After two years of warfare, the North finally was mobilizing its economy full steam, while the South had crested and was falling back. General Sherman, the most acute observer of the war, had predicted this development exactly even before Sumter, telling a rebel acquaintance:
The North can make a steam-engine, locomotive or railway car; hardly a yard of cloth or a pair of shoes can you make. You are rushing into war with one of the most powerful, ingeniously mechanical an determined people on earth--right at your doors. You are bound to fail. Only in your spirit and determination are you prepared for war. In all else you are totally unprepared. . . . At first you will make headway, but as your limited resources begin to fail, and shut out from the markets of Europe by blockade as you will be, your cause will begin to wane.
The blockade squeezed the southern economy into a downward spiral; it shrank by 40 to 50%. The hardships of Confederate civilians was greatly mitigated by the fact that eight in ten lived on farms, and with little chance of selling tobacco, much good land and slave labor was switched to food production. Shortages of coffee annoyed everyone, while a severe shortage of salt made the preservation of meat a major headache. The breakdown of the commissary and transportation systems kept the army hungry. Richmond lacked the managerial skills needed to move food from where it was still abundant. Each rebel army learned to raid the countryside for food, fodder, wood, horses and mules, until they had stripped friendly territory bare. As early as the 1862 harvest season, Sergeant Robert Smith, of the Second Tennessee division, reported that his regiment had been given only one pound of flour each to last the next three days, and had gobbled it up. "They will have to live on parched [boiled] corn, wall-nuts & acorns for the next two days--rather hard living." The soldiers joked that the war was between the
"Feds" and the "Cornfeds." By spring 1863 poor quality rations, high in calories but low in vitamins and meat, had become the norm. The Army of the Tennessee fed its 50,000 troops every day with 35,000 pounds of bacon, 88,000 pounds of corn meal, 3,500 pounds of rice, 520 gallons of molasses, and a small river of ersatz "coffee" made from corn meal. The troops grumbled that warriors needed red meat to fight well, but they chewed their rancid bacon and soldiered on. Every few months standard rations were cut; more sugar, lesancid bacon and soldiered on. Every few months standard rations were cut; more sugar, less beef. Vegetables became rarities, though one week some boxcars of tomatoes from Florida provided a special treat. Nutritional deficiencies kept the sick and wounded incapacitated for longer periods, caused scurvy, and may have produced the night blindness that handicapped the defenders in at least one battle. In winter, when battles were rare, the Confederate army sent thousands of soldiers home to allow them to work on their farm or in munitions factories; more would have been sent but the railroads could not handle them. The Confederate medical system, scarcely able to cope with battlefield casualties, routinely sent lightly injured men home temporarily. "The boys regard a severe wound now as equivalent to a furlough, and whenever one is wounded they say he has got a furlough for thirty, sixty or ninety days as the wound may be slight, severe, or serious."
The decaying infrastructure of the South negated the Confederacy's advantage of interior lines of communications. The US Navy commanded the high seas and every major river. To maintain mobility over the vast western distances, the quartermasters had to feed the workhorses, mules and cavalry mounts large amounts of forage (ten pounds a day each of corn and hay), which filled the available wagons and railroad cars. Lee's horses in Virginia were on half rations, and could hardly pull their caissons, guns and wagons. The life expectancy of an army horse was a matter of weeks, and Lee could not replenish his losses while the Federals were increasingly well mounted as the war went on. Union cavalry, distinctly inferior in 1861-62, was much superior by 1864.
SHut off from its own river system, the Confederate lifeline became its few overburdened railroads. In September, 1863, Lee outwitted the Yankees by shipping Longstreet's elite First Corps from the Virginia front to Chickamauga (on the Tennessee-Georgia state line, south of Chattanooga); the goal was to give Bragg a sudden numerical advantage over Rosecrans' Yankees. Movement by sea was of course impossible, and the direct route of 500 miles across the mountains had been cut. Eight brigades totaling 12,000 soldiers therefore made a roundabout 965 mile rail journey in 10-16 days. They traversed eleven different railroads, each with different gauge (width) tracks, so it was impossible to use the same cars. As one staff officer recalled:
Never before were so many troops moved over such worn-out railways. Never before were such crazy cars--passenger, baggage, mail, coal, box, platform, all and every sort wobbling on the jumping strap iron--used for hauling good soldiers. But we got there nonetheless.*
----
* Lacking solid iron rails, none of which were made or imported
during the war, the southerners nailed thin straps of iron to
wooden rails.
----
Not quite. The rebel artillery and 4,500 infantry arrived too late for the battle of Chickamauga. Bragg therefore had inadequate reserves to clinch success when Longstreet's veterans burst through the Union lines. What might have been a smashing victory became just another bloody morale builder for the Confederates--it proved to be their last major victory in the west. The Yankees regained numerical advantage when Lincoln reinforced Rosecrans with 20,000 men from the Virginia front; they circled round some 1,200 miles over superior Union railroads in one-third less time.
By 1864 Grant and Sherman realized the weakest point of the armies opposing them was the decrepitude of the southern infrastructure and deliberately sought to wear it down. Cavalry raids were the favorite device, with instructions to ruin destroy railroads (by twisting their rails) and burn bridges. Sherman's insight was deeper. He focused on the trust the rebels had in their Confederacy as a living nation, and he set out to destroy that trust. "I propose to demonstrate the vulnerability of the South, and make its inhabitants feel that war and ruin are synonymous terms." It took a while to secure the approval of Lincoln and Grant, for Sherman's stunningly bold plan was to ignore the Confederate army and strike instead at the Confederate nation. Sherman's "March To the Sea," from Atlanta to Savannah in fall, 1864, burned and broke and ruined every part of the industrial, commercial, transportation and agricultural infrastructure it touched. The actual damage shoukld not be damaged, for Sherman confined himself to a swath of territory totaling about 15% of the single state of Georgia. Much more important than the twisted rails, smoldering main streets, dead cattle, burning barns and ransacked houses was the bitter realization among rebel civilians and soldiers throughout the remaining Confederacy that if they persisted, sooner or later their homes and communities would receive the same treatment. Sherman, who had been deeply involved in the Seminole War, knew that the way to defeat Indians was to strike at their villages and especially their food supply, and that winter campaigns especially effective. Maybe the same strategy would work now. Thus Sherman struck at Georgia in October, November and December, and while Grant and Lee were in quiet winter quarters in the next three months, Sherman's army moved north through the Carolinas in a campaign even more devastating than the March Through Georgia.
The recruitment of black soldiers was just as
controversial as emancipation itself. Over 180,000 joined
segregated units in the US Army and a few thousand joined integrated
crews in the Navy. In the North the free black community
vigorously recruited young men until enthusiasm fell off when
Washington decided to pay the blacks $3 less a month than whites.
Reports of low enrollments, poor discipline, and even mutinies troubled
Lincoln, who felt since blacks "had larger motives for being
soldiers than white men...they ought to be willing to enter the
service on any condition." The soldiers were used primarily to
perform fatigue and construction chores, and to guard bridges,
forts and Freedmen's camps containing many of the 600,000 or so
slaves liberated by the advancing armies. Except for 100 black
junior officers, the 7,000 officers in xx black regiments were
whites who had been carefully screened. The first officer
candidate school was established to train experienced white
sergeants to become lieutenants in the "Colored Volunteers."
Grant told Lincoln that emancipating and arming the blacks
At first treated as inferior socially and militarily, eventually the
black soldiers won the grudging admiration of many of their white comrades.
The peace Democrats excited large audiences by warning that white
men were now dying in order to equalize a lower race. The
Republicans counterattacked with the rebuttal that "Copperheads"
were cowards for refusing to enlist, traitors for sympathizing
with the enemy, and inferior in citizenship to the blacks who
were fighting for their country. "You say you will not fight to
free negroes," Lincoln snapped. "Some of them seem willing to
fight for you."
The Confederacy was outraged at the arming of their
slaves, and threatened to reenslave or execute them when
captured. They desisted when Lincoln vowed retaliation. However,
the refusal of Richmond to allow black Union prisoners to be
exchanged for Confederate prisoners brought an end to all
prisoner exchanges in 1863. This condemned thousands of prisoners both sides on to slow death in poorly supplied camps like Andersonville, where disease and starvation took 13,000 of the 45,000 Yankees. Southern prisoners in Chicago and other norther camps fared a little better, but thousands died ofs died of exposure and disease.
Paradoxically, the Confederacy finally realized it needed more
blacks in its army. In 1864, the Army of Tennessee replaced
white support soldiers (including cooks and construction crews)
with blacks and reassigned them to combat units. General Joseph
Johnston estimated this reform added 25% to his fighting force.
When General Patrick Cleburne went one step further and
recommended the black auxiliaries be armed and used as combat
troops, an intense controversy arose. Arming the slaves would
require eventual emancipation and the doom of slavery--but many
Confederate nationalists saw it as the only way to preserve their
new nation. Finally in early 1865, Lee insisted on having black
combat units, and the Richmond government agreed. The Confederacy
began to raise and train black regiments in March, 1865; they
never saw combat, but the episode demonstrates that the
Confederacy was in the end willing to abandon slavery to preserve
its independence.
The quality of black performance in combat was a hotly
debated subject. Black regiments fought in 39 major engagements,
most notably Ft. Wagner, the Crater, Olustee (all US defeats),
New Market Heights (a very bloody success) and Nashville (a US
triumph). Critics, motivated by racist distrust of black
soldiers, emphasized how the blacks had broken and run in each
battle. Charles Francis Adams, Jr. grandson of a president and
colonel of the 5th Massachusetts Colored Cavalry, was shocked at the
disaster at the Crater, near Petersburg, Virginia in July, 1864.
Pennsylvania soldiers who were ex-coal miners had secretly placed
8,000 pounds of gunpowder underneath the Confederate front line.
The tremendous explosion killed nine companies of South
Carolinians, and blew up four guns commanded by Colonel William
Pegram. The rebels were disoriented and helpless for half an
hour. But when three white divisions and a black one tried to
attack, they stupidly entered the huge crater, 30 feet deep and
60 feet wide. They panicked, could not get out, and were
massacred; casualties were 40%. "A few of our men were wounded by
the negroes which exasperated them very much," Pegram (age 23)
told his sister. "As soon as we got upon them, they threw down
their arms to surrender, but were not allowed to do so." Pegram
boasted that scores of blacks who managed to become prisoners
were immediately executed. "It seems cruel to murder them in cold
blood, but I think the men who did it had very good cause for
doing so....it has a splendid effect on our men."* Adams decided
----
the fiasco proved, "That the negro was wholly unfit for cavalry service, lacking absolutely the essential qualities of alertness, individuality, reliability, and
self-reliance." On the other hand sympathizers praised the
fighting spirit with which they had attacked in the first place,
and blamed the retreats and disasters on white units. A black
brigade did well at Nashville (December, 1864). It retreated
there too, but this time the rebels totally fell apart. Col
Thomas Jefferson Morgan, the brigade commander, hailed its
"record of coolness, bravery, manliness. . . . A new chapter in
the history of liberty has been written." As black editor
Frederick Douglass had predicted in 1863,
In the final tally, blacks accounted for 2.2% of the 6.4 million
soldier-years served in the US Army, 15.7% of the 186,000 deaths
by disease, 2.2% of the 34,200 severe nonfatal gunshot wounds,
and 3.3% of the 78,200 deaths in combat. To their own surprise,
some white soldiers learned to appreciate the presence of the
black troops, and worked hard to convince their civilian
relatives that the equality policy was indeed a good idea.
The turning point of the Civil War had come in September,
1862, with the twin failures of Lee's invasion of Maryland and
Bragg's invasion of Kentucky. Foreign intervention had gone a
glimmering, and while the peace Democrats did carry New York
state in the 1862 fall election for governor, the prowar
Republicans retained control of all other large states as well as
the federal government. Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation,
announced after Antietam, took effect on January 1, 1863; its
anniversary would soon become a day of celebration for the black
community. Emancipation stiffened Confederate resistance; to
them the war was now a quest for independence, a defense of their
homes, and a war between the races all rolled into one. They
fought ferociously, the more so as their supplies ran thin and
reinforcements became scarcer. Victory would not come cheap.
Lincoln lavished equipment and manpower building the Army of the
Potomac into "the finest army on the planet." Lee nevertheless
continued his mastery over faltering Union generals, especially
at Chancellorsville, until he made one major miscalculation.
Confusing peace rhetoric for northern public opinion, assuming
the Yankees must be just as war weary as southerners, and
frightfully short of supplies for his army, Lee planned another
full-scale raid into the North--Pennsylvania this time. He
figured:
Hooker, commanding the Army of the Potomac, was, as Lee
had calculated, indeed tardy and afraid to fight Lee. He wanted
to attack Richmond, but Lincoln vetoed that idea as impossible of
success and replaced Hooker with George Meade. The new commander
brooked no delay in chasing the rebels north. Lee underestimated
his new foe, expecting him to be a day late and a division short,
like Hooker. Lee was blinded for a week by the failure of Jeb
Stuart's cavalry to provide timely reconnaissance. "Where on
earth is my cavalry?" he kept asking every day. In fact Stuart
was miles away sacking a mule-drawn supply train,* while Meade
was close behind, and had cut off the line of retreat back to
Virginia. Lee had to fight, but first he had to rush to
reassemble his scattered forces at the crossroads town of
Gettysburg before Meade defeated them piecemeal. Lee had 60,000
infantry and 10,200 cavalry (Meade's intelligence officers
estimated Lee had 140,000). Would this be enough to challenge
the United States on its home ground? This time it was Lee's
turn to be fooled; he gullibly swallowed misinformation that
suggested Meade had twice as many soldiers, when in fact he had
86,000.
Even though the main Confederate army was marching
through Pennsylvania, Lincoln was unable to give Meade more
firepower. The vast majority of the 700,000 Federal soldiers
(except for Grant's 70,000) were noncombatants, held static
defensive posts that Lincoln feared to uncover, or like Rosecrans
at Nashville, they were afraid to move. Urgently the President
called for 100,000 civilian militiamen to turn out for the
emergency; some did, but being unorganized, untrained, unequipped
and poorly led, they were more trouble than worth. Lee was
overconfident of the morale and equipment of his "invincible"
veterans; he fantasized about a definitive war-winning triumph:
----
The Battle of Gettysburg unfolded over three days, July
1-3, 1863. The rebels, who had entered Gettysburg looking for a
warehouse of shoes, unexpectedly encountered Yankee cavalry. John
Reynolds, a brilliant commander who had refused Lincoln's offer
of command of the Army of the Potomac, directed infantry brigades
forward to replace the lightly armed dismounted cavalry (acting
as infantry) holding Seminary Ridge just west of the town.
Suddenly he fell from his saddle, dead by a sharpshooters bullet.
The Yankees fell back to Cemetery Hill south of town and dug in
overnight; they been whipped the first day because they were
badly outnumbered, 25,000 to 19,000. With 5,000 Federals
captured, and 4,500 more killed or wounded, Gettysburg Day One
seemed to be a reprise of Lee's triumphs at Fredericksburg and
Chancellorsville. The battle had just begun. Meade did not
retreat to lick his wounds and blame his subordinates; he poured
in reinforcements and took a strong defensive position. His
fishhook-shaped defensive line stretched two miles from Little
Round Top in the south to Culp's Hill in the north, then jutted
eastward another mile. (See map) Lee's advisors warned against a
frontal assault, but he knew the Confederacy was desperate. It
had to win a decisive battle in the North, or else be rejected
abroad and systematically ground to death. The Federals had the
more compact position with better
communication and better opportunity to move forces from one
danger spot to another. Meade's forces were atop small ridges
with gentle slopes that angled just enough to provide an
advantage to the defenders shooting downward. The Yankees had
more soldiers and more artillery--and more spirit, for now it was
they who were defending their homes, and the rebels who were
invaders. "Our men are three times as enthusiastic as they have
been in Virginia.... The idea that Pennsylvania is invaded and
that we are fighting on our own soil proper, influences them
strongly." Despite the enemy's advantages, Lee had to attack and
win, or risk losing his entire army and the Confederacy itself.
So large and complex was Gettysburg that Lee and
Meade could not control all the action; their corps and division
commanders were in charge. Often colonels had to make vital
decisions on the spot, without consulting their superiors. With
vicious hand-to-hand fighting late in the second afternoon, the
Confederates captured the "Devil's Den" a rock-strewn jumble of
large boulders. In the melee, "Every fellow was his own general,"
a Texan recalled. "Private soldiers gave
commands as loud as the officers; nobody paying attention to
either." Carelessly the Federals had left nearby Little Round Top
undefended; five rebel regiments rushed to seize this ideal
location for their cannon. Colonel Strong Vincent, at 26 the
youngest brigade commander, took the initiative without
permission and rushed the 20th Maine and three other regiments
(1,350 men total) to Little Round Top. They arrived fifteen
minutes before the Confederates, and, with four more regiments
soon joining them, they beat back five attacks. Vincent had
saved the day--"Don't yield an inch!" he shouted seconds before a
bullet ripped through his heart. On a day for heroes the 20th
Maine withstood charge after charge until it ran out of
ammunition. Undaunted, its intrepid commander, Colonel Joshua
Chamberlain (a Bowdoin College professor on sabbatical) ordered a
bayonet charge and captured the bewildered attackers. Little
Round Top was secure.
Lee was uncharacteristically slow issuing orders, and his
key corps commander, Longstreet even slower carrying them out.
Against battle-hardened Union veterans, commanded by highly
experienced generals and colonels, the small delays and little
mistakes began to cumulate. Lee's biographers seem to assume that
if his orders for an early attack on Day Two had been carried out
that they would have been successful. There is no reason to
suppose this. When Longstreet finally attacked (at 5:30 pm) the
intense fighting in the "Peach Orchard" and "The Wheatfield"
proved inconclusive. Lee sent Ewall's corps on a diversionary
attack against Culp's Hill and Cemetery Ridge in the north. It
almost succeeded, but was finally repulsed by hot canister fire.
Lee lacked the reserves, artillery and ammunition needed to
transform his momentary advantages into victory. Seven afternoon
and evening hours of poorly coordinated attacks by 22,000 rebels
had been repulsed by 40,000 Federals. Seven thousand Confederate
casualties had purchased a few acres of bloody turf. With fresh
reinforcements to replace his losses, and with good artillery
positions, Lee decided to attack once more on Day Three. Again he
rejected conservative advice, and seemed unaware that artillery
ammunition was running low. He assumed the enemy was badly hurt
and dispirited, and that he could, as so many times before,
outwit their generals. Union morale was strong; in the 150th
Pennsylvania Regiment, "Each man felt that upon his own arm hung
the fate of the nation." Lee aimed a frontal attack, this time
at Meade's center. That was exactly what Meade expected, and he
set a trap.
Stuart's tired-out cavalry, armed with revolvers and
sabers, finally arrived on Day Three a few miles from the main
battlefield. But they were checked by Union cavalry (especially a
brigade under General George Custer, age 23) which used new fast-
firing breech-loaders, the single-shot Sharps carbine. Stuart had
taken all Lee's best cavalry, leaving the main army with two
third-rate, ill-equipped, poorly led brigades that could not
handle reconnaissance or much of anything else.
The main battle on Day Three opened with one of the
greatest artillery duels of the nineteenth century. At the
beginning of the war, artillery was considered a minor adjunct to
infantry or a device for coastal defense. Both armies used
batteries of 4-6 guns (and 90 men) assigned to the several
divisions. By 1863 Confederate experience had proven that
artillery would have a more decisive impact when massed in
separate brigades attached to the corps. The Army of the Potomac
finally adopted the corps artillery system, and went one step
further with an army-level reserve. Centralization made supply
more efficient and allowed the heavy firepower to be concentrated
at the main point of action. The Confederates had a brilliant
artillerist in Edward Porter Alexander (age 28), Longstreet's
chief of artillery, but Lee's chief of artillery William
Pendleton was mediocre at best, and the other officers were
undistinguished. Lee had 65 batteries, comprising 4,700
artillerymen and 282 guns. Meade brought 70 batteries comprising
8,000 men and 366 guns, controlled by the Army's top expert,
Henry Jackson Hunt. He relied on three types of guns: most
useful were his 146 12 pound "Napoleon" smoothbores, of 4.62
calibre (the inside diameter of the muzzle was 4.62 inches).
They could fire two rounds a minute of solid shot (weighing 12
pounds). They were relatively inaccurate, and were best used
against large formations of infantry. Solid shot, explosive
shells and, especially, canister, fired without aiming at a rate
of 4 rounds a minute proved devastating against infantry
advancing closer than 300 yards. Canister was a tin can filled
with 27 iron balls about the size of golf balls; they came out
like shotgun pellets at 1000 feet-per-second velocity, and
sprayed down everything in their path. When the attackers closed
in, they would be hit with double charges of canister.* Hunt's
----
146 3" rifled guns and 64 10-pounder rifled "Parrotts"
represented a superior technology; they were much more accurate
than Napoleons and had longer range. The problem with rifled guns
was their conical shells plowed into the ground and did not
bounce like the round shot from a smoothbore. Therefore they
were less deadly against infantry formations, and were used
primarily to knock out enemy artillery batteries at long range.
On the other side, Pendleton had to make do with captured and
smuggled guns, producing a frustrating variety of sizes and types
of ammunition. He had 111 Napoleons, 44 rifled 10-pounders and
84 rifled 3" guns, 10 very large rifled "Parrott" 20 pounders,
and 30 miscellaneous other guns. The Yankee ammunition supply was
ample, with 270 rounds per gun (he shot off one third of it,
33,000 rounds in all.) The Confederates however, had only 150
rounds per gun; with powder run through the blockade costing $3 a
pound, shortages were the norm. (A Napoleon needed 2 1/2 pounds
of powder per round.) Furthermore, Confederate fuzes were often
defective and malfunctions common. Lee fired off 22,000 rounds,
or half his supply; Alexander had to cut short the preparatory
barrage on July 3, and warned that there was not enough for a
fourth day of heavy action. Even if Lee had done well on Day
Three, he would have had to retreat to his supply base in
Virginia.
Lee assigned Longstreet the critical mission of a frontal
attack to seize Cemetery Ridge, the heavily defended Union
center. First Longstreet needed to knock out the Yankee
artillery, which otherwise would massacre the infantry in the
open. Alexander opened fire at 1 pm with 135 guns. The heaviest
bombardment of the war, it seemed to succeed, as some of the
Union guns were limbered up and pulled out of action. That was a
Yankee trick; they were deliberately holding fire. Hunt had 85
guns against Longstreet, but they were better positioned on the
heights of Cemetery Ridge and Little Round Top; Lee's failure to
capture that hill on Day Two was proving ruinous. Yankee
infantry huddled behind stone walls and breastworks, whispering
thanks that the rebel aim was too high because of poor spotting
capability (no observers in balloons or on high hills). However,
some rebel 20 pound solid shot did hit home:
At 3 pm Longstreet's artillery stopped and 47 regiments marched
out, a mile wide, in parade ground formation. On the right
swashbuckling George Pickett commanded a division of 15
regiments; he had been the first American to scale the ramparts
at Chapultepec, and now he determined to scale Cemetery Ridge, a
veritable Gibraltar a mile ahead of him. The Union cannon
reawakened with explosive shot and solid balls. Pickett's
division took the brunt of fire, staggered, pushed forward. At
200 yards Union artillery switched to canister. At 100 yards the
Yankee infantry opened fire with deadly riflery, and the
regiments on either side swung in to catch the rebels with
flanking fire. "Don't hurry men!" commanded general John Gibbon.
"Don't fire too fast. Let them come up close before you fire,
and then aim low and steadily." Still the rebels advanced, their
units all jumbled, the senior commanders nearly all down. A few
hundred actually made it to the crest, and were shot down. Of
the 15,000 Confederates who had gone forward, scarcely half made
it back--and only a third of Pickett's men.
It was the worst defeat Lee had ever known. Maybe with
twice as many soldiers and twice the artillery "Pickett's Charge"
could have succeeded, but the Confederacy had no more to spare,
while the Yankees had plenty of fresh reserves.* Lee's past
battles had been models of efficiency, coordination, and timely
movement. At Gettysburg the rebel soldiers fought ferociously,
but their generals mistimed their moves, wasting their strength
and allowing the Yankees to concentrate on the decisive points.
Stunned, humiliated, with only 42,000 effectives left, Lee
feverishly prepared for Meade's counterattack on Day Four, the
Fourth of July. Meade had 56,000 left, but he did not move. "We
have done well enough," he said, surprised that he had not been
whipped by Lee, who was still assumed to have more soldiers.
Meade did not fathom that he had won one of history's greatest
battles, nor, despite insistent telegrams from Lincoln, did he
realize he could have cut off Lee's retreat back to Virginia.
Lee, his wagon trains slowed by the plunder of Pennsylvania,
presented a target that a Grant or a Sherman would have lunged
at--perhaps capturing him and ending the war. Meade, too new to
overall command, too bedazzled by Lee's reputation, suddenly
acted like all his predecessors, and hesitated too long at the
critical moment. Lee made his escape. Although there would be
only light fighting in the East for the next 10 months, the end
was now in sight. No one realized it would take another 21
months. Perceptive Confederates, like chief of ordnance Josiah
Gorgas, were crestfallen:
----
dead wounded missing total % of forces
USA 3,200 14,500 5,400 23,100 27%
CSA 3,900 18,700 5,500 28,100 38%
Union medical services were ready; Dr. Jonathan Letterman had 650
doctors, 3,000 medics, 1,000 ambulances and an efficient system
of one field hospital for each division. They treated 20,000
patients, blue and gray alike. Expecting another battle,
Letterman pulled 540 doctors out of the hospitals to follow
Meade, a tragic miscalculation.
Westerners pooh-poohed Chancellorsville and Gettysburg,
the only major battles in the East in 1863: they just canceled
each other out. The real war was being fought and won in the
West, where the theater stretched not two hundred miles across
Virginia, but a thousand miles from Cincinnati to New Orleans.
The first western strategic goal was to seize full control of the
Mississippi and Tennessee rivers, and state of Tennessee. The
second goal was to use the Tennessee River to launch an attack at
the rebel heartland in Georgia. The Mississippi River was of less
strategic value, but control was a high priority because the
"Father of Waters" was central to the image of nationhood held by
westerners. Furthermore, control would completely knock Texas
and Arkansas without the need to defeat the strong armies there.
Throughout the war, Washington and Richmond both tended to ignore
the west; they sent inadequate soldiers and supplies. The two
national governments, and their respective media and influential
elites, were oriented toward the East front, which they
mistakenly assumed would prove decisive. Responsibility for the
various armies (and Union Navy) out west was divided on both
sides. But while the Federals learned to cooperate under the
brilliant consensus-oriented leadership of Grant, the Confederates
squabbled continually, and failed to communicate and cooperate.
Grant thus beat them piecemeal. Grant's biggest challenge was
geography and nature itself. The Union armies were challenged by
swamps and mud, by the twists and turns of the rivers and bayous
that hid a hundred bushwhackers, by the insufferable heat, and
especially by diseases that northerners were unaccustomed to. Lee
believed that the Yankees would be wiped out by malaria, so there
was no need to ship a portion of his troops west. Indeed, every
year doctors treated 900 cases of malaria per thousand of Grant's
soldiers (victims usually were recorded multiple times, most men
never caught the disease). The Yankees, however, had ample
supplies of quinine, and kept the death rate to 4 per 1000
effectives per year. The Confederates, short of quinine,
doctors, hospitals and food, suffered much more.
Grant set his first mission the capture of Vicksburg, one
of two Confederate strongholds on the Mississippi. For half a
year every strategy he could devise failed. At one point he even
tried digging a new channel for the river so the fortress would
be left high and dry. Aware that political enemies in Washington
might get him recalled, Grant kept on the move. Grant's supply
lines, based a railroad from Columbus, Kentucky, grew longer and
more vulnerable the further south he moved. At least he had
supply lines; the Confederates had to live off the land, and also
leave enough for their civilians to survive. In December, one
rebel cavalry raid cut the railroad from Columbus and another
captured Grant's main supply depot at Holly Springs, Mississippi.
Grant was forced to pull back to Memphis, rely on the river for
supplies, and rethink his strategy. He tried waterborne attacks,
which also failed. Finally in spring, 1863, he realized that his
supply lines were a handicap; defending them tied down half his
army, and their very existence told the enemy where he would be.
He could live off the land too (leaving civilians only two months
worth of food) and use freed slaves as laborers. In the most
audacious move of the war, Grant circled around Vicksburg from
the south and east, and cut loose from his supply lines. He would
win the campaign or lose his entire army. Passing Vicksburg was a
challenge accepted by Commodore David Porter. On April 16, after
dark he slipped the Yankee fleet past the 31 heavy guns of
Vicksburg, dodging one shell every ten seconds, and absorbing one
a minute. All were hit repeatedly, but were saved by their thick
iron armor (one sank). A week later a flotilla of Army steamers
made the same run (manned by soldiers, as the civilian crews
declined the job.) Grant's army marched south in roundabout
fashion, then was ferried by Porter to the east bank of the
Mississippi. When Grant sent 1,700 cavalry under Colonel
Grierson on a hugely successful 600-mile raid through the length
of Mississippi, the Confederates lost their telegraph, their
railroads and their knowledge of where Grant's army was.
In a masterful display of strategic maneuver against a
divided enemy, Grant marched 130 miles in ten days, won four
battles, and laid a tight siege on Vicksburg. Grant had
systematically destroyed railroads and bridges behind him, so
that Johnston's Confederate army could not relieve the siege.
Washington assisted by rushing in reinforcements hurriedly pulled
off garrison and anti-guerrilla duty. Vicksburg, under siege for
48 days, was on the verge of starvation; it surrendered on July
4, 1863, with 30,000 prisoners.* Five days later Port Hudson,
the last fortress on the Mississippi, surrendered after a 47 day
siege of its own, and the Confederacy was cut in twain.
In defying the strategic law that armies had to maintain
and protect their supply lines, Grant not only ignored Halleck in
Washington and disregarded the advice of his top aid General
Sherman, he violated one of the geometrical principles of warfare
as expounded by the leading European theorist, Baron Antoine
Jomini.* (Grant admitted he had never bothered to read Jomini.)
Jomini depicted warfare primarily as a matter of capturing key
localities and winning battles by maneuver and timing. His
mathematical models fascinated smart engineers like Halleck (3rd
out of 31 in his West Point class), McClellan (2nd out of 59) Lee
(2/46) and Sherman (6/42); luckily for Grant, he graduated so low
in his West Point class (21/39) that he was ineligible to join
the engineers. Jomini's principles ignored the broader political
question of national ability and will to fight, and downplayed
practical matters of manpower, training, intelligence, logistics
and weaponry. Grant concluded instead that, "there are no fixed
laws of war which are no subject to the conditions of the
country, the climate, and the habits of the people." The
epiphany hit Sherman on May 18, when he stood with Grant
overlooking the Mississippi; they had circled Vicksburg and
reestablished their supply line. Sherman became an avid convert
to Grant's radical methods. To win the war, they decided, they
had to break the Confederacy's ability and will to resist, while
winning enough battles to maintain morale in the army and on the
homefront. Lincoln understood that Grant had the answer. He
first gave Grant command in the west, then in early 1864 demoted
Chief of Staff Halleck to clerical chores and put Grant in
overall charge of military strategy, with Sherman in command of
the western theater.
----
----
While Grant was capturing Vicksburg, the Union Army of
the Cumberland, under William Rosecrans, was grinding forward from
Nashville to Chattanooga (on the Tennessee-Georgia border).
Bragg's Confederate "Army of Tennessee", reinforced by
Longstreet, lured Rosecrans into a trap at Chicamagua. Whipped,
the Yankees had to fall back to Chattanooga, which Bragg put
under siege. Lincoln sent in Grant and things started to happen.
He broke the siege, and won decisive victories in November at
Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge that cleared Tennessee and
opened the way to Atlanta. Little fighting occurred over the
winter of 1863-64, allowing the Confederacy to furlough soldiers
to work their home farms, a necessity in view of plaintive
letters like this one from an Alabama wife:
----
chief (Grant).* Grant decided (correctly) that Lee was
invulnerable in Richmond. He proposed to cut off Virginia and
Lee's army by an invasion of North Carolina; once Raleigh, the
state capital, was captured, Lee would be isolated from his base
of supplies and manpower reinforcements. The plan was a good one
but Lincoln, increasingly self-confident in his skills as a
strategist, overruled Grant and insisted he concentrate on Lee's
army. "On to Richmond!" was a political goal that Lincoln
insisted upon. Grant, always sensitive to the political
imperatives of the hour, scrapped his plan. Instead he adopted a
program for 1864 of simultaneous attacks from every direction,
with Grant himself leading the attack on Lee. Grant vividly
remembered how Lee sent Longstreet's corps by rail to Chicamagua,
and greatly exaggerated the capability of the disintegrating
rebel rail system to repeat that miracle. His strategy would
guarantee that the Confederacy would be unable to move
reinforcements from a quiet sector to an active front. The main
goal of the strategy was attrition. As Grant explained in
August, 1864,
Furthermore, with a little
luck, some of the attacks might score major breakthroughs.
Operations in 1864 started poorly. Over Grant's objections,
Lincoln sent General Banks and Admiral Porter up the Red River
into Texas. Military victory was not the objective: Lincoln
wanted to escalate the economic war by breaking the Confederacy's
embargo on cotton. A second goal was to trump Richmond's
diplomacy, which was trying to forge an alliance with France by
allowing that power to take over Mexico in violation of the
Monroe Doctrine. Banks was defeated by Richard Taylor (Zachary
Taylor's son) at Sabine Pass in April, and almost did not make it
back. Draught had so lowered the river that Porter's fleet was
unable to recross the rapids. The dilemma was solved by an
infantry colonel who had been a lumberman in Wisconsin; he
hurriedly built a series of spill dams; cutting each dam in turn
created a flow that allowed Porter's boats to run the rapids and
escape to safety. Another fiasco developed in Virginia, where
Ben Butler was supposed to advance his army on Richmond from the
south. Instead Bureaugard's smaller force bottled him up on a
peninsula. Butler later in 1864 was sent to capture Wilmington,
North Carolina, the last remaining blockade-running port. The
rebels defended their city with the strongest fort on the globe,
Fort Fisher, with its high, thick walls and 50 heavy guns.
Butler failed miserably--it seemed that coast artillery could
defend against a naval attack. Grant replaced Butler with Alfred
Terry, who cooperated with Porter in a blistering bombardment and
land assault that captured the fort in January, 1865. The prison
walls of the Confederacy now had closed in--the last openings to
the outside world were finally nailed shut.
Grant and Lincoln conferred regularly on grand strategy,
and in the spring of 1864 they decided on an attrition policy.
Grant believed (incorrectly) that Lee would be unable to replace
his casualties, especially now that prisoners were no longer
exchanged but kept in permanent confinement. Grant further
assumed (incorrectly) that his losses could easily be replaced by
Lincoln. Attrition would be merciful in the long run, for it
would more speedily end the war. There were political goals as
well. Public opinion in the North might soon tire of the war
effort. The nation was prosperous enough, but the casualty tolls
gnawed at public sensibility. The federal draft law was widely
denounced as inequitable--it caused more unrest than it was worth
in terms of the 50,000 men who were actually drafted and served.
Although the North dropped the unpopular device of allowing
draftees to pay $300 to get out of service, it still allowed men
to furnish substitutes. Older men furnished young relatives, or
hired a substitute. Many northern towns sent hired black freedmen
as substitutes for their own draftees. High bonuses brought in a
barely adequate supply of volunteers. The failure after three
years to shake the Southern resolve in favor of independence
raised questions about the quality of Northern leadership,
including Lincoln's own presidency. The escalation of war goals
to include emancipation was violently denounced by most Democrats
as a perversion of the cause of nationalism, despite Republican
insistence that the Confederacy was propped up by the institution
of slavery, which therefore had to be knocked down.
Although Grant had 120,000 soldiers, Lee's 60,000 could move
faster. Grant squandered his numerical superiority by attacking
at the "Wilderness," a thick forest north of Richmond. Maneuver
was impossible, and losses heavy. Beaten there he hurried further
south to Spotsylvania. Lee was lighter and faster, and won the
race. The carnage at "Bloody Angle" was grisly, as recounted by
Grant's aide Horace Porter:
Instead of retreating as all his predecessors had done, Grant
turned south and attacked again. The bluecoats cheered. They at
last had a commander who planned to win this war. Grant vowed
"to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer." He again
attacked Lee's barricades at Cold Harbor on June 1, losing 7000
casualties in a half-hour of stupid frontal assaults. No
victories, 2,000 casualties a day and 1,500 Confederate losses.
The fantastic casualty toll was undercutting the Republican
efforts to bolster public opinion. Grant realized that attrition
was politically unacceptable, and was fast ruining his army. The
people of the North, he decided were "naturally restless and apt
to become discouraged." He decided to "make a desperate effort
to get a position here which will hold the enemy [Lee] without
the necessity of so many men." With election day approaching,
Lincoln thanked his commander in chief:
Grant's solution to Lee's trench warfare was brilliant.
He built his own system of trenches and fortifications, and
slowly worked clockwise around Petersburg. Cavalry raids watched
Lee's movements and cut his vital railroad lines. Grant's top
priority was to make sure Lee did not break lose and try to link
up with forces in Carolina and attack Sherman. The trenches hid
Grant's maneuvers, and provided numerous venues for a surprise
all-out assault on one sector of Lee's trenches. Lee had to
protect every yard of his 35 miles of trenches. Grant almost
broke through on July 30, when a huge underground mine blew a
hole in the center of Lee's trenches. Badly coordinated attacks
left most of the Yankees in the crater that was formed, where the
rebels shot them like fish in a barrel. The Battle of the Crater
was the worst bungled operation of the war, but Grant did not let
it shake his self confidence or his strategy of keeping the
pressure on. Union casualties on the Virginia front alone
totaled 17,000 in June (2,000 dead), and averaged 7,500 a month
(740 dead) from July through October. (Losses elsewhere were much
lighter.) After Lincoln was reelected in November, there was no
immediate need for a victory so Grant let up the pressure until
the following March; his casualties were only 400 in November and
600 in December. Lee, however, still had to guard against Grant's
capability to make a decisive breakthrough. He had to keep his
men in the trenches throughout the winter months. The frozen mud
in the unusually cold winter was so thick that neither side could
march quickly. While Union supplies were abundant, Lee's
situation steadily worsened; his cavalry was sent stations a
hundred miles to the south where forage was still available.
Confederate nationalism flourished inside the armies, but
seemed to disintegrate behind Yankee lines, and the Yankees
seemed to be everywhere at once. The unity that blurred class
lines in 1861 now faded, allowing a major split between poor
whites and slaveowners to weaken the Confederate effort. The poor
were less and less able to deal with deprivations and handle the
growing stress--they could not, for example, afford to send women
and children away to safe areas. They had difficulty protecting
their precious food supplies from Confederate Army impressment,
or from theft and raids from increasingly bold and bloodthirsty
bandits. Curses about "the rich man's war and the poor man's
fight" attacked those slaveowners who seemed more intent on
protecting their property than saving their nation. Lincoln's
policy of creating a highly profitable market for cotton in the
Mississippi Valley encouraged planters to sell their crops, thus
giving de facto support to the federals. After all, they
reasoned, Richmond was unable to provide markets or defend the
territory. Political leaders tried to balance the situation by
raising taxes on the rich, impressing their slaves and exempting
the poor. The policy alienated the slaveholders who by 1863 or
'64 were out of cash themselves, and could not pay the taxes.
Amazingly, the Confederacy still managed to find some
fresh manpower, especially from youth coming of age and eager for
excitement. Of course they had few opportunities in civilian life
as the once prosperous southern economy disintegrated. Rebel
soldiers became folk heroes, and in the forge of many campaigns
developed an esprit that kept their fighting skills honed. A
series of religious revivals in the Confederate armies heightened
the sense that their sacrifice was meaningful. Men who lacked
esprit did not lower group morale--they just deserted and had no
further influence on the remaining soldiers. The famous Stonewall
Brigade (33d Virginia Infantry) lost one fourth of its men
through desertion. Even as desertions weakened the Confederate
armies, new recruits raised the strength of the Army of Northern
Virginia from 40,000 in October to 67,000 at the end of the year
(another 100,000 were hospitalized or had deserted). Against
Grant it would not be nearly enough.
Grant assigned himself the task of grinding down Lee's
army, and sent Sherman to wear down Johnston's army, which was
trying to defend Atlanta even though outnumbered 110,000 to
45,000. Even with the advantage of rough terrain and rivers
every few miles that provided defensive positions, Johnston could
only delay the inevitable. The campaign was a series of zig-zags
south, as Sherman would try to outflank Johnston on his left,
then Johnston would retreat and dig in again; then Sherman would
try the right flank. Sherman blundered once by attempting a
frontal assault on Kennesaw Mountain, and was repulsed with heavy
losses. Sherman had to count soldiers carefully; 43 regiments
were left behind to guard the single rail line that stretched 150
from the main base in Nashville (and another 190 miles to
Louisville, the ultimate supply base.) Twenty regiments marched
home when
their three years' enlistment expired. New recruits could not be
expected until the draft started up again in September, but with
100,000 men in arms the fiery red-head had more than enough.
Johnston's retreat was done well, but it disgusted Jefferson
Davis, who once again let petty personality conflict cloud his
military judgment. In the worst personnel blunder of the war,
Davis replaced Johnston with the reckless John Bell Hood, who
promptly launched ill-organized assaults against the unstoppable
Yankees. Hood was defeated in a series of battles around Atlanta,
and the city fell on September 2. After expelling the remaining
civilians, Sherman's men were especially diligent in ripping out
track, wrecking the bridges, and burning the city's public
buildings and numerous munitions factories.
The fall of Atlanta dumbfounded the antiwar voices. It
assured a landslide victory in the November election for Lincoln
and his "Union Party" ticket (comprising mostly Republicans, plus
a few war Democrats like vice presidential candidate Andrew
Johnson of Tennessee). The Republicans would have won the
presidential election even without Atlanta, for their
organization had been perfected, and the Democratic party was
polarized between a peace wing (end the war immediately) and
McClellanites (fight on to defeat the rebellion, but not to end
slavery). The political resources of the North were now committed
to finish the job. To make the destruction of slavery ironclad
(the Emancipation Proclamation, never authorized by Congress,
could be canceled), Lincoln pushed the Thirteenth Amendment
through Congress in February, 1865.
The swath of destruction was a deliberate refutation of
the rebel argument that the Confederacy could never be defeated
because it was so large and agriculturally rich. Sherman's March
exposed the basic Confederate quandary: their nation was too
large to defend. The political goal of preserving slavery
necessitated defense of all the territory, since once the
Federals passed through the system of slavery was doomed. Many
blacks fled the plantations to join the Union armies; a larger
number were evacuated by their masters before the Federals
arrived. Knowledge that freedom was imminent undercut the
automatic obedience that the slave regime required. Sherman's
March was essentially a raid: the invaders did not intend to
occupy the state, and as soon as they had departed the rebels
reclaimed their ruined land. The March rankled for a century in
the Southern psyche not so much because of the physical
destruction it caused (less than 1% of southern wealth), but
because of the studied insult to the honor of the white South.
While there were very few instances of rape or mayhem, the
Yankees delighted in demonstrating that Southerners were unable
to defend their own homes, their property, their slaves, or their
families. Sherman understood that the March would be "fatal to
the possibility of a Southern independence; they may stand the
fall of Richmond, but not of all Georgia." Grant hoped this
threat would force Lee to abandon Richmond and rush south to
intercept Sherman. Grant indeed had set a trap: if Lee moved,
Grant had his entire army ready to chase him down. If he did not
move, Georgia would be ruined and the Confederacy would be proven
to be but a shadow nation, its armies failures, its men impotent.
Lee did not move
After delivering Savannah to the nation as a Christmas
present, Sherman turned north into South Carolina--the very
heartland of secession. There, even more than Georgia, the
destruction was systematic and symbolic. On February 17 downtown
Columbia, the capital of South Carolina, burned to ashes. Sherman
had intended to burn only the public buildings and munitions
factories, but was not especially vigilant in controlling his
men. As part of their economic warfare, Confederate policy was
to destroy all cotton before the Yankees could use it. They had
therefore piled the streets high with cotton, then soaked it with
turpentine and set it ablaze. Tufts of burning cotton, sparks and
embers wafted across the city. Routinely the local officials had
publicly whipped uppity slaves, and maltreated Yankee prisoners.
Revenge came when the last Confederate units pulled out. Hundreds
of barrels of Scotch (slipped through the blockade at enormous
cost) were liberated by the invaders; the mayor had neglected to
destroy it because it was private property. Many elite civilian
men, fearful of imprisonment, abandoned their families and
servants in the doomed city, and yet later expressed astonishment
when the invaders were dilatory at quenching the fires that
gutted their aristocratic mansion district. Sherman then headed
to North Carolina where (in accord with Grant's original plan),
he would isolate Virginia and cut off Lee's army from its base of
support.
While Sherman was marching practically unopposed (save
for a battle he won at Bentonville, NC, in March), Hood, was
playing a bad and. As Sherman entered Atlanta in September,
1864, Hood moved behind him, planning to sever the federal supply
route. There was no supply route, so Hood decided to invade
Tennessee, thus forcing Sherman to pull out of Georgia. Sherman,
who had planned for this sort of contingency, instead sent Thomas
back to guard Tennessee. Hood might have had better luck if he
had not delayed so long, but his mistakes were mounting. He
missed an obvious opportunity to trap a Federal army at Spring
Hill, Tennessee on November 29. The next day his 38,000 troops
finally attacked strong defenses manned by 32,000 Federals at
Franklin, Tennessee. The rebels were mauled, losing 6,200
casualties and 12 generals. It was time to retreat but Hood
still did not understand how much trouble he was in. When Thomas
pulled back into fortifications around Nashville the rebels took
the bait and were sucked into a trap. Reinforcements rushed in
to give a numerical advantage to the better armed Yankees. Hood
must have been dreaming of his glory days at Chicamagua. He
refused to retreat and when an ice storm hit in early December he
was frozen in place. Attack! Attack! Grant ordered, but Thomas,
the methodical planner, refused to move until every unit was
ready. Finally a warm spell melted the ice and Thomas' elaborate
plans were put into operation. The Yankees attacked and rolled up
Hood's left flank at the Battle of Nashville, December 15, 1864,
in one of history's classic examples of battlefield maneuvering.
The rebel lines crumbled, the soldiers fell back in a wild
retreat. Nashville was the most decisive battle of the entire
war. By the time Hood pulled his forces together again in
Mississippi, his once vaunted Army of Tennessee had been reduced
by casualty and desertion to a helpless shell. The war in the
west was over.
As the first war fought between two rich, modern
economies, the Civil War was by far the most expensive war the
world had known. Considering just the period from July 1, 1861
to June 30, 1865, the USA spent $3.1 billion, and the CSA (whose
records are poor) spent perhaps one third as much. (Multiply by
10 to convert to 2000 dollars.) Voluntary contribution of
service was essential to both sides--the vast majority of
soldiers volunteered and served because of patriotism, rather
than because of the pay or bonuses. A basic principle in the
North was the profit motive. Individuals and companies that
supplied the Yankees and invested in US bonds were guaranteed a
handsome profit, regardless of the loud outcries from opponents
of the war about favoritism, corruption and overcharging. By
1864 the Union kept its army full by paying cash bonuses to
enlistees. Taxation was a necessary evil during the war. The
economic system was too primitive to rely on income taxes,
although a moderate one was imposed by Washington and raised $55
million. Instead the North imposed excise taxes (a sort of
national sales tax) of $370 million, and taxed imports (the high
"Morrill tariff") for $305 million. Taxation covered about one-
fourth of Washington's cash outlays. Inflation was a hidden tax
used moderately in the North (where prices rose 80% in four
years), and massively in the South (where they rose by twenty
times). Always before (and after) the US Treasury had receipts
(taxes plus borrowings) to exactly match spending. In the
emergency, the US Treasury issued $450 million worth of paper
money (called "greenbacks" because of the ink), that were not
matched with receipts or gold and which therefore became
inflationary. Richmond issued $170 million in unbacked paper
money in 1861 alone, and over a billion dollars more later on.
The paper became increasingly worthless and forced up the price
level to astronomical levels. Barter replaced cash, compounding
the inefficiency and waste in an economic system that could not
bear the burdens placed on it. Inflation was a hidden tax on the
thrifty, the patriotic and the optimistic Confederates, and
increasingly they came to understand how their government was
fooling them.
Both sides tried to borrow; the Yankees did a much better
job, primarily because the new national banking system had
monetized the North's wealth. Philadelphia banker Jay Cooke
democratized financing. He organized highly publicized campaigns
that enabled ordinary middle class citizens to purchase $50
savings bonds in monthly installments. Sales reached $1.2 billion
and paid for 40% of the federal war budget. The purchasers of
bonds gave up money that would have been spent on civilian goods,
in return for the promise that they would be repaid with interest
after the war. They were; the bonds were eventually paid off by
taxpayers who had been children in 1860, and who by 1890 were
much wealthier than their parents. Taxes also diverted spending
from the civilian into the military sector, but the burden fell
entirely upon the wartime taxpayer. Probably half the savings of
the North went into the war effort, but there was much left over
to invest in new factories, railroads, and enterprises. The
private sector flourished in the North, and shriveled away in the
South. In Philadelphia, one new factory opened every week of the war; in
the South, one closed every week. Both nations tried to borrow money from
Europe. The Yankees did well, but Richmond cleared only $7
million from the 1862 bond sale to the Erlanger bank in Paris.
Forty times as much money was invested by the British in the
blockade runners.
The Confederacy used some radical financing with
devastating consequences. It confiscated property owned by
Yankees and postponed payment of debts owed foreigners. Extremely
unpopular was the seizure ("impressment") of civilian goods by
army sergeants who came around with an empty wagon and a book
full of coupons. The coupons promised payment at some future
date for whatever horses, mules, cattle, hogs, chickens, vegetables,
grain, hardware, lumber, and fuel the sergeant could locate and cart away. Slaves were impressed into government construction projects and gunpowder factories. A hidden method of financing the war, but one critical in the
South, was to postpone normal investment, repair and upkeep.
Prewar stocks of food, clothing and equipment were used up
without replenishment. The stock of animals shrank by one third.
Property damaged by war or accident, or just used up in normal
operations, was not replaced. The railroad system was ground to
the nub like an overused pencil. Household items were in
disrepair--by 1865, Whitelaw Reid noticed, "A set of forks with
whole tines is a curiosity. Clocks and watches have nearly all
stopped. . . . Hair brushes and tooth brushes have all worn out."
The myth after the war was that the damnyankees had stripped the
countryside bare. Indeed there was systematic destruction in
some areas, but overall the total wealth fell 43%, and the
devastation was practically as bad in areas that escaped the
Yankee soldiers--indeed they never entered a majority of counties
in the deep South. There the impressment officers wore gray
uniforms*. In four years the Confederacy itself used up the
substance of the southern economy, and it would not fully recover
for many decades.
----
There was no pressure for the military of either side to
allow women in uniform (though some served as spies, and others
fought in male disguise). Controversy did erupt on the new role
of women as nurses. The need for nursing care for several
hundred thousand wounded, and upward of ten million sick soldiers
was obvious.* A few years earlier the English reformer Florence
Nightingale had demonstrated the value of a female nurse corps in
----
the Crimean War. Since the first American nursing schools opened
after the war, and the Army and Navy nurse corps were 40 years in
the future, there were no women trained as nurses. No men
either, but the need was so pressing that over 15,000 male nurses
served (in civilian capacity) in military hospitals on both
sides. Much nursing work was performed by soldiers who were
themselves recuperating in the hospitals. The Richmond General
Hospital had 25 black male nurses (16 of them slaves) and a
couple of black women. On both sides, five of six nurses were
men, of whom the most famous was poet Walt Whitman. The patients
were ambiguous, embarrassed by the presence of women crossing the
gender line but also appreciative of the tenderness that they
provided beyond the Army regulations.
Ten thousand Yankee women (and 1000 Southerners) served in
multiple roles. While many patriotic women wanted to serve,
family pressure (responding to ugly, false gossip) was negative.
Ulysses Grant told his wife to stop visiting hospitals. Julia
Ward Howe's plans to volunteer were vetoed by her husband; she
stayed home and wrote "The Battle Hymn of the Republic." Those
who did break the bounds of Victorian decorum served many roles.
Most informal were the healers, helpers and relatives who
volunteered their services without pay, and proved necessary to
deal with the overload in the wake of major battles. The
performed many chores that boosted morale--changing dressings,
serving food, washing clothes and writing letters. The military
surgeons who ran the hospitals emphasized elaborate organization
and chain of command, and strongly disapproved of the volunteers.
Occasionally a politically well-connected woman appeared, like
Clara Barton, who fluttered from here to there, being most useful
in bringing necessary supplies that had run short. In later
years Barton helped organize the American National Red Cross,
using as her model not the war experience but the Red Cross
programs established in Europe in the 1880s. The Sanitary
Commission, a private, very well-run philanthropic effort to
upgrade the hygienic conditions of the US Army, employed some
women nurses on hospital ships, and gave scope to philanthropists
like Mary Livermore.*
----
In 1861 Dorothea Dix, a prominent philanthropist,
obtained War Department approval for a cadre of civilian nurses
who would work in Army general hospitals under the supervision of
the army surgeons. Dix screened the applicants carefully, making
sure they were over 30 and exuded no sex appeal. Some 3,200 women
participated, with duties, depending on the surgeon, that ranged
from housekeeping chores to administering medications. None were
assigned to field hospitals, and except in emergencies few were
assigned to direct patient care. By 1863 Dix's dictatorial style
was so offputing that the Surgeon General gave his doctors
authority to hire women not provided by Dix. Many of the nurses
(including author Louisa May Alcott) broke under the strain, or
later reported the health had been permanently damaged. The Dix
experiment ended with the war, because of Dix's difficult
personality and her repeated insubordination-- especially her
penchant for disregarding medical orders and providing instead
the sort of therapy she considered best suited to the patients.
The surgeons much preferred Catholic nuns from the Sisters of
Mercy and Sisters of Charity orders. They knew how to run
hospitals and, especially, to follow surgeons' orders precisely.
Back home, local Republican party organizations worked
with county governments to establish a system of relief for
impoverished families of soldiers, and for widows and orphans.
The oratory of thousands of politicians, preachers and
intellectuals, echoed by thousands of newspaper editorials and
innumerable pamphlets extolled the war effort, and stressed the
need to carry on a little longer so that the unique nation
conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all
men are equal would not perish from this earth. On November 21,
1864, Lincoln wrote to Widow Bixby in Boston--and to all the
grieving parents of soldiers who had died for their nation:
While the North rallied to the challenge, the South was
lapsing more and more into fatalism--no one had any plan, any
strategy to win the war or force a peace. The only new idea was
subsidizing peace activism and antiwar demonstrations in the
North. Cash subsidies went to Democratic headquarters in several
states, and reached fruition in the party's strenuous canvass for
the fall elections. Confederate plots to foment riots, resist
the draft, break prisoners out of POW camps, rob banks and even
burn down New York City fizzled out when it became apparent that
the peace Democrats of the North talked like lions and acted like
cowards.
Winning the war involved two goals, the destruction of
the Confederacy and the permanent end of slavery. Washington
divided sharply on whether the terms had been met. the new
President, southerner Andrew Johnson, took a very lenient
position. He said th war was won as soon as the Confederate army
and national government disbanded, and the southern state
legislatures ratified the 13th Amendment (abolishing slavery).
Republicans throughout the North were much more skeptical. The
feared that the "spirit" of secession still flickered, and that
the emancipated slaves ("freedmen") were being kept in a third
class status hardly distinguishable from slavery. The war was
NOT over. Johnson and the Republicans clashed repeatedly, with
the Republicans decisively victorious in the 1866 Congressional
elections. Congress then stripped Johnson of control of the
Army, giving it to Grant, and nearly impeached the President.
They abolished the ex-Confederate state governments Johnson had
allowed to rule in the South, and put the region under military
control in 1867. The Republicans figured the only way the South
would become truly loyal to the Union, and at the same time the
vestiges of slavery be eradicated, was to enfranchise the Blacks.
In elections held under military rule, the Southern states
elected "radical" Reconstruction governments controlled by
Republicans. The Army hated police work in the first place, and
reluctantly but competently performed the occupation duties
assigned it. The show of force was always enough to control the
situation; no fighting was necessary. In several states white
resistance to "Black Reconstruction: in the late 1860s was
violent. Grant, elected president in 1868, used the federal
courts (backed up by the Army) to suppress the violently racist
Ku Klux Klan. By 1872 probably--and certainly by 1876--the vast
majority of Northerners agreed the war was truly over.
Secessionism was utterly dead, and all rebel officials had been
released from prison or allowed to return from overseas exile.
The blacks, despite the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments still did
not have full equality (which not many whites favored in the
first place), but on the other hand slavery was dead. Even so,
federal troops were still propping up three state governments in
the South. In a highly controversial presidential election,
those very same three states turned the electoral vote to the GOP
candidate Rutherford Hayes in 1876. Hayes took office and
immediately withdrew the Army, thus finally ending the Civil War.
Grant and Sherman led the victory parade in Washington on
May 24, 1865, with tens of thousands of troops marching in
triumphant review. California poet Bret Harte imagined a second
parade:
Blacks in The Army
is the heaviest blow yet given the
Confederacy.... By arming the negro we have
added a powerful ally. They will make good
soldiers and taking them from the enemy
weakens him in the same proportion they
strengthen us.
* James I. Robertson, ed. "'The Boy Artillerist: Letters of
Colonel William Pegram, C.S.A.," Virginia Magazine of History and
Biography 98 (April 1990), 243-44. The "very good cause" was to
deter the dreaded threat of slave revolts back home.
---- t to
citizenship.
1863: The East: Gettysburg
If we can baffle them [Yankees] in their various
designs this year & our people are true to our
cause...our success will be certain.... [and] next
year there will be a great change in public
opinion at the North. The Republicans will be
destroyed [in the 1864 presidential election] & I
think the friends of peace will become so strong
as that the next administration will go in on that
basis. We have only therefore to resist manfully.
Lee's invasion and his seizure of free blacks, who were shipped
south and sold into slavery, had the unintended effect of
mobilizing northern Republicans and tarring the peace Democrats
as traitorous "Copperheads" who refused even to resist the
invasion of their homes. Antiwar protests occasionally turned
into riots, which further antagonized the patriots, for as one
Wisconsin private wrote his sweetheart, "I hope if they do have
to take soldiers home to enforce the draft that I will be the one
who will have to go, for I could shoot one of those copperheads
with a good heart as I could shoot a wolf." They will come up...broken down with hunger and
hard marching, strung out on a long line and much
demoralized when they come into Pennsylvania. I
shall throw an overwhelming force on their advance,
crush it, follow up the success, drive one corps
back on another, and by successive repulses and
surprises, before they can concentrate, create a
panic and virtually destroy the army. [Then] the war
will be over and we shall achieve the recognition of
our independence.
* Stuart had trouble finding Lee; he solved his intelligence
problem by swiping a Philadelphia newspaper that accurately
reported Lee's location. The news was a day old, however, and
Stuart, slowed down by booty, did not arrive at Gettysburg until
July 2. The Confederates were often aided by uncensored
newspaper reports of the movements of Union forces. Reporter
Horace White was angry when his editor tried to censor his
reports; he would not "sacrifice so many good things because they
happen to be true." The Army temporarily shut down several
newspapers for publishing false news which adversely affected
public morale. Voluntary censorship by the media proved
successful in later wars.
----
* "Grape" was canister using larger balls; it was almost never
used in the war, despite the colloquial use of "grape and
canister"
---- One of these shots struck in the center of a
line of infantry, who were lying down behind the
wall. Taking the line lengthwise, it literally
ploughed up two or three yards of men, killing
and wounding a dozen or more.
Yesterday we rode on the pinnacle of success;
today absolute ruin seems to be our portion. The
Confederacy totters to its destruction.
* Total casualties in Gettysburg campaign:
----1863: The West: Vicksburg and Chattanooga
* Grant paroled the prisoners, many of whom promptly rejoined the
rebel army; other had enough and went home to stay.
----
** Jomini's other principles included concentrating superior
numbers (which Grant understood well), the advantage of short
interior lines of communication over longer exterior lines (which
Grant ignored, since he had a much larger source), and the
advantage of turning (sideways) movements over frontal assaults
(ignored by Grant). Grant would have agreed wholeheartedly with
Jomini's admonitions about the psychological value of surprise
and the danger of passivity (except at Shiloh, Grant always
attacked first.)
---- We haven't got nothing in the house to
eat but a little bit o meal.... I don't want ,
you to stop fighting them Yankees...but try
and get off and come home and fix us up some
and then you can go back.
1864: Simultaneous Attacks: The Strategy
Lincoln wanted to turn the North's numerical superiority
to advantage by simultaneous attacks from every direction. Henry
Halleck, the Army chief of staff, laughed off Lincoln's
amateurism; it conflicted with Jomini's principle that forces had
to be concentrated at decisive points. After Grant's success at
Chattanooga, Lincoln demoted Halleck and brought Grant in as
overall commander in charge of general strategy, with the added
role of supervising Meade's Army of the Potomac. The US now had
the world's first modern command system, with clear lines of
authority from civilians (Lincoln and the Secretary of War),
through a military staff (Halleck's new role) to a general in
* A few years later Prussia created an even more effective
system, the "general staff". It had full responsibility for
operations and planning, and trained its own career personnel.
----"A man lost by them cannot be replaced.... Besides what they
lose in frequent skirmishes and battles, they are now losing
from desertions and other causes at least one regiment per day."
Grant Tries Attrition
1864: Politics and Attrition Warfare in Virginia
The presidential election of 1864 affected the military
strategy of Lincoln and Grant. The Confederacy was on its last
legs, but its front line troops were fighting just as ferociously
as ever. Peace negotiations came to naught, as Jefferson Davis
told a peace mission that, "This war must go on till the last of
the generation falls in his tracks...unless you acknowledge our
right to self-government. War weariness in the North, and
complaints inside the Republican party that Lincoln was moving
too slowly on emancipation, put the president's reelection bid in
jeopardy. At one point in August when the prognosis seemed
dismal, Lincoln expected to lose, and his successor (who would
take office March 4, 1865) probably would arrange a truce. That
would destroy the Union, so Lincoln vowed that if defeated he
would do whatever it took to defeat the rebellion and save the
Union by March. Meanwhile, he told Grant he needed victories in
the field; there had been no victories (and almost no fighting)
on the eastern front since Gettysburg in July 1863. Grant
obliged with a six-week "Overland Campaign" (May 4-June 12, 1864)
that risked disaster. Grant calculated that the Confederacy had
every available man in the field; "They have robbed the cradle
and the grave equally to get their present force." A strategy of
attrition would prove decisive: Every depletion of their army is an irreparable loss.
Desertions from it are now rapid. With the prospect of
large additions to our force the desertions would
increase. The greater number of men we have the shorter
and less sanguinary will be the war.
The battle near the "angle" was probably the most
desperate engagement in the history of modern
warfare, and presented features which were
absolutely appalling. It was chiefly a savage
hand-to-hand fight across the breastworks. Rank
after rank was riddled by shot and shell and
bayonet-thrusts, and finally sank, a mass of torn
and mutilated corpses; then fresh troops rushed
madly forward to replace the dead, and so the
murderous work went on. Guns were run up close to
the parapet, and double charges of canister played
their part in the bloody work.... Wild cheers,
savage yells, and frantic shrieks... formed a
demoniacal accompaniment to the booming of the
guns.
It is a rule that, when the rebels halt, the first day
gives them a good riflepit; the second, a regular
infantry parapet with cannon in position; and the third a
parapet with an abatis in front and entrenched batteries
behind. Sometimes they put this three-days' work into the
first twenty-four hours.*
----
* An abatis was an entanglement made from tree branches pointing
outward . It was almost as effective as the barbed wire used in
World War I.
---- Pressed as we are by lapse of time, I am glad to hear you
say this; and yet I do hope you may find a way that the
effort shall not be desperate in the sense of a great
loss of life.
1864: Sherman Takes Atlanta
1864: Sherman's March Through Georgia and South Carolina
Sherman, copying Grant at Vicksburg, decided to cut loose
from his railroad. With but 60 locomotives and 600 freight cars,
it was hard pressed to provide the 130 ten-ton carloads of
freight needed every day. He sent a third of his force back to
Thomas to hold Tennessee, and stripped the brigades down to the
bare essentials; the men each carried a five day supply of
hardtack. Better food would be acquired along the way. The
famous "March from Atlanta to the Sea" represented a new kind of
warfare. Apart from a few ineffective militia units, Sherman
encountered no serious opposition. He lived off the country,
which because of the transportation breakdowns was bursting with
food that could not be moved. His army consumed what it needed,
and destroyed the rest. Advancing in two fronts, each 10 to 30
miles wide, Sherman cut a swath through 200 miles of one of the
South's richest agricultural districts. Confederates had
considered the Fabian tactic of scorched earth--destroy
everything first, so Sherman would starve. That was impossible
because Sherman, not tied to a supply line, could head in any
direction he pleased. "Having alternatives, I can take so
eccentric a course that no general can guess my objectives." He
used statistical data provided by the census to select the
fattest counties to despoil. In 26 days his soldiers wreaked
$100 million worth of damage, proving conclusively
that War is Hell.
Mobilizing for Total War
The modernity of the North was brilliantly demonstrated by
its systematic, and highly successful organization of all the
indirect needs of warfare. Factories poured out munitions,
including in 1864 alone, 1,700 cannon, and 1.7 million shells,
800,000 rifles and 169 million cartridges. New soldiers for the
year totaled some 700,000. Five Midwestern governors volunteered
100,000 militia for 100 days' duty--the summer campaigning
season. As the three-year enlistments of the veteran cohort of
1861 expired, 60% of the 240,000 veterans reenlisted, encouraged
by federal, state and local bounties, and by the camaraderie
unique to a fighting force. Lincoln's plan to draft another
500,000 men miscarried, as only a few thousand actually showed
up--many of whom were bounty jumpers who immediately deserted.
Vigorous--even coercive--recruiting in the Freedmen's camps
produced 100,000 black soldiers, most of whom were assigned to
"pioneer" (labor) or garrison duties.
* Yankees occasionally impressed when deep in rebel territory,
as in Sherman's March; their coupons were actually worth real
money. No payment was made for the freed slaves (except those in
the District of Columbia). In economic terms emancipation
represented a transfer of wealth from one group of southerners
(white salve owners) to another (the freedmen themselves.) The
postwar South was impoverished because the new system extracted
less work out of people, the region's crops brought lower prices,
and the highly productive new industrial order bypassed the
region.
----Hospitals and Relief
To prepare for heavy casualties the semi-governmental
Sanitary Commission stepped up its medical programs, raised large
sums at fairs in the major cities, and promoted hygiene and new
surgical techniques (using chloroform and ether as anesthetics)
that reduced the death toll among the wounded, and kept the
amputations to a minimum. Partially disabled soldiers were
enrolled in a new Invalid Corps and given non-combat missions.
The Army established an ambulance service with new vehicles and
trained personnel assigned to moving the wounded to field
hospitals as rapidly as possible. Even so, long delays were often
caused by the failure of opposing commanders to arrange a quick
truce for removal of the wounded. Hospital steamers and special
railroad cars brought the seriously wounded from field hospitals
near the battlefields to one of 120,000 beds in the Army's 190
general hospitals.
* The Federal surgeons tabulated 1.7 million cases of diarrhea
44
and dysentery (44,500 fatal), 1.3 million of malaria (10,000
fatal), 148,000 of typhoid fever (34,800 fatal), 80,000 of
syphilis and gonorrhea (150 fatal), 77,000 of pneumonia (20,000
fatal), and 76,000 of measles (5,000 fatal). The Confederate
totals were never compiled, but surely were just as bad.
----
* Livermore recognized that women's wartime contribution
validated their citizenship, but future influence over social
issues required the right to vote. The War accelerated demands
for woman's suffrage, which was finally awarded in recognition of
women's homefront contributions to winning World War I.
---- I have been shown...that you are the mother of
five sons who have died gloriously on the field
of battle. I feel how weak and fruitless must
be any word of mine which should attempt to
beguile you from the grief of a loss so
overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from
tendering you the consolation that may be found
in the thanks of the republic that they died to
save. I pray that our Heavenly Father may
assuage the anguish of your bereavement and
leave you only the cherished memory of the loved
and lost, and the solemn pride that must be
yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon
the altar of freedom.
1865: The End
Back in Dixie, the economic system was in the last stages
of internal collapse, much assisted by Sherman and other federal
invaders, not to mention the ever-tightening naval blockade. As
its territory shrank, its natural population base declined. As
prospects of independence faded, new recruits shied away.
Confederate raids into Kentucky and Missouri that were designed
to recruit young soldiers came away empty handed. Thousands of
casualties each week drained the Confederacy; it was harder and
harder to find new horses, new shoes, new soldiers. Frontline
combat units were on half rations. The government started to tax
food production and ordered it shipped to the front, but two-
thirds was spoiled or lost in transit. Captures of Yankee
supplies became less common as victories became less frequent.
When Confederates Nathan Forrest and Abraham Buford raided
Paducah, Kentucky, on March 25, 1864, they were more interested
in grabbing 400 horses and tons of supplies than defeating the
garrison. The next day the newspapers hooted that they had
missed 140 Army mounts hidden in a foundry--whereupon Buford
returned and rounded up the horses. The North hoped that Richmond
would recognize the hopelessness and come to terms; instead, the
enemy's resolve stiffened. The Confederate armies, battle
hardened and still superb fighters, assumed more and more
political voice in the Confederacy. As the faint-hearted
deserted, the die-hards determined to fight to the bitter end.
The intention of Grant and Lincoln to win a psychological victory
proved extraordinary difficult. While the dream of southern
independence slipped away, the fear of slave rebellion and social
upheaval, combined with the basic instinct of defending one's
home, Soldiers typically misinterpreted setbacks as victories,
and discounted even severe defeats. By 1864, however, it became
harder and harder for even the most loyal rebs to maintain their
illusions. William Chambers of the 43rd Mississippi candidly
analyzed his unit in January, 1865: The regiment numbers one hundred and fifty men,
about half of whom are barefoot. All are
ragged, dirty, and covered with vermin.... The
men are jovial enough in regard to their
condition...but when it comes to discussing the
prosecution of the war, they are entirely
despondent, being fully convinced the
Confederacy is gone.
Amazingly, the Confederacy survived the winter. With
Sherman moving up through North Carolina, the end was near. It
came in March, when Grant resumed his offensive against Lee's
long, thin line of trenches south of Petersburg. Soon the break
came, and Yankees flooded through, nearly capturing Lee himself
and killing A.P. Hill, one of Lee's senior corps commanders.
Richmond was doomed--the Confederates burned the city on April 3
as a last tribute to their misguided policy of leaving nothing of
value for the Yankees to use. Lincoln himself came the next day
to see the ruins, and bargain with Virginians about reentry into
the Union. It was his last opportunity to promote "malice toward
none, charity toward all," as a pro-southern conspiracy
assassinated him on Good Friday, April 14. With his Army of
Northern Virginia shrinking 5 to 10% a day because of desertions
and captures, Lee was doomed. Grant caught and surrounded him at
Appomattox on April 9. The surrender ceremony was a simple
affair, with the rebels paroled to go home and work their farms.
The other fragmented Confederate armies surrendered piecemeal in
the next few weeks. Grant sent Sheridan with 50,000 troops to
Texas in case the rebels there planned a last ditch stand. They
did not. Surrender finally came on May 26. The US troops stayed
in Texas however, as an unsubtle reminder that the French army
had to evacuate Mexico immediately. And I saw a phantom army come,
With never a sound of fife or drum,
But keeping time to a throbbing hum
Of wailing and lamentation:
The martyred heroes of Malvern Hill,
Of Gettysburg and Chancellorsville,
The men whose wasted figures fill
The patriot graves of the nation.
And there came the nameless dead,--the men
Who perished in fever-swamp and fen,
The slowly-starved of the prison-pen;
And, marching besides the others,
Came the dusky martyrs of Pillow's fight,
With limbs enfranchised and bearing bright:
They looked as white as their brothers!
So all night marched the Nation's dead
Jensen's Guide to Reconstruction Online at http://tigger.uic.edu/~rjensen/recon.htm
by Richard Jensen revised 11-12-02 copyright 2002