The Blue and the Gray

"The Surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia, April 12, 1865" by Ken Riley 1965.
Original at West Point
(Source)

Welcome to the third installment of Sarge's "Off the top of my head" History Lectures*...

This one should be interesting, although the war ended 153 years ago, it still evokes strong emotions in a lot of folks. Sadly, in a couple of generations it won't, as the schools don't really do a good job of teaching history any more.

Convince me I'm wrong...

In April of 1861, artillery around the periphery of Charleston Harbor, South Carolina, under the command of General P.G.T. Beauregard of the Confederate States Army began to fire upon Fort Sumter, a Federally controlled installation at the entrance to that harbor.

Tension within the young nation of the United States had been building since the 1850s with the bloody events in Kansas. Some say you can trace the issues which led to the war back to the Missouri Compromise of 1820.

The Missouri Compromise was the legislation that provided for the admission to the United States of Maine as a free state along with Missouri as a slave state, thus maintaining the balance of power between North and South in the United States Senate. As part of the compromise, slavery was prohibited north of the 36°30′ parallel, excluding Missouri. The 16th United States Congress passed the legislation on March 9, 1820, and President James Monroe signed it on March 6, 1820. (Source)

I would argue that you can find the causes for the Civil War** as far back as the American Revolution and the events leading up to the adoption of the Constitution. The power of the central government versus the powers of the individual states, the Federalists versus the Anti-Federalists.

Was the war about slavery or was it about states rights? In some senses both, in some senses neither, the war was really about power. Southern leaders were worried, quite rightly, that the rapidly growing North would eventually leave them virtually powerless in Washington D.C., the seat of the Federal government. While admitting states one for one (one free for one slave) would keep a balance in the Senate, as the North's population increased, Northern representation in the House would necessarily increase so that the South would have little power in that arena. Is that a big deal?

The House is charged with the passage of federal legislation, known as bills, which, after concurrence by the Senate, are sent to the President for consideration. In addition to this basic power, the House has certain exclusive powers which include the power to initiate all bills related to revenue, the impeachment of federal officers, who are sent to trial before the Senate, and in cases wherein no candidate receives a majority of electors for President, the duty falls upon the House to elect one of the top three recipients of electors for that office, with one vote given to each state for that purpose. (Source)

Why yes, yes it is.

Now I learned as a kid that the South was primarily agricultural and most of the Nation's heavy industry was located in the North. Which was accurate to a certain extent. There was industry in the South and there was also lots of agriculture in the North. A key factor, if it came to war (which it did), was railroad mileage. The North had lots of it, the South, a lot less.

The Civil War** is considered by many historians to be the first "modern" war. The use of railroads to move men and supplies and the use of trenches (later in the war) lead them down that path. In my book, a modern war is the one you're fighting right now. There was no war like the Civil War, every war introduces new technology, World War I was modern at the time, ditto the Second World War. In fact, I would argue that no war is "like" another except that people die, stuff gets destroyed, and somebody gets more power at the end.

The little guy always, always, always gets screwed. Only the new guys in power benefit.

All that aside, here's what I know about the Civil War**, off the top of my head.

The Confederates, as they liked to call themselves, (the North called them rebels) bombarded Fort Sumter. South Carolina had seceded from the United States and they considered Fort Sumter to be both a threat to South Carolina and the rightful property of South Carolina. At any rate, this started the shooting war. Fort Sumter surrendered rather promptly as their position was unsustainable. The fort had been designed and built to keep a seaborne enemy out of Charleston (a place the British attacked twice during the Revolution), not to keep South Carolinians in.

I need to backtrack at this point and describe the parlous state of the United States Army at this time. Many of its southern-born officers had resigned their commissions and returned to their home state, Robert E. Lee being one of the most famous, leaving many units with fewer officers than required to keep all of us rapscallion enlisted in line. In December of 1860, the Army was authorized a strength of 18,000 officers and men,slightly more than 16,100 were actually on the roles. Small army, big war coming.

As far as the South goes, they didn't really have an army, rather what they had were a number of state militia units. These came together to form armies. The North had a similar setup, the states providing troops with equipment and some training. Both sides were composed of very amateurish units. Which first clashed in Northern Virginia near a creek named Bull Run, not far from Manassas. Where my great-grandfather, serving in the 22nd New York Infantry, was captured. He was later paroled.

The battle itself was a messy affair, at one point the North nearly won, then the South managed to stand their ground as reinforcements arrived and the Union Army broke, fleeing the field. (This is the battle where Thomas Jackson received his nickname "Stonewall." Legend has it that Southern General Barnard Bee rallied his troops by gesturing towards Jackson's brigade and shouting out that they stood like a stonewall. Some have conjectured that Bee was not complimenting Jackson but was insulting him. Not standing strong like a stonewall, immovable, impregnable, but immobile like a stonewall, not moving to Bee's assistance as his unit was being chewed up. As Bee was mortally wounded there, no one was able to get him to clarify exactly what he meant. At least that's the story I heard in my impressionable youth.)

This battle also established the custom of the two sides calling the same battle  by two different names. Not always, but a lot. To the North this battle was the Battle of Bull Run, to the South it was the Battle of Manassas. Later (after a second battle fought in that same area, which the North again managed to lose) they added the word "First" to the name of that battle. Of course, at the time they didn't call it that as they had no idea that they would do it again later. (Same with World War I, they didn't call it that at the time. It was simply "The World War," or "The Great War," or "The War to End All Wars." The first was accurate, the second was "great" as in "big" and the third was a pipe dream.)

Something I should point out right now, when I was young we learned that the South had the better officers. Looking at the North's record in the field, at least in the East, up until 1863, you had to believe it. They lost damned near every time. Was it that the North's generals were so bad (in the case of McClellan, Hooker, and Burnside, they were really, really bad, more on McClellan in a minute) or that the Army of Northern Virginia was led by some very outstanding officers.

Probably a little of both.

Also note that the main Southern force in the East was named after a place, as they named the battles. The North liked naming their armies after rivers, the main Northern force in the East going by the name Army of the Potomac. They also went with the names of rivers or creeks with some battles. I think the battle name hinges more on what was being fought over as opposed to where the battle was fought. For instance, Bull Run divided the battlefield and the North considered that significant. The same applies to what the North called the Battle of Antietam, and the South called Sharpsburg. Antietam Creek was a significant feature of that battlefield, the nearby town of Sharpsburg wasn't all that significant.

The Battle of Shiloh (a place) is also called The Battle of Pittsburg Landing, though I can't find any reference to one side preferring one name over the other. A good article about the names of battles (and the war itself) can be found here. (Heck I'll reference anything which cites Shelby Foote as a source.)

So it can get confusing talking about battles when you're talking with someone from the opposite region of the conflict.

Be that as it may, in the East the North was consistently getting their asses kicked. George McClellan (mentioned above) was a brilliant organizer. He built the Army of the Potomac into a well equipped, well trained fighting force. Too bad the "Napoleon of the West" did not know how to fight (he did invent a very nice cavalry saddle) and he also relied on the Pinkertons for his intelligence on the Army of Northern Virginia. They consistently overestimated Southern strength leading Little Mac (another of his many nicknames) to constantly tell Lincoln that he needed more troops. To his credit he managed not to lose the Battle of Antietam, more on that in a bit.

Eventually he was fired, to be replaced by two other inept army commanders in turn: Burnside and Hooker. Neither of whom was very good at producing victories, though both are somewhat famous for lending their names to two very modern things. Sideburns are named after Ambrose Burnside, can you guess why?

The rest of Burnside's military career showed him to be a useful general, just not at the army level. He was governor of Little Rhody once upon a time and actually died in Bristol, the Sarge's current place of residence.

As for Joseph "Fighting Joe" Hooker, legend has it that we get the term "hooker" from the general's reputation as a ladies man and a party animal. Turns out though that the term precedes the general's fame in the war. Dates back to 1835 I think. Nice story though.

"Fighting Joe" (who was anything but) was fired after the Battle of Chancellorsville, where Robert E. Lee divided his army against the vastly larger Army of the Potomac and managed to beat them. Mostly through Hooker's lack of talent as an army commander. He did continue to serve and, like Burnside, was an adequate general.

Now out West there were a number of Northern generals who were pretty good leaders and damned tenacious fighters: Grant, Sherman, Thomas, Sheridan and others. Ulysses S. Grant (known as Sam to his friends) was the best of the lot. He was a West Point graduate who had fought in Mexico (along with many of the Civil War's** big names) and had a good record there. After the war he was stationed in the northwest where he missed his family terribly and probably drank too much. He got out of the army and became a civilian, which he sucked at.

When the war started he joined a state unit and worked his way up. His nickname out West was "Unconditional Surrender" Grant for when asked for terms by the defeated commander of Fort Donelson, he allegedly responded that "unconditional surrender" were the only terms he would offer. Like many cool things I learned as a kid, that story is probably apocryphal, invented by some journalist. (Things haven't changed much, have they?)

At any rate, Grant was doing well out in the Western Theater, which I should mention was fought for control of the Mississippi River. The idea was split Texas and Arkansas off from the rest of the Confederacy by seizing that river and the port of New Orleans, which would also pretty much take Louisiana out as well. (The Eastern Theater was always about taking Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy. Later on everyone kind of realized that if you beat the Army of Northern Virginia, Richmond was yours for the taking.)

Anyhoo, the big stumbling block to the campaign out west was a General by the name of Henry Halleck, nicknamed "Old Brains" Halleck. He had been in charge of that theater until recalled to Washington to be the General-in-Chief of all the Northern armies. The successes of his subordinates were the reason for the success of the Western armies, not Halleck. He pretty much hamstrung Grant for quite a while. (Grant eventually replaced Halleck in as General-in-Chief.)

Now on the southern side Robert E. Lee is perhaps the most famous southern general, just about everyone knows of him. He didn't start the war in command of the Army of Northern Virginia.  In face he had been offered the command of the United States Army before Virginia seceded from the Union. When it went, so did Lee.

At first he served as Jefferson Davis' (President of the Confederacy) chief military adviser. From what I remember, Davis didn't listen to Lee as much as he should have, Davis was also a West Pointer and considered himself something of a military expert. He wasn't.

Lee was initially mocked in the South as the "King of Spades" due to his insistence on building entrenchments to defend the capital and to defend the Peninsula. Eventually he got out from under Davis' thumb and took command of the Army of Northern Virginia.

He kept the Federals away from Richmond but the problem was that the war was being fought on southern soil, the South was getting pretty torn up, especially Northern Virginia. The invasion into Maryland was the first attempt by the Confederates to carry the war onto Northern soil (though many Marylanders considered themselves Southerners, Maryland was, after all,  a slave state). It failed at Antietam Creek with Little Mac still nominally in command. Wasn't much commanding going on, but the boys in blue stood their ground against everything the Rebs threw at them. In truth they outlasted the South. It was a bloodbath. (Burnside had a bridge named after him there, which he kept throwing troops at. Accomplishing little except getting a lot of men killed.)

The second attempt, at Gettysburg, failed spectacularly. Lee moved his army into Pennsylvania. He had expected his cavalry (under J.E.B Stuart) to screen the army and prevent the Federals from knowing what was going on. Instead Stuart went for headlines and Lee's army stumbled into the Army of the Potomac, now commanded by General George Meade (replacing Hooker).

From that point onward it was a defensive war for the South, a war that they could only win by exhausting the North's will to continue. Something they came very close to doing. They also hoped for recognition by Britain and France, and perhaps assistance from them. (The Brits did provide some assistance, but nothing decisive.)

Outright recognition of the Confederate States was never really realistic. Europeans didn't think much of slavery, and after realizing that they could get all the cotton they wanted from Egypt, they didn't need Southern cotton either (which was pretty much the main product of the South).

On the day Lee began to retreat from Pennsylvania after his defeat at Gettysburg, Grant captured the key city of Vicksburg. For all intents and purposes, the Mississippi River was now controlled by the United States from Minnesota to the sea (New Orleans having been captured as well, when I don't remember).

Because of his successes in the West, Lincoln brought Grant east to be General-in-Chief, the commander of all Federal armies. Grant wasn't a man to sit in Washington behind a desk, he joined the Army of the Potomac in the field and stayed with them until Lee's surrender. George Meade retained command of that Army but can you imagine having the boss looking over your shoulder, day and night?

Much bloody fighting remained after Gettysburg, but in truth, the South was defeated in the month of July 1863, they just wouldn't admit it. They kept fighting. Grant's strategy was to grind the South down, he wasn't interested in seizing territory, he wanted to destroy the Southern military. At this point in the war, that meant the Army of Northern Virginia.

While fighting continued in the West, General William T. Sherman commanding, it was a sideshow compared to the East. Eventually Sherman broke the rebel armies he faced and cut a path of destruction across Georgia to the sea and then north through the Carolinas. Northerners had a special hatred for South Carolina, they really blamed that state for the whole war. Unfair perhaps, but South Carolina paid as steeply as Georgia. (As an aside, this old Yankee loves South Carolina, especially Charleston, a lovely city.)

Grant continued to pound Lee's army, many thought Grant had no finesse, that he just threw bodies at the rebel earthworks, and sometimes that was the case. But Grant also knew that the longer the war lasted, the more men would die, better to press and lose some men then let the war drag on and lose many thousands more.

Eventually the Army of Northern Virginia was cornered, worn down, and out of options. No food, no ammunition, and no hope of withdrawing southward where Lee had hoped to join up with Joe Johnston's army. But the Federals had him cornered and his men were quitting, just going home or crossing the lines to surrender, in the hopes of getting something to eat mostly. Many of his troops had been marching and fighting for days without any rations to speak of, the troops were tired, they'd had enough.

Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Court House in April of 1865. At the place where the Army of Northern Virginia would lay down their arms and disband, the Federal commander on scene, one Major General Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, ordered his troops to present arms, saluting their defeated foe. Which the southerners returned the favor. The war was all over bar the shouting, Johnston surrendered later in April. The last southern force of any size surrendered in May. But with Lee's surrender, it was over.

Much agony ensued in the South. Lincoln's plan to "let 'em up easy" died when he did. Vindictive Northern politicians wanted to make the South "pay." (Into their pockets and their relatives' pockets no doubt. Again, things don't change much do they.)

The freedmen were screwed by both the North and the South, the reverberations of that are still affecting us today. But the shooting war ended in 1865.

The Union was preserved, and to my way of thinking, that's the most important take-away. The writings of some authors of historical fiction notwithstanding, a divided Union would probably have led to an Allied defeat in World War I. Though that might have prevented the rise of Hitler, Stalin would still have come along and he was a bigger bastard than Hitler. Ask the kulaks.

Just my opinion though. I'm glad we're now all one Nation. Anyone who wants to divide us now, should just go to Hell and be done with it.

One afterthought, what the South was fighting for, State Rights, really hamstrung them in the end. Jefferson Davis tried to build a strong central government, the states wanted no part of that. While the Army of Northern Virginia struggled to find enough food, some southern governors withheld supplies, munitions, and men "just in case the Federals showed up."

The lack of a strong central government in the American Revolution almost scuttled that endeavor. It was, in my estimation, a major cause of the defeat of the Confederacy. If not the key factor.

We're still trying to find the right balance between the power of the central government and the powers of the individual states.




As to what to call the war? This is interesting. (it's behind a pay wall, but you get four free reads.)




* Meaning which, I don't do a lot of research before writing, picture me answering a question about a topic while sitting down, face to face, avec moi, perhaps over an adult-type beverage. Hopefully which the questioner is buying. (Hint.) Reader suggestions for future topics along these lines are welcome. Of course, the post might wind up being. "Hhmm, I know next to nothing about that." Hey, it happens.
** Insert whatever you like to call it here in place of "Civil War."