APU HIST552 2020 February All Weeks Forums Latest

HIST552 Civil War-Seminal Event in American History

Week 1 Forum

Heroes & Traitors

Class, our reading of Woodworth this week gives us a quick overview of some of the main issues that brought about the decision of some southern states to secede. Those were followed by others which were at first undecided, but which decided once the new President called for volunteers to put down the rebellion that broken out into violence at Charleston.  The short video clip in our lesson combined with the course designer’s conception of how one officer made the decision to remain with the Union give us some idea of the rationale used in those decisions.  Please discuss your views on whether those who left the US Army to serve the Confederacy were traitors. Provide justification for your reasons.

Reading:

Steven Woodworth, This Great Struggle, Ch. 1

https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.ezproxy1.apus.edu/lib/apus/reader.action?docID=669792&query

 

HIST552 Civil War-Seminal Event in American History

Week 2 Forum

The Civil War was a unique event in American History on multiple levels.  But, should it have ever happened?  Was secession a legal and constitutional act?  Every argument that has spawned from this horrible war deviates from that essential question.  Did the Southern states have a constitutional right to secede from the Union?

Readings:

George Desnoyers, Lincoln’s Four Main Arguments Against Secession

http://www.endusmilitarism.org/secession_condensed-with_notes.html

Brian McClanahan, Is Secession Legal

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/is-secession-legal/

James Ostrowski, An Analysis of Lincoln’s Legal Arguments

http://www.no-debts.com/anti-federalist/files/secess1.txt

 

HIST552 Civil War-Seminal Event in American History

Week 3 Forum

Discuss the advantages and disadvantages (economic, political, diplomatic, military) of both sides in this epic struggle. Are you able to ascertain a scenario in which the South could have won the war?

Readings:

Charles Hubbard, James Mason, the Confederate Lobby, and the Blockade Debate of March 1862

https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy1.apus.edu/docview/1474215748?pq-origsite=summon&accountid=8289

Howard Jones, Union and Confederate Diplomacy During the Civil War

http://www.essentialcivilwarcurriculum.com/union-and-confederate-diplomacy-during-the-civil-war.html

Roger Ransom, The Economics of the Civil War

The Economics of the Civil War

Arturo Rivera, Why The South Wasn’t Ready for War

https://americancivilwar.com/authors/arrturo_rivera.html

Steven Woodworth, This Great Struggle, Ch. 2 and 3

https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.ezproxy1.apus.edu/lib/apus/reader.action?docID=669792&query

 

HIST552 Civil War-Seminal Event in American History

Week 4 Forum

Battle Analysis:

This week each of you will be assigned a battle to discuss.  For this battle you will:

1. Examine the factors that led to the battle.

2. Assess the strengths and weaknesses of both the Union and Confederate armies, including the key commanders.

3. Present an overview of the battle.

4. Present an analysis of the battle’s decisive moments and decisions.

There is no word limit for this forum though it will undoubtedly go beyond the typical 300 words.  You must also respond to at least 3 of your classmates.

The battles:

Antietam

Atlanta

Second Manassas

Chancellorsville

Chattanooga

Chickamauga

Cold Harbor

Fort Donelson

Fredericksburg

Gettysburg

Jackson’s Valley Campaign

Nashville

Seven Days

Shiloh

Spotsylvania

Stones River

The Wilderness

Vicksburg

The following website has extensive resources on all of the above battles, as do the McPherson and Woodworth books in your syllabus.

www.civilwarhome.com

 

HIST552 Civil War-Seminal Event in American History

Week 5 Forum

The year 1864 also saw two other major operations separate from the carnage of the Wilderness. Sherman’s March to the Sea and Sheridan’s Shenandoah Valley Campaign each played a major part in the South’s ultimate defeat, though Sherman receives far more credit for that defeat than does Sherman. Evaluate both campaigns and answer a question that has lingered for 150 years, was Sherman’s March a war crime?

Readings:

James McPherson, This Mighty Scourge, Ch. 9 and 10

http://web.a.ebscohost.com.ezproxy2.apus.edu/ehost/detail/detail?vid=0&sid=e2dd7516-9db6-40ef-873a-fb6957385eff%40sessionmgr4010&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY29wZT1zaXRl#AN=191245&db=nlebk

Steven Woodworth, This Great Struggle, Ch. 11

https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.ezproxy1.apus.edu/lib/apus/reader.action?docID=669792&query

 

HIST552 Civil War-Seminal Event in American History

Week 6 Forum

he face of both sides in this war were the leaders of each side. US president Abraham Lincoln and Confederate leader Jefferson Davis guided their respective sides through this disaster. Assess the strengths and weaknesses of both men and determine their impact on the outcome of the war.

Readings:

William Cooper, Jefferson Davis and the Civil War Era, Ch. 4 and 7

https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.ezproxy2.apus.edu/lib/apus/reader.action?docID=483241&query=

James McPherson, This Mighty Scourge, Ch. 4

http://web.a.ebscohost.com.ezproxy2.apus.edu/ehost/detail/detail?vid=0&sid=e2dd7516-9db6-40ef-873a-fb6957385eff%40sessionmgr4010&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY29wZT1zaXRl#AN=191245&db=nlebk

 

HIST552 Civil War-Seminal Event in American History

Week 7 Forum

President Lincoln took many actions during the Civil War that have been seen as skirting, if not outright violating the Constitution.  He emphatically stated that he did so to preserve the hallowed document and the nation for which it was intended.  Suspending habeas corpus, the blockade, and most significantly the Emancipation Proclamation all were conceivably outside the realm of his presidential powers.  Did he go too far or in times of crisis must the government and more specifically the president be allowed to exceed their powers to protect the nation?

Readings:

Judge Frank Williams:

https://www.heritage.org/defense/report/abraham-lincoln-and-civil-liberties-wartime

Justin Ewers:

https://www.usnews.com/news/history/articles/2009/02/10/revoking-civil-liberties-lincolns-constitutional-dilemma

James McPherson, This Mighty Scourge, Ch. 16

http://web.a.ebscohost.com.ezproxy2.apus.edu/ehost/detail/detail?vid=0&sid=e2dd7516-9db6-40ef-873a-fb6957385eff%40sessionmgr4010&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY29wZT1zaXRl#AN=191245&db=nlebk

Henry Chambers:

https://scholarship.richmond.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1550&context=law-faculty-publications

 

HIST552 Civil War-Seminal Event in American History

Week 8 Forum

Upon being asked by Brig. Gen. E. P. Alexander on the eve of surrender whether it might not be better to take to the woods and carry on a guerrilla war, General Lee responded thoughtfully with a variety of reasons why that course of action would have a long-lasting detrimental impact on the nation as whole. “We would bring on a state of affairs it would take the country years to recover from,” he is purported to have said, concluding that “the only dignified course for me would be to go to General General Grant and surrender myself and take the consequences of my acts” (Alexander, 604-605)  Lee’s rationale was on a plane so far above Alexander’s thinking the he confessed he was ashamed to have made the suggestion.  As we know, no Confederate force took the woods, but historian Russell F. Weigley contends that while one might easily see how Lee could have seen his surrender as the only dignified course for himself, “it remains less easy to explain why nearly all the other warriors of the Confederacy also abandoned so readily the alternative of the kind of war that has become the customary recourse of nationalist movements unwilling to die but unable to compete with their enemies in regular war . . . (Weigley, 455).

Admittedly, Alexander made this apocryphal observation in 1907, when the nation was well on the road to recovery from the psychological devastation of war, and such statements were commonly made as support for continued healing, but true or not, he raises a good point that Weigley carries a step further when he goes on to say that “it may be that Confederate nationalism died so abruptly and so completely because it was never a true nationalism, that the fatal split in the Confederate psyche prevented the national spirit from ever flowering fully enough to nourish a resolve that would have persevered in the contest after all the romance was gone” (Weigley, 456).

The war took decades to brew until boiling over with Lincoln’s election, but the abrupt end to such a seminal event in our nation’s history does seem somewhat odd.  Please provide your own thoughts on the Confederate willingness to lay down arms, knowing that their way of life would be forever destroyed, and on the strength or lack of strength of true Confederate Nationalism.  Consider what brought the South to the point of warfare, and consider what those reasons looked like by the spring of 1865.  Was the war a seminal event, or was it actually the quiet transition from war to peace that was so seminal to our history?