Georgia and the American Experience

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Georgia and the American Experience

• Chapter 8
• The Civil War, A Nation in Conflict
• Study Presentation

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Georgia and the American Experience

• Section 1 The Road to War
• Section 2 The War on the Battlefield
• Section 3 Life for the Civil War Soldier
• Section 4 Life During the Civil War

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Section 1 The Road to War

• Essential Question
• What strategies were selected to win the Civil
  War?

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Section 1 The Road to War

• What words do I need to know?
• conscription
• blockade
• blockade runner
• King Cotton Diplomacy
• strategy

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The War Begins

• April 10, 1861, Major General P.G.T. Beauregard
  leads bombardment of Fort Sumter, in Charleston
  Harbor
• Federal troops and laborers inside Fort Sumter
  surrender on April 13
• Arkansas, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia
  secede from the Union
• President Abraham Lincoln calls for 75,000 troops
  to put down the rebellion and protect Washington

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Assembling Armies

• Most soldiers volunteered at first, but later men
  were conscripted (drafted to serve in the armies)
• Some men received bounties (money) to sign up
  some signed up, received the bounty, then
  deserted
• Poorer men sometimes accepted money to fight in
  place of wealthier men who didnt want to serve

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Resources, North and South

• North had more people from which to create and
  resupply armies
• North had more factories, better railroad system,
  and most of the nations farms and wealth
• South had more experienced military leaders, and
  were highly motivated to defend their familiar
  homeland to win independence

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Blockade Strategy

• Union blockaded all Southern ports to prevent
  cotton exports and imports of weaponry from
  foreign countries
• Privately operated blockade runners successfully
  slipped past Union ships to ship goods to and
  from Europe during the war
• The Union Navy included many ironclads (armored
  ships)

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Other Wartime Strategies

• Anaconda Plan To squeeze Confederacy to death
  by capturing the Mississippi River and cutting
  off Louisiana, Texas, and Arkansas
• Capturing Richmond, the capital, might have ended
  the war early, but General Robert E. Lees
  Confederate Army prevented that for years

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Late War Strategy

• Destroy Confederate armies on the battlefield
• Lay waste to the Southern land, so that civilians
  would call for an end to the war
• General William T. Shermans March to the Sea
  through Georgia was successful in the lay waste
  to land strategy

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Southern Strategies

• Wear down the Union armies, which would hasten
  the northerners desire to end the war
• Use swift raiders to help break the Union
  blockade
• King Cotton Diplomacy Temporarily stop exports
  to England and France to inspire those nations to
  help break the Union blockade France and England
  instead starting importing Egyptian cotton

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Section 2 The War on the Battlefield

• ESSENTIAL QUESTION
• What were the major battles that took place in
  Georgia?

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Section 2 The War on the Battlefield

• What words do I need to know?
• Chickamauga
• Atlanta Campaign
• Emancipation Proclamation

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Freeing the Slaves

• Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on
  September 22, 1862
• Document gave the Southern Confederacy a choice
  Quit the war and keep slavery alive or keep
  fighting and slaves would be forever free
• Deadline was January 1, 1863
• The Confederate leaders continued the war and the
  slaves were declared free by the United States
  government in 1863

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The Fall of Fort Pulaski

• More than 100 battles or skirmishes in Georgia
  92 happened in 1864 during the Atlanta and
  Savannah campaigns
• First battle, April 10, 1862, was at all-brick
  Fort Pulaski, near Tybee Island
• Rifled cannon used by U.S. Army in warfare for
  the first time the Confederates surrendered the
  fort in less than two days
• No brick American forts were built after this
  battle

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The Battle of Chickamauga

• September 1863
• Seven miles south of Chattanooga, Tennessee
• Chattanooga was major railroad center
• Union troops were driven back to Chattanooga
  Confederates did not follow-up on their victory
• Union reinforcements later recaptured Chattanooga
  

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The Atlanta Campaign

• Late Spring/Early Summer 1864 Shermans Union
  Army fought series of battles against Joseph E.
  Johnstons Confederate Army
• Confederates continued to retreat further
  southward into Georgia
• June 1864 Sherman attacked Johnston at Kennesaw
  Mountain Sherman lost but continued toward
  Atlanta
• July 1864 John Bell Hood replaced Johnston,
  battled Sherman, then concentrated defenses in
  Atlanta

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The Battle of Atlanta

• Sherman surrounded the city and laid siege
• Hood wanted to lure Sherman into the city to
  fight, but that didnt work
• Fighting continued during July and August 1864
• Hood and Atlantas citizens finally vacate the
  city on September 1
• Sherman burns the city in mid-November then
  begins his march toward Savannah and the sea

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The March to the Sea

• Shermans Union army destroys everything in its
  path, 300 miles from Atlanta to Savannah
• A sixty mile-wide area is burned, destroyed, and
  ruined during a two-month period
• Estimated losses exceeded 100 million
• Captured, but did not burn, Savannah in December
  1864
• Loaded and shipped 28 million worth of cotton,
  stored in Savannah, to the North

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The Civil War Ends

• January 13, 1865 Fort Fisher in North Carolina
  capturedthe last Confederate blockade-running
  port
• General Robert E. Lees Army of Virginia cannot
  defeat Union General U.S. Grant at Petersburg he
  surrenders his army at Appomattox Courthouse on
  April 9, 1865
• Confederate President Jefferson Davis flees and
  is eventually captured in Irwinville, Georgia

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Civil War Prisons

• Both North and South had prisons for captured
  soldiers thousands of men on both sides died in
  these prisons
• Andersonville Prison, in southwest Georgia, was
  overcrowded, and offered poor food, contaminated
  water, and poor sanitation 13,700 Union soldiers
  are buried there
• Captain Henry Wirtz, Andersonville Prison
  commander, was later hanged for excessive
  cruelty
• Andersonville is now home to the National
  Prisoner of War Museum

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Section 3 Life for the Civil War Soldier

• ESSENTIAL QUESTION
• What was life like for the common soldiers of
  the Civil War?

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Section 3 Life for the Civil War Soldier

• What words do I need to know?
• Sutler wagon
• rations
• common soldier

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The Civil War Soldier

• Most were under the age of 21 over 250,000 were
  16-years-old or younger
• Most came from lower socioeconomic groups wanted
  to seek adventure or escape boredom of farm life
• Rations (portions of food) were generally better
  for Northern soldiers than Southern soldiers
• Sutler wagons followed troops, and sold soldiers
  a variety of goods and foods their items were
  very expensive, however

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Uniforms and Supplies

• In the early months of the war, troops wore a
  variety of uniforms sometimes armies were hard
  to tell apart
• The Confederate soldiers eventually wore gray
  pants or butternut-dyed homemade clothes
• Union soldiers wore blue uniforms, most mass
  produced in factories

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Weaponry

• Forty-inch barrel Springfield rifles replaced
  single-shot, muzzle-loading .54 caliber rifles
• Confederate soldiers often fought with foreign
  rifles, but when they broke, they depended on
  rifles they could gather from the battlefield
• Infantry on both sides carried long fighting
  blades

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Camp Life

• Boredom between battles was common
• Men wrote and read letters, played practical
  jokes, played games, or sang
• Many men whittled, carving items out of wood,
  bone, and other material
• Games of baseball were common
• Religious gatherings, including Bible and singing
  were popular

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Black Soldiers

• Some 178,985 enlisted men served in black
  regiments during the Civil War
• The 54th Massachusetts, led by Col. Robert Shaw
  (a white officer) led an assault on Fort Wagner,
  South Carolina in 1863 the battle proved the
  value of black troops
• 3,500 black men from Georgia fought in the Union
  Army
• The Confederate government in 1865 passed a law
  allowing black slaves to fight in Southern
  armies the war ended before a black regiment was
  organized

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Latino Service

• Many immigrants from Spain and Latin America were
  recruited for the Union Army
• Admiral David Farragut, a Latino, became first
  U.S. Naval Admiral he was a hero for capturing
  Mobile Bay and other ports
• Loreta Velazquez fought for the Confederacy
  (disguised as a man) and served as a Confederate
  spy
• Several states contributed entire Latino
  battalions

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Section 4 Life During the Civil War

• ESSENTIAL QUESTION
• What was life like for civilians during the Civil
  War?

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Section 4 Life During the Civil War

• What words do I need to know?
• hardships
• shortages
• volunteers

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Women in the Civil War

• Food, items for clothes, and basic items were in
  short supply, especially in the South
• Staples like flour, coffee, and sugar were very
  expensive or hard to acquire
• Women tried to keep their families fed and
  sheltered despite the difficulties
• Many fought disguised as men others served as
  spies many worked in factories
• Female nurses were much valued

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Women of Note

• Phoebe Pember of Savannah helped administer a
  division in a major Richmond hospital
• Captain Sally Tompkins ran a Southern military
  hospital
• Clara Barton, a Union nurse supervisor, later
  founded the American Red Cross
• Mary Boykin Chesnut of South Carolina left a
  prized written record of the wartime life

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Children During the War

• Most did chores at home to help their families or
  contribute to the war effort
• Children in the South had basically no public
  schools wealthy families could continue with
  private tutoring
• Boys as young as 10 served in both armies
  thousands of soldiers were between 14- and
  16-years-old

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The Aftermath

• 620,000 people died during the war about
  two-thirds died from diseases, wounds, or
  military prison hardships
• Healing of emotional wounds took far longer than
  the war itself
• The North or the South would never be the same
  again

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