Civil War Notes

AntietamSharpsburg, MarylandSeptember 17, 1862

Lee’s 1st invasion of the North

o Lee hoped to win Maryland’s support (and supplies) for the South and win European support

o Lincoln needed a Northern victory to issue an Emancipation Proclamation

o The North knew Lee’s plans but Lee was able to rebound quickly

o The battle was a draw, but Lee retreated South of the Potomac

*Bloodiest Day in American History*

AntietamEngaged 85,000Casualties 12,410

Engaged 45,000

Casualties 11,172

Results of Battle:•South’s hopes of foreign aid were dashed•Lincoln issued preliminary Emancipation

Proclamation

GettysburgGettysburg, Pennsylvania

July 1-3, 1863

• Turning Point of the Civil War

• Lee had several goals:– Draw the Union army out

of Virginia– Fuel anti-war feeling in the

North– Feeding and supplying his

troops– Last-ditch effort to win

foreign aid

• The first two days fought to a draw, Lee made a bold attempt to win– Pickett’s Charge, sending thousands marching over a mile across an open field and in which more the 50% of the Rebels died

• Lee was never able to recover from this loss of men- Gettysburg is the bloodiest battle of the war, the worst ever fought on American soil.

Engaged 95,000Casualties 23,000

Engaged 80,000

Casualties 28,000

Gettysburg

Confederate Dead at Devil’s DenThe hand-to-hand fighting was fierce – one in every

three men in the 4th Maine was killed

Union dead July 1st and 2nd

Gettysburg Address

This crowd at the dedication of the Gettysburg Cemetery in November, 1863 hears Lincoln utter, in less than three minutes, one of the greatest political speeches in American history.

Sherman’s March to the SeaAtlanta to Savannah, Georgia

July to December, 1864

• Sherman wanted to break the South’s will to fight

• Sherman cut his army from supply lines and lived off the land

• The army cut a sixty-mile wide path of destruction, virtually destroying the state

All of these incidents stemmed from the same root question:

Who is more important, the states or the Federal government?

Appomattox Court HouseApril 9, 1865

Appomattox Court House, Virginia

• Lee surrendered his starving troops to Grant• Grant gave Lee and his men generous terms• The Union soldiers, cheering the end of the war,

were stopped by Grant to show respect to the Confederates

The Human Cost of the War

Dead WoundedTotal

North 364,511 288,881 646,392

South 260,000 194,000 454,000

Total 624,511 475,881 1,100,392

The Union armies had from 2,500,000 to 2,750,000 men. Their losses, by the best estimates:

Battle deaths: 110,070

Disease, etc.: 250,152

Total 360,222

The Confederate strength, known less accurately because of missing records, was from 750,000 to 1,250,000. Its estimated losses:

Battle deaths: 94,000

Disease, etc.: 164,000

Total 258,000

Confederate losses by states, in dead and wounded only, and with many records missing (especially those of Alabama):

North Carolina 20,602

Virginia 6,947

Mississippi 6,807

South Carolina 4,760

Arkansas 3,782

Georgia 3,702

Tennessee 3,425

Louisiana 3,059

Texas 1,260

Florida 1,047

Alabama 724

(Statisticians recognize these as fragmentary, from a report of 1866; they serve as a rough guide to relative losses by states).

In addition to its dead and wounded from battle and disease, the Union listed:

Deaths in Prison 24,866

Drowning 4,944

Accidental deaths 4,144

Murdered 520

Suicides 391

Sunstroke 313

Military executions 267

Killed after capture 104

Executed by enemy 64

Unclassified 14,155

The Economic Cost of the War

• In dollars and cents, the U.S. government estimated Jan. 1863 that the war was costing $2.5 million daily. A final official estimate in 1879 totaled $6,190,000,000. The Confederacy spent perhaps $2,099,808,707. By 1906 another $3.3 billion already had been spent by the U.S. government on Northerners' pensions and other veterans' benefits for former Federal soldiers