THE CIVIL WAR

The American Civil War (1861–1865) (also referred to as War Between the States, among other names) was a civil war between the United States of America (the "Union") and the Southern slave states of the newly formed Confederate States of America under Jefferson Davis. The Union included all of the free states and the five slaveholding border states and was led by Abraham Lincoln and the Republican Party. Republicans opposed the expansion of slavery into territories owned by the United States, and their victory in the presidential election of 1860 resulted in seven Southern states declaring their secession from the Union even before Lincoln took office.[1] The Union rejected secession, regarding it as rebellion.

Hostilities began on April 12, 1861, when Confederate forces attacked a U.S. military installation at Fort Sumter in South Carolina. Lincoln responded by calling for a large volunteer army, then four more Southern states declared their secession. In the war's first year, the Union assumed control of the border states and established a naval blockade as both sides massed armies and resources. In 1862, battles such as Shiloh and Antietam caused massive casualties unprecedented in U.S. military history. In September 1862, Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation made ending slavery in the South a war goal, which complicated the Confederacy's manpower shortages.

In the East, Confederate commander Robert E. Lee won a series of victories over Union armies, but Lee's reverse at Gettysburg in early July, 1863 proved the turning point. The capture of Vicksburg and Port Hudson by Ulysses S. Grant completed Union control of the Mississippi River. Grant fought bloody battles of attrition with Lee in 1864, forcing Lee to defend the Confederate capital at Richmond, Virginia. Union general William Sherman captured Atlanta, Georgia, and began his famous March to the Sea, devastating a hundred-mile-wide swath of Georgia. Confederate resistance collapsed after Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Court House in April 1865.

The war, the deadliest in American history, caused 620,000 soldier deaths[2] and an undetermined number of civilian casualties, ended slavery in the United States, restored the Union by settling the issues of nullification and secession and strengthened the role of the Federal government. However, issues affected by the war's unresolved social, political, economic and racial tensions continue to shape contemporary American thought. (From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

African American Infantry Soldier

Freedmen as Soldiers

Despite the fact that African-Americans had served in both the American Revolution and the War of 1812, they were turned away when they tried to enlist in the Union army at the beginning of the Civil War. During the same period, the South was using the labor of slaves to support its war effort. When Generals Fremont and Hunter attempted to train slaves as soldiers, Lincoln quickly ordered them to stop. Their experiments did, however, intensify the debate over the use of African-Americans in the military. Finally, with Congress's adoption of the Second Confiscation and Militia Act of July 17, 1862 and Lincoln's pronouncement of the Emancipation Proclamation, the way became clear for the enlistment of black troops.

Cont.

In 1862, the 1st Regiment, Louisiana Native Guards and the First South Carolina (African-American) Volunteers received close scrutiny from the press when they became two of the first African-American regiments to be officially mustered into the Union army. However, while black soldiers quickly proved their worth, they received lower pay than white soldiers, were generally commanded by white officers, and were often assigned to menial roles as cooks, or "washerwomen," and teamsters.

Representations of African-American soldiers in the press reflected the complex, conflicting, and shifting racial attitudes of those in the North. Northern newspapers such as Frank Leslie's and Harper's Weekly included reports praising the exploits of individual slaves who managed to control of Southern ships or land and the performance of black troops in key battles. Some of the most positive depicitions of African-American soldiers came in the reports of Southern atrocities at the battles of Fort Pillow and Milliken Bend, probably both because of the sympathy those events provoked and the way they appealed to anti-Southern feelings in the North. And yet, these positive accounts appear virtually side-by side with racist jokes and cartoons, a state of affairs that probably reflects the conflicted opinions of Northern readers on the subject of race. Benjamin Butler and Thomas Wentworth Higginson, white men who commanded African-American regiments, were outspoken in their praise of the men who served with them. And the letters of Freedmen's teachers allow us to see yet another side of African-American soldiers: their love of learning.      (© 2006 American Antiquarian Society)