the shelling of fort sumpterConstruction of Fort Sumter first began in 1829 in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina, on a man-made island built from thousands of tons of granite. Building ground to a halt in the 1830s amid a dispute over ownership of the stretch of the harbor, and did not resume until 1841. Like many Third System fortifications, Fort Sumter proved a costly endeavor, and construction slowed again in 1859 due to lack of funding. By 1860 the island and the outer fortifications were complete, but the fort’s interior and armaments remained unfinished. Construction of Fort Sumter was still underway when South Carolina seceded from the Union on December 20, 1860. Despite Charleston’s position as a major port, at the time only two companies of federal troops guarded the harbor. Commanded by Major Robert Anderson (1805-1871), these companies were stationed at Fort Moultrie, a dilapidated fortification facing the coastline. Recognizing that Fort Moultrie was vulnerable to a land assault, Anderson elected to abandon it for the more easily defensible Fort Sumter on December 26, 1860. South Carolina militia forces would seize the city’s other forts shortly thereafter, leaving Fort Sumter as the lone federal outpost in Charleston. A standoff ensued until January 9, 1861, when a ship called the Star of the West arrived in Charleston with over 200 U.S. troops and supplies intended for Fort Sumter. South Carolina militia batteries fired upon the vessel as it neared Charleston Harbor, forcing it to turn back to sea. Major Anderson refused repeated calls to abandon Fort Sumter, and by March 1861 there were over 3,000 militia troops besieging his garrison. A number of other U.S. military facilities in the Deep South had already been seized, and Fort Sumter was viewed by many as one of the South’s few remaining hurdles to overcome before achieving sovereignty. With the inauguration of President Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) in March 1861, the situation soon escalated. Knowing that Anderson and his men were running out of supplies, Lincoln announced his intention to send three unarmed ships to relieve Fort Sumter. Having already declared that any attempt to resupply the fort would be seen as an act of aggression, South Carolina militia forces soon scrambled to respond. On April 11, militia commander P.G.T. Beauregard (1818-1893) demanded that Anderson surrender the fort, but Anderson again refused. In response Beauregard opened fire on Fort Sumter shortly after 4:30 a.m. on April 12, 1861. U.S. Captain Abner Doubleday (1819-1893)—later famous for the myth that he invented baseball—ordered the first shots in defense of the fort a few hours later. Beauregard’s 19 coastal batteries unleashed a punishing barrage on Fort Sumter, eventually firing an estimated 3,000 shots at the citadel in 34 hours. By Saturday, April 13, cannon fire had broken through the fortress’s five-foot-thick brick walls, causing fires inside the post. With his stores of ammunition depleted, Anderson was forced to surrender the fort shortly after 2 p.m. in the afternoon. No Union troops had been killed during the bombardment, but two men died the following day in an explosion that occurred during an artillery salute held before the U.S. evacuation. The bombardment of Fort Sumter would play a major part in triggering the Civil War. In the days following the assault, Lincoln issued a call for Union volunteers to quash the rebellion, while more Southern states including Virginia, North Carolina and Tennessee cast their lot with the Confederacy. Following Beauregard’s bombardment in 1861, Confederate forces occupied Fort Sumter and used it to marshal a defense of Charleston Harbor. Once it was completed and better armed, Fort Sumter allowed the Confederates to create a valuable hole in the Union blockade of the Atlantic seaboard. The first Union assault on Fort Sumter came in April 1863, when Rear Admiral Samuel Francis Du Pont (1803-1865) attempted a naval attack on Charleston. Commander of the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron, Du Pont arrived in Charleston with a fleet of nine ironclad warships, seven of which were updated versions of the famed USS Monitor. While Du Pont had hoped to recapture Fort Sumter—by then a symbol of the Confederate rebellion—his attack was poorly coordinated and met with unfavorable weather conditions. In collaboration with Fort Sumter, Confederate batteries commanded by P.G.T. Beauregard hammered the ironclad fleet with artillery fire, and underwater mines posed a constant threat to the ships’ hulls. Outgunned and unable to properly maneuver in heavy currents, Du Pont’s fleet eventually withdrew from the harbor after taking over 500 hits by Confederate guns. Only one Union soldier was killed during the battle, but one of the ironclads, the Keokuk, sank the next day. Five Confederates were killed during the attack, but the damage to Fort Sumter was soon repaired and its defenses improved. Confederate soldiers even managed to salvage one of the Keokuk’s 11-inch Dahlgren guns and mount it on the fortress. In July 1863 Union troops laid siege to Fort Wagner, a valuable post on Morris Island near the mouth of Charleston Harbor. After being met with heavy fire from Fort Sumter, Union General Quincy Adams Gillmore (1825-1888) turned his guns on the fort and unleashed a devastating seven-day bombardment. On September 8 a force of nearly 400 Union troops attempted to land at Fort Sumter and capture the post by force. Union Rear Admiral John Dahlgren (1809-1870) mistakenly believed the fort was manned by a skeleton crew, but the landing party was met by over 300 Confederate infantry, who easily repulsed the assault. Following the failed infantry attack, Union forces on Morris Island recommenced their bombing campaign on Fort Sumter. Over the next 15 months, Union artillery effectively leveled Fort Sumter, eventually firing nearly 50,000 projectiles at the fort between September 1863 and February 1865. Despite suffering over 300 casualties from the Union bombardments, the beleaguered Confederate garrison managed to retain control of the fort until February 1865. Only when Union General William T. Sherman was poised to capture Charleston did the Confederates finally evacuate. Union forces would reclaim Fort Sumter on February 22, 1865. Robert A. Anderson and Abner Doubleday, the two commanding officers from the original siege of Fort Sumter, would both return to the fortress on April 14, 1865, for a flag raising ceremony. After the Civil War the derelict Fort Sumter was rebuilt and partially redesigned. It would see little use during the 1870s and 1880s and was eventually reduced to serving as a lighthouse station for Charleston Harbor. With the start of the Spanish-American War (1898), the fortress was rearmed and once again used as a coastal defense installation. It would later see service during both World War I(1914-18) and World War II (1939-45). In 1948 Fort Sumter was decommissioned as a military post and turned over to the National Park Service. It now attracts over 750,000 visitors every year. |
gettysburgclick the link below to see reenactment of picketts charge
After his astounding victory at the Battle of Chancellorsville, Virginia, in May 1863, Robert E. Lee led his Army of Northern Virginia in its second invasion of the North—the Gettysburg Campaign. With his army in high spirits, Lee intended to collect supplies in the abundant Pennsylvania farmland and take the fighting away from war-ravaged Virginia. He wanted to threaten Northern cities, weaken the North's appetite for war and, especially, win a major battle on Northern soil and strengthen the peace movement in the North. Prodded by President Abraham Lincoln, Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker moved his Union Army of the Potomac in pursuit, but was relieved of command just three days before the battle. Hooker's successor, Maj. Gen. George Gordon Meade moved northward, keeping his army between Lee and Washington, D.C. When Lee learned that Meade was in Pennsylvania, Lee concentrated his army around Gettysburg.
Elements of the two armies collided west and north of the town on July 1, 1863. Union cavalry under Brig. Gen. John Buford slowed the Confederate advance until Union infantry, the Union 1st and 11th Corps, arrived. More Confederate reinforcements under generals A.P. Hill and Richard Ewell reached the scene, however, and 30,000 Confederates ultimately defeated 20,000 Yankees, who fell back through Gettysburg to the hills south of town--Cemetery Hill and Culp's Hill. On the second day of battle, the Union defended a fishhook-shaped range of hills and ridges south of Gettysburg with around 90,000 soldiers. Confederates essentially wrapped around the Union position with 70,000 soldiers. On the afternoon of July 2, Lee launched a heavy assault on the Union left flank, and fierce fighting raged at Devil's Den, Little Round Top, the Wheatfield, the Peach Orchard and Cemetery Ridge. On the Union right, demonstrations escalated into full-scale assaults on Culp's Hill and East Cemetery Hill. Although the Confederates gained ground, the Union defenders still held strong positions by the end of the day. On July 3, fighting resumed on Culp's Hill, and cavalry battles raged to the east and south, but the main event was a dramatic infantry assault by 12,000 Confederates against the center of the Union line on Cemetery Ridge--Pickett's Charge. The charge was repulsed by Union rifle and artillery fire, at great losses to the Confederate army. Lee led his army on a torturous retreat back to Virginia. As many as 51,000 soldiers from both armies were killed, wounded, captured or missing in the three-day battle. Four months after the battle, President Lincoln used the dedication ceremony for Gettysburg's Soldiers National Cemetery to honor the fallen Union soldiers and redefine the purpose of the war in his historic Gettysburg Address. |
siege of atlantaWith the outcome of the Civil War still in doubt, the North turned its hopes to Ulysses S. Grant, who in March 1864 was given command of all Union armies and promoted to lieutenant general, a rank last held in wartime by George Washington. In this capacity, Grant came up with a plan to attack the Confederacy simultaneously on multiple fronts, using “all parts of the army together.” He participated in the so-called Overland Campaign himself, in which a large Union force engaged Confederate General Robert E. Lee in several bloody battles around Richmond, Virginia, the Southern capital. But after suffering an estimated 55,000 casualties (killed, wounded and missing) in just a few weeks, Grant was forced to back off and initiate a siege of Petersburg, Virginia, a rail hub that Richmond depended on for supplies. Smaller Union forces fared no better on Virginia’s Bermuda Hundred peninsula and in the Shenandoah Valley, whereas a planned offensive against Mobile, Alabama, never even got off the ground following the disastrous Red River Campaign in Louisiana. To add insult to injury, Confederate raiders in July came within a hair’s breadth of entering Washington, D.C.
William T. Sherman (center, with arm on cannon) surveys the field during the siege of Atlanta. Only a campaign against Atlanta seemed to be making progress. Under General William T. Sherman, the successor to Grant as the top Union commander in the West, about 100,000 men departed Chattanooga, Tennessee, in May, heading south along a railroad line. In their way stood some 63,000 troops led by Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston, who took up a series of strong defensive positions only to retreat each time after being outflanked by long, roundabout Union marches. Wary of engaging his numerically superior opponents head on, Johnston tried to goad them into attacking. This strategy worked once, as his trench-protected soldiers cut down roughly 3,000 northerners who charged up Kennesaw Mountain on June 27, while losing fewer than 1,000 of their own. But neither this setback nor near-daily skirmishes prevented Sherman from continuing his advance, oftentimes through heavy rain, including one storm in which a single lightning bolt killed or wounded 15 of his men. By the second week of July, Sherman’s force had reached the outskirts of Atlanta, then a city of around 20,000 that served as a rail hub and manufacturing center. Lieutenant General John Bell Hood Fed up with the constant withdrawals, Confederate President Jefferson Davis replaced Johnston on July 17 with the aggressive General John B. Hood, whose right leg had been amputated at the Battle of Chickamauga and whose left arm had been permanently crippled at the Battle of Gettysburg. True to form, Hood decided not to rely on the extensive defensive fieldworks ringing Atlanta, which had been built largely by slave labor, and instead went on the attack. His first offensive took place on July 20, when he attempted to drive back one of the three armies under Sherman’s command as it crossed Peachtree Creek. But although the Union force bent, it ultimately held its position, suffering about 1,700 casualties while inflicting at least 2,500. Undeterred, Hood targeted a second Sherman army two days later in what would become known as the Battle of Atlanta. Prior to the fighting, he sent thousands of men on a secret, overnight march around the Union’s left flank. Despite arriving into position hours later than planned, they caught their opponents by surprise. The delay proved costly, however, because Union commanders had readjusted their troops that morning. As a result, they were able to meet certain Confederate divisions head-on rather than being attacked from the side or rear. During the course of the battle, the southerners launched assault after assault from seemingly all directions, killing high-ranking General James B. McPherson and briefly breaching the Union line. Yet the Yankees rallied under McPherson’s replacement, General John A. “Black Jack” Logan, and when darkness fell the rebels were no closer to dislodging them. Once more, the Confederates suffered more casualties than their Northern counterparts—an estimated 6,000 compared to 3,700—a particularly devastating outcome considering their already limited manpower. Major General James B. McPherson was the second highest ranking Union officer killed during the war. On July 28, Hood initiated still another battle, his third in nine days. But his troops were defeated again at Ezra Church, an encounter that cost him some 3,000 men, in contrast to only 632 on the Union side. With it now clear that Hood could no longer effectively confront Sherman in the field, the Yankees stepped up their artillery bombardment of Atlanta and maneuvered to cut its railroad supply lines. Once the last line fell in the midst of a fourth Union victory—arguably the most one-sided yet—Hood evacuated the city on September 1, blowing up a long munitions train on the way out so that it wouldn’t fall into enemy hands. As Yankee troops prepared to pour in the following day, Atlanta’s mayor officially surrendered. “Atlanta is ours, and fairly won,” Sherman boasted in a telegram. Just a few weeks earlier, President Lincoln had doubted his re-election chances. “I am going to be beaten…and unless some great change takes place, badly beaten,” he purportedly told a White House visitor. Yet the capture of Atlanta, along with a subsequent Union victory in the Shenandoah Valley, completely changed the national mood. Lincoln would go on to win 55 percent of the popular vote and all but three states that November, receiving overwhelming support from the armed forces. Meanwhile, Sherman’s troops were still in Atlanta, deporting over 1,600 of the city’s remaining civilian residents and destroying factories, warehouses and railroad installations, along with numerous private homes. “If the people raise a howl against my barbarity and cruelty,” Sherman wrote to another general, “I will answer that war is war and not popularity-seeking.” Destruction in Atlanta Rather than spend much time chasing Hood, who was attacking his supply line from Chattanooga to Atlanta, Sherman decided to press onward. On November 15, he and some 60,000 men set out on their so-called March to the Sea, in which they wrecked railroad tracks, pillaged and otherwise terrorized Georgia’s populace from Atlanta to Savannah. Hood left them to their own devices, preferring instead to invade Tennessee. But his force was decimated by a reckless charge near Nashville, after which a Union attack sent what remained of his army into a full-scale retreat. Less than four months later, as Sherman’s troops pushed up through the Carolinas, Grant captured Petersburg and Richmond and forced Lee to surrender, effectively ending Southern resistance once and for all. |
consequenceshere are two websites to learn about the wars casualties
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left to right-newspaper of assassination, weapon used to kill Lincoln, and conspirators being hanged
abraham lincoln assassinationAbraham Lincoln’s killer, John Wilkes Booth, was a Maryland native born in 1838 who remained in the North during the Civil War despite his Confederate sympathies. As the conflict entered its final stages, he and several associates hatched a plot to kidnap the president and take him to Richmond, the Confederate capital. However, on March 20, 1865, the day of the planned kidnapping, Lincoln failed to appear at the spot where Booth and his six fellow conspirators lay in wait. Two weeks later, Richmond fell to Union forces. In April, with Confederate armies near collapse across the South, Booth came up with a desperate plan to save the Confederacy.
Learning that Lincoln was to attend Laura Keene’s acclaimed performance of “Our American Cousin” at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C., on April 14, Booth—himself a well-known actor at the time—masterminded the simultaneous assassination of Lincoln, Vice President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State William H. Seward. By murdering the president and two of his possible successors, Booth and his co-conspirators hoped to throw the U.S. government into disarray. Lincoln occupied a private box above the stage with his wife Mary, a young army officer named Henry Rathbone and Rathbone’s fiancé, Clara Harris, the daughter of New York Senator Ira Harris. The Lincolns arrived late for the comedy, but the president was reportedly in a fine mood and laughed heartily during the production. At 10:15, Booth slipped into the box and fired his .44-caliber single-shot derringer into the back of Lincoln’s head. After stabbing Rathbone, who immediately rushed at him, in the shoulder, Booth leapt onto the stage and shouted, “Sic semper tyrannis!” (“Thus ever to tyrants!”–the Virginia state motto). At first, the crowd interpreted the unfolding drama as part of the production, but a scream from the first lady told them otherwise. Although Booth broke his leg in the fall, he managed to leave the theater and escape from Washington on horseback. A 23-year-old doctor named Charles Leale was in the audience and hastened to the presidential box immediately upon hearing the shot and Mary Lincoln’s scream. He found the president slumped in his chair, paralyzed and struggling to breathe. Several soldiers carried Lincoln to a house across the street and placed him on a bed. When the surgeon general arrived at the house, he concluded that Lincoln could not be saved and would die during the night. Vice President Andrew Johnson, members of Lincoln’s cabinet and several of the president’s closest friends stood vigil by Lincoln’s bedside until he was officially pronounced dead at 7:22 a.m. The first lady lay on a bed in an adjoining room with her eldest son Robert at her side, overwhelmed with shock and grief. The president’s body was placed in a temporary coffin, draped with a flag and escorted by armed cavalry to the White House, where surgeons conducted a thorough autopsy. Edward Curtis, an Army surgeon in attendance, later described the scene, recounting that a bullet clattered into a waiting basin during the doctors’ removal of Lincoln’s brain. He wrote that the team stopped to stare at the offending weapon, “the cause of such mighty changes in the world’s history as we may perhaps never realize.” During the autopsy, Mary Lincoln sent the surgeons a note requesting that they clip a lock of Lincoln’s hair for her. News of the president’s death traveled quickly, and by the end of the day flags across the country flew at half-mast, businesses were closed and people who had recently rejoiced at the end of the Civil War now reeled from Lincoln’s shocking assassination. The president’s corpse was taken to the White House, and on April 18 it was carried to the Capitol rotunda to lay in state on a catafalque. On April 21, Lincoln’s body was boarded onto a train that conveyed it to Springfield, Illinois, where he had lived before becoming president. Tens of thousands of Americans lined the railroad route and paid their respects to their fallen leader during the train’s solemn progression through the North. Lincoln and his son, Willie, who died in the White House of typhoid fever in 1862, were interred on May 4, 1865, at Oak Ridge Cemetery, near Springfield. As the nation mourned, Union soldiers were hot on the trail of John Wilkes Booth, who many in the audience had immediately recognized. After fleeing the capital, he and an accomplice, David Herold, made their way across the Anacostia River and headed toward southern Maryland. The pair stopped at the home of Samuel Mudd, a doctor who treated Booth’s leg. (Mudd’s actions earned him a life sentence that was later commuted). They then sought refuge from Thomas A. Jones, a Confederate agent, before securing a boat to row across the Potomac to Virginia. On April 26, Union troops surrounded the Virginia farmhouse where Booth and Herold were hiding out and set fire to it, hoping to flush the fugitives out. Herold surrendered but Booth remained inside. As the blaze intensified, a sergeant shot Booth in the neck, allegedly because the assassin had raised his gun as if to shoot. Carried out of the building alive, he lingered for three hours before gazing at his hands and uttering his last words: “Useless, useless.” Four of Booth’s co-conspirators were convicted for their part in the assassination and executed by hanging on July 7, 1865. They included David Herold and Mary Surratt, the first woman put to death by the federal government, whose boarding house had served as a meeting place for the would-be kidnappers. |