At 4:30 in the morning on April 12, 1861, the newly-formed Confederate States of America opened fire on Fort Sumter, located near the entrance to Charleston Harbor, South Carolina and held by troops loyal to the Union. This was the spark for conflict, the scale of which was glimpsed by virtually no-one in 1861. By war's end four years later, 620,000 Americans would be dead and a nation would be unified by law but divided in spirit.
New military technology combined with old fashioned medicine produced battle casualties that have been unprecedented in American history. The need for sanitation, especially when treating wounds was unbeknownst to doctors at this time which allowed for the easy spread of disease and increased the need for amputation, pictured right. |
Total WarThe Civil War introduced a whole new kind of warfare: Total War. Instead of waging war against the armies of the Confederacy, the Union waged war against the Confederacy herself, burning, pillaging and raping as they went. Even today the people of the South hold grudges against the North for the destruction they caused.
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More advanced weaponry combined with outdated battle tactics came together to produce horrendous casualties. Following the war, infantry soon evolved into the trench style fighting seen in WWI.
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We must make old and young, rich and poor, feel the hard hand of war"
- Union general William Sherman on Total War
The use of Total War caused a greater divide between the North and the South than the actual war itself. This type of conflict foreshadowed the type of war the U.S. would fight in the 20th Century.
A New Social Class Rises
With the freeing of the slaves in the South, many former slaves known now as Freedmen found themselves kicked out of their former plantations and on the road with no money to support themselves. The lucky Freedmen found themselves back in the hands of their former masters who allowed them to work on their plantations in exchange for room and board, causing many to fall into extreme debt.
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"The Freedman's Bureau set up relief camps and throughout the summer of 1865 distributed 100,000 daily rations to suffering blacks. But the camps were so crowded that epidemics killed a third of the people in them" |
ReconstructionLincolns Emancipation Proclamation put an end to slavery, and with it, the Southern way of life the Confederates fought so hard to uphold. Bitter and humiliated, distraught whites formed hate groups like the Klu Klux Klan in the hopes of maintain racial superiority, embracing the legend of a lost cause and forever tainting our nations history. Fast-forward to 2018 and the hatred is still ever present.
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Following the end of the war, the South wasn't just destroyed but rather completely annihilated. Two-fifths of her livestock wiped out, more than half her farm machinery demolished, her major cities in ruins, her railroads and industry devastated. Groups of bandits plagued defenseless homes.
To combat the South passed "black codes" to control the labor and behavior of former slaves, putting in place a free-labor system that binded free blacks to their former masters. Although slavery had been outlawed by the Thirteenth Amendment, it effectively continued in many states. |
Even today, the cause of the Civil War is a topic of much controversy. Supporters of the Confederacy don't defend slavery but instead it wasn't the main perpretrator of the war. One need only take a drive through a rural community in central Minnesota or Wisconsin, states who had no ties with the Confederacy, to see the rebel flag flying in the wind.
1. “Amputation Being Performed in a Hospital Tent, Gettysburg.” DocsTeach, www.docsteach.org/documents/document/amputation-being-performed-in-a-hospital-tent-gettysburg.
2. “Today.” A History of Racial Injustice - Equal Justice Initiative, racialinjustice.eji.org/timeline/12-24/.
3. Woeltje And Cutting. Map of the battle field of Gettysburg. July 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 1863. [S.l, 1888] Map. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/99448798/
4. Newcomb, Alyssa. “Twitter Users Are Outing Charlottesville Protesters.” NBCNews.com, NBCUniversal News Group, 14 Aug. 2017, www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/twitter-users-are-outing-charlottesville-protesters-n792501.
5. Harris, Paul. “How the End of Slavery Led to Starvation and Death for Millions of Black Americans.” The Observer, Guardian News and Media, 16 June 2012, www.theguardian.com/world/2012/jun/16/slavery-starvation-civil-war.
2. “Today.” A History of Racial Injustice - Equal Justice Initiative, racialinjustice.eji.org/timeline/12-24/.
3. Woeltje And Cutting. Map of the battle field of Gettysburg. July 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 1863. [S.l, 1888] Map. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/99448798/
4. Newcomb, Alyssa. “Twitter Users Are Outing Charlottesville Protesters.” NBCNews.com, NBCUniversal News Group, 14 Aug. 2017, www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/twitter-users-are-outing-charlottesville-protesters-n792501.
5. Harris, Paul. “How the End of Slavery Led to Starvation and Death for Millions of Black Americans.” The Observer, Guardian News and Media, 16 June 2012, www.theguardian.com/world/2012/jun/16/slavery-starvation-civil-war.