Slavery is regarded as a main cause of the Civil War.
By Phil KohnPhil Kohn can be reached at USCW160@yahoo.com.
The causes of the Civil War in the United States are many and complex. At the root of all of them, agree most historians today, was slavery.
At the founding of the nation, in the 1770s, the institution of slavery was firmly established throughout the American colonies. Suffice it to say that over the next 80 to 85 years, the U.S. had become a nation of two distinct regions as regards to slavery: the “free” states of New England, the Northeast and the Midwest, which had large and rapidly growing urban populations, and the “slave” states of the South, which were more rural, with a small population, relatively little immigration, and plantations and farms that relied on slave labor.
By the 1840s, abolitionists (mostly based in the North and who argued for the immediate and unconditional extinction of slavery) were preaching that not only was slavery a social evil, but a moral wrong as well. Their rhetoric became stronger as time went on.
In 1856, the Republican Party came into being, the first major political party almost completely based in the North, in part because of Northern outrage at political compromises made to appease the South regarding the extension of slavery into new territories.
By 1860, Southerners were concerned that if the Republican Party’s nominee for president won the election in that year, the institution of slavery would be in great danger, even though legal under the U.S. Constitution.
These considerations resulted in increasing talk of secession throughout the South — departure from the Union and freedom from Northerners who talked of slave ownership as a grave sin and Northern politicians who insisted on stopping the extension of slavery into new territories and even threatened the very existence of “the peculiar institution” itself.
In November 1860, Abraham Lincoln, a Republican, was elected President of the United States in a fragmented and sectionally divided race. The following month, South Carolina seceded from the Union, followed by ten other Southern states in early 1861.
War began on April 12, 1861, when Southern troops fired on the Federal garrison of Fort Sumter in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina. Both sides began mobilizing. The Southern states formed their own nation, the Confederate States of America, with its capital at Richmond, Virginia, and Jefferson Davis as its president. U.S. President Lincoln called for 75,000 troops to put down the rebellion and Northerners thought the uprising would be quickly quelled. Three early Confederate victories in 1861 — at Ball’s Bluff and Manassas Junction, Virginia, and Wilson’s Creek, Missouri — quickly shattered that illusion.
Imposition of a U.S. naval blockade of Southern East Coast and Gulf Coast ports, and some strategic Union moves in the Western Theatre (Kentucky and Tennessee), however, began to restore some balance.
We join the war in progress, a year after the secession of South Carolina.
On December 31, 1861, President Lincoln and others are highly concerned that the Union Army lacks focus and direction. As Maj. Gen. George McClellan — in charge of the Federal Army of the Potomac — is ill, the president reaches out to Maj. Gen. Henry Halleck in Missouri. His hope is that perhaps the Western Departments, at least, will be moved into some sort of action.
New Year’s Day of 1862 sees Confederate Commissioners Mason and Slidell — released two days earlier from a federal prison in Boston — board the British sloop-of-war HMS Rinaldo off Provincetown, Massachusetts, to resume their journey to Europe that had been interrupted by the U.S. Navy. (On November 8, 1861, the U.S. Navy vessel USS San Jacinto illegally and without authorization had stopped the British packet RMS Trent on the high seas and forcibly removed the two men.) Thus ended the Trent Affair that almost caused a war between the U.S. and the United Kingdom. Sharp skirmishing takes place in the vicinity of Port Royal, South Carolina, as the Federals try to expand their beachhead between the Port Royal area and Hilton Head. Federal ships and batteries at Fort Pickens in Florida fire at Confederate positions in Pensacola. At Fort Bliss, in Texas, Brig. Gen. Henry Sibley’s three regiments — having arrived from San Antonio — gather and regroup for their invasion of the Federal New Mexico Territory.
On January 2, Maj. Gen. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, despite bitter-cold weather, leads his Confederate forces out of Winchester, Virginia, on the Romney Expedition, the object of which is the destruction of sections of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad and dams along the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal.
Brig. Gen. Sibley’s 2,600-strong Confederate Army of New Mexico on January 3 moves about 50 miles north of Fort Bliss to Fort Thorn, abandoned since 1859. Sibley leaves a battalion of five companies of the 7th Texas Cavalry at Mesilla as his rear guard.
Stonewall Jackson’s Confederates take Bath, in northwestern Virginia, on January 4.
On January 5, Jackson’s Confederates capture Hancock, Maryland, north of the Potomac River.
In Washington, D.C., support for Maj. Gen. George McClellan begins to wane due to his reluctance to commit troops to any concerted action. A group of Senators approaches President Lincoln on January 6 suggesting McClellan be replaced, but the president rebuffs the idea. The president sends a communication to Maj. Gen. Don Carlos Buell, in Kentucky, urging him to advance his forces to show support “for our friends in East Tennessee.”
Federal troops positioned near Hancock, Maryland, on January 7 move away from the Potomac River, heading southwestward toward Romney, in northwestern Virginia. They are followed by Stonewall Jackson’s Confederates.
In Washington, D.C., U.S. Navy Capt. David Farragut on January 9 is appointed commander of the West Gulf Blockading Squadron, whose patrol area stretches from western Florida to Mexico. At the White House, President Lincoln expresses vexation that neither Maj. Gen. Halleck nor Brig. Gen. Buell have responded to his urging that western troops advance.
Brig. Gen. Ulysses Grant, at Cairo, Illinois, on January 10 prepares his troops for an expedition into Kentucky. At Prestonburg, Kentucky, 3,000 Federal troops under Col. James A. Garfield attack 2,000 Confederates led by Brig. Gen. Humphrey Marshall. The result of the clash is not decisive — both sides withdraw believing they have won. Federal troops abandon Romney, Virginia, and Stonewall Jackson’s forces occupy the town and begin settling in for the winter.
Some 100 ships of the U.S. Navy land 15,000 troops under Brig. Gen. Ambrose Burnside near Hatteras Inlet, North Carolina, on January 11. This force will augment Union soldiers that already are holding the vicinity of Port Royal, South Carolina. In Washington, D.C., President Lincoln accepts the resignation of Secretary of War Simon Cameron and names prominent Washington attorney Edwin Stanton as his successor.
On January 13, 1862, President Lincoln once again writes to generals Halleck and Buell expressing his desire that they press the Confederates.
On January 15, 1862, Edwin M. Stanton is confirmed as Lincoln’s Secretary of War, replacing Simon Cameron, widely considered as ineffective.
Working in tandem, a land force of some 20,000 Federal troops under Brig. Gen. U.S. Grant and naval forces on the Tennessee River on January 16 begin working their way towards Fort Henry, garrisoned by about 3,000 Confederates under Brig. Gen. Lloyd Tilghman. Farther east in Tennessee, near Mill Springs, Confederate Brig. Gen. Felix Zollicoffer positions his soldiers north of the Cumberland River against orders to the contrary from Maj. Gen. George Crittenden, whose main body of troops are south of the river. Union troops have been sighted moving toward this area.
On January 17, Union ground forces begin moving into the area around Fort Henry, in Tennessee.
In Kentucky, Federal troops on January 18 begin closing in on Confederate forces around Mill Springs.
