Themes of the American Civil War


CHAPTER The First of the Modern Wars?



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Themes of the American Civil War The War Between the States by Susan-Mary Grant (z-lib.org)
CHAPTER
The First of the Modern Wars?
JOSEPH G. DAWSON III
Writing fifteen years after General Robert E. Lee surrendered his army at
Appomattox, Adam Badeau maintained that It was not only victory that either side was playing for, but existence Badeau continued, If the rebels won, they destroyed a nation if the US government succeeded, it annihilated a rebellion As former Military Secretary, and aide-de-camp to
General Ulysses S. Grant, Badeau may offer insights into Grant’s approach to waging war:
But above all, he Grant understood that he was engaged in a people’s war, and that the people as well as the armies of the South must be conquered, before the war could end. Slaves, supplies, crops,
stock, as well as arms and ammunition—everything that was necessary in order to carry on the war was a weapon in the hands of the enemy and of every weapon the enemy must be deprived. . . It was indispensable to annihilate armies and resources to place every rebel force where it had no alternative but destruction or submission.
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Beginning in 1861, Americans fought over political objectives that could not be compromised. First, and foremost, the North sought complete reunion with all the states that had claimed to secede. After eighteen months of intensifying conflict, on September 22, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln announced his preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, adding the objective of destroying slavery to the goal of reunion. On the other hand,
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southerners had created a slaveholders republic, the Confederate States of America, where the institution of slavery would be protected and encouraged. During the first eighteen months of war, President Jefferson Davis,
other national and state officials, and most Southern newspaper editors showed no willingness to restore the Union or abolish slavery. Following the campaigns of autumn of 1862, the war became increasingly bitter and hard-fought, exceeding both in scale and destructiveness anything that
Americans could have predicted in 1861. Both sides called upon government to organize their resources, manufacture or import munitions and matériel,
and field several armies, most of them larger than any armies raised in other
American wars.
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Federals and Confederates battled gallantly, but increasingly disregarded civility.
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By the summer of 1864, after more than three years of fighting, many Americans decided that one side would have to completely give up its objectives. The war would not be resolved by trading a state or two, or compromised by simply adjusting boundaries here or there. Either the United States would be restored, or not either the Confederacy would be independent, or not either slavery would be abolished or perpetuated indefinitely.
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During the early months of conflict, President Lincoln and President
Davis both hoped to fight a limited war, meaning that partial mobilization and commitment of limited forces might persuade their opponents to quit,
thus winning their objectives.
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Surprisingly, the recently formed Confederacy demonstrated remarkable national resilience, despite the fact that the North held clear advantages in important war-making categories, including more than two to one in population, two to one in railroad mileage, and five to one in number of factories. But northerners took much longer than expected to make their advantages felt.
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Making a transition toward total war, Union leaders never uttered the phrase unconditional surrender but that was what they practically demanded from the Confederacy by 1865.

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