Part 47 (1/2)

%452. The Grand Army disbands.%--As this was practically the end of the Confederacy, the great Union army of citizen soldiers, numbering more than 1,000,000 men, was called home from the field and disbanded.

Before these veterans separated, never to meet again with arms in their hands, they were reviewed by the President, Congress, and an immense throng of people who came to Was.h.i.+ngton from every part of the loyal states to welcome them. During two days (May 23 and 24, 1865) the soldiers of Grant and Sherman, forming a column thirty miles long, marched down Pennsylvania Avenue, and then, with a rapidity and quietness that seems almost incredible, scattered and went back to their farms, to their shops, to the practice of their professions, and to the innumerable occupations of civil life.

Of the Confederates not one was molested, not a soldier was imprisoned, not a political leader suffered death. Davis was ordered to be imprisoned at Fort Monroe for two years, but he was soon released on bail, was never brought to trial, and died at New Orleans in 1889.

SUMMARY

1. After the election of Lincoln seven states seceded from the Union, and formed the ”Confederate States of America.”

2. Four other states joined the Confederacy later.

3. The refusal of the United States to recognize the right to secede led to the refusal to give up Federal forts in Charleston harbor. The attempt to take Sumter by force led to the appeal to arms.

4. The line which separated the troops of the two governments ran from Chesapeake Bay, across Virginia, and through Kentucky and Missouri, to New Mexico.

5. While the Union troops held the Confederates in check on the eastern end of the line, they broke through the line in the West, and, aided by the Union fleet, opened the Mississippi River.

6. The Confederates were thus driven from the Mississippi and forced back to the mountains of Georgia. Sherman was sent against them, and in 1864 marched eastward through the heart of the Confederacy to the Atlantic.

7. Marching north from Savannah, across Georgia and South Carolina, to Goldsboro in North Carolina, he was now in the rear of the Confederate army in Virginia.

8. Grant, meantime, with the Army of the Potomac, had fought a series of battles with Lee, and had besieged Richmond and Petersburg; and Sheridan had cleared out the Shenandoah valley.

9. Lee was thus forced, early in 1865, to leave Richmond, and while retreating westward he was forced to surrender.

SECESSION AND THE WAR FOR THE UNION

--------------------------------------------------------------------- _The South_ _The North_ The cotton states secede. Attempts to compromise.

The Confederacy formed. Buchanan's att.i.tude.

A const.i.tution adopted. The Crittenden Compromise.

Unites States property seized. A Thirteenth Amendment proposed.

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------------------------------------------ Buchanan attempts to provision Fort Sumter _Star of the West_ fired on.

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------------------- Lincoln inaugurated.

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------------------------------------------ Lincoln attempts to provision Fort Sumter The fort bombarded. The surrender.

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---------------------------------------------------------------------- Arkansas, North Carolina, The call to arms.

Virginia, and Tennessee secede. The march to Was.h.i.+ngton Richmond made the capital Fight in the streets of of the Confederacy. Baltimore. ------------------------------------------------------------------

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------------------ _The war opens_ -------------------

----------------------------------------------------------------- _Fighting in the West._ _Fighting along the Potomac and in Virginia_ _1861-1862._ Breaking the _1861._ The attempt to take Richmond.

Confederate line. Battle of Bull Run.

1. Line broken at Fort Henry and Fort Donelson and driven out of Kentucky and West Tennessee.

2. Driven out of Missouri and North Arkansas.

3. New Orleans taken.

4. Mississippi River nearly open.

_1863_. 1. Vicksburg and Port Hudson taken, and Mississippi River open to the Gulf.

2. The Confederacy cut in two.