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Info About Confederate States of America

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The Civil War began in 1861 after eleven Southern states broke away from the Union. It ended in 1865 when the South surrendered. More than 600,000 men died during the war. In many respects the Civil War was the first 'modern' war to be fought in history. Several new developments in weapons were first used during the war, and railroads, which had recently been constructed, played an important part in troop movements.

American Civil War

This was a war fought between the northern and southern states (1861-65). For many years before the Civil War, the northern and southern states had opposed each other. There were many differences between their ways of life. The South was mainly agricultural and relied on growing cotton. Cotton was so important to southerners that they called it “King Cotton”. It was often grown on large farms called plantations, where almost all of the laborers were black slaves. At first slaves had been shipped to the United States from Africa. In 1808, this slave trade was stopped, but slavery continued. In 1860, there were about 3% million black slaves and 5% million whites in the southern states.

The North was also agricultural, but it did not depend on one crop or on slaves, as the South did. Also, industry in the North was growing very fast, while the South had few or no factories. The South had to rely on the North for most manufactured goods, such as clothes and plows. Arguments between North and South grew very bitter over the problems of slavery in new territories. As people moved westwards into new lands, new territories were created. The South thought that slavery should be allowed in some of the new territories, such as Kansas. Many northerners disapproved of slavery and they did not want it to spread to new territories. Some northerners wanted slavery abolished in the South as well. In 1861, Abraham Lincoln of Illinois became president. He belonged to the Republican Party, which had promised to pass laws which would ban slavery in new territories. Eleven southern states therefore broke away from the Union, chose another president and called themselves the Confederate States of America. Abraham Lincoln had not intended to free their slaves, but he could not let the southern states break away from the Union.

war War began when southerners captured Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor, South Carolina in April 1861. For two years, the South fought successfully. Their Confederate Army, which had many experienced soldiers, was led by two brilliant generals, Robert E. Lee and 'Stonewall' Jackson. Lee won the South's first victory at the First Battle of Bull Run in July 1861. Many other battles were fought in the same area between Washington D.C. (the Union capital) and Richmond, Virginia (the Confederate capital). 'Stonewall' Jackson was killed in this area after another Confederate victory at Chancellorsville, Virginia, in May 1863. Two months later, Robert E. Lee suffered a defeat at Gettysburg. In this blood-thirsty battle, George E. Meade stopped Lee's invasion of Pennsylvania and drove him back towards Richmond.

President Lincoln had great difficulty in finding a commander for the Union's armies who could out-general Lee. However, a day after the Union victory at Gettysburg, a Union general, Ulysses S. Grant, captured the city of Vicksburg in Mississippi after a long siege. Lincoln made him commander of the Union armies and he led Meade s army against Lee's in the Wilderness Campaign in 1864. Grant's victory at Vicksburg had given the Union armies control of the Mississippi River. They had captured New Orleans in 1862, and their control of the river cut the southern states in two. Meanwhile, General Sherman led a northern army into Georgia and South Carolina to cut the South into two from east to west. Sherman's army left its railroad supply line and marched from Atlanta, Georgia to the sea, then up through South Carolina. They seized or destroyed food, cattle, horses and factories and left burning houses and fields behind them. In 1865, Grant captured Richmond and on April 9, General Lee surrendered with his army to Grant at Appomattox, thus ending the war after four years' fighting. Over 200,000 men died in battle. The South lost because it had fewer men and also because, unlike the North, it lacked the factories for making guns and other war supplies. The southerners could not import supplies from abroad because northern ships blocked their harbors. The southern states again became part of the United States, and all slaves were freed. Many southerners felt very bitter towards their northern conquerors for years afterwards.