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嘿嘿，自己在红颜老师书上看的。下次跟着组里的题目写~

10.10泛读

The American Civil War (1861-1865)(I) IntroductionThe Civil War between the northern and southern sections of the United States, which began with the bombardment of Fort Sumter on the 12th of April 1861, and came to an end, in the last days of April 1865, with the surrender of the Confederates, was in its scope one of the greatest struggles known to history. Its operations were spread over thousands of miles, vast numbers of men were employed, and both sides fought with an even more relentless determination than is usual when " armed nations " meet in battle. The duration of the war was due to the nature of the country and the enormous distances to be traversed, not to any want of energy, for the armies were in deadly earnest and their battles and combats (of which two thousand four hundred can be named) sterner than those of almost any war in modern history. For the purposes of the military narrative it is sufficient to say that eleven southern states seceded from the Union and formed the Confederate States of America. Jefferson Davis was chosen president of this confederacy, and an energetic government prepared to repel the expected attack of the "Union " states. The " resumption " by the seceding states of the coast defenses (built on land ceded by the various states to the Federal government, and, it was argued, withdrawn therefore by the act of secession) brought on the war.
II. Bombardment of Fort Sumter—South Carolina, finding other means of seizing or regaining Fort Sumter at Charleston ineffectual, ushered in the great struggle by the bombardment of the 12th of April 1861. Against overwhelming odds the United States troops held out until honor was satisfied; they then surrendered the ruins of the fort and were conveyed by warships to the north. At once the war spirit was aroused. President Lincoln called out 75,000 men. The few southern states which had not yet seceded, refused their contingents and promptly joined the " rebels," but there was no hesitation in the people of the North, and the state troops volunteered in far greater numbers than had been demanded. Nearly the whole of the nation had now definitely taken sides in the quarrel. The Confederacy consisted of eleven states (Virginia, North and South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas and Tennessee). All the remaining states and territories stood by the Union, except Missouri, Kentucky and Maryland, in which public opinion was divided. But the first operations of the war brought about the willing or unwilling adhesion of these border states to the Federal cause. Citizens of these states served on either side in the war. The small, but highly efficient, regular army stood by the president, though large numbers of the officers, amongst them many of the best in the service, left it when their states seceded. The navy likewise remained national, and of its officers very few went with their states, for the foreign relations of the navy tended to produce a sentiment wider than local. But the Federal armaments were not on such a scale as to enable the government to cope with a " nation in arms," and the first call for volunteers was followed by more and more, until in the end the Federals had more than a million men under arms. At first the troops on both sides were voluntarily enlisted, but the South quickly, the North later, put in force conscription acts. Reducing the figures to a three years' average, the North furnished about 45 % of her military population, the South not less than 90 % for that term. Even so the Confederacy was numerically, as in every other respect, far weaker, and rarely, after the second year, opposed equal numbers to the troops of the Union. Throughout the critical period of the war, that is, from the beginning of 1862 up to the day of Chattanooga, three distinct campaigns were always in progress. Virginia, separating the two hostile capitals, Richmond and Washington, was the theatre of the great campaigns of the east, where the flower of both armies fought. In the centre, the valleys of the Ohio, the Cumberland and the Tennessee were the battle-ground of large armies attacking and defending the south and south-eastern states of the Confederacy, while on and beyond the great waterway of the Mississippi was carried on the struggle for those interests, vital to either party, which depended on the mighty river and its affluents. Until the end of 1863 the events in these three regions remain distinct episodes; after that the whole theatre of war is comprised in the " anaconda policy," which concentrated irresistible masses of troops from all sides on the heroic remnants of the Confederacy. In Virginia and the east, Washington, situated on the outpost line of the Union, and separated by the " border" state of Maryland from Pennsylvania and the North, was for some time in great peril. Virginia, and with it the Federal navy yard at Norfolk and the arsenal at Harper's Ferry, was controlled by the rebels. Baltimore was the scene of a bloody riot as the first Northern regiment (6th Mass.) passed through on its way to Washington on the 19th of April, and, until troops could be spared to protect the railway through Maryland, all reinforcements for the national capital had to be brought up to Annapolis by sea. When that state was reduced to order, the Potomac became the front, and, later, the base, of the Northern armies.
III. Battles In Missouri and West Virginia—Missouri, at the other flank of the line, contained an even stronger Confederate element, and it was not without a severe struggle that the energy of Mr. (afterwards General) F. P. Blair, and of Nathaniel Lyon, the Unionist military commander, prevailed over the party of secession. In Kentucky the Unionist victory was secured almost without a blow, and, even at the end of 1861, the Confederate outposts west of the Alleghenies lay no farther north than the line Columbus, —Bowling Green—Cumberland Gap, though southern Missouri was still a contested ground. Between the Mississippi and the mountains the whole of the year was spent by both sides in pre-paring for the contest. In the east hostilities began in earnest in western Virginia. This part of the state, strongly Unionist, had striven to prevent secession, and soon became itself a state of the Union (1863). A force under General G. B. McClellan advanced from the Ohio in June and captured Philippi. This promptitude was not only dictated by the necessity of preserving West Virginia, but imposed by the necessity of holding the Baltimore & Ohio railway, which, as the great link between east and west, was essential to the Federal armies, A month later, an easy triumph was obtained by McClellan and Rosecrans against the Confederates of Virginia at Rich Mountain.
IV. First Bull Run—The opposing forces now in the field numbered 190,000 Unionists and half that number of Confederates; sixty-nine warships flew the Stars and Stripes and a number of improvised ironclads and gunboats the rival " Stars and Bars. " On the l0th of June a Federal force was defeated at Big Bethel (near Fortress Monroe), and soon afterwards the main Virginian campaign began. On the Potomac the Unionist generals McDowell and Patterson commanded respectively the forces at Washington and Harper's Ferry, opposed by the Confederates under Generals J. E. Johnston and P. G. T. Beauregard at Winchester and at Manassas. The forces of these four commanders were raw but eager, and the people behind them clamored for a decision. Much against his own judgment, Lieutenant-General Winfield Scott, the Federal general-in-chief, a veteran of the second war with England and of the war with Mexico, felt constrained to older an advance against Beauregard, while Patterson was to hold Johnston in check on the Shenandoah. On the 21st of July took place the first battle of Bull Run between McDowell and Beauregard, fought by the raw troops of both sides with an obstinacy that foreboded the desperate battles of subsequent campaigns. The arrival of Johnston on the previous evening and his lieutenant Kirby Smith at the crisis of the battle (for Patterson's part in the plan had completely failed), turned the scale, and the Federals, not yet disciplined to bear the strain of a great battle, broke and fled in wild rout. The equally raw Confederates were in no condition to pursue. A desultory duel between the forces of Rosecrans and Robert E. Lee in West Virginia, which ended in the withdrawal of the Confederates, and a few combats on the Potomac (Ball's Bluff or Leesburg, October 21; Dranesville, December 20), brought to a close the first campaign in the east.
V. Close of the First Year of the Civil War—In the end Bull Run did more harm to the victors than to the conquered. The Southerners undeniably rested on their laurels, and enabled McClellan, who was now called to the chief military command at Washington, to raise, organize and train the famous Army of the Potomac, which, in defeat and victory, won its reputation as one of the finest armies of modern history. Johnston meanwhile was similarly employed in fashioning the equally famous Army of northern Virginia, which for three years carried the Confederacy on its bayonets. It was not until the people was stung by the humiliation of Bull Run that the unorganized enthusiasm of the North settled down into an invincible determination to crush the rebellion at all costs. The men of the South were not less in earnest, and the most highly individualized people in the world was thus found ready to accept a rigorous discipline as the only way to success. In the autumn, a spirited attempt was made by the Arkansas Confederates to reoccupy Missouri. Fremont, the Federal commander, proved quite unable to deal with this, and General Lyon was defeated and killed at Wilson's Creek (August 10). Soon afterwards, after a steady resistance, the Unionist garrison of Lexington surrendered to Sterling Price. But the work of Blair and Lyon had not been in vain, and the mere menace of Fremont's advance sufficed to clear the state, while General John Pope, by vigorous action in the field and able civil administration, restored order and quiet in the northern part of the state. In the central theatre (Kentucky), the only event of importance was a daring reconnaissance of the Confederate fort at Columbus on the Mississippi by a small force under Brigadier-General U. S. Grant (action of Belmont, November 7).
VI. The Blockade—Meanwhile the Federal navy had settled down to its fourfold task of blockading the enemy's coast against the export of cotton and the import of war material, protecting the Union commerce afloat, hindering the creation of a Confederate navy and cooperating with the land forces. From the first months of the war the sea power of the Federals was practically unchallenged, and the whole length of the hostile coast-line was open to invasion. But the blockade of 3000 miles of coast was a far more formidable task, and international law required it to be effective in order to be respected. Nevertheless along the whole line some kind of surveillance was established long before the close of 1861, and, in proportion as the number of vessels available increased, the blockade became more and more stringent, until at last it was practically unbreakable at any point save by the fastest steamers working under unusually favorable conditions of wind and weather. As against the civilian enemy the navy strangled commerce; its military preponderance nipped in the bud every successive attempt of the Confederates to create a fleet (for each new vessel as it emerged from the estuary or harbor in which it had been built, was destroyed or driven back), while at any given point a secure base was available for the far-ranging operations of the Union armies. Two hundred and twelve warships or converted merchantmen were in commission on' the 1st of January 1862. There had been several coastal successes in 1861, notably the occupation of Hatteras Inlet, North Carolina, by Commodore S. H. Stringham and General B. F. Butler (August 28-29, 1861), and the bombardment and capture of Forts Beauregard and Walker at Port Royal, South Carolina, by the fleet under Commodore S. F. duPont and the forces of General W. T. Sherman (November 7, 1861). Early in 1862 a large expedition under General A. E. Burnside and Commodore L. M. Goldsborough captured Roanoke Island, and the troops penetrated inland as far as Newbern (actions of February 8 and March 14). About the same time Fort Pulaski (the main de-fence of Savannah, Georgia) was invested and captured. But the greatest and most important enterprise was the capture of New Orleans by Flag-Officer D. G. Farragut and General Butler (April 18-25, 1862). This success opened up the lower Mississippi at the same time as the armies of the west began to move down that river under Grant, who was always accompanied by the gunboat flotilla which had been created on the upper waters in 1861. A slight campaign in New Mexico took place in February 1862, in which several brilliant tactical successes were won by the Texan forces, but no permanent foothold was secured by them.