Timeline :The Civil War (1861-1865)

1861 War begins: Confederates attack federal Fort Sumter

1862 Confederate battlefield successes

1863 Turning point battles (July 4): Gettysburg & VicksburgEmancipation Proclamation

1864 Grant begins the Union strategy of attrition in the East

1865 Confederate defeat: Lee surrenders at Appomattox CourthouseLincoln assassinated

Timeline :The Civil War (1861-1865)

1861: Fort Sumter61: First Bull Run (east)62: Seven Days’ Campaign (east)62: Second Bull Run (east)62: Antietam (east)62: Fredericksburg (east)62: Henry & Donnelson (west)62: New Orleans (west)62: Shiloh (west)62: southern conscription63: Gettysburg (east)63: Vicksburg (west)63: northern conscription64: Grant vs. Lee attrition – The Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, Petersburg (east)64: Savannah (east)64: Lincoln re-elected64: Sherman’s March to the Sea (center east)65: capture Richmond, Lee surrenders at Appomattox, Lincoln assassinated

gray = Confederate victory blue = Union victory

… the dead were piled in heaps upon heaps and the wounded men were intermixed with the dead, held fast by their dead companions who fell upon them, continually adding to the ghastly pile of men. The breastworks were on the edge of a heavy oak woods and large trees, eighteen inches or more in diameter, were worn and cut completely off by the storm of bullets and fell upon the dead and wounded Rebels. Those that lay upon our side in the night when the trees fell said that their howlings were awful when these trees came down upon them. When I looked over in the morning there was one Rebel, sat up, praying at the top of his lungs, and others were gibbering in insanity. (Charles Brewster at Spotsylvania, 1864)

… a poor, thin country girl in a faded calico gown and a sun bonnet. She stood alone on the platform waiting. When we stopped, the men took out from a freight car a rough, unplaned pine box and laid it down, baring their heads for a moment. Then the train steamed away. She sat down on the ground, put her arms around the box, and leaned her head on it. The child went on playing. (northern woman’s diary)

Though the government openly declared that it did not want the negroes in this conflict, I look around me and see hundreds of colored men armed and ready to defend the government at any moment. And such are my feeling that I can only say: the fetters have fallen, our bondage is over.

Fire must be met with water, darkness with light, and war for the destruction of liberty must be met with war for the destruction of slavery.

Phase One (1861-62):Confederate Supremacy

…a set of ragamuffins. It seemed as if every cornfield in Maryland had been robbed of its scarecrows. None had any underclothing. My costume consisted of a stained dirty jacket, an old slouch hat, the brim pinned up with a thorn, a begrimed blanket thrown over my shoulder, a grease-smeared cotton haversack full of apples and corn, a cartridge box full, and a musket. I was barefoot and had a stone bruise on each foot. There was no one there who would not have been run in by the police, had he appeared on the streets of any normal city.

It was not a fight: it was a massacre.

Phase Two (1863):The Turning Point

If you cannot feed us, you had better surrender.

Phase Two (1863):The Turning Point

I will save the union by freeing all of the slaves or I will save the union by freeing none of the slaves. (Lincoln, 1863)

a motley-looking crew, but they fight like devils

…gaunt starvation that looked out from their cavernous eyes... That they could march or fight at all seems incredible.

Phase Three (1864-65):Attrition

Leave them only their eyes, with which to weep.

Morning, June third: I die today at Cold Harbor.

Ain’t gonna be no niggers in Uncle Billy’s army.

“Long Abe Lincoln a little longer”

Conquered, submission, subjugation are the words that burn into my heart, yet I feel that we are doomed to know them in all their bitterness. ... [we will] now become slaves, yes slaves, of the Yankee government ... submission to the Union, how we hate that word: confiscation, negro equality...