Download 33. 1861 to 1862 Stalemate

1861 to 1862 Stalemate
Stalemate is a curious end to a chess match when neither player can win. For two
years, the “kings” of the United States of America and the Confederate States of America
found themselves in this awkward position. Abraham Lincoln, the new president of the
USA, said, “The United States of America will constitutionally defend and maintain
itself.” In his turn, CSA President Jefferson Davis said, “Our career of independence
must be inflexibly pursued.” Confederates called Union soldiers, “Yankees,” after the
Indian word Yengeese which was the best they could make back in colonial days of “ the
English.” Union soldiers simply referred to Confederates as “Rebels.”
An eerie sameness manifested itself between the combatants. Both the CSA and
the USA faced similar problems and resorted to the same means to combat them. Both
countries raised and equipped armies identically. They resorted to identical means to
finance the war. They conducted diplomacy identically, and the Confederate
Constitution copied that of the USA with minor exceptions. The CSA, amazingly,
limited the power of states by installing a permanent federal government just as the
United States had back in 1789. This central government was originally located in
Montgomery, Alabama by February, 1861, and for reasons that might become obvious
later, it would have done well to stay there. Other differences in the Confederate
Constitution included a line item veto for a 6-year president, and “the right of property in
negro slaves.”
Jefferson Davis delivered his Inaugural Address in the style of the Declaration of
Independence, listing grievances. Lincoln’s first and second Inaugural Addresses are
among the most exemplary pieces of American rhetoric. In his first, he pledged not to
invade the South, he downplayed sectionalism, and he urged union. These pleasantries
were balanced by firm notice that if there were a civil war, it would forever be blamed on
the South. You’ll see how he made sure that was true in a moment.
The CSA had to answer the momentous question—how do you start a
government? A key question was whether or not the laws and precedents from the USA
before 1861 would still pertain to them. There was even debate about a new flag for the
Confederacy. Some Rebel leaders wanted to keep the Stars and Stripes and let the North
find a new flag design. When it came to securing leaders of the CSA, only secessionists
could apply. My own unionist Tennessee ancestor was chased from his home in East
Tennessee and later put in jail. Dewitt Clinton Senter later became the Governor of
Tennessee during Reconstruction and forgave his enemies. More on him, later. Neither
unionists nor Southern “fire-eaters” were trusted with office. These restrictions narrowed
the choice, and Jefferson Davis also insisted on having one representative in his Cabinet
from each of the seven original Confederate states except for his own state of Mississippi.
Therefore, no outstanding men were placed in positions of responsibility. A rather telling
fact is that the CSA Secretary of Treasury had to pay to furnish his own office with his
own money.
Lincoln had a start that was little better. The USA was demoralized, of course, by
secession, and the Army was not prepared to fight what would become the first modern
war in world history. Only 14,657 men were in the ranks, and officers were daily
defecting to the South. Lincoln’s election marked the rise to power of a new political
party, so he was plagued from the beginning by job seekers as Andrew Jackson’s spoils
system delivered the spoils to a new victor. Two of Lincoln’s Cabinet members, at least,
both thought they would make a better president than Lincoln and vied for power.
William H. Seward, the Secretary of State, and Salmon P. Chase, the Secretary of
Treasury, both thought Lincoln was a country bumpkin and were not subtle about it.
Lincoln’s immediate problem was that seven states had seceded and four more
were about to, including Tennessee and Virginia. Five Border States are largely
forgotten for the danger they posed to the Union. Border States were the states,
obviously, between the CSA and the USA, but all of them originally permitted slavery.
Lincoln was convinced that if he lost them, the South would win its independence, and
modern historians agreed with him. Lincoln therefore had to speak delicately about
slavery in order to woo them. Had these states seceded, they would have increased the
population and manufacturing capacity of the CSA dramatically. Certain rivers would
have fallen completely into Rebel hands. West Virginia seceded from Virginia and
entered the Union as a free state in 1863, but all the rest required some level of military
occupation in order to keep them. In this regard, not counting twenty others, Lincoln’s
insight is single-handedly responsible for saving the country long enough for it to become
a nation.
Contrary to popular belief, Ft. Sumter was not the first federal installation fired
upon by the Rebels. Ft. Pickens in Pensacola, Florida, actually saw the first exchange of
fire, but the battle ended in a truce. Ft. Sumter, in Charleston Harbor in South Carolina,
was intolerable to Southern pride since it guarded the entrance to the state that seceded
first. Only seventy-nine Union men manned the fort, and the South urged Jefferson
Davis to take it. Lincoln had to display his will in order to keep it, and tried many
options, but Major Anderson, the commander of the fort, said he’d starve by August 15.
Lincoln therefore sent a supply ship after notifying the CSA that it was not a warship.
Jefferson Davis ordered Ft. Sumter taken on April 12, 1861, at 4:30 a. m. Lincoln could
always say from that point on that the Rebels started the war, a moral high ground he
would never relinquish. He asked the North to provide 75,000 volunteers to put down the
rebellion in the South. The Confederate States of America declared war on the United
States of America on May 6, 1861.
A second wave of four states seceded from the Union after Ft. Sumter fell. With
this wave, most members of the five civilized nations of Indians in the Oklahoma
Territory sided with the Confederacy. Many of the Choctaws, Chickasaws, Creeks,
Seminoles, and Cherokee owned black slaves. The second secession doubled the
population of the Confederacy. It brought in the only factories capable of making iron
implements, cannon, and gunpowder in quantity. The capital of the CSA was then
moved to Richmond, Virginia. The rest of the war saw the Confederates obsessed with
defending Richmond even to the point of letting the West of their country go. Richmond
and Washington, DC are only a little over 100 miles apart. This fact is the chief reason
Virginia is the state that saw most of the fighting of any during the war.
The volunteers that answered the call of both countries to fight ordinarily enlisted
with local regiments, which meant you went to war with your neighbors and buddies.
Prominent politicians would initiate the formation of each regiment. At first, different
uniforms were issued, sometimes none. Different weapons were issued, including even
old flintlock rifles. A regiment was given a farewell ceremony where speeches and
prayers inspired them, and wives of officers kissed their husbands’ cavalry sabers. The
regiment received its regimental flag and went off to war. Both governments were
flooded by volunteers. Amazingly, the CSA turned away 200,000 volunteers at first.
An immense boost to the American economy and the industrial revolution
occurred with army contracts for arms, ammunition, uniforms, horses, food, medical
supplies, tents, boots, etc.—yet corruption was afoot. General John C. Fremont
contracted for 411 horses in Missouri. 350 were undersized, under- or over-aged, lame,
or blind. Five were dead.
Soldiers in both armies were in for a shock. They expected service to be like
serving in the militia with the thought that war was fun—a frolic or a lark with a little
drill mixed in with heavy drinking. The reality of being a soldier included discipline,
spit-and-polish cleaning of equipment, and hours of drill learning how to handle
weapons, march, advance, and retreat. A soldier’s life in any army has been described as
monotony interrupted by brief, intense terror. Exposure to all weather accompanied all
manner of intestinal diseases. Disease, in fact, killed as many during the Civil War as
bullets and cannon shot. Within one year, both armies began to lose spirit and numbers
through desertion, a crime punishable by death.
Edwin Stanton, Lincoln’s new Secretary of War, ended corruption by hearing all
business for Army procurement in open, public meetings where contractors had to
announce their prices aloud. Stanton quickly made the Union Army the best supplied in
the world. The Confederate Army improved, too. The CSA began the war with about
twenty rounds of ammo for each rifle. Keep in mind that a well-trained soldier could
load and fire that amount in twenty minutes. By 1862, though, factories in the South
were capable of supplying 400,000 men with ammunition each year.
One final note on supplying men for the army—the first conscription law, or
draft, in US history was imposed by the CSA since the initial troops were done after 12
months. On April 16th, 1862 all men from age 18-35 were subject to the draft except for
druggists, professionals, planters and overseers from plantations with twenty or more
slaves, and (you guessed it) politicians. The Confederate Army encouraged the troops
from the first year of the war to re-enlist by allowing them to stay with their original
regiments but to elect new officers. If they did not re-enlist, they were subject to the draft
and might have to fight in a new regiment in some branch of the Army far away. Union
Army volunteers slowed after 1862, a year of mostly Confederate victories. Lincoln
needed 300,000 new men. The USA first passed a law empowering the President to
establish quotas from each state to encourage enlistment by choice rather than by force.
Ultimately, however, the Union Army also resorted to a draft.