Civil War--论文代写范文精选

51due论文代写网精选代写范文：“Civil War ”  论文是关于美国南北战争的打响。林肯发表了一份公告,4月15日要求军队被送到所有州。4月19日第二次宣言，宣布南部港口将封锁。第三次公告,呼吁志愿者正规军和18000名志愿者加入战争。邦联的国会授权戴维斯总统宣布战争开始。

The North responded to the attack on Fort Sumter with shock and anger. Everywhere people were determined to support the government in whatever measures it might take. On April 15, Lincoln issued a proclamation that called up a total of 75,000 militia from the states. At the same time, calls for troops were sent to the governors of all states that had remained in the Union. On April 19 a second proclamation announced that Southern ports would be blockaded. A third proclamation, dated May 3, called for 42,000 three-year volunteers for the regular army and for 18,000 volunteers to serve one to three years in the navy. The South responded with equal determination Virginia and the rest of the upper South seceded. The Congress of the Confederacy authorized President Davis to wage the war now beginning. 

The border slave states of Kentucky, Missouri, Maryland, and Delaware never seceded. However, many thousands of men in Kentucky, Missouri, and Maryland volunteered for service in the Confederate armies. Both the North and South raised troops as quickly as possible and struggled with the problem of equipping and training them. The states recruited volunteers and organized them into regiments. Officers were elected by the men and commissioned by the governors. In the beginning the length of service was usually short, but as soon as it became clear that the war would not end with one decisive battle, three-year-enlistments became the rule, although there were many exceptions. In the North the first troops ready for service were sent to Washington, D.C., and to points along the Ohio River. Confederate troops were concentrated in Tennessee and in northern Virginia, where they could threaten the federal capital. The North responded to the attack on Fort Sumter with shock and anger. Everywhere people were determined to support the government in whatever measures it might take. On April 15, Lincoln issued a proclamation that called up a total of 75,000 militia from the states. At the same time, calls for troops were sent to the governors of all states that had remained in the Union. On April 19 a second proclamation announced that Southern ports would be blockaded. A third proclamation, dated May 3, called for 42,000 three-year volunteers for the regular army and for 18,000 volunteers to serve one to three years in the navy. The South responded with equal determination . Virginia and the rest of the upper South seceded. The Congress of the Confederacy authorized President Davis to wage the war now beginning. The border slave states of Kentucky, Missouri, Maryland, and Delaware never seceded. However, many thousands of men in Kentucky, Missouri, and Maryland volunteered for service in the Confederate armies. Both the North and South raised troops as quickly as possible and struggled with the problem of equipping and training them. 

The states recruited volunteers and organized them into regiments. Officers were elected by the men and commissioned by the governors. In the beginning the length of service was usually short, but as soon as it became clear that the war would not end with one decisive battle, three-year-enlistments became the rule, although there were many exceptions. In the North the first troops ready for service were sent to Washington, D.C., and to points along the Ohio River. Confederate troops were concentrated in Tennessee and in northern Virginia, where they could threaten the federal capital. As men poured into the armies, Northern and Southern leaders discussed strategies that would achieve victory. These strategies contrasted significantly because the two sides had very different war aims. The Confederacy sought independence and only had to defend itself. The North sought to restore the Union, which meant it had to compel the seceded states to give up their hopes to found a new nation. Northern armies would have to invade the Confederacy, destroy its capacity to wage war, and crush the will of the Southern people to resist. The Confederacy could win by prolonging the war to a point where the Northern people would consider the effort too costly in lives and money to persist. The South had a compelling example in the American Revolution of a seemingly weaker power defeating a much stronger one. The colonies had been at an even greater material disadvantage in relation to Britain than were the Confederate states in relation to the North, yet the colonies won, with the help of France, by dragging the war out and exhausting the British will to win. If the North chose not to mount a military effort to coerce the seceded states back into the Union, the Confederacy would win independence by default. Lincoln and other Northern leaders, however, had no intention of letting the Southern states go without a fight. The most prominent American military figure in the spring of 1861 was Winfield Scott, the general-in-chief of the United States Army. 

Physically frail but with a brilliant mind, Scott conceived a long-range strategy to bring Northern victory. Subsequently named the “Anaconda Plan” (after the South American snake that squeezes its prey to death), Scott’s plan sought to apply pressure on the Confederacy from all sides. A combined force of naval and army units would sweep down the Mississippi River, dividing the Confederacy’s eastern and western states. At the same time, the Union navy would institute a blockade to deny the Confederacy access to European manufactured goods. Should the South continue to resist even after the loss of the Mississippi and the closing of its ports, Scott envisioned a major invasion into the heart of the Confederacy. He estimated it would take two to three years and 300,000 men to carry out this strategy. Except for underestimating, by about half, the length of time and number of men it would take to bring success, Scott had sketched the broad strategy the North would implement to defeat the South over the next four years. The United States Navy applied increasing pressure along the Confederate coasts, Northern forces took control of the Mississippi River by the middle of 1863, and large armies marched into Virginia, Tennessee, Georgia, and the Carolinas, eventually forcing a Confederate surrender in the spring of 1865. The Confederacy pursued what often is termed a defensive-offensive strategy. Simply put, Confederate armies generally adopted a defensive strategy, protecting as much of their territory as possible against Northern incursions. 

However, when circumstances seemed to offer an opportunity to gain a decided advantage over Northern forces, the Confederacy launched offensives—the three most important of which culminated in the battles of Antietam (Maryland) and Perryville (Kentucky) in 1862, and Gettysburg (Pennsylvania) in 1863. Geography played a major role in how effectively the two sides were able to carry out their strategies. The sheer size of the Confederacy posed a daunting obstacle to Northern military forces. Totaling more than 1,940,000 sq km (750,000 sq mi) and without a well-developed network of roads, the Southern landscape challenged the North’s ability to supply armies that maneuvered at increasing distances from Union bases. It was also almost impossible to make the North’s blockade of Southern ports completely effective because the South’s coastline stretched 5600 km (3500 mi) and contained nearly 200 harbors and mouths of navigable rivers. The Appalachian Mountains also hindered rapid movement of Northern forces between the eastern and western areas of the Confederacy while the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia offered a protected route through which Confederate armies could invade the North. The placement of Southern rivers, however, favored the North. The Mississippi, Tennessee, and Cumberland rivers provided excellent north-south avenues of advance for Union armies west of the Appalachians. In Virginia, Confederates defended from behind the state’s principal rivers, but the James River also served as a secure line of communications and supply for Union offensives against Richmond in 1862 and again in 1864. 

Technological advances helped both sides deal with the great distances over which the armies fought. The Civil War was the first large conflict that featured railroads and the telegraph. Railroads rapidly moved hundreds of thousands of soldiers and vast quantities of supplies; the North contained almost twice as many miles of railroad lines as the South. Telegraphic communication permitted both governments to coordinate military movements on sprawling geographical fronts. The combatants also took advantage of numerous other recent advances in military technology. The most important was the rifle musket carried by most of the infantrymen on both sides. Prior to the Civil War, infantry generally had been armed with smoothbore muskets, weapons without rifling in the barrels. These muskets had an effective range of less than 90 m (300 ft). As a result, massed attacks had a good chance of success because one side could launch an assault and not take serious casualties until they were almost on top of the defenders. The rifle musket, with an effective range of 225 to 275 m (750 to 900 ft), allowed defenders to break up attacks long before they reached the defenders’ positions. Combined with field fortifications, which were widely used during the war, the rifle musket changed military tactics by making charges against defensive positions more difficult. It also gave a significant advantage to the defending force. Other new technologies included ironclad warships, which were used by both sides; the deployment of manned balloons for aerial reconnaissance on battlefields, used mainly by the North; the first sinking of a warship by the South’s submarine, known as the CSS Hunley; and the arming of significant numbers of soldiers with repeating weapons, carried mainly by the northern cavalry. The technology for all of these weapons had been present before the Civil War, but never before had armies applied the technology so widely. At the beginning of the war, state militias provided most of the troops for both Union and Confederate armies. Soon large numbers of civilians were volunteering for military service. Throughout the war, the bulk of the forces consisted of volunteers. When the number of volunteers lagged behind the growing battle casualties, both the Northern and Southern governments resorted to drafting men into the armies. The Confederacy passed the first draft act in April 1862. The Union followed almost a year later. In both North and South, men of certain classes, occupations, and professions were exempted from the draft. 

Furthermore, a man who was drafted in the North could avoid military service by making a money payment to the government and in both the North and South, a draftee could hire a substitute to go to war for him. Opposition to the draft was general throughout the country. In New York City the publication of the first draft lists caused four days of violent rioting in which many were killed and $1.5 million worth of property was destroyed. Although the draft itself did not produce a sufficient number of soldiers, the threat of being drafted led many to volunteer and collect a bounty, which was paid to volunteers. Some soldiers were unscrupulous enough to enlist, desert, and reenlist to collect the bounty more than once. The Civil War, like all wars, called for great sums of money to pay troops and supply them with equipment. At the outset of the war the Confederacy depended on loans, but this source of finance soon disappeared as Southerners began to be affected financially by the cost of the war and unable to buy bonds. The South never really tried heavy taxation because the government had no means to collect taxes and people in the South were reluctant and often unable to pay them. Instead it relied on paper money, freely printed. Backed only by the possibility of Southern victory, the money dropped in value as the war went on and as its outcome became more uncertain. The Confederacy suffered greatly from severe inflation and debt throughout the war. The Confederate rate of inflation was about 9000 percent, meaning that an item that cost $1 in the Confederacy at the beginning of the war would have cost $92 at the end of the war. In contrast, the North’s rate of inflation was only about 80 percent. As the value of money declined, prices rose accordingly. The Union financed its armies by loans and taxes to a much greater degree than the Confederacy, even resorting to an income tax. The people of the North were more prosperous than those of the South. A national banking system was established by Congress to stimulate sales of U.S. bonds. Northerners had savings with which they could buy the bonds and had earnings from which taxes could be taken. The North also resorted to printing large amounts of paper money, called greenbacks, which were not backed by gold in the U.S. Treasury. As in the South, though to a much lesser degree, the paper money dropped in value in relation to gold, and prices rose. 

However, the North and South continued to fight as if their treasuries were full. Both sides prepared for what would become a much longer war than either at first imagined. Hundreds of thousands of volunteers poured into the armies, and the respective economies tried to adjust to meet the demands of supplying huge military forces. On the battlefield, the Confederates won victories in Virginia at the First Battle of Bull Run in mid-July, and in Missouri at Wilson’s Creek in August. Despite these setbacks, the Union army and navy took steps to begin operations along the upper Mississippi River and along the southern Atlantic coast. The goal was to implement Winfield Scott’s Anaconda Plan to seize control of the Mississippi River and institute a naval blockade of the Confederacy. Away from the military sphere, the Trent Affair presented the Lincoln administration with a major diplomatic crisis that threatened to involve Britain in the American war. On July 16, 1861, a Union army, led by General Irvin McDowell, began to move toward Confederate troops under General Beauregard that were grouped about Manassas Junction, 40 km (25 mi) southwest of Washington, D.C. The two armies did not meet until July 21. The battle, known as First Bull Run or First Manassas, started well for the North. However, with the arrival of Confederate reinforcements and the heroic stand of General Thomas J Jackson, who earned the nickname “Stonewall,” the battle ended in an overwhelming victory for the South. Most of the Union troops straggled back to Washington in near panic. The defeat shocked the North. The people suddenly realized that the war could be a grim struggle that might last for years. Governors offered more troops and hurried forward regiments with full ranks. The Union War Department pushed the organization of long-term volunteers. General George McCloud was ordered to Washington from western Virginia, where he had made a name for himself in a series of small battles. McClellan took charge of the troops in and around the capital, enforcing discipline and instituting intensive training. By the end of October he had a well-equipped, well-trained army that was known as the Army of the Potomac. 

In November he replaced the aged general Winfield Scott as general- Fighting had also begun farther west. In St. Louis, Missouri, on May 10, 1861, a Union force captured a large band of men believed to be training for Confederate service. The seizure of the men caused a riot in the streets where 30 people were killed. Thereafter, Missouri, torn between North and South, would be a state with a civil war of its own. On August 10 a Union Army under Nathaniel Lyon attacked a pro-Southern force under Ben McCulloch and Sterling Price at Wilson’s Creek, near Springfield, in southwestern Missouri. Lyon and the Union forces were decisively defeated. For the remainder of 1861 Missouri continued to be a battleground for both Northern and Southern sympathizers. As early as April 22, Union forces had begun to concentrate at Cairo, Illinois, where the Ohio River flows into the Mississippi. By fall, Kentucky, which had remained neutral for several months, had shown that it would definitely remain in the Union. Neither side needed to respect Kentucky’s neutrality any longer. In early September the Confederates grouped troops at several places in Kentucky, with the largest number in Columbus, on the Mississippi River. When the Confederates occupied Columbus, the Kentucky legislature asked the U.S. government for help. In response to the Confederate troop movements, a Union force under Brigadier General Ulysses S Grant occupied Paducah, Kentucky, at the mouth of the Tennessee River. On November 7, Grant occupied Belmont, Missouri, opposite Columbus. The Confederates quickly threw a strong force across the river. After a sharp battle, Grant succeeded in withdrawing most of his 4000 men, and the battle ended without a clear victory for either side. Belmont was the Union commander’s first battle of the war. Also on November 7, 1861, a federal naval officer, Flag Officer Samuel F. du Pont, took 17 wooden cruisers into Port Royal Sound on the South Carolina coast. Du Pont’s guns pounded the shore batteries at Fort Beauregard and Fort Walker so effectively that after several hours the defenders evacuated the forts. Du Pont sent in convoy transports, supply ships, and 12,000 men under General Thomas W. Sherman. The men landed with little opposition late in the afternoon and took possession of the forts. Thus, early in the war, the Union established an important base for operations along the southern coast. Simultaneously the Union met and survived its first diplomatic crisis of the war, known as the Trent affair. In the fall of 1861 the Confederacy sent James Murray Mason and John Slidell as commissioners to Britain and France. The two men ran the Northern blockade to Havana, Cuba. On November 7, 1861, they left Cuba on the British ship Trent. 

The next day, Captain Charles Wilkes of the U.S. vessel San Jacinto stopped the Trent, searched it, and took the two Confederate representatives on board his own ship and later to Fort Warren in Boston Harbor. The North hailed Wilkes as a hero, but by seizing the commissioners from a neutral ship, he had violated principles of international law that the United States had upheld for 50 years and had even gone to war for in 1812. The British ministry demanded an apology and the release of the two men. Many in the North clamored for war with Britain. Lincoln, however, was cautious, and in England, Prince Albert, Queen Victoria’s consort, used his influence on behalf of peace. After allowing time for the war fever to cool, the United States admitted that Wilkes had acted without authorization, disavowed him, and liberated the Southern commissioners. A war that might have been fatal to the Union was thus averted. Furious military action flared in both the eastern and western theaters. In the West, Union victories at forts Henry and Donelson in February and at Shiloh in April gave the Union control of the heartland of Tennessee. The Battle of Pea Ridge in March frustrated a Confederate effort to gain a hold in Missouri, and the capture of New Orleans in late April cost the Confederacy its largest city and busiest port. Confederates responded with an invasion of Kentucky in late summer and fall, which ended in failure at the Battle of Perryville in October. Heavy fighting for the year ended with the inconclusive battle of Stones River or Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and unsuccessful opening movements in the Union campaign to capture Vicksburg, Mississippi. In the East, a Confederate victory at the Seven Days Battle in late June and early July turned back a major threat to Richmond, followed by another Southern triumph at Second Bull Run in late August, and the Union’s strategic success at Antietam in mid-September, which ended Robert E. Lee’s first invasion of the North. The year closed in Virginia with a costly Union setback at Fredericksburg in mid-December. The year also saw the Confederacy enact the first national conscription act in American history, and the North place emancipation alongside unification as a second great war aim. It would be a mistake to think of the Civil War only as a succession of major battles . Once the fighting was well under way, some kind of military action took place almost daily. 

The month of October 1862 was typical. Within its 31 days, two battles that resulted in heavy losses were fought. On October 3 and 4 the Confederates attacked Union forces holding Corinth, Mississippi. They were repulsed, but not until they had lost 4133 men killed, wounded, and prisoners, against a total Union loss of 2520 men. On October 8 Union and Confederate troops clashed in the Battle of Perryville, in Kentucky, and the casualties totaled 7600. The same month saw smaller conflicts. One took place on the Hatchie River near Corinth, Mississippi, on October 5, and a chronicler describes the losses as merely “heavy.” The next day, in a 30-minute conflict at La Vergne, Tennessee, the Confederates lost 25 men and a Union force lost 14. On October 10 and 11 the Confederate cavalry leader J.E.B Stuart occupied Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, destroyed cars and engines belonging to the Cumberland Valley Railroad, and seized 500 horses and a large quantity of Union Army supplies. On October 18 Confederate cavalry commanded by General John Hunt Morgan dashed into Lexington, Kentucky, and took 125 prisoners. In an action at Labadieville on the Bayou Lafourche, in Louisiana, on October 27, the Confederates lost 6 killed, 15 wounded, and 208 taken prisoner, while the Union loss was reported as 18 killed and 74 wounded. The month of October 1862 also saw numerous reconnaissances and skirmishes in which only one or two men were killed or wounded, casualties too small to be reported. It would also be a mistake to think of the Civil War as a steady series of military actions, large or small. The stubbornest enemy of every soldier was not his opponent, but inactivity and boredom. For every hour a man spent in action, he endured many days during which he did nothing but respond to the routine formations of reveille, mess call, and retreat or march mile after mile on expeditions that led nowhere. As 1862 began, the Army of the Potomac remained inactive. McClellan, although still popular with his troops, was now subject to mounting criticism from an impatient administration and public. The phrase “All quiet on the Potomac” became a taunt. On the western front, Grant waited for permission from his superior, Henry Helleck , to strike at the Confederates in Tennessee. Grant had picked his targets: Fort Henry on the Tennessee River; then Fort Donelson a few miles to the east on the Cumberland River. In January 1862 Halleck ordered the advance. 

It was to be a joint campaign with naval forces under the command of Flag Officer Andrew H. Foote. Foote’s gunboats attacked Fort Henry on February 6. The fort surrendered before Grant’s troops could be engaged. Fort Donelson proved to be a different story. Fighting began on February 12, but Fort Donelson held out until February 16. The two victories lifted spirits in the North, and Grant’s demand for “unconditional and immediate surrender” in response to the Confederate commander’s request for terms made the Union general famous. The North, its elation heightened by a decisive Union victory in the Battle of Pea Ridge, also known as the Battle of Elkhorn Tavern, in Arkansas, on March 7 and 8, soon received more good news with a victory at Shiloh. After taking Fort Donelson, Grant had wanted to move on the Confederate base in Corinth, Mississippi, where Albert Johnson, the Confederate commander in the West, was known to be assembling troops. Grant was ordered to delay his advance until Union General Don Carlos Buell, who had been operating in East Tennessee, could join him. Early on Sunday, April 6, 1862, Johnston’s army, which had come up to the federal lines undetected, struck Grant’s army, which was encamped at Pittsburg Landing on the Tennessee River. The Battle Of Shiloh followed. At the end of the second day of fighting the Union forces drove back the attackers. Shocking losses, 13,000 out of more than 62,000 Federals and 10,700 out of 40,000 Confederates, appalled both sections of the country. Although victorious, Grant was accused of lacking elementary caution and found himself reviled in the North. The South mourned the loss of Johnston, one of its ablest commanders, who was shot and bled to death. In the spring of 1862, McClellan proposed to Lincoln that the North invade Virginia by way of the peninsula between the James and York rivers. However, an unexpected development in that area threatened to prevent the offensive. On March 8 the Confederate ironclad vessel, the Virginia, which was made from the salvaged Merrimack, entered Hampton Roads, Virginia, at the mouth of the James. A number of wooden men-of-war of the Union fleet were in the roads enforcing the blockade. 

The Virginia destroyed two ships and disabled another. The North was thrown into panic. The next morning, however, the Virginia was challenged by the Monitor, a Union ironclad. The two armored ships bounced shells off each other’s sides for four hours without doing any serious damage. Although the battle ended in a draw, the Virginia no longer controlled the area’s waters. Soon after, when the Confederates withdrew from Norfolk, they destroyed the Virginia to keep it from falling into Northern hands. McClellan continued with his plans for invading Virginia. Lincoln agreed with McClellan that an attempt should be made to capture Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy. Lincoln favored an overland invasion route. McClellan, however, insisted on moving the Army of the Potomac by water to the peninsula between the York and James rivers and attacking Richmond from the southeast. Lincoln finally consented to this plan on condition that generals Irvin McDowell and Nathaniel P. Banks be left behind for a short time with about half of the army to defend Washington, D.C. Lincoln needed the troops in Washington, D.C., because the federal capital was threatened by Stonewall Jackson, operating with a handful of men in the Shenandoah Valley. When McClellan’s invasion began, Jackson was ordered to prevent reinforcements from reaching the Union commander. Jackson then opened a remarkable campaign, deceiving the enemy into believing he had a huge army. Even in a battle he lost at Kernstown on March 23, he convinced his adversary, General James Shields, of his strength although he had only 4200 men. By mobility and inventiveness, Jackson won victories in the valley at McDowell, Front Royal, Winchester, Cross Keys, and Port Republic before withdrawing to help in the defense of Richmond. Jackson’s tactics succeeded; to oppose him and the 16,000 men who fought with him for most of the campaign, the North held back 55,000 men under Banks, McDowell, and John C. Frémont, men that McClellan needed badly on the peninsula. On April 2, 1862, McClellan arrived with 100,000 men at Fort Monroe, at the southeastern tip of the peninsula. He took Yorktown after a month’s siege but let its defenders escape. On May 31 Confederate General Joseph E. Johnson tried unsuccessfully to stop McClellan’s drive at Fair Oaks, only 10 km (6 mi) from Richmond. Johnston was wounded in the battle, and Robert E. Lee replaced him as commander of the Army of Northern Virginia. 

Lee’s courage and courtesy won him the warm affection of his troops. His outstanding ability as a general was to make him idolized in the South and respected and feared in the North. At times, as the war progressed, only the genius and personality of General Robert E. Lee kept the Confederate Army from crumbling. Soon after Lee’s appointment, a series of engagements known as the Seven Days’ Battle took place, lasting from June 25 through July 1, 1862. On the second day, Union General Fitz-John Porter drove back a Confederate attack at Mechanicsville, 8 km (5 mi) northeast of Richmond. However, instead of pushing on to Richmond, McClellan began to withdraw. He ordered Porter to fall back to Gaines’s Mill. There, on June 27, a Confederate charge led by John B. Hood broke the Union center. McClellan then ordered the army to fall back on Harrison’s Landing on the James River, where he would have the cover of Union gunboats. On July 2, after sharp rear guard actions at Savage’s Station, Frayser’s Farm, and Malvern Hill, the last engagement in the Seven Days’ Battle, McClellan reached Harrison’s Landing and safety. The South was over, with heavy losses on both sides. There were 16,000 Union casualties. 

Lee suffered even more, with casualties of over 20,000 men, about one-fifth of his army. However, he had stopped McClellan’s drive on Richmond. Lincoln’s administration held McClellan at fault for not having taken Richmond. McClellan blamed the administration for not having sent reinforcements. Both North and South tended to underrate an event that took place while the country’s attention was fixed on the peninsula. To make the blockade of the South effective, the Union had to win control of New Orleans and the lower Mississippi. Early in April 1862, Flag Officer David G. Foregut started up the Mississippi with a squadron of combat ships and transports carrying 18,000 federal troops. Attempts to stop him with chain cables and fire rafts failed. Foregut pressed on past Fort Jackson and Fort Saint Philip and arrived at New Orleans, Louisiana, on April 25. He demanded the surrender of the city. Its Confederate defenders, numbering only 3000, withdrew. For the rest of the war, New Orleans, the biggest Confederate city and the key to the Mississippi, remained in Union hands. Its loss was a disaster for the Confederacy. -X

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