GSESS8H5 | Civil War
Analyze the impact of the Civil War on Georgia.
a. Explain the importance of key issues and events that led to the Civil War; include slavery, states’ rights, nullification, Compromise of 1850 and the Georgia Platform, the Dred Scott case, Abraham Lincoln’s election in 1860, and the debate over secession in Georgia.
b. Explain Georgia’s role in the Civil War; include the Union blockade of Georgia’s coast, the Emancipation Proclamation, Chickamauga, Sherman’s Atlanta Campaign, Sherman’s March to the Sea, and Andersonville.
b. Explain Georgia’s role in the Civil War; include the Union blockade of Georgia’s coast, the Emancipation Proclamation, Chickamauga, Sherman’s Atlanta Campaign, Sherman’s March to the Sea, and Andersonville.
The Lesson & Essential Questions
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Vocabulary & Content Review
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VIDEOS IN THE LESSON
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H5.a Part 1 - Slavery, States' Rights, Nullification & Compromise of 1850
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H5.a Part 2 - GA Platform, Dred Scott, Lincoln's Election & Secession
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H5.b Part 1 - GA in the Civil War, Union Blockade, Emancipation Proclamation
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H5.b Part 2 - Chickamauga and Sherman's Atlanta Campaign
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H5.b Part 3 - Sherman's March to Sea and Andersonville
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The Story | GeorgiaStandards.org
The Civil War is likely the most researched and analyzed period of American history. The causes, events, and outcomes still impact and resonate with Americans today.
Georgia’s role in the years leading up to the war, during the war itself, and during Reconstruction was significant. Slow to secede from the Union, this slave-holding state encouraged compromise through the Georgia Platform when confronted with the Compromise of 1850. Even after Abraham Lincoln was elected, the state had a heated debate between those legislators who were for and those who were against leaving the Union. A well-known opponent of secession was Georgia’s own Alexander Stephens. Interestingly, Stephens became vice-president of the Confederate States after Georgia decided to leave the union with the rest of the Deep South.
During the war, Georgia produced much of the manufactured equipment for the Confederate States of America (CSA). For a large portion of the war, Georgia remained relatively untouched by US forces. However, once Grant and Sherman set their sights on the state, it suffered tremendously during Sherman’s Atlanta Campaign and March to the Sea. After the war, Georgia’s economy was devastated and there was much suffering throughout the state.
The intent of this standard is for students to be able to explain the importance of the key issues and events that led to the Civil War. They should be able to discuss some of the important events that happened during the Civil War.
GSESS8H5.a
Due to the rules of the Trustees, slavery was not allowed in Georgia until the early 1750’s. Once it was legalized, slavery grew quickly due to Georgia’s agriculture-based economy. However, slavery grew exponentially with the invention of the cotton gin. The South’s economic dependence on cotton led to a change of attitude about the evils of slavery. While many of the nation’s founding fathers disliked slavery, and hoped that later generations would find a way to end it, their sons and grandsons began to defend slavery as a necessary good and began infringing on the rights of those who spoke out against it in the South.
In turn, many in the North, led by the writings of abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, began to despise slavery and call for its end. Others simply became uncomfortable with its existence in the nation’s borders and disagreed with its expansion.
The gap between the two regions widened every time the U.S. gained more territory. The South hoped for slavery to expand into the new territories while many in the North wanted it, at the very least, to be contained to where it already existed. As with the other slave states, Georgia wanted slavery to expand and was distrustful of the abolitionist movement taking place in the North.
A major conflict in the history of the United States, from its creation to the present, is the issue of states’ rights. States’ rights regard the amount of power a state government has in relation to the amount of power held by the federal government in making decisions. Early in the United States’ history, the Articles of Confederation gave the individual states too much power and the nation could not even tax the states for revenue. All of the signers of the U.S. Constitution knew that the federal government needed to have more power than it had under the Articles of Confederation to run the country effectively. However, once the Constitution was ratified, there were several instances before the Civil War that caused the country to almost break apart due to the issue of states’ rights. While the argument for states’ rights during the Civil War was often based on a state’s right to have slavery, there were other times in the nation’s history that issues tied to states’ rights became major concerns. For example, during the War of 1812 there was talk in New England about secession. This was due to the fact that the New England states were losing money with their inability to trade with Britain.
A states’ rights issue, the nullification crisis in the early 1830’s, was a dispute over tariffs. The North supported high tariffs to subsidize their fledgling manufacturing industry against the cheaper products that could be sent to the United States by Great Britain. The South was opposed to this tariff because it took away profits from cotton farmers based on Great Britain’s retaliatory tariff on cotton. When the Northern states, who dominated the House of Representatives, voted to renew the tariff, South Carolina threatened to nullify the tariff and even possibly secede. However, Andrew Jackson’s threat to attack South Carolina if they attempted to leave the union worked well enough to keep the state in the fold for the time being.
Another states’ rights issue occurred in Georgia. Georgia lost the Worcester v. Georgia case but refused to release the missionaries or stop pushing for Cherokee removal. This test of states’ rights proved that a state could do as it pleased if there was not a unified attempt to by the federal government or other states to stop them.
The issues of slavery, tied with the concept of states’ rights, left a huge rift in the country. Controversy after controversy widened this gap, and for almost 40 years, members of the U.S. Congress tried to close wounds with compromises and acts that amounted to temporary Band-Aids. Though these acts and compromises kept the country together in the short term, as Abraham Lincoln said “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” Over time, a physical war between the North and South appeared to be almost inevitable.
The first compromise was called the Missouri Compromise, an agreement between the northern and southern states about allowing Missouri to enter the Union. The issue with this compromise focused on disrupting the balance of power between the slave and free states in Congress. Allowing Missouri to enter as a slave state and Maine to enter as a free state enabled the balance of power to remain the same for almost 30 years as states were entered into the Union in free and slave pairings. This pattern changed in 1850 when California, due to the Gold Rush, had a population large enough to apply for statehood. With no slave state available to balance the entry of a free one, major conflict ensued between the North and South. The South, which had a smaller population than the North, was fearful that losing the balance of power in the Senate would one day give the North the opportunity to end slavery. Talk of secession was prevalent in the South and the Civil War almost started a decade earlier than it did. However, Senators Henry Clay and Stephen A. Douglas wrote the Compromise of 1850, a bill that both groups grudgingly agreed to approve.
Though there were several provisions in the Compromise of 1850, the two most important were that California was admitted as a free state resulting in a power imbalance in both the House and Senate. In turn, Northern congressmen agreed to pass the Fugitive Slave Act, which guaranteed the return of any runaway slaves to their owners if they were caught in the North. There was much protest in the North to this act but the southern leaders believed it would protect the institution of slavery.
While debate over the Compromise of 1850 was raging in Congress, prominent Georgia politicians were deciding if the state should accept the terms of the Compromise. If passed, it would give the free states more representation in the US Senate and end the balance of power that had been established for 30 years. Led by Alexander Stephens, Robert Toombs, and the promise of the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act, Georgia provided a response to the compromise, known as the Georgia Platform. This document outlined southern rights as well as the South’s devotion to the Union. It established Georgia’s conditional acceptance of the Compromise of 1850. With Georgia leading the way, other southern states also accepted the Compromise preventing a civil war for 11 years.
The Dred Scott Case (1857) ended in a Supreme Court ruling that greatly favored the southern view of slavery and lead to a greater ideological divide between the North and South. Dred Scott was a slave who was taken by his master to the free states of Illinois and Wisconsin. Upon his return to Missouri, Scott sued the state based on the belief that his time spent in the free states made him a free man. When the case made it to the Supreme Court, the court ruled on the side of Missouri. The Court went on to declare that slaves and freed blacks were not citizens of the United States and did not have the right to sue in the first place. It’s interesting to note that Georgia native, Justice James Moore Wayne, was instrumental in rendering this decision as he concurred with Chief Justice Taney. Maintaining his loyalty to the United States, Wayne remained on the Court for the duration of the war even though the Confederacy deemed him a traitor and seized his property. He was the only justice from the Deep South to remain on the Court during the war years.
The final situation that plunged the United States into the Civil War was Abraham Lincoln’s election in 1860. Due to the dramatic sectionalism that was dividing the country, four presidential candidates ran for office in 1860. These men were Abraham Lincoln, John Breckenridge, John Bell, and Stephen Douglas. Because of the issue of slavery, Northern and Southern Democrats split into two parties with the nominee for the North being Stephen Douglas and the nominee for the South was John Breckenridge. John Bell was the candidate for the Constitutional Union Party whose primary concern was to avoid secession. Lincoln was the nominee of the Republican Party, a party that began in 1854 and whose primary goal was to prevent the expansion of slavery. Georgia would ultimately stand with candidate John Breckenridge. Lincoln was not on the ballot in Georgia as he was not in most southern states.
Lincoln won the election of 1860 with 180 electoral votes (152 electoral votes were needed to win at that time). After the election, the southern states, believing that Lincoln’s ultimate goal was to end slavery, voted one by one to secede from the Union. Georgia, after a three-day debate, voted to leave the Union on January 19, 1861.
In 1861, there was a spirited debate over secession in the Georgia General Assembly to determine if Georgia should join its southern brethren in breaking away from the Union. Though there were strong supporters for both sides of the issue, Georgia eventually seceded from the Union after several other southern states. Georgia was part of the Confederacy from 1861-1865.
During the debate, there were those who did not want to leave the Union, including representatives from the northern counties, small farmers and non-slave holders, and most importantly Alexander Stephens, who gave an eloquent speech against secession. On the other side, were large farmers and slave holders, Georgia Governor Joseph E. Brown, and powerful and influential men such as Robert Toombs, who had a social and economic stake in the continuation of the institution of slavery. In an early vote for secession, the Assembly was split 166 to 130 in favor of secession. However, in the end, the General Assembly voted 208 to 89 in favor of seceding from the union.
As information: Alexander Stephens (1812-1873) served as Governor of Georgia, U.S. Congressman, U.S. Senator, and the Vice-President of the Confederacy. Stephens, though physically small and frail, was a major force in Georgia and U.S. politics. Born in Crawfordville, he graduated from the University of Georgia in 1832. In 1836, soon after passing the Georgia Bar, Stephens was elected to the Georgia Assembly where he served as a member of the Whig party.
In 1843, Stephens was elected to the U.S. Congress. While in Congress, Stephens played a major role in assisting with the passage of the Compromise of 1850 and the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Though an advocate for slavery, Stephens was a Unionist who resisted secession until the very end.
After the election of 1860 and the secession debate in Georgia, Stephens remained the strongest advocate for staying with the United States. However, once the General Assembly voted for secession, Stephens signed the “Ordinance of Secession” and was immediately chosen as one of Georgia’s representatives to the Confederate Congress. At the Congress, he was elected vice president of the Confederate States of America. His election was due to his political experience and as a sign of Confederate unity based on his Unionist past. Stephens had a frustrating experience as the vice-president; though a brilliant statesman, his weak stature never allowed him any military experience. Once the CSA’s focus turned to military engagement, Stephens had little to do.
After the war, Stephens was jailed for five months. Upon his release, the people of Georgia elected him as their U.S. Senator. However, the Senate Republicans refused to sit the former C.S.A. vice president so soon after the war was over. Stephens spent the next few years writing. He was elected to the U.S. House again in 1877, where he served until 1882. He was elected Governor of Georgia in 1882, but died shortly after. Stephens County is named in his honor.
GSESS8H5.b
In this standard, students should focus on the role of Georgia during the Civil War. While it may be helpful to student understanding to relate national events of the war period, the focus should be on Georgia’s involvement in the war effort.
One of the United States’ most important strategies during the Civil War is often called the Union Blockade of Georgia’s coast. The North’s primary objective was to use its superior navy to prevent the South from shipping its cotton to England and France in return for weapons and other supplies. General Winfield Scott was the mastermind behind the strategy, often called the “Anaconda Plan” due to its intention of “squeezing” the CSA to death. The press dubbed it the “Anaconda Plan” as a critique, believing it to be too passive and too difficult and slow to implement. Despite initial criticisms, this strategy proved to be a factor in the US victory.
At first, the Union blockade was not successful and almost nine out of ten “blockade runners,” private citizens who took the risk of evading the Union blockade for the chance at huge profits, were able to make it to Europe and back. However, things changed dramatically in Georgia when the North destroyed the brick Fort Pulaski with rifled-barrel cannon. Once this fort was destroyed, the North was able to effectively restrict continued to attempt to sneak past the Union blockade, and build several gun boats, including three “ironclads,” Georgia was unable to effectively deal with the power of the Union Navy. The US also made several attacks on Georgia, including occupying St. Simons Island and attacking the port town of Darien. Savannah was finally captured by General William T. Sherman, in 1864, with assistance from the U.S. Navy which was operating in the port.
The Battle of Antietam (1862), the bloodiest one day battle of the Civil War and considered a draw with no clear winner, was the “victory” Abraham Lincoln needed to release his Emancipation Proclamation. One week after this battle, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, 1862. Though often understood as the document that “freed the slaves,” the Proclamation actually said that all slaves in the rebellious states would be freed on January 1, 1863. At that point, all slaves in states that fought with the Union were not freed. Hypothetically, according to this document, if the South had surrendered before January 1, they would have been allowed to keep their slaves. However, Lincoln knew the CSA would not give up, and this document would end slavery once the war was over. It would also be the moral issue that discouraged other European powers from involvement in the Civil War.
For the first three years of the Civil War, Georgia was virtually left untouched by the war. There were a few skirmishes, though the Battle of Fort Pulaski in 1862 led to the North’s control of the Georgia coast and expansion of the Union Blockade of Southern ports. However, the major impact of war arrived on Georgia’s doorstep in 1863, during the Battle of Chickamauga. The town of Chickamauga is located in Walker County just 10 miles south of the Tennessee/Georgia line. The battle lasted three days from September 18-20 and was the second bloodiest battle of the Civil War with over 34,000 casualties. The battle was the largest ever fought in the state of Georgia.
The Generals that led this battle were William S. Rosecrans of the USA and Braxton Bragg of the CSA. This battle was part of a larger Northern objective to capture the city of Chattanooga, itself an important rail center, and to use its capture as a stepping stone to capture a more significant rail road hub: Atlanta. While Rosecrans captured Chattanooga earlier that September, he wanted to circle around Bragg’s army and cut the Southern supply lines in Western Tennessee and Northwest Georgia. However, the CSA discovered Rosecrans’s army in the area and attacked.
This battle is significant for several reasons. It was the largest Union defeat in the Western theater of the Civil War. After the battle, Bragg, who was preoccupied with his enormous losses, failed to follow the Union forces back into Chattanooga. Eventually, the Confederates turned their attention to Chattanooga but were soundly defeated by Union troops and reinforcements under the leadership of General Ulysses Grant. This southern defeat provided Grant the stepping stone which led to his promotion to the Commanding General of the U.S. Army. Once Chattanooga was defended and securely in Union hands, it was used as a launching point for Sherman’s Atlanta Campaign.
To many Georgians, General William T. Sherman’s actions during the Civil War make him the most hated figure in the state’s history. However, many historians are re-examining Sherman’s military campaigns and are developing varying viewpoints about the purposes and rationales behind his treatment of the South. No matter if Sherman was a truly a tyrant who reveled in his “mistreatment” of Georgia, or simply a military commander doing his job to swiftly end the war, Sherman’s military campaigns through Georgia left an enormous impact on the social, economic and political history of the state.
Though often called “Sherman’s March through Georgia” or simply “Sherman’s March,” Sherman actually led two separate military campaigns in the state. The first was called the Atlanta Campaign. Beginning in the spring of 1864, Sherman set out to capture Atlanta. Capturing the city would bring a devastating blow to the Confederacy because Atlanta’s was the major railroad hub of the South and had adequate industrial capabilities. The campaign took almost four and one-half months and several major engagements took place between the two armies including the Battles of Dalton, Resaca, and Kennesaw Mountain.
The Southern army was led by General Joseph Johnston who believed that, with his army being out numbered almost two to one, he should use defensive tactics to slow down Sherman’s aggressive campaign. He hoped to have his army dig in to defensive positions and lure Sherman into costly head-on attacks. However, with the exception of the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain, where the North lost over 2,000 men, Sherman chose to simply go around (“out-flank”) the CSA’s positions and continue to move toward Atlanta forcing the CSA to withdraw from their defensive strongholds.
As Sherman pushed his army closer and closer to Atlanta, CSA President Jefferson Davis removed Johnston from command and replaced him with General John B. Hood, who would attack Sherman’s larger army headon in order to protect the city. Though Hood did as ordered, his attacks were unsuccessful and did not deter Sherman and his movements toward Atlanta. It should be pointed out that there was not one major battle to take Atlanta but instead several small battles that eventually allowed Sherman the opportunity to move close enough to the city to bombard it with cannon fire. These battles include the Battle of Peachtree Creek (July 20, 1864), the Battle of Atlanta (July 22, 1864), and the Battle of Ezra Church (July 24, 1864).
On September 2, 1864, General Hood was forced to withdraw from Atlanta, leaving the city open to Union occupation. Sherman held the city for more than two months, while planning for what was to be the March to the Sea. On Nov 15, 1864, Sherman’s army left Atlanta. Whether or not the Union army was solely to blame for the fire that spread through the city as it was withdrawing, or if some of the fires were started by Confederate soldiers or civilians, is a topic that has been debated from almost as soon as it happened. Regardless, as Sherman started his new campaign, the city of Atlanta was left smoldering and in ruins. The capture of Atlanta in September of 1864 was critical, not only due to Atlanta’s industrial role for the South, but also because it gave the war weary North a victory to celebrate and boosted the will-power to continue fighting. With Sherman’s victory, Lincoln was assured a triumph in the 1864 presidential election.
After leaving the city of Atlanta utterly destroyed, Sherman set his sights on the rest of Georgia. Hoping to end the war as quickly as possible, while punishing the South for starting the war, Sherman began his infamous March to the Sea. The march began on November 15, 1864, and ended on December 21, 1864, with Sherman’s capture of Savannah. Due to the losses, the CSA sustained during the battles of the Atlanta campaign, and Hood’s attempt to lure Sherman out of Georgia by marching toward Tennessee, Union troops had an unobstructed path to the Atlantic Ocean.
During the march, Sherman’s army implemented the Union’s hard-war philosophy, creating a path of destruction that was 300 miles long and 60 miles wide. His plan to wreak havoc on Georgia’s infrastructure (railroads [Sherman’s neckties], roads, cotton gins and mills, warehouses) that assisted in supplying Confederate troops was intentional and deliberate. However, it is widely disputed about how Union soldiers were ordered to behave during the march. Per written orders from Sherman before leaving Atlanta, Union troops were permitted to “forage liberally on the countryside”, but were prohibited from trespassing and entering homes. Sherman’s ill-disciplined men burned buildings and factories, looted civilian food supplies and took civilian valuables as treasures of the march. Modern historians believe that violent aggression was not the norm, but rather the exception. Sherman’s lack of tolerance of violence led to prosecution but, there is ample evidence that the invading army often intimidated Georgians. Sherman believed that destroying the morale of Georgians would lead to a quick end of the war.
The only major infantry battle during the march happened at Griswoldville, a small town that produced the Colt Navy Revolver. Sherman’s men encountered a Georgia militia unit comprised of men too old and boys too young for service in the regular army. The rather lopsided result (Union losses: 62 soldiers v. Georgia militia losses: over 650 men and boys) allowed Sherman’s forces to continue their move toward Savannah. Calvary skirmishes along the way resulted in the same, an unobstructed path toward the port city. In the end, Savannah, not wanting to receive the same bombardment and destruction that beset Atlanta, surrendered to Sherman without a fight on December 22, 1864. Sherman wrote to Abraham Lincoln that Savannah was his Christmas present (along with about twenty-five thousand bales of cotton that was ultimately shipped to Northern factories).
Andersonville Prison is the most notorious prisoner of war camp from the Civil War era. Located in Macon County, the prison’s official name was “Fort Sumter” but became known as Andersonville after a nearby railroad station. Built to hold only 10,000 Union prisoners of war in 1864, the camp’s population tripled to over 30,000 at the peak of its occupancy.
Once the prison began to reach its occupancy limits, the main water source, a small creek that flowed through the camp, became infested with diseased human waste and other sewage. This encouraged disease to spread rapidly throughout the prison camp. In addition, due to the success of the Union blockade, the South was running low on food and other supplies for the prisoners. Finally, the Union prisoners turned on each other and a group of soldiers known as “the raiders” terrorized the fellow prisoners by robbing and beating them. Their crimes were countered by the regulators, a band of men who tried to stop the raiders. Six of these raiders were later hanged for their crimes. With these horrible conditions, more men died (over 13,000) at Andersonville than at any other Civil War prison. Due to the awful conditions, Captain Henry Wirz, the commander of the camp, was executed by the North for war crimes. He was the only CSA official to meet this fate. While some supported Wirz’s execution due to the harsh treatment of the Andersonville prisoners and the high death rate, others believed that Wirz did what he could to run the prison with the South’s lack of resources and the decision by his superiors to continue sending prisoners to the already overcrowded prison. There was an effort to relieve the overcrowded conditions at Andersonville by building Camp Lawton near Millen, Georgia, but the advancing of Sherman’s army through southeast Georgia kept the CSA from moving men from Andersonville to the less crowded location.
Georgia’s role in the years leading up to the war, during the war itself, and during Reconstruction was significant. Slow to secede from the Union, this slave-holding state encouraged compromise through the Georgia Platform when confronted with the Compromise of 1850. Even after Abraham Lincoln was elected, the state had a heated debate between those legislators who were for and those who were against leaving the Union. A well-known opponent of secession was Georgia’s own Alexander Stephens. Interestingly, Stephens became vice-president of the Confederate States after Georgia decided to leave the union with the rest of the Deep South.
During the war, Georgia produced much of the manufactured equipment for the Confederate States of America (CSA). For a large portion of the war, Georgia remained relatively untouched by US forces. However, once Grant and Sherman set their sights on the state, it suffered tremendously during Sherman’s Atlanta Campaign and March to the Sea. After the war, Georgia’s economy was devastated and there was much suffering throughout the state.
The intent of this standard is for students to be able to explain the importance of the key issues and events that led to the Civil War. They should be able to discuss some of the important events that happened during the Civil War.
GSESS8H5.a
Due to the rules of the Trustees, slavery was not allowed in Georgia until the early 1750’s. Once it was legalized, slavery grew quickly due to Georgia’s agriculture-based economy. However, slavery grew exponentially with the invention of the cotton gin. The South’s economic dependence on cotton led to a change of attitude about the evils of slavery. While many of the nation’s founding fathers disliked slavery, and hoped that later generations would find a way to end it, their sons and grandsons began to defend slavery as a necessary good and began infringing on the rights of those who spoke out against it in the South.
In turn, many in the North, led by the writings of abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, began to despise slavery and call for its end. Others simply became uncomfortable with its existence in the nation’s borders and disagreed with its expansion.
The gap between the two regions widened every time the U.S. gained more territory. The South hoped for slavery to expand into the new territories while many in the North wanted it, at the very least, to be contained to where it already existed. As with the other slave states, Georgia wanted slavery to expand and was distrustful of the abolitionist movement taking place in the North.
A major conflict in the history of the United States, from its creation to the present, is the issue of states’ rights. States’ rights regard the amount of power a state government has in relation to the amount of power held by the federal government in making decisions. Early in the United States’ history, the Articles of Confederation gave the individual states too much power and the nation could not even tax the states for revenue. All of the signers of the U.S. Constitution knew that the federal government needed to have more power than it had under the Articles of Confederation to run the country effectively. However, once the Constitution was ratified, there were several instances before the Civil War that caused the country to almost break apart due to the issue of states’ rights. While the argument for states’ rights during the Civil War was often based on a state’s right to have slavery, there were other times in the nation’s history that issues tied to states’ rights became major concerns. For example, during the War of 1812 there was talk in New England about secession. This was due to the fact that the New England states were losing money with their inability to trade with Britain.
A states’ rights issue, the nullification crisis in the early 1830’s, was a dispute over tariffs. The North supported high tariffs to subsidize their fledgling manufacturing industry against the cheaper products that could be sent to the United States by Great Britain. The South was opposed to this tariff because it took away profits from cotton farmers based on Great Britain’s retaliatory tariff on cotton. When the Northern states, who dominated the House of Representatives, voted to renew the tariff, South Carolina threatened to nullify the tariff and even possibly secede. However, Andrew Jackson’s threat to attack South Carolina if they attempted to leave the union worked well enough to keep the state in the fold for the time being.
Another states’ rights issue occurred in Georgia. Georgia lost the Worcester v. Georgia case but refused to release the missionaries or stop pushing for Cherokee removal. This test of states’ rights proved that a state could do as it pleased if there was not a unified attempt to by the federal government or other states to stop them.
The issues of slavery, tied with the concept of states’ rights, left a huge rift in the country. Controversy after controversy widened this gap, and for almost 40 years, members of the U.S. Congress tried to close wounds with compromises and acts that amounted to temporary Band-Aids. Though these acts and compromises kept the country together in the short term, as Abraham Lincoln said “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” Over time, a physical war between the North and South appeared to be almost inevitable.
The first compromise was called the Missouri Compromise, an agreement between the northern and southern states about allowing Missouri to enter the Union. The issue with this compromise focused on disrupting the balance of power between the slave and free states in Congress. Allowing Missouri to enter as a slave state and Maine to enter as a free state enabled the balance of power to remain the same for almost 30 years as states were entered into the Union in free and slave pairings. This pattern changed in 1850 when California, due to the Gold Rush, had a population large enough to apply for statehood. With no slave state available to balance the entry of a free one, major conflict ensued between the North and South. The South, which had a smaller population than the North, was fearful that losing the balance of power in the Senate would one day give the North the opportunity to end slavery. Talk of secession was prevalent in the South and the Civil War almost started a decade earlier than it did. However, Senators Henry Clay and Stephen A. Douglas wrote the Compromise of 1850, a bill that both groups grudgingly agreed to approve.
Though there were several provisions in the Compromise of 1850, the two most important were that California was admitted as a free state resulting in a power imbalance in both the House and Senate. In turn, Northern congressmen agreed to pass the Fugitive Slave Act, which guaranteed the return of any runaway slaves to their owners if they were caught in the North. There was much protest in the North to this act but the southern leaders believed it would protect the institution of slavery.
While debate over the Compromise of 1850 was raging in Congress, prominent Georgia politicians were deciding if the state should accept the terms of the Compromise. If passed, it would give the free states more representation in the US Senate and end the balance of power that had been established for 30 years. Led by Alexander Stephens, Robert Toombs, and the promise of the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act, Georgia provided a response to the compromise, known as the Georgia Platform. This document outlined southern rights as well as the South’s devotion to the Union. It established Georgia’s conditional acceptance of the Compromise of 1850. With Georgia leading the way, other southern states also accepted the Compromise preventing a civil war for 11 years.
The Dred Scott Case (1857) ended in a Supreme Court ruling that greatly favored the southern view of slavery and lead to a greater ideological divide between the North and South. Dred Scott was a slave who was taken by his master to the free states of Illinois and Wisconsin. Upon his return to Missouri, Scott sued the state based on the belief that his time spent in the free states made him a free man. When the case made it to the Supreme Court, the court ruled on the side of Missouri. The Court went on to declare that slaves and freed blacks were not citizens of the United States and did not have the right to sue in the first place. It’s interesting to note that Georgia native, Justice James Moore Wayne, was instrumental in rendering this decision as he concurred with Chief Justice Taney. Maintaining his loyalty to the United States, Wayne remained on the Court for the duration of the war even though the Confederacy deemed him a traitor and seized his property. He was the only justice from the Deep South to remain on the Court during the war years.
The final situation that plunged the United States into the Civil War was Abraham Lincoln’s election in 1860. Due to the dramatic sectionalism that was dividing the country, four presidential candidates ran for office in 1860. These men were Abraham Lincoln, John Breckenridge, John Bell, and Stephen Douglas. Because of the issue of slavery, Northern and Southern Democrats split into two parties with the nominee for the North being Stephen Douglas and the nominee for the South was John Breckenridge. John Bell was the candidate for the Constitutional Union Party whose primary concern was to avoid secession. Lincoln was the nominee of the Republican Party, a party that began in 1854 and whose primary goal was to prevent the expansion of slavery. Georgia would ultimately stand with candidate John Breckenridge. Lincoln was not on the ballot in Georgia as he was not in most southern states.
Lincoln won the election of 1860 with 180 electoral votes (152 electoral votes were needed to win at that time). After the election, the southern states, believing that Lincoln’s ultimate goal was to end slavery, voted one by one to secede from the Union. Georgia, after a three-day debate, voted to leave the Union on January 19, 1861.
In 1861, there was a spirited debate over secession in the Georgia General Assembly to determine if Georgia should join its southern brethren in breaking away from the Union. Though there were strong supporters for both sides of the issue, Georgia eventually seceded from the Union after several other southern states. Georgia was part of the Confederacy from 1861-1865.
During the debate, there were those who did not want to leave the Union, including representatives from the northern counties, small farmers and non-slave holders, and most importantly Alexander Stephens, who gave an eloquent speech against secession. On the other side, were large farmers and slave holders, Georgia Governor Joseph E. Brown, and powerful and influential men such as Robert Toombs, who had a social and economic stake in the continuation of the institution of slavery. In an early vote for secession, the Assembly was split 166 to 130 in favor of secession. However, in the end, the General Assembly voted 208 to 89 in favor of seceding from the union.
As information: Alexander Stephens (1812-1873) served as Governor of Georgia, U.S. Congressman, U.S. Senator, and the Vice-President of the Confederacy. Stephens, though physically small and frail, was a major force in Georgia and U.S. politics. Born in Crawfordville, he graduated from the University of Georgia in 1832. In 1836, soon after passing the Georgia Bar, Stephens was elected to the Georgia Assembly where he served as a member of the Whig party.
In 1843, Stephens was elected to the U.S. Congress. While in Congress, Stephens played a major role in assisting with the passage of the Compromise of 1850 and the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Though an advocate for slavery, Stephens was a Unionist who resisted secession until the very end.
After the election of 1860 and the secession debate in Georgia, Stephens remained the strongest advocate for staying with the United States. However, once the General Assembly voted for secession, Stephens signed the “Ordinance of Secession” and was immediately chosen as one of Georgia’s representatives to the Confederate Congress. At the Congress, he was elected vice president of the Confederate States of America. His election was due to his political experience and as a sign of Confederate unity based on his Unionist past. Stephens had a frustrating experience as the vice-president; though a brilliant statesman, his weak stature never allowed him any military experience. Once the CSA’s focus turned to military engagement, Stephens had little to do.
After the war, Stephens was jailed for five months. Upon his release, the people of Georgia elected him as their U.S. Senator. However, the Senate Republicans refused to sit the former C.S.A. vice president so soon after the war was over. Stephens spent the next few years writing. He was elected to the U.S. House again in 1877, where he served until 1882. He was elected Governor of Georgia in 1882, but died shortly after. Stephens County is named in his honor.
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In this standard, students should focus on the role of Georgia during the Civil War. While it may be helpful to student understanding to relate national events of the war period, the focus should be on Georgia’s involvement in the war effort.
One of the United States’ most important strategies during the Civil War is often called the Union Blockade of Georgia’s coast. The North’s primary objective was to use its superior navy to prevent the South from shipping its cotton to England and France in return for weapons and other supplies. General Winfield Scott was the mastermind behind the strategy, often called the “Anaconda Plan” due to its intention of “squeezing” the CSA to death. The press dubbed it the “Anaconda Plan” as a critique, believing it to be too passive and too difficult and slow to implement. Despite initial criticisms, this strategy proved to be a factor in the US victory.
At first, the Union blockade was not successful and almost nine out of ten “blockade runners,” private citizens who took the risk of evading the Union blockade for the chance at huge profits, were able to make it to Europe and back. However, things changed dramatically in Georgia when the North destroyed the brick Fort Pulaski with rifled-barrel cannon. Once this fort was destroyed, the North was able to effectively restrict continued to attempt to sneak past the Union blockade, and build several gun boats, including three “ironclads,” Georgia was unable to effectively deal with the power of the Union Navy. The US also made several attacks on Georgia, including occupying St. Simons Island and attacking the port town of Darien. Savannah was finally captured by General William T. Sherman, in 1864, with assistance from the U.S. Navy which was operating in the port.
The Battle of Antietam (1862), the bloodiest one day battle of the Civil War and considered a draw with no clear winner, was the “victory” Abraham Lincoln needed to release his Emancipation Proclamation. One week after this battle, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, 1862. Though often understood as the document that “freed the slaves,” the Proclamation actually said that all slaves in the rebellious states would be freed on January 1, 1863. At that point, all slaves in states that fought with the Union were not freed. Hypothetically, according to this document, if the South had surrendered before January 1, they would have been allowed to keep their slaves. However, Lincoln knew the CSA would not give up, and this document would end slavery once the war was over. It would also be the moral issue that discouraged other European powers from involvement in the Civil War.
For the first three years of the Civil War, Georgia was virtually left untouched by the war. There were a few skirmishes, though the Battle of Fort Pulaski in 1862 led to the North’s control of the Georgia coast and expansion of the Union Blockade of Southern ports. However, the major impact of war arrived on Georgia’s doorstep in 1863, during the Battle of Chickamauga. The town of Chickamauga is located in Walker County just 10 miles south of the Tennessee/Georgia line. The battle lasted three days from September 18-20 and was the second bloodiest battle of the Civil War with over 34,000 casualties. The battle was the largest ever fought in the state of Georgia.
The Generals that led this battle were William S. Rosecrans of the USA and Braxton Bragg of the CSA. This battle was part of a larger Northern objective to capture the city of Chattanooga, itself an important rail center, and to use its capture as a stepping stone to capture a more significant rail road hub: Atlanta. While Rosecrans captured Chattanooga earlier that September, he wanted to circle around Bragg’s army and cut the Southern supply lines in Western Tennessee and Northwest Georgia. However, the CSA discovered Rosecrans’s army in the area and attacked.
This battle is significant for several reasons. It was the largest Union defeat in the Western theater of the Civil War. After the battle, Bragg, who was preoccupied with his enormous losses, failed to follow the Union forces back into Chattanooga. Eventually, the Confederates turned their attention to Chattanooga but were soundly defeated by Union troops and reinforcements under the leadership of General Ulysses Grant. This southern defeat provided Grant the stepping stone which led to his promotion to the Commanding General of the U.S. Army. Once Chattanooga was defended and securely in Union hands, it was used as a launching point for Sherman’s Atlanta Campaign.
To many Georgians, General William T. Sherman’s actions during the Civil War make him the most hated figure in the state’s history. However, many historians are re-examining Sherman’s military campaigns and are developing varying viewpoints about the purposes and rationales behind his treatment of the South. No matter if Sherman was a truly a tyrant who reveled in his “mistreatment” of Georgia, or simply a military commander doing his job to swiftly end the war, Sherman’s military campaigns through Georgia left an enormous impact on the social, economic and political history of the state.
Though often called “Sherman’s March through Georgia” or simply “Sherman’s March,” Sherman actually led two separate military campaigns in the state. The first was called the Atlanta Campaign. Beginning in the spring of 1864, Sherman set out to capture Atlanta. Capturing the city would bring a devastating blow to the Confederacy because Atlanta’s was the major railroad hub of the South and had adequate industrial capabilities. The campaign took almost four and one-half months and several major engagements took place between the two armies including the Battles of Dalton, Resaca, and Kennesaw Mountain.
The Southern army was led by General Joseph Johnston who believed that, with his army being out numbered almost two to one, he should use defensive tactics to slow down Sherman’s aggressive campaign. He hoped to have his army dig in to defensive positions and lure Sherman into costly head-on attacks. However, with the exception of the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain, where the North lost over 2,000 men, Sherman chose to simply go around (“out-flank”) the CSA’s positions and continue to move toward Atlanta forcing the CSA to withdraw from their defensive strongholds.
As Sherman pushed his army closer and closer to Atlanta, CSA President Jefferson Davis removed Johnston from command and replaced him with General John B. Hood, who would attack Sherman’s larger army headon in order to protect the city. Though Hood did as ordered, his attacks were unsuccessful and did not deter Sherman and his movements toward Atlanta. It should be pointed out that there was not one major battle to take Atlanta but instead several small battles that eventually allowed Sherman the opportunity to move close enough to the city to bombard it with cannon fire. These battles include the Battle of Peachtree Creek (July 20, 1864), the Battle of Atlanta (July 22, 1864), and the Battle of Ezra Church (July 24, 1864).
On September 2, 1864, General Hood was forced to withdraw from Atlanta, leaving the city open to Union occupation. Sherman held the city for more than two months, while planning for what was to be the March to the Sea. On Nov 15, 1864, Sherman’s army left Atlanta. Whether or not the Union army was solely to blame for the fire that spread through the city as it was withdrawing, or if some of the fires were started by Confederate soldiers or civilians, is a topic that has been debated from almost as soon as it happened. Regardless, as Sherman started his new campaign, the city of Atlanta was left smoldering and in ruins. The capture of Atlanta in September of 1864 was critical, not only due to Atlanta’s industrial role for the South, but also because it gave the war weary North a victory to celebrate and boosted the will-power to continue fighting. With Sherman’s victory, Lincoln was assured a triumph in the 1864 presidential election.
After leaving the city of Atlanta utterly destroyed, Sherman set his sights on the rest of Georgia. Hoping to end the war as quickly as possible, while punishing the South for starting the war, Sherman began his infamous March to the Sea. The march began on November 15, 1864, and ended on December 21, 1864, with Sherman’s capture of Savannah. Due to the losses, the CSA sustained during the battles of the Atlanta campaign, and Hood’s attempt to lure Sherman out of Georgia by marching toward Tennessee, Union troops had an unobstructed path to the Atlantic Ocean.
During the march, Sherman’s army implemented the Union’s hard-war philosophy, creating a path of destruction that was 300 miles long and 60 miles wide. His plan to wreak havoc on Georgia’s infrastructure (railroads [Sherman’s neckties], roads, cotton gins and mills, warehouses) that assisted in supplying Confederate troops was intentional and deliberate. However, it is widely disputed about how Union soldiers were ordered to behave during the march. Per written orders from Sherman before leaving Atlanta, Union troops were permitted to “forage liberally on the countryside”, but were prohibited from trespassing and entering homes. Sherman’s ill-disciplined men burned buildings and factories, looted civilian food supplies and took civilian valuables as treasures of the march. Modern historians believe that violent aggression was not the norm, but rather the exception. Sherman’s lack of tolerance of violence led to prosecution but, there is ample evidence that the invading army often intimidated Georgians. Sherman believed that destroying the morale of Georgians would lead to a quick end of the war.
The only major infantry battle during the march happened at Griswoldville, a small town that produced the Colt Navy Revolver. Sherman’s men encountered a Georgia militia unit comprised of men too old and boys too young for service in the regular army. The rather lopsided result (Union losses: 62 soldiers v. Georgia militia losses: over 650 men and boys) allowed Sherman’s forces to continue their move toward Savannah. Calvary skirmishes along the way resulted in the same, an unobstructed path toward the port city. In the end, Savannah, not wanting to receive the same bombardment and destruction that beset Atlanta, surrendered to Sherman without a fight on December 22, 1864. Sherman wrote to Abraham Lincoln that Savannah was his Christmas present (along with about twenty-five thousand bales of cotton that was ultimately shipped to Northern factories).
Andersonville Prison is the most notorious prisoner of war camp from the Civil War era. Located in Macon County, the prison’s official name was “Fort Sumter” but became known as Andersonville after a nearby railroad station. Built to hold only 10,000 Union prisoners of war in 1864, the camp’s population tripled to over 30,000 at the peak of its occupancy.
Once the prison began to reach its occupancy limits, the main water source, a small creek that flowed through the camp, became infested with diseased human waste and other sewage. This encouraged disease to spread rapidly throughout the prison camp. In addition, due to the success of the Union blockade, the South was running low on food and other supplies for the prisoners. Finally, the Union prisoners turned on each other and a group of soldiers known as “the raiders” terrorized the fellow prisoners by robbing and beating them. Their crimes were countered by the regulators, a band of men who tried to stop the raiders. Six of these raiders were later hanged for their crimes. With these horrible conditions, more men died (over 13,000) at Andersonville than at any other Civil War prison. Due to the awful conditions, Captain Henry Wirz, the commander of the camp, was executed by the North for war crimes. He was the only CSA official to meet this fate. While some supported Wirz’s execution due to the harsh treatment of the Andersonville prisoners and the high death rate, others believed that Wirz did what he could to run the prison with the South’s lack of resources and the decision by his superiors to continue sending prisoners to the already overcrowded prison. There was an effort to relieve the overcrowded conditions at Andersonville by building Camp Lawton near Millen, Georgia, but the advancing of Sherman’s army through southeast Georgia kept the CSA from moving men from Andersonville to the less crowded location.
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Chad J. DeWolf is an educator and coach at Madison County Middle School (Comer, GA) in the Madison County School District (Danielsville, GA). This website is NOT affiliated with MCMS or MCSD. ETS is used as an educational tool for anyone interested & should be viewed as a resource for an awesome online learning experience. Tell your friends.You know you want to. |
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