CHAPTER XXIV
THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
N the perspective of military history the Civil War is the first modern
war.1 It marked a transition from the older warfare, which involved
principally the fighting forces, to the modern which affects in varying
degree every group of society and which would demand ultimately a
totalisation of national life. The Civil War was a war of material as well
as of men. It witnessed the innovation or employment of mass armies,
railroads, armoured ships, the telegraph, breech-loading and repeating
rifles, various precursors of the machine-gun, railway artillery, signal
balloons, trenches, and wire entanglements.2 It was a war of ideas and
therefore of unlimited objectives. One side or the other had to win a
complete victory: the North to force the South back into the Union, the
South to force the North to recognise its independence. There could be
no compromise, no partial triumph for either. In contrast to the leisurely,
limited-objective wars of the eighteenth century, the Civil War was rough,
ruthless and sometimes cruel.
It was the first great military experience of the American people and
their greatest historical experience. The drama, the agony, the valour of the
years 1861-5 became a permanent part of the national consciousness.
So did a profound realisation of its significance. In American history the
Civil War is the great pivotal event, comparable to the revolution of 1789
in France. It settled certain differences, and it settled them permanently.
It destroyed slavery, and assured the ascendancy of industrial capitalism.
Furthermore, it preserved the Union and stabilised, if it did not indeed
create, the modern American nation. Although Americans have continued to argue about some of the problems it left, its great result—the
endurance of the Union—has been accepted by all elements in the nation.
Since 1865 no party, class, or section has even contemplated the possibility or desirability of dividing the nation.
On the eve of the war it was not certain that the North would win.
True, all the great material factors were on its side. The twenty-three states
of the North, or the United States, had a greater population and hence
I
1
For a brief account of the military course of the war see ch. xn, pp. 327-30.
Cf. ch. xn, pp. 305-6,310. Although breech-loaders and repeaters were employed in the
war, the basic weapon of the infantry soldier was the Springfield rifle, a muzzle-loading, oneshot gun. Capable of killing at half a mile, it was most accurate at 250 yards. Rifled artillery
guns with ranges of up tofivemiles came into use, but the standard artillery weapon was the
'Napoleon', a 12-pound brass smooth-bore. It could fire a mile, was accurate at half that
distance, and was murderous at 250 yards. The Springfield and the Napoleon invested
Civil War armies with greater range, accuracy, and firepower than previous American
armies had possessed.
1
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THE ZENITH OF EUROPEAN POWER, I83O-7O
a larger manpower reservoir than the eleven states of the South, the Confederate States. The population of the North was approximately
22,000,000; that of the South something over 9,000,000. But in comparing
the human potential, several qualifying factors have to be taken into
account. The Northern total includes the four slave states that had refused
to secede (Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky, Missouri), which furnished
thousands of volunteers to the Confederacy, and the Pacific coast states
(California, Oregon), which sent no troops to the main theatres of conflict.
Both sections contained minority groups opposed to the war: the Peace
Democrats in the North and the mountain people in the South. The two
groups were perhaps approximately equal in size. Included in the
Southern total are some 3,500,000 slaves, leaving a white population of
about 6,000,000. Although the slaves were not directly available for
military service, it would be a mistake to discount them. Indirectly they
provided an important source of strength. Many served as military
labourers, acting as teamsters and cooks in the armies and constructing
fortifications. The great majority remained at home on the plantations
where they performed a vital function in agricultural production. If they
had not been present to plant, care for, and harvest the crops, white men
would have had to do this work. In short, the slaves freed a large number
of whites for military service.
When all the factors in the manpower situation are measured, however,
it is evident that the North possessed a definite superiority and was capable
of raising larger forces than the South. But this advantage was not decisive. Wars are not won by numbers alone. Furthermore, the North did
not attain a clear numerical superiority until the last year and a half of
the war. The Confederacy, by resorting early to conscription, mobilised
a large proportion of its manpower rapidly. The Confederate armies
increased in size until 1863, and then steadily declined. Before 1863 the
Union armies were usually larger than those of their opponents, but not
vastly larger. At the battle of First Manassas (1861) the two armies were
approximately equal in size, 30,000 each. The same was true at Shiloh
(1862), where each army numbered 40,000 on the first day. In the fighting
in the Seven Days before Richmond (1862) the Federals committed
100,000 troops and the Confederates 85,000. Other battles in which the
odds favoured the Federals but not greatly were Stone's River (1862),
45,000 to 38,000; Gettysburg (1863), 90,000 to 75,000; and Chattanooga
(1863), 56,000 to 46,000. At Chickamauga (1863) the Confederates had
an advantage of 70,000 to 58,000. There were a few engagements, notably
Fredericksburg (1862) and Chancellorsville (1863), in which the odds were
greater, approaching two to one, but it was not until the closing months in
1865, when the Confederate armies were depleted by defeat and desertion,
that they reached the five-to-one ratio remembered by later generations of
Southerners. It was well within the realm of possibility that the Con632
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THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
federacy, during the first two years of the war, might have won its independence by victory on the battlefield.
More important than the manpower differential was the superior potential of the Northern economic system. This became increasingly significant
as the conflict settled into a sustained and long struggle. It was apparent
in both agricultural and industrial production. At the outset both sides
possessed the capacity to produce enough food for their ordinary civilian
needs. As the war continued, the North was able to expand its productive
capacities to meet the new war demands, while Southern agricultural
production declined under the strain of war. The North swelled its production, even though thousands of farm-boys joined the armies, by an
increased employment of labour-saving machines like the reaper, thresher,
and drill. In the South the food-producing area was steadily reduced by
Federal occupation or devastation; and the agricultural labouring force
was decreased by the tendency of the slaves to flock to the camps of the
invading armies. But even with damaged facilities, the South continued
to produce, at least until 1864, sufficient foodstuffs for its minimum needs.
Most of the shortages during the last two years of the war were due
primarily to inadequacies in the railway system, which could not move
supplies where they were needed.
The North's greater potential was most strikingly apparent in industrial
production. On the eve of war the North possessed approximately
110,000 factories, representing a capital investment of $850,000,000, employing 1,131,000 workers, and turning out annually products valued at
$1,500,000,000. For the South, the figures were: establishments, 20,000;
capital, $95,000,000; workers, 110,000; value of products, $155,000,000.
Both sides strove to expand their facilities, but inevitably the North, with
its initial pre-eminence and its greater knowledge of industrial techniques, far outstripped the South. In the vital arms industries, for
example, the thirty-eight largest gun factories in the North by 1862 could
produce 5000 rifles a day; the maximum for Southern plants, which because of labour and supply shortages was not often achieved, was only
300 a day.
Northern industrial supremacy meant that the Northern armies, after
the economic system had been geared to war production, would have
more of everything than the Southern. In the first year of war both sides
purchased large supplies, particularly arms, in Europe. But by 1862 the
North was able to provide practically all its material, and dependence on
Europe ceased. By contrast, the South, while labouring frantically to
expand its facilities, throughout continued to rely on Europe, importing
what goods it could run through the Northern naval blockade. Confederate industrial deficiency affected almost every phase of the war effort.
Although the ordnance department, headed by the brilliant Josiah Gorgas,
accomplished wonders, Confederate firearms were inferior to Northern
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THE ZENITH OF EUROPEAN POWER, I83O-7O
weapons, and the firepower of a Confederate army was rarely equal to
that of its enemy. The Southern economy was unable to provide its military forces with uniforms, shoes, medical supplies—and it was unable to
furnish ordinary consumer goods to its civilian population. Its failure
hurt the Southern will to fight. After 1863 morale sagged seriously, and
one reason was the popular realisation that the South had exhausted its
resources, while those of the enemy seemed limitless.
In transport the North possessed a marked advantage. It had more and
better inland water transport, more surfaced roads, and more wagons
and animals. But its greatest superiority was in its railways. The Civil
War was the first war in which railways played an important role. They
carried raw materials to factories and finished goods to military distribution centres. They transported recruits to training camps and trained
soldiers to army camps. They moved troops long distances from one theatre
to another and with unprecedented speed. In 1862 the main Confederate field army in the west was shifted from northern Mississippi via
Mobile to Chattanooga, Tennessee, a distance of 800 miles. In 1863
a Federal corps was moved from the eastern to the western theatre in
the then unheard-of time of eight days. The North had approximately
20,000 miles of railways; the South, with an equal land-area, had only
10,000 miles. Furthermore, many of the Southern lines, having been
built to connect two specific towns, were short; there were long gaps
between key points; and the lines had not been built according to a
uniform gauge. The few through-lines, like the connections between Richmond and Memphis and between Richmond and the Carolinas, ran close
to the land or sea frontier, and hence were vulnerable. Before the war
the South had purchased its rolling stock from Northern factories or
from Southern plants that during the war were concentrating on armaments. The result was that when stock was destroyed or worn out, it could
not be replaced. The railway system steadily deteriorated, and by 1864 it
was almost in a state of collapse. Some historians think that the railway
breakdown was a major cause of defeat.1
The North possessed the great weapon of sea-power. In 1861 the
Federal navy was small, numbering only ninety ships of all types and
9000 sailors. Rapid expansion soon made naval power a major factor.
By 1864 the navy included some 670 ships and 51,000 men. No average
total for the Confederate navy can be given because of the frequent destruction of its vessels; its personnel, however, reached only 4000. Northern
sea-power performed two important functions. First, it established a
blockade. The mission of sealing off the long Southern coastal line was
difficult to execute, and even after the navy attained maximum size, it
1
For example, Charles W. Ramsdell, Behind the Lines in the Southern Confederacy
(Baton Rouge, 1944), pp. 94-5; Robert C. Black III, The Railroads of the Confederacy
(Chapel Hill, 1952), pp. 294-5-
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THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
could not maintain a completely effective blockade. Blockade runners
continued to operate throughout the war. Although the effects of the
blockade in depriving the South of supplies have been exaggerated,1 it
did, nevertheless, hurt the Confederacy. It hindered the Confederacy from
importing bulky goods (the blockade runners were necessarily light ships),
it prevented Confederate cruisers from using Southern ports as bases,
and it gave the Southern people a feeling of being cut off from the outside
world. The second function of sea-power was to aid Federal land forces
to subjugate the vast western region between the Appalachian Mountains
and the Mississippi River. Here the larger rivers were navigable to gunboats and transport ships. Some of the largest operations in the west were
joint land and naval movements. Without the employment of sea-power
on the western rivers, it is doubtful whether the Federals could have
occupied the west.
Some historians,2 impressed by the North's material advantages, have
concluded that the Southern struggle was doomed from the start. Actually,
the odds were not as overwhelming as they appear. As previously indicated, the Confederacy might have won a military decision up to 1863.
Not all the advantages were with the North. The South, for the most
part, fought on the defensive in its own country and commanded interior
lines. The invaders had to maintain long lines of communication and
garrison occupied areas. And because this was a civil war, the North
had to do more than capture the enemy capital or even defeat enemy
armies. It had to conquer a people and convince them that their cause
was hopeless. Perhaps the Confederacy's best chance, after the opportunity for a military decision had passed, was psychological. The South
was fighting for one simple objective, its independence; it had no aggressive designs against the North. The North, on the other hand, was
fighting an aggressive war to maintain two somewhat abstract principles:
the permanence of the Union and, later, the emancipation of the slaves.
At any moment the North could have peace and its own independence
simply by quitting the war. If the South had been able to convince the
North that it could not be beaten, it might, even after 1863, have won
its freedom. There would be times, notably in the summer of 1864, when
it seemed that the North was discouraged enough to abandon the struggle.
Thoughtful Southerners realised the importance of the North's superior
economic potential. They believed, however, that Southern military
leadership and valour would be able to overcome the North's material
1
The impact of the blockade, and the conflicting views of scholars on its influence, are
analysed in J. G. Randall, The Civil War and Reconstruction (Boston, 1937), pp. 650-1.
For a criticism of its effectiveness, see Frank L. Owsley, King Cotton Diplomacy (Chicago,
1931). PP- 268, 273-4, 285.
• For example, Francis B. Simkins, The South Old and New (New York, 1948), pp. 137-8;
Charles A. and Mary R. Beard, The Rise of American Civilization (New York, 1939), vol. 11,
pp. 52-4.
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THE ZENITH OF EUROPEAN POWER, I83O-7O
advantages. But even if the human factor failed to outweigh economics,
there was still an almost certain promise of success—Europe would intervene on the side of the South. The intervention argument, which convinced even the most realistic Southerners, ran as follows: the economic
systems of England and France depended on their textile industries,
which had to have Southern cotton; England and France, therefore, would
force the North to stop the war and concede Southern independence.
Diplomacy thus became a major element in Confederate statecraft. The
South hoped to receive recognition as a nation, to secure material aid,
and to persuade Great Britain and France to break the blockade and
force mediation on the North. The United States, believing that it could
handle its inner troubles if unhampered by outside interference, strove
to prevent recognition and intervention.
In the diplomatic narrative the key nations are England and France.
They were the only nations who were capable of interfering in the American struggle, and who felt that their interests might be affected by the
outcome. England and France, allied in the Crimean War, continued
to act together in many areas, one of their understandings being that
questions concerning the United States fell within the sphere of British
influence. The French emperor, Napoleon III, would not therefore intervene unless England moved first. The third power of Europe, Russia,
like the United States a rising nation, also felt that its aspirations were
blocked by England. Because of this supposed community of interests,
Russia openly sympathised with the North. In 1863 Russia dispatched
two fleets, one to New York and the other to San Francisco. The actual
reason for their appearance was a threat of war with England over Poland:
Russia wanted to get her navy into position to attack British commerce.
But in America it was widely believed that the Russians had come out
of friendship for the United States, and a long-lasting legend began that
the Russian squadrons had offered support should Britain and France
attempt to break the blockade.
When the conflict began, the sympathies of the ruling classes of England
and France were for the Confederacy. Although some were motivated
by a feeling of cultural kinship with the planter aristocracy of the slave
states, they reacted as they did primarily because they disliked the ideal
and the reality which the United States represented. European liberals,
pressing for a broader popular basis for government, had delighted to
hold up the United States as a successful example of democracy in a
populous country. It was an argument that conservatives were hard put
to answer. John Bright, the great English liberal, eloquently described
the nature of American influence: 'Privilege has beheld an afflicting
spectacle for many years past. It has beheld thirty millions of men, happy
and prosperous, without king, without the surroundings of a court, without nobles except such as are made by eminence in intellect and virtue.
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THE A M E R I C A N CIVIL
WAR
. . .Privilege has shuddered at what might happen to old Europe if the
great experiment should succeed.' But the great experiment seemed to
be breaking up, and its failure promised to discredit democracy every­
where. Also for many years past the dominant groups in England and
France had beheld with uneasiness the growing strength of the American
Republic. In an independent Confederacy they saw a check to the young
power rising in the west. A divided America would mean that no single
powerful nation existed in the western hemisphere. Once started, the
process of division might continue. An independent South might be
followed by an independent west, and the various American republics
would have to seek the support of England or France and would thus
fall under European influence. Even anti-slavery liberals in England and
France tended to favour the Southern cause. For reasons of domestic
politics, the Northern government at first maintained that it was waging
war to restore the Union but not to destroy slavery. Many liberals con­
cluded that the South was fighting for the honoured liberal principle of
self-determination.
But British and French opinion was never solidly in sympathy with
the South. From the beginning some members of the upper classes,
particularly in England, spoke out for the North. Liberals like Bright
and Richard Cobden foresaw that no matter how the Northern govern­
ment defined the purposes of the war, it would have to become ultimately
a war to destroy slavery. To their working-class followers, they described
the American conflict as a struggle between free and slave labour. This
seemed plausible to the politically conscious but unenfranchised labourers.
Whatever the conservative leaders of the nation might think, the English
workers identified the Northern cause with their own. They expressed
their sympathy in mass meetings, in resolutions, and, through the speeches
of Bright and other liberals, in Parliament itself. When President Lincoln
issued the Emancipation Proclamation (i January 1863), they felt that
their impression of the war as a struggle for free labour had been con­
firmed. The proclamation, making emancipation an official objective of
Northern war aims, had an enormous influence in turning liberal opinion
in Europe against the Confederacy.
At the outbreak of hostilities the British government issued a proclama­
tion of neutrality which recognised the Confederacy as a belligerent.
France and other nations followed suit. In the United States the British
action was deeply resented. The Northern government contended that
it was not fighting a war but repressing an insurrection, and that granting
belligerency status to the Confederacy was an unneutral act. Nevertheless,
England had proceeded in conformity both with accepted practices of
neutrality and with the realities of the situation. No matter how the
United States officially defined the conflict, it was actually fighting a war,
1
1
Speeches of John Bright on the American Question (Boston, 1865), p. 177.
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THE ZENITH OF EUROPEAN POWER, 183O-7O
as Lincoln himself conceded in his proclamation establishing the blockade.
The North was convinced, however, that England did not intend to
remain neutral and that recognition of belligerency would be followed
by recognition of independence.
Yet neither England nor France or any European nation extended
diplomatic recognition to the Confederacy. Nor did England and France,
although on several occasions they discussed mediation, ever seriously
consider intervention. Several factors influenced the final outcome of the
diplomatic struggle. The personnel of the Northern diplomatic corps was,
in general, superior at all levels to that of its rival. Judah P. Benjamin,
the Confederacy's Secretary of State for the greater part of the war, was
clever and able, but he failed to present the Southern cause in terms that
would appeal to European governments and opinion. His counterpart
in the North, William H. Seward, after some initial sabre-rattling blunders (at first he seemed to think his principal duty was to insult Britain),
became an outstanding secretary of state. The North was fortunate in
being represented in London by a skilled and distinguished minister,
Charles Francis Adams, whose father and grandfather had occupied the
Presidency. He easily outshone the Confederate representative, James M.
Mason, a genial Virginia country squire of bucolic manner. The Southern
diplomats in Europe, reflecting the cultural isolation in which the South
had long lived, betrayed an ignorance of European thought; in particular,
they underestimated the intensity of the anti-slavery sentiment in most
European nations.
Cotton diplomacy failed to exert the decisive influence which the South
had envisaged. When the war began, English textile manufacturers possessed a surplus supply of cotton, having imported in i860 some 2,580,000
bales from the United States. The immediate effect of the shortage created
by the war and the blockade was to enable the operators to dispose of their
remaining finished goods at high prices. By 1862, when only 70,000 bales
were imported, the supply was becoming scanty, and the effects were felt
in England and France. Many mills had to close, and in Britain over
500,000 workers were thrown out of employment. The English and French
operators managed, however, to bring in enough cotton from Egypt and
India to avoid a complete collapse. Perhaps the most significant feature
was that the English textile workers, even those without jobs, continued
to support the North.
Other economic forces proved stronger than the cotton shortage. A succession of crop failures in England reduced the domestic production of
wheat to a point where large amounts had to be imported annually from
the United States: King Wheat momentarily seemed more powerful than
King Cotton. Important English economic interests found they were
making money out of the war. Sales to the American contestants swelled
profits in the munitions, textile, linen, and other industries. As Confeder638
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THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
ate commerce destroyers, some of them built in Britain, harried American
commerce from the sea, England took over the carrying trade of her
principal mercantile rival. Political and military factors also operated
to restrain English intervention. The Emancipation Proclamation caused
English opinion to shift markedly in favour of the North. As the greatest
naval power, and hence the leading exponent of the weapon of blockade,
England hesitated to interfere with the Northern blockade for fear of
setting a dangerous precedent. Finally, neither England nor France, even
if they had wished to act, could risk intervening unless the Confederacy
seemed close to victory; otherwise they would have to fight a North
capable of striking back. The South never developed a certainty of victory.
There was a brief time in the closing months of 1862 when Southern
success seemed assured—and when England and France might have acted
—but this moment passed with Union victories at Antietam and Stone's
River and never returned.
During the war three incidents strained relations between the United
States and Britain; one assumed the proportions of a crisis and might have
resulted in war. The first and most dangerous, known in American history
as the Trent affair, occurred late in 1861. The Confederate government
appointed two commissioners, James M. Mason and John Slidell, to
England and France. Slipping through the blockade to Havana, the
commissioners embarked for England on the British steamer Trent. In
Cuban waters was a United States frigate (the San Jacinto), commanded
by Captain Charles Wilkes, who, knowing Mason and Slidell were aboard
the Trent, decided, with no authorisation from his superiors, to capture
them. Intercepting the Trent after she left Havana, he compelled her
captain to hand over the diplomats, and bore them off to Boston. The
Northern public hailed him as a national hero: he had arrested the rebel
commissioners and humiliated unneutral Britain. Actually, he had placed
his government in a delicate position. Denouncing Wilkes's act as a violation of international law, the English government prepared a demand for
the release of the prisoners, reparation, and an apology. As originally
drafted, the document was almost an ultimatum, which the United States
probably would have rejected. But before it was sent off, the language was
toned down, primarily at the urging of the Prince Consort, in order to allow
the American government a loophole through which to back out. Lincoln
and Seward realised that the North could not afford to become involved in
a foreign war; they knew also that the Northern public would be infuriated
if the diplomats were released immediately. They spun out negotiations
until opinion had cooled, and then returned Mason and Slidell with an
indirect apology which satisfied England. Ironically, in the course of the
incident both governments had contended for policies which historically
they had opposed: Britain for the rights of a neutral and America for the
rights of a belligerent. Incidentally, when Mason and Slidell proceeded
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THE ZENITH OF EUROPEAN POWER, I83O-7O
to their respective posts, they accomplished nothing for their country.
Mason was never received officially in London, and in 1863 he left for
France convinced that England favoured the North. In France Slidell
associated on friendly terms with the emperor, but he too failed to secure
recognition or intervention. They were far more valuable to the Confederacy when they languished in a Northern prison.
The second episode intensified American suspicions that England did
not mean to observe a proper neutrality. Early in the war the Confederate
government, in order to weaken the blockade, decided to buy or have
built in Europe fast destroyers to prey on Northern sea commerce. (The
Confederate naval department thought that the North would detach ships
from the blockade to hunt the destroyers.) Six vessels, of which the most
famous was the Alabama, were built or purchased in England, and sailed
from English ports to begin their work. Although the United States
minister in London, Adams, regularly informed the British government
of the projected departure of each ship, the government took no effective
action to detain them, usually claiming that it did not possess satisfactory
evidence that the raiders were intended for the Confederacy. Before
1863 the United States, for fear of provoking intervention, dared not
object too strongly; it limited its protest to charges that permitting the
destroyers to be constructed contravened rules of neutrality. After the
war these protests formed the basis for the so-called 'Alabama damage
claims', which the United States served on England—and which England
paid.
The third incident, in reality a continuation of the second, was the
affair of the Laird rams. In 1863 the Confederacy was beginning to feel
the pinch of the blockade; although the commerce raiders had almost
swept the Northern merchant marine off the sea, the Federal government
had refused to weaken its naval cordon. In a bold move to destroy the
blockade, the Southern government placed an order with the Laird shipbuilding company for two powerful ironclads. These rams constituted
a potential menace that the North could not ignore: the loss of its commerce it could absorb but the blockade had to be maintained. Furthermore, now that the war was turning in its favour, the United States could
speak more firmly. Seward instructed Adams to inform the British government that if the rams, or any other vessels intended for the Confederacy,
were allowed to leave British ports, there would be danger of war. Adams
delivered the message, but even before it was received the government had
detained the rams. In fact, the cabinet some months previously had
decided to stop the practice of English shipyards building vessels for the
Confederacy. The new policy was apparent to the United States; Adams's
dramatic warning was meant to ensure its maintenance. Suddenly England
had realised that for a naval power she had been imprudent. The assistance
which she had permitted the South to secure might bring a similar form
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THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
of retaliation against her in future wars. Hastily she conceded her error
before any dangerous precedents were created.
Napoleon III, if he could have followed his inclinations, would have
intervened in the American struggle. Forced to follow Britain's lead, he
could only express sympathy for the South and permit it to secure commerce destroyers in France. Primarily he desired a Southern victory
because of his ambition to re-establish French colonial power in the
western hemisphere; if the United States was split into two nations,
neither would be strong enough to block his designs. He seized the opportunity created by the war to set up a French-dominated empire in Mexico.
Before the war Mexico had borrowed $80,000,000 from English, French,
and Spanish bankers. When the government, nearly bankrupt, suspended
payments on the debt, the creditors appealed to their governments for
redress and the three powers agreed to send a land and naval force to
Mexico. Late in 1861 they occupied several coastal towns, whereupon
Mexico proposed to settle her obligation and the invaders began to differ
as to their objectives. England and Spain withdrew from the enterprise in
April 1862, but the French occupied Mexico City, and in 1863, with
the support of one native political faction, proclaimed a new government to be headed by an Austrian archduke, Maximilian, as emperor.
Napoleon's move clearly violated the Monroe Doctrine, but the United
States, afraid of provoking French intervention and fully occupied at home,
dared only to register a formal protest. Not until after the Civil War had
ended could it bring enough pressure to force Napoleon to withdraw his
troops (1866-7). Then Maximilian's government fell, and he was executed
by bis subjects. The Confederacy, hoping for French aid, voiced official
approval of the new satellite state. Southern opinion, however, tended
to condemn the French venture as an infringement of the Monroe Doctrine, thereby posing an interesting historical question. If the South had
won independence, which American nation would have owned and enforced the doctrine? Or, in such case, could it have been upheld?
The exploits of the Northern economic system, heralding the rise of
a new industrial giant, were not lost on European observers. Both industry
and agriculture expanded their productive capacities. The Northern
economy performed the same enormous feat that the national economy
would in the two great wars of the twentieth century. It both supplied the
immense demands of modern war and enlarged the national wealth; it
created goods faster than war could destroy them. The vast expansion
was largely a result of the war, of huge purchases by the government of
all kinds of goods. Although the government did not actually intervene
in the modern sense to mobilise the economy, its activities stimulated
almost every segment of the economic system.
The greatest expansion occurred in industry. Those industries which
supplied the needs of the armed forces experienced the most spectacular
41
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THE ZENITH OF EUROPEAN POWER, I83O-7O
increase in output: iron and steel, textiles, boots and shoes, arms and
munitions, railways, and coal. The annual production of coal jumped from
a peacetime figure of 13,000,000 tons to 21,000,000, the annual consumption of wool from 85,000,000 pounds to over 200,000,000. Some railways
enlarged their traffic by as much as 100 per cent, and the inland waterways
recorded an even greater increase. In part this stupendous expansion
was accomplished by remodelling old factories or building new ones, in
part by using machines and processes which had been introduced before
the war but only sparingly utilised. The Howe-Singer sewing machine
enabled the textile industry to meet the demands for uniforms, creating
in the process a new business, ready-made suits for men. A similar device
in the making of shoes, machine-stitching of soles to uppers, revolutionised
the shoe industry. In arms manufacturing, the principle of interchangeable
parts was employed with startling results. Before the war the combined
output of the two largest arsenals had been only 22,000 weapons a year;
by 1862 one alone was turning out 200,000 rifles annually.
Similar feats of production were recorded by Northern agriculture.
In addition to satisfying the normal civilian needs, the farmers were called
upon to supply foodstuffs to the army and to alleviate the wheat shortage
in England. With hardly a sign of strain, the agricultural system was able
to meet both domestic and foreign demands. Wheat production leaped
from 142,000,000 bushels for the whole country to 191,000,000 bushels
from the North alone, and the amount exported increased threefold.
Wool production rose from 60,000,000 pounds to 142,000,000 pounds.
As in industry, the expansion was partly the result of enlarged facilities—
new land brought under cultivation in the west—and partly of the employment of machines introduced before the war but never widely used. Forced
into mass-production by the demands of the war, the farmers now resorted
to labour-saving machinery: the mower, the thresher, and the reaper.
By the end of the war, 250,000 reapers were employed on Northern farms.
They were largely responsible for the tremendous expansion in wheat
production.
Another stimulus to economic expansion was the legislation enacted
by the Republican party during the war. In an economic sense, the
Republicans represented the aspirations of Northern business and agriculture; they advocated the old Federalist-Whig doctrine that the national
government should foster the economy with subsidies and beneficent
laws. With Southern opposition removed from Congress, they proceeded
to satisfy the economic expectations of the groups that had put them in
power. Most of the laws benefited business and finance, an indication
that the eastern wing of the party was acquiring an ascendency over the
western-agricultural wing.
The chief gains of the western faction were the Homestead Act (1862)
and the Morrill Land Grant Act (1862). By the first, any citizen or any
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THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
alien who had declared intentions of citizenship could register claim to
a quarter section of public land (640 acres), and, after furnishing evidence
that he had lived on it for five years, receive title on payment of a nominal
fee. After the war thousands of settlers in the west would thus claim
'free' farms. The Morrill Act answered a western demand for Federal aid
for agricultural education. It provided that each state should receive
30,000 acres of public land for each of its Congressional representatives,
the proceeds from the land to be used for instruction in agriculture,
engineering, and military science. After the war, the measure provided
the basis for the great growth of the so-called Land Grant colleges.
The business wing of the party scored significant gains in tariff, railway,
and immigration legislation. In 1861 the Morrill Tariff Act provided a
moderate boost in existing rates. Later measures (1862, 1864) raised the
average of duties to 47 per cent, double the level of the pre-war rates, and
gave industry the protection it demanded from European competition.
The promoters of a transcontinental railway (from a point in the Mississippi valley to the Pacific coast) persuaded Congress to enact legislation
(1862,1864) creating two corporations, the Union Pacific and the Central
Pacific, to construct a line between Omaha, Nebraska, and San Francisco,
California. The government was to aid the companies by advancing them
loans and making grants of public lands. Work on the line was not
commenced until after the war, when other promoters sought and secured
similar legislative support. Most of the western railways were built with
Federal subsidies. Here were internal improvements on a scale hardly
envisaged by the Federalists or the Whigs. When immigration from Europe
fell off sharply in the first years of the war, threatening a labour shortage,
Congress came to the rescue with a contract labour law which authorised
employers to import labourers, paying the costs of their transport, the
future wages of the migrants being mortgaged to repay the costs. Largely
because of this measure, over 700,000 immigrants entered the country
during the war.
The most important legislation affecting business and finance was the
National Bank Act (1863, amended 1864) which created a new financial
complex, the National Banking System, that endured until 1913. In its
inception, the measure was envisaged partly as a long-range reform of
banking arrangements and partly as a solution to the immediate money
needs of the government. Its architects, one of whom was the Secretary
of the Treasury, Salmon P. Chase, presented it as a law to restore control
of the currency to the Federal government (on the eve of the war 1500
state-chartered banks were issuing notes of widely varying values). They
argued that the country needed a uniform banknote currency and that
national supervision of the banking system would enable the government
to market its bonds more economically. The act outlined a process by
which a 'banking association9 could secure a Federal charter and become
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THE ZENITH OF EUROPEAN POWER, I83O-7O
a National Bank. Each association was required to possess a minimum
capital and to invest one-third of its capital in government bonds. It
could issue banknote currency up to 90 per cent of the current value of
the securities. To ensure a standard currency and to impel state banks
to join the system, Congress placed a prohibitive tax on notes of state
banks. By the end of the war the system included 11,582 banks which were
circulating notes amounting to over $200,000,000. Although some bankers disliked the regulatory features of the law, the system ultimately
benefited primarily the financial and creditor classes; the east continued
to have a banknote circulation far in excess of the other sections. Historically, the National Banking System marked a return to the FederalistWhig idea of a connection between the government and the financial community, the concept which the Jacksonian Democrats had sought to destroy.
With its vast reservoirs of wealth, the North possessed ample resources
to sustain the huge costs of modern war. Northern war financing was
not, however, particularly efficient. The failure of the governmental and
monetary leaders to exploit adequately the existing resources can be
ascribed largely to national inexperience in financing anything that was
very expensive. It was hard for a people who paid scarcely any taxes to
grasp the realities of a war that came to cost $2,000,000 a day. The North
financed the war from three principal sources: taxation, which yielded
$667,000,000; loans, which brought in $2,600,000,000; and paper currency, of which $450,000,000 was issued.
When the war began, Chase, who thought it would be short, failed to
recommend a programme of new taxes. Both he and the legislators
thought that the war should be financed mainly from loans. The principal
measure enacted in 1861 was a modest income tax, the first in the nation's
history. Not until 1862 did Congress pass an adequate tax bill, the Internal
Revenue Act, which placed moderate duties on practically all goods and
most occupations. Although the government's programme did not fully
exploit the taxable resources of the country, the war taxes marked a new
departure. Through their medium the hand of the government was coming
to rest on thousands of individuals who had never paid levies to the central
government. The United States was acquiring a national internal revenue
system, one of the many unexpected nationalising results of the war.
From loans the government secured three times as much revenue as from
all other sources combined. The process of selling bonds was, however,
hampered by clashes between Chase and the bankers, the Secretary
favouring short-term issues at low interest and the financiers holding out
for long-term loans at high interest. Both had to compromise. Chase's
most original contribution to bond-selling was in seeking a broad popular
subscription to government stocks. The Treasury sold $400,000,000 of
bonds to small purchasers, one of the first examples of mass financing
of war in modern history. The government resorted to the issue of paper
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THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
money early in 1862 when tax receipts were small and bonds were selling
slowly. The Legal Tender Act authorised the printing of paper currency,
which, because of its colour, came to be known as ' greenbacks'. Because
the greenbacks were not supported by specie and depended for redemption
on the good faith of the government, they fluctuated violently in value,
ranging in relation to a gold dollar from $0-39 to $0-69. They were an easy
answer to the government's need for quick funds, but, by inflating prices,
they increased the costs of the war. They had, however, an enduring effect
on the economy. Together with the notes of the National Banks, they
constituted a large part of the nation's circulating money supply. The
United States was also acquiring a national currency.
A substantial part of the war revenues went to support the large
Northern armies. At the beginning of the war, the regular army numbered only 16,000. President Lincoln, without constitutional sanction,
authorised increases and called for volunteers for national service. When
Congress met in July 1861 it provided, at Lincoln's recommendation,
for enlisting 500,000 volunteers to serve for three years. In the first days
of the war, when the country was moved by an outburst of patriotism,
the volunteer system brought out enough men to fill up the armies. But
after the first flush of enthusiasm the number of enlistments dwindled
alarmingly. Finally the government realised it would have to resort to
conscription, and in March 1863 Congress enacted the first national draft
law in American history, whereby all able-bodied males between twenty
and forty-five if unmarried and twenty and thirty-five if married were
liable to military service for three years. Although few exemptions were
authorised (high government officials and men who were the sole support
of dependants), a conscript could escape service by hiring a substitute
or by paying the government a fee of $300. These loopholes were bitterly
criticised as examples of special privilege, and the cash commutation was
repealed.
Actually, the law did not directly draft men; the purpose behind it was
to stimulate enlistments by threatening to draft. Each state was assigned
at intervals a quota. If it could, by offering cash bounties or other inducements, meet its allotment, it escaped the draft completely; only if it failed
to fill its quota did the national government move in to invoke conscription. Despite the peculiar working of the measure, it filled up the armies.
The Federal forces increased steadily, reaching a maximum in 1865.
Because of the vague statistics kept during the war, no accurate statement
of the numbers raised is possible. It is estimated that 1,500,000 served
for three years. The casualty rate was enormous, and if the Confederate
casualties are reckoned in the total, the Civil War is the most costly
American war. The total deaths in the Northern armies numbered 360,000
and in the Confederate armies, 258,000. Of the Northern total, 110,000
were battlefield deaths; the remainder died of sickness and disease.
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THE ZENITH OF EUROPEAN POWER, I83O-7O
Before the war the American people had hardly felt the weight of
government in their daily lives. Conscription came as a strange and
irritating control. Although the great majority submitted to its discipline,
opposition was widespread, particularly from labourers, immigrants, and
advocates of peace. In some places, notably New York City, it erupted
into violence and riots. Some state governors challenged the authority
of the central government to conscript, but the Lincoln administration
continued to force men into the army. The impact of war was destroying
state rights in the North as surely as the war's result would destroy the
Southern concept of state sovereignty.
In its President the North had a leader who was determined to maintain
American nationality. Abraham Lincoln possessed the qualities of statesmanship—intellectual and moral strength, a deep understanding of the
spirit of his age and of popular thought, superb political skill—and the
will to employ those qualities to accomplish his purpose. Lincoln's task,
the most difficult ever confronted by an American statesman, was to
preserve a nation. He had to restore the Union, to direct a civil war, and
at the same time to sustain a basic unity of purpose among his own people.
As Professor Allan Nevins has emphasised,1 Lincoln was able to perform
his great task because he had another element of statesmanship, passion.
Lincoln's passion was for democracy, for the world's greatest example of
democracy, the American Union, for what he called 'the last, best hope
of earth'. 2
When Lincoln assumed the Presidency he was regarded by most people
in Washington as a humble man who realised that he was not big enough
for the post. Actually, he was well aware of his great inner powers, and
superbly confident in his abilities. His assurance was revealed in his
choice of a cabinet, which included four men who had been his rivals
for the Republican nomination. The general level of ability was above
average, and three of the members, Seward, Chase, and the Secretary
of War, Edwin M. Stanton, were first-rate men. Although several of the
Secretaries thought they were abler than Lincoln, he managed them all
for his own purposes. Lincoln's confidence was also demonstrated by his
bold exercise of his war powers. He had an expansive view of the wartime
role of the President: in order to achieve bis objectives he even violated
provisions of the constitution, stating that he would not lose the whole
for fear of disregarding a part. He summoned troops to suppress 'the
rebellion', which was equivalent to a declaration of war; illegally increased
the size of the regular army; and proclaimed a naval blockade of the
South.
The exercise of presidential war powers that stirred the greatest resent1
In The Statesmanship of the Civil War (New York, 1953), pp. 5-6, 8-9,17-18.
« Roy P. Basler (ed.), The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (New Brunswick, 1953),
vol. v, p. 537.
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THE ZENITH OF EUROPEAN POWER, I83O-7O
Confiscation Act which declared free the slaves of all persons aiding and
supporting the insurrection.
Lincoln, always a superb reader of public opinion, saw the signs of the
times. He realised that in order to achieve his larger purpose of preserving
the American nation he would have to yield his lesser objective of preventing the sudden striking down of slavery. To save the nation he had to keep
the support of the Radicals, who were the unconditional Unionists; and
if a majority of the Northern people wanted emancipation as a war aim,
he could not afford to divide opinion by resisting their will. He decided,
in July 1862, to place himself at the head of the antislavery movement by
issuing an executive proclamation freeing slaves in the Confederacy. His
decision, resting on the sound principle that a needed change should be
made at the right time, was in the best tradition of English-American
pragmatism.
Lincoln withheld announcement of his purpose until a favourable turn
in the war. On 22 September 1862, after the battle of Antietam, he issued
a preliminary proclamation stating that on 1 January 1863 he would
declare free the slaves in all states then in rebellion. As no state returned
to its allegiance by that date, he published the final Emancipation Proclamation. This declared forever free the slaves in most areas of the
Confederacy. Not included were the state of Tennessee, most of which
was under Federal control, and western Virginia and southern Louisiana,
which were also held by Federal troops; presumably these areas were
excepted because they were not enemy territory and hence were not
subject to the war powers. The proclamation did not, of course, apply to
the four loyal slave states, nor did it abolish slavery as an institution
in the region where it did apply. Immediately the proclamation freed
no slaves; its enforcement would have to wait until Federal armies conquered the South. But its promulgation meant that the war had taken
a new turn—it had become a war to destroy slavery as well as to save the
Union. And once the antislavery process was started it could not be
reversed. Early in 1865 Congress sent to the states for ratification the
Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which freed slaves everywhere
and abolished slavery as an institution.
In 1864 the United States faced a presidential election, the first to be
held during a war. This election is one of the few in the history of democratic governments when a people were offered the choice of continuing
a war or abandoning it—and voted for war. After the Congressional
elections of 1862, in which the Democrats scored substantial gains, the
Republicans attempted to strengthen their organisation by turning it into
a coalition of all groups who supported the war. Seeking particularly
to attract the War Democrats, they changed the party name from Republican to Union. Lincoln was the Union candidate in 1864, although many
Radicals would have preferred a less conservative leader, and Andrew
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THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
Johnson, a War Democrat, was the nominee for Vice-President. In the
summer it seemed that the Republicans would be defeated in the November election. Lincoln himself expected to be beaten. War weariness gripped
the Northern people; they seemed ready to concede that the South could
not be conquered. This depressed mood would, of course, reflect itself
in votes for the Democrats. Oddly, the North appeared ready to give
up the struggle at a moment when the exhausted South no longer had
the resources to achieve a military decision. Some of the Radical leaders,
convinced that Lincoln would drag the party down to defeat, planned to
prevent his nomination and to substitute one of their men in his place.
Before they could move against Lincoln, the political picture suddenly
changed. The Democrats met in convention and nominated the former
general George B. McCIellan, whom the Radicals feared and hated. The
peace faction got a plank in the platform denouncing the war as a failure
and calling for a truce and a national convention. Although McCIellan
repudiated the plank, the Democrats stood before the country as the
peace party. The peace plank and McClellan's nomination had the effect
of causing the Radicals to close ranks behind Lincoln. At the same time
Northern armies scored several important victories, notably the capture
of Atlanta, Georgia, which rejuvenated popular morale and raised
Republican hopes.
When the votes were counted in November, Lincoln had 212 electoral
votes to only twenty-one for McCIellan. Lincoln's popular majority,
however, was only 400,000; a slight shift of votes in the big states would
have changed the result. But a Democratic victory would not have
changed the outcome of the war. Even if McCIellan had decided to
comply with the peace plank, he would not have taken office until
March 1865 and by then the South was at the point of collapse.
The Southern nation that came into existence as a result of the secession
movement, the Confederate States of America, was a confederation of
sovereign states. Delegates from the first seven states to secede met at
Montgomery, Alabama, in February 1861, framed a constitution and
chose the executive officers. (The four states that seceded later accepted
the Montgomery constitution.) State sovereignty was specifically recognised in the constitution. The powers delegated to the central government
were fewer than those in the constitution of the old Union, and the
reserved powers of the states were greater. The Southern principle of the
concurrent voice, the power of a minority to check the majority, appeared
frequently in the document. To enact various types of legislation—to
admit a new state, to pass an appropriation bill—a two-thirds vote of the
two-house legislature was required. Any three states could demand and
force the convocation of a convention of all the states to amend the
constitution. The right of a state to secede was implied, but, significantly,
was not expressly stated. Like the government of the Union, the
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THE ZENITH OF EUROPEAN POWER, 183O-7O
Confederate government was divided into three branches: an executive
consisting of a President and Vice-President, a two-house Congress, and
a National Judiciary.
The government-makers at Montgomery were anxious to avoid any
impression that they represented a rash, revolutionary movement. As
President they selected Jefferson Davis of Mississippi, a moderate secessionist, and as Vice-President, Alexander H. Stephens of Georgia, who
believed passionately in the right of secession but doubted there was much
cause for its exercise. The choice of Davis was fateful. In contrast to his
rival at Washington, whose task was to preserve a nation, Davis's was
to make one. He failed, largely because he lacked many of the elements
of statesmanship. He had integrity and intelligence, and he was an excellent administrator. Over-conscious of his intelligence, he was sensitively
proud of his opinions and could not brook criticism or contradiction.
Over-aware of his administrative skill, he spent too much time on small
routine items, and in political thinking rarely rose above the level of
a cabinet secretary. He believed in the Southern cause intellectually, but
felt no passion for it. His state-papers were logical and correct—and
completely unmoving. Perhaps his greatest defect as a leader of a revolutionary cause was his refusal to realise that it was a revolution. He proceeded on the assumption that the Confederacy was an established, recognised nation. When the situation demanded ruthless zeal, he tied himself
up in legal red tape. It is a curious fact that Lincoln, heading an established government, displayed more revolutionary vigour than Davis.
Davis's cabinet was, at the best, an assemblage of only average ability.
Several of the members were capable administrators but nothing more.
The ablest was Judah P. Benjamin, who held three different positions,
finally becoming Secretary of State. He confined his energies to his particular department and never tried to influence Davis in large matters of
policy. The personnel of the cabinet changed frequently. There were three
Secretaries of State, two of the Treasury, five of War, and four AttorneysGeneral. The shifting nature of the body indicates Davis's reluctance
to delegate power. The secretaries were, in effect, his clerks. Many of
them recognised their status and resigned.
While the Northern economy expanded, the South underwent a period
of shortages, suffering and sacrifice. Subjected to the strain of war, the
static Southern economic system almost collapsed. The South lacked
factories, machines, production managers, skilled labourers, and the
resources to create new wealth. Whereas the North created new resources,
the resources of the South were quickly consumed by the demands of the
military machine. Moreover, the war, and specifically the blockade, cut
off the South's principal source of revenue, the sale of its agricultural
products in Europe. The conditions of Southern economic life posed hard
problems for the men who had to finance the Confederacy's war efforts.
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THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
Because surplus capital had usually been invested in slaves and land, the
amount of short-term assets held by banks or individuals was small.
Southern banks, except in New Orleans, the South's only urban centre,
were fewer and smaller than those in the North. The only specie possessed
by the government was the $1,000,000 seized at the beginning of hostilities
in the United States mints in the South.
The Confederacy drew its war revenue from three sources: taxation,
loans, and paper money. Like its Northern counterpart, the Confederate
Congress was reluctant to impose rigorous duties on a people unaccustomed to heavy taxes. The first measure, passed in 1861, failed really to
tax. It provided for a direct tax on property to be levied by the states;
if a state preferred, it could, instead of taxing its people, pay its quota
as a state. Most states assumed the tax, which they met by issuing bonds.
In 1863 Congress enacted an internal-revenue tax; a unique feature of
the measure was the 'tax in kind', which required every planter and
farmer to contribute one-tenth of his produce to the government. The
returns from the various war taxes were slight. Because of difficulties in
fixing the value of the farm-produce received, the exact amount cannot
be calculated, but it has been estimated that the Confederacy raised only
1 per cent of its total income by taxes. The government issued bonds in
such large amounts that the people came to suspect its ability to redeem
them. Some of the loans were in the form of produce, subscribers being
permitted to deposit commodities, or the promise of commodities, with
the government in exchange for bonds. Often the promises were not
fulfilled or the goods were spoiled or destroyed by the enemy. One reason
why the government accepted taxes and loans in produce was its desire
to escape its own currency. The government started issuing paper notes
in 1861, partly because it needed ready-money, partly because this form
of currency seemed an easy way to finance the war. Once started, it could
not stop. By 1864 a total of $ 1,000,000,000 had been issued. The inevitable
result was depreciation and an astronomical inflation of prices. It was
an index of the unstable currency system that Federal greenbacks circulated in the South at a higher premium than Confederate notes. Hit
particularly hard by the inflated prices were people with fixed incomes and
town-dwellers, who depended on others for their food. They suffered
real privation and in the process lost much of their faith in Confederate
victory. To protect the government from the effects of its own currency,
Congress enacted the Impressment Act, which authorised departments
to fix their own purchase price. One result was to cause producers to
avoid selling to the government.
The Confederacy first attempted to recruit its armies from volunteers.
In 1861 several hundred thousand men enlisted, the great majority for
twelve months. Once the initial enthusiasm had waned, volunteering
dropped off, and the Confederacy seemed threatened by a manpower
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THE ZENITH OF EUROPEAN POWER, 183O-7O
crisis. The most ominous feature was that the twelve-months men, the
veterans, were not re-enlisting. Accordingly, in April 1862 Congress
adopted a Conscription Act declaring that all able-bodied white males
between eighteen and thirty-five were liable for three years military service.
The twelve-months soldiers were retained in the army but required to
serve only two years more. Later measures in 1862 and 1864 extended the
age-limits to seventeen and fifty. The original act and those that followed
provided for numerous exemptions. It was realised that some men had
to be left at home to perform the productive functions. Consequently,
many occupational deferments were permitted. The framers erred in
allowing too many group-exemptions and in excusing individuals—editors,
teachers, printers, and others—who were not engaged in vital work. These
exemptions aroused wide resentment on the part of groups not excluded,
who felt they were being discriminated against. Some provisions seemed
to favour the rich. A conscript could escape service by employing a
substitute (eventually this clause was repealed), and one white man on
each plantation with twenty or more slaves was deferred. The so-called
'twenty-nigger law' angered ordinary folk, moving them to say it was
a rich man's war and a poor man's fight.
Conscription filled up the armies until the end of 1862. As 1863
opened, some 500,000 men were serving. Thereafter the forces steadily
decreased in size. Military reverses, war weariness, and the occupation
of large areas by Federal armies combined to dry up the manpower
sources. At the close of 1863,465,000 men were carried on the army rolls,
but only about 230,000 were present for duty. The situation worsened in
1864-5, when an estimated 100,000 desertions occurred. When the end
came, all Confederate armies in the field numbered only about 100,000.
As with the Union forces, the exact total of men in service is difficult to
determine. An approximately accurate estimate is that 900,000 served
for three years.
At the outbreak of war the Southern people were almost united in their
desire to achieve independence. The only organised opposition to the war
came from the mountain areas, particularly in western Virginia and
eastern Tennessee, whose people constituted less than 10 per cent of the
Southern population. Southerners were united in wishing to win the war,
but they divided bitterly on how it should be conducted. Some of the
differences almost tore the government to pieces. In part, the divisions
were the clashes normal in any popular government: people criticised
Davis for making faulty decisions or Congress for enacting unwise laws.
Other controversies reflected the conditions of Southern culture. Most
upper-class Southerners—and men from this caste held most of the high
offices—were proud, sensitive, imperious individuals. Perhaps because
they were masters of a subject race, they took offence easily when opposed
or criticised. They were accustomed to giving orders, but did not submit
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THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
readily to discipline. Many of the fierce quarrels between President Davis
and Congress can be explained by the personalities of the parties involved.
In contrast with Lincoln, who vetoed only three bills, Davis vetoed thirtyeight and saw thirty-seven of them repassed.
But the great divisive force was, ironically, the principle of states rights.
Southerners had talked so much about states rights that it had become a
cult with them, to a point where they resented any kind of control. The
supporters of states rights possessed sufficient cohesiveness to be known as
a party—the states rights party, headed by Vice-President Stephens. They
stood first for state sovereignty and then for a national Southern state.
They desired an independent South, but if to achieve that goal states rights
had to be sacrificed, they preferred defeat. Passionately devoted to their
quixotic principles, they fought almost every attempt of the government
to impose centralised controls. They attacked the Davis administration
on two main issues: (i) they denied that the government could suspend
habeas corpus or conscript soldiers; and (2) they alleged that the administration was refusing opportunities to negotiate peace. Davis, faced by
opposition to the war in the mountain areas, asked Congress for authority
to dispense with civil law (instead of suspending it himself, as Lincoln did).
He received permission to suspend for only a limited time or in a limited
place; a bill giving him general authorisation was defeated by the statesrighters, who accused him of seeking to establish a dictatorship. Their
opposition to conscription was equally violent and, because state officials
could hinder its execution, more effective. By the terms of the draft act,
governors could certify state militia troops as exempt, and some governors,
notably Joseph Brown of Georgia and Zebulon M. Vance of North
Carolina, kept thousands of men out of service. In 1864, with Federal
armies striking deep into the South, Brown defied the government to
enforce conscription in Georgia. The states-righters were fascinated by the
idea of a negotiated peace, and brought constant pressure on Davis to
make overtures to the North. They never made it absolutely clear whether
they wanted a settlement based on independence or on a return of the
South to the Union. At different times they urged both alternatives.
The evidence seems plain enough that in the later stages of the war they
would have accepted a peace without victory, with whatever control over
race relations they could have persuaded the North to grant.
An assessment of the Southern failure would have to give weight to
several factors—the South's lack of industrial resources, the inadequacy
of its transport system, the collapse of its financial system. Ranking high
on any list would be the nature of its political arrangements. The Confederacy was founded on a principle, states rights, that made failure almost
inevitable. It is highly doubtful whether a confederation of sovereignties
can win a modern war. If it could, it is even more doubtful that such a
government could survive in the modern world.
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THE ZENITH OF EUROPEAN POWER, 183O-7O
At the outset of the war neither government had a general strategic
plan. Strategic designs were worked out in the heat of conflict and in the
light of what the planners learned about the military situation. Because
the policy of the North was to restore the Union by force, Northern
strategy had to be offensive. Federal armies had to invade the South,
defeat Confederate armies, and occupy the entire section. The policy of
the South was to establish its independence by force. Therefore the government determined on a defensive strategy. This decision was forced on the
South partly by the nature of "Northern strategy, and partly because
a strategy of defence seemed logical for a power that wanted only to be
let alone and that harboured no aggressive intentions. With equal logic,
the South might have demonstrated that it was too strong to be conquered
by going over to the offensive and winning victories on Northern soil.
Geography influenced profoundly the strategic planning of both sides
and the nature of the war. The physical features of the South, in which
most of the battles would be fought, divided the war into three theatres:
the eastern, the western, and the trans-Mississippi. The great Appalachian
Mountain barrier, extending from Maryland to Georgia, made impossible
any unified conduct of operations east of the Mississippi. The area between
the mountains and the sea-coast became the eastern theatre, and the vast
region between the mountains and the Mississippi became the western
theatre. West of the river, the states of Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas
constituted the trans-Mississippi theatre.
Most of the fighting in the eastern theatre occurred in Virginia,
where the chief Northern objective was to capture Richmond, which
became the Confederate capital after Virginia seceded, and to defeat the
defending Southern army. The movements of both armies were largely
controlled by the proximity of the rival capitals, separated by a marching
distance of only 130 miles. For the Northern invaders, the most obvious
route was to strike from Washington or a base in northern Virginia
straight southward to Richmond. Once, in 1862, they attempted, unsuccessfully, another possible invasion road, moving on the waterways east
of the capital. In western Virginia was a secondary route between the
capitals, the Shenandoah valley, running the length of the state and
reaching to the Potomac River. Either side could use it for an offensive or
for a diversionary movement to deceive the other. The Confederates were
particularly adept in manoeuvring their valley forces in a manner to create
illusions that they meant to threaten Washington. Not until 1864-5 did the
Federals crush Confederate resistance in Virginia and grasp Richmond.
In the western theatre the first strategic objective of the Federals was
to seize the line of the Mississippi, thereby splitting the Confederacy into
two. To achieve this they moved, with land and sea forces and from north
and south, against Confederate strong-points on the river. When they
found a particular place too strong to attack, they moved on streams
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THE
AMERICAN
CIVIL
WAR
parallel to the Mississippi, thus outflanking the Confederates. By the
summer of 1863, with the fall of Vicksburg, the Federals had possession
of the river line. They then started operations to secure their next objective,
the line of the Tennessee River. This stream, flowing across Tennessee
and part of Alabama to the Ohio, was an obvious invasion path into the
heart of the South. On the Tennessee the key position was Chattanooga.
If the Federals could capture the city, they would have a base from which
they could again split the Confederacy. They occupied Chattanooga in
1863, and from it in 1864 General W. T. Sherman moved in the great
march that carried him by the end of the war to North Carolina.
Action in the trans-Mississippi area was minor in comparison with the
campaigns elsewhere. Neither side committed large forces in this region.
Federal forces operating from Missouri occupied the northern half of
Arkansas. In 1862 a Northern naval and land expedition seized New
Orleans, which with the southern part of Louisiana was held for the
remainder of the war. Several plans were broached to occupy the rest
of Arkansas and Louisiana and to send a column into Texas, but the
Federal high command was unwilling to supply sufficient troops to execute
them. It was unnecessary, after the fall of Vicksburg, to conquer the
states west of the Mississippi. The Federals, merely by holding the river
line, could contain the entire theatre and isolate it.
The strategy of the Confederacy, largely formulated by Davis, was to
meet each Northern offensive, to hold every threatened point. It has been
called a dispersed defensive. An alternative programme for the side with
the inferior forces would have been to guard shorter lines enclosing the
most defensible areas or those containing important resources. In deciding
to defend the entire South, Davis was partly influenced by practical
political considerations. For the new Southern government to abandon
any part of its territory would seem an admission of weakness and might
deprive it of popular support. But Davis seemed to think almost instinc­
tively in defensive terms; with him the holding of places, many of which
turned out to be traps for their garrisons, became an idee fixe. On the
few occasions when Southern armies did undertake offensive movements,
the thrusts failed—largely because they were made with insufficient
strength—because the government refused to add available defensive
units to the attacking forces. But Davis and his advisers should not be
criticised for adopting a defective strategy. Their military thinking was
necessarily limited by the influences of their culture. As Clausewitz said,
a nation's social system will determine the kind of war it fights. The
principle of the Southern system was states rights, and the South fought
a states-rights war. Southern political leaders were unable to install
centralisation in the conduct of government, and Southern military direc­
tors failed to establish a unified strategy or a centralised command.
The Confederate command throughout the war consisted mainly of
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THE ZENITH OF EUROPEAN POWER, 1830-70
President Davis. For a brief period early in 1862 Davis appointed General
Robert E. Lee to act under his direction as commander of all Confederate
armies. But Lee, a man of brilliant abilities, was not called upon, except
at rare intervals, to formulate strategy; he acted as a mere adviser, providing counsel when Davis asked for it. In the summer of 1862 Lee
assumed field command, and Davis did not replace him. Not until
February 1864 did he take another adviser, Braxton Bragg, who had failed
in field command. Early in 1865 Congress, in a move designed to clip
Davis's powers, created the position of general-in-chief; it was expected
that Davis would have to give the post to Lee, the South's greatest
general, and that Lee would take over the direction of military affairs.
Davis did appoint Lee, announcing at the same time that he was still
commander-in-chief, and Lee accepted the office on this basis. The war
ended before the new arrangement had a chance to prove itself. It is
doubtful whether Lee could have commanded a field army and also
directed other armies. Nor is it certain that Lee, who thought primarily
in terms of his native Virginia, could have altered his strategic thinking
to include national concepts.
The United States entered the war with an archaic and inadequate
command system. Command arrangements in the small peacetime army
were performed by an agency loosely referred to as 'the staff', which
consisted of the general holding appropriate rank in the army and the
heads of the War Department bureaux, and which was not a staff in the
modern meaning of the word. It held no joint meetings and discussed
no common problems. No member or section was charged with formulating strategy. Each official—the quartermaster-general, the head of
ordnance, the adjutant-general—administered his department much as
he pleased. The senior general at the beginning of the war was seventy-fiveyear-old Winfield Scott, who, with the exception of John E. Wool,
another aged veteran, was the only officer to have commanded troops in
numbers sufficient to be called an army. (Scott's army in the Mexican
War numbered 14,000.) None of the younger officers, who would command the field armies in the war, had directed as large a unit as a brigade.
At the head of the military organisation was the constitutional commander-in-chief, the President. Lincoln had a completely civilian background; he had no military education, and, except for an inconsequential
militia interlude, no military experience. Yet Lincoln became a great warPresident; as a director of war he was superior to Davis, who had received
a professional military education and served in the regular army. Lincoln
illustrates the truth of Clausewitz's statement that an acquaintance with
military affairs is not the principal qualification for a war director but
that a superior mind and moral strength are better qualifications. Because
of his mental and moral powers, Lincoln developed into a superb strategist.
Recognising that numbers were on his side, he mobilised the maximum
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THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
manpower resources of the North, and urged his generals to exercise
constant pressure on the strategic line of the Confederacy until a weak
spot was found. Better than his first generals, he realised that the true
objective was to destroy the Confederate armies and not to occupy places.
Lincoln has been criticised for interfering with his generals, but most of
his interventions were designed to force hesitant or timid officers to act
aggressively. And most of his interferences had salutary effects. In contrast with Davis, who interfered with his generals to make a faulty defensive strategy more defensive, Lincoln acted to implement a sound offensive
strategy.
During the first three years of the war, Lincoln performed many functions that would now be handled by the chief-of-staff. He framed strategic
plans and even directed tactical movements. He assumed an active role
because of the inadequacies of the existing command system and because
the various officers he appointed as general-in-chief—Scott, George B.
McClellan, Henry W. Halleck—either would not or could not execute
their responsibilities. Early in 1864, with Lincoln and Congress as chief
architects, the nation finally received an efficient, modern command
system. Thereafter Lincoln exercised fewer command functions, although
he continued to supervise the general operations of the military machine.
Under the new arrangements, Ulysses S. Grant, who had emerged as
the North's ablest general, was named general-in-chief by Lincoln, with
the rank of lieutenant-general created by Congress. Grant was charged
with planning strategy for all theatres of the war and directing the movements of the seventeen Federal armies on all fronts. He proved to be the
general for whom Lincoln had long searched. He possessed, as did no
other general on either side, the ability to see the war as a whole and to
devise over-all strategy. Although Lincoln gave him a relatively free hand,
Grant always submitted the general features of his plans to the President
for approval. Halleck, who had been general-in-chief, now became 'chiefof-staff', a post in which he acted as a channel of communication
between Lincoln and Grant and between Grant and the departmental
commanders. The 1864 system of commander-in-chief to form policy and
indicate grand strategy, general-in-chief to frame battle strategy, and
chief-of-staff to co-ordinate information was, with the possible exception
of the Prussian General Staff, the most efficient then in existence. It was
one of the principal reasons why the North won the war.
The Civil War determined many things, both immediately and in its
ultimate effects on national and world history. It decided that the United
States would remain one nation. It unified that nation as it had never been
unified before and placed it on the way to become a great world power.
By destroying slavery and by demonstrating that a popular government
could preserve liberty during an internal conflict, it vindicated and vitalised the democratic concept everywhere. Lincoln saw the significance
42
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THE ZENITH OF EUROPEAN POWER, 183O-7O
of this aspect of the struggle. After the election of 1864 he said: 'It has
demonstrated that a people's government can sustain a national election
in the midst of a great civil war. Until now it has not been known to the
world that this was a possibility.'1 Some of the immediate results of the
war were unfortunate and malefic. The nation had to chart a course
through the painful ordeal of reconstruction, which was not dealt with
on a very high level of statesmanship, and through the booming economic
expansion after the war, when material standards seemed to transcend
all others. But even then the great idealistic critics of American life saw
the war in a long and proper perspective and believed that its results
would endure. Revolutions in the interest of society, wrote Emerson, are
always remembered: "These are read with passionate interest and never
lose their pathos by time.' If the American people marching with' a careless swagger to the height of power' could recover and regulate the spirit
which had enabled them to win the war, the United States could become
'the new nation, the guide and lawgiver of all nations'.2 And Walt
Whitman, who, deeply touched by the impact of the war, understood its
meaning and his country better than most, seeing in 1871 many things in
America that he did not like, could write: 'Today, ahead, though dimly
yet, we see in vistas, a copious, sane, gigantic oifspring.'3
1
Roy P. Basler (ed.), The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, vol. vin, p. 101.
The Complete Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson (New York, 1929), vol. 11, pp. 1185,
1188, 1193-48
'Democratic Vistas', in Mark van Doren (ed.), Walt Whitman (New York, 1945),
pp. 389-90.
2
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