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Chapter 15 Secession and Civil War, 1860–1862

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MAP 15.2 Principal Military Campaigns of the Civil War

This map vividly illustrates the contrast between the vast distances over which the armies fought in the western theater of the war and the concentrated campaigns of the Army of the Potomac and the Army of Northern Virginia in the East.

more closely to nearby Ohio and Pennsylvania than to the South. Delegates who

had opposed Virginia’s secession from the Union returned home determined to

secede from Virginia. With the help of Union troops, who crossed the Ohio River

and won a few small battles against Confederate forces in the area during summer

1861, they accomplished their goal. Through a complicated process of conventions

and referendums—carried out in the midst of raids and skirmishes—they created

the new state of West Virginia, which entered the Union in 1863.

Indian Territory

To the south and west of Missouri, civil war raged along a

and the

different border—between Southern states and territories—for

Southwest

control of the resources of that vast region. In the Indian

Territory (present-day Oklahoma), the Native Americans, who

had been resettled there from Eastern states in the generation before the war, chose sides and carried on bloody guerrilla warfare against each other as ferocious as

The Balance Sheet of War

517

the bushwhacking in Missouri. The more prosperous Indians of the five “civilized

tribes” (Cherokees, Creeks, Seminoles, Chickasaws, and Choctaws), many of them of mixed blood and some of them slaveholders, tended to side with the Confederacy.

Some tribes signed treaties of alliance with the Confederate government. Aided by white and black Union regiments operating out of Kansas and Missouri, the pro-Union Indians gradually gained control of most of the Indian Territory.

In the meantime, Confederates had made their boldest bid to fulfill antebellum

Southern ambitions to win the Southwest. A small army composed mostly of

Texans pushed up the Rio Grande valley into New Mexico in 1861. The following

February, they launched a deeper strike to capture Santa Fe. They hoped to push

even farther westward and northward to gain the mineral wealth of California

and Colorado gold mines, whose millions were already helping to finance the

Union war effort and could do wonders for Confederate finances. A good many

Southerners lived in these Western territories and in California.

At first, the Confederate drive up the Rio Grande went well. The Texans won a

victory over the Unionist New Mexico militia and a handful of regulars at the battle of Valverde, 100 miles south of Albuquerque, on February 21, 1862. They continued up the valley, occupied Albuquerque and Santa Fe, and pushed on toward Fort

Union near Santa Fe. But Colorado miners who had organized themselves into

Union regiments and had carried out the greatest march of the war, over the rugged Rockies in winter, met the Texans in the battle of Glorieta Pass on March 26–28.

The battle was a tactical draw, but a unit of Coloradans destroyed the Confederate wagon train, forcing the Southerners into a disastrous retreat back to Texas. Of the 3,700 who had started out to win the West for the Confederacy, only 2,000 made it back. The Confederates had shot their bolt in this region; the West and Southwest remained safe for the Union.

THE BALANCE SHEET OF WAR

If one counts three-quarters of the border state population (including free blacks) as pro-Union, the total number of people in Union states in 1861 was 22.5 million,

compared with 9 million in the Confederate states. The North’s military manpower

advantage was even greater because the Confederate population total included 3.7

million slaves compared with 300,000 slaves in Union areas. At first, neither side expected to recruit blacks as soldiers. Eventually, the Union did enlist 180,000

black soldiers and 18,000 black sailors; the Confederacy did not take that step until the war was virtually over. Altogether, about 2.1 million men fought for the Union and 850,000 for the Confederacy. That was close to half of the North’s male population of military age (18 to 40) and three-quarters of the comparable Confederate white population. Because the labor force of the South consisted mainly of slaves, the Confederacy was able to enlist a larger proportion of its white population. The North’s economic superiority was even greater. The Union states possessed nine-tenths of the country’s industrial capacity and registered shipping, four-fifths of its bank capital, three-fourths of its railroad mileage and rolling stock, and three-fourths of its taxable wealth.

These statistics gave pause to some Southerners. In a long war that mobilized

the total resources of both sides, the North’s advantages might prove decisive. But 518

Chapter 15 Secession and Civil War, 1860–1862

HISTORY THROUGH FILM

The Red Badge of Courage (1951)

Directed by John Huston. Starring Audie

The film remains more faithful to the

Murphy (The Youth) and Bill Mauldin

book than most movies based on novels.

(The Loud Soldier).

Most of the dialogue is taken directly

from Crane. Henry Fleming’s self-doubts,

Stephen Crane’s short novel The Red

fears, and eventual heroism after he first

Badge of Courage became an instant clas-

runs away are brilliantly portrayed on

sic when it was published in 1895. Civil

the screen by action and dialogue against

War veterans praised its realistic descrip-

a background of a narrator’s words.

tions of the confusion, terror, chaos, cour-

Fleming is played by Audie Murphy,

age, despair, and adrenaline-driven rage of

America’s most decorated soldier in the

men in battle. A story of young Henry

Second World War, and Wilson by Bill

Fleming (The Youth) and his buddy

Mauldin, whose Willie and Joe cartoons

Wilson (The Loud Soldier) in their first

provided the most enduring images of

battle (Chancellorsville), the novel traces

the American infantryman in that war.

Henry’s transition from boyhood to man-

They make the characters come alive

hood, from raw recruit to veteran, over

with moving performances.

two days of violent combat. Intended by

Much of the credit for this success

Crane as a portrait of soldiers facing the

belongs to director John Huston, who

ultimate moment of truth in combat, the

brought out the best in his inexperienced

novel strives for universality rather than

actors. One of Hollywood’s most promi-

specificity as a Civil War story. Thus the

nent directors, Huston had lobbied Louis

battle is not actually named (although

Mayer of MGM to produce the film.

circumstances make clear that it is Chan-

Believing that “Nobody wants to see a

cellorsville, despite the film misleadingly

Civil War movie,” Mayer finally gave in

dating it in 1862). The 304th New York

but provided Huston with a skimpy bud-

regiment is fictional, and even the fact that

get. When Huston flew to Africa immedi-

it is a Civil War battle is scarcely men-

ately after the filming was completed to

tioned. Crane did achieve a sort of univer-

begin directing The African Queen, studio

sality; the novel is a story of men at war,

executives cut several of Huston’s scenes

not simply a story of the Civil War.

and reduced the movie’s length to 69

in 1861, few anticipated how long and intense the war would be. Both sides

expected a short and victorious conflict. Confederates seemed especially confident, partly because of their vaunted sense of martial superiority over the “bluebellied”

Yankee nation of shopkeepers. Many Southerners really did believe that one of

their own could lick three Yankees. “Let brave men advance with flintlocks and

old-fashioned bayonets, on the popinjays of Northern cities,” said ex-Governor

Henry Wise of Virginia, now a Confederate general, and “the Yankees would break

and run.”

Although this turned out to be a grievous miscalculation, the South did have

some reason to believe that its martial qualities were superior. A higher propor-

tion of Southerners than Northerners had attended West Point and other mili-

tary schools, had fought in the Mexican War, or had served as officers in the

The Balance Sheet of War

519

Collection

Everett

Theof

Courtesy

Audie Murphy (Henry Fleming) and Bill Mauldin (The Loud Soldier), in The Red Badge of Courage.

minutes. The studio also did little to pro-

the novel, however, it has become a classic

mote the film, and because audiences

that is still, more than a half-century after

failed to identify with its grim realism

it was filmed, one of the best cinematic

and mostly unknown cast, The Red Badge

portrayals of the psychology of men in

of Courage was a box-office failure. Like

combat.

regular army. Volunteer military companies were more prevalent in the antebel-

lum South than in the North. As a rural people, Southerners were proficient in

hunting, riding, and other outdoor skills useful in military operations. More-

over, the South had begun to prepare for war earlier than the North. As each

state seceded, it mobilized militia and volunteer military companies. Not until

summer 1861 would the North’s greater manpower manifest itself in the form

of a larger army.

Strategy

Even when fully mobilized, the North’s superior resources

and Morale

did not guarantee success. Its military task was much more

difficult than that of the South. The Confederacy had come

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Chapter 15 Secession and Civil War, 1860–1862

into being in firm control of 750,000 square miles—a vast territory larger than all of Western Europe and twice as large as the 13 colonies in 1776. To win the war,

Union forces would have to invade, conquer, and occupy much of that territory,

cripple its people’s ability to sustain a war of independence, and destroy its armies.

Britain had been unable to accomplish a similar task in the war for independence, even though it enjoyed a far greater superiority of resources over the United States in 1776 than the Union enjoyed over the Confederacy in 1861. Victory does not

always ride with the heaviest battalions.

To “win” the war, the Confederacy did not need to invade or conquer the

Union or even to destroy its armies; it needed only to hold out long enough to convince Northerners that the cost of victory was too high. Most Confederates were

confident in 1861 that they were more than equal to the task. Most European mili-

tary experts agreed. The military analyst of the London Times wrote:

It is one thing to drive the rebels from the south bank of the Potomac, or even to occupy Richmond, but another to reduce and hold in permanent subjection a tract of country nearly as large as Russia in Europe.... No war of independence ever terminated unsuccessfully except where the disparity of force was far greater than it is in this case.... Just as England during the revolution had to give up conquering the colonies so the North will have to give up conquering the South.

The important factor of morale also seemed to favor the Confederacy. To be

sure, Union soldiers fought for powerful symbols: nation, flag, constitution. “We are fighting to maintain the best government on earth” was a common phrase in

their letters and diaries. It is a “grate [sic] struggle for Union, Constitution, and law,” wrote a New Jersey soldier. A Chicago newspaper declared that the South

had “outraged the Constitution, set at defiance all law, and trampled under foot

that flag which has been the glorious and consecrated symbol of American

Liberty.”

But Confederates, too, fought for nation, flag, constitution, and liberty—of

whites. In addition, they fought to defend their land, homes, and families against invading “Yankee vandals,” who many Southern whites quite literally believed

were coming to “free the negroes and force amalgamation between them and the

children of the poor men of the South.” An army fighting in defense of its homeland generally has the edge in morale. “We shall have the enormous advantage of fighting on our own territory and for our very existence,” wrote a Confederate leader.

Mobilizing

More than four-fifths of the soldiers on both sides were

for War

volunteers. The Confederacy passed a conscription law in

April 1862, and the Union followed suit in March 1863, but

even afterward, most recruits were volunteers. In both North and South, patriotic rallies with martial music and speeches motivated local men to enlist in a company (100 men) organized by the area’s leading citizens. The recruits elected their own company officers (a captain and two lieutenants), who received their commissions

from the state governor. A regiment consisted of 10 infantry companies, and each

regiment was commanded by a colonel, with a lieutenant colonel and a major as

second and third in command—all of them appointed by the governor. Cavalry

regiments were organized in a similar manner. Field artillery units were known as The Balance Sheet of War

521

batteries, a grouping of four or six cannon with their caissons and limber chests (two-wheeled, horse-drawn vehicles) to carry ammunition; the full complement of a six-gun battery was 155 men and 72 horses.

Volunteer units received a state designation and number in the order of their

completion—the 2nd Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, the 5th Virginia Cavalry,

and so on. In most regiments, the men in each company generally came from the

same town or locality. Some Union regiments were composed of men of a particular

ethnic group. By the end of the war, the Union army had raised about 2,000 infan-

try and cavalry regiments and 700 batteries; the Confederates had organized just

under half as many. As the war went on, the original thousand-man complement

of a regiment was usually whittled down to half or less by disease, casualties, desertions, and detachments. The states generally preferred to organize new regiments

rather than keep the old ones up to full strength.

These were citizen-soldiers, not professionals. They carried their peacetime

notions of democracy and discipline into the army. That is why, in the tradition

of the citizen militia, the men elected their company officers and sometimes their field officers (colonel, lieutenant colonel, and major) as well. Professional military men deplored the egalitarianism and slack discipline that resulted. Political influence often counted for more than military training in the election and appoint-

ment of officers. These civilians in uniform were extremely awkward and

unmilitary at first, and some regiments suffered battlefield disasters because of inadequate training, discipline, and leadership. Yet this was the price that a democratic society with a tiny professional army had to pay to mobilize large armies almost overnight to meet a crisis. In time, these raw recruits became battle-hardened veterans commanded by experienced officers who had survived the

weeding-out process of combat or of examination boards or who had been pro-

moted from the ranks.

As the two sides organized their field armies, both grouped four or more regi-

ments into brigades and three or more brigades into divisions. By 1862, they began grouping two or more divisions into corps and two or more corps into armies. Each of these larger units was commanded by a general appointed by the president. Most of the higher-ranking generals on both sides were West Point graduates, but others were appointed because they represented an important political, regional, or (in the North) ethnic constituency whose support Lincoln or Davis wished to solidify.

Some of these “political” generals, like elected regimental officers, were incompetent, but as the war went on, they too either learned their trade or were weeded

out. Some outstanding generals emerged from civilian life and were promoted up

the ranks during the war. In both the Union and the Confederate armies, the best

officers (including generals) led their men by example as much as by precept; they commanded from the front, not the rear. Combat casualties were higher among

officers than among privates, and highest of all among generals, who died in action at a rate 50 percent higher than enlisted men.

Weapons

In Civil War battles, the infantry rifle was the most lethal

and Tactics

weapon. Muskets and rifles caused 80 to 90 percent of the

combat casualties. From 1862 on, most of these weapons

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Chapter 15 Secession and Civil War, 1860–1862

were “rifled”—that is, they had spiral grooves cut in the barrel to impart a spin to the bullet. This innovation was only a decade old, dating to the perfection in the 1850s of the “minié ball” (named after French army Captain Claude Minié, its

principal inventor), a cone-shaped lead bullet with a base that expanded on firing to “take” the rifling of the barrel. This made it possible to load and fire a muzzle-loading rifle as rapidly (two or three times per minute) as the old smoothbore

musket. Moreover, the rifle had greater accuracy and at least four times the effective range (400 yards or more) of the smoothbore.

Civil War infantry tactics adjusted only gradually to the greater lethal range

and accuracy of the new rifle, however, for the prescribed massed formations had

emerged from experience with the smoothbore musket. Close-order assaults against

defenders equipped with rifles resulted in enormous casualties. The defensive power of the rifle became even greater when troops began digging into trenches. Massed

frontal assaults became almost suicidal. Soldiers and their officers learned the

hard way to adopt skirmishing tactics, taking advantage of cover and working

around the enemy flank.

Logistics

Wars are fought not only by men and weapons but also by

the logistical apparatus that supports and supplies them. The

Civil War is often called the world’s first modern war because of the role played by railroads, steam-powered ships, and the telegraph, which did not exist in earlier wars fought on a similar scale (those of the French Revolution and Napoleon).

Railroads and steamboats transported supplies and soldiers with unprecedented

speed and efficiency; the telegraph provided rapid communication between army

headquarters and field commanders.

Yet these modern forms of transport and communications were extremely vul-

nerable. Cavalry raiders and guerrillas could cut telegraph wires, burn railroad

bridges, and tear up the tracks. Confederate cavalry became particularly skillful at sundering the supply lines of invading Union armies and thereby neutralizing forces several times larger than their own. The more deeply the Union armies penetrated

into the South, the more men they had to detach to guard bridges, depots, and supply bases.

Once the campaigning armies had moved away from their railhead or wharf-

side supply base, they returned to dependence on animal-powered transport.

Depending on terrain, road conditions, length of supply line, and proportion of

artillery and cavalry, Union armies required one horse or mule for every two or

three men. Thus a large invading Union army of 100,000 men (the approximate

number in Virginia from 1862 to 1865 and in Georgia in 1864) would need about

40,000 draft animals. Confederate armies, operating mostly in friendly territory

closer to their bases, needed fewer. The poorly drained dirt roads typical of much of the South turned into a morass of mud in the frequently wet weather. These

logistical problems did much to offset the industrial supremacy of the North, particularly during the first year of the war when bottlenecks, shortages, and inefficiency marked the logistical effort on both sides. By 1862, though, the North’s

economy had fully geared up for war, making the Union army the best-supplied

army in history up to that time.

The Balance Sheet of War

523

Confederate officials accomplished impressive feats of improvisation in creating

war industries, especially munitions and gunpowder, but the Southern industrial

base was too slender to sustain adequate production. Particularly troublesome for the Confederacy was its inability to replace rails and rolling stock for its railroads.

Although the South produced plenty of food, the railroads deteriorated to the point that food could not reach soldiers or civilians. As the war went into its third and fourth years, the Northern economy grew stronger and the Southern economy grew

weaker.

Financing

One of the greatest defects of the Confederate economy was

the War

finance. Of the three methods of paying for a war—taxation,

loans, and (paper money)—treasury notes are the most

inflationary because they pump new money into the economy. By contrast, taxa-

tion and loans (war bonds) soak up money and thus counteract inflation. Although

Confederate treasury officials were quite aware of this difference, the Confederate Congress, wary of dampening patriotic ardor, was slow to raise taxes. And because most capital in the South was tied up in land and slaves, little was available for buying war bonds.

So, expecting a short war, the Confederate Congress authorized a limited issue

of treasury notes in 1861, to be redeemable in specie (gold or silver) within two years after the end of the war. The first modest issue was followed by many more

because the notes declined in value from the outset. The rate of decline increased during periods of Confederate military reverses, when people wondered whether

the government would survive. By early 1863 it took eight dollars to buy what

one dollar had bought two years earlier; just before the war’s end the Confederate dollar was worth one U.S. cent.

In 1863 the Confederate Congress tried to stem runaway inflation by passing a

comprehensive law that taxed income, consumer purchases, and business transac-

tions and included a “tax in kind” on agricultural products, allowing tax officials to seize 10 percent of a farmer’s crops. This tax was extremely unpopular among

farmers, many of whom hid their crops and livestock or refused to plant, thereby

worsening the Confederacy’s food shortages. The tax legislation was too little and too late to remedy the South’s fiscal chaos. The Confederate government raised less than 5 percent of its revenue by taxes and less than 40 percent by loans, leaving 60

percent to be created by the printing press. That turned out to be a recipe for

disaster.

In contrast, the Union government raised 66 percent of its revenue by selling

war bonds, 21 percent by taxes, and only 13 percent by printing treasury notes.

The Legal Tender Act authorizing these notes—the famous “greenbacks,” the

origin of modern paper money in the United States—passed in February 1862.

Congress had enacted new taxes in 1861, including the first income tax in Ameri-

can history, and had authorized the sale of war bonds. By early 1862, however,

these measures had not yet raised enough revenue to pay for the rapid military

buildup. To avert a crisis, Congress created the greenbacks. Instead of promising to redeem them in specie at some future date, as the South had done, Congress

made them legal tender—that is, it required everyone to accept them as real

524

Chapter 15 Secession and Civil War, 1860–1862

money at face value. The North’s economy suffered inflation during the war—

about 80 percent over four years—but that was mild compared with the 9,000 per-

cent inflation in the Confederacy. The greater strength and diversity of the North’s economy, together with wiser fiscal legislation, accounted for the contrast.

The Union Congress also passed the National Banking Act of 1863. Before the

war, the principal form of money had been notes issued by state-chartered banks.

After Andrew Jackson’s destruction of the Second Bank of the United States

(Chapter 12), the number and variety of banknotes had skyrocketed until 7,000

different kinds of state banknotes were circulating in 1860. Some were virtually

worthless; others circulated at a discount from face value. The National Banking

Act of 1863 resulted from the desire of Republicans to resurrect the centralized

banking system and create a more stable banknote currency, as well as to finance

the war. Under the act, chartered national banks could issue banknotes up to 90

percent of the value of the U.S. bonds they held. This provision created a market for the bonds and, in combination with the greenbacks, replaced the glut of state banknotes with a more uniform national currency.

National banknotes would be an important form of money for the next

half-century. They had two defects, however: First, because the number of

notes that could be issued was tied to each bank’s holdings of U.S. bonds, the

volume of currency available depended on the amount of federal debt rather

than on the economic needs of the country. Second, the banknotes tended to

concentrate in the Northeast, where most of the large national banks were

located, leaving the South and West short. The creation of the Federal Reserve

System in 1913 (Chapter 21) largely remedied these defects, but Civil War

legislation established the principle of a uniform national currency issued and

regulated by the federal government.

NAVIES, THE BLOCKADE, AND FOREIGN RELATIONS

To sustain its war effort, the Confederacy needed to import large quantities of

material from abroad. To shut off these imports and the exports of cotton that

paid for them, on April 19, 1861, Lincoln proclaimed a blockade of Confederate

ports. At first, the blockade was more a policy than a reality because the navy had only a few ships on hand to enforce it. The task was formidable; the Confederate

coastline stretched for 3,500 miles, with two dozen major ports and another 150

bays and coves where cargo could be landed. The U.S. Navy, which since the

1840s had been converting from sail to steam, recalled its ships from distant seas, took old sailing vessels out of mothballs, and bought or chartered merchant ships and armed them. Eventually, the navy placed several hundred warships on blockade

duty. But in 1861, the blockade was so thin that 9 of every 10 vessels slipped

through it on their way to or from Confederate ports.

King Cotton

The Confederacy, however, inadvertently contributed to the

Diplomacy

blockade’s success when it adopted King Cotton diplomacy.

Cotton was vital to the British economy because textiles

Navies, the Blockade, and Foreign Relations

525

were at the heart of British industry, and three-fourths of Britain’s supply of raw cotton came from the South. If that supply was cut off, Southerners reasoned,

British factories would shut down, unemployed workers would starve, and Britain

would face the prospect of revolution. Rather than risk such a consequence,

people in the South believed that Britain (and other powers) would recognize the

Confederacy’s independence and then use the powerful British navy to break

the blockade.

Southerners were so firmly convinced of cotton’s importance to the British

economy that they kept the 1861 cotton crop at home rather than try to export it

through the blockade, hoping thereby to compel the British to intervene. But the

strategy backfired. Bumper crops in 1859 and 1860 had piled up a surplus of cot-

ton in British warehouses and delayed the anticipated “cotton famine” until 1862.

In the end, the South’s voluntary embargo of cotton cost them dearly. The Confed-

eracy missed its chance to ship out its cotton and store it abroad, where it could be used as collateral for loans to purchase war matériel.

Moreover, the Confederacy’s King Cotton diplomacy contradicted its own

foreign policy objective: to persuade the British and French governments to refuse to recognize the legality of the blockade. Under international law, a blockade

must be “physically effective” to be respected by neutral nations. Confederate

diplomats claimed that the Union effort was a mere “paper blockade,” yet

the dearth of cotton reaching European ports as a result of the South’s embargo

suggested to British and French diplomats that the blockade was at least partly

effective. And by 1862 it was. Slow-sailing ships with large cargo capacity rarely tried to run the blockade, and the sleek, fast, steam-powered “blockade runners”

that became increasingly prominent had a smaller cargo capacity and charged

high rates because of the growing risk of capture or sinking by the Union navy.

Although most blockade runners got through, by 1862 the blockade had reduced

the Confederacy’s seaborne commerce enough to convince the British government

to recognize it as legitimate. The blockade was also squeezing the South’s econ-

omy. After lifting its cotton embargo in 1862, the Confederacy had increasing

difficulty exporting enough cotton through the blockade to pay for needed

imports.

Confederate foreign policy also failed to win diplomatic recognition by

other nations. That recognition would have conferred international legitimacy

on the Confederacy and might even have led to treaties of alliance or of for-

eign aid. The French Emperor Napoleon III expressed sympathy for the Con-

federacy, as did influential groups in the British Parliament. But Prime

Minister Lord Palmerston and Foreign Minister John Russell refused to recog-

nize the Confederacy while it was engaged in a war it might lose, especially if

recognition might jeopardize relations with the United States. The Union foreign

policy team of Secretary of State Seward and Minister to England Charles Fran-

cis Adams did a superb job. Seward issued blunt warnings against recognizing

the Confederacy; Adams softened them with the velvet glove of diplomacy.

Other nations followed Britain’s lead; by 1862, it had become clear that Britain

would withhold recognition until the Confederacy had virtually won its

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Chapter 15 Secession and Civil War, 1860–1862

independence, but such recognition would have come too late to help the Con-

federacy win.

The Trent Affair

If anything illustrated the frustrations of Confederate diplo-

macy, it was the “Trent Affair.” In October 1861, Southern

envoys James Mason and John Slidell slipped through the blockade. Mason hoped

to represent the Confederacy in London and Slidell in Paris. On November 8,

Captain Charles Wilkes of the U.S.S. San Jacinto stopped the British mail steamer Trent with Mason and Slidell on board, near Cuba. Wilkes arrested the two

Southerners, took them to Boston, and became an instant hero in the North. When

the news reached England, the British government and public were outraged by

Wilkes’s “high-handed” action. Britain demanded an apology and the release of

Mason and Slidell. The popular press on both sides of the Atlantic stirred up war fever. Soon, however, good sense prevailed and Britain softened its demands. With a philosophy of “one war at a time,” the Lincoln administration released Mason

and Slidell the day after Christmas 1861, declaring that Captain Wilkes had acted

“without instructions.” The British accepted this statement in lieu of an apology, and the crisis ended.

The

Lacking the capacity to build a naval force at home, the

Confederate

Confederacy hoped to use British shipyards for the purpose.

Navy

Through a loophole in the British neutrality law, two fast

commerce raiders built in Liverpool made their way into

Confederate hands in 1862. Named the Florida and the Alabama, they roamed

the seas for the next two years, capturing or sinking Union merchant ships and

whalers. The Alabama was the most feared raider. She sank 62 merchant vessels

plus a Union warship, before another warship, the U.S.S. Kearsarge, sank the

Alabama off Cherbourg, France, on June 19, 1864. Altogether, Confederate pri-

vateers and commerce raiders destroyed or captured 257 Union merchant vessels

and drove at least 700 others to foreign registry. This Confederate achievement,

although spectacular, made only a tiny dent in the Union war effort, especially

when compared with the 1,500 blockade runners captured or destroyed by the

Union navy, not to mention the thousands of others that decided not to even try

to beat the blockade.

The Monitor and

Though plagued by shortages on every hand, the Confeder-

the Virginia

ate navy department demonstrated great skill at innovation.

Southern engineers developed “torpedoes” (mines) that sank

or damaged 43 Union warships in southern bays and rivers. The South also

constructed the world’s first combat submarine, the H. L. Hunley, which sank a

blockade ship off Charleston in 1864 but then went down before she could return

to shore. Another important innovation was the building of ironclad “rams” to

sink the blockade ships. The idea of iron armor for warships was not new—the

Division

Photographs

and

Prints

Congress,of

Library

Mayer/CORBISG.

Francis©

The Monitor and Merrimac. The above photograph shows the crew of the Union

ironclad Monitor standing in front of its revolving two-gun turret. In action, the sun canopy above the turret would be taken down, and all sailors would be at their stations inside the turret or the hull, as shown in the painting of the famed battle, on March 9, 1862, between the Monitor and the Confederate Virginia (informally called the Merrimac because it had been converted from the captured U.S. frigate Merrimack). There is no photograph of the Virginia, which was blown up by its crew two months later when the Confederates retreated toward Richmond because its draft was too deep to go up the James River.

528

Chapter 15 Secession and Civil War, 1860–1862

British and French navies had prototype ironclads in 1861—but the Confederacy

built the first one to see action. It was the C.S.S. Virginia, commonly called (even in the South) the Merrimac because it was rebuilt from the steam frigate U.S.S.

Merrimack, which had been burned to the waterline by the Union navy at Norfolk

when the Confederates seized the naval base there in April 1861. Ready for its

trial-by-combat on March 8, 1862, the Virginia steamed out to attack the blockade squadron at Hampton Roads. She sank one warship with her iron ram and another

with her 10 guns. Other Union ships ran aground trying to escape, to be finished

off (Confederates expected) the next day. Union shot and shells bounced off

the Virginia’s armor plate. It was the worst day the U.S. Navy would have until

December 7, 1941.

Panic seized Washington and the whole northeastern seaboard. In almost

Hollywood fashion, however, the Union’s own ironclad sailed into Hampton

Roads in the nick of time and saved the rest of the fleet. This was the U.S.S.

Monitor, completed just days earlier at the Brooklyn navy yard. Much smaller

than the Virginia, with two 11-inch guns in a revolving turret (an innovation)

set on a deck almost flush with the water, the Monitor looked like a “tin can on a shingle.” It presented a small target and was capable of concentrating considerable firepower in a given direction with its revolving turret. The next day, the

Monitor fought the Virginia in history’s first battle between ironclads. It was a draw, but the Virginia limped home to Norfolk never again to menace the Union

fleet. Although the Confederacy built other ironclad rams, some never saw

action and none achieved the initial success of the Virginia. By the war’s end, the Union navy had built or started 58 ships of the Monitor class (some of them

double-turreted), launching a new age in naval history.

CAMPAIGNS AND BATTLES, 1861–1862

Wars can be won only by hard fighting. Some leaders on both sides overlooked

this truth. One of them was Winfield Scott, General-in-Chief of the U.S. Army.

Scott, a Virginian who had remained loyal to the Union, evolved a military strat-

egy based on his conviction that a great many Southerners were willing to be won

back to the Union. The main elements of his strategy were a naval blockade and a

combined army-navy expedition to take control of the Mississippi, thus sealing

off the Confederacy on all sides and enabling the Union to “bring them to terms

with less bloodshed than by any other plan.” The Northern press labeled Scott’s

strategy the Anaconda Plan, after the South American snake that squeezes its prey to death.

The Battle

Most Northerners believed that the South could be

of Bull Run

overcome only by victory in battle. Virginia emerged as

the most likely battleground, especially after the Confeder-

ate government moved its capital to Richmond in May 1861. “Forward to

Richmond,” clamored Northern newspapers. And forward toward Richmond

moved a Union army of 35,000 men in July, despite Scott’s misgivings and those

Campaigns and Battles, 1861–1862

529

of the army’s field commander, Irvin McDowell. McDowell believed his raw,

90-day Union militia were not ready to fight a real battle. They got no farther

than Bull Run, a sluggish stream 25 miles southwest of Washington, where a

Confederate army commanded by Beauregard had been deployed to defend a key

rail junction at Manassas.

Another small Confederate army in the Shenandoah Valley under General

Joseph E. Johnston had given a Union force the slip and had traveled to Manassas

by rail to reinforce Beauregard. On July 21, the attacking Federals forded Bull Run and hit the rebels on the left flank, driving them back. By early afternoon, the Federals seemed to be on the verge of victory, but a Virginia brigade commanded by

Thomas J. Jackson stood “like a stone wall,” earning Jackson the nickname he

carried ever after. By mid-afternoon, Confederate reinforcements, including one

brigade just off the train from the Shenandoah Valley, had grouped for a screaming counterattack (the famed “rebel yell” was first heard here). They drove the exhausted and disorganized Yankees back across Bull Run in a retreat that turned into a rout.

Although the Battle of Manassas (or Bull Run, as Northerners called it) was

small by later Civil War standards, it made a profound impression on both sides.

Of the 18,000 soldiers actually engaged on each side, Union casualties (killed,

wounded, and captured) were about 2,800 and Confederate casualties 2,000. The

victory exhilarated Confederates and confirmed their belief in their martial superiority. It also gave them a morale advantage in the Virginia theater that persisted for two years. And yet, Manassas also bred overconfidence. Some in the South

thought the war was won. Northerners, by contrast, were jolted out of their expectations of a short war. A new mood of reality and grim determination gripped the

North. Congress authorized the enlistment of up to 1 million three-year volunteers.

Hundreds of thousands flocked to recruiting offices in the next few months. Lin-

coln called General George B. McClellan to Washington to organize the new

troops into the Army of the Potomac.

An energetic, talented officer who was only 34 years old and small of stature

but great with an aura of destiny, McClellan soon won the nickname “The Young

Napoleon.” He had commanded the Union forces that gained control of West

Virginia, and he took firm control in Washington during summer and fall 1861.

He organized and trained the Army of the Potomac into a large, well-disciplined,

and well-equipped fighting force. He was just what the North needed after its

dispiriting defeat at Bull Run. When Scott stepped down as General-in-Chief on

November 1, McClellan took his place.

As winter approached, however, and McClellan did nothing to advance

against the smaller Confederate army whose outposts stood only a few miles from

Washington, his failings as a commander began to show. McClellan was afraid to

take risks; he never learned the military lesson that no victory can be won without risking defeat. He consistently overestimated the strength of enemy forces facing him and used these faulty estimates as a reason for inaction until he could increase his own force. When Republicans in Congress and in the press began to criticize

him (he was a Democrat), he accused his critics of political motives. Having built a fine fighting machine, he was afraid to start it up for fear it might break. The caution that McClellan instilled in the Army of the Potomac’s officer corps

530

Chapter 15 Secession and Civil War, 1860–1862

persisted for more than a year after Lincoln removed him from command in

November 1862.

Naval

Because of McClellan, no significant action occurred in the

Operations

Virginia theater after the Battle of Bull Run until spring

1862. Meanwhile, the Union navy won a series of victories

over Confederate coastal forts at Hatteras Inlet on the North Carolina coast, Port Royal Sound in South Carolina, and other points along the Atlantic and Gulf

coasts. These successes provided new bases from which to expand and tighten the

blockade. They also provided small Union armies with takeoff points for opera-

tions along the southern coast. In February and March 1862, an expeditionary

force under General Ambrose Burnside won a string of victories and occupied

several crucial ports on the North Carolina sounds. Another Union force captured

Fort Pulaski at the mouth of the Savannah River, cutting off that important

Confederate port from the sea.

One of the Union navy’s most impressive achievements was the capture in

April 1862 of New Orleans, the Confederacy’s largest city and principal port.

Most Confederate troops in the area had been called up the Mississippi to con-

front a Union invasion of Tennessee, leaving only some militia, an assortment of

steamboats converted into gunboats, and two strong forts flanking the river 70

miles below New Orleans. That was not enough to stop Union naval commander

David G. Farragut, a native of Tennessee who was still loyal to the U.S. Navy

in which he had served for a half century. In a daring action on April 24, 1862,

Farragut led his fleet upriver past the forts, losing one ship but scattering or

destroying the Confederate gunboats. The Union fleet compelled the surrender of

New Orleans with nine-inch naval guns trained on its streets.

Fort Henry and

These victories demonstrated the importance of sea power

Fort Donelson

even in a civil war. Even more important were Union victo-

ries won by the combined efforts of the army and fleets of

river gunboats on the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers, which flow through

Tennessee and Kentucky and empty into the Ohio River just before it joins the

Mississippi. The unlikely hero of these victories was Ulysses S. Grant, who had

failed in several civilian occupations after resigning from the peacetime military in 1854. Grant rejoined when war broke out. His quiet efficiency and determined

will won him promotion from Illinois colonel to brigadier general. When Confed-

erate units entered Kentucky in September, Grant moved quickly to occupy the

mouths of the Cumberland and Tennessee rivers.

Military strategists on both sides understood the importance of these naviga-

ble rivers as highways of invasion into the South’s heartland. The Confederacy

had built forts at strategic points along the rivers and had begun to convert a

few steamboats into gunboats and rams to back up the forts. The Union also con-

verted steamboats into “timberclad” gunboats—so called because they were

armored just enough to protect the engine and the paddle wheels but not enough

Campaigns and Battles, 1861–1862

531

Lebanon

I L L I N O I S

40 Miles

Munfordville

ILLINOIS

Grant

RiverLogan Cross Roads

CENTRAL R.R.

een

Jan. 18

Puducah

K E N T U C K Y

Somerset

Cairo

Bowling Green

Crittenden

& NASHVILLE

M O .

ope

Foo

um t

F r

o a

Belmont

ILLE

Columbus

o n

Mill Springs

t t

ISV

iver

HALLECK

ell

Cumberland

L Tompkinsville

Ft. Henry

Cumberland

New Madrid Hickman

Surrendered Feb. 6

Clarksville

Gap

Union City

Riv

Gallatin

Paris

Ft. Donelson

Landings

OPERATIONS AGAINST

iver Island No. 10

Surrendered Feb. 16

Nashville

FORTS HENRY AND DONELSON

Captured by

Surrendered Feb. 25

Union Forces April 8

erlandb

A R K .

T E N N E S S E E 6

Foote's

Landing

Gunboats

uck

Franklin

Humboldt

Murfreesboro

Foote's

Ft. Pillow

River

Ft. Henry

Gunboats

Buckner

ississippiAbandoned June 4

Jackson

rant

Ft.

ennessee

Columbia

GRANT

Donelson

RUGGLES

Dover

Shelbyville

Memphis

Buell

nessee 0

3 Miles

Captured by

Pillow

FLOYD

Union River Navy

Savannah

June 6

Grand Juction .R. Shiloh

Church

Chattanooga

Corinth

Stevenson

Iuka

. S. Johnsto

Union forces

Huntsville

rag

IS & CHARLE

Learning

A. S. JOHNSTON

STON

CUMBERLAND

Confederate forces

MOUNTAINS

M I S S I S S I P P I

A L A B A M A

Confederate entrenchments

Cengage©

MAP 15.3 Kentucky–Tennessee Theater, Winter–Spring 1862

This map illustrates the importance of rivers and railroads as lines of military operations and supply. Grant and Foote advanced up (southward) the Tennessee and Cumberland

rivers, while Buell moved along the Louisville and Nashville Railroad. Confederate divisions under the overall command of General Albert Sidney Johnston used railroads to concentrate at the key junction of Corinth.

to impair speed and shallow draft for river operations. The Union also built a new class of ironclad gunboats designed for river warfare. Carrying 13 guns, these flat-bottomed, wide-beamed vessels drew only six feet of water. Their hulls and pad-

dle wheels were protected by a sloping casemate sheathed in iron armor up to

32½ inches thick.

When the first of these strange-looking but formidable craft were ready in

February 1862, Grant struck. His objectives were Forts Henry and Donelson on

the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers just south of the Kentucky–Tennessee bor-

der. The gunboats knocked out Fort Henry on February 6. Fort Donelson proved

a tougher nut to crack. Its guns repulsed a gunboat attack on February 14. The

next day, the 17,000-man Confederate army attacked Grant’s besieging army,

which had been reinforced to 27,000 men. With the calm decisiveness that became

his trademark, Grant directed a counterattack that penned the defenders back up

in their fort. Cut off from support by either land or river, the Confederate com-

mander asked for surrender terms on February 16. Grant’s reply made him

instantly famous when it was published in the North: “No terms except an

532

Chapter 15 Secession and Civil War, 1860–1862

immediate and unconditional surrender can be accepted. I propose to move imme-

diately upon your works.” With no choice, the 13,000 surviving Confederates

surrendered (some had escaped), giving Grant the most striking victory in the

war thus far.

These victories had far-reaching strategic consequences. Union gunboats now

ranged all the way up the Tennessee River to northern Alabama, enabling a Union

division to occupy the region, and up the Cumberland to Nashville, which became

the first Confederate state capital to surrender to Union forces on February 25.

Confederate military units pulled out of Kentucky and most of Tennessee and

reassembled at Corinth in northern Mississippi. Jubilation spread through the

North and despair through the South. By the end of March 1862, however, the

Confederate commander in the western theater, Albert Sidney Johnston (not to

be confused with Joseph E. Johnston in Virginia), had built up an army of

40,000 men at Corinth. His plan was to attack Grant’s force of 35,000, which

had established a base 20 miles away at Pittsburg Landing on the Tennessee River

just north of the Mississippi–Tennessee border.

The Battle

On April 6, the Confederates attacked at dawn near a

of Shiloh

church called Shiloh, which gave its name to the battle.

They caught Grant by surprise and drove his army toward

the river. After a day’s fighting of unprecedented intensity, with total casualties of 15,000, Grant’s men brought the Confederate onslaught to a halt at dusk. One of

the Confederate casualties was Johnston, who bled to death when a bullet severed

an artery in his leg—the highest-ranking general on either side to be killed in the war. Beauregard, who had been transferred from Virginia to the West, took

command after Johnston’s death.

Some of Grant’s subordinates advised retreat during the dismal night of April

6–7, but Grant would have none of it. Reinforced by fresh troops from a Union

army commanded by General Don Carlos Buell, the Union counterattacked the

next morning (April 7) and, after 9,000 more casualties to the two sides, drove

the Confederates back to Corinth. Although Grant had snatched victory from

the jaws of defeat, his reputation suffered a decline for a time because of the

heavy Union casualties (13,000) and the suspicion that he had been caught

napping the first day.

Union triumphs in the western theater continued. The combined armies of

Grant and Buell, under the overall command of the top-ranking Union general in

the West, Henry W. Halleck, drove the Confederates out of Corinth at the end of

May. Meanwhile, the Union gunboat fleet fought its way down the Mississippi to

Vicksburg, virtually wiping out the Confederate fleet in a spectacular battle at

Memphis on June 6. At Vicksburg, the Union gunboats from the north connected

with part of Farragut’s fleet that had come up from New Orleans, taking Baton

Rouge and Natchez along the way. The heavily fortified Confederate bastion at

Vicksburg, however, proved too strong for Union naval firepower to subdue. Nev-

ertheless, the dramatic succession of Union triumphs in the West from February

to June, including a decisive victory at the battle of Pea Ridge in northwest

Arkansas on March 7 and 8, convinced the North that the war was nearly won.

Campaigns and Battles, 1861–1862

533

“Every blow tells fearfully against the rebellion,” boasted the leading Northern

newspaper, the New York Tribune. “The rebels themselves are panic-stricken,

or despondent. It now requires no very far reaching prophet to predict the end

of this struggle.”

The Virginia

But affairs in Virginia were about to take a sharp turn in

Theater

favor of the Confederacy. In the western theater, the broad

rivers had facilitated the Union’s invasion of the South, but

in Virginia a half-dozen small rivers flowing west to east provided the Confederates with natural lines of defense. McClellan persuaded a reluctant Lincoln to approve a plan to transport his army down Chesapeake Bay to the tip of the Virginia peninsula, formed by the tidal portions of the York and James rivers. That would

shorten the route to Richmond and give the Union army a seaborne supply line

secure from harassment by Confederate cavalry and guerrillas.

This was a good plan—in theory. But once again, McClellan’s failings began

to surface. A small Confederate blocking force at Yorktown held him for the entire month of April, as he cautiously dragged up siege guns to blast through defenses

that his large army could have punched through in days on foot. McClellan slowly

followed the retreating Confederate force up the peninsula to a new defensive

line only a few miles east of Richmond, all the while bickering with Lincoln and

Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton over the reinforcements they were withholding

to protect Washington against a possible strike by Stonewall Jackson’s small

Confederate army in the Shenandoah Valley.

Jackson’s month-long campaign in the Shenandoah (May 8–June 9), one of the

most brilliant of the war, demonstrated what could be accomplished through decep-

tion, daring, and mobility. With only 17,000 men, Jackson moved by forced

marches so swift that his infantry earned the nickname “Jackson’s foot cavalry.”

Darting here and there through the valley, they marched 350 miles in the course

of one month; won four battles against three separate Union armies, whose com-

bined numbers surpassed Jackson’s by more than 2 to 1 (but which Jackson’s force

always outnumbered at the point of contact); and compelled Lincoln to divert to

the valley some of the reinforcements McClellan demanded.

Even without those reinforcements, McClellan’s army substantially outnum-

bered the Confederate force defending Richmond, commanded by Joseph E.

Johnston. McClellan overestimated Johnston’s strength at double what it was

and acted accordingly. Even so, by the last week of May, McClellan’s army

was within six miles of Richmond. A botched Confederate counterattack on

May 31 and June 1 (the Battle of Seven Pines) produced no result except 6,000

Confederate and 5,000 Union casualties. One of those casualties was Johnston,

who was wounded in the shoulder. Jefferson Davis named Robert E. Lee to

replace him.

The Seven

That appointment marked a major turning point in the

Days’ Battles

campaign. Lee had done little so far to earn a wartime rep-

utation, having failed in his only field command to dislodge

534

Chapter 15 Secession and Civil War, 1860–1862

Union forces from control of West Virginia. His qualities as a commander began

to manifest when he took over what he renamed the Army of Northern Virginia.

Those qualities were boldness, a willingness to take great risks, an almost

uncanny ability to read the enemy commander’s mind, and a charisma that won

the devotion of his men. While McClellan continued to dawdle, Lee sent his

dashing cavalry commander, J. E. B. “Jeb” Stuart, to lead a reconnaissance

around the Union army to discover its weak points. Lee also brought Jackson’s

army in from the Shenandoah Valley and launched a June 26 attack on

McClellan’s right flank in what became known as the Seven Days’ battles.

Constantly attacking, Lee’s army of 90,000 drove McClellan’s 100,000 away

from Richmond to a new fortified base on the James River. The offensive cost

the Confederates 20,000 casualties (compared with 16,000 for the Union) and

turned Richmond into one vast hospital, but it reversed the momentum of

the war.

CONFEDERATE COUNTEROFFENSIVES

Northern sentiments plunged from the height of euphoria in May to the depths

of despair in July. “The feeling of despondency here is very great,” wrote a

New Yorker, while a Southerner exulted, “Lee has turned the tide, and I shall

not be surprised if we have a long career of successes.” The tide turned in the

western theater as well, where Union conquests in the spring had brought

50,000 square miles of Confederate territory under Union control. To occupy

and administer this vast area, however, drew many thousands of soldiers from

combat forces, which were left depleted and deep in enemy territory and vulner-

able to cavalry raids. During summer and fall 1862, the cavalry commands of

Tennesseean Nathan Bedford Forrest and Kentuckian John Hunt Morgan staged

repeated raids in which they burned bridges, blew up tunnels, tore up tracks,

and captured supply depots and the Union garrisons trying to defend them.

By August the once-formidable Union war machine in the West seemed to have

broken down.

These raids paved the way for infantry counteroffensives. After recapturing

some territory, Earl Van Dorn’s Army of West Tennessee got a bloody nose when

it failed to retake Corinth on October 3 and 4. At the end of August, Braxton

Bragg’s Army of Tennessee launched a drive northward from Chattanooga through

east Tennessee and Kentucky. It had almost reached the Ohio River in September

but was turned back at the Battle of Perryville on October 8. Even after these

defeats, the Confederate forces in the western theater were in better shape than

they had been four months earlier.

The Second

Most attention, though, focused on Virginia. Lincoln

Battle of Bull

reorganized the Union corps near Washington into the Army

Run

of Virginia under General John Pope, who had won minor

successes as commander of a small army in Missouri and

Tennessee. In August, Lincoln ordered the withdrawal of the Army of the Potomac

Confederate Counteroffensives

535

from the peninsula to reinforce Pope for a drive southward from Washington. Lee

quickly seized the opportunity provided by the separation of the two Union armies confronting him, by the ill will between McClellan and Pope, and by the bickering among various factions in Washington. To attack Pope before McClellan

could reinforce him, Lee shifted most of his army to northern Virginia, sent

Jackson’s foot cavalry on a deep raid to destroy its supply base at Manassas

Junction, and then brought his army back together to defeat Pope’s army near

Bull Run on August 29 and 30. The demoralized Union forces retreated into the

Washington defenses, where Lincoln reluctantly gave McClellan command of

the two armies and told him to reorganize them into one.

Lee decided to keep up the pressure by invading Maryland. On September 4,

his weary troops began splashing across the Potomac 40 miles upriver from

Washington. This move, which took place at the same time Braxton Bragg was

invading Kentucky, presented several momentous possibilities: Maryland might be

AL R. R

Rapidan R.

Fredericksburg

McDowell

ckah

app

Beaver

Dam

RICHMOND,

Mechanicsville

Creek

June 26

Old Church

FREDERICKSBURG

Meadow

& POTOMAC R.R.

Frederick's Hall

Bridge

so i

n l

–

atta

Hanover

rter

A. P. H

–

pon

Gaines' Mill

Junction

.P.H

June 27

McCLELLAN

Longstreet

McCLELLAN

n a R.

Porter

Tunstall's

Ashland

nke

LEE

Savage

Station

Magruder

Longstreet

Station

White RICHMOND & Urbanna

Huger

June 29 RICHMOND & YORK RIVER R.R.

Mechanicsville

House YORK RIVER

Richmond

R.R.

Richmond

Fair Oaks

West Point

Oak S i

w te

Grove

m O

J. E. Jo

p a

ANVILLE R.R.

ton

June 25

D Drewry's Bluff

Action

Seven Pines

May 15

May 31–June 1

R. i

Chaffin's

–16

Glendale

om J. E. JOHNSTON

City Point

Severn R.

Bluff

June 30

Gloucester

New Market

x R.

Petersburg

Williamsburg

Yorktown

Drewry's

May 5

Bluff

Besieged

Malvern Hill

April 5–May 4

Forge

SOUTHSIDE R.R.

Magruder

A U

July 1

Bridge

m i

Ft. Monroe

y n

Warwick R. e

–

Charles City

iver

Court House

Norfolk

G R

Captured May 10

Harrison's

Landing

Portsmouth

James Ri

Elizabeth R.

ver

15 20 Miles

attoxR.

Suffolk

Appom

Confederate positions

Union positions

0 1 2 3 4 5 Miles

Learning

Confederate movements

Union movements

Confederate retreat

Union retreat

Cengage©

MAP 15.4 Peninsula Campaign, April–May 1862 [and] Seven Days’ Battles,

June 25–July 1, 1862

General McClellan used Union naval control of the York and James rivers to protect his flanks in his advance up the peninsula formed by these rivers (left map). When Robert E.

Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia counterattacked in the Seven Days’ Battles (right map), McClellan was forced back to the James River at Harrison’s Landing.

536

Chapter 15 Secession and Civil War, 1860–1862

P o t o ma

S TO SECOND MANASSAS

R i

(Bull Run)

e r

August 1862

WASHINGTON

I D

henandoah

R .

Chantilly

R u

Alexandria

Fairfax Court

Rectortown

House

Centreville

Manassas

ORANGE & ALEXAND

RIA R.R.

Groveton

Gap

Salem

GAP

Aug. 25

Aug. 28

ckson

Thoroughfare

Gainesville

Manassas

Gap

coquan

Junction

Bristoe Station

McCLELLAN

Aug. 27

Warrenton

r t

Warrenton

s g

Junction

POPE

15 Miles

Pope

Sperryville

P o r t e r

RIVER

Brandy Station

Acquia Creek

Rappahannock

(Pope)

Culpepper

Court House

Falmouth

Confederate positions

Rapidan R.

Confederate movements

eda

Fredericksburg

r Run

Union positions

Cedar Mountain

Aug. 9

LEE

Sudley

Union movements

Sudley

Ford

Springs

Union retreat

Sudley

Church

Catharpin

Run

Bull Run

Orange

POPE

–31

Court Ho.

Aug. 29

Retreats Aug. 30

P o p e

Warrenton Turnpike

Union Line,

Evening,A

Stone

Gordonsville

Bridge

R.R.)

o i

Henry

House

Groveton

ISH

FIN

. 30

fed

Bull

Gainesville

L o n g s t r e e t

onC

Manassas Sudley

Road

New Market

stre

L o

Learning

1 2

1 Mile

ction

Aug. 2

o r te

Cengage

9 r

MAP 15.5 Second Battle of Manassas (Bull Run), August 29–30, 1862

Note that some of the heaviest fighting in both battles took place around the house owned by Judith Henry, which was destroyed, and the elderly widow killed in her house, in the first battle.

Conclusion

537

won for the Confederacy. Another victory by Lee might influence the U.S. con-

gressional elections that fall and help Democrats gain control of Congress, and

might even force the Lincoln administration to negotiate peace with the Confed-

eracy. Successful invasion of Maryland, coming on top of other Confederate

successes, might even persuade Britain and France to recognize the Confederacy

and offer mediation to end the war, especially since the long-expected cotton

famine had finally materialized. In fact, in September 1862, the British and

French governments were considering recognition and awaiting the outcome of

Lee’s invasion to decide whether to proceed. Great issues rode with the armies

as Lee crossed the Potomac and McClellan cautiously moved north to meet him.

CONCLUSION

The election of 1860 had accomplished a national power shift of historic pro-

portions. Through their domination of the Jeffersonian Republican coalition

during the first quarter of the 19th century and of the Jacksonian Democrats

thereafter, Southern political leaders had maintained effective control of the

national government for most of the time before 1860. South Carolina’s seces-

sion governor, Francis Pickens, described this leverage of power in a private

letter to a fellow South Carolinian in 1857:

We have the Executive [Buchanan] with us, and the Senate & in all probability the H[ouse of] R[epresentatives] too. Besides we have repealed the Missouri line & the Supreme Court in a decision of great power, has declared it ... unconstitutional null and void. So, that before our enemies can reach us, they must first break down the Supreme Court—change the Senate & seize the Executive & ... restore the Missouri line, repeal the Fugitive slave law & change the whole govern [men]t. As long as the Govt. is on our side I am for sustaining it, & using its power for our benefit, & placing the screws upon the throats of our opponents.

In 1860, Pickens’s worst-case scenario started to come true. With Lincoln’s

election, the South lost control of the executive branch—and perhaps also the

House. They feared that the Senate and Supreme Court would soon follow. The

Republicans, Southerners feared, would launch a “revolution” to cripple slavery

and, as Lincoln had said in his “House Divided” speech two years earlier, place it

“in course of ultimate extinction.” The “revolutionary dogmas” of the Republicans, declared a South Carolina newspaper in 1860, were “active and bristling with terrible designs.” Worst of all, the Northern Black Republicans would force racial

equality on the South: “Abolition preachers will be on hand to consummate the

marriage of your daughters to black husbands.”

Thus the South launched a preemptive counterrevolution of secession to

forestall a revolution of liberty and equality they feared would be their fate if they remained in the Union. Seldom has a preemptive counterrevolution so

quickly brought on the very revolution it tried to prevent. If the Confederacy

had lost the war in spring 1862, as appeared likely after Union victories from

February to May of that year, the South might have returned to the Union with

538

Chapter 15 Secession and Civil War, 1860–1862

slavery intact. Instead, successful Confederate counteroffensives in summer 1862

convinced Lincoln that the North could not win the war without striking against

slavery. Another issue that rode with Lee’s troops as they crossed the Potomac

into Maryland in September 1862 was the fate of an emancipation proclamation

Lincoln had drafted two months earlier and then put aside to await a Union

victory.

A NEW BIRTH OF FREEDOM,

1862–1865