Week 8 day 4

So here's just my notes on some of the stuff we talked about in class today

• panic of 1857 mainly impacted the north (business depression)
• south started thinking their economy was invincible or something
• John J crittenden- protecting right of slave owners
• Crittenden compromise- stronger fugitive slave law, constitition can never be amended to give congress power over slavery in any state. last last last hope for compromise
• Lincoln doesnt accept it

military stuff pg 26

• country’s regular army no more than 16,000 men (federal govnt)
• state militia volunteers were heavily relied upon
• both sides have a lot of soldiers who have no experience in an actual war
• most units made of individual company’s from different towns, never worked together before as a regiment (few thousand men)
• makes it hard to maneuver, march together get from columns to horizontal lines so they could fight
• both sides equally unready

misconceptions:

• war would be short
• there will be one big battle and whoever won it would win the war
• enlist for 90 days!

War aims and advantages

• confederacy fights for independence
• built a government, built an army, fought defensive strategy leaving it to the North to be aggressive
• hardly 9 million people
• average southerner has clearer picture of what he was fighting for (protecting homelands from Northern invader)
• confederacy’s coast line so long that sealing the south off would need naval power the North didn’t have
• North fights for reestablishment of the union
• over 18 million people
• ⅔ of railway mileage, and most of the industrial factories

Strategy

• Anaconda Plan, far too slow for any use
• blockade sea coast, seal off inland borders, take the mississippi to constrict the life out of the south. then slowly break confederacy into bits by invading

Cotton is king pg 38

• failure

• chanted it so much they started to believe in their own power
• South thought that England and France have to help them- they need their cotton!
• in order to make them feel the pressure, they stop exporting cotton (blockade themselves)
• england and france were doing just great
• backfired- they had extra cotton left from before- sold it back to the North oops
• YOU CAN’T SHOOT PEOPLE WITH COTTON

Northern problems pg 64

• early 1862
• Lincoln and his advisors tell mcClellan attack attack attack
• McClellan’s plan march down jamestown peninsula- attack richmond from behind
• this plan leaves Washington undefended- could fall to a sudden confederate attack
• lincoln forces him to leave some men behind, when he doesn’t, they removed an entire army corps from his command
• lincoln lets him do his attack but only had 90,000 men instead of 130,00 men

New naval technology

• iron-clad ships instead of wooden

• Horace Hunley brings his first submarine to use in the war
• little boys on ships, can fit inside to clean them

John Pope pg 86

• moving down towards richmond from opposite direction of McClellan
• the idea was that the confedereacy couldn’t deal with both
• Lee knows McClellan would be inactive, directs his forces at Pope
• Lee “suppresses him” aka Pope gets his butt kicked

Battle of Antietam

• McClellan got a copy of Lees orders
• divides his army with plan to meet up
• mcClellan’s plan: beat him there
• McClellan is slow as usual and Lee’s armies were just meeting when he got there
• Battle was a draw
• Single bloodiest day in American military history

Western front

• confederate offensive collapses
• Bragg’s grasp on strategic principles weakened

Britain and France end of 1862

• back off
• because of the emancipation proclamation
• the union appears to be winning
• decide not to intervene in the American Civil War