Analyzing Three Questions on the Civil War

¶ … Civil War Born in 1826, George B. McClellan served as an officer in the U.S. Army. He was also a politician who became a major general at the time of the Civil War from 1861-1865 as well as a railroad president. In 1861, he was in command of the Army of Potomac, which he organized. McClellan also served the Union Army as the general-in-chief for a short time.

He was very popular among his men, but was reluctant to make strong attacks on the Confederacy, despite having an advantage due to the number of men in his army. This brought differences between him and President Abraham Lincoln[footnoteRef:1]. When the Seven Days Battle came to an end in 1862, McClellan's Peninsula Campaign fell apart. He was unable to defeat the Confederate Army of Robert E at the Battle of Antietam at a later time of the same year.

His extremely cautious battle tactics got Lincoln frustrated, who in turn, decided to remove him from commanding the Army of the Potomac later in the year 1862. In 1864, he went ahead to launch a presidential campaign against Lincoln, but it failed. McClellan later served in New Jersey as the governor from 1878 t 1881. [1: George Mcclellan] Robert E. Lee was born in 1807 and died in 1870. He was in the U.S. Army as a military officer.

He also served the West Point as a commandant and the Confederate Army as a legendary general during the American Civil War (1861-65). He commanded the Army of Northern Virginia from June 1861 and led it to the end of the war. The army became very successful under his command at Second Bull Run (Mansassas), Fredericksburg and at the time of the Peninsula Campaign. The Battle of Chancellorsville was, however, where he achieved the greatest victory.

He proceeded to invade the north during spring in 1863 and fought the Battle of Gettysburg, but he was defeated[footnoteRef:2]. Being almost assured of defeat at Confederate, Lee pressed on and was involved in continuous clashes in Virginia against Union General Ulysses S. Grant in 1864-1865. Finally, he surrendered his army's remains in April 1865. Lee has received a lot of praise for displaying tactical brilliance and is still admired and respected in the South of America. [2: Robert E. Lee] 2) The Kansas-Nebraska Act was forced in 1854 by Sen.

Stephen Douglas through Congress. The bill revoked the Missouri Compromise made in 1820 and created a possibility of slavery expansion in a significant part of the Midwest. Abraham Lincoln, the political rival of Douglas and former Congressman of Illinois, was not pleased by the bill. In response, he arranged three speeches to address the public during the fall in 1854[footnoteRef:3]. The Peoria Speech was the longest speech, taking a period of three hours. It contained Lincoln's complains about Douglas' bill, stating his economic, legal, political and moral stand against slavery.

[3: Tracing President Lincoln's Thoughts On Slavery] Like numerous Americans, Lincoln did not know what to do once slavery was over. During the civil war, Lincoln said that he had always considered slavery unjust. He could not even remember any time he did not hold that opinion. Eric Foner, a historian, said there is no reason why anyone would doubt that. The problem came from the question of what would be done with slavery considering that it was unjust.

Lincoln spent a large amount of time trying to decide what steps he would take3. Foner followed the development of the thoughts Lincoln had regarding slavery in The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery. He describes how the change on these thoughts and the role played by freed slaves reflects the transformation of America. Foner points out that Lincoln stated that slavery is not right in the Peoria speech, but later admitted that he did not have a ready solution to end slavery.

He even considered the idea of setting all the slaves free and sending them back to their native land. It was only after the Emancipation Proclamation, which gave freedom to all the slaves and announced 10 states in which the law would be applied, that Lincoln denied his earlier opinions. According to Foner, there are numerous reasons why Lincoln's views about former slaves changed. Both the slaves and the slave owners did not support colonization. In the South, slavery was starting to disintegrate.

Concurrently, the Union Army was searching for soldiers to recruit and in the south there were African-American men who were ready and willing. As the Civil War was beginning, the federal government started making policies and they decided that they would treat the former slaves as free men3. They would not send them back to the holding regions. The army embarked on enlisting the black men and by the time the civil war ended, the Union Army and the Navy had been served by 200,000 men who had been slaves.

Picturing the black men as soldiers was very different from the role they had been expected to play in the society of America. These soldiers serve the role of developing Lincoln's change on the issue of racial attitude and what people think of America as a society made of many races, in his last two years when he was still alive. 3) A hundred and fifty years ago, the Army of the West of General William Tecumseh Sherman marched from Atlanta to Savannah's seaport.

On the way, the soldiers intentionally ruined a strip of countryside that was 60 miles wide. According to the Confederate accounts existing at that time, the march to the sea by Sherman's forces was appalling from a "total war." Uncontrollable Yankees who were Sherman's engineers did a lot of damage, burnt down Atlanta and then violently acquired property from the countryside[footnoteRef:4]. In the eyes of the southerners, Sherman was a war criminal. Sherman had expected their rage and he arguably fueled it.

He stated his objective in a brilliant and blunt manner: end the slaughter of the Civil War with victory for the Union. According to his estimation, cutting through Georgia was a blow with a potential of winning the war. In comparison to the rest of the civil war campaigns, the level of combat at the march to the sea was considerably light. The main forces of The Confederate, led by General John Bell Hood, were trying to capture Nashville and cause destruction on Union Railroads in Tennessee.

Hood's idea appeared to be reasonable. If he managed to capture Nashville, he could provide Sherman with supplies, that is, if Sherman would still be in Atlanta.