“The Red Sea of War”

This chapter examines how Americans read the Bible in response to the battle at Fort Sumter and the beginning of the Civil War. In the North, Henry Ward Beecher set the tone in his sermon, “The Battle Set in Array,” which called on the Exodus story to rouse northerners to war. As Beecher preached it, the Exodus was a war story, a story of God’s deliverance of his people in battle, but it was also a story that warned people that they could not just rely on God – they would have to join the fight. Many northerners shared Beecher’s zeal, including Catholics, some of whom saw wartime service as a way to earn the respect of others in a predominately anti-Catholic nation. Overall northerners embraced the war, viewing it as a noble enterprise that would improve the moral resolve of a nation that had become materialistic, immoral, and weak.

2. 1861

“1861” describes the events of that year, which began with the appointment of Jefferson Davis as president of the Confederacy. Following the Confederate bombardment of Fort Sumter, Lincoln called for troops, appointed George McClellan to command Union forces, and imposed a blockade against the South. The first battles were chaotic. Union forces (“Yankees”) benefited from greater manpower and technology; Southerners (“Rebels”) had a stronger military tradition and familiar terrain. Although the war did not begin with the aim of abolishing slavery, the institution played a role in military and diplomatic developments. Abolitionists hoped that Union war aims would transform into a struggle against slavery.

From Waiting Game to War

A month of anxious waiting came to an end in early April 1861 when Lincoln’s decision to send a relief expedition to Fort Sumter shattered an uneasy peace between the Union and the Confederacy and precipitated war and the last phase of secession. Just after delivering his Inaugural Address on March 4, 1861, in which he denounced secession as anarchy and pledged to hold federal properties as yet unseized in the South but not to initiate hostilities against the seceded states, Lincoln learned from Major Anderson that Fort Sumter would run out of supplies in about forty days. Whether to resupply the fort or order its evacuation was the defining issue of his first month in office. Against the advice of Republican conservatives led by William H. Seward, who were convinced that Southerners would voluntarily choose to reenter the Union in a matter of months if Lincoln refrained from any act that could touch off a war, Lincoln finally ordered a relief expedition but stipulated that no troops or ammunition would be sent in unless the Confederacy fired upon the expedition or the fort. On the orders of Jefferson Davis, Confederate artillery opened fire on the morning of April 12. On learning of the fort’s surrender, Lincoln called on all the states for militia troops to put down what he defined as a rebellion. Southerners viewed his troop call as a declaration of war to invade their homeland and end slavery. Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas, and North Carolina in the Upper South quickly seceded, but the border slave states, a key to future Union offensive operations, held firm in the Union.

Deadlock and a Deepening Crisis

Congressional efforts to quell secession through a sectional compromise collapsed in December. As Northerners debated ways to deal with secession, President James Buchanan, a Democrat who had long sympathized with Southern grievances, lost credibility on both sides when he declared secession to be an unconstitutional act that he was powerless to put down. Following the departure of House members from the Lower South and South Carolina’s secession on December 20, a Senate committee proposed the Crittenden Compromise, a package of constitutional amendments guaranteeing the protection of slavery, including the recognition of slavery in all present and future territories south of the Missouri Compromise line of 36° 30'. Lincoln emphatically rejected the territorial feature on the expansion of slavery, and the Republicans backed him by scuttling the compromise. At the same time, the governors in the Lower South denounced the surprise move by Major Robert Anderson of his federal garrison from the vulnerable Fort Moultrie to Fort Sumter in the Charleston harbor as a hostile act portending a new aggressive federal policy against secession. In what amounted to de facto secession, the governors ordered the seizure of federal forts and possessions in their states. War over Fort Sumter was averted when Buchanan and the South Carolina governor agreed to maintain the status quo in the wake of the firing on a poorly planned relief effort to resupply the fort.

The Union as It Was

When the Confederacy fired on Fort Sumter, Catholic northerners rallied to save the Union from its greatest threat. Some hoped that immigrant and Catholic bravery and sacrifice on the battlefield would forever end anti-Catholic nativism in America. As conservatives and Democrats, they also strongly resisted attempts to enlarge the purpose of the war, especially on the issue of emancipating southern slaves. Remembering the connections between antislavery politics and anti-Catholic nativism in the antebellum North, they feared Republicans’ attacks on slavery might be followed by assaults on their rights as naturalized citizens and Catholics. The most prominent pro-Union leaders in the North were the Irish Americans Archbishop John Hughes (1797–1864) of New York and the Bostonian Patrick Donahoe (1811–1901), owner of the widely published newspaper the Boston Pilot. Together these two men led Catholic conservatives’ fight to restore the Union as it was before the outbreak of war.

Heroes and Cowards

This chapter explores how ideas about honor and shame shaped how Civil War era Americans understood surrender. Robert Anderson was celebrated as a hero for his honorable surrender at Fort Sumter. By contrast, Union surrenders at San Antonio, San Augustin Springs, and Harpers Ferry, and Confederate surrenders at Fort Donelson and Fort Jackson, were seen as dishonorable.

Treated with the Greatest Civility

This chapter explores the role of surrender in American history prior to the Civil War, including the Revolutionary War, War of 1812, and Mexican War. It argues that American ideas about surrender grew out of notions that civilized warfare had rules. The chapter culminates with Major Robert Anderson's surrender at Fort Sumter in 1861.

Raising the White Flag

The American Civil War began with a laying down of arms by Union troops at Fort Sumter, and it ended with a series of surrenders, most famously at Appomattox Courthouse. But in the intervening four years, both Union and Confederate forces surrendered en masse on scores of other occasions. Indeed, roughly one out of every four soldiers surrendered at some point during the conflict. In no other American war did surrender happen so frequently. David Silkenat here provides the first comprehensive study of Civil War surrender, focusing on the conflicting social, political, and cultural meanings of the action. Looking at the conflict from the perspective of men who surrendered, Silkenat creates new avenues to understand prisoners of war, fighting by Confederate guerillas, the role of southern Unionists, and the experiences of African American soldiers. The experience of surrender also sheds valuable light on the culture of honor, the experience of combat, and the laws of war.

Never Surrender

This chapter seeks to situate how surrenders fit into the memorialization and memory of the Civil War. It argues that surrender sites, unlike battlefields, proved challenging to commemorate. This began in 1865 with Robert Anderson's return to Fort Sumter and the rise of the Lost Cause. Focusing on Fort Sumter, Vicksburg, Appomattox Courthouse, and Bennett Place, the chapter looks at the monuments built on these sites and how they were commemorated during the Civil War Centennial and Sesquicentennial.