The Power of Soft Power: Union Diplomacy in the Civil War
Charles Francis Adams
This is another section of my Gettysburg and Civil War text. For those that have been following my posts on this subject
Diplomacy is a key part of the whole of government, the whole of national power, and the understanding of waging war and winning the peace and it does matter before, during, and after the conclusion of any war. Diplomacy is an essential part of the DIME and Union diplomacy had a major effect on the American Civil War, and during the war it was the Federal government and Union diplomats who understood this far better than their Confederate counterparts and were facing leaders of Britain and France who resented the power of the United States and wanted it to fail. This was particularly the case with the conservative British Tory party, like so many other governments of aristocratic regimes the English aristocracy “sympathized with what they saw as a corresponding plantation aristocracy in the South, and were not sad at the prospect of the American republic demonstrating what they had all along insisted was the fate of all popular democracies – instability, faction, civil war, and dismemberment.” [1]
Early Confederate diplomacy was based on the belief that European trading partners could not do without Southern cotton and would intervene in the war to break the Union blockade. As a result, cotton became “the principle weapon of Southern foreign policy.” [2] England depended on southern cotton to supply its massive textile industry and before the war the South had supplied roughly seventy-five percent of its demand. While the Confederates were able to receive recognition as a belligerent from some European powers, including the British, whose position infuriated Secretary of State Seward, the Confederacy, much to the chagrin of its leaders never received diplomatic recognition as a nation.
The efforts of the Confederacy to secure recognition would be due to Union diplomacy, much of it led by the United States Minister to Great Britain, Charles Francis Adams who “tirelessly represented the Union Cause to the British government and the British people but also financed an active network of spies and agents who relentlessly exposed Confederate violations of the British neutrality laws and hobbled Confederate efforts to raise money and but arms.” [3]
Union diplomats in Europe had to manage a very complex situation at the very outset of the conflict when a Captain Charles Wilkes of the United States Navy, commanding the steam sloop USS San Jacinto, fired on and stopped the British passenger steamer Trent, in international waters during November 1861 and removed two Confederate diplomats, James Mason and John Slidell and their secretaries, who were on their way to Britain. Ignoring the protests of the Trent’s master, Wilkes returned the two Confederates to New York setting of a firestorm of protest. The British Prime Minister, Lord Palmerston, “immediately drafted an ultimate and ordered a squadron of steamers and 7,000 troops readied to send to Canada.” [4]
The incident became known as the Trent affair and provided an early challenge for Union diplomacy, and nearly wrecked the Union war effort. As Charles F. Adams noted in a letter to his son, “Captain Wilkes has not positively shipwrecked us, but he has come as near close to it without succeeding as he could.” [5] Confederates rejoiced, the chief Confederate propagandist in England wrote, “If Commodore Wilkes designed making a sensation he succeeded to his heart’s content…. The usually apathetic Englishmen were roused to a sudden frenzy by this insult to their flag, such as I have never witne4ssed in them before.” [6] Fears of war with Britain dominated the financial markets and “dried up the sale of bonds to finance the war against the Confederacy.” [7]
These fears were not unfounded, as the crisis dragged on into December, Britain made other military preparations some 5,000 Canadian troops trained to British Army standards and 35,000 other Canadian volunteer militia were called up, and “an additional 11,000 British Regulars were soon on their way to Canada.” [8] Additionally the British government placed an embargo on the shipment of saltpeter from India to the United States until the affair was settled. Since India was the largest supplier of this material which was vital to the manufacture of gunpowder, this threatened to cripple the Union war effort, and as soon as the crisis was ended, this vital material was soon on the way to Northern manufacturers who rapidly turned it into gunpowder.
Had it not been for the skilled efforts of Adams, the United States minister to defuse the situation, the affair could have led to British recognition of the Confederacy and intervention in the war. Adams’ efforts to defuse the situation in Britain, and to convince Lincoln to release the Confederates and return them to the British were so successful that they “left Anglo-American relations in better shape than before the crisis.” [9]
Adams also had to deal with Abraham Lincoln and Secretary of State William H. Seward’s indignation of Confederate commissioners meeting with British Foreign Minister Lord Russell. Those meetings sent Seward into a rage, he told Senator Charles Sumner “God damn them, I’ll give them hell” and he wrote Adams instructing the American Minister to “break off relations if the British government had any more dealings with southern envoys. If Britain officially recognized the Confederacy, “we from that hour, shall cease to be friends and become once more, as we have twice before been forced to be, enemies of Great Britain.” [10] Lincoln, knowing how critical the situation was gave Adams the discretion of presenting the substance of the matter verbally rather than hand Seward’s dispatch to Russell. Adams handled the matter deftly, and Russell “conceded that he had twice met with the Southern commissioners, but “had no expectation of seeing them any more.” [11]
In the end the release of the Confederate envoys “improved Anglo-American relations and disappointed Confederate hopes for an Anglo-American war that might assure their independence.” [12] Adams wrote, “The first effect of the surrender of Messrs. Mason and Slidell has been extraordinary. The current which ran against us with such extreme violence six weeks ago now seems to be going with equal fury in our favor.” [13]
This was very import because there was much support for the Confederate cause in the European aristocracy and some in Europe hoped for Confederate success. They were encouraged by Union military defeats at the outset of the war, but Union diplomats helped to keep Europeans out of the war. Confederate diplomacy in Europe was not helped when the Confederates elected to embargo cotton exports in order to force Britain and other powers to recognize them. But despite the fears of the loss of cotton and the negative effects on their economies, European powers, especially the British were resentful of the Confederate attempt to blackmail them through the use of the embargo. The Times of London, a Tory paper sympathetic to the Confederacy declared that if Southerners “thought that they could extort our cooperation by the agency of king cotton… they had better think again. To intervene on the behalf of the South “because they keep cotton from us” said Lord Russell in September 1861, “would be ignominious beyond measure…. No English Parliament could do so base a thing.” [14]
British visitors to the South in 1861 were surprised and how fervently many Southerners believed that cotton would spur European involvement in the war on their behalf. The Southern hubris about their importance to the world economy was and how Britain could not survive without their cotton. One reporter wrote:
“there can be no doubt that the prevalent conviction in the South is that England cannot do without the “king” that all cotton, except American is too short or too long; and that the medium is the only staple Manchester can have. In vain we tell them that our manufacturers would soon change their machinery, and adapt it to the necessities of the times; that our Government was making great exertions to procure cotton from India and Africa; and that it was our interest to foster our own colonies, and to produce it there if possible; and that if we were deprived of America as a market, the more strenuous would our efforts be to render ourselves independent of it. But it was of no use; they were ineradicably impressed with the conviction that they can command the market at any time; and that the distance from England at which its rivals are placed must always give the Confederacy an advantage.” [15]
By early 1862 the British government had decided to recognize the Union blockade. The cotton embargo had had an effect until Britain turned to Egypt and other cotton producers to make up the difference, and diversified by expanding the manufacture of steel and ships. Likewise, the Confederate had harmed the Southern even worse. Since so little of the cotton could be exported and sold on the foreign market, prices for it dried up and the Confederate economy began to implode. Mary Boykin Chesnut bitterly wrote of the effects in March 1862:
“Cotton is five cents a pound and labor of no value at all; it commands no price whatsoever. People gladly hire out their negroes to have them fed and clothed, which the latter cannot be done. Cotton osnaburg at 37 ½ cents a yard, leaves no chance to clothe them…. We poor fools, who are patriotically ruining ourselves will see our children in the gutter while treacherous dogs of millionaires go rolling by in their coaches – coaches that were acquired by taking advantage of our necessities.” [16]
However, Union diplomats were aided by tensions in Europe regarding the Schleswig-Holstein problem between Prussia and Austria, as well as unrest in Poland, as a result “European realpolitik hindered the Rebel’s diplomatic objectives as well.” [17] The British in particular were loath to risk intervening in a conflict that might be “a disturbance in the precarious balance of power which might be the signal for a general conflagration, they recalled Voltaire’s comment that a torch lighted in 1756 in the forests of the new world had promptly wrapped the old world in flames.” [18] Thus, European leaders and diplomats were very hesitant to allow Southern legations to convince them to intervene. In January 1863 an extremely frustrated Jefferson Davis made mention of the neutral nations of Europe which had refused to recognize the Confederacy as an independent nation.
Another factor in the success of Union diplomacy was the success of Union military operations on the periphery of the Confederacy, many of them spearheaded by joint Army-Navy operations. While the Confederates won many early battles in 1861 and 1862 it was the success of the Union military that altered the diplomatic landscape and helped doom the Confederacy. The joint operations conducted by Ulysses Grant and Flag Officer Foote at Island Number Ten, Fort Henry, Fort Donaldson and Shiloh opened the door to the western Confederacy making it vulnerable to Union invasion. Likewise, the joint operations conducted by the Union Navy and Army against the Confederacy through the blockade and capture of key ports such as New Orleans by 1862; combined with the bloody repulses of Confederate armies at Perryville and Antietam allowed Lincoln to make his Emancipation Proclamation, an act which reverberated across the Atlantic.
These military successes enabled British Prime Minister, Lord Palmerston, to reject a French proposal for France, England and Russia to propose to the warring parties, a “North-South armistice, accompanied by a six month lifting of the blockade. The result, if they had agreed- as they had been in no uncertain terms warned by Seward in private conversations with British representatives overseas- would have been a complete diplomatic rupture, if not an outright declaration of war.” [19]
The issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation ensured that Europe would not recognize the Confederacy. In part this was because even the most pro-Southern English political leaders could not appear to give the slightest appearance of supporting slavery, especially as both England and France had abolished slavery decades before, while Russia had only recently emancipated its serfs and despite being a less democratic monarchy than Britain “was pro-Union from the start….” [20] Popular sentiment in Britain, France, Russia and other European countries, outside of the ruling class and business elites, was heavily in favor of emancipation, especially among the working classes. The leaders of the workingmen of Manchester England, a major textile producer, who which had been among the “hardest hit by the cotton famine, sent him [Lincoln] an address approved at a meeting on New Year’s Eve, announcing their support of the North in its efforts to “strike off the fetters of the slave” [21] following the Emancipation Proclamation.
The success of the Union blockade was a key factor in the diplomatic efforts. There were many people, especially business leaders and members of the aristocracy in both Britain and France who sympathized with the South and hoped for Southern victory. However they were not impressed by Confederate attempts to subject them to an embargo of all Southern cotton until they recognized the independence of the Confederacy. Confederate commissioners attempted to persuade the British and French that the Union blockade was a “paper blockade” that was not binding on the British. While a good number of Confederate blockade runners got through the Union blockade, they carried very little cotton. While many Englishmen were offended by Seward’s bluster, many “resented even more the Confederacy’s attempt at economic blackmail.” [22] When the Confederates pressured the British Lord Russell announced to Parliament a corollary to the Declaration of Paris which affirmed the effectiveness of the Union blockade and “drove a stake through the heart of the Confederate efforts to convince the European governments of the blockade’s illegitimacy.” [23]
The British especially were keen on not going to war for the sake of the South, as there was far too much at stake for them. This was something that the Southern leaders and representatives did not fully comprehend. Prime Minister Viscount Palmerston and Foreign Minister Lord Russell were concerned about the economic impact of the loss of Southern cotton but also “recognized that any action against the blockade could lead to a conflict with the United States more harmful to England’s interests than the temporary loss of Southern cotton.” [24] Palmerston well remembered the war of 1812 when he served as Minister of War, and the disastrous results for the British Merchant Marine, and he realized that “England could not only afford the risk of a loss in a sideline war; she could not even afford to win one.” [25]
Union diplomats led by Adams scored another major victory against South in September 1863. During the war, Confederate agents working through shadow companies had managed to purchase large fast ships as commerce raiders. While this was not legal, while building the ships were declared by the builders of the Laird Company as merchant ships, and then sailed out of the country to be armed and equipped as Confederate commerce raiders. These include the ships which became the CSS Florida, CSS Georgia, and the most successful Confederate raider of all, the CSS Alabama.
Laird Ram
The escape of these ships and their use as raiders proved to be a great embarrassment to the British government, and in “March of 1863 the House of Commons had undertaken an investigation of the earlier cases of the Florida and Alabama. Its report condemned the government for laxness in enforcing British neutrality.” [26] When it was discovered that Confederate agents were contracting with English and French shipyards to build modern oceangoing ironclad rams, frigates and commerce raiders, Union diplomats intervened. The two rams, to be built by Laird’s were to displace 1,800 tons, mount six nine inch guns in rotating turrets and were equipped with a seven foot long submerged bow mounted ram.
The presence of the turrets made them hard to disguise as merchantmen and Adams sent a note to Foreign Secretary Russel a declaration that if these ships were allowed to escape, that “It would be superfluous to me to point out your Lordship, that this is war.” [27] Having been embarrassed by the past incidents and the scrutiny of Parliament, neither Russell or Prime Minister Palmerston were about to let such an event happen again, in fact before he had even received Adam’s protest had already taken steps to detain the vessels over the protests of the Confederate agents and officials, but the British interest in the case was not simply due to the protests, again, realpolitik came into play. Russell did not want Britain to be held liable for Union financial claims of loss after the war due, but even more importantly, that in another war the situation could be reversed. In this case ships were being built for the Confederacy in British shipyards, but in the next war it was quite conceivable that “in the next war that the roles could be reversed, with warships being constructed in American shipyards for use against the British merchant fleet. Britain was generally a belligerent in nineteenth century wars, not a neutral, and it did not want to lose sight of its long term interests.” [28]
Though Palmerston was offended at the brusqueness of Adams’s note, Union diplomacy had won a victory that “Henry Adams described as “a second Vicksburg.” [29] The British eventually bought the two ships for use in the Royal Navy where they became known as the Scorpion Class of which one ship served until 1922. Russell sent a dispatch to Richmond addressed to Jefferson Davis and warned him “against the efforts of the authorities of the so-called Confederate States to build war vessels with Her Majesty’s dominions to be employed against the Government of the United States.” [30]
The efforts of Adams and his counterpart in France, William Drayton were instrumental in hampering Confederate efforts at recognition by exposing Confederate plots and machinations against the laws of England and France won the praise of Confederate propagandists, one who admitted that Adams, “played well his part, and by his singular moderation of language and action… sustained his own dignity and that of the people he represented… and won reluctant admiration from many who loved not the cause or the Government he sustained.” [31]
[1] Ibid. Guelzo Fateful Lightening p.289
[2] Ibid. McPherson. The Battle Cry of Freedom p.383
[5] Adams, Charles F. Letter to Charles F. Adams Jr. in The Civil War and Reconstruction: A Documentary Collection, William E. Gienapp editor, W.W. Norton and Company, New York and London 2001 p.144
[7] Ibid. McPherson Tried by War p.54
[10] Ibid. McPherson the Battle Cry of Freedom pp.388-389
[11] ibid. McPherson The Battle Cry of Freedom
[12] Ibid. McPherson Tried by War p.54
[13] Ibid. Adams Letter to Charles F. Adams Jr. p.144
[15] ____________. “A Month With the Rebels,” Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine 90 (December 1861): 762-763 in The Civil War and Reconstruction: A Documentary Collection edited by William E. Gienapp, W.W. Norton and Company, New York and London 2001 p.143
[16] Ibid. Mary Chesnut’s Diary p.122
[17] Ibid. Goldfield America Aflame: How the Civil War Created a Nation p.315
[18] Foote, Shelby, The Civil War, A Narrative. Volume Two Fredericksburg to Meridian Random House, New York 1963 p.154
[19] Ibid. Foote The Civil War, A Narrative Volume Two p.153
[21] Ibid. Foote, The Civil War, A Narrative Volume Two p.155
[22] Ibid. McPherson. The Battle Cry of Freedom p.384
[23] Ibid. McPherson The War that Forged a Nation p. 71
[26] McPherson, James M. War on the Waters: The Union & Confederate Navies, 1861-1865 University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 2012 p.202
[27] Ibid. Foote, The Civil War, A Narrative Volume Three p.100
[28] Stahr, Walter Seward: Lincoln’s Indispensable Man Simon and Schuster, New York 2012 p.374
[31] Ibid. Guelzo Fateful Lightening p.298
Filed under civil war, History
Tagged as abraham lincoln, american civil war, charles francis adams, charles wilkes, cotton diplomacy, diplomacy, james mason, john slidell, king cotton, lord palmerston, lord russell, mary chesnut, tory party, trent affair, union blockade of south, william drayton, william seward
Speaking Out for Pride
Yesterday I had the chance to speak at the Staff College’s LGBT Pride ceremony. I asked to speak because I felt it was important for people to get a historical and personal account from a heterosexual who has served continuously since 1981. I have recounted my story of how as a white, heterosexual, Christian, military officer and chaplain my journey to support the rights of LGBTQ people.
Though I have written about this subject many times, today was the first time that I spoke in front of peers and colleagues. I was able to recount how things have changed since I entered the army in 1981. That was a time when it was easy to demean and even persecute LGBTQ people. The amount of anti-gay prejudice then was pervasive and so normal that it didn’t even seem wrong. Likewise, it was not permitted for Gays to serve in the military, and even if they were exemplary soldiers, sailors, Marines, or airman even an unprovable allegation by someone was enough to ensure that they were punished and discharged from the military under other than honorable conditions.
After I was commissioned and sent to Germany to serve in a Medical company, I had soldiers in my platoon who were either Gay or Lesbian. They were exceptionally discreet and were some of the best soldiers in the company. These men and women were exceptional, they volunteered for duties beyond what was needed, and when others fell down on the job, the stepped in, doing extra work and taking field assignments. They were solid, dependable, and always ready to do more that required to get the mission done. At that moment I realized that Gays and Lesbians should be allowed to serve.
When I became the company commander dealing far too many other real disciplinary issues ranging from sexual assault, drug use, robbery, vandalism, DUI, and other assorted issues, I realized that it would be stupid to punish some of my best soldiers, and to create a lot more work for me, so I began my own policy of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell over seven years before that policy went into effect.
My next assignment was at the Academy of Health Sciences at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio. There I served as the Adjutant for the Academy Brigade. I was a newly promoted Captain and recent graduate of the army’s Military Personnel Officer course. It was about that time that HIV and AIDS became a national concern, and military physicians and researchers, realizing that this was a threat to military health and readiness were in the forefront of the efforts to find out about this disease. Likewise, the military needed personnel policies that would allow servicemen and women infect with HIV to be able to continue their service.
As a result, being that I was the junior medical personnel officer present, and senior officers wanted nothing to do with HIV or those infected I was assigned to work with Department of the Army personnel on developing personnel policies for those infected, and to be the point of contact for every soldier in our command who had tested positive for HIV. Those experiences with men infected with HIV gave me a compassion for their suffering, and made me question things that many of my Christian friends said about Gays. Instead of people to be scorned and consigned to hell, I realized that they were deserving of empathy and compassion. After I left active duty and went to seminary and became a chaplain I did a pastoral care residency at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, Texas, where I was immersed in the life and death struggles of men and women dying of AIDS related infections and cancers. I saw men who were dying who were treated shamefully by their “Christian” family members and had their partners forbidden to be with them in their dying hours. At the same time I saw other Christian families care for and love the partners of their dying sons.
I was in the National Guard when the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy went into effect. It was a step in the right direction, but not enough. I knew Gays and Lesbians who served, but still lived in fear that something might lead to their removal from the service for simply being Gay. I remember one of my friends, now retired, who spent the first 18 years of her career in fear and on more than one occasion during the DADT era being investigated by her command due to allegations made against her. I cannot imagine what that would be like.
Since returning to active duty in the navy in 1999 I have served with sailors and Marines, officers and enlisted who were Gay, Lesbian, or Bisexual. Most were exemplary Sailors and Marines. Some are still serving, but now after the repeal of DADT are able to do so openly. Likewise, with ruling in favor of Marriage Equality in the Obergfell v. Hodges case, these men and women can now marry, and their spouses are considered military spouses.
I a proud to serve alongside these men and women, people who swear the same oath that I have to support and defend the Constitution of the United Staates, and our nation in a time of war when under one percent of the American population serves in the military. They are part of my military family, my brothers and sisters who go into harm’s way to defend our way of life.
So yesterday I was proud to speak out, not just giving my story in a nutshell, but recounting examples from history and connecting the most important thing for me; that being the radical proposition that is the heart of the Declaration of Independence, “we hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. – That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among men…”
For me that is the most important thing, and it is something that I am always reminded of when I visit Gettysburg and read Abraham Lincoln’s univeralization of those rights in his Gettysburg Address. In that short speech, Lincoln noted that our founders created a new nation, “conceived in Liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” Lincoln’s words were as revolutionary, and perhaps even more than those contained in the Declaration of Independence, because he was now fighting a war against fellow Americans who had seceded from the Union based on the proposition that blacks were not citizens, and for that matter were less human than whites, something specified in the Confederate Constitution and declared in each declaration of secession voted on by the states that made up the Confederacy.
The truth that all men are created equal and that this nation is dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal is the basis of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution, the 19th Amendment, the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, as well as the decision to repeal DADT and the recent Supreme Court Rulings which gave LGBTQ people the right to marry. For me, this is the extension of Liberty, and finally I was able to speak publicly to affirm that I stand by my LGBTQ friends, realizing, like Lincoln, that this is still an “unfinished work” and I dedicate myself to continue to stand alongside them in an era where many still would attempt to restrict those rights, or even kill them simply because of who they are.
Because of this I will continue to speak out and right in support of my LGBTQ brothers and sisters who serve our country, as well as all people.
So have a good day,
Filed under ethics, faith, History, LGBT issues, Military, Political Commentary
Tagged as declaration of independence, don't ask don't tell, gays in military, gettysburg address, lgbtq rights, marriage equality
What’s On Deck this Week
I have been working on a number of articles that will be published here this week. I have one coming up on some of the very troubling episodes of xenophobia that have occured in England and Wales in the wake of the Brexit vote, incidents that are similar to some that have occured in the United States and other nations over the past several months. Of course I have a number that are continued work on my Civil War and Gettysburg texts. As I mentioned I am going to have to split the first two chapters, which alone account for over 350 pages of the nearly 1100 page text into their own book or books. The trouble when you go back through work on history or political and military theory to clarify and amplify what you are saying is that it often results in more text. At least as I do this the bumpy places in the text are coming together in a much more smooth and readable form. Of course the subjects that I write about in it are just as pertinent today as they were in the ante-bellum era, The Civil War, Reconstruction, as well as the post-Reconstruction and White supremacist Jim Crow era.
Over the weekend I will be writing about the Declaration of Independence, and the most important proposition in it, the proposition that all men are created equal.
So anyway, with that said, have a great Tuesday.
Tagged as brexit, civil war, declaration of independence, xenophobia
From Limited War to a People’s War
Here is another reworked section of my Civil War and Gettysburg text. It deals with how the how the American Civil War changed from being a limited war to a people’s war, driven by a mutual hatred and hostility. It was the first war which came close to approximating Clausewitz’s definition of total war, and though it was ignored by world military leaders as an aberration over for fifty years, it prefigured the Wold Wars, as well as the civil wars of the 20th Century. It demonstrates that once the genie of war is out of the bottle, and the passionate hatreds of peoples are unleashed, that policy will will adjust itself. Most wars can and should be averted if leaders work to control the fear and passions of their people and not as so often the case stoke the fires of those fears and passions into an uncontrollable rage directed against the intended target. This is especially true in civil wars which are often waged with a ruthlessness unseat in most wars conducted by nation states against other nation states, unless those wars are driven by religion, ideology, or ethnic hatred.
So I hope that you find this interesting and informative.
The Beginning: Limited War
At the beginning of the war President Lincoln attempted a strategy of conciliation in order to attempt to coax seceding states back into the Union and by conciliation to keep those considering seceding from doing so. However, Lincoln’s attempts were met with outright rejection, before, during, and after the secession crisis. He spoke directly to the Southern states in his First Inaugural Address, saying “We are not enemies, but friends,” [1] only to be accused of deliberately lying to the South by pledging to maintain control of Federal installations and forts in the South, like Fort Sumter which was now surrounded by massed batteries of Confederate artillery and demands that it surrender. Jefferson Davis wrote, “The Lincoln Administration deliberately lied to us, baiting us with false promises and pacific pledges all the while it was planning for war. Never in history has a government behaved with such malicious deceit and bad faith.” [2]
When the troops of South Carolina opened fire on Fort Sumter the die was cast, and Lincoln chose the path of war in order to restore the Union, “not because he wanted to, but because the South forced his hand.” [3] His proclamation calling for troops to suppress the rebellion described the kind of war that he foresaw, “the utmost care will be observed… to avoid any devastation, any destruction of, or interference with, property, or any disturbance of peaceful citizens in any part of the country.” [4]
Though he pursued the option of war to restore the Union, Lincoln initially adopted a soft-war strategy in which Confederate armies were the target. This was in large part due to the efforts of Secretary of State Henry Seward and General-in-Chief Winfield Scott. Though he adopted a strategy that required the North to conquest the South, initially he did so with the expectation that after battlefield defeats the Confederates would eventually return to the Union. It was a limited war strategy, “based on an assumption that a majority of the southern people were loyal to the Union and that eleven states had been swept into secession by the passions of the moment.” [5] In fact it was hardly a military strategy at all, “but more of a police action to quell a rather large riot.” [6]
After the defeat at First Bull Run, Congress passed a resolution defining Union war aims. It is notable in terms of how soft and its deference to the feelings of Southerners. Introduced by Senator John J. Crittenden of Kentucky, a key border that that had not seceded but had declared its neutrality, the resolution stated:
“Resolved by the House of Representatives of the Congress of the United States, That the present deplorable civil war has been forced upon us by the disunionists of the Southern States now in revolt against the constitutional Government and in arms around the capital; that in this national emergency Congress, banishing all feelings of mere passion or resentment, will recollect only its duty to the whole country; that this war is not waged upon our part in any spirit of oppression, nor for any purpose of conquest or subjugation, nor purpose of overthrowing or interfering with the rights and institutions of those States, but to defend and maintain the supremacy of the Constitution and to preserve the Union, with all the dignity, equality, and rights of the several States unimpaired; and that as soon as these objects are accomplished that the war ought to cease.” [7]
It was an incredibly weak statement of war aims based on the notion that most Southerners were actually Unionists and would come back to the Union. The feeling was increased by some early victories, particularly those of McClellan to secure West Virginia, and Grant and Flag Officer Foote in by the west in their capture of Forts Henry and Donaldson. For a brief time these victories seemed to confirm the validity of such an approach.
Winfield Scott
But the issue was not just with the politicians. Many early Union commanders raised in the niceties of Jominian limited war, and sometimes restrained by their religious upbringings were averse to taking casualties. Winfield Scott believed that only a thin line separated war from murder, and before Bull Run the elderly general noted, “No Christian nation… can be justified in waging war in such a way as shall destroy five hundred and one lives, when the object of the war can be attained at the cost of five hundred. Every man killed beyond the number absolutely required is murdered.” [8] George McClellan was also casualty averse, he told his soldiers that he would watch over them “as a parent over his children…. It shall be my care, as it ever has been, to gain success with the least possible loss…” [9] But McClellan’s “fixation with avoiding casualties, revealed a deep sensitivity of nature admirable in most of life’s pursuits but crippling in war. Battle evokes the cruelest probing of the general in command: young men will die and be maimed, win or lose; and the hard choice must be made when opportunity offers, which may (or may not) save many more lives in the long run than will be lost in a day.” [10] Even George Gordon Meade who would command the Army of the Potomac during Gettysburg, which was the bloodiest battle of the war, and who under Grant would be involved in other costly battles “believed that to ensure minimal losses on both sides, the North should prosecute the war “like an afflicted parent who is compelled to chastise his erring child, and who performs the duty with a sad heart.” [11] The lack of resolve of many overly cautious generals, especially in the east to fight a hard war against the Confederates would lead to several bungled opportunities to destroy the Army of Northern Virginia, outside the gates of Richmond, at Antietam, and during the pursuit from Gettysburg.
But after series of defeats in the East in 1862 at the hands of a revitalized Confederate Army of Northern Virginia under the command of General Robert E. Lee served notice on Lincoln that the war would be more difficult than previously imagined, and that a hard war strategy was needed.
The Link Between War and Statecraft
George McClellan
The strategies and operational methods employed by commanders such as Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and George McClellan embraces the tenants of Henri Jomini, the French military theorist and exponent of limited war, McClellan in his fixation with geographic places, Lee and Jackson in their love of the offensive. Each “failed to grasp the vital relationship between war and statecraft…. They might win victories – Lee won a series of spectacular ones – but they lacked the vision to win a mighty struggle between two societies.” [12] McClellan, told Lincoln “Woe to the general…who trusts in modern inventions, and neglects the principles of strategy.” But modern inventions, the railroad and the rifle, had conspired with mass citizen armies, themselves reflecting the ideologies of democratic society, to undermine the principles he espoused.” [13] McClellan, who had so deeply imbibed of the theories of Jomini, could not see that war had changed and the principles of Jomini could not win the war against the Confederacy, but others in the North would begin to see this.
But public sentiment in the North was beginning to shift, while there were still a good number of politicians willing to either let the South go its own way or to allow it to return with little substantive change, others were beginning to realize that the people of the South were serious about secession and were irreconcilable in their view that the break between them and the North was final. The New York Times which represented the views of moderate Republicans including Lincoln editorialized, “The country is tired of trifling…. We have been afraid of wounding rebel feelings, afraid of injuring rebel property, afraid of using, or under any circumstance, of freeing rebel slaves. Some of our Generals have fought the rebels – if fighting be it called – with their kid gloves on…” [14]
Lincoln was the political leader who first understood the connection, but militarily it was not until the “emergence of Grant and Sherman did Civil War military leadership break free of Jominian shackles to anticipate modern warfare.” [15] British military historian and theorist J.F.C. Fuller likened the change in the war to be a “return to barbarism,” and noted that “the more stubborn and indecisive became the fighting, and the more the outcome of the war was prolonged, the intenser grew the hatred, until frustration awakened a spirit of vengeance in the hearts of the Federals against the entire population of the South.” [16] Of course the hatred of the Confederacy came late as compared to much of the early nearly pathological and religious hatred of the Union by the radical secessionist, fire-eaters in Southern states even before the war began Thus, compared to the South, the hatred came slow, but when it boiled over the people of the South felt the pain of war as much as their armies did in the field.
While those who planned for a limited war like Winfield Scott and his Anaconda plan failed to understand the changing character of war, it did provide “both an education for Lincoln, and a firm foundation for the Union’s strategic thinking.” [17] The hard experience of war would point others in the same direction, including both Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman, and it would be these men who along with Lincoln provided developed a grand strategy that would defeat the Confederacy. It was a strategy which was in line with the political goals of the North, and which marshalled the might of the Union military, diplomatic, economic, industrial and informational strengths, against the Confederacy.
In the South one of the few proponents of this new type of warfare was a former Regular Army officer and professor at the Virginia Military Institute, General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson. In May of 1861 he moved across the Potomac to occupy the heights that surrounded Harper’s Ferry. Chastised by Lee, then serving as Jefferson Davis’s military adviser, Jackson proposed a strategy of invading the North and “burning Baltimore and Philadelphia and making Northerners understand on a visceral level what the war was going to cost them.” Likewise, he explained to Virginia Governor John Letcher a “black flag” strategy in which meant all Union prisoners of war would be summarily executed. [18]
Later Jackson had the chance to expound on his strategy to another general and suggested that he be given an army to cross the Potomac to “cut of the communications with Washington, force the Federal government to abandon the capital… destroy industrial establishments wherever we found them, break up the lines of interior intercourse, close the coal mines, seize and if necessary, destroy the manufactories of Philadelphia and of other large cities within our reach…. Subsist mainly on the country we traverse, and making unrelenting war amidst their home, force the people of the North to understand what it will cost them to hold the South in the Union at the bayonet’s point.” [19]
The fact that his plan was unrealistic based on the South’s actual military situation and capabilities, as well as opposed by Jefferson Davis as well as Robert E. Lee, takes nothing away from its similarity to the strategy later developed by Grant and Sherman. The problem was as Jefferson Davis wrote in July 1862, “The time and place for invasion has been a question not of will but power,” and then proceeded to recount a conversation with an unnamed Brigadier General the previous fall that appears whose plans did not match the reality of the number of troops available for such an operation. [20] From this meeting Davis got “the not altogether inaccurate idea that Jackson was an offense crazed fanatic.” [21] However, it shows that the desire to take the war to the enemy citizenry was not confined to the North and had the South had the military means that it many have attempted a similar strategy to that later employed by Grant and Sherman.
Grant, who had scored impressive victories at Forts Donaldson and Henry changed his view on how the war should be pursued after being roughly handled in the near disaster at Shiloh. After that battle, Grant gave up on the idea of limited war. He now believed that it was necessary to seize or destroy any property or resources that could be used to sustain the Confederate war effort. Before the Confederate counteroffensive at Shiloh Grant had said that he had been “carful to “protect the property of the citizens whose territory was invaded;” and afterwards his policy became to “consume everything that could be used to support or supply armies.” [22]
Henry Wager Halleck
Henry Wager Halleck, who had long been a proponent of Jominian limited war in late 1862 under the influence of Francis Lieber. When Halleck heard complaints that General Horatio G. Wright was pursuing too soft of policy toward rebels in Kentucky, Halleck did not intervene, but offered strong advice to Wright. “Domestic traitors, who seek the overthrow of our Government, are not entitled to its protection and should be made to feel its power…. Make them suffer in their persons and property for their crimes and the suffering they have caused to others…. Let them feel that you have an iron hand; that you know how to apply it when necessary. Don’t be influenced by old political grannies.” [23]
Halleck also backed up Grant in August 1862 when Grant was beginning to pursue the hard war policy in the west by ordering Grant to “Take up all active [rebel] sympathizers… and hold them as prisoners or put them beyond our lines. Handle that class without gloves, and take their property for public use…. It is time that they should begin to feel the presence of the war.” [24]
As the war went on it became apparent to many people in the North, and in the armies on the front lines that harder measures were required, especially with the escalation of guerilla attacks behind Union lines, as well as the involvement of Southern civilians in attacking Union troops in occupied areas of the South. “Senator John Sherman wrote his brother William of a growing sentiment “that we must treat these Rebels as bitter enemies to be subdued – conquered – by confiscation – by the employment of their slaves – by terror – energy – audacity – rather than by conciliation.” [25]
By early 1863 Grant was fully on board with the policy of the Union government, especially emancipation, and the need for the war to be carried through to a conclusion that would completely subjugate the Confederacy. He wrote to one of his generals, “Rebellion has assumed that shape now that it can only be terminated by the complete subjugation of the South or the overthrow of the Government. It is our duty, therefore, to use every means to weaken the enemy, by destroying their means of subsistence, withdrawing their means of cultivating their fields, and in every other way possible.” [26] Some Union military commanders other than Grant became early exponents of a hard and brutal war, among them was Major General John Pope, who as commander of the Army of Virginia issued a “series of orders authorizing his officers to seize Confederate property without compensation, to execute captive guerillas who had fired on Union troops, and to expel from occupied territory any civilians who had sheltered guerillas or who had refused to take an oath of allegiance to the United States.” [27] Jackson, who himself had once proposed the “black flag” strategy against the North and its soldiers “considered Pope’s orders “cruel and utterly barbarous.” [28]
Henry Halleck wrote to Grant in April 1863 that “the character of the war has changed very much…. There is now no possible hope of reconciliation with the rebels. The Union party in the South is virtually destroyed. There can be no peace but that which is forced upon it.” In May he wrote another general in Memphis, “We must live upon the enemy’s country as much as possible, and destroy his supplies. This is cruel warfare, but the enemy has brought it on himself by his own conduct.” [29]
As late as 1862 there were some in the North, especially in the Democratic Party fought against any move toward a harder war strategy. One of these was Major General George McClellan who in a brazen attempt to be named General-in-Chief after his failed Peninsular campaign attempted to school President Lincoln in the ways of politics and strategy.
“The time has come when the Government must determine upon a civil and military policy, covering the whole ground of our national trouble…. This rebellion has assumed the character of a war: as such it must be regarded; and should be conducted upon the highest principles known to Christian Civilization. It should not be a War looking to the subjugation of the people of any state, in any event. It should not be, at all, a War upon the population; but against armed forces and political organizations. Neither a confiscation of property, political executions of person, territorial organization of states or forcible abolition of slavery should be contemplated for a moment.” [30]
Lincoln read McClellan’s letter in his presence and refused to comment upon it. One historian described Lincoln’s reaction to McClellan’s suggestion, “That policy had been pursued for over a year and Lincoln was convinced that it had failed. He was ready to move on.” [31] Instead of complying with McClellan’s demands Lincoln infuriated McClellan by naming Henry Halleck as General-in-Chief, calling for more troops, and deciding on a strategy in which emancipation would play a key role. Since the leaders of the Confederacy to its dying day refused to countenance emancipation, these decisions would change the character of the war from a limited war to bring about political reunion to a war that would drastically change American politics, economics, and society.
While the nature of war remained unchanged, the American Civil war dramatically changed the character of war, as it had been known for centuries, since the Peace of Westphalia, and the end of the Thirty Years War. In the American Civil War the character of war changed from the emphasis of the limited wars of the 18th Century and the Napoleonic era where opposing armies dueled each other into a war that encompassed the entire population. The changes challenged a generation of military officers who had grown up with Jomini’s principles of war and his emphasis on limited war including McClellan and Lee, but Grant, who had never read Jomini and denied the validity of general principles of war that were valid in all times wrote, “There are no fixed laws of war which are not subject to the conditions of the country, the climate and the habits of the people. The laws of successful war in one generation would ensure the defeat in another.” [32]
The leading catalyst that convinced Lincoln and other Northern leaders of the need to abandon the strategy of limited war was the fact that the Confederates had “blurred the distinction between combatants and noncombatants in the parts of the Confederacy and border states occupied by Union forces. The crops and livestock of Southern civilians were feeding and clothing Confederate armies. Their slaves were the principle labor force in the Confederate War economy. Thousands of Southern civilians became guerillas who roamed behind Union lines destroying supplies and ambushing unarmed as well as armed Unionists.” [33]
The Union reaction to the Confederate actions would portent a change in the war. And soon, the war bordered on Clausewitz’s definition of absolute or total war, especially in Sherman’s march through Georgia and the Carolinas, and in the actions of Confederate irregulars who used terror against Unionist civilians. The actions of irregular Confederate forces to attack his troops and supply lines caused Sherman, who earlier in the war had taken a conciliatory attitude to Southern civilians, to change his views. They had blurred the lines between combatants and non-combatants, he noted that the Union army must act “on the proper rule that all in the South are enemies of all in the North….. The whole country is full of guerilla bands…. The entire South, man woman, and child, is against us, armed and determined.” [34]
[1] Weigley, Russell F. The American Way of War: A History of United States Military History and Policy University of Indiana Press, Bloomington IN, 1973 p.133
[2] Davis, Jefferson in Oates, Stephen B. The Approaching Fury: Voices of the Storm 1820-1861 University of Nebraska Press. Lincoln and London, 1997 p.413
[3] Stoker, Donald The Grand Design: Strategy and the U.S. Civil War Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York 2010 p.18
[4] Ibid. Weigley The American Way of War: A History of United States Military History and Policy p.133
[5] Ibid. McPherson Abraham Lincoln and the Second American Revolution p.75
[7] U.S. Congress The Crittenden Resolution of July 22, 1861 in The Civil War and Reconstruction: A Documentary Collection edited by William E. Gienapp, W.W. Norton and Company, New York and London 2001 p.117
[8] Faust, Drew Gilpin, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War Vintage Books, a division of Random House, New York 2008 p.34
[9] Sears, Stephen W. To the Gates of Richmond: The Peninsula Campaign Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston and New York, 1992 p.21
[10] Sears, Stephen W. Landscape Turned Red: The Battle of Antietam Houghton-Mifflin Company, Boston and New York 1983 p.32
[11] Ibid. Faust This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War p.34
[12] Gallagher, Gary W. “Upon Their Success Hang Momentous Interests”: Generals in Why the Confederacy Lost edited by Gabor S. Boritt, Oxford University Press, New York and Oxford 1992 p.86
[13] Strachan, Hew European Armies and the Conduct of War George Allen and Unwin Publishers, Ltd. London 1983 p.73
[14] McPherson, James M. Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief Penguin Books, New York and London 2008 p.105
[15] Ibid. Gallagher “Upon Their Success Hang Momentous Interests” p.86
[16] Fuller, J.F.C. A Military History of the Modern World, Volume Three: From the Seven Days Battle, 1862, to the Battle of Leyte Gulf, 1944 Minerva Press 1956 p.107
[17] Ibid. Stoker The Grand Design: Strategy and the U.S. Civil War p.411
[18] Gwynne, Samuel C. Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion, and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson Scribner, a Division of Simon and Schuster New York 2014 p.45
[19] Ibid. Gwynne Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion, and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson p.173
[20] Davis, Jefferson, Letter to John Forsyth July 18th 1862 in Major Problems in American Military History edited by John Whiteclay Chambers II and G. Kurt Piehler, Houghton-Mifflin and Company, Boston and New York 1999 pp.159-160
[22] McPherson, James M. Drawn With the Sword: Reflections on the American Civil War Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York 1996 p.76
[23] Marszalek, John F. Commander of All of Lincoln’s Armies: A Life of General Henry W. Halleck The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA and London 2004 p.168
[24] Ibid. McPherson Drawn With the Sword: Reflections on the American Civil War p.79
[25] Ibid. McPherson Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief p.103
[26] Catton, Bruce. Grant Moves South Castle Books, New York, 2000, originally published by Little Brown and Company, New York 1960 p.402
[29] Ambrose, Stephen E. Halleck: Lincoln’s Chief of Staff Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge and London 1960 and 1992 p.119
[30] McClellan, George B. Letter to Abraham Lincoln July 7, 1862 in Perman, Michael and Murrell Taylor, Amy editors Major Problems in the Civil War and Reconstruction: Documents and Essays Third Edition Wadsworth Cengage Learning Boston MA 2011 p.140
[31] Gallagher, Gary W. The 1862 Richmond Campaign as a Watershed in Major Problems in the Civil War and Reconstruction: Documents and Essays Third Edition Wadsworth Cengage Learning Boston MA 2011 p.157
[32] Ibid. Strachan European Armies and the Conduct of War p.73
[33] Ibid. McPherson The War that Forged a Nation: Why the Civil War Still Matters p.35
Filed under civil war, History, Military
Tagged as abraham lincoln, carl von clausewitz, francis lieber, General William Tecumseh Sherman, george mcclellan, henri jomini, henry halleck, jefferson davis, jominian theory, lieber code, limited war, thomas stonewall jackson, total war, ulysses s grant, winfield scott
33 Years of Marriage: Finding that One Special Person You Want to Annoy the Rest of Your Life
Mark Twain, a wise man if there ever was such, wrote “After all these years, I see that I was mistaken about Eve in the beginning; it is better to live outside the Garden with her than inside it without her.” Truthfully I think that he was absolutely correct.
Yesterday, Judy and I celebrated our thirty-third wedding anniversary with many friends at our local version of the Cheers bar, the Gordon Biersch brewery restaurant in Virginia Beach. It was a wonderful time and I cannot have imagined a better way to spend it than with the people who came out, as well as those who wanted to but were unable to attend.
But it really is hard to imagine that we have been married thirty-three years, and that we have known each other for close to thirty-eight years. It is really amazing to think that this has been the case, I for one never really expected to fall in love but I did, in spite of my less than idealistic realism and the fact that I can be such a pain in the ass, as Judy can well attest. I think that the comedienne, Rita Rudner said it quite well, “I love being married. It’s so great to find that one special person you want to annoy for the rest of you life,” or as I like to put it, live to love, love to annoy. Truthfully, I am surprised at times that Judy has not found reason to kill me off, in fact there are a number of times that I am sure that any jury would have ruled my murder justifiable homicide, but I digress…
The fact is that in our thirty-three years of marriage we have weathered some incredibly difficult times that many good people in loving marriages do not survive. Marriage is a difficult thing, yes it is about love, but even more than that it it about friendship, and a commitment to make things work. Marriage is a bit like politics and diplomacy, it involves compromise and commitment in order to ensure that war does not break out. Love is certainly a part, and forgiveness, an absolute necessity, but it really does come down to friendship. As Mark Twain noted, “Love seems the swiftest, but it is the slowest of all growths. No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century.” It took us nearly a third of a century, but in spite of all, I think that we have found it.
Filed under marriage and relationships
Tagged as friendship, mark twain, marriage, relationships, rita rudner
A Name Change to Reflect Reality: Musings of a Progressive Realist in Wonderland
The World is a bit different today than it was when I first began to blog here in 2009, and my world is also different. When I started writing here I named the site Padre Steve’s World: Musings of a Passionate Moderate. After the 2012 elections I decided that the title needed a change to reflect my still moderate, but ever growing liberal and progressive philosophy. Over the past year as I have watched friends as well as the country as a whole drift towards more ideological polarity, I realized that even as a progressive, and a passionate one at that that I was not an ideologue, nor have I ever been.
A few weeks ago I was reading B.H. Liddell-Hart’s biography of General William Tecumseh Sherman and I was struck by the title of the chapter describing Sherman’s warnings to people in the South and the North of what secession and civil war would bring to the country. His predictions turned out to be more correct than almost anyone of his time, others such as Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant would within the year begin to come to Sherman’s point of view, but many people and leaders in both the North and South were much too slow to comprehend his warning. The chapter was titled “A Realist in Wonderland.” As I reflected in it, and then looked back to the articles I have been writing about the rapidly changing political climate and polarization in the country that my views are much like Sherman, I am much more pragmatic than many people in the country. I do have my passionate beliefs, and yes though I am a liberal and progressive, I am still moderate. But my moderatation is better described as realism. I have a hard time being arguments from either side of the political and ideological spectrum that are not grounded in political, economic, social, technological, diplomatic, cultural, or military reality, as well as human nature. Likewise, I do not jump on the bandwagon of any movement without looking at it in context of what it will mean for all of us.
Since I am a historian, a theologian with a fair amount of training in psychology and sociology, coupled with the fact and I am a man who has spent over 90% of my adult life in the military and 86% of that time as an officer I am a consummate realist.
Sadly, in today’s world, realism is not often practiced. Ideologues on all sides of the political spectrum fan passionate hatred of all that oppose them, even in minor details. Politicians of all stripes promise things that cannot be delivered because they are not based in political or economic realities, compromise and cooperation is shunned in favor of extreme positions than when examined seldom pass the muster of reality and their proponents seldom thing of the second, third, and fourth order effects of their policies if enacted. I think the recent Brexit is an example of that and what happens now will change the world. In some cases those changes may be good, in other realms bad, and some potentially disastrous. How those changes unfold, and what the consequences will be, is dependent on all of us and who the political leaders that we elect deal with the issues, as well as the leaders of commerce and industry.
In fact I would dare say that the United States today is as divided as it was in the mid to late 1850s and that our political parties are undergoing the same kind of disintegration as occurred to the Whigs and Democrats of that era, with new movements; some based on economics, some on the idea of emancipation and freedom, and some based on anti-immigrant racial and religious xenophobia arising. But I digress…
We can look to history to try to understand the nature of our situation, but what we become will be based on our human nature, and how we rise to the occasion. It will be a challenging time, and to get back to what I started with, I think that the change in the blog title is better descriptive of me and my views.
Have a great day and I hope that you continue to enjoy what I post, learn from it, be challenged, and spread the word that there is a realist in wonderland.
Filed under leadership, philosophy, Political Commentary
Tagged as History, ideology, leadership, Political Commentary, political thought, realism, william tecumseh sherman
The Realm of Hatred
This is an uncomfortable article because it deals with an aspect of life that most of us do not want to deal with, that is the fact that no matter how hard that we try that human beings are capable of some of the most heinous crimes imaginable. That being said, war, no matter how undesirable is not an autonomous military action that can be separated from passions of the people involved. Clausewitz wrote about the connection between the people, the army, and the government. This article is a portion of a further researched and re-written article that I posted here a few months back. However, that being said, it is based on the simple reality that war and conflict is based in the realm of hatred. We may find reasons to try to justify this, but the fact is that war and conflict falls in the realm of hatred. I guess that Clausewitz really never goes out of style. On Monday I will post another article from this text on a similar topic from my text.
Likewise, the enmity of the two sides for one another had been fostered by a half century of relentless and violent propaganda that ushered from the mouths of politicians, the press, and even from the pulpit brought the element of hatred to the fore of the conflict; as Clausewitz correctly observed, “Even the most civilized of peoples, in short, can be filled with passionate hatred for each other.” [1]
As the war went on the feelings of animosity and hatred often boiled over and were reflected in the words and sometimes the actions of the soldiers. A Confederate Captain wrote his wife to teach his children “a bitter and unrelenting hatred of the Yankee race” that had “invaded our country and devastated it… [and] murdered our best citizens…. If any luckless Yank should unfortunately come my way he need not petition for mercy. If he does I will give him lead.” A well off wife of a plantation owner in Georgia reflected, “I wonder if the Northern people still cling to the delusion that such a thing as our being united with them is possible. So far from it I am inclined to believe that each passing day widens the gulf between [us]. Each man we lose but serves to render more intense our hatred of the Yankee…” [2]
During Lee’s invasion of Pennsylvania in 1863, ordinary Southerners, encouraged by the victories at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville allowed confidence, to mix with arrogance and hatred, even among the deeply religious. “Because extermination is the watchword of our enemies,” one Georgia Baptist editor rationalized, “Mercy ceases to be a virtue in a contest with devils.” Instead, the government should adopt “those extreme measures of retaliation which shall put fear into the hearts of the Yankee soldiery and demoralize the invading armies.” [3]
A soldier from a Wisconsin regiment wrote to his fiancée after the assault on Resaca, Georgia that his unit had captured twenty-three Confederates and “or boys asked if they remembered Fort Pillow and killed them all. Where there is no officer with us, we take no prisoners…. We want revenge for our brother soldiers and will have it…. Some of the [rebels] say they will fight as long as there is one of them left. We tell them that is what we want. We want to kill them all off and cleanse the country.” [4]
While this was hatred was not universal and many times the combatants behaved with great chivalry on the battlefield, and Northern and Southern veterans led efforts at reconciliation after the war; such hatred was something that had not been a part of the American military experience. The deep rooted enmity, especially in the South, would remain a constant over the next one hundred years. “White southerners who retained Confederate loyalties against Federal soldiers and northerners in general…. Confederates defiantly refused to forgive enemies who had inflicted such pain on their society.” [5] Likewise, many Union veterans felt that in their sacrifices to defeat the Confederacy and end slavery would be forgotten as time slipped by and the memory of the war subsided.
This very real hatred meant that there were many times when the American Civil War came close to Clausewitz’s understanding of absolute war in its in character, and it prefigured the great ideological wars of the twentieth century. J.F.C. Fuller noted “for the first time in modern history the aim of war became not only the destruction of the enemy’s armed forces, but also of their foundations- his entire political, social and economic order.” [6] It was the first war where at least some of the commanders, especially Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman were men of the Industrial Age, in their thought and in the way that they waged war, in strategy, tactics even more importantly, psychologically. Fuller wrote:
“Spiritually and morally they belonged to the age of the Industrial Revolution. Their guiding principle was that of the machine which was fashioning them, namely, efficiency. And as efficiency is governed by a single end- that every means is justified- no moral or spiritual conceptions of traditional behavior must stand in its way.” [7] After he left Atlanta, many towns were treated leniently, even Savannah where a significant number of influential people desired peace, and Sherman, in a politically astute move attempted to nurture division in the population of the Confederacy.
President Lincoln, as well as Grant and Sherman realized in early 1864 that “the South was indeed a nation in arms and that the common European practice of having standing armies engaged each other in set-piece battles to determine the outcome of a war was not enough to win this struggle.” [8] Though neither man was a student of Clausewitz, their method of waging war was in agreement with the Prussian who wrote that “the fighting forces must be destroyed; that is, they must be put in such a position that they can no longer carry on the fight” but also that “the animosity and the reciprocal effects of hostile elements, cannot be considered to have ended so long as the enemy’s will has not been broken.” [9]
Sherman told the mayor of Atlanta after ordering the civilian population expelled that “we are not only fighting hostile armies, but a hostile people, and must make the old and young, the rich and poor, feel the hard hand of war.” [10] Sherman was one of the first American military leaders to understand that a civil war could not be waged according to the limited war doctrines most American officers had been taught. He not only “carried on war against the enemy’s resources more extensively and systematically than anyone else had done, but he developed also a deliberate strategy of terror directed against the enemy’s minds.” [11] While some might find this troubling, especially those who attempt to rationalize “war because they find difficulty accepting the elemental forces at its centre.” [12] But the fact remains that it was Sherman’s Southern sweep of all that lay before him that broke the back of the Confederacy.
In August 1864 Ulysses Grant, tired of the Confederates using the Shenandoah Valley as a route to launch attacks into the North, and understanding it to be the breadbasket of Virginia dispatched Major General Philip Sheridan to defeat the Confederate forces there, and to render it incapable of further supplying the Confederate war effort. He instructed Sheridan,
“In pushing up the Shenandoah Valley… it is desirable that nothing should be left to invite the enemy to return. Take all provisions, forage, and stock wanted for the use of your command; as such as cannot be consumed, destroy. It is not desirable that the buildings should be destroyed; they should rather be protected; but the people should be informed that so long as an army can subsist among them recurrences of these raids must be expected, and we are determined to stop them at all hazards.” [13]
Grant ordered Sheridan “to give the enemy no rest…. Do all the damage to railroads and crops you can. Carry off stock of all descriptions, and negroes, so as to prevent further planting. If the war is to last another year, we want the Shenandoah Valley to remain a barren waste.” [14] Sheridan complied, and on October 2nd reported that “he had destroyed over 2000 barns filled with wheat , hay, and farming implements; over 70 mills filled with flour and wheat; have driven in front of the army over 4000 head of stock, and have killed or issued to the troops not less than 3000 sheep…. Tomorrow I will continue the destruction…” [15] Sheridan himself was unapologetic and noted something that has been true in almost every modern war. He wrote, “Death is popularly considered the maximum punishment in war, but it is not; reduction to poverty brings prayers for peace more surely and more quickly than does destruction in human life.” [16] A Union reporter wrote, “The completeness of the devastation is awful. Hundreds of nearly starving people are going north. Our trains are crowed with them. They line the wayside. Hundreds more are coming.” [17]
The effect of Sheridan’s rampage was soon felt across Virginia and the Carolinas, shortages of all kinds arose on the Confederate home front and soldiers began to question where the war could be won, and for the first time desertion became a major problem for Lee’s army as soldiers elected to go home to do what they could to help their families.
But Sherman and Grant were not alone in understanding the problem of fighting a limited war against the Confederacy. In the fall of 1862 a twenty-five year volunteer officer, Colonel Strong Vincent serving with McClellan’s army in Virginia understood what had to happen if the Union were to overcome the rebellion of the Confederacy. Vincent who would be instrumental in throwing back Hood’s assault on Little Round Top, and die leading the defense of that edifice, wrote to his wife about the need for harder measures.
“We must fight them more vindictively, or we shall be foiled at every step. We must desolate the country as we pass through it, and not leave a trace of a doubtful friend or foe behind us; make them believe that we are in earnest, terribly in earnest; that to break this band in twain is monstrous and impossible; that the life of every man, yea, of every weak woman or child in the entire South, is of no value whatever compared with the integrity of the Union.” [18]
Abraham Lincoln came to embrace the eternal nature of war as well as the change in the character of the war over time. Lincoln had gone to war for the preservation of the Union, something that for him was almost spiritual in nature, as is evidenced by the language he used in both of his inaugural addresses and the Gettysburg Address. Instead of a war to re-unite the Union with the Emancipation Proclamation the war became a war for the liberation of enslaved African Americans, After January 1st 1863 when the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect, Lincoln “told an official of the Interior Department, “the character of the war will be changed. It will be one of subjugation…The [old] South is to be destroyed and replaced by new propositions and ideas.” [19] That too was a modern understanding of war.
Of course, the revolution in military affairs that characterized the Civil War took time, but it was the political and military leaders of the North who better adapted themselves and their nation to the kind of war that was being fought. “Lincoln’s remarkable abilities gave him a wide edge over Davis as a war leader, while in Grant and Sherman the North acquired commanders with a concept of total war and the determination to make it succeed.” [20]
At the beginning of the war the leaders and populace of both sides still held a romantic idea of war. The belief that the war would be over in a few months and that would be settled by a few decisive battles was held by most, including many military officers on both sides. There were some naysayers like the venerable and rather corpulent General Winfield Scott, but politicians and the press mocked Scott and those who even suggested that the war would be long, hard, and bloody. Of course those who predicted a short, easy, and relatively bloodless war who were proven wrong, and the war became the bloodiest war ever waged by Americans, and it was against other Americans.
[1] Ibid. Clausewitz On War p.76
[2] Thomas, Ella Gertrude. The Journal of Ella Gertrude Thomas in The Civil War and Reconstruction: A Documentary Collection edited by William E. Gienapp, W.W. Norton and Company, New York and London, 2001 p.211
[3] Rable, George C. God’s Almost Chosen Peoples: A Religious History of the American Civil War University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill 2010 p.264
[4] Ibid. McPherson The War that Forged a Nation pp.49-50
[5] Gallagher, Gary W. The Confederate War: How Popular Will, Nationalism and Military Strategy Could not Stave Off Defeat Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA and London 1999 p.34
[6] Ibid. Fuller A Military History of the Modern World, Volume Three: p.88
[7] Ibid. Fuller A Military History of the Modern World, Volume Three p.88
[8] Flood, Charles Bracelen, Grant and Sherman: The Friendship that Won the War, Harper Perennial, New York 2005 p.238
[10] Ibid. McPherson The Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era p.809
[11] Ibid. Weigley The American Way of War: A History of United States Military History and Policy p.149
[12] Ibid. Strachan European Armies and the Conduct of War p.3
[13] A Great Civil War: A Military and Political History 1861-1865 p.371
[15] Foote, Shelby, The Civil War, A Narrative. Volume Three Red River to Appomattox Random House, New York 1974 p.563
[16] Ibid. Goldfield America Aflame: How the Civil War Created a Nation pp.340-341
[17] Ibid. Foote The Civil War, A Narrative. Volume Three Red River to Appomattox p.564
[18]Nevins, James H. and Styple, William B. What death More Glorious: A Biography of General Strong Vincent Belle Grove Publishing Company, Kearney NJ 1997 p.57
[19] Ibid. McPherson The Battle Cry of Freedom p.558