today we're covering civil war 101 the basics hello welcome to the daily bellringer please
don't forget to subscribe and take a look at the questions down in the description also
I'd love to see your answer to question number five in the comments below so today we're just
hitting the basics of the American Civil War each year when I teach the Civil War I always
have students who you know they've studied the civil war in the past or they've heard
of the Civil War before but they just don't quite understand some of the the basics of
the war so today I'm not really covering you know why the Civil War happened if you want
to know that you know take a look at some of my other videos about sectionalism or
about western expansion but today I'm really just gonna hit you know a few things that
you know a lot of the students seem to have questions about when we get to the Civil War
so first off the the United States itself at the time the Civil War there was a total population of
around 31 million people with 22 million people living in northern states and 9 million people
living in southern states but it's important to note of that 9 million people 4 million
were enslaved people so the north otherwise called the Union consisted of 20 states with five border
states of Missouri Kentucky West Virginia which of course broke away from Virginia during Civil War
Maryland and Delaware now these border states these were states that still had slavery and
didn't vote for Lincoln in the election of 1860 yet they never officially seceded from
the Union so that doesn't mean they exclusively supported the Union because there were men from
these states that fought for the Union but they're also also meant from these states who fought for
the Confederacy so the south or the Confederacy or the Confederate States of America was made up of
11 states and they believed themselves to be a new country separate from the United States of America
so the Union flag should be very familiar since this is basically still the standard stars and
stripes that we think of today as being our national flag but it's important to note in the
Union flag they never remove stars for states that seceded because they never officially recognized
southern states as seceded from the Union so during that the war the flag went through
several different changes there were actually 33 stars on the flag when the war began at Fort
Sumner but then there were 34 added when Kansas wasn't meted on there were 35 when West Virginia
was admitted and then finally in 1865 there's 36 stars on the flag when Nevada was admitted now
for the Confederacy of course we have this very recognizable Confederate battle flag or the Army
of Northern Virginia battle flag this flag was not the official flag of the Confederacy originally
although it does appear later on their national flag the original national flag was the Stars and
Bars seen here the problem with the Stars and Bars was that it was very similar to the Union flag
and so on the battlefield commanders depended on seeing these flags to know where their troops were
at during the battle and it got really confusing when you would see two red white and blue flags on
the battlefield so the confederates adopted this flag to carry into battle later in the
war the Confederates did change their national flag to include the battle flag in their design
the union uniform was of course the blue or the dark navy blue with with lighter blue pants this
uniform had officially been adopted by the United States in 1858 but for years United
u.s. troops had been wearing some form of blue uniform the idea that they were wearing darker
colors was that basically they wouldn't stand out at a distance this was a practice that was
used by pre Civil War hunters now Confederates of course they wore gray uniforms this was primarily
because gray dye was pretty cheap to use and it was also the standard uniform color of a lot of
different state militias some historians also note that the cadets or the students at West
Point and the Virginia Military Institute or VMI the two primary military schools of the
time wore grey uniforms so although the Union had a means to reduce uniforms with their you
know industries and everything the Confederates did not have as much industry so they could not
produce as many uniforms and so a lot of times you see Confederates wearing just their standard
you know clothing that they wore from day to day on the battlefield but a lot of times they would
take blue uniforms from killed or captured Union troops and they would dye them in a solution of
walnuts and acorns and lye and turn the uniform to tan and this became known as the butternut uniform
now the theaters of the war a lot of times you'll hear theaters of the war discussed
and we're not talking about you know going to a show or anything rather there's two major goals
or I'm sorry this focuses on a couple different goals for the Union during the war so we have the
eastern theater of the war which was basically the fight to capture Richmond and you know
there's major battles that occur here such as you know Antietam Chancellorsville Gettysburg
happen in the eastern theater of the war then we have the western theater of the war which
focused on control of the Mississippi River and so we you know we have major conflicts
that happen here such as Shiloh and Vicksburg that happened in the western theater of the war
so hopefully I cleared up a few things there maybe I confused you a little bit more about
the Civil War but with that hopefully you learned something and thanks for watching
you