The Civil War, 1860–1865

This is Unit Fifteen, part two, on how the war was actually fought and what it did to both governments. Part one closed with a balance sheet and a warning not to read it as a forecast. This half is what each side did with what it had. Carry one idea, and it is the strongest material in this course on the changing role of government. The side that seceded over states' rights built the more centralised of the two wartime governments — conscripting men first, seizing property from its own slaveholders, suspending habeas corpus, overruling states that resisted. Meanwhile the modern federal government was constructed in Washington under cover of the war, by a Congress the South's own departure had left unopposed. Two entries make those cases, and neither is an accusation of hypocrisy. By the end you will be able to explain both. To state the commutation fee and what both drafts shared. To distinguish the eastern and western theories of the war. And to state what Lincoln told Horace Greeley.

Two entries before the fighting, on the arithmetic and on who was commanding.

What the population figure contains.

USH1 2121 Nine Million, Four Million

The Confederacy's population of fewer than nine million included nearly four million enslaved people, counted as part of its strength — a nation counting as an asset a population with every reason to want it defeated. Over one hundred and ninety thousand of them fought for the Union, which part three covers. The arithmetic is inseparable from the institution.

Why the generals knew each other.

USH1 2122 West Point on Both Sides

Commanders on both sides came from West Point or had served together in the Mexican-American War, and could anticipate each other's strategies, with both sides believing in concentrated armies attacking the enemy's capital city. Shared training produces shared doctrine, and that doctrine produces the frontal assaults that made this war so costly.

Four entries in the east, and the same problem recurs in three of them.

The commander who would not fight.

USH1 2123 McClellan

General George B. McClellan commanded the Army of the Potomac and was reluctant to engage, wrongly believing Confederate forces too strong for him — a general popular with his soldiers and unpopular with Lincoln and Congress. The Union enlisted one million men for three-year service, and in January eighteen sixty-two Lincoln and Secretary Edwin Stanton ordered him to take Richmond.

What happened when he tried.

USH1 2124 The Seven Days

McClellan moved one hundred thousand soldiers toward Richmond and stopped miles short, while Stonewall Jackson moved north toward Washington to draw men away, and a quarter to a third of his force was sent back under Irvin McDowell, exactly as Jackson intended. The Seven Days Battles of late June eighteen sixty-two killed or wounded almost twenty thousand Confederates and ten thousand Union men.

The bloodiest day.

USH1 2125 Antietam

Lee moved into Maryland and met Union forces at Antietam Creek near Sharpsburg on September seventeenth, eighteen sixty-two, with eight thousand soldiers killed or wounded, more than on any other single day of combat. McClellan again believed himself outnumbered and held back much of his force. Lee withdrew first and McClellan refused to pursue, which convinced Lincoln he would never win.

Who replaced him.

USH1 2126 Fredericksburg

Ambrose E. Burnside replaced McClellan and failed at Fredericksburg in December eighteen sixty-two, where Confederates held the heights above the town and artillery devastated his force as it advanced. Northern morale suffered badly and Joseph Hooker took command in January eighteen sixty-three. Lincoln also disliked McClellan personally, who had called him a baboon.

Three entries in the west, and the first is a different idea of what winning means.

Grant in the west.

USH1 2127 Grant in the West

Ulysses S. Grant's Army of the West operated in Kentucky, Tennessee and the Mississippi Valley, aiming to control the rivers rather than to take a capital, with Union control of the Mississippi promising to split the Confederacy in two. This is a different theory of the war from the eastern one, and it is the theory that worked.

His first great battle.

USH1 2128 Shiloh

Confederate general Albert Sidney Johnston attacked Grant's camp near Shiloh church on the Tennessee River on the morning of April sixth, eighteen sixty-two, with William Tecumseh Sherman rallying the line while Grant, on crutches, called up reinforcements. Many Union troops fled in terror. Johnston died that afternoon, and reinforced Union forces routed the Confederates the next day.

The river campaign.

USH1 2129 New Orleans and Memphis

Admiral David Farragut fought past the forts in April eighteen sixty-two and bombarded New Orleans, which lies below sea level and was judged indefensible, so Major General Marshall Lovell sent the artillery upriver to Vicksburg instead. Armed New Orleans civilians fought, destroying ships and supplies. Confederates abandoned Fort Pillow on June fourth and Memphis fell on June sixth.

Five entries on what the war demanded, and watch what the Confederate government does.

What kind of war this was.

USH1 2130 Total War

The anchor defines total war as demoralising the enemy by striking military targets and disrupting the opponent's ability to wage war through destruction of resources, with the distinction between civilian and military targets blurring on both sides. Neither side entirely abandoned civilian protections. What total war required was governments mobilising all resources, which extended the state into citizens' lives unprecedentedly.

The Confederate draft.

USH1 2131 The Confederate Draft

The Confederacy adopted conscription in April eighteen sixty-two, requiring all men between eighteen and thirty-five to serve three years, with wealthy men permitted to hire substitutes, which the poor resented bitterly. The Confederate Congress denied state attempts to circumvent the draft, which is a states' rights government overruling states on the most intimate question there is.

What else it took.

USH1 2132 Impressment and Habeas Corpus

The Confederate government ran industry, built transport and infrastructure, and impressed enslaved people from their owners to work fortifications and rail lines, and slaveholders' objections were overruled. Congress also let Davis suspend habeas corpus in eighteen sixty-two, permitting indefinite detention without stated reason, which is the writ requiring a prisoner be brought before a court.

How it paid.

USH1 2133 Confederate Taxes and Inflation

The Confederate Congress refused to tax enslaved people or cotton, adopting a plan that favoured the southern elite, and printed money instead, with runaway inflation following directly from the printing. A government that will not tax its own principal form of wealth has one remaining option, and that option is what produced the riots in the next entry.

What the inflation did.

USH1 2134 The Richmond Bread Riots

In April eighteen sixty-three thousands of hungry people rioted in Richmond, and many of the rioters were mothers who could not feed their children, and Davis threatened to have Confederate troops open fire on the crowd. The riot ended after that threat: a government aiming rifles at its own citizens over the price of bread.

One entry now, and it assembles the last five into the unit's central claim.

The contradiction, assembled.

USH1 2135 Mobilised Against Its Own Principles

A nation founded on states' rights built the more centralised of the two wartime governments. It conscripted men before the Union did, impressed enslaved people over their owners' objections, ran industry directly, suspended habeas corpus, and overruled states that tried to evade its draft. States' rights advocates resented Davis's conscription, taxation and requisitions. Governors withheld supplies and troops. Vice President Alexander Stephens opposed conscription, the seizure of enslaved property, and the suspension of habeas corpus, which put the Confederacy's second officer in opposition to its central war measures. This is not hypocrisy. A war of survival requires central power, and any government fighting one will take it. What the Confederate case demonstrates is that constitutional doctrine loses to necessity when the two collide, which is the same lesson Unit Fourteen taught about states' rights in eighteen fifty. The doctrine was never the driver.

Three entries on Washington, and the third explains why they are in a war chapter.

What the Union built.

USH1 2136 Union Mobilisation

The Homestead Act of eighteen sixty-two let settlers claim one hundred and sixty acres of federal land by residing on it five years, and Congress chartered the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads with generous funds. The Land Grant College Act of the same year, authored by Vermont Republican Justin Smith Morrill, granted each state thirty thousand acres.

How the Union paid.

USH1 2137 Union Finance

The Union used income taxes on the wealthy, inheritance taxes, high tariffs, war bonds, and the National Bank Acts of eighteen sixty-three and sixty-four, with the Legal Tender Act making a hundred and fifty million dollars of greenbacks legal tender. The northern economy boomed, though inflation resulted there too. Compare the Confederacy, where printing was the only answer.

What outlasts the war.

USH1 2138 What Outlasts the War

Three of the Union's wartime measures outlast the war entirely and reshape the country: the Homestead Act, the transcontinental railroad charters, and the land-grant colleges. None of them is a war measure in any direct sense. All three passed a Congress in which the southern delegations were absent, having withdrawn with their states, leaving the Republican Party in unopposed control of both chambers for the first time. So a national land policy, a national rail network and a national university system were enacted in a single session by a Congress missing a third of its members. This is the entry to remember for the changing role of government. The modern federal government is built during the war and under cover of it, by the party the South's departure left unopposed. Secession removed the standing obstacle to every one of these programmes, which had been blocked for a decade.

Two entries on conscription in the North, and the second finds an exact match.

The Enrollment Act.

USH1 2139 The Enrollment Act

The Enrollment Act of March eighteen sixty-three required unmarried men between twenty and twenty-five, and married men between thirty-five and forty-five, to register for a lottery, with immigrants who had filed for citizenship included in the requirement. African Americans, excluded from citizenship by Dred Scott, were exempt. Lincoln had already suspended habeas corpus in Maryland, and the administration closed three hundred newspapers.

Who could avoid it.

USH1 2140 Three Hundred Dollars

The Enrollment Act let a drafted man provide a substitute or pay a commutation fee of three hundred dollars to avoid service altogether. The Confederate draft of eighteen sixty-two let wealthy men hire substitutes on the same principle. Both provisions were resented by the poor of their own side, and both produced the complaint that this was a rich man's war and a poor man's fight. This is a rare exact symmetry and it is worth the entry for that reason. The two societies described themselves as opposites, one built on free labour and the other on slavery, and when each had to compel its own citizens to die it reached for the same device. Note also what three hundred dollars was: roughly a year's wages for a labourer, which makes the commutation fee a price only one class could pay. The New York draft riots, which part three covers, begin two days after the first lottery under this act.

Three entries to close, on the work women took on and where the president stood.

Women in the war.

USH1 2141 Women in the War

Women took over farms and businesses, organised ladies' aid societies to sew uniforms and raise money, and southern women nursed wounded soldiers in their homes, while northern women volunteered for the United States Sanitary Commission, formed in June eighteen sixty-one. The Commission inspected camps to reduce disease, the war's most common cause of death. Some women spied and some fought as men.

The woman who ran the nurses.

USH1 2142 Dorothea Dix

Dorothea Dix was placed in charge of Union army nurses, a position with no precedent and no established qualifications to fill it. A rumour held that Dix sought women over thirty, plain almost to repulsion in dress, the stated reason being that such women would not form romantic liaisons with soldiers. The anchor calls it rumour and so does this course.

Where Lincoln stood.

USH1 2143 Lincoln's Early Caution

Lincoln disapproved of slavery personally, believed he lacked authority to abolish it, feared border-state secession, and aimed only at restoring the Union, as in his letter to Horace Greeley of August twenty-second, eighteen sixty-two. He would save the Union without freeing any slave if he could, or by freeing all of them, or by freeing some.

Look at what you can now do. You can explain why the states' rights side built the more centralised government — conscription first, impressment of enslaved people over their owners' objections, industry run directly, habeas corpus suspended, states overruled — and say that this is doctrine losing to necessity rather than hypocrisy. You can explain what the South's withdrawal from Congress made possible: the Homestead Act, the transcontinental railroads and the land-grant colleges, all passed by a Republican Party left unopposed, all blocked for a decade before. You can state the commutation fee of three hundred dollars, roughly a year's wages for a labourer, and say that both drafts wrote the same class privilege into law. You can distinguish the two theories of the war: the eastern one aimed at the enemy capital, and Grant's aimed at the rivers, and the second is the one that worked. And you can state what Lincoln told Greeley, which was that he would save the Union by freeing all, some, or none.