US History

U.S. History Study Guide

©2018 of 194 The Union army made progress early in the battle, but Confederate reinforcements arrived late in the day from the Shenandoah Valley and beat up on the Union forces. The Union commander, Irvin McDowell, was made the scapegoat and was replaced with an officer who had some victories in minor skirmishes, George Brinton McClellan. During the fall and winter, both sides grew their ranks, trained troops, and obtained additional weapons, food and equipment, and horses and mules for the coming year’s campaigns. 13.14 Civil War 1862 The fighting in 1861 had disillusioned Americans north and south of the notion this would be a short war, 1862 showed how terrible its cost in human life would be. The Confederates would win another decisive battle at the battle of Bull Run/Manassas II, but the real bloodshed would begin with the two bloody days of the Battle of Shiloh in Tennessee and continuing through a series of battles in Virginia and America’s bloodiest single day, the Battle of Antietam in Maryland. The year also saw the first clash between ironclad warships and Lincoln announces his Emancipation Proclamation after Antietam. Shiloh Shiloh proved that this was not going to be a short war, and that it was going to be bloody. It demonstrated the importance of transportation on the outcome of battles. Grant and Sherman were beat on the first day, Don Carlos Buell showed up a day late in the day with supplies and turned the momentum into the second day, ensuring a Union victory but with a tremendous loss of life. Not only did the South lose the battle they lost a great general, Albert Sydney Johnston was killed at Shiloh, thought then to be the best general the South had, according to Jefferson Davis. To the North, Grant showed that this war could be won by a determined general, who, despite horrific losses the first day, could come back and win it the next day. Antietam Antietam is the single deadliest battle ever fought by any American army. Actual death tolls have never been fully counted because of the great numbers who died later from wounds and infections received in the battle. Despite heavy casualties, it gave the North a victory that allowed Lincoln a chance to issue the Emancipation Proclamation and change the direction of the war from preserving the Union to the abolition of slavery. Clash of the Ironclads (USS Monitor and CSS Merrimac) The history’s first clash between two ironclads, the USS Monitor and CSS Merrimac (also called CSS Virginia), at Hampton Roads, Virginia, on March 9, 1862. These were iron ships that were the precursors to the battleships. The Confederacy was the first to put the Merrimac into commission and Achieve Page 170