Download Civil War Geography e:\history\three\geog.2dp 1. Defense. The

Civil War Geography
e:\history\three\geog.2dp
Main Ideas:
1. Defense. The South would fight a defensive war, and
to her accordingly would proceed all the advantages of the Key Words:
Analysis:
defensive. With the improvement in modern weapons, it
was believed that the attacking force, should outnumber
the defenders in a proportion of at least two-to-one.
Three-to-one, some authorities insisted, when the
defenders had time to prepare earthworks- trenches. A
study of the map showed additional difficulties for the
North. Between the two capitals, the rivers ran east and
west across the line of march. This presented a series of
obstacles to the invader. In the West the rivers ran north
and south. These rivers were broad highways for invasion.
Shelby Foote, American novelist and son of a planter, The
Civil War: A Narrative, Fort Sumter to Perryville (New
York: Random House, 1958), 61.
The South would have its back to the wall. Sheer
desperation would compel the region to make a heroic
stand. For the South to lose was to accept subjugation by
an all-but-foreign foe. This could mean the humiliating
acceptance of the black slave as an equal. Perhaps also the
loss of freedom and the right to choose self-government.
For the leaders, defeat would certainly mean loss of
property and perhaps even of life. No such calamitous
possibilities confronted the people of the North. The
worst that could result from failure in battle was to
withdraw from the war and allow the South to go its own
way. There would be no loss of anything: property, liberty
or life. Robert Leckie, US Marine, None Died In Vain:
The Saga of the American Civil War (New York:
HarperCollins Publishers, 1990), 114-5.
Every European military expert thought that Lincoln had
taken on an impossible task to "conquer" the South. Two
leading English in military writers of the last generation,
Fuller and Henderson, never seemed to understand how he
did. But they ignored three vital factors: sea power, Union
sentiment, and the Emancipation Proclamation. Samuel
Eliot Morison, Professor of History at Harvard, The
Oxford History of the American People (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1965), 616.
1
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
strategy took advantage of the Union's superior resources.
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.
2. Tactics. A great principle of both attack and defense in Main Ideas:
Key Words:
the Civil War was to flank the enemy with fire or
Analysis:
movement, or both. A defensive position would be
stronger if it was laid out to give cross-fire onto the
enemy’s avenue of approach, and it would in turn become
vulnerable if it could be enfiladed by hostile artillery.
Considerable ingenuity would therefore often be
expended, if time permitted, in establishing the most
favorable layout in this respect. Paddy Griffith, British
Military historian, Battle Tactics of The Civil War (New
Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1987), 60-1.
In the attack there was an equal realization that flanking
movements were preferable to frontal assaults. This had
been the doctrine of Frederick the Great a century earlier,
and it was enshrined in every textbook. Indeed, it was
almost a geometrical inevitability in linear warfare that a
flank march would be favored by any attacker who wished
to concentrate the bulk of his force against a fraction of
the enemy’s. The idea would be to leave only a small part
of one’s own force facing the enemy frontally, well
protected by fortifications. He could beat vainly against
this bulwark, distracting himself from the main body
2
creeping around his flank, until the trap was ready to
close. Paddy Griffith, British Military historian, 61.
The principal western battles took place in Tennessee,
where General Ulysses S. Grant merged as the key
northern commander. Grant had graduated from West
Point and served bravely in Mexico. When the Civil War
began, 'it, was a thirty-nine-year-old dry-goods clerk in
Galena, Illinois. Gentle at home, he became pugnacious
on the battlefield. "The art of war is simple," he said.
"Find out where your enemy is, get at him as soon as you
can and strike him as hard as you can, and keep moving
on." Grant's philosophy of war as attrition would rake a
huge toll in human life, but it played to the North's
strength: superiority in manpower. James L. Roark, 379.
3. Geography. Jefferson Davis envisaged a strategy like
that of George Washington in the Revolution.
Washington traded space for time. He retreated when
necessary in the face of a stronger enemy. He
counterattacked against isolated British outposts or
detachments when such an attack promised success.
Above all, he tried to avoid full-scale battles that would
have risked annihilation of his army and defeat of his
cause. This has been called a strategy of attrition. A
strategy of winning by not losing. Wear out a better
equipped foe and compel him to give up by prolonging the
war and making it too costly to continue. James M.
McPherson, Professor of History at Princeton, Battle Cry
of Freedom: The Civil War Era (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1988), 337.
The South would almost certainly be on the defensive and
thus have no small advantage in possession of "interior
lines"-with its bases inside its menaced frontiers it could
move troops and supplies quicker from point to point than
the enemy operating on "exterior lines." Robert Leckie,
114.
The basic war aim of the Confederacy, like that of the
United States in the Revolution, was to defend a new
nation from conquest. Confederates looked for inspiration
to the heroes of 1776, who had triumphed over greater
odds than southerners faced in 1861. The South could
"win" the war by not losing. The North could win only by
winning. The large territory of the Confederacy--750,000
3
Main Ideas:
Key Words:
Analysis:
square miles, was as large as Russia west of Moscow. It
was twice the size of the thirteen original United States.
This would make Lincoln's task as difficult as Napoleon's
in 1812 or George III's in 1776. James M. McPherson,
336.
Southerners' confidence may seem naive today but even
tough-minded European military observers picked the
South to win. Offsetting the Union's power was the
Confederacy's expanse. The North, Europeans predicted,
could not conquer the vast territory (750,000 square
miles). To defeat the South, the Union would need to
raise and equip a massive invading army and protect
supply lines that would stretch farther than any in modern
history. James L. Roark, 374.
Main Ideas:
4. Southern Morale. The average Southerner would
Key Words:
always have a clearer, more emotionally stimulating
Analysis:
picture of what he was fighting for. The Southerner would
see himself as fighting to protect the home place from the
invader. The Northerner, on the other hand, was fighting
for an abstraction. The sacred cause of "the Union" might
look very drab once real war weariness developed. Bruce
Catton, journalist and Pulitzer prize winner for historical
works, The American Heritage Picture History of the Civil
War (New York: American Heritage Publishing Company,
1960), 31.
Most intangible was the moral force felt by men defending
their homeland. According to Napoleon, the moral to the
material in war "is as three to one." Devoted as the North
might be to saving the Union, the battle cry of "Home and
Hearth" or "Death to the Yankee Invader" was far more
inspiring than "The Union Forever!" Robert Leckie, 114.
A principal Southern advantage was the worth of the
individual soldier. The Southerner, being accustomed to
command under the plantation system, as well as to the
rigors of outdoor living and the use of horse and gun,
would obviously make the superior trooper or infantryman
or cannoneer. The North took pride in her million-odd
industrial workers. The South called them "pasty-faced
mechanics." They were a downright liability in any army,
jumpy and apt to run from the first danger. Shelby Foote,
61.
4
5. Industrial Capacity. The odds against a southern
victory seemed long. There were nearly 21 million people
in the North, just 9 million in the Confederacy. 3.5 million
of them were slaves, whom their masters did not dare arm.
The North had more than twice as many miles of railroad
track as the South. The value of all the manufactured
goods produced in all the Confederate states added up to
less than one-fourth of those produced in New York alone.
Geoffrey C. Ward, Ric Burns, Ken Burns, The Civil War,
An Illustrated History (New York: Alfred P. Knopf, 1990),
55.
Regional Economic
Development
North
(1,000s)
Border
states
(1,000s)
South
(1,000s)
Railroad
mileage
20 miles
1.7
9
Number
of
Factories
100.5
9.6
20.6
Value of
products
$2,500,000
$121,000
$155,000
Main Ideas:
Key Words:
Analysis:
Bank
$189,000
$18,000
$47,000
deposit
Border states, MD, KY, DE, MO. Bruce Catton, 79.
Regional Distribution of Wealth, 1850 (Values in millions)
Property
North
West
South
Value of
animals
Capital in
manufacture
Value in
railroads
Value of bank
capital
Real estate
$ 173.8
$ 112.6
$ 253.8
382.4
155.9
95
451.9
298.8
221.9
186.7
17
97.7
1,835
619.2
1,445
5
Personal
544.7
195.1
1,385.7 *
Property
*Includes value of slaves. Thomas P. Kettell,
Southern Wealth and Northern Politics (New York:
George W. and John A. Wood, 1860), 145.
Union
Confederacy Ratio
Total
71%
29%
2.4 to 1
population
Industrial 92%
8%
11.5 to 1
workers
Free
81%
19%
4.3 to 1
males
Wealth
75%
25%
3 to 1
produced
Factory
91%
9%
10.1 to 1
production
Textile
93%
7%
13.3 to 1
production
Firearms
97%
3%32.3 to 1
production
Railroad
71%
29%
2.4 to 1
mileage
Iron
94%
6%
15.7 to 1
production
Coal
97%
3%32.3 to 1
production
Livestock 60%
40%
1.5 to 1
Farm
75%
25%
3 to 1
acreage
Wheat
81%
19%
4.3 to 1
Corn
67%
33%
2 to 1
Cotton
-4%'
98%
1 to 24
Merchant 90%
10%
9 to 1
ship
tonnage
Naval ship 96%
4%24 to 1
tonnage
James L. Roark, 373.
6. Supplies. A Union army operating in enemy territory
averaged one wagon for every forty men and one horse or
mule (including cavalry and artillery horses) for every two
or three men. A campaigning army of 100,000 men
6
Main Ideas:
Key Words:
Analysis:
therefore required 2,500 supply wagons and at least
35,000 animals. It consumed 600 tons of supplies each
day. James M. McPherson, 325.
In business, the proportion of Yankees was three times as
great. Among engineers and inventors it was six times as
large. Nearly twice this percentage of northern youth
attended school. Almost half of the southern people
(including slaves) were illiterate, compared to 6 percent of
residents of free states. James M. McPherson, 40.
The Confederacy had only one-ninth the industrial
capacity of the Union. Northern states had manufactured
97 percent of the country's firearms in 1860, 94 percent of
its cloth, 93 percent of its pig iron, and more than 90
percent of the boots and shoes. James M. McPherson,
318.
By the mid-nineteenth century . . . no southern legislature
had created a statewide public school system. Dominant
slaveholders failed to see any benefit in educating small
farmers, especially with their tax money. Despite the
flurry of railroad building, the South's mileage in 1860
was less than half that of the North. Moreover, while
railroads crisscrossed the North carrying manufactured
goods as well as agricultural products, most railroads in
the South ran from port cities back into farming areas and
were built to export cotton. James L. Roark, 322.
In 1860, the federal Army numbered only 16,000 men,
most of them scattered over the West subjugating Indians.
One-third of the officers followed the example of the
Virginian Robert E. Lee, resigning their commissions and
heading south. The U.S. navy was in better shape. Fortytwo ships were in service, and a large merchant marine
would in time provide more ships and sailors for the
Union cause. Possessing a much weaker navy, the South
pinned its hopes on its armies. James L. Roark, 375.
7. Ordnance. The Confederacy made prodigious efforts
to build new factories to produce tents, blankets, shoes,
and its gray uniforms, but many rebel soldiers slept in the
open air without proper clothes and sometimes without
shoes. Even when factories managed to produce what the
soldiers needed, southern railroads often could not deliver
the goods. And each year more railroads were captured,
destroyed, or left in disrepair. Food production proved
7
Main Ideas:
Key Words:
Analysis:
less of a problem, but food sometimes rotted before it
reached the soldiers. The one bright spot was the
Confederacy's Ordnance Bureau, headed by Josiah Gorgas,
a near miracle worker when it came to manufacturing
gunpowder, cannon, and rifles. In April 1864, Gorgas
proudly observed: "Where three years ago we were not
making a gun, a pistol nor a saber no shot nor shell . . . -a
pound of powder-we now make all these in quantities to
meet the demands of our large armies." James L. Roark,
375.
Josiah Gorgas created a Mining and Niter Bureau. They
located lime caves containing saltpeter in the southern
Appalachians. They appealed to southern women to save
the contents of chamber pots to be leached for niter. They
built a huge gunpowder mill at Augusta, Georgia, which
began production in 1862. Ordnance officers roamed the
South buying or seizing stills for their copper to make rifle
percussion caps. They melted down church and plantation
bells for bronze to build cannons. James M. McPherson,
320.
Although the blockade stopped big arms shipments from
Europe in 1862, the Confederate ordnance service, under a
resourceful Pennsylvanian named Josiah Gorgas, was able
to keep the army so well supplied that the South never lost
a battle for want of ammunition. Samuel Eliot Morison,
616.
Gleaning the battlefields was one of the important duties
of the field ordnance officers. They were directed to save
everything, which they could be made of use. Of course
they took care of the good arms and good ammunition.
They also collected damaged arms, gun barrels, wasted
ammunition, lead, bayonets, and cartridge boxes. Over
twenty thousand damaged arms were sent to Richmond
arsenal. Henry Steele Commager, The Blue and the Gray
(New York: Fairfax Press, 1902), 94.
8. Southern Transportation. The South could produce
enough food to feed itself. The transport network, which
was adequate at the beginning of the war to distribute this
food, soon began to deteriorate because of a lack of
replacement parts. Nearly all of the rails had come from
the North or from Britain. Of 470 locomotives built in the
United States during 1860, only nineteen had been made
8
Main Ideas:
Key Words:
Analysis:
in the South. James M. McPherson, 318-319.
Southern transportation was the weakest point in the
Confederate economy. Yet the South in 1860 was as well
provided with railroads as the North. They encountered
many bottlenecks and even breaks, where goods had to be
transported by wagon from on station to another.
Congress appropriated money to construct missing links,
but little was accomplished. The few rolling mills and
foundries were too busy with government work to replace
worn out railway equipment. Main lines could be kept
going only by cannibalizing branch lines. Junctions
became congested with supplies, and breakdowns were
frequent. That is why a women's bread riot occurred in
Richmond in 1863 when the barns of the Shenandoah
Valley were bursting with wheat. Government clerks had
to pay $15 a bushel for corn that was bringing the farmer
only a dollar in southwestern Georgia. Samuel Eliot
Morison, 672.
It should be noted, however, that the principal cities and
staple-producing areas of the South were located on or
near navigable rivers, which made canals and railroads
less important than in the North. James M. McPherson,
91.
9. King Cotton. There was the possibility, Jefferson
Davis thought "the likelihood," that the powerful nations
of Europe would come to the Confederacy's side. Hungry
for cotton, they would welcome a tariff-free source. They
had the chance to cripple a strong competitor in the North.
This time, it would be not only France who would cross
the ocean to assist a new nation, but also Great Britain and
perhaps even czarist Russia. Robert Leckie, 114.
The South's confidence also rested on its belief that
northern prosperity depended on the South's cotton. It
followed then that without cotton, New England textile
mills would stand idle. And without southern planters
purchasing northern manufactured goods, northern
factories would drown in their own unsold goods. A
Virginian spoke for most Confederates when he declared
that in the South's ability to "withhold the benefits of our
trade, we hold a power over the North more powerful than
a powerful army in the field." James L. Roark, 373-4.
Cotton would also make Europe a powerful ally of the
9
Main Ideas:
Key Words:
Analysis:
Confederacy, Southerners reasoned. After all, 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, 374.
10. Cotton Diplomacy. King Cotton diplomacy failed
for several reasons. A bumper cotton crop in 1860 meant
that the warehouses of British textile manufacturers
bulged with surplus cotton through, 1861. When a cotton
shortage did occur, European manufacturers found new
source, Egypt and India. In addition, the development a
brisk trade between the Union and Britain--British war
materiel for American grain flour-helped offset the decline
in textiles encouraged Britain to remain neutral. Union
military successes in the West also made Britain France
think twice about linking their fates to Confederacy.
Finally in September 1862, five days after the Union
victory at Antietam, Lincoln announced a new policy that
made an alliance with the Confederacy an alliance with
slavery, an alliance the French and British were not
willing to make. James L. Roark, 380.
Had the South but known it, the second half of 1861 gave
her the best chance of victory. Cotton should have been
rushed to Europe, arms and munitions imported, and
Confederate finances put on a sound basis before the
Union blockade closed in. Instead, the Southern states,
faithful to the old Jefferson embargo theory, withheld
cotton believing that this would force Europe to break the
blockade. Samuel Eliot Morison, 629.
Eventually, 400,000 British mill workers were driven from
their jobs, starved of southern cotton. Geoffrey C. Ward,
108.
The European textile industry largely depended on
American cotton. But two important factors were
overlooked by plantation economists. In April 1861 there
was a 50 per cent oversupply both of the fiber and of
cotton cloth in the English market. The bumper cotton
crop of 1860, largely exported before the blockade, added
10
to the glut. The war enabled European cotton brokers to
work off surplus stock at inflated prices. Later they found
new sources of supply in Egypt and India. Samuel Eliot
Morison, 632.
Main Ideas:
11. Naval Blockade. The problem of blockading 3350
Key Words:
miles of Southern coastline, with 42 Northern ships,
Analysis:
seemed insoluble. These 42 ships were mostly steampropelled, none were armor plated. Samuel Eliot Morison,
642.
Secretary of the Navy, Gideon Welles, labored
unceasingly to build a new navy. The number of workers
in government navy yards increased, early in 1862, from
4,000 to 17,000. Over 200 vessels were built. Some 400
others were purchased. The Union navy grew from a
pathetic 90 ships in 1861 to 671 in December, 1864.
Bruce Catton, 185.
Year by year the naval blockade grew more successful as
the Union navy grew. By 1865 only one Confederate
blockade-runner in five was getting through. Joseph R.
Colin, Our Land, Our Time: A History of the United
States (San Diego, California: Coronado Publishers,
1987), 375.
No big modern war has been won without sea power.
Conversely, very few rebellions have succeeded without
acquiring sea power. The Thirteen Colonies could not
have won independence but for the help of the French
navy. The South American republics employed retired
British naval officers to build up fleets which challenged
Spain's. Samuel Eliot Morison, 642.
At the beginning of the war, the U.S. navy's blockade fleet
consisted of about three dozen ships to patrol more than
3,500 miles of southern coastline, and rebel merchant
ships were able to slip in and out of southern ports nearly
at will. Taking on cargoes in the Caribbean, sleek, fast
Confederate blockade runners brought in vital suppliesguns and medicine. But with the U.S. navy
commissioning a new blockader almost weekly the naval
fleet eventually numbered 150 ships on duty, and the
Union navy dramatically improved its score. James L.
Roark, 380.
The Confederacy never found a way to break the Union
blockade despite exploring many naval innovations
11
including a new underwater vessel-the submarine. Each
month the Union fleet tightened its noose. The growing
effectiveness of the federal blockade, a southern naval
officer observed, "shut the Confederacy out from the
world, deprived it of supplies, weakened military and
naval strength." By 1865, the blockaders were
intercepting about half of the southern ships attempting to
break through. James L. Roark, 380.
Main Ideas:
12. Northern Economy. The demands of war had
Key Words:
boosted the northern economy to new heights of
Analysis:
productivity. Iron production in the Union states was 29
percent higher in 1864 than for the whole country in the
previous record year of 1856. Coal production in the
North during the four war years was 21 percent greater
than in the highest four peacetime years for both North
and South. The amount of railroad traffic over existing
lines increased by 50 percent or more, absorbing the
excess capacity created by the railroad-building boom of
the 1850S. Traffic on the Erie Canal also increased by
more than 50 percent during the war. Despite a drastic
decline of 72 percent in the North’s leading industry,
cotton textiles, the overall manufacturing index stood 13
percent higher in 1864 for the Union states alone than for
the entire country in 1860. James M. McPherson, 816-7.
With all of this, the Northern farm belt not only met
wartime needs for food and fibers, but it also helped to
feed Great Britain. More than 40 per cent of the wheat
and flour imported into Great Britain came from the
United States. The country's wheat exports tripled during
the war, as if it was Northern wheat rather than Southern
cotton that was king. Bruce Catton, 394.
The need to build and fuel the Union war machine boosted
the economy. The Union sent nearly 2 million men into
the military and still increased production in almost every
area. But because the rewards and burdens of patriotism
were distributed unevenly, the North experienced sharp,
even violent, divisions. Workers confronted employers,
whites confronted blacks, and Democrats confronted
Republicans. Still, Northerners on the home front
remained fervently attached to the Union. James L.
Roark, 396.
12
13. Southern Economy. Two-thirds of assessed southern Main Ideas:
Key Words:
wealth vanished in the war. Southern agricultural and
Analysis:
manufacturing capital declined by 46 percent between
1860 and 1870, while northern capital increased by 50
percent. In 1860 the southern states had contained 30
percent of the national wealth; in 1870, only 12 percent.
Such were the economic consequences of the South's bid
for independence. James M. McPherson, 818-9.
Thus in the North, where an economy capable of
supporting a modern war was enormously expanded by
war’s stimulus. In the South the conditions were tragically
reversed. Instead of expanding under wartime pressures,
the Southern economy all but collapsed. Bruce Catton,
395.
When the war began, the United States had no national
banking system, no national currency, and no federal
income or excise taxes. But the secession of eleven slave
states cut the Democrats' strength in Congress in half and
destroyed their capacity to resist Republican economic
programs. The Legal Tender Act of February 1862
created a national currency, paper money that Northerners
called "greenbacks." With passage of the National
Banking Act in February 1863, Congress created a system
of national banks that by the 1870s had largely replaced
the antebellum system decentralized state banks.
Congress also acted a series of sweeping tax laws. By
revolutionizing the country's banking, monetary, and tax
structures, the Republicans generated enormous economic
power. James L. Roark, 386.
Main Ideas:
14. Wartime Finances. Recruiting and supplying huge
Key Words:
armies required enormous new revenues. At first, the
Analysis:
Union and the Confederacy sold war bonds, which
essentially were loans from patriotic citizens. In addition,
both sides turned to taxes. The North raised one-fifth of
its wartime revenue from taxes; the South raised only onetwentieth. Eventually, both began printing paper money.
Inflation soared, but the Confederacy suffered more
because it financed a greater part of its wartime costs
through the printing press. Prices in the Union rose by
about 80 percent during the war, while inflation in the
Confederacy topped 9,000 percent. James L. Roark, 375.
Paying for the war became the most difficult task. A flood
13
of paper money caused debilitating inflation. By 1863,
Charlestonians paid ten times more for food than they had
paid at the start of the war. By Christmas 1864, a
Confederate soldier's monthly pay no longer bought a pair
of socks. Despite bold measures, the Davis administration
failed to transform the agricultural economy into a modern
industrial one. The Confederacy never produced all that
the South needed. Each month, the gap between the
North's and the South's production widened. James L.
Roark, 383.
Main Ideas:
15. War and Social Class. When the Republicandominated Congress enacted the draft law in March 1863, Key Words:
Analysis:
Democrats had another grievance. The law required that
all men between the ages of twenty and forty-five enroll
and make themselves available for a lottery that would
decide who went to war. What poor men found
particularly galling were provisions that allowed a draftee
to hire a substitute or simply to pay a $300 fee and get out
of his military obligation. As in the South, common folk
could be heard chanting, "A rich man's war and a poor
man's fight." James L. Roark, 388.
Hardships on the home front fell most heavily on the poor.
Flour that cost three or four cents a pound in 1861 cost
thirty-five cents in 1863. The draft stripped yeoman farms
of men, leaving the women and children to grow what they
ate. Government agents took 10 percent of farm wives'
harvests as a "tax-in-kind" on agriculture. Like inflation,
shortages afflicted the entire population, but the rich lost
luxuries while the poor lost necessities. In the spring of
1863, bread broke out in a dozen cities and villages across
the South. In Richmond, a mob of nearly a thousand
hungry women broke into shops and took what they
needed. James L. Roark, 384.
"Men cannot be expected to fight for the Government that
permits their wives & children to starve," a southern
leader observed November 1862. While a few wealthy
individuals shared their bounty and the Confederate and
state governments made efforts at social welfare, every
attempt fell short. In late 1864, one desperate farm wife
told her husband: "I have always been proud of you, and
since your connection with the Confederate army, I have
been prouder of you than ever before. I would have you
14
do anything wrong for the world, but before God, Edward,
unless you come home, we must die." When the war
ended, one-third of the soldiers had already gone home. A
Mississippi deserter explained, "We are poor men and are
willing to defend our country but our families [come]
first." James L. Roark, 384.
Soldiers of the Seventh Tennessee Cavalry pose with their
slaves. Many slaveholders took "body servants" with
them to war. These slaves cooked, washed, and cleaned
for the white soldiers. In 1861, James H. Langhorne
reported to his sister: "Peter ... is charmed with being with
me & 'being a soldier.' I gave him my old uniform
overcoat & he says he is going to have his picture taken . .
. to send to the servants." Do you think Peter was "puttin'
on of massa" or just glad to be free of plantation labor?
James L. Roark, 384.
Yeomen perceived a profound inequality of sacrifice.
They called it "a rich man's war and a poor man's fight."
The draft law permitted a man who had money to hire a
substitute to take his place. Moreover, the "twenty-Negro
law" exempted one white man on every plantation with
twenty or more slaves. The government intended this law
to provide protection for white women and to see that
slaves tended the crops, but yeomen perceived it as rich
men evading military service. A Mississippian
complained that stay-at-home planters sent their slaves
into the fields to grow cotton while in plain view "poor
soldiers' wives are plowing with their own hands to make
a subsistence for themselves and children-while their
husbands are suffering, bleeding and dying for their
country." In fact, most slaveholders went off to war, but
the extreme suffering of common folk and the relative
immunity of planters fueled class animosity. James L.
Roark, 384-5.
15
Discussion
1. Three to One Advantage of the Defense
Over the Offense.
Compare Surface Area:
2. Exterior Lines vs. Interior Lines.
Manpower
Reinforcements.
3. Rivers
West to East - Hinder Attack
North to South - Help the Attack
16
Casualties in U.S. Wars
e:\history\three\casual.2w
Robert E. Lee
Wars
Branch of
service
Number
serving
Battle deaths
Revolutionary War
1775-1783
Total
Army
Navy &
Marines
0
184,000
*
250,000
6,824
5,992
*
832
War of 1812-1815
Total
Army
Navy
Marines
286,730
*
*
*
2,260
1,950
265
45
Mexican War 1846-1815
Total
Army
Navy
Marines
78,718
*
*
*
1,733
1,721
1
11
Civil War Union forces
1861-1865
Total
Army
Navy
Marines
2,213,363
2,128,948
*
84,415
140,414
138,154
2,112
148
Confederate forces
(estimate)
1863-1866
* Data not available
Total
Army
Navy
Marines
0
600,000
*
1,500,000
17
74,524
*
*
*
American Casualties.
e:\history\three\casual.4w
Abraham
Lincoln
War
Deaths
American Revolution, 1776
4,435
War of 1812
2,260
Mexican American, 1836
13,248
Spanish American, 1896
2,436
World War I, 1918
116,708
World War II, 1944
407,316
Korean War, 1950
54,246
Vietnam, 1960
55,000
Persian Gulf, 1994
Total
War
uk
655,594
Deaths
US Civil War, 1862
North
384,511
South
288,415
Civil War Total
672,926
All Other Wars
655,594
18