all right this is openstax us history chapter 15 section 3 1863 the changing nature of the war so two years into the war it was clear that this would not be a quick and decisive war and instead the war continued to drag on in many ways the civil war was transformed into a war of attrition and that would be a war in which each side simply tried to outlast the other even though that was not the type of war that the north envisioned they were certainly more prepared for a long drawn-out war because they had the supplies and men and money to fight for a long time where the confederacy was uh was low on those things um it also meant that the war turned into a total war a total war is a war in which all soldiers and civilians are mobilized we might also say that the line between civilian between we'll say soldier first soldier and civilian becomes blurred in other words there is less of a distinction between who's a soldier and who's a civilian a total total war excuse me also means that all resources are dedicated to the war right so you know everybody within a particular society all resources are dedicated to the war uh feel the um you know feel the effects of it and it was clear that for either side to win that they really needed to mobilize all parts of their population both north and south in order for the military victory now for the confederacy um you know and this is going to you know some of these things are going to be true of the union as well for the confederacy this meant to institute a military draft up until you know 1862-1863 both sides union and confederacy had used volunteer armies there were enough enthusiasm and there's enough volunteers for both sides initially but that enthusiasm you know faded away and so a military draft was instituted again this is mandatory military service it also meant that both sides needed to crack down on any sort of anti-war messaging or anything that could threaten the war effort at home so in the south they suspended habeas corpus which essentially means abs corpus is the protection against being just thrown in jail for for no reason for an unlimited amount of time so we might just say of habeas corpus suspended uh we'll just say that anti-war critics could be and were imprisoned right so you didn't need to bring people before a judge you can simply just lock them away and that was done on on both sides now for the confederacy in particular it was in a lot of ways the the money that was the big problem like we mentioned in the last section the confederacy had a lot of wealth but didn't have a lot of money to use that to purchase war related supplies so they resorted to to printing and that led to in a lot of cases runaway inflation which ultimately had a severe impact on sort of the lives of everyday normal people there were cases where people starved there were instances where people rioted and this was felt more intensely in the south than it was in the north also for the confederacy the hope that cotton would be the solution to all their answers never really panned out we might say of cotton that the confederacy hoped it would i say be the key to victory you know they had anticipated that the selling of cotton to especially countries like britain and france would provide them with more than enough to continue to wage this war uh however though other countries like britain and france found other cotton producers you know the brit the british found cotton in egypt or in india and the french elsewhere and also one thing that the confederacy hoped to do and never fully realized was to gain foreign recognition that is to say maybe britain or france might help the confederacy or at least recognize them that was something that never happened and it would potentially be a way for the south to win the war had they had some sort of foreign support but that didn't occur for the north during the course of the war the civil war allowed them not only to mobilize for the war but also to put forward certain acts and laws that for a long time would have gotten resistance from the south so you know this was a republican congress and they started passing acts that again helped with the war but also in some cases weren't completely related to it a good example of this is the homestead act and the moral act the homestead act allowed for settlers to obtain land in the west so this was a way of trying to populate the western territories develop them and the moral act gave funds or agricultural colleges much of the land out west was considered not to be the best for growing uh you know crops and so if there was more science involved irrigation stuff like that then perhaps that land could be more useful so funds was funds were you know diverted away in order to help produce more agricultural colleges laws that were a little bit more relevant to the war included the national bank act or national bank acts which on the one hand created war bonds so war bonds are something that the government sells to the population so the idea is that people buy a war bond they give the money to the government the government then uses that money for the war so government sells to the population raises money for the war and the north also issued a new currency called the greenback so there was some inflation in the north but not nearly as much as the south so greenbacks printed to fund the war against something like the national bank this would have never been agreed upon had the south remained in the union recall andrew jackson killing the second national bank but now with only republicans with only northerners you know they can really push forward laws and policies that most northerners wanted um you know including investing in what we might call even though it's slightly outdated at this point the american system internal improvements national banking etc etc the north also instituted a draft right mandatory military service and the north also suspended habeas corpus you know president abraham lincoln especially concerned with anti-war voices in states that had a lot of confederate sympathizers like maryland so this gave lincoln the power to simply just put people in prison that could potentially undermine the conflict now like we mentioned before this war was total that meant that all men and women were required to mobilize for the conflict for many women this meant a lot more added responsibilities particularly on farms and in businesses you know where men were off fighting women took up the roles of their of their previous responsibilities there are also organizations that women played a part in like the united states sanitary commission this was an organization to battle disease in army camps and one significant way that the role of women changed not just during the conflict but in society was in the field of nursing uh nursing really before the civil war was considered mostly a male field um you know sort of taught you know tied to the medical field but so many women served as nurses during the course of the war served well that it became much more open to women as a result so we might say nursing as a field became more open to women as a result of the civil war the rothia dix she was in some ways she was a leader for women's nursing sometimes also recalled dorothea dixie sometimes also see her in the reform era she was a prison reformer sometimes referred to as the first public woman so uh very active in the public arena and in these various reform movements now all the way up until this point we hadn't really been talking about the issue of slavery uh slavery played a key role especially in the um you know in the build-up to the civil war and the the widening divide or gap between north and south especially the um uh the argument in regards to slavery and the western territories we know that in abraham lincoln's inauguration address in 1861 he had said that he had no intention of abolishing slavery where it existed however the course of the war changed that in a lot of ways changed it in a sense that lincoln would change his public tone um privately uh you know we could speculate as to when lincoln made his decision for emancipation but at least publicly the course of the award changes this and this is an important distinction to make is that when we think about the civil war and the abolition of slavery it wasn't something that happened before the war it wasn't something that happened after the war it was something that happened during the war right it was as the war progressed so as the war progressed it was very clear from the perspectives of slaves that this was the war to get rid of slavery as union soldiers began to march into southern territory uh emancipated slaves ran towards northern lines or or ran towards union armies now according to the law especially the fugitive slave laws those union armies were expected to return runaway slaves but many northern generals refused to do so and instead those runaway slaves stayed with the union armies or stayed with the northern armies as what was called contraband so contraband was the name given to emancipated slaves and when we mean those mean union armies right so as the union army would march further and further south these emancipated slaves would join their forces you might say of the fugitive slave laws that northern generals uh more or less ignored them i ignored them uh there was obviously a moral reason for it but there was also a military reason for it from just a strict military strategic perspective it didn't make sense to union generals to return runaway slaves to the enemy that would only make the enemy stronger so not just for moral reasons but also for strategic reasons northern generals did not want to follow or abide by the runaway slave laws congress got on board and passed the confiscation act this was a law that permitted uh union armies to confiscate again quote unquote contraband right gave union generals the cover to essentially ignore fugitive slave laws and so it became very clear from you know from abraham lincoln not just the strategic um the strategic necessity to end slavery as that would weaken the south that was one of the factors but also the practical sense of it that really despite what lincoln said there were going to be cases where union generals are marching into southern territory and they're emancipating slaves whether or not the law states it and so lincoln privately made the decision that emancipation was on the table to free all slaves with it or sorry to free free all slaves in the united states we'll get to that in a moment but didn't want to come out with it because it may seem too desperate we have to recall that this was a time where the union was losing on the battlefield and lincoln feared that foreign countries might view this as sort of a last-ditch effort or sort of a desperate attempt by the north to do anything they could to turn the tides of war so lincoln waited until after the battle of antietam this was in some sense you know a union it was if you could call it a union victory but you know it gave lincoln the quote unquote cover to issue emancipation you know this way he can say look the north won this battle this is not just an effort by me out of desperation because the north is losing the war um and then he issued in september the emancipation proclamation which gave emancipation proclamation we'll say this freed so first of all the proclamation was a threat to the southern states it said surrender or all the slaves within the rebelling states that is the confederacy will be freed it had until january 1st a couple of months zero of the confederate states surrendered and so effective january 1st 1863 the emancipation proclamation freed the slaves in the confederacy now of course those slaves or those states were in rebellion and so it would only it would only be enforced um when uh where we go when those union armies were effectively in those territories so the emancipation proclamation you know dramatically changed the meaning of the war what was initially a war to just keep the country together where lincoln is quoted as of saying you know if if i could free every slave and keep the country together or if i could not free any of them and keep the country together i would do both of those right preserving the union was priority number one now by 1863 lincoln is you know you know uh freeing the slaves in the confederate territories and so um this transforms the war from a war that was you know that broke out over slavery to a war to abolish slavery um however though it's important to understand that the border states those are the slave states fighting for the north um the slaves there were not free as a result of the emancipation proclamation that would come later with the 13th amendment and so lincoln is still still very much practical in this sense right not wanting to alienate the border states those are slave states fighting for the north 1863 and you know the long drawn-out attrition of the conflict um also saw in the north quite possibly the you know one of the lowest points for the north and that was the new york city draft riots you know for the north and the civil war it was never a matter of did the north have enough money or guns or troops that was all true the question for the north was do they have the will to continue fighting this conflict and as the war went on and as it dragged on and especially as the union lost um battles and then when the union instituted the draft and issued the emancipation proclamation which was not popular by a lot of northerners right we gotta recall this was a proclamation that was given by lincoln it wasn't voted for right it wasn't majority of americans voted to abolish uh slavery it was coming from abraham lincoln that only uh you know made things worse and in uh 1863 the people of new york city uh rioted um some of the deadliest and destructive riots in american history so riots over the draft and emancipation you know those that were targeted in the new york city draft riots included anything related to the civil war anything related to the republican party but also anything related to african americans or blacks in the north uh parts of um parts of the city in new york that had a lot of african-americans uh were burned down and destroyed during these riots so you know rioting whites targeted blacks republicans and anything associated with the war with these uh with these riots and eventually troops were called in and the riots were put down you know some 100 people died or something like that but uh this was especially concerning because you know it meant that you know how many of these riots away was the north from just simply giving up on the cause right throwing in the towel and that was a big concern right for the north however on the battlefield despite the new draft despite the emancipation proclamation victory on the battlefield was enough to keep the union morale and union spirit in check um on the seas the union continued or navally the union continued to have huge success new orleans the biggest city in the south was captured by the union in fact this happened pretty early 1862 and vicksburg mississippi captured by the union and this gave the union access or control over the mississippi river but the most consequential battle uh by far was the battle of gettysburg which in many cases is not just the most important battle of the civil war it's probably the most important battle in all of american history now the confederacy under robert e lee we got to recall lee is a confederate general um lee and the confederacy was not prepared or that you know they weren't really built to fight a long drawn-out war so um the confederacy decided that an invasion of the north would be their best course of action the confederate invasion was really designed to get the north to quote unquote give up again if lee and the confederacy could threaten a northern city that might just cause the north to throw on the towel or to get foreign o-r-e-i-g-n recognition right that maybe perhaps a foreign country like france or britain would look at the confederate invasion as evidence of military success and throw their effort behind them in short even though the confederacy only needed to fight a defensive war they couldn't just sit back and wait forever because they would be you know they would run out of men's supplies food etcetera etcetera and so uh this confederate invasion of the north eventually led to gettysburg which is a city in pennsylvania i think pa is pennsylvania i'm not sure um and it turned out to be the most this uh the most uh yeah decisive in some ways conflict of the uh of the battle or sorry of the war uh we can see here a bird's eye view of virginia and pennsylvania here's gettysburg right in the middle just beyond the pennsylvania border this was also the first and only time that confederate armies would invade not just union territory but free soil maryland was a slave state but it was firmly on the side of the union and at the battle of gettysburg the battle took four days it was on the decisive third day that pickett's charge a failed confederate attacked confederate attack would ultimately decide the day when pickett's charge failed the confederacy retreated never to return to union territory again so the significance of gettysburg is that it is the turning point of the war you know really after this moment it was no longer possible for the confederacy to win a victory in the way that they uh you know envisioned or imagined it it was still possible maybe to get some sort of negotiated peace um not a complete loss but certainly victory was no longer in the question after this battle lincoln in the aftermath of the gettysburg or battle of gettysburg issued the gettysburg address which talked about the birth of a new freedom the meaning of the civil war so we might just say a speech about the meaning of the civil war but maybe more importantly of really the united states