all right guys welcome to unit 14 the last of the units uh in this unit we're going to talk about the uh the american civil war uh i've subtitled the american idiot for all you uh uh english majors out there um okay so the civil war this is this might be one of the longest units we have because the war is very very important and there's a lot of very important battles but also very important events uh beyond battles that took place here so we're going to be breaking down unit 14 into five parts and in part one we're going to talk about the the the awakening of the civil war uh how it began uh talking about a kind of the formation of the confederate states of america comparisons of north and south uh fort sumter where it actually all begins and then won one of the early battles of the american civil war part two we're going to talk about how the civil war began to intensify in the year 1862. we see a very big ramping up of the war the war goes from relatively small to all-encompassing here in 1862. then in part three we're going to talk about the turning of the tide in which we'll look at how the union began to turn the tide of the war against the confederacy and then in part four we'll talk about how the union will ultimately grind down the confederacy and win the american civil war and then in part five we'll talk about the significance of the american civil war but this is part one the civil war awakening and what we'll cover in part one is uh you know the causes of the war as being a subject of great debate and i'll give you uh an interpretation among historians and the consensus historians have today as to what caused this great uh war in our nation's history after that we'll get into a discussion about the creation of the confederate states of america and after that we'll talk about the event that actually sparked the american civil war and that's of course the crisis at fort sumter in charleston harbor then we'll get into a brief discussion about the comparisons about the union and the confederacy so we have a good idea of the numbers involved here and who should win and how long it should take and ultimately why it didn't happen the way it should have happened at least on paper then we'll finish out part one by talking about the first important uh major land battle of the american civil war known as the battle of first bull run but first let's start with the causes of the american civil war now hopefully throughout the course you've understood you've got a good sense of what is bringing this thing about but you should understand that uh even today what causes the american civil war is a subject of great debate not only among historians but also among the general american public now this this chart i have here you know it's kind of broken down by political affiliation democrats independence republicans but i think it's a useful um graphic to kind of show you that even today the debate that rages over what caused the american civil war usually comes down to either a belief that states rights brought this war about or the institution of slavery but brought this uh this war about uh and you know there are arguments for both sides of of this debate but let me kind of give you the consensus among historians today as to what caused this great rupture in our nation's history okay so let me give you then kind of an interpretation here in the consensus among historians what actually sparks the american civil war was the secession of the deep south states that first wave of secession that's what actually causes the american civil war to begin in 1861 but that's not the full picture you have to try to understand then why did they secede why did they leave the union and risk a civil war that's where it becomes a little more complicated and that's where the arguments of well they left in order to prevent or to protect states rights or they left in order to protect slavery let me build upon this idea here see what happens after secession of the lower south states is you know lincoln is faced with a choice he could if he had wanted to let these states go in peace that could have that was an option he could have absolutely let these states go in peace but if he does that then that would be lincoln admitting that the united states is broken and if you let these states go in peace then the likelihood that secession occurs again in the future is a very real possibility if secession is allowed to occur then what would happen the next time the state of the united states disagreed with the federal government well they would just leave the union so lincoln's decision here when he comes into office that he is going to refuse to recognize succession and vow to uphold the federal laws within the seceded states now this is something that those seceded states cannot tolerate so their decision to secede is what placed the nation on the precipice of war that's why historians have found a consensus here that what actually sparks the revolution there i'm sorry the civil war is the succession of the lower south states but it's more complicated guys that have everything is more complicated what caused the secession of the lower south states did they leave in order to protect states rights did they believe states rights was being threatened or perhaps was it slavery now this is a question that you know i can try all day to convince you of uh there's either states rights or slavery being the root cause here of the civil war but what i like to do as a historian is just kind of let the people that live during that time period speak for themselves let them explain to us why they decided to leave the union and put the nation on the precipice of civil war and the best example i can give you comes from a speech given by the actual vice president of the confederacy a man by the name of alexander h stevens in 1861 he gave in savannah georgia what became known as the famous cornerstone speech and in this speech if you would have been in the audience that day you would have heard very clearly why these southern states had left the union now here is a long excerpt of this speech and i won't read all of it you can pause the video and read the the whole excerpt if you want but in this speech what he did is he he made the case that you know the the constitution of the united states uh was created and and was at the time in 1861 being interpreted by the northern free states as creating a government that uh you know uh was uh all about equality of of the races and equality of humankind and you can see some of the points he's making here that the the prevailing ideas entertained by him and he's talking about jefferson at that point was the and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution were that the enslavement of of the african was in violation of the laws of nature that it was wrong in principle social moral and political uh that it was an evil they knew not that not well how to deal with but the general opinion of them was that uh one day it would just pass away these ideas stephen's goes on were fundamentally wrong that they rested upon the assumption of the equality of the races and that that was an error that it was a sandy foundation and that when the idea of that government that it was built upon when the storm came the wind blew it and it fell he goes later on in this speech to describe the confederate government and the confederate constitution and the reasons why they left the union and decided to become an independent nation he states our government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas that its foundations are laid its cornerstone rest upon the great truth and again guys his words that the negro was not equal to the white man and that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and moral condition guys what he's telling you here is that the reason these states left the union is because they believed that the constitution of the united states was being interpreted in a very radical way not how it should have been interpreted and that they left the union because they believed that the north was a beginning to wage war on slavery they left in other words they left the union in order to protect the institution of slavery they believed that it was threatened you don't in his speech read anything about states rights you don't read anything about that all you hear in his speech in which he is explaining to you why they left the union and have placed the nation on the precipice of war it was all because of slavery because they believed slavery to be under assault under attack and left the union in order to protect it this is the consensus among historians today that slavery was the root cause of the american civil war and here's a good way to think of it and you may disagree with it but here's a good way to think of this idea think about the united states had slavery never existed meaning all the way back there at the founding of jamestown slavery never came to the united states and it never took root here and it never existed in our nation's history do we have an american civil war you may say yes i would say no and i would be backed by the consensus of historians so what's causing the american civil war is the secession of the lower south states what's causing them to secede it was in order to protect slavery meaning slavery is the root cause of this great war in american history okay so that's kind of the first issue here of part one the causes of the war being the subject of a great debate even today uh you look you can believe what you want to believe i'm just giving you the consensus view among historians we have done decades of work on all of this so we uh we feel like we have a pretty good grasp on what's going on here but you're free to believe whatever you want okay what i want to get into now is to talk about what did those first wave of seceding states what did they do after they left the union and what we find is that they came back together and created a new nation that they called the confederate states of america and that's what i want to talk about next okay guys so let's let's talk about the creation of the confederacy um after the secession of the first wave of southern states uh they they existed for a brief period as independent nations uh but they needed to be bound together they needed to be brought back together and form a new government and in march of 1861 uh the first seven states to leave the union decided to send representatives to montgomery alabama with the purpose of creating a constitution and creating a new government this convention was known as the montgomery convention and here's a picture on the left here this is the building that they met in montgomery when these representatives came together in montgomery their first order of business was to create a temporary government so that it could write a new constitution and then write laws and then hold elections under this new constitution so this was what was being done at the montgomery convention in 1861. all of these states had representatives there each of the states had one vote in this convention and each state was sovereign to each of the others this is why they only had one vote now i want to briefly talk about the constitution that they created here at the montgomery convention the uh became known then as the confederate constitution uh in many ways the confederate constitution was identical to the united states constitution and this just highlights the fact that what these states were doing is they they were not rejecting the u.s constitution by seceding from the union they had left because they were upset with the way northerners were interpreting that constitution so it would make sense then that their constitution they create was very very similar then to the united states constitution and it was it was almost identical there were some differences though uh worth noting for example there was clear and concise guarantee of state sovereignty meaning that the states would have primacy over any type of national government created here in these southern states it also had clear and concise guarantee of slavery meaning slavery was cemented it is not going anywhere it cannot be threatened you also had in this constitution clear and concise language that guaranteed slavery in any territories claimed by the confederacy remember they put that in because that had been the big issue you also saw in this confederate constitution a restriction on protective tariffs they of course threw that in because of the uproar overprotective tariffs in the 1830s and then actually two differences here the confederate constitution were in my opinion i think actually good things for example the president of the confederacy was given a line-item veto uh we don't have this in our federal government today but what this allowed the president of the confederacy to do is you know any bill that came to his desk he could veto just a single portion of the of the bill rather than vetoing the entire bill yeah this i actually think this was a great idea it actually made government more efficient and if we had something like this today this would eliminate half of the pork pork barrel spending that is attached to legislative measures today also a difference of the confederate constitution was that the president was going to only be eligible to serve one term of six years no re-elections i i think this is actually a good idea as well it'd be interesting to see if the united states could do something like this but the big differences were just very clear and concise language that guaranteed not only state sovereignty but also slavery and slavery in the territories other than that it was relatively a carbon copy of the united states constitution um once this constitution was formed it was now time to hold elections to elect the officers and the officials of this new confederate nation um here's a picture of the first confederate cabinet [Music] there were a good sprinkling of people in the confederate cabinet from all of the southern states virtually every southern state that left the union was uh um represented here uh in in the government however the president that was elected in 1861 of the confederacy was actually not even a radical he wasn't even a southern radical he was actually a very moderate southerner he was actually a guy that had opposed secession but his name was jefferson davis he was chosen because he had a long career in national politics before this moment he had served as a senator from his home state he had been a secretary of war he hadn't even been a vice presidential candidate he was considered kind of the logical choice to be the president for the confederacy because he was not a radical he was more of a moderate but his name was jefferson davis he was from the state of mississippi he pretty much was the best that the south had to offer in terms of political leadership and this is why he was chosen so what we had then is that you know this first wave of seceding states came back together in march of 1861 and formed an independent nation that they called the confederate states of america the point here is by the time lincoln is inaugurated in march of 1861 we have two independent nations existing in what used to be the larger united states of america we had the united states of america in the north and we have the confederate states of america in the south this means that the potential for conflict is extremely high and of course we're going to see that the fact we have these two independent nations is going to lead to a crisis the crisis of fort sumter and that's where we'll turn to okay the crisis of fort sumter uh if you don't know what fort sumter was or you don't know where it was don't worry i'll explain to you here in a second but let me kind of give you the background to how this crisis at fort sumter comes about after the first wave of secession and after the formation of the confederate states of america this led to an issue now within the confederacy throughout the confederacy which are the states there outlined in brown throughout the confederacy there were federal you know u.s military forts sprinkled throughout these confederate states the confederacy cannot allow these u.s military forts to be maintained by the us military because this would then be a foreign military occupying their soil so what you saw happening there is uh the confederacy needed to have these forts surrendered to them and a lot of people were worried that some of these u.s military detachments in these sports were not going to surrender these forts but what we see is that throughout early 1861 all across the confederacy these forts are being surrendered to the confederacy and given up without a fight it even happened right here in texas in san antonio and this is all taking place before lincoln is inaugurated many of these federal forts are being are surrendering to the confederates without incident and this is all because lincoln is not in office yet nobody knows what to do so the officers of these forts throughout the south are surrendering because they don't want to be responsible for starting a war because they have no orders from president lincoln because he's not president yet now all of these sports across the south are being surrendered except for one in charleston south carolina the situation is different right in the harbor charleston harbor is fort sumter and this fort was a u.s military fort and you can see that from a strategic position this fort is easily held it doesn't have to really surrender because it sits right in the middle of charleston harbor it's not on land now fort sumter is occupied by about 200 u.s military soldiers and their commander i'll introduce this commander here in a second but at charleston harbor you know the eyes of the nation in both the confederacy and the union they all turn towards fort sumter and realize that if something isn't going to happen if war is going to begin it's likely to begin here so before lincoln's inaugurated you know fort sumter because it's not on land it doesn't it's not really forced to surrender now you can see there the other two red marks these are other forts on land that are occupied by confederate forces so fort sumter is surrounded but it's really hard to force this fort to surrender because it's sitting right in the middle of charleston harbor now everyone agrees that if something's going to happen it's clear that it's probably going to happen here okay and everyone's waiting for lincoln to take office to figure out what lincoln will do concerning fort sumter once he is inaugurated lincoln is now faced with some very tough choices concerning fort sumter now we talked earlier about how lincoln is going to refuse to recognize that secession is legal and by doing that he is not going to recognize the legitimacy of the confederate states of america he believes those states to not be an independent nation he believes those things to only be states that are in rebellion now by taking that position he cannot surrender then fort sumter to the confederates okay he can't do it if he surrenders the fort to the confederates then that will be legitimizing the confederate states of america but if he maintains the fort if he refuses to surrender the fort he risks starting a war so these are tough choices here what should he do if he surrenders the fort then he is recognizing the legitimacy of the confederacy if he holds the fort he risks war we see in his first inaugural address what his viewpoint was on the prospects of a civil war and these are kind of the important parts here he quotes in his first he says in his first and daughter address that in your hand he's talking to the confederacy in your hands my dissatisfied fellow countrymen and not in mine is the momentous issue of civil war he assures them that the government will not assail them that they can have no conflict without themselves being the aggressors they have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the government of the united states and that he shall have the most solemn oath to preserve protect and defend it at the very end of his inaugural address you know he appeals to the confederates to not be hasty to not do something stupid i am loath to close lincoln says we are not enemies but friends we must not be enemies and what he does here at the end of his inaugural address is he appeals to the better angels of their nature hoping that they will not do something stupid here at fort sumter so lincoln's in a tough position and he's made it known that if a war starts it's going to be the confederacy that starts it so what does the confederacy face here at fort sumter well if the confederates allow the american flag to continue to fly over fort sumter then that means they're truly not an independent nation it means that secession is a joke and their new nation is a joke and to allow the flag to continue over fort sumter subverts everything that they've done so for the confederacy that fort has to be surrendered so this is why there's a crisis being created here lincoln can't give the fort up because it'll be legitimizing the confederacy the confederacy needs the fort to be given up otherwise they are a joke the crisis is very tense in april of 1861 the commander of fort sumter his name was major robert anderson here's a picture of him in april 1861 anderson sends a letter to abraham lincoln informing him that the supplies of fort sumter are running low and if the fort is not resupplied he will have to abandon the fort he will have to surrender the fort so now lincoln is forced into a very tough decision if he resupplies the fort it is likely to start a war if he doesn't resupply the fort the fort falls into the hands of the confederacy this is a tough choice ultimately lincoln will decide to go ahead and resupply the fort with provisions only no soldiers he's not going to reinforce this fort you can see this letter that he wrote to the governor of south carolina in informing the governor that any attempt an attempt will be made to resupply fort sumter with provisions only and that if attempt be not resisted no effort to throw in men arms or ammunition will ever be made except in the case of an attack on the fort so what lincoln has done here is he has now placed the ball in the court of the confederates he is going to resupply the fort with provisions only and if the war is going to start it's going to be up to the confederates to start the ball is in their court you can see this letter is april 4th 1861. okay uh the governor of south carolina will inform president jefferson davis of lincoln's intentions uh something interesting there you notice that lincoln did not send a letter to jefferson davis informing him that he was going to resupply the fort he could not send that letter to jefferson davis if he sends the letter to davis that's legitimizing the confederate government and he doesn't recognize that so he sends the letter to the governor of south carolina informing him that he's going to provision the fort well the governor of south carolina forwards that letter onto jefferson davis jefferson davis considers lincoln's decision to resupply the fort as an act of war it's clear that he's not that lincoln is not going to give up the fort so davis's response is to order the confederate military to go ahead and force the surrender of fort sumter the commander of the confederate forces surrounding fort sumter is this man on the screen one of the best names in american history pierre gustov borgard um beauregard is instructed by davis to force the surrender of fort sumter uh beauregard will send a letter to major anderson inside the fort telling him to surrender the fort or the confederacy will fire upon it anderson cannot do it so on april 12 1861 in the early morning hours of this day the confederate batteries surrounding fort sumter opened fire on the fort from all different angles the bombardment will last for over 36 hours now interesting enough nobody died in fort sumter it's a very well-built fort no one was killed in the exchange but it was clear that the fort was not going to be able to be resupplied and with no hope of aid the fort was ultimately surrendered to the confederacy anderson and his men were allowed to return to the north but the damage had been done right here on april 12 1861 in charleston harbor this was the beginning of the american civil war all right so what's significant about the crisis of fort sumter well i just kind of mentioned it is that uh this is where the american civil war began this was where the shooting started in the defining moment in american history this is where it all starts but the other reason it's significant concerns lincoln's response to the showing of fort sumter [Music] lincoln now has a war on his hands he now has a rebellion taking place lincoln responded to the shelling of fort sumter by calling on the states for the creation of a 75 000 man volunteer army in order to put down the rebellion here's an excerpt from his proclamation of april 15th just three days after fort sumter which you can see he's telling everyone that the laws of the united states have been and for some time passed are now opposed and execution of them are being obstructed in the states of south carolina georgia alabama florida mississippi louisiana and texas and what he's arguing is uh he needs to enforce the laws of the united states constitution uh within these states that these states are in a state of rebellion and he is now calling on the states to send 75 000 men for the creation of an army in order to suppress these said combinations and to cause the laws to be duly executed so this is another reason this crisis of force sumpter was significant not only does it start to board but we see lincoln calling on the states for the creation of an army in order to put down a rebellion in order to help him enforce the laws of the united states within the confederacy the other reason the crisis of fort sumter is significant is the result of lincoln's proclamation it was now clear to some of the other southern states that had not left the union that lincoln intended to wage war on the south and that led to the second wave of secession lincoln's decision to call for the 75 000 man army that a result of the shelling of fort sumter leads to the second wave of secession and the second wave of secession were the states of virginia north carolina tennessee and arkansas these were the four states of the second wave of secession now i do want to show you or do highlight draw attention to that you see these states in yellow of missouri kentucky a portion of virginia that we know today is west virginia maryland and delaware these were slave states that did not leave the union they never left the union they remained loyal to the union uh we'll talk more about them as we go through uh the american civil war but uh one of the reasons fort sumter was significant is that it will lead uh to lincoln issuing the proclamation for the for the creation of the army and that will in turn lead to the second wave of secession those four states virginia north carolina tennessee and arkansas will secede from the union and then very quickly join the confederacy okay so we've talked about the causes of the war the creation of the confederacy and the event that actually sparks the war at fort sumter i want to now talk about i want to kind of compare the union and the confederacy so that you have a good idea of what each side is up against in terms of population uh the union had roughly 22.6 million people living in 24 states plus some territories uh they also during the war the union had its significant wartime immigration in fact one in five soldiers that served in the union armies were actually foreign born many of them had just recently arrived to the united states and they saw joining the military as a quick way to earn a living quick way to earn some money now out of that 22.6 million you know that includes old men children and women they're not going to fight in the war what you have then of the 22.6 million have 5.9 million able-bodied males that are eligible for service in the military now not all of them will serve we'll talk about the enlistments here in a second but you have 5.9 million able-bodied males eligible for service in the military for the union how about the confederacy the confederacy had roughly 8.8 million people living in in 11 states plus some portions of the new mexico territory uh the problem here is that eight of that 8.8 million 3.7 million of them were slaves and they are not going to fight in the confederate military so when you take out the slaves when you take out women when you take out old men and you take out children out of the 8.8 million what you wind up with is only 1.25 million able-bodied males eligible for service in the confederate military what does this all mean it means the confederacy is outnumbered but what about the enlistments meaning how many of the eligible men served in the military for the union you had about 2 million men serve in some capacity in the union military during the american civil war that actually represents 34 percent of the able-bodied males in the union serving in the military the rest of those able-bodied men were of course working in factories or working in farms or had found ways to not serve in the military the confederacy of the 1.25 million they had eligible for service over 800 000 of them are going to end up serving in the confederate military that is a percentage of 64 percent the only way that the confederacy could field 64 of its able-bodied males was because of the existence of slavery slavery allowed the confederacy to field a higher percentage of its able-bodied males in the ranks of the military now the only reason i mentioned that is that abraham lincoln was very much aware of this he understood that slavery allowed the confederacy to maintain a larger army than they really should be able to and the reason i tell you that is because as the war drags on lincoln will focus on perhaps taking away that slave labor from the south in order to help defeat the confederacy so that's of course a spoiler alert for the emancipation proclamation but we're not there yet so these are the comparisons of enlistments what about the economic comparisons well the union had a very balanced economy it had agriculture and industry it had commerce in fact in 1860 according to the census of 1860 there were 110 000 large factories in the union in the north uh that that was producing 96 of the nation's locomotives and producing 97 percent of the nation's firearms the confederacy however was mostly agricultural it relied on a staple caught a staple crop of cotton it didn't produce a lot of food there were not very large factories uh it had very little liquid capital that's actual tangible money so this made then for the confederacy it's very hard for them to buy supplies they had to trade cotton for supplies from europe what does all this mean the union is in a better position to wage a modern war like the civil war the confederacy is not what about naval comparisons well the union had a very large navy you know all the u.s naval ships are part of the union so they had a very large navy and this is going to allow the union to blockade the confederacy and to prevent the supplies that the confederacy needs coming from europe the union also had very skilled naval officers most of the naval officers held from the new england states and these people had grown up on the water they knew uh how to sail ship they were just very skilled naval officers how about the confederacy well it really didn't have a navy any naval vessels that the confederacy used were vessels that they had confiscated from the union that wasn't very many of them without a navy they would know they're never going to be able to break the union blockade it's going to make getting supplies to the confederacy extremely difficult now it happened but it was extremely difficult to do the naval officers for the confederacy were also for the large part unskilled there were some notable exceptions but for the most part confederate navy commanders were not very propel prepared to wage a naval war so what does this all mean the union at least on the water is in a much better position to wage this war finally what about the war aims what are they fighting for this is where the confederacy really does get an advantage here uh the union is fighting to preserve the union now i cannot stress this enough the union did not decide to wage this war to end slavery okay the union didn't fight this war to end slavery the union fought this war to preserve the union to hold the union together to prevent secession from being successful because if they don't win this war if they don't preserve the union it's all over with the united states doesn't exist anymore the union does not go to war to end slavery when the as the war drags on as the casualties mount the ending of slavery in the confederacy was added to the union war effort but only as a means to help them achieve the larger war aim of preserving the union we'll discuss more of that when we get to the emancipation proclamation but you do need to understand that the union war aims when the war began that their decision to wage the war lincoln's decision was in order to preserve the union okay it was not to end slavery that comes later but again ending slavery as a means to help preserve the union what does this mean for the union well if their war aim is to hold the union together to prevent secession from happening it means the union is going to have to fight this war offensively meaning they will have to invade the south that is a very hard thing to do you have to take territory you have to hold territory it's expensive it's going to cost a lot of money it's going to cost a lot of men to do it so this is kind of a disadvantage for the union because of their warning what about the confederacy the confederacy is fighting to protect their entire way of life they're fighting for independence they're fighting for freedom from those that want to agitate slavery they're fighting to protect their entire way of life that means then that they're fighting to protect their homes their livelihood and their families this means they're going to fight harder they're going to fight longer it also means that they will be fighting then on the defensive they will be defending territory which is always easier to do in a land battle than to try to take territory so we know the population comparisons we know the enlistments we know the economics we know the naval comparisons and now we know the war game comparisons now we're ready to get into the actual fighting uh what does it all mean well let me sum it all up the confederacy is outnumbered and outnumbered dramatically the confederacy is not in a good economic position to wage this war however the confederacy has advantages and the fact that they can fill the larger army than they should be able to and that they're fighting to defend their territory this is always easier to do than invading territory all of this means that the war then is likely to be long and very bloody and of course it was all right so now we have this good foundation i want to finish off this lecture by talking about the first major land battle of the american civil war it's known as the battle of first bull run let me talk about the background real quick then i'll briefly discuss the battle and the significance when we talk about this stuff just you know for notes purposes and quiz purposes and exam purposes the significance of these battles we talk about is what you should really focus on which you should really jot down and what you should really study for the quizzes and exams but the background of the battle of first bull run 1861 all right after fort sumter and after the raising of the 75 000 man army that lincoln has called for lincoln put in command of this army a man named irwin mcdowell he was the first general in chief of the union army he will not be the last uh he was simply the first uh and lincoln then instructs mcdowell and the union army to go ahead and invade the south with the intention of capturing the confederate capital at richmond virginia the confederacy understands that this is likely the goal of the union army so the confederate military under command of there's beauregard again they move north to prevent this union invasion and these two gigantic armies meet near manassas virginia along a creek known as bull run so the battle actually has two names it's either known as the battle of manassas or the battle of bull run now this battle with these fir when these armies first slammed into each other uh they actually had the same strategy in this battle which was to turn the left flank of each of the armies so what happened is they actually just kind of rotated around each other and early on in the battle in the early hours of the battle it looked like the union was about to break the lines of the confederacy and win the day but one of the confederate division commander a man by the name of general thomas nicknamed stonewall jackson uh he held the line against this union assault and he rallied the confederate forces to hold their ground as well and this bought enough time for the confederacy to reinforce its army at bull run and interesting enough another confederate general named joseph johnston he had put about 12 000 confederate soldiers on a railroad uh and ferried them very quickly to the battlefield this was interesting enough the first time ever in world history that a railroad was used during a battle now joseph johnson and these 12 000 confederate soldiers will arrive just in the nick of time and you can see on this map they will arrive just in time and they will smash into the union lines and the union army into disarray the union army will then very hastily retreat many they just broke ranks and ran as fast as they could back to the defense of washington dc and this was the battle of first bull run the battle was actually significant for a few reasons let me talk about it real quick uh this was the first major land battle of the american civil war and that alone makes it kind of worth knowing but the other reason the battle was significant is that the union advance the first advance on the confederate capital of richmond virginia was halted it's not going to happen the other reason the battle is significant is that resulted in the best chance for the confederacy to end this war quickly and what i mean by that is that you know when the war when the battle is over the union army is just scattered to the wind there is no cohesive organization to the union army that meant that these washington dc was largely undefended the confederacy the confederate army could have literally just walked in to washington dc and captured it and maybe in the war why did it not happen well the confederate army at bull run was also in just as bad as shape a lot of casualties a lot of confusion and there was no there was no orders to do this but had they done it they might have this was probably the best chance the confederacy had to winning the war quickly the real reason this battle is significant is that the battle convinced the union that the war was going to be long and costly the union began to set in for the long haul but the confederacy after this battle believed that the north didn't have the fight in them that they weren't up to this and they believed that the war was going to be short and so they did not prepare for the long protracted war that this war would become okay all right i told you this is going to be a long one so hopefully there won't be this long i hope this was interesting for you i hope you enjoyed it uh but this concludes part one of unit 14 and part two we're going to discuss the major events of the year 1862 the first full year of the american civil war and we're going to see how this war in 1862 is going to dramatically intensify see you in part two