Military conflict in the Civil War
Strategy over battles
You have previously learned that the AP curriculum US history curriculum and exam do not ask many detailed questions about specific military engagements; instead, the AP curriculum and exam emphasize the different strategic foci of the combatants as well as the impacts from these battles and military confrontations. Knowing the overall military chronology and the consequent shifts in strategies and tactics after both successful and unsuccessful campaigns will be helpful in crafting effective written responses for short answer questions (SAQs), document-based questions (DBQs), and long essay questions (LEQs), as well as when analyzing stimulus-based multiple-choice questions (MCQs).
Fort Sumter through First Bull Run
For most Americans, the Civil War began with the Confederate bombardment of Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor in April 1861 that resulted in the **Union **surrender of the fort and the Confederacy’s successful capture of the last United States/Union military base in the at that time 7 seceded states; within a week of the Confederate capture of Fort Sumter, Virginia voted to join the Confederacy and 3 more southern states would join over the next few months.
While neither the Union nor the Confederacy was initially prepared for a brutal, sustained war that would last more than 4 years and kill more than 600,000 people, combining Union and Confederate war dead, the Confederacy was more prepared at the outset of the war than the Union. As you learned in previous lessons, prominent southerners had openly advocated for secession in the years leading up to the Civil War; during the 4 months from Lincoln’s election in November 1860 to his inauguration in early March 1861, President James Buchanan did not prevent southerners from transferring both money and weapons from the United States to the Confederacy, and much of the officer corps of the United States military came from southern states, providing the Confederacy with a significant early advantage in experienced military leadership. Public opinion in the Union was still very much divided at the outset of the Civil War, although the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter spurred greater support for militarily confronting the Confederacy.
Within a few days of the Confederate capture of Fort Sumter, Lincoln requested 75,000 Union military volunteers to serve for 90 days to reclaim seized federal property, including military bases, in the Confederacy, or as the Union called the southern states that had seceded, “areas currently in rebellion against the United States.” While adding 75,000 volunteers to the United States army was an important first step in creating an effective military force to combat the Confederacy, it quickly became apparent that this would be insufficient to quell the rebellion, particularly after the Union debacle at First Bull Run or First Manassas, the first large-scale armed confrontation between Union and Confederate forces in late July 1861. After Confederate general Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, who earned the nickname “stonewall” during First Bull Run, led a successful defensive stand and subsequent counterattack that led to untrained Union volunteers dropping their weapons to speed their hasty, unorganized retreat back towards Washington D.C., Union military and political leaders began to realize that Confederate forces would mount a stiff defense against any planned assaults on Richmond, Virginia, the Confederate capital.
Confederate General P.T. Beauregard, Eyewitness Account of the Battle of Bull Run, 1861
Creating mass armies
Once the initial enthusiasm and naivete wore off, both Union and Confederate military and political leadership realized that the war would likely last far longer than they had originally anticipated and require much larger armies and navies than either the United States or the Confederate States of America then maintained. The creation of the first mass armies, sometimes reliant upon conscription, or forced military service, in United States history provided both sides with hundreds of thousands of soldiers but also generated significant resentment in both the Union and the Confederacy, particularly given that people could hire substitutes to replace them in the war. You will learn more about the impacts of Union and Confederate government policies, and the reactions to those policies, in the next lesson.
Anaconda strategy
The military strategies of the Union and Confederacy were considerably different because the two sides had fundamentally different war aims. While the Confederacy sought to maintain its independence and its concomitant ability to maintain slavery, the Union sought to (re)unify the entire country and therefore could not achieve victory without reintegrating every part of the Confederacy into the United States. Given that the Confederacy did not have to capture Washington D.C. or occupy territory in the Union, the Confederate military could fight a primarily defensive war of attrition, hoping to exhaust Union political and military will. Conversely, the Union’s need to (re)unify the country required an offensive strategy aimed at occupying the entire Confederacy and suppressing all pockets of resistance, including in the border states (Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland and Missouri) within the Union that maintained slavery throughout much of the war. Dubbed the “Anaconda strategy” by newspaper publishers, the predominant Union strategy was to secure Texas and the Mississippi River and the Atlantic coastline and then crush Confederate resistance from two sides. While this viselike strategic approach would likely require years to achieve, northern political and military leaders frequently invoked the prospects of rapid military victory through the capture of Richmond and forcing the Confederate leadership to surrender.
Image 017/Anaconda strategy
Gettysburg and Vicksburg
For much of the first two years of the Civil War, the Confederacy won symbolically important victories at **Bull Run/Manassas I & II, Fredericksburg **and Chancellorsville and also staved off likely disaster in the Peninsular campaign and at Antietam/Sharpsburg because of the hesitancy of Army of the Potomac’s commanding general, George B. McClelland, and the boldness of Robert E. Lee, commander of the Army of Northern Virginia, and Stonewall Jackson as well as the defensive and counterattacking military acumen of General James Longstreet. Union victory at New Orleans and the salvaging of vital Union armies at Shiloh/Pittsburgh Landing by Ulysses S. Grant were critical forerunners of Grant’s eventual victory at **Vicksburg, **Mississippi after a lengthy siege of a vital Mississippi River fortress and access point. Coinciding with the victory at Vicksburg, Union victory at Gettysburg in southern Pennsylvania inflicted lasting damage on the Confederate military and on the aura of invincibility surrounding Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia.
Total war - the Wilderness campaign and Sherman’s march to the sea
Even with the vital victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg in July 1863, prospects for Union military victory, particularly rapid victory, remained unclear. Throughout 1864 and early 1865, Grant, now the commander of the Army of the Potomac, attacked Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia and slowly drove it closer to Richmond. Further south, General William Tecumseh Sherman captured Atlanta in September 1864 and then proceeded to march his army to Savannah on the Atlantic coast and eventually into Columbia, the capital of South Carolina. General Phillip Sheridan devastated the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia, depriving Confederate armies of needed food as Union reliance on total war depleted the Confederacy of manpower and supplies.
Capturing Richmond
By the end of March 1865, Robert E. Lee, having advocated for the Confederate government to relocate from Richmond months earlier, finally prevailed upon **Jefferson Davis **and the Confederate government to flee Richmond and seek to lead a *guerrilla warfare *campaign from more remote and protected areas of the remaining Confederacy. Union troops entered a deserted and burning Richmond in the morning of April 3, 1865, and Lincoln famously visited Richmond the next day. Lee’s forces continued fleeing but were surrounded by Grant’s army within a few days and on April 9, 1865, Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia, ending the most prominent Confederate resistance; just over a week later, Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston surrendered his army to General Sherman in North Carolina, essentially ending the military campaigns of the Civil War.