The Civil War Lives On 5

From mid-April 1861 until mid-April 1865 three million men North and South had seen war service. Killed in action or dead from wounds and disease were 360,000 from the North, 260,000 from the South, a grand total of 620,000 Americans.

The Civil War Lives On 4

During Sherman’s infamous March to the Sea, after he had taken, and then burnt, Atlanta to the ground, his well-fed, well-equipped army of 65,000 began cutting a 50-mile swath of devastation through Georgia estimated by Sherman himself at $100,000,000 in value. His rampaging troops were seldom opposed – except at one point when Federal veterans on a hill-top with swamp ground to left and right and a clear field of fire directly to their front encountered a force of 1,500 infantry with, as one Federal observed, ‘more courage than discretion.’ They attacked them across that open ground. The dug-in Yankees greeted them with a blistering volley that left scores on the field. Astonishingly they regrouped and charged again, with the same result. After yet a third attempt to dislodge the invaders, the pathetic remnant was beaten back for a final time. When the engagement was completed the Yankees, who had incurred a mere 62 casualties, walked over that field of blood only to discover that their attackers were old men and young boys – more than 600 of them in all.

The Civil War Lives On 3

During the Civil War a quantum leap occurred that changed the way in which humans conducted war against one another. The spring campaign of 1864 began with Grant and the Army of the Potomac attacking Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia at a place that came to be called The Wilderness.

When that battle ended [on balance, one could argue that the North had been defeated by the South yet again] Grant should have followed an unwritten but time-honored tradition: break off engagement with the enemy to assess and regroup. That is what had happened throughout history. Virtually all the great battles of the past - Marathon, Actium, Austerlitz, even Gettysburg – could be summarized as two blind giants stumbling into and then pummeling each other for a day or two, and then disengaging. The Battle of Hastings, for example, which decided the dynastic future of the English throne was done in an afternoon. But when the Battle of the Wilderness concluded, Grant’s order was ‘flank to the left.’ His immediate purpose was to position himself between Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy, and the Army of Northern Virginia, which was charged among other things with Richmond’s defense. Lee [nickname: ‘King of Spades’] moved quickly to take up a defensive position and prevented that from happening. For the rest of 1864 the two armies grappled with each other zigzagging southward – but did not disengage. Such a relentless strategy was the beginning of what a later century would come to call total war.

The Civil War Lives On 2

The Civil War was truly a war of brother against brother as exemplified by the roll call of Mary Todd Lincoln's family of Lexington [Kentucky was a border state]. Her eldest brother Levi and her half-sister Margaret Kellogg were for the Union, while her youngest brother George and her three half-brothers had joined the Confederate Army, and her three half-sisters were the wives of Confederate officers.

The Civil War Lives On 1

On December 20, 1860 the Electoral College met formally to elect Abraham Lincoln President of the United States. On that very same day a special convention was convened in South Carolina to consider and then approve the following Ordinance of Secession: ‘That the union now subsisting between South Carolina and other States, under the name of the United States of America is hereby dissolved.’ This bold move – one state out, with maybe more to follow [but no guarantee!], and 33 states in – passed by a vote of 169 to 0. This take-no-prisoners attitude not only is profound but also is not the kind of mindset that later generations will lightly dismiss. And, the evidence suggests, later generations didn’t.

Why the South lost 3

‘The dream of the Confederacy started out with an expectation of nobility and ended cloaked in revisionist elitism. Both dreams contain fantastic, almost unbelievable, stories. But the story of what really happened is far more intriguing – and useful. If we are to learn from the history of men, we must be frank about their humanity. Those who led the Confederacy were not gods. They were men, sometimes bold and sometimes weak, sometimes hateful and sometimes grand, sometimes selfish, not always sober. Together they formed an imperfect union, and together they destroyed it.’

- David Eicher

Why the South lost 2

The reason the Lost Cause actually lost was not because the Confederate leadership wasn't prepared to pay the price; it wasn't because they failed to see themselves, or behave, as men of honor; it wasn't because they were lacking in the kind of talent, the sheer brain power, to pull it off; it wasn't because they used up all the men, money and resources needed to get the job done; it wasn't even because God was punishing a society based on the monstrous evil of slavery. The real reason had to do with the logic behind the idea of secession itself. Only a few short weeks before secession actually took root, they thought they saw a new president [Abraham Lincoln] of a thing larger than their precious individual states show signs that he was going to be a state-eating ogre; that mind-set had quickly become set in concrete. Soon Jefferson Davis was warning that the Confederacy’s only hope of final victory over what eventually proved to be a determined foe was in unity and the (temporary) surrender of states' rights to a different president [namely, himself] of a thing larger than a state. Davis’s warning largely fell on deaf ears. He was told, in effect, ‘we already endured that kind of presidential tyranny; we'll not put up with it again.’ In their heart of hearts they knew Davis was right; in his heart of hearts Davis knew they were right. Bottom line: although each side ended up making significant accommodations to the other side, there was simply no accommodation here. The problem was that Southern leaders continually ended up tripping over a mind-set that leads to secession – a mind-set, they discovered to their cost, that has no internal check.