What This Cruel War Was Over

by Chandra Manning

  97. Pvt. Daniel Walker, Fifty-fourth Mass., to Editor, January 15, 1864, Morris Island, S.C., CR, January 30, 1864, p. 1.

  98. Sgt. Isaiah Welch, Fifty-fifth Mass., to Editor, December 2, 1863, Folly Island, S.C., CR, December 19, 1863, p. 2.

  99. At the end of the war, journalist Whitelaw Reid noticed free blacks’ equation of the end of slavery with the security of their own rights. In New Orleans, for example, one free black man told Reid, “we have no rights which we can reckon safe while the same are denied to the field-hands on the sugar plantation.” Whitelaw Reid, After the War: A Tour of the Southern States, 1865–66, quoted in Tunnell, Crucible of Reconstruction, 66–67.

  100. General Longstreet’s orders issued during the Gettysburg campaign encouraged the capture of African Americans, on the premise that they could be escaped slaves, for enslavement in the South. Official Records, ser. 1, vol. 51, part 2, pp. 732–33.

  101. Cpl. John Williams, August 4, 1863, near Richmond, John A. Williams Letters, VHS. For more on Confederate soldiers’ enslavement of Pennsylvania blacks in the summer of 1863, see Ted Alexander, “A Regular Slave Hunt: The Army of Northern Virginia and Black Civilians in the Gettysburg Campaign,” North and South 4:7(2001), 82–89; David G. Smith, “Race and Retaliation: The Capture of African Americans During the Gettysburg Campaign,” in Peter Wallenstein and Bertram Wyatt-Brown, Virginia’s Civil War (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2005), 137–51; and Peter C. Vermilyea, “The Effect of the Confederate Invasion of Pennsylvania on Gettysburg’s African-American Community, Gettysburg Magazine 24 (January 2001), 112–28.

  102. Sgt. Isaac Reynolds, Sixteenth Va. Cavalry, to wife, July 20, 1863, Page County, Va., Isaac Reynolds Letters, DU. “Dutch” (from deutsch) meant German. While the jovial atmosphere of the raids quickly changed for Reynolds, the practice of capturing African Americans did not. As late as August 9, he was still writing to his wife about capturing “negroes and horses,” but by that time the mood had become grim and retaliatory rather than celebratory.

  103. Pvt. Robert Mabry, Sixth Va., to wife, July 7, 1863, Winder Hospital, Richmond, Robert C. Mabry Papers, NCDAH. Mabry attributed the uncharacteristically bad behavior to inept officers who were unable to manage the ranks’ demoralized mood induced by the discouraging war news.

  104. “Many Soldiers” to Gen. John C. Pemberton, June 28, 1863, Official Records (Navy), ser. I, vol. 25, p. 118.

  105. Pvt. Andrew Edge, Fifty-second Ga., to wife, July 10, 1863, Enterprise, Miss., Andrew Edge Correspondence, EU.

  106. Sgt. George M. Dixon to sister, July 16, 1863, Jackson, Miss., George M. Dixon Papers, CMM Ser. B, Reel 4. See also Pvt. John Fryar, Thirty-fourth Ga., diary, July 4, 1863, Vicksburg, Miss., John H. Fryar Letters and Diary, MOC.

  107. In “Lee’s Army Has Not Lost Any of Its Prestige: The Impact of Gettysburg on the Army of Northern Virginia and the Confederate Home Front,” in Gary Gallagher, ed., Lee and His Army in Confederate History (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 83–114, Gary Gallagher argues that historians have exaggerated the damaging impact of Gettysburg on Confederate morale. While it is true that Confederate morale recovered and Gettysburg did not mark the beginning of the end in Confederate eyes, it is equally true that the concurrence of Gettysburg and Vicksburg struck white Southerners as a definite, though not permanent, change in Confederate fortunes. As explained below, white Southerners did not give up after July 1863, but their thinking did evolve, especially in religious directions that had not been nearly so evident earlier in the war.

  108. Jefferson Davis, “Speech of 16 February 1861,” in Jefferson Davis, Constitutionalist: His Letters, Papers, and Speeches (Jackson: Mississippi Department of Archives and History, 1923–32), 5:48. Surgeon John Kinyoun, Sixty-sixth N.C., to wife, October 4, 1863, in N.C., John Kinyoun Papers, DU. For the best discussion of the necessity of “organic unity” within the Confederacy, see Faust, Creation of Confederate Nationalism, esp. ch. 1. For the Confederacy’s image of itself as distinctively (and necessarily, if it was to survive) above the fray of petty internal divisions, see Rable, The Confederate Republic.

  109. Pvt. James Zimmerman, Fifty-seventh N.C., to wife, August 16, 1863, Orange Court House, Va., James Zimmerman Papers, DU.

  110. Surgeon John Kinyoun, Sixty-sixth N.C., to wife, July 31, 1863, Kinston, N.C., John Kinyoun Papers, DU.

  111. Sgt. Archie Livingston, Third Fla., to brother, November 6, 1863, near Missionary Ridge, Tenn., Livingston Family Letters, MOC.

  112. Lt. Macon Bonner, N.C. Artillery, to wife, December 28, 1863, Fort Fisher, N.C., Macon Bonner Papers, SHC.

  113. Pvt. Thomas Taylor, Sixth Ala., to wife, August 5, 1863, Orange Court House, Va., Thomas S. Taylor Letters, ADAH.

  114. Pvt. James Zimmerman, Fifty-seventh N.C., to wife, August 16, 1863, Orange Court House, Va., James Zimmerman Papers, DU.

  115. Lt. Thomas Trammell, Eleventh Georgia, to Joseph Brown, June 23, 1863, Inspector General’s Correspondence, GDAH, quoted in Weitz, A Higher Duty, 117–18.

  116. Pvt. James Zimmerman, Fifty-seventh N.C., to wife, August 2, 1863, Orange Court House, Va., and October 21, 1863, Brandy Station, Va., James Zimmerman Papers, DU. Zimmerman made similar points in letters of August 16 and August 30, 1863.

  117. Pvt. J. Marcus Hefner, Fifty-seventh N.C., to wife, July 19, 1863, near Clarkson, Va., Marcus Hefner Papers, NCDAH. William Wagner also resented that ordinary men like himself had to “keepe on fiteing” while the “Big fellows” benefited. See Wagner, Fifty-seventh N.C., to wife, August 2 and August 4, 1863, near Rapidan Station, Va., in William F. Hatley and Linda B. Huffman, eds., Letters of William F. Wagner, Confederate Soldier (Wendell, N.C.: Broadfoot’s Bookmark, 1983), 62, 63.

  118. Surgeon John Kinyoun, Sixty-sixth N.C., to wife, July 31, 1863, Kinston, N.C., John Kinyoun Papers, DU.

  119. Q.M. Theophilus Perry, Second Brigade, Army of the Trans-Mississippi, to wife, July 12, 1863, near Trenton, La., Person Family Papers, DU.

  120. Sgt. John Calton, Fifty-sixth N.C., to brother, December 30, 1863, Concord Church, N.C., John Washington Calton Letters, NCDAH. See also Capt. Theophilus Perry, Twenty-eighth Tex. Cavalry, to wife, January 15, 1864, near Marksville, Ark., Person Family Papers, DU.

  121. Pvt. Richard Ledbetter, Fortieth Ala., to wife, December 25, 1863, near Dalton, Ga., Fortieth Ala. Infantry File, CNMP.

  122. Gary Gallagher and others have argued that soldiers in the Army of Northern Virginia maintained consistently high morale, even when the war was going poorly for the Confederacy, and that these troops retained a high degree of commitment to the war. (See The Confederate War.) ANV soldiers were the least likely to berate secessionists for instigating (and then refusing to do their share in carrying out) an unpopular war. Nonetheless, the theme arose frequently in other Confederate armies, and even among some ANV soldiers, especially North Carolinians, most likely because North Carolina had been lukewarm on the secession issue in the first place and remained a hotbed of dissent throughout the war.

  123. Pvt. James Zimmerman, Fifty-seventh N.C., to wife, August 2, 1863, near Orange Court House, Va., James Zimmerman Papers, DU. Firebrands and secessionists were also favorite targets of Theophilus Perry.

  124. The phenomenon of desertion continued to vary by region in and after the summer of 1863. In Conscription and Conflict, Moore notes that “the baleful practice of skulking and deserting” grew in the second half of 1863, and attributes the rise to dissatisfaction with conscription, especially with how exemptions were administered (202). The picture varies a bit from state to state. Summer 1863 was a time of high desertion among North Carolinians, according to Moore (203). In Desertion of Alabama Troops from the Confederate Army, Bessie Martin identifies July and August 1863 as the crest of one of the highest waves of desertion among Alabama troops (27). Writing about Georgia troops (and counting only Confederates who fled to Union camps), Mark Weitz cites late 1863 and especially 1864 as the time of Georgia’s highest deserti
on rates, and argues that desertion occurred not in response to the battlefield, but rather to home front concerns. Specifically, he denies that the fate of the Army of Northern Virginia played a significant role in instigating Georgia desertions (A Higher Duty, 119, 175). Aaron Sheehan-Dean, in contrast, shows that among Virginia troops serving in Virginia, desertions actually declined in the summer of 1863 after peaking in 1862, a conclusion that makes sense for several reasons that set Virginians serving in the ANV apart. First, the relative quiet of the Virginia theater after Gettysburg saved soldiers posted there the demoralizing battlefield defeats that soldiers serving elsewhere experienced. Second, Virginians serving in their home state were spared the anxiety of non-Virginians, who worried about their distant loved ones and were fighting far from home. Finally, as Sheehan-Dean points out, by 1863 the Emancipation Proclamation provided Confederate troops with a vivid reminder of the need to keep fighting. See Aaron Sheehan-Dean, “Justice Has Something to Do with It: Class Relations and the Confederate Army,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 113:4 (November 2005), 340–77. The important point is that soldiers who spoke of a desertion flood in the summer of 1863 overestimated the scale of the phenomenon, but their comments matter because they show that soldiers, especially soldiers outside of the Army of Northern Virginia, and even some non-Virginians in the ANV, perceived a spike in desertions, and linked it to both military defeats and home front struggles in the second half of 1863, a time of difficulty, though not mass abandonment of the cause, for many Confederates.

  125. Capt. Arthur Hyatt, Sixteenth La. Consolidated Infantry, diary, Alexandria, La. For the days July 16–27, every entry mentions desertion. Arthur Hyatt Papers, CMM Ser. B, Reel 10.

  126. Pvt. William Wagner, Fifty-seventh N.C., to wife, July 30, 1863, near Madison Court House, Va., in Hatley and Huffman, Letters of William F. Wagner, 59. In his demoralized state, Wagner surely exaggerated the number.

  127. Pvt. Oliver Strickland, Forty-third Ga., to mother, December 18, 1863, near Dalton, Ga., Oliver Strickland Letters, EU. Like Wagner, Strickland exaggerated. Although the Fifty-second Ga. was what Weitz has identified as a “high desertion regiment,” from which many troops had deserted and would continue to do so, the whole regiment did not leave in December 1863 (A Higher Duty, Table 3, 71).

  128. Pvt. John Forman, Sixteenth La., to sister, August 7, 1863, near Morton, Tenn., Robert A. Newell Papers, CMM Ser. B, Reel 14.

  129. In the reconfigured Congress, 41 out of 106 representatives openly opposed the Davis administration, while twelve out of twenty-six senators were anti-administration men. The North Carolina delegation provides an even more extreme example: 90 percent of its members were “Union Whigs.” See Beringer et al., Elements of Confederate Defeat, 116, 132; Thomas, Confederate Nation, 257–58; McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 691–92.

  130. Lofton’s Regiment of Georgia Volunteers, October 7, 1863, near Atlanta, CSA Archives, State Government Papers, 1861–65, DU. The State Government Papers include the voting returns for many companies and regiments, among which Lofton’s Regiment’s returns are fairly typical. In other words, there is little obvious voting pattern in any of them, but if nothing else, the results make clear that no widespread endorsement of the Confederate authorities existed among Georgia troops in 1863.

  131. Lt. Josiah Patterson, Fourteenth Ga., to sons, October 31, 1863, Rappahannock River, Va., Josiah Blair Patterson Letters, GDAH. Other state elections also yielded divided results. In North Carolina, the main issues centered on the peace movement, and the mixed results showed the division that existed among the troops on that topic. See Lt. Macon Bonner, N.C. Artillery, to wife, November 1, 1863, Ft. Fisher, N.C., Macon Bonner Papers, SHC; and Capt. Henry Chambers, Forty-ninth N.C., diary, Suffolk, Va., Henry Chambers Papers, NCDAH. Other states revealed just as many divisions, but the issues in question were as likely to be local matters as they were Confederacy-wide matters. See Capt. Christopher Winsmith, First S.C., to father, October 10, 1863, near Chattanooga, Tenn., John Christopher Winsmith Papers, MOC.

  132. “Peace—When shall we have Peace?” North Carolina Weekly Standard, July 22, 1863, p. 1.

  133. Holden’s newspaper, the Weekly Standard, reported over one hundred peace meetings in the summer of 1863 and reprinted the resolutions adopted at the meetings. Although the Standard characterized the meetings as spontaneous upswellings of native sentiment, the resolutions adopted at each of them were nearly identical, and borrowed phrasing directly from the Standard editorial pages. The Zebulon Baird Vance Papers, Governor’s Papers, Box 10, and Private Collections, vol. 3 (both at the NCDAH), contain peace resolutions from many locations, including Henderson, Forsythe, Rutherford, Cabarrus, and Caldwell Counties, N.C. The North Carolina Weekly Standard also includes several sets of peace resolutions. The issue of August 5, 1863, for example, includes on pp. 1–3 resolutions from public meetings held in Wake, Moore, Gaston, Iredell, Buncombe and Sampson counties. For more on Standard editor William Woods Holden and his role in the peace movement, see William C. Harris, William Woods Holden: Firebrand of North Carolina Politics (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1987), esp. chs. 6 and 7. For more on the peace movement, see Marc W. Kruman, Parties and Politics in North Carolina 1836–1865 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1983), 241–52. For an account of the meetings and examples of reactions to them, see Buck Yearns and John G. Barrett, eds., North Carolina Civil War Documentary (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980), 291–306.

  134. While most resolutions did not express willingness to go back to the Union, there were a few exceptions. A “Humble Citizen” of Forsythe County, for example, wrote to tell Governor Vance that “the people of Bethania, Salem, and the surrounding country are riding about with petitions getting every person they can to sign them, deceiving the ignorant by telling them just sign it, the Governor will call a convention, we will send delegates that will vote us back into the Union, and we will have peace in less than three months.” See Humble Citizen to Governor Vance, February 1, 1864, Forsythe Co., N.C., Zebulon Baird Vance Papers, Governor’s Papers, Box 10, NCDAH. This citizen’s letter about rumors he had heard of peace meetings suggests that some meetings discussed or even supported reentry into the Union, but the resolutions in Governor Vance’s papers and published in North Carolina newspapers generally do not explicitly endorse returning to the Union.

  135. Proceedings of Caldwell County meeting, February 8, 1864, Caldwell Co., N.C., Zebulon Baird Vance Papers, Governor’s Papers, Box 10, NCDAH.

  136. Pvt. Adelphos J. Burns, Forty-eighth N.C., to father, August 1863, Talorsville, Va., Adelphos J. Burns Papers, NCDAH.

  137. Pvt. George Dewey, First N.C. Cavalry, to sister, July 31, 1863, Culpeper, Va., George Stanley Dewey Correspondence, SHC.

  138. Pvt. Jacob Hanes, Fourth N.C., to brother, September 16, 1863, near Rapidan River, Va., Catherine Hanes Papers, SHC.

  139. Pvt. William Wagner, Fifty-seventh N.C., to wife, August 15, 1863, near Orange Court House, Va., in Hatley and Huffman, Letters of William F. Wagner, 65. Wagner further noted the outrage of the troops when the “Big men,” meaning the senior officers, reported to the newspapers that the men had voted to carry on the war. “We never voted that a way we voted to have pease on some terms,” the angry Wagner told his wife. See also Pvt. Francis Poteet, Forty-ninth N.C., to family, November 22, 1863, Kinston, N.C., Poteet-Dickson Letters, NCDAH.

  140. Samuel Cameron, Second Ala. Cavalry, to brother-in-law, December 15, 1863, Cameron Collection, Hoole.

  141. Sgt. Edward Brown, Forty-fifth Ala., to wife, July 8, 1863, near Chattanooga, Tenn., Edward Norphlet Brown Letters, ADAH.

  142. Pvt. Albert Allen, First Mo. (CSA), to friend, December 3, 1863, near Meridian, Miss., Civil War Letters 1862–64, UMOC.

  143. Surgeon Robert Bell, Tenth Mo. (CSA), diary, July 7, 1863, near Helena, Ark., Bell Diaries, MOHS.

  144. Pvt. John Price, Tenn. (CSA), to father, January 4, 1864,
near Dalton, Ga., John F. and William Price Letters, EU. Even the ebullient Robert Bunting could resort to this sort of logic when he sensed that his typically hearty tone was getting nowhere. “After all the blood and treasure—after the struggle which has made our name immortal among the nations,” he pleaded, how could anyone even consider “kiss[ing] the scepter of our invaders?” Chaplain Robert Bunting, Eighth Tex. Cavalry, to Houston Telegraph, July 30, 1863, near Rome, Ga., Robert Franklin Bunting Papers, TSLA.

  145. Chaplain Robert Bunting, Eighth Tex. Cavalry, to Houston Telegraph, August 11, 1863, near Rome, Ga., Robert Franklin Bunting Papers, TSLA. Al Pierson also spoke of the impossibility of Confederates allowing themselves to become “enslaved” to the Union government, as long as they kept determined eyes on the goal of “separation from and freedom of the yanks.” See Sgt. Reuben Allen (“Al”) Pierson, Ninth La., to father, August 22, 1863, Orange Court House, Va., in Thomas Cutrer and T. Michael Parrish, Brothers in Gray: The Civil War Letters of the Pierson Family (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1997), 210.

  146. Pvt. Thomas Taylor, Sixth Ala., to sister, August 15, 1863, near Orange Court House, Va., Thomas S. Taylor Letters, ADAH.

  147. Sgt. Ivy Duggan, Forty-ninth Ga., to Central Georgian, November 7, 1863, near Culpeper Court House, Va., Ivy W. Duggan Letters, GDAH.

  148. Pvt. Jonathan Doyle, Fourth La., to friend’s sister, August 18, 1863, near Jackson, Miss., Josiah Knighton Family Papers, CMM Ser. B, Reel 11.

  149. For an extended discussion of the impact of disruptions in the domestic and social order on Confederate ideology, and the Confederacy itself, see Faust, Mothers of Invention. For specific treatment of shifting relations between and images of women and slaves, see esp. ch. 3. Ch. 4 details the transformation alluded to by Pvt. Jonathan Doyle above. See also Whites, The Civil War as a Crisis in Gender, ch. 2, for analysis of how the war disrupted a social order based on independence of white males and dependence of everyone else, in part by “empower[ing] the domestic labor of Confederate women.”