by Hugh Brogan
Many of the soldiers were no doubt unrefiective types, content to accept words like ‘Union’, ‘rebel’ and ‘nation’ and act accordingly. But the intensely political quality of American life meant that for at least as many of these young citizens the matter had to be thrashed out in argument and private thought; their society forced them to be like Cromwell’s russet-coated trooper, who knew what he fought for and loved what he knew.2 Their leaders had to justify themselves to their followers, and the followers had to justify themselves to each other and to the folks back home. It was common practice to elect junior officers, as if a regiment were a township or a pioneer train. No wonder that the army was intensely politicized and that Lincoln had always to take its views into consideration. Eventually his pains were repaid: it was the army vote which re-elected him triumphantly in 1864, an explicit vindication of the Union cause.
Attachment to the Union had long been a commanding feeling, even before Andrew Jackson in 1830 proposed his famous toast: ‘Our Federal Union – it must be preserved.’ The rituals of American life fortified it, not only on the Fourth of July but in every schoolroom where, in that enlightened age, boys were taught the art of public speaking and practised the peroration of Daniel Webster’s Second Reply to Hayne:
When my eyes shall be turned to behold, for the last time, the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonoured fragments of a once glorious Union; on States dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood! Let their last feeble and lingering glance, rather, behold the gorgeous ensign of the republic… still full high advanced… bearing for its motto no such miserable interrogatory as, What is all this worth? Nor those other words of delusion and folly, Liberty first, and Union afterwards: but everywhere, spread over all in characters of living light, blazing on all its ample folds, as they float over the sea and over the land, and in every wind under the whole heavens, that other sentiment, dear to every true American heart – Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable!
The feeling was no doubt greatly reinforced by economic interests: as Stephen A. Douglas warned the South in i860, ‘You cannot sever this Union without severing every hope and prospect that a Western man has on this earth.’ There were innumerable ways in which the various parts of the great republic had grown economically intertwined; even the South, even if there had not been a war, would have suffered grievously from its self-imposed exclusion from the markets and resources of the North; and then there was the plain geographical fact that, as Lincoln said in his first inaugural, ‘physically speaking, we cannot separate’. The Americans were stuck with each other in one continent. Their religion, origins and political culture were much the same, their language was English. The Union seemed to be the merest expression of common sense and inevitability.
But these considerations have little to do with the passions of the Civil War. At the bottom of all American patriotism lay, and lies to the present day, the commitment to freedom – the favourite word, the favourite idea, the favourite boast. This freedom was a very concrete thing, the essential stuff of the American historical experience. The colonial and Revolutionary eras had been a continuous struggle to be free of England, in religion, politics, trade and everything else. In the nineteenth century, freedom meant the ability to go west, to run your own life, to make your own future, to worship your own God, to bring up your children in your own way, to speak your mind. The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and eighty-odd years of political experience had not only reinforced, deepened and broadened the commitment to freedom, they had incarnated it in the United States, in a nation. It was not, perhaps, true that American freedom could not have survived the defeat of the North in the Civil War; but the great majority of Northerners, from Lincoln downwards, believed it to be true. Everything they valued in life seemed to be at risk with the Union. No wonder they fought.
It took them a long time to learn how. General Scott, the corpulent veteran of the War of 1812 and Mexico, had a strategic plan that he called the Anaconda, which was in many respects the same as that which eventually defeated the Confederacy: the rebels were to be attacked from all sides, from the sea, the West and the North, and squeezed to death. But the United States only had a tiny navy, so the decision to blockade the South created plenty of work for the Navy Secretary, Gideon Welles (1802–78), just as its interference with the regular course of North Atlantic trade would create plenty of work for Secretary of State Seward. Above all, an army had to be shaped out of the mass of green recruits provided by the state militias. Washington hummed with activity. Unfortunately this deluded the inexperienced press, politicians and parents of America into imagining that everything was in fair train to an early victory, and Lincoln, who was still over-optimistic himself, felt enormous pressure to launch an offensive to end matters briskly.
Appearances were never more deceptive. The South too was organizing. The Confederacy transferred its capital from Montgomery to Richmond, Virginia. Beauregard took command of the scratch army that was hastily assembling there. The fire-eater, Yancey, led a mission to Europe in search of diplomatic recognition of the new nation. But the North discounted all these signs of serious purpose. ‘On to Richmond!’ was the cry. Impatience mounted, and voices began to be heard impugning Scott’s loyalty: after all, he was a Virginian. So at last the generals gave in. Scott being too old and fat to exercise field command himself, the job was given to Irvin McDowell, unluckiest of commanders. On 21 July, a boiling day, his raw levies attacked Beauregard’s almost equally unripe troops in their strong position at
Manassas Junction, on a ridge above the little river of Bull Run in northern Virginia.3 The ladies and gentlemen of Washington flocked out with picnic baskets to see the fun. For a time it was a question of who would run away first (the militia had improved very little, if at all, since George Washington’s day), but the rebels gradually steadied. One of their commanders encouraged his troops by pointing to the next section of the line: ‘Look at Jackson’s men, standing like a stone wall!’ – and thus a hero got his name. McDowell was not helped by the decision of the Pennsylvania militia to leave just before the battle: they had signed on for ninety days, and their time was up. Gradually it became clear that the North had been checked. Then, for no good reason (but it was so very hot and the experience was so very new) panic seized the Union troops. Instead of retiring a few miles in good order, which was all that veterans would have found necessary, they fled in abandoned terror all the way back to the bridges across the Potomac, which were soon choked by a roaring, hysterical mob. Had the Southern army been capable of swift movement, Washington could have been captured; as it was, Virginia was suddenly clear of federal troops, except for outposts on the southern bank of the Potomac. Several of the picnickers, failing to run away in time, fell into the hands of the Confederates.
This staggering blow began to sober the North. Lincoln, having got something like the measure of the problem, determined for the time being to ignore importunate back-seat drivers. He sent for General George B. McClellan (1826 – 85), who had just cleared the mountains of western Virginia of Confederates, and gave him a free hand to train what was now to be called the Army of the Potomac. General Scott retired, and more volunteers poured into Washington. Later on that winter Lincoln got rid of his Secretary of War, a machine politician from Pennsylvania who was more interested in the patronage of his office than in enabling the Army of the Potomac to fight effectively, and replaced him with Edwin Stanton, who soon showed himself to be one of the most valuable members of the Cabinet.
If it was beginning to dawn on the North that the war was going to be much longer and more disagreeable than had been expected, no such illumination seems to have benefited the South. To be sure, the Confederacy was confronted with a hard predicament. Its war aim was simple: to win from the North an acknowledgement of its independence. It had neither the power nor the wish to destroy the gover
nment of the United States (other than by seceding from it), nor did it have any designs on its territory. The difficulty was in choosing means to reach the goal. One route, much favoured beforehand, was that of ‘King Cotton’. It was supposed that if Lancashire and its mills could not get any cotton, the British economy would totter, and to avoid a fall the British government would be forced to intervene, to recognize and guarantee the Confederacy, even at the price of war with the Union. So even before the Northern blockade could bite, an embargo was placed on the export of cotton in 1862. Lancashire began to feel the pinch, but its sufferings did little damage to British prosperity and never brought the British government anywhere near the point of intervention. In the end only Robert E. Lee’s idea, of unrelenting brilliant battle, with the object of breaking the Northern will to go on fighting, offered any hope; but in the winter of 1861 – 2 the South did not adopt it. Instead she rested on her laurels, unwisely content already to have dealt the North a stinging rebuke.
Opposite: 5. The principal battles of the Civil War. The map also shows the three geographical features which dominated strategy: the mountains, the rivers and the railroads. Sherman’s march through the South, for example, advanced along the railroad lines
Meantime the leaders of the North struggled with their own dilemmas. Tactics might for the moment be left to General McClellan, who was busily drilling his men at Washington and teaching them all the other elements of soldiering, from marksmanship to sanitation. Strategic choices might equally be postponed until the Army of the Potomac was ready to move. Still, they would eventually have to be faced; it would have to be decided whether to stick to the Anaconda plan or to attack one particular point; and when that was settled, enormous resources would have to be mustered for the gigantic effort required. How could Northern will be maintained in the long struggle to a remote victory?
True, by any conventional measure the North’s military potential was so overwhelming that she should have been able to achieve a speedy victory. She was twice as populous as the South; she had command of the sea, thanks partly to Gideon Welles and partly to the fact that the South had no navy and no allies; her industrial strength was great and growing; her financial base was solid: Salmon P. Chase (1808 – 73), Secretary of the Treasury, was always able to borrow the money he needed to pay for the war (throughout which, it should be added, nineteenth-century Americans showed themselves nearly as reluctant to be taxed as had eighteenth-century ones). The war had come at a good moment in at least one respect: industrial techniques were now far enough advanced to enable the North to exploit her wealth in many valuable new ways. For example, it had just become possible to mass-produce boots and shoes. The soldiers complained that those they got seemed to be made of paper and rapidly fell to pieces; but without mass-production they would all too often have had to go barefoot, like so many Southern soldiers, or like so many soldiers throughout history. And what the North could not produce, she could purchase abroad: the first three years of the war, until Northern factories caught up with Northern demand, were a boom time for the gun-makers of Birmingham. But strong though the North was, her strength alone was not going to produce victory, least of all an early one. Skill was required, and skill was lacking; skill that only painful experience could teach. The great question therefore could not be shirked.
The behaviour of the Pennsylvania militia at Bull Run suggested that Union enthusiasm alone could not be depended on for the duration of a hard war. Americans were not schooled to the long haul (in the twentieth century ‘Mr Dooley’ would pithily characterize them as ‘short-term crusaders’). War-weariness might diminish their fighting spirit to the point where the North would concede independence to the South rather than go on fighting. Today, with two world wars to enlighten us, we may guess that the danger was slighter than it seemed: nation-states, even when fighting in a bad cause under wicked leaders (for example, Germans under Hitler), give up only when all is lost. Yet Lincoln and his advisers can hardly be blamed for taking the problem seriously. And when, later in the war, they were confronted with draft riots, semi-treasonable peace movements and an endless stream of deserters, they must have felt that their anxiety was more than justified.
The cause of reunion, of restoring the status quo, was not enough. Lincoln had a semi-mystical belief that the future happiness of the world depended on a Northern victory, and voiced this idea more and more frequently. But it was too remote, too speculative a notion to fire many, especially as it was a long time before Lincoln’s extraordinary personality began to inspire much respect in his fellow-citizens. The cause of anti-slavery lay much readier to hand; but it too had drawbacks – dangerous ones.
The abolitionists had been divided on the outbreak of war, as so often before. Garrison, who for years had urged the breaking of the covenant with Hell, as he called the Constitution because of its acceptance of slavery, welcomed the secession of the South; so did Wendell Phillips; and they were quite prepared to say so in public, whether on the speaker’s platform or in the pages of the Liberator. Fortunately some sensible person warned them that if they did they would never be listened to in the North again. They stopped to think for once. The upshot was that they rallied to the Union cause, proclaiming that its victory was essential, for it would bring with it the destruction of slavery. This was the note that New England wanted to hear; this was the belief that sent the region’s finest young men so eagerly to war. They, and their sympathizers in Europe, waited eagerly to hear Lincoln adopt it as the official creed of the Union. For more than a year they waited in vain.
Lincoln’s difficulty was not a racialist qualm. His hatred of slavery was strong and deep, his attitude to black men one of straightforward friendliness, like his attitude to whites. To be sure, he shared some of the prejudices of his time; he doubted that it was possible for the two races to live in peace and equality together. He never supposed that this doubt justified the continuance of slavery. He wanted all men, everywhere, to be free. In the first period of the Civil War, however, he dared not touch the peculiar institution, as we have seen. The border states and Northern opinion had to be considered; and, ever conscious of his enormous responsibilities, Lincoln was disinclined to do anything that was not clearly necessary. So he took stern disciplinary measures against Northern generals who issued proclamations of slave emancipation in the areas of their commands, and bore the resultant abolitionist criticisms with his usual stoicism. At the same time he welcomed the abolition by Congress of slavery in the District of Columbia (when a Congressman, years before, he had drawn up a bill for that purpose himself) and the negotiation by Seward of a treaty with Great Britain in 1862 which at last effectively ended the Atlantic slave-trade. Nor did he demur when Congress passed first one and then another Confiscation Act, directed at rebel slave-holders.
Lincoln’s caution gave little satisfaction to much Northern opinion, especially as it emerged that General McClellan was also cautious – exceedingly cautious, it seemed, lethargic. McClellan was overimpressed by his reasonable conviction that the South would be a very hard nut to crack. He clamoured incessantly for more time, more money and more training. The South, it seemed, was meanwhile making good her escape. The North’s fretful anxiety was expressed in various trivial but revealing incidents, such as the hounding in the press of William Howard Russell, special correspondent of The Times, who made the mistake of writing too accurate a report of the Bull Run rout. He was eventually forced to go back to England.
Presently there was a major flare-up which was nearly disastrous. The Confederacy, dissatisfied with its diplomatic progress, or rather non-progress (for both England and France, intimidated by the bellicose language of Secretary Seward, refused to recognize Southern independence), sent two new ministers to London and Paris: Messrs Mason and Slidell. These gentlemen slipped easily enough through the Northern blockade, but word of their presence in the area of his command soon reached Captain Wilkes of the US navy. He discovered that the two men had reached Cu
ba, and there boarded the British mail-steamer Trent, sailing for home. He stopped the vessel and relieved her of her two important passengers. He then sailed for Boston, where Mason and Slidell were confined in Fort Warren while Wilkes was given a public banquet and Northern opinion rejoiced. It was a blow against the South and a slap in the face for Great Britain, which had deeply disappointed the United States by her determined neutrality in the great struggle.
Today it is a little difficult to share the intensity of feeling which the Trent affair unleashed. Nowadays neutrals have learned to take the rough with the smooth and be thankful so long as they can stay at peace. Such a tame attitude was impossible to the subjects of Queen Victoria. Apart from the insult to the Union Jack, there was a widespread feeling that those coarse, vulgar, aggressive Yankees had behaved just as might have been predicted, just as they had behaved so often before: it was time to teach them a lesson. Mason and Slidell had relied on the protection of the British flag; they must be shown not to have done so in vain. On the other side of the Atlantic opinion was at first just as firm in praising Wilkes and wishing to retain his captives as prisoners of war. Fortunately neither Cabinet – neither Lincoln’s nor Lord Palmerston’s – wanted to let this trifle precipitate a ruinous war between Britain and America; after a decent interval, which allowed the North to have second thoughts, the two Southerners were released and continued their voyage to Europe (to their own deep disappointment: had their capture touched off an Anglo-American war the South’s independence would probably have been assured).
Nothing more happened until the spring, when the war began at last to move into its major phase. As a preliminary the South tried to break the blockade with an ironclad vessel, the Virginia (formerly the USS Merrimac, a wooden ship that had fallen into rebel hands when the naval yard at Norfolk, Va., was captured). Virginia did great damage to federal shipping in Hampton Roads; but the next day, in the nick of time, the first Northern ironclad, the newly completed Monitor, appeared to give battle. The two strange monsters battered at each other for five hours, doing comparatively little damage; but in the end Virginia crept back to harbour and did not re-emerge. It was a momentous day in naval history, for it made the whole world’s wooden fleets obsolete and set off a frantic hurry of shipbuilding and iron-cladding in Europe, and especially in Britain. Its chief consequence in the Civil War was that the federal government hastened on the production of more Monitors, so that the blockade was never broken. The South built four more ironclads, but lacked the industrial resources to do more; and none of them fought as successfully as had Virginia.
