The Civil War Read online

  Copyright © 2014 by Gordon Leidner

  Cover and internal design © 2014 by Sourcebooks, Inc.

  Cover image by Alexander Gardner, 1862, courtesy of the Civil War Collection, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

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  Photos courtesy of the Library of Congress.

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  Dedicated to my great-grandfather:

  Private Philip Heinrich Leidner, Company A,

  5th Missouri Regiment, USRC

  Veteran of the American Civil War

  Contents

  Preface

  Introduction to the Civil War

  1 Distant Drums

  2 Call to Arms

  3 A Resolve to Win

  4 Character

  5 War Is Hell

  6 Facing the Inevitable

  7 We Are All Americans

  Excerpts from Jefferson Davis’s Inaugural Address

  Excerpts from Abraham Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address

  The Gettysburg Address: Abraham Lincoln

  Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address

  Grant’s Terms of Surrender to Lee at Appomattox

  Farewell Address: General Robert E. Lee

  Endnotes

  About the Editor

  “The struggle of today, is not altogether for today—it is for a vast future also.”1

  —Abraham Lincoln

  Preface

  There is no saga of American history that contains more stories of hope, courage, resolve, love, and sacrifice than the American Civil War. The Civil War: Voices of Hope, Sacrifice, and Courage tells the story of this great conflict through the words of the men and women who experienced it firsthand. Within are quotations from presidents Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis, which provide insight into the reasons for the war. The words of military leaders such as Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant, Stonewall Jackson, and William Tecumseh Sherman demonstrate not only military acumen, but also a thorough understanding of human nature. Excerpts from the diaries of women such as Mary Boykin Chesnut and Sarah Morgan Dawson tell of the civilians’ hardships in war. Stories of wounded soldiers are recounted by nurses such as Clara Barton and Louisa May Alcott, revealing the heroism of both the teller and the reteller. Abolitionists such as John Brown and Henry Ward Beecher attack the injustice of slavery, while slave owners like William Lowndes Yancey and Edmund Ruffin defend it. Personal stories from former slaves such as Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman provide insight into the meaning of freedom, while soldiers of all ranks, Union and Confederate, convey both the horror and grandeur of war.

  The Civil War abounds with some of the most enduring speeches of American history. The Gettysburg Address, Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, and Lee’s Farewell are among those included at the end of the book.

  Each chapter begins with a short introduction that provides some context for the quotes that follow. To improve the quotes’ readability, minor changes were occasionally made to correct capitalization, spelling, and punctuation errors. A sincere effort was made to ensure that the quotes are historically accurate, as evidenced by the endnotes in the back of the book.

  Rather than attempting to trace the progress of a soldier’s rank through the war, officers are usually referred to by their highest rank attained. Instead of trying to differentiate between Brigadier, Major, and Lieutenant General, all men of general rank are referred to as simply “General.”

  For the most part, the quotes are presented in a chronological manner. The primary purpose, however, was to arrange the quotes topically, so succeeding chapters will occasionally have a few quotes that occurred earlier in the war.

  I trust that the reader will find these quotes inspirational as well as informative. I agree with many others that one cannot fully understand the United States of America today without understanding the experiences of Americans during our nation’s most devastating war.

  —Gordon Leidner

  Introduction to the Civil War

  Most twenty-first-century readers are amazed that it required a horrendous war, resulting in the death of hundreds of thousands of Americans, to put an end to an institution as reprehensible as slavery. It becomes even more amazing when one realizes that the majority of the Americans who fought in the Civil War did not join the army in order to either explicitly defend or eliminate slavery.

  To most Southerners, the war was about preserving their “way of life” rather than preserving slavery. The majority of the Southern people had grown to accept slavery as fundamental to the South’s economic survival, and their consciences had been eased regarding the “peculiar institution” by not only their political leaders, but also their religious leaders. Preachers in the South, and sometimes in the North too, had extolled passages of the Bible supporting slavery. These religious leaders didn’t bother with clarifying details such as the fact that a “slave” in the Bible would have been more accurately described as a “bond servant” in the nineteenth century. Whereas bond servants were often skilled workers who had rights such as the ability to buy their freedom, the Southern slaves had no rights and were typically slaves for life.

  It was a comparative minority of Southerners, namely the slave-owning planter class, who had an overriding interest in propagating the institution of slavery. This minority had an enormous influence on the rest of their society and convinced the majority of Southerners that any threat to slavery was a threat to them all.

  To most Northerners, the war was initially about preserving democratic government. Only a minority of Northerners, primarily the abolitionists, were adamant about immediately eliminating the institution of slavery. Most Northerners had never even seen a slave and assumed that it was only by letting the institution continue undisturbed in the South that they would avert a terrible war. They believed what the Founding Fathers had assured them—that slavery would eventually die a “peaceful death” in the South for both political and economic reasons.

  But three significant events took place in the 1850s that disrupted the nation’s apathy toward slavery. These were the Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854, the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision of 1857, and John Brown’s attempted slave insurrection in 1859. The Kansas–Nebraska Act allowed settlers in new territories to determine through popular sovereignty whether they would permit slavery, negating the old Missouri Compromise that had excluded slavery in most of the new territories. The Dred Scott decision declared that people of African descent could not be American citizens and consequently had no right to sue for freedom. John Brown attempted to incite a slave revolt in Northern Virginia and was publicly han
ged for his “crime.”

  These events triggered alarm in both the North and the South. Northerners such as Abraham Lincoln started to believe that slavery would not die peacefully after all. They feared that it would propagate in the Western Territories and spread into Central America, becoming a permanent institution. Consequently, the North’s Republican Party became adamant about preventing the spread of slavery into the new territories. Southerners such as Jefferson Davis feared that the North was going to force an end to slavery, upset the political balance of power that the South had enjoyed thus far in Congress, and destroy their agrarian way of life.

  Both the Southern slave owners and Northern abolitionists took advantage of these fears. The Southern planters had, proportionately, a greater influence with the Southern people than the Northern abolitionists had with theirs. Consequently, they used this influence to initiate state conventions to consider secession from the Union. One by one, beginning with South Carolina in December 1860, these conventions voted for independence, finally resulting in eleven Southern states binding together to declare themselves a new country—the Confederate States of America. It was this declaration of Southern independence, and its consequent threat to the perpetuation of the United States, that motivated the North to arms.

  The Southern slave owners had significant influence on the formation of the Constitution of the Confederate States of America also. Consequently, the Confederacy’s constitution included the provision that only individual states would ever be capable of banning slavery. It could never be eliminated as an institution by action of their national government.

  The war started when the South attacked federal Fort Sumter in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, on April 12, 1861. After this, President Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers to put down the rebellion, and the South became more united than ever. On both sides, men rushed to enlist, naively fearing that the war would be over before they had a chance to fight.

  The American Civil War lasted four arduous years. The war in the eastern theater, primarily Virginia, was a stalemate for the war’s duration thanks primarily to the military leadership of the South’s Robert E. Lee. The battle lines went back and forth in Virginia and Maryland, with the South winning most of the battles until the latter part of the war. The war in the west, however, had a completely different outcome. Here—in Tennessee, Mississippi, and Georgia—the Northern armies, led by General Ulysses S. Grant, won most of the battles and sometimes forced the surrender of entire Southern armies that opposed them. Toward the end of the war, President Lincoln brought Grant east to oppose Lee in Virginia, and Union General William Tecumseh Sherman’s army marched through the Deep South virtually unopposed.

  President Abraham Lincoln, who had hated slavery all of his life, recognized during the course of the war his opportunity to strike at the heart of that institution. To do this, he realized that he would have to lead the Northern people through a significant transformation, helping them to embrace both the moral and practical benefits of eliminating slavery. On January 1, 1863, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which added the elimination of slavery to the war’s purposes. In speeches such as the Gettysburg Address in November 1863, Lincoln appealed to people to accept the Declaration of Independence’s proposition that “all men are created equal.” Finally, in January 1865, he pushed the acceptance of the Thirteenth Amendment, which constitutionally outlawed slavery, through a reluctant Congress. Through these efforts, he expanded the purpose of the war, as well as the minds of the Northern people. By the end of 1864, the majority of Northerners supported the elimination of slavery as a war measure to help defeat the South and/or as a morally justified action.

  The American Civil War touched virtually everyone living within the boundaries of the continental United States. As will be seen, it was “fought” not only by soldiers, but also by wives, nurses, slaves, mothers, and sometimes children. Their reasons for fighting, their experiences, their hopes and fears are presented in the following pages.

  1

  Distant Drums

  The inherent conflict between America’s two foundational documents—the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution—made the Civil War inevitable. In 1776, the Founding Fathers had ideologically proclaimed in the Declaration that all men are created equal. But when they adopted the United States Constitution eleven years later, they allowed the continuation of slavery.

  Most of the Founding Founders had hoped that slavery would eventually experience a peaceful demise. But by the middle of the nineteenth century, long after the Founders had died, that peaceful end remained elusive. Slavery had been instrumental in the rise of two different cultures in America, Northern and Southern. Each society feared domination by the other, and this fear evolved into mistrust. Visionaries like Robert E. Lee and William Tecumseh Sherman tried to warn America of the horrors of war, but their voices were lost in the clamor for arms.

  * * *

  I appear this evening as a thief and robber. I stole this head, these limbs, this body from my master and ran off with them.2

  —Abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass

  * * *

  No, you dare not make war on cotton. No power on earth dares to make war upon it. Cotton is king!3

  —Southern Senator John Henry Hammond, regarding the antebellum South’s slave-based economy

  Abolitionist John Brown

  “The crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away; but with blood!”4

  You may dispose of me very easily. I am nearly disposed of now. But this question is still to be settled, this Negro question, I mean; the end of that is not yet.5

  —Abolitionist John Brown, during his trial for inciting a slave revolt

  * * *

  They [persons of African descent] had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the Negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit.6

  —Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court Roger B. Taney, in the 1857 Dred Scott Decision

  * * *

  The roaring of the approaching storm is heard from every part of the Southern states.7

  —Southern slave owner and secessionist Edmund Ruffin

  * * *

  In firing his gun, John Brown has merely told what time of day it is. It is high noon, thank God.8

  —Abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison

  * * *

  African slavery is the cornerstone of the industrial, social, and political fabric of the South; and whatever wars against it, wars against her very existence. Strike down the institution of African slavery and you reduce the South to depopulation and barbarism.9

  —Southern Congressman Lawrence Keitt

  * * *

  We were no more than dogs. If they caught us with a piece of paper in our pockets, they’d whip us. They was afraid we’d learn to read and write, but I never got the chance.10

  —A former slave woman

  * * *

  This will be a great day in our history; the date of a New Revolution—quite as much needed as the old one. Even now as I write they are leading old John Brown to execution in Virginia for attempting to rescue slaves! This is sowing the wind to reap the whirlwind, which will come soon!11

  —Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  * * *

  I think we must get rid of slavery, or we must get rid of freedom.12

  —Ralph Waldo Emerson

  * * *

  The great difference…is the institution of slavery. This alone sets apart the Southern States as a peculiar people, with whom independence, as to their internal policy, is the condition of their existence. They must rule themselves or perish.13

  —Southern secessionist Robert Barnwell Rhett Sr.

  * * *

  The leading Northern p
oliticians…do not believe that there is either courage or strength enough in the South to resist these efforts… Never has there been such an opportunity for secession.14

  —Southern slave owner and secessionist Edmund Ruffin

  * * *

  [Slavery is] the Mightiest Engine in the world for the civilization, education, and refinement of mankind.15

  —Confederate General John Brown Gordon

  * * *

  We have here only one life to live, and once to die; and if we lose our lives it will perhaps do more for the cause than our lives would be worth in any other way.16

  —Abolitionist John Brown

  * * *

  If the slaves of the South were mine, I would surrender them all without a struggle to avert the war.17

  —Confederate General Robert E. Lee

  * * *

  We shall fire the Southern heart—instruct the Southern mind—give courage to each other, and at the proper moment, by one organized, concerted action, we can precipitate the cotton states into a revolution.18

  —Southern slave owner and secessionist William Lowndes Yancey

  * * *

  I believe that to interfere, as I have done, in the behalf of God’s despised poor is not wrong but right. Now, if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments, I say, let it be done.19

  —Abolitionist John Brown, shortly before being hanged for inciting a slave revolt

  * * *

  He is not Old Brown any longer; he is an angel of light.20

  —Henry David Thoreau, speaking of the martyred John Brown

  * * *

  They do not know what they say. If it comes to a conflict of arms, the war will last at least four years. Northern politicians do not appreciate the determination and pluck of the South, and Southern politicians do not appreciate the numbers, resources, and patient perseverance of the North. Both sides forget that we are all Americans. I foresee that the country will have to pass through a terrible ordeal, a necessary expiation, perhaps, for our national sins.21