Download 34. Behind the Battles

Behind the Battles
Both the USA and the CSA found it harder to supply and to pay troops than to
enlist them. This fact is part of why Shelby Foote says in the Ken Burns Civil War series
that this war was “the crossroads of our being.” As terrible an event as the Civil War
was, it is one of the great accomplishments of our civilization that it could fight such a
war and survive. In fact, the great industrial potential of the United States was asleep in
1860, but the war awakened it. All our wealth and power follows what Foote called “this
catastrophe of the mid-nineteenth century.”
Still, however, five out of every six Americans lived on farms. Textile factories
were large, but clothing factories were small. Only 239 small factories existed in 1860
that produced firearms. There was abundant food in America, but a poor means of
marketing it. There were 30,000 miles of railroads, but they had different gauges, or
widths, that hampered transportation. There was no national currency and no national
bank to issue it. The only armory owned by the US government was at Lincoln’s
hometown of Springfield, Illinois. Colt and Remington were private manufacturers who
had to shoulder most of the burden of production of weapons. Mass production picked
up, however, as uniforms were made in small, medium, and large sizes rather than being
tailored to fit. Boots were made straight in order to speed up production. Soldiers had to
break-in the boots into being left and right, but at least Union soldiers had footwear.
All these supplies needed to be purchased with money. Both the USA and the
CSA had empty treasuries that were run by new men inexperienced in financial matters.
Taxes were thought to be a dangerous answer to the question of how to raise money
because they would have dampened enthusiasm. In 1861 there had not been an excise tax
in America in 35 years. The Morrill Tariff was a protective tariff so high in 1861 and
1862 that it effectively stopped imports into the United States and therefore made no
revenue. The Confederacy was blockaded by the Union Navy, so their low tariffs were
not productive either.
The Union resorted at last to a direct tax on states. The Confederacy created a ½
percent tax on all wealth. Bonds issued by Northern states attempted to borrow from
banks, quickly draining them of all gold and silver specie to pay the federal tax. This
move threatened the currencies the banks issued with inflation and robbed them of the
capacity for redemption, or the exchange of paper money for coins made of precious
metals. Both the USA and the CSA then resorted to issuing paper currency with no
specie backing it. The CSA issued $100 million by August of 1861, and even more in
1862. The USA issued $150 million in 1862. This currency was first called
“greenbacks” because it was printed with green ink. Both Secretaries of the Treasuries
hated the idea of currencies without any backing, but there seemed no other way to hang
on.
Regarding foreign diplomacy both Presidents were inexperienced and had unruly
Secretaries of State. William H. Seward eventually became one of America’s best, but he
began erratically. Seward sent a memo to Lincoln urging a declaration of war not only
against the Confederacy, but also against Great Britain, Russia, Spain, and France for
violations of the Monroe Doctrine. Lincoln took two wise steps in response to this
memo. First, he filed it in the event he would ever need to face an overt challenge from
Seward. Secondly, he did not immediately dismiss Seward but gave him time to come to
his senses. Interestingly, word of the memo leaked to Europe and made those nations
cautious in their negotiations with the CSA.
The Confederacy went through two Secretaries of State before settling on Judah
P. Benjamin. Benjamin is as guilty as any other individual for the great miscalculation
that crippled the South’s economy. He proposed that the Confederacy use exports of
cotton to lure Europe, especially England, to officially recognize the CSA and to compel
the British Navy to break the Union naval blockade. Canny British merchants, however,
had anticipated instability in the cotton supply prior to the Civil War and had stockpiled
enough cotton to last through 1862. While the Confederate generals pulled off miracles
on the battlefield through that time, King Cotton was assassinated.
Lincoln and Seward expected the United Kingdom and France to support the antislavery attitude of the Union, but since Lincoln could not yet move forward with
emancipation, they demurred. Lincoln even began the war by ordering the return of
fugitive slaves to their masters to keep the Border States by focusing the war only on the
preservation of the Union. Besides, the balance of power in Europe was too delicate at
the time for any one nation to risk European involvement in America’s war. There was
never any official recognition of the Confederate States of America by a European power,
although many did acknowledge that a legitimate revolution was happening.
On Nov. 8, 1861, the Trent Affair unfolded as USN Captain Charles Wilkes
captured two CSA diplomats returning from the UK and from France aboard the British
merchant ship, Trent. The Confederates were called “spies” and imprisoned in Boston.
The British government sent 11,000 troops to Canada in the event of a clash, but Lincoln
released the prisoners on Christmas Day. Lincoln’s restraint gave Europe hope for a
speedy end to the war that would allow everyone to reinstate open commerce.
As we prepare to study the battles of the Civil War, it is important to weigh the
advantages each side possessed. The Confederate Army enjoyed the best graduates from
West Point in the ranks of its leadership, including Robert E. Lee, who was the best
textbook general (new textbooks were written after the war, of course). The soldiers of
the Confederacy were also better, man-for-man. Many Union soldiers had never fired a
rifle before the war, but men from across the South had done so all their lives, hunting.
Young Southern aristocrats had entertained themselves by riding horses and shooting
things, like foxes. The average Rebel, therefore, had more fighting spirit and skill.
Furthermore, the Confederate Army almost always fought with a home-ground
advantage. Their spirit to defend their homes from a Northern invader was reinforced by
their knowledge of the terrain. Too, there is the distinct advantage that all the CSA had
to do was to defend themselves in order to win their independence.
The Union Army had to fight offensively, then. In cold numerical terms, this
meant Union victories would take three times the number of soldiers of any Confederate
force. Ulysses S. Grant was the first Union general to discover this ratio, and he had the
determination to send each trio of his men into battle knowing that he would likely lose
two. These are formidable statistics if you haven’t the imagination to realize it for
yourself. When other Union officers criticized Grant as a drunk to Lincoln, the President
simply responded, “Find out what he drinks and deliver it to all my generals. This man
fights!”
The incredible fact, however, is that the Confederacy held out at long as it did
considering the numerous advantages of the North. The Union had over twenty million
people in it compared to the roughly nine million people of the South, four million of
whom were slaves. The greater economic strength of the North cannot be
overemphasized, but railroads provide a memorable example. Of the locomotives built in
America, 14 out of 15 were built in the North. The Union also owned 70% of the
railroads. The Union Navy was also better and more numerous than the Confederate
Navy. All of these statistics keep in mind, increased for the North during the war
including the population that was swelled by immigration. All of the Confederacy’s
numbers went down, except the price of food as crippling inflation and scarcity set in.
A more amorphous quality also belonged to the North throughout the war. The
Union Army, because of Lincoln, had the moral high ground for the duration. Physical
high ground is important in battle, but moral high ground may be more important.
Lincoln first inspired the Yankees to fight for Union and free navigation of the
Mississippi River. When those causes seemed to deflate, Lincoln unfurled his greatest
weapon, the Emancipation Proclamation. The moral high ground he seized then was
expressed in the Gettysburg Address as “a new birth of freedom.”
All of these qualities and quantities added up to the war being much longer than
anyone thought it would be. The sides were essentially evenly matched at the beginning,
but it could never remain so forever. Union General William Tecumseh Sherman
recognized early on in the war that an agrarian society could never win a war against a
mechanized society.
Another fact that made the war more brutal was that most of the officers on both
sides had learned how to make war from the same teachers who taught Napoleonic
tactics. Fifty-five of sixty major battles were led by West Pointers on both sides. All of
these graduates of West Point had studied the same book on strategy, a history of
Napoleon’s campaigns written by French historian Baron Henri Jomini. A simple
example of why this was devastating is revealed when two armies approached each other
and then simultaneously used Napoleon’s tactic of flanking the enemy. When both
armies flanked each other, the armies simply reversed positions on the field while coming
much closer to one another. No tactical advantage was gained, but the fighting was
suddenly point-blank along the whole line.
The strategies Civil War generals learned from Jomini were combined with more
advanced technology with deadly results. Napoleon had made use of the bayonet even as
an offensive weapon, but while Civil War soldiers were issued bayonets, they rarely used
them for anything except cooking spits. Napoleonic tactics were continued even after
rifles were introduced that were deadly from as far away as 500 yards. Napoleon’s
musket had done well to hit anyone at 60 yards.
Jomini taught that armies needed to pursue three main goals. First, territory had
to be conquered and kept away from the enemy. The Union accomplished this goal best.
Secondly, you were to seize the enemy’s capital city. While the Union Army was the
only one to do this, the threat that Stonewall Jackson, for example, would attack
Washington, DC, immobilized huge Federal armies throughout the war. Third, an army
had to bring a powerful, united force to bear on the enemy’s weakest point in any given
battle. The Confederacy regularly accomplished this third goal, but its chance to
accomplish the first and second goals was lost after their victory at First Bull Run, the
first major battle of the war.
A devotion to Jomini’s theories lost the war for the South and almost lost it for the
North. Union and Confederate generals found themselves fighting murderous head-on
battles when victory was supposed to be accomplished by finesse. Not until innovators
emerged like General Thomas J. (Stonewall) Jackson and General Nathan Bedford
Forrest for the South, and General William Tecumseh Sherman for the North, could the
stalemate be broken. Jackson was a master of deception, the key in Lee’s victories
against Union armies seven times the size of their own. When he was killed accidentally,
Lee said he had lost his right arm. Forrest is considered by historians to be the true
genius of the war, and Sherman is know as the first modern general for reasons we will
explore in our next installment where the battles actually begin.