Themes of the American Civil War
Widening Destructive Scope
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| Widening Destructive Scope One of them was William T. Sherman. Southerners and some historians have pictured Sherman and his campaigns tilting the scales to total war. Maturing under Grant’s tutelage, and foreshadowing the shape of things to come, in and 1863 Sherman moved against the enemy’s economic infrastructure in Mississippi, destroying railroads in Meridian and Jackson, the state capital. Worse lay ahead in Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina. After taking the railroad center of Atlanta, Georgia, on September 1, 1864, Sherman led an army of 60,000 veteran troops across the state. Marching in loose formations fifty miles wide, their eventual destination was the Atlantic port of Savannah, more than 200 miles away from Atlanta. Sherman’s goals were those of modern war to destroy everything of military value but also to ruin the South’s will to prosecute the war—simultaneously destroying economic resources and morale. Sherman summarized his intent to Grant: [I]t is a demonstration to the world, foreign and domestic, that we have a power which Jefferson Davis cannot resist. This may not be war, but rather statesmanship, nevertheless it is overwhelming to my mind that there are thousands of people abroad and in the South who will reason thus If the North can march an army right through the south, it is proof positive that the North can prevail in this contest, leaving only open the question of its willingness to use that power. 32 No Confederate army blocked his path, and, like a human hurricane, from November 15 to December 22, 1864, Sherman’s catastrophic raid damaged or destroyed railroads, bridges, and war supplies, along with many civilian homes, businesses, and much personal property. Moreover, thousands of slaves fled their owners, creating a terrible logistics burden for Sherman, but further undermining slavery throughout the South. In the Carolinas, Sherman’s army further demonstrated the powerlessness of the Confederate government. From February through April, 1865, Union troops pillaged across two states, burning two dozen towns, including much of Columbia, South Carolina’s capital, ripping up railroads, laying waste to crops, incinerating factories, and leaving a trail of unprecedented destruction in their wake. Major General Philip H. Sheridan’s campaign in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley paralleled Sherman’s destructiveness. During the summer of 1864 two armies sparred while moving up and down the Shenandoah Valley. Union soldiers damaged several towns, and that damage so infuriated 74 • Joseph G. Dawson III General Jubal Early that he retaliated by raiding northward and razing the town of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. Although the strength of the two valley armies varied, Sheridan’s 40,000 outnumbered Early’s about two to one. A series of hard-fought engagements culminated in a Union victory at the battle of Cedar Creek on 19 October. Obeying Grant’s orders to leave “the Shenandoah Valley . . . a barren waste and taking a systematic approach, Sheridan set out to ruin the area known as the breadbasket of the Confederacy”; its bountiful farms had sustained Lee’s army. Barns and crops, farms and fences, mills and shops all fell to the torch Union soldiers hauled off food and livestock, leaving little of value to anyone. The Shenandoah Valley never fed Lee’s army again. 33 Mentor to Sherman and Sheridan, Ulysses S. Grant rose from obscurity into the height of American military power in Forging a modernistic cooperative relationship with Union naval officers, Grant became the temporary darling of Northern journalists in the early spring of after demanding the unconditional surrender of Fort Donelson, Tennessee. However, the battle of Shiloh, Tennessee, on April 6–7, produced horrific casualties more than 20,000 Federals and Confederates were killed, wounded, or missing. Shiloh transformed Grant’s outlook about what it would take to restore the Union. He recalled in his memoirs: I gave up all ideas of saving the Union except by complete conquest. Up to that time it had been the policy of our army, certainly of that portion commanded by me, to protect the property of the citizens whose territory was invaded, without regard to their sentiments, whether Union or Secession. After this battle, however, I regarded it as humane to both sides to protect the persons of those found at their homes, but to consume everything that could be used to support and supply armies. 35 Grant never again discounted the Confederates devotion to winning independence and, accordingly, came to understand the tremendous military force that would have to be marshalled and applied in order to smash the rebellion and produce national reunion. It proved impossible to destroy armies on the battlefield, but Grant trapped three Confederate armies during the war (Fort Donelson, Vicksburg, and Appomattox, and forced them to surrender, destroying their usefulness and also damaging Southern morale. Looking beyond the battlefield, Grant decided that destruction of enemy resources must be given high priority. Working with Sherman and Sheridan, Grant sought ways to undercut the Southern war effort by depriving the Confederacy of whatever it needed to fuel its war machine. 36 As Union armies ground their way into the Confederacy, they targeted cities—places with industrial capacity. In May, 1862, the Union navy The First of the Modern Wars? • 75 delivered a man federal army to capture New Orleans, the South’s largest city, biggest port, and a major banking center as well as home to the Leeds Iron Works and other factories. In that same spring McClellan campaigned against Richmond. It was capital of the Confederacy, but also the South’s largest industrial center, site of the famous Tredegar Iron Works and other heavy industries. Other places with manufacturing capabilities fell to the Union’s onslaught, including Nashville (February, 1862) and Memphis (June, 1862), Tennessee, and the shipyards at Norfolk, Virginia (May, Although McClellan failed to take Richmond, by the end of 1862 four of the Confederacy’s twelve largest cities (New Orleans, Nashville, Memphis, and Norfolk) were in federal hands. One by one, the Union armies captured other shipping or railroad centers containing industries, including Chattanooga, Tennessee (September, 1863), Mobile, Alabama (August, 1864), and Atlanta, Georgia (September, 1864). Then came Sherman’s March to the Sea As Grant summarized, the Georgia–Carolinas campaign had enabled Sherman “to get into the interior of the enemy’s country as far as he can, inflicting all of the damage you can against their war resources In the war’s waning weeks, March–April, 1865, Brigadier General James H. Wilson led a column of 13,000 Union cavalrymen on a destructive 300 mile raid across Alabama and into eastern Georgia, ravaging the vital depots and industries at Selma, scorching central Alabama in the same way that Sherman had burnt the heart of Georgia. Thus by the end of the war the Confederacy was deprived of much of its manufacturing capability, either destroyed or occupied by Union armies. 37 As the war raged through its third year, federal leaders refused to be distracted by Confederate guerrilla raids and focused on major campaigns. The war was mostly a conventional conflict, and Lincoln and his generals insisted that Union forces hammer against the secessionists conventional armies and resources. 38 Meanwhile some, including Northern “Peace Democrats” and diehard Southern rebels, still held out hopes for an armistice. Avoiding a term like unconditional surrender in July, 1864, Lincoln gave directions to Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune. The journalist was about to hold unofficial discussions in Canada with Confederate delegates. If you can find any person anywhere professing to have any proposition of Jefferson Davis in writing, for peace, embracing the restoration of the Union and abandonment of slavery, whatever else it embraces, say to him he may come tome with you Nothing came from Greeley’s meeting likewise, no breakthrough resulted in February, from Lincoln’s conference with Confederate Vice-president Alexander Stephens at Hampton Roads, Virginia. 39 Reunion and emancipation remained Lincoln’s terms for ending the war. Restoration of the Union foreclosed the continued existence of the Confederate States of America. If there was no entity called the Confederate 76 • Joseph G. Dawson III States of America, the rebels conventional armies could not survive. Anything else that remained to be negotiated were such war-ending matters as when and how Confederates would turn in weapons before disbanding, arranging for the release of prisoners of war, and requiring any surviving Confederate ships to haul down their flags. Obviously, such a vague phrase as the abandonment of slavery revealed no specifics as to the process of how slavery would be abandoned, or how long it might take. While vague, the phase meant that the institution was to be ended in some fashion; it required Davis and other Southern leaders to give up the social and economic system that had ignited so much controversy since the Missouri Compromise of 1821. Not surprisingly, President Davis blenched when he learned of Lincoln’s terms, seeing that they equalled unconditional surrender without using that dreaded phrase, even if there was a slim chance that Lincoln could persuade the Congress to appropriate money to pay slave- owners for their slave property. 40 Sliding to oblivion, the Confederacy lived on for less than a year. By June, all government offices and departments of the Confederate States of America had closed. Its Congress was dissolved and its President was imprisoned. Confederate armies were disbanded and their flags shredded or surrendered. To avoid arrest, some Confederate officers fled overseas to Mexico, Brazil, or Egypt. Confederate ministers (ambassadors) to foreign nations held no portfolio. Confederate money was worthless in private or public commerce and its debt was repudiated in America and Europe. Crippled by Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, the institution of slavery was abolished by the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the US. Constitution six months after the last Confederate army surrendered. There was no compromise on any of these issues. As a result of the Civil War the Confederate States of America ceased to exist. The war’s casualties reflected the far-reaching nature of the conflict, especially for the Confederacy. Inexact records for the South and more accurate tabulations for the North indicate that a total of 620,000 American soldiers and sailors died during the war, some 360,000 Federals and probably more than 260,000 Confederates. Of those totals, more than Yankees and 164,000 Rebels died of disease. In addition, more than northerners and 195,000 southerners were wounded. The Confederate casualties represented 50 percent of men in uniform killed, died of disease, wounded, or missing. 41 The Civil War ripped apart the social and economic fabric of the old Union, destroyed slavery and produced constitutional changes (the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, the first steps toward anew society. Industries worked to fill military orders and railroads accommodated military schedules. Employing modern weapons and suffering significant casualties, large armies maneuvered through the Southern The First of the Modern Wars? • 77 countryside, damaging crops, railroads, businesses, cities, and homes. Praising the sacred Union and promising anew birth of freedom on one hand, or pledging to uphold states rights and perpetuate slavery on the other, rival American governments sought to achieve national goals that could not be compromised. Northerners and southerners fought to the bitter end in a conflict that can be viewed as the first modern war. Notes 1. Adam Badeau, Military History of Ulysses S. Grant, 3 vols. (New York, 1881) III, pp. 643–4. A valuable introduction to this topic is Mark Grimsley, Modern War/Total War in Steven E. Woodworth, ed, The American Civil War A Handbook of Literature and Research (Westport, CT, and London, 1996), pp. 379–89. An assertive argument, answering the question in the negative, is Mark E. Neely, Jr, Was the Civil War a Total War Civil War History 37 (pp. 5–28; revised in Stig Förster and Jörg Nagler, eds, On the Road to Total War The American Download 2.25 Mb. Share with your friends:
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