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| | The Civil War had begun. | | The Civil War had begun. |
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| − | ===Strategic plans===
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| − | Northerners rallied behind Lincoln in response to the attack on Fort Sumter, while the new president called for troops to preserve the Union. General Scott has drawn up a grand strategy, called the ''[[Anaconda Plan]]'', in which the entire South would be encircled by a naval blockade, with a splitting of the Confederacy down the Mississippi, and a routing of insurgents piecemeal. Believing that the war itself would not last long, Lincoln called for 74,000 volunteers to enlist for 90 days. The response to the troop call up from four states was not what Lincoln wanted:
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| − | *Virginia seceded April 17.
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| − | *Arkansas seceded May 6.
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| − | *Tennessee seceded May 7.
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| − | *North Carolina seceded May 20.
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| − | When Virginia joined the Confederacy, the state was rewarded with a shift of the capitol from Montgomery to Richmond. On April 20 the Confederacy was presented with the bonus of a major naval installation, with drydocks, near Norfolk, which the Federals tried to burn without much success (one of the ships partially destroyed was USS ''Merrimac'', which would make history the following year). That same day, after turning down an offer of high command from General Scott, Colonel Robert E. Lee resigned his commission in the Army.
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| − | The '''border states''' in the Union were the northernmost slave-holding states still considered part of the South: Maryland, Delaware, Missouri, and Kentucky. Lincoln declared martial law in Maryland after anti-Union rioting in Baltimore and numerous cases of bridge-burning, which was tolerated and even encouraged by many in the state legislature who were pro-Southern. Militia units were rushed toward Washington and Baltimore, and before they could react Lincoln was in firm control of Maryland, and had arrested the entire Maryland statehouse.
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| − | In Missouri Governor Claiborne F. Jackson called out the state militia to take the state for the Confederacy and overturn a legislature who voted to remain in the Union; General Nathaniel Lyon then attacked and drove Jackson's militia, plus the governor himself, to the southwestern corner of the state. In the resulting vacuum the legislature reconvened and took power as a pro-Union provisional government.
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| − | Kentucky declared neutrality; despite this, the Confederates seized the city of Columbus in September 1861. Instead of the hoped-for switch of sides, opinion was turned against the Confederacy, and the state declared loyalty to the Union, despite a brief, alternate government set up by Confederate sympathizers and recognized by the Confederacy.
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| − | ===Bull Run===
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| − | On May 18, the Union opens fire on Confederate shore batteries at Sewall's Point, Virginia. Captain Elmer Ellsworth of the New York 11th Regiment becomes a martyr to the Union when he is shot after pulling down a Confederate flag from a hotel across the Potomac from Washington. Small Union regiments try without success to dislodge Confederate forces that have massed in the countryside around Manassas, Virginia, and in July a march by a large Union force under Maj. Gen. Irvin McDowell was halted by Confederate troops under the command of Generals Joseph E. Johnston and P.G.T. Beauregard in the [[First Battle of Bull Run]] (or First Manassas). Although it looked like the Federals would succeed in driving the Confederates from the field, the rebels fall back to Henry House Hill and hold firm under Generals N.G. Evans, Bernard Bee, and a former instructer of the Virginia Military Institute who would not duck for cover in the face of enemy fire, Thomas Jonathan Jackson. General Bee, in order to stop his own men from retreating under the heavy fire, told his men to "look yonder. There is General Jackson standing like a stone wall!". Bee lost his life, but his men held firm, and Jackson received his famous nickname. The Federals were soon forced to retreat, and an errant shell hitting an ammunition wagon turned the retreat into a rout as soldiers mixed with civilians who had come to observe a battle as though it were a picnic. Alarmed at the loss, the U.S. Congress passed the Crittenden-Johnson Resolution on July 25, stating that the war was being fought, not to end slavery, but to preserve the Union.
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| − | ==1862==
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| − | ==1863==
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| − | ==1864==
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| − | ==1865==
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| − | ==Reconstruction==
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| − | ==Aftermath==
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| | ==References== | | ==References== |