CHAPTER 15

SECESSION AND CIVIL WAR, 1860-1862

Civil and battle flags of the Confederacy.

Advancing in close order drill.

USS Monitor

STUDY GUIDE QUESTIONS

a.2

Lincoln's First Inaugural Address, 4 March 1861

d.1

North vs. South Balance Sheet

d.2

Who Fought?

d.4

West Point and Military Tactics & Operations

d.5

Logistics and Victory

e.3

Failure of Cotton Diplomacy

f.9

Committee for the Conduct of the War

Related WWW Sites

  [d.1]

NORTH vs. SOUTH BALANCE SHEET

The North held all the cards

A glance at demographic, industrial, and financial data instantly reveals that the North had a distinct advantage in the Civil War.

  1. FINANCIAL: The North had a developed banking structure with international links. The North financed 90% of the war by raising loans and direct taxation. Over 60% of the Southern war effort was financed by inflation (printing of paper money).

     

  2. INDUSTRIAL: The state of Pennsylvania produced more iron than the 11 Confederate state put together. New York's profits from manufacturing outweighed most of the Confederacy. The South had only one foundry capable of casting cannon--the Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond, VA.

     

  3. MANPOWER: The North boasted a population of 22 million. The South had only 11 million, and 3.5 million of them were slaves. During the war, 800,000 immigrants arrived in the North.

     

  4. SEA POWER: Virtually all officers of the navy remained loyal to the Union. During the war, the North used superior sea power to blockade the Southern coastline, seriously crimping the flow of goods into Confederacy from foreign ports.

[d.2]

WHO FOUGHT?

Civil War armies were amateurish mass armies. Most of the 2 million northerners and 900,000 southerners were volunteers. The threat of the draft stimulated volunteering. Research shows that 6% of the Union army consisted of conscripts, while the Confederate army drafted 19% of its armies.

[d.4]

WEST POINT AND MILITARY TACTICS & OPERATIONS

West Point in command

Every major battle on both sides of the conflict was commanded by a West Point graduate. A review of the curriculum they studied reveals insights into the way in which the Civil War was fought.

Military art and science ranked low.

Until the reforms of 1854 the curriculum at West Point focused on engineering and administration. Army officer explorers like Lewis, Clark, Pike, and Fremont were tasked with gathering scientific data on the nation's western territories. Cadets devoted less attention to strategy, tactics, and gunnery. Unquestioning obedience took precedence over thoughtful analysis. In 1854, Secretary of War Jefferson Davis, future Confederate president, revised the curriculum. Foreign language, HISTORY, and tactics received greater emphasis. But strategy remained a side-show. On the eve of the Civil War, math still counted most in the cadet ranking system.

The impact of French thought.

Original thinking may have been lacking at the nation's military academy, but intellectual members of the faculty tackled the question of strategy and military theory. West Point instructors favored the thinking of the French military schools. Before 1830, American officers considered the campaigns of Napoleon, buttressed by the writing of Henri Jomini, as the true essence of war. Jomini believed in offensive operations oriented on strategic points in enemy territory as the key to war. His book The Art of War (1834) influenced a whole generation of American officers. Its main points follow:

1. The offensive was all important

 

2. Commanders must maneuver their forces by hard-marching to concentrate for the attack at weak point on the enemy line.

 

3. Professional troops would break the enemy line by frontal assault.

 

4. Warfare was positional. It was more important to capture key cities, seize key terrain, and cut enemy supply and communication lines than it was to annihilate the enemy army.

 

5. Maintenance of interior lines of communication.

The impact of DH Mahan

Some Americans viewed the frontal assault with skepticism. Dennis H. Mahan, a famous West Point Instructor, disliked the way European generals threw away the lives of their troops. The US relied on its citizens not just as soldiers but also as farmers, shopkeepers, and votes. US generals could not expend men like Napoleon did. Mahan proposed an alternative to frontal assault: Maintain an "active defense" by digging temporary fortification, make the enemy attack you, then counter-attack him with the bayonet. These two theories--active defense & frontal assault--existed side by side as the US entered the Civil War.

Mahan wrote two main books: Complete Treatise on Field Fortifications (1836), and Outpost (1847). French thinking informed this works, but the emphasis on temporary field fortifications that formed his tactical defense-strategic offense theory was a noteworthy innovation. Mahan's cardinal points are outlined below:

  1. The offensive, stressed Mahan, combined with good reconnaissance, was all important.

     

  2. Given the lack of a large, professionally trained army, Mahan recognized the importance of temporary field fortifications. Design was important. Troops had to be able to get out quickly to resume offensive operations.

     

  3. The combination of the offensive and defensive fortifications gave rise to the "strategic offense-tactical defense" scenario.

     

  4. Mahan still favored the frontal approach, believing American soldiers were too ill-trained for complicated maneuvering. However, he devised assault tactics based on smaller groups and short rushes to replace the heavy Napoleonic column.

     

  5. Enemy territory, not the army, was the prime objective of war.

The Napoelonic vision dominated despite the example of Winfield Scott.

Civil War generals disregarded Mahan. First of all, American officers did not devote themselves to the study of text book theory. Second, the legend of Napoleonic battles of offensive annihilation did not leave room for the tactical defense. Despite textbooks, Napoleon's classic "battle of annihilation" captured the imagination of most cadets. The Mexican-American War (1847-48) left an ambivalent impression. During Scott's campaign in Mexico, he assaulted head-on and used hold-and-turn tactics. A relic of 18th-century limited war, Scott nonetheless emerged from the war as the "talk of the army." Most young officers were not inclined, however, to study military theory. The image, if not the substance, of Napoleonic battle still captured the imagination of US officers as the nation approached the Civil War. Not even the slaughter the Crimean War (1856) or the War of Italian Independence (1859) changed the minds of officers who believed massed assaults could overcome the rifled bullet.

d.5]

LOGISTICS AND VICTORY

The elusiveness of decisive victory

No matter how good the general was, decisive military victory eluded both North and South during the Civil War. Napoleon could do it, but technological advances since 1815 combined with the landscape of North America made such a strategy impossible by 1861. The North won the war through a grinding process of attrition. Attrition implies that one side uses its superior manpower, finances, and industrial advantages to wear the other side down until it surrenders. The list below highlight why the Civil War devolved into a war of attrition.

#1: Reliance on supply lines.

LOGISTICAL LIMITATIONS. Land used for agriculture was less widespread in North America than you might think. Very few areas of the country were cultivated intensely enough to support 2 occupying 2 armies numbering 80,000 men each. Armies were ultimately dependent on supply trains for support. Living solely off the land was impossible. Therefore, an army wanting to follow up a battlefield victory by pursuing a retreating enemy had to break away from its supply base. Both sides found out that moving away from river landings and rail depots hampered operations. Wagon support helped, but the trains moved slowly. Because it was impossible to live off the land, armies had to stay relatively close to the supply bases.

#2: Artillery less effective.

CANNON INEFFECTIVE IN OFFENSIVE ROLL. Napoleon had made great use of his artillery. Since the range of smoothbore muskets was only 50 yards, Napoleon was able to push his cannons to within 200 yards of an enemy line. Napoleon used massed artillery to blast gaps in the opposing enemy line then follow it up with a massed infantry attack. Technological advances changed all this. The rifled musket could hit targets 300 yards away. The increased rifle range forced artillery to stand off a much greater distances, usually around 1,000 yards. Although there was rifled cannon such as the famous Parrot gun, smoothbores were the mainstay of the US army through the Civil War. A 12 pounder smoothbore fired a 12 pound, solid iron cannon ball ("solid shot"). Officers in the army knew that shoulder fired muskets made it impossible to replicate the Napoleonic tactic of wheeling artillery in front of advancing infantry and blowing a hole through the enemy line. However, the success of close range artillery fire during the Mexican-American War (1847) convinced some officers that cannon might continue to play a significant offensive role. They were wrong. Their misconception was graphically demonstrated at Gettysburg. Confederate artillery firing in support of Pickett's Charge failed to clear Union troops from Cemetery Ridge. Federal artillery, on the other hand, together with dug-in infantry, devastated Longstreet's brigades with solid shot and canister. All this proved that smoothbore cannon and rifled muskets in the tactical defense role reigned supreme. A good discussion of this issue is found in Edward Hagerman's The American Civil War and the Origins of Modern Warfare: Ideas, Organization, and Field Command, (Bloomington, Indiana: University of Indiana Press, 1988).

#3: Lack of offensive mobility.

LACK OF MOBILITY. Without rapid transport, a victorious army could not enlarge upon a battlefield victory. Troops that had just won a battle could march no faster than the army in retreat. Without the internal combustion engine, defeated armies would live to "fight another day."

[f.3]

KING COTTON DIPLOMACY

The South miscalculates

During the Civil War, the Confederacy tried to gain recognition from France and England. Southern diplomats like John Slidell believed that recognition would come for one reason: English and French textile mills depended on southern cotton. The northern blockade cut off southern export of cotton to Europe. The South reasoned that once the European working classes were tossed out of work, they would demand that their navies steam across the Atlantic, break the Union blockade, and restore the flow of cotton across the Atlantic Ocean.

It did not happen. Why ?

  • the French people would not support a war against the US.
  • Napoleon III, the emperor of France, feared that other European powers would seek gains in Europe if he diverted attention to the southern US.
  • The British people refused to fight for slavery.
  • India and Egypt produced bumper cotton crops to offset the southern loss.
  • English arms manufacturers were realizing high profits from the war.

Source: Frank Owsley, King Cotton Diplomacy: The Foreign Relations of the Confederate States of America, 1931).

[f.9]

COMMITTEE FOR THE CONDUCT OF THE WAR

This congressional committee, dominated by radical republicans, investigated Union generals two things: 1) failure on the battlefield, and 2) their political views. Generals who lost battles or who failed to have the "proper" attitude regarding slavery and party loyalty could be removed from command and sent west to fight Indians.

Back to 1301

RELATED WWW SITES

Back to 1301