He then sent Grenville Dodge to Washington to plead Iowa's case. Governor Samuel Kirkwood appealed to Washington, but no arms arrived. At first Iowans did not have enough weapons or ammunition. Thousands of Iowans volunteered at the first call for soldiers. After the first battles everyone realized that the war would not end quickly, and the army signed up men for three years.Īs the war began, Iowa was committed to the Union cause. Lincoln asked for a specific number of soldiers from each state, and volunteers quickly met his request.
Most people, North and South, thought the war would be short. President Lincoln called for volunteers to enlist for 90 days to put down the southern rebellion. With the news of open fighting, four more southern states voted to leave the Union, and these 12 organized the Confederate States of America. When Lincoln refused to order federal troops to leave Fort Sumter in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, southern soldiers opened fire on April 12, 1861. Eventually their Congressmen left Washington, and the states claimed that all federal property, including forts and army supplies, now belonged to them. Within the next six weeks, six more states followed. On December 20 the South Carolina legislature voted to secede (to withdraw from the United States). To prevent that, several southern states decided to leave the Union. When southern whites heard the news that Abraham Lincoln had been elected president in 1860, they feared that the federal government would take new steps to oppose slavery. Iowa in the Civil War Confederate States of America
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