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  • Episode 20 – Civil War

  • Hi I’m John Green this is Crash Course US History and today we come at last to the Civil

  • War, the conflict that in many ways created a nation. So here’s what you won’t be

  • getting today. We will not be describing battles and tactics.

  • If that’s your bag, might I suggest Ken Burns or if you prefer books, like 1000 authors,

  • my favorites being James McPherson and Shelby Foote.

  • And 2. We won’t be bashing and/or praising Abraham Lincoln very much, although we do

  • have multiple Lincolns here because weve heard that’s good for ratings.

  • I mean, to watch or read certain accounts, you would think that the Civil War was a lengthy

  • chess game played by Abraham Lincoln against his cunning opponent Abraham Lincoln, but

  • of course there were other people involved. We are going to quote a fair bit of Lincoln,

  • though, because, you know, that won Tony Kushner an Academy Award nomination.

  • 3. We won’t be claiming that the Civil War was somehow secretly about something other

  • than slavery, because that is just so early 20th century.

  • And 4. There will not be a lot of jokes today because hahaha 700,000 people died.

  • Mr. Green, actually only 680,000 people died. Yeah, it depends on how you count, you snivelling

  • little ghoul. But recent estimates are between 680,000 and 800,000 total casualties. Deadlier

  • for Americans than the American Revolution, World War I, World War II, and Vietnam combined.

  • intro So let’s start with some basic facts about

  • the American Civil War. 1861 to 1865, which corresponded with the presidency of Abraham

  • Lincoln. The Union, or more colloquially the North, fought against the forces of the Confederate

  • States of America, or the South. Sometimes people call the Unionthe blue

  • and the confederatesthe gray,” but in fact the uniforms weren’t very uniform,

  • they were all different kinds of color. And also, with all that dirt and blood, they were

  • all just brown. Alright, let’s go to the Thought Bubble.

  • Youll notice from this map that not all the states that held slaves were part of the

  • Confederacy. The border states of Kentucky, Missouri, Delaware and Maryland allowed slavery

  • and never left the United States. All of these border states were critical to the Union--Maryland

  • was north of the nation’s capitol in Washington D.C.; Kentucky controlled the Ohio River;

  • Missouri was the gateway to the West; Delaware actually wasn’t that important.

  • So none of that should be particularly controversial, unless youre from Delaware, but the causes

  • of the war, that’s another story. The Civil War was about slavery--actual historians will

  • back me up on this, like David Goldfield, who wrote, “Both Northerners and Southerners

  • recognized slavery as the immediate cause of the Civil War.” Also, Lincoln said in

  • his second inaugural address, “One eighth of the whole population were colored slaves,

  • not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it.

  • These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was,

  • somehow, the cause of the war.” That said, in comments lots of people will

  • be like, the war was about agriculture versus industry, or the statesrights to protect

  • themselves from the tyranny of a big federal government, but if it were REALLY about that,

  • the Civil War wouldve started during the Nullification crisis in the 1830s, when--as

  • I’m sure youll remember--Andrew Jackson said that South Carolina couldn’t declare

  • a federal tariff null in their state. Why didn’t that cause a Civil War?

  • The Confederate government passed the first conscription act in American history, implemented

  • national taxes, created a national currency, and had a government bureaucracy of about

  • 70,000 people, more than the federal bureaucracy in Washington D.C.

  • Thanks, Thought Bubble. That said, in the beginning of the war, Lincoln deliberately

  • tried to downplay the slavery angle, arguing that the war was only about preservingthe

  • Union.” But the war was also about religion, for both

  • sides. As David Goldfield put it, “In protecting the Revolutionary ideals, northerners would

  • preserve God’s plan to extend democracy and Christianity across an unbroken continent

  • and around the world. Southerners welcomed a war to create a nation more perfect in its

  • fealty to God than the one they had left.” But it’s also important to remember that

  • regular soldiers often had more prosaic reasons for going off to fight, as you will eventually

  • learn when you are forced to read The Red Badge of Courage,

  • Goldfield tells the story of one Alabamian who enlisted only after his girlfriend mailed

  • him a dress and told him he should start wearing if he wasn’t willing to go fight.

  • And for Northerners, Union, religion and an end to slavery mixed together to form a potent

  • rationale for war. It’s summed up nicely by Julia Ward Howe’s words to the song that

  • would become famous as the Battle Hymn of the Republic: “As he died to make men holy,

  • let us die to make men free.” You thought I was going to sing, but you were wrong.

  • So spoiler alert the Union won the war, which in a sense was unsurprising, because they

  • had massive advantages: For starters, they had many more people, approximately

  • 22 million as compared to 9 million in the South, of whom 3.5 million were slaves and

  • therefore unlikely to be sympathetic to the Southern cause.

  • Also, the north manufactured more than 90% of all goods in America; its factories turned

  • out 17 times more textiles than the South, 30 times more shoes and boots, 13 times more

  • iron, and 32 times more firearms. Plus, at the outbreak of the war the North

  • had twenty thousand miles of railroad compared with the South’s ten thousand.

  • This made it easier for the Union to move its army, which over the course of the war

  • enlisted more than 2 million men, compared with 900,000 for the Confederacy.

  • Even northern agriculture was also more productive, taking greater advantage of mechanization

  • than southern farmers did. Really the only advantage the south had was

  • better leaders, like most of the tactically famous generals of the Civil War, Robert E.

  • Lee, Stonewall Jackson, J. E. B. Stewart, etc., were Southerners. And also, by the way,

  • they all had great last words. Lee saidStrike the tent,” Stonewall

  • Jackson saidLet us cross over the river and rest under the shade of those trees,”

  • and JEB Stuart after being mortally wounded in battle said to his close friend and lieutenant,

  • Honey-bun, how do I look in the face?” Famous Union general Ulysses Grant’s last

  • word wasWater,” which isn’t near so good, but he said that last word after having

  • survived the war and getting to be, like, President of the United States and stuff.

  • Right but anyway, this all raises an interesting question: Was the result of the war a foregone

  • conclusion? The Confederacy had to create a nation from

  • scratch and build national unity among people who were committed to the autonomy of their

  • individual home states. So that’s a problem. And, then there was the issue of overcoming

  • class conflicts, especially when the ruling class was often exempted from actually fighting

  • in the war. But when you put aside all that nation-building

  • stuff and just focus on the actual fighting of the war, the question of the union’s

  • inevitable win becomes much trickier. Some have argued that all the Confederacy

  • really to do was outlast the Northern efforts to bring them back into the Union, like Washington

  • had to do against the British. And the idea was that the war of attrition

  • would eventually wear down northern resolve. But, there were two problems with this theory.

  • First, the North had such superiority in its resources that it would take a long time to

  • wear down. Secondly, fighting a war of attrition would

  • be costly to the South, as well and their resources would be depleted long before the

  • North’s. Oh it’s time for the Mystery Document? The

  • rules here are simple. Woah! That was intense. I try to identify the author of the Mystery

  • Document. If I am right, I do not get shocked, but I’m never right because Stan makes it

  • too hard. Alright, let’s see what weve got today.

  • “I therefore determined, first, to use the greatest number of troops practicable against

  • the armed force of the enemy, preventing him from using the same force at different seasons

  • [and] second, to hammer continuously against the armed force of the enemy and his resources,

  • until by mere attritionthere should be nothing left to him but submission.” [1]

  • Okay so the strategy of attrition was a Confederate strategy. But, Stan is a jerk.

  • But it talks about the enemy AND HIS RESOURCES, which was kind of a Union focus. And more

  • importantly, it talks about preventing him from using the same force at different seasons.

  • That makes me think it is a Union general. Final answer Ulysses S. Grant. OH HOW DO YOU

  • LIKE THEM APPLES. Grant was different from previous Union generals

  • in that he was willing to sustain enormous casualties in pursuit of his goal to wear

  • down the South. Because of this, Grant was branded a butcher,

  • like he was willing to weather incredible losses including the 52,000 men -- 41% of

  • his army -- who were injured or killed at the battles of the Wilderness and Cold Harbor.

  • But his grim determination not just to defeat but to destroy his opponent is what made Grant

  • one of the first truly modern generals and also the most successful leader the Union

  • found. So, Grant’s brutal strategy coupled with

  • the vast superiority in Northern resources suggests that the outcome of the Civil war

  • really was inevitable, but it also points to some of the reasons to be cautious about

  • that conclusion. First off, it took three years before the

  • Union actually fully adopted Grant’s strategy, and between 1861 and 1864 it was possible

  • that Southern victories would eventually force the Union to give in.

  • I mean, the Union lost a lot of battles in the first two years, largely due to ineffective

  • General-ing and nothing saps a nation’s motivation for war like losing.

  • Now, some argue that the North had superior motivation to prosecute the war because they

  • had God on their side and they were against slavery, but that’s also pretty problematic.

  • I mean, for many men who joined the federal army, a war to end slavery had very little

  • appeal, especially poor enlistees who might be afraid that newly-freed slaves would compete

  • with them for jobs. Also, while we are correct in considering

  • slavery unjust, southerners who took up arms for the Confederacy saw themselves as engaged

  • in a fight for their own freedom, rather than a fight to protect slavery.

  • The truth is, when it comes to fighting, motivation is a very tricky business, and I’m most

  • comfortable agreeing with James McPherson who argued that motivation waxes and wanes

  • with victory, and that the outcome of the war was contingent on a number of turning

  • points. And were just gonna discuss two of the

  • most important: July 1863 and August 1864. July 1863 saw two of the most important Union

  • victories in the whole war. In the western theater, General Grant laid siege to and captured

  • Vicksburg Mississippi, thus giving the federals control of the lower Mississippi river.

  • I mean, by then, the North already had New Orleans, which made it pretty much impossible

  • for the Confederates to ship cotton or anything else along the Mississippi River.

  • After that, Grant was able to turn his attention to the east with the aforementioned hammering

  • of the enemy and their resources. More famously, especially in the eastern part

  • of the United States, the first three days of July 1863 saw the battle of Gettysburg

  • in Pennsylvania. This was General Lee’s furthest major offensive

  • in the north and had he won the battle it is likely that panic would have set in in

  • places like Philadelphia and maybe even New York.

  • Actually panic did overcome New York in draft riots that killed more than 100 people and

  • only ended after troops from Gettysburg were called in.

  • I’m not going to go into detail about either of these battles, but they shifted the tide

  • of the war in favor of the North, although not enough to bring the war to a quick end.

  • Confederate forces would never again threaten a northern city. August 1864 saw another turning

  • point that really spelled the doom of the Confederacy, and that was when Union general

  • Sherman took Atlanta. Atlanta was a railroad hub and manufacturing center but its capture

  • was more significant politically than militarily because it happened close to the election

  • of 1864. And that American election was really the

  • last time that the Confederate states of America could have won the Civil War.

  • It’s easy to forget this, but Lincoln actually had to run for reelection during the Civil

  • War, and by the summer of 1864 the war was pretty unpopular and it looked like Lincoln

  • might lose. The capture of Atlanta changed public opinion

  • about Lincoln and meant it that his Democratic opponent and former top general George McClellan

  • didn’t stand a chance of winning, which was really significant for the war because

  • Lincoln was committed to ending it with a Union victory and McClellan, meh.

  • I think it says a lot about American history that in the end the war’s outcome was insured

  • not just by military victories but by a political one.

  • Next week, well examine the effects of the Civil War and the enduring questions that

  • have arisen out of it, such as who, exactly, freed the slaves? But, until then, thanks

  • for watching. Crash Course is produced and directed by Stan

  • Muller. The script supervisor is Meredith Danko. Our show is written by my high school

  • history teacher, Raoul Meyer, and myself. Our graphics team is Thought Café. And our

  • associate producer is Danica Johnson, also responsible for felt Abraham Lincoln.

  • If you want to suggest captions for the libertage, you can do so in comments where you can also

  • ask questions about today’s video that will be answered by our team of historians.

  • Thanks for watching Crash Course and as we say in my hometown, don’t forget to be awesome.

  • ________________ [1] Goldfield America Aflame p. 326

Episode 20 – Civil War

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南北戦争 第1部:クラッシュコース アメリカ史 #20 (The Civil War, Part I: Crash Course US History #20)

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