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Civil War Battles
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Spring 2009
Robert E. Lee
1. Progressive Historians. Lee was now resolved on a
second invasion of the North . . . Lee's object was to carry
the war into the Northern States . . . The Army of the
Potomac hastened forward to meet the invading force.
The two mighty armies encountered each other, July 1,
1863, and the result was the tremendous battle of
Gettysburg. William Swinton, A Condensed School
History of the United States (New York: Ivison,
Blakeman, Taylor & Company, 1871), 267.
Disregarding the almost tearful remonstrances of General
Longstreet, he sent General Pickett with 15,000 men, the
flower of the Confederate infantry, to carry by storm the
impregnable position of the Union troops, under General
W.S. Hancock, on Cemetery Ridge. David Saville
Muzzey, Consensus Historian, Ph.D. Barnard College,
Columbia University New York, An American History
(New York: Ginn and Company, 1911), 357.
Lincoln was reelected in November by an electoral vote of
212 to 21 and a popular majority of nearly 500,000. The
election meant the endorsement by the people of the North
of Lincoln's policy of continuing the war until the South
recognized the supremacy throughout the United States of
the national government at Washington. David Saville
Muzzey, 368.
To blacks, both slave and free, the Emancipation
Proclamation served as a beacon . . . it stood as a promise
of future improvement. John A. Garraty, Progressive
Professor of History at Columbia University, The
American Nation: A History of the United States to 1877
(New York: Harper & Row, 1966), 418.
The Emancipation proclamation was political in purpose.
It was sort of a campaign address to the Northern people,
and its design was to augment the prestige of the
administration, and to give the soldier boys a stimulating
moral objective which had a deeper emotional throb than
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Unionism, the stock exchange, low wages, high prices and
the tariff. William E. Woodward, Consensus Historian, A
New American History (New York: Literary Guild, 1937),
545-6.
2. Textbook. Cotton would also make Europe a powerful Main Ideas:
Analysis:
ally of the Confederacy, Southerners reasoned. After all,
Evaluation:
they said, England's economy (and to a lesser degree
France's) also depended on cotton. Of the 900 million
pounds of cotton England imported annually, more than
700 million came from the South. If the supply were
interrupted, sheer economic need would make England
(and perhaps France) a Confederate ally. And because the
British navy ruled the seas, the North would find Britain a
formidable foe. James L. Roark, Professor of History at
Emory University, Michael P Johnson, Johns Hopkins
University, Patricia Cline Cohen, University of California,
Santa Barbara, Sarah Stage, Arizona State University,
Alan Lawson, Boston College, and Susan M. Hartmann,
Ohio State University, The American Promise: A Compact
History Third Edition Volume I: To 1877 (Boston,
Massachusetts: St. Martin's, 2007), 374.
Indeed, the South enjoyed major advantages, and the
Confederacy devised a military strategy to exploit them. It
recognized that a Union victory required the North to
defeat and subjugate the South, but a Confederate victory
required only that the South blunt invasions, avoid battles
that risked annihilating its army, and outlast the North's
will to fight. When an opportunity presented itself, the
South would strike the invaders. Like the American
colonists, the South could win independence by not losing
the war. James L. Roark, 374.
If the North did nothing, the South would by default
establish itself as a sovereign nation. The Lincoln
administration therefore adopted an offensive strategy that
applied pressure at many points. Lincoln declared a naval
blockade of the Confederacy to deny the South the
advantages offered by its most valuable commoditycotton. Without the sale of cotton abroad, the South would
have far fewer dollars to pay for war goods. Lincoln also
ordered the Union army into Virginia, at the same time
planning a march through the Mississippi Valley that
would cut the Confederacy in two. This ambitious
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strategy took advantage of the Union's superior resources.
James L. Roark, 374.
At first, the bustle of economic and military mobilization
seemed to silence politics, but bipartisan unity did not last.
Within a year, Democrats were labeling the Republican
administration a "reign of terror," and Republicans were
calling Democrats the party of "Dixie, Davis, and the
Devil." Democrats denounced Republican policies
emancipating the slaves, subsidizing private business, and
expanding federal power-as unconstitutional. In
September 1862, in an effort to stifle opposition to the
war, Lincoln placed under military arrest any person who
discouraged enlistments, resisted the draft, or engaged in
"disloyal" practices. Before the war ended, his
administration imprisoned nearly 14,000 individuals, most
in the border states. The campaign fell short of a reign of
terror, for the majority, of the prisoners were not northern
Democratic opponents but Confederates, blockade
runners, and citizens of foreign countries, and most of
those arrested gained quick release. Still, the
administration's heavy-handed tactics did suppress free
speech. James L. Roark, 388.
3. Northern Generals. McClellan energetically whipped Main Ideas:
his dispirited army into shape but was reluctant to send his Analysis:
Evaluation:
soldiers into battle. For all his energy, McClellan lacked
decisiveness. Lincoln wanted a general who would
advance, take risks, and fight, but McClellan went into
winter quarters. "If General McClellan does not want to
use the army I would like to borrow it," Lincoln declared
in frustration. James L. Roark, 377.
All this time the Federal commander had maneuvered with
skill and daring, only to be checked by concentrations on
interior lines which were never surpassed in Lee's greatest
triumphs. Then on June 3 Grant made his single blunder
by ordering a blunt frontal assault at Cold Harbor. A few
hours later 6,000 slain and wounded were stretched out
before the rebel rifle pits at a trifling cost to the defenders.
And with this final slaughter the month's battle ended as
the exhausted armies faced each other in trenches less than
a hundred yards apart. The Federal dead, wounded and
missing have been estimated at 50,000 the Confederate
losses at 32,000. Lee had retreated nearly to Richmond,
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yet both in tactical and political respects he must be
credited with the victory. Grievous as his casualties were,
amounting to 46 per cent of his original strength, he had
won even the temporary advantage in the duel of attrition.
For after Cold Harbor the Northern general was execrated
as a "butcher" by newspapers, which had recently lauded
him to the skies. Throughout the Union the heart-rending
casualty lists were blamed on the Administration; and in
view of the approaching presidential election, the hopes of
the Confederacy grew brighter than at any time since
Chancellorsville. Lynn Montross, historical writer for the
US Marine Corps, War Through The Ages: Revised And
Enlarged Third Edition (New York: Harper & Brothers
Publishers, 1960), 623.
Few soldiers of history have been the victims of an
injustice, such as has permanently clouded Grant's military
reputation. Although he admitted his error at Cold
Harbor, the blunder had been no more costly than Lee's
frontal attacks at Malvern Hill and Cemetery Ridge.
Throughout the entire war, moreover, Grant's total losses
amounted to a smaller proportion than those of his great
opponent. Yet in 1864 he had to endure a storm of abuse
from his countrymen, which has even been echoed by
critics and historians. Lynn Montross, 623.
Let's consider the casualties that earned Grant his
reputation as butcher. During the first month of the 1864
campaign, as the Army of the Potomac ground its way
from the Rapidan through the Wilderness to the nightmare
of Cold Harbor, it suffered approximately 55,000
casualties-about the total strength of the Army of Northern
Virginia the start of the campaign. In the process, it
inflicted 32,000 casualties-a ratio of roughly 5 to 3, which
is higher than the 5 to 2 superiority that the Union
possessed over the Confederacy, and is not an
unreasonable proportion considering the advantages that
the defense had in Civil War battles. Reid Mitchell,
Gabor S. Boritt, Why the Confederacy Lost (New York:
Oxford University Press), 1992, 120.
Main Ideas:
4. Southern Generals. The contrast between Lee and
Analysis:
McClellan could hardly have been greater. McClellan
Evaluation:
brimmed with conceit and braggadocio; Lee was courteous
and reserved. On the battlefield, McClellan grew timid
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and irresolute, and Lee became audaciously, even
recklessly, aggressive. And Lee had at his side in the
peninsula campaign military men of real talent: Thomas J.
Jackson, nicknamed "Stonewall" for holding the line at
Manassas, and James E. B. (Jeb) Stuart, a dashing twentynine-year-old cavalry commander who rode circles around
Yankee troops. James L. Roark, 377.
It is in the entrenchments as much as the weapon itself that
we find the clue to Lee's greatest victories. Just as the
backwoods invention of the greased patch had given the
American rifleman of 1777 an advantage, so in 1862 the
equally practical "head-log" revolutionized tactics. This
improvement consisted merely of two logs so placed on
the parapet as to allow the entrenched soldier to fire from
a slit between them. Thus protected from the hasty and
scattered shots of advancing foemen, he could aim from a
rest with a sense of security. Ax and spade soon became
almost as important as the rifle itself, since nearly all the
Civil War campaigns took place in wooded country. With
constant practice the troops of both sides learned to throw
up log-faced earthworks in an incredibly short time, and
even the Northern revival of hand grenades did not solve
the problems of the offensive. Lynn Montross, 603.
Lee's generalship rested largely on his ability to make use
of such factors. For the Southern leader did not depend on
the rifle pit solely for defense; he also made it the pivot of
attack. Relying on the proved fact that a marksman in a
trench could take care of several foemen, he planned to
neutralize a large portion of the enemy's bulk and create
the opportunity for a decisive counterstroke. On several
fields he carried his daring to such lengths as to divide his
army in the face of a more numerous foe, knowing that a
regiment in the trenches was worth a division in the open.
Lynn Montross, 603.
5. Antietam. Lee again divided his army, sending
Jackson in an attempt to capture Harper's Ferry with its
strong garrison. By a prodigious stroke of luck, the order
for the separation fell into McClellan's hands giving him
the cue to redeem himself with a battle of annihilation.
Yet even this amazing opportunity went begging as the
Northern advanced with his wonted caution. So slow
were his movements that Jackson took Harper's Ferry and
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Main Ideas:
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reunited with Lee on September 16 to accept battle the
next day. Lynn Montross, 605.
Due to the Confederate vice of straggling, Lee's army had
melted he could bring but 41,500 troops into line on a
strong defensive position at Antietam Creek. McClellan's
numbers were 81,176, but the story of the day is told by
the fact that not more than two of his six corps were ever
engaged simultaneously. Two remained in reserve, seeing
almost no action in a battle fought in detail by the other
four. Often the advancing Federals were outweighed at
the point of contact by riflemen taking every advantage of
excellent natural cover. Lee handled his army faultlessly
and the following morning his troops awaited a
resumption, which McClellan declined. On the nineteenth
the invaders fell back across the Potomac without
molestation, having suffered about 10,000 casualties as
compared to 12,000 for the North. Lynn Montross, 605.
At the last possible minute Lee's army had been saved
from defeat. What had saved it was the arrival from
Harper’s Ferry of A.P. Hill. These soldiers came upon the
field at precisely the right time and place, after a terrible
seventeen-mile forced march from Harper's Ferry, in
which exhausted men fell out of ranks by the score and
Hill himself urged laggards on with the point of his sword.
A more careful and methodical general (any one of the
Federal corps commanders, for instance) would have set a
slower pace, keeping his men together, mindful of the
certainty of excessive straggling on too strenuous a march
– and would have arrived, with all his men present or
accounted for, a couple of hours too late to do any good.
AP Hill drove his men so cruelly that he left fully half of
his division panting along the roadside. Those who were
left in time to stave off disaster and keep the war going for
two and one half more years. Bruce Catton, journalist and
Pulitzer prize winner for historical works, Civil War,
Three Volumes in One, Mr. Lincoln's Army, Glory Road,
A Stillness at Appomattox (New York: Fairfax Press,
1984), 185-6.
In 1862 at Antietam, nearly 11,000 Confederates and more
than 12,000 Federals had fallen along that ridge and in that
valley, including a total on both sides of about 5000 dead.
Losses at South Mountain raised these numbers to 13,609
and 14,756 respectively, the latter being increased to
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27,276 by the surrender of the Harpers Ferry garrison. Lee
had suffered only half as many casualties as he had
inflicted in the course of the campaign. Even this was
more than he could afford. "Where is your division?"
someone asked Hood at the close of the battle, and Hood
replied, "Dead on the field." Shelby Foote, American
novelist and son of a planter, The Civil War: A Narrative,
Fort Sumter to Perryville (New York: Random House,
1958),702.
6. Impact. Antietam was finally, and irrevocably, the
decisive battle of the war, affecting the whole course of
American history ever since. For this stalemated
battle-this great whirlwind of flame and torn earth and
shaking ground, which seemed to consume everything and
to create nothing-brought about the Emancipation
Proclamation and put the country on a new course from
which there could be no turning back. Here at last was the
sounding forth of the bugle that would never call retreat.
Bruce Catton, 191.
The Emancipation Proclamation meant that Europe was
not going to decide how the American Civil War came
out. It would be fought out at home. And it would be
fought to the bitter end. The chance for compromise was
killed. Bruce Catton, 192.
On July 21, the president informed his cabinet that he was
ready "to take some definitive steps in respect to military
action and slavery." The next day lie read a draft of a
preliminary emancipation proclamation that promised to
free all slaves in the seceding states on January 1, 1863.
Lincoln described emancipation as an "act of justice," but
it was the lengthening casualty lists that finally brought
him around. Emancipation, he declared, was "a military
necessity, absolutely essential to the preservation of the
Union." On September 22, Lincoln issued his preliminary
Emancipation Proclamation promising freedom to slaves
in areas still in rebellion on January 1, 1863. James L.
Roark, 382.
By presenting emancipation as a "military necessity"
Lincoln hoped he had disarmed his conservative critics.
Emancipation would deprive the Confederacy of valuable
slave laborers, shorten the war, and thus save lives.
Democrats, however, fumed that the "shrieking and
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howling abolitionist faction" had captured the White
House and made it "a nigger war." Democrats made
political hay out of Lincoln's action in November 1862
elections, gaining thirty-four congressional seats. House
Democrats quickly proposed a resolution branding
emancipation "a high crime against the Constitution." The
Republicans, who maintained narrow majorities in both
houses of Congress, beat it back. James L. Roark, 382.
7. Gettysburg. The Army of the Potomac remained some Main Ideas:
Analysis:
80,000 strong after deductions for stragglers and
Evaluation:
yesterday’s casualties. Lee on the other hand, with
Pickett's division and six of the seven cavalry brigades still
absent, had fewer than 50,000 effectives on the field after
similar deductions. Moreover, the tactical deployment of
the two forces extended these eight-to-five odds
considerably. Meade's 51 brigades of infantry and seven
of cavalry were available for the occupation of three miles
of line, which gave him an average of 27,000 men per
mile, or better than fifteen to the yard. This was roughly
twice as heavy a concentration as the Confederates had
enjoyed at Fredericksburg. Lee's 34 brigades of infantry
and one of cavalry were distributed along a five-mile
semicircle for an average of 10,000 men to the mile, or
fewer than six per yard. As for artillery, Meade had 354
guns and Lee 272, or 118 to the mile, as compared to 54.
Shelby Foote, 497.
If Stonewall Jackson still commanded the II Corps and
had received Lee's message to attack the Yankee right on
Cemetery Hill before sundown if practical, it is almost
certain that he would have attacked. To Stonewall the
word "practicable" had a different meaning than it had to
Old Bald Head. It meant a good chance of success, as he
had shown at Fredericksburg until the Federal guns on
Stafford Heights changed his mind. To General Ewell it
mean absolute certainty of success, and the sight of enemy
fortifications growing stronger by the hour, and Lee's
refusal to give him supporting troops paralyzed his will.
Moreover, Joe Johnston's division did not arrive until late
sundown, so that when Ewell conferred with Lee at
twilight he was absolutely unwilling to move. The
opportunity to crush a still dazed enemy had passed.
Richard Ewell was simply no Stonewall Jackson. Robert
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Leckie, None Died In Vain: The Saga of the American
Civil War (HarperCollins Publishers, 1990), 504.
It is the custom of military service to accept instructions of
a commander as orders, but when they are coupled with
conditions that transfer the responsibility of battle and
defeat to the subordinate, they are not orders, and General
Ewell was justifiable in not making attack that his
commander would not order, and the censure of his failure
is unjust and very ungenerous. James Longstreet,
Lieutenant-General Confederate Army, From Manassas to
Appomattox, Memoirs Of The Civil War In America
(Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press: 1960),
381.
Gouverneur K. Warren, the army's thirty-three-year-old
chief engineer . . . Disturbed to find the high ground [Little
Round Top] all but unoccupied; despite its obvious
tactical value, Warren told the signalmen to keep up their
wigwag activity, simply as a pretense of alertness . . .
Colonel Strong Vincent, who at twenty-six was the army's
youngest brigade commander, responded by marching at
once to occupy the hill. Arriving less than a quarter of an
hour before the Texans and Alabamians, he advanced his
brigade-four regiments from as many different states,
Pennsylvania, New York, Maine, and Michigan-to the far
side of the crest, well downhill in order to leave room for
reinforcements, and took up a stout position in which to
wait for what was not long in coming . . . Warren did not
waste time riding to the head of the column to find Weed.
"Never mind that, Paddy," he said. "Bring them up on the
double-quick, and don't stop for aligning. I'll take the
responsibility." O'Rorke did as Warren directed, and
Weed soon followed with his other three regiments,
double-timing them as best he could up the steep, boulderclogged incline. Shelby Foote, 503-4.
When that gate shut, so did perhaps the best hope of the
Confederacy shut down at Gettysburg. Little Round Top
was "the key to the whole Union position. Had it fallen
the road would have opened to the Yankee rear for the
Army of Northern Virginia. The Federal line on Cemetery
Ridge would have become untenable, especially with
Confederate artillery above it. General Robert E. Lee
would have had another victory, this time on northern soil.
Could that have been the decisive battle so many looked
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for? Years later Colonel William C. Oates, the commander
of the men from Alabama, paid homage to his counterpart,
the college professor turned colonel from Maine, who with
"his men saved a Little Round Top and the Army of the
Potomac from defeat." Oates added: "Great events
sometimes turn on comparatively small affairs." Gabor S.
Boritt, ed., Why the Confederacy Lost (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1992), 4.
8. Pickett’s Charge. Lee said the distance was not more Main Ideas:
Analysis:
than fourteen hundred yards. General Meade's estimate
Evaluation:
was a mile or a mile and a half (Captain Long, the guide of
the field of Gettysburg in 1888, stated that it was a trifle
over a mile). He then concluded that the divisions of
McLaws and Hood could remain on the defensive line;
that he would reinforce by divisions of the Third Corps
and Pickett's brigades, and stated the point to which the
march should be directed. James Longstreet, 386-7.
"If,' said he [Lee], on many occasions, 'I had taken General
Longstreet's advice on the eve of the second day of the
battle of Gettysburg, and filed off the left corps of my
army behind the right corps, in the direction of
Washington and Baltimore' along the Emmitsburg road,
the Confederates would to-day be a free people." James
Longstreet, 401.
The Union cannons on the hill fell silent one by one.
General Hunt passed the word along to the remaining two
thirds of his guns to stop firing to make the Confederates
think that the Union cannons had been knocked out.
Shelby Foote, 547-8.
The story of the famous charge is best told by the bare
statistics. In any age of war, including the present, losses
of more than 30 per cent will usually suffice to stop
assaulting troops. Yet out of the 4,500 men in General
George Pickett's own division, 3,393 were left on the
field-a casualty list of 75 per cent. All 18 of the brigade
and regimental commanders were killed or wounded, and
one regiment lost nine-tenths of its total numbers. Lynn
Montross, 614.
9. Gettysburg Politics. The Confederate invasion (of
Pennsylvania) had the opposite effect on Northern opinion
from what Lee had expected. Instead of encouraging the
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Main Ideas:
Analysis:
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antiwar faction, it spurred an outburst of fury among most
Northerners that quelled the Copperheads into silence.
The invaders had seized all the cattle, horses, wagons,
food and shoes they could find and levied tribute on towns
they occupied. They had also captured scores of
Pennsylvania blacks and sent them south into slavery. All
of this roused Northerners to the same pitch of anger and
hatred that Southerners had experienced when defending
their soil. James McPherson, Ordeal by Fire (New York:
Alfred A. Knopf, 1982), 325.
Southern soldiers also seized scores of black people in
Pennsylvania and sent them south into slavery. James M.
McPherson, Edwards Professor of American History at
Princeton University, Battle Cry Of Freedom: The Civil
War Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 650.
Main Ideas:
10. Vicksburg was the key to the Mississippi, if not to
Analysis:
the entire war. If it fell, the great waterway would be in
Evaluation:
Union hands. But if it held out as Abraham Lincoln said:
"We may take all the northern ports of the Confederacy
and they can still defy us from Vicksburg. It means hog
and hominy without limit, fresh troops from all the states
of the far South, and a cotton country where they can raise
the staple without interference." Vicksburg, however, was
a very tough nut, especially from the water. It stood on
high bluffs on the eastern bank commanding a great bend
in they river. On its eastern or landward side it was
protected by swamps and bayous. Robert Leckie, 542.
Up to this time its supplies had come down the
Mississippi on barges, but with only five days' rations,
Grant cut loose altogether from his base. The significance
of this step cannot be overestimated. All European armies
of the day had long ago returned to the magazine system in
reaction to the excesses of the Napoleonic wars. The
Federal forces of the first two years, influenced by
continental models, likewise depended on bases and
wagon trains. Early in the war Northern political leaders
still hoped to gain converts in border regions, and generals
were warned against offending the inhabitants. The
Confederates, subsisting for the most part in friendly
territory, were first to supply themselves at the expense of
the enemy. This policy gave them an advantage in
mobility, which General Ewell summed up in his
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comment, “The path to glory cannot be followed with
much baggage." Lynn Montross, 616-7.
By deception and maneuver Grant had already won his
main objectives when he reached high ground at Walnut
Hills and occupied Haines’ Bluff as his new base of
supplies. A few days later, counting too much on enemy
demoralization, he made the single mistake of the
campaign by ordering a general assault all along the line.
From three miles of trenches the rebel riflemen replied
with a murderous fire. Grant stubbornly tried again, and
on the twenty-second he had to accept a second repulse
with heavy losses. Lynn Montross, 617-8.
Now Grant's daring came into play to match his
farsightedness. Although he had about 33,000 men
against Pemberton's 23,000, the enemy army in Vicksburg
was linked to the interior by rail and could be easily
reinforced or supplied. Grant decided to attack the city's
rear, its supply base to the east in Jackson, then held by
Joe Johnston with about 6,000 men. The Union chief
proposed one of the most audacious moves in history: to
cut loose from his base, seize Jackson, and then, still
living off the land, turn west to invest Vicksburg. Thus, as
Grant moved east toward Jackson, the bewildered
Pemberton sallied from Vicksburg to "cut" the nonexistent
Yankee supply line. Robert Leckie, 551-2.
Main Ideas:
11. Siege of Vicksburg. Pick and spade served him
Analysis:
(Grant) better as weapons. Throughout June his parallels
Evaluation:
and approaches drew ever closer to the Confederate
entrenched camp. In the Federal rear Joe Johnston was
assembling an army of relief, but after a heroic resistance
Vicksburg came to a choice between surrender and
starvation. Lynn Montross, 618.
Vicksburg was caught in a trap. On the river, gunboats
kept up a steady shelling of the city. On land, field artillery
boomed away. The Union trenches spread their strangling
arms wider and gun batteries wormed their way closer.
Within the city, the garrison and the people lived like cave
dwellings. Robert Leckie, 556.
There was little to eat but corn bread and mule meat.
Some lived on spoiled bacon and bread made of pea flour.
Those with hardy stomachs trapped and ate rats,
comparing their flesh to spring chicken. Robert Leckie,
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556.
In 1863 at Vicksburg, the meager diet was beginning to
tell. By late June, nearly half the garrison was on the sick
list or in hospital. The Confederate ration now had been
reduced to "one biscuit and a small bit of bacon per day."
If you can't feed us, you had better surrender us, horrible
as the idea is, than suffer this noble army to disgrace
themselves by desertion. This army is now ripe for
mutiny, unless it can be fed. Shelby Foote, 415.
Main Ideas:
12. Sherman’s March to the Sea. The Confederates
expected the weather and terrain to stop Sherman. Joseph Analysis:
Evaluation:
Johnston believed that "it was absolutely impossible for an
army to march across lower portions of the State in
winter." But the Yankees did it. Pioneer battalions (100
white soldiers and 75 black pioneers) cut down whole
forests to corduroy roads; entire brigades exchanged rifles
for spades and axes to build bridges. At night the menSherman included-sometimes rested in trees to escape the
flooded ground. Yet in all this, only 2 percent of the army
fell sick. When the Federals came to the Salkiehatchie
River, Confederate General William J. Hardee assured his
superiors: "The Salk is impassable." The bluecoats
bridged it and got the army over without loss of a wagon
or gun. "I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it,"
said Hardee ruefully. Johnston later wrote: "When I
learned that Sherman's army was marching through the
Salk swamps, making its own corduroy roads at the rate of
a dozen miles a day and more, and bringing its artillery
and wagons with it, I made up my mind that there had
been no such army in existence since the days of Julius
Caesar."21 James McPherson, Ordeal by Fire, 471.
Sherman’s loss for the past month of June 1864 was 7,500
Joe Johnston’s around 6,000. This brought their
respective totals for the whole campaign to just under
17,000 and just over 14,000. Roughly speaking, to put it
another way, one out of every four Confederates had been
shot or captured, as compared to one out of seven
Federals. Sherman would take great pride in this reversal
of the anticipated ratio of losses between attacker and
defender. As well he might, especially in a campaign
fought on ground as unfavorable to the offensive as North
Georgia, against an adversary he admired as much as he
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did Joe Johnston. Shelby Foote, 400-1.
The logistical accomplishments of this march were among
the most stunning in the history of warfare. The earlier
march through Georgia had taken place against token
opposition in dry fall weather along lines parallel to the
principal rivers. This one went half again as far and
crossed many rain-swollen rivers and swamps in the
middle of an unusually wet winter against increasing
opposition, as the Rebels desperately scraped together an
army in their futile attempt to block the blue bulldozer.
Counting rest days and delays caused by skirmishes and
fights, Sherman's forces averaged nearly ten miles a day
for forty-five days. During twenty-eight of those days rain
fell. James McPherson, Ordeal by Fire, 471.
Main Ideas:
13. Total War. The march to the sea, like Sheridan's
Analysis:
Shenandoah campaign, was one of deliberate destruction,
Evaluation:
in order to ruin a main source of provisions for Lee's and
Hood's armies. Sheridan cut a swath 60 miles wide
through "the garden spot of the Confederacy," destroying
stores of provisions, standing crops and cattle, cotton gins
and mills, railways beyond possibility of repair; in fact,
everything that could be useful to the Confederacy and
much that was not. The indiscriminate looting of private
houses, although forbidden by orders, was largely the
work of the "bummers" - stragglers from both sides; and
also of Joe Wheeler's Confederate cavalry, which hung on
the flanks. Outrages on persons were surprisingly few,
and on women, none. It was the sort of campaign that
soldiers love - maximum of looting and destruction,
minimum of discipline and fighting: splendid weather, few
impediments, plenty of broiled turkey and fried chicken
and roast pork, swarms of Negroes eager to pillage their
former masters, tagging joyfully along. Samuel Eliot
Morison, 696.
Sherman had long pondered the nature and purpose of this
war. He had concluded that, "we are not only fighting
hostile armies, but a hostile people." Defeat of Southern
armies was not enough to win the war; the railroads,
factories, and farms that supplied and fed them must be
destroyed; the will of the civilian population that sustained
the armies must be crushed. Sherman expressed more
bluntly than anyone else the meaning of total war. James
14
McPherson, Ordeal by Fire, 460.
Sherman has justly been censured for the needless
suffering he inflicted, though Sheridan's devastation of the
Shenandoah was even more harsh. For all military
purposes the thorough destruction of railways would have
sufficed to deprive the Confederate armies of food, while
the burning and looting of local supplies could only leave
a tradition of bitterness for following generations. Enemy
chroniclers admitted that cases of personal violence were
few, but it could not be denied that thousands of civilians
had been reduced to the hardships of malnutrition. Lynn
Montross. 630.
14. Dueling Presidents. Mobilization required effective Main Ideas:
political leadership, and at first glance the South appeared Analysis:
Evaluation:
to have the advantage. Jefferson Davis brought to the
Confederate presidency a distinguished political career,
including experience in the U.S. Senate. He was also a
West Point graduate, a combat veteran and authentic hero
of the Mexican-American War, and a former secretary of
war. In contrast, Abraham Lincoln brought to the White
House one term in the House of Representatives, and his
sole brush with anything military was as a captain in the
militia in the Black Hawk War, a brief struggle in Illinois
in 1832 in which whites expelled the last Indian, from the
state. The lanky, disheveled Illinois lawyer-politician
looked anything but military or presidential in his bearing.
James L. Roark, 374.
Davis, however, proved to be less than he appeared.
Although he worked hard, Davis had no gift for military
strategy yet intervened often in military affairs. He was an
even less able political leader. Quarrelsome and proud, he
had an acid tongue that made enemies the Confederacy
could ill afford. He insisted on dealing with every scrap of
paper that came across his desk, and he grew increasingly
unbending and dogmatic. James L. Roark, 374.
With Lincoln, in contrast, the North got far more than met
the eye. He proved himself a master politician and a
superb leader. When forming his cabinet, Lincoln
appointed the ablest men, no matter that they were often
his chief rivals and critics. He appointed Salmon P. Chase
secretary of the treasury knowing that Chase had
presidential ambitions. As secretary of state, he chose his
15
chief opponent for the Republican nomination in 1860,
William H. Seward. Despite his civilian background,
Lincoln displayed an innate understanding of military
strategy. No one was more crucial in mapping the Union
war plan. James L. Roark, 374.
The Yankee James Ford Rhodes wrote at the beginning of
the twentieth century that "the preponderating asset of the
North proved to be Lincoln." And in 1960 the southernborn historian David Potter put it even more strongly: "If
the Union and the Confederacy had exchanged presidents
with one another, the Confederacy might have won its
independence." James M. McPherson, Gabor S. Borritt,
ed., 37.
Main Ideas:
15. Emancipation Proclamation. A very mysterious
Analysis:
man. He's got so many sides to him. The curious thing
Evaluation:
about Lincoln to me is that he could remove himself from
himself, as if he were looking at himself. It's a very
strange, very eerie thing and highly intelligent. Such a
simple thing to say, but Lincoln's been so smothered with
stories of his compassion that people forget what a highly
intelligent man he was. And almost everything he did,
almost everything he did was calculated for effect. He
knew exactly how to do it. Shelby Foote, Geoffrey C.
Ward, Ric Burns, Ken Burns, The Civil War, An
Illustrated History (New York: Alfred P. Knopf, 1990),
270.
"I never, in my life, felt more certain that 1 was doing
right, than I do in signing this paper (Emancipation
Proclamation)," he (Abraham Lincoln) said. "If my name
ever goes into history it will he for this act, and my whole
soul is in it." Doris Kearns Goodwin, Ph.D. in
government from Harvard, Team of Rivals: The Political
Genius of Abraham Lincoln (New York: Simon &
Schuster, 2005), 499.
In an unusual twist, the Federal government actually began
accepting blacks into the army before Lincoln issued the
Emancipation Proclamation. He decided on emancipation
and black enlistment around the same time, but due to the
state of military affairs, he delayed the announcement of
the Emancipation Proclamation until after the next
significant Union victory, which did not occur until
September. Otherwise, the Proclamation would have
16
looked like the desperate act of a nation in defeat. With
the repulse of Lee’s raid into Maryland, Lincoln’s
pronouncement came from a position of greater strength.
Joseph T. Glatthaar, Gabor S. Boritt, ed., 150-1.
Negroes responded to such appeals in astonishing
numbers. Constituting less than one percent of the North's
population, blacks would make up nearly one-tenth of the
northern army by the end of the war. Eighty-five percent
of those eligible signed on: 180,000 blacks wore Union
blue-more than twice the size of Lee's army at Gettysburg.
Geoffrey C. Ward, Ric Burns, Ken Burns, 252.
16. Lincoln Policies. Scheduled for early April, the
congressional and state elections in Connecticut, Rhode
Island, and New Hampshire would be a test case in the
battle for the heart of the North. Lincoln sent a telegram
to Thurlow Weed [William Seward's political boss] at the
Astor House in New York, requesting that he take the first
train to Washington . . ."Mr. Weed, we are in a tight
place," Lincoln explained. "Money for legitimate
purposes is needed immediately; but there is no
appropriation from which it can be lawfully taken. I didn't
know how to raise it, and so I sent for you." "The amount
needed was $15,000. Weed returned to New York on the
next train. Before the night had ended, "the Dictator" had
persuaded fifteen New Yorkers to contribute $1,000 each .
. . It was money well spent. Voters in both states defeated
the Copperhead candidates by clear majorities, ensuring
that the great war measures would be sustained in the next
House of Representatives. The results were "a stunning
blow to the Copperheads," the New York Times noted.
The surprising triumph "puts the Administration safely
round the cape, and insures it clear seas to the end." Doris
Kearns Goodwin, 505.
You are the children of Abraham Lincoln. We are at best
only his stepchildren-children by adoption, children by
force of circumstances and necessity. To you it especially
belongs to sound his praises, to preserve and perpetuate
his memory, to multiply his statues, to hang his pictures
high upon your walls, and commend his example, for to
you he was a great and glorious friend and benefactor . . . I
have said that President Lincoln was a white man, and
shared the prejudices common to his countrymen towards
17
the colored race . . . His great mission was to accomplish
two things: first, to save his country from dismemberment
and ruin; and second, to free his country from the great
crime of slavery. To do one or the other, or both, he must
have the earnest sympathy and the powerful cooperation of
his loyal fellow countrymen. Without this primary and
essential condition to success his efforts must have been
vain and utterly fruitless. Had he put the abolition of
slavery before the salvation of the Union, he would have
inevitably driven from him a powerful class of the
American people and rendered resistance to rebellion
impossible. Viewed from the genuine abolition ground,
Mr. Lincoln seemed tardy, cold, dull, and indifferent; but
measuring him by the sentiment of his country, a
sentiment he was bound as a statesman to consult, he was
swift, zealous, radical, and determined. Though Mr.
Lincoln shared the prejudices of his white fellow
countrymen against the Negro, it is hardly necessary to say
that in his heart of hearts he loathed and hated slavery.
Taking him all in all, measuring the tremendous
magnitude of the work before him, considering the
necessary means to the ends, infinite wisdom has seldom
sent any man to the world better fitted for his mission than
Abraham Lincoln. Frederick Douglass, at the dedication
of the Freedmen's Monument in Washington, D.C. (1876),
William Safire, Great Speeches In History: Updated and
Expanded (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2004),
196-9; Frederick Douglass, (1865), Ken Burns, The Civil
War, Episode 9: The Better Angels of Our Nature
(Atlanta, Georgia: Turner Home Entertainment, 1984).
Lincoln saw the whole strategic picture from the start,
made very few mistakes, grasped immediately the
advantages of superior numbers and sea power, and urged
the generals to keep tightening the squeeze on the
Confederacy until time and circumstance invited a breakthrough. And he saw that the main objective should be the
surrender of the Confederate armies, rather than the
occupation of territory. Clausewitz was right when he
wrote that the best qualifications for a commander in
chief, whether king, emperor, or president, were not
military knowledge but "a remarkable, superior mind and
strength of character." Lincoln had both. But Jefferson
Davis, from supposedly expert knowledge, frequently
18
overrode generals like Joseph Johnston and Lee, who were
better strategists than he, and relied heavily on
incompetents like Braxton Bragg, or blowhards like
Beauregard. Samuel Eliot Morison, 627.
Main Ideas:
17. Presidential Election. The capture of Mobile, the
fall of Atlanta, and Sheridan's victories in the Shenandoah Analysis:
Evaluation:
Valley put a different face on the presidential election. As
late as August 23 Lincoln himself had believed that he
would not be reelected. That day he had asked the
members of his Cabinet to indorse a folded sheet of paper
without reading it. On it he had written: "This morning, as
for some days past, it seems exceedingly probable that this
Administration will not be reelected. Then it will be my
duty to so co-operate with the President elect, as to save
the Union between the election and the inauguration; as he
will have secured his election on such ground that he can
not possibly save it afterwards." Paul M. Angle, A
Pictorial History of the Civil War Years (Garden City,
New York: Doubleday & Company, 1967), 182-3.
Lincoln’s re-election was the clincher. It meant that the
pressure would never be relaxed. Grant would be
sustained in his application of a strategy that was as
expensive as it was remorseless. No loss of spirit back
home would cancel out what the armies in the field were
winning. Bruce Catton, 519.
More than half of the three year veterans reenlisted . . .
Without these "veteran volunteers" the Union armies
would have become hollow shells in 1864. James
McPherson, Ordeal by Fire, 410.
The soldier vote provided the margin of Republican
victory in several congressional districts. It probably also
provided Lincoln's margin in New York and Connecticut
(and possibly in Indiana and Maryland). Although the
President would have won without the army vote, the fourto-one Republican majority of soldier ballots was an
impressive mandate for Lincoln's policy of war to victory.
The men who would have to do the fighting had voted by
a far larger margin than the folks at home to finish the
job.34 James McPherson, Ordeal by Fire, 457-8.
The fall of Atlanta produced a remarkable transformation
in the mood of Republicans. "We are going to win the
Presidential election," Lincoln's longtime critic Theodore
19
Tilton wrote Nicolay. "All divisions are going to be
healed. I have never seen such a sudden lighting up of
public mind as since the late victory at Atlanta. This great
event, following the Chicago platform—a most villainous
political manifesto known to American history!—has
secured a sudden unanimity for Mr. Lincoln." Even he,
"never having been a partisan for Mr. Lincoln's reelection, but the reverse," was intending to advise
everyone he knew "to unite on Mr. Lincoln." Leonard
Swett, who only weeks before had warned Lincoln that his
reelection looked doubtful, believed that God had given
the Union its glorious victory to make the floundering ship
of state "right itself, as a ship in a storm does after a great
wave has nearly capsized it." Relieved, Thurlow Weed
informed Seward that with military success, the
"conspiracy against Mr. Lincoln collapsed." Doris Kearns
Goodwin, 656.
18. Lee's Surrender. During the final year of the war,
Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant employed his overwhelming
superiority in manpower to defeat the Confederacy.
Simply stated, Grant’s plan was to mobilize every
available man, apply pressure on all fronts, and stretch the
Confederacy. Joseph T. Glatthaar, Gabor S. Boritt, ed.,
135.
In the fall and early winter of 1864-65, some 40 percent of
the Confederate soldiers east of the Mississippi deserted.
Archer Jones, Gabor S. Borit, 74.
After the fall of Wilmington, last great port of supply,
neutral observers realized that the end was near. Not only
had the material resources of the South been shattered, but
even the causes of rebellion. For the theory of states'
rights became a mockery when governors might browbeat
Jefferson Davis by threatening to secede from the
Confederacy. Nor could the doctrine of slavery be upheld
when several Southern leaders advocated the freeing of
Negroes to fill the thinned ranks of the armies. Lynn
Montross, 631.
20
Main Ideas:
Analysis:
Evaluation:
How to Win a Battle.
US Grant
1. Avoid Frontal Assaults.
Flank Attack.
Hit them On the Ends - Enfilade Fire
Surprise them from Behind
Once you get them on the run, keep up the scare
Shoot them in the back
Fleeing men make good targets
Fleeing men can't fight back very well
Mystify and Surprise
2. Concentration of Forces
Hurl all of your Army against a part of the enemy
forces
Gang up, teamwork,
Frederick the Great
3. Geography
Take the high ground
21
Attacking troops walk up slower
Defending troops can fire down upon slowly
moving troops marching uphill
Ground Cover, top of hill
Ground cover, bottom of hill
Split the Enemy Line –
Divide and Conquer
Cross Fire
4. Make them attack you
Defensive advantage 2 to 1
Swing around
Get between them and their supplies
US Grant
Get Between them and their capital
5. Siege Warfare
Surround Them
Dig defensive trenches around them
Cut Off their Supplies
22
Table of Historiography.
Samuel Eliot Morison
1. Progressive Historians.
2. Textbook.
Some Progressive Historians build up the Civil
War as a War to free the slaves
The textbook takes a middle of the road
approach
Some make the North the heroes and the South
the villains.
Talks about the economies of the North and
South, Presidential leadership, Northern Navy,
and the South's advantages.
Some Consensus Historians make slave owners
to be the villains, and the common Southerners
the heroes
Many historians of all ranks posit the myth of
inevitability
The North won, and their victory was
inevitable
Progressive Historians ruled the writing of
American History from 1800 – 1950.
They still write most of the American History
textbooks for high schools.
Cheerleaders, boosters of the American way
Build up European Americans and the
government, marginalize other groups
3. New Left Historians.
4. Mark Saiki Interpretation.
There was no inevitability involved:
Some New Left Historians portray AfricanAmericans as heroes and Southerners as
Villains
Contingency, Stonewall Jackson shot and
killed at Chancellorsville by his own men
New Left historians wrote history from 1950
Jackson at Gettysburg would have taken Culp's
23
– 1975.
and Cemetery Hill
They still dominate the writing of college
textbooks
Enfalade fire on the entire Union line
Critics, they point out what is wrong with
European Americans and the US government
Gettysburg Southern Victory, South sued for
peace
Roark builds up the North too much
Build up women, and African- and Native
Americans
Says that the 14,000 men Abe Lincoln
imprisoned without trial were "Confederates"
not Democrats.
In actuality they were Peace Democrats and
Copperheads not Confederates.
Lincoln flat out violated the US Constitution
by arresting political opponents, Roark
marginalizes this
24