*Lincoln was the first Republican president, and a moderate, compromise candidate.  He had many opponents within the leadership of the Republican Party, and, in order to make them relatively happy and to keep an eye on them, he put several of them in his cabinet.  Secretary of State William Seward had hoped to win the nomination instead of Lincoln in 1860, and considered him soft.  Treasury was Samuel Chase (of the $10,000 dollar bill), a former Free Soil Party Senator who had also tried for the 1860 Republican nomination and won 49 votes, which he gave to Lincoln, most likely in exchange for a cabinet post (one of the many reasons Seward did not like him).  Secretary of the Navy was Gideon Wells, a former newspaper editor and an anti-British conservative who did not get along with the other members of the cabinet.  Initially the Secretary of War was Simon Cameron who also tried for the 1860 nomination and later gave his support to Lincoln in exchange for a cabinet post.  He early hired a Democrat, Buchanan’s former Attorney General Edwin Stanton, and was replaced by him in 1862 after they together wrote a suggestion that freed slaves be armed and used against the CSA.  Stanton thought Lincoln was an idiot, but worked well with him despite this.

*By the time Lincoln was inaugurated on 4 March 1861, seven states had left the Union and formed the Confederate States of America.  On 16 March, part of New Mexico seceded from the remainder of the territory and set itself up as the Confederate Territory of Arizona.  It seemed likely that the eight remaining slave states, from Delaware to Arkansas, and perhaps the Indian Territory might leave the Union as well, although several of them had already had conventions, referenda, or legislative votes on the subject and rejected it.

*Throughout the South, military installations had been turned over to the Confederacy and, indeed, throughout the Union, many Southerners in the Army and Navy (although not all), resigned and went to their home states.

*Initially, both sides waited to see what the other would do.  The South only wanted to be left alone, and Lincoln, although he wanted to keep the Union together, feared that using force to do so without provocation might simply result in more states leaving the Union.  There was also, he feared, insufficient support in the North for a war, as many Northerners did not want to die in a war that they thought was over slavery.

*While the USA and CSA waited, Europe looked on, hoping the Union would split up into smaller countries that Old World diplomatists could play off against one another.  Seward publicly threatened war with Britain or France if either tried to help the South, as the South hoped they would due to their supposed dependence on Southern cotton, but privately assured their ambassadors that the US was not quite so bellicose.

*Lincoln’s official policy was to consider all the South still part of the Union, but not make any move to provoke the South outright.  However, he swore to defend any and all Federal installations in the South that were still held by the Union Army.  There were four of these:  Fort Sumter at Charleston, Fort Pickens at Pensacola, and Forts Taylor and Jefferson off Key West.

*The most important of the Federal installations was Sumter, and Lincoln would use it to provoke a war much as Polk had instigated the Mexican War with his trans-Nueces expedition in 1846.

*In January the US had tried to send the Star of the West to bring supplies to Sumter, but was fired upon by the city’s batteries manned by students from the Citadel.  Sumter was low on supplies, and Lincoln had to send more or else Major Anderson would have to surrender without firing a shot.  On 6 April, to make it look like he wanted to appease the South who claimed Sumter as their own and feared he would reinforce it, Lincoln stated that he would send a ship to re-supply it only.  The South was in a bind.  If Sumter was re-supplied, the Union flag would remain in Charleston and the most important Atlantic port would be blockaded.  However, if they attacked the fort, they would have begun the war.  After an emergency meeting in Montgomery, the CS government, with the dissent of Secretary of State Robert Toombs, felt they could not allow this.

*Although Anderson had told the South he would leave the fort by 15 April if not re-supplied, fire-eating nationalists felt they had to make a point, and Beauregard fired on Sumter for 34 hours, beginning at 4.30 AM 12 April 1861.  No-one was killed, Anderson surrendered, and the War began.

*Lincoln’s plan had worked.  Pressure on the South had pushed the CSA into firing the first shot, and the North was outraged.  On 15 April, Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers to put down the rebellion by force.  This in turn infuriated the South, who felt they were about to be invaded.  In both the North and South the majority of the people felt the time for reason had ended and rejected further calls attempts at negotiation and compromise.  Army and militia recruiters got more volunteers than they could handle, to the point they had to turn them away.    Moreover, it offended the Border States, who had not wanted to leave the Union, but were willing to let their fellow Southerners go if they wanted to, and would not let the South be invaded by the armies of the tyrant Lincoln, especially as he would have to march through them to do so.

*On 17 April, Virginia would secede and the Confederate capital would soon be moved to Richmond, less than 100 miles from Washington.  In May, North Carolina and Arkansas would follow.  On 8 June, Tennessee would join the CSA.

*In parts of these states, especially in the Appalachian Mountains, poor whites would not want to go to war to prop up the wealthy slave-owners who they felt had dismembered the Union.  In western Virginia, especially the northern panhandle near Wheeling, some delegates, disappointed by Richmond’s decision, lobbied for the creation of a new state, and had the support of a few counties.  Conventions were held to consider the secession of West Virginia from seceded Virginia.  Soon Federal troops moved in and ‘assisted’ in the process of voting for delegates to these conventions.  39 counties, under these conditions, chose to secede, but a total of 50 were selected for economic and military reasons, and in 1861 West Virginia (having rejected the name Kanawha) asked for admission to the Union as a new state, and was accepted as such in 1863, despite Article IV, Section 3 of the Constitution, which states in part ‘no new State shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or Parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress.’  Of course, Lincoln was always willing to bend the Constitution when it was useful for him to do so.

*In Maryland and Kentucky there were strong pro-Southern movements, particularly in Baltimore where Boston troops passing through town on 19 April 1861 had been attacked by war protestors, and had fired into the crowd, making the first casualties of the war civilians killed by the US Army.

*In Maryland, the governor supported secession and the legislature opposed it.  The Kentucky the reverse was true, and as a compromise the governor declared Kentucky a neutral state, uninvolved in any warfare.  Lincoln promptly invaded.  He also suspended the write of habeas corpus in both states, allowing him to arrest and imprison without a warrant anyone he wanted to, including, in this case, the governors and legislatures of both Kentucky and Maryland.  Chief Justice Taney said this was illegal and unconstitutional, so Lincoln threatened to lock him up, too.

*Wherever the US Army occupied the Border States, they took a hand in enforcing elections and manipulating them for the Union’s benefit, taking advantage of the public aspects of voting at this time to coerce voters into voting pro-Union.

*Delaware considered secession, with the governor and one county in the state for it, and the other two counties opposed.  The Pro-Southern side called for help from the CSA but none came in time.  Pro-Union militia in the state forced the Pro-Southern militia to surrender without firing a shot.  In Missouri a secession convention was held, but no ordinance was passed, and the Union maintained a strong presence there, especially after the battle of Wilson’s Creek on 10 August 1861.  Nonetheless, Missouri would remain deeply divided, and, all the Border States one both sides, would experience an internal civil war, although Missouri’s was one of the worst (along with East Tennessee’s).

*The Indian Territory was below the old Missouri Compromise lines and most of the Five Civilised Tribes sided with the South because they, too, especially the Cherokee, were slaveowners.  The last Confederate general to surrender in 1865 would be the Cherokee Brigadier Stand Watie.  There were divisions among the Cherokee, and some, along with many of the plains Indians, sided with the Union.

*Ultimately, though, there were slave-owners in the Union and many non-slaveowners in the South.  When the War began, it was not a fight to free the slaves, but a fight to preserve the Union or the rights of the several sovereign states, depending on one’s point of view, and this debate split not only the country, but states and even families.  Senator John Crittenden of Kentucky had two sons, and one fought for the North and one for the South.

*When the War began, both sides had advantages, although in a material sense, the North had more.

	USA	CSA
Farms	67%	33%
Industry	90%	10%
Wealth	75%	25%
Transportation	Good roads 22,000 miles of RR Canals	Bad roads 9,000 miles of RR Few canals
Sea power	Navy	No navy
Population	22 million	5.5 million white 3.5 million slaves
During the course of the War, about 2.9 million Americans would serve in either the US or CS military, almost 2 million in the USA and 950,000 in the CSA.	*Established government *Superior economy and diversified industry *Excellent transportation system *Large population *800,000 immigrants to replace losses	*European help?  CSA offered tariff-free cotton to Britain *Defensive war *Interior lines *Superior morale *The Cause:  Independence, Home, and Family (although States’ Rights would also prove to be a problem) *Spies *Military tradition, strong state militia system, military schools, brilliant leaders

*When the War began, the overall commander of the US Army was that veteran of 1812, the Conqueror of Mexico, ‘Old Fuss and Feathers’ himself, 75 year-old Winfield Scott, the highest-ranked officer in the US Army since Washington, a man so fat he cannot get on a horse, and a man so long-admired that officers under his command are named after him.  He tells Lincoln that the man who should command the Union Armies is his old aide from the Mexican War, Robert E. Lee of Virginia.  Lee is offered the job, but declines, refusing to draw a sword against his native state.

*Nonetheless, Scott is the man with the plan, specifically, what comes to be called the Anaconda Plan, so-called because it meant to choke off and strangle the South slowly but surely, like its name-snake.  First, the US Navy would surround the South, blockading the Confederacy to prevent it from selling cotton or importing desperately needed supplies, such as Beauregard’s hair dye and English repeating rifles.  Second, the US would seize the Mississippi River, cutting the Confederacy in half.  Only when the South had been weakened in this way would it be seriously invaded; Scott’s original plan focused on devastating the Southern interior, while later versions of the plan, more interested in a dramatic victory, shouted ‘On to Richmond!’  Most Yankees (like most Southerners) thought the War would be over quickly, and, although they implemented the blockade, then skipped straight to the last part of the plan, thinking the rest too slow and boring.
*****
*Despite this plan, and despite the North’s obvious advantages, the South seemed to have a good chance, especially early on.  Not only were Southerners on the whole much more willing to fight than were most Northerners, many European powers were openly sympathetic.

*The crowned heads of Europe had long disapproved of American democracy, and felt both cultural end economic ties with the Cotton Kingdom.

*British textile mills drew 75% of their cotton from the American South.  The Emperor of France was also sympathetic to the South, as were most major European powers with the exception of Russia.

*Southerners hoped that foreign aid would help them as it had their ancestors in the first War for Independence, and counted on the Royal Navy to break the blockade.  Although some British vessels did operate as blockade runners and covert aid and assistance was given to the CSA by the British Empire, Europe never officially recognised the Confederacy.

*This was in large part due to the influence of Uncle Tom’s Cabin on the reading, working, and voting public of Britain.  Furthermore, the British had been buying excess cotton in the years immediately after the Crimean War, and now had a surplus on which they could temporarily depend.  When they felt more pinched later in the war, they would simply increase their influence over cotton-producing Egypt and India.  The British also found they needed the North.  The North had an overabundance of grain during this period, and the British suffered a series of bad harvests, and needed American wheat more than they needed American cotton.

*In the first years of the War, however, it was not obvious that Britain would not intervene.  On 8 November 1861, the USS San Jacinto stopped the British mail-ship Trent on the high seas north of Cuba.  On board were two Confederate diplomats, James Mason and John Slidell, the man who had tried to make peace with Mexico by buying California in 1846.  The US seized them and the British claimed this was an act of aggression and the proud British were incensed that anyone might stop their vessels to seize passengers.  War preparations began and redcoats shipped out for Canada.  In keeping with Seward’s policy of public posturing and backroom dealing, after a time, Mason and Slidell were allowed to go to Britain.  Lincoln’s words on the matter were ‘one war at a time.’

*Yankees were also upset about Confederate commerce-raiders.  These were Confederate ships built in Britain but armed elsewhere, so that technically the British were not building warships.  Many had British crews and Confederate officers.  Although they fought the US Navy, they mostly attacked US merchant ships, doing to them on the high seas what the US Navy was doing to Confederate merchants who tried to slip through the blockade.  The most famous of these ships was the CSS Alabama, which captured or destroyed over 60 Federal ships in all the oceans of the world.  In 1864 the Alabama was destroyed by the USS Kearsarge off the coast of France, but commerce raiding continued, and, indeed, the last Confederate unit to surrender was CSS Shenandoah, who surrendered in Liverpool on 6 November 1865.  The British built over 250 ships for the Confederacy over the course of the War.  In return some Yankees considered attacking Canada, which was, in fact, the base of some Confederate operations.

*The Union nearly did go to war with Britain over the Laird Rams.  Built by the John Laird and Sons, the same firm the built the Alabama, these heavily armoured ships were meant to ram and sink the Union blockading fleet, opening up Northern cities to the Confederate naval bombardment.  The US ambassador to Great Britain, Charles Francis Adams, grandson of John, threatened war again, and seriously, the British chose not to deliver the rams.  In 1872, the British would even pay Americans $15.5 million for damage done by commerce-raiders during the War.

*19 October 1864, a group of Confederates operating out of Canada invaded the town of St Albans, Vermont, robbing three banks and making off with $200,000.  Later, the same town would be used by about 3,500 Irish-born Fenians as a point from which they invaded Canada in the hope of seizing it from the British and setting up an Irish Free State.  This attempt failed, as did a similar effort in 1870, but neither improved Anglo-American relations along the Canadian border.  One response to the first of these attacks, and to the growing threat of America in general, was the creation of the Dominion of Canada in 1867, uniting most of Britain’s Canadian colonies under one government.

*The French Emperor, Napoleon III also tried to take advantage of the Union’s distraction from world events to violate the Monroe Doctrine by setting up the Austrian Archduke Maximilian (brother of the Emperor Franz Josef) as Emperor of Mexico, where he had support among conservative elements, but not the majority.  After the War, Seward threatened to march the 900,000-man US Army into Mexico unless Napoleon III withdrew his support.  He did so, offering to take Maximilian with him, but Maximilian stood by his supporters until his overthrow and execution by liberal forces in the country.

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