The Civil War: A Long, Bloody Affair

• No one thought the war would last long.

•One congressman said he’d be able to wipe up all the blood spilt over secession with his handkerchief.

Northern Advantages• North had the population advantage, with

22 million people to the South’s 9 million.• North had the economic advantage,

controlling 85% of U.S. industry. They could produce military supplies faster

• Most of the railroads were located in the Northeast and Midwest, so the north could move troops and supplies more easily

• Most of the U.S. Navy remained loyal to the Union. This allowed for the Anaconda Plan, which involved a naval blockade of the South.

Southern Advantages

• South had to fight only a defensive war – they just needed to protect their territory until the North gave up.

• The South had excellent military leadership

The War Begins…• After the 1860 presidential election of Abraham Lincoln,

the seceding Southern states formed the Confederate States of America.

• The War began on April 12, 1861 when Confederates bombarded Fort Sumter. The Confederates took the fort without either side losing a man.

The bombardment of Fort Sumter

Battle of Bull Run / Manassas

• Some Northerners set up a picnic to view this, the first battle of the Civil War

• Union called it Bull Run after the creek that ran near the battlefield.

• South called it Manassas after the town it was near

The first major battle of the Civil War

Spectators at Bull Run

Robert E. Lee•Lee had gained recognition serving in the Mexican War.

•Lincoln asked him to lead the Union Army but he said no.

•He opposed secession and slavery but said he could not fight against his home state of Virginia. He became commander of the Confederate Army

Bull Run was a Union defeat that shamed the North and helped them realize that the war was going to take longer than a couple of months.

Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson Alfred S. Johnston

Two of the Confederacy’s best generals, Jackson and Johnston, were at Manassas. Neither of them would survive the war.

Fighting Conditions

• Both sides suffered from lack of supplies and disease during the war

• Disease, malnutrition and infection took the lives of over 65% of the soldiers who fought in the war.

A Union doctor gets ready to amputate a soldiers leg. Amputations were a very common procedure during the war.

• Part of the reason their were so many infections is because their were many amputations.

• The bullet being used in the Civil War was known as the Minie Ball. It was made of soft lead, and unlike modern bullets, when it hit bone it would spread, turning bone into dust.

• The Minie Ball also made Civil War rifles much more accurate (p.388)

Casualty rates for many Civil War battles were at 50%. Nowadays a 10% casualty rate is considered a “bloodbath”

Some regiments that began with around 1,500 men would be reduced to less that 300 in a year.

The weapons were more advance than the tactics

• A big reason casualties were so high during the Civil War was because the weapons technology had advanced, but generals were still using the old way of fighting – marching up men in columns, lining up and firing.

Matthew Brady’s photos of Civil War battlefields presented the horrors of the war to the public in a

way they had never seen before.

Casualties from the entire Revolutionary War: 4,500Casualties from two days at the Battle of Shiloh: 23,500

By the end of the war, 7 more battles as deadly as Shiloh (or more) would be fought.