vania-janet/multiturn-rag-retrieval-data huggingface dataset:
United Kingdom and the American Civil War
Throughout the early years of the war , British foreign secretary Lord Russell , Napoleon III , and , to a lesser extent , British Prime Minister Lord Palmerston , explored the risks and advantages of recognition of the Confederacy or at least offering a mediation . Recognition meant certain war with the US , loss of American grain , loss of exports , loss of investments in American securities , potential invasion of Canada and other North American colonies , higher taxes , and a threat to the British merchant marine with little to gain in return . Many party leaders and the general public wanted no war with such high costs and meager benefits . Recognition was considered following the Second Battle of Manassas , when the British government was preparing to mediate in the conflict , but the Union victory at the Battle of Antietam and Lincoln 's Emancipation Proclamation , combined with internal opposition , caused the government to back away .
Confederate States of America
Historian Frank Lawrence Owsley argued that the Confederacy `` died of states ' rights '' . The central government was denied requisitioned soldiers and money by governors and state legislatures because they feared that Richmond would encroach on the rights of the states . Georgia 's governor Joseph Brown warned of a secret conspiracy by Jefferson Davis to destroy states ' rights and individual liberty . The first conscription act in North America authorizing Davis to draft soldiers was said to be the `` essence of military despotism '' .
Battle of Gettysburg
The nature of the result of the Battle of Gettysburg has been the subject of controversy for years . Although not seen as overwhelmingly significant at the time , particularly since the war continued for almost two years , in retrospect it has often been cited as the `` turning point '' , usually in combination with the fall of Vicksburg the following day . This is based on the observation that after Gettysburg Lee 's army conducted no more strategic offensives -- his army merely reacted to the initiative of Ulysses S. Grant in 1864 and 1865 -- and by the speculative viewpoint of the Lost Cause writers that a Confederate victory at Gettysburg might have resulted in the end of the war . (
Emancipation Proclamation
Racism remained pervasive on both sides of the conflict and many in the North supported the war only as an effort to force the South to stay in the Union . The promises of many Republican politicians that the war was to restore the Union and not about black rights or ending slavery , were now declared lies by their opponents citing the Proclamation . Copperhead David Allen spoke to a rally in Columbiana , Ohio , stating , `` I have told you that this war is carried on for the Negro . There is the proclamation of the President of the United States . Now fellow Democrats I ask you if you are going to be forced into a war against your Brithren of the Southern States for the Negro . I answer No ! '' The Copperheads saw the Proclamation as irrefutable proof of their position and the beginning of a political rise for their members ; in Connecticut , H.B. Whiting wrote that the truth was now plain even to `` those stupid thick - headed persons who persisted in thinking that the President was a conservative man and that the war was for the restoration of the Union under the Constitution '' .
Tennessee in the American Civil War
With the attack on Fort Sumter on April 12 , 1861 , followed by President Abraham Lincoln 's April 15 call for 75,000 volunteers to put the seceded states back into line , public sentiment turned dramatically against the Union .
American Civil War
British investors built small , fast , steam - driven blockade runners that traded arms and luxuries brought in from Britain through Bermuda , Cuba , and the Bahamas in return for high - priced cotton . Many of the ships were designed for speed and were so small that only a small amount of cotton went out . When the Union Navy seized a blockade runner , the ship and cargo were condemned as a Prize of war and sold , with the proceeds given to the Navy sailors ; the captured crewmen were mostly British and they were simply released . The Southern economy nearly collapsed during the war . There were multiple reasons for this : the severe deterioration of food supplies , especially in cities , the failure of Southern railroads , the loss of control of the main rivers , foraging by Northern armies , and the seizure of animals and crops by Confederate armies . Most historians agree that the blockade was a major factor in ruining the Confederate economy ; however , Wise argues that the blockade runners provided just enough of a lifeline to allow Lee to continue fighting for additional months , thanks to fresh supplies of 400,000 rifles , lead , blankets , and boots that the homefront economy could no longer supply . Gunline
Spanish–American War
The Spanish -- American War ( Spanish : Guerra hispano - americana or Guerra hispano - estadounidense ; Filipino : Digmaang Espanyol - Amerikano ) was fought between the United States and Spain in 1898 . Hostilities began in the aftermath of the internal explosion of the USS Maine in Havana Harbor in Cuba , leading to US intervention in the Cuban War of Independence . American acquisition of Spain 's Pacific possessions led to its involvement in the Philippine Revolution and ultimately in the Philippine -- American War .
American Civil War
The war resulted in at least 1,030,000 casualties ( 3 percent of the population ) , including about 620,000 soldier deaths -- two - thirds by disease , and 50,000 civilians . Binghamton University historian J. David Hacker believes the number of soldier deaths was approximately 750,000 , 20 percent higher than traditionally estimated , and possibly as high as 850,000 . The war accounted for more American deaths than in all other U.S. wars combined . One
Southern United States
The Confederacy had the resources for a short war , but was unable to finance or supply a longer war . It reversed the traditional low - tariff policy of the South by imposing a new 15 % tax on all imports from the Union . The Union blockade stopped most commerce from entering the South , and smugglers avoided the tax , so the Confederate tariff produced too little revenue to finance the war . Inflated currency was the solution , but that created distrust of the Richmond government . Because of low investment in railroads , the Southern transportation system depended primarily on river and coastal traffic by boat ; both were shut down by the Union Navy . The small railroad system virtually collapsed , so that by 1864 internal travel was so difficult that the Confederate economy was crippled .
Presidency of Abraham Lincoln
The U.S. and the CSA both recognized the potential importance of foreign powers in the Civil War , as a European intervention could greatly aid the Confederate cause , much as French intervention in the American Revolutionary War had helped the United States gain its independence . At the start of the war , Russia was the lone great power to offer full support to the Union , while the other European powers had varying degrees of sympathy for the Confederacy . Nonetheless , foreign nations were officially neutral throughout the Civil War , and none recognized the Confederacy , marking a major diplomatic achievement for Secretary Seward and the Lincoln Administration .
Georgia during Reconstruction
These developments led to calls for Georgia 's return to military rule , which increased after Georgia was one of only two ex-Confederate states to vote against Grant in the Presidential election of 1868 . The expelled black legislators , led by Tunis Campbell and Henry McNeill Turner , lobbied for federal intervention in Washington . In March 1869 Governor Bullock , hoping to prolong Reconstruction , `` engineered '' the defeat of the Fifteenth Amendment . The same month the U.S. Congress once again barred Georgia 's representatives from their seats , causing military rule to resume in December 1869 . In January 1870 , Gen. Alfred H. Terry , the final commanding general of the Third District , purged the General Assembly 's ex-Confederates , replaced them with the Republican runners - up , and reinstated the expelled black legislators , creating a large Republican majority in the legislature .
Presidency of Abraham Lincoln
Lincoln took office following the 1860 presidential election , in which he won a plurality of the popular vote in a four - candidate field . Almost all of Lincoln 's votes came from the Northern United States , as the Republicans held little appeal to voters in the Southern United States . A former Whig , Lincoln ran on a political platform opposed to the expansion of slavery in the territories . His election served as the immediate impetus for the outbreak of the American Civil War . During the 16 weeks between Election Day and Inauguration Day , seven slave states declared their secession from the Union and formed the Confederate States of America . After being sworn in as president , Lincoln refused to accept any resolution that would result in Southern secession from the Union . The Civil War began weeks into Lincoln 's presidency with the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter , a federal installation located within the boundaries of the Confederacy .
Confederate States of America
The statesmen who led the secession movement were unashamed to explicitly cite the defense of slavery as their prime motive ... Acknowledging the centrality of slavery to the Confederacy is essential for understanding the Confederate .
Molasses Act
The growing corruption of local officials and disrespect for British Law caused by this act and others like it such as the Stamp Act or Townshend Acts eventually led to the American Revolution in 1776 . This Act was replaced by the Sugar Act in 1764 . This Act halved the tax rate , but was accompanied by British intent to actually collect the tax this time .
Sherman's March to the Sea
Sherman 's March to the Sea ( also known as the Savannah Campaign ) was a military campaign of the American Civil War conducted through Georgia from November 15 until December 21 , 1864 , by Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman of the Union Army . The campaign began with Sherman 's troops leaving the captured city of Atlanta on November 15 and ended with the capture of the port of Savannah on December 21 . His forces followed a `` scorched earth '' policy , destroying military targets as well as industry , infrastructure , and civilian property and disrupting the Confederacy 's economy and its transportation networks . The operation broke the back of the Confederacy and helped lead to its eventual surrender . Sherman 's bold move of operating deep within enemy territory and without supply lines is considered to be one of the major achievements of the war .
History of Arkansas
Arkansas played a key role in aiding Texas in its war for independence with Mexico , sending troops and materials to Texas to help fight the war . The proximity of the city of Washington to the Texas border involved the town in the Texas Revolution of 1835 - 36 . Some evidence suggests Sam Houston and his compatriots planned the revolt in a tavern at Washington in 1834 . When the fighting began a stream of volunteers from Arkansas and the eastern states flowed through the town toward the Texas battle fields .
American Civil War
( A ) social cataclysm in which the capitalists , laborers , and farmers of the North and West drove from power in the national government the planting aristocracy of the South .
Emancipation Proclamation
The Emancipation Proclamation broadened the goals of the Civil War . While slavery had been a major issue that led to the war , Lincoln 's only mission at the start of the war was to maintain the Union . The Proclamation made freeing the slaves an explicit goal of the Union war effort . Establishing the abolition of slavery as one of the two primary war goals served to deter intervention by Britain and France . The Emancipation Proclamation was never challenged in court . To ensure the abolition of slavery in all of the U.S. , Lincoln pushed for passage of the Thirteenth Amendment , and insisted that Reconstruction plans for Southern states require abolition in new state constitutions . Congress passed the 13th Amendment by the necessary two - thirds vote on January 31 , 1865 , and it was ratified by the states on December 6 , 1865 , ending legal slavery .
American Civil War
Comparison of Union and Confederacy , 1860 -- 1864 Year Union Confederacy Population 1860 22,100,000 ( 71 % ) 9,100,000 ( 29 % ) 1864 28,800,000 ( 90 % ) 3,000,000 ( 10 % ) Free 1860 21,700,000 ( 81 % ) 5,600,000 ( 19 % ) Slave 1860 400,000 ( 11 % ) 3,500,000 ( 89 % ) 1864 negligible 1,900,000 Soldiers 1860 -- 64 2,100,000 ( 67 % ) 1,064,000 ( 33 % ) Railroad miles 1860 21,800 ( 71 % ) 8,800 ( 29 % ) 1864 29,100 ( 98 % ) negligible Manufactures 1860 90 % 10 % 1864 98 % negligible Arms production 1860 97 % 3 % 1864 98 % negligible Cotton bales 1860 negligible 4,500,000 1864 300,000 negligible Exports 1860 30 % 70 % 1864 98 % negligible
American Civil War
Numerous small - scale military actions south and west of Missouri sought to control Indian Territory and New Mexico Territory for the Union . The Union repulsed Confederate incursions into New Mexico in 1862 , and the exiled Arizona government withdrew into Texas . In the Indian Territory , civil war broke out within tribes . About 12,000 Indian warriors fought for the Confederacy , and smaller numbers for the Union . The most prominent Cherokee was Brigadier General Stand Watie , the last Confederate general to surrender .
Missouri Compromise
Events leading to the American Civil War Slavery Northwest Ordinance Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions Battle of Negro Fort Missouri Compromise Tariff of 1828 Nat Turner 's slave rebellion Nullification Crisis The Amistad Prigg v. Pennsylvania Texas annexation Mexican -- American War Wilmot Proviso Manifest destiny Underground Railroad Nashville Convention Compromise of 1850 Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 Uncle Tom 's Cabin Kansas -- Nebraska Act Ostend Manifesto Bleeding Kansas Caning of Charles Sumner Dred Scott v. Sandford The Impending Crisis of the South Brown 's raid on Harpers Ferry 1860 presidential election Crittenden Compromise Secession of Southern States Star of the West Corwin Amendment Battle of Fort Sumter
American Civil War
War loomed in late 1861 between the U.S. and Britain over the Trent affair , involving the U.S. Navy 's boarding of the British ship Trent and seizure of two Confederate diplomats . However , London and Washington were able to smooth over the problem after Lincoln released the two . In 1862 , the British considered mediation between North and South -- though even such an offer would have risked war with the U.S. British Prime Minister Lord Palmerston reportedly read Uncle Tom 's Cabin three times when deciding on this .
American Civil War
General Braxton Bragg 's second Confederate invasion of Kentucky ended with a meaningless victory over Maj. Gen. Don Carlos Buell at the Battle of Perryville , although Bragg was forced to end his attempt at invading Kentucky and retreat due to lack of support for the Confederacy in that state . Bragg was narrowly defeated by Maj. Gen. William Rosecrans at the Battle of Stones River in Tennessee .
Tennessee in the American Civil War
The centrality of the question of slavery to the secession movement was not doubted by people at the time of the Civil War , nor was it ignored by the contemporary press . Especially in the case of the pro-slavery papers , this question of the possibility of the eventual granting of equal rights for people of color was not couched in diplomatic phraseology :
United Kingdom and the American Civil War
The Union 's main goal in foreign affairs was to maintain friendly relations and large - scale trade with the world and to prevent any official recognition of the Confederacy by any country , especially Britain . Other concerns included preventing the Confederacy from buying foreign - made warships ; gaining European support for policies against slavery ; and attracting immigrant laborers , farmers and soldiers . There had been continuous improvement in Anglo - American relations throughout the 1850s . The issues of Oregon , Texas , and the Canada -- US border had all been resolved , and trade was brisk . Secretary of State William H. Seward , the primary architect of American foreign policy during the war , intended to maintain the policy principles that had served the country well since the American Revolution : `` non-intervention by the United States in the affairs of other countries and resistance to foreign intervention in the affairs of the United States and other countries in this hemisphere . ''
Turning point of the American Civil War
But more strategically , George B. McClellan 's victory was just convincing enough that President Lincoln used it as justification for announcing his Emancipation Proclamation . He had been counseled by his cabinet to keep this action confidential until a Union battlefield victory could be announced , lest it appear to be an act of desperation . Along with its immense effect on American history and race relations , the Emancipation Proclamation effectively prevented the British Empire from recognizing the Confederacy as a legitimate government . The British public had strong anti-slavery beliefs and would not have tolerated joining the pro-slavery side of a fight where slavery was now a prominent issue . This removed one of the Confederacy 's only hopes of surviving a lengthy war against the North 's suffocating naval blockade . Support from France was still a possibility , but it never came to pass . Antietam and two other coincident failed actions -- Braxton Bragg 's invasion of Kentucky ( sometimes called the `` high - water mark of the Confederacy in the Western Theater '' ) and Earl Van Dorn 's advance against Corinth , Mississippi -- represented the Confederacy 's only attempts at coordinated strategic offensives in multiple theaters of war . Death
American Civil War
President Johnson took a lenient approach and saw the achievement of the main war goals as realized in 1865 , when each ex-rebel state repudiated secession and ratified the Thirteenth Amendment . Radical Republicans demanded proof that Confederate nationalism was dead and that the slaves were truly free . They came to the fore after the 1866 elections and undid much of Johnson 's work . In 1872 the `` Liberal Republicans '' argued that the war goals had been achieved and that Reconstruction should end . They ran a presidential ticket in 1872 but were decisively defeated . In 1874 , Democrats , primarily Southern , took control of Congress and opposed any more reconstruction . The Compromise of 1877 closed with a national consensus that the Civil War had finally ended . With the withdrawal of federal troops , however , whites retook control of every Southern legislature ; the Jim Crow period of disenfranchisement and legal segregation was about to begin .
Abner Doubleday
Abner Doubleday ( June 26 , 1819 -- January 26 , 1893 ) was a career United States Army officer and Union general in the American Civil War . He fired the first shot in defense of Fort Sumter , the opening battle of the war , and had a pivotal role in the early fighting at the Battle of Gettysburg . Gettysburg was his finest hour , but his relief by Maj. Gen. George G. Meade caused lasting enmity between the two men . In San Francisco , after the war , he obtained a patent on the cable car railway that still runs there . In his final years in New Jersey , he was a prominent member and later president of the Theosophical Society .
American Civil War
The fourth theory was advocated by Mississippi Senator Jefferson Davis , one of state sovereignty ( `` states ' rights '' ) , also known as the `` Calhoun doctrine '' , named after the South Carolinian political theorist and statesman John C. Calhoun . Rejecting the arguments for federal authority or self - government , state sovereignty would empower states to promote the expansion of slavery as part of the federal union under the U.S. Constitution . `` States ' rights '' was an ideology formulated and applied as a means of advancing slave state interests through federal authority . As historian Thomas L. Krannawitter points out , the `` Southern demand for federal slave protection represented a demand for an unprecedented expansion of federal power . '' These four doctrines comprised the major ideologies presented to the American public on the matters of slavery , the territories and the U.S. Constitution prior to the 1860 presidential election .
American Civil War
In the world of 19th century self - made Americans , growing in prosperity , population and expanding westward , `` freedom '' could mean personal liberty or property rights . The unresolved difference would cause failure -- first in their political institutions , then in their civil life together . Nationalism
Confederate States of America
Four of the seceding states , the Deep South states of South Carolina , Mississippi , Georgia , and Texas , issued formal declarations of causes , each of which identified the threat to slaveholders ' rights as the cause of , or a major cause of , secession . Georgia also claimed a general Federal policy of favoring Northern over Southern economic interests . Texas mentioned slavery 21 times , but also listed the failure of the federal government to live up to its obligations , in the original annexation agreement , to protect settlers along the exposed western frontier . Texas resolutions further stated that governments of the states and the nation were established `` exclusively by the white race , for themselves and their posterity '' . They also stated that although equal civil and political rights applied to all white men , they did not apply to those of the `` African race '' , further opining that the end of racial enslavement would `` bring inevitable calamities upon both ( races ) and desolation upon the fifteen slave - holding states '' .
Battle of Fort Sumter
On December 20 , 1860 , shortly after Abraham Lincoln 's victory in the presidential election of 1860 , South Carolina adopted an ordinance declaring its secession from the United States of America and , by February 1861 , six more Southern states had adopted similar ordinances of secession . On February 7 , the seven states adopted a provisional constitution for the Confederate States of America and established their temporary capital at Montgomery , Alabama . A February peace conference met in Washington , D.C. , but failed to resolve the crisis . The remaining eight states declined pleas to join the Confederacy .
Emancipation Proclamation
On September 22 , 1862 , Lincoln issued a preliminary warning that he would order the emancipation of all slaves in any state that did not end its rebellion against the Union by January 1 , 1863 . None of the Confederate states restored themselves to the Union , and Lincoln 's order was signed and took effect on January 1 , 1863 . The Emancipation Proclamation outraged white Southerners ( and their sympathizers ) who envisioned a race war . It angered some Northern Democrats , energized anti-slavery forces , and undermined elements in Europe that wanted to intervene to help the Confederacy . The Proclamation lifted the spirits of African Americans both free and slave . It led many slaves to escape from their masters and get to Union lines to obtain their freedom , and to join the Union Army .
Confederate States of America
Women had charge of making do . They cut back on purchases , brought out old spinning wheels and enlarged their gardens with flax and peas to provide clothing and food . They used ersatz substitutes when possible , but there was no real coffee and it was hard to develop a taste for the okra or chicory substitutes used . The households were severely hurt by inflation in the cost of everyday items like flour and the shortages of food , fodder for the animals , and medical supplies for the wounded .