What was boot camp like in the civil war

The Republicans again rejected the idea, although a majority of both Northerners and Southerners would likely have voted in favour of it. A pre-war February Peace Conference of met in Washington, proposing a solution similar to that of the Crittenden compromise; it was rejected by Congress.

The Republicans proposed an alternative compromise to not interfere with slavery where it existed but the South regarded it as insufficient. On 04 March , Abraham Lincoln was sworn in as president.

He had no intent to invade Southern states, nor did he intend to end slavery where it existed, but said that he would use force to maintain possession of Federal property. The government would make no move to recover post offices, and if resisted, mail delivery would end at state lines. Where popular conditions did not allow peaceful enforcement of Federal law, US marshals and judges would be withdrawn.

He stated that it would be US policy to only collect import duties at its ports; there could be no serious injury to the South to justify the armed revolution during his administration.

The South sent delegations to Washington and offered to pay for the federal properties and enter into a peace treaty with the United States. Lincoln rejected any negotiations with Confederate agents because he claimed the Confederacy was not a legitimate government, and that making any treaty with it would be tantamount to recognition of it as a sovereign government.

Fort Sumter is located in the middle of the harbour of Charleston, South Carolina. Its garrison had recently moved there to avoid incidents with local militias in the streets of the city.

Lincoln told its commander, Major Anderson to hold on until fired upon. Confederate president Jefferson Davis ordered the surrender of the fort. Anderson gave a conditional reply that the Confederate government rejected, and Davis ordered General P. Beauregard to attack the fort before a relief expedition could arrive.

He bombarded Fort Sumter on April, forcing its capitulation. The attack on Fort Sumter rallied the North to the defence of American nationalism.

Historian Allan Nevins underscored the significance of the event:. From every side came news of mass meetings, speeches, resolutions, tenders of business support, the muster of companies and regiments, the determined action of governors and legislatures.

Union leaders incorrectly assumed that only a minority of Southerners were in favour of secession and that there were large numbers of southern Unionists that could be counted on. Had Northerners realised that most Southerners favoured secession, they might have hesitated at attempting the enormous task of conquering a united South. Lincoln called on all the states to send forces to recapture the fort and other federal properties. The scale of the rebellion appeared to be small, so he called for only 75, volunteers for 90 days.

The governor of Massachusetts had state regiments on trains headed south the next day. In western Missouri, local secessionists seized Liberty Arsenal. On 03 May , Lincoln called for an additional 42, volunteers for a period of three years. Four states in the middle and upper South had repeatedly rejected Confederate overtures, but now Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas, and North Carolina refused to send forces against their neighbours, declared their secession, and joined the Confederacy.

To reward Virginia, the Confederate capital was moved to Richmond. Maryland, Delaware, Missouri, and Kentucky were slave states that were opposed to both secession and coercing the South. West Virginia then joined them as an additional border state after it separated from Virginia and became a state of the Union in It had numerous anti-Lincoln officials who tolerated anti-army rioting in Baltimore and the burning of bridges, both aimed at hindering the passage of troops to the South.

Lincoln responded by establishing martial law and unilaterally suspending habeas corpus in Maryland, along with sending in militia units from the North. In Missouri, an elected convention on secession voted decisively to remain within the Union. When pro-Confederate Governor Claiborne F. Jackson called out the state militia, it was attacked by federal forces under General Nathaniel Lyon, who chased the governor and the rest of the State Guard to the southwestern corner of the state.

In the resulting vacuum, the convention on secession reconvened and took power as the Unionist provisional government of Missouri. Kentucky did not secede; for a time, it declared itself neutral. When Confederate forces entered the state in September , neutrality ended and the state reaffirmed its Union status while trying to maintain slavery. During a brief invasion by Confederate forces in , Confederate sympathizers organised a secession convention, formed the shadow Confederate Government of Kentucky, inaugurated a governor, and gained recognition from the Confederacy.

Its jurisdiction extended only as far as Confederate battle lines in the Commonwealth and went into exile for good after October A voter turnout of 34 percent approved the statehood bill 96 percent approving. The inclusion of 24 secessionist counties in the state and the ensuing guerrilla war engaged about 40, Federal troops for much of the war.

Congress admitted West Virginia to the Union on 20 June West Virginia provided about 20,, soldiers to both the Confederacy and the Union. A Unionist secession attempt occurred in East Tennessee, but was suppressed by the Confederacy, which arrested over 3, men suspected of being loyal to the Union. They were held without trial. The Civil War was a contest marked by the ferocity and frequency of battle. Over four years, named battles were fought, as were many more minor actions and skirmishes, which were often characterised by their bitter intensity and high casualties.

As the first seven states began organising a Confederacy in Montgomery, the entire US army numbered 16, However, Northern governors had begun to mobilise their militias. The Confederate Congress authorised the new nation up to , troops sent by governors as early as February. By May, Jefferson Davis was pushing for , men under arms for one year or the duration, and that was answered in kind by the US Congress.

In the first year of the war, both sides had far more volunteers than they could effectively train and equip. After the initial enthusiasm faded, reliance on the cohort of young men who came of age every year and wanted to join was not enough.

Both sides used a draft law — conscription — as a device to encourage or force volunteering; relatively few were drafted and served. The Confederacy passed a draft law in April for young men aged 18 to 35; overseers of slaves, government officials, and clergymen were exempt.

The US Congress followed in July, authorising a militia draft within a state when it could not meet its quota with volunteers. European immigrants joined the Union Army in large numbers, including , born in Germany and , born in Ireland. When the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect in January , ex-slaves were energetically recruited by the states and used to meet the state quotas. States and local communities offered higher and higher cash bonuses for white volunteers.

Congress tightened the law in March Men selected in the draft could provide substitutes or, until mid, pay commutation money. Many of those eligible pooled their money to cover the cost of anyone drafted. Families used the substitute provision to select which man should go into the army and which should stay home. There was much evasion and overt resistance to the draft, especially in Catholic areas. Of the , men procured for the Union through the draft, , were substitutes, leaving only 50, who had their services conscripted.

In both the North and South, the draft laws were highly unpopular. In the North, some , men evaded conscription, many of them fleeing to Canada, and another , soldiers deserted during the war. At least , Southerners deserted, or about 10 percent; Southern desertion was high because, according to one historian writing in , the highly localised Southern identity meant that many Southern men had little investment in the outcome of the war, with individual soldiers caring more about the fate of their local area than any grand ideal.

European observers at the time dismissed them as amateur and unprofessional, but British historian John Keegan concluded that each outmatched the French, Prussian and Russian armies of the time, and but for the Atlantic, would have threatened any of them with defeat.

The number of women who served as soldiers during the war is estimated at between and , although an accurate count is impossible because the women had to disguise themselves as men. Women also served on the Union hospital ship Red Rover and nursed Union and Confederate troops at field hospitals. Mary Edwards Walker, the only woman to ever receive the Medal of Honour, served in the Union Army and was given the medal for her efforts to treat the wounded during the war.

Her name was deleted from the Army Medal of Honour Roll in along with over other, male, MOH recipients ; however, it was restored in Perman and Taylor write that historians are of two minds on why millions of men seemed so eager to fight, suffer and die over four years:. Some historians emphasize that Civil War soldiers were driven by political ideology, holding firm beliefs about the importance of liberty, Union, or state rights, or about the need to protect or to destroy slavery.

Most historians agree that no matter what a soldier thought about when he went into the war, the experience of combat affected him profoundly and sometimes altered his reasons for continuing the fight.

At the start of the civil war, a system of paroles operated. Captives agreed not to fight until they were officially exchanged.

Meanwhile, they were held in camps run by their army. They were paid, but they were not allowed to perform any military duties. The system of exchanges collapsed in when the Confederacy refused to exchange black prisoners. The small US Navy of was rapidly enlarged to 6, officers and 45, men in , with vessels, having a tonnage of , Its mission was to blockade Confederate ports, take control of the river system, defend against Confederate raiders on the high seas, and be ready for a possible war with the British Royal Navy.

Meanwhile, the main riverine war was fought in the West, where a series of major rivers gave access to the Confederate heartland. In the East, the Navy supplied and moved army forces about and occasionally shelled Confederate installations. The Civil War occurred during the early stages of the industrial revolution.

Many naval innovations emerged during this time, most notably the advent of the ironclad warship. Only half of these saw active service.

In addition to ocean-going warships coming up the Mississippi, the Union Navy used timberclads, tinclads, and armoured gunboats. Shipyards at Cairo, Illinois, and St. Louis built new boats or modified steamboats for action.

The Confederacy experimented with the submarine CSS Hunley, which did not work satisfactorily, and with building an ironclad ship, CSS Virginia, which was based on rebuilding a sunken Union ship, Merrimack.

The resulting three hour Battle of Hampton Roads was a draw, but it proved that ironclads were effective warships. Not long after the battle, the Confederacy was forced to scuttle the Virginia to prevent its capture, while the Union built many copies of the Monitor. Lacking the technology and infrastructure to build effective warships, the Confederacy attempted to obtain warships from Great Britain.

However, this failed as Great Britain had no interest in selling warships to a nation that was at war with a far stronger enemy, and it meant it could sour relations with the US. By early , General Winfield Scott had devised the Anaconda Plan to win the war with as little bloodshed as possible. Scott argued that a Union blockade of the main ports would weaken the Confederate economy. Public opinion, however, demanded an immediate attack by the army to capture Richmond. In April , Lincoln announced the Union blockade of all Southern ports; commercial ships could not get insurance and regular traffic ended.

The South blundered in embargoing cotton exports in before the blockade was effective; by the time they realized the mistake, it was too late. The blockade shut down the ten Confederate seaports with railheads that moved almost all the cotton, especially New Orleans, Mobile, and Charleston.

By June , warships were stationed off the principal Southern ports, and a year later nearly ships were in service. British investors built small, fast, steam-driven blockade runners that traded arms and luxuries brought in from Britain through Bermuda, Cuba, and the Bahamas in return for high-priced cotton.

Many of the ships were designed for speed and were so small that only a small amount of cotton went out. When the Union Navy seized a blockade runner, the ship and cargo were condemned as a prize of war and sold, with the proceeds given to the Navy sailors; the captured crewmen were mostly British, and they were released.

The Southern economy nearly collapsed during the war. There were multiple reasons for this: the severe deterioration of food supplies, especially in cities, the failure of Southern railroads, the loss of control of the main rivers, foraging by Northern armies, and the seizure of animals and crops by Confederate armies. Most historians agree that the blockade was a major factor in ruining the Confederate economy; however, Wise argues that the blockade runners provided just enough of a lifeline to allow Lee to continue fighting for additional months, thanks to fresh supplies of , rifles, lead, blankets, and boots that the homefront economy could no longer supply.

Surdam argues that the blockade was a powerful weapon that eventually ruined the Southern economy, at the cost of few lives in combat. Practically, the entire Confederate cotton crop was useless although it was sold to Union traders , costing the Confederacy its main source of income. Critical imports were scarce and the coastal trade was largely ended as well.

Merchant ships owned in Europe could not get insurance and were too slow to evade the blockade, so they stopped calling at Confederate ports. To fight an offensive war, the Confederacy purchased ships in Britain, converted them to warships, and raided American merchant ships in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Insurance rates skyrocketed and the American flag virtually disappeared from international waters.

However, the same ships were reflagged with European flags and continued unmolested. After the war ended, the US government demanded that Britain compensate them for the damage done by the raiders outfitted in British ports. Although the Confederacy hoped that Britain and France would join them against the Union, this was never likely, and so they instead tried to bring Britain and France in as mediators.

Seward worked to block this, and threatened war if any country officially recognised the existence of the Confederate States of America. In , Southerners voluntarily embargoed cotton shipments, hoping to start an economic depression in Europe that would force Britain to enter the war to get cotton, but this did not work.

It also helped to turn European opinion further away from the Confederacy. When Britain did face a cotton shortage, it was temporary, being replaced by increased cultivation in Egypt and India. Meanwhile, the war created employment for arms makers, ironworkers, and ships to transport weapons. Diplomats explained that the United States was not committed to the ending of slavery, and instead repeated legalistic arguments about the unconstitutionality of secession.

Confederate representatives, on the other hand, were much more successful by ignoring slavery and instead focusing on their struggle for liberty, their commitment to free trade, and the essential role of cotton in the European economy. European government leaders welcomed the fragmentation of the ascendant American Republic. US minister to Britain Charles Francis Adams proved particularly adept and convinced Britain not to openly challenge the Union blockade. The most famous, the CSS Alabama, did considerable damage and led to serious post-war disputes.

However, public opinion against slavery in Britain created a political liability for British politicians, where the anti-slavery movement was powerful. However, London and Washington were able to smooth over the problem after Lincoln released the two. In , the British government considered mediating between the Union and Confederacy, though even such an offer would have risked war with the United States.

The Union victory in the Battle of Antietam caused them to delay this decision. The Emancipation Proclamation over time would reinforce the political liability of supporting the Confederacy.

Realising that Washington could not intervene in Mexico as long as the Confederacy controlled Texas, France invaded Mexico in Confederate offers late in the war to end slavery in return for diplomatic recognition were not seriously considered by London or Paris. After , the Polish revolt against Russia further distracted the European powers, and ensured that they would remain neutral.

Russia supported the Union, largely due to the view that the US served as a counterbalance to their geopolitical rival, the United Kingdom. The Eastern theatre refers to the military operations east of the Appalachian Mountains, including the states of Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, the District of Columbia, and the coastal fortifications and seaports of North Carolina.

Major General George B. McClellan took command of the Union Army of the Potomac on July 26 he was briefly general-in-chief of all the Union armies, but was subsequently relieved of that post in favour of Major General Henry W. Halleck , and the war began in earnest in The Union strategy called for simultaneous advances along four axes:.

The Army originated as the Confederate Army of the Potomac, which was organised on 20 June , from all operational forces in northern Virginia. The Army of the Peninsula was merged into it on 12 April When Virginia declared its secession in April , Robert E. Lee chose to follow his home state, despite his desire for the country to remain intact and an offer of a senior Union command.

Freeman, asserts that the army received its final name from Lee when he issued orders assuming command on 01 June Jefferson Davis and Johnston did not adopt the name, but it is clear that the organisation of units as of 14 March was the same organisation that Lee received on 01 June, and thus it is generally referred to today as the Army of Northern Virginia, even if that is correct only in retrospect.

Jackson assigned Jeb Stuart to command all the cavalry companies of the Army of the Shenandoah. The Union had the upper hand at first, nearly pushing confederate forces holding a defensive position into a rout, but Confederate reinforcements under. Joseph E. Johnston arrived from the Shenandoah Valley by railroad, and the course of the battle quickly changed. A brigade of Virginians under the relatively unknown brigadier general from the Virginia Military Institute, Thomas J.

Upon the strong urging of President Lincoln to begin offensive operations, McClellan attacked Virginia in the spring of by way of the peninsula between the York River and James River, southeast of Richmond. Banks and John C. Fremont, preventing them from reinforcing the Union offensive against Richmond.

Lee assumed his position of command. Stonewall Jackson was shot in the arm by accidental friendly fire during the battle and subsequently died of complications. The fiercest fighting of the battle — and the second bloodiest day of the Civil War — occurred on 03 May as Lee launched multiple attacks against the Union position at Chancellorsville.

The Confederates fought a successful delaying action at the Battle of Salem Church. Meade defeated Lee at the Battle of Gettysburg 01 to 03 July At the same time, the Confederate stronghold of Vicksburg surrendered, giving the Union control of the Mississippi River, permanently isolating the western Confederacy, and producing the new leader Lincoln needed, Ulysses S.

The primary Confederate force in the Western theatre was the Army of Tennessee. While the Confederate forces had numerous successes in the Eastern Theatre, they were defeated many times in the West. Union logisticians employed their superior resources in overcoming commissary and quartermaster problems, but the Confederates also managed to supply their men in winter camp under more challenging conditions.

Periodic shortages did exist, but were vividly remembered by the Southerners. Both sides shared the difficulties that emerged from remaining in one place for an extended period of time.

The majority of soldiers, being from rural backgrounds, had not been exposed to such a wide cross section of the human population and its communicable diseases.

When accumulated in camps of tens of thousands, soldiers without natural immunities would succumb to the likes of measles and chickenpox. Those same large numbers, residing in one spot for more than a month, caused horrendous situations in relation to sanitation.

The use of "sink pits" as latrine mechanisms ultimately led to the presence of human fecal bacteria in the water supply. That water supply, in many instances, did not need much help in the area of contamination. Swift running, clear water would be the exception more often than the rule.

These conditions created the greatest killer of the war: amoebic and bacterial dysentery. By the end of the war, the Union Sanitary and Christian Commissions made great strides in improving camp hygiene and clean water.

The Confederacy had nothing on such a scale, although experience also improved camp conditions for the boys in gray. After four long years of war, the military encampments had taken their toll.

Although the rate of death from disease over combat may seem alarming to us today, it represented a significant improvement from earlier conflicts, like the American Revolution and Napoleonic Wars, when that number was closer to Not until World War II did the number of battle casualties approach the losses from disease. Civil War Article. Life of the Civil War Soldier in Camp.

Brandy Station, Va. Library of Congress. The basics for every soldier, shown here, including hard tack. Photography by James Salzano Rations on the march varied from plentiful to scarce.

Did frontier soldiers go through boot camp? Katherine Ross already had a substantial Hollywood career when she starred as Etta Place in…. Box , Cave Creek, AZ Skip to content. My Account Blog. Frontier Army. Post Views: 1, Related Posts.