Module: O16P464HIW

The American Civil War: A Nation Divided

Tutor: Dr Thomas E. Sebrell II(T.Sebrell@westminster.ac.uk)

The American Civil War

INTRODUCTION

Overview

This course examines the American Civil War from three distinct, yet interrelated, angles: social, political and military. We will investigate, in depth, the root causes of sectionalism between North and South, the events and consequences of the war including an emphasis on the people involved, both military and civilian, inclusive of discussions of gender and race-related issues and experiences. Of equally importance, we will examine how the war impacted the United States and Europe diplomatically, particularly in regards to Britain and Ireland.

Course Aims & Objectives

By the end of the course you will have considered numerous crucial dynamics of US political, social and military history with a full understanding of how the American Civil War permanently changed the United States as a country, as well as why the war was also a global conflict which was not restricted by the American borders. In addition to gaining a synthetic understanding of the history of the subject, you will engage critically with historiography pertaining to the conflict.

METHOD OF ASSESSMENT AND TEACHING ARRANGEMENTS

Method of Assessment

Each student is required to write one essay, which should be approximately 1,500 words and is due on 6 March. The essay MUST contain footnotes, in addition to a bibliography. In-text citations are not acceptable.

The American Civil War

PREPARATION FOR CLASS

The following books offering a wide analysis of the subject are extremely helpful. Although they will provide you with an overview of the week’s topic, they are not a substitute for reading the topic-specific books required for the essay.

James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom (1988).

James I. Robertson, Jr, Soldiers Blue and Gray (1988).

Charles P. Roland, An American Iliad (1991).

My aim in the reading list which accompanies the week-by-week programme is to suggest the range of work available. For the essay you should aim to read thoroughly at least six books on the list.

PREPARATION FOR ESSAYS

Key points for a successful essay:

● Books providing an overview of the subject are only useful as an introduction to each sub-topic of the subject. A sophisticated analysis requires much more work.

● Read widely in the secondary literature. You should aim to read thoroughly at least six books specifically on the topic. You should also aim to read journal articles dealing with the subject.

● You must include a discussion of historiography in order to get top marks in essays. Historiography is about the debates different historians have about the causes of events, the interpretation of facts, and the meaning significant occurrences hold for both historians and historical figures. In other words, historiography is the study of history and is a key part to any university-level essay.

● Make sure you have an argument. Think hard when choosing an essay question and then take a strong stand when answering it – do not simply provide a narrative.

● Do not plagiarise. If you have any questions what this means, please come see me.

The American Civil War

ESSAY QUESTIONS

1) Explain why and how sectionalism developed between North and South during the period from 1820 to 1860.

2) In what ways was the Confederate Government both the functioning head of a ‘nation’ and also dysfunctional political body?

3) How did women contribute to the Union and Confederate war efforts throughout the war?

4) Why were the Confederates far more successful in the Eastern Theater than in the Western Theater?

5) What was the African-American experience in the Union Army?

6) Compare and contrast the experiences of Union and Confederate prisoners at various prisoner-of-war camps situated in the North and South.

7) How was Britain impacted by the American Civil War?

8) Why did the South lose the American Civil War?

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WEEKLY PROGRAMME

16 January:

Who are you, who am I, and what are we doing here (and why is the study of the American Civil War so important in the 21st century?)?

We will analyse the development of sectional tensions from the Missouri Compromise to the 1860 Presidential Election and the start of the Secession Crisis. We will discuss the different key personnel involved – the newly-created Republican Party, Fire-Eaters, Northern Democrats and Southern moderates.

Drew Gilpin Faust, ed., The Ideology of Slavery: Proslavery Thought in the Antebellum South, 1830-1860 (1981).

Paul Finkelman, Congress and the Emergence of Sectionalism: From the Missouri Compromise to the Age of Jackson (2008).

Robert Pierce Forbes, The Missouri Compromise and its Aftermath: Slavery and the Meaning of America (2007).

William W. Freehling, The Road to Disunion: Secessionists at Bay, 1776-1854 (1990).James Brewer Stewart, William Lloyd Garrison at Two Hundred: History, Legacy and

Memory (2008).John L. Thomas, The Liberator, William Lloyd Garrison: A Biography (1963).William S. McFeely, Frederick Douglass (1991).Frederick Douglass, The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (2001).Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave

(2001).Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852).Kristen Tegtmeier Oertel, Bleeding Borders: Race, Gender and Violence in pre-Civil

War Kansas (2009).Mark A. Graber, Dred Scott and the Problem of Constitutional Evil (2006).Peggy A. Russo, Terrible Swift Sword: The Legacy of John Brown (2005).William Garrott Brown, Stephen Arnold Douglas (1902).Carl Shurz, Abraham Lincoln (1919).

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23 January:

This week we will discuss the creation of the Confederacy, Lincoln’s First Inauguration and selection of Cabinet members.

We will then cover the commencement of war with the bombardment of Fort Sumter, further secession, and how the two sides were (or were not) prepared for war by the time of the first major battle at Manassas, Virginia.

This will be followed by an examination of the seriousness of the Trent Affair, how the blockade was beginning to affect the economy of North-West England, and how Britain and France became increasingly interested in the war’s events and considering if, and how, they could become involved.

Confederate diplomatic and naval construction activities in London and Liverpool will be analysed, as will the Union responses to these efforts.

William C. Davis, Look Away!: A History of the Confederate States of America (2002).Felicity Allen, Jefferson Davis: Unconquerable Heart (1999).Joan E. Cashin, First Lady of the Confederacy: Varina Davis's Civil War (2006).John D. Majewski, Modernizing a Slave Economy: The Economic Vision of the

Confederate Nation (2009).Emory M. Thomas, Inside the Confederate Nation: 1861-1865 (2005).Abner Doubleday, Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie in 1860-‘61 (1998).Samuel Wylie Crawford, The Genesis of the Civil War: The Story of Sumter, 1860-1861

(2000).William C. Davis, Virginia at War: 1861 (2005).Richard Blackett, Divided Hearts: Britain and the American Civil War (2001).Howard Jones, Blue and Gray Diplomacy: A History of Union and Confederate Foreign

Relations (2010).

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30 January:

We will examine how the war turned sharply against the South during the early months of 1862. This will also be our first heavy emphasis on women in the war, analysing Gen. Butler’s occupation of New Orleans.

We will then examine how the war, and warfare, changed drastically during the Spring and Summer of 1862 – the inaugural use of ironclad ships, the ‘Stonewall’ Jackson’s elevated status after the Shenandoah Valley Campaign, Robert E. Lee’s becoming commander of the Army of Northern Virginia, and McClellan’s doomed Peninsula Campaign.

Edward O. Cunningham, Shiloh and the Western Campaign of 1862 (2007).Steven Woodworth, ed., The Shiloh Campaign (2009).Michael D. Pierson, Mutiny at Fort Jackson: The Untold Story of the Fall of New

Orleans (2008).Peter Cozzens, Shenandoah 1862: Stonewall Jackson’s Valley Campaign (2008).John Esten Cooke, The Life of Stonewall Jackson (2000).Wallace Hettle, Inventing Stonewall Jackson: A Civil War Hero in History and Memory

(2011).Markinfield Addey, Life and Military Career of Stonewall Jackson (2001).Gary W. Gallagher, The Shenandoah Valley Campaign of 1862 (2003).Paul Christopher Anderson, Blood Image: Turner Ashby in the Civil War and the

Southern Mind (2002).Kevin Dougherty, The Peninsula Campaign of 1862: A Military Analysis (2005).Glenn David Brasher, The Peninsula Campaign and the Necessity of Emancipation:

African Americans and the Fight for Freedom (2012).Alexander S. Webb, The Peninsula: McClellan's Campaign of 1862 (2001).Emory M. Thomas, Robert E. Lee (1995).Brian Holden Reid, Robert E. Lee: Icon for a Nation (2013).Gary W. Gallagher, Lee and His Generals in War and Memory (1998).Joseph T. Gratthaar, Soldiering in the Army of Northern Virginia: A Statistical Portrait of

the Troops Who Served Under Robert E. Lee (2011).Brian K. Burton, Extraordinary Circumstances: The Seven Days Battle (2001).Gary W. Gallagher, ed., The Richmond Campaign of 1862: The Peninsula & the Seven

Days (2000).Ethan Rafuse, McClellan’s War: The Failure of Moderation in the Struggle for the Union

(2005).George Brinton McClellan, McClellan’s Own Story (1998).Kimberley Anderson, The Rhetoric of Rebel Women: Civil War Diaries and Confederate

Persuasion (2013).LeeAnn Whites, Alecia P. Long & E. Susan Barber, Occupied Women: Gender, Military

Occupation and the American Civil War (2009).

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Nina Silber, Daughters of the Union: Northern Women Fight the Civil War (2005).Libra Rose Hilde, Worth a Dozen Men: Women and Nursing in the Civil War South

(2012).Sarah E. Gardner, Blood & Irony: Southern White Women’s Narratives of the Civil War,

1861-1937 (2003).Lyde Cullen Sizer, The Political Work of Northern Women Writers and the Civil War,

1850-1872 (2000).Carolyn Johnston, Cherokee Women in Crisis: Trail of Tears, Civil War and Allotment,

1838-1907 (2003).Marilyn Mayer Culpepper, Trials and Triumphs: Women of the American Civil War

(1991).Drew Gilpin Faust, Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the

American Civil War (1996).Jennifer A. Stollman, Daughters of Israel, Daughters of the South: Southern Jewish

Women and Identity in the Antebellum and Civil War South (2013).Giselle Roberts, The Confederate Belle (2003).Victoria E. Ott, Confederate Daughters: Coming of Age During the Civil War (2008).Nannie Haskins Williams, The Diary of Nannie Haskins Williams: A Southern Woman's

Story of Rebellion and Reconstruction, 1863-1890 (2014).Nancy L. Rhoades, Wanted – Correspondence: Women’s Letters to a Union Soldier

(2009).S. Emma E. Edmonds, Nurse and Spy in the Union Army: The Adventures and

Experiences of a Woman in Hospitals, Camps and Battlefields (2000).Catherine Clinton, Public Women and the Confederacy (1999).Belle Boyd, Belle Boyd in Camp and Prison (1865).Elizabeth Brown Pryor, Clara Barton: Professional Angel (1987).

6 February:

We will discuss the Confederate victory at Second Manassas, setting the stage for Lee’s first invasion of the North.

This very important week will also focus on the battle of Antietam and its impact on the remainder of the war. The bloodiest single day of the war shocked the world, but perhaps not as significantly as did the subsequently-issued preliminary Emancipation Proclamation.

We will, likewise, discuss the changing roles of African Americans in the war, the response from the Confederate government and Southern society, as well as Britain’s and France’s nearly becoming involved.

The American Civil War

William C. Davis, Virginia at War: 1862 (2007).Matt Spruill, Summer Lightning: A Guide to the Second Battle of Manassas (2013).John J. Hennessy, Return to Bull Run: The Campaign and Battle of Second Manassas

(1993).David G. Martin, The Second Bull Run Campaign: July–August 1862 (1997).Ezra Ayers Carman, The Maryland Campaign of September 1862, Vol. 1, South

Mountain (2010).James M. McPherson, Crossroads of Freedom: Antietam, the Battle That Changed the

Course of the Civil War (2002).Gary W. Gallagher, The Antietam Campaign (1999).Marion V. Armstrong, Unfurl Those Colors!: McClellan, Sumner and the Second Army

Corps in the Antietam Campaign (2008).B. Franklin Cooling, Counter-thrust: From the Peninsula to the Antietam (2007).Jack C. Mason, Until Antietam: The Life and Letters of Major General Israel B.

Richardson, U.S. Army (2009).Roger L. Ransom and Richard Sutch, One Kind of Freedom: The Economic

Consequences of Emancipation (1977).Harold Holzer, The Emancipation Proclamation: Three Views (Social, Political,

Iconographic) (2006).Burrus Carnahan, Act of Justice: Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation and the Law of

War (2007).William Alan Blair, Lincoln's Proclamation: Emancipation Reconsidered (2009).Thomas E. Sebrell II, Persuading John Bull: Union & Confederate Propaganda in

Britain, 1860-65 (2014).

13 February:

Our focus will shift westward this week, covering the Confederate Army of Tennessee’s invasion of Kentucky, retreat after Perryville and another defeat at Stone’s River.

We will then shift back to the Eastern Theater to discuss Lincoln’s new strategy of dealing with unsuccessful generals, starting with the firing of McClellan in the autumn of 1862. Emphasis will then move to Lee’s continued success in Virginia.

Also during this week, we will examine the issue of medicine during the war.

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Kenneth W. Noe, Perryville: This Grand Havoc of Battle (2001).Francs A. O’Reilly, The Fredericksburg Campaign: Winter War on the Rappahannock

(2003).George C. Rable, Fredericksburg! Fredericksburg! (2002).William C. Davis, Virginia at War: 1863 (2009).Gary W. Gallagher, Chancellorsville: The Battle and its Aftermath (1996).Glenna R. Schoeder-Lein, The Encyclopedia of Civil War Medicine (2008).Margaret Humphreys, Marrow of Tragedy: The Health Crisis of the American Civil War

(2013).

20 February:

The focus for this week will shift to the pivotal Summer of 1863, where we will see yet another new Union commander, followed by Lee’s first sound defeat at Gettysburg, followed by the Vicksburg Campaign. With the death of ‘Stonewall’ Jackson, the class will shift attention onto other Confederate corps commanders in the Army of Northern Virginia, such as Longstreet, Hill and Ewell.

Abner Doubleday, Chancellorsville and Gettysburg (2001).Glenn W. LaFantasie, Gettysburg Heroes: Perfect Soldiers, Hallowed Ground (2008).Kent Masterson Brown, Retreat from Gettysburg: Lee, Logistics and the Pennsylvania

Campaign (2005).Matt Spruill, Decisions at Gettysburg: The Nineteen Critical Decisions that Defined the

Campaign (2011).Harry W. Pfanz, Gettysburg: The Second Day (1987).Eric J. Wittenburg & J. David Petruzzi, Plenty of Blame to Go Around: Jeb Stuart's

Controversial Ride to Gettysburg (2006).Earl J. Hess, Pickett’s Charge: The Last Attack at Gettysburg (2001).Warren W. Hassler, The First Day at Gettysburg: Crisis at the Crossroads (2010).Donald C. Pfanz, The Letters of General Richard S. Ewell: Stonewall’s Successor (2012).Steven E. Woodworth & Charles D. Grear, The Vicksburg Campaign: March 29-May 18,

1863 (2013).Michael B. Ballard, Grant at Vicksburg: The General and the Siege (2013).Terrence J. Winschel, Triumph and Defeat: The Vicksburg Campaign, Vol. 2 (2006).Timothy B. Smith, Champion Hill: Decisive Battle for Vicksburg (2006).

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27 February:

Our focus will shift to Charleston, South Carolina, this week, and we will cover the first three years of the North’s campaign to capture one of the Confederacy’s most crucial ports. Our analysis will be broken into three parts: 1) a discussion of the importance of the blockade-running supply route from Liverpool to Charleston; 2) the actual Charleston campaign through to the US Navy’s ironclad assault on Fort Sumter and the first major engagement involving African-American soldiers in US Army history at Morris Island, both occurring in the Summer of 1863; 3) the first sinking of a ship by a submarine in naval history.

Russell Duncan & Robert Shaw, Blue-Eyed Child of Fortune: The Civil War Letters of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw (1999).

6 March:

Attention will now switch to the Western Theater. We will start by focusing on high ranking officials in political and military circles of the Confederacy who argued that the western areas of the South had been neglected as far as protection from invasion was concerned, and the lead up to the battle of Chickamauga and the siege of Chattanooga. Amongst other issues when discussing these battles, we will talk about Southerners who played key roles in the Union war efforts, such as Gen. George Thomas.

The lecture will end with a discussion of Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest’s roles in the Western Theater, highlighting the Fort Pillow Massacre. We will also briefly discuss the Confederate guerilla campaign in Missouri, led by William Quantrill, ‘Bloody Bill’ Anderson and Jesse James.

The American Civil War

Steven E. Woodworth, The Chickamauga Campaign (2010).David A. Powell, Failure in the Saddle: Nathan Bedford Forrest, Joseph Wheeler and the

Confederate Cavalry in the Chickamauga Campaign (2010).Steven E. Woodworth & Charles D. Grear, The Chattanooga Campaign (2012).Jeremy Neely, The Border Between Them: Violence and Reconciliation on the Kansas-

Missouri Line (2007).Robert L. Dyer, Jesse James and the Civil War in Missouri (1994).Mark Geiger, Financial Fraud and Guerilla Violence in Missouri’s Civil War, 1861-1865

(2010).Daniel E. Sutherland, A Savage Conflict: The Decisive Role of Guerrillas in the

American Civil War (2009).

13 March:

Grant’s Overland Campaign will be the focus of this week, covering The Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, and the start of the Siege of Petersburg.

With Grant losing 50,000 men in a month, life on the Northern home front will also be emphasised.

Gordon C. Rhea, The Battle of the Wilderness: May 5–6, 1864 (1994).Gordon C. Rhea, The Battles for Spotsylvania Court House and the Road to Yellow Tavern, May 7–12, 1864 (1997).Gordon C. Rhea, To the North Anna River: Grant and Lee, May 13–25, 1864 (2000).Alfred C. Young, Lee’s Army During the Overland Campaign: A Numerical Study (2013).Earl J. Hess, Trench Warfare Under Grant & Lee: Field Fortifications in the Overland

Campaign (2007).William S. Dunlop, Lee’s Sharpshooters (2001).Zack C. Waters & James C. Edmonds, A Small But Spartan Band: The Florida Brigade

in Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia (2010).Gary W. Gallagher, The Spotsylvania Campaign (1998).Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of General Ulysses S. Grant (2014).Harry S. Laver, A General Who Will Fight: The Leadership of Ulysses S. Grant (2013).Henry Deming, The Life of Ulysses S. Grant, General United States Army (1868).Joan Waugh, U.S. Grant: American Hero, American Myth (2009).Joan Waugh, Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant: A History of the Union Cause (2003).Charles R. Bowery, Jr, Lee & Grant: Profiles in Leadership from the Battlefields of

Virginia (2005).J. F. C. Fuller, Grant & Lee: A Study in Personality and Generalship (1933).

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20 March:

This week we will examine Sherman’s Atlanta Campaign, followed by his army’s destructive march to Savannah. The Second Shenandoah Valley Campaign, which proved equally destructive, will also be considered.

We will then analyse the downfall of the Confederacy, focusing on Mobile Bay, the Carolina Campaign, fall of Charleston, Wilmington and Richmond; and the surrenders of Confederate military units and naval ships from April to November 1865.

The civilian experience in the Southern home front will be emphasised during this week, as will Union and Confederate prisoner-of-war camps.

Finally, we will discuss the Lincoln assassination.

George E. Pond, The Shenandoah Valley in 1864 (2001).Gary W. Gallagher, The Shenandoah Valley Campaign of 1864 (2006).Lisa M. Brady, War Upon the Land: Military Strategy and the Transformation of

Southern Landscapes During the American Civil War (2012).John F. Marszalek, Sherman: A Soldier’s Passion for Order (1992).Wesley Moody, Demon of the Lost Cause: Sherman and Civil War History (2011).S. M. Bowman, Sherman and His Campaigns: A Military Biography (1868).James Gillespie Blaine, Memoirs of Gen. W. T. Sherman, Vols. I & II (1999).Chauncey H. Cooke, A Badger Boy in Blue: The Civil War Letters of Chauncey H. Cooke

(2007).James B. Swan, Chicago's Irish Legion: The 90th Illinois Volunteers in the Civil War

(2009).Mark H. Dunkelman, Marching with Sherman: Through Georgia and the Carolinas with

the 154th New York (2012).John P. Wilson, From Western Deserts to Carolina Swamps: A Civil War Soldier’s

Journals and Letters Home (2012).Marion Brunson Lucas, Sherman and the Burning of Columbia (2000).Thomas Robertson, Resisting Sherman: A Confederate Surgeon’s Journal and the Civil

War in the Carolinas, 1865 (2015).T. Harry Williams, McClellan, Sherman and Grant (1991).Craig Symonds, Union Combined Operations in the Civil War (2010).Benjamin G. Cloyd, Haunted by Atrocity: Civil War Prisons in American Memory

(2010).Roger Pickenpaugh, Captives in Blue: The Civil War Prisons of the Confederacy (2013).Roger Pickenpaugh, Camp Chase and the Evolution of Union Prison Policy (2007).James M. Gillespie, Andersonvilles of the North: The Myths and Realities of Northern

Treatment of Civil War Confederate Prisoners (2008).

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John McElroy, Andersonville: A Story of Rebel Military Prisons, Fifteen Months a Guest of the So-called Southern Confederacy. A Private Soldier’s Experience in Richmond, Andersonville, Savannah, Millen, Blackshear and Florence (1999).

J. J. Greer, Beyond the Lines: Or, a Yankee Prisoner Loose in Dixie (2000).John B. Vaughter, Prison Life in Dixie (2000).Victor E. Taylor, The Religious Pray, the Profane Swear: Robert Loudon Drummond's

Survival of Libby and Salisbury Prisons during the American Civil War (2012).Wesley Makely, I Fear I Shall Never Leave this Island: Life in a Civil War Prison

(2011).James J. Williamson, Prison Life in the Old Capitol and Reminiscences of the Civil War

(1911).William Marvel, Lee’s Last Retreat: The Flight to Appomattox (2002).Lawrence A. Kreiser, Jr, Defeating Lee: A History of the Second Corps, Army of the

Potomac (2011).G. S. Boritt, Why the Confederacy Lost (1992).Henry Steele Commager, The Defeat of the Confederacy: A Documentary Survey (1964).Anne S. Rubin, A Shattered Nation: The Rise and Fall of the Confederacy, 1861-1868

(2005).William Simpson Oldham, Rise and Fall of the Confederacy: The Memoir of Senator

Williamson S. Oldham, CSA (2006).Eugene D. Genovese, A Consuming Fire: The Fall of the Confederacy in the Mind of the

White Christian South (1998).Harold Holzer, Lincoln and Freedom: Slavery, Emancipation and the Thirteenth

Amendment (2007).Harold Holzer & Craig Symonds, The Lincoln Assassination: Crime and Punishment,

Myth and Memory (2010).Edward Steers, Jr, Lincoln’s Assassination (2014).William C. Edwards, The Lincoln Assassination: The Evidence (2009).Thomas Goodrich, The Darkest Dawn: Lincoln, Booth and the Great American Tragedy

(2005).Andrew C. A. Jampoler, The Last Lincoln Conspirator: John Surratt's Flight From the

Gallows (2009).