Video transcript
- [Voiceover] All right Kim,so we left off in I guess, early-mid 1861, you haveLincoln gets inagurated, Fort Sumter which is kindof the first real conflict of the war, if not the first major battle. Lincoln forms his volunteer army, and then the rest of the southernstates secede, four more states secede. - [Kim] Right. - [Voiceover] And then whatwas the first major conflict? - [Kim] So the firstmajor conflict comes after a number of months. There are a couple of littleskirmishes here and there, but nothing super large until about 60,000 troops meet outside of Manassas, Virginia, at a place called Bull Run. An interesting fact, I think, is that Union armies andConfederate armies actually named battles differentthings, if you've ever been confused about this. The Union armies tendedto name battles after bodies of water, whereasthe Confederate armies tended to name them by nearby towns. So if you've ever heardthe Battle of Manassas and the Battle of Bull Run,they're the same thing, it's just the Union officersare talking about this creek, Bull Run, whereas theConfederates are talking about the town nearby. - [Voiceover] I see, and the 60,000 troops between the two of them. - [Kim] Right. So they meet, and this is veryclose to Washington, D.C., so much so that people goout and they bring picnics to watch this battle. - [Voiceover] They think it'sgoing to be entertaining. - [Kim] Yeah, they thinkit's going to be like a football game. And it is not like a football game. It is a gigantic battle,800 people die that day, which doesn't sound like a lot to us, but it was the most deadly battleever in American history up until that point. So it's a Confederate victory,which is very surprising to the Union, because theythink that they have such superior forces that thisis really going to be a very short war. And this is a quick rebellion, in 90 days we're going to be able to, you know, suppress this rebellion and that'll be it. But Bull Run is really the first sign that this is going to be a major war. It's not going to be quickand it is going to be very deadly. - [Voiceover] This was July of... - [Both] 1861. - [Voiceover] Okay, so nowit's clear to both sides, especially, I guess youcould say the North, that this is not going to be a short war. So they need to prepare. How are they approaching this? - [Kim] Well, so bothsides have some advantages and disadvantages. For the South, they have some of the same advantages that the UnitedStates would have had during the war for independence. They have home courtadvantage, we could say, which is that they knowthe territory very well and also there's a realincentive for people to protect their homes, right. You're gonna care moreabout a war that's happening on your property than awar that's gonna happen very far away. The other advantage that they have is just really, really terrificmilitary leadership. So they have Robert E. Lee, who is widely considered thegreatest general of his era. He's truly a military genius. He, in fact, was offered acommission in the Union army but when Virginia seceded,he went with Virginia. He preferred his home state. So he is a terrific general. The Union is gonna reallystruggle to come up with the kind of militaryleadership that the South has. - [Voiceover] Who is incharge of the Union or the Northern armies? You said, the United States Army. - [Kim] The United States Army. The first general thatLincoln puts in charge is George B. McClellan. This is problematic for a lot of reasons. One is that GeorgeMcClellan is a Democrat, so he doesn't agreepolitically with Lincoln. I think he would havepreferred peace, in fact in 1864 he runs againstLincoln for President on a platform of lettingthe South go, basically. And so Lincoln is struggling to match the South when it comes to military leadership, but he does have other advantages. For one thing, there are fourtimes as many free people in the North as there are in the South. - [Voiceover] And you madethe point, free people. - [Kim] Right. - [Voiceover] Because theSouth, as you mentioned, it has a majority of thepopulation was not free. - [Kim] I wouldn't say amajority of the population, in many states,- [Voiceover] In Deep South. - [Kim] In the Deep South states, right. But so there are onlyabout 9,000,000 people living in the South, andof those 9,000,000 people 3,500,000 to 4,000,000of them are enslaved. So they're not going to be fighting to continue the institution of slavery. By contrast, the Northhas 22,000,000 people and it also has aterrific industrial base. One of the major cultural differences between the North and South that leads to the Civil War is thatthe South is primarily agrarian, and the Northbecomes very industrial. But industry is really helpful in a war. They've got miles andmiles of railroad tracks which means that they can move supplies very quickly, and they alsohave hundreds and hundreds of factories that make it easyfor them to make munitions. - [Voiceover] This is the middle of the Industrial Revolution- [Kim] Right. - [Voiceover] and anindustrial base matters a lot. And so what's, given the North's advantages and the South's advantages, what's their strategies, how do they try to play to their strengths? - [Kim] Right, so the South, they are basically trying to outlast the North. They know that they have this territory, and if the North wants them to come back into the Union, they're going to have to conquer this territory. And even though it's hard to kind of tell, the territory of theSouth is actually larger than Western Europe.- [Voiceover] Wow. - [Kim] So in a way, theNorth has a bigger job to conquer the South than the Allies did in World War II, to conquer Europe. So they know that theNorth is gonna have to fight a war to conquer them, whereas the South just needs towin the war of waiting. - [Voiceover] Of attrition. - [Kim] Yeah, they'rehoping that the North will get tired of fighting. - [Voiceover] Fightingin another person's land, you're not defending your own land. - [Kim] Right, and theyknow that there are plenty of whites in the North who don't care about slavery. It's not in their.. - [Voiceover] They'reindifferent, what do they care. - [Kim] Yeah, what do they care, in fact some people are afraid thatif the slaves are freed in the South, they'reall gonna come up North and they're going to compete for labor with poor white people. So there are plenty of whites in the North who have no interest in the slaves in the South being free, even if that's not an early war aim of the North. So the South is hoping that maybe they can win a couple of reallybig battles that show this isn't gonna be a big war. - [Voiceover] Or it'd beso painful for the North to try to conquer the South, so to speak. - [Kim] And they'realso trying to show that they're serious, to aninternational audience, particularly England, becausethe South is producing 3/4 of the world's supplyof cotton at this point, and England is anindustrial nation which is built in many cases aroundtextile manufacturing. So they're hoping that if they show that they are serious abouttheir own nationhood that they're going to winthis war against the North that England willintercede on their behalf to protect their supply of cotton. - [Voiceover] So this wouldbe an appeal to England on purely economic grounds. - [Kim] Right. - [Voiceover] Fascinating. Because England, they didn't have slavery. - [Kim] No. - [Voiceover] But purelyeconomically, at least, appeal to them. - [Kim] So on the otherhand, the North's strategy is what they call "The Anaconda Plan". And the idea of the Anaconda Plan is that they are going to squeezethe South, economically. What they want to do, - [Voiceover] Like an anaconda. - [Kim] Like an anaconda, right. So they want to blockadethe Atlantic ocean because they don't wantthe South to be able to sell their cotton toget money, and they also don't want the South to be able to buy the kinds of things thatthey're going to need to make a war happen. They also want to controlthe Mississippi River cuz that's the real main artery of commerce in the West. Anyone who is gonna beshipping their grain or their cotton is gonna be shipping it down the Mississippi tothe port of New Orleans. So the Union hopes thatif they can basically surround the South, and make sure nothing gets in or out, theneventually they're just gonna starve to death. - [Voiceover] This alsogoes through the industrial bays, it can also producemore ships and etc. - [Kim] Right, and it takesthem a while to do that, in fact at the start ofthe war, the Union only has 90 ships. I've heard it comparedto "Five leaky boats". Right, we're not a navalpower at this point and so it's gonna take them a while to build up the kind of naval power they need to do that, cuz this is3500 miles of coastline that they're gonna need to patrol. - [Voiceover] I'm justlooking at this map, not getting too much intodetails, it looks like a lot of the battlesare concentrated right in this Virginia/Maryland area, and then there's more, it's alittle bit more sparse but you have a few thatare in the Deep South and along this Mississippi corridor. - [Kim] There are two major theaters of the war. We'd say the Eastern Theater, and this is that 100-mile corridor between Washington and Richmond,where a huge amount of the fighting takes place. It's important toremember that the capital of the Confederacy and the capital of the United States are only 100 miles apart. - [Voiceover] This capitalis, you can't see it on this map but it'ssomeplace in the middle of Virginia, and then D.C.,literally, as you mentioned you said it was 100 miles apart? - [Kim] Yep. - [Voiceover] Fascinating.
