Chapter 19: The North & South Prepare for War

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Welcome back.

Let's dive right into a really pivotal moment.

Picture this.

March 4,

1861.

Abraham Lincoln has just snuck into Washington, D .C., partly in disguise, which tells you something about the tension.

Yeah, the atmosphere must have been electric.

Absolutely.

And he's standing there about to take the oath of office, looking up at the Capitol building, but the dome, it's unfinished.

It's this incredibly powerful symbol of the disunited states at that moment.

Seven states already gone.

A really potent image.

And before spiral into, you know, four years of absolute horror and bloodshed, Lincoln tries to frame the whole struggle.

He says it's about proving that popular government is not an absurdity.

Basically, can a democracy survive internal division?

That quote, yeah, really sets the stage for what we're digging into today.

We're using chapter 19 of the American pageant titled Girding for War as our guide.

Our mission here is help you understand those first crucial steps, the challenges, the strategies, the preparations from 1861 to 1865.

Okay, so let's start with fundamental Lincoln pointed out geography.

He argued secession was just, well, impossible physically.

The north and south, he said, cannot separate.

Right.

The source material uses that image of conjoined twins.

And why?

Because the major geographical features like the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River, they run north south.

They don't create a neat east west border.

They actually bind the country together, which immediately creates huge problems.

If you try to split, suddenly you have questions like, okay, who pays what share of the national debt?

Exactly.

And what happens to the federal territories out west?

And the fugitive slave issue becomes even more explosive.

The source points out slaves might only need to cross the Ohio River, not go all the way to Canada.

So conflict was pretty much baked in from the start of secession.

Unavoidable really.

Armed clashes were bound to happen over these shared resources and borders.

And that leads us straight to the first major flashpoint, Fort Sumter.

Lincoln inherits this

seething states had seized federal property, forts, arsenals.

And by the time Lincoln takes office, only two significant forts in the south still flew the Union flag.

The really critical one was Fort Sumter right there in Charleston Harbor.

So Lincoln faced this terrible dilemma.

The fort was running out of supplies due around mid April.

Yeah, it was a real catch 22.

If he did nothing, the fort surrenders.

That looks weak.

Maybe even like he's violating his oath to protect federal property.

But if he tries to send reinforcements, men, guns, South Carolina sees that as an act of war.

They couldn't have a federal fort controlling their main port.

Right.

So Lincoln tries this, let's call it a middle way.

He notified South Carolina that he's sending provisions food only.

He explicitly says no effort to throw in men, arms, and ammunition.

But was that distinction even meaningful to the Confederates at that point?

Sending ships at all seems like it would be seen as aggression.

It absolutely was.

From the southern perspective, any attempt to resupply or hold that fort was hostile.

They saw the approaching naval force, even if just carrying food as reinforcement.

And their response.

They opened fire April 12th, 1861.

The cannons started shelling Fort Sumter.

That's the definitive start of the shooting war.

34 hours of bombardment.

And amazingly, no one was killed during the shelling itself.

The garrison eventually surrendered.

Right.

A bloodless start in one sense, but the political and emotional impact was immense.

Huge.

Because up till then, you had a lot of northerners saying things like, wayward sisters, depart in peace.

Just let them go.

But that sentiment vanished overnight.

Seeing the flag fired upon,

it galvanized the north.

The new cries were, remember Fort Sumter and save the Union.

So the South's action basically forced Lincoln's hand, politically speaking.

It did.

He immediately issued a call April 15th for 75 ,000 militia men.

He needed troops to suppress the rebellion.

But that call for troops had its own consequences, didn't it?

Especially in the Upper South.

Absolutely.

It was the final straw for four more states.

Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina.

They saw it as the North initiating war against sovereign states, so they seceded too.

And the Confederacy then moves its capital to Richmond, Virginia.

Suddenly the two capitals are only about a hundred miles apart.

Which just underscores the strategic importance of the next critical group.

The border states.

Right.

The slave states that hadn't seceded.

Missouri, Kentucky,

Maryland, and Delaware.

Losing them?

Yep.

Well, the source suggests the North might have lost the whole war right there.

It's hard to overstate their importance.

They had a white population more than half the size of the entire Confederacy.

Their manufacturing capacity would have nearly doubled the South's.

And they had huge numbers of horses and mules critical for armies back then.

Exactly.

Lincoln famously, reportedly, said he hoped God was on his side, but he had to have Kentucky.

And he took some pretty strong actions to keep them.

Especially Maryland, right?

Declaring martial law.

He did.

He couldn't risk Washington, D .C., being surrounded by hostile territory.

He sent troops into Missouri, too, where the fighting was fierce.

It was about securing loyalty, sometimes by force.

Which ties into his political tightrope walk.

He had to be incredibly careful about the stated war aims initially.

Critically careful?

He had to publicly declare he was not fighting to free the slaves.

Why not?

Seems counterintuitive now.

Because if he had,

the border states, which were slave states, would almost certainly have left the Union immediately.

And it wasn't just them.

You mean the butternut region.

Tell us about that.

Yeah, that's a term for the southern parts of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois.

A lot of people there had southern ancestry or sympathies.

They weren't abolitionists.

So making it an anti -slavery crusade early on would have alienated them, too.

Definitely.

He could have lost support within the Union itself.

So the official line had to be,

this war is only about preserving the Union.

Which meant, paradoxically, you had slaveholders on both sides of the conflict at the beginning.

It really was brother's blood, as the source puts it.

Just look at Senator Crittenden from Kentucky tried to broker peace, but ended up with one son, a general in the Union Army, the other a general in the Confederate Army.

A tragic illustration.

And Lincoln's own wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, had four brothers fighting for the Confederacy.

It cut right through families.

Even affected Native American tribes in the Indian Territory.

That's right.

Most of the five civilized tribes, the Cherokees, Creeks, Choctaws, Chickasaws, and Seminoles, sided with the Confederacy.

Partly because some of them also owned slaves and felt more culturally aligned with the South.

Such deep divisions.

Okay, let's shift to the balance sheet, the resources.

Who had what going into this?

Well, at first glance, the South had some significant advantages.

They were fighting defensively on their own turf behind interior lines.

They didn't need to conquer the North.

They just needed to fight to a draw and win their independence.

Morale must have been high, too.

Fighting for self -determination, their way of life.

Very high, initially.

And they arguably had the better military leadership at the start.

Think Robert E.

Lee, Stonewall Jackson, brilliant commanders.

And their soldiers had a reputation, right?

Bred to fight the famous rebel yell.

Yes, accustomed to outdoor life, handling horses and firearms.

They were formidable fighters, especially early in the war.

But the North had advantages that were just overwhelming in the long run, especially the economy.

Oh, absolutely overwhelming.

You look at the data, like in Table 19 .1, the source provides.

The North had about three quarters of the nation's wealth.

Three quarters of the railroad mileage, too.

Over 30 ,000 miles.

Crucial for moving troops and supplies.

And manufacturing.

No contest.

The source notes that the Middle States alone produced nearly half the nation's total manufactured goods.

The South had very little industry.

And manpower.

A huge disparity.

About 22 million people in the versus 9 million in the Confederacy.

And roughly 3 .5 million of those Southerners were enslaved people.

Generally not used as soldiers by the Confederacy.

Plus, the North kept getting reinforcements from immigration.

Right.

Over 800 ,000 European immigrants arrived between 1861 and 1865.

Many enlisted, often lured by bounties.

About a fifth of the Union Army ended up being foreign -born.

A massive pool of manpower the South just didn't have.

Let's talk about the soldiers themselves.

The source paints portraits of Billy Yank and Johnny Reb.

Yeah, sort of general profiles.

Billy Yank, the Union soldier, telling him to be more literate, maybe more practical, coming from towns and cities, more used to regimentation, maybe adapted to army discipline a bit quicker.

Whereas Johnny Reb, the Confederate soldier, often more emotional, perhaps more outwardly religious,

definitely embodying that fierce Southern individualism.

Which could be for fighting spirit, but sometimes meant, well, less respect for military hierarchy and discipline.

But for both sides, the biggest killer wasn't the enemy's bullets.

Tragically, no.

It was disease.

Things like dysentery, typhoid fever, measles, mumps.

They killed twice as many soldiers as combat did.

Just awful.

Due to poor sanitation, lack of medical knowledge.

Exactly.

Germ theory wasn't understood.

Field hospitals were often breeding grounds for infection, which highlights the crucial role women started to play.

As nurses, right?

Like Clara Barton and Dorothea Dix in the North?

Yes.

They transformed nursing from a lowly service into a respected profession.

They organized hospitals and sanitation efforts.

In the South, you had figures like Sally Tompkins, who ran a Richmond hospital so effectively she was commissioned as a captain by Jefferson Davis.

Incredible.

Okay, let's switch gears to diplomacy.

The South had a big hope here, didn't they?

King Cotton.

That was their ace in the hole, or so they thought.

Their strategy heavily relied on getting foreign intervention, especially from Britain.

Because British textile mills were massively dependent on southern cotton, something like 75 % of their supply came from the American South.

The thinking was,

the blockade would cut off cotton, British factories would close, workers would riot, and Britain would have to intervene to break the blockade and save its economy.

But King Cotton, while he was dethroned, why did that strategy fail so badly?

Several key reasons.

First, the British public, especially the working classes, were increasingly anti -slavery.

Thanks partly to books like Uncle Tom's Cabin, they saw the North's cause, especially after emancipation, as morally superior.

They put pressure on their government not to intervene on behalf of a slave power.

Okay, so public opinion mattered.

What else?

Second, timing and stockpiles.

Britain had imported enormous amounts of cotton in the They actually had a huge surplus when the war started.

The cotton famine didn't hit as hard or as fast as the South hoped.

Ah, so they had a buffer.

Exactly.

And the third reason, perhaps the most decisive,

King Wheat and King Corn turned out to be more powerful.

Britain suffered a series of bad harvests during the war years.

They became desperately dependent on importing huge quantities of grain from the North.

So if Britain broke the union blockade to get cotton, they'd risk war with the North.

And lose their vital supply of food, starving their own people for cotton.

Not a good trade -off.

The North's agricultural power proved more compelling diplomatically than the South's cotton.

Wow, that really shifted the balance.

But there were still some close calls with Britain diplomatically.

Oh yes, very tense moments.

The Trent Affair in late 1861 was probably the most serious.

What happened there?

A union warship stopped a British male steamer, the Trent, on the high seas and forcibly removed two Confederate diplomats who were on their way to Europe.

That sounds illegal, taking people off a neutral ship.

Highly illegal by international standards.

Britain was furious.

War talk was everywhere.

They demanded the release of the diplomats and an apology.

How did Lincoln handle it?

Very carefully.

He supposedly said, one war at a time.

He knew he couldn't fight Britain and the Confederacy simultaneously, so reluctantly he released the diplomats, called them white elephants.

Crisis averted, barely.

But the trouble didn't end there.

What about the Confederate warships built in Britain?

Right, the commerce raiders.

Ships like the famous CSS Alabama.

They were built in British shipyards, slipped out unarmed, and then picked up guns elsewhere.

The Alabama never even docked in a Confederate port, but captured over 60 union merchant ships.

That must have devastated northern shipping.

It did.

It crippled the U .S.

merchant for years.

The North was obviously furious that Britain allowed these ships to be built.

And then there was an even bigger threat.

The Laird Rams.

Yes.

In 1863, these were two ironclad warships being built by the Laird Company in Britain for the Confederacy.

They had iron rams designed to smash wooden ships potentially powerful enough to break the union blockade.

That sounds like a game changer.

It could have been.

The union minister in London, Charles Francis Adams, basically told the British government,

if those ships sail, it means war.

High stakes again.

Extremely.

Fortunately, London backed down at the last minute.

They bought the rams for the Royal Navy instead, avoiding a disastrous conflict with the United States.

It's interesting how these tensions had ripple effects, like with Canada.

Exactly.

All this friction helped convince the British colonies in North America that they needed to unite for common defense against potential American anger after the war.

That led directly to the establishment of the Dominion of Canada in 1867.

And France tried to take advantage too, right?

In Mexico.

Yeah.

Napoleon III saw the U .S.

preoccupied and installed Austrian Archduke Maximilian as Emperor of Mexico in 1863.

A clear violation of the Monroe Doctrine.

How did the U .S.

respond?

Secretary of State Seward basically warned France off, but couldn't do much during the war.

As soon as the war ended in 1865, though, the U .S.

prepared to march south, and Napoleon III quickly pulled his troops out, leading Maximilian to be executed by Mexican forces.

The Monroe Doctrine was upheld.

Let's compare the leaders.

Jefferson Davis in the south, Abraham Lincoln in the north.

How did they stack up, according to the source?

The contrast is pretty stark.

Degas is often described as tense, legalistic, maybe a bit stubborn.

He had military experience but struggled with public opinion and managing his own Congress.

And he had that state's rights issue working against him, even within the Confederacy.

Absolutely.

He was constantly battling governors who guarded their state prerogatives jealously.

The source even mentions Georgia threatening to secede from the Confederacy.

It hampered a unified war effort.

Lincoln, on the other hand.

Lincoln started with less experience in national administration, but proved incredibly adaptable.

He had this amazing ability, this genius, the source says, for understanding and guiding public opinion.

He used humor, patience.

Yep.

He managed his often difficult cabinet with forbearance.

That famous line about Secretary of War, Stanton calling him a fool.

Lincoln reportedly said Stanton was probably right because he usually was.

He grew into the presidency.

But to win the war, Lincoln also took actions that were,

well, pretty controversial, constitutionally speaking.

He definitely did.

Things that would be unthinkable in peacetime.

He proclaimed a blockade.

He increased the size of the army.

He ordered federal spending all initially without congressional approval, though Congress did back him later.

And the most controversial, suspending the writ of habeas corpus.

That was huge.

Habeas corpus is the right to have a judge determine if your imprisonment is lawful.

Lincoln suspended it, meaning anti -unionists, critics, potential spies could be arrested and held without trial.

He even defied the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court on this.

How is this justifiable?

The argument was simple.

Necessity.

To save the constitution, maybe you had to bend it or even temporarily break parts of it.

He argued that if he didn't take these strong measures, there might be no union and thus no constitution left to protect.

He also ordered supervised voting in the border states, essentially using soldiers to ensure loyalty.

It's a profound question about executive power and wartime.

Now, this massive war effort needed soldiers.

Lots of them.

Which led to the draft.

Yes.

Both sides eventually resorted to conscription.

The South actually started first, in 1862, because they were running out of volunteers faster.

The North followed in 1863.

But the draft laws had a feature that caused enormous resentment, didn't they?

They did.

In both the North and the South, wealthy men could get out of serving.

They could hire a substitute to go in their place, or in the North, pay an exemption fee of $300.

$300?

That was a huge amount of money for an ordinary worker back then.

Exactly.

It led to the bitter cry.

Rich man's war.

Poor man's fight.

People called those who paid the fee $300 men.

And this resentment boiled over.

Most dramatically, in the New York draft riots of 1863.

For several days, mobs, largely poor Irish immigrants, rampaged through the city.

They attacked draft offices, the wealthy and horrifyingly African Americans, whom they blamed for the war and feared as labor competition.

It was incredibly violent.

People tried to cheat the system too, the bounty jumpers.

Oh yeah.

Federal, state, and local governments offered cash bounties to encourage enlistment.

So some men would enlist, collect the bounty, desert, go somewhere else, enlist under a different name, collect another bounty, and repeat.

The source mentions one man who supposedly jumped 32 times.

Unbelievable.

Okay, let's talk about the money behind the war, especially in the North.

How did they pay for this massive conflict?

The North had several methods.

They increased excise taxes on things like tobacco and alcohol.

They levied the first ever federal income tax, though rates were low by today's standards.

And tariffs.

That was a big Republican policy.

Yes.

The Moral Tariff Act was passed in 1861, even before the war really got going.

It significantly increased tariff rates.

This protected Northern manufacturers from foreign competition, raised revenue, and enriched the industrialists who were key supporters of the Republican Party.

They also printed paper money, right?

Greenbacks.

They did.

Nearly $450 million worth of greenbacks.

This paper money wasn't backed by gold, so its value fluctuated depending on the Union Army's success on the battlefield.

It caused inflation, but it helped finance the war.

But maybe the most significant financial development was the national banking system.

Absolutely.

Created in 1863, this was a landmark piece of legislation.

It was the first real move towards a unified, stable national banking structure since Andrew Jackson had killed the second bank of the United States back in the 1830s.

What did it do, practically?

It allowed banks to join the system if they met certain requirements,

including purchasing government bonds.

In return, they could issue standardized, reliable paper money backed by those bonds.

It stimulated bond sales for the war effort, and crucially, it created a standard banknote currency for the whole country.

That stability was vital for business and lasted long after the war.

All this activity meant the Northern economy actually boomed during the war.

In many ways, yes.

New factories sprang up to meet military demand.

Protective tariffs shielded them.

A new class of millionaires emerged for the first time in American history.

Though some weren't exactly ethical, the shoddy millionaires.

People who got rich selling substandard goods to the Army uniforms that fell apart, shoes with cardboard soles, faulty weapons.

There was definitely profiteering and corruption alongside the patriotism.

Agriculture kept pace, too.

Amazingly so.

New labor -saving machinery, especially the mechanical reaper, allowed farms to produce more food even with hundreds of thousands of men away fighting.

These grain exports, as we discussed, were crucial diplomatically and economically.

And the government was also looking west during the war.

Yes.

The Republicans pushed through policies they'd long wanted.

The Homestead Act of 1862 offered free land to settlers, encouraging westward expansion.

And the Pacific Railroad Act of the same year authorized the Transcontinental Railroad, linking the country together.

The war also opened up new roles for women, didn't it?

Significantly.

Besides nursing, thousands of women took jobs previously held by men.

They became government clerks, government girls in Washington.

The proportion of women in manufacturing jobs increased from about one in four to one in three.

And organizations like the U .S.

Sanitary Commission.

Yes.

Largely run by women.

It played a huge role in coordinating medical supplies, training nurses, and improving camp conditions.

It gave women valuable experience in large -scale organization and public life.

Now, contrast all that northern economic activity with the south.

It was a completely different story.

A tragic story, economically.

The union blockade was devastatingly effective over time.

It choked off customs duties, which had been the main source of revenue for the Confederacy.

And they couldn't just raise taxes easily.

No.

The state's rights philosophy worked against them again.

Southerners strongly resisted heavy direct taxation by the central Confederate government.

So revenue was scarce.

Which forced them to rely on.

Printing money.

Vast amounts of blue -backed Confederate paper money.

But with little backing in and union success eroding confidence, the currency became almost worthless.

What kind of inflation are we talking about?

Catastrophic inflation.

The source says the Confederate dollar eventually sank to the point where it took nearly a thousand dollars to equal one pre -war gold dollar.

That's an inflation rate of nine thousand percent.

Compare that to about eighty percent inflation in the north over the whole war.

Nine thousand percent.

That just destroys an economy.

Completely.

Savings were wiped out.

Bartering became common.

The transportation system, already weak, totally collapsed under the strain of war and lack of repair.

The south's economic vitality just drained away.

Cotton capitalism couldn't compete with the north's industrial might.

The source paints a really grim picture by the end.

The south was rich in little but amputees, war heroes, ruins, and memories.

A powerful summary of the economic devastation.

Okay, let's try to wrap this up.

Key takeaways from this deep dive into chapter 19.

I mean, the geography made separation almost impossible, setting the stage for conflict.

Right.

And the south's big diplomatic gamble on King Cotton failed utterly.

Largely because the north's agricultural power, King Wheat and King Corn, proved more vital to Europe, especially Britain.

And ultimately, the north's overwhelming economic advantages, combined with new financial systems like the national banking system in support of government policies like tariffs,

really sealed the south's fate in a long war.

It became a war of attrition that the industrialized north was simply better equipped to win.

Which leads to a final thought, something for you, the listener, to ponder.

This chapter shows how the war didn't just preserve the union.

It fundamentally reshaped America's economy and the power of the federal government.

Think about those acts passed during the war.

The Moral Tariff, the Homestead Act, the Pacific Railroad Act, the national banking system.

They set the stage for the industrial gilded age that followed.

So the question is, how much of the modern America we recognize today was actually forged, not in peacetime planning, but in the crucible of war and necessity?

A powerful question to end on.

That connection between the battlefield and the boardroom forged over those four bloody years.

Thank you for joining us on this deep dive.

We'll see you next time.