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Veteran Affairs

2011-01-01 10:18:00

The American Civil War

Question: What can you tell me about the American Civil War?

Answer: The American Civil War (1861-1865) was a war between the United States of America USA), and the Confederate States of America (CSA). The eleven Southern states that had declared their secession from the Union, the Border States may or may not have seceded from the Union, in some cases the legislative branches of the states voted to either stay or secede from the Union or to become a part of the CSA or not to be a part of the CSA. West Virginia is an example of this. The western part of the state decided to go with the USA. Other states had the same problem. Parts of Texas were showing Northern tendencies especially those with a large portion of German immigrants. Those individuals were resettled to other areas. We also saw examples of joining the local home guard units and then deserting with information and equipment to benefit the other side, be it USA or CSA... The war was never civil, and it was roughest on the poor usually on the agriculture poor. The Union won a victory, followed by a period of Reconstruction. When Reconstruction was over or so the Republican Party announced in order to get the votes. The Republican Party won, but the black former slaves were left and again swinging in the wind, literally, this time. The war produced more than 970,000 casualties (3 percent of population), including approximately 560,000 deaths Nashville, Tennessee, fell to the Union early in 1862. Most of the Mississippi was opened with the taking of Island No. 10 and New Madrid, Missouri, and then Memphis, Tennessee. New Orleans, Louisiana, was captured in May 1862, allowing the Union forces to begin moving up the Mississippi as well. Only the fortress city of Vicksburg, Mississippi, prevented unchallenged Union control of the entire river. Braxton Bragg’s second Confederate invasion of Kentucky was repulsed by Don Carlos Buell at the confused and bloody Battle of Perryville and he was narrowly defeated by William S. Rosecrans at the Battle of Stones River in Tennessee. The one clear Confederate victory in the West was the Battle of Chickamauga in Georgia, near the Tennessee border, where Bragg, reinforced by the corps of James Longstreet (from Lee’s army in the east), defeated Rosecrans, despite the heroic defensive stand of George Henry Thomas, and forced him to retreat to Chattanooga, which Bragg then besieged. The Union’s key strategist and tactician in the west was Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, who won victories at: Forts Henry and Donelson, by which the Union forces seized control of the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers; Shiloh; the Battle of Vicksburg, cementing Union control of the Mississippi River and considered one of the turning points of the war; and the Battle of Chattanooga, Tennessee, driving Confederate forces out of Tennessee and opening an invasion route to Atlanta and the heart of the Confederacy. Jefferson Davis, first and only President of the Confederate States of America At the beginning of 1864, Lincoln made Grant Commander of all Union armies. Grant made his headquarters with the Army of the Potomac, and put Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman in command of most of the western armies. Grant understood the concept of total war and believed, along with Lincoln and Sherman, that only the utter defeat of Confederate forces and their economic base would bring an end to the war. He devised a coordinated strategy that would strike at the heart of Confederacy from multiple directions: Generals Grant, Meade, and Benjamin Butler would move against Lee near Richmond; General Franz Sigel (and later Philip Sheridan) would invade the Shenandoah Valley; General Sherman would and capture Atlanta and march to the sea; Generals George Crook and William W. Averell would operate against railroad supply lines in West Virginia; and General Nathaniel Banks would capture Mobile, Alabama. Union forces in the East attempted to maneuver past Lee and fought several battles during that phase (“Grant’s Overland Campaign”) of the Eastern campaign. An attempt to outflank Lee from the south failed under Butler, who was trapped inside the Bermuda Hundred river bend. Grant was tenacious and, despite astonishing losses (over 66,000 casualties in six weeks), kept pressing Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia back to Richmond. He pinned down the Confederate army in the Siege of Petersburg, where the two armies engaged in trench warfare for over nine months. Grant finally found a commander, General Philip Sheridan, aggressive enough to prevail in the Valley Campaigns of 1864. Sheridan proved to be more than a match for Jubal Early, and defeated him in a series of battles, including a final decisive defeat at Cedar Creek; Sheridan then proceeded to destroy the agricultural base of the Valley, a strategy similar to the tactics Sherman would later employ in Georgia. Meanwhile, Sherman marched from Chattanooga to Atlanta, defeating Confederate Generals Joseph E. Johnston and John B. Hood. The fall of Atlanta, on September 2, 1864, was a significant factor in the re-election of Abraham Lincoln, as President of the Union. Leaving Atlanta, and his base of supplies, Sherman’s army marched with an unclear destination, laying waste to about 20% of the farms in Georgia in his celebrated “March to the Sea”, and reaching the Atlantic Ocean at Savannah, Georgia in December 1864. Burning plantations as they went, Sherman’s army was followed by thousands of freed slaves. When Sherman turned north through South Carolina and North Carolina to approach the Virginia lines from the south, it was the end for Lee and his men, and shortly thereafter, for the Confederacy. Lee attempted to escape from the besieged Petersburg and link up with Johnston in North Carolina, but he was overtaken by Grant’s better rested and equipped army. Consequently, Lee surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia on April 9, 1865, at Appomattox Court House. In an untraditional gesture and as a sign of Lincoln’s respect and anticipation of folding the Confederacy back into the Union with dignity and peace, Lee was permitted to keep his officer’s sabre and his near-legendary horse, Traveler. Upon emerging from the surrender, Lee - clearly melancholy - was greeted with respectful salutations by the Union troops. Johnston surrendered his troops to Sherman shortly thereafter in Durham, North Carolina at a family farmhouse known as Bennett Place. The Battle of Palmito Ranch, fought on May 13, 1865, in the far south of Texas, was the last Civil War land battle and ended, ironically, with a Confederate victory. All Confederate land forces surrendered by June 1865. Early in 1865, both sides in south Texas honored an agreement that there was no point to further hostilities. After July 28, 1864, most of the 6,500 Union troops pulled out of the Lower Rio Grande Valley, including Brownsville, which they had occupied on November 2, 1863, for other campaigns. The Confederates sought to protect their remaining ports for cotton sales to Europe, as well as importation of supplies. Mexicans tended to side with the Confederates due to a lucrative smuggling trade. Maj. Gen. Lew Wallace proposed a negotiated end of hostilities in Texas between his forces and those of Confederate Brig-Gen. James E. Slaughter, and met with Slaughter’s subordinate Col. John Salmon Ford at Port Isabel in March 1865. Despite Slaughter’s and Ford’s concurrence that further combat would prove tragic, the negotiations were repudiated by their superior, Confederate Gen. John G. Walker, in a scathing exchange of letters with Wallace. Despite this, both sides appeared to honor a tacit agreement not to advance on the other without prior notice in writing. A brigade of 1,900 Union troops commanded by Col. Robert B. Jones of the 34th Indiana Veteran Volunteer Infantry garrisoned Brazos Santiago Island at the mouth of the Rio Grande River. The 34th Indiana, 400 strong, was an experienced infantry regiment that had seen combat in the Vicksburg campaign and had been reorganized in December 1863 as a “Veteran” regiment, re-enlisting veteran troops of several regiments whose original enlistments had expired. It deployed to Brazos Santiago on December 22, 1864, replacing the 91st Illinois Volunteer Infantry, which returned to New Orleans. The brigade also included the 87th and 62nd United States Colored Infantry Regiments (“United States Colored Troops”, or U.S.C.T.), with a combined strength of approximately 1,100. Shortly after Walker rejected the armistice proposal, Jones resigned his commission to return to Indiana, replaced in command of the 34th Indiana by its lieutenant colonel, Robert G. Morrison, and at Brazos Santiago by Colonel Theodore H. Barrett, commander of the 62nd U.S.C.T. Barrett, 30, had been an officer since 1862, but was without combat experience. Eager to advance in rank, he had volunteered to command one of the newly-raised “colored” regiments in 1863 and was appointed colonel of the 1st Missouri Colored Infantry, which in March 1864 was federalized in Louisiana as the 62nd U.S.C.T. Barrett contracted malaria in the summer of 1864, and while he was on convalescent leave, the 62nd was posted to Brazos Santiago, where Barrett rejoined it in February 1865. Why the battle happened remains something of a mystery. Barrett’s detractors among the brigade suggested soon after the battle that he had desired “a little battlefield glory before the war ended altogether.” Historian Louis J. Schuler, in a 1960 pamphlet entitled The last battle in the War Between the States, May 13, 1865: Confederate Force of 300 defeats 1,700 Federals near Brownsville, Texas, asserts that Brig-Gen. Egbert B. Brown of the U.S. Volunteers ordered the expedition with the object of seizing for sale as contraband 2,000 bales of cotton stored in Brownsville. However, Brown was not appointed to command at Brazos Santiago until later in May. On May 11, Barrett instructed his lieutenant colonel, David Branson, to attack the Confederate encampments commanded by Ford at White and Palmito Ranches near Fort Brown, outside Brownsville. Branson’s Union forces consisted of 250 men of the 62nd U.S.C.T. in eight companies and two companies of the (U.S.) 2nd Texas Cavalry Battalion,[6] 50 men without mounts. They crossed from Brazos Santiago to the mainland across the Boca Chica Pass during a storm on the evening of May 11 and made a night march upriver to attack the Confederate encampment. At first Branson’s expedition was successful, capturing three prisoners and some supplies, although it failed to achieve the desired surprise. During the afternoon, Confederate forces under Captain William N. Robinson counterattacked with less than 100 cavalry, driving Branson back to White’s Ranch, where the fighting stopped for the night. Both sides sent for reinforcements: Ford arrived with the remainder of his cavalry force and six guns (for a total of 300 men), while Barrett came with 200 troops of the 34th Indiana in nine under strength companies The next day, Barrett started advancing westward, passing a half mile to the west of Palmito Ranch, with skirmishers from the 34th Indiana deployed in front. Ford attacked Barrett’s force as it was skirmishing with an advance Confederate force along the Rio Grande about 4 p.m. Ford sent a couple of companies with artillery to attack the Union right flank, sending the remainder of his force into a frontal attack. After some confusion and fierce fighting, the Union forces retreated back towards Boca Chica. Barrett attempted to form a rearguard but Confederate artillery prevented him from rallying a significant force to do so. During the retreat, which lasted until the 14th, 50 members of the 34th Indiana’s rear guard company, 30 stragglers, and 20 of the dismounted cavalry were surrounded in a bend of the Rio Grande and captured. In Barrett’s official report of August 10, 1865, he reported 115 Union casualties: one killed, nine wounded, and 105 captured. Confederate casualties were reported as five or six wounded, with none killed. Historian and Ford biographer Stephen B. Oates, however, concludes that Union deaths were much higher, numbering approximately 30, many of whom drowned in the Rio Grande or were murdered by French troops on the Mexican side. He likewise estimated Confederate casualties at approximately the same number. However, using court-martial testimony and post returns from Brazos Santiago, Texas A&M International University historian Jerry D. Thompson determined that the 62nd U.S.C.T. incurred two killed and four wounded; the 34th Indiana one killed, one wounded, and 79 captured; and the 2nd Texas Cavalry Battalion one killed, seven wounded, and 22 captured, totaling four killed, 12 wounded, and 101 captured. Like the war’s first big battle at First Bull Run, which also yielded little gain for either side, the battle is recorded as a Confederate victory. Two weeks later, Texan forces surrendered formally on May 26, 1865; Confederate General Edmund Kirby Smith surrendered his forces in the Trans-Mississippi Department on June 2. Most senior Confederate commanders in Texas (including Smith, Walker, Slaughter, and Ford) and many troops and equipment fled across the border to Mexico, possibly to ally with Imperial Mexican forces. The Military Division of the Southwest (after June 27 the Division of the Gulf) commanded by Maj-Gen. Phillip H. Sheridan, occupied Texas between June and August. Consisting of the IV Corps, XIII Corps, the African-American XXV Corps, and two 4,000-man cavalry divisions commanded by Brig-Gen. Wesley Merritt and Maj-Gen. George A. Custer, it aggregated a 50,000 man force on the Gulf Coast and along the Rio Grande River to pressure the French intervention in Mexico and garrison the Reconstruction Department of Texas. In July 1865, Barrett preferred charges of disobedience of orders, neglect of duty, abandoning his colors, and conduct prejudicial to good order and military discipline against Morrison for actions in the battle, resulting in the latter’s court martial. Confederate Col. Ford, who had returned from Mexico at the request of Union Gen. Frederick Steele to act as parole commissioner for disbanding Confederate forces, appeared as a defense witness and assisted in absolving Morrison for responsibility for the defeat. Pvt John J. Williams of the 34th Indiana was the last fatality during the Battle at Palmito Ranch, making him likely the final combat death of the war. Fighting in the battle involved Caucasian, African-American, Hispanic, and Native American troops. Reports of shots from the Mexican side, the sounding of a warning to the Confederates of the Union approach, the crossing of Imperial French cavalry into Texas, and the participation by several among Ford’s troops are unverified, despite many witnesses reporting shooting from the Mexican shore. Many shots were fired across the border into Union Troops. Who fired the shots is not known. They were always union bodies until the union forces learned to fight back. Distinctive uniforms always seemed to draw fire, with no respect for rank