Alan Axelrod - Complete Idiot’s Guide to American History

The fact is that Lincoln was no enthusiastic advocate of emancipation. To be sure, he personally hated slavery, but as president, he was sworn to uphold the Constitution, which clearly protected slavery in the slave states. More immediately, Lincoln feared that universally declaring the slaves free would propel the four slaveholding border states into the Confederate fold. For many Northerners, the moral basis of the Civil War was the issue of emancipation. But Lincoln moved cautiously.

In August 1861, Lincoln prevailed on Congress to declare slaves in the rebellious states “contraband” property. As such, slaves could be seized by the federal government, which could then refuse to return them. In March 1862, Congress passed a law forbidding army officers from returning fugitive slaves. In July 1862, Congress passed legislation freeing slaves confiscated from owners “engaged in rebellion.” In addition, a militia act authorized the president to use freed slaves in the army. With these acts, Lincoln’s government edged closer to emancipation.

Secretary of State William H. Seward warned that a proclamation of emancipation would ring hollow down the depressingly long corridor of Union defeats. It was not until Antietam, a Union victory—albeit a costly one—that Lincoln felt confident in issuing the preliminary proclamation on September 23, 1862. This document did not free the slaves, but rather, warned slave owners living in states “still in rebellion on January 1, 1863” that their slaves would be declared “forever free.” When that deadline came and passed, Lincoln issued the “final” Emancipation Proclamation-which set free only those slaves in areas of the Confederacy that were not under the control of the Union army (areas under Union control were no longer, technically, in rebellion); slaves in the border states were not liberated.

Timid, even disappointing as the Emancipation Proclamation may seem from our perspective, it served to galvanize the North by explicitly and officially elevating the war to a higher moral plane: slavery was now the central issue of the great Civil War.

The Confederacy attempted to negotiate independence from the Union before commencing hostilities by firing on Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor.

Plagued by cautious or inept commanders, the Union Army performed poorly in the first months of the war.

The Emancipation Proclamation was a fairly timid document, which reflected Lincoln’s first priority: to preserve the Union, not necessarily to free the slaves.

The popular vote was much closer than the electoral vote was much closer than the electoral vote. Lincoln received only 1,866,452 votes against 2,815,617 votes for his combined opponents.

The population of the of the South in 1861 was about 9 million people, including 3 million slaves (who were not military assets). The North had 22 million people.

Rose O’Neal Greenhow was born in Port Tobacco, Maryland, in 1817, and moved to Washington, D.C., where, from early womanhood, she cast a powerful spell on men. She married a State Department official, through whom she met a circle of highly influential Washingtonians, including James Buchanan. Widowed in 1854, Greenhow became particularly intimate with the bachelor president. Although this relationship was probably platonic, Greenhow had many others that were anything but. Among her “gentleman callers” was a host of military and government officials, perhaps including a U.S. Senator.

Greenhow was a highly intelligent woman who had nursed John C. Calhoun through his final illness when he was a resident at her aunt’s fashionable Capitol Hill boardinghouse. She imbibed Calhoun’s states’ rights theories and became a passionate partisan of the South. When the Civil War broke out, Greenhow was recruited by Confederate spy master Thomas Jordan to obtain Union military secrets. Using her many charms, she procured information that proved highly valuable to the Confederacy at First Bull Run.

Arrested on August 23, 1861, by Alan J. Pinkerton, the man who virtually invented the profession of private detective, Greenhow was later paroled to the South, and on August 5, 1863, sailed to Europe on a mission to revive French and British support for the Confederate cause. There she met Napoleon III and Queen Victoria, and she published a best-selling memoir.

Rose O’Neal Greenhow drowned in 1864 when the blockade-runner on which she was returning from abroad ran aground off Wilmington, North Carolina.

No military figure in American history is more universally admired than Robert E. Lee, who not only served the Confederate cause as a brilliant commander but, in defeat, became an enduring example of courage and dignity.

Lee was born on January 19, 1807, in Westmoreland County, Virginia, the son of Henry “Light Horse Harry” Lee, a fine cavalry officer during the American Revolution. Appointed to West Point in 1825, Robert E. Lee graduated at the top of his class in 1829 and, two years later, married Mary Ann Randolph Custis, great-granddaughter of Martha Washington by her first marriage. Lee served as an engineering officer under General Winfield Scott during the Mexican War (1846-48) and, from 1852-1855, was superintendent of West Point. In 1859, Lee led the force that suppressed John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry.

Robert E. Lee was anything but a Southern “fire-eater.” He deplored the extrimism—on both sides—that led to the Civil War. But Lee felt intense loyalty to Virginia, and when war came, he declined an offer to command the Union army, resigned his commission, and offered his services to Virginia.

Lee repeatedly took the offensive against the North-and repeatedly attained victory against superior forces, achieving his greatest triumph at extremes (May 1863). But as the South ran short of men and money, the tide turned in favor of the North. Falling back into Virginia, Lee continued to wage war brilliantly. Finally trapped at Appomattox Court House, he surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia on April 9, 1865, in what is considered the symbolic end of the Civil War.

After the war, Lee became president of Washington College (now Washington and Lee University) in Lexington, Virginia. He died on October 12, 1870, a universally admired figure.

Although Antietam was a Union victory, McClellan lost more troops than Lee: 12,000 troops versus 10,000.

In This Chapter

Gettysburg and Vicksburg: turning point of the war

Lincoln’s ultimate commander: U.S. Grant

“Total war”: Sherman’s March to the Sea

The assassination of Lincoln

Reconstruction and bitterness in the South

Andrew Johnson’s impeachment; election of Rutherford B. Hayes

No face in American history is more familiar, better loved, or more terrible than that of Abraham Lincoln. Fortunately for us, famed Civil War photographer Mathew Brady was there to photograph it. In the 16th president’s face, we see his character: the hard life of the backwoods, an infinite gentleness, an infinite sorrow. Lincoln’s burden is unimaginable; he had a mission to save the Union, even if doing so cost more than half a million lives.

Through the long, terrible summer of 1862, the president despaired. Lincoln was no military man, but he had a sound and simple grasp of strategy, and he saw that Generals Don Carlos Buell and George B. McClellan failed to press their gains toward decisive victories. Frustrated, Lincoln removed Buell from command of the Army of the Ohio and replaced him with William S. Rosecrans in late October 1862. The next month, be put Ambrose E. Burnside in McClellan’s place as commander of the Army of the Potomac. Rosecrans scored a very costly victory at Murfreesboro, Tennessee (December 31, 1862-January 3, 1863), forcing Braxton Bragg out of Tennessee, but Burnside suffered a terrible defeat at Fredericksburg, Virginia. He tried to regain the initiative for the Union forces by renewing a drive on Richmond, but faltered at the Rappahannock River and was checked by Lee’s army. On December 13, Burnside hurled a series of assaults against the Confederate trenches. He not only failed to penetrate the Confederate lines but lost more than 12,000 men in the process.