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A Brief Overview of the Civil War from the Perspective of Genesee County
by
Michael J. Eula, Ph.D.
Genesee County Historian
On the fifteenth of April, 1861, The Daily Republican Advocate of Batavia, New
York proclaimed in its headline “War! War! War!” Informing the public of the
Confederate attack on the federal installation at Ft. Sumter, South Carolina three
days before, the reader was told that “reports up to Saturday afternoon”
suggested that
. . . the besieged forces might yet hold out
some time longer, although the barracks and
other wooden material were in flames. We
hoped that the gallant band of heroes would
ultimately be able to hold their position, but
the odds were fearfully against them.
Nearing its conclusion, the article reported that
Without waiting for a single hostile act, without
waiting (for) the arrival of the unarmed vessel,
the bombardment of Sumter was commenced,
and the war opened. What its end will be, God
only knows.
Throughout this article we see a stress on uncertainty from the Union
perspective that combines with a concurrent emphasis upon odds stacked against
the federal forces. While this perspective is understandable within the context of
the early stage of the war, hindsight reveals that such a vantage point proved to
be unwarranted. Indeed, the odds were clearly stacked against the Confederacy
from the beginning. It was the Confederate States of America that took the
enormous gamble of a military insurrection against the North – one that proved
to be, at least in military terms, a disaster for the “secesh” by 1865.
What made the commencement of hostilities such a risk for the South? To
begin with, the entire southern population – including African-American slaves –
totaled about nine million people. The Union, on the other hand, had a
population of approximately twenty-two million. But population was only the
start of the story. The Confederacy had an untested government that ironically
resembled in broad terms the United States government – with the obvious
exception of slavery, which received formal acknowledgment as such in the
Confederate Constitution. Along with an untested government, the South lacked a
railroad network that could rival that of the North. Its banking system was
relatively undeveloped, as was its industrial base – a fatal flaw in what proved to
be a modern, industrial-based war. The Confederate navy was not a threat. Just as
importantly, the South found itself somewhat isolated in an international arena
struggling to end slavery. The South was a titanic anachronism in moral, political,
and economic terms, and of course there were those in the Confederacy who
were less than enthusiastic about secession – which, ironically, included General
Robert E. Lee himself, whose wife was the great granddaughter of the
revolutionary leader George Washington’s wife, Martha.
Lee’s Virginia was of course one of the states that had seceded from the Union
to form a new country. Leaving the Union on April 17th, 1861, it was preceded in
this drastic step by South Carolina on December 20th, 1860, which was then
followed by Mississippi on the ninth of January, 1861, and by Florida the next day.
Alabama followed suit on January 11th, as did Georgia on the nineteenth of
January. A week later Louisiana left the Union, and by June of 1861 North
Carolina, Arkansas, and Tennessee had all left as well. Up against the Union forces
stretching from California in the far west to New York and the remainder of the
Northeast, the Confederacy found itself in the unenviable position of having to
mobilize for a war which on paper showed itself early to be a challenge that
eventually proved to be overwhelming.
What motivated the South to risk all on such an undertaking? What is so
compelling about a conflict that has produced the phenomenon of its having
become the most written about event in United States history? A more
comprehensive answer to the question of southern motivation would take us
beyond the scope of this short overview of the Civil War. Suffice it to say that at
least politically, the southern position revolved around the idea of state
sovereignty. This was expressed as early as 1828 by a South Carolina lawyer, John
C. Calhoun, who had served as a Secretary of War under President James Monroe,
and as Vice President in the administrations of Presidents John Quincy Adams and
Andrew Jackson. In Exposition and Protest Calhoun argued that ultimate political
authority is found on the state level. It was the states who delegated power to the
federal government – and not the other way around. The Confederate position
was one of defense of what was understood to be its sovereign independence –
of which slavery was a part. Conversely, the North was equally determined to
maintain the integrity of the federal union.
This ideological motivation for the war combined with the economic realities of
a Northern industrialization that amounted to a clash of civilizations. In general,
the North and its factory system was producing an increasingly urban society
featuring a free labor force standing in stark contrast to a southern society that
remained overwhelmingly agricultural, rural, and dependent upon the labor of
about four million African-American slaves. The war was as much a clash of
competing visions of what modern America would look like as it was a clash
between competing visions of government. Ultimately, the resolution of the issue
– would modern America be an industrial, urban one based upon free labor – or
not - was one decided upon the battlefield. This confrontation between
civilizations was captured in a fascinating editorial found in Batavia’s Daily
Republican Advocate on April 25th, 1861. Entitled “A Negro Astride the Statue of
Washington,” we are told that
The Richmond (Virginia) secessionists actually
celebrated the passage of the Act of Secession
by the Convention, by placing a negro astride
the statue of Washington in the Capital. We will
not trust ourselves to comment upon the proceeding.
Thank God that the time of such diabolical wretches
is short- very short.
The battlefield that proved to be the arena within which the question of
America’s future was decided was one looking radically different than those of
previous wars. Its characteristics were those of the all too familiar battlefields of
the murderous twentieth century. Scientific and technological breakthroughs by
the middle of the nineteenth century combined with factory production to create
a radically different kind of warfare. New technologies such as rifled artillery and
armored trains accentuated a central feature of this war – the use of large land
armies. By 1865 over two million men would have served in the federal army,
while an additional eight hundred thousand soldiers served in the Confederate
Army. The Civil War armies were unprecedented in their sheer size, and initially
the formation of such huge military forces was predicated upon local efforts.
Rallies were held, and volunteers were often secured in the flush of enthusiasm
brought out by such gatherings. As a result of such a system of recruitment army
units were typically made up of soldiers from the same area. Genesee County was
no exception. On the seventeenth of April, 1861, The Republican Daily Advocate
reported on one such meeting in Batavia:
Our Union Meeting
Our Union Meeting at Concert Hall, on Tuesday
evening, made us proud of our citizens. At an
early hour the large hall was crowded to its
utmost capacity, and a spirit of enthusiasm
generally prevailed – Junius A. Smith, Esq.,
presided, and Geo. P. Pringle, Esq., acted as
Secretary. Patriotic speeches were made by
the Chairman, and by Messrs. Geo. Babcock,
R.H. Foote, S. Wakeman, Rev. Mr. Kauffman
( who addressed his German brethren in their
own language), M.W. Hewitt, J.M. Willett, N.A.
Woodward, Esqs., and others.
About twenty of our young men enrolled their
names as volunteers, and hosts more will do
so immediately. The right kind of spirit animates
our entire people. Political feelings are ignored,
and everyone seems ready to sustain the government.
That same issue saw yet another description of a recruitment rally:
Union Rally Last Night
Through the patriotic exertions of Mr. Mallory
and others, Concert Hall was obtained for
holding the second Union Meeting.
The Batavia Brass Band volunteered last evening,
and played Hail Columbia, Star Spangled Banner
and Yankee Doodle, all of which were received
with cheers . . .
Mr. George Babcock was called on, and made a
most powerful speech. He was completely carried
away by his love of country and sympathy for those
who have already suffered by the rebels’ fire at
Charleston: he spoke the sentiments of each heart
in the room.
Mr. R.H. Foote made a move in the right direction,
and called on the young men to do their duty.
Such rallies revealed an informal and democratic way of raising an army, and
were a method in keeping with an historic American distrust of a large,
professional standing army. An integral aspect of this tradition is the idea that an
army in a democratic republic can only be one in which the people themselves
freely consent to form an army – it would be undemocratic to compel military
service. However, the Civil War is a modern war featuring unprecedented
destructiveness and loss of life. This ruinous conflict was also a protracted one,
and it did not take long before the insatiable demand for additional soldiers
surpassed the number of volunteers. The Confederacy first felt the problem of an
inadequate number of volunteers when it enacted its conscription law in April of
1862. The following March, in 1863, the federal government implemented the
Enrollment Act, which rendered all able-bodies white male citizens aged twenty
to forty-five eligible for military service.
As subsequent drafts in U.S. history would reveal, there were numerous
exemptions granted in this 1863 law. Immunities were extended to clergy, high
government officials, and men who were the sole support of orphans, indigent
parents, or widows. There were also two other ways of avoiding military service.
One was to pay another man who would serve in one’s place. A second means of
avoidance was to pay a $300.00 fee to the federal government. States were
divided into enrollment districts which then had to meet quotas through
volunteers initially and then via the draft. Enrollment districts were known to
compete for volunteers by offering enlistment bonuses, or bounties. There were
cases in which “bounty jumpers” regularly registered and then deserted after the
collection of a payment. In both the North and the South the draft provoked
opposition. For some, the draft undermined individual freedom. For others, there
was resentment among those who could not raise the money to pay for a
substitute. As we discover in a publication of the “State Committee of Drafted
Men” entitled “The First Draft in Genesee County,”
When the first draft came to Genesee County,
about three hundred of her citizens were
conscripted and held, and they had to enter
the military service for three years, send a
substitute for that time, or give the government
$300 to get a substitute for them.
And despite their individual circumstances,
No matter how they were situated, as to their
business, circumstances, and families – the
call was imperative and they had to respond,
no matter how great the hardship.
Accordingly,
They met the requirement – they either went, sent
a substitute or paid the price of a substitute.
Calculating it on the basis of commutation, they
paid $90,000 to fill that quota for Genesee County.
At this point the “State Committee of Drafted Men” then acknowledged the
inequity of the three subsequent drafts in Genesee County, and most likely were
articulating some of the discontent felt by some in the County regarding the
working of the draft:
. . . three other drafts were ordered, and then the
towns and county, instead of letting other citizens
be drafted and burdened personally, raised the
money by tax and loan to procure substitutes for
the men drafted or liable to draft. They did not
suffer a hair of their other citizens’ heads to be
injured. The men in the first draft must take care
of themselves – the men in the later drafts must
be cared for by the public, and at the public expense.
Rising now to a moral crescendo, the “State Committee of Drafted Men” asks
How is that for fairness, justice and equality, as
between citizens of the same town and county?
But regardless of how they entered military service, the advent of weapons
unprecedented in their ferocity – combined with enormous land armies –
translated into what remains to this day the costliest war in United States history
in terms of lives lost. Many of those casualties were the result of a situation in
which the technology designed to kill had far outpaced the ability of medicine to
heal. The same can be said of logistics – unsanitary and unpredictable food
supplies, along with the realities of barracks life, both created unhealthy
conditions that could prove to be fatal. Hence even if a soldier was not killed in
battle, the chances for survival remained minimal. A typical army camp provided
what were often, at best, rudimentary sanitary facilities. Consequently, dysentery,
typhoid, and smallpox could prove to be as deadly as rifled artillery. Physicians did
not yet understand the underlying causes of infections, nor had they the habit of
sterilizing surgical instruments. The ability to efficiently transport wounded
soldiers to a medical tent was often limited. Even if a wounded soldier did reach a
medical tent he was received by weary surgeons working under harsh conditions.
Given these realities it should not surprise us to find this article in the LeRoy
Gazette on June 26th, 1861:
By telegraph arrived the news on June 26th, 1861
that James A. Bell from LeRoy, died in the barracks
at Elmira. He was too ill to follow his regiment which
had departed a few days earlier. His remains were
assorted through the street by a procession of
mourners, preceded by a musical band that played
the “Death March.” Flags flew at half-mast and church
bells tolled in honor of this dead soldier who was
buried with military honors. James was 18 years old.
I am closing this short essay with a reference to eighteen year old James
because when one looks at any war it is tempting to only examine tactics,
strategies, geopolitics, and personalities. It is tempting to reduce the treatment to
an exclusive discussion of specific battles, changes in the general staff, weapons,
etc. But what is absent in such an approach is what war means for countless and
anonymous human beings – such as LeRoy’s James A. Bell – for whom the war is
really about personal security, food, shelter, medical care, and the longed for day
of a return home. It is probably not an accident that for those who survive the
carnage the war is thought about not in terms of statistics or broad political
objectives, but instead, in terms so eminently human. I therefore conclude with a
personal view of the war. It was once said that ultimately it is novelists and poets
who shake us and compel us to look and listen to the individuals most directly
affected by war. In the Spirit of the Times, published in Batavia on April 15th, 1865,
we find on the front page a poem entitled “The Dying Soldier,” a portion of which
is found below:
Dear mother, the sun hangs low in the west,
And the stars are beginning to shine,
The birds are all gone to their place of rest,
In the tops of the cedar and pine,
The booming of cannon I heard afar off
As the strife of the battle went on,
But how the glad shout of the boys ring out,
And I know that the battle is won . . .
But now I am passing away to my rest,
Never here shall I see thee again,
For soon I shall stand in the ranks of the blest,
Where, they say, is no sorrow and pain . . .