1: Prelude to War

• This introductory lecture explains the sectional controversies and clashes that set the stage for secession and war.

2: The Election of 1860

• The presidential canvass of 1860 was the most important in U.S. history. It resulted in Abraham Lincoln's election as the first Republican to occupy the White House and brought sectional tensions to a head.

3: The Lower South Secedes

• Beginning with South Carolina in December 1860, all of the Lower South states seceded by the first week of February 1861. They sent delegates to a convention in Montgomery, Alabama, that established the Confederate States of America.

4: The Crisis at Fort Sumter

• From February through April 1861, the United States and the Confederacy eyed each other warily and vied for the support of eight slave states that remained in the Union. As various compromise proposals fell short, United States-held Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor came to be a flash point.

5: The Opposing Sides, I

• Was the South fated to lose, as many people think? If the Confederate States of America could have won, when did it come closest to doing so? As fighting began, each side had important advantages. We will take a close look at these.

6: The Opposing Sides, II

• Did the Confederacy have better generals? Which side had the edge in strategic and political leadership? What were the attitudes of England and France toward the conflict? Which side marshaled its resources and exploited its advantages more effectively?

7: The Common Soldier

• Why did young men join the colors of the North or the South? What made them bear the war's awful dangers and hardships? What was it like to be a soldier in the ranks?

8: First Manassas or Bull Run

• Following the Upper South's secession and the move of the Confederate capital to Richmond, Virginia, both sides geared up for war. Learn the details of General Winfield Scott's brilliant "Anaconda Plan" and the factors that led to the Battle of First Manassas or Bull Run (July 21, 1861), the first big clash of the war.

9: Contending for the Border States

• The loyalty of slaveholding states Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, and Delaware was an object of intense competition in the summer and autumn of 1861. What, in the end, kept those states in the Union?

10: Early Union Triumphs in the West

• Most people looked to Virginia to be the critical military arena, but many leaders on both sides believed the war would be decided in the vast area between the Appalachians and the Mississippi River.

11: Shiloh and Corinth

• Early 1862 saw breathtaking Union successes in the West. Ulysses S. Grant took Forts Henry and Donelson and moved south up the Tennessee River, while Don Carlos Buell marched from Nashville. Aiming to crush Grant before Buell arrived, A. S. Johnston struck the unwary Federals near Shiloh Church on April 6, 1862.

12: The Peninsula Campaign

• Nine months of relative quiet following First Manassas ended when George B. McClellan started a slow Union drive up the Virginia Peninsula toward Richmond in April. By the end of May 1862, Union forces menaced Richmond from two directions and Confederate prospects looked bleak.

13: The Seven Days' Battles

• As Stonewall Jackson marched and fought in the Shenandoah Valley, Joseph E. Johnston attacked McClellan at Seven Pines or Fair Oaks (May 31, 1862). When Johnston was wounded, Robert E. Lee took command. In the Seven Days' Battles (June 25-July 1), he seized the initiative and pressed the Federals south to the James. Lee had saved Richmond and offset Union success in the West.

14: The Kentucky Campaign of 1862

• The Confederacy faced a difficult strategic situation in July 1862. Jefferson Davis and his generals responded by sending armies into Kentucky and Maryland in the most impressive Confederate strategic offensive of the war. Operations in Kentucky between August and October 1862 culminated in a confused battle at Perryville (October 8).

15: Antietam

• After besting John Pope at Second Manassas in late August, Lee marched north into Maryland. Lincoln reluctantly returned command to McClellan, whose pursuit of Lee culminated at Antietam on September 17, the bloodiest day in American history. What happened on that battlefield? What did it mean?

16: The Background to Emancipation

• Despite slavery's role in causing the conflict, for at least the first year it remained in the background. As long as restoring the Union remained the sole war aim, there was remarkable unity among Northerners. But what type of Union were they fighting for?

17: Emancipation Completed

• Lincoln came to see emancipation as necessary to victory. But he understood that he lacked the authority to end slavery in loyal areas, and his famous proclamation deliberately casts emancipation as a war measure. What did most Northerners think of it?

18: Filling the Ranks

• How many men served during the war? How were they recruited? How good were the United States and the CSA at putting their military-age men under arms?

19: Sinews of War-Finance and Supply

• War spending went on at an unprecedented scale. Both sides sold bonds, levied taxes, and printed paper money. Despite its weak economy, the Confederacy never lost a battle because its armies ran out of ordnance.

20: The War in the West, Winter 1862-63

• While McClellan sat north of the Potomac, Buell slowly followed Bragg's retreat into Tennessee. Lincoln, eager for good war news, named Ambrose E. Burnside to take over the Army of the Potomac and William S. Rosecrans to tackle Bragg. In December, Rosecrans moved, and Grant began his long campaign against Vicksburg.

21: The War in Virginia, Winter and Spring 1862-63

• In Virginia, the Union army suffered two setbacks along the Rappahannock. Lee threw back Burnside's costly frontal assaults at Fredericksburg on December 13. The talented, ambitious Joseph Hooker soon took command. He planned a brilliant offensive that began well at the end of April 1863, but Lee and Jackson had other plans.

22: Gettysburg

• Gettysburg is often described as the turning point of the war. It took place against a background of uncertainty and unrest in the North and was the result of a major strategic debate in the South. Why did Lee go north? Was his strategic thinking sound? What swung the three-day battle's outcome? How did people on either side view Gettysburg?

23: Vicksburg, Port Hudson, and Tullahoma

• In mid-April, Grant boldly ordered the Navy to run past Vicksburg's guns, ferried his troops across the south of the city, marched inland to seize Jackson, Mississippi, and then besieged Vicksburg. With skillful marching, Rosecrans pinned Bragg in Chattanooga.

24: A Season of Uncertainty, Summer and Fall 1863

• Although the Union seemed poised for knockout blows both east and west, Meade would not force a full-blown battle, and Grant found himself without a major goal after Vicksburg. Rosecrans ably maneuvered Bragg out of Chattanooga and into north Georgia in early September. Reinforced, Bragg struck back at Chickamauga (September 19-20), the CSA's only major tactical victory in the West.

25: Grant at Chattanooga

• With all eyes on Chattanooga, both armies experienced command problems. Grant, named overall Union commander in the West in mid-October, took charge personally. Bragg meanwhile conducted an increasingly ineffective siege.

26: The Diplomatic Front

• Both Lincoln and Davis cast anxious eyes toward Europe, thinking of the decisive French aid to the colonies during the American Revolution. Why, despite several flare-ups with England and France, did the Lincoln administration finally prevail in the diplomatic arena?

27: African Americans in Wartime, I

• During the conflict, thousands of slaves made their way to Union lines. Approximately 500,000, roughly one-seventh of all enslaved black people in the CSA, passed from Confederate to Union control. Their plight was often hard and uncertain. Nearly 180,000 black men, most of them former slaves, wore Union blue. The "U.S. Colored Troops" faced obstacles and injustices, yet their solid serv...

28: African Americans in Wartime, II

• In the North, blacks were at the center of a debate over war aims. The 13th Amendment and various other new laws marked progress toward fairer treatment. Slave labor vastly aided Southern mobilization and the CSA's economy. There were no major slave revolts, but black and white Southerners found their social and economic relations changing amid the dislocations of war.

29: Wartime Reconstruction

• Even as war raged, Lincoln and Congress debated what would happen after it was won. In December 1863, Lincoln offered a simple, lenient reconstruction plan. Radical Republicans in Congress objected and offered their own blueprint. The debate was continuing even as an assassin cut short Lincoln's part in it.

30: The Naval War

• The U.S. Navy played a major, often overlooked, role in defeating the CSA. Starting the war with just 42 ships, the Navy would have nearly 700 by 1865. Northern naval strategy focused on supporting ground operations along Southern rivers and coasts, and above all, on the blockade. With nothing like the North's industrial base, how did the Confederate Navy perform?

31: The River War and Confederate Commerce Raiders

• The war in the West gave a key role to the U.S. Navy, which built special craft for river duty. Meanwhile, Southern commerce raiders like the C.S.S. Alabama became legendary. How much did they aid the CSA's war effort?...

32: Women at War, I

• How did Northern women experience the war? Wartime urgencies provided increased opportunities for middle-class women to enter the public sphere as nurses, clerks, or agents of benevolent organizations. The experiences of poor white women and black women-whether as farmwives, widows, or factory workers-are less well understood.

33: Women at War, II

• The war changed women's lives in ways dramatic and subtle, lasting and temporary. Although anxiety, grief, and hardship were felt on both sides, women in the CSA suffered most directly from the war. To black women, the war brought emancipation and the opportunity to solidify marriage and family ties. The front drew more women than might seem likely.

34: Stalemate in 1864

• Named general-in-chief in March 1864, Grant hoped to apply enough pressure across the board to crush the Confederacy. The most important actions would be led by Sherman in Georgia and Grant himself in Virginia.

35: Sherman versus Johnston in Georgia

• Moving south from Chattanooga, Sherman intended to use his large armies to outmaneuver Johnston, who fell back while looking for a chance to counterpunch. By early July, the sparring armies had settled into a siege.

36: The Wilderness to Spotsylvania

• In many ways the war's pre-eminent confrontation, the Overland Campaign brought together each side's greatest captain in a novel and relentless combat. The prominence of Grant and Lee ensured that their contest would deeply affect civilian morale. The armies would battle fiercely and almost continuously from early May to mid-June.

37: Cold Harbor to Petersburg

• After Spotsylvania (May 8-21), Lee entrenched at Cold Harbor, Virginia. On June 3, Grant launched a futile and costly frontal assault. On June 12, he began one of the most impressive movements of the war, nearly taking Petersburg on June 15. By June 19, however, the opportunity had passed. Grant began a siege.

38: The Confederate Home Front, I

• The war caused the CSA enormous strains, hardships, and dislocations. Eschewing formal party politics, the CSA's founders hoped to return to a Revolutionary-era ideal. But bitter divisions arose, and the political scene often seemed chaotic and a drag on the war effort. Although most Confederates remained committed to beating the Yankees, economic woes made many doubt their ability to continue the...

39: The Confederate Home Front, II

• In addition to slaves who fled to Union lines, many Southern whites became refugees as they fled from Union armies. Among those who did not become refugees, increasing hardship and a demanding central government caused distress and anger as the war progressed. Did the resulting internal dissension kill the Confederacy?

40: The Northern Home Front, I

• Although the war did not bring severe dislocations to the North, it did produce a political sea change. The Republicans became the majority party, but bad war news and the unpopularity of some of their policies led to crises.

41: The Northern Home Front, II

• Unlike the Confederacy, the North was able to produce both guns and butter in abundance. With no Southern presence in Congress, the Republicans started the nation down an economic path it would follow for several decades.

42: Prisoners of War

• Few aspects of the conflict were as emotionally charged, with both sides hurling charges of negligence and atrocities. More than 400,000 men were captured. Early in the war most were quickly paroled or exchanged. Later, this system broke down, and prisoners suffered.

43: Mobile Bay and Atlanta

• In the summer of 1864, Lincoln needed victories. The first break came in August, at Mobile Bay, Alabama, when Admiral David G. Farragut closed the CSA's last major port on the Gulf. Far more important news soon followed from Atlanta: Sherman had at last taken the city (September 1-2).

44: Petersburg, the Crater, and the Valley

• While events unfolded at Atlanta, Grant and Lee confronted each other along an elaborately entrenched front from Richmond to Petersburg. In mid-June, Lee detached a corps under Jubal Early to operate in the Shenandoah Valley and Maryland. Between September 19 and October 19, Philip H. Sheridan won three victories over Early and laid waste to much of the lower Valley.

45: The Final Campaigns

• After Atlanta fell, Hood tried to draw Sherman northward. Sherman followed briefly before deciding to cut loose from his supply lines on his famous March to the Sea, implementing the "strategy of exhaustion" in the Confederate interior.

46: Petersburg to Appomattox

• By March 1865, the Federals had restricted Lee's supply lines and forced him to extend his lines. Lee failed to break the siege and headed west. Grant blocked the way at Appomattox, where Lee surrendered his 28,000 starving men on April 9. CSA forces elsewhere quickly surrendered.

47: Closing Scenes and Reckonings

• Lincoln's assassination has given rise to much speculation. What does the best evidence suggest? Lincoln was among the last casualties in a war whose staggering human and material toll can never be known. Taking everything into account, why did the South lose and the North win?

48: Remembering the War

• How did participants remember and interpret the conflict in the decades after Appomattox? How do modern Americans view the people and events of 1861-65? What are the types of understanding at which one can arrive?

The.American.Civil.War.part1.GC.rar

The.American.Civil.War.part2.GC.rar

The.American.Civil.War.part3.GC.rar

The.American.Civil.War.part4.GC.rar