Fighting the War - Civil War

Fighting the War

Everyone expected a short war. Indeed, Lincoln's first call for volunteers required just a ninety-day enlistment. After the First Battle of Bull Run (July 1861), the hope for a quick victory faded, and the Union implemented the Anaconda Plan. Named for the South American constrictor, it was intended to slowly crush the South with a naval blockade of the Atlantic and Gulf coasts and an invasion along the Cumberland, Tennessee, and Mississippi rivers to slice the Confederacy in half. The defense of Washington, D.C., and pressure on the Confederate capital at Richmond were also part of the northern strategy. Jefferson Davis's defensive strategy took advantage of fighting on familiar territory and keeping his army close to the bases of supply. The South was prepared to go on the offensive and move into the North through Maryland and Pennsylvania, however, if opportunities presented themselves.

The war in the East. The first major engagement of the war was a disaster for the North. At the First Battle of Bull Run in Virginia, thirty thousand Union troops were routed by a smaller Confederate force as politicians and their families from Washington picnicked on the hills above the battlefield. The defeat prompted Lincoln to put General George McClellan in command of the Army of the Potomac. McClellan spent the next nine months transforming his men into welltrained and disciplined soldiers but then seemed reluctant to let them fight. The army suffered another defeat when it finally did go into the field during the Peninsula Campaign (March-July 1862), an attempt to take Richmond by sea. In September, the South went on the offensive. The Army of Northern Virginia under Robert E. Lee moved into Maryland and met the Union troops at the Battle of Antietam. The bloodiest confrontation of the war ended inconclusively but for the fact that Lee's retreat allowed McClellan to claim victory. Antietam was significant because the outcome finally gave Lincoln the opportunity to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, which probably ended any chance the South had of getting Great Britain and France to intervene. Also significant was Lincoln's dismissal of McClellan following his failure to pursue Lee's retreating army; the commander in chief and the general became bitter political rivals.

Lincoln first replaced McClellan with General Ambrose Burnside. Burnside's doubts about his own ability to lead a large army proved correct, and he lost a major battle against Lee and Lieutenant General "Stonewall" Jackson at Fredericksburg in December 1862. The president then turned to General "Fighting Joe" Hooker. Despite Hooker's overwhelming numerical superiority on the battlefield--about one hundred thirty thousand Union troops against sixty thousand southern troops under Lee and Jackson--he was unable to prevent a major Confederate victory at Chancellorsville (May 1863).

The war in the West. The Union army had greater success in the West. After driving Confederate forces out of Kentucky, Ulysses S. Grant moved into Tennessee, where he narrowly averted defeat at Shiloh (April 1862), and then proceeded to the Mississippi River, where he captured Memphis (June 1862). Grant's troops moved