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The American Civil War is a pivotal and ugly moment in American history. But it might not be as cut and dry as North vs. South. Today, let's break down some myths about Lincoln, women soldiers, racist Northerners, and Southern Union sympathizers.
'Misconceptions' is back with an all-new episode that will challenge your perception of the War of the Rebellion. Did you know there was a Civil War naval battle off the coast of France? Yeah. That's just the tip of the iceberg.
Join host Justin Dodd in an endless pursuit of the truth.
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0:00
Today, Abraham Lincoln is lauded as one of the heroes of the American Civil War
0:04
But he wasn't universally beloved in the mid-1800s, even amongst Northerners. In fact, this defining era in United States history is often more complicated than we've
0:13
been led to believe. There were New Yorkers who instigated a bloody riot in response to
0:18
Lincoln's wartime maneuvers, Confederate leaders who lamented their state's secession from the
0:22
Union, and even a Civil War naval battle that took place thousands of miles from the United States
0:29
Hi, I'm Justin Dodd, and I'll touch on those stories and more today as we clear up some
0:33
misconceptions about the American Civil War. Let's get to it. Lincoln's policies enjoyed widespread support in the North
0:49
The story of the Civil War is all about division within one's own country. But
0:54
The schisms ran deeper than just North against South. There were also cracks within the Union
0:59
even after the Southern states seceded. Up north, you had a group called the Peace
1:03
Democrats that opposed basically everything about Lincoln's leadership and his war. In time, these dissidents would be nicknamed Copperheads after the Venomous Snake. Some of
1:12
them were Southern loyalists, others were Democrats who strictly adhered to a reading
1:17
of the Constitution that privileged states' rights above federal powers. One of Lincoln's most notable critics was New York Governor Horatio Seymour. Tensions between
1:26
the two leaders came to an ugly head during the Civil War draft riots of 1863. Many of New York's
1:32
working-class citizens were incensed over the Enrollment Act of 1863, which established a draft
1:38
lottery and provided a means for wealthy, draft-eligible men to avoid conscription by paying
1:44
a hefty fee instead. What might have begun with principled indignation towards the legislation
1:49
soon devolved into terroristic violence and destruction. The rioters targeted African Americans in the businesses that catered to them, killing many and even setting fire to an orphanage
1:59
Governor Seymour, for his part, was not only seen by the public to be potentially siding
2:03
with the rioters, he even referred to them as my friends in a speech shortly afterward
2:08
Elsewhere in the country, when former Ohio Congressman Clement L. Valendaia made an
2:13
anti-war speech, he was seized by Union troops and tried by a military court
2:18
Baldym was all set to go to prison until Lincoln decided to commute his sentence and
2:22
banish him to the Confederacy. Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis were staunch secessionists
2:28
Jefferson Davis, the man who would eventually become the Confederacy's first and only president
2:32
and who, in my opinion, looks like Abraham Lincoln's evil twin, was originally a senator
2:37
from Mississippi who opposed early calls for secession. But when Davis learned that his home
2:42
state officially voted to leave the Union in January 1861, he decided to stick by his
2:47
state rather than his country. He did so with a heavy heart, saying it was
2:52
"...the saddest day of my life." Remember, this was a time when many politicians and citizens
2:57
thought of themselves in terms of state first, country second. In Davis's eyes, there was no
3:02
other choice, and he eventually headed to Montgomery, Alabama, where the heads of the
3:06
recently-seceded southern states were planning to meet and form the Confederate States of America
3:11
Now, let's be clear. Even when Davis had his doubts about secession, his mind was entirely made up about the war's
3:17
defining ideological difference. In 1857, a newspaper reports in proclaiming that, slavery as it exists in the United States was a moral a social and a political blessing Even if there were plenty of racists in the North and Unionists in the South the question
3:33
of slavery largely defined the outlines of the war. Robert E. Lee followed a similar ideological trajectory on the issue of secession
3:41
Though he was initially against it, his real loyalties were with his home state of Virginia
3:46
After Virginia's state convention voted to secede by a count of 88 to 55 on April 17
3:51
In 1861, Lee resigned from the United States military, where he was a colonel and went to
3:56
work for the Confederate Army. While in command, Lee served under Davis, who apparently got over his whole secession
4:02
phobia in a big way. In a late 1862 speech to the legislature of Mississippi, he declared
4:09
"...after what has happened during the last two years, my only wonder is that we consented
4:13
to live for so long a time in association with such miscreants.
4:17
The Emancipation Proclamation ended slavery. So did Lincoln abolish slavery with the Emancipation Proclamation
4:26
Not exactly. When Lincoln delivered the message on January 1st, 1863, it declared
4:30
"...all persons held as slaves within any state or designated part of a state, the people
4:36
whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thence forward
4:40
and forever free." Old-timey jargon aside, Honest Abe was basically saying, slaves in the rebelling states are
4:47
free if we win. It was what many people wanted to hear, but it still had some important limitations
4:53
First, it left out border states like Kentucky and Delaware, and none of it would really
4:58
matter if the Union didn't prevail. Despite that, it was also a huge win for abolitionists
5:04
This was really an announcement that the Civil War was no longer a war just to preserve the Union
5:08
Freeing the enslaved population was now an official objective for Lincoln and his army
5:14
It emboldened the abolitionists in the North and made opposing countries like France and
5:18
UK, bristle at the thought of supporting the pro-slavery forces of the Confederacy
5:23
Still, it would be another two years before slavery would actually come to an end in the
5:28
United States. In June 1865, Union troops led by General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston
5:34
Texas and announced that all 250,000 enslaved people in the state were officially free
5:39
Today, Juneteenth is celebrated on June 19th to honor this occasion, though it's worth
5:44
noting that even after that date, slavery continued in some places within the United
5:48
States. Neither Delaware nor Kentucky ended slavery during the Civil War, so some historians
5:54
estimate there were still around 65,000 enslaved people in 1865. In December 1865, the end of slavery was finally put into law when Congress passed the 13th
6:04
Amendment, which stated, "...neither slavery nor involuntary servitude except as a punishment
6:09
for a crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted shall exist within the United
6:14
States or any place subject to their jurisdiction." All amputations were done without anesthesia
6:20
We've discussed some of the underpinnings of the war, but what about the actual warfare
6:25
You've seen it in plenty of movies. The wounded Civil War soldier is brought into a medical tent on one of those old-timey stretchers
6:32
where he's attended to by a kindly nurse and a heavily bearded doctor
6:37
The two look at the bloody, pulsating limb and decide to amputate before gangrene sets
6:42
in, but this is a battlefield in 1863. There's no anesthesia in sight. There's only a hacksaw
6:47
a complimentary bullet for the soldier to bite down on and a doctor who is just dead behind the eyes It won be pretty but it time for that limb to come off If that the image that pops into your head congratulations you seen glory But despite what the silver screen suggests anesthesia is estimated to have been used in
7:05
around 95% of all surgeries during the Civil War, according to the National Museum of Civil War
7:11
Medicine, which is a very real and very specific museum. Ether had made its way into medicine as
7:16
a general anesthetic in 1846, with chloroform arriving the very next year
7:22
That being said, this new-fangled way of putting people under in order to operate was still
7:26
somewhat controversial at the time, and the Civil War doctors who used it actually had
7:31
very little, if any, hands-on experience with it. Of the two, chloroform was the preferred method of anesthesia because it worked faster and
7:39
was far less likely to, you know, explode. Now, there were times when anesthesia couldn't be used, but according to the medical and
7:47
surgical history of the War of the Rebellion, prepared under the direction of Surgeon General
7:51
Joseph K. Barnes, many of those cases might have been shot injuries, where there were
7:56
concerns about negative side effects from the drugs. Even then, the report says that there were just 254 cases reported without any anesthesia. Brutal
8:07
Only men fought during the Civil War. You probably imagine those injured soldiers as men
8:12
And while it's true that women were not legally permitted to serve in the military at the
8:16
time, stories have come to light over the years indicating that anywhere from 400 to
8:20
750 women actually managed to sneak through to the front lines and pick up arms to fight
8:25
for their country, or for the Confederacy. While that's an impossibly small percentage of the 2.75 million soldiers that fought in
8:32
the war, the question remains, how did they do it? Some likely found a way to pass as men during pre-combat physicals a la Mulan, while others
8:41
might have snuck into camps once the fighting began. Once they were in, these women were just as involved as the men
8:47
There are counts of women directly involved in spy missions, reconnaissance, and active combat
8:52
One famous individual that may fit under this category is Jenny Hodgers, who fought for the
8:56
Union under the name Albert Cashier. I qualify that last sentence because some historians argue that Cashier is more likely
9:03
be a trans man than a disguised woman, even if we didn't have the vocabulary to identify him
9:08
as such in his time. In any case, it's a pretty cool story. Legend places Albert at dozens of
9:13
battles during his three years at war, and at one point it said he escaped from a Confederate prison
9:18
by overpowering a guard and fleeing. Albert survived the war and remained under this assumed
9:23
identity the rest of his life. Abraham Lincoln was the keynote speaker on the day of the Gettysburg
9:29
Address. On November 19, 1863, a crowd of 15,000 gathered to witness the dedication of a military
9:35
cemetery on the battlefield of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, where thousands of Union and
9:40
Confederate soldiers had died over a three-day span in July. Coming in at around 270 words
9:46
Honest Abe powered through the Gettysburg Address in less than three minutes. And
9:51
contrary to what you might have heard, no, Lincoln did not scribble the speech onto an envelope on
9:56
the way to the battlefield. Lincoln's secretary later commented that, with all the noise
10:00
distractions, and rockings and joltings of the train, it would have been impossible to write
10:05
anything on the moving train, and the surviving drafts of the speech are written in Lincoln's
10:09
normal, steady handwriting. She did note that Lincoln finished up the speech that morning
10:14
but romanticizing it as history's greatest rush job is definitely overstating it
10:19
One thing that you might not know about the address is that Lincoln was not pegged to be the main speaker on that day That honor belonged to Edward Everett a distinguished scholar and orator who took the
10:30
stage before Lincoln. Everett's speech would go on for around two hours, totaling upwards of 13,000
10:37
words. It was a speech he poured his heart and soul into, along with months of research. He
10:42
obsessed over every account of the battle from both the northern and southern perspectives in
10:47
order to get the words just right. Throughout the speech, he retold the story of the Battle
10:51
of Gettysburg, interspersed with flowery ruminations on the idea of liberty and the plea for unity
10:57
saying, Kind of beautiful, right? Lincoln sure thought so. After Everett finished his speech
11:14
the president shook his hand and told him, I am more than gratified. I am grateful to you
11:19
Then the thunder stealer-in-chief rang out with four score and seven years ago
11:24
and made Everett's magnum opus a historical footnote in under 180 seconds
11:29
Even Everett himself knew he was one-upped by Lincoln, writing soon after that
11:33
I should be glad if I could flatter myself that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion
11:37
in two hours as you did in two minutes. The war was fought entirely in the U.S
11:44
Gettysburg is perhaps the classic vision of a Civil War battlefield. Green
11:48
hilly fields ensconced in artillery smoke. In reality, though, the Civil War was far from
11:53
landlocked. Naval warfare played a huge role in the conflict, with the Union victory at the Battle
11:58
of Port Royal and the standstill at the Battle of Hampton Roads among the most pivotal maritime
12:04
clashes. The Civil War also made a little naval history when the Confederacy's Hunley became the
12:09
first submarine to sink an opposing warship when it attacked the USS Housatonic in 1864
12:16
You can check out our episode of Inventors Killed by Their Own Inventions for a little more on that particular adventure and seafaring technology
12:22
One naval battle is noteworthy because it did not take place in the waters of America
12:26
at all. In June 1864, the North and South came to blows in the waters of Cherbourg, France and the
12:32
English Channel. The battle began brewing when the Confederate ship, the CSS Alabama, was docked at Cherbourg
12:39
Harbor, hoping for some repairs. For years, the ship had been wreaking havoc on U.S. vessels
12:44
resulting in the plunder of more than 64 ships and causing millions of dollars in damages
12:50
The USS Kearsarge, helmed by John A. Winslow, had been pursuing the Alabama for months. Once Winslow
12:56
got word from the U.S. minister in Paris that the ship was docked and prone, he moved in for the kill
13:02
Upon hearing that the Kearsarge was ready for battle, Alabama captain Raphael Semes prepped
13:07
his ship and met his Union foe nine miles off the coast of Cherbourg. The Alabama was the first to
13:13
fire, but there was just one problem. The Kearsarge was draped in a thick anchor chain that protected
13:19
it from enemy artillery. Soon, the Alabama was taking on water, the white flag was up, and the
13:25
Confederate Captain Raphael Sims was all but defeated. Instead of capture, though, Sims and
13:30
some of his surviving men were saved by a nearby British ship. In all, around 20 Confederate troops
13:36
died compared to just one Union soldier
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