Union National Objective (S)

Union National Objective(s) With tensions rising on the issue of Slavery in the 1860s, and the secession of a number of Southern states, the American nation saw the beginnings of a Civil war start to unfold. With the secession of the South, there existed a feeling that the Union should maintained rather than separate. After tensions reached their breaking point, war broke out between the North and South with the main national objective for the Union was to reestablish and preserve the Union as it was prior while the South sought for the preservation of their state rights. For the first years of the war, the Union's sole objective was to preserve the Union of states. However, with each attempt to push South that ended without success it …show more content…
In the naval capacity, the Union Navy began to establish a blockade in the South by December 1862 and establishing bases by occupying various ports in the South. Such bases included Hatteras , which served as the base of Operations for General Burnsides, on 29 August 1861, Port Royal on 7 November, followed by a handful of ports in both Georgia and Florida. Then in the west troops operations began with an Operation from Grant to take Fort Henry on 6 February and soon after Fort Donaldson on 13 February. In each campaign, save for the Naval operations, there seemed to be little gains on either side and usually from looks from the maps that the War was a large-scale tug of war for the first year or so. For the West, with Grant, Buell, Farragut and Butler the Operations give the appearance of real success due to the gain of territory in Tennessee and along the Mississippi River for their efforts in 1862, especially at the Battle of Shiloh with Grant and Buell and the Seizure of New Orleans by 1 May 1862. In the East, however under McClellan, Burnside and later Pope, gained little or lost a bunch with each major engagement against the Confederates such as the Battle of Fair Oaks and later the Seven Days Battles. In the end of the campaign of these battles the Army of the Potomac again was pulled back north to Washington. By the time of the Second Battle of Bull Run, the Confederates had plans to cut off Buell's supply lines and destroy both his and Grant's armies in the west, coinciding with a similar push north by Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. Both attacks were intercepted by Union Forces: Bragg's push into Kentucky by Buell's command in a Meeting engagement and Lee by the Army of the Potomac at Antietam; both resulting in Confederate