33.8 America: a.d. 1801 to 1900  (Page 19/31)

The first gun of the Civil War was fired April 12, 1861 as the Confederate officers started to take Fort Sumter at Charleston, North Carolina. That firing on the flag was enough to arouse patriotism in the north and then events moved swiftly. To win, the north had to completely crush the south and most European experts thought this impossible.

Lincoln's paramount object was to save the Union, not to destroy slavery, but in the fall of 1862 after General Lee's army had been exhausted and depleted at Antietam, he did announce his Emancipation Proclamation to officially free the slaves in the rebel states. The loyal slave states (Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, West Virginia and Missouri) only later freed their slaves by state action.

Mostly boys fought the Civil War, it being almost certain that the majority on both sides were under 21, many as young as 15. Even the officers were young, some major generals being in their 20s. At least 540,000 Americans (population in 1860 was over 31,000,000) lost their lives in or as a result of that war. The average soldier was sick enough 2 or 3 times each year to be sent to a hospital, which was of ten a more dangerous place than the battlefield. Antisepsis was unknown, anesthetics not always available and abdominal wounds and major amputations meant probable death. The south had the best medical corps as a result of the work of their capable surgeon-general, Dr. Samuel Preston Moore, but neither side had an effective transportation system early and the south never developed one. In the last 2 years of the war the use of anesthetics finally became routine in the northern armies only. (Ref. 125 ) The commander of the Confederate Navy had a son killed in the Union Navy and Mrs. Lincoln's three brothers died fighting for the south.

In this outline we shall not attempt to record the campaigns and battles of this war. In spite of a series of costly land campaigns over two years, the Union won only after the South had been starved by a Union blockade and split by the Mississippi. The best officers on both sides were West Point graduates, but Lincoln may have been the best strategist of them all. He offered command of the Union forces at the beginning to General Robert E. Lee and Lee was against slavery, but he was a fifth generation Virginian and felt that he had to stay with his state. Most of the fighting was done in rough, forested country. Antietam, Gettysburg and Fredericksburg were the only important battles in open country. General Lee persistently underestimated the effect of rifle fire over open ground and that is why his attacks failed at Antietam and Gettysburg. The Union's .58 caliber rifle, 4' 8" long, fired by a percussion cap, could be fired at 3 rounds per minute and could kill at over 1/2 mile. Mines and submarines were used for defense in shoal waters. A new innovation was air observation from balloons. 50uthern hopes of a quick victory were based on the expectation that the North would not f ight and that England, needing cotton, would go to war to help the South. Both assumptions were in error, although warships for the Confederacy were built in both British and French ports.