American Civil War#Memory and historiography

{{Main|Origins of the American Civil War}}

{{Further|Timeline of events leading to the American Civil War|Slave states and free states|Slavery in the United States|Abolitionism in the United States}}

The origins of the war were rooted in the desire of the Southern states to preserve the institution of slavery.{{Cite journal |last=Woods |first=M. E. |date=August 20, 2012 |title=What Twenty-First-Century Historians Have Said about the Causes of Disunion: A Civil War Sesquicentennial Review of the Recent Literature |url=https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jas272 |journal=Journal of American History |volume=99 |issue=2 |pages=415–439 |doi=10.1093/jahist/jas272 |issn=0021-8723}} Historians in the 21st century overwhelmingly agree on the centrality of slavery in the conflict—at least for the Southern states. They disagree on which aspects (ideological, economic, political, or social) were most important, and on the North's reasons for refusing to allow the Southern states to secede.Aaron Sheehan-Dean, "A Book for Every Perspective: Current Civil War and Reconstruction Textbooks", Civil War History (2005) 51#3 pp. 317–324 The pseudo-historical Lost Cause ideology denies that slavery was the principal cause of the secession, a view disproven by historical evidence, notably some of the seceding states' own secession documents.{{Cite magazine |last=Loewen |first=James W. |date=2011 |title=Using Confederate Documents to Teach About Secession, Slavery, and the Origins of the Civil War |magazine=OAH Magazine of History |volume=25 |issue=2 |pages=35–44 |doi=10.1093/oahmag/oar002 |jstor=23210244 |issn=0882-228X |quote=Confederate leaders themselves made it plain that slavery was the key issue sparking secession.}} After leaving the Union, Mississippi issued a declaration stating, "Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery—the greatest material interest of the world."{{cite news |last1=Coates |first1=Ta-Nehisi |title=What This Cruel War Was Over |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/06/what-this-cruel-war-was-over/396482/ |work=The Atlantic |date=June 23, 2015 |archive-url=https://archive.today/20171031234944/https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/06/what-this-cruel-war-was-over/396482/ |archive-date=October 31, 2017 |language=en}}{{cite web |title=A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union. |work=The Declaration of Causes of Seceding States |url=https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/declaration-causes-seceding-states#South_Carolina |via=American Battlefield Trust |access-date=September 12, 2024 |year=1861}}

The principal political battle leading to Southern secession was over whether slavery would expand into the Western territories destined to become states. Initially Congress had admitted new states into the Union in pairs, one slave and one free. This had kept a sectional balance in the Senate but not in the House of Representatives, as free states outstripped slave states in numbers of eligible voters.{{cite book |author=Patrick Karl O'Brien |title=Atlas of World History |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ffZy5tDjaUkC&pg=PA184 |year=2002 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-521921-0 |page=184 |access-date=October 25, 2015 |archive-date=September 5, 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150905202421/https://books.google.com/books?id=ffZy5tDjaUkC&pg=PA184 |url-status=live}} Thus, at mid-19th century, the free-versus-slave status of the new territories was a critical issue, both for the North, where anti-slavery sentiment had grown, and for the South, where the fear of slavery's abolition had grown. Another factor leading to secession and the formation of the Confederacy was the development of white Southern nationalism in the preceding decades.John McCardell, The Idea of a Southern Nation: Southern Nationalists and Southern Nationalism, 1830–1860 (1981) The primary reason for the North to reject secession was to preserve the Union, a cause based on American nationalism.Susan-Mary Grant, North Over South: Northern Nationalism and American Identity in the Antebellum Era (2000)

Background factors in the run up to the Civil War were partisan politics, abolitionism, nullification versus secession, Southern and Northern nationalism, expansionism, economics, and modernization in the antebellum period. As a panel of historians emphasized in 2011, "while slavery and its various and multifaceted discontents were the primary cause of disunion, it was disunion itself that sparked the war."Elizabeth R. Varon, Bruce Levine, Marc Egnal, and Michael Holt at a plenary session of the organization of American Historians, March 17, 2011, reported by David A. Walsh "Highlights from the 2011 Annual Meeting of the Organization of American Historians in Houston, Texas" [http://www.hnn.us/articles/137673.html HNN online] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111204081355/http://hnn.us/articles/137673.html |date=December 4, 2011 }}

{{Main|1860 United States presidential election}}

File:Abraham Lincoln 1860.jpg by Mathew Brady|alt=Portrait of the middle-aged Abraham Lincoln the year of 1860 by Mathew Brady]]

Abraham Lincoln won the 1860 presidential election.{{sfn|Potter|Fehrenbacher|1976|p=485}} Southern leaders feared Lincoln would stop slavery's expansion and put it on a course toward extinction.{{sfn|McPherson|1988|pp=254–255}} His victory triggered declarations of secession by seven slave states of the Deep South, all of whose riverfront or coastal economies were based on cotton that was cultivated by slave labor.

Lincoln was not inaugurated until March 4, 1861, four months after his 1860 election, which afforded the South time to prepare for war.{{Cite web |title=1861 Time Line |url=https://www.loc.gov/collections/civil-war-glass-negatives/articles-and-essays/time-line-of-the-civil-war/1861 |access-date=January 22, 2022 |website=Civil War Glass Negatives and Related Prints |publisher=Library of Congress}} Nationalists in the North and "Unionists" in the South refused to accept the declarations of secession, and no foreign government ever recognized the Confederacy. The U.S. government, under President James Buchanan, refused to relinquish the nation's forts, which the Confederacy claimed were located in their territory.

According to Lincoln, the American people had demonstrated, beginning with their victory in the American Revolution and Revolutionary War and subsequent establishment of a sovereign nation, that they could successfully establish and administer a republic. Yet, Lincoln believed, a question remained unanswered: Could the nation be maintained as a republic, where its government was selected based on the people's vote, given ongoing internal attempts to destroy or separate from such a system.{{Cite book |last=Jaffa |first=Harry V. |title=A New Birth of Freedom: Abraham Lincoln and the Coming of the Civil War |year=2004 |publisher=Rowman & Littlefield |isbn=978-0-8476-9953-7 |page=1}}

{{Main|Ordinance of Secession}}

File:US Secession map 1861.svg

Lincoln's election provoked South Carolina's legislature to call a state convention to consider secession. South Carolina had done more than any other state to advance the notion that a state had the right to nullify federal laws and even secede. On December 20, 1860, the convention unanimously voted to secede and adopted a secession declaration. It argued for states' rights for slave owners but complained about states' rights in the North in the form of resistance to the federal Fugitive Slave Act, claiming that Northern states were not fulfilling their obligations to assist in the return of fugitive slaves. The "cotton states" of Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas followed suit, seceding in January and February 1861.

Among the ordinances of secession, those of Texas, Alabama, and Virginia mentioned the plight of the "slaveholding states" at the hands of Northern abolitionists. The rest made no mention of slavery but were brief announcements by the legislatures of the dissolution of ties to the Union.{{Cite web |title=Ordinances of Secession of the 13 Confederate States of America |url=http://www.civil-war.net/pages/ordinances_secession.asp |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20040611023102/http://civil-war.net/pages/ordinances_secession.asp |archive-date=June 11, 2004 |access-date=November 28, 2012}} However, at least four—South Carolina,{{Cite web |title=Confederate States of America – Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union |url=http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_scarsec.asp |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190220121942/http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_scarsec.asp |archive-date=February 20, 2019 |access-date=November 28, 2012 |website=The Avalon Project}} Mississippi,{{Cite web |title=A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union |url=http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_missec.asp |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141010225636/http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_missec.asp |archive-date=October 10, 2014 |access-date=November 28, 2012 |website=The Avalon Project}} Georgia,{{Cite web |title=Confederate States of America – Georgia Secession |url=http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_geosec.asp |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110714154731/http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_geosec.asp |archive-date=July 14, 2011 |access-date=November 28, 2012 |website=The Avalon Project}} and Texas{{Cite web |title=Confederate States of America – A Declaration of the Causes which Impel the State of Texas to Secede from the Federal Union |url=http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_texsec.asp |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110811013053/http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_texsec.asp |archive-date=August 11, 2011 |access-date=November 28, 2012 |website=The Avalon Project}}—provided detailed reasons for their secession, all blaming the movement to abolish slavery and its influence over the North. Southern states believed that the Fugitive Slave Clause made slaveholding a constitutional right. These states agreed to form a new federal government, the Confederate States of America, on February 4, 1861.{{sfn|McPherson|1988|p=24}} They took control of federal forts and other properties within their boundaries, with little resistance from outgoing president James Buchanan, whose term ended on March 4. Buchanan said the Dred Scott decision was proof the Southern states had no reason to secede and that the Union "was intended to be perpetual". He added, however, that "The power by force of arms to compel a State to remain in the Union" was not among the "enumerated powers granted to Congress". A quarter of the U.S. army—the Texas garrison—was surrendered in February to state forces by its general, David E. Twiggs, who joined the Confederacy.{{sfn|Winters|1963|p=28}}

As Southerners resigned their Senate and House seats, Republicans could pass projects that had been blocked. These included the Morrill Tariff, land grant colleges, a Homestead Act, a transcontinental railroad,{{Cite web |year=1865 |title=Profile Showing the Grades upon the Different Routes Surveyed for the Union Pacific Rail Road Between the Missouri River and the Valley of the Platte River |url=http://www.wdl.org/en/item/4608/ |access-date=July 16, 2013 |publisher=World Digital Library}} the National Bank Act, authorization of United States Notes by the Legal Tender Act of 1862, and the end of slavery in the District of Columbia. The Revenue Act of 1861 introduced income tax to help finance the war.{{Cite web |title=Abraham Lincoln imposes first federal income tax |url=https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/lincoln-imposes-first-federal-income-tax |access-date=June 12, 2021 |website=History.com|date=November 16, 2009 }}

File:President-Jefferson-Davis.jpg, President of the Confederate States of America (1861–1865)|alt=Middle-aged man in a goatee posed standing in a suit, vest and bowtie]]

In December 1860, the Crittenden Compromise was proposed to re-establish the Missouri Compromise line, by constitutionally banning slavery in territories to the north of it, while permitting it to the south. The Compromise would likely have prevented secession, but Lincoln and the Republicans rejected it.{{sfn|McPherson|1988|pp=252–254}} Lincoln stated that any compromise that would extend slavery would bring down the Union.{{sfn|McPherson|1988|p=253}} A February peace conference met in Washington, proposing a solution similar to the Compromise; it was rejected by Congress. The Republicans proposed the Corwin Amendment, an alternative, not to interfere with slavery where it existed, but the South regarded it as insufficient. The remaining eight slave states rejected pleas to join the Confederacy, following a no-vote in Virginia's First Secessionist Convention on April 4.{{sfn|McPherson|1988|pp=234–266}}

On March 4, Lincoln was sworn in as president. In his inaugural address, he argued that the Constitution was a more perfect union than the earlier Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, was a binding contract, and called secession "legally void". He did not intend to invade Southern states, nor to end slavery where it existed, but he said he would use force to maintain possession of federal property, including forts, arsenals, mints, and customhouses that had been seized.{{sfn|McPherson|1988|p=262}} The government would not try to recover post offices, and if resisted, mail delivery would end at state lines. Where conditions did not allow peaceful enforcement of federal law, U.S. marshals and judges would be withdrawn. No mention was made of bullion lost from mints. He stated that it would be U.S. policy "to collect the duties and imposts"; "there will be no invasion, no using of force against or among the people anywhere" that would justify an armed revolution. His speech closed with a plea for restoration of the bonds of union, famously calling on "the mystic chords of memory" binding the two regions.

The Davis government of the new Confederacy sent delegates to Washington to negotiate a peace treaty. Lincoln rejected negotiations, because he claimed that the Confederacy was not a legitimate government and to make a treaty with it would recognize it as such.{{sfn|Potter|Fehrenbacher|1976|pp=572–573}} Lincoln instead attempted to negotiate directly with the governors of seceded states, whose administrations he continued to recognize.{{Cite journal |last=Harris |first=William C. |date=Winter 2000 |title=The Hampton Roads Peace Conference: A Final Test of Lincoln's Presidential Leadership |url=http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.2629860.0021.104 |journal=Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association |volume=21 |issue=1 |pages=30–61 |doi=10.5406/19457987.21.1.04 |issn=1945-7987 |hdl=2027/spo.2629860.0021.104|hdl-access=free }}

Complicating Lincoln's attempts to defuse the crisis was Secretary of State William H. Seward, who had been Lincoln's rival for the Republican nomination. Embittered by his defeat, Seward agreed to support Lincoln's candidacy only after he was guaranteed the executive office then considered the second most powerful. In the early stages of Lincoln's presidency Seward held little regard for him, due to his perceived inexperience. Seward viewed himself as the de facto head of government, the "prime minister" behind the throne. Seward attempted to engage in unauthorized and indirect negotiations that failed.{{sfn|Potter|Fehrenbacher|1976|pp=572–573}} Lincoln was determined to hold all remaining Union-occupied forts in the Confederacy: Fort Monroe in Virginia, Fort Pickens, Fort Jefferson, and Fort Taylor in Florida, and Fort Sumter in South Carolina.{{Cite book |last=Hardyman |first=Robyn |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=D11iDwAAQBAJ |title=What Caused the Civil War? |year=2016 |publisher=Gareth Stevens |isbn=978-1-4824-5180-1 |page=27}}

{{Main|Battle of Fort Sumter}}

{{See also|Proclamation 80}}

File:Sumter.jpg]]

The American Civil War began on April 12, 1861, when Confederate forces opened fire on the Union-held Fort Sumter. Fort Sumter is located in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina.{{Sfn|McPherson|1988|p=264}} Its status had been contentious for months. Outgoing president Buchanan had dithered in reinforcing its garrison, commanded by Major Robert Anderson. Anderson took matters into his own hands and on December 26, 1860, under the cover of darkness, sailed the garrison from the poorly placed Fort Moultrie to the stalwart island Fort Sumter.{{Sfn|McPherson|1988|p=265}} Anderson's actions catapulted him to hero status in the North. An attempt to resupply the fort on January 9, 1861, failed and nearly started the war then, but an informal truce held.{{Sfn|McPherson|1988|p=266}} On March 5, Lincoln was informed the fort was low on supplies.{{Sfn|McPherson|1988|p=267}}

Fort Sumter proved a key challenge to Lincoln's administration.{{Sfn|McPherson|1988|p=267}} Back-channel dealing by Seward with the Confederates undermined Lincoln's decision-making; Seward wanted to pull out.{{Sfn|McPherson|1988|p=268}} But a firm hand by Lincoln tamed Seward, who was a staunch Lincoln ally. Lincoln decided holding the fort, which would require reinforcing it, was the only workable option. On April 6, Lincoln informed the Governor of South Carolina that a ship with food but no ammunition would attempt to supply the fort. Historian McPherson describes this win-win approach as "the first sign of the mastery that would mark Lincoln's presidency"; the Union would win if it could resupply and hold the fort, and the South would be the aggressor if it opened fire on an unarmed ship supplying starving men.{{Sfn|McPherson|1988|p=272}} An April 9 Confederate cabinet meeting resulted in Davis ordering General P. G. T. Beauregard to take the fort before supplies reached it.{{Sfn|McPherson|1988|p=273}}

At 4:30 a.m. on April 12, Confederate forces fired the first of 4,000 shells at the fort; it fell the next day. The loss of Fort Sumter lit a patriotic fire under the North.{{Sfn|McPherson|1988|pp=273–274}} On April 15, Lincoln called on the states to field 75,000 militiamen for 90 days; impassioned Union states met the quotas quickly.{{sfn|McPherson|1988|p=274}} On May 3, 1861, Lincoln called for an additional 42,000 volunteers for three years.{{sfn|McPherson|1988|p=278}} Shortly after this, Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas, and North Carolina seceded and joined the Confederacy. To reward Virginia, the Confederate capital was moved to Richmond.{{sfn|McPherson|1988|pp=276–307}}

{{Main|Border states (American Civil War)}}

File:US Secession map 1863.svg and the Confederacy

{{legend|#1A3E7A| Union states}}

{{legend|#00cdff| Union territories not permitting slavery}}

{{legend|#ffff00| Southern Border Union states, permitting slavery}}

(One of these states, West Virginia, was created in 1863, while KY, WV and MO had dual competing Confederate and Unionist governments)

{{legend|#C95200| Confederate states}}

{{legend|#EDB360| Union territories that permitted slavery (claimed by Confederacy) at the start of the war, but where slavery was outlawed by the U.S. in 1862}}]]

Maryland, Delaware, Missouri, West Virginia and Kentucky were slave states whose people had divided loyalties to Northern and Southern businesses and family members. Some men enlisted in the Union Army and others in the Confederate Army.{{sfn|Jones|2011|pp=203–204}} West Virginia separated from Virginia and was admitted to the Union on June 20, 1863, though half its counties were secessionist.{{sfn|Jones|2011|p=21}}

Maryland's territory surrounded Washington, D.C., and could cut it off from the North.{{Cite web |title=Civil War and the Maryland General Assembly |url=http://msa.maryland.gov/msa/stagser/s1259/121/7590/html/0000.html |access-date=May 28, 2017 |website=Maryland State Archives}} It had anti-Lincoln officials who tolerated anti-army rioting in Baltimore and the burning of bridges, both aimed at hindering the passage of troops to the South. Maryland's legislature voted overwhelmingly to stay in the Union, but rejected hostilities with its southern neighbors, voting to close Maryland's rail lines to prevent their use for war.{{Cite web |year=2005 |title=Teaching American History in Maryland – Documents for the Classroom: Arrest of the Maryland Legislature, 1861 |url=http://teachingamericanhistorymd.net/000001/000000/000017/html/t17.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080111110628/http://teachingamericanhistorymd.net/000001/000000/000017/html/t17.html |archive-date=January 11, 2008 |access-date=February 6, 2008 |publisher=Maryland State Archives}} Lincoln responded by establishing martial law and unilaterally suspending habeas corpus in Maryland, along with sending in militia units.{{sfn|McPherson|1988|pp=284–287}} Lincoln took control of Maryland and the District of Columbia by seizing prominent figures, including arresting one-third of the members of the Maryland General Assembly on the day it reconvened.{{Cite book |last=Harris |first=William C. |title=Lincoln and the Border States: Preserving the Union |year=2011 |publisher=University Press of Kansas |page=71}} All were held without trial, with Lincoln ignoring a ruling on June 1, 1861, by Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney, not speaking for the Court,{{efn|Historians disagree as to whether Roger Taney heard Ex parte Merryman as a U.S. circuit judge or as a Supreme Court justice in chambers.{{Cite book |last=White |first=Jonathan W. |title=Abraham Lincoln and Treason in the Civil War: The Trials of John Merryman |year=2011 |publisher=Louisiana State University Press |location=Baton Rouge |pages=38–39}}{{Cite magazine |last=Vladeck |first=Stephen I. |author-link=Steve Vladeck |date=Summer 2007 |title=The Field Theory: Martial Law, The Suspension Power, and The Insurrection Act |url=https://www.templelawreview.org/article/80-2_vladeck/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220927142538/https://www.templelawreview.org/article/80-2_vladeck/ |archive-date=September 27, 2022 |magazine=Temple Law Review |page=391, n. 2 |volume=80 |issue=2}}}} that only Congress could suspend habeas corpus (Ex parte Merryman). Federal troops imprisoned a Baltimore newspaper editor, Frank Key Howard, after he criticized Lincoln in an editorial for ignoring Taney's ruling.{{Cite book |last=Howard |first=F. K. |url=https://archive.org/details/fourteenmonthsin00inhowa |title=Fourteen Months in American Bastiles |year=1863 |publisher=H. F. Mackintosh |location=London |access-date=August 18, 2014}}

In Missouri, an elected convention on secession voted to remain in the Union. When pro-Confederate Governor Claiborne Fox Jackson called out the state militia, it was attacked by federal forces under General Nathaniel Lyon, who chased the governor and rest of the State Guard to the southwestern corner of Missouri (see Missouri secession). Early in the war the Confederacy controlled southern Missouri through the Confederate government of Missouri but was driven out after 1862. In the resulting vacuum, the convention on secession reconvened and took power as the Unionist provisional government of Missouri.

Kentucky did not secede, it declared itself neutral. When Confederate forces entered in September 1861, neutrality ended and the state reaffirmed its Union status while maintaining slavery. During an invasion by Confederate forces in 1861, Confederate sympathizers and delegates from 68 Kentucky counties organized the secession Russellville Convention, formed the shadow Confederate Government of Kentucky, inaugurated a governor, and Kentucky was admitted into the Confederacy on December 10, 1861. Its jurisdiction extended only as far as Confederate battle lines in the Commonwealth, which at its greatest extent was over half the state, and it went into exile after October 1862.

After Virginia's secession, a Unionist government in Wheeling asked 48 counties to vote on an ordinance to create a new state in October 1861. A voter turnout of 34% approved the statehood bill (96% approving).{{Cite web |title=A State of Convenience, The Creation of West Virginia |url=http://www.wvculture.org/History/statehood/statehood10.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120518153656/http://www.wvculture.org/History/statehood/statehood10.html |archive-date=May 18, 2012 |access-date=April 20, 2012 |publisher=West Virginia Archives & History}} Twenty-four secessionist counties were included in the new state, and the ensuing guerrilla war engaged about 40,000 federal troops for much of the war.{{sfn|McPherson|1988|p=303}}{{sfn|Weigley|2004|p=55}} Congress admitted West Virginia to the Union on June 20, 1863. West Virginians provided about 20,000 soldiers to each side in the war. A Unionist secession attempt occurred in East Tennessee, but was suppressed by the Confederacy, which arrested over 3,000 men suspected of loyalty to the Union; they were held without trial.{{sfn|Neely|1993|pp=10–11}}

{{See also|List of American Civil War battles|Military leadership in the American Civil War}}

The Civil War was marked by intense and frequent battles. Over four years, 237 named battles were fought, along with many smaller actions, often characterized by their bitter intensity and high casualties. Historian John Keegan described it as "one of the most ferocious wars ever fought", where in many cases the only target was the enemy's soldiers.{{harvnb|Keegan|2009|p=73.}} "Over 10,000 military engagements took place during the war, 40 percent of them in Virginia and Tennessee."Gabor Boritt (ed.). War Comes Again (1995), p. 247.

{{See also|Economic history of the American Civil War}}

File:Anti Civil War Draft Rioters in Lexington Avenue New York 1863.jpg of 1863|alt=Building on fire as rioters look on, one holds a sign that says "no draft"]]

As the Confederate states organized, the U.S. Army numbered 16,000, while Northern governors began mobilizing their militias.{{Cite book |title=American Military History |pages=199–221 |chapter=The Civil War, 1861 |quote=With an actual strength of 1,080 officers and 14,926 enlisted men on June 30, 1860, the Regular Army... |chapter-url=http://www.history.army.mil/html/bookshelves/resmat/civil_war/extracts/the_civil_war_1861_(pg_199-221).pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121017195124/http://www.history.army.mil/html/bookshelves/resmat/civil_war/extracts/the_civil_war_1861_(pg_199-221).pdf |archive-date=October 17, 2012 |url-status=live}} The Confederate Congress authorized up to 100,000 troops in February. By May, Jefferson Davis was pushing for another 100,000 soldiers for one year or the duration, and the U.S. Congress responded in kind.{{Cite book |last1=Nicolay |first1=John George |url={{google books |plainurl=y |id=9lAfAQAAIAAJ |page=264}} |title=Abraham Lincoln: A History |last2=Hay |first2=John |year=1890 |publisher=Century |page=264}}{{sfn|Coulter|1950|p=308}}

In the first year of the war, both sides had more volunteers than they could effectively train and equip. After the initial enthusiasm faded, relying on young men who came of age each year was not enough. Both sides enacted draft laws (conscription) to encourage or force volunteering, though relatively few were drafted. The Confederacy passed a draft law in April 1862 for men aged 18–35, with exemptions for overseers, government officials, and clergymen. The U.S. Congress followed in July, authorizing a militia draft within states that could not meet their quota with volunteers. European immigrants joined the Union Army in large numbers, including 177,000 born in Germany and 144,000 in Ireland.{{Cite book |last=Faust |first=Albert Bernhardt |url={{google books |plainurl=y |id=4xgOAAAAIAAJ |page=523}} |title=The German Element in the United States: With Special Reference to Its Political, Moral, Social, and Educational Influence |year=1909 |publisher=Houghton Mifflin}} About 50,000 Canadians served, around 2,500 of whom were black.{{Cite book |last=Reid |first=Richard M. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bi9nAwAAQBAJ |title=African Canadians in Union Blue: Volunteering for the Cause in the Civil War |publisher=University of British Columbia Press |year=2014 |isbn=978-0-7748-2745-4 |location=Vancouver |pages=4–5, 40}}

When the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect in January 1863, ex-slaves were energetically recruited to meet state quotas. States and local communities offered higher cash bonuses for white volunteers. Congress tightened the draft law in March 1863. Men selected in the draft could provide substitutes or, until mid-1864, pay commutation money. Many eligibles pooled their money to cover the cost of anyone drafted. Families used the substitute provision to select which man should go into the army and which should stay home. There was much evasion and resistance to the draft, especially in Catholic areas. The New York City draft riots in July 1863 involved Irish immigrants who had been signed up as citizens to swell the vote of the city's Democratic political machine, not realizing it made them liable for the draft.{{sfn|Schecter|2007|p={{page needed|date=September 2024}}}} Of the 168,649 men procured for the Union through the draft, 117,986 were substitutes, leaving only 50,663 who were conscripted.

In the North and South, draft laws were highly unpopular. In the North, some 120,000 men evaded conscription, many fleeing to Canada, and another 280,000 soldiers deserted during the war.{{Cite journal |last=Hallock |first=Judith Lee |year=1983 |title=The Role of the Community in Civil War Desertion |url=http://mtw160-198.ippl.jhu.edu/journals/civil_war_history/v029/29.2.hallock.pdf |journal=Civil War History |volume=29 |issue=2 |pages=123–134 |doi=10.1353/cwh.1983.0013}} At least 100,000 Southerners deserted, about 10 percent of the total. Southern desertion was high because many soldiers were more concerned about the fate of their local area than the Southern cause.{{Cite journal |last=Bearman |first=Peter S. |year=1991 |title=Desertion as Localism: Army Unit Solidarity and Group Norms in the U.S. Civil War |journal=Social Forces |volume=70 |issue=2 |pages=321–342 |doi=10.1093/sf/70.2.321 |jstor=2580242}} In the North, "bounty jumpers" enlisted to collect the generous bonus, deserted, then re-enlisted under a different name for a second bonus; 141 were caught and executed.

From a tiny frontier force in 1860, the Union and Confederate armies grew into the "largest and most efficient armies in the world" within a few years. Some European observers at the time dismissed them as amateur and unprofessional,{{Cite web |last=Nadeau |first=Ryan |date=January 5, 2015 |title=A Prussian Observes the American Civil War |url=https://gettysburgcompiler.org/2015/01/05/a-prussian-observes-the-american-civil-war/ |access-date=January 6, 2022 |website=The Gettysburg Compiler}} but historian John Keegan concluded that each outmatched the French, Prussian, and Russian armies, and without the Atlantic, could have threatened any of them with defeat.{{sfn|Keegan|2009|p=57}}

{{Main|Southern Unionist}}

File:Newton-knight.jpg (Mississippi), leader of the Knight Company and one of the founders of the Free State of Jones.]]

Unionism was strong in certain areas within the Confederacy. As many as 100,000 men living in states under Confederate control served in the Union Army or pro-Union guerrilla groups. Although they came from all classes, most Southern Unionists differed socially, culturally, and economically from their region's dominant prewar, slave-owning planter class.Scott, E. Carole. [https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/article/southerner-vs-southerner-union-supporters-below-the-mason-dixon-line/ Southerner vs. Southerner: Union Supporters Below the Mason-Dixon Line]. Warfare History Network. Retrieved November 11, 2024.

{{Main|American Civil War prison camps}}

File:Prisoner of war, from Belle Isle, Richmond, at the U.S. General Hospital, Div. 1, Annapolis.jpg

At the war's start, a parole system operated, under which captives agreed not to fight until exchanged. They were held in camps run by their army, paid, but not allowed to perform any military duties.{{Cite book |last=Pickenpaugh |first=Roger |url={{google books |plainurl=y |id=pWOfsOceCNUC |page=57}} |title=Captives in Blue: The Civil War Prisons of the Confederacy |publisher=University of Alabama Press |year=2013 |isbn=978-0-8173-1783-6 |pages=57–73}} The system of exchanges collapsed in 1863 when the Confederacy refused to exchange black prisoners. After that, about 56,000 of the 409,000 POWs died in prisons, accounting for 10 percent of the conflict's fatalities.{{sfn|Tucker|Pierpaoli|White|2010|p=1466}}

{{See also|Women in the military#United States|Gender issues in the American Civil War}}

Historian Elizabeth D. Leonard writes that between 500 and 1,000 women enlisted as soldiers on both sides, disguised as men.{{sfn|Leonard|1999|pp=165, 310–311}} Women also served as spies, resistance activists, nurses, and hospital personnel.{{sfn|Leonard|1999|p=240}} Women served on the Union hospital ship Red Rover and nursed Union and Confederate troops at field hospitals.{{Cite web |title=Highlights in the History of Military Women |url=http://www.womensmemorial.org/Education/timeline.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130403045042/http://www.womensmemorial.org/Education/timeline.html |archive-date=April 3, 2013 |access-date=June 22, 2013 |website=Women In Military Service For America Memorial}} Mary Edwards Walker, the only woman ever to receive the Medal of Honor, served in the Union Army and was given the medal for treating the wounded during the war.{{Cite book |last=Pennington |first=Reina |title=Amazons to Fighter Pilots: A Biographical Dictionary of Military Women |publisher=Greenwood |year=2003 |isbn=0-313-32708-4 |volume=2 |pages=474–475}}{{Cite news |date=June 4, 1977 |title=The Case of Dr. Walker, Only Woman to Win (and Lose) the Medal of Honor |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1977/06/04/archives/the-case-of-dr-walker-only-woman-to-win-and-lose-the-medal-of-honor.html |access-date=January 6, 2018 |work=The New York Times}} One woman, Jennie Hodgers, fought for the Union under the name Albert D. J. Cashier. After she returned to civilian life, she continued to live as a man until she died in 1915 at the age of 71.Blanton, DeAnne, "A Life on His Own Terns: Albert D. J. Cashier, 95th Illinois Infantry", in Brian Matthew Jordan and Jonathan W. White, eds., Final Resting Places: Reflections on the Meaning of Civil War Graves. Athen, Georgia: The University of Georgia Press, 2023, pp. 47-53.

{{Further|Union Navy}}

File:Battle of Hampton Roads 3g01752u.jpg

The Union Navy in 1861 was relatively small but, by 1865, expanded rapidly to 6,000 officers, 45,000 sailors, and 671 vessels totaling 510,396 tons.{{Cite magazine |last=Welles |first=Gideon |author-link=Gideon Welles |date=January 1865 |title=Secretary of the Navy's Report |url={{google books |plainurl=y |id=u4gfAAAAYAAJ}} |magazine=The Sailors' Magazine and Seamen's Friend |publisher=American Seamen's Friend Society |page=152 |volume=37 |issue=5}}{{sfn|Tucker|Pierpaoli|White|2010|p=462}} Its mission was to blockade Confederate ports, control the river system, defend against Confederate raiders on the high seas, and be ready for a possible war with the British Royal Navy.{{sfn|Canney|1998|p={{page needed|date=September 2024}}}} The main riverine war was fought in the West, where major rivers gave access to the Confederate heartland. The U.S. Navy eventually controlled the Red, Tennessee, Cumberland, Mississippi, and Ohio rivers. In the East, the Navy shelled Confederate forts and supported coastal army operations.{{Cite encyclopedia |title=American Civil War: The naval war |url=https://www.britannica.com/event/American-Civil-War/The-naval-war |access-date=January 24, 2022 |encyclopedia=Encyclopædia Britannica}}

The Civil War occurred during the early stages of the industrial revolution, leading to naval innovations, including the ironclad warship. The Confederacy, recognizing the need to counter the Union's naval superiority, built or converted over 130 vessels, including 26 ironclads.{{sfn|Nelson|2005|p=92}} Despite these efforts, Confederate ships were largely unsuccessful against Union ironclads.{{sfn|Anderson|1989|p=300}} The Union Navy used timberclads, tinclads, and armored gunboats. Shipyards in Cairo, Illinois, and St. Louis built or modified steamboats.Myron J. Smith, Tinclads in the Civil War: Union Light-Draught Gunboat Operations on Western Waters, 1862–1865 (2009).

The Confederacy experimented with the submarine {{ship|CSS|Hunley}}, which proved unsuccessful, and with the ironclad {{ship|CSS|Virginia}}, rebuilt from the sunken Union ship {{USS|Merrimack|1855|2}}.Gerald F. Teaster and Linda and James Treaster Ambrose, The Confederate Submarine H. L. Hunley (1989). On March 8, 1862, Virginia inflicted significant damage on the Union's wooden fleet, but the next day, the first Union ironclad, {{USS|Monitor}}, arrived to challenge it in the Chesapeake Bay. The resulting three-hour Battle of Hampton Roads was a draw, proving ironclads were effective warships.{{sfn|Nelson|2005|p=345}} The Confederacy scuttled the Virginia to prevent its capture, while the Union built many copies of the Monitor. The Confederacy's efforts to obtain warships from Great Britain failed, as Britain had no interest in selling warships to a nation at war with a stronger enemy and feared souring relations with the U.S.{{sfn|Fuller|2008|p=36}}

{{Main|Union blockade}}

File:Scott-anaconda.jpg, featuring a tightening naval blockade, forcing rebels out of Missouri along the Mississippi River, Kentucky Unionists sit on the fence, idled cotton industry illustrated in Georgia.|alt=A cartoon map of the South surrounded by a snake.]]

By early 1861, General Winfield Scott had devised the Anaconda Plan to win the war with minimal bloodshed, calling for a blockade of the Confederacy to suffocate the South into surrender.{{sfn|Richter|2009|p=49}} Lincoln adopted parts of the plan but opted for a more active war strategy.{{sfn|Johnson|1998|p=228}} In April 1861, Lincoln announced a blockade of all Southern ports; commercial ships could not get insurance, ending regular traffic. The South blundered by embargoing cotton exports before the blockade was fully effective; by the time they reversed this decision, it was too late. "King Cotton" was dead, as the South could export less than 10% of its cotton. The blockade shut down the ten Confederate seaports with railheads that moved almost all the cotton. By June 1861, warships were stationed off the principal Southern ports, and a year later nearly 300 ships were in service.{{sfn|Anderson|1989|pp=288–289, 296–298}}

{{Main|Blockade runners of the American Civil War}}

File:First Charleston Harbor.jpg off Charleston. Continuous blockade of all major ports was sustained by North's overwhelming war production. |alt=Panoramic view of ships in harbor during battle]]

The Confederates began the war short on military supplies, which the agrarian South could not produce. Northern arms manufacturers were restricted by an embargo, ending existing and future contracts with the South. The Confederacy turned to foreign sources, connecting with financiers and companies like S. Isaac, Campbell & Company and the London Armoury Company in Britain, becoming the Confederacy's main source of arms.{{sfn|Wise|1991|p=49}}{{sfn|Mendelsohn|2012|pp=43–44}}

To transport arms safely to the Confederacy, British investors built small, fast, steam-driven blockade runners that traded arms and supplies from Britain, through Bermuda, Cuba, and the Bahamas in exchange for high-priced cotton. Many were lightweight and designed for speed, only carrying small amounts of cotton back to England.{{sfn|Stern|1962|pp=224–225}} When the Union Navy seized a blockade runner, the ship and cargo were condemned as a prize of war and sold, with proceeds given to the Navy sailors; the captured crewmen, mostly British, were released.{{Cite journal |last=Neely |first=Mark E. |date=June 1986 |title=The Perils of Running the Blockade: The Influence of International Law in an Era of Total War |journal=Civil War History |volume=32 |issue=2 |pages=101–118 |doi=10.1353/cwh.1986.0012}}

The Southern economy nearly collapsed during the war due to multiple factors, the most notable being severe food shortages, failing railroads, loss of control over key rivers, foraging by Northern armies, and the seizure of animals and crops by Confederate forces.{{sfn|Wise|1991|p={{page needed|date=August 2024}}}} Historians agree the blockade was a major factor in ruining the Confederate economy; however, Wise argues blockade runners provided enough of a lifeline to allow Robert E. Lee, a Confederate general, to continue fighting for additional months, as a result of supplies that included 400,000 rifles, lead, blankets, and boots that Confederate economy could no longer supply.{{sfn|Wise|1991|p={{page needed|date=August 2024}}}}

The Confederate cotton crop became nearly useless, which cut off the Confederacy's primary income source. Critical imports were scarce, and coastal trade also largely ended.{{Cite journal |last=Surdam |first=David G. |year=1998 |title=The Union Navy's blockade reconsidered |journal=Naval War College Review |volume=51 |issue=4 |pages=85–107}} The blockade's success was not measured by the few ships, which slipped through, but by the thousands that never tried. European merchant ships could not obtain insurance for their ships and transport, and were too slow to evade the blockade, leading them to cease docking in Confederate ports.{{Cite book |last=Surdam |first=David G. |title=Northern Naval Superiority and the Economics of the American Civil War |year=2001 |publisher=University of South Carolina Press}}

To fight an offensive war, the Confederacy purchased arms in Britain and converted British-built ships into commerce raiders, which targeted United States Merchant Marine ships in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. The Confederacy smuggled 600,000 arms, enabling it to continue fighting for two more years.{{Cite news |last=Keys |first=David |date=June 24, 2014 |title=Historians reveal secrets of UK gun-running which lengthened the American civil war by two years |url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/archaeology/historians-reveal-secrets-of-uk-gunrunning-which-lengthened-the-american-civil-war-by-two-years-9557937.html |work=The Independent}}{{Cite book |last=Kevin Dougherty |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2pMqE2E63XgC&pg=PA87 |title=Weapons of Mississippi |publisher=University Press of Mississippi |year=2010 |isbn=978-1-60473-452-2 |page=87}} As insurance rates soared, American-flagged ships largely ceased traveling in international waters, though some were reflagged with European flags, which allowed them to continue operating.{{sfn|Anderson|1989|p=300}} After the conclusion of the Civil War, the U.S. government demanded Britain reimburse it for the damage caused by blockade runners and raiders outfitted in British ports. Britain paid the U.S. $15 million in 1871, which covered costs associated with commerce raiding but nothing more.{{sfn|Jones|2002|p=225}}

{{Main|Diplomacy of the American Civil War}}

{{further|United Kingdom and the American Civil War|France and the American Civil War}}

File:Abraham Lincoln and the London Punch; cartoons, comments and poems, published in the London charivari, during the American Civil War (1861-1865) (1909) (14782634093).jpg. John Bull, at right, warns Uncle Sam, "You do what's right, my son, or I'll blow you out of the water."]]

Although the Confederacy hoped Britain and France would join them against the Union, this was never likely, so they sought to bring them in as mediators.{{sfn|McPherson|1988|pp=546–557}}{{sfn|Herring|2011|p=237}} The Union worked to block this and threatened war against any country that recognized the Confederacy. In 1861, Southerners voluntarily embargoed cotton shipments, hoping to start an economic depression in Europe that would force Britain to enter the war, but this failed. Worse, Europe turned to Egypt and India for cotton, which they found superior, hindering the South's postwar recovery.{{sfn|McPherson|1988|p=386}}

Cotton diplomacy proved a failure, because Europe had a surplus of cotton, while the 1860–62 crop failures in Europe made the North's grain exports critically important. It also helped turn European opinion against the Confederacy. It was said that "King Corn was more powerful than King Cotton," as U.S. grain increased from a quarter to almost half of British imports.{{sfn|McPherson|1988|p=386}} Meanwhile, the war created jobs for arms makers, ironworkers, and ships to transport weapons.

Lincoln's administration initially struggled to appeal to European public opinion. At first, diplomats explained that the U.S. was not committed to ending slavery and emphasized legal arguments about the unconstitutionality of secession. Confederate representatives, however, focused on their struggle for liberty, commitment to free trade, and the essential role of cotton in the European economy.{{sfn|Doyle|2015|pp=69–70}} The European aristocracy was "absolutely gleeful in pronouncing the American debacle as proof that the entire experiment in popular government had failed. European government leaders welcomed the fragmentation of the ascendant American Republic."{{sfn|Doyle|2015|p=8}} However, a European public with liberal sensibilities remained, which the U.S. sought to appeal to by building connections with the international press. By 1861, Union diplomats like Carl Schurz realized emphasizing the war against slavery was the Union's most effective moral asset in swaying European public opinion. Seward was concerned an overly radical case for reunification would distress European merchants with cotton interests; even so, he supported a widespread campaign of public diplomacy.{{sfn|Doyle|2015|pp=70–74}}

U.S. minister to Britain Charles Francis Adams proved adept and convinced Britain not to challenge the Union blockade. The Confederacy purchased warships from commercial shipbuilders in Britain, with the most famous being the {{ship|CSS|Alabama}}, which caused considerable damage and led to serious postwar disputes. However, public opinion against slavery in Britain created a political liability for politicians, where the anti-slavery movement was powerful.Richard Huzzeym, Freedom Burning: Anti-Slavery and Empire in Victorian Britain (2013).

War loomed in late 1861 between the U.S. and Britain over the Trent Affair, which began when U.S. Navy personnel boarded the British ship {{RMS|Trent||2}} and seized two Confederate diplomats. However, London and Washington smoothed this over after Lincoln released the two men. Prince Albert left his deathbed to issue diplomatic instructions to Lord Lyons during the Trent Affair. His request was honored, and, as a result, the British response to the U.S. was toned down, helping avert war.{{Cite web |date=January 5, 2022 |title=The Trent Affair: Diplomacy, Britain, and the American Civil War – National Museum of American Diplomacy |url=https://diplomacy.state.gov/u-s-diplomacy-stories/the-trent-affair-diplomacy-britain-and-the-american-civil-war/ |access-date=January 18, 2022}} In 1862, the British government considered mediating between the Union and Confederacy, though such an offer would have risked war with the U.S. British prime minister Lord Palmerston reportedly read Uncle Tom's Cabin three times when deciding what his decision would be.

The Union victory at the Battle of Antietam caused the British to delay this decision. The Emancipation Proclamation increased the political liability of supporting the Confederacy. Realizing that Washington could not intervene in Mexico as long as the Confederacy controlled Texas, France invaded Mexico in 1861 and installed the Habsburg Austrian archduke Maximilian I as emperor.Shawcross, Edward (2021). The Last Emperor of Mexico: The Dramatic Story of the Habsburg Archduke Who Created a Kingdom in the New World. New York: Basic Books. {{ISBN|978-1541-674196}}. Also titled The Last Emperor of Mexico: A Disaster in the New World. London: Faber & Faber, 2022. Washington repeatedly protested France's violation of the Monroe Doctrine. Despite sympathy for the Confederacy, France's seizure of Mexico ultimately deterred it from war with the Union. Confederate offers late in the war to end slavery in return for diplomatic recognition were not seriously considered by London or Paris. After 1863, the Polish revolt against Russia further distracted the European powers and ensured they remained neutral.{{sfn|Herring|2011|p=261}}

Russia supported the Union, largely because it believed the U.S. counterbalanced its geopolitical rival, the UK. In 1863, the Imperial Russian Navy's Baltic and Pacific fleets wintered in the American ports of New York and San Francisco, respectively.Norman E. Saul, Richard D. McKinzie, eds. Russian-American Dialogue on Cultural Relations, 1776–1914. Columbia, Missouri, and London, UK: University of Missouri Press, p. 95. {{ISBN|978-0826210975}}.

{{Further|Eastern theater of the American Civil War}}

File:American Civil War Battles by Theater, Year.png map of Civil War battles by theater and year|alt=Map of the United States with counties colored]]

The Eastern theater refers to the military operations east of the Appalachian Mountains, including Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, the District of Columbia, and the coastal fortifications and seaports of North Carolina.{{Cite web |title=Eastern Theater of the Civil War |url=https://www.legendsofamerica.com/ah-easterntheater/ |access-date=April 22, 2024 |website=Legends of America}}

Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan took command of the Union Army of the Potomac on July 26, 1861, and the war began in earnest in 1862. The 1862 Union strategy called for simultaneous advances along four axes:{{sfn|Anderson|1989|p=91}}

1. McClellan would lead the main thrust in Virginia towards Richmond.
2. Ohio forces would advance through Kentucky into Tennessee.
3. The Missouri Department would drive south along the Mississippi River.
4. The westernmost attack would originate from Kansas.

File:Robert Edward Lee.jpg|alt=Old man with gray beard and military uniform]]

The primary Confederate force in the Eastern theater was the Army of Northern Virginia. The Army originated as the (Confederate) Army of the Potomac, which was organized on June 20, 1861, from all operational forces in Northern Virginia. On July 20 and 21, the Army of the Shenandoah and forces from the District of Harpers Ferry were added. Units from the Army of the Northwest were merged into the Army of the Potomac between March 14 and May 17, 1862. The Army of the Potomac was renamed Army of Northern Virginia on March 14. The Army of the Peninsula was merged into it on April 12, 1862.

When Virginia declared its secession in April 1861, Robert E. Lee chose to follow his home state, despite his desire for the country to remain intact and an offer of a senior Union command. In his four-volume biography of Lee published in 1934 and 1935, historian Douglas S. Freeman wrote that the army received its final name from Lee when he issued orders assuming command on June 1, 1862.{{Cite book |last=Freeman |first=Douglas Southall |url=https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Gazetteer/People/Robert_E_Lee/FREREL/home.html |title=R. E. Lee: A Biography |publisher=Charles Scribner's Sons |year=1934 |volume=II |location=New York |page=78 and footnote 6}} However, Freeman wrote, Lee corresponded with Brigadier General Joseph E. Johnston, his predecessor in army command, before that date and referred to Johnston's command as the Army of Northern Virginia. Part of the confusion results from the fact that Johnston commanded the Department of Northern Virginia as of October 22, 1861, and the name Army of Northern Virginia was seen as an informal consequence of its parent department's name. Jefferson Davis and Johnston did not adopt the name, but the organization of units as of March 14 was clearly the same organization that Lee received on June 1, and is generally referred to as the Army of Northern Virginia, even if that is correct only in retrospect.

On July 4 at Harper's Ferry, Colonel Thomas J. Jackson assigned Jeb Stuart command of all cavalry companies of the Army of the Shenandoah, and Jackson eventually commanded the Army of Northern Virginia's cavalry.

File:Thure de Thulstrup - Battle of Antietam.jpg, which resulted in over 22,000 fatalities, the Civil War's deadliest one-day battle|alt=Painting of battlefield scene]]

In July 1861, in the first in a series of prominent battles in the war, Union Army troops commanded by Maj. Gen. Irvin McDowell attacked Confederate forces, which were under the command of Beauregard near the national capital in Washington. The Confederacy successfully repelled the attack in the First Battle of Bull Run. In the beginning of the Civil War, the Union appeared to hold the upper hand. The Union Army routed Confederate forces, then holding defensive positions, but Confederate reinforcements under Joseph E. Johnston arrived from the Shenandoah Valley by railroad, and the battle's course quickly changed. A brigade of Virginians, commanded by Thomas J. Jackson, then a relatively unknown brigadier general from Virginia Military Institute, stood its ground, leading to Jackson earning the nickname "Stonewall". Lincoln urged the Union Army to commence offensive operations against Confederate forces, which led General George B. McClellan, in the spring of 1862, to attack Virginia by way of the peninsula between the York River and James River southeast of Richmond. McClellan's army reached the gates of Richmond in the Peninsula campaign.{{sfn|Foote|1974|pp=464–519}}{{sfn|McPherson|1988|pp=424–427}}

Also in the spring of 1862, in Shenandoah Valley, Jackson led his Valley Campaign, during which he employed rapid and unpredictable movements on interior lines. Jackson's 17,000 troops marched 646 miles (1,040 km) in 48 days, during which they won minor battles as they successfully engaged three Union armies, comprising 52,000 men, including those of Nathaniel P. Banks and John C. Fremont, preventing them from reinforcing the Union offensive against Richmond. The swiftness of Jackson's troops earned them the nickname foot cavalry. Johnston halted McClellan's advance at the Battle of Seven Pines, but he was wounded in the battle, and Robert E. Lee assumed his position of command. Lee and his senior subordinates, James Longstreet and Stonewall Jackson, defeated McClellan in the Seven Days Battles, forcing McClellan's retreat.{{sfn|McPherson|1988|pp=538–544}}

File:Union soldiers entrenched along the west bank of the Rappahannock River at Fredericksburg, Virginia (111-B-157).jpg in May 1863]]

During the Northern Virginia Campaign, which included the Second Battle of Bull Run, Confederate forces registered another important military victory.{{sfn|McPherson|1988|pp=528–533}} McClellan resisted General-in-Chief Halleck's orders to send reinforcements to John Pope's Union Army of Virginia, which enabled Lee's Confederate forces to defeat twice the number of combined enemy troops.{{Cite web |title=Overview of the Battle |url=https://history.army.mil/books/Staff-Rides/2Manassas/2mns-ov.htm |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071217114921/http://www.history.army.mil/books/Staff-Rides/2Manassas/2mns-ov.htm |url-status=dead |archive-date=December 17, 2007 |access-date=September 13, 2024 |website=history.army.mil |quote=On 3 August, General Halleck directed General McClellan to begin his final withdrawal from the Peninsula and to return to Northern Virginia to support Pope. McClellan protested and did not begin his redeployment until 14 August. The situation created an opportunity for General Lee. The removal of the Army of the Potomac as a threat meant that there would be a short period when he could turn on Pope's force and actually outnumber it before the merger of the two Federal armies.}}

Emboldened by Second Bull Run, Confederate forces launched their first invasion of the North in the Maryland Campaign during which Lee led 45,000 Army of Northern Virginia troops across the Potomac River into Maryland on September 5. Lincoln then restored Pope's troops to McClellan, and McClellan and Lee clashed in the Battle of Antietam near Sharpsburg, Maryland, on September 17, 1862, which proved the bloodiest single day in both the Civil War and U.S. military history.{{sfn|McPherson|1988|pp=538–544}}{{sfn|McPherson|1988|pp=543–545}} Lee's army retreated to Virginia before McClellan could destroy it, leading the Battle of Antietam to be widely viewed as a Union victory since it halted Lee's invasion of the North and provided an opportunity for Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, which he issued as an executive order on January 1, 1863.{{sfn|McPherson|1988|pp=557–558}}

McClellan failed to respond in any measurable way to Lee's attempt to invade the North at Antietam led to his replacement by Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside. Burnside led Union Army troops in the Battle of Fredericksburg,{{sfn|McPherson|1988|pp=571–574}} where they were defeated on December 13, 1862. Over 12,000 Union soldiers were killed or wounded during futile attempts by Union troops to launch frontal assaults against Marye's Heights.Matteson, John, A Worse Place Than Hell: How the Civil War Battle of Fredericksburg Changed a Nation, New York: W. W. Norton, 2021. After the battle, Burnside was replaced by Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker.{{Cite book |last=Jones |first=Wilmer L. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=neq3DAAAQBAJ&pg=PA237 |title=Generals in Blue and Gray: Lincoln's Generals |publisher=Stackpole |year=2006 |isbn=978-1-4617-5106-9 |pages=237–238}}

File:Thure de Thulstrup - L. Prang and Co. - Battle of Gettysburg - Restoration by Adam Cuerden.jpg on July 3, 1863, the final day of the Battle of Gettysburg, which proved the Civil War's deadliest battle but also one of its most significant, altering the course of the war in the Union's favor|alt=Cavalry charges on a battlefield]]

Hooker, too, proved unable to defeat Lee's army; despite having over twice the number of troops than Lee, Hooker's proved Chancellorsville Campaign ultimately prvoed ineffective, and he was soundly defeated in the Battle of Chancellorsville, which was fought between April 30 and May 6, 1863.{{sfn|McPherson|1988|pp=639–645}} Chancellorsville is known as Lee's "perfect battle" because his risky decision to divide his army paid off, resulting in a significant Confederate victory. During the Battle of Chancellorsville, Stonewall Jackson was shot in his left arm and right hand by friendly fire, leading to a need to amputate his arm, and he died of pneumonia.{{Cite book |last=Noyalas |first=Jonathan A. |url={{google books |plainurl=y |id=EHRDCgAAQBAJ |page=93}} |title=Stonewall Jackson's 1862 Valley Campaign |year=2010 |publisher=Arcadia |isbn=978-1-61423-040-3 |page=93}} Lee famously said: "He has lost his left arm, but I have lost my right arm."{{Cite book |last=Thomas |first=Emory M. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2tJZ_TCHUjAC&pg=PA287 |title=Robert E. Lee: A Biography |year=1997 |publisher=W. W. Norton |isbn=978-0-393-31631-5 |page=287}}

The fiercest fighting of the battle—and the second bloodiest day of the Civil War—occurred on May 3 as Lee launched multiple attacks against the Union position at Chancellorsville. That same day, John Sedgwick advanced across the Rappahannock River, defeated the small Confederate force at Marye's Heights in the Second Battle of Fredericksburg, and then moved to the west. Confederate forces succeeded in militarily delaying Union forces in the Battle of Salem Church.{{Cite web |date=October 5, 2021 |title=Salem Church |url=https://www.nps.gov/frsp/learn/historyculture/sc.htm |access-date=March 30, 2022 |website=National Park Service}}

Hooker was replaced by Maj. Gen. George Meade during Lee's second invasion of the North, in June. In the Battle of Gettysburg, which proved the war's bloodiest and one of its most strategically significant, Meade defeated Lee in a three-day battle between July 1 and 3, 1863.{{sfn|McPherson|1988|pp=653–663}} The Battle of Gettysburg took over 50,000 Union and Confederate lives, but also proved the war's turning point, altering the course of the war in the Union's favor. Pickett's Charge, launched July 3, on the final day of the Battle of Gettysburg, is considered the high-water mark of the Confederacy, representing the collapse of any credible prospect that the Confederacy could prevail in the war. At Gettysburg, Lee's Army of Northern Virginia suffered 28,000 casualties versus Meade's 23,000, and Lee was repelled in a failed attempt to invade and occupy Union territory.{{sfn|McPherson|1988|p=664}}

{{Further|Western theater of the American Civil War}}

The Western theater refers to military operations between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River, including Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Mississippi, North Carolina, Kentucky, South Carolina, Tennessee, and parts of Louisiana.{{Cite book |last=Bowery |first=Charles R. |title=The Civil War in the Western Theater, 1862 |year=2014 |publisher=Center of Military History |isbn=978-0-16-092316-6 |location=Washington, D.C. |pages=58–72}}

{{Main|Army of the Cumberland|Army of the Tennessee}}

File:Gen. Ulysses S. Grant (4228634580).jpg, a Union army general who was later elected the nation's 18th president]]

The primary Union forces in this theater were the Army of the Tennessee and Army of the Cumberland, named for the two rivers, Tennessee River and Cumberland River. After Meade's inconclusive fall campaign, Lincoln turned to the Western theater for new leadership. At the same time, the Confederate stronghold of Vicksburg surrendered, giving the Union control of the Mississippi River, permanently isolating the western Confederacy, and producing the new leader Lincoln needed, Ulysses S. Grant.{{Cite web |title=Vicksburg |url=https://www.battlefields.org/learn/civil-war/battles/vicksburg |access-date=September 27, 2022 |publisher=American Battlefield Trust}}

The Army of Tennessee, which served as the primary Confederate force in the Western theater, was formed on November 20, 1862, when General Braxton Bragg renamed the former Army of Mississippi. While Confederate forces had successes in the Eastern theater, they were defeated many times in the West.

The Union's key strategist and tactician in the West was Ulysses S. Grant, who led the Union to victories in battles at Fort Henry (February 6, 1862) and Fort Donelson (February 11 to 16, 1862), earning him the nickname of "Unconditional Surrender" Grant. With these victories, the Union gained control of the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers.{{sfn|McPherson|1988|pp=405–413}} Nathan Bedford Forrest rallied nearly 4,000 Confederate troops and led them to escape across the Cumberland River. Nashville and central Tennessee fell to the Union, leading to attrition of local food supplies and livestock and a breakdown in social organization.{{citation needed|date=January 2022}}

Confederate general Leonidas Polk's subsequently invaded Columbus, Kentucky, which ended Kentucky's policy of neutrality and turned it against the Confederacy. Grant used river transport and Andrew Hull Foote's gunboats of the Western Flotilla, threatening the Confederacy's "Gibraltar of the West" in Columbus, Kentucky. Although rebuffed at Belmont, Grant cut off Columbus. Confederate forces, lacking their gunboats, were forced to retreat and the Union took control of west Kentucky and opened Tennessee in March 1862.{{Cite journal |last=Whitsell |first=Robert D. |year=1963 |title=Military and Naval Activity between Cairo and Columbus |journal=Register of the Kentucky Historical Society |volume=62 |issue=2 |pages=107–121}}

At the Battle of Shiloh, in Shiloh, Tennessee, in April 1862, Confederates forces launched surprise attack on Union forces, pushing them back to river as night fell. Over that night, however, the Navy landed reinforcements, and Grant counterattacked. Grant and the Union ultimately won a decisive victory in the first battle with a high number of casualties in what proved to be the first in a series of such battles.{{sfn|Frank|Reaves|2003|p= 170}} Confederate forces lost Albert Sidney Johnston, considered their finest general, before Lee emerged to assume command.{{Cite web |title=Death of Albert Sidney Johnston – Tour Stop #17 |url=https://www.nps.gov/places/death-of-albert-sidney-johnston-tour-stop-17.htm |access-date=March 12, 2022 |publisher=National Park Service}}

File:Chickamauga.jpg, the war's highest two-day loss battle]]

One of the early Union objectives was to capture the Mississippi River, which would permit it to cut the Confederacy in half. The Mississippi was opened to Union traffic to the southern border of Tennessee after it took Island No. 10, New Madrid, Missouri, and then Memphis, Tennessee.{{sfn|McPherson|1988|pp=418–420}}

In April 1862, the Union Navy captured New Orleans.{{sfn|McPherson|1988|pp=418–420}} "The key to the river was New Orleans, the South's largest port [and] greatest industrial center."Kennedy, p. 58.{{full citation needed|date=August 2024}} U.S. naval forces under Farragut ran past Confederate defenses south of New Orleans. Confederate forces abandoned the city, giving the Union a critical anchor in the deep South,{{sfn|Symonds|Clipson|2001|p=92}} which allowed Union forces to move up the Mississippi. Memphis fell to Union forces on June 6, 1862, allowing it to serve as a key base for further Union advances south along the Mississippi. On the Mississippi River, the Union took every fortress city with the exception of Vicksburg, Mississippi. But Confederate control of Vicksburg was sufficient in preventing the Union from controlling the entire river.{{Cite web |date=January 31, 2013 |title=10 Facts: The Vicksburg Campaign |url=https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/10-facts-vicksburg-campaign |access-date=September 13, 2022 |publisher=American Battlefield Trust}}

Bragg's second invasion of Kentucky in the Confederate Heartland Offensive included initial successes, including Kirby Smith's triumph in the Battle of Richmond and the capture of the Kentucky capital of Frankfort, Kentucky, on September 3, 1862.{{Cite book |last=Brown |first=Kent Masterson |url=https://archive.org/details/civilwarinkentuc0000unse/mode/2up |title=The Civil War in Kentucky: Battle for the Bluegrass State |publisher=Savas |year=2000 |isbn=978-1-882810-47-5 |location=Mason City, IA |page=95}} The campaign ended with a meaningless victory over Maj. Gen. Don Carlos Buell at the Battle of Perryville, and Bragg was forced to end his attempt to invade and control Kentucky. Lacking logistical support and infantry recruits, Bragg was instead forced to retreat,{{sfn|McPherson|1988|pp=419–420}} and ended up being narrowly defeated by Maj. Gen. William Rosecrans in the Battle of Stones River in Tennessee in what proved to be the culmination of the Stones River Campaign.{{sfn|McPherson|1988|pp=480–483}}

U.S. naval forces assisted Grant in the long, complex Vicksburg Campaign, which resulted in Confederate forces surrendering in the Battle of Vicksburg in July 1863, which cemented Union control of the Mississippi River in one of the war's turning points.{{Cite journal |last=Mangum |first=Ronald Scott |year=1991 |title=The Vicksburg Campaign: A Study In Joint Operations |url=https://carlisle-www.army.mil/usawc/Parameters/Articles/1991/1991%20mangum.pdf |journal=Parameters: U.S. Army War College |volume=21 |issue=3 |pages=74–86 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121127192600/https://carlisle-www.army.mil/usawc/Parameters/Articles/1991/1991%20mangum.pdf |archive-date=November 27, 2012}}Miller, Donald L. Vicksburg: Grant's Campaign that Broke the Confederacy. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2019. {{ISBN|978-1-4516-4137-0}}. The one clear Confederate victory in the West was the Battle of Chickamauga. After Rosecrans' successful Tullahoma Campaign, Bragg, reinforced by Lt. Gen. James Longstreet's corps, defeated Rosecrans, despite the defensive stand of Maj. Gen. George Henry Thomas.{{citation needed|date=January 2022}} Rosecrans retreated to Chattanooga, Tennessee, where Bragg was then besieged in the Chattanooga Campaign. Grant marched to the relief of Rosecrans, where he led the defeat of Bragg in the Third Battle of Chattanooga,{{sfn|McPherson|1988|pp=677–680}} eventually causing Longstreet to abandon his Knoxville Campaign and driving Confederate forces out of Tennessee and opening a route to Atlanta and the heart of the Confederacy.{{Cite web |date=September 17, 2014 |title=Sherman's March to the Sea |url=https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/shermans-march-sea |publisher=American Battlefield Trust}}

{{further|Trans-Mississippi theater of the American Civil War}}

The Trans-Mississippi theater refers to military operations west of the Mississippi, encompassing most of Missouri, Arkansas, most of Louisiana, and the Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma. The Trans-Mississippi District was formed by the Confederate States Army to better coordinate Ben McCulloch's command of troops in Arkansas and Louisiana, Sterling Price's Missouri State Guard, as well as the portion of Earl Van Dorn's command that included the Indian Territory and excluded the Army of the West. The Union's command was the Trans-Mississippi Division, or the Military Division of West Mississippi.{{sfn|Jones|2011|p=1476}}

File:Wilson's Creek charge of 1st Iowa (rotate).jpg secured docks and arsenal in St. Louis, leading Union Army forces to expel the Missouri Confederate forces and government.{{sfn|Keegan|2009|p=100}}]]

The first battle of the Trans-Mississippi theater was the Battle of Wilson's Creek (August 1861). The Confederates were driven from Missouri early in the war as a result of the Battle of Pea Ridge.{{sfn|McPherson|1988|pp=404–405}}

Extensive guerrilla warfare characterized the trans-Mississippi region, as the Confederacy lacked the troops and logistics to support regular armies that could challenge Union control.{{Cite book |last=Martin |first=James B. |title=Third War: Irregular Warfare on the Western Border 1861–1865 |year=2012 |publisher=Combat Studies Institute Press |series=Leavenworth papers |volume=23 |location=Fort Leavenworth, KS |oclc=1029877004}}{{Cite book |last=Fellman |first=Michael |title=Inside War: The Guerrilla Conflict in Missouri during the Civil War |year=1989 |publisher=Oxford University Press |location=New York |quote=Missouri alone was the scene of over 1,000 engagements between regular units, and uncounted numbers of guerrilla attacks and raids by informal pro-Confederate bands, especially in the recently settled western counties.}} Roving Confederate bands such as Quantrill's Raiders terrorized the countryside, striking military installations and civilian settlements.{{Cite journal |last=Bohl |first=Sarah |year=2004 |title=A War on Civilians: Order Number 11 and the Evacuation of Western Missouri |journal=Prologue |volume=36 |issue=1 |pages=44–51}} The "Sons of Liberty" and "Order of the American Knights" attacked pro-Union people, elected officeholders, and unarmed uniformed soldiers. These partisans could not be driven out of Missouri, until an entire regular Union infantry division was engaged. By 1864, these violent activities harmed the nationwide antiwar movement organizing against the re-election of Lincoln. Missouri not only stayed in the Union, but Lincoln took 70 percent of the vote to win re-election.{{sfn|Keegan|2009|p=270}}

Small-scale military actions south and west of Missouri sought to control Indian Territory and New Mexico Territory for the Union. The Battle of Glorieta Pass was the decisive battle of the New Mexico Campaign. The Union repulsed Confederate incursions into New Mexico in 1862, and the exiled Arizona government withdrew into Texas. In the Indian Territory, civil war broke out within tribes. About 12,000 Indian warriors fought for the Confederacy but fewer for the Union.{{Cite journal |last=Graves |first=William H. |year=1991 |title=Indian Soldiers for the Gray Army: Confederate Recruitment in Indian Territory |journal=Chronicles of Oklahoma |volume=69 |issue=2 |pages=134–145}} The most prominent Cherokee was Brigadier General Stand Watie, the last Confederate general to surrender.{{Cite journal |last=Neet |first=J. Frederick Jr. |year=1996 |title=Stand Watie: Confederate General in the Cherokee Nation |journal=Great Plains Journal |volume=6 |issue=1 |pages=36–51}}

After the fall of Vicksburg in July 1863, Jefferson Davis informed General Kirby Smith in Texas that he could expect no further help from east of the Mississippi. Although he lacked resources to beat Union armies, he built up a formidable arsenal at Tyler, along with his own Kirby Smithdom economy, a virtual "independent fiefdom" in Texas, including railroad construction and international smuggling. The Union, in turn, did not directly engage him.{{sfn|Keegan|2009|pp=220–221}} Its 1864 Red River Campaign to take Shreveport, Louisiana, failed and Texas remained in Confederate hands throughout the war.{{Cite encyclopedia |title=Red River Campaign |encyclopedia=Encyclopedia Britannica |url=https://www.britannica.com/event/Red-River-Campaign |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220327234657/https://www.britannica.com/event/Red-River-Campaign |archive-date=March 27, 2022 |url-status=live}}

{{further|Lower seaboard theater of the American Civil War}}

The lower seaboard theater refers to military and naval operations that occurred near the coastal areas of the Southeast as well as the southern part of the Mississippi. Union naval activities were dictated by the Anaconda Plan.{{Cite book |last=Symonds |first=Craig L. |title=The Civil War at Sea |year=2012 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-993168-2 |location=New York |page=110}}

File:Naval Triumph on the Mississippi below New Orleans 1862 (cropped).jpg]]

One of the earliest battles was fought in November 1861 at Port Royal Sound, south of Charleston. Much of the war along the South Carolina coast concentrated on capturing Charleston. In attempting to capture Charleston, the Union military tried two approaches: by land over James or Morris Islands or through the harbor. However, the Confederates were able to drive back each attack. A famous land attack was the Second Battle of Fort Wagner, in which the 54th Massachusetts Infantry took part. The Union suffered a serious defeat, losing 1,515 soldiers while the Confederates lost only 174. However, the 54th was hailed for its valor, which encouraged the general acceptance of the recruitment of African American soldiers into the Union Army, which reinforced the Union's numerical advantage.{{Cite encyclopedia |title=Second Battle of Fort Wagner |url=https://www.britannica.com/topic/Second-Battle-of-Fort-Wagner |access-date=January 25, 2022 |encyclopedia=Encyclopædia Britannica}}

Fort Pulaski on the Georgia coast was an early target for the Union navy. Following the capture of Port Royal, an expedition was organized with engineer troops under the command of Captain Quincy Adams Gillmore, forcing a Confederate surrender. The Union army occupied the fort for the rest of the war after repairing it.{{Cite web |last=Lattimore |first=Ralston B. |title=Battle for Fort Pulaski – Fort Pulaski National Monument |url=https://www.nps.gov/fopu/learn/historyculture/battle-for-fort-pulaski.htm |access-date=April 20, 2022 |website=National Park Service}}

In April 1862, a Union naval task force commanded by Commander David Dixon Porter attacked Forts Jackson and St. Philip, which guarded the river approach to New Orleans from the south. While part of the fleet bombarded the forts, other vessels forced a break in the obstructions in the river and enabled the rest of the fleet to steam upriver to the city. A Union army force commanded by Maj. Gen. Benjamin Butler landed near the forts and forced their surrender. Butler's controversial command of New Orleans earned him the nickname "Beast".{{Cite book |last=Trefousse |first=Hans L. |author-link=Hans L. Trefousse |title=Ben Butler: The South Called Him Beast! |publisher=Twayne |year=1957 |location=New York |oclc=371213}}

The following year, the Union Army of the Gulf commanded by Maj. Gen. Nathaniel P. Banks laid siege to Port Hudson for nearly eight weeks, the longest siege in U.S. military history. The Confederates attempted to defend with the Bayou Teche Campaign but surrendered after Vicksburg. These surrenders gave the Union control over the Mississippi.

Several small skirmishes but no major battles were fought in Florida. The biggest was the Battle of Olustee in early 1864.{{citation needed|date=January 2022}}

{{further|Pacific coast theater of the American Civil War}}

The Pacific coast theater refers to military operations on the Pacific Ocean and in the states and Territories west of the Continental Divide.{{Cite web |title=War in the West · Civil War · Digital Exhibits |url=http://digitalexhibits.wsulibs.wsu.edu/exhibits/show/civilwar/war-in-the-west/war-in-the-west |access-date=March 7, 2022 |website=digitalexhibits.wsulibs.wsu.edu}}

File:William-Tecumseh-Sherman.jpg]]

At the beginning of 1864, Lincoln made Grant commander of all Union armies. Grant made his headquarters with the Army of the Potomac and put Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman in command of most of the western armies. Grant understood the concept of total war and believed, along with Lincoln and Sherman, that only the utter defeat of Confederate forces and their economic base would end the war.{{Cite journal |last=Neely |first=Mark E. |date=December 2004 |title=Was the Civil War a Total War? |journal=Civil War History |volume=50 |issue=4 |pages=434–458 |doi=10.1353/cwh.2004.0073}} This was total war not in killing civilians, but in taking provisions and forage and destroying homes, farms, and railroads, that Grant said "would otherwise have gone to the support of secession and rebellion. This policy I believe exercised a material influence in hastening the end."{{Cite book |last=Grant |first=Ulysses S. |url=https://archive.org/details/memoirsselectedl00gran_0 |title=Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant; Selected Letters |publisher=Library of America |year=1990 |isbn=978-0-940450-58-5 |page=[https://archive.org/details/memoirsselectedl00gran_0/page/247 247]}}

Grant devised a coordinated strategy that would strike at the entire Confederacy from multiple directions. Generals Meade and Benjamin Butler were ordered to move against Lee near Richmond, General Franz Sigel was to attack the Shenandoah Valley, General Sherman was to capture Atlanta and march to the Atlantic Ocean, Generals George Crook and William W. Averell were to operate against railroad supply lines in West Virginia, and Maj. Gen. Nathaniel P. Banks was to capture Mobile, Alabama.{{Cite book |last=Field |first=Ron |title=Petersburg 1864–65: The Longest Siege |publisher=Osprey |year=2013 |isbn=978-1-4728-0305-4 |page=6}}

Grant's army set out on the Overland Campaign intending to draw Lee into a defense of Richmond, where they would attempt to pin down and destroy the Confederate army. The Union army first attempted to maneuver past Lee and fought several battles, notably at the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, and Cold Harbor. These resulted in heavy losses on both sides and forced Lee's Confederates to fall back repeatedly.{{sfn|McPherson|1988|pp=724–735}} At the Battle of Yellow Tavern, the Confederates lost Jeb Stuart.{{sfn|McPherson|1988|p=728}}

An attempt to outflank Lee from the south failed under Butler, who was trapped inside the Bermuda Hundred river bend. Each battle resulted in setbacks for the Union that mirrored those they had suffered under prior generals, though unlike them, Grant chose to fight on rather than retreat. Grant was tenacious and kept pressing Lee's Army of Northern Virginia back to Richmond. While Lee was preparing for an attack on Richmond, Grant unexpectedly turned south to cross the James River and began the protracted Siege of Petersburg, where the two armies engaged in trench warfare for over nine months.{{sfn|McPherson|1988|pp=724–742}}

File:Philip Sheridan 1-restored.jpg]]

To deny the Confederacy continued use of the Shenandoah Valley as a base from which to launch invasions of Maryland and the Washington area, and to threaten Lee's supply lines for his forces, Grant launched the Valley campaigns in the spring of 1864. Initial efforts led by Gen. Sigel were repelled at the Battle of New Market by Confederate Gen. John C. Breckinridge. The Battle of New Market was the Confederacy's last major victory, and included a charge by teenage VMI cadets. After relieving Sigel, and following mixed performances by his successor, Grant finally found a commander, General Philip Sheridan, aggressive enough to prevail against the army of Maj. Gen. Jubal A. Early. After a cautious start, Sheridan defeated Early in a series of battles in September and October 1864, including a decisive defeat at the Battle of Cedar Creek. Sheridan then proceeded through that winter to destroy the agricultural base of the Shenandoah Valley, a strategy similar to the tactics Sherman later employed in Georgia.{{sfn|McPherson|1988|pp=778–779}}

Meanwhile, Sherman maneuvered from Chattanooga to Atlanta, defeating Confederate Generals Joseph E. Johnston and John Bell Hood. The fall of Atlanta on September 2, 1864, guaranteed the reelection of Lincoln.{{sfn|McPherson|1988|pp=773–776}} Hood left the Atlanta area to swing around and menace Sherman's supply lines and invade Tennessee in the Franklin–Nashville Campaign. Union Maj. Gen. John Schofield defeated Hood at the Battle of Franklin, and George H. Thomas dealt Hood a massive defeat at the Battle of Nashville, effectively destroying Hood's army.{{sfn|McPherson|1988|pp=812–815}}

Leaving Atlanta, and his base of supplies, Sherman's army marched, with no destination set, laying waste to about 20% of the farms in Georgia in his "March to the Sea". He reached the Atlantic at Savannah, Georgia, in December 1864. Sherman's army was followed by thousands of freed slaves; there were no major battles along the march. Sherman turned north through South Carolina and North Carolina, to approach the Confederate Virginia lines from the south, increasing the pressure on Lee's army.{{sfn|McPherson|1988|pp=825–830}}

Lee's army, thinned by desertion and casualties, was now much smaller than Grant's. One last Confederate attempt to break the Union hold on Petersburg failed at the decisive Battle of Five Forks on April 1. The Union now controlled the entire perimeter surrounding Richmond–Petersburg, completely cutting it off from the Confederacy. Realizing the capital was now lost, Lee's army and the Confederate government were forced to evacuate. The Confederate capital fell on April 2–3, to the Union XXV Corps, composed of black troops. The remaining Confederate units fled west after a defeat at Sayler's Creek on April 6.{{sfn|McPherson|1988|pp=846–847}}

{{Main|Conclusion of the American Civil War}}

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| caption1 = This New York Times front page celebrated Lee's surrender, headlining how Grant let Confederate officers retain their sidearms and "paroled" the Confederate officers and men.{{Cite news |date=April 10, 1865 |title=Union / Victory! / Peace! / Surrender of General Lee and His Whole Army |url=https://newspaperarchive.com/new-york-times-apr-10-1865-p-1/ |work=The New York Times |page=1}}

| image2 = 18650416 Lee Has Surrendered to Grant - Savannah Daily Herald.png

| caption2 = News of Lee's April 9 surrender reached this southern newspaper (Savannah, Georgia) on April 15—after the April 14 shooting of President Lincoln. The article quotes Grant's terms of surrender.{{Cite news |date=April 16, 1865 |title=Most Glorious News of the War / Lee Has Surrendered to Grant ! / All Lee's Officers and Men Are Paroled |url=https://newspaperarchive.com/savannah-daily-herald-apr-16-1865-p-1/ |url-access=subscription |work=Savannah Daily Herald |location=Savannah, GA |pages=1, 4}}

}}

Lee did not intend to surrender, but planned to regroup at Appomattox Station, where supplies were to be waiting, and then continue the war. Grant chased Lee and got in front of him, so that when Lee's army reached the village of Appomattox Court House, they were surrounded. After an initial battle, Lee decided the fight was hopeless, and surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia to Grant on April 9, 1865, during a conference at the McLean House.{{Cite book |last=Simpson |first=Brooks D. |title=Let Us Have Peace: Ulysses S. Grant and the Politics of War and Reconstruction, 1861–1868 |publisher=The University of North Carolina Press |year=1991 |location=Chapel Hill |page=84}}William Marvel (2002) Lee's Last Retreat: The Flight to Appomattox, pp. 158–181. In an untraditional gesture and as a sign of Grant's respect and anticipation of peacefully restoring Confederate states to the Union, Lee was permitted to keep his sword and horse, Traveller. His men were paroled, and a chain of Confederate surrenders began.{{Cite book |last=Winik |first=Jay |title=April 1865: the month that saved America |year=2001 |publisher=HarperCollins |isbn=0-06-018723-9 |location=New York |pages=188–189}}

On April 14, 1865, Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth, a Confederate sympathizer. Lincoln died early the next morning. Lincoln's vice president, Andrew Johnson, was unharmed, because his would-be assassin, George Atzerodt, lost his nerve, so Johnson was immediately sworn in as president.

Meanwhile, Confederate forces across the South surrendered, as news of Lee's surrender reached them.Unaware of the surrender of Lee, on April 16 the last major battles of the war were fought at the Battle of Columbus, Georgia, and the Battle of West Point. On April 26, the same day Sergeant Boston Corbett killed Booth at a tobacco barn, Johnston surrendered nearly 90,000 troops of the Army of Tennessee to Sherman at Bennett Place, near present-day Durham, North Carolina. It proved to be the largest surrender of Confederate forces. On May 4, all remaining Confederate forces in Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana east of the Mississippi, under the command of Lt. General Richard Taylor, surrendered.{{sfn|Long|1971|p=685}} Confederate president Davis was captured in retreat at Irwinville, Georgia on May 10.{{Cite book |last1=Arnold |first1=James R. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=35LvCgAAQBAJ |title=Understanding U.S. Military Conflicts through Primary Sources [4 volumes] |last2=Wiener |first2=Roberta |publisher=ABC-CLIO |year=2016 |isbn=978-1-61069-934-1 |page=15}}

The final land battle was fought on May 13, 1865, at the Battle of Palmito Ranch in Texas.{{sfn|Long|1971|p=688}}{{sfn|Bradley|2015|p=68}}{{sfn|Hunt|2015|p=5}} On May 26, 1865, Confederate Lt. Gen. Simon B. Buckner, acting for Edmund Smith, signed a military convention surrendering Confederate forces in the Trans-Mississippi Department.{{sfn|Long|1971|p=690}}{{sfn|Dunkerly|2015|p=117}} This date is often cited by contemporaries and historians as the effective end date of the war.{{efn|name=End1}}{{efn|name=End2}} On June 2, with most of his troops having already gone home, a reluctant Kirby Smith had little choice but to sign the official surrender document.{{sfn|Long|1971|p=692}}{{Cite web |date=April 17, 2009 |title=Ulysses S. Grant: The Myth of 'Unconditional Surrender' Begins at Fort Donelson |url=https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/ulysses-s-grant-myth-unconditional-surrender-begins-fort-donelson |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160207004144/http://www.civilwar.org/education/history/end-of-war/smith-surrenders.html |archive-date=February 7, 2016 |publisher=American Battlefield Trust}} On June 23, Cherokee leader and Brig. General Stand Watie became the last Confederate general to surrender his forces.{{Cite book |last=Morris |first=John Wesley |url={{google books |plainurl=y |id=fSqmnpHFEF0C |page=68}} |title=Ghost Towns of Oklahoma |year=1977 |publisher=University of Oklahoma Press |isbn=978-0-8061-1420-0 |page=68}}{{harvnb|Bradley|2015|p=69}}. "The 58-year-old Cherokee chieftain was the last Confederate general to lay down his arms. The last Confederate-affiliated tribe to surrender was the Chickasaw nation, which capitulated on 14 July."

On June 19, 1865, Union Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger announced General Order No. 3, bringing the Emancipation Proclamation into effect in Texas and freeing the last slaves of the Confederacy.Conner, Robert C. General Gordon Granger: The Savior of Chickamauga and the Man Behind "Juneteenth". Havertown, PA: Casemate Publishers, 2013. {{ISBN|978-1-61200-186-9}}. p. 177. The anniversary of this date is now celebrated as Juneteenth.{{Cite web |last=Gates |first=Henry Louis Jr. |author-link=Henry Louis Gates Jr. |date=January 16, 2013 |title=What Is Juneteenth? |url=https://www.pbs.org/wnet/african-americans-many-rivers-to-cross/history/what-is-juneteenth/ |access-date=June 12, 2020 |publisher=PBS}}

The naval part of the war ended more slowly. It had begun on April 11, two days after Lee's surrender, when Lincoln proclaimed that foreign nations had no further "claim or pretense" to deny equality of maritime rights and hospitalities to U.S. warships and, in effect, that rights extended to Confederate ships to use neutral ports as safe havens from U.S. warships should end.{{sfn|Neff|2010|p=205}} Having no response to Lincoln's proclamation, President Johnson issued a similar proclamation dated May 10, more directly stating that the war was almost at an end and insurgent cruisers still at sea, and prepared to attack U.S. ships, should not have rights to do so through use of safe foreign ports or waters. Britain finally responded on June 6, by transmitting a letter from Foreign Secretary John Russell, 1st Earl Russell, to the Lords of the Admiralty withdrawing rights to Confederate warships to enter British ports and waters.{{Cite journal |date=June 24, 1865 |title=Withdrawal of Belligerent Rights by Great Britain |url=https://archive.org/details/sim_armed-forces-journal_1865-06-24_2_44 |journal=Army and Navy Journal |location=New York |publisher=American News Company |volume=2 |issue=44 |page=695 |access-date=July 25, 2022}} U.S. Secretary of State Seward welcomed the withdrawal of concessions to the Confederates.{{Cite journal |date=July 22, 1865 |title=England and the Termination of the Rebellion |url=https://archive.org/details/sim_armed-forces-journal_1865-07-22_2_48 |journal=Army and Navy Journal |location=New York |publisher=American News Company |volume=2 |issue=48 |page=763 |access-date=July 25, 2022}} Finally, on October 18, Russell advised the Admiralty that the time specified in his June message had elapsed and "all measures of a restrictive nature on vessels of war of the United States in British ports, harbors, and waters, are now to be considered as at an end".{{Cite journal |date=November 4, 1865 |title=Withdrawal of British Restrictions Upon American Naval Vessels |url=https://archive.org/details/sim_armed-forces-journal_1865-11-04_3_11 |journal=Army and Navy Journal |location=New York |publisher=American News Company |volume=3 |issue=11 |page=172 |access-date=July 25, 2022}} Nonetheless, the final Confederate surrender was in Liverpool, England where James Iredell Waddell, the captain of CSS Shenandoah, surrendered the cruiser to British authorities on November 6.{{sfn|Heidler|Heidler|Coles|2002|pp=703–706}}

Legally, the war did not end until August 20, 1866, when President Johnson issued a proclamation that declared "that the said insurrection is at an end and that peace, order, tranquillity, and civil authority now exist in and throughout the whole of the United States of America".{{efn|{{multiref2|{{harvnb|Murray|1967|p=[https://archive.org/details/northcarolinahis1967nort/page/336/mode/1up 336]}} | {{harvnb|Neff|2010|p=207}} | {{harvnb|Trudeau|1994|p=396}}. In United States v. Anderson, 76 U.S. 56 (1869), "The U.S. attorneys argued that the Rebellion had been suppressed following the surrender of the Trans-Mississippi Department, as established in the surrender document negotiated on May 26, 1865." | {{harvnb|Trudeau|1994|p=397}}. The Supreme Court decided that the "legal end of the American Civil War had been decided by Congress to be August 20, 1866—the date of Andrew Johnson's final proclamation on the conclusion of the Rebellion."}}}}

File:Civil war 1861-1865.png

The causes of the war, reasons for its outcome, and even its name are subjects of lingering contention. The North and West grew wealthy while the once-rich South became poor for a century. The national political power of the slaveowners and rich Southerners ended. Historians are less sure about the results of postwar Reconstruction, especially regarding the second-class citizenship of the freedmen and their poverty.{{sfn|McPherson|1988|p=851}}

Historians have debated whether the Confederacy could have won the war. Most scholars, including James M. McPherson, argue Confederate victory was possible.{{sfn|McPherson|1988|p=855}} McPherson argues that the North's advantage in population and resources made Northern victory likely, but not guaranteed. He argues that if the Confederacy had fought using unconventional tactics, it would have more easily been able to hold out long enough to exhaust the Union. Confederates did not need to invade and hold enemy territory to win, but only to fight a defensive war to convince the North the cost of winning was too high. The North needed to conquer and hold vast stretches of enemy territory and defeat Confederate armies to win. Lincoln was not a military dictator and could fight only as long as the American public supported the war. The Confederacy sought to win independence by outlasting Lincoln; however, after Atlanta fell and Lincoln defeated McClellan in the election of 1864, hope for a political victory for the South ended. Lincoln had secured the support of the Republicans, War Democrats, border states, emancipated slaves, and the neutrality of Britain and France. By defeating the Democrats and McClellan, he defeated the Copperheads, who had wanted a negotiated peace with the Confederacy.{{sfn|McPherson|1988|pp=771–772}}

Some scholars argue the Union held an insurmountable long-term advantage over the Confederacy in industrial strength and population. Confederate actions, they argue, only delayed defeat.{{sfn|Murray|Bernstein|Knox|1996|p=235}}{{sfn|Heidler|Heidler|Coles|2002|pp=1207–1210}} Historian Shelby Foote expressed this view succinctly: {{blockquote|I think that the North fought that war with one hand behind its back .... If there had been more Southern victories, and a lot more, the North simply would have brought that other hand out from behind its back. I don't think the South ever had a chance to win that War.{{sfn|Ward|1990|p=272}}}}

A minority view among historians is that the Confederacy lost because, as E. Merton Coulter put it, "people did not will hard enough and long enough to win".{{sfn|Coulter|1950|p=566}}{{Cite book |last1=Beringer |first1=Richard E. |title=Why the South Lost the Civil War |last2=Hattaway |first2=Herman |last3=Jones |first3=Archer |last4=Still |first4=William N. Jr. |year=1991 |at=ch. 1}} However, most historians reject the argument.{{Cite web |last=Farmer |first=Alan |year=2005 |title=Why was the Confederacy Defeated? |url=http://www.historytoday.com/alan-farmer/why-was-confederacy-defeated |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140323165319/http://www.historytoday.com/alan-farmer/why-was-confederacy-defeated |archive-date=March 23, 2014 |website=History Review |pages=15–20 |via=History Today |issue=52}} McPherson, after reading thousands of letters written by Confederate soldiers, found strong patriotism that continued to the end; they truly believed they were fighting for freedom and liberty. Even as the Confederacy was visibly collapsing in 1864–65, most Confederate soldiers were fighting hard.{{sfn|McPherson|1997|pp=169–172}} Historian Gary Gallagher cites General Sherman, who in early 1864 commented, "The devils seem to have a determination that cannot but be admired." Despite their loss of slaves and wealth, with starvation looming, Sherman continued, "yet I see no sign of let-up—some few deserters—plenty tired of war, but the masses determined to fight it out".{{Cite book |last=Gallagher |first=Gary W. |author-link=Gary W. Gallagher |url={{google books |plainurl=y |id=QHNEtpvEB30C |page=57}} |title=The Confederate War |publisher=Harvard University Press |year=1999 |isbn=978-0-674-16056-9 |location=Cambridge, MA |page=57}}

Also important were Lincoln's eloquence in articulating the national purpose and his skill in keeping the border states committed to the Union cause. The Emancipation Proclamation was an effective use of the president's war powers. The Confederate government failed to get Europe involved militarily. Southern leaders needed to get European powers to help break the blockade the Union had created around Southern ports. Lincoln's naval blockade was 95 percent effective at stopping trade goods; as a result, imports and exports to the South declined significantly. The abundance of European cotton and Britain's hostility to slavery, along with Lincoln's naval blockades, severely decreased any chance that Britain or France would enter the war.{{sfn|McPherson|1988|pp=382–388}}

Historian Don H. Doyle has argued that the Union victory had a major impact on world history.{{sfn|Doyle|2015}} The Union victory energized popular democratic forces. A Confederate victory, on the other hand, would have meant a new birth of slavery, not of freedom. Historian Fergus Bordewich, following Doyle, argues:

{{blockquote|The North's victory decisively proved the durability of democratic government. Confederate independence, on the other hand, would have established an American model for reactionary politics and race-based repression that would likely have cast an international shadow into the 20th century and perhaps beyond.{{Cite web |last=Bordewich |first=Fergus M. |date=February 6, 2015 |title=The World Was Watching: America's Civil War slowly came to be seen as part of a global struggle against oppressive privilege |url=https://www.wsj.com/articles/book-review-the-cause-of-all-nations-by-don-h-doyle-1423260658 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170221081620/https://www.wsj.com/articles/book-review-the-cause-of-all-nations-by-don-h-doyle-1423260658 |archive-date=February 21, 2017 |website=The Wall Street Journal}}}} Scholars have debated what the effects of the war were on political and economic power in the South.{{Cite journal |last1=Dupont |first1=Brandon |last2=Rosenbloom |first2=Joshua L. |year=2018 |title=The Economic Origins of the Postwar Southern Elite |url=https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/econ_las_pubs/644 |journal=Explorations in Economic History |volume=68 |pages=119–131 |doi=10.1016/j.eeh.2017.09.002}} The prevailing view is that the southern planter elite retained its powerful position in the South. However, a 2017 study challenges this, noting that while some Southern elites retained their economic status, the turmoil of the 1860s created greater opportunities for economic mobility in the South, than in the North.

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{{Further|Environmental history of the United States#Civil War}}

Exact casualty figures were collected for the Union, but Confederate records were poorly kept, or lost in the chaos of defeat. Thus, the casualty figures are imprecise and based on statistical extrapolation. Neither side kept a tally of civilian deaths due to the war. In the 19th century, the death toll had been estimated at a lower 620,000. In 2011, the death toll was recalculated based on a 1% sample of census data, yielding approximately 750,000 soldier deaths, 20 percent higher than traditionally estimated, and possibly as high as 850,000.{{Cite web |date=September 22, 2011 |title=U.S. Civil War Took Bigger Toll Than Previously Estimated, New Analysis Suggests |url=https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/09/110921120124.htm |access-date=September 22, 2011 |website=Science Daily}} The figure was recalculated to 698,000 soldier deaths in 2024 after examining newly available full census records. Mortality rates among men were as high as 19 percent in Louisiana, and 16.6–16.7 percent in Georgia and South Carolina respectively.{{Cite web |date=November 19, 2024 |title=Civil War Toll Much Worse in Confederate States, New Estimates Show|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/19/health/civil-war-death-toll.html#selection-835.50-835.66 |access-date=November 27, 2024 |website=archive.ph |archive-url=https://archive.today/20241119193351/https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/19/health/civil-war-death-toll.html#selection-835.50-835.66 |archive-date=November 19, 2024}}{{Cite journal |last1=Barceló |first1=Joan |last2=Jensen |first2=Jeffrey L. |last3=Peisakhin |first3=Leonid |last4=Zhai |first4=Haoyu |date=November 26, 2024 |title=New Estimates of US Civil War mortality from full-census records |journal=Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences |volume=121 |issue=48 |pages=e2414919121 |doi=10.1073/pnas.2414919121 |pmid=39556740 |doi-access=free |pmc=11621511 |bibcode=2024PNAS..12114919B}}

The war resulted in at least 1,030,000 casualties (3 percent of the population), including an estimated 698,000 soldier deaths—two-thirds by disease. Based on 1860 census figures, 8 percent of all white men aged 13–43 died in the war, including 6 percent in the North and 18 percent in the South.{{sfn|Vinovskis|1990|p=7}} About 56,000 soldiers died in prison camps during the War. An estimated 60,000 soldiers lost limbs.{{Cite news |last=Riordan |first=Teresa |date=March 8, 2004 |title=When Necessity Meets Ingenuity: Art of Restoring What's Missing |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/08/business/technology-when-necessity-meets-ingenuity-art-of-restoring-what-s-missing.html |access-date=December 23, 2013 |website=The New York Times |agency=Associated Press}} As McPherson notes, the war's "cost in American lives was as great as in all of the nation's other wars combined through Vietnam".{{Sfn|McPherson|1988|p=854}}

Of the 359,528 Union Army dead, amounting to 15 percent of the over two million who served:

• 110,070 were killed in action (67,000) or died of wounds (43,000).
• 199,790 died of disease (75 percent was due to the war, the remainder would have occurred in civilian life anyway)
• 24,866 died in Confederate prison camps
• 9,058 were killed by accidents or drowning
• 15,741 other/unknown deaths

In addition, there were 4,523 deaths in the Navy (2,112 in battle) and 460 in the Marines (148 in battle).

After the Emancipation Proclamation authorized freed slaves to "be received into the armed service of the United States", former slaves who escaped from plantations or were liberated by the Union Army were recruited into the United States Colored Troops regiments of the Union Army, as were black men who had not been slaves. The U.S. Colored Troops made up 10 percent of the Union death toll—15 percent of Union deaths from disease and less than 3 percent of those killed in battle. Losses among African Americans were high. In the last year and a half and from all reported casualties, approximately 20 percent of all African Americans enrolled in the military died during the war. Their mortality rate was significantly higher than white soldiers. While 15 percent of U.S. Volunteers and just 9 percent of white Regular Army troops died, 21 percent of U.S. Colored Troops died.{{cite journal |first=Herbert |last=Aptheker |author-link=Herbert Aptheker |title=Negro Casualties in the Civil War |journal=The Journal of Negro History |volume=32 |issue=1 |date=January 1947 |pages=10–80 |jstor=2715291 |publisher=University of Chicago Press |doi=10.2307/2715291 |issn=0022-2992}}{{Rp|16}}

File:Burial of the dead on the Antietam battlefield army.mil-2008-09-10-145638.jpg battlefield in 1862]]

While the figures of 360,000 army deaths for the Union and 260,000 for the Confederacy remained commonly cited, they are incomplete. In addition to many Confederate records being missing, partly as a result of Confederate widows not reporting deaths due to being ineligible for benefits, both armies only counted troops who died during their service and not the tens of thousands who died of wounds or diseases after being discharged. This often happened only days or weeks later. Francis Amasa Walker, superintendent of the 1870 census, used census and surgeon general data to estimate a minimum of 500,000 Union military deaths and 350,000 Confederate military deaths, a total of 850,000 soldiers. While Walker's estimates were originally dismissed because of the 1870 census's undercounting, it was later found that the census was only off by 6.5 percent and that the data Walker used would be roughly accurate.

Losses were far higher than during the war with Mexico, which saw roughly 13,000 American deaths, including fewer than two thousand killed in battle, between 1846 and 1848. One reason for the high number of battle deaths in the civil war was the continued use of tactics similar to those of the Napoleonic Wars, such as charging. With the advent of more accurate rifled barrels, Minié balls, and (near the end of the war for the Union) repeating firearms such as the Spencer repeating rifle and the Henry repeating rifle, soldiers were mowed down when standing in lines in the open. This led to the adoption of trench warfare, a style of fighting that defined much of World War I.{{Cite web |title=American Civil War Fortifications |url=https://ospreypublishing.com/american-civil-war-fortifications-2 |website=Osprey}}

Deaths among former slaves has proven hard to estimate, due to the lack of reliable census data, though they were known to be considerable, as former slaves were set free or escaped in massive numbers in areas where the Union army did not have sufficient shelter, doctors, or food for them. Professor Jim Downs states that tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of slaves died during the war from disease, starvation, or exposure, and that if these deaths are counted in the war's total, the death toll would exceed 1 million.Jim Downs, Sick from Freedom: African-American Illness and Suffering during the Civil War and Reconstruction, Oxford University Press, 2012.

It is estimated that during the war, of the equines killed, including horses, mules, donkeys and even confiscated children's ponies, over 32,600 of them belonged to the Union and 45,800 the Confederacy. However, other estimates place the total at 1,000,000.{{Cite web |date=June 25, 2013 |title=The Battle of Gettysburg & the History of the Civil War Horse |url=https://thehorsemenscorral.com/2013/06/25/the-battle-of-gettysburg-the-history-of-the-cival-war-horse/ |access-date=January 2, 2024}}

It is estimated that 544 Confederate flags were captured during the war by the Union. The flags were sent to the War Department in Washington.{{Cite book |title=Southern Historical Society Papers |editor-last=Jones |editor-first=J. William |volume=32 |chapter=1.37: Confederate States' flags |access-date=January 9, 2024 |chapter-url=https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:2001.05.0290:chapter=1.37 |via=Perseus Digital Library}}{{Cite web |title=Returned Flags Booklet, 1905 |url=https://www.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/ket-history-civilwar58/returned-flags-booklet/ |access-date=January 9, 2024 |via=PBS LearningMedia}} The Union flags captured by the Confederates were sent to Richmond.{{citation needed|date=September 2024}}

[[File:Abolition of slavery in the United States SVG map.svg|thumb|upright=2|Abolition of slavery in the various states over time:{{Legend|#84c6c9|Abolition of slavery during or shortly after the American Revolution}}

{{Legend|#7be3de|The Northwest Ordinance, 1787}}

{{Legend|#64e5c5|Gradual emancipation in New York (starting 1799, completed 1827) and New Jersey (starting 1804, completed by Thirteenth Amendment, 1865)}}

{{Legend|#7ab377|The Missouri Compromise, 1821}}

{{Legend|#5f9b4a|Effective abolition of slavery by Mexican or joint U.S./British authority}}

{{Legend|#97cf2d|Abolition of slavery by Congressional action, 1861}}

{{Legend|#c7dd47|Abolition of slavery by Congressional action, 1862}}

{{Legend|#ffe86d|Emancipation Proclamation as originally issued, January 1, 1863}}

{{Legend|#f1c84e|Subsequent operation of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863}}

{{Legend|#d39c59|Abolition of slavery by state action during the Civil War}}

{{Legend|#f7b360|Operation of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1864}}

{{Legend|#f6a89a|Operation of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1865}}

{{Legend|#d3595f|Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. constitution, December 18, 1865}}

{{Legend|#bca4b1|Territory incorporated into the U.S. after the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment}}]]

Abolishing slavery was not a Union war goal from the outset, but quickly became one.{{Sfn|McPherson|1988|pp=vii–viii}} Lincoln's initial claims were that preserving the Union was the central goal.{{sfn|Foner|2010|p=74}} In contrast, the South fought to preserve slavery.{{Sfn|McPherson|1988|pp=vii–viii}} While not all Southerners saw themselves as fighting for slavery, most officers and over a third of the rank and file in Lee's army had close family ties to slavery. To Northerners, the motivation was primarily to preserve the Union, not to abolish slavery.{{sfn|Foner|1981|p={{page needed|date=September 2024}}}} However, as the war dragged on, and it became clear slavery was central to the conflict, and that emancipation was (to quote the Emancipation Proclamation) "a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing [the] rebellion," Lincoln and his cabinet made ending slavery a war goal, culminating in the Emancipation Proclamation.{{Sfn|McPherson|1988|pp=vii–viii}}{{sfn|McPherson|1988|pp=506–508}} Lincoln's decision to issue the Proclamation angered Peace Democrats ("Copperheads") and War Democrats, but energized most Republicans.{{sfn|McPherson|1988|pp=506–508}} By warning that free blacks would flood the North, Democrats made gains in the 1862 elections, but they did not gain control of Congress. The Republicans' counterargument that slavery was the mainstay of the enemy steadily gained support, with the Democrats losing decisively in the 1863 elections in the Northern state of Ohio, when they tried to resurrect anti-black sentiment.{{sfn|McPherson|1988|p=686}}

{{Main|Emancipation Proclamation}}

The Emancipation Proclamation legally freed the slaves in states "in rebellion," but, as a practical matter, slavery for the 3.5 million black people in the South effectively ended in each area when Union armies arrived. The last Confederate slaves were freed on June 19, 1865, celebrated as the modern holiday of Juneteenth. Slaves in the border states and those in some former Confederate territory occupied before the Emancipation Proclamation were freed by state action or (on December 6, 1865) by the Thirteenth Amendment.{{Cite news |last=Cathey |first=Libby |date=June 17, 2021 |title=Biden signs bill making Juneteenth, marking the end of slavery, a federal holiday |url=https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/biden-sign-bill-making-juneteenth-federal-holiday-commemorating/story?id=78335485 |access-date=June 17, 2021 |work=ABC News}}Claudia Goldin, "The economics of emancipation." The Journal of Economic History 33#1 (1973): 66–85. The Emancipation Proclamation enabled African Americans, both free blacks and escaped slaves, to join the Union Army. About 190,000 volunteered, further enhancing the numerical advantage the Union armies enjoyed over the Confederates, who did not dare emulate the equivalent manpower source for fear of undermining the legitimacy of slavery.{{efn|In spite of the South's shortage of soldiers, most Southern leaders—until 1865—opposed enlisting slaves. They used them as laborers to support the war effort. As Howell Cobb said, "If slaves will make good soldiers our whole theory of slavery is wrong." Confederate generals Patrick Cleburne and Robert E. Lee argued in favor of arming blacks late in the war, and Jefferson Davis was eventually persuaded to support plans for arming slaves to avoid military defeat. The Confederacy surrendered at Appomattox before this plan could be implemented.{{sfn|McPherson|1988|pp=831–837}}}}

During the war, sentiment concerning slaves, enslavement, and emancipation in the United States was divided. Lincoln's fears of making slavery a war issue were based on a harsh reality: abolition did not enjoy wide support in the west, the territories, and the border states.{{Sfn|Donald|1995|pp=417–419}} In 1861, Lincoln worried that premature attempts at emancipation would mean the loss of the border states, and that "to lose Kentucky is nearly the same as to lose the whole game".{{multiref2 |Lincoln's letter to O. H. Browning, September 22, 1861. | {{harvnb|Wittke|1952|p={{page needed|date=September 2024}}}}. "Sentiment among German Americans was largely antislavery especially among Forty-Eighters, resulting in hundreds of thousands of German Americans volunteering to fight for the Union." | {{harvnb|Keller|2009}}. | for primary sources, see Walter D. Kamphoefner and Wolfgang Helbich, eds., Germans in the Civil War: The Letters They Wrote Home (2006). "On the other hand, many of the recent immigrants in the North viewed freed slaves as competition for scarce jobs, and as the reason why the Civil War was being fought." | {{harvnb|Baker|2003}}. "Due in large part to this fierce competition with free blacks for labor opportunities, the poor and working class Irish Catholics generally opposed emancipation. When the draft began in the summer of 1863, they launched a major riot in New York City that was suppressed by the military, as well as much smaller protests in other cities." | {{harvnb|Schecter|2007|loc=ch. 6}}. "Many Catholics in the North had volunteered to fight in 1861, sending thousands of soldiers to the front and suffering high casualties, especially at Fredericksburg; their volunteering fell off after 1862."}} Copperheads and some War Democrats opposed emancipation, although the latter eventually accepted it as part of the total war needed to save the Union.{{sfn|Baker|2003}}

At first, Lincoln reversed attempts at emancipation by Secretary of War Simon Cameron and Generals John C. Frémont and David Hunter, to keep the loyalty of the border states and the War Democrats. Lincoln warned the border states that a more radical type of emancipation would happen if his plan of gradual compensated emancipation and voluntary colonization was rejected.McPherson, James M., "Lincoln and the Strategy of Unconditional Surrender", in Boritt, Gabor S. (ed.). Lincoln, the War President, pp. 52–54; also in McPherson, James M., Abraham Lincoln and the Second American Revolution, pp. 83–85. But compensated emancipation occurred only in the District of Columbia, where Congress had the power to enact it. When Lincoln told his cabinet about his proposed emancipation proclamation, which would apply to the states still in rebellion on January 1, 1863, Seward advised Lincoln to wait for a Union military victory before issuing it, as to do otherwise would seem like "our last shriek on the retreat".Oates, Stephen B., Abraham Lincoln: The Man Behind the Myths, p. 106. Walter Stahr, however, writes, "There are contemporary sources, however, that suggest others were involved in the decision to delay", and Stahr quotes them.Stahr, Walter, Stanton: Lincoln's War Secretary, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2017, p. 226.

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Lincoln laid the groundwork for public support in an open letter published in response to Horace Greeley's "The Prayer of Twenty Millions"; the letter stated that Lincoln's goal was to save the Union, and that, if he freed the slaves, it would be as a means to that end.{{Cite web |date=June 14, 2022 |title=Horace Greeley (1811–1872). "The Prayer of Twenty Millions". Stedman and Hutchinson, eds. 1891. A Library of American Literature: An Anthology in 11 Volumes |url=https://www.bartleby.com/400/prose/1279.html |website=www.bartleby.com}}Lincoln's letter was published first in the Washington National Intelligencer on August 23, 1862. Holzer, Harold, Lincoln and the Power of the Press: The War for Public Opinion, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014, p. 401.{{cite Q|Q116965145}} He also had a meeting at the White House with five African American representatives on August 14, 1862. Arranging for a reporter to be present, he urged his visitors to agree to the voluntary colonization of black people. Lincoln's motive for both his letter to Greeley and his statement to the black visitors was apparently to make his forthcoming Emancipation Proclamation more palatable to racist white people.White, Jonathan W., A House Built by Slaves: African American Visitors to the Lincoln White House, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2022, ch. 3. A Union victory in the Battle of Antietam on September 17, 1862, provided Lincoln with an opportunity to issue the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, and the War Governors' Conference added support for the proclamation.Pulling, Sr. Anne Frances, Altoona: Images of America, Arcadia Publishing, 2001, 10.

Lincoln issued his preliminary Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, 1862. It stated that slaves in all states in rebellion on January 1, 1863, would be free. He issued his final Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, keeping his promise. In his letter to Albert G. Hodges, Lincoln explained his belief that "If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong .... And yet I have never understood that the Presidency conferred upon me an unrestricted right to act officially upon this judgment and feeling ... I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me."Lincoln's Letter to A. G. Hodges, April 4, 1864.{{efn|In late March 1864 Lincoln met with Governor Bramlette, Archibald Dixon, and Albert G. Hodges, to discuss recruitment of African American soldiers in the state of Kentucky. In a letter dated April 4, 1864, Lincoln summarized his stance on slavery, at Hodges' request.{{Cite web |title=Lincoln Lore – Albert G. Hodges |url=https://apps.legislature.ky.gov/LegislativeMoments/moments08RS/49_web_leg_moments.htm |access-date=January 20, 2022 |website=Kentucky Legislature}}}}

Lincoln's moderate approach succeeded in inducing the border states to remain in the Union and War Democrats to support the Union. The border states, which included Kentucky, Missouri, Maryland, Delaware, and Union-controlled regions around New Orleans, Norfolk, Virginia, and elsewhere, were not covered by the Emancipation Proclamation. Nor was Tennessee, which had come under Union control.{{Cite web |title=Andrew Johnson and Emancipation in Tennessee – Andrew Johnson National Historic Site |url=https://www.nps.gov/anjo/learn/historyculture/johnson-and-tn-emancipation.htm |website=National Park Service}} Missouri and Maryland abolished slavery on their own; Kentucky and Delaware did not.{{Cite web |last=Harper |first=Douglas |year=2003 |title=Slavery in Delaware |url=http://www.slavenorth.com/delaware.htm |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071016062740/http://slavenorth.com/delaware.htm |archive-date=October 16, 2007 |access-date=October 16, 2007}} Still, the proclamation did not enjoy universal support. It caused much unrest in what were then considered western states, where racist sentiments led to a great fear of abolition. There was some concern that the proclamation would lead to the secession of western states, and its issuance prompted the stationing of Union troops in Illinois in case of rebellion.{{Sfn|Donald|1995|pp=417–419}}

Since the Emancipation Proclamation was based on the president's war powers, it applied only in territory held by Confederates at the time it was issued. However, the Proclamation became a symbol of the Union's growing commitment to add emancipation to the Union's definition of liberty.{{Cite magazine |last=McPherson |first=James |author-link=James M. McPherson |date=March 1990 |title=A War that Never Goes Away |url=https://www.americanheritage.com/war-never-goes-away |magazine=American Heritage Magazine |volume=41 |issue=2}} The Emancipation Proclamation greatly reduced the Confederacy's hope of being recognized or otherwise aided by Britain or France.{{sfn|Asante|Mazama|2004|p=82}} By late 1864, Lincoln was playing a leading role in getting the House of Representatives to vote for the Thirteenth Amendment, which mandated the ending of chattel slavery.{{sfn|Holzer|Gabbard|2007|pp=172–174}}

{{Main|Reconstruction era}}

File:Freedmen richmond sewing women.jpg, Northern teachers traveled into the South to provide education and training for the newly freed population.]]

The war devastated the South and posed serious questions of how it would be reintegrated into the Union. The war destroyed much of the South's wealth, in part because wealth held in enslaved people (at least $1,000 each for a healthy adult prior to the war) was wiped off the books.{{Cite magazine |last=Rhodes-Pitts |first=Sharifa |date=October 9, 2014 |title=The Worth of Black Men, From Slavery to Ferguson |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/12/magazine/the-worth-of-black-men-from-slavery-to-ferguson.html |access-date=December 25, 2023 |magazine=The New York Times Magazine |issn=0362-4331}} All accumulated investment in Confederate bonds was forfeited; most banks and railroads were bankrupt. The income per person dropped to less than 40 percent of that of the North, and that lasted into the 20th century. Southern influence in the federal government, previously considerable, was greatly diminished until the second half of the 20th century. Reconstruction began during the war, with the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1863, and it continued until 1877.Hans L. Trefousse, Historical Dictionary of Reconstruction (Greenwood, 1991) covers all the main events and leaders. It comprised multiple complex methods to resolve the outstanding issues of the aftermath, the most important of which were the three "Reconstruction Amendments" to the Constitution: the 13th outlawing slavery (1865), the 14th guaranteeing citizenship to former slaves (1868), and the 15th prohibiting the denial of voting rights "on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude" (1870). From the Union perspective, the goals of Reconstruction were to consolidate victory by reuniting the Union, to guarantee a "republican form of government" for the ex-Confederate states, and to permanently end slavery—and prevent semi-slavery status.Eric Foner's A Short History of Reconstruction (1990) is a brief survey—an abridgement of his Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877 (1988).

President Johnson, who took office in April 1865, took a lenient approach and saw the achievement of the main war goals as realized in 1865, when each ex-rebel state repudiated secession and ratified the Thirteenth Amendment. Radical Republicans demanded proof that Confederate nationalism was dead and that the slaves were truly free. They overrode Johnson's vetoes of civil rights legislation, and the House impeached him, although the Senate did not convict him. In 1868 and 1872, the Republican candidate Grant won the presidency. In 1872, the "Liberal Republicans" argued that the war goals had been achieved and Reconstruction should end. They chose Horace Greeley to head a presidential ticket in 1872 but were decisively defeated. In 1874, Democrats, primarily Southern, took control of Congress and opposed further reconstruction. The Compromise of 1877 closed with a national consensus, except on the part of former slaves, that the war had finally ended.C. Vann Woodward, Reunion and Reaction: The Compromise of 1877 and the End of Reconstruction (2nd ed. 1991). With the withdrawal of federal troops, however, whites retook control of every Southern legislature, and the Jim Crow era of disenfranchisement and legal segregation was ushered in.{{Cite book |last1=Williams |first1=Susan Millar |title=Upheaval in Charleston: Earthquake and Murder on the Eve of Jim Crow |last2=Hoffius |first2=Stephen G. |year=2011 |publisher=University of Georgia Press |isbn=978-0-8203-3715-9 |jstor=j.ctt46nc9q}}

The war had a demonstrable impact on American politics. Many veterans on both sides were elected to political office, including five U.S. Presidents: Ulysses Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, James A. Garfield, Benjamin Harrison, and William McKinley.{{Cite web |title=Presidents Who Were Civil War Veterans |url=https://www.essentialcivilwarcurriculum.com/presidents-who-were-civil-war-veterans.html |website=Essential Civil War Curriculum}}

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The war is a central event in American collective memory. There are innumerable statues, commemorations, books, and archival collections. The memory includes the home front, military affairs, the treatment of soldiers, both living and dead, in the war's aftermath, depictions of the war in literature and art, evaluations of heroes and villains, and considerations of the moral and political lessons of the war. The last theme includes moral evaluations of racism and slavery, heroism in combat and behind the lines, and issues of democracy and minority rights, as well as the notion of an "Empire of Liberty" influencing the world.

Historians have paid more attention to the causes of the war than to the war itself. Military history has largely developed outside academia, leading to a proliferation of studies by non-scholars who nevertheless are familiar with the primary sources and pay close attention to battles and campaigns and who write for the general public.{{sfn|Woodworth|1996|p=208}}{{Cite book |last=Cushman |first=Stephen |url={{google books |plainurl=y |id=95l6BAAAQBAJ |page=5}} |title=Belligerent Muse: Five Northern Writers and How They Shaped Our Understanding of the Civil War |publisher=University of North Carolina Press |year=2014 |isbn=978-1-4696-1878-4 |pages=5–6}} Practically every major figure in the war, both North and South, has had a serious biographical study.{{citation needed|date=September 2024|reason=Previous source "Provides short biographies and historiographical summaries."}}

Even the name used for the conflict has been controversial, with many names used for it. During and immediately after the war, Northern historians often used a term like "War of the Rebellion". Writers in rebel states often referred to the "War for Southern Independence". Some Southerners have described it as the "War of Northern Aggression".{{cite Q|Q118746838 |pages=385–398}}

{{Main|Lost Cause of the Confederacy}}

The memory of the war in the white South crystallized in the myth of the "Lost Cause": that the Confederate cause was just and heroic. The myth shaped regional identity and race relations for generations. Alan T. Nolan notes that the Lost Cause was expressly a rationalization, a cover-up to vindicate the name and fame of those in rebellion. Some claims revolve around the insignificance of slavery as a cause; some appeals highlight cultural differences between North and South; the military conflict by Confederate actors is idealized; in any case, secession was said to be lawful.{{sfn|Nolan|2000|pp=14–19}} Nolan argues that the adoption of the Lost Cause perspective facilitated the reunification of the North and the South while excusing the "virulent racism" of the 19th century, sacrificing black American progress to white man's reunification. He also deems the Lost Cause "a caricature of the truth. This caricature wholly misrepresents and distorts the facts of the matter" in every instance.{{sfn|Nolan|2000|pp=28–29}} The Lost Cause myth was formalized by Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard, whose The Rise of American Civilization (1927) spawned "Beardian historiography". The Beards downplayed slavery, abolitionism, and issues of morality. Though this interpretation was abandoned by the Beards in the 1940s, and by historians generally by the 1950s, Beardian themes still echo among Lost Cause writers.Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard, The Rise of American Civilization (1927), 2:54.{{Cite book |last=Hofstadter |first=Richard |url={{google books |plainurl=y |id=iLdMzbv2IDQC |page=459}} |title=Progressive Historians |publisher=Knopf Doubleday |year=2012 |isbn=978-0-307-80960-5 |page=304 |orig-year=1968}}{{additional citation needed|reason=Pinning the "formalization" of the Lost Cause myth on the Beards is a very bold claim; at best, other sources state that their orthogonal economic perspective served as an element for others to synthesize.|date=July 2023}}

The United Daughters of the Confederacy

The United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) is a Southern heritage organization founded in 1894 in Nashville, Tennessee, by a group of women whose stated mission was to honor Confederate veterans and preserve their memory. The organization quickly grew in influence during the late 19th and early 20th centuries and ended up playing a pivotal role in shaping the collective memory of the American Civil War.

The UDC focused on erecting Confederate monuments, funding the education of Confederate descendants, and promoting Confederate history through textbooks and public ceremonies. The group emphasized the valor of Confederate soldiers and the righteousness of the Southern cause, often omitting or downplaying the central role of slavery in the conflict.

The UDC became a major proponent of the Lost Cause ideology, a narrative that romanticized the Confederacy as a noble, states'-rights-driven effort rather than a rebellion to preserve slavery. Through speeches, publications, and curriculum influence, the UDC worked to recast the Confederacy in a sympathetic light, framing the Civil War as a struggle against Northern aggression.

This effort contributed to the widespread proliferation of Confederate symbols and a sanitized portrayal of Southern history in public spaces and schools. Critics argue that the UDC's activities perpetuated racist ideologies by fostering nostalgia for the antebellum South and minimizing the horrors of slavery.

In recent years, the role of the UDC and the Lost Cause myth has come under scrutiny amid debates over Confederate monuments and systemic racism in the United States. Many of the monuments and historical markers the UDC sponsored have been reevaluated and removed, sparking ongoing discussions about memory, heritage, and justice.

{{Main|American Civil War battlefield preservation}}

File:Civil War centennial issues.jpg released commemorative stamps for five famous battles, each issued on the 100th anniversary of the respective battle.]]

The first efforts at Civil War battlefield preservation and memorialization came during the war, with the establishment of National Cemeteries at Gettysburg, Mill Springs and Chattanooga. Soldiers began erecting markers on battlefields beginning with the First Battle of Bull Run in 1861. The oldest surviving monument is the Hazen Brigade Monument near Murfreesboro in Central Tennessee, built in the summer of 1863 by soldiers in Union Col. William B. Hazen's brigade to mark the spot where they buried their dead, following the Battle of Stones River.{{Cite news |last=West |first=Mike |date=April 27, 2007 |title=Hazen's Monument a rare, historic treasure |url=https://www.murfreesboropost.com/community/hazen-s-monument-a-rare-historic-treasure/article_0498c498-c95b-5569-8d8a-ce0830be17d7.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181118185935/https://www.murfreesboropost.com/community/hazen-s-monument-a-rare-historic-treasure/article_0498c498-c95b-5569-8d8a-ce0830be17d7.html |archive-date=November 18, 2018 |access-date=May 30, 2018 |work=Murfreesboro Post}}

In the 1890s, the government established five Civil War battlefield parks under the jurisdiction of the War Department, beginning with the creation of the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park at Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia, and the Antietam National Battlefield in Sharpsburg, Maryland, in 1890. The Shiloh National Military Park was established in 1894 in Shiloh, Tennessee, followed by the Gettysburg National Military Park in 1895, and Vicksburg National Military Park in 1899. In 1933, these five parks and other national monuments were transferred to the National Park Service.Timothy B. Smith, "The Golden Age of Battlefield Preservation" (2008; The University of Tennessee Press). Chief among modern efforts to preserve Civil War sites has been the American Battlefield Trust, with more than 130 battlefields in 24 states.Bob Zeller, "Fighting the Second Civil War: A History of Battlefield Preservation and the Emergence of the Civil War Trust", (2017: Knox Press){{Cite web |title=Saved Land |url=https://www.battlefields.org/preserve/saved-land |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190812162007/https://www.battlefields.org/preserve/saved-land |archive-date=August 12, 2019 |access-date=May 30, 2018 |publisher=American Battlefield Trust}} The five major battlefield parks operated by the National Park Service had a combined 3 million visitors in 2018, down 70% from 10 million in 1970.{{Cite news |last=McWhirter |first=Cameron |date=May 25, 2019 |title=Civil War Battlefields Lose Ground as Tourist Draws |url=https://www.wsj.com/articles/civil-war-battlefields-lose-ground-as-tourist-draws-11558776600?mod=searchresults&page=1&pos=2 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191010233320/https://www.wsj.com/articles/civil-war-battlefields-lose-ground-as-tourist-draws-11558776600?mod=searchresults&page=1&pos=2 |archive-date=October 10, 2019 |work=The Wall Street Journal}}

{{Further|Commemoration of the American Civil War|Commemoration of the American Civil War on postage stamps}}

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The Civil War has been commemorated in many capacities, ranging from the reenactment of battles to statues and memorial halls erected, films, stamps and coins with Civil War themes being issued, all of which helped to shape public memory. These commemorations occurred in greater numbers on the 100th and 150th anniversaries of the war.

Hollywood's take on the war has been especially influential in shaping public memory, as in such film classics as The Birth of a Nation (1915), Gone with the Wind (1939), and Lincoln (2012). Ken Burns's PBS television series The Civil War (1990) is well-remembered, though criticized for its historical inaccuracy.{{Cite web |title=Debate over Ken Burns Civil War doc continues over decades |url=https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2017/nov/04/debate-over-ken-burns-civil-war-doc-continues-over/ |access-date=May 4, 2020 |website=The Spokesman-Review}}{{Cite magazine |last=Merritt |first=Keri Leigh |title=Why We Need a New Civil War Documentary |url=https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/why-we-need-new-civil-war-documentary-180971996/ |access-date=May 4, 2020 |magazine=Smithsonian Magazine}}

Technological innovations during the war had a great impact on 19th-century science. The war was an early example of an "industrial war", in which technological might is used to achieve military supremacy.{{Cite book |last1=Bailey |first1=Thomas |title=The American Pageant |last2=Kennedy |first2=David |year=1987 |page=434}}{{full citation needed|date=August 2024 |reason=Several volumes, several editions, none with this date.}} New inventions, such as the train and telegraph, delivered soldiers, supplies and messages at a time when horses had been the fastest way to travel.{{Cite journal |last=Dome |first=Steam |year=1974 |title=A Civil War Iron Clad Car |journal=Railroad History |publisher=The Railway & Locomotive Historical Society |volume=130 |issue=Spring 1974 |pages=51–53}}William Rattle Plum, The Military Telegraph During the Civil War in the United States, Christopher H. Sterling (ed.) (New York: Arno Press, 1974) vol. 1 p. 63. It was also in this war that aerial warfare, in the form of reconnaissance balloons, was first used.{{Cite book |last=Buckley |first=John |url={{google books |plainurl=y |id=YSSPAgAAQBAJ |page=6}} |title=Air Power in the Age of Total War |publisher=Routledge |year=2006 |isbn=978-1-135-36275-1 |pages=6, 24}} It saw the first action involving steam-powered ironclad warships in naval warfare history.Sondhaus, Naval Warfare 1815–1914 p. 77. Repeating firearms such as the Henry rifle, Spencer rifle, Colt revolving rifle, Triplett & Scott carbine and others, first appeared during the Civil War; they were a revolutionary invention that would soon replace muzzle-loading and single-shot firearms. The war saw the first appearances of rapid-firing weapons and machine guns such as the Agar gun and Gatling gun.{{sfn|Keegan|2009|p=75}}

File:The Peacemakers 1868.jpg by George Peter Alexander Healy portrays, from left to right, Sherman, Grant, Lincoln, and Porter discussing plans for the last weeks of the Civil War aboard the steamer River Queen in March 1865. It currently hangs in the Oval Office dining room.|alt=Painting of four men conferring in a ship's cabin, entitled "The Peacemakers".]]

The Civil War is one of the most studied events in American history, and the collection of cultural works around it is enormous.{{Cite book |last=Hutchison |first=Coleman |url={{google books |plainurl=y |id=ovYTCwAAQBAJ |page=278}} |title=A History of American Civil War Literature |publisher=Cambridge University Press |year=2015 |isbn=978-1-316-43241-9}} This section gives an abbreviated overview of the most notable works.

• When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd and O Captain! My Captain! (1865) by Walt Whitman, famous eulogies to Lincoln
• Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War (1866) poetry by Herman Melville
• The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government (1881) by Jefferson Davis
• The Private History of a Campaign That Failed (1885) by Mark Twain
• Texar's Revenge, or, North Against South (1887) by Jules Verne
• An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (1890) by Ambrose Bierce
• The Red Badge of Courage (1895) by Stephen Crane
• The Challenge to Sirius (1917) by Sheila Kaye-Smith
• Gone with the Wind (1936) by Margaret Mitchell
• North and South (1982) by John Jakes
• The March: A Novel (2005) by E. L. Doctorow, fictionalized account of Sherman's March to the Sea

{{colbegin|colwidth=25em}}

• The Birth of a Nation (1915, U.S.)
• The General (1926, U.S.)
• Operator 13 (1934, U.S.)
• Gone with the Wind (1939, U.S.)
• The Red Badge of Courage (1951, U.S.)
• The Horse Soldiers (1959, U.S.)
• Shenandoah (1965, U.S.)
• The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966, Italy-Spain-FRG)
• The Beguiled (1971, U.S.)
• The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976, U.S.)
• North and South (miniseries; 1985–1994, U.S.)
• Glory (1989, U.S.)
• The Civil War (1990, U.S.)
• Gettysburg (1993, U.S.)
• The Last Outlaw (1993, U.S.)
• Cold Mountain (2003, U.S.)
• Gods and Generals (2003, U.S.)
• Lincoln (2012, U.S.)
• Free State of Jones (2016, U.S.)

{{colend}}

{{See also|Music of the American Civil War}}

{{colbegin|colwidth=28em}}

• "Dixie"
• "Battle Cry of Freedom"
• "Battle Hymn of the Republic"
• "The Bonnie Blue Flag"
• "John Brown's Body"
• "When Johnny Comes Marching Home"
• "Marching Through Georgia"
• "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down"

{{colend}}

{{colbegin}}

• North & South (1989, France)
• Sid Meier's Gettysburg! (1997, U.S.)
• Sid Meier's Antietam! (1999, U.S.)
• American Conquest: Divided Nation (2006, U.S.)
• Forge of Freedom: The American Civil War (2006, U.S.)
• The History Channel: Civil War – A Nation Divided (2006, U.S.)
• AGEOD's American Civil War (2007, U.S./France)
• History Civil War: Secret Missions (2008, U.S.)
• Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood (2009, U.S.)
• Darkest of Days (2009, U.S.)
• Victoria II: A House Divided (2011, U.S.)
• AGEOD's American Civil War II (2013, U.S./France)
• Ultimate General: Gettysburg (2014, Ukraine)
• Ultimate General: Civil War (2016, Ukraine)
• War of Rights (TBD, U.S.)

{{colend}}

{{stack|{{portal|American Civil War}}}}

• American Civil War by state
• Foreign enlistment in the American Civil War
• African Americans in the American Civil War
• German Americans in the American Civil War
• Hispanics in the American Civil War
• Irish Americans in the American Civil War
• Italian Americans in the Civil War
• Native Americans in the American Civil War
• Cherokee
• Choctaw
• Outline of the American Civil War
• Removal of Confederate monuments and memorials

{{reflist|30em|group=lower-alpha}}

{{reflist|24em|refs=

{{Cite web |title=Abraham Lincoln: Proclamation 83 – Increasing the Size of the Army and Navy |url=http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=70123 |access-date=November 3, 2011 |publisher=Presidency.ucsb.edu}}

{{Cite web |last=Nofi |first=Al |author-link=Albert Nofi |date=June 13, 2001 |title=Statistics on the War's Costs |url=http://www.cwc.lsu.edu/other/stats/warcost.htm |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070711050249/http://www.cwc.lsu.edu/other/stats/warcost.htm |archive-date=July 11, 2007 |access-date=October 14, 2007 |publisher=Louisiana State University}}

{{Cite journal |last=Fehrenbacher |first=Don |year=2004 |title=Lincoln's Wartime Leadership: The First Hundred Days |url=http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=jala;view=text;rgn=main;idno=2629860.0009.103 |journal=Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association |publisher=University of Illinois |volume=9 |issue=1 |access-date=October 16, 2007}}

David W. Blight (2001) Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory.

Stephen B. Oates, The Approaching Fury: Voices of the Storm 1820–1861, p. 125.

{{Cite web |title=Manufactures of the United States in 1860; Compiled from the original returns of the Eight Census |url=http://www2.census.gov/prod2/decennial/documents/1860c-01.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170817153653/https://www2.census.gov/prod2/decennial/documents/1860c-01.pdf |archive-date=August 17, 2017}}

Carter, Susan B. (ed.). The Historical Statistics of the United States: Millennial Edition (5 vols), 2006.

Snell, Mark A. (2011), West Virginia and the Civil War, History Press, Charleston, SC, p. 28.

Gabor S. Boritt (ed.). Why the Confederacy Lost.

Gaines M. Foster (1988), Ghosts of the Confederacy: Defeat, the Lost Cause and the Emergence of the New South, 1865–1913.

Joan Waugh and Gary W. Gallagher, eds. (2009), Wars within a War: Controversy and Conflict over the American Civil War (University of North Carolina Press).

Curry, Richard Orr (1964), A House Divided: A Study of the Statehood Politics and the Copperhead Movement in West Virginia, University of Pittsburgh Press, map on p. 49.

Robert Fantina, Desertion and the American Soldier, 1776–2006 (2006), p. 74.

{{Cite news |date=March 31, 2011 |title=Finally Passing |url=http://www.economist.com/node/18486035?story_id=18486035 |url-access=registration |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110420045142/http://www.economist.com/node/18486035?story_id=18486035 |archive-date=April 20, 2011 |newspaper=The Economist |pages=23–25}}

Gary Gallagher, Causes Won, Lost, and Forgotten: How Hollywood and Popular Art Shape What We Know about the Civil War (Univ of North Carolina Press, 2008).

Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address, Monday, March 4, 1861.

Eugene Murdock, One Million Men: the Civil War draft in the North (1971).

{{Cite web |last=Yancey Hall |date=July 1, 2003 |title=U.S. Civil War Prison Camps Claimed Thousands |url=http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/07/0701_030701_civilwarprisons.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20030707041320/http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/07/0701_030701_civilwarprisons.html |archive-date=July 7, 2003 |website=National Geographic News}}

Nevins, The War for the Union (1959), 1:119–129.

Nevins, The War for the Union (1959), 1:129–136.

Allan Nevins, War for the Union 1862–1863, pp. 263–264.

{{Cite news |last=Hacker |first=J. David |date=September 20, 2011 |title=Recounting the Dead |url=http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/20/recounting-the-dead/ |url-access=subscription |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110925090025/http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/20/recounting-the-dead/ |archive-date=September 25, 2011 |access-date=September 22, 2011 |work=The New York Times |agency=Associated Press}}

Richard Wightman Fox (2008). "[https://web.archive.org/web/20110716083839/http://www.slate.com/toolbar.aspx?action=read&id=2180856 National Life After Death]". Slate.

Bruce Catton, Terrible Swift Sword, pp. 263–296.

{{Cite web |last=Buchanan |first=James |date=December 3, 1860 |title=Fourth Annual Message |url=http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=29501 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081220011320/http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=29501 |archive-date=December 20, 2008 |access-date=November 28, 2012 |via=The American Presidency Project}}

{{Cite web |last=Lincoln |first=Abraham |date=April 11, 1865 |others=Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley |title=Proclamation 128—Claiming Equality of Rights with All Maritime Nations |url=https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/202896 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221116151716/https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/proclamation-128-claiming-equality-rights-with-all-maritime-nations |archive-date=November 16, 2022 |access-date=July 25, 2022 |website=The American Presidency Project |publisher=University of California, Santa Barbara}} The proclamation did not use the term "belligerent rights".

{{Cite web |last=Johnson |first=Andrew |date=May 10, 1865 |others=Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley |title=Proclamation 132—Ordering the Arrest of Insurgent Cruisers |url=https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/203414 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221116151715/https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/proclamation-132-ordering-the-arrest-insurgent-cruisers |archive-date=November 16, 2022 |access-date=July 25, 2022 |website=The American Presidency Project |publisher=University of California, Santa Barbara}} The proclamation did not use the term "belligerent rights".

}}

{{Main|Bibliography of the American Civil War|Bibliography of early American naval history#American Civil War|label2=Bibliography of American Civil War naval history}}

{{refbegin|30em}}

• {{Cite book |last=Anderson |first=Bern |url={{google books |plainurl=y |id=41-3swEACAAJ}} |title=By Sea and By River: The naval history of the Civil War |publisher=Hachette |year=1989 |isbn=978-0-306-80367-3}}
• {{Cite book |last1=Asante |first1=Molefi Kete |url={{google books |plainurl=y |id=RcBkDlJ7qjwC |page=82}} |title=Encyclopedia of Black Studies |last2=Mazama |first2=Ama |publisher=SAGE |year=2004 |isbn=978-0-7619-2762-4 |location=Thousand Oaks, CA}}
• {{Cite magazine |last=Baker |first=Kevin |date=February–March 2003 |title=Violent City |url=http://americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/ah/2003/1/2003_1_17.shtml |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101019000238/http://americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/ah/2003/1/2003_1_17.shtml |archive-date=October 19, 2010 |access-date=July 29, 2010 |magazine=American Heritage Magazine |volume=54 |issue=1}}
• {{Cite journal |last=Blair |first=William A. |year=2015 |title=Finding the Ending of America's Civil War |journal=The American Historical Review |publisher=Oxford University Press |volume=120 |issue=5 |pages=1753–1766 |doi=10.1093/ahr/120.5.1753 |issn=0002-8762 |jstor=43697075}}
• {{Cite book |last=Bradley |first=Mark L. |url=https://history.army.mil/html/books/075/75-17/cmhPub_75-17.pdf |title=The Civil War Ends |year=2015 |publisher=US Army, Center of Military History |access-date=May 26, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220526083556/https://history.army.mil/html/books/075/75-17/cmhPub_75-17.pdf |archive-date=May 26, 2022 |url-status=dead}}
• {{Cite book |last=Canney |first=Donald L. |url={{google books |plainurl=y |id=o_fB_SD5QhIC}} |title=Lincoln's Navy: The Ships, Men and Organization, 1861–65 |publisher=Naval Institute Press |year=1998 |isbn=978-1-55750-519-4 |location=Annapolis, MD}}
• {{Cite book |last1=Chambers |first1=John W. |url={{google books |plainurl=y |id=_Rzy_yNMKbcC}} |title=The Oxford Companion to American Military History |last2=Anderson |first2=Fred |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=1999 |isbn=978-0-19-507198-6}}
• {{Cite book |last=Catton |first=Bruce |author-link=Bruce Catton |title=The Centennial History of the Civil War |volume=3: Never Call Retreat |year=1965 |publisher=Doubleday |location=Garden City, NY}}
• {{Cite book |last=Coulter |first=E. Merton |url={{google books |plainurl=y |id=Z2_ZM0dWVrsC |page=308}} |title=The Confederate States of America, 1861–1865: A History of the South |publisher=Louisiana State University Press |year=1950 |isbn=978-0-8071-0007-3}}
• {{Cite book |last=Davis |first=Jefferson |author-link=Jefferson Davis |title=The Rise And Fall Of The Confederate Government |date=1881 |publisher=D. Appleton & Co. |volume=II |location=New York |oclc=1249017603}}
• {{Cite book |last=Dinçaslan |first=M. Bahadırhan |title=Amerikan İç Savaşı El Kitabı |publisher=Altınordu Yayınları Press |year=2022 |isbn=978-6-257-61066-7 |location=Ankara |language=tr |trans-title=American Civil War Handbook}}
• {{Cite book |last=Donald |first=David Herbert |author-link=David Herbert Donald |title=Lincoln |publisher=Simon & Schuster |year=1995 |isbn=978-0-684-80846-8 |location=New York}}
• {{Cite book |last=Doyle |first=Don H. |title=The Cause of All Nations: An International History of the American Civil War |year=2015 |publisher=Basic |location=New York}}
• {{Cite book |last=Draper |first=John William |author-link=John William Draper |url=https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.278844 |title=History of the American Civil War |year=1870 |publisher=Harper & Brothers |volume=3 |location=New York |oclc=830251756 |access-date=July 28, 2022}}
• {{Cite book |last=Dunkerly |first=Robert M. |title=To the Bitter End: Appomattox, Bennett Place and the Surrenders of the Confederacy |publisher=Savas Beatie |year=2015 |isbn=978-1-61121-252-5 |location=El Dorado Hills, CA}}
• {{Cite book |last=Dyer |first=Frederick H. |author-link=Frederick H. Dyer |url=https://archive.org/details/08697590.3359.emory.edu |title=A compendium of the War of the Rebellion |year=1908 |publisher=Dyer |location=Des Moines, IA |oclc=8697590}}
• {{Cite book |last=Foner |first=Eric |author-link=Eric Foner |url={{google books |plainurl=y |id=rQSYk-LWTxcC}} |title=Politics and Ideology in the Age of the Civil War |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=1981 |isbn=978-0-19-502926-0 |access-date=April 20, 2012}}
• {{Cite book |last=Foner |first=Eric |url={{google books |plainurl=y |id=earytjxi6pEC}} |title=The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery |publisher=W. W. Norton |year=2010 |isbn=978-0-393-34066-2 |location=New York}}
• {{Cite book |last=Foote |first=Shelby |title=The Civil War: A Narrative |volume=1: Fort Sumter to Perryville |title-link=The Civil War: A Narrative |publisher=Vintage |year=1974 |isbn=978-0-394-74623-4 |location=New York}}
• {{Cite book |last1=Frank |first1=Joseph Allan |url={{google books |plainurl=y |id=J_GlcVOb374C |page=170}} |title=Seeing the Elephant: Raw Recruits at the Battle of Shiloh |last2=Reaves |first2=George A. |publisher=University of Illinois Press |year=2003 |isbn=978-0-252-07126-3 |location=Urbana}}
• {{Cite book |last=Fuller |first=Howard J. |title=Clad in Iron: The American Civil War and the Challenge of British Naval Power |publisher=Naval Institute Press |year=2008 |isbn=978-1-59114-297-3 |location=Annapolis, MD}}
• {{Cite book |last1=Gallagher |first1=Gary W. |title=The American Civil War: This Mighty Scourge of War |last2=Engle |first2=Stephen D. |last3=Krick |first3=Robert K. |last4=Glatthaar |first4=Joseph T. |publisher=Osprey |year=2003 |isbn=978-1-84176-736-9 |location=New York}}
• {{Cite book |last=Grant |first=Ulysses S. |author-link=Ulysses S. Grant |url=https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.160835 |title=Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant |year=1886 |publisher=Charles L. Webster & Co. |volume=2 |location=New York |oclc=255136538}}
• {{Cite book |last=Greeley |first=Horace |author-link=Horace Greeley |url=https://archive.org/details/americanconflic00greegoog |title=The American Conflict: A History of the Great Rebellion in the United States, 1860–'65 |date=1866 |publisher=O. D. Case & Co. |volume=II |location=Hartford |oclc=936872302}}
• {{Cite book |last1=Heidler |first1=David S. |title=Encyclopedia of the American Civil War: A Political, Social, and Military History |last2=Heidler |first2=Jeanne T. |last3=Coles |first3=David J. |publisher=ABC-CLIO |year=2002 |isbn=978-1-57607-382-7 |location=Santa Barbara, CA}}
• {{Cite book |last=Herring |first=George C. |title=From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations since 1776 |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2011 |isbn=978-0-19-976553-9}}
• {{Cite book |url={{google books |plainurl=y |id=xLbkXsn6xHAC |page=174}} |title=Lincoln and Freedom: Slavery, Emancipation, and the Thirteenth Amendment |publisher=Southern Illinois University Press |year=2007 |isbn=978-0-8093-2764-5 |editor-last=Holzer |editor-first=Harold |editor-link=Harold Holzer |location=Carbondale |editor-last2=Gabbard |editor-first2=Sara Vaughn}}
• {{Cite book |last=Hunt |first=Jeffrey William |title=The Last Battle of the Civil War: Palmetto Ranch |year=2015 |publisher=University of Texas Press |isbn=978-0-292-73461-6 |location=Austin}}
• {{Cite book |last=Johnson |first=Timothy D. |title=Winfield Scott: The Quest for Military Glory |publisher=University Press of Kansas |year=1998 |isbn=978-0-7006-0914-7 |location=Lawrence}}
• {{Cite book |last=Jones |first=Howard |url={{google books |plainurl=y |id=TFyLOUrdGFwC |page=225}} |title=Crucible of Power: A History of American Foreign Relations to 1913 |publisher=Rowman & Littlefield |year=2002 |isbn=978-0-8420-2916-2 |location=Wilmington, DE}}
• {{Cite book |last=Jones |first=Terry L. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ET6CDfczq9gC&pg=PA203 |title=Historical Dictionary of the Civil War |publisher=Scarecrow Press |year=2011 |isbn=978-0-8108-7953-9}}
• {{Cite book |last=Keegan |first=John |url=https://archive.org/details/americancivilwar00keeg |title=The American Civil War: A Military History |publisher=Alfred A. Knopf |year=2009 |isbn=978-0-307-26343-8 |location=New York}}
• {{Cite journal |last=Keller |first=Christian B. |date=January 2009 |title=Flying Dutchmen and Drunken Irishmen: The Myths and Realities of Ethnic Civil War Soldiers |journal=Journal of Military History |volume=73 |issue=1 |pages=117–145 |doi=10.1353/jmh.0.0194}}
• {{Cite book |last=Leonard |first=Elizabeth D. |url=https://archive.org/details/alldaringofsoldi00leon/page/165/mode/1up |title=All the Daring of the Soldier: Women of the Civil War Armies |date=1999 |publisher=W.W. Norton & Co. |isbn=0-393-04712-1 |url-access=registration}}
• {{Cite book |last=Long |first=E. B. |title=The Civil War Day by Day: An Almanac, 1861–1865 |year=1971 |publisher=Doubleday |location=Garden City, NY |oclc=68283123}}
• {{Cite book |last=McPherson |first=James M. |title=Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era |title-link=Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=1988 |isbn=978-0-19-503863-7}}
• {{Cite book |last=McPherson |first=James M. |url={{google books |plainurl=y |id=1qhEHVki8tEC}} |title=For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=1997 |isbn=978-0-19-974105-2 |location=Oxford; New York}}
• {{Cite journal |last=Mendelsohn |first=Adam |year=2012 |title=Samuel and Saul Isaac: International Jewish Arms Dealers, Blockade Runners, and Civil War Profiteers |url=https://www.jewishsouth.org/sites/default/files/sjh_v._15_2012_mendelsohn.pdf |url-status=live |journal=Journal of the Southern Jewish Historical Society |publisher=Southern Jewish Historical Society |volume=15 |pages=41–79 |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20221009/https://www.jewishsouth.org/sites/default/files/sjh_v._15_2012_mendelsohn.pdf |archive-date=October 9, 2022}}
• {{Cite book |last=Murray |first=Robert B. |url=https://archive.org/details/northcarolinahis1967nort |title=The End of the Rebellion |date=Autumn 1967 |publisher=The North Carolina Historical Review}}
• {{Cite book |last1=Murray |first1=Williamson |url={{google books |plainurl=y |id=ld8NPYqqUnMC |page=235}} |title=The Making of Strategy: Rulers, States, and War |last2=Bernstein |first2=Alvin |last3=Knox |first3=MacGregor |publisher=Cambridge University Press |year=1996 |isbn=978-0-521-56627-8}}
• {{Cite book |last=Neely |first=Mark E. |author-link=Mark E. Neely Jr. |url={{google books |plainurl=y |id=zPV2AAAAMAAJ}} |title=Confederate Bastille: Jefferson Davis and Civil Liberties |publisher=Marquette University Press |year=1993 |isbn=978-0-87462-325-3 |location=Milwaukee, WI}}
• {{Cite book |last=Neff |first=Stephen C. |title=Justice in Blue and Gray: A Legal History of the Civil War |publisher=Harvard University Press |year=2010 |isbn=978-1-61121-252-5 |location=Cambridge, MA}}
• {{Cite book |last=Nelson |first=James L. |url={{google books |plainurl=y |id=d8XD-j--EVsC |page=149}} |title=Reign of Iron: The Story of the First Battling Ironclads, the Monitor and the Merrimack |publisher=HarperCollins |year=2005 |isbn=978-0-06-052404-3 |location=New York}}
• {{Cite book |last=Nolan |first=Alan T. |title=The Myth of the Lost Cause and Civil War History |year=2000 |editor-last=Gallagher |editor-first=Gary W. |editor-last2=Nolan |editor-first2=Alan T.}}
• {{Cite book |last1=Potter |first1=David M. |url=https://archive.org/details/impendingcrisis00pott |title=The Impending Crisis, 1848–1861 |last2=Fehrenbacher |first2=Don E. |publisher=Harper & Row |year=1976 |isbn=978-0-06-013403-7 |location=New York |url-access=registration}}
• {{Cite book |last=Richter |first=William L. |url={{google books |plainurl=y |id=obFt-MmS6ygC |page=49}} |title=The A to Z of the Civil War and Reconstruction |publisher=Scarecrow |year=2009 |isbn=978-0-8108-6336-1 |location=Lanham}}
• {{Cite book |last=Robertson |first=James I. Jr. |author-link=James I. Robertson Jr. |url=https://www.gutenberg.org/files/58549/58549-h/58549-h.htm#c10 |title=The Civil War |publisher=Civil War Centennial Commission |year=1963 |location=Washington, DC |oclc=299955768}}
• {{Cite book |last=Schecter |first=Barnet |title=The Devil's Own Work: The Civil War Draft Riots and the Fight to Reconstruct America |year=2007}}
• {{Cite book |last=Stephenson |first=Nathaniel W. |url=https://archive.org/details/dayconfederacya01stepgoog/page/n220/mode/2up?ref=ol&view=theater |title=The Day of the Confederacy. Vol. 30, A Chronicle of the Embattled South |year=1919 |publisher=New Haven: Yale University Press; Toronto: Glasgow, Brook & Co.; London: Oxford University Press |series=The Chronicles Of America Series}}
• {{Cite book |last=Stern |first=Phillip Van Doren |author-link=Philip Van Doren Stern |url={{google books |plainurl=y |id=GDeqAAAAIAAJ}} |title=The Confederate Navy |publisher=Doubleday |year=1962}}
• {{Cite book |last1=Symonds |first1=Craig L. |author-link1=Craig Symonds |url={{google books |plainurl=y |id=q_HIcc8n3K4C}} |title=The Naval Institute Historical Atlas of the U.S. Navy |last2=Clipson |first2=William J. |publisher=Naval Institute Press |year=2001 |isbn=978-1-55750-984-0}}
• {{Cite book |last=Trudeau |first=Noah Andre |author-link=Noah Andre Trudeau |title=Out of the Storm: The End of the Civil War, April–June 1865 |publisher=Little, Brown & Co. |year=1994 |isbn=978-0-316-85328-6 |location=Boston}}
• {{Cite book |last1=Tucker |first1=Spencer C. |url={{google books |plainurl=y |id=q4mwAtj2r3UC |page=462}} |title=The Civil War Naval Encyclopedia |last2=Pierpaoli |first2=Paul G. |last3=White |first3=William E. |publisher=ABC-CLIO |year=2010 |isbn=978-1-59884-338-5 |location=Santa Barbara, CA}}
• {{Cite book |last=Vinovskis |first=Maris |url={{google books |plainurl=y |id=9D4TAwc93VoC}} |title=Toward a Social History of the American Civil War: Exploratory Essays |publisher=Cambridge University Press |year=1990 |isbn=978-0-521-39559-5}}
• {{Cite book |last=Ward |first=Geoffrey R. |title=The Civil War: An Illustrated History |publisher=Alfred A. Knopf |year=1990 |isbn=978-0-394-56285-8 |location=New York}}
• {{Cite book |last=Weigley |first=Frank Russell |url=https://archive.org/details/greatcivilwarmil00russ |title=A Great Civil War: A Military and Political History, 1861–1865 |publisher=Indiana University Press |year=2004 |isbn=978-0-253-33738-2 |location=Bloomington}}
• {{Cite book |last=Winters |first=John D. |url={{google books |plainurl=y |id=PjicJWUQhPYC&pg=PR3}} |title=The Civil War in Louisiana |publisher=Louisiana State University Press |year=1963 |isbn=978-0-8071-0834-5 |location=Baton Rouge}}
• {{Cite book |last=Wise |first=Stephen R. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=0i-KzgEACAAJ |title=Lifeline of the Confederacy: Blockade Running During the Civil War |publisher=University of South Carolina Press |year=1991 |isbn=978-0-87249-799-3}}
• {{Cite book |last=Wittke |first=Carl |title=Refugees of Revolution |publisher=University of Pennsylvania Press |year=1952 |isbn=978-1-5128-0874-2 |location=Philadelphia}}
• {{Cite book |last=Woodworth |first=Steven E. |url={{google books |plainurl=y |id=rb3ANWoZt1YC}} |title=The American Civil War: A Handbook of Literature and Research |publisher=Greenwood |year=1996 |isbn=978-0-313-29019-0 |location=Wesport, CT}}

{{refend}}

{{refbegin}}

• {{Cite web |last=Downs |first=James |date=April 13, 2012 |title=Colorblindness in the demographic death toll of the Civil War |url=https://blog.oup.com/2012/04/black-white-demographic-death-toll-civil-war/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180119065611/https://blog.oup.com/2012/04/black-white-demographic-death-toll-civil-war/ |archive-date=January 19, 2018 |website=Oxford University Press blog}}

{{refend}}

{{refbegin|30em}}

• {{Cite book |last=Ahlstrom |first=Sydney E. |url={{google books |plainurl=y |id=5kFF6a1viGcC}} |title=A Religious History of the American People |publisher=Yale University Press |year=1972 |isbn=978-0-300-01762-5 |location=New Haven, CT}}
• {{Cite book |last1=Beringer |first1=Richard E. |title=Why the South Lost the Civil War |last2=Hattaway |first2=Herman |last3=Jones |first3=Archer |last4=Still |first4=William N. Jr. |publisher=University of Georgia Press |year=1986 |isbn=978-0-8203-0815-9 |location=Athens}} Influential analysis of factors; an abridged version is {{Cite book |last=Beringer |first=Richard E. |title=The Elements of Confederate Defeat: Nationalism, War Aims, and Religion |publisher=University of Georgia Press |year=1988 |isbn=978-0-8203-1077-0 |location=Athens}}
• {{Cite journal |last=Bestor |first=Arthur |year=1964 |title=The American Civil War as a Constitutional Crisis |journal=American Historical Review |volume=69 |issue=2 |pages=327–352 |doi=10.2307/1844986 |jstor=1844986}}
• {{Cite book |last=Gallagher |first=Gary W. |title=The Union War |publisher=Harvard University Press |year=2011 |isbn=978-0-674-06608-3 |location=Cambridge, MA}}
• {{Cite book |title=New Perspectives on the Union War |publisher=Fordham University Press |year=2019 |isbn=978-0-8232-8456-6 |editor-last=Gallagher |editor-first=Gary W. |editor-link=Gary W. Gallagher |location=New York |doi=10.2307/j.ctvh1dnpx |jstor=j.ctvh1dnpx |editor-last2=Varon |editor-first2=Elizabeth R. |editor-link2=Elizabeth R. Varon}}
• {{Cite book |last=Gara |first=Larry |title=Essays on the Civil War and Reconstruction |publisher=Holt, Rinehart and Winston |year=1964 |isbn=978-0-03-079640-1 |editor-last=Unger |editor-first=Irwin |editor-link=Irwin Unger |location=New York |publication-date=1970 |chapter=The Fugitive Slave Law: A Double Paradox}} (originally published in Civil War History, Vol. 10, No. 3, September 1964, pp. 229–240).
• {{Cite journal |last=Hofstadter |first=Richard |author-link=Richard Hofstadter |year=1938 |title=The Tariff Issue on the Eve of the Civil War |journal=American Historical Review |volume=44 |issue=1 |pages=50–55 |doi=10.2307/1840850 |jstor=1840850}}
• {{Cite book |last=Johannsen |first=Robert W. |title=Stephen A. Douglas |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=1973 |isbn=978-0-19-501620-8 |location=New York}}
• {{Cite book |last=Krannawitter |first=Thomas L. |url=https://archive.org/details/vindicatinglinco00kran |title=Vindicating Lincoln: defending the politics of our greatest president |publisher=Rowman & Littlefield |year=2008 |isbn=978-0-7425-5972-1 |location=Lanham, MD}}
• {{Cite book |last=McPherson |first=James M. |author-link=James M. McPherson |url=https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780195313666 |title=This Mighty Scourge: Perspectives on the Civil War |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2007 |isbn=978-0-19-539242-5 |url-access=registration}}
• Nevins, Allan. Ordeal of the Union, an 8-volume set (1947–1971). the most detailed political, economic and military narrative; by Pulitzer Prize-winner.
• # Ordeal of the Union: Fruits of Manifest Destiny, 1847–1852; [https://archive.org/details/ordealofunion00nevi online];
• # Ordeal of the Union: A House Dividing, 1852–1857;
• # The Emergence of Lincoln: Douglas, Buchanan, and Party Chaos, 1857–1859;
• # The Emergence of Lincoln: Prologue to Civil War, 1859–1861;
• # War for the Union: The Improvised War, 1861–1862;
• # War for the Union: War Becomes Revolution, 1862–1863; [https://archive.org/details/warforunionvol202nevi online];
• # War for the Union: The Organized War, 1863–1864;
• # War for the Union: The Organized War to Victory, 1864–1865
• {{Cite book |last=Olsen |first=Christopher J. |url={{google books |plainurl=y |id=RrBb2ThDuCkC |page=237}} |title=Political Culture and Secession in Mississippi: Masculinity, Honor, and the Antiparty Tradition, 1830–1860 |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2002 |isbn=978-0-19-516097-0}}
• {{Cite journal |last=Potter |first=David M. |year=1962 |title=The Historian's Use of Nationalism and Vice Versa |journal=American Historical Review |volume=67 |issue=4 |pages=924–950 |doi=10.2307/1845246 |jstor=1845246}}
• {{Cite book |title=Leaders of the American Civil War: A Biographical and Historiographical Dictionary |date=1998 |editor-last=Ritter |editor-first=Charles F. |editor-last2=Wakelyn |editor-first2=Jon L.}} Provides short biographies and historiographical summaries.
• {{Cite journal |last=Russell |first=Robert R. |year=1966 |title=Constitutional Doctrines with Regard to Slavery in Territories |journal=Journal of Southern History |volume=32 |issue=4 |pages=466–486 |doi=10.2307/2204926 |jstor=2204926}}
• {{Cite book |last=Sheehan-Dean |first=Aaron |url=https://www.wiley.com/en-us/A+Companion+to+the+U+S+Civil+War%2C+2+Volume+Set-p-9781444351316 |title=A Companion to the U.S. Civil War |date=April 2014 |publisher=Wiley-Blackwell |isbn=978-1-4443-5131-6 |series=2-Volume Set |location=New York}} 1232 pp; 64 Topical chapters by scholars and experts; emphasis on historiography.
• {{Cite book |last=Stampp |first=Kenneth M. |author-link=Kenneth M. Stampp |url=https://archive.org/details/americain185700kenn |title=America in 1857: A Nation on the Brink |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=1990 |isbn=978-0-19-503902-3 |url-access=registration}}
• {{Cite book |last1=Thornton |first1=Mark |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Tv_ZLOx8_ywC |title=Tariffs, Blockades, and Inflation: The Economics of the Civil War |last2=Ekelund |first2=Robert Burton |publisher=SR |year=2004 |isbn=978-0-8420-2961-2 |location=Wilmington, DE}}
• {{Cite book |last=Varon |first=Elizabeth R. |author-link=Elizabeth R. Varon |title=Disunion!: The Coming of the American Civil War, 1789–1859 |publisher=University of North Carolina Press |year=2008 |isbn=978-0-8078-3232-5 |location=Chapel Hill}}
• {{Cite book |last=Weeks |first=William E. |url={{google books |plainurl=y |id=e3thBAAAQBAJ}} |title=The New Cambridge History of American Foreign Relations |publisher=Cambridge University Press |year=2013 |isbn=978-1-107-00590-7 |volume=1}}

{{refend}}

{{refbegin|30em}}

• {{Cite book |last=Carmichael |first=Peter S. |author-link=Peter S. Carmichael |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Lfp1DwAAQBAJ |title=The War for the Common Soldier: How Men Thought, Fought, and Survived in Civil War Armies |date=2018 |publisher=The University of North Carolina Press |isbn=978-1-4696-4309-0 |series=The Littlefield history of the Civil War era |location=Chapel Hill}}
• {{Cite book |last1=Frank |first1=Joseph Allan |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=b67lCQAAQBAJ |title='Seeing the Elephant': Raw Recruits at the Battle of Shiloh |last2=Reaves |first2=George A. |date=2003 |publisher=University of Illinois Press |isbn=978-0-252-07126-3 |location=Urbana |orig-year=1989 |ref=none}}
• {{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NZK6KP4zVqIC |title=Civil War Prisons |date=1972 |publisher=Kent State University Press |isbn=978-0-87338-131-4 |editor-last=Hesseltine |editor-first=William B. |location=Kent, Ohio}}
• {{Cite book |last=Linderman |first=Gerald |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=GSbGEEjmcKUC |title=Embattled Courage: The Experience of Combat in the American Civil War |date=1989 |publisher=Free Press |isbn=978-1-4391-1857-3 |location=New York}}
• {{Cite book |last=Livermore |first=Thomas L. |url=https://archive.org/details/numberlossesinci00live |title=Numbers and Losses in the Civil War in America, 1861–65 |date=1901 |publisher=Houghton, Mifflin and Company |location=Boston and New York}}
• {{Cite book |last=McPherson |first=James M. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1qhEHVki8tEC |title=For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War |date=1997 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-509023-9 |location=New York ; Oxford |ref=none}}
• {{Cite book |last=Manning |first=Chandra |author-link=Chandra Manning |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=cOuDP5fwkTgC |title=What This Cruel War Was Over: Soldiers, Slavery, and the Civil War |date=2007 |publisher=Alfred A. Knopf |isbn=978-0-307-26482-4 |location=New York |oclc=ocm72989064}} Uses letters, diaries, and regimental newspapers to probe the world view of soldiers—black and white, Yankee and Rebel.
• [https://repository.lsu.edu/cwbr/vol9/iss3/2 Interview with author]
• {{Cite book |last=Mitchell |first=Reid |url=https://archive.org/details/civilwarsoldiers00mitc_0 |title=Civil War Soldiers: Their Expectations and Their Experiences |date=1988 |publisher=Viking |isbn=978-0-670-81742-9 |location=New York, N.Y., U.S.A |url-access=registration}}
• {{Cite book |last=Robertson |first=James I. |url=https://archive.org/details/soldiersbluegray0000robe_y2i7 |title=Soldiers Blue and Gray |date=1988 |publisher=University of South Carolina Press |isbn=978-0-87249-572-2 |series=American military history |location=Columbia, S.C |url-access=registration}}
• {{Cite book |last=Meier |first=Kathryn |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=RRuRAAAAQBAJ |title=Nature's Civil War: Common Soldiers and the Environment in 1862 Virginia |date=2013 |publisher=The University of North Carolina Press |isbn=978-1-4696-1076-4 |series=Civil War America |location=Chapel Hill}}
• {{Cite book |last=Wiley |first=Bell I. |author-link=Bell I. Wiley |url=https://archive.org/details/lifeofjohnnyrebt0000bell/ |title=The Life of Johnny Reb and The Life of Billy Yank |date=1994 |publisher=Book-of-the-Month Club |location=New York |url-access=registration}} Two standard scholarly histories combined, originals:
• {{Cite book |last=Wiley |first=Bell I. |url=https://archive.org/details/lifeofjohhnyreb0000unse |title=The Life of Johnny Reb: The Common Soldier of the Confederacy |publisher=Bobbs-Merrill Company |year=1943 |location=Indianopolis ; New York |author-mask=2 |url-access=registration}}
• {{Cite book |last=Wiley |first=Bell I. |url=https://archive.org/details/lifeofbillyyank0000unse |title=The Life of Billy Yank: The Common Soldier of the Union |publisher=Bobbs-Merrill Company |year=1952 |location=Indianopolis ; New York |author-mask=2 |url-access=registration}}

{{refend}}

{{sister project links|auto=1|wikt=y |commons=y |n=y |q=y |s=y |b=y |voy=y |v=y}}

• [https://westpoint.edu/academics/academic-departments/history/american-civil-war West Point Atlas of Civil War Battles]
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20160818205335/http://www.archives.gov/research/civil-war/photos/index.html Civil War photos] at the National Archives
• [https://www.loc.gov/pictures/search?st=grid&c=100&co=cwp View images] from the [https://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/cwp/ Civil War Photographs Collection] at the Library of Congress
• {{Internet Archive short film|id=gov.archives.arc.54756|name=A House Divided (1960)}}
• [https://persuasivemaps.library.cornell.edu/browse-subject "American Civil World" maps at the Persuasive Cartography, The PJ Mode Collection], Cornell University Library
• [https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/declaration-causes-seceding-states Statements of each state as to why they were seceding], battlefields.org
• [https://www.nps.gov/civilwar/places.htm National Park Service Civil War Places]
• [https://www.nps.gov/subjects/battlefields/civil-war.htm Civil War Battlefield Places] from the National Park Service
• [http://www.battlefields.org/ American Battlefield Trust] – A non-profit land preservation and educational organization with two divisions, the Civil War Trust and the Revolutionary War Trust, dedicated to preserving America's battlefields through land acquisitions.
• [https://gettysburg.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p4016coll2 Civil War Era Digital Collection at Gettysburg College] – This collection contains digital images of political cartoons, personal papers, pamphlets, maps, paintings and photographs from the Civil War Era held in Special Collections at Gettysburg College.
• [http://www.sonofthesouth.net/ The Civil War] – site with 7,000 pages, including the complete run of Harper's Weekly newspapers from the Civil War

{{American Civil War}}

{{Foreign countries in the American Civil War}}

{{American conflicts}}

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Civil War

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