• Mr. Macklin   John Jay Senior High School Elective -   Civil War  1861-1865

     

    Overall:  

    The Civil War is the central event in America's historical consciousness. While the Revolution of 1776-1783 created the United States, the Civil War of 1861-1865 determined what kind of nation it would be. The war resolved two fundamental questions left unresolved by the revolution: whether the United States was to be a dissolvable confederation of sovereign states or an indivisible nation with a sovereign national government; and whether this nation, born of a declaration that all men were created with an equal right to liberty, would continue to exist as the largest slaveholding country in the world.

    Northern victory in the war preserved the United States as one nation and ended the institution of slavery that had divided the country from its beginning. But these achievements came at the cost of 625,000 lives--nearly as many American soldiers as died in all the other wars in which this country has fought combined. The American Civil War was the largest and most destructive conflict in the Western world between the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 and the onset of World War I in 1914.

    The Civil War started because of uncompromising differences between the free and slave states over the power of the national government to prohibit slavery in the territories that had not yet become states. When Abraham Lincoln won election in 1860 as the first Republican president on a platform pledging to keep slavery out of the territories, seven slave states in the deep South seceded and formed a new nation, the Confederate States of America. The incoming Lincoln administration and most of the Northern people refused to recognize the legitimacy of secession. They feared that it would discredit democracy and create a fatal precedent that would eventually fragment the no-longer United States into several small, squabbling countries.

     

    Content  & Course Overview:

    Pre Civil War

    1. Arrival of Slavery                        9) Underground Railroad
    2. Missouri Compromise 1820          10) 1854-1859 Bleeding Kansas
    3. Abolitionist Movement                 11) 1857 Dred Scott vs. Sanford 
    4. Specific Abolitionists                   12) 1858 Lincoln & Douglas Debates
    5. Nat Turner Rebellion 1831           13) 1859 John Brown’s Raid
    6. 1846 - 1850 Wilmot Proviso         14) 1860 Election of Abraham Lincoln
    7. Compromise of 1850                   15) 1861 - Battle of Fort Sumter
    8. Uncle Tom’s Cabin 1854               16)  Advantages of Union & Confed. 

     

    Civil War Events and Battles:

    1. April 12-13 1861 -  Battle of Fort Sumter, S.C. - {Conf V}
    2. July 21, 1861 - First Bull Run - Battle of Manassas, Va - {Conf V)
    3. Feb. 11-16, 1862 - Battle of Donelson, Tenn - {Union V)
    4. April 6-7, 1862 - Battle of Shiloh or Pittsburg Landing, Tenn - {Union V}
    5. April 25 - May 1862 - Capture of New Orleans, La - {Union V}
    6. June 25 - July 2, 1862 - Seven Days Battle, Va 
    • June 25, 1862 - Battle of Oak Grove, Va (inconclusive)
    • July 1, 1862 - Battle of Malvern Hall, Va {McClellan defeats Lee}
    1. August 28-30, 1862 - 2nd Battle of Bull Run or Second Manassas, Va - {Conf. V}
    2. Sept. 17, 1862 - Battle of Antietam or Sharpsburg, Md. - {Union V}
    3. Sept. 22, 1862 - Lincoln issues Emancipation Proclamation
    4. Dec. 13, 1862 - Battle of Fredericksburg, Va - {Conf. V}
    5.  April 30 - May 6, 1863 - Battle of Chancellorsville, Va. {Conf. V}
    6. July 4, 1863 - Siege of Vicksburg, Miss. {Union V}
    7. July 1 - 3, 1863 - Gettysburg, Penn. - {Union V}
    8. Pickett’s Charge 
    9. Gettysburg Address - Lincoln
    10. Sept. 19-20, 1863 - Battle of Chickamauga, Geo. - {Conf. V}
    11. May 5 - 7, 1864 - Battle of Wilderness, Va. - (inconclusive)
    12. May 31 - June 12, 1864 - Battle of Cold Harbor, Va - {Conf. V}
    13. July 11-12, 1864 - Battle of Fort Stevens, W.D.C - {Union V}
    14. July 22, 1864 - Battle of Atlanta, Geo. - {Union V}
    15. Nov - Dec 1864 - March to Sea, Geo - General Sherman
    16. Dec. 15-16, 1864 - Battle of Nashville, Tenn. - {Union V}
    17. April 1, 1865 - Battle of Five Forks. Va. - {Union V}
    18. April 2, 1865 - Battle of Pittsburg, Va. - {Union V}
    19. April 2, 1865 - Battle of Sutherland’s Station, Va. - {Union V}
    20. April 6, 1865 - Battle of Appomattox Station, Va. - {Union V}
    21. April 9, 1865 - Battle of Appomattox Ct. House, Va. - {Union V}
    22. June 19, 1865 - Juneteenth - Galveston, Tx. - Union Army General Gordon Granger - informs slaves of Texas slavery had been abolished
    23. Reconstruction