Posted on 11/14/2003 3:33:02 AM PST by swilhelm73
Here I am in my palatial office above my garage, outlining a speech for a gathering of Civil War Battlefield Preservation Trust contributors, of whom I am one. First, I'll tell a few jokes, and then I'll talk about how I read a lot about the CW. I'll talk about how I grew up in Maryland a stone's throw from the house where Jubal Early made his headquarters during his 1864 raid on Washington, D.C., and how the old house behind me still had slave quarters rotting away when I was a lad. I'll talk about how my wife's family, from Mississippi, had many men fight and die in the Civil War, and how my childhood best friend, David Scull, was on his mother's side a Lee and also a Montgomery Blair descendant, and how discussion of the Civil War was a constant part of childhood conversation. I'll talk about how I read John Brown's Body when I was a boy, and how it moved me, and how I read as much of Bruce Catton as I could, and even started Lee's Lieutenants as a teenager, but never finished it because it was so sad.
With all of this conversation and reading -- I am still reading Lee's Lieutenants, and it is still too sad to finish -- I always have a number of questions to which I do not know the answers, but I think they are provocative:
(1) Did The Civil War Have To Be Fought? The Northern states lost about 400,000 men. Two hundred thousand Southerners died -- roughly one in nine Southern white males died. Each was a tragedy for his family and friends, and all died in agony. Did this have to happen? Was there not some way it could have been avoided? Was there a way of buying up the slaves? After all, abhorrent as it sounds and is, they were considered property. Could they have been emancipated by money rather than blood? What could have been done had the powers that be on both sides known how many would die? By Antietam or Shiloh, surely Lincoln knew it was going to be long and bloody. So did Jefferson Davis. Couldn't something have been worked out to end the killing?
(2) To slightly restate this -- assuming, as I do, that slavery was a moral evil of horrendous proportions -- could it not have been allowed to wither away? Slavery was horrific, but so are the deaths of 600,000 plus men and the maiming of millions. Does the ultimate responsibility lie with the abolitionists, the secessionists or with both? And how could any of them live with themselves ever after, when they saw the rivers, oceans of blood?
(3) Why was it legal for the colonies to rebel against Britain but not for the South to rebel against the North? Again, I assume slavery was and is horrible and disgusting and a crime against humanity. But it was legal under the U.S. Constitution, so why was it allowable to wage a moral crusade killing six hundred thousand men to end it and to compel the slave states back into the Union? If popular sovereignty and right of self-determination mean anything, why did they not mean something in North America? Clearly the South (most but not all of it) wanted to be separate. Why was war the response to popular sovereignty? Or did the Southern firebrands force it on the North? If so, could the North have walked away from the fight? And, again, I am convinced that slavery was thoroughly horrible. But so is war.
(4) Could the South have won? Once Lincoln decided that the "grim calculus" favored the North, could Lee and Davis have done anything to save the Confederacy? Was it Jefferson Davis's fault that the South lost the war for keeping on such incompetents as Bragg and Hood? Was it Lee's fault for his catastrophes at Gettysburg and Malvern Hill? What would have happened if Lee had won at Gettysburg? Or if he had then seized Washington? Or Philadelphia? Was the South basically out-generaled despite Lee and Jackson and Forrest?
(5) How would America have been different if the South had won? Does anyone really think slavery would still be a stain on humanity in 2003? What would have happened if Lincoln had just said, "Erring sisters, go in peace"? Would the North and South not have reconciled and been one nation again? There were mystic chords of memory, after all, to coin a phrase. Would they not have pulled the Union together eventually without bloodshed?
(6) What would the South have been like if slavery had ended peacefully, as a result of moral awakening in the South, instead of through a bloody war? Might the situation of blacks in America be better today? Might there have been no segregation, no Klan, no lynchings?
(7) Why is the Southern Cause so compelling even now? Knowing -- as we do -- that the Southern economy was largely based on a horrifying notion of racial supremacy, why do we find the South still so haunting and sympathetic? Is it Gone With the Wind? Is it moonlight and magnolias and nonsense? Is it the romance of a lost cause? Why do we find Lee so much more compelling than Grant? Why do we find Lee so much more compelling than a general that even Lee said was the finest on either side in the Civil War, Nathaniel Bedford Forrest? Why do I cry when I visit one of my favorite battlefields, the one at Upperville, Virginia? And why do I have nightmares every time I visit Gettysburg, when most of my ancestors did not even come to America until thirty years after the Civil War ended?
(8) Of all of the amazing, breathtaking truths and myths about the Civil War, why is this one almost always omitted from mention: that men of one race fought and died in the hundreds of thousands to free from bondage men and women of another race. From all corners of the Northern States, men came and laid down their lives for the Union, yes, but also to free the African slaves, the ancestors of today's African Americans. When else in history has anything like this ever happened, that one racial group should die in droves for another's liberty? This surely is one of the brightest shining dawns in human civilization. When reparations are discussed for African Americans, I am mindful that a certain reparation has already been paid, that every drop of blood drawn by the lash has been paid for by a hundred drawn by the sword, to coin a Lincoln phrase.
(9) Why is not more attention paid to the stunning contributions of the black man to his own freedom? Both sides considered blacks unfit to be good soldiers until about 1863. When Lincoln finally relented, they proved to be superb fighters, and their presence on the Union side was a major factor in the Union victory. Other than maybe in the movie Glory, I don't think that the black soldier gets the credit he deserves for coming from a tradition of oppression and humiliation and then fighting with utmost courage as soon as the chains had been struck from his body.
(10) But most of all -- and closely connected to this last point -- how could all of the men and women who participated in the war have been so amazingly brave? How could they have carried such heavy loads, under such grueling conditions, slept in the rain, slept in the snow, marched right into massed rifle fire and certain death? How could they face death from belly wounds, in agony, maddened with thirst? How could they have undergone surgery with primitive anesthesia or none at all? How could the Army of Northern Virginia, starving, under-clothed, bled white by Grant, still have fought so gloriously in a lost cause at Petersburg? How could the Union soldiers have crossed those pontoon bridges at Fredericksburg under intense rifle fire and then attacked the fortified Confederates time after time? How could Pickett's men have marched across that horrible open field into the jaws of death, keeping good order, doing their utmost as all of their friends and comrades fell and died around them?
THE CIVIL WAR WAS OUR BLOODIEST conflict, but also the densest concentration of courage ever shown on this continent. And nowhere is this most precious American quality -- courage -- more fittingly memorialized than on our Civil War Battlefields. Shiloh and Gettysburg, and -- saddest of them all -- Franklin and Lookout Mountain, and Vicksburg and Upperville and a thousand other battlefields I have never seen make us think more about the courage and sacrifice of Americans on both sides than any other monument or memorial.
The preservation of these battlefields is partly because of their beauty. Partly it is because they are a respite from the relentless strip-malling and subdividing of America. But mostly the battlefields tell us something we need to know about us, and about our nation, and this is something we need to know now more than ever, as we are under attack by a new enemy who believes we are weak and cowardly.
The Civil War battlefields tell us that we are a nation of idealists and a nation of heroes, and that no matter what the struggle, no matter how difficult or long, if we truly believe in the cause, we will fight it out until the end. Our battlefields inspired us to fight the Nazis, to fight the Japanese, to win the Cold War, and now they will inspire us to fight and win the war of the terrorists against all decent people.
In a real sense, the battlefields we preserve pay us back by preserving us and this great country that God has blessed so abundantly. As I say, courage is the primary, indispensable element of a people and a nation. America's Civil War battlefields are where that courage is best memorialized. Let's keep them, and keep them glorious and beautiful, keep them above commerce. And let us always remember that the courage that Americans have is a gift from God, and that when we preserve memorials to it, we are thanking God. The battlefields we seek to save are reminders of gifts from God that will save us if we invoke them, even now, one hundred and forty years after Pickett's Charge.
That's highly unlikely. In both the 1862 and 1863 campaigns Lee was operating in unfriendly territory. The same case can be made for the Union Army in Virginia, but at least they had established supply lines leading back to Union territory. Lee did not, he was basically alone in enemy country without any supply line south, living off the land and what he could carry with him. Regardless of the lost order, McClellan knew the general area where Lee was and was in pursuit. At one point or another there would have been a battle, no doubt a major battle with a large number of casualties. Win or lose, any such battle would have left Lee with a large number of casualties that would have had to be cared for while he was in unfriendly territory. He would have had to return home and the invasion would be ended.
A victory at Gettysburg - which certainly was obtainable - would have accomplished the same thing.
No it would not. The chance for European recognition died in 1862 when it became clear that the Union wasn't going to quit and when Lincoln more closely tied the Union cause to the end of slavery. A victory at Gettysburg would have meant no more than did the victory and Chancellorsville two months before. The Army of the Potomac would have regrouped, Vickburg would still have fallen, Grant would have still come east, and the war would have gone on to its inevitable conclusion.
What the hell are you talking about?
That's highly unlikely. In both the 1862 and 1863 campaigns Lee was operating in unfriendly territory.
True.
The same case can be made for the Union Army in Virginia, but at least they had established supply lines leading back to Union territory. Lee did not, he was basically alone in enemy country without any supply line south, living off the land and what he could carry with him.
Also true.
I do not see why operating by living off the land rather than by supply line is such a great disadvantage. After all: Grant did so with success in the Vicksburg campaign in the spring of 1863; and Sherman did so in the March to the Sea. And surely you concede that neither central Mississippi or Georgia was any better endowed with forage than the rich German farmsteads of southern Pennsylvania.
In any case, Lee himself operated quite well by forage in Maryland and Pennsylvania during both of his offensives north of the Potomac. So I do not find the argument of inadequate supply lines to be a convincing one. It was accomplished successfully by well-led field armies on several occasions during the war. Note that in this regard Banks' Red River expedition does not qualify.
Regardless of the lost order, McClellan knew the general area where Lee was and was in pursuit. At one point or another there would have been a battle, no doubt a major battle with a large number of casualties. Win or lose, any such battle would have left Lee with a large number of casualties that would have had to be cared for while he was in unfriendly territory. He would have had to return home and the invasion would be ended.
The difficulty here is that McClellan moved very cautiously (as usual) until he got hold of SO 191. He was operating under the inaccurate belief that Lee greatly outnumbered him. It was only the intelligence that Lee's army was badly divided and vulnerable to destruction in detail that impelled him to move with such expedition against South Mountain; an alacrity which so mystified Lee and Jackson that they remained puzzled about it until they learned of the lost order the following spring. Without 191, all the evidence suggests that McClellan would have moved slowly out of Frederick, and not reached South Mountain until Lee had wrapped up the Harpers Ferry campaign and reunited his army to resume the march north. At that point Lee would be back in a position to choose the time and place for battle on his terms.
McClellan was an able and intelligent commander but an exceedingly cautious one, and this was reinforced by his constant belief of Lee's numerical superiority. The only time he managed any success against Lee was when he had an enormous intelligence advantage and had an overwhelming numerical superiority (Antietam); even then he only managed a draw despite outnumbering the ANV better than 4 to 1.
Given all that, it seems hard to credit McClellan with any kind of victory against Lee in Pennsylvania in October of 1862 without some very powerful additional advantage. Lee would have had his stragglers up (a likely strength of 55,000+), Stuart operating effective reconnaisance, and Jackson at his side, to say nothing of the confidence of having an unbroken record of military success since Fair Oaks.
And that one success - however qualified - would have brought the foreign recognition that the South needed. It would also have encouraged Bragg in Kentucky, who fell back listlessly after hearing of Lee's setback in Maryland. It would instead have been the laconic Buell who fell back listlessly.
No it would not. The chance for European recognition died in 1862 when it became clear that the Union wasn't going to quit and when Lincoln more closely tied the Union cause to the end of slavery. A victory at Gettysburg would have meant no more than did the victory and Chancellorsville two months before. The Army of the Potomac would have regrouped, Vickburg would still have fallen, Grant would have still come east, and the war would have gone on to its inevitable conclusion.
The South's situation in 1863 was more desperate but the public morale in the north was still shaky. A major defeat on northern soil with Lee operating at will in Pennsylvania or Maryland might well have been enough to force peace talks. Imagine also that the New York City draft riots of the next week would have been much more powerful, with no Gettysburg veterans available to suppress them.
Vicksburg certainly would have fallen still. Of course, the fruits might well have been thrown away when Grant and many of his veterans were hurried back east to confront Lee.
And then there is the opportunity of 1864, when stalemate in Georgia and Virginia and appalling casualty lists left Northern morale so low that Lincoln was convinced that he would not win reelection. If Davis had left Johnston in place to continue to defebsive stalemate rather than the reckless Hood, Atlanta might have remained in Confederate hands by election day.
And if it had, Lincoln's chances of reelection would have been much grimmer.
Of course, a Southern victory in 1864 would have been a terribly expensive one. Much of its territory was in ruins and much of its slave force accustomed to liberty.
But the fact remains that the Civil War was a close-run thing. The North had powerful advantages, but not powerful enough to assure easy victory.
What was the one position on which Davis was immobile? Come on, Non - it's your big chance to talk about Davis (with invite, even)!
Southern independence. As late as January 1865 he was insisting on that as a precondition to talks with the Union, in spite of the fact that everyone else in the government recognized how foolish that stand was.
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