Chapter XVIII

The American Civil War

The Potomac River forms the boundary between Maryland and Virginia. Virginia became part of the Confederacy. Maryland did not. Therefore, in 1861, the Potomac River became the boundary between the Confederacy and the United States. Lincoln sent the United States army into northern Virginia. The Confederacy also sent its soldiers there. The battle line formed in northern Virginia. Both sides were equal in strength. After the fighting began, neither side could move forward. Day after day, the front remained in almost the same place. Then it became week after week that the front stayed in the same place. Then it became month after month, and year after year, that the front stayed in the same place. In 1863, in the third year of the war, the Confederate army was able to break through the western part of the Potomac. They went through the western part of Maryland and reached the village of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania. There, the United States army stopped them and pushed them back to where they had been. In this single battle, the Confederates lost almost 25,000 men.

At first, both armies were not large. Both sides asked their young men to volunteer. Both armies grew larger and larger. The day came when both sides asked for more volunteers, but not enough young men joined. So both sides began to draft young men into the army. The draft law is a law that says young men must go into the army whether they want to or not. After the draft laws were passed, the armies became very large, the largest that the world had ever seen up to that time.

The Confederacy had almost no factories. They bought almost all of their war materials from England. At the beginning of the war, the South told their people to bring all of their American dollars to the banks and trade them for Confederate dollars. The people believed the South would win the war, so they brought all of their American dollars to the banks. Then the Confederate government sent all of the American dollars to England to buy weapons and ammunition. There were no American dollars left anywhere in the South. The South then began to pay for weapons by selling cotton to England. It was able to buy many weapons with the money it got from cotton.

At the beginning of the war, Lincoln said he would not disturb slavery in the states where it existed. After almost two years of war, Lincoln realized that his soldiers alone could not win the war. Lincoln had to do something different. He knew that he had to stop the South from buying weapons in England. On January 1, 1863, Lincoln issued an Emancipation Proclamation. This was a document that told the slaves of the South that the United States would help to free them. Up until this time, the slaves had worked in the fields. They did not care if the United States broke up into two countries. When the slaves heard that they would be free, they began to run away. Others did not do any more work for their masters. After that, the South did not have enough cotton to buy all of the weapons that it needed. More than half a million slaves ran away. More than 100,000 young Black men from the South joined the American army. Of them, more than 38,000 gave their life in battle. Another 100,000 went to work for the American army digging trenches and doing other necessary work.

Other Black people became spies for Lincoln's army. The city of Richmond in Virginia was near the front lines. A very old Black lady went around selling apples and vegetables to Confederate soldiers. She had gray hair and was bent over with age. She dressed in the clothing of a very old, very poor, slave woman. Nobody paid any attention to her. In the evenings, she would draw very good maps of what she had seen. Her maps showed where the big guns were located, where the fortifications were located, and where the concentrations of Confederate soldiers stood. At night, a friend of hers secretly carried the maps to the American army officers. She was one of the best spies that Lincoln had. None of the Confederates ever suspected that she was a spy.

The Mississippi River was far to the west. In 1862, General Grant was put in command of that part of the American army that was near the Mississippi. He was the first clever general that Lincoln found. In 1863, Grant figured out a way to capture the entire Mississippi River. This was very important because it divided the South into two parts. Most of the meat in the South came from Texas. Texas had very many cows. The cows were put on trains and sent across the Mississippi River to Virginia. There they became food for the Confederate soldiers. By capturing the Mississippi, Grant stopped the meat from reaching Virginia. After that, the Confederate soldiers did not have enough meat. Lincoln saw that Grant was his best general, so he put Grant in command of all of the American armies. It was only in the third year of the war that Lincoln was able to find a competent general for his army.

General Sherman was another officer that was stationed in the west. In May of 1864, Grant told Sherman to march to Atlanta. Atlanta was the most important railroad center in the South. Sherman was able to capture Atlanta. However, Sherman did not have enough soldiers to hold the city. Sherman decided to burn the city to stop the railroads from running. Sherman's soldiers told all of the people of Atlanta that they must leave their homes. Most of the houses were made of wood. Sherman's soldiers set fire to the houses and they burned the entire city.

In the autumn of 1864, Sherman's soldiers began marching to the Atlantic Ocean. They spread out over a wide front, about one hundred kilometers wide. Sherman's soldiers burned and destroyed everything that they saw. They burned all the villages, all the warehouses, all of the barns, and all of the stores. Everywhere they destroyed all of the railroad tracks. They tore out the rails and heated and bent them so that they could never be used again. In this way, they were able to divide the South into three parts.