The 20 Most Significant Events of the Civil War

by Alan Axelrod

  The next morning, Stuart bravely walked toward the arsenal and armory, flag in hand. He entered the fire house, spent some time there, and then reemerged. His broad-brimmed cavalry hat was in his hand, held by the crown. Lee watched as he lifted it above his head and waved it in a broad arc. With that, the lieutenant colonel ordered his men to charge. The marines went directly for the firehouse door, smashing it in, and then storming through the shattered doorway. On entry, they skewered two of the raiders with their bayonets. They acted as quickly as they could to save the hostages, but four, including the mayor, were killed, as was one marine. Brown and his men got much worse. Only four, including Brown, escaped death. Brown himself suffered a deep gash from a marine saber. Among the dead were two of the three Brown sons who participated in the raid, twenty-one-year-old Oliver Brown and twenty-four-year-old Watson Brown. Both were mortally wounded, Oliver dying on October 19, Watson on October 22.

  Predictably, President Buchanan refused to treat the attack on a federal facility as a crime against the United States. Instead, he let the state of Virginia prosecute the surviving raiders. Happy to oblige, the state charged all with “treason against Virginia,” murder, and conspiracy to incite “servile insurrection.” The state’s justice was carried out swiftly. Ten days after their capture, the men were tried. Found guilty, the four survivors were sentenced to death by hanging.

  The public spectacle on December 2, 1859, was very well attended. Acting on orders of Virginia Governor Henry A. Wise, Thomas Jonathan Jackson—soon to enter history as Stonewall Jackson—a professor at the Virginia Military Institute (VMI), led a detachment of youthful cadets to the place of execution, not merely to observe the proceedings, but to assist, if necessary, in maintaining public order. Also present among the spectators that day was an actor from Maryland, a darkly handsome matinee idol who enjoyed particular popularity with female audiences south of the Mason-Dixon Line. His name was John Wilkes Booth.

  If Virginia authorities believed that the executions would edify the public and discourage rebellion against the laws protecting slaves and slavery, they were sorely mistaken. Brown was not only unapologetic, he faced his end without a visible trace of fear. At his sentencing, he did not curse, and he did not threaten. He merely recited to judge and jury the words of Christ: “Remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them.” After this, he addressed the court and jurors more personally: “Now, if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments—I submit; so let it be done.”

  The truth was that Virginia gave to the abolitionist movement what that movement most craved: a martyr. Many abolitionists viewed Brown this way and said that his execution proved that the South could protect the manifest evil of slavery only through the force of “bayonet rule.” Yet Brown’s raid and his subsequent execution did little to prepare the North for civil war, whereas many Southern governors took note of the antiquated condition and inefficiency of their militias. This led to a reorganization of the militia throughout the region, and the result produced an important basis for quickly building a Confederate army. As for Brown himself, he had no doubt about what his actions portended. The morning of his execution he asked for pen and paper. “I John Brown am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away; but with Blood,” he wrote.

  20

  March 8, 1862

  The Ironclads Clash at Hampton Roads

  Why it’s significant. The Battle of Hampton Roads (March 8–9, 1862) between the Confederate ironclad Virginia (ex-Merrimack) and the Union proto-battleship Monitor revolutionized naval warfare. Even more significantly, it revealed the Civil War as a new kind of war, a war driven by industrial civilization, a war with outcomes determined at least as much by technology and technological innovation as by manpower, strategy, and national will. The Battle of Hampton Roads raised the curtain on modern warfare, destined to evolve rapidly through the Russo-Japanese War (1904–05), World War I (1914–18), World War II (1939–1945), and the ever-present threat of worse to come.

  AS NARRATED IN Chapter 10, William Tecumseh Sherman was enjoying a pleasant dinner with one of his academic colleagues at Louisiana State Seminary of Learning & Military Academy when news reached him that South Carolina had seceded from the Union. Laying down knife and fork, Sherman immediately predicted not only a bloody war, a massive war, and a long war, but a war that would be driven by industry. “The North can make a steam engine, locomotive or railway car; hardly a yard of cloth or a pair of shoes can you make,” he scolded his Southern dinner companion. “You are rushing into war with one of the most powerful, ingeniously mechanical and determined people on earth—right at your doors. You are bound to fail.”

  Sherman was being hyperbolic, but he wasn’t lying. In 1858, South Carolina’s Senator James Henry Hammond had famously pronounced cotton “king” of the Southern economy, and indeed much of the arable land in South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Arkansas, upper Louisiana, the eastern half of Texas, and even the Florida Panhandle was devoted to the cultivation of that single crop. Where cotton wasn’t being grown, rice, tobacco, and sugar were. Large-scale agriculture employing slaves made a relatively few Southerners very wealthy, but these plantation owners invested their money in their own plantations, not in industrial enterprises. By 1860, the South had just 18,000 manufacturing establishments employing 111,000 workers. By that same year, the North had 111,000 factories, employing 1.3 million workers. In 1860, approximately 90 percent of the nation’s manufacturing was in the North. In fact, it was thanks to manufacturing that Northern farmland was actually much more productive, acre for acre, than that in the overwhelmingly agricultural South. In the year before the outbreak of the Civil War, the average Northern farmer owned $0.89 worth of farm machinery per acre, compared to $0.42 per acre for the average plantation owner. Thanks largely to mechanization, Northern farming was more efficient, which made Northern farmland more productive, thereby increasing its value. On average, an acre of farmland was worth $25.67 in the North, but less than half that in the South, $10.40.

  There were far-seeing Southern men who counseled the wealthy to invest beyond their plantations and put money into mining, manufacturing, and railroad building in order to diversify and strengthen the economy and civilization of the region. Such advice was largely ignored. As a result, the South went to war as a net exporter of its major slave crops and a net importer of manufactured goods. Before the war, Southerners imported most of their manufactured needs from the North. During the war, they turned of necessity to Europe—mostly England and France—for the bulk of their weapons. They supplemented imports with some locally manufactured arms in addition to whatever they had managed to seize at the outbreak of the war from federal arsenals located in the South and, throughout the war, whatever they could capture.

  The Confederate military managed to obtain sufficient arms and ammunition that no Southern army ever avoided or lost a battle for want of materiel. Nevertheless, not surprisingly, Confederate soldiers were typically armed with obsolescent weapons. They often used smoothbore muskets instead of more modern and more accurate rifle-muskets. Their ammunition often consisted of old-fashioned round ball shot instead of the bullet-shaped Minié ball, which was fired from weapons with rifled barrels and was therefore capable of greater range and accuracy. Neither side in the conflict used a great many breech-loading long arms or rapid-fire repeating rifles; however, the Union army was equipped with many more of both than the Confederate army. When it came to artillery, the North had many more cannon of all calibers, and what it had was more modern, accurate, and reliable than what the Confederate army was equipped with.

  There is no denying that the South was at an industrial disadvantage compared with the North. That is what makes it all the mor
e remarkable that weapons innovation was far from dead in the South. While it is true that the region could not manufacture sufficient numbers of infantry weapons—rifle-muskets, especially—to equip its army with the latest in long arms, it did produce highly innovative naval weapons, which, by their nature, were manufactured in small, sometimes one-of-a-kind quantity. The most innovative was undoubtedly CSS H. L. Hunley, a submarine intended to be a prototype of a submersible vessel capable of destroying the surface ships of the ever-expanding Union naval blockade that was strangling the Confederate economy. On February 17, 1864, the Hunley actually succeeded in attacking and sinking one of the blockade ships, the Union screw sloop USS Housatonic, in Charleston’s outer harbor. That victory, however, also sank the Hunley and cost the lives of its eight-man crew. After successfully ramming the Housatonic with an explosive spar torpedo, the submarine disappeared. (The wreck of the Hunley was discovered in 1995 and raised in 2000. It is believed that the crew was knocked unconscious or even killed when its spar torpedo exploded a mere twenty feet from the submarine, which drifted under the surface, eventually took on water, and settled to the bottom.)

  The Hunley was built to disrupt the Union blockade of the South. Earlier, the Confederacy had also turned to another innovation in warships to fight that blockade. At the very beginning of the war, in 1861, the Union’s general-in-chief, Winfield Scott, ordered a naval blockade of Southern ports. Throughout 1861 and well into 1862, Union ships on blockade duty managed to stop fewer than one out of every ten Confederate “blockade runners,” privately owned crafts manned by daring crews who specialized in slipping past the Union patrols.

  Even the loss of one in ten cargoes was a heavy cost to the Confederate economy and war effort. Confederate military planners were also well aware that Northern shipyards were turning out Union naval vessels at a remarkable rate. New ships were being continually added to the blockade fleet. Moreover, the Confederate strategy during the first months of the war was not to engage the Union ships in combat, but simply to evade them. So the blockading fleet kept growing and became increasingly effective. By the close of the war, the Union navy was bagging one of every three blockade runners.

  The Confederacy could not afford to build or buy a large navy. Most of the warships it was acquiring were so-called commerce raiders, fast vessels designed to operate in distant waters, where they preyed upon the North’s commercial ships carrying goods to or from Europe. It was not feasible for the Confederates to confront the Union blockade on a ship-for-ship basis, but what if a new kind of ship could be designed, one capable of striking at the blockade vessels with relative impunity?

  At the outbreak of the Civil War, the US Navy’s Gosport Navy Yard, on the south shore of Hampton Roads, Virginia, was quickly evacuated. In the frenzy to avoid capture of personnel and the most important warships, there was neither sufficient time nor manpower to move every vessel out of Gosport and back to the safety of Northern ports. Among the ships left behind was the screw frigate USS Merrimack. Not wanting to relinquish the ship to the Confederates, Union sailors burned it to the waterline and then scuttled the hull.

  What was to the North a burned-out, sunken hulk was to the needy Confederate navy the makings of a secret weapon. The severely damaged vessel was refloated and towed to a “graving dock”—a dry dock—at the Gosford yard, which was now occupied by Confederate navy personnel. After inspection, they concluded that the lower hull was intact and most of the ship’s machinery capable of restoration. Confederate Secretary of the Navy Stephen Mallory decided on July 11, 1861, to convert the Merrimack into an ironclad—a steam-propelled warship built of wood but clad in armor plates made of iron. A design was quickly worked up for a so-called casemate ironclad, a vessel that sat very low in the water, with an iron-reinforced prow and ram. Rising from its deck was a low superstructure built as a casemate, an armored enclosure inside which guns were mounted. The casemate was designed with sloping sides all around. These would deflect most cannonballs and other projectiles. The casemate’s sides were pierced by narrow openings to accommodate cannon. The ship was designed to be armed with four new muzzle-loading Brooke rifles and six smoothbore nine-inch Dahlgren guns, the latter salvaged from the Merrimack. Two of the rifled weapons, seven-inchers, were used as pivot guns at the fore and aft ends of the casemate, and two 6.4-inch Brookes were added to the broadside array, along with the salvaged Dahlgrens. The steam engines, gears, and screw (propeller) of the Merrimack were also salvaged and restored.

  While the vessel would be built—or rebuilt—at the graving dock, the Brooke rifles and the large number of iron plates required were ordered from Richmond’s celebrated Tredegar Iron Works. Although it was one of the very few industrial-scale foundries in the South, Tredegar was a modern plant on a par with the best of major foundries in the North. The plant supplemented its paid workforce with slave labor in order to cast the required cannon, numerous iron fittings, and armor plates as quickly as possible.

  Rechristened CSS Virginia, the salvaged and rebuilt vessel was commissioned on February 17, 1862, and fully completed and fitted out on March 7. The next day, Franklin Buchanan took command of CSS Virginia. Formerly commandant of the Brooklyn Navy Yard, Buchanan resigned his commission in the US Navy at the outbreak of the war and defected to the Confederate service. He now steamed the Virginia into Hampton Roads for her maiden battle with the vessels of the Union blockading fleet, some powered exclusively by sail, others by a combination of sail and steam, all with hulls of timber.

  Those Union sailors who saw the approach of CSS Virginia were bewildered by the appearance of the strange craft. One took it for a huge, half-submerged crocodile. Another described it as “the roof of a very big barn belching … smoke.” But as the warship closed in, her guns became visible, protruding slightly through the narrow ports of the casemate. It was the Union commanders who ordered their own guns into action first. When he observed this, the commanding officer of the adjacent Union shore batteries also opened fire. The barrage directed against the Virginia was intense and created a great deal of smoke, which blended with the black billows pouring out of the Virginia’s stack. As the smoke cleared somewhat during a pause in the bombardment, the harbor pilot aboard USS Cumberland was horrified to see that not a single shot had penetrated the enemy’s hull. He later remarked that the cannonballs had bounced “upon her mailed sides like India-rubber.”

  Now at close range, CSS Virginia opened up with a broadside against the Cumberland. In this first fusillade, five US Marines were killed instantly by shrapnel and splintered timber. The two ships exchanged broadsides until the guns of the Cumberland suddenly fell silent. The absence of return fire was a signal to Captain Buchanan, who ordered his engine room to make all possible steam. Those aboard USS Cumberland must have heard the enemy’s boilers and machinery roar as CSS Virginia maneuvered to drive her iron ram into the hull of the Union vessel. Forwarded by its propeller, the iron-heavy ship—displacing some 4,000 long tons—staved in the enemy’s hull as if it were built of nothing more than matchwood. Since the Virginia rode so low in the water, its iron ram penetrated the Union ship well below the waterline. Instantly, the Cumberland took on water and heeled over sharply. With capsize imminent, her commander made for the sandy shallows just beyond the Roads, hoping to beach his heavily listing, rapidly sinking ship. He partially succeeded. Although the hull went under and the decks were awash, the masts, still mostly undamaged, remained well above the waterline and the waves. Even Old Glory still flapped in a stiff gale. Sailors clambered up ratlines and ropes, deploying themselves along the yardarms in an effort to keep from drowning.

  Most of the other Union warships nearby were support vessels and did not engage in the fight, but another frigate, USS Congress, made for the shallows in search of a position from which to train close fire on the enemy. Alas, the Congress maneuvered too far into the shallow water and ran aground. Unable to move, captain and crew could do nothing but await their fate.

 
They did not have to wait long. CSS Virginia steamed close to Congress and let loose a broadside that included hot shot—cannon balls heated red hot before firing and used as incendiary ammunition. The Union ship caught fire and quickly “struck its colors,” lowering its flag as a token of surrender. Buchanan immediately dispatched a rescue party from another Confederate vessel nearby. Unfortunately, the commander of the Union shore batteries did not interpret this as a rescue, but as a boarding expedition. The Union batteries opened fire on the Virginia, whereupon Captain Buchanan took up a rifle and began firing at the artillerists. Provoked, a Union sharpshooter targeted Buchanan, who was hit in the leg. Disabled, he turned over command to his first officer, Lieutenant Catesby ap R. Jones and allowed himself to be lifted below deck to have his wound attended to.

  Although the Virginia emerged from the battle still seaworthy, her bow was leaking because part of the ram had been damaged in the attack on the Housatonic. Moreover, severe damage to her smokestack diminished the boilers’ draft. This made the stokers’ fires smaller, diminishing steam pressure and substantially slowing a ship that, at best, could make no more than six knots. Two of her broadside cannon had also been hit and put out of action. Despite this, Buchanan ordered Jones to turn his attention to the USS Minnesota, which, frantically trying to evade the ironclad, had run aground on a sandbar in the shallows. That sandbar was sufficiently large, however, to prevent the Virginia from approaching Minnesota closely enough to cause serious damage. Moreover, the sun was low in the sky, and Jones decided to pull back for the evening and, in the morning, return to find a way to finish off both the Congress and the Minnesota.