Complete Idiot’s Guide to American History

by Alan Axelrod

  From the West Coast, word of gold spread east. The scene played out in San Francisco was repeated in city after city. Employment was unceremoniously terminated, wives and children were left behind, and seekers set out on the long trek to California. The journey was characteristically filled with hardship and heartbreak, whether the traveler chose the tedious overland route, the treacherous sea passage around stormy Cape Horn, or the boat to Panama (and a trek across the disease-ridden Isthmus to meet another ship for the voyage to the California coast). For some, the trip was worthwhile; great fortunes were made. Most prospectors, however, found only hard lives, mean spirits, and barely enough gold to pay for meals, shelter, and clothing. Many didn’t even find that much.

  The fact was that most men made the mistake of looking for their fortune on the ground, while the real money was made by those, like Brannon, who sold groceries, hardware, real estate, liquor, and other necessities to the ’49ers. Collis Huntington and Mark Hopkins made a fortune in miner’s supplies. Charles Crocker used the profits from his dry goods operation to start a bank. Leland Stanford parlayed his mercantile pursuits into a political career culminating in the governorship of California and the founding of the university that bears his name. Together—as the “Big Four”—Huntington, Hopkins, Crocker, and Stanford provided the major financing for the Central Pacific Railroad—the western leg of the great transcontinental railroad completed in 1869.

  The California Gold Rush lasted through the eve of the Civil War. The rush populated much of California, and then, as gold was discovered farther inland in Nevada, Colorado, and the Dakotas, yet more of the frontier West was settled. But as the bonds of union grew stronger between East and West, those uniting North and South steadily dissolved. Still basking in the reflected glory of western gold, the American nation was about to enter its darkest hours.

  The Least You Need to Know

  While controversial, the war with Mexico greatly expanded the western territory of the United States.

  In addition to agriculture, the promise of religious freedom and the promise of gold lured many thousands out west in the years between the Mexican War and the Civil War.

  Main Event

  The Norman Trek was accomplished with great efficiency and very little loss of life. The church established a Perpetual Emigrating Fund to lend money to those lacking the means to finance their own way west. By 1855, the church realized that outfitting fully equipped wagon trains would soon break the fund. Brigham Young hit on a solution. He directed Mormon carpenters in Iowa to build handcarts as cheap substitutes for the horse-drawn prairie schooners. The emigrants would walk to Salt Lake City.

  The small, boxlike carts looked like miniature covered wagons. They were equipped with only two oversize wheels, designed to roll easily over rough terrain. Approximately 500 handcart “Saints” left Iowa City on June 9 and 11, 1856. Although the trek took longer than anticipated (the emigrants did not arrive in Salt Lake City until late in September), the emigrants arrived safely, and Young was encouraged.

  Departure of the next two “Handcart Brigades” was delayed until July and August because of a shortage of carts. Faced with a scarcity of seasoned lumber, the carpenters had to use green wood, which shrunk in the hot, and air of the plains. Filled to overflowing, the carts broke down or simply fell apart, supplies ran short, and, worse still, the delayed departure from Iowa put the emigrants in Wyoming during the first snows. Of the 1,000 emigrants in the second Handcart Brigade, 225 died.

  Word for the Day

  People who participated in the great California Gold Rush of 1849 earned the name ’49er or Forty-niner. The 1849 rush was not the country’s first, however; nor would it be the last. Western Georgia was the scene of the first rush would occur elsewhere in California and throughout the West during much of the 19th century. In 1896, the Klondike drew thousands of prospectors, and two years later, more came to Alaska in search of the yellow ore.

  Strange Flag over Sumter

  (1859-1862)

  In This Chapter

  Lincoln’s rise

  John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry

  The fall of Fort Sumter and the early battles

  Union military failures

  Antietam and the Emancipation Proclamation

  Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, in a log cabin in Hardin (now Larue) County, Kentucky. In 1816, the family moved to Indiana and, finally, to Illinois in 1830. Largely self-taught, Lincoln tried various occupations and served as a militiaman in the Black Hawk War (1832). Although he had little appetite for military life, Lincoln took “much satisfaction” in having been elected captain of his militia company. That position opened new horizons for the young backwoodsman. Lincoln ran for the Illinois state legislature, losing his first bid but subsequently gaining election to four consecutive terms (1832-41). After setting up a successful law practice in Springfield, the state capital, he served a term (1847-49) in the U.S. House of Representatives but then returned to his law practice.

  At this point, by his own admission, Lincoln “was losing interest in politics.” Then came the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854. Its doctrine of popular sovereignty potentially opened new territories to slavery, and Lincoln saw the provisions of the act as immoral. Although he believed that the Constitution protected slavery in states where it already existed, he also thought that the Founding Fathers had put slavery on the way to extinction by legislating against its spread to new territories. Lincoln ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate in 1855, then, the following year, left the Whig party to join the newly formed Republicans.

  In 1858, Lincoln ran for the Senate against the Illinois incumbent, Stephen A. Douglas. Lincoln accepted his party’s nomination (June 16, 1858) with a powerful speech suggesting that Douglas, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, and Democratic presidents Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan had actually conspired to nationalize slavery. Declaring that compromise was doomed to fail and that the nation would become either all slave or all free, he paraphrased the Bible: “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” For the fate of the country, it was as if he spoke prophecy.

  John Brown’s Body

  Lincoln, a highly principled moderate on the issue of slavery, soon found himself transformed from an obscure Illinois politician to the standard bearer of his party. He challenged Douglas to a series of debates that captured the attention of the national press. Although Lincoln failed to win a seat in the Senate, he emerged as an eloquent, morally upright, yet thoroughly balanced embodiment of prevailing sentiment in the North. Radical Southerners warned that the election of any Republican, even Lincoln, would mean civil war.

  While Lincoln and other politicians chose the stump and the rostrum as forums suited to decide the fate of the nation, others took more radical action. John Brown was born on May 9, 1800, in Torrington, Connecticut, but he grew to undistinguished adulthood in Ohio, drifting from job to job, always dogged by bad luck and bad business decisions. By the 1850s, however, Brown’s life began to take direction, as he became profoundly involved in the slavery question.

  Brown and his five sons settled in “Bleeding Kansas,” where they became embroiled in the violence between pro-slavery and anti-slavery forces for control of the territorial government. Brown assumed command of the local Free-Soil militia, and after pro-slavery forces sacked the Free-Soil town of Lawrence, Brown, four of his sons, and two other followers retaliated by hacking to death, with sabers, five unarmed settlers along the Pottawatomie River during the night of May 24, 1856.

  Although he was not apprehended, Brown claimed full responsibility for the act and became increasingly obsessed with the idea of emancipating the slaves by inciting a massive slave revolt. The charismatic Brown persuaded a group of Northern abolitionists to back his scheme financially. He chose Harpers Ferry, Virginia (present-day West Virginia), as his target, planning to capture the federal small-arms arsenal there. Then Brown planned to establish a base of operations in the mountains, from wh
ich he would direct the slave rebellion as well as offer refuge to fugitives. On October 16, 1859, with 21 men, Brown seized the town and broke into the arsenal. Local militia responded, and within a day, federal troops under the command of Robert E. Lee arrived, attacked, and killed 10 of Brown’s band. The wounded Brown was taken prisoner.

  Yet the battle was hardly over. Arrested and tried for treason, Brown conducted himself with impressive dignity and courage. It was, in fact, his finest hour, and he succeeded in arousing Northern sympathy, eliciting statements of support from the likes of William Lloyd Garrison and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Brown’s execution by hanging, on December 2, 1859, elevated him to the status of martyr. To many, the raid on Harpers Ferry seemed a harbinger of the great contest to come.

  Bleak Transition

  The brand-new Republican Party, with Lincoln as its presidential candidate, united remnants of the essentially defunct Free-Soil Party and the Liberty party, as well as the old Whigs and other anti-slavery moderates and radicals. Stephen A. Douglas, who had ,defeated Lincoln in the race for the Senate, sought the Democratic nomination in 1860. But having denounced the pro-slavery constitution adopted by Kansas, Douglas had alienated the pro-Democratic South. Although Douglas was finally nominated, he was the candidate of a splintered party; a breakaway Southern Democratic party emerged, with outgoing vice president John C. Breckinridge as its candidate. Yet another splinter group, the Constitutional Union party, fielded a candidate, further dividing the party and propelling Lincoln to victory with 180 electoral votes against 123 for his combined opponents.

  News of the victory of a “black Republican” (as radical Southerners called Lincoln) pushed the South to secession. First to leave the Union was South Carolina, on December 20, 1860; Mississippi followed on January 9, 186 1, Florida on January 10, Alabama on January 11, Georgia on January 19, Louisiana on January 26, and Texas on February 1. Four days later, delegates from these states met in Montgomery, Alabama, where they wrote a constitution for the Confederate States of America and named Mississippi’s Jefferson Davis provisional president. As the Union crumbled about him, lame duck President James Buchanan temporized, unwilling to take action.

  Prior to his inauguration, President-elect Lincoln discovered that Jefferson Davis was not spoiling for war but offered to negotiate peaceful relations with the United States. And Senator John J. Crittenden (1787-1863) of Kentucky proposed, as a last-ditch alternative to bloodshed, the Crittenden Compromise—constitutional amendments to protect slavery while absolutely limiting its spread. Lincoln, determined to avoid committing himself to any stance before actually taking office, nevertheless let others attribute positions to him. The fact was that Lincoln’s prime objective was to preserve the Union, and he was actually willing to consider protecting slavery where it existed, even by constitutional amendment. Lincoln also thought the Fugitive Slave Act should be enforced. Yet, by remaining silent during the period between his election and inauguration, lie conveyed the impression that he fully shared the radical Republican opposition to compromise.

  April 12, 1861, 4:30 A.M.

  With Lincoln in office and all hope of compromise extinguished, the Confederate president and Confederate Congress authorized an army and navy and set about taking control of federal civil and military installations in the South. Fort Sumter, which guarded Charleston harbor, was especially important. If the Confederacy could not control the key international port on the coast of South Carolina, it could not effectively claim sovereignty. Throughout March 1861, the Confederate government attempted to negotiate the peaceful evacuation of the Union garrison at Fort Sumter, but Lincoln remained adamant that the United States would not give up the fort. Yet, not wanting to provoke the Southerners, Lincoln delayed sending reinforcements.

  Faced with South Carolina “fire-eaters” (ardent secessionists) who threatened to seize the fort on their own, Jefferson Davis decided that he had to take action. He assigned the mission of capturing the fort to Brigadier General Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard, who laid siege to the fort, hoping to starve out post commandant Major Robert Anderson and his men. In the meantime, Lincoln and the rest of the federal government seemed to be sleepwalking. With great deliberation and delay, a ship was loaded with reinforcements and supply. But it was too late now. just before he was prepared to open fire, Beauregard offered Anderson, his former West Point instructor, generous surrender terms: “All proper facilities will be afforded for the removal of yourself and command, together with company arms and property, and all private property, to any post in the United States which you may select. The flag which you have upheld so long and with so much fortitude, under the most trying circumstances, may be saluted by you on taking it down.” Anderson refused, and the first shot of the Civil War was fired at 4:30 a.m. on April 12, 1. 861. Edmund Ruffin (1794-1865), a 67-year-old “fire-eater,” claimed credit for having pulled the lanyard on that initial volley-although the truth is that Captain George S. James fired a signal gun first. The ensuing bombardment lasted 34 hours before Anderson surrendered. Incredibly, this first engagement of the war resulted in no casualties. It would be the last bloodless battle of the war.

  From Bull Run to Antietam

  During the spring of 1861, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas joined the seven original Confederate States. Yet even that number put the odds at 11 versus 23 Northern states. The North had a far more extensive industrial base than the South and more than twice as many miles of railroad. As far as the production of foodstuffs was concerned, Northern agriculture was also better organized. Although the North was just recovering from an economic depression, the entire South could scrape together no more than $27 million in specie (gold and silver). The North not only commanded far more wealth, but it also had diplomatic relations with foreign powers and, therefore, could secure extensive credit.

  Yet the South did have more of the army’s best officers, who, at the outbreak of hostilities, had resigned their commissions in the U.S. Army and joined the army of the Confederate States. Confederate leaders knew that their only chance was to score swift military victories that would sap the North’s will to fight.

  The first major engagement of the war, after the fall of Fort Sumter, proved just how effective the Confederate officers and men were. When it began, the battle the South would call First Manassas and the North would call First Bull Run was a picnic. On July 21, 1861, Washington’s fashionable folk rode out to nearby Centreville, Virginia, in carriages filled with baskets of food and bottles of wine. Through spy glasses, they viewed the action three miles distant. The Union troops seemed similarly carefree; as they marched to battle, they frequently broke ranks to pick blackberries. Remarkably lax, too, was military security. Newspapers published the Union army’s plan of action, and what information the papers didn’t supply, rebel sympathizers, such as the seductive Rose O’Neal Greenhow, volunteered to spy for the cause. Thus General Beauregard was prepared for the. Union advance and had erected defenses near a railroad crossing called Manassas Junction. There, across Bull Run Creek, his 20,000 rebels (later augmented by reinforcements) faced the 37,000 Yankees under the command of the thoroughly mediocre General Irvin McDowell.

  The battle began well for the North, as McDowell managed to push the rebels out of their positions. But then the Southern forces rallied when they beheld a Virginia brigade led by General Thomas J. Jackson. Like a “stone wall” the brigade held its ground, and thereafter, Thomas Jackson was best known by the name his soldiers gave him: Stonewall. The entire Confederate force now rallied and, ultimately, broke through the Union lines. Suddenly, panicked Northern troops retreated all the way to Washington. The First Battle of Bull. Run stunned the capital—which trembled in anticipation of a Confederate invasion that never came—and it stunned Union loyalists all across the nation. The picnickers ran for their lives, It would be a long, hard war.

  Seven Days

  Justifiably dismayed by McDowell’s performance at Bull Run, President Li
ncoln called General George B. McClellan to command the main Union force. Jefferson Davis combined Beauregard’s troops with those of General Joseph E. Johnston, who was given senior command of the Confederate forces in Virginia. Now the major action centered in Virginia as McClellan set about building a large army with which to invade Richmond, which became the Confederate capital in May 1861.

  Despite the triumph at First Bull Run, the outlook seemed grim for the Confederates. Richmond could not withstand a massive assault. Yet McClellan, a popular commander who succeeded in transforming the Union army from an undisciplined rabble into a cohesive body of credible soldiers, suffered from a Hamlet-like tendency to ponder and delay. Eventually exasperated, Lincoln would peg him with homely accuracy: McClellan has a “bad case of the slows,” the president pronounced.

  McClellan repeatedly delayed his assault on Richmond, finally losing the initiative, so that lie had to settle into an arduous campaign on the Virginia peninsula. In that campaign’s principal series of battles, called the Seven Days (June 26-July 2, 1862), more men were killed or wounded than in all the Civil War battles fought elsewhere during the first half of 1.862, including another encounter that became a byword for slaughter, Shiloh (April 6-7,1862). Shiloh pitted General Ulysses S. Grant’s 42,000-man Union against a 40,000-man Confederate force under General Albert S. Johnston. Grant lost 13,000 men, and the Confederates lost more than 10,000 in a battle that resulted in strategic stalemate on the war’s western front.