4-6.4

It Is Essential For Students To Know:

• Battle of Fort Sumter: President Lincoln informed Confederate President Davis that he was sending supplies to the federal troops surrounded at the federal installation, Fort Sumter, in the middle of Charleston harbor. Union troops were ordered to surrender by the Confederates but they would not.
• Jefferson Davis ordered Confederate troops to fire on the fort thus beginning the Civil War. The bombardment lasted for thirty-four hours and buildings at the fort were burned, but there were no casualties during the battle.
• The strategies of the North and the South were based on geography, and the resources and economies of each region.
• The strategy of the North was threefold. First, it blockaded the southern ports. Using their navy, the North was able to keep the South from getting enough supplies from Europe. Second their aim was to split the Confederacy in two at the Mississippi River. [They were finally successful as a result of the fall of Vicksburg.] Third, they would attack the Confederate capital at Richmond.
• The strategy of the South was to fight a defensive war and depend upon the trade relationship they had in cotton with England to lend them the supplies they needed. The Southern armies defended Richmond and threatened Washington but only attacked the North on their own ground twice [at Antietam and at Gettysburg].
• Battle of Gettysburg: The Confederate Army led by General Robert E. Lee invaded the North for the second time but was turned back at the Battle of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania. This fight was the turning point of the Civil War because the Confederate Army was so severely wounded that they never again had the military strength to attempt an invasion of the North.
• After Gettysburg, the South could only fight a defensive war. Four months after the battle, President Lincoln gave the Gettysburg Address to dedicate part of the battlefield as a National Cemetery to honor the men who had been killed in battle.
• In his famous two-minute speech, Lincoln’s asserted that his intention was to preserve the Union and democracy and that "government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth”.
• Students should be able to interpret significant passages from this document.
• The Emancipation Proclamation was an order issued by President Lincoln as Commander in Chief of the United States armed forces that freed the slaves in all the states that had left the union. It did not free the slaves that were living in the states that were still loyal to the United States.
• Since the Confederate states did not recognize the authority of the President of the United States, they did not obey his order.
• Slaves were freed only as the Union army liberated them. However, the proclamation made the war one to liberate slaves. Consequently it made it harder for the English government to support the South since many British citizens opposed slavery.
• Surrender at Appomattox After four years of fighting, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Union General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House in Virginia. This surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia was the initial surrender that would be finalized over the next several months as other armies of the South gave up too. It came because Lee’s troops were exhausted, and without supplies, their ranks had been decimated by four years of war.
• African Americans participated in a variety of ways in the Civil War. Many Northern African Americans, like Frederick Douglass, recognized long before most white Northerners that the fate of the Union was tied to the issue of slavery and therefore any possibility of eliminating slavery was tied to the outcome of the conflict.
• When the Civil War began, Northern African Americans formed and financed military companies and began to drill. They requested permission to go to war but were turned down by the Secretary of War.
• Although Southerners did not hesitate to re-enslave or even execute African Americans caught trying to obtain freedom, thousands of contrabands fled to Union military sites. Slaves who fled to the Union army lines and tried to join were turned away.
• At first, the war was being fought to preserve the Union, not to free the slaves. By 1862, the increasing numbers of slaves seeking refuge with Union forces and arguments made by abolitionists like Frederick Douglass convinced Lincoln that victory and the future of the Union were tied directly to the issue of slavery.
• In the Emancipation Proclamation, President Lincoln specifically called for the enlistment of African American as soldiers in the Union army.
• By late 1861, parts of the South Carolina Lowcountry were under Union control and the First SC Colored Volunteers became the first black unit recognized by the Union Army. Many African Americans joined segregated units commanded by white officers. The most famous was the 54th Massachusetts that led the attack on Fort Wagner outside of Charleston.
• African Americans aided themselves and the Union causes as liberators, spies, guides and messengers, including Harriet Tubman.
• In the South, some planters required their African Americans slaves to accompany them on the battlefield for the Confederacy.
• The Confederacy, though afraid to arm the majority of the slave population, was more than willing to use their labor. Both slaves and free African Americans were impressed into service throughout the South, building fortifications, working in factories, and performing menial duties, sometimes under heavy combat.

It Is Not Essential For Students To Know:

• Students do not need to know that the northern strategy to squeeze the South was called the Anaconda plan.
• Although students do not need to know other battles in the Civil War, some other battles will help them to understand the strategies of the war. For instance, understanding the impact of the Battle of Vicksburg would help students to understand that the North was effective in their plan to split the Confederacy in two at the Mississippi River.
• Students should also be reminded of Sherman’s march to the sea that they learned about in 3rd grade. This march changed the nature of the war to one of attrition and total war. This was a strategy to wear down the South and force the surrender of the Confederate Army.
• Students do not need to know the names of the generals associated with any of the battles listed above.
• Students do not need to memorize the Gettysburg address, however they should be able to read and interpret it.
• Students do not need to know specific roles of African-American military units or individuals however such details can be used to emphasize the commitment of African Americans to securing their freedom.
• The following are a few examples.
• In order to protect their city, the Louisiana Native Guard (African American) voluntarily joined the war on behalf of the Confederate Army. When the Union forces retook the city in 1862, the Native Guard refused to retreat with the Confederate forces and offered their services to and was accepted by the Union.
• In early 1861, eighty-two free black men in Charleston petitioned Governor Francis W. Pickens and offered their support to South Carolina. Although, South Carolina did not accept them into the armed forces, many whites were pleased with their act of loyalty.
• By the fall of 1862, General Rufus Saxon had recruited approximately five thousand African American troops for the First SC and they were commanded by Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson. Many African Americans joined segregated units commanded by white officers such as Higginson.
• The South Carolina slave, Robert Smalls, with the aid of seven African American crewmen, sailed The Planter past Confederate fortifications, including Fort Sumter, to the Union fleet. Smalls liberated himself and fifteen other slaves, including women and children. He became a successful Republican politician in South Carolina in the decades following the Civil War. He served in the South Carolina house and senate, and in the U.S. House of Representatives. He was also a member of the South Carolina constitutional conventions in 1868 and 1895. He was a major figure in the Republican Party and served as customs collector in Beaufort from 1889 to 1913.
• Harriet Tubman in 1863 organized a spy ring in South Carolina Lowcountry and in cooperation with the African American Second SC Volunteer Regiment, helped organized an expedition that destroyed plantations and freed nearly eight hundred slaves.
• In Richmond, Virginia, Mary Elizabeth Bowser, a literate former slave who worked as a servant at the Confederate White House used overhead conversations by President Jefferson Davis and his subordinates to covertly examine Confederate correspondence and relay information to Union agents.