American Civil War

American Civil War

The American Civil War produced an estimated 1,030,000 casualties (3% of the U.S. population, which today would equate to nearly 9,000,000 souls), including approximately 620,000* deaths—two-thirds by disease.

Date: April 12, 1861 – June 1865 (Order of Surrendering Confederate Forces and Last Battle and Final Surrender of the Civil War)
 

Location: Principally in the Southern United States

Result(s): Union victory; Secession defeated; Restoration of the Union; Reconstruction; Slavery abolished
 

Combatants: United States of America (Union); Confederate States of America (Confederacy)
 

Theaters of the American Civil War: Union blockade – Eastern – Western – Lower Seaboard – Trans-Mississippi – Pacific Coast
 

American Civil War (1861–1865) was a major war between the United States ("Union") and eleven Southern states ("Confederacy"), which declared that they had a right to secession and formed the Confederate States of America, led by President Jefferson Davis. The Union included free states and Border States and was led by President Abraham Lincoln and the Republican Party. Although the Border States were under Union control, they supplied the South with tens-of-thousands of troops.

 

The South strongly believed in States' Rights (Bill of Rights and the 10th Amendment) according to the United States Constitution and believed that it entitled them to a right of secession. While the Republicans rejected any right of Southern secession, they also opposed the expansion of slavery into territories owned by the United States (see causes and origins of the American Civil War). Soldiers' motives for fighting in the conflict also varied.

 

Fighting commenced on April 12, 1861, when Confederate forces attacked a United States (Federal) military installation at Fort Sumter in South Carolina, the first state to secede. South Carolina, however, claimed that Fort Sumter was legally within its (territorial) waters.

 

During the American Civil War, the North generally named a battle after the closest river, stream or creek, and the South tended to name battles after towns or railroad junctions. Hence the Confederate name Manassas after Manassas Junction, and the Union name Bull Run for the stream Bull Run.

During the first year of the Civil War, the Union assumed control of the Border States and established a naval blockade as both sides raised large armies. In 1862, major bloody battles, such as Shiloh and Antietam, were fought causing massive casualties unprecedented in U.S. military history. In September 1862, Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation made the freeing of slaves in the South a war goal, despite opposition from Northern Copperheads who tolerated secession and slavery.

Emancipation reduced the likelihood of intervention from Britain and France on behalf of the Confederacy. In addition, the goal also allowed the Union to recruit African Americans for reinforcements, a resource that the Confederacy did not exploit until it was too late. The Border States and War Democrats initially opposed emancipation, but gradually accepted it as part of total war needed to save the Union.

European immigrants joined the Union Army in large numbers too. 23.4% of all Union soldiers were German-Americans; about 216,000 were born in Germany. In the East, Confederate General Robert E. Lee assumed command of the Army of Northern Virginia and experienced a series of victories against the Army of the Potomac. However, Lee's best general, Thomas Jonathan "Stonewall" Jackson, was killed at the Battle of Chancellorsville in May 1863.

Lee's invasion of the North was repulsed at the Battle of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania in July 1863; Lee, however, managed an orderly retreat to Virginia. The Union Navy captured the port of New Orleans in 1862, and Ulysses S. Grant seized control of the Mississippi River by capturing Vicksburg, Mississippi, in July 1863, thus splitting the Confederacy. See also: Anaconda Plan: The United States Naval Plan of Divide and Conquer and Turning Points of the American Civil War.

By 1864, long-term Union advantages in geography, manpower, industry, finance, political organization and transportation were overwhelming the Confederacy. Grant fought a number of bloody battles with Lee in Virginia during the summer of 1864. Lee's defensive tactics resulted in extremely high casualties for Grant's army, but Lee lost strategically overall as he could not replace his casualties and was forced to retreat into trenches around the Confederacy's capital, Richmond, Virginia. Meanwhile, General William Sherman, the leader of the Union Military Division of the Mississippi, captured Atlanta, Georgia, during his March to the Sea. Sherman also destroyed a hundred-mile-wide swath of Georgia. In 1865 the Confederacy collapsed after Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Court House.

 

All slaves in the Confederacy were freed by the Emancipation Proclamation, which stipulated that slaves in Confederate-held areas, but not in Border States or in Washington, D.C., were free. Slaves in the Border States and Union-controlled areas in the South were freed by state action or by the Thirteenth Amendment, although slavery effectively ended in the United States in the spring of 1865. The full restoration of the Union was the work of a highly contentious postwar and aftermath era known as Reconstruction.

Diseases and Napoleonic Tactics, consequently, were the contributing factors for the high casualties during the American Civil War.

 

More than 10,500 battles and skirmishes occurred during the Civil War; 384 engagements (3.7 percent) were identified as the principal battles and classified according to their historical significance.

 

The war produced an estimated 1,030,000 casualties (3% of the U.S. population, which today would equate to nearly 9,000,000 souls), including approximately 620,000* deaths—two-thirds by disease. Let's take a moment and think about it on today's terms. To put it into perspective, 3% of the U.S. population equates to the combined population of the present-day states of New Hampshire, Hawaii, Rhode Island, Montana, Delaware, South Dakota, Alaska, North Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming. See also American Civil War History, Facts, and Statistics.

The war accounted for more casualties than all other U.S. wars combined. Presently, the causes of the war, the reasons for its outcome, and even the name of the war itself are subjects of lingering controversy. The main result of the war was the restoration of the Union. Also, approximately 4 million slaves were freed in 1865. Based on 1860 United States census figures, 8% of all white males aged 13 to 43 died in the war, including 6% in the North and an extraordinary 18% in the South. See also: American Civil War Battles, Casualties, & Statistics and Organization of Union and Confederate Armies.

 

*Best estimates. Depending on the source, numbers vary.

Connecticut in the Civil War

Connecticut in the Civil War

According to the 1860 U.S. census, Connecticut, a free state, had a population of 460,147.

During the Civil War more than 50,000 Connecticut men served in the Union Army and fought in numerous major battles and campaigns. The state furnished twenty-eight regiments of infantry (including two composed of black men). Two regiments of heavy artillery also served as infantry toward the end of the war. Connecticut also supplied three batteries of light artillery and one regiment of cavalry.

According to The Union Army, vol. 4, "[T]he total quotas of the state during the war amounted to 44,797, while she sent to the army a total of 54,349, and 1,515 paid commutation. She thus furnished a surplus of 11,067 men. As there were only 80,000 voters in the state at this period, she contributed nearly seven-tenths of her voting strength. These 54,000 men were distributed among twenty-eight regiments of infantry, two regiments and three batteries of artillery, and one regiment and one squadron of cavalry. As already noted, she also furnished one squadron of cavalry which was included, despite promises to the contrary, in the N.Y. Harris light cavalry and credited to that state. The above enumeration likewise fails to include over 2,000 men from Connecticut who enlisted in the U.S. Navy, as well as large numbers who served in the regular army and in the regiments of other states." During the Civil War, Connecticut suffered a total of 5,254 in killed and thousands more in wounded.

Prominent among military manufacturers with Connecticut ties was the New Haven Arms Company, which provided the Union Army with the Henry rifle, developed by New Haven's Benjamin Tyler Henry. Colt's Manufacturing Company, founded and owned by Hartford-born industrialist Samuel Colt, was another significant arms and munitions supplier. The company shipped large quantities of sidearms to the Union Navy. The Hartford-based firm of Pratt & Whitney provided machinery and support equipment to Army contractors to produce weapons. Most of the brass buttons used on Federal uniforms, belt buckles and other fittings, were made in Waterbury, the "Brass City", notably by the Chase Brass and Copper Company. The shipyards at Mystic provided ships for the Union Navy. The USS Monticello (1859), USS Galena (1862), USS Varuna (1861) were all built at Mystic.

Fort Trumbull in New London served as an organizational center for Union troops and headquarters for the U.S. 14th Infantry Regiment. Here, troops were recruited and trained before being sent to war. Among the regiments trained there was the 14th Connecticut Infantry, which played a prominent role in the Army of the Potomac's defense of Cemetery Ridge during the Battle of Gettysburg. The 2nd Connecticut Heavy Artillery (19th Connecticut Infantry) suffered significant casualties in the 1864 Overland Campaign and the Siege of Petersburg. Among the troops from the "Nutmeg State" that fought in the Trans-Mississippi Theater was the 9th Connecticut Infantry, which aided in the capture of New Orleans, Louisiana, as part of the "New England Brigade."

Notable figures from Connecticut included Glastonbury native Gideon Welles was a prominent member of the Lincoln Cabinet and perhaps its leading conservative. He was the Secretary of the Navy from 1861 to 1869 and was the architect of the planning and execution of the blockade of Southern ports. During his tenure, he increased the size of the United States Navy tenfold. The popular late war marching song Marching Through Georgia was written by Henry Clay Work, a Middletown resident.

Shortly after the war began, Col. Daniel Tyler of the 1st Connecticut was promoted to brigadier general. Later, other field officers in Connecticut regiments such as Alfred Terry, Henry Warner Birge (both born in Hartford), and Robert O. Tyler of the 4th Connecticut Infantry would be raised in rank to general. Some Connecticut-born men with antebellum U.S. Army service also became leading generals early in the war, including Ashford-born Nathaniel Lyon, one of the war's earliest army commanders to be killed when he was shot down at the Battle of Wilson's Creek in Missouri. Cornwall's John Sedgwick commanded the Union VI Corps for much of the war until killed at the Spotsylvania Court House. He was succeeded by Horatio G. Wright of Clinton, a long-time officer in the Regular Army.

Major General Joseph K. Mansfield of Middletown led the II Corps of the Union Army of the Potomac during the middle of 1862. He was killed in action at the Battle of Antietam during the 1862 Maryland Campaign. Another casualty of the fighting at Antietam was Brig. Gen. George Taylor, who had been educated at a private military academy in Middletown.

Joseph R. Hawley of New Haven commanded a division in the Army of the Potomac during the Siege of Petersburg and was promoted in September 1864 to brigadier general. Concerned over keeping the peace during the November elections, Hawley commanded a hand-picked brigade shipped to New York City to safeguard the election process. Other Union generals with Connecticut roots included Henry W. Benham of Meriden, Luther P. Bradley of New Haven, William T. Clark of Norwich, Orris S. Ferry of Bethel, and Alpheus S. Williams of Deep River. New Haven native Andrew Hull Foote received the Thanks of Congress for his distinguished actions in commanding the Mississippi River Squadron gunboat flotilla in the capture of Forts Henry and Donelson and Island No. 10. 

Casualties from Connecticut military units during the war included 97 officers and 1094 enlisted men killed in action, with another 700 men dying from wounds while more than 3,000 perished from disease, and thousands more returned to Connecticut wounded. 27 men were executed for crimes, including desertion. More than 400 men were reported as missing; the majority were likely held by the Confederate Army as prisoners of war. According to "The Union Army," the 14th infantry suffered the greatest loss, with 188 killed or mortally wounded and 552 wounded. The 5th and 18th infantry show the smallest losses, losing 63 and 48 men respectively. Continue to Connecticut Civil War History and Connecticut, The Union Army, and the Civil War (1861-1865).