For the Common Defense
Page 22
When Wellington learned of Scott’s victory, he declared that the American commander was “the greatest living soldier” and urged young English officers to study the Veracruz–Mexico City campaign, which he considered “unsurpassed in military annals.” Old Fuss and Feathers deserved the praise, having brilliantly conducted an audacious campaign. Yet, like Taylor’s victories, Scott’s expedition did not result in immediate peace. Mexican national pride made it difficult to accept defeat, and political turmoil frustrated the government’s decision-making process. The growing American antiwar movement also indicated that continued resistance might secure more favorable terms. Intense guerrilla warfare, the traditional recourse for a nation with limited conventional military power, involved the occupation forces in constant patrolling and numerous clashes.
With its armies defeated in every battle, its northern provinces conquered, and its capital occupied, Mexico’s refusal to negotiate frustrated Polk and his supporters. As the war’s toll in blood and treasure had increased, Polk believed the United States should take as an indemnity more territory than he originally demanded. Some Democrats even demanded “All Mexico.” In April 1847 Polk had dispatched the State Department’s chief clerk, Nicholas E Trist, to accompany Scott’s army with an offer to the Mexican government to negotiate. Trist’s instructions embodied Polk’s original territorial goals. By October 1847 the president not only wanted more land but also believed Trist had performed badly and, even worse, had become Scott’s political ally. Polk recalled Trist, but the diplomat refused to obey. On February 2, 1848, Trist signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which he negotiated on the basis of his original instructions. Under the treaty’s provisions the United States would pay Mexico $15 million and assume the damage claims of its own citizens against Mexico totaling $3.25 million. In return Mexico would recognize the Rio Grande boundary and cede New Mexico and California.
Few people liked the treaty. Polk was appalled that Trist had ignored his recall, avid expansionists believed the United States would gain too little territory, and war opponents thought the country had taken too much land. Yet on March 10 the Senate ratified the treaty. “The desire for peace, and not the approbation of its terms,” wrote Calhoun, “induces the Senate to yield its consent.” Direct war costs amounted to $58 million, plus the money paid under the treaty’s terms. The human price was also high: American deaths were approximately 14,700. As usual, disease and accidents, not bullets and bayonets, were the big killers: Only 1,733 men were killed in action or died of wounds.
Like most wars, the conflict with Mexico yielded glaring ironies. Polk, the staunch Democratic partisan, waged war both militarily and politically. In military terms he was spectacularly successful against Mexico, but he lost the political battle against popular Whig generals. In 1848 the Whigs nominated for the presidency Old Rough and Ready, who led them to victory. More fundamentally, the vast territorial expansion of America’s western empire precipitated the Civil War. Although historians do not agree on all the war’s fundamental causes, few deny that the immediate question of whether the newly acquired land would be slave or free played a significant role in shattering the nation. Manifest Destiny had made disunity manifest.
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SIX
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The Civil War, 1861–1862
At 4:30 A.M. on April 12, 1861, a lightning-like flash and thunderous roar shattered the predawn stillness at Charleston, South Carolina. A mortar shell arced across the sky, its burning fuse etching a parabolic path toward Fort Sumter. Moments after the shell exploded, guns ringing the harbor began battering the fort as if “an army of devils were swooping around it.” For thirty-four hours artillery commanded by General Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard fired at Sumter, setting numerous fires and knocking huge masonry flakes in all directions. Miraculously, the seemingly murderous barrage killed none of the fort’s soldiers or workmen. But the commanding officer, Major Robert Anderson, who had been Beauregard’s artillery instructor at West Point, knew the good luck could not continue. Having satisfied the demands of duty and honor, he ordered the Stars and Stripes lowered and the white flag raised. The Civil War had begun.
Decades of sectional disagreements over the expansion of slavery into the territories and, for a small minority of northerners, the moral implications of the institution, fueled sharp differences over states’ rights versus national authority and propelled the divided nation toward that fateful moment in Charleston Harbor. Once war became a reality, many people on both sides offered predictions regarding its probable duration and who would triumph. Few, however, foresaw exactly what the war would be like. Most people optimistically predicted a brief conflict waged with the romantic heroism of a Sir Walter Scott novel. Instead, the outlines of modern total warfare emerged during a four-year ordeal. Since both sides fought for unlimited objectives—the North for reunion and (eventually) emancipation, the South for independence and slavery’s preservation—a compromise solution was impossible. No short, restrained war would convince either side to yield; only a prolonged and brutal struggle would resolve the issue.
As the North and South pursued their objectives, sheer numbers of men and industrial capacity became extremely significant. One Confederate general wrote that the war became one “in which the whole population and whole production of a country (the soldiers and the subsistence of armies) are to be put on a war footing, where every institution is to be made auxiliary to war, where every citizen and every industry is to have for the time but the one attribute—that of contributing to the public defense.” Neither belligerent could depend upon improvised measures to equip, feed, and transport its huge armies. Men with administrative skills working behind the lines were equal in importance to men at the front. Furthermore, the coordination of logistical and strategic matters on a vast scale could not be left to individual states. Massive mobilization required an unprecedented degree of centralized national control over military policy.
Mobilizing for War
The North’s warmaking resources were much greater than the Confederacy’s. Roughly speaking, in 1861 the Union could draw upon a white population of 20 million, the South upon 6 million. Two other demographic factors influenced the numerical balance. First, the South contained nearly 4 million slaves who were initially a military asset, laboring in fields and factories and thereby releasing a high percentage of white males for military service. However, after 1862–1863, when the North began enlisting black troops, the slaves progressively became a northern asset. Second, between 1861 and 1865 more than 800,000 immigrants arrived in the North, including a high proportion of males liable for military service. Approximately 20 to 25 percent of the Union Army’s men were foreign-born. Ultimately more than 2 million men served in the Union Army, which reached its peak strength of about 1 million late in the war. Perhaps 750,000 men fought in the Confederate Army, which had a maximum strength of 464,500 in late 1863.11 This nearly total mobilization of southern white males created a dilemma: Fattening the thin gray ranks limited the number of workers in agriculture, mines, foundries, and supply bureaus, risking such reduced output that the soldiers could not be fed and supplied.
The Confederacy did not have the financial structure to wage a long war. It had few banking experts and institutions, had very little specie at its disposal, and had its wealth invested primarily in land and slaves, which were hard to convert into liquid capital. For income the South traditionally sold cotton to the North and to Europe, but the war interrupted this trade. These financial weaknesses undermined the South’s ability to pay for the war by fiscally responsible means. Taxation produced less than 5 percent of the Confederacy’s income. The Confederate constitution prohibited protective tariffs, and although the congress enacted a variety of tax measures, they produced little revenue. The South also tried to borrow money at home and abroad, but few southerners had money to invest, and foreigners had doubts about the new nation’s survival. In all, bonds produced less than 33 percen
t of government income. By necessity rather than choice, Secretary of the Treasury Christopher Memminger turned to the printing press, churning out more than $1.5 billion in paper money, which represented approximately two-thirds of Confederate wartime revenue. As in the Revolution, overabundant paper money combined with severe commodity shortages to create rampant inflation.
Compared to the South, inflation was not so severe in the North, which also financed the war through taxation, loans, and paper money. However, drawing upon its superior fiscal strength, the Union relied primarily upon taxes and borrowing, the former yielding approximately 21 percent of government income, the latter 63 percent. Beginning in 1862 Congress also authorized the Treasury Department to print paper money, called “greenbacks.” During the war it issued $450 million in greenbacks, but this represented only one-sixth of government expenditures.
The North’s industrial superiority was also impressive. In 1860 the northern states had 110,000 manufacturing establishments, while the southern states had only 18,000. The total value of manufactured goods in Virginia, Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi was less than $85 million, but New York’s alone was almost $380 million. However, these numbers do not completely reveal the South’s industrial weakness. Southern states relied on northern technological know-how and skilled labor, and many skilled laborers went back north. The Confederacy’s raw-materials base could not support needed industrial expansion. For instance, during the year ending June 1, 1860, the states forming the Confederacy produced 36,790 tons of pig iron, while the figure for Pennsylvania alone was 580,049 tons. Furthermore, Confederate mines and factories, clustered in the upper south and in coastal cities, were vulnerable to enemy assault.
Railroads were the indispensable element in Civil War transportation, but the South contained only 9,000 of the 30,000 miles of track in 1860. Again, these figures do not fully expose the disparity. Most southern lines were short and single track. The numerous and competitive railroad companies used different track gauges, and when rival lines entered a city, they invariably remained unconnected. Gaps existed in seemingly continuous lines, tracks and bridges were often poorly constructed, and repair facilities were negligible. Locomotives, rolling stock, and rails were scarce, and the South could not produce them during the war. The government’s reluctance to supervise the railroads compounded all these problems. In May 1863 the Confederate congress granted the government broad authority over the railroads, but President Jefferson Davis hesitated to wield the power. Not until early 1865, far too late, did the Confederacy finally take control of the railroads.
The South did not have a railroad network that tied its scant industrial base together or readily permitted long-distance strategic movements. Only one genuine trunk line, running from Memphis through Corinth, Chattanooga, and Lynchburg to Richmond, linked the Mississippi Valley with Virginia. A second trunk line from Vicksburg to Atlanta, where it branched to Wilmington, Charleston, and Savannah, remained unfinished. Four lateral lines crossed those two “main” railroads. One ran from Memphis to Jackson to New Orleans; another stretched from Columbus, Kentucky, through Corinth to Mobile; a third connected Louisville, Nashville, Chattanooga, and Atlanta; the fourth hopscotched along the seaboard from Savannah to Charleston to Wilmington, then ran north to Petersburg and Richmond. Should the North sever any of these fragile arteries, the result would be disastrous.
Northern railroads formed a much better network and suffered less than their southern counterparts from different gauges, poor terminal facilities, gaps, shoddy workmanship, and shortages. The North’s industrial facilities allowed it to produce ample rolling stock and rails. Equally important, President Abraham Lincoln did not share Davis’s sensitivity about government interference with railroads. In January 1862 Congress authorized Lincoln to take possession of any railroads whenever public safety warranted it and place them under military control. The next month Lincoln appointed Daniel C. McCallum director of the United States Military Railroads, and in May the president took formal possession of all railroads. However, he intimated that provided a company sustained the war effort, he would not actually seize the railroad and direct its internal affairs. The president also saw to it that cooperative lines received government aid. He secured such a high degree of cooperation that McCallum’s organization, with but a few exceptions, operated only railroads captured or built in Confederate territory.
Northern water and wagon transportation was also better. Yankee sea power restricted Confederate coastal traffic, and Union gunboats soon plied most of the great western rivers. The South had few barges and steamboats and could not build very many; the North’s situation was the opposite. While railroads and steamboats were vitally important, armies straying from the railhead and wharf depended upon horse- and mule-drawn wagons. When Confederate wagons fell into disrepair, shortages of iron tires and leather goods delayed or prevented repair or replacement. When Union wagons broke down, quartermasters simply requisitioned new ones.
Divisiveness within southern society exacerbated its manpower and resource problems. Southern Unionists were especially numerous in the Appalachian highlands, where, vowed a Knoxville newspaper editor, they would “fight secession leaders till Hell froze over, and then fight them on the ice.” This was no idle boast. Viewing the mountain Unionists as a traitorous wedge thrusting into the Confederacy’s heartland, the South conducted military operations into the region but could not eradicate the loyalists. Two mounted regiments escaped from North Carolina to fight for the Union, thousands of east Tennesseans joined bluecoated units, and northern Alabama Unionists formed the Federal 1st Alabama Cavalry. In all, more than 100,000 southern Unionists fought for the North, with every Confederate state except South Carolina providing at least a battalion of white soldiers for the Union Army. Given the South’s limited manpower and the North’s seemingly insatiable need for soldiers, this “missing” southern army that turned up in the enemy’s ranks was a crucial element in the ultimate Confederate defeat.
States’ rights enthusiasts also disrupted southern harmony. The Confederate constitution guaranteed state sovereignty. Unwilling to surrender much state power, prominent politicians such as Vice President Alexander H. Stephens and Governors Joseph E. Brown of Georgia and Zebulon B. Vance of North Carolina resisted the centralization of authority necessary for efficient warmaking.
Although facing long odds, the Confederate cause was far from hopeless. Many imponderables made northern advantages less imposing than they seemed. One of the greatest uncertainties was the fate of four border slave states that had not seceded. Delaware’s resources were minimal, but Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri contained 2.5 million whites and extensive agriculture and industrial resources. Should these states join the Confederacy, the manpower and resources imbalance would be partially addressed. Another unknown was the war’s duration. The North required considerable time to convert its warmaking potential into actual military power. A short war would render the North’s manpower and industrial superiority superfluous. Foreign intervention was also possible; the South expected English and perhaps French assistance. Because it supplied four-fifths of the cotton used in European mills, the South felt confident that the English and French economies would falter without its raw material. When war began, the Confederacy, by popular consensus rather than government decree, imposed a cotton embargo, anticipating European recognition and aid in return for renewed cotton shipments.
High-level leadership could also make a difference, and a comparison of the commanders in chief seemingly favored the South. An 1828 West Point graduate, Jefferson Davis performed gallant Mexican War service and served in both houses of Congress before becoming President Franklin Pierce’s secretary of war, a position he administered with considerable skill. Lincoln served four terms in the Illinois legislature and one term in the House of Representatives and was best remembered for his humorous yarns and great strength. He was ignorant of the theory and history of war, and his own military experi
ence was a fifty-day militia stint during the Black Hawk War, when, he said only half-jokingly, he led charges against wild onion beds and lost blood battling mosquitoes. By training and experience Davis seemed ideally qualified to lead a nation at war; Lincoln appeared equally unqualified.
And, finally, what of morale? Statistics and accounting ledgers do not win wars, but courage and tenacity at home and at the front are often decisive. The South’s determination seemed more certain than the North’s. Men on both sides viewed the situation through the past’s prism, and history apparently favored the Confederacy. Southerners considered themselves akin to their Revolutionary forefathers, fighting for lofty principles against a tyrannical government and in defense of home and hearth. On the other hand, cast in the conqueror’s role, the North had a task similar to Britain’s during the Revolution. How long would northerners sustain a war to force southern states back into a Union they hated, especially if the cost in blood and treasure became high? From the first some northerners, especially Peace Democrats, urged the Lincoln administration to let the South go.
The widespread sentiment that southerners were more militarily inclined than Yankees reinforced the South’s sense of invincibility. Whether Confederates were more militant is debatable, but large numbers of people on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line thought they were. Many antebellum Americans believed that northeastern commercialism sapped manly virtues, while plantation life accustomed young men to live outdoors, to ride and shoot, and to enjoy violence. Thus in the eastern theater where Union armies came from the northeast, southerners may have had a psychological edge. When a Confederate boasted that he could whip ten Yankees, many Yankees believed him.