The second republic, proclaimed after the fall of the monarchy in 1931, was at first dominated by middle-class liberals and moderate socialists, among them Niceto Alcalá Zamora, Francisco Largo Caballero, and Manuel Azaña. They began a broad-ranging attack on the traditional, privileged structure of Spanish society: Some large estates were redistributed; church and state were separated; and an antiwar, antimilitarist policy was proclaimed. With their interests and their ideals threatened, the landed aristocracy, the church, and a large military clique, as well as monarchists and Carlists, rallied against the government, as did the new fascist party, the Falange.
The government's idealistic reforms failed to satisfy the left-wing radicals and did little to ameliorate the lot of the lower classes, who increasingly engaged in protest movements against it. The forces of the right gained a majority in the 1933 elections, and a series of weak coalition governments followed. Most of these were under the premiership of the moderate republican Alejandro Lerroux, but he was more or less dependent on the right wing and its leader José María Gil Robles. As a result many of the republican reforms were ignored or set aside. Left-wing strikes and risings buffeted the government, especially during the revolution of Oct., 1934, while the political right, equally dissatisfied, increasingly resorted to plots and violence.
When the electoral victory (1936) of the Popular Front (composed of liberals, Socialists, and Communists) augured a renewal of leftist reforms, revolutionary sentiment on the right consolidated. In July, 1936, Gen. Francisco Franco led an army revolt in Morocco. Rightist groups rebelled in Spain, and the army officers led most of their forces into the revolutionary (Nationalist or Insurgent) camp. In N Spain the revolutionists, under Gen. Emilio Mola, quickly overran most of Old Castile, Navarre, and W Aragon. They also captured some key cities in the south.
Catalonia—where socialism and anarchism were strong, and which had been granted autonomy—remained republican (Loyalist). The Basques too sided with the republicans to protect their local liberties. This traditional Spanish separatism asserted itself particularly in republican territory and hindered effective military organization. By Nov., 1936, the Nationalists had Madrid under siege, but while the new republican government of Francisco Largo Caballero (to which the anarchists had been admitted) struggled to organize an effective army, the first incoming International Brigade helped the Loyalists hold the city.
The International Brigades—multinational groups of volunteers (many of them Communists) that were organized mostly in France—represented only a small part of the foreign participation in the war. From the first and throughout the war, Italy and Germany aided Franco with an abundance of planes, tanks, and other materiel. Germany sent some 10,000 aviators and technicians; Italy sent large numbers of "volunteers," probably about 70,000. Great Britain and France, anxious to prevent a general European conflagration, proposed a nonintervention pact, which was signed in Aug., 1936, by 27 nations. The signatories included Italy, Germany, and the USSR, all of whom failed to keep their promises. The Spanish republic became dependent for supplies on the Soviet Union, which used its military aid to achieve its own political goals.
As the war progressed the situation played into the hands of the Communists, who at the outset had been of negligible importance. The Loyalists ranks were riven by factional strife, which intensified as the Loyalist military position worsened; among its manifestations was the Communists' suppression of the anarchists and the Trotskyite Partido Obrero de Unificacion Marxista (POUM). On the Nationalist side internal conflict also existed, especially between the military and the fascists, but Franco was able to surmount it and consolidate his position. Gradually the Nationalists wore down Loyalist strength. Bilbao, the last republican center in the north, fell in June, 1937, and in a series of attacks from March to June, 1938, the Nationalists drove to the Mediterranean and cut the republican territory in two. Late in 1938, Franco mounted a major offensive against Catalonia, and Barcelona was taken in Jan., 1939. With the loss of Catalonia the Loyalist cause became hopeless. Republican efforts for a negotiated peace failed, and on Apr. 1, 1939, the victorious Nationalists entered Madrid. Italy and Germany had recognized the Franco regime in 1936, Great Britain and France did so in Feb., 1939; international recognition of Franco's authoritarian government quickly followed.
For Germany and Italy the Spanish civil war served as a testing ground for the blitzkrieg and other techniques of warfare that would be used in World War II; for the European democracies it was another step down the road of appeasement; and for the politically conscious youth of the 1930s who joined the International Brigades, saving the Spanish republic was the idealistic cause of the era, a cause to which many gave their lives. For the Spanish people the civil war was an encounter whose huge toll of lives and material devastation were unparalleled in centuries of Spanish history.
See F. Borkenau, The Spanish Cockpit (1937); G. Orwell, Homage to Catalonia (1938); G. Brenan, The Spanish Labyrinth (1943); H. Thomas, The Spanish Civil War (1961); R. Rosenstone, Crusade of the Left (1969); R. Carr, ed., The Republic and the Civil War in Spain (1971); G. Jackson, The Spanish Republic and the Civil War (1965).
The struggle has also been called the Puritan Revolution because the religious complexion of the king's opponents was prevailingly Puritan, and because the defeat of the king was accompanied by the abolition of episcopacy. That name, however, overemphasizes the religious element at the expense of the constitutional issues and the underlying social and economic factors. Most simply stated, the constitutional issue was one between a king who claimed to rule by divine right and a Parliament that professed itself to have rights and privileges independent of the crown and that ultimately, by its actions, claimed real sovereignty.
Parliament in this period did not represent the full body of the English people; it was composed of and represented the nobility, country gentry, and merchants and artisans. The 16th cent. had seen a decline in the influence of the nobility and a striking rise in the numbers, wealth, and influence of the gentry and merchants, the beneficiaries of a tremendous expansion of markets and trade in Tudor times. It was from this middle class of gentry and merchants that the opposition to the crown drew most of its members. Their ambition to do away with financial and commercial restrictions and their desire to have a say in such matters as religious and foreign policies had been severely restrained by the Tudors, but on the accession (1603) of a Scottish king to the English throne the popular party began to organize its strength.
James I was not long in gaining a personal unpopularity that helped to strengthen Parliament's hand. At the Hampton Court Conference (1604) he resolutely refused to compromise with Puritans on religious questions. The Parliament that met in 1604 soon clashed with the king on questions of finance and supply. James was forced to temporize because of his urgent need of money, but the dissolution of the Parliament in 1610 left feelings of bitterness on both sides.
A new Parliament met in 1614, and the Commons engaged in quarrels not only with the king but also with the House of Lords. Because it passed not a single statute, this was called the Addled Parliament. James had little understanding of the popular unrest and aroused deeper opposition by his continued collection of impositions and benevolences, his dependence on favorites, and his scheme of a Spanish marriage for his son Charles.
Meanwhile a legal battle was being waged in the courts, with Sir Francis Bacon zealously upholding the royal prerogative and Sir Edward Coke defending the supremacy of common law. The king dismissed Coke from the bench in 1616, but the Parliament of 1621 impeached Bacon. The last Parliament (1624) of the reign accompanied its grant of money with specific directions for its use. James's reign had raised certain fundamental questions concerning the privileges of Parliament, claimed by that body as their legal right and regarded by James as a special grant from the crown.
Under Charles ICharles I, married to a French Roman Catholic princess, Henrietta Maria, proved more intractable and even less acceptable to the Puritan taste than his father, and Parliament became even more uncompromising in the new reign. The leaders of the parliamentary party—Coke, John Pym, Sir John Eliot, and John Selden—sought ways to limit the powers of the king. The Parliament of 1625 granted him the right to collect tonnage and poundage (customs duties) only for a year and not, as was customary, for his entire reign. The Parliament of 1626 went further and impeached the king's favorite, George Villiers, 1st duke of Buckingham. Charles dissolved it in anger.
Failing to raise money without Parliament, he was forced to call a new one in 1628. The new Parliament drew up the Petition of Right, and Charles accepted it in order to get his subsidy. He continued to levy customs duties, an act that the parliamentarians declared illegal under the Petition of Right. Parliament in 1629 vigorously protested Charles's collection of tonnage and poundage and the prosecution of his opponents in the Star Chamber. The religious issue also came up, and Commons resisted the king's order to adjourn by forcing the speaker to remain in his chair while Eliot presented resolutions against "popery" and unauthorized taxation.
In the succeeding 11 years Charles attempted to rule without a Parliament, resorting to such expedients as ship money (a tax levied originally on seaports but extended by Charles to the entire country) to raise revenue. The reprisals against Eliot and the prosecution of William Prynne and John Hampden aroused widespread indignation. Charles's chief advisers, Archbishop William Laud and Thomas Wentworth, later 1st earl of Strafford, were cordially detested.
The ominous peace was broken by troubles in Scotland, where efforts to enforce Anglican episcopal policy led to the violent opposition of the Covenanters and to war in 1639 (see Bishops' Wars) and compelled Charles to seek the financial aid of Parliament. The resulting Short Parliament (1640) once more met the king's request for supply by a demand for redress of grievance. Charles offered to abandon ship money exactions, but the opposition wished to discuss more fundamental issues, and the king dissolved the Parliament in just three weeks.
The disasters of the second Scottish war compelled a virtual surrender by the king to the opposition, and the Long Parliament was summoned (Nov., 1640). The parliamentarians quickly enacted a series of measures designed to sweep away what they regarded as the encroachments of despotic monarchy. Those imprisoned by the Star Chamber were freed. A Triennial Act provided that no more than three years should elapse between sessions of Parliament, while another act prohibited the dissolution of Parliament without its own consent. Ship money and tonnage and poundage without parliamentary authorization were abolished. Strafford was impeached, then attainted and executed (1641) for treason; Laud was impeached and imprisoned. Star Chamber and other prerogative and episcopal courts were swept away. However, discussions on church reform along Puritan lines produced considerable disagreement, especially between the Commons and Lords.
Despite the king's compliance to the will of the opposition thus far, he was not trusted by the parliamentary party. This distrust was given sharp focus by the outbreak (Oct., 1641) of a rebellion against English rule in Ireland; an army was needed to suppress the rebellion, but the parliamentarians feared that the king might use it against them. Led by John Pym, Parliament adopted the Grand Remonstrance, reciting the evils of Charles's reign and demanding church reform and parliamentary control over the army and over the appointment of royal ministers. The radicalism of these demands split the parliamentary party and drove many of the moderates to the royalist side. This encouraged Charles to assert himself, and in Jan., 1642, he attempted to arrest in person Pym and four other leaders of the opposition in Commons. His action made civil war inevitable.
In the lull that followed, both Parliament and the king sought to secure fortresses, arsenals, and popular support. In June, 1642, Parliament sent to the king a statement reiterating the demands of the Grand Remonstrance, but since the proposals amounted to a complete surrender of sovereignty by the crown to Parliament, the king did not even consider them as a basis for discussion. Armed forces (including many peers from the House of Lords and a sizable minority of Commons) gathered about him in the north. Parliament organized its own army and appointed Robert Devereux, 3d earl of Essex, to head it. On Aug. 22, 1642, Charles raised his standard at Nottingham.
The followers of king and Parliament did not represent two absolutely distinct social groups, as the popular conception of the royalist Cavaliers and the parliamentary Roundheads would indicate. However, it is true that the parliamentary, or Puritan, group drew much of its strength from the gentry and from the merchant classes and artisans of London, Norwich, Hull, Plymouth, and Gloucester; it centered in the southeastern counties and had control of the fleet. The majority of the great nobles followed the king, who had the support of most Anglicans and Roman Catholics; geographically the royalist strength centered in the north and west.
The first major engagement of the armies at Edgehill (Oct. 23, 1642) was a drawn battle. Charles then established himself at Oxford. The royalist forces gained ground in the north and west, although repeated attempts by the king to advance on London proved abortive. The indecisive engagements of 1643 were remarkable mainly for the emergence of Oliver Cromwell, an inconspicuous member of the Long Parliament, to military prominence with his own regiment of "godly" men, soon to become famous as the Ironsides.
Futile negotiations for peace had been conducted at Oxford early in 1643, and in Sept., 1643, Parliament took a decisive step by securing the alliance of the Presbyterian Scots in accepting the Solemn League and Covenant. Scottish aid was obtained only by a promise to submit England to Presbyterianism, which was soon to produce a reaction from the Independents and other sectarians (particularly in the army) who opposed the idea of any centralized national church.
The war now entered a new phase. A Scottish army, under Alexander Leslie, 1st earl of Leven, advanced into Yorkshire early in 1644 and gave aid to the parliamentary army in the north. Charles's nephew, the brilliant and dashing Prince Rupert, did something to stem royalist losses by retaking Newark, but his gains were temporary. His campaign to relieve the besieged York led to the battle of Marston Moor (July 2, 1644), in which Cromwell and Leslie inflicted a crushing defeat on the royalists. Charles managed to cut off Essex in the southwest but shortly thereafter met parliamentary troops from the north in an indecisive engagement at Newbury.
To stem the rising dissension among parliamentary leaders, Cromwell sponsored in Parliament the Self-Denying Ordinance, by which all members of Parliament were compelled to resign their commands, and the parliamentary army was reorganized (1644-45) into the New Model Army. Thomas Fairfax (later 3d Baron Fairfax of Cameron) became the commander in chief.
After further futile peace negotiations at Uxbridge, Charles, hoping to join the forces under James Graham, marquess of Montrose, moved north and stormed Leicester. He met Cromwell in a sharp battle at Naseby (June 14, 1645). This battle cost the king a large part of his army and rendered the royalist cause hopeless. Unable to join Montrose (who was defeated by Leslie in Scotland) and thwarted in his attempts to secure aid from Ireland or the Continent, the king was unable to halt the steady losses of his party and finally was compelled to surrender himself to the Scots, who made him reassuring but vague promises. The first civil war came to an end when Oxford surrendered in June, 1646.
The king was delivered (1647) by the Scots into the hands of Parliament, but the Presbyterian rule in that body had thoroughly alienated the army. The army resisted Parliament's proposal to disband it by capturing the king from the parliamentary party and marching on London. Army discontent gradually became more radical (see Levelers), and the desire grew to dispose of the king altogether.
Refusing to accept the army council's proposals for peace (the Heads of the Proposals), Charles escaped in Nov., 1647, and took refuge on the Isle of Wight, where he negotiated simultaneously with Parliament and the Scots. In Dec., 1647, he concluded an agreement with the Scots known as the Engagement, by which he agreed to accept Presbyterianism in return for military support. In the spring of 1648, the second civil war began. Uprisings in Wales, Kent, and Essex were all suppressed by the parliamentary forces, and Cromwell defeated the Scots at Preston (Aug. 17, 1648). Charles's hopes of aid from France or Ireland proved vain, and the war was quickly over.
Parliament again tried to reach some agreement with the king, but the army, now completely under Cromwell's domination, disposed of its enemies in Parliament by Pride's Purge (Dec., 1648; see under Pride, Thomas). The legislative remnant known as the Rump Parliament erected a high court of justice, which tried the king for treason and found him guilty. Charles was beheaded on Jan. 30, 1649, and the republic known as the Commonwealth was set up, governed by the Rump Parliament (without the House of Lords) and by an executive council of state.
Charles I's son Charles II was recognized as king in parts of Ireland and in Scotland but was forced to flee to the Continent after his defeat at Worcester (1651). The years of the interregnum, under the Commonwealth to 1653 and the Protectorate after that, are largely the story of Oliver Cromwell's personal rule, which was marked by strict military administration and enforcement of the Puritan moral code. After his death and the short-lived rule of his son, Richard Cromwell, the Commonwealth was revived for a brief and chaotic period. It ended in 1660 with the Restoration of Charles II. Although some of the changes brought about by the war were swept away (e.g., in the restoration of Anglicanism as the state church), the settlement of the contest between the king and Parliament was permanently assured in the Glorious Revolution of 1688.
The standard works on the period of the war are by S. R. Gardiner. See also C. V. Wedgwood, The King's Peace, 1637-1641 (1955) and The King's War, 1641-1647 (1958); A. H. Burne and P. Young, The Great Civil War, a Military History (1959); G. Davies, The Early Stuarts (2d ed. 1959); J. E. C. Hill, Puritanism and Revolution (1958) and The Intellectual Origins of the English Revolution (1965); I. A. Roots, The Great Rebellion, 1642-1660 (1968).
The name Civil War is misleading because the war was not a class struggle, but a sectional combat having its roots in political, economic, social, and psychological elements so complex that historians still do not agree on its basic causes. It has been characterized, in the words of William H. Seward, as the "irrepressible conflict." In another judgment the Civil War was viewed as criminally stupid, an unnecessary bloodletting brought on by arrogant extremists and blundering politicians. Both views accept the fact that in 1861 there existed a situation that, rightly or wrongly, had come to be regarded as insoluble by peaceful means.
In the days of the American Revolution and of the adoption of the Constitution, differences between North and South were dwarfed by their common interest in establishing a new nation. But sectionalism steadily grew stronger. During the 19th cent. the South remained almost completely agricultural, with an economy and a social order largely founded on slavery and the plantation system. These mutually dependent institutions produced the staples, especially cotton, from which the South derived its wealth. The North had its own great agricultural resources, was always more advanced commercially, and was also expanding industrially.
Hostility between the two sections grew perceptibly after 1820, the year of the Missouri Compromise, which was intended as a permanent solution to the issue in which that hostility was most clearly expressed—the question of the extension or prohibition of slavery in the federal territories of the West. Difficulties over the tariff (which led John C. Calhoun and South Carolina to nullification and to an extreme states' rights stand) and troubles over internal improvements were also involved, but the territorial issue nearly always loomed largest. In the North moral indignation increased with the rise of the abolitionists in the 1830s. Since slavery was unadaptable to much of the territorial lands, which eventually would be admitted as free states, the South became more anxious about maintaining its position as an equal in the Union. Southerners thus strongly supported the annexation of Texas (certain to be a slave state) and the Mexican War and even agitated for the annexation of Cuba.
The Compromise of 1850 marked the end of the period that might be called the era of compromise. The deaths in 1852 of Henry Clay and Daniel Webster left no leader of national stature, but only sectional spokesmen, such as W. H. Seward, Charles Sumner, and Salmon P. Chase in the North and Jefferson Davis and Robert Toombs in the South. With the Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854) and the consequent struggle over "bleeding" Kansas the factions first resorted to shooting. The South was ever alert to protect its "peculiar institution," even though many Southerners recognized slavery as an anachronism in a supposedly enlightened age. Passions aroused by arguments over the fugitive slave laws (which culminated in the Dred Scott Case) and over slavery in general were further excited by the activities of the Northern abolitionist John Brown and by the vigorous proslavery utterances of William L. Yancey, one of the leading Southern fire-eaters.
The "wedges of separation" caused by slavery split large Protestant sects into Northern and Southern branches and dissolved the Whig party. Most Southern Whigs joined the Democratic party, one of the few remaining, if shaky, nationwide institutions. The new Republican party, heir to the Free-Soil party and to the Liberty party, was a strictly Northern phenomenon. The crucial point was reached in the presidential election of 1860, in which the Republican candidate, Abraham Lincoln, defeated three opponents—Stephen A. Douglas (Northern Democrat), John C. Breckinridge (Southern Democrat), and John Bell of the Constitutional Union party.
Lincoln's victory was the signal for the secession of South Carolina (Dec. 20, 1860), and that state was followed out of the Union by six other states—Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas. Immediately the question of federal property in these states became important, especially the forts in the harbor of Charleston, S.C. (see Fort Sumter). The outgoing President, James Buchanan, a Northern Democrat who was either truckling to the Southern, proslavery wing of his party or sincerely attempting to avert war, pursued a vacillating course. At any rate the question of the forts was still unsettled when Lincoln was inaugurated, and meanwhile there had been several futile efforts to reunite the sections, notably the Crittenden Compromise offered by Sen. J. J. Crittenden. Lincoln resolved to hold Sumter. The new Confederate government under President Jefferson Davis and South Carolina were equally determined to oust the Federals.
When, on Apr. 12, 1861, the Confederate commander P. G. T. Beauregard, acting on instructions, ordered the firing on Fort Sumter, hostilities officially began. Lincoln immediately called for troops to be used against the seven seceding states, which were soon joined by Arkansas, North Carolina, Virginia, and Tennessee, completing the 11-state Confederacy. In the first important military campaign of the war untrained Union troops under Irvin McDowell, advancing on Richmond, now the Confederate capital, were routed by equally inexperienced Confederate soldiers led by Beauregard and Joseph E. Johnston in the first battle of Bull Run (July 21, 1861). This fiasco led Lincoln to bring up George B. McClellan (1826-85), fresh from his successes in W Virginia (admitted as the new state of West Virginia in 1863).
After the retirement of Winfield Scott in Nov., 1861, McClellan was for a few months the chief Northern commander. The able organizer of the Army of the Potomac, he nevertheless failed in the Peninsular campaign (Apr.-July, 1862), in which Robert E. Lee succeeded the wounded Johnston as commander of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia. Lee planned the diversion in the Shenandoah Valley, which, brilliantly executed by Thomas J. (Stonewall) Jackson, worked perfectly. Next to Lee himself Jackson, with his famous "foot cavalry," was the South's greatest general.
Lee then went on to save Richmond in the Seven Days battles (June 26-July 2) and was victorious in the second battle of Bull Run (Aug. 29-30), thoroughly trouncing John Pope. However, he also failed in his first invasion of enemy territory. In September, McClellan, whom Lincoln had restored to command of the defenses of Washington, checked Lee in Maryland (see Antietam campaign). When McClellan failed to attack the Confederates as they retreated, Lincoln removed him again, this time permanently.
Two subsequent Union advances on Richmond, the first led by Ambrose E. Burnside (see Fredericksburg, battle of) and the second by Joseph Hooker (see Chancellorsville, battle of), ended in resounding defeats (Dec. 13, 1862, and May 2-4, 1863). Although Lee lost Jackson at Chancellorsville, the victory prompted him to try another invasion of the North. With his lieutenants Richard S. Ewell, James Longstreet, A. P. Hill, and J. E. B. (Jeb) Stuart, he moved via the Shenandoah Valley into S Pennsylvania. There the Army of the Potomac, under still another new chief, George G. Meade, rallied to stop him again in the greatest battle (July 1-3, 1863) of the war (see Gettysburg campaign).
With the vastly superior sea power built up by Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles, the Union established a blockade of the Southern coast, which, though by no means completely effective, nevertheless limited the South's foreign trade to the uncertain prospects of blockade-running. In cooperation with the army the Union navy also attacked along the coasts. The forts guarding New Orleans, the largest Confederate port, fell (Apr. 28, 1862) to a fleet under David G. Farragut, and the city was occupied by troops commanded by Benjamin F. Butler (1818-93). The introduction of the ironclad warship (see Monitor and Merrimack) had revolutionized naval warfare, to the ultimate advantage of the industrial North. On the other hand, Confederate cruisers, built or bought in England (see Alabama claims) and captained by men such as Raphael Semmes, destroyed or chased from the seas much of the U.S. merchant marine.
That the "war was won in the West" has become axiomatic. There the rivers, conveniently flowing either north (the Cumberland and the Tennessee) or south (the Mississippi), invited Union penetration, as they did not in Virginia. In Feb., 1862, the Union gunboats of Andrew H. Foote forced the Confederates to retire from their post Fort Henry on the Tennessee to their stronghold on the Cumberland, Fort Donelson. There, on Feb. 16, 1862, Grant, commanding the Army of the Tennessee, won the first great Union victory of the war, and Nashville promptly fell without a struggle.
Farther down the Tennessee, Grant was lucky to escape defeat in a bloody contest (Apr. 6-7) with Albert S. Johnston and Beauregard (see Shiloh, battle of). Minor Union successes at Iuka (Sept. 19) and Corinth (Oct. 3-4) followed, while the counterinvasion by the Confederate Army of Tennessee under Braxton Bragg was stopped by Don Carlos Buell at Perryville, Ky. (Oct. 8, 1862). William S. Rosecrans, Buell's successor, then stalked Bragg through Tennessee, fought him to a standoff at Murfreesboro (Dec. 21, 1862-Jan. 2, 1863), and finally, by outmaneuvering him, forced the Confederate general to withdraw S of Chattanooga.
Union gunboats had cleared the upper Mississippi (see Island No. 10; Fort Pillow), leading to the fall of Memphis on June 6, 1862. Grant's Vicksburg campaign, at first stalled by the raids of Confederate cavalrymen Nathan B. Forrest and Earl Van Dorn, was pressed to a victorious end in a brilliant movement in which the navy, represented by David D. Porter, also had a hand. The Union now controlled the whole Mississippi, and the trans-Mississippi West was severed from the rest of the Confederacy. The fighting in that area (see Pea Ridge; Arkansas Post) had held Missouri for the Union and led to the partial conquest of Arkansas, but after the fall of Vicksburg, the war there, with the exception of the unsuccessful Union Red River expedition of Nathaniel P. Banks and a last desperate Confederate raid into Missouri by Sterling Price (both in 1864), was largely confined to guerrilla activity.
Britain never formally recognized the Confederacy (neither did France) and maintained peaceful relations with the Union despite the provocation late in 1861 of the Trent Affair, which was adroitly handled by Secretary of State Seward. Charles Francis Adams (1807-86) at London and John Bigelow at Paris were able diplomats, but probably more important in winning popular support for the Union in England and France was the Emancipation Proclamation, which Lincoln issued after Antietam.
This act appeased for a time the anti-Lincoln radical Republicans in Congress, among them Benjamin F. Wade, Zachariah Chandler, Thaddeus Stevens, and Henry W. Davis, with whom Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase and Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton were allied. Not all Unionists were abolitionists, however, and the Emancipation Proclamation was not applied to the border slave states: Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri had all remained loyal. For Lincoln and kindred moderates, such as Postmaster General Montgomery Blair, the restoration of the Union, not the abolition of slavery, remained the principal objective of the war.
The Union victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg in July, 1863, marked a definite turning point in the war. Both sides now had seasoned, equally valiant soldiers, and in Lee and Ulysses S. Grant each had a superior general. But the North, with its larger population and comparatively enormous industry, enjoyed a tremendous material advantage. Both sides also resorted to conscription, even though it met some resistance (see draft riots).
Under Stanton, successor to Simon Cameron, the overall administration of the Union army was more efficient. Problems of organization still remained, however, and Henry W. Halleck continued in the difficult role of military adviser, with the title of general in chief. The Joint Congressional Committee on the Conduct of the War, organized in Dec., 1861, attempted to influence the actions as well as the appointment of Union generals (its efforts were particularly strong on behalf of Hooker). The chairman, Benjamin F. Wade, was frequently at odds with Lincoln, and the committee's investigations and high-handed actions lowered morale among the Union forces.
On the Georgia-Tennessee line in Sept., 1863, Bragg, having temporarily halted his retreat, severely jolted the Federals, who were saved from a complete rout by the magnificent stand of George H. Thomas, the Rock of Chickamauga (see Chattanooga campaign). Grant, newly appointed supreme commander in the West, hurried to the scene and, with William T. Sherman, Hooker, and Thomas's fearless troops, drove Bragg back to Georgia (Nov. 25). After Knoxville, occupied in September, withstood Longstreet's siege (Nov.-Dec.), all Tennessee, hotbed of Unionism, was now safely restored to the Union.
In Mar., 1864, Lincoln, for many years an admirer of Grant, made him commander in chief. Leaving the West in Sherman's capable hands, Grant came east, took personal charge of Meade's Army of the Potomac, and engaged Lee in the Wilderness campaign (May-June, 1864). Outnumbered but still spirited, the Army of Northern Virginia was slowly and painfully forced back toward Richmond, and in July the tenacious Grant began the long siege of Petersburg.
Although Jubal A. Early won at Monocacy (July 9), threatening the city of Washington, the Confederates were unable to repeat Jackson's successful diversion of 1862, and Philip H. Sheridan, victorious in the grand manner at Cedar Creek (Oct. 19), virtually ended Early's activities in the Shenandoah Valley. For his part, Sherman, opposed first by the wily Joe Johnston and then by John B. Hood, won the Atlanta campaign (May-Sept., 1864).
On the political front, a movement within the Republican party to shelve Lincoln had collapsed as the tide turned in the Union's favor. With Andrew Johnson, Lincolm's own choice for Vice President over the incumbent Hannibal Hamlin, the President was renominated in June, 1864. The Democrats nominated McClellan, who still had a strong popular following, on an ambiguous peace platform (largely dictated by Clement L. Vallandigham, leader of the Copperheads), which the ex-general repudiated. Even so, Lincoln was easily reelected.
After the fall of Atlanta, which had contributed to Lincoln's victory, Sherman's troops made their destructive march through Georgia. Hood had failed to draw Sherman back by invading Union-held Tennessee, and after the battle of Franklin (Nov. 30) Hood's army was almost completely annihilated by Thomas at Nashville (Dec. 15-16, 1864). Sherman presented Lincoln with the Christmas gift of Savannah, Ga., and then moved north through the Carolinas. Farragut's victory at Mobile Bay (Aug. 5, 1864) had effectively closed that port, and on Jan. 15, 1865, Wilmington, N.C., was also cut off (see Fort Fisher).
After Sheridan's victory at Five Forks (Apr. 1), the Petersburg lines were breached and the Confederates evacuated Richmond (Apr. 3). With his retreat blocked by Sheridan, Lee, wisely giving up the futile contest, surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Courthouse (see under Appomattox) on Apr. 9, 1865. The surviving Confederate armies also yielded when they heard of Lee's capitulation, thus ending the conflict that resulted in over 600,000 casualties.
The long war was over, but for the victors the peace was marred by the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, the greatest figure of the war. The ex-Confederate states, after enduring the unsuccessful attempts of Reconstruction to impose a new society on the South, were readmitted to the Union, which had been saved and in which slavery was now abolished. The Civil War brought death to more Americans than did any other war, including World War II. Photographs by Mathew B. Brady and others reveal some of the horror behind the statistics. The war cost untold billions and nourished rather than canceled hatreds and intolerance, which persisted for decades. It established many of the patterns, especially a strong central government, that are now taken for granted in American national life. Virtually every battlefield, with its graves, is either a national or a state park. Monuments commemorating Civil War figures and events are conspicuous in almost all sizable Northern towns and are even more numerous in the upper South.
Notable fictional treatments of the war are Stephen Crane's Red Badge of Courage (1896) and Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind (1936), and there is one outstanding work in verse—Stephen Vincent Benét's John Brown's Body (1928). The quantity of historical literature on the Civil War is enormous, and there is no single, adequate bibliographical guide. For bibliographies, see Allan Nevins et al., ed., Civil War Books: A Critical Bibliography (2 vol., 1967-69).
On the causes of, and events leading up to, the war, see A. C. Cole, The Irrepressible Conflict, 1850-1865 ("History of American Life" series, Vol. VII, 1934; rev. ed. 1938, repr. 1971); G. F. Milton, The Eve of Conflict (1934); A. O. Craven, The Coming of the Civil War (1942, new ed. 1957) and Civil War in the Making (1959, repr. 1968); C. B. Dew, Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War (2001).
Standard, older works on the military phase are C. C. Buel and R. U. Johnson, ed., Battles and Leaders of the Civil War (4 vol., 1877; new ed. 1956); J. C. Ropes, The Story of the Civil War (2 vol., 1898-99; completed by W. R. Livermore, 1913); and F. Maurice, Statesmen and Soldiers of the Civil War (1926). R. E. Lee: A Biography (4 vol., 1934-35) and Lee's Lieutenants (3 vol., 1942-44), both by D. S. Freeman, and Lincoln Finds a General (5 vol., 1949-59), by K. P. Williams, are definitive in their respective fields.
See also T. L. Livermore, Numbers and Losses in the Civil War in America, 1861-1865 (1901; new ed. 1957, repr. 1969); J. F. Rhodes, History of the Civil War, 1861-1865 (1917, new ed. 1961); J. B. McMaster, A History of the People of the United States during Lincoln's Administration (1927); E. C. Smith, The Borderland in the Civil War (1927, repr. 1970); R. S. Henry, The Story of the Confederacy (1931, rev. ed. 1957); C. R. Fish, The American Civil War: An Interpretation (1937); M. Leech, Reveille in Washington (1941); A. Nevins, Ordeal of the Union (8 vol., 1947-71); B. Catton, A Stillness at Appomattox (1953) and other studies; B. Quarles, The Negro in the Civil War (1953, repr. 1968); L. M. Starr, Bohemian Brigade (1954); J. B. Mitchell, Decisive Battles of the Civil War (1955); R. S. West, Jr., Mr. Lincoln's Navy (1957); S. Foote, The Civil War (3 vol., 1958-74); M. M. Boatner, The Civil War Dictionary (1959); American Heritage Picture History of the Civil War (ed. by R. M. Ketchum et al., 1960); R. F. Nichols, The Stakes of Power (1961); V. Jones, The Civil War at Sea (3 vol., 1960-62); J. M. McPherson, The Negro's Civil War (1965); J. G. Randall, The Civil War and Reconstruction (2d ed., with D. Donald, 1969); E. Foner, Politics and Ideology in the Age of the Civil War (1980); E. B. and Barbara Long, The Civil War Day by Day (1971, repr. 1985); J. McPherson, Battlecry of Freedom (1988) and For Cause and Comrades (1997); E. Forbes, Thirty Years After (1994); H. Holzer and M. E. Neely, Jr., Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory (1994); G. W. Gallagher, The Confederate War (1997); J. M. Perry, A Bohemian Brigade: The Civil War Correspondents—Mostly Rough, Sometimes Ready (2000); A. Fahs, The Imagined Civil War: Popular Literature of the North and South (2001); D. W. Blight, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (2001); D. J. Eicher, The Longest Night: A Military History of the Civil War (2001). See also the bibliographies in separate articles on the major events of the war.
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