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.
2
Federals and Confederates battled gallantly, but increasingly disregarded civility.
3
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.
4
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.
5
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.
6
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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