The Civil War, 1861-1862
1861
By February of 1861 the Confederate States of America had been organized with their capital at Montgomery, Alabama, though it would later be moved to the larger city of Richmond. Jefferson Davis was sworn in as provisional first president, the Confederate Constitution was written, a cabinet was formed and the new government began to function, all within three months of the event that precipitated the action, the election of Abraham Lincoln as president.
All those events occurred before Abraham Lincoln left Illinois. President Buchanan did his best to hold things together, but obviously a crisis was at hand, and the new president would have to deal with it. As Lincoln made his way slowly from Springfield to Washington via New York State, he was met by well-wishers along the way—including a little girl who had urged him to grow beard to hide his ugliness—and he eventually was smuggled into Washington in the middle of the night, since the city found itself in the midst of Confederate sympathizers.
President Lincoln took office facing an unprecedented Constitutional dilemma—and the Constitution offered no guidance on how to confront the crisis. Lincoln put together a balanced cabinet, headed by William Seward, who hoped to conciliate the South, and Salmon Chase, who was a spokesman for abolitionists. The president’s problem was how to enforce the Constitution—the Supreme Law of the Land—without being accused of starting a war. His dilemma lay in the fact that if he ignored southern occupation of Federal territory he would be, in effect, recognizing their right to do so. On the other hand, the Confederacy also faced a dilemma—if it allowed President Lincoln to treat what they considered former Federal property as still belonging to the United States, then they would be acknowledging, in effect, that they were not sovereign over such territory and were therefore not fully independent.
Fort Sumter, April 12, 1861
Since South Carolina was the first state to secede, Lincoln decided to focus his attention on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor. President Lincoln’s decision to re-supply the fort with an unarmed vessel shifted the dilemma to the Confederacy. If the Confederate government, acting through the state of South Carolina, allowed a union vessel to enter the harbor to re-supply the fort, it would be acknowledging that it lacked full sovereignty over its own territory. If, on the other hand, the South were to use force to prevent the fort from being re-supplied by firing on an unarmed ship, then they would be held guilty of firing the shot that started the war.In the end that is what happened.
Lincoln’s decision to send a ship full of provisions but without armament to supply the hungry garrison led the Confederate Government to decide that it could not allow what it deemed a foreign country to enter its territory without permission, and thus General P.G.T. Beauregard was ordered not to allow the resupply to take place, and to fire on Fort Sumter. Lincoln positioned the Confederacy in such a way that they were obliged to fire the first shot on the American flag, which occurred in April 12, 1861.
The Confederates shelled Fort Sumter for several hours, causing much damage but no serious casualties, and the Commander, Major Anderson, surrendered the fort the next day. Lincoln then called for 75,000 3-month volunteers to end the “Insurrection.” This caused four upper South slave states to secede: North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee and Arkansas. Southerners considered Lincoln’s call an act of aggression that denied them their right to self-determination. In Lincoln’s view secession was undemocratic because it challenged the results of a freely held election. In 1861, northerners were committed to saving the Union, not to freeing the slaves. The fact that the South had fired on the United States flag was enough to send thousands of young men to volunteer to fight for the Union.
Both sides expected a short war—neither was prepared for a drawn-out conflict.Both Yankees and Confederates expected it to be over in a matter of weeks. One southerner held up a handkerchief and declared he would be able to soak up all the blood that would be shed with that single piece of cloth.
April 19 Blockade. Lincoln proclaimed a blockade of the Southern coastline but faced a legal dilemma: how to avoid recognizing the South as a belligerent power. Lincoln was concerned over possible British responses and did not want to influence her position away from that of neutrality; Lincoln’s hope was that because Great Britain was the world’s leading naval power and relied on blockades as a war measure, she would recognize the Union blockade. In addition, Lincoln and Seward were concerned about other international responses, but it was likely that most nations would follow Great Britain's lead. Lincoln’s overriding diplomatic challenge was to keep the South isolated. Foreign intervention on behalf of the South would certainly aid the South's quest for independence.
The Blue and the Gray
Historians have argued for years about possible outcomes of the Civil War. A consensus has been reached among many historians that because of the substantial difference in resources available to the North and the South, the North was bound to win. The North’s larger population, its wealth and industrial power, and the fact that the Union government already had relations with other nations all seemed to some to make the outcome a foregone conclusion. It should be remembered, however, that relative to the North, the Confederacy had far more resources available in its situation than the Patriots had in 1775.
In addition it should be noted that the North and South had different objectives: the North had to pursue an aggressive strategy, for it could not force the Confederate states back into the Union without invading the South and winning a decisive victory. The South, on the other hand, did not really need a total victory—a draw would suffice.It just needed to keep the war going until the North ran out of patience and resources. (The outcomes of the American Revolution and the Vietnam War both suggest that victory can be achieved in various ways; the British were not driven out of North America, nor were the Americans driven out of Vietnam.)
The Union strategy initially conceived by General Winfield Scott sought to divide and conquer the South. He envisioned a complete blockade of the South by hemming the Confederate states in on both land and sea and then forcing them to a position where surrender was the only option. The press derided Scott's plan and dubbed it the “Anaconda Plan.”The main points of Scott’s strategy included a blockade of the Confederate coastline, controlling the Mississippi and cutting off Southern use of the waterway, seizing the capital of Richmond, and as the war progressed, dividing the Confederacy along a line through Georgia. The Northern press, however, called for an “On to Richmond!”approach, thinking that a swift attack would bring quick victory.
President Lincoln was also concerned with keeping other nations out of the conflict and keeping the remaining border states, especially Kentucky in Maryland, in the Union. (Lincoln no doubt had in mind the fact that without French assistance, the American Revolution might have ended differently.)
The Confederate strategy as initially mapped out and, to some extent put into practice, though not successfully, was to take Washington and advance into Maryland and Pennsylvania, cutting the Northeast off from the rest of the nation. The South also sought foreign assistance, especially from Great Britain, and believed that cotton was “king,” and that British dependence on Southern cotton would cause her to intervene and assist the South.For a variety of reasons Great Britain did not follow that course, not wanting, among other things, to cut herself off from Northern grain supplies.Alternative sources of cotton (Egypt and India) were also a factor. The South also sought to defend its homeland with aggressive tactics, which eventually proved very costly.
Northern advantages were fairly obvious: a larger population, greater industrial capacity, better railroad system, control of the Navy, an established government with diplomatic ties to other nations, and a mature political organization. Northern disadvantages included the fact that the United States Army was small and mostly confined to the Western theaters. President Lincoln knew little of warfare or foreign affairs, though he was a quick study.
Southern advantages were perhaps less obvious but nonetheless real: The South had interior lines, meaning they could shift forces more rapidly than the Union; northern business interests were tied to the South; the South had outstanding military leaders, including President Jefferson Davis, a West Point graduate and Mexican war veteran who had served as U.S. secretary of war. The South could take advantage of their defensive position, and they had a more homogenous population. Southern disadvantages included the fact that the states’ rights philosophy tended to hamper unity; furthermore, President Davis was politically handicapped by a one-party system which did not provide for a “loyal opposition.”
The Balance: Southern problems included the fact that the Confederate government had to be created—they had plenty of experienced leaders, but basic the machinery had to be established. Post offices and such continued to function, but government offices, clerks, etc., needed to be organized.
The war was fought in two theaters, East and West, but the Washington-Richmond line became the main line of concern. There was also significant action on lesser fronts such as the trans-Mississippi area, the Southern coasts and on the high seas, where the war was fought by cruisers, raiders, and blockade runners. Although Scott’s “Anaconda Plan” was scorned, it eventually won the war.
First battle of Bull Run/Manassas. July 21, 1861.
Although numerous skirmishes broke out in border areas dividing the union and the Confederacy, the first relatively large battle was fought less than 25 miles from Washington. The opening weeks of the war were unsettling for President Lincoln, as significant numbers of troops were slow to arrive in Washington. Part of the difficulty lay in the fact that Maryland was a slave state and several units had to actually fight their way through Baltimore in order to get to the nation's capital. Alternative routes were eventually established, and by June a number of regiments had begun to assemble.
Union commander, General Irvin McDowell, realizing that his troops had had little training, was reluctant to take them into battle. President Lincoln pointed out, however, that the Southern troops and had no more training than the Union men, and he urged McDowell to begin to move. On July 21, McDowell's 30,000 men advanced towards the Confederate positions along Bull Run Creek near Manassas. The march out from Washington revealed that federal troops were poorly trained—they lacked water discipline and otherwise showed that they were not a highly trained military organization.The Confederates, waiting in defensive positions, were perhaps better prepared as they had time to establish their defenses.
As the realities of war had not yet sunk in on either population, spectators from both Washington and Richmond traveled to the battle site in carriages and other conveyances in order to observe the action, as if it were some sort of sporting event. They soon discovered that the confrontation was not a game.
The Confederates waiting for the Yankees were under the command of General P.G.T. Beauregard, who had fired the first shot at Fort Sumter. General McDowell’s battle plan was reasonable, but it depended upon Confederate reinforcements being blocked and other secondary actions that did not turn out as hoped. The fighting started fairly early and for much of the day, the Union troops fought well, but as the day wore on and the heat intensified and casualties mounted, the resolve of the Federal soldiers finally broke, and as individual fighting men began to scurry from the battlefield, they were pursued by officers on horseback and shouting at them to return.
Those actions were misinterpreted by others within a view of those scenes, who thought a general retreat had been ordered. The result was that more soldiers joined the hasty, ill-organized retreat until the entire Union force was heading back for Washington, discarding weapons and equipment along the way. Meanwhile, the spectators who had come out in carriages with spy-glasses and picnic lunches to observe and the day's activities joined the panicky retreat, as wagon master’s and swearing teamsters added to the din and confusion. The scene was later reported in detail by British journalist William Howard Russell, veteran writer of the Crimean War, who was thereafter known as “Bull Run Russell.”
The Confederate rebel yell had supposedly unnerved the Union troops, but when President Jefferson Davis urged his commanders to pursue the fleeing Yankees, it was discovered that they were just as disorganized as the Union troops and did not follow up on their action.The battle was clearly a defeat for the Union, but it was far from being decisive.
In the end, the importance of the Battle of Bull Run is that it generated a considerable amount of confidence in the Confederate soldiers, who came to believe that their fierce rebel yell and their undaunted courage would carry the day in any battle against even a superior sized Union force.That overconfidence was to cost the Confederates dearly over the next few years. On the Union side, those who had been predicting and hoping for a quick, decisive victory had been substantially disillusioned.Union leaders from President Lincoln on down began to realize that they needed to dig in for the long haul and prepare for a lengthy contest.It was not going to be over quickly.Thus the Battle of Bull Run was a wake-up call for the Union which, at the same time, bred a dangerous sense of overconfidence in the Confederates.
General McDowell was relieved of his command and was replaced by perhaps the most controversial Union General of the war, General George B. McClellan. McClellan had had moderate success in western Virginia with a force of 20,000 troops and had won a battle at Philippi on June 3. Much of McClellan's success, however, had been attributable to his subordinates;“Little Mac,” as his own best press secretary, sent glowing reports of his achievements to Washington, and President Lincoln, beginning what would be a long a frustrating search to find a competent general to lead his eastern armies, gave commend of the army in Washington to McClellan, soon known as the “Young Napoleon.”
As McClellan busied himself reorganizing the Union Army, the Union suffered another defeat at the Battle of Ball’s Bluff above Washington. Former U.S. Senator Col. Edward D. Baker made several tactical blunders which led to the decimation of Union forces. Repercussions included the forming of a congressional Committee on the Conduct of the War.
As the two sides continued to organize their armies and train enlistees who flocked to the Union and Confederate colors, little major action occurred on land for the remainder of 1861. In November federal naval forces captured Port Royal, South Carolina, as part of the effort to establish a blockade around the Confederacy. In that regard relations with England were to become the most critical, since the Union blockade during the opening months of the war was mostly a paper blockade. (In order for a naval blockade to be legal under international law, it had to be enforced with naval vessels on the scene.) The Union advantage in this regard was that Great Britain, as a maritime nation, had depended heavily on blockades in the past and would likely continue to do so into the future; thus Great Britain tended to over look the weakness of the Union blockade of the South.
The Trent Affair. Relations between the two nations took a sour turn, however, when information was obtained that two Confederate agents, James Mason and John Slidell, had been embarked in a British ship, H.M.S. Trent, and were on a diplomatic mission to establish relations in Europe for the Confederacy. Captain Charles Wilkes of the U.S.S. San Jacinto stopped the Trent and removed the Confederate agents and their secretaries over the protests of the captain of the Trent. The British government lodged immediate protests, and an embarrassed President Lincoln was obliged to release Mason and Slidell and eventually issue a formal apology. British Canada, feeling threatened by a disturbance with its southern neighbor, doubled the size of its militia from 50,000 to 100,000. Although the Trent affair and Captain Wilkes had been enthusiastically supported throughout the North, Lincoln nevertheless backed down, feeling that one war at a time was more than enough.
One of the unsung heroes of the Civil War for the Union was the U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain, Charles Francis Adams, son of John Quincy Adams. Inheriting the diplomatic skill of his father, Adams performed brilliantly, as he was sometimes obliged to sidestep the heavy-handed diplomatic efforts of Secretary of State Seward. During the Trent affair, as well as during subsequent diplomatic crises, Adams performed an extremely valuable service in helping to keep Great Britain out of the war, a condition that was vital for Union victory.
Raising again the point about the inevitability of the outcome of the war, it seems clear that if Great Britain or France had entered the war on the Confederate side, a Southern victory might well have been assured. Lincoln’s major diplomatic challenge was to fight the war in such a way so as not to irritate Great Britain, whose lead would be followed by the French. Gauging British sympathies was not easy, as some elements in Great Britain were sympathetic to the southern position, while others, correctly perceiving that slavery was an underlying cause of the war, were well disposed toward Lincoln and the Union.
On November 1 General McClellan was appointed General in Chief upon the retirement of General Winfield Scott, whom McClellan rather ungraciously helped usher out the door.McClellan was a superb organizer, and he soon began an excellent regimen of training to bring the growing Union army up to fighting trim. He replaced incompetent officers with more capable men and began to build up the Army of the Potomac, which, when well led, could stand against any army in the world. The problem with General McClellan was that he was reluctant to lead it into battle; a series of parades and reviews thrilled Congress and the Washington community but left Lincoln frustrated and unimpressed. When illness forced McClellan to his bed for what seemed to Lincoln an overlong recuperation, Lincoln sent a note to McClellan suggesting that if the General had no immediate plans for using his army, the president might like to borrow it. McClellan did not respond well to such jibes and accused Lincoln of being a meddler.
In November Major General Henry W. Halleck, known as “Old Brains” for his authoritative writings on warfare, made some replacements in the western commands, but the Union forces in the Mississippi and Ohio valleys were still divided. Gen. Don Carlos Buell commanded forces in central and eastern Kentucky, while Brigadier General Grant and others commanded other western areas. Grant, who had left the Army in 1854 under something of a cloud because of his alleged drinking habits, had had to talk his way into an officer’s commission at the outbreak of the war, but had quickly demonstrated his natural military skills. He won a small battle at Belmont in November, 1861, but in those early days of fighting a small victory was noticed. Grant was gradually given more responsibility.
Summary of 1861: Both sides begin uncertainly. Young men flock to colors for “Union” (North) and “Liberty” (South), each feeling it is upholding the “principles of 1776.” President Lincoln, less experienced in military matters than President Davis, begins to educate himself in the ways of war. Davis, more experienced, has difficulties arising from his political situation of a single party system, exacerbated by his own personality. The Union industrial capacity is greater, but much corruption and inefficiency offset the advantage.
On January 15, 1862, President Lincoln replaced the inefficient Secretary of War Simon Cameron with Edwin M. Stanton. Stanton had been attorney general under President Buchanan but was adamantly opposed to secession. At first he was very critical of Lincoln’s abilities, but within a few months of close working with the president, who spent much of his time in the War Department, Stanton began to appreciate Lincoln’s honesty and dedication to the Union cause. He eventually became a Republican and one of Abraham Lincoln’s most trusted and loyal advisers.
For the first half of the American Civil War the fighting in Western theater along the Mississippi River was very different from that in the East. In the East until the Battle of Gettysburg it seemed as though the Army of the Potomac could do no right, and Lee's Army of Northern Virginia could do no wrong. With the exception of the tactical draw at Antietam on September 17, 1862, the war in the East was heavily one-sided in favor of the Confederacy.
The situation in the West was very different. Early in the war Colonel U. S. Grant was given a regimental command by the governor of Illinois, but he quickly proved his mettle and was promoted to brigadier general. He soon began a campaign that eventually closed the Mississippi River to the Confederacy and led him to the position of command of all Union forces. In January General George H. Thomas defeated a Confederate force at Mill Springs, Kentucky, then teamed up with General Grant to begin moving into Tennessee.
Grant worked in splendid cooperation with Flag Officer Andrew Foote, a naval officer who commanded gunboats and transports on the Mississippi, Ohio, Tennessee, and Cumberland Rivers. In early 1862 Grant set out to capture Fort Henry on the Tennessee River. Foote sent his gunboats up the river to bombard the fort, and Grant placed his troops ashore on either side. The Confederate commander, however, decided to abandon the fort and sent his soldiers to Fort Donelson, which lay 10 miles to the east on the Cumberland River. When Fort Henry surrendered, Union armies had use of the Tennessee River all away to Alabama.
Following the fall of Fort Henry Grant sent Foote's gunboats down the Tennessee, up the Ohio and thence up the Cumberland River toward Fort Donelson. Meanwhile he marched his army overland and surrounded the fort. The Confederate commanders attempted to break out but were unable to penetrate Grant’s lines. Two Confederate generals departed, leaving General Simon Bolivar Buckner in charge. Although Fort Donelson artillery drove off Flag Officer Foote’s gunboats, Grant had a firm hold on the fort. When Buckner asked Grant for terms, Grant responded that no terms except “unconditional surrender” could be accepted. He added, “I propose to move immediately upon your works.” Thereafter Gen. Ulysses S. Grant became known as “unconditional surrender” Grant.
General Buckner, an old friend of Grant from prewar days, told the victor, “Sam, if I'd been in charge the whole time, you never would have gotten away with it.” Grant supposedly responded, “Buckner, if you had been in charge, I never would have tried.” Whether true or not, the anecdote illustrates a factor that played itself out numerous times in the Civil War; often the opposing commanders knew each other, since many had served together in the Mexican war and elsewhere, and they often gauged their tactics according to their knowledge of what their opponents would be likely to do.
Shiloh. The victory at Fort Donelson was a major success, and the Union celebrated its first hero. Combined with the Union victories at Middle Creek, Kentucky, under Colonel James Garfield and Thomas’s victory at Mill Springs, the Confederates were out of Kentucky and the Union forces controlled the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers as well all the railroads in western Tennessee. General Grant had established himself as an effective commander and continued moving further into Tennessee. Grant moved his Army up the Tennessee River to a point known as Pittsburg Landing, about 15 miles northwest of the Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee intersection, where he was waiting to combine forces with General Don Carlos Buell. Although the area was lightly settled, a church in the vicinity named Shiloh gave its name to the battle.
General Albert Sidney Johnston, reputed to be the finest officer in the Confederate army, decided to attack before Grant could be reinforced, and he launched an assault early on April 6. Not realizing that the Confederates were so close, Grant had neglected to fortify his position and instead was drilling his troops. Camped along the southwest side of the Tennessee River at Pittsburgh Landing, near a small Baptist church named Shiloh, Grant’s men were enjoying a leisurely Sunday morning when Confederates broke out of the woods and overwhelmed the unsuspecting Union soldiers. Using artillery, the Confederates backed the Union troops toward the Tennessee River, and only fierce fighting kept the day’s encounter from being a complete rout of the Northerners. Grant was not even in the vicinity when the fighting started, having been somewhat downstream along the river dealing with other troop matters. When he eventually learned that the fighting had begun, he hastened back to rally his troops, who managed to keep from being driven off the field. But they were in dire straits. The Union Army managed to hang on during a long day of fierce fighting, taking a stand at a sunken road that became known as the “hornet’s nest.”
Johnston was mortally wounded during the first day’s fighting, and command was turned over to General P.G.T. Beauregard. During the night General Buell’s troops arrived and crossed the Tennessee River to join Grant’s men. Early on the morning of April 7, the fighting resumed, and Beauregard, having suffered heavy casualties, retired from the field and took his army backed to Corinth, Mississippi. A pursuit led by General William T. Sherman on April 8 was unsuccessful, but the victory had been substantial.
Casualties at Shiloh numbered over 23,000, with the Union having suffered more losses. The Confederates lost a larger percentage of their troops, however. The total casualties exceeded all of America's previous wars put together, yet it was no means the costliest battle of the Civil War. Despite his successes, rumors about Grant’s former drinking problems and other political machinations brought criticism of him in Washington. President Lincoln said, however, “I can't spare this man: He fights.”
Part of the reason for President Lincoln’s response to the criticism of Grant was that his general in the East, George B. McClellan, was moving so slowly that even his impressive reviews had begun to lose their luster as the administration and Congress grew anxious for more victories. McClellan initially planned a direct assault on Richmond, but when he advanced across the Potomac, he discovered that the Confederates had withdrawn southward, so he conceived a new battle plan. He decided to take the entire Army of the Potomac down the river for which it was named and land it on the peninsula between the York and James Rivers. As a superb organizer and logistician, McClellan moved his army efficiently; the problems began when it was time to fight.
Shiloh was extremely costly for both sides, but Grant had escaped disaster. The Confederates retreated into Mississippi and Grant set about attacking the Confederate stronghold of Vicksburg, Mississippi, which controlled that portion of the Mississippi where railroads connected Texas and the entire Southwest with the rest of the Confederacy.
But before Grant could carry out his greatest campaign, he had to deal with his own reputation, which went back to his old army career. General Grant had left the Army in the 1850s under a cloud, having been branded an unrelaible drinker. Although he had fought splendidly from the beginning of the Civil War and had never and indulged his fondness for alcohol, many in Washington who had heard of Grant were skeptical of his abilities. In fact, at one point he was relieved of command, despite the fact that he was the only general who seemed to be winning anything for the Union. A story is told that when President Lincoln was advised that General Grant drank too much, he is supposed to have said, “Find out what General Grant drinks and send a barrel to every general in the Union Army!” Whether that is actually true is beside the point: Lincoln needed generals who could fight.
The Monitor and the Merrimack. While McClellan was preparing his campaign during early March, a famous naval battle took place in Hampton Roads, Virginia. The Confederate Navy had captured the former U.S.S. Merrimack and renamed it C.S.S. Virginia. The ironclad Confederate ship had maneuvered out of the harbor and easily destroyed several Union warships, as cannonballs bounced off her heavy metal plates. During the night after the first day of fighting, a strange-looking craft arrived, the U.S.S. Monitor. The Monitor possessed but a single gun, but it was mounted inside a revolving turret, and its iron plating made it also impervious to shells. On March 9 the Monitor and the Virginia fought it out in Hampton Roads, and the small “cheese box on a raft” neutralized the Confederate threat, which might have disrupted the Union blockading fleet. It was the first “battle of ironclads,” and although it was more or less indecisive, it provided a glimpse of future naval warfare.
At the outbreak of the war the Union Navy had been nothing but a motley collection of ships, few of them formidable. But the U.S. government purchased ships of all kinds for use in the blockade, and began a building program in August, 1861. Within a year the number of ships sailing in and out of southern ports had been substantially reduced, and as Union forces captured various ports and islands along the southern coast, the blockade gradually grew tighter. From initial odds of approximately one in ten, the chances of a blockade runner getting through dropped to about one in three.
McClellan’s Peninsular Campaign. After months of preparation, General McClellan began his Peninsula Campaign on March 17, moving the Army of the Potomac by ship to a location east-southeast of the Confederate capital of Richmond. McClellan’s plan was to invade Richmond by advancing up the peninsula formed by the York and James Rivers. McClellan failed to grasp the nature of modern warfare—he thought it uncivilized to consider crushing the South and destroying carefully trained military units. He was an unsurpassed military administrator and planner, but he did not like to fight and risk damage to his well prepared army. Thus McClellan conducted his Peninsula Campaign with too much caution.
On April 5 he began a siege of Yorktown, which led to occupation of the city. If Yorktown had been a strategically significant, fortified city, a siege—which involves intricate engineering maneuvers—might have made sense. But as one Confederate officer said in derision, “Only McClellan would a besiege and undefended city.”
Again illustrating that familiarity with the mindset of one’s opponents was a repeating factor in Civil War engagements, and being aware of McClellan's “over-cautiousness” (as Lincoln put it), Confederate commanders went out of their way to befuddle their plodding opponent. Confederate General John McGruder, known from his West Point days as “Prince John” because of his acting ability, marched troops back and forth behind his lines in order to create the illusion of a larger force than he actually possessed. McClellan engaged the well known detective Allan Pinkerton as his intelligence adviser, and Pinkerton, demonstrating what is sometimes a propensity among intelligence types to overestimate enemy strength, just to be on the safe side, played right into McClellan’s fears.
As McClellan moved closer to Richmond against light Confederate resistance, he constantly overestimated the strength of the southern army and repeatedly called on Washington for additional forces. As he was advancing, General Thomas J. (“Stonewall”) Jackson was operating in the Shenandoah Valley with an army of troops who moved so fast they were known as “foot cavalry.” His campaign lasted from late March until early June and kept some 40,000 Union troops under Union Generals Banks and Frémont constantly occupied. President Lincoln, concerned about the security of the national capital, was held in a state of worry, which made him the McClellan's requests for reinforcements unsettling.
McClellan eventually advanced so close to Richmond that his troops could see the church spires in the city and hear their bells ringing on Sunday morning. With McClellan’s troops stretched on either side of the Chickahominy River, General Joseph Johnston decided to take the battle to his enemy. On May 31 and June 1 the two armies clashed in the battle of Seven Pines (Fair Oaks), with high casualties on both sides. The outcome was a tactical draw, but General Johnston was wounded and was soon replaced by Robert E. Lee. Lee had earned a reputation for cautiousness himself during the early days of the war, but that was soon to change.
As McClellan sat idly by, Lee extended his lines and reorganized his troops, now designated the Army of Northern Virginia. Joined by Jackson’s men who had moved into the Richmond area from their Valley campaign, Lee once again took on the Union Army of the Potomac in what became known as the Seven Days’ battles: Mechanicsville, Gaines Mill, and Malvern Hill. Lee was an excellent tactician, and unlike McClellan, he had a bold and masterful plan for the Seven Days’ battle, which again placed McClellan on the defensive. Unfortunately for Lee, this plan may have been too sophisticated, and the Confederate generals had difficulty carrying it out. Even Jackson’s Corps was not up to the level it had achieved during his Valley campaign; his movements were uncharacteristically slow.
General Jeb Stuart, Lee’s cavalry commander, had made a bold ride completely around the Union Army, attacking supply trains and disrupting communications. As fine a commander as Stuart was, however, his cavalry tactics, while daring, sometimes failed to produce decisive results. McClellan’s forces were assisted by Union gunboats, another measure of the effectiveness of the Union “river navy,” sometimes undervalued by Civil War historians in retrospect.
Once again, the loss of life during the Seven Days was appalling. At the last battle at Malvern Hill Union artillery demonstrated its skill and value on the battlefield by repeatedly breaking up Confederate attacks. Following the battle Confederate General D.H. Hill said, “With Southern infantry and Union artillery I could whip any army on earth.” Despite the impressive performance by McClellan’s troops in combat, the Peninsular Campaign itself was a strategic failure. Total casualties numbered some 36,000 on both sides, and McClellan took his battered army back to Washington while Lee's men licked their wounds and moved northward again on the Richmond-Washington axis.
Second Battle of Bull Run. While McClellan was moving his army back to disembarkation points in Alexandria, General John Pope, who had won a small but notable victory at Island #10 on the Mississippi River north of Memphis, took command of the troops in and around Washington and met Lee on August 29 and 30 at the Second Battle of Manassas, or Bull Run. Pope had been planning for an advance on Richmond, but Lee, Longstreet, and Jackson trapped Pope’s army, which had its left flank exposed. The two days of fighting left the Union Army battered, and as McClellan had done nothing to assist Pope, bitter recriminations followed on the northern side, including charges that Union General Porter had been reluctant in battle. As often happens in times of military disappointment the hunt for scapegoats was on. The stage was now set for the first major battle in the north as Lee prepared to invade into Maryland in order to relieve pressure on Virginia.
Antietam: The First Turning Point
As Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia was moving north toward the Maryland border, Lincoln faced a dilemma. General John Pope had not proved to be the leader Lincoln was looking for; he had alienated the troops and officers by implying that Western soldiers were superior to those in the East. As McClellan’s peninsular campaign had been a strategic failure, and as criticism of “Little Mac” continued to grow in Congress, Lincoln was loath to place him back in command of the Army of the Potomac. But he knew McClellan was a good organizer and that he was well liked by his troops, so he gave him the command, and McClellan set out to block Lee.
Lee hoped to be able to recruit successfully in areas theoretically sympathetic to the South, but slavery in Maryland was mostly located on the peninsula, not in the more western mountainous areas. He also hoped that a dramatic blow on northern soil would unnerve the northern public, who would then demand a negotiated peace. He also wanted to relieve pressure on Virginia and gain support perhaps procure supplies in the Maryland countryside.
Part of Lee’s army moved into Harpers Ferry and captured that important city while the rest of the Army of Northern Virginia moved in the direction of Hagerstown. McClellan, meanwhile, was moving from Rockville up towards Frederick, Maryland, on a more or less parallel path with Lee. While the movement was under way two of McClellan’s pickets found an interesting looking piece of paper wrapped around some cigars in an abandoned Confederate camp. It seemed to be a battle order, and indeed it was. It showed the general disposition of Lee’s army, indicating that it had been separated and was not in a single body. The knowledge gave McClellan an advantage which, however, he failed to exploit, despite his boast the this time he would “lick Bobby Lee.” On September 14 the Battle of South Mountain, between Frederick and Hagerstown in Maryland, delayed the Union advance while Lee concentrated his army at the little village of Sharpsburg along Antietam Creek.
On the morning of September 17 McClellan attacked. Lee’s back was to the Potomac, and his outnumbered army faced possible destruction. But rather than attacking broadly and decisively, McClellan advanced his army in piecemeal fashion, giving Lee time to regroup and reposition his men. The fighting started in a large cornfield which was soon bathed in red. Lee’s men pulled back to a sunken road as the attack continued; by late afternoon the fighting was taking place along Antietam Creek in a position that came to be known as Burnside’s bridge. The intense fighting made the Battle of Antietam the bloodiest single day of combat in all of American history, as over 20,000 casualties on both sides were inflicted. Military historians have concluded that had McClellan attacked aggressively and used all of his forces—one entire Union Corps of 30,00 men never saw action during the entire day—the result might have been a decisive defeat for the Army of Northern Virginia with dire consequences for the Confederacy.
The bloody battle, however, was indecisive, although it was a strategic defeat for Lee, who had to withdraw back into Virginia. McClellan failed to pursue Lee and instead decided to rest and recuperate his army at the scene of the battle; another opportunity had been lost. Frustrated, Lincoln wrote to McClellan, “I have read your dispatch about … fatigued horses. Will you pardon me for asking what the horses of your army have done since the battle of Antietam that fatigues anything?”
Military historians agree that the battle of Antietam was a tactical draw; neither side was driven off the field in disarray, and neither side could claim having dealt the other side a mortal blow. But the meaning of the battle for the course of the war was rooted in two events that occurred off the battlefield. First, in order for the South to have a significantly improved chance of winning the war, it needed foreign assistance. Just as the struggling 13 colonies, after they had declared themselves states, needed the assistance of the French to stave off defeat at the hands of the mighty British Empire, the Confederacy would certainly have benefited from the intrusion of Great Britain into the war. Had Great Britain intervened on the side of the Confederacy, it is quite likely that the Confederate States of America would have become a permanent political entity.
Not long before the Battle of Antietam it began to look as though intervention by the British might truly come to pass. In the opening days of the conflict the Union had suffered a diplomatic humiliation over the Trent affair, when Confederate agents were arrested while aboard a British ship, H.M.S. Trent. President Lincoln eventually apologized to the British, and the affair died, but about the same time Secretary of State William Seward had suggested that the president might want to provoke Great Britain and perhaps France into a conflict in order to reunify the country, an idea which wise Lincoln wisely ignored. The British were quite dependent upon Southern cotton to supply their mills, and there were other factors that supported friendly relationships between Great Britain and the confederacy. Thus, recognition and intervention on the part of Great Britain was no far-fetched idea.
Great Britain was not, however, quite ready to anger the United States government for various reasons diplomatic, political and economic, British intervention might even have led to a declaration of war by the United States. Nevertheless, as the early lack of Union success on the battlefields, especially in the East, opened the possibility of an eventual Confederate victory, Great Britain began to move in the direction of recognition of the South and perhaps a further involvement in the war on the Confederate side. But they needed a strong sign.
During the American Revolution, the French, after secretly aiding the colonies, had waited for an indication that the Americans might be able to win on the battlefield, and having seen that occur at Saratoga in 1777, France recognized American independence and formed a military alliance. In 1862 the British were looking for a similar sign of encouragement, and when Lee invaded Maryland's in September 1862, British leaders began to believe that a victory on Union soil might be what they were looking for. But although Lee's intrepid Army of Northern Virginia held its own against the larger Union force, largely because General McClellan failed to exploit his advantages, Lee was forced to retreat, and the tactical draw certainly did not equate to a strategic victory. The British hesitated, Lincoln acted, and the moment for recognition quickly passed.
Following the battle of Antietam President Lincoln visited McClellan at the battlefield and listened patiently while the general reviewed the outcome of the fighting as he took the president on a tour of the field. President Lincoln congratulated the Union troops and commiserated with wounded Confederate soldiers, whom he also visited in emotional scenes. In a private conversation the president apparently chastised McClellan for failing to move in pursuit of Lee—he said McClellan had “the slows.” When McClellan did not take Lincoln's suggestion, he was finally relieved of command. He did not again participate in the war, but he ran for President as a Democrat against Lincoln in 1864 and later served as Governor of New Jersey.
Emancipation. As President Lincoln himself said, he had thought long and hard about the relationship between slavery and the Civil War from the very beginning of the conflict. When Horace Greeley challenged him in an open letter to state his intentions regarding slavery in the summer of 1862, Lincoln responded by saying that if he thought he could save the Union by freeing all the slaves, he would do so. He added that if he thought he could save the Union by freeing none of the slaves he would do that, and then added that if he felt he could save the Union by freeing some of the slaves and leaving others in bondage, that he would do as well. In the end that is what he did.
Because several Union generals had jumped the gun, declaring slaves contraband, an idea took shape in Lincoln’s mind. He decided to issue an Emancipation Proclamation, but he did not want to do so when Union military fortunes looked bleak, lest it seem like a desperation move. Although Antietam was not a decisive victory, it was close enough for Lincoln to use, since Lee had to retreat into Virginia. Thus President Lincoln issued his preliminary Emancipation Proclamation five days after the battle of Antietam, announcing that as of January 1, 1863, slaves in territory controlled by the Confederacy were to be forever free. He did not free all the slaves because he felt the did not have the constitutional authority to do so. Instead he used the Confederacy’s own position regarding slaves against them: he counted them as property, property that had value in time of war and was therefore subject to being confiscated as contraband.
The Battle of Antietam was a turning point in its own right, first because it demonstrated that Lee could not sustain an offensive on Union soil. Second, the battle was costly, the bloodiest single day of fighting in all of American history, and while the losses were approximately equal, the North could tolerate them far better than the Confederacy because it had a much larger manpower pool on which to draw. In that sense Antietam was militarily significant, if not a turning point in the military sense.
The Emancipation Proclamation, however, fundamentally altered the goals of the conflict for both sides. Lincoln's first concern was to save the Union; and although Lincoln abhorred slavery, ending the “peculiar institution” was secondary to him. (Those who believe that Lincoln cared more about saving the Union than about ending slavery miss the point: If the Confederacy had won the war and become independent, Lincoln could have done nothing about the status of slavery in North America. And it is clear from the Confederate Constitution and the prewar political rhetoric, not to mention feelings and attitudes that had evolved in the South over 200 years, that slavery would have continued for a long time after the end of the conflict, perhaps even into the 20th century.)
If the Union were to prevail, however, after the Emancipation Proclamation it was fairly certain that would be a Union in which slavery would no longer exist. So from merely saving the Union, the goal for the North became to save the Union without the institution of slavery. It is interesting to note that by the end of the war in late 1864-early 1865, the Confederacy had apparently changed its goal in the war as well, which had been to preserve Southern society with slavery intact. Instead their goal became to gain independence, even if they had to give up slavery in order to get it. In December 1864 Confederate Secretary of State Judah P. Benjamin sent a secret delegation to Great Britain to plead one last time for their assistance in becoming independent, in exchange for which they would voluntarily end the institution of slavery. It was too late for Great Britain to intervene, however, but not long after that the Confederacy decided to arm the slaves in order to help them become free, a move which certainly would have tended to undermine status of slavery in the South. But the war ended before that happened, and the Confederacy lost its bid for independence, and slavery ended with passage of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865.
Fredericksburg. Lincoln turned command of the army over the Potomac over to General Ambrose Burnside. Lee had retreated to the vicinity of Fredericksburg and had taken a position along some elevated ground known as Marye’s Heights. The Rappahannock River lay between Lee’s troops and the advancing Union Army, and Burnside devised an elaborate plan to cross the river with pontoon bridges and attack Lee on the other side. Construction of the bridges was made difficult by Confederate sharpshooters harassing engineers building the bridges. Union artillery, meanwhile, shelled the city of Fredericksburg, leaving damage the remnants of which are still visible in some buildings.
On December 13 Burnside’s men finally crossed the river and assaulted the Confederate troops, who were protected by a stone wall and a sunken road at the base of Marye’s Heights. Although part of Burnside’s plan worked fairly well, the slaughter in front of Marye’s Heights was one of the worst of the war as Union troops were mowed down and fell on top of dead or wounded comrades. The North was shocked by the magnitude of the defeat, and Lincoln was in the depths of despair; “What will the country think?” he wondered. The battered army moved back north to a position west of Fredericksburg.
On December 31 Union General Gen. William S. Rosecrans and the Army of the Cumberland engaged a Confederate force under General Braxton Bragg, the Army of Tennessee. Rosecrans had pursued Bragg from Kentucky following General Braxton Bragg’s loss at Perryville. Bragg’s men began the attack on the morning of December 31, but after some initial gains the Union established a strong defensive line. After a pause on New Year’s Day, the two armies again clashed on January 2 and 3, and on the next day Bragg took his army from the field and retreated deeper into Tennessee. In three days of fierce fighting Union artillery had again proved decisive. A relieved President Lincoln sent a congratulatory telegram to General Rosecrans, thanking him for the victory that had lifted the president and the country out of the depressing state that had set in following the disaster at Fredericksburg.
Summary of 1862. The Union had made little progress in the East; even with the heavy losses they had suffered, the Federals were no closer to Richmond. Lincoln and much of North remained in despair—one historian has called it the “winter of Northern discontent.” Although the Confederates had fared quite well in the East, they had also suffered heavy losses and did not appear to be exhausting federal resources.
The picture in the West was substantially brighter for the Union. General Grant was fighting well, and southern commanders seemed unable to keep the Union armies from moving deeper into southern territory. Union forces controlled much of the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers as well as the Ohio as far as Memphis. Benjamin Butler had captured New Orleans in early 1862, and the Union armies in the West were ready to converge on the last great stronghold of Vicksburg.
Civil War 1863 | Updated May 5, 2008