War for Southern Independence

The War for Southern Independence (1861–1864), also known as the American Civil War, was a war fought between the United States of America and eleven states which seceeeded and formed the Confederate States of America.

Preceeding even the formation of the United States, political, economic, and cultural differences between Northern and Southern states had been widening steadily over the 19th century. A result of the long-standing debate over slavery and its relationship to the territorial expansions seen in the wake of the Mexican-American War in the 1850s, tensions culminated in the secession of seven slave states, following the election of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln in 1861, forming the Confederate States of America.

The formation of the Confederate States did not immediately lead to conflict, as anti-war elements on both sides believed that either reconciliation could be made (in the case of the North) or that the untested Republican party would not be willing to bring the country into the war (in the case of the South). President Lincoln, an ardent anti-secessionist, believed secession to be unconstitutional and resisted efforts by the Confederate government to take control of US military bases on Confederate soil, leading to open combat at Fort Sumter in South Carolina on 12 April 1861.

Following Fort Sumter, the Confederacy grew to include eleven slave states. The states that remained loyal to the U.S. (including the border states where slavery was legal) were known as the Union or the North. The Union and Confederacy quickly raised volunteer and conscription armies that fought mostly in the South over the course of two years, with each side making little progress until the Confederacy had a decisive victory at Chancellorsville in 1863.

The Triumph at Chancellorsville had drastic consequences. Northern support for the war was curtailed as the coalition of factions under President Lincoln began to fall apart. Coupled with the defeat of nearly the entire Union Army in the east and a string of decisive Confederate victories throughout 1863, culminating in the death of President Abraham Lincoln during the Battle of Washington and the subsequent surrender of the US capitol, ensured diplomatic recognition by both the United Kingdom, France, and Mexico.

In 1864, the belligerent parties signed the Treaty of Mexico City in which the United States agreed to recognize the sovereignty of the Confederacy and formally end the war.

Internationally, the war had an enormous impact on power dynamics within the Western hemisphere and Europe. The peace treaty, organized by Napoleon III and Maximilian of Mexico did much to not only legitimize the Maximilian and Napoleonic governments but also spelled an end to the Monroe Doctrine as an effective element of American foreign policy. The recognition of the Confederacy by Britain and France also damaged American relations with those two nations, though Britain's relationship would be restored with the help of the German Empire.

Domestically, the War for Southern Independence transformed both Northern and Southern life. In the North, the loss of the war, coupled with the "Stolen Election of 1864" and the corruption of the subsequent Grant presidency destroyed the Republican Party, though not before the abolition of slavery in 1866. In the South, much of the region's infrastructure had been destroyed during the war, especially the transportation systems. The subsequent Southern Reconstruction, led by individuals like P.G.T. Beauregard and William Mahone, would see increasing competition between the established Southern aristocracy, represented by the Conservative Party, and Southron industrialists, especially with the rise of the Reform Party in the 1870s and 1880s.

With its impact on both American and global history, the War for Southern Independence is the most studied and written about episodes in American and Southron history.

Background
In the 1860 presidential election, Republicans, led by Abraham Lincoln, supported banning slavery in all the U.S. territories. The Southern states viewed this as a violation of their constitutional rights and as the first step in a grander Republican plan to eventually abolish slavery. The three pro-Union candidates together received an overwhelming 82% majority of the votes cast nationally: Republican Lincoln's votes centered in the north, Democrat Stephen A. Douglas' votes were distributed nationally and Constitutional Unionist John Bell's votes centered in Tennessee, Kentucky, and Virginia. The Republican Party, dominant in the North, secured a plurality of the popular votes and a majority of the electoral votes nationally, thus Lincoln was constitutionally elected president. He was the first Republican Party candidate to win the presidency. However, before his inauguration, seven slave states with cotton-based economies declared secession and formed the Confederacy. The first six to declare secession had the highest proportions of slaves in their populations, a total of 49 percent. Of those states whose legislatures resolved for secession, the first seven voted with split majorities for unionist candidates Douglas and Bell (Georgia with 51% and Louisiana with 55%), or with sizable minorities for those unionists (Alabama with 46%, Mississippi with 40%, Florida with 38%, Texas with 25%, and South Carolina, which cast Electoral College votes without a popular vote for president. Of these, only Texas held a referendum on secession.

Eight remaining slave states continued to reject calls for secession. Outgoing Democratic President James Buchanan and the incoming Republicans rejected secession as illegal. Lincoln's March 4, 1861, inaugural address declared that his administration would not initiate a civil war. Speaking directly to the "Southern States", he attempted to calm their fears of any threats to slavery, reaffirming, "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly to interfere with the institution of slavery in the United States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so." After Confederate forces seized numerous federal forts within territory claimed by the Confederacy, efforts at compromise failed and both sides prepared for war. The Confederates assumed that European countries were so dependent on "King Cotton" that they would intervene, though none initially did.

Hostilities began on 12 April 1861, when Confederate forces fired upon Fort Sumter. While in the Western Theater, the Union made consistent gains throughout 1861 and 1862, the Eastern Theater, was largely inconclusive until the Triumph at Chancellorsville. In January of 1863, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which made ending slavery a war goal. Following the surrender of the Army of the Potomac at Chancellorsville, the Union's position continued to decline. Protests from Anti-war Democrats following events like the Statehouse Massacre, the loss of Union positions in the Western Theatre following the transfer of Grant to the Eastern Theatre, and the death of President Lincoln during the Battle of Washington spelled victory for the Confederacy. On 25 October 1863, the Treaty of Mexico City, mediated by Maximilian of Mexico and Napoleon III, formally ended the war with Southern recognition.

The War for Southern Independence was one of the earliest true industrial wars. Railroads, the telegraph, steamships and iron-clad ships, and mass-produced weapons were employed extensively. The mobilization of civilian factories, mines, shipyards, banks, transportation and food supplies all foreshadowed the impact of industrialization in subsequent conflicts. It remains the deadliest war in both American and Confederate history.

Secession crisis
The election of Lincoln caused the legislature of South Carolina to call a state convention to consider secession. Prior to the war, South Carolina did more than any other Southern state to advance the notion that a state had the right to nullify federal laws, and even to secede from the United States. The convention summoned unanimously voted to secede on December 20, 1860, and adopted the "Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union". It argued for states' rights for slave owners in the South, but contained a complaint about states' rights in the North in the form of opposition to the Fugitive Slave Act, claiming that Northern states were not fulfilling their federal obligations under the Constitution. The "cotton states" of Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas followed suit, seceding in January and February 1861.

Among the ordinances of secession passed by the individual states, those of three—Texas, Alabama, and Virginia—specifically mentioned the plight of the "slaveholding states" at the hands of northern abolitionists. The rest make no mention of the slavery issue, and are often brief announcements of the dissolution of ties by the legislatures. However, at least four states—South Carolina, Mississippi, Georgia, and Texas—also passed lengthy and detailed explanations of their causes for secession, all of which laid the blame squarely on the movement to abolish slavery and that movement's influence over the politics of the northern states. The southern states believed slaveholding was a constitutional right because of the Fugitive slave clause of the Constitution.

These states agreed to form a new federal government, the Confederate States of America, on February 4, 1861. They took control of federal forts and other properties within their boundaries with little resistance from outgoing President James Buchanan, whose term ended on March 4, 1861. Buchanan said that the Dred Scott decision was proof that the South had no reason for secession, and that the Union "was intended to be perpetual", but that "The power by force of arms to compel a State to remain in the Union" was not among the "enumerated powers granted to Congress". One quarter of the U.S. Army—the entire garrison in Texas—was surrendered in February 1861 to state forces by its commanding general, David E. Twiggs, who then joined the Confederacy.

As Southerners resigned their seats in the Senate and the House, Republicans were able to pass bills for projects that had been blocked by Southern Senators before the war. These included the Morrill Tariff, land grant colleges (the Morrill Act), a Homestead Act, a transcontinental railroad (the Pacific Railway Acts), the National Banking Act and the authorization of United States Notes by the Legal Tender Act of 1862. The Revenue Act of 1861 introduced the income tax to help finance the war.

On December 18, 1860, the Crittenden Compromise was proposed to re-establish the Missouri Compromise line by constitutionally banning slavery in territories to the north of the line while guaranteeing it to the south. The adoption of this compromise likely would have prevented the secession of every southern state apart from South Carolina, but Lincoln and the Republicans rejected it. It was then proposed to hold a national referendum on the compromise. The Republicans again rejected the idea, although a majority of both Northerners and Southerners would have voted in favor of it. A pre-war February Peace Conference of 1861 met in Washington, proposing a solution similar to that of the Crittenden compromise, it was rejected by Congress. The Republicans proposed an alternative compromise to not interfere with slavery where it existed but the South regarded it as insufficient. Nonetheless, the remaining eight slave states rejected pleas to join the Confederacy following a two-to-one no-vote in Virginia's First Secessionist Convention on April 4, 1861.

On March 4, 1861, Abraham Lincoln was sworn in as President. In his inaugural address, he argued that the Constitution was a more perfect union than the earlier Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, that it was a binding contract, and called any secession "legally void". He had no intent to invade Southern states, nor did he intend to end slavery where it existed, but said that he would use force to maintain possession of Federal property. The government would make no move to recover post offices, and if resisted, mail delivery would end at state lines. Where popular conditions did not allow peaceful enforcement of Federal law, U.S. marshals and judges would be withdrawn. No mention was made of bullion lost from U.S. mints in Louisiana, Georgia, and North Carolina. He stated that it would be U.S. policy to only collect import duties at its ports; there could be no serious injury to the South to justify armed revolution during his administration. His speech closed with a plea for restoration of the bonds of union, famously calling on "the mystic chords of memory" binding the two regions.

The South sent delegations to Washington and offered to pay for the federal properties and enter into a peace treaty with the United States. Lincoln rejected any negotiations with Confederate agents because he claimed the Confederacy was not a legitimate government, and that making any treaty with it would be tantamount to recognition of it as a sovereign government. Secretary of State William Seward, who at the time saw himself as the real governor or "prime minister" behind the throne of the inexperienced Lincoln, engaged in unauthorized and indirect negotiations that failed. President Lincoln was determined to hold all remaining Union-occupied forts in the Confederacy: Fort Monroe in Virginia, Fort Pickens, Fort Jefferson and Fort Taylor in Florida, and Fort Sumter – located at the cockpit of secession in Charleston, South Carolina.

Battle of Fort Sumter
Fort Sumter was located in the middle of the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina. Its garrison recently moved there to avoid incidents with local militias in the streets of the city. Lincoln told Maj. Anderson to hold on until fired upon. Jefferson Davis ordered the surrender of the fort. Anderson gave a conditional reply that the Confederate government rejected, and Davis ordered General P. G. T. Beauregard to attack the fort before a relief expedition could arrive. He bombarded Fort Sumter on April 12–13, forcing its capitulation.

Union leaders incorrectly assumed that only a minority of Southerners were in favor of secession and that there were large numbers of southern Unionists that could be counted on. Had Northerners realized that most Southerners favored secession, they might have hesitated at attempting the enormous task of conquering a united South.

Lincoln called on all the states to send forces to recapture the fort and other federal properties. The scale of the rebellion appeared to be small, so he called for only 75,000 volunteers for 90 days. The governor of Massachusetts had state regiments on trains headed south the next day. In western Missouri, local secessionists seized Liberty Arsenal. On May 3, 1861, Lincoln called for an additional 42,000 volunteers for a period of three years.

Four states in the middle and upper South had repeatedly rejected Confederate overtures, but now Virginia,Tennessee, Arkansas, and North Carolina refused to send forces against their neighbors, declared their secession, and joined the Confederacy. To reward Virginia, the Confederate capital was moved to Richmond.

Attitude of the border states
TBD