The war begins

Anaconda Plan and blockade, 1861

Eastern Theater 1861–1863

Western Theater 1861–1863

Trans-Mississippi Theater 1861–1865

End of the war 1864–1865

Slavery during the war

Threat of international intervention

Victory and aftermath

Reconstruction

• Disfranchisement after the Civil War
• Jim Crow laws
• United States v. Cruikshank (1875)
• Civil Rights Cases (1883)
• Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)
• Williams v. Mississippi (1898)
• Giles v. Harris (1903)
• Reconstruction era of the United States(145)
• Redemption (United States history)

Results

See also

• List of American Civil War topics
• Abolitionism
• African Americans in the Civil War
• German-Americans in the Civil War
• Canada and the American Civil War
• Casualties of the American Civil War
• List of Medal of Honor recipients
• Military history of the Confederate States
• National Civil War Museum
• Naming the American Civil War
• New York Draft Riots
• List of people associated with the American Civil War
• List of wars involving the United States
• Official Records of the American Civil War
• Opposition to the American Civil War
• Photography and photographers of the American Civil War
• Rail transport in the American Civil War
• U.S. Congress Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War
• American Civil War spies
• List of wars by death toll
• Confederados
• Confederate colonies
• American Civil War reenactment

Cinema and Television

Documentaries about the war

• The Civil War (1990)

Games

Notes

1. Abraham Lincoln, House Divided Speech, Springfield, Illinois, June 16, 1858



2. Shelby Foote, The Civil War: Fort Sumter to Perryville, page 34



3. BOOK,weblink Voices from the Gathering Storm: The Coming of the American Civil War, Glenn M. Linden, 2001, Rowman & Littlefield, United States, 236, 0842029990, Prevent, as far as possible, any of our friends from demoralizing themselves, and our cause, by entertaining propositions for compromise of any sort, on slavery extension. There is no possible compromise upon it, but which puts us under again, and leaves all our work to do over again. Whether it be a Mo. Line, or Eli Thayer's Pop. Sov. It is all the same. Let either be done, & immediately filibustering and extending slavery recommences. On that point hold firm, as with a chain of steel. - Abraham Lincoln to Elihu B. Washburne, December 13, 1860,



4. Let there be no compromise on the question of extending slavery. If there be, all our labor is lost, and, ere long, must be done again. The dangerous ground—that into which some of our friends have a hankering to run—is Pop. Sov. Have none of it. Stand firm. The tug has to come, & better now, than any time hereafter. - Abraham Lincoln to Lyman Trumbull, December 10, 1860



5. James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, page 241 and 253



6. Declarations of Causes for: Georgia, Adopted in January 29, 1861; Mississippi, Adopted in 1861 (no exact date found); South Carolina, Adopted in December 24, 1860; Texas, Adopted in February 2, 1861



7. The New Heresy, Southern Punch, editor John Wilford Overall, September 19, 1864 is one of many references that indicate that the Republican hope of gradually ending slavery was the Southern fear. It said in part, "Our doctrine is this: WE ARE FIGHTING FOR INDEPENDENCE THAT OUR GREAT AND NECESSARY DOMESTIC INSTITUTION OF SLAVERY SHALL BE PRESERVED."



8. David Potter, The Impending Crisis, pages 33-50. Potter argued that the states rights theory of causes (page 33) and various cultural and economic "causes" can't be separated from the slavery issue.



9. Jefferson Davis' Resolutions on the Relations of States, Senate Chamber, U.S. Capitol, February 2, 1860, From The Papers of Jefferson Davis, Volume 6, pp. 273-76. - Davis states' rights argument for slavery in the territories is as follows: Resolved, That the union of these States rests on the equality of rights and privileges among its members, and that it is especially the duty of the Senate, which represents the States in their sovereign capacity, to resist all attempts to discriminate either in relation to person or property, so as, in the Territories -- which are the common possession of the United States -- to give advantages to the citizens of one State which are not equally secured to those of every other State."



10. J.L.M. Curry: The Perils and Duty of the South - Speech Delivered in Talladega, Alabama, November 26, 1860 - This was one of many Southern states' rights arguments for defending slavery.



11. Lincoln's Speech in Chicago, December 10, 1856 in which he said, "We shall again be able not to declare, that 'all States as States, are equal,' nor yet that 'all citizens as citizens are equal,' but to renew the broader, better declaration, including both these and much more, that 'all men are created equal.'"; Also, Lincoln's Letter to Henry L. Pierce, April 6, 1859



12. From Alexander Stephens' Cornerstone Speech, March 21, 1861, The Athenaeum, Savannah Georgia - Stephens said: 'African slavery as it exists amongst us -- the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization ... was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the "rock upon which the old Union would split." He was right.'



13. From Alexander Stephens' Cornerstone Speech, March 21, 1861, The Athenaeum, Savannah Georgia The larger Stephens quote, for more context, is as follows: 'The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution -- African slavery as it exists amongst us -- the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the "rock upon which the old Union would split." He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with, but the general opinion of the men of that day was that, somehow or other in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. This idea, though not incorporated in the constitution, was the prevailing idea at that time. The constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly urged against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the "storm came and the wind blew."Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery -- subordination to the superior race -- is his natural and normal condition. [Applause.] '



14. Stampp, The Causes of the Civil War, pages 152-153 (Cornerstone Speech). Stampp said Stephens' Cornerstone Speech "was in striking contrast to his postwar constitutional interpretation."



15. Stampp, The Causes of the Civil War, pages 63–65 (A Constitutional View of the Late War Between the States) Stampp used the following quote to illustrate the fact that, after Confederate defeat, Stephens argued that the war was caused not by slavery but by states' rights controversies: "It is a postulate, with many writers of this day, that the late War was the result of two opposing ideas, or principles, upon the subject of African Slavery. Between these, according to their theory, sprung the 'irrepressible conflict,' in principle, which ended in the terrible conflict in arms. Those who assume this postulate, and so theorize upon it, are but superficial observers.That the war had its origin in opposing principles, which in their action upon the conduct of men,produced the ultimate conflict of arms, may be assumed as an unquestionable fact. But the opposing principles which produced these results in physical action were of a very different character from those assumed in the postulate. They lay in the organic Structure of the Government of the States ... between the supporters of a strictly Federative Government, on the one side, and a thoroughly National one, on the other."






17. James McPherson, This Mighty Scourge page 4. McPherson writes, "After the war, however, Davis and Stephens changed their tune. By the time they wrote their histories of the Confederacy, slavery was gone with the wind -- a dead and discredited institution. To concede that the Confederacy had broken up the United States and launched a war that killed 620,000 Americans in a vain attempt to keep four million people in bondage would not confer honor on their lost cause.






19. James McPherson, This Mighty Scourge, pages 3-9. Speaking of alternative explanations for secession, McPherson writes (p. 7), "While one or more of these interpretations remain popular among the Sons of Confederate Veterans and other Southern heritage groups, few professional historians now subscribe to them. Of all these interpretations, the state's-rights argument is perhaps the weakest. It fails to ask the question, state's rights for what purpose? State's rights, or sovereignty, was always more a means than an end, an instrument to achieve a certain goal more than a principle.



20. Allan Nevins, Ordeal of the Union: A House Dividing - 1852-1857, pages 267–269



21. Freehling, Prelude to Civil War, page 297; Willentz page 388 - On March 13, 1833 Rhett said, "A people, owning slaves, are mad, or worse than mad, who do not hold their destinies in their own hands ... Every stride of this Government, over your rights, brings it nearer and nearer to your peculiar policy. ... The whole world are in arms against your institutions … Let Gentlemen not be deceived. It is not the Tariff – not Internal Improvement – nor yet the Force bill, which constitutes the great evil against which we are contending. ... These are but the forms in which the despotic nature of the government is evinced – but it is the despotism which constitutes the evil: and until this Government is made a limited Government ... there is no liberty – no security for the South."



22. As early as 1830, in the midst of the Nullification Crisis, Calhoun identified the right to own slaves as the chief southern minority right being threatened:"I consider the tariff act as the occasion, rather than the real cause of the present unhappy state of things. The truth can no longer be disguised, that the peculiar domestick [sic] institution of the Southern States and the consequent direction which that and her soil have given to her industry, has placed them in regard to taxation and appropriations in opposite relation to the majority of the Union, against the danger of which, if there be no protective power in the reserved rights of the states they must in the end be forced to rebel, or, submit to have their paramount interests sacrificed, their domestic institutions subordinated by Colonization and other schemes, and themselves and children reduced to wretchedness." - Ellis, Richard E. The Union at Risk: Jacksonian Democracy, States' Rights, and the Nullification Crisis (1987), page 193; Freehling, William W. Prelude to Civil War: The Nullification Crisis in South Carolina 1816-1836. (1965), page 257; Ellis p. 193. Ellis further notes that "Calhoun and the nullifiers were not the first southerners to link slavery with states’ rights. At various points in their careers, John Taylor, John Randolph, and Nathaniel Macon had warned that giving too much power to the federal government, especially on such an open-ended issue as internal improvement, could ultimately provide it with the power to emancipate slaves against their owners’ wishes."



23. John Niven, John C. Calhoun and the Price of Union, page 197 - The author said the following about Calhoun's description of the tariff issue: "Finally, the root of the nullification crisis was exposed. What had begun as a reaction to a depression in the cotton states, a slump that had been particularly severe in South Carolina, had rapidly resolved itself into an all-encompassing fear on the part of a majority of the planter elite class that the growing industrialization of the North, expressing itself politically through the majority will, would eventually demand emancipation, heedless of the social consequences."



24. William E. Gienapp, "The Crisis of American Democracy: The Political System and the Coming of the Civil War." in Boritt ed. Why the Civil War Came 79–123



25. McPherson, Battle Cry pages 88–91



26. Most of her slave owners are "decent, honorable people, themselves victims" of that institution. Much of her description was based on personal observation, and the descriptions of Southerners; she herself calls them and Legree representatives of different types of masters.;Gerson, Harriet Beecher Stowe, p.68; Stowe, Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin (1953) p. 39



27. David Potter, The Impending Crisis, pages 201-204 and 299-327



28. David Potter, The Impending Crisis, page 208



29. David Potter, The Impending Crisis, pages 208-209



30. Fox Butterfield; All God's Children page 17



31. David Potter, The Impending Crisis, pages 210-211



32. David Potter, The Impending Crisis, pages 212-213



33. David Potter, The Impending Crisis, pp. 356–384



34. Kenneth M. Stampp, The Imperiled Union: Essays on the Background of the Civil War (1981) p 198; Woodworth, ed. The American Civil War: A Handbook of Literature and Research (1996), 145 151 505 512 554 557 684; Richard Hofstadter, The Progressive Historians: Turner, Beard, Parrington (1969)



35. James McPherson, Drawn With the Sword, page 11



36. James McPherson, "Antebellum Southern Exceptionalism: A New Look at an Old Question," Civil War History 29 (September 1983)



37. David Potter, The Impending Crisis, page 485



38. James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom 1988 p 242, 255, 282-83. Maps on page 101 (The Southern Economy) and page 236 (The Progress of Secession) are also relevant



39. David Potter, The Impending Crisis, pages 503–505



40. William W. Freehling, The Road to Disunion: Secessionists at Bay 1776-1854, pages 17- 19. Freehling also said tha