1. LESSON 3
The War at Home

2. Drafting an Army
The Confederacy passed a conscription law that required men of a certain age fight in the army.
Draft dodgers were men who refused to enlist.
Deserters were men who ran away from their duty.
Plantation owners who had more than 20 slaves could pay for someone to serve in their place.
The Union also passed a conscription law, but men could pay a fee to avoid serving.

3. Drafting an Army
What did it mean to say the Civil War was “a rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight”?

4. Hardships on the Homefront
Just as they did in the American Revolution, women took on extra duties and helped the war effort.

5. Shortages and High Prices
Hardships on the Homefront
Shortages and High Prices
The Union’s naval blockade caused shortages of basic items, such as cloth, thread, needles, coffee, sugar, and flour.
Resourcefulness and rationing helped to some degree, but many Southerners suffered.
Widespread inflation made things worse and led to riots in some places and caused opposition to the war to grow.

6. Hardships on the Homefront
Why do you think the Union distributed food in areas it occupied in the South?
The war divided the South
Secessionist did not like Lincoln because he was against the spread of slavery
SC leaders believed that each state government should have the right to control its own citizens
SC Unionists opposed secession because they believed that the Constituion could protect the rights of slave owners.
Southern women get food from a Union food supply station, or commissary.

7. Hardships on the Homefront
The war divided the South
Secessionist did not like Lincoln because he was against the spread of slavery
SC leaders believed that each state government should have the right to control its own citizens
SC Unionists opposed secession because they believed that the Constitution could protect the rights of slave owners.

8. The Cost of War
The end of the war meant the end of slavery and the plantation system.
$4 billion cost to the South from emancipation.
Drop in land values due to destruction.
South Carolina suffered huge losses in livestock.
Whole sections of South Carolina were reduced to rubble and the land was destroyed.

9. The Cost of the War
How do you think Sherman’s “March to the Sea” affected South Carolina after the war ended?

10. The Cost of War
How do you think the destruction of plantations and the end of slavery changed the view Southerners had of themselves?

11. A Staggering Death Toll
The Cost of War
A Staggering Death Toll
Source: Civil War Trust (
620,000 Americans lost their lives during the Civil War. The death toll remains greater than any other war Americans have fought in.

12. Celebration and Sadness
After the war, freedmen held a grand march to celebrate their freedom in Charleston.
Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth assassinated President Lincoln on April 14, 1865.
The North reacted with grief.
The South had mixed feelings. Some were indifferent, others were afraid of what his death meant for the future.