HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Campaigns of 1862: in the west
While attempting to isolate Virginia, it is important also for Union forces to gain control of the great river system to the west of the Confederate states. There is a successful campaign to this end during 1862.
It begins when a Union general, Ulysses S. Grant, and naval officer, Andrew Foote, combine forces to seize two river forts recently built by the Confederates to defend Tennessee. Fort Henry and Fort Donelson are both taken during February, with a loss to the Confederate cause of 12,000 men, mainly as prisoners.
This success is rapidly followed by a surprise raid at the mouth of the Mississippi. On April 18 Flag Officer David Farragut boldly navigates a small fleet of Union warships through a bombardment from shore batteries downstream of New Orleans. By April 25 he is anchored close to the city itself. Union marines go ashore and occupy New Orleans on May 1.
This leaves the Confederates in control only of the middle section of the Mississippi. This region has been the scene on April 6-7 of one of the most fiercely fought battles of the war, at Shiloh, where Grant secures with difficulty a Union victory but wins no significant strategic advantage. That must await his success at Vicksburg in the following year.
Campaigns of 1862: in the east
The Union strategy against Richmond in this second year of the war is to approach the Confederate capital from the sea. A large army, under the command of George B. McLellan, is to be shipped through Chesapeake Bay and is to land near Yorktown. The intention is then to march up the peninsula between the York and James rivers towards Richmond.
Before the army even begins embarkation, there is a scare that its landing may be prevented by a terrifying new naval vessel. The Merrimack, a Confederate ship resembling a floating metal hut, appears at the mouth of the James river and sinks some federal vessels. But the very next day, the balance is redressed by another equally ungainly metal boat, the Monitor (see Monitor and Merrimack).
With the threat of the Confederate ironclad removed, McClellan successfully lands 100,000 men, takes Yorktown on May 2, and moves on up the peninsula. By late June he is within a few miles of Richmond. But during a week’s fighting he is confronted by a Confederate army of 85,000 men under General Lee.
The Seven Days Battle (June 26 to July 2) brings heavy casualties to both sides. It ends in stalemate, but the event is sufficient to persuade McClellan to withdraw. Thus the great Peninsular Campaign ends in failure. So does a second major Union attempt in this same summer to advance against Richmond.
A Union army crosses the Potomac in July to march south towards Richmond, repeating the invasion tactic of the previous year. As on that occasion, the adventure ends in disaster at Bull Run Creek. The second battle of Bull Run or Manassas (August 29-30) is a joint victory for Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee. Under Lee’s command they drive the Union forces back across the Potomac.
Virginia is now virtually clear of Union intruders. This autumn the Confederates take the offensive, pressing north into Kentucky and Maryland. But they fail to make progress, and Lee is forced back into Virginia after a reversal at Antietam (September 17). This Union success prompts Lincoln to take a different kind of initiative.
Emancipation Proclamation: AD 1862-1863
President Lincoln has undertaken the Civil War intending only to preserve the Union. His purpose, and that of the Republican party, has never been to end slavery in the southern states. But two costly and inconclusive years of war begin to alter his opinion.
There are several reasons. The abolitionist lobby in the north is passionate and vocal. Increasing resentment at the southern states, begetters of this painful conflict, lessens any inclination to protect their supposed rights as slave-owners. And a new moral dimension added to the Union war aims is likely to bring its own diplomatic and political benefits.
Liberal opinion in Britain, where the government often seems inclined to support the south, will be impressed by an anti-slavery crusade. And flagging domestic acceptance of the war will be refreshed by an injection of idealism, particularly in the cause with which Americans identify most powerfully – that of liberty.
Lincoln decides, in the summer of 1862, to make the emancipation of the slaves a central plank of his policy. But this summer, bringing successive defeats in Virginia of Union armies, seems not the right moment. It is important that such an important announcement shall not seem to be made in desperation.
The president is given his opportunity when the engagement at Antietam, in September 1862, can be presented as a Union success on the battlefield. Five days later he issues a preliminary proclamation. It states that if the Confederate states have not laid down their arms by the end of the year, he will declare their slaves to be free.
Naturally the states fail to respond, so on 1 January 1863 Lincoln issues his Emancipation Proclamation. It declares that all people held in slavery in the rebel states are now free; it urges them to refrain from violence; and it announces that freed slaves will be welcome to serve in the US army and navy.
Most of this is as yet only of symbolic relevance. No slaves are formally freed anywhere, since the proclamation does not apply to slave states fighting on the Union side (where Lincoln cannot as yet afford to offend their owners). Nevertheless many southern slaves take the opportunity to flee to the north. By the end of the war about 180,000 Negroes have joined the armed forces, greatly boosting Union military strength.
And the symbolic effect is enormous. The struggle now has a high moral purpose. The attitude of the slaves is transformed, whether in Union or Confederate states, by the knowledge that a Union victory will be followed by freedom.
Campaigns of 1863
By the end of the Independence Day celebrations on 4 July 1863 the north has news of victories on two fronts. They can later be seen as the major turning point in the four-year war.
One, in the west, ends a long struggle over the Mississippi. In spite of all his efforts during 1862, Ulysses S. Grant has not been able to dislodge Confederate forces from the middle section of the great river. Their main stronghold is at Vicksburg. During the winter and spring of 1862-3 he has made many different attempts (including the use of ironclads on the river) to attack Vicksburg, but always without success. However by May 1863 Grant is at last in a position to besiege the city.
Six weeks later, on July 4, by which time the town is short of ammunition and almost out of food, the Confederate commander surrenders with his garrison of 30,000 men. The entire Mississippi is now in Union hands. With his instinct for a solemn but telling phrase, Lincoln declares: ‘The Father of Waters flows once more unvexed to the sea.’
The three previous days have seen another more unexpected victory. It arises out of what is virtually a chance encounter.
In June Robert E. Lee moves north into Pennsylvania with an army of about 75,000 men. He has several motives for carrying the campaign once again into the north. He hopes to build on growing popular hostility to the war, which has been fanned by Lincoln’s introduction of conscription. Lee is also eager to move the scene of hostilities away from war-ravaged Virginia. And he intends to gather at Union expense some much needed supplies of food and clothing for his men.
On June 30 a brigade of Confederate soldiers is approaching the small town of Gettysburg, where they have heard there is a supply of boots. A squadron of Union troopers unexpectedly comes across them. The result, over the next three days, is the battle of Gettysburg.
By July 2 the Union forces have taken up a strong defensive position on Cemetery Hill south of the town. The Confederates fling themselves against this hillside, with massive losses and to no avail. The final encounter, on July 3, is the famous Pickett’s Charge, in which 15,000 Confederate infantrymen from General George Pickett’s division march, as if on parade, across 1400 yards of open fields towards the Union artillery and muskets. Only 5000 survive this reckless endeavour (a statistic which makes the Charge of the Light Brigade seem trivial), and the total casualties for both sides exceed 50,000.
General Lee and his army are allowed to limp back across the Potomac. They are not conclusively defeated, but the tide has turned.
Four months later, in November, President Lincoln comes to Gettysburg to dedicate a national cemetery for those who fell in this most bloody of all the Civil War encounters (the estimated figures for dead and wounded are 23,000 Union soldiers and 28,000 Confederates).
The audience first must suffer a two-hour high-flown oration by a distinguished clergyman and statesman, Edward Everett. Lincoln then speaks for two minutes and produces, in what becomes famous as the Gettysburg Address, a ringing statement of the ideals for which he believes this war is being fought: ‘that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth’.
Not everyone in the north shares the president’s idealism. In particular there is much resentment over his Union Enrollment Act, passed in March 1863. This drafts into the army all able-bodied males between the ages of twenty and forty-five, but it allows exemption on payment of $300.
This is the clause which causes outrage among the poorer classes, prompting riots in many places. The most violent protest is by Irish immigrants in New York, where disturbances last for four days in July 1863 and cause more than 100 deaths.
