a more varied diet than they had under slavery.
a. This introduced the contentious issue of whether land ownership should be part of black freedom.
B. Wartime Reconstruction in the West
2. Neither side was satisfied with the new labor system.
3. At Davis Bend, Grant established a “negro paradise.”
C. The Politics of Wartime Reconstruction
1. In 1863, Lincoln announced his Ten-Percent Plan of Reconstruction.
2. Free blacks in New Orleans complained about the Ten-Percent Plan and found sympathy from Radical
Republicans.
3. The Wade-Davis Bill was offered as an alternative plan.
a. It required most of a state’s voters to pledge loyalty.
b. Lincoln vetoed the plan.
D. Victory at Last
2. The Thirteenth Amendment was approved on January 31, 1865.
3. On April 3, 1865, Grant took Richmond.
4. Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, on April 9.
5. Lincoln was shot on April 14 and died the next morning.
E. The War and the World
1. Grant’s post-presidential world tour illustrates how non-Americans saw the war.
a. England’s Duke of Wellington hailed Grant as a military genius.
i. Grant told Bismarck that the war was also “to destroy slavery.”
F. The War in American History
1. The Civil War laid the foundation for modern America, preserving the Union, destroying slavery, and
shifting power from southern planters to northern capitalists.
2. Both sides lost something they had gone to war to defend.
3. The work of achieving equality for blacks remained to be done.
SUGGESTED DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
• Describe why the Civil War was both a modern war and a total war.
• Why wasn’t the Union more successful early in the war when it had clear advantages over the Confederacy?
Why was a strategy of merely capturing the Confederate capital of Richmond not enough to win the war?
• Describe the various ways blacks, both in and out of the military, aided in the war and defined its consequences.
• Discuss the Civil War in the Far West and Great Plains. What did both sides hope to achieve? How did the Civil
War bring more conflict to the Indians in the West?
• Over time, Lincoln switched from using the term “Union” to using the term “nation.” Discuss the significance
of this shift in thinking.
• How does the Gettysburg Address express ideas of freedom and liberty? What purpose did Lincoln give the
Civil War in that address?
SUPPLEMENTAL WEB AND VISUAL RESOURCES
A Nation Divided
https://postalmuseum.si.edu/exhibits/current/binding-the-nation/a-nation-divided/index.html
From the Smithsonian Institution’s National Postal Museum, this site depicts the efforts to keep communication alive during
the war through soldiers’ letters, efforts by family members to get around the blockades, and patriotic envelopes colorfully
decorated with symbols of the writer’s cause.
The Civil War
www.pbs.org/civilwar/film/episode5.html
This documentary by Ken Burns, Episode 5, “The Universe of Battle (1863),” covers the battles of Gettysburg and Vicksburg
and discusses the wartime participation of women and African-Americans.
americanhistory.si.edu/militaryhistory/exhibition/flash.html
From the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History, select a war (e.g., Civil War) and enter an exhibit
that includes a movie, learning resources, statistics, printable exhibition, maps, and time lines.
The Emancipation Proclamation
http://www.scribd.com/doc/117165086/The-Meaning-and-Making-of-Emancipation
This links to a 200-plus page e-book of primary source documents called The Meaning and Making of Emancipation. Besides
information on the Emancipation Proclamation, there is analysis of earlier attempts to emancipate slaves and examination of
events that led to the Civil War. This National Archives–produced book is free and can be downloaded as a PDF file. At the back
of the book are two pages of sources, many of which are available online.
SUPPLEMENTAL PRINT RESOURCES
Bailey, Anne. “A Texas Cavalry Raid: Reaction to Black Soldiers and Contrabands.” Civil War History 35, no. 2 (1989): 138–
152.
Blight, David. Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001.
Blanton, DeAnne, and Lauren M. Cook. They Fought Like Demons: Women Soldiers in the Civil War. Baton Rouge: Louisiana
State University Press, 2002.
Brands, H. W. The Man Who Saved the Union: Ulysses Grant in War and Peace. New York: Doubleday, 2012.
Cashin, Joan E. First Lady of the Confederacy: Varina Davis’s Civil War. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006.
Cimbala, Paul, and Randall Miller, eds. An Uncommon Time: The Civil War and the Northern Home Front. Bronx, NY: Fordham
Inscoe, John C., and Robert C. Kenzer, eds. Enemies of the Country: New Perspectives on Unionists in the Civil War South.
Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2001.
2007.
Reardon, Carol. Pickett’s Charge in History and Memory. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1997.
INTERACTIVE INSTRUCTOR ACTIVITIES
Historical Reenactment
Ask students to imagine themselves as Civil War soldiers, either for the Union or the Confederacy. Have each student decide his
or her own fictional background. Maybe some are women hiding their gender, maybe some have brothers fighting for the
Confederacy, maybe some are immigrants, others escaped slaves or free black troops, and maybe others are from a long line of
military veterans. Have each student write a letter home discussing the war and his or her feelings about it.
Discussion Activities:
Have students answer the following questions in groups or as a class:
1. What led to Robert E. Lee’s taking the Army of Northern Virginia into Pennsylvania? What were the risks?
2. Discuss the Union colonel Joshua Chamberlain’s strategy on Little Round Top during the second day of the battle. Why
did it work?
3. On day three, why did Lee order Pickett’s Charge? Why did it fail?
4. By the end of day three, the Union had made significant gains and had weakened Lee’s army. Should the Union have
pursued Lee when he retreated? What do you think would have happened if there had been a fourth day of fighting?
5. Based on the DVD segment and the images on the PBS website, discuss the Civil War photos. What do the images tell us
about the war and the soldiers? Why are there not many shots of actual fighting from the battlefield?
