The Civil War: The Untold Soldier Stories of the American Civil War: United States, American Heroes, Slavery, Abraham Lincoln

49 Pages·2016·0.71 MB·English

by  Stewart

The Civil War

The Untold Soldier Stories of the
American Civil War
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Table of Contents
Introduction: Stars and Stripes, Stars and Bars
Chapter 1: Origins
Chapter 2: Sumter
Chapter 3: First Bull Run/First Manassas
Chapter 4: Antietam
Chapter 5: Union Low Point – Chancellorsville
Conclusion
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Introduction: Stars and Stripes, Stars and Bars
Thank you for downloading this book, “Civil War Heroes”.
On June 17, 2015, a young white supremacist named Dylann Roof
walked into the Emanuel African Methodist Church in Charleston, South
Carolina, and opened fire. Roof killed nine people and wounded at least three
others, all of them African-American.
His actions, and the discovery of his personal website, which included
white supremacist ideas and images, were also decorated with the flag of the
Confederate States of America. Roof's hope was that his actions would help
ignite a race war in the United States. Though that of course did not happen, his
actions brought to a head the debate over the use and display of the Confederate
flag at official monuments in the South, as well as its private display by
American citizens throughout the nation. In South Carolina and other southern
states, demonstrators both for and against the flag held rallies, and debated what
the flag meant to them – a symbol of slavery, or a symbol of rebellion, military
heritage and an independent spirit.
Many states, including South Carolina amended their laws regarding the
display of the flag, and others are still debating whether to take action or not –
for instance, in Mississippi, where the Confederate flag, often known as the
“Stars and Bars”, is a significant part of the state banner.
The debate over the Confederate flag, its meaning and place in today's
America clearly shows that the Civil War, the bloodiest in American history,
clearly illustrates that the effects of the war are still being felt, one hundred fifty
years after the conflict came to an end.
The personal accounts which you read in this e-book are in the public
domain, kept in the National Archives, or in various local archives, museums,
universities and colleges. They have been included in a number of works, three
of which I would like to acknowledge here: 1) Wheeler, Richard. Voices of the
Civil War. New York: Crowell, 1976.
2) Robertson, James I. Soldiers Blue and Gray. Columbia, S.C.: University of
South Carolina Press, 1988.
3) Flagel, Thomas R., and Ken Allers. The History Buff's Guide to Gettysburg:
Key People, Places, and Events. Nashville, Tenn: Cumberland House, 2006.

Please feel free to share this book with your friends and family. Please also
take the time to write a short review on Amazon to share your thoughts.
Chapter 1: Origins
Before the Civil War most US citizens, when asked if they considered
themselves “American” would likely say yes – with a caveat – they were New
Yorkers, Vermonters, South Carolinians, Georgians, etc, first.
The first uniting documents of the United States of American were the
Declaration of Independence in 1776, and the Articles of Confederation in 1781,
which described the American government from 1777-1789.
The Declaration mentions nothing about a new nation. The documents
conclusion asserts that “...by Authority of the good people of these Colonies,
solemnly publish and declare, That these united colonies are, and by right ought
to be, Free and Independent States...”
The Articles of Confederation, while forming the basic structure of a
federal government, left that government without real teeth, and devolved to the
states virtual self-government, except in the case of war, alliances and certain
federal expenditures. One of the biggest problems that developed under the
Articles was that each state was able to govern its own trade. This was
specifically the raising of duties and tariffs to protect its own markets, which
severely hampered economic growth in the country as a whole. The issue of
slavery was not a part of the Articles in any way or for that matter; it was not
included in the Declaration either.
In the years after the end of the American Revolution in 1781, it became
increasingly clear that the Articles of Confederation were more of a hindrance
than a help. By 1786, representatives from a number of states had drafted a
request to Congress, asking for a constitutional convention to be held as soon as
possible in order to more tightly bind the states together and solve the many
economic problems that thrived under the Articles.
The Constitutional Convention met from late May to mid-September of
1787 in Philadelphia. Delegates from all thirteen states came to Pennsylvania to
represent the interests of their states within a proposed federal union.
Considering the problems that needed to be addressed it was no small miracle
that the members of the Convention were able to announce the construction of a
Constitution of the United States in just four and a half months.
The Constitution provided for a stronger federal government, described
the construction and duties of that government the relationship of the federal and
state governments and the basic rights of American citizens. One of the main
reasons that the document passed so rapidly was that the delegates almost
completely ignored the issue of slavery; except for the now infamous method of
counting slaves for the purpose of state representation in that adult slaves were
to be counted as “three fifths” of a person.
Though some members of the Convention were strongly against slavery
and attempted to address it, they were silenced by the majority, even those
against what was later termed the South's “peculiar institution”. It is easy to
condemn the Founders for not addressing the problem of slavery when
constructing the Constitution, and while every sane individual of the 21st century
would agree that slavery was and is wrong, at the time it was rightly believed
that that there would likely have been no Constitution, and hence, no nation.
The primary fear among the representatives, even those who were
firmly against slavery, was that the thirteen states would go their own separate
ways, forming into two or more nations, with all of the problems that would
involve. Foremost among the fears of those in Philadelphia was that an inability
to unite the states would result in the re-assertion of foreign power in the
country, particularly that of Great Britain. Indeed, history proves the Founders
right in that respect. It would take another war, the War of 1812, to finally secure
the nation from British interference or invasion.
Southern delegates were very clear about slavery. Either it would
continue in the South, or there would be no United States. It was believed by
slaveholders in the South, especially the large landowners that the economy of
the South depended on slave labor. Many Southerners justified the use of slaves
by citing Biblical verse and/or pointing out the lack of “civilization” among
those arriving the in United States from Africa, especially the lack of Christian
belief.
Most of the Founders were quite conscious of the fact that slavery
would at some point or other in the future become a serious issue for the country,
one which might threaten to tear it apart. However, most believed that there was
a better chance of the nation surviving any future debate over slavery if the
nation had the opportunity to survive its first few years or decades.
Estimates of the slave population in the early years of the United States
from 1776 range to about six or seven hundred thousand, or nineteen percent of
the US population. By the start of the Civil War, the slave population
approached four million or fourteen percent of the population. An increase in
both the white birthrate and immigration from Europe accounted for the
percentage decrease.
As time went on, slavery became more and more of an issue for the
country. Throughout the nation’s history, a series of compromises kept averting
crises over slavery. In actuality, it just pushed them into the future for others to
deal with.
In 1787, the basic limits of slavery were established. With some
exceptions, slavery was confined to the southern part of the nation south of the
Ohio River. When the nation grew after the Louisiana Purchase in 1803-1804,
debate raged in Congress about the expansion of slavery into the new territory.
Compromise was reached when slavery was limited to the areas geographically
in line with the Old South.
As time went by a number of factors increased the importance of
slavery to the Southern economy, the most important of which were the
development of the cotton gin, which allowed the crop to be readied for market
many times faster than could be done by hand. It also increased the demand for
field labor, and the opening of Louisiana and the development of the sugar crop.
The opening of Louisiana to the slave market of the United States increased the
slave population of the territory/state many times over.
While the South was experiencing a resurgence of slavery in the first
decades of the 19th century, anti-slavery sentiment grew in the North, centered
mainly in the strong religious communities of New England, but gradually
spreading throughout the northern part of the country as travel and
communications improved and Northerners were increasingly exposed to the
realities of slavery. Anti-slave feeling reached an all-time high with the
publication of Harriet Beecher Stowe's “Uncle Tom's Cabin” in 1852, which
exposed many Northerners for the first time to some of the horrors of slavery.
After the Mexican War in in 1848, debate raged in Congress over where
or if slavery should expand in the territories gained by the US in the war. The
Compromise of 1850 allowed slavery in Texas, forbade it in California, gave the
people of Utah and New Mexico the right to decide the issue for themselves.
Utah rejected it, New Mexico never firmly made a decision, but in the end
slavery was extremely limited in the state/territory, never numbering more than a
couple of dozen people, if that.
In 1820, Maine separated from Massachusetts to become its own state.
This meant that the number of “free states” outnumbered “slave states”, with a
corresponding imbalance in Congress. Southern politicians, fearing that slavery
would be outlawed, demanded that the territory of Missouri be admitted as a
slave state to correct the imbalance. This was done, but in 1854, things in the
Midwest came to a head with the formation of the Kansas and Nebraska
Territories.