The Dispute over Slavery, Secession, and the Civil War 147when two ironclads, the Merrimac and the Monitor—their hulls were
shielded in metal—engaged in a fi ve-hour battle on the James River
that resulted in a draw. The age of wooden fighting ships effectively
ended on that day.
A naval squadron under David G. Farragut ran the Confederate
defenses below New Orleans in April 1862 and bombarded the city,
whereupon it was occupied by Union troops under General Benjamin
F. Butler. For his success, Farragut was named a rear admiral, the fi rst
to be accorded that rank.
At the Second Battle of Bull Run in late August, the Union army
suffered another humiliating rout by a Confederate army now com-
manded by General Robert E. Lee, who succeeded General Johnston
after Johnston was severely wounded at the Battle of Seven Pines in
late May. Lee then invaded the North in an attempt to isolate Wash-
ington by cutting the major rail lines leading to the city. At Antietam
the Union and Confederate armies met in another bloody engagement.
Over 3 , 000 on both sides were killed and another 18 , 000 wounded.
The battle ended in a draw when McClellan failed to deploy his re-
serves, but Lee withdrew to Virginia and so the Union could claim a
“technical” victory.
It was enough of a victory for President Lincoln to issue his Prelimi-
nary Emancipation Proclamation on September 22. Although at the
beginning of the war he insisted that the conflict involved preserving
the Union, by this time slavery had become the defi ning issue. In this
Preliminary Proclamation, Lincoln declared that on January 1 , 1863 , he
would free all the slaves in Confederate areas still in rebellion against
the United States. “I wish it were a better time,” he told his cabinet. “I
wish that we were in a better condition. The action of the army against
the rebels has not been quite what I should have best liked.” Even so, it
was time to bring the question of slavery to an end.
The “technical” victory at Antietam also halted any possibility of
recognition of the Confederacy by Great Britain and France. Those
two countries had been on the verge of recognition, but now they held
back, and this danger to the Union cause passed without further diffi -
culty. However, Great Britain continued building raiding ships for the
Confederates, allowing the Alabama to slip out of Liverpool and infl ict
heavy damage on American shipping. Not until the U.S. minister to