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 war from seeing it as a war fought to defend the
Union to a war fought to end slavery. The chapter examines how the war was both a modern war and a total war and the relative ad-
vantages that the North had over the South. After a series of Union defeats, Abraham Lincoln began a fundamental shift in his think-
ing and issued the Emancipation Proclamation. Afterward, blacks fought valiantly for the Union. The chapter then looks at the Civil
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
2. Confederate soldiers were highly motivated fighters.
4. Recruits were not ready for regimentation.
6. Voices of Freedom (Primary Source document feature) provides a portion of a letter by plantation owner Thomas Drayton,
who explains the Confederate cause to his Union navy brother in 1861.
B. The Technology of War
1. Railroads were vital to the war effort.
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
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.
3. Despite the North’s advantages, victory on the battlefield was elusive.
E. Military Strategies
2. Lincoln’s early generals did not successfully use the North’s advantages in manpower and technology.
F. The War Begins
1. In the East, most of the war’s fighting took place in a narrow corridor between Washington and Richmond.
3. After First Bull Run, George McClellan assumed command of the Union army of the Potomac.
G. The War in the East in 1862
2. Successful on the defensive, Lee now launched an invasion of the North.
4. Ambrose Burnside replaced McClellan after Antietam.
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.
3. Lincoln initially insisted that slavery was irrelevant to the conflict.
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.
3. Blacks called the conflict a “freedom war.”
C. Steps toward Emancipation
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).
D. Lincoln’s Decision
1. During the summer of 1862, Lincoln concluded that emancipation had become a political and military necessity.
3. On September 22, 1862, five days after Antietam, Lincoln issued the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation.
E. The Emancipation Proclamation
1. Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, which declared slaves in Confederate-held territory to
be free.
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.
3. By the end of the war, over 180,000 black men had served in the Union army and 24,000 in the navy.
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.
3. Within the army, black soldiers did not receive equal treatment to white soldiers.
4. Black soldiers played a crucial role not only in winning the Civil War but also in defining the war’s consequences.
5. The service of black soldiers affected Lincoln’s own outlook.
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.
a. Japan
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.
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,
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
1. The rising class of capitalist entrepreneurs gained power.
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 financial system.
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
1. The Union victory at Glorieta Pass (March 1862) ended Confederate plans to take western territory for the southern
version of manifest destiny.
2. The withdrawal of troops from the West increased conflict between Indians and white settlers.
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.
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.
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.
B. The Inner Civil War
1. Social change and internal turmoil engulfed much of the Confederacy.
2. The draft encouraged class divisions among whites.
C. Economic Problems
2. Numerous yeoman families, many of whom had gone to war to preserve their economic independence, sank into poverty
3. By the war’s end, over 100,000 southern men had deserted.
D. Southern Unionists
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 of General
2. General Grant secured a Union victory at Vicksburg, Mississippi (July 1863).
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 army—while Lee
4. Some Radical Republicans nominated John C. Frémont on a platform calling for a constitutional amendment to abolish
slavery, federal protection of the freed people’s rights, and confiscation of the land of leading Confederates.
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
1. The Union occupied the Sea Islands (off South Carolina’s coast) in November 1861.
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.
B. Wartime Reconstruction in the West
1. After the capture of Vicksburg, the Union army established regulations for plantation labor.
a. Freed people signed labor contracts and were paid wages.
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.
3. The Wade-Davis Bill was offered as an alternative plan.
D. Victory at Last
1. Sherman marched from Atlanta to the sea in November–December 1864 and then headed into South Carolina, bringing
even greater destruction.
3. On April 3, 1865, Grant took Richmond.
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.
F. The War in American History
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?
SUPPLEMENTAL WEB AND VISUAL RESOURCES
A Nation Divided
Jefferson Davis
Robert E. Lee
Shenandoah Valley Communities
The Civil War
The Emancipation Proclamation
Native Americans and the Civil War
The Confederacy
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 University Press,
2002.
Davis, William C. Crucible of Command: Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee—The War They Fought, the Peace They Forged. Boston, MA: Da
Capo Press, 2015.
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, oth-
ers 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.
Film Analysis
Have students watch the Gettysburg segment from Ken Burns’s The Civil War documentary series. The Gettysburg segment is episode 5, “Uni-
verse of Battle,” and Chapters 3–5 on the DVD. The DVD is available at many libraries and is in the streaming format on Netflix and Films on
Demand.
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?
