The Civil War: Causes and Initial Strategies

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Civil War: Causes

• Slavery• States rights vs centralized government• Agrarian vs industrialized way of life• Cultural differences

– By the time of the Civil War, “an entire generation of Southern young men… had come of age with a sense of Southern cultural identity, commitment to slaveholding, and a willingness to defend these values against a Northern culture” (Gary Gallagher)

Road to War

• “War is nothing but the continuation of policy with other means.”– Clausewitz

• Missouri Compromise (1820) -- Maine admitted as a free state and Missouri as a slave, but no other slave states from the Louisiana Purchase territory would be allowed north of Missouri’s southern boundary

Road to War• Nullification Crisis (1832) --

Responding to a tariff on manufactured goods, South Carolina declared a state can void any act of Congress it feels is unconstitutional

• Mexican War (1846-1848) -- viewed by some as a Southern attempt to expand slavery– Wilmot Proviso (1846) failed.

Would have formally renounced any intention to introduce slavery into lands seized from Mexico

John Calhoun argued that each state was sovereign and the Constitution was a compact among sovereign states.

Road to War (cont)• Compromise of 1850 dealt

with issues involving territories gained in the Mexican War and slavery– California admitted as a free

state– Slavery in New Mexico and

Utah territories to be determined by popular sovereignty

– Slave trade prohibited in the District of Columbia

– A more stringent fugitive slave law was passed that required all U.S. citizens to assist in the return of runaway slaves

Henry Clay, “the Great Compromiser,” introduces the Compromise of 1850

Road to War (cont)

• Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854) -- popular sovereignty; overturns Missouri Compromise

• Harper’s Ferry and John Brown (1859)

• Lincoln elected (Nov 6, 1860)

• South Carolina votes to secede (Dec 20, 1860) – Mississippi, Alabama,

Louisiana, Georgia, Florida, and Texas follow

Road to War (cont)

• Lincoln takes office (March 4, 1861)

• Fort Sumter (April 12, 1861)

• Lincoln requests 75,000 three-month volunteers (April 15, 1862)– Virginia,

Arkansas, North Carolina, Tennessee secede

States in the Civil War

Objectives

• North– Restore Union

• Therefore couldn’t completely alienate or destroy the South or the Southern people

• South– Hold on to de facto

independence– Continue the

struggle long enough for the North to tire of it• Similar to

American colonists

Northern Strategy

• Secure border states• Still need to go on

offensive to win

• Scott’s Anaconda Plan• Blockade• Secure the Mississippi

River and cut the South in two

• Wait

• Capture Richmond• Anaconda Plan would

take too long• In June 1861, Lincoln

orders an advance on Richmond

Southern Strategy

• Defend at the border– Political pressure to defend all territory– Maintain legitimacy through territorial integrity– Protect slavery

• Offensive-defensive– Realize they don’t have the resources to defend

everywhere– Allow Northern thrust to develop– Determine the main axis– Concentrate and counterattack at an advantageous time

Comparison

• North– 20 million people– 110,000

manufacturing establishments

– 22,000 miles of railroad

– 75% of nation’s total wealth

– 16,000 man Army and 90 ship Navy

• South– 9 million people (5.5

million whites)– 18,000 manufacturing

establishments– 8,500 miles of railroad– Wealth lay in land and

slaves (non-liquid)– No existing military

Comparison

• North– Had to project forces

across large and hostile territory

– Requirement for offense

– Had to maintain supply lines

– Fighting to regain preexisting status quo

• South– Could take advantage

of interior lines– Could win by only

succeeding on the defense

– Friendly territory and population

– Fighting for homeland and independence

Abraham Lincoln

• Lincoln had little to suggest he would be a good wartime president, especially in contrast to Jefferson Davis

• Lincoln had no significant military experience– Served as a captain in the Illinois

militia during the Black Hawk War but never saw combat

• In actuality he was an excellent commander in chief who was well ahead of his early generals in his strategic thinking

Abraham Lincoln

• Almost from the beginning of the war Lincoln urged his generals to make the enemy armies their objective and to move all Federal forces simultaneously against the Confederate line

• Many of his early generals, especially McClellan, arrogantly minimized Lincoln, thinking war was to be carried on by military professionals without interference from civilians and without political objectives

Abraham Lincoln

• Many of Lincoln’s generals clung to strategies of limited war and conciliation toward the Confederacy– McClellan stated, “I have not come here to wage war

upon non-combatants, upon private property, nor upon the domestic institutions of the land.”

– Meade thought the North should prosecute the war “like the afflicted parent who is compelled to chastise his erring child, and who performs the duty with a sad heart”

• Lincoln did not find a soul mate in this strategic approach until Grant

Jefferson Davis

• “If modern computer-calculators had been available in 1861, they would have surely forecast that Jefferson Davis would be a great war director and Abraham Lincoln an indifferent one.” – T. Harry Williams

• Davis had an excellent military background– West Point Class of 1828 – Regimental commander in the Mexican War– Secretary of War under President Franklin Pierce

Jefferson Davis

• “Davis’s breadth of background probably better qualified him for high army command than any man in the United States….Yet some of Davis’s background would also be a handicap.” – Herman Hattaway and Archer

Jones, 9

• Part of this handicap can be traced to Davis’s experience in the Mexican War.

Jefferson Davis

• Commanded the Mississippi Rifles, a volunteer regiment, in Mexico

• Fell under the command of Brigadier General Zachary Taylor, the father of Davis’s first wife Sarah Knox who had died just three months after their marriage– Unlike Scott who made maximum use of

his staff, Taylor’s forte was individual command rather than collective effort

– From Taylor, Davis would learn a very self-reliant command style

Zachary Taylor

Jefferson Davis

• Davis won great fame for his performance at Buena Vista

• In 1847, he was offered but declined an appointment as brigadier general in the United States Army

• Instead he returned to his political career

“Mississippi Rifles at Buena Vista”The National Guard Heritage Series

Jefferson Davis

• But Buena Vista made Davis very confident in his own abilities

• “... Buena Vista was a relatively minor battle, so that the young colonel should not have assumed, as he did, that he was expert as a tactician and strategist. This assumption led to overconfidence when Davis was called upon to direct the military effort of the Confederacy”– Cass Canfield

• Near the close of the Civil War, the Richmond Examiner lamented, “If we are to perish, the verdict of posterity will be, Died of a V”

Jefferson Davis

• Took his title as Commander in Chief of the Confederate Army quite literally– “considered himself a

military leader first and a politician second”

• Chris Fonvielle – Had six secretaries of

war in four years, but for all practical purposes, served as his own secretary of war and chief of staff.

Confederate Secretaries of War

Leroy Pope Walker 1861Judah Benjamin 1861-1862George Randolph 1862Gustavus Smith 1862 (acting)James Seddon 1862-1865John Breckinridge 1865

Jefferson Davis

• “as everything about the military fascinated him and he believed only he was capable of running things, the President performed tasks that belonged properly to clerks in the War Office, and even in the Adjutant General’s office. Conversely, as he squandered his time and energies in the field of his interests, Davis neglected affairs which properly belonged in the President’s office”

• Clifford DowdeyThe White House of the Confederacy

Limited War: Changing Times

• “… while Scott was the preeminent military strategist of the first half of the nineteenth century, he occupied a lonely plateau in more senses than one: that at the zenith of his powers he was already a museum piece, a soldier of an age gone by whose perceptions of war and strategy had little influence on most of the very West Point graduates whose service in Mexico he so fulsomely praised, because the young graduates inhabited a new world of very different values from Scott’s, the military world of Napoleon” (Russell Weigley, American Way of War, 76).

Turning Movements and the Civil War

• “The Mexican War created an informal, unwritten tactical doctrine—to turn the enemy.” (Archer Jones)– Civil War battles and campaigns that involved

turning movements include the Peninsula Campaign, Second Manassas, and Vicksburg

• Nonetheless the Civil War will also include many costly frontal attacks such as Fredericksburg and Pickett’s Charge

Technology: Changing Times

• By the time of the Civil War, the rifled musket and the Minie ball will cause a change in military tactics– The defense will gain strength

relative to the offense– Artillery will loose its ability to

safely advance close to the enemy and breach holes in defenses

– Close-order formations will become dangerously vulnerable

Junior Officers: Rehearsal for the Civil War

• Approximately 194 Federal generals and 142 Confederate generals previously served in Mexico

• Lee, Jackson, Hill, Pickett, Longstreet, Beauregard, Bragg, etc

• Meade, Grant, Kearney, McClellan, Hooker, Pope, McDowell, etc

West Pointers in the Civil War

• West Pointers will play a key role in the Civil War– 151 Confederate and 294 Federal generals

were West Point graduates– Of the Civil War’s 60 major battles, West

Pointers commanded both sides in 55– A West Pointer commanded on one side in

the other five

Next

• Peninsula Campaign, Shenandoah Valley, and Antietam