Civil War: In U.S. history, the conflict (1861–65) between the Northern states (the Union) and the Southern states that seceded from the Union and formed the Confederacy. It is generally known in the South as the War between the States and is also called the War of the Rebellion (the official Union designation), the War of Secession, and the War for Southern Independence. The name Civil War, although much criticized as inexact, is most widely accepted.
The name Civil War is misleading because the war was not a class struggle, but a sectional combat having its roots in political, economic, social, and psychological elements so complex that historians still do not agree on its basic causes. It has been characterized, in the words of William H. Seward, as the “irrepressible conflict.” In another judgment the Civil War was viewed as criminally stupid, an unnecessary bloodletting brought on by arrogant extremists and blundering politicians. Both views accept the fact that in 1861 there existed a situation that, rightly or wrongly, had come to be regarded as insoluble by peaceful means.
In the days of the American Revolution and of the adoption of the Constitution, differences between North and South were dwarfed by their common interest in establishing a new nation. But sectionalism steadily grew stronger. During the 19th century the South remained almost completely agricultural, with an economy and a social order largely founded on slavery and the plantation system. These mutually dependent institutions produced the staples, especially cotton, from which the South derived its wealth. The North had its own great agricultural resources, was always more advanced commercially, and was also expanding industrially.
Hostility between the two sections grew perceptibly after 1820, the year of the Missouri Compromise, which was intended as a permanent solution to the issue in which that hostility was most clearly expressed—the question of the extension or prohibition of slavery in the federal territories of the West. Difficulties over the tariff (which led John C. Calhoun and South Carolina to nullification and to an extreme states' rights stand) and troubles over internal improvements were also involved, but the territorial issue nearly always loomed largest. In the North moral indignation increased with the rise of the abolitionists in the 1830s. Since slavery was unadaptable to much of the territorial lands, which eventually would be admitted as free states, the South became more anxious about maintaining its position as an equal in the Union. Southerners thus strongly supported the annexation of Texas (certain to be a slave state) and the Mexican War and even agitated for the annexation of Cuba.
The Compromise of 1850 marked the end of the period that might be called the era of compromise. The deaths in 1852 of Henry Clay and Daniel Webster left no leader of national stature, but only sectional spokesmen, such as W. H. Seward, Charles Sumner, and Salmon P. Chase in the North and Jefferson Davis and Robert Toombs in the South. With the Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854) and the consequent struggle over “bleeding” Kansas the factions first resorted to shooting. The South was ever alert to protect its “peculiar institution,” even though many Southerners recognized slavery as an anachronism in a supposedly enlightened age. Passions aroused by arguments over the fugitive slave laws and over slavery in general were further excited by the activities of the Northern abolitionist John Brown and by the vigorous proslavery utterances of William L. Yancey, one of the leading Southern fire-eaters.
The Union commander at Pensacola, 1st Lt. Adam Slemmer, knew Florida was about to secede from the Union and assumed the state would try to seize U.S. forts and property. On January 10, 1861, the day Florida seceded, Slemmer, on his own initiative, destroyed the guns at Barrancas and McRee and moved his men to Fort Pickens on the tip of narrow, 40 mile long Santa Rosa Island. Slemmer's men were aided by the navy's commissary ship, Supply, which then sailed for New York with the officers' families. The state's forces immediately occupied McRee and Barrancas, captured the navy yard, and demanded Slemmer surrender Pickens.
The situation in Pensacola, like the Fort Sumter crisis happening in Charleston Harbor at the same time, was a powder keg ready to explode and ignite a civil war. When Rebel emissaries approached Pickens and announced, "We have been sent by the governors of Florida and Alabama to demand a peaceable surrender of this fort," Slemmer replied, "I am here by authority of the President of the United States, and I do not recognize the authority of any governor to demand the surrender of United States property--a governor is nobody here."
Slemmer refused two more demands for surrender even though his garrison was cut off from mainland supplies and was effectively under siege. When word reached Washington, President James Buchanan dispatched a warship with 200 reinforcements, which arrived off Santa Rosa Island on January 29. There it anchored without landing the troops under order from Buchanan for the men to stay aboard ship unless sucessionist forces attacked the fort.
Fascinating Fact: At Pensacola a stalemate, called the Fort Pickens Truce, lasted until April 12, when news arrived of the bombardment of Fort Sumter.
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