Well, here we are, at war. Sort of. Shots were fired at Fort Sumter, but no one was actually killed in the battle. But now the battle lines are being drawn. Lincoln has asked for more volunteers, and the border states of Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee, and most importantly, Virginia, have chosen to leave the Union, rather than provide troops that would be used to attack the south.
So both sides begin putting together armies. A lot of men volunteered initially, in part because they thought that this wasn’t going to take long. Lincoln’s request for new volunteers, for example, was only for a 90 day enlistment. People in both the North and the South felt like this war would be over in only a few months. Both sides overestimated their own battle prowess, and felt like they would be able to ‘whip’ the other side pretty easily. But even more than that, both sides seriously underestimated the other side’s resolve to fight.
What is A Short Walk through Our Long History?
I think that if you want to understand the world we live in today, it helps to understand the important events of history. In this series, we are going to look at major events, people, documents, places, books, and ideas that have shaped history, and thus shaped our modern world.